I’m not a supporter of (now former) presidential candidate John Edwards, but I have to give him credit for this: he knew when it was finally time to quit and throw in the towel.

“I don’t think there was one overriding decision that says you have to get out now,” said John Moylan, a close Edwards friend and campaign adviser. “Clearly he could have stuck it out.” Moylan, who talked to The New York Times, added, I think the timing now felt right to him,” Mr. Moylan said. “He felt like it would do more good if he stepped aside.

“I don’t think there was one overriding decision that says you have to get out now. Clearly he could have stuck it out.”

The candidate’s decision puts a spotlight one of the toughest balancing acts that just about any leader (particularly as business leader) eventually has to face–when should I stay and when should I go?

Recent history is riddled with examples of executives who should have known it was time to depart gracefully, as Edwards did, but failed to do so (frequently for selfish reasons). Some, like former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli and former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, overstayed their welcome and just refused to listen to the ever-increasing chorus of critics calling for their departure. Others – Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher and former American Red Cross President Mark Everson – had to be pushed to resign when confronted with damaging personal information. 

But some executives, like John Mackey of Whole Foods Market and Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide, dig in their heels and refuse to leave when confronted with their public missteps. They stay on in spite of negative media coverage and calls for them to step aside. They seem to have no concern about the damage their continued presence might do to the company they purport to care about. Their imperious style makes you wonder how their boards put up with them.

As with all things in life, there is a time to dig in and fight, and a time to let things go. No one wants to be thought of as a quitter, but then again, no one wants to stick it out and continue to battle beyond reason. The trick is knowing when there is still a good reason to fight, and when to resign yourself to the inevitable and let things go.

I may not have wanted to vote for John Edwards, but I very much admire his ability to read the writing on the wall and admit that the time had come to give it up. It’s a lesson anyone toiling in our modern workforce would be wise to learn.

For better or for worse, California is on the cutting edge of a lot of workforce legal trends. 

Here is the latest one: the state Supreme Court ruled this week that despite a voter-approved law that makes medical marijuana legal, workers who indulge can still be “fired for testing positive for the drug at work.” According to a story in the San Francisco Chronicle, Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said, “We have no reason to conclude the voters intended to speak so broadly, and in a context so far removed from the criminal law, as to require employers to accommodate marijuana use.”

This is a big issue because, as the Chronicle story noted, “Lawyers on both sides of the case said pre-employment testing for marijuana is common among California employers, especially those that have federal contracts and are legally required to keep their workplaces drug-free.”

The issue isn’t over, however. Some California legislators are vowing to pass legislation addressing the issue. A story in the Los Angeles Times said that “Within hours of the court’s decision, Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) announced that he would introduce legislation to prevent employers from discriminating against medical marijuana users. The people of California did not intend that patients be unemployed in order to use medical marijuana,” he said.

Frankly, I don’t think the people of California thought too deeply about the possible workplace repercussions when they passed the medical marijuana initiative back in 1996. Now, you have two legal issues that are at odds: a law that allows people to use medical marijuana legally for medical purposes versus the legally mandated need for employers to provide a drug-free workplace.

Is there a right answer here? How do we handle compassionate policies and laws that are at odds with safety and common sense in the workplace? If you have an answer, I’d love to see it—either as a comment here or an e-mail to me at jhollon@workforce.com.

Wal-Mart is not only the world’s largest retailer, but also the world’s largest private employer. It is also Ground Zero in the battle over employee health care and a focal point for those who say that the current American system of employer-based health care just doesn’t work.

It’s an image the company is trying to change, as Wal-Mart senior vice president Sue Oliver told Workforce Management two summers ago–and as the company made clear with its announcement last September of an expansion of health care benefits for Wal-Mart workers.

So how much progress is Wal-Mart making? If you glance at a press release issued by Wal-Mart today, it sounds like a lot. According to today’s announcement, “the number of (Wal-Mart) associates who now have health care coverage through its new associate-tailored plans for 2008 or another source has significantly increased from 90.4 percent to 92.7 percent, and the number of uninsured associates decreased by more than 20 percent, compared to one year ago.”

“Over the past few years, we’ve spent a lot of time listening to our associates and working closely with them to design a benefits package that better meets their needs,” said Linda Dillman, executive vice president of benefits and risk management for Wal-Mart. “Just as in the last few years, we are pleased to see an increase in enrollment numbers. With 690,970 associates—and more than 1.1 million associates and dependants in total—now covered by Wal-Mart’s plans, we can see that the improvements we’ve made are being embraced by our associates and their families.”

The press release goes on to say that more than 30,000 associates chose Wal-Mart’s coverage for the first time during the fall of 2007 after previously being uninsured. Wal-Mart also says that “the percentage of associates who reported having no coverage declined from 9.6 percent to 7.3 percent—a figure significantly lower than the 17.7 percent uninsured rate nationwide for U.S. employed workers that was recently reported by the U.S. Census Bureau.”

So, does this mean that Wal-Mart is providing health care to nearly 93 percent of its workers? Well, no. If you dig into the numbers a little bit, you’ll see that the company says that “associates surveyed cited the following sources for their health care coverage”:

* 50.2 percent - Wal-Mart plan
* 22.3 percent - Spouse
* 7.3 percent - Uninsured
* 4.3 percent - Medicare
* 4.2 percent - Parents, school or college
* 3.2 percent - Other/previous employer
* 2.4 percent - Individual policy
* 2.3 percent – Department of Veterans Affairs or military
* 1.9 percent - Medicaid
* 1.2 percent - State program other than Medicaid
* 0.7 percent - Another source than those listed above

In other words, only 50 percent of Wal-Mart workers surveyed are actually getting their health care coverage through Wal-Mart. While that’s probably pretty good for the retail industry, it still well below the 60 percent-plus range for most companies that provide employee health coverage.

It’s also a little disingenuous for Wal-Mart to be touting “92.7 percent” of employees being covered by a health plan when in fact only 50 percent are being covered by the Wal-Mart health plan. It makes you wonder: Why can’t the company just tout its progress rather than resorting to PR deception and spin control? Some things, it seems, never change.

I’ve written a lot here about bad behavior on the part of high-level executives, from the CEO who, in his blog, anonymously attacked and belittled a competitor his company was trying to buy, to the “personal relationship” with a subordinate that got the head of the American Red Cross fired, to the multimillion-dollar sexual harassment verdict handed down against the coach of the New York Knicks.

If you are a rational, reasonable person, you probably came away after reading about these incidents wondering, as I did: “What on earth were these men thinking?”

 These examples go to show that despite the huge salaries, stock options and perks that get thrown at CEOs these days, in some cases these corporate titans are conspicuously lacking in good judgment and common sense. People who take the long view and have some historical perspective would probably say that none of this is really new or unique to our day and age. And they would be right.

But sometimes, you come across an account that alleges over-the-top executive behavior that is so stunningly inappropriate that it shocks the sensibilities and defies any easy analysis or explanation. So it is with Dov Charney, founder and chief executive of American Apparel (Amex: APP).

Charney was the subject of a recent Los Angeles Times article (“Lawsuit has fashion mogul in spotlight”). that has to be read to be believed. It’s about a sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit that has been brought against Charney and is scheduled to go to trial next week.

That’s the tamest part of the story.

The more complex and titillating issues are in the details, which include Charney acknowledging “that he has appeared in his underwear many times in front of male and female employees,” that “on a few occasions during work meetings, he donned a skimpy garment that barely covered his genitals,” and that he engaged in some very personal sexual behavior in front of a journalist who was interviewing him for Jane magazine.

Although the company denies that Charney engaged in sexual harassment, his lawyers were quoted in court documents cited by the L.A. Times saying that “American Apparel is a sexually charged workplace where employees of both genders deal with sexual conduct, speech and images as part of their jobs.”

 CEO Charney also told the Times: “I’m the CEO of a public company. I manage 7,000 employees in 14 countries. … Could I have done all this where I’m inappropriate all the time? Where I’m running around in my underwear all the time?”

Good question, but it makes you wonder: Is running around the office in your skivvies normal behavior for a chief executive any of the time, even if he is in charge of an underwear manufacturer? I’ll be watching this case closely to find out.

You can file this under “things they forgot to teach you in business school.” Your success (and some would say survival) as a manager or business executive is directly linked to how skilled you are at managing expectations.

I’ve touched on this before, but there’s a fine art to this, and it generally takes time and practice to figure out how to do it just right. Sometimes, however, it is instructive to learn from seeing how it can go really wrong. A good example is Boeing’s inability to properly manage expectations for its new 787 Dreamliner.

In case you haven’t been following the story, the new 787 is seen as the future of the commercial airline industry. According to The Wall Street Journal, “The 787, which has received more orders than any new aircraft, is expected to save 20 percent on fuel due to a lighter-weight body and wings made mostly of composite materials, rather than aluminum.” Boeing has also done a remarkable job of marketing and selling the new jetliner. As of mid-December, the company had 762 orders for the aircraft from 52 customers, and according to the Journal, “is sold out essentially through 2014.”

In other words, the expectations for the 787 Dreamliner are extremely high, but unfortunately, Boeing has a pretty basic problem: It can’t figure out how to produce and deliver the aircraft on schedule.

“Boeing again delays Dreamliner’s debut,” said a story in USA Today. And a similar story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoted Pat Shanahan, a troubleshooter Boeing brought in to manage the Dreamliner program last year after the previous program manager was fired, as saying: “If there is anything that we have learned over these past months, it is that we underestimated how long it would take to complete someone else’s work. I know our credibility is being tested on this program, and it is up to us to deliver on what we say we will do. We are committed to executing this schedule and delivering on what we have promised. We will pass this test.”

Shanahan hit the nail on the head. A manager’s credibility—and all too frequently, his job—is at stake if he can’t deliver on what he says he can do. The trick I’ve always been taught is to under-promise and over-deliver. That is, set expectations at a level where you can reasonably meet them, and then exceed them. 

This is easier said then done. Sometimes you don’t get the opportunity to set expectations. Other times, the goals and expectations get changed in midstream. And still on other occasions, people and personalities get into the mix and can foul up both the expectations and your ability to deliver them.

History is littered with great examples of unrealistic expectations being unmet. Boeing’s struggle with the 787 Dreamliner program is just the latest, and a sobering case study of why your ability to manage expectations can either take you to the next level, or send your career spiraling out of your control.