01
Sep

Frustrated

Frustrated.

That was the one-word subject of an email millions of Obama supporters received last night. 

And someone should be fired over it.

It shows an utter lack of understanding around leadership and communication.

What kind of message does it send for a leader to tell their people that they are frustrated by their own inability to get things done? 

Imagine if the CEO of a company wrote her/his employees and shareholders an email telling them he/her were frustrated by the company’s ability to get stuff done.  The employees would think to themselves, “Well, if you’re frustrated, you’ve only got yourself to blame.  You’re the leader.”  The board of directors would think to themselves, “Well, if you’re frustrated, maybe we should get someone different to step in and move things forward.”

The dictionary defines frustrated as:

foiled, stopped, disappointed

suffering from frustration; dissatisfied, agitated, and/or discontent because one is unable to perform an action or fulfill a desire.

That’s not exactly the sentiment people want to hear from their leaders.

Sure, Obama’s campaign was trying to rile up Democrats around frustration against the Republicans in Congress.  But, imo that’s like the CEO saying I’m frustrated by this department of our company, or this executive, or this initiative. In the end, Obama’s still the guy at the top and he’s got to lead and find ways to channel his frustration towards positive outcomes.

I wonder if Obama truly is frustrated or if his campaign just lacks message discipline?

For the record, I’m an Obama supporter, frustrated by his leadership and his campaign. 

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About

Betashop is the website of Jason Goldberg,
Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Fab.

Jason founded Fab in 2011 with Bradford Shellhammer (Chief Design Officer) and Nishith Shah (Chief Technology Officer).

Fab is everyday design.

Fab’s mission is to help people better their lives with design. Millions of people around the world use Fab to discover everyday design products at great prices, to connect with the world’s most exciting designers, and to share their favorite design inspirations. Smile, you're designed to.

Some have called Fab "the fastest growing E-commerce company on the planet." We like to say we're just doing our best to serve up great design that makes people smile.

Fab now serves more than 11 million members across 26 countries. Fab grew sales by more than 500% in 2012, one-third of which comes from users of the Fab mobile apps for iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. In February 2013 Fab was named the #5 most innovative company in the World by Fast Company. Fab won the award for Best E-Commerce Company of The Year at The Crunchies in both 2012 and 2011. It's all very humbling and inspiring. The truth is we celebrate our challenges more than our successes at Fab and we're really still just getting started.

Fab is the fourth company Jason founded. Jason previously founded fabulis, socialmedian, and Jobster. In 2009, following the sale of socialmedian to XING AG, Jason was Chief Product Officer at XING, based in Hamburg, Germany. Before starting Jobster in 2004, Jason led product and business initiatives at both T-Mobile USA and AOL Time Warner. In a prior life, Jason spent 6 years working 100 hours a week for Bill Clinton in the White House.

Jason is also an investor in and Board Member at RJ Metrics. He is also an investor in BlackJet and Twitter. Notable prior investments: TweetDeck.

Jason is a product guy. He loves to blog, loves transparency, and loves trying to make people smile. Jason shares everything about Fab on his blog, betashop, at http://betashop.com.

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