Action: Upend the Pyramid
“Look, Son,” Dad said at breakfast this morning, “I know that you and I need to talk. I know it,” he repeated, making sure that I heard him.
Dad really looked at me when he said this, his eyes revealing what they usually keep hidden, a depth of love for me and his understanding of my need. We’d talk. My dad and I would not miss our chance.
“But today, Mike,” he continued, “I want you to go to work. Dive in, Son! Please!”
There it was again. “Please.” I just looked at him for a moment, trying to get my bearings. Dad and I were going to make a connection—that’s what he just promised. Underneath everything else, that’s all I really wanted.
But right now seemed as good a time as any to start that talk. It’s not like we have all the time in the world, right? And there have been other promises—ball games he wouldn’t miss, the speech I was going to give at my high school graduation. He’d get there in time, he had promised.
“Okay, Dad,” I said, nodding my head. It wasn’t okay. But I wasn’t ready, either, truth be told. I wasn’t ready to go to that place I would need to go when we had our talk. Everything was too upside down. The news of last night was too fresh, my torn feelings of love and hurt too jumbled. So, I’d go to work today. I’d try to please, like he asked. It’s familiar ground.
“Ali’s got a big day for you,” Dad then said, his face looking relieved. “He drew you an upside-down pyramid yesterday. Today you’ll visit with some leaders who’ve upended the pyramid—and are making an incredible difference.”
I pulled Ali’s napkin out of the inside cover of my notebook, smoothed it out in front of me, and penned my father’s words onto the picture.
I clicked my pen closed and looked up from my note. I could focus on a task with the best of them. “Okay, Dad,” I repeated, “but first a question. You’ve been at this for a while. Why don’t you head me in the right direction this morning by giving me your definition of a Serving Leader?” I was ready to engage now. And deep inside, I believed my dad. We would talk!
Dad smiled at me, his eyes again soft. I could really get used to my dad looking at me this way.
“I could answer your question,” he began. “But I believe the best answers will come to you from your own observations of the leaders you’re going to meet. Let their lives speak to you. I can always give you my view later.”
I glanced over at my mom. My dad didn’t have a lot of “later” to work with. She was looking at my dad with a little twist of a smile on her face and tears in her eyes.
“All right,” I answered, returning my attention to him. “I’ll head out with my eyes open. But, Dad,” I continued, “I hope our talk is going to be sooner rather than later.”
Another quick glance at Mom told me she had the same hope.
“Fair enough, Son,” Dad replied. “We’ll make it sooner. In fact, let’s make a small start right now.”
I clicked my pen right back open.
“Serving Leaders are living paradoxes. They create results by doing some rather counterintuitive things. I want you to look for the paradoxes. Find the paradoxes and you’ll find the principles.”
I paused a moment to absorb his comment.
“Can you give me one example? Point me in the right direction?”
“One example. Serving Leaders upend the pyramid. That’s what you just wrote down. Now here’s the paradox. You qualify to be first by putting other people first.”
I just stared at him, waiting for his words to make sense.
“Write it down,” he added, smiling and pointing to my notebook.
I wrote it down.
You qualify to be first by putting other people first.
“You’re going to be seeing new things, Mike. Or seeing in a new way. To do that you’re going to need new eyes.”
Dad and I just looked at each other. This was already new—Dad and me looking at each other. I have no idea how to get new eyes, but my dad’s looking at me gives me real hope.
“I have a date with your mom today!” he said. “You should probably get going yourself.”
One more glance at Mom showed the clouds of worry that were in her eyes.
Outside it was one of those glorious, clear summer days. In the car with Ali, I pulled out my journal. “While you’re driving, why don’t you tell me the story of your life?”
“It’s a long and sorry story,” Ali began with a laugh. “Actually, from what I hear, it’s not all that different from your own.”
I got the joke and smiled back.
Ali started again. “I came to the States after an education in math and physics. I went to business school in Boston. After B-school, I joined the firm in the strategy practice. Those were the early days of the firm. Like you, I did a lot of studies and even wrote a few books. But at one point, I hit a defining moment. I led a firmwide review to find the best results achieved by clients through our consulting efforts.”
“I read that report,” I interrupted him. “All my crew working on our new leadership services offering read it. It was good!”
“Thanks,” Ali said, “but at the time our findings were more than a little disturbing to the firm. As you now know, the best predictor of business results in studies of our clients was not our firm’s brilliant strategies. It was the quality of their leadership. This made me very curious, and I took pains to learn all I could about leadership in our successful clients’ companies. In my last years at the firm, I tried to weave more focus on leadership development into our engagements.”
“Right. Your engagements are still being talked about in the firm. You had quite a string of successes.”
“Thanks again,” he said with a boyish smile that took years off his face. “As you know, the firm has a ‘dog-eat-old-dog’ culture. It eventually became time for me to step down. My regret was that I had not further developed the leadership initiative I had started at the firm. Maybe you will do that.
“Actually,” Ali continued, his face suddenly very sober, “I have bigger regrets than what I didn’t complete.” He let the comment hang for a moment before continuing. “I almost lost my marriage over those years. All the work. All the stress. I’m thankful we were able to repair the damage, but I’ll never get those years back. I’m sorry, Mike. I just remembered your own situation.”
I shook my head. It’s a subject I don’t like to think about. Susan left me ten years ago. She’s been married to her new husband longer now than she was to me. They have children. I don’t really think about it much anymore. I make a point of trying not to think about it. And I can’t say that I understand what happened. We loved each other. We got married. Then she left.
“I didn’t mean to take you back there,” Ali said, interrupting my private pang.
“It’s okay,” I answered. It wasn’t.
“So after the firm, I moved here to live and to run my own consulting business. And then one day, your father called.”
I returned my attention from my old pain to Ali’s story.
“Your dad knew of my interest in leadership, so he suggested I take a late-midlife leap and join him. He assigned me as a consultant to project leaders here in the city, and I’ve been at it now for several years. We’ll visit two such projects this morning.”
“It sounds like you haven’t really changed jobs at all.”
“Oh, but I have! I have definitely changed jobs. This is more significant than anything I’ve done before. You’ll see. I genuinely love the people I’m serving. And I’m having a lot more fun in my second half of life.”
“Tell me what we’re going to see.”
“Our first stop is at an amazing organization run by an even more remarkable leader, Dorothy Hyde. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary factory. The organization is called Aslan Industries, and it’s an outrageously successful enterprise right in the heart of the inner city. Wait until you see what’s on the inside.
“Aslan started out as an after-school tutoring program. The leadership team there understood, though, that poor grades and delinquency were just symptoms of the problems in this part of the city. One of the root causes was a lack of career opportunities. Why prepare for a future if you aren’t going to have one? So they concluded that Aslan had to do something about job readiness for promising jobs. They had to build a job-training organization.
“However, they knew nothing about job training. Since they didn’t know enough to know what couldn’t be done, they did the impossible. They built one of the most effective job-training programs for machinists in the region, and while they’re doing this training, they’re also running a very productive machine shop right here in the neighborhood. Every year their excellent reputation in the shipyards wins them more business.
“I’d be willing to bet that you’ve rarely seen such an effective organization as Aslan,” Ali added. “And I’ll also bet that you’re unlikely to have met a leader like Dorothy Hyde.”
As we drove, I began to notice the neighborhoods change. At first boarded-up houses were rare. Then they became the norm. I even saw a few burned-out ones. How could a first-class training and manufacturing organization function here?
Suddenly, we drove into a block of beautifully refurbished industrial buildings. A sharply dressed and smiling guard waved us into a parking area right in front of a renovated factory building.
Dorothy Hyde met us at the door of her office. She stood about five feet nothing, a bundle of enthusiasm in a business suit. She greeted Ali with a grandmotherly embrace and then, to my great surprise, treated me to the same unpretentious ritual. Would milk and cookies follow? I wondered.
“Mike, it’s good to meet you,” Dorothy began. “Let’s take a little walk around the office. You’ll be seeing the manufacturing complex and classrooms later. Follow me!”
We fell in line behind Dorothy. As we walked, she introduced us to every person we met, each time relating a story about that person’s recent contributions to the training and job-creation mission of Aslan. They all beamed as Dorothy spoke of them and would then add a word or two of information. Every encounter included an introduction, a story, some praise, and even some planning, all of it right before our eyes! By the time we reached her office, she had worked meaningfully with nearly a dozen people. I was in total awe! How many times have I followed an executive into a factory and watched as the workers glanced away or pretended to be too busy to notice? The difference here was stunning.
In the conference room, Dorothy told me the story of Aslan. “I guess you’re wondering how a housewife and grandmother like me winds up here.”
I nodded. I was wondering this.
“It goes back to some of this city’s darkest days,” Dorothy explained. “In our frustration and anger over our poverty and lack of opportunity, we were literally destroying our neighborhoods and ourselves. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I didn’t feel suited to the task, but I was convinced that we had to turn our situation around. So I got to work, and others joined me.”
Dorothy went on to describe an amazing story of birth, growth, significance, and success. Her own training in bookkeeping years earlier at Howard University had been buried under the press of life—children, struggles with the local schools, her husband’s cyclical unemployment, and the daily chores of stretching resources as far as possible to make ends meet.
She had grown through it all, winning the trust of her neighbors through diligent concern for all the children on her street. She had gained the respect of the high school principal by bringing parents together to assist with much-needed hall monitoring. She had become an asset to her local councilman by consistently addressing the most urgent neighborhood topics with a positive focus. When Dorothy pointed out a problem, she also offered several solutions, and she always showed up when it was time to do the hard work of implementation.
Hers was a natural progression into leadership. Better to say she had been growing into a leader long before anyone thought to call her one. Hall monitoring became after-school tutoring. When the school tutoring center needed computers, Dorothy dusted off her old training and wrote the budget for a grant request. Seeing her thoroughness, the principal asked her to write the whole proposal, which she promptly did, with success. Gaining this success through her volunteer work at the high school led her naturally to look at issues of job readiness after graduation. She had already gotten to know some local funders and returned to them to pitch a job-training pilot program. The money granted for a feasibility study made it possible to do a broad market-and-needs analysis. Opportunities were identified, and both the foundation community and the private sector figured out that they could advance their own interests by partnering with Dorothy. She helped them figure this out.
“What we have here,” Dorothy was explaining, “is a people-development engine. On the demand side, we did our homework with the businesses in this area. We discovered that Philadelphia was facing a critical shortage of skilled machinists. We went to shops all over the city and throughout the shipyards, hundreds of them, and asked them if they would be willing to take machinists of color if we trained them. A deal shaped up. If we could produce great machinists, both in terms of skill and reliability, these shops would have plenty of jobs available.
“I just knew,” Dorothy continued, her voice as full and emphatic as a preacher at full thunder, “that we could do it! No one could tell me that our trainees could not become the very best of the best. So I focused all my energy on our students’ success. Their success was my success!
“From a leadership standpoint. I had to redefine the concept of ‘being in charge.’ I’m not in charge so much as I’m committed to whatever causes my followers to get charged. Charged up, that is.”
You’re in charge principally to charge up others.
In fact, I wrote down as much as I possibly could. Two hours later, I had filled many pages with stories of success and of changed lives. Aslan lives out Dorothy’s commitment to charge up people. What makes the team at Aslan great is the greatness its students achieve.
Dorothy finally took a break. “I want you to talk with my chief operating officer, Harry Donohue,” she said. “He’s a retired chief master sergeant who is now deep into what we call his ‘second-half’ career.” With that, she left us to find her COO.
“What a remarkable woman!” I said to Ali.
“No argument. Tell me what you learned this morning.”
“Dorothy is fantastically focused on business results, but at the same time, she was persistent in pointing out the individual contributions of each person. Except in the case of herself.”
“Right,” said Ali. “I really wanted you to notice that. A defining characteristic of a Serving Leader that you will see again and again around here involves the issue of ego. You saw it with Dorothy, and I think you’ll see it in every one of our leaders. They direct the credit to others. Dorothy is constantly getting her ego out of the way and building up others.”
“So people end up feeling good about themselves.”
“Well, that’s true. But it’s not the most important point. Self-esteem is very important because it sets up a powerful cycle of personal growth, willingness to take risks, persistence, and results. But getting your ego out of the way has an even deeper organizational impact.”
I wasn’t sure what Ali was getting at, but I was definitely listening.
“The Serving Leader handles his or her own ego,” Ali continued, “because the best results come from genuine teamwork. The leader turns the pyramid onto its head in order to serve others. When a leader keeps personal ego in check—and builds the confidence and self-esteem of others—it is then possible for the team to work together.”
When a leader keeps personal ego in check—and builds the confidence and self-esteem of others—it is then possible for the team to work together.
“You’re saying that if a leader models the importance of building up others and doesn’t care about getting the credit for the achievement, other members of the team will do the same thing.”
“Exactly,” Ali said. “By putting others first in this way, the Serving Leader is able to catalyze the creation of high-performance teams.”
As we finished, former chief master sergeant Donohue strode in, his spit-polished black shoes snappily striking the hardwood floor with rhythmic precision. I felt my spine straightening involuntarily.
“Harry Donohue,” he said briskly. “I’m your tour guide. So fall in.”
“Yes, sir,” I nearly barked, rising to do as instructed.
“Not ‘sir.’ Harry,” Donohue corrected gruffly. “I work for a living!”
Startled, I glanced quickly over at Ali, who was trying to suppress a very happy expression.
Our first visit was to a classroom where basic skills in math and English were being taught. Harry introduced us to students as we went along, acting exactly as Dorothy had. He gave us remarkable statistics on graduation rates as well as illustrations of student confidence being built and skills being acquired. The whole place was as neat as a pin, every wall covered with motivational quotations and symbols of achievement. No military barracks awaiting inspection had ever looked neater.
“Would you tell me what the secrets of success are here, Harry?” I began.
“I don’t know about secrets,” he replied. “I put the students first. I still get up at four thirty every morning to be here before the students arrive. I enforce the rules. If you miss class twice, you’re out. If you sleep in class, you’re out. Drugs or other substances, you’re out. If you don’t get the grades, we offer you as much assistance as you can stand. But if you can’t or won’t make the grade, sadly, you’re out.
“Life is a high-wire act,” he continued. “We do not coddle the students. That simply doesn’t serve them well. We believe in their capacity for strength and determination, and they tend to rise to those expectations. They have to stay on the wire to succeed.”
I said, “The thing I started to see here was the way your leaders put the students above themselves. I’m calling this ‘Upend the Pyramid.’ You and Dorothy and the other leaders move to the bottom of the pyramid and work to charge up the students.”
Harry nodded once.
“But now I’m realizing that something else is going on that’s very different, something that almost seems contradictory. On the one hand, you’re serving people, but on the other hand, you’ve got really tough standards! How does that fit together?”
Harry opened his mouth to answer, but Ali cut him off. “Sorry to disappoint you, Mike, but your question will get an answer at our next stop. And we’re already late.”
I was disappointed. I felt I was only getting started with Harry. I thanked him for his time and promised a prompt return visit. He said he would welcome that, and I felt that he really meant it.
“Harry,” I thought to ask, just as we were about to leave the room, “how did you meet Dorothy?”
Harry’s war-tempered, ramrod, tough-guy persona transformed right in front of my eyes. I might have been watching a cop newly home from his punishing beat as he slumps, gratefully, into his favorite chair. Every guard was lowered.
“She saved my kid,” Harry answered simply, his eyes level with mine. In this moment, I wasn’t looking at former chief master sergeant and taskmaster extraordinaire Harry Donohue. I was looking at somebody’s dad.
I nodded my head in acknowledgment. I want to spend more time with this man.
“I can see why you love this place,” I said to Ali as we walked back to the parking lot. “Their accomplishments are remarkable. How do they pull it off?”
“Hold the analysis for just a second,” Ali interrupted. “What did you feel here?”
I stopped in my tracks and raised my hands, palms facing forward toward the factory building. I closed my eyes. “I feel the power,” I said, poking fun just a little bit at the question.
Ali laughed good-naturedly. “Seriously. Tell me what you felt in there.”
“I felt a little puzzled. The leaders seem to—I don’t know what else to call it but love—they seem to love their students. And yet this isn’t a soft love. They mean business!”
“Strictly speaking, ‘puzzled’ isn’t a feeling,” Ali chided, his face kind. “But I’m going to accept your answer. You felt the love. You saw the toughness. And your mind is puzzling over the apparent contradiction of these things.”
Okay, so Ali’s going to play shrink, too. Fair enough. I’m not famous for trafficking in the realm of feelings. “You’re right. I felt the love, and I’m a little confused about what I saw.”
“Which means you’re going to get it. It’s great stuff, isn’t it?” he added, grinning broadly at my look of uncertainty. “But we can’t linger, my friend,” Ali pressed on, patting me on the back. “I’ve got to get you to our second appointment. On the surface, this one’s going to appear entirely different—it’s arguably one of the most successful biotechnology companies in the country. On closer inspection, though, I think you’ll find some of the next building blocks of the Serving Leader model fitting right into the picture you started to get here at Aslan.”
In the car, I reviewed what I had learned so far. The Serving Leader’s first order of business is to upend the pyramid. This task has two dimensions: the Serving Leader moves to the bottom of the pyramid and the Serving Leader concentrates on building up others. My dad’s comment about paradoxes came back to mind, and I saw the paradoxes of upending the pyramid. I also had a feeling that my conversation with Harry about standards was also going to present a paradox.
I was reflecting on my last question to Harry—about serving and being tough—when Ali pulled into BioWorks.