Over the last 19 years, since Daniel Snyder purchased the Washington Redskins from the estate of the late Jack Kent Cooke, the franchise has under-achieved, and has chewed through head coaches. The replacement of Jim Zorn by Mike Shanahan after the 2009 season was only the latest in a long line of coaching changes that have created something of a a revolving door at the top of the organization.
A brief analysis of team histories shows that stability is a key enabler to high achievement in the NFL. The most consistently successful franchises turn out to be the ones with the fewest top-level coaching changes over time. Frequent coaching changes play havoc with teams. Every new coach wants to install his own system on offense or defense (sometimes both at once), and the tendency on the part of many coaches to pass over more talented players in favor of "system" players means that system changes invariably result in high player and assistant coach turnover.
Having said that, let us take a brief tour of the Washington Redskins coaching and franchise leadership landscape and look at how many of the recent events have violated some fundamental components of what might be termed Leadership and Management 101. Here goes...

1. Conflicts of interest
No matter how charitably you view it, when the head coach hires his son as the offensive co-ordinator, that creates a whopping great conflict of interest. There are so many possible downsides to that scenario I don't know where to start, but the biggest one is that Mike Shanahan is extremely unlikely (I am being charitable the way I phrase that) to ever fire Kyle Shanahan as the offensive co-ordinator if the offense is not functioning correctly. It is also unlikely that any offensive players who are unhappy with the offense are going to be able to promulgate any message to leadership that even hints at issues with Kyle Shanahan's leadership and coaching.
The presence of Kyle and Mike Shanahan makes it highly probable that the offensive approach is going to be some variant of "my way or the highway, no discussion". That leadership style only works in a crisis situation, and it has a limited shelf life even then.

2. Conflicting signals on the #1 quarterback
When a team trades for a quarterback, declares him to the the cornerstone of a franchise, then benches him, cannot get it's story straight about the benching, then signs him to a contract extension that turns out on closer examination to be worth nothing in terms of that quarterback's job security, then benches him for the rest of the season, but keeps him as an offensive captain and has him walk out to the coin toss at the Cowboys game, I think the obvious question is: how seriously dysfunctional is this behaviour? At best it sends utterly conflicting signals concerning the quarterback position, at worst it demonstrates that leadership within the Redskins is not capable of even reading from the same book, never mind staying on the same page.

3. The Albert Haynesworth Saga
The Redskins eventually suspended Albert Haynesworth for the rest of the 2010 season after a long series of run-ins between Haynesworth and the coaching staffs. There was never likely to be a positive resolution to the stand-off, given that the Redskins installed a defensive scheme for the 2010-11 season that Haynesworth had never played in in the NFL before.
Ideally the Redskins would have traded Haynesworth before he became a serious distraction, but he has a current contract lasting until at least the end of 2012 with over $40m in guaranteed money, a contract agreed to by none other than, er, Redskins current leadership. No team is likely to want to assume that contract as part of a trade, and Haynesworth has little incentive to agree to re-structure it because the years up to 2012 are loaded with guaranteed money. A true rock-hard place scenario for the team. Haynesworth still remains under contract until at least 2012 if a new CBA is agreed, and even if the Redskins cut him after 2012 they are going to end up carrying a lot of "dead" money on their cap for the 2013 season.

3. Suing the media
Daniel Snyder filed a defamation lawsuit against the Washington City Paper earlier this year over an article which he alleges contained anti-Semitic smears. A lawyer comments on the lawsuit here, and as you might expect, in addition to wondering out loud why the hell Snyder thinks it is a good idea to file a lawsuit against a local paper that still buys ink by the barrel, he does not think much of the chances of success with the lawsuit:

...Snyder is a public figure, the columnist was making fun of him, and I’ll be shocked if this suit survives a motion for summary judgment.
Snyder might be as good at picking football players as I am at picking out healthy lunch options, but we know he can identify a good lawyer when he sees one. He has got to know that this lawsuit is probably dead in the water. So why did he file it?
I’m forced to believe that the only reason he did this was that he wanted to get a headline calling a newspaper anti-Semitic and possibly gain some public sympathy with a fan base that generally can’t stand him. Most people take claims of anti-Semitism seriously.

I have no idea why the lawsuit was filed, but it merely continues to make Daniel Snyder the story when the phrase "Washington Redskins" is mentioned. Perhaps that is the real reason for the lawsuit, if the on-field product continues to disappoint..

I believe that we are witnessing the same dynamic unfolding in Washington as has unfolded in Dallas, with an egotistical, controlling owner struggling to establish a productive working relationship with his front office and head coach. (Actually it is worse than that; Daniel Snyder seems to be working hard to alienate the local media also, which is something that Jerry Jones, for all his faults, has never done). It seems that Joe Gibbs is the only recent coach that Daniel Snyder feels comfortable with ,judging by Gibbs' appearance with Snyder in the owner's box at a Redskins home game last season. Quite what Mike Shanahan thinks about that visit from Gibbs is anybody's guess.