"We're So Good We'll Be Fine," And Other Fairy Tales

Can you ever think too much about leadership?  Not in my book. 

But then, I'm firmly in the camp of "people make history" rather than "history makes people."  Or, as The New York Times put it this morning apropos the 10th anniversary of eBay (and an uncharacteristic admission of theirs it was, that we're not all just flotsam on the sea of magisterial government policy):  "EBay also did one thing Mr. Omidyar was not thinking about 10 years ago: it proved that even in these daunting times, one person with a good idea can still change the world."

In law-firm-land, think of what Marty Lipton built at Wachtel, the development of the Socratic/case method of instruction by Christopher Columbus Langdell at Harvard Law in the 1800's, or even the invention of the "Cravath model" here in the early 1900's.  Do individuals make a difference?  You bet.

That's why I think this Harvard Business School piece has the best encapsulated definition of leadership I've yet to find:  Leaders are "people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion."

To me (and to the HBS author), the far-more-important piece of that construction is not footprints, but passion.  If you're not passionate about what you do, I can promise there's somebody down the hall doing pretty much the same thing who is passionate —and not to be oblique about it, but you lose.

Worse, you go through life that way, until you do (or don't) find your passion.

Back to leadership:  True leadership, as distinct from (the very respectable!) management, requires, as the author puts it, that you be "ambidextrous."  That is to say, you need to continue to manage the day-to-day, but you also need to take another step, one enabled by a different perspective than the executional and the operational.  The other step, coming from the reflective, creative, probing side of your brain, is to ask "if we're so good, how come we're not better?"  

Managing is the "what is;" leadership is the "what if." 

Sometimes the combination is only found by pairing two fundamentally different people, one who relentlessly pushes for change with one who ensures the place doesn't blow up in the process.  But experience teaches that dual chiefs is a situation of inherent disequilibrium (Phil Purcell and John Mack at Morgan Stanley; Mel Karmazin and Sumner Redstone at Viacom).  Better to incorporate both capabilities between your own ears.

Going from theory to practice?   Recognize that re-molding an organization in the direction inspired by your answer to "what if?" will take:

• Persistence:  Your vision cannot be a flash in the pan.
• Organization:  Without giving people a roadmap for getting from here to there, they will cling fast to the tried and true.
• Teamwork:  You can inspire, but you can't do it yourself.
• Open-mindedness:  Be prepared for mid-course corrections, and don't just solicit advice, listen to it. 
• Communication:  As Hewitt Associates reminds us, "Everything communicates."  And as I will remind you, the human antennae-cum-shields system for hypocrisy detection combines exquisite sensitivity with a repellent force whose default setting is "stun."  So our last ingredient is:
• Integrity.