Leadership Expert Jeff Christian: 'Egypt Meets Its Enron Moment'

CLEVELAND, Feb. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- According to leadership expert Jeff Christian, Egypt, with the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, has met its Enron moment.  Christian, who is the founder of Revenue Beast, a revenue acceleration company; the Number 12 Foundation, a foundation that finds lasting recovery for men in, and coming out of, the penal system; and founder of CTPartners executive search firm, has worked with hundreds of CEOs.

According to Christian, "The reality is that the personality of a dictator is the same – whether he or she is running a company, or running a country."

Christian noted that, "the dictator personality has three key priorities, me, me and me."

"This narcissistic personality manifests itself with two specific abusive behaviors of every dictator.  First, the person will do anything, at any cost to keep his or her power.  Second, he or she will take advantage of people and his or her position to steal from the company or country," said Christian.

Christian observed that the outcomes of a dictator in business and politics are the same, "The dictator personality, like those of Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco or Ken Lay of Enron, is inclined to keep political hold and maintain his or her leadership position at any cost.  As a result, these countries, these corporations are mismanaged and eventually a revolt ensues."

He continued, "In the corporate world, the revolt is from a corporation's employees who eventually scream loud enough that they are heard by the board and shareholders.  The board is eventually forced to take action."

"In the case of Egypt, the board can be equated to the military," said Christian.  "Egyptian citizens screamed loud enough to provoke the military to abandon their support of Mubarak.  The military realized that their position and safety would be at stake if they did not oust the President, which they did successfully."  

"Dictatorships work in corporations and in countries when the employees or citizens are well cared for," explained Christian, "And Egypt has a long history of revolt going back thousands of years.  Every leader of Egypt has known that if his people were not well-fed, his life was at stake."  

As reported in USA Today, "One in five Egyptians live in poverty in a country where the estimated per-capita income was $6,200 last year, according to the CIA's The World Factbook."  Furthermore, as mentioned in The Huffington Post, "Mubarak...and his family have a net worth of at least $5 billion."  

Christian noted that these facts combined represent, "evidence of a poorly run government and just as with corporations, poorly run regimes eventually collapse and their leaders are ousted."

"The whole world is watching to see who the next President of Egypt will be," concluded Christian.

About Jeff Christian

Jeff Christian is the founder of executive search firm CTPartners, The Number 12 Foundation, and Revenue Beast. For more information go to www.revenuebeast.com.

SOURCE RevenueBeast