This is a continuation of an earlier blog, which you can read here.
Third Principle: A leader places the organization’s goals above her own, and pushes her followers to improve.
Why do you lead? Is it to accomplish a specific goal? Or is it to feed your ego? If the latter, then you’re running a personality cult, and you probably don’t want to help your followers get better for fear they’ll surpass or challenge you.
There’s a possibly apocryphal story of an MBA student of one of the more prestigious B-schools (guess which one) who was asked, in a job interview, if he considered himself a team player. He replied, “Absolutely – if I’m the captain.”
If your devotion is to getting things done, to reaching your group’s collective objectives, then the faster your people hone their skills and increase their abilities, the more likely you are to achieve what you, collectively, set out to achieve. And this is as true whether you lead, or whether you discover someone who would actually be a better leader than you are, and cede the leadership role to him or her.
But if your goal is to feather your own nest and buff up your ego, then you are not leading, but rather misleading. In that case, the group’s goals are, at best, secondary to your personal agenda. Indeed, if you look at many of the problems in corporate leadership in recent years, they often stem from the head person’s desire to achieve personal goals (bonuses, stock options, corporate perks, etc.) at the expense of the corporation’s goals or interests. In my opinion, these people are liars, not leaders.
Think, for example, of Aubrey McClendon of Chesapeake Energy, who used corporate jets for personal reasons, borrowed $500 million from a company that’s an investor in Chesapeake, and ran a hedge fund with a direct conflict of interest with his day job of being CEO. Or what about Carly Fiorina, who paid herself handsomely, spent a lot of her time self-promoting, worked the lecture circuit and did media grandstanding, all while firing staff in order to cut costs, and leading Hewlett-Packard into a disastrous merger with Compaq. Then there’s Ken Lay of Enron, who defies the whole concept of leadership. He lied, cheated, swindled, and ultimately stole from investors, stakeholders, and the people who were supposed to be his clients. His company’s, customers’, and employees’ entire purpose for being, as far as he was concerned, was for the glorification and enrichment of Ken Lay. His company, Enron, became the ultimate example of corporate greed and dishonesty.
Until, that is, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008. Lehman Brothers not only exemplified Wall Street’s greed and corruption, gambling with other peoples’ lives and money to try to win huge bonuses for themselves, but almost took down the entire free market system with them. And Dick Fuld was the “leader” that drove Lehman on the rocks, yet remains unrepentant to this day.
The capitalist system works best when both parties are better off as the result of a transaction, if both sides profit. People who do not understand capitalism believe that the capitalist (the bad guy) is profiteering off the hard work of the exploited worker. In fact, the owner does benefit from the work of the worker, but the worker also benefits from the capital investment and market position created by the owner. And the purchaser benefits from the innovation and production of the producer, which in turn benefits by supplying the product or service at a price that is higher than its cost of production. Both sides are better off. But when this two way street breaks down, it’s no longer capitalism, but exploitation. And deliberate subversion of a leadership position for personal gain amounts to exploitation of both the people being led, and the customers or clients being short-changed.
But what about an entrepreneur or founder, someone who starts a company, movement, or organization? Don’t they have to lead the organization in order to accomplish their own personal goals? Indeed, don’t they hire people to help them achieve that specific purpose? No, generally they don’t.
If a founder’s entire purpose is to have people perform personal services for them, that’s one thing. That’s a service transaction.
But if you look at organizations that started off as entrepreneurial ventures, and then grew into something more, they change as they grow, and their objectives change as well. Take, for example, the early days of Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.). Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer, but believing that they had something big on their hands, and that they needed both more capital and executive expertise they didn’t have, found both in veteran Mike Markkula, an angel investor who backed the fledgling company, and whom the two Steves lured out of retirement in 1977. Markkula brought not only money, but connections, financial savvy, and executive ability to Apple. He recruited the first professional CEO for Apple in 1977, and then assumed the role of CEO himself in 1981.
Markkula was devoted to the goals of the organization, not the two Steves. In fact, he overrode Steve Job’s early attempt to kill the Macintosh computer in favor of another project, backed John Sculley’s ouster of Steve Jobs in 1985, and then Sculley’s ouster in 1993. Markkula remained Chair until 1997, when Jobs returned to the company, and a new board was constituted. His devotion was to the objectives of the company, its employees, and its stakeholders, not to the founders.
My point is that although Jobs is now, in retrospect, seen as the archetypical visionary and entrepreneur, he grew into that role, and his path, and Apple’s, overlapped but were not the same. Jobs hired people to serve over him when he lacked the necessary skills, and although his story ends with him as the shining exemplar, the ultimate entrepreneur, what made Apple the world-shaking organization it became involved more than just Jobs’ leadership, crucial though that was to the company’s eventual success. Fortunately, Jobs and Wozniak were smart enough to realize early on that they needed to follow someone who was more experienced than they were – and that may be the greatest testament to their leadership abilities.
So, to sum up this principle: a true leader is one that is truly committed to leading towards the organization’s goals, even when her personal goals are overridden by those of the organization.
Principle 4: A leader must promise success, and achieve it.
In many ways, this is the most important of all the five principles. If a leader doesn’t promise victory, either implicitly or explicitly, or his followers don’t believe he can deliver victory, they won’t follow him. Success in the agreed-upon goal becomes the ultimate test of leadership, and the ultimate reason why people will follow you.
There are many examples of this, but one of the best is a British general from the Napoleonic Wars, Roland “Daddy” Hill, who became the 1st Viscount of Almaraz. The fighting men of the British army at that time were described by Lord Wellington as “the scum of the Earth” because they were largely convicts who chose to enlist rather than be executed for their crimes. (He also added that they were the greatest fighting men in the world, which Napoleon found out the hard way.) Discipline was more than harsh, involving floggings or executions for what we would consider inadequate reasons, and so it was in Hill’s command.
Despite this Hill’s men loved him, and called him Daddy Hill, for two reasons. First, he looked after them, both en masse, and individually. Despite the differences in rank, he would personally thank messengers and solders who served him, and make sure they were well fed and well treated. He showed his men respect, in other words, despite the apparently enormous social gulf between his military rank and social station, and theirs.
But the biggest reason he was loved was that he lead his men to victory, sharing their danger, showing his commitment, leading from the front, and almost being killed during the Battle of Waterloo, when his horse was shot out from under him. He won repeatedly, sometimes against fearsome odds and in difficult situations. In one encounter, at Arroyo de Molinos in Spain, his force inflicted 1,300 casualties on Napoleon’s army, while his troops suffered only 65 casualties. He inspired fierce loyalty and affection.
In contrast, let’s return to Steve Jobs and Apple. Outside of Apple, Jobs was celebrated as a visionary, someone who both saw and shaped the future. But he was hell to work for, often running roughshod over the people who worked for him, showing no interest in their feelings, well-being, or position, demanding unreasonable results, ruining their personal lives, treating them like idiots, and sometimes taking credit for their successes. He famously inspired fear, not love, and was known to have fired employees for things they said when he met them in an elevator.
But he delivered results, and people fought to work for Apple for the prestige of working for a company that could make technology cool, and invent the future. His success was more important than the questionable grooming habits of his early years, his uncompromising, inhuman perfectionism, or his raw, take-no-prisoners, domineering leadership style. He successfully led people where they wanted to go – and they willingly, eagerly followed.
So if you want to lead, you must be able to convince your followers that you will lead them to success. And eventually, you have to deliver that success. Everything else, from leadership style, to personality, to social standing, to skill, is secondary.
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