Key 10

Develop Leaders

 

 

It has been proven time and time again that the only leader whom soldiers will reliably follow when their lives are on the line is the leader who is both competent and whom soldiers believe is committed to their well-being.

—Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

Finally, key 10 is to lead investors to seize the opportunity and the rewards. This sets great leaders apart. They know the answer to these questions:

• Why are some leaders chosen to lead over and over again?
• How do we ensure that shareholders will invest again?

Why Are Some Leaders Chosen to Lead Again and Again?

Great leaders are chosen to lead again because they deliver rewards to stakeholders. There was no one more determined to deliver rewards to investors than General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He had to deliver to the U.S. Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his field commanders, his troops, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the people in the Allied countries. His desire to deliver stood out when Walter Cronkite interviewed him 20 years after the invasion of Normandy. Eisenhower said little about battles, commanders, politicians, or strategies. Instead, he spoke of the men and women who died in the war, who never enjoyed their grandchildren—whom he didn’t deliver for.

When World War II ended, Eisenhower returned to the United States as a hero. When he spoke to a joint session of Congress, he received the longest standing ovation in congressional history. He was persuaded to enter politics and went on to serve two terms as president of the United States. He was chosen to lead time and time again because he led investors to seize great opportunities, and he made sure that the benefits of opportunities were delivered to investors.

Great leaders deliver even when times are tough. In 1986, when FedEx shut down its Zapmail program, it found other jobs in the company for those affected. When it discontinued some operations in Europe, it placed full-page ads urging other employers to hire its workers. In Belgium, 80 companies responded with 600 job offers. Loyalty in hard times builds a “trust fund” that pays long-term dividends. FedEx founder Fred Smith believes that if you take care of your people, they will take care of your customers, the company will be profitable, and your people will have secure futures. For more on the FedEx story, see The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America by Robert Levering, Milton Moskowitz, and Michael Katz (New York: New American Library, 1987).

For years, companies like IBM, AT&T, and GE rewarded loyal employees by assuring them lifetime job security. But when business went bad and Wall Street rewarded companies that made job cuts, the companies laid off people—an example of failure to deliver.

We, the authors, have worked with a corporation in Chicago that has delivered to employees by never having a layoff in its 65-year history. Its employees are willing to create improvements because they know they won’t lose their jobs as a result. They have improved manufacturing labor productivity every year and have increased the customer delivery response rate by 10 to 1. The CEO of the company feels responsible for delivering to the people he leads.

How Do We Ensure That Shareholders Will Invest Again?

The key to ensuring that shareholders will invest again is to deliver what means the most to them. Great leaders deliver. In 1981, the government of France awarded Louis Pasteur a medal for developing the vaccines and the antiseptic concepts discussed earlier in the book. But Pasteur said he would refuse the medal unless the government also gave awards to his research assistants. Many chose to be led by Pasteur because he delivered the benefits.

Bill Gates has delivered to the employees who helped him to build Microsoft. He’s created more employee millionaires than anyone else in history.

Successful leaders respect the expertise and resources of stakeholders and feel responsible for seeing that their investment is rewarded. Stakeholders judge leaders by what they deliver, not what they promise. If they don’t deliver, the stakeholders may not willingly invest again. Stakeholders seem to know the old saying: I can’t hear what you’re saying because what you are doing is so loud! (Ralph Waldo Emerson may be the first to have said this.)

Personal Success Versus Organizational Success

When it comes to delivering, the noted researcher Jim Collins says in his book Good to Great (New York: Harper Collins, 2001) that the most successful executives put the organization’s success ahead of their own. He says that they go beyond effective leadership. They build the organization’s enduring greatness through a mix of humility and professional will.

We all are inclined to put our personal successes first, rather than the contributions we can make to others. However, people such as Edison, Smith, Einstein, Curie, Walton, and Michelangelo achieved personal success as a result of the important contributions they made to others. In free societies, those who have delivered great benefits to stakeholders have been more successful personally.

If stakeholders believe that they have received good value for their investments, they’ll invest again in opportunities the leader helps them find—and the leader will be chosen to lead again. These investments can be in a wide variety of benefits, such as

• personal growth
• security
• the opportunity to create
• social recognition
• financial success
• a better society
• food for the soul.

Great innovators and achievers not only deliver; they also develop others so that they can also find and seize the great opportunities of their time. Developing other innovators and high achievers is the highest level of leadership, and many can’t reach it. Let’s look at an example of a brilliant, hard-working, ambitious man who failed because he fell short of this level.

William Shockley Fails to Coach Others to Lead

In 1945, radios, telephone circuits, and transmitters built with vacuum tubes were heavy, bulky, expensive, and unreliable, and they required a lot of power to operate. So Bell Labs, the research division of AT&T, formed a scientific team to find a replacement for the vacuum tube and appointed William Shockley to lead it.

Shockley knew that the person who invented a replacement device would lead a revolution in electronics, computers, and communication systems. He had an idea, and, for a year and a half, two scientists on his team, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, tried to make his idea work. Bardeen created hundreds of designs, and Brattain built them and tested them. They all failed. From the failures, Bardeen developed a theory that led the team in another direction.

Following Bardeen’s theory, in late December 1947, Brattain positioned a tiny, V-shaped probe against the surface of a small piece of germanium. He saw an unexpected signal on the screen of his oscilloscope. He blurted out, “This thing’s got gain,” for everyone in the quiet laboratory to hear. After Bardeen quickly made some calculations, the team members knew they had found a new phenomenon. Their activity increased to a feverish pace. Within a month, they had a working device that eventually was called a transistor.

Shockley was furious when they told him that they had discovered how to replace the vacuum tube in a way entirely different from what he had proposed. Also, because he was at home when they made the discovery, he was afraid that he might not get all the credit. He immediately went into seclusion and worked around the clock to create an advanced version of the transistor that would upstage what they had discovered.

When photos of the moment of the breakthrough were staged for the press, Shockley grabbed the seat that Brattain had been in when the discovery was made, creating the impression that he had made the discovery. At a press conference, Shockley also gave the false impression that Brattain had simply been following his instructions. He tried in vain to convince patent attorneys that his name should be the only name on the patent. Although the Nobel Prize for the transistor was awarded to all three men, Bardeen and Brattain were deeply troubled by Shockley’s attempt to take all the credit.

Shockley later started his own company, and he tried to hire scientists from AT&T. Each one turned him down, so he hired scientists who didn’t know him well. Within his company, Shockley was so controlling over the work of the scientists that they could not pursue their own ideas. Scientists with leadership ability became frustrated.

They found other opportunities and left to create Fairchild Semiconductors and Intel. Shockley’s company failed.

Many leaders have known how to find great opportunity and seize it. Many of them also have been able to attract investors and deliver benefits. But, like Shockley, some of them never enabled others to develop into innovators or high achievers or leaders of innovators and high achievers. Such leaders believe that only they can achieve at a high level and that they lose something when others succeed. They may fear that they will lose power, followers, control, or the chance to achieve again.

So the questions are:

• Why should we enable others to develop?
• How should we enable others to develop?

Compare Shockley with Sam Walton. Walton was an innovator and a high achiever who developed others for their benefit and for the benefit of his organization. Early in the development of Wal-Mart, he realized that one of the great pitfalls of expanding a business was in not developing strong leader-managers. He also knew how much retail management expertise it took to become a strong leader-manager. So he went after leaders. In his words, “Without shame or embarrassment, I nosed around other people’s stores searching for talent.”

Walton was nosing around a successful TG&Y store in Tulsa when he ran into the store manager, Willard Walker. Walton was so impressed with Walker that he offered him a salary and a percentage of the profits to manage Walton’s first expansion store. A percentage of the profits was Walton’s way of delivering to those who helped him build Wal-Mart. He knew that complex organizations can’t be grown without people who have expertise in leading and developing other innovators and high achievers. He believed that, if developed, others could achieve as much as he could. Later, he developed managers from within the company to manage new stores as they opened.

Developing others is an important leadership responsibility. The next leader, Phil Jackson, is a master of both. He has helped some of basketball’s best players become leaders of high achievers.

The “Jordan Problem”

By 1989, Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls was the best basketball player and the leading scorer in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Because he could take control of a game at will, competitors feared him, and his teammates were in awe of him. But the Bulls’ head coach, Doug Collins, and his staff regularly discussed what they called the “Jordan problem.” Because Jordan was the Bulls’ major scoring threat, other teams beat them by double teaming him. Teammates keyed their play around him and were reluctant to initiate plays independently.

The Bulls attempted many solutions. In one staff meeting, assistant coach Phil Jackson said that he believed the mark of a great player was not how much he scored but how much he lifted his teammate’s performances. Collins told Jackson to tell that to Jordan. Reluctantly, Jackson approached Jordan in the weight-training room and told him Holzman’s point of view. Jordan thanked him for the advice.

The following season, Jordan agreed to become a point guard, direct the offense, and bring other players into the key. It seemed to work, at first. But, by the time the Bulls lost in the Eastern Conference finals, it was clear that, after running as point guard and directing the offense, Jordan didn’t have the energy left for the last quarter drive.

When Jackson replaced Collins as head coach of the Bulls, he searched for an opportunity to lift the whole team to a championship level. He decided that he needed to replace its traditional power offense.

Jackson felt that a power offense was creative in the hands of a great player like Jordan, but it involved only two or three players in any given play. He needed an offense that involved all the players in a play. He decided to change to a triangle offense designed by assistant coach Tex Winters.

Jackson had to persuade Jordan to try the triangle offense and to lead the team in a way that helped the other players to become high achievers and come together as a team. He had to replace the meaning Jordan would lose as the team star. He had to sell Jordan the idea that helping his teammates to be all they could be was the key to an NBA title.

In his book, Sacred Hoops (New York: Hyperion, 1995), Jackson recalls asking Jordan to help him lead the switch to a new triangle offense and to share the spotlight with his teammates to help them grow into high achievers:

 

JORDAN: WELL, I THINK WE’RE GOING TO HAVE TROUBLE WHEN THE BALL GETS TO CERTAIN PEOPLE, BECAUSE THEY CAN’T PASS AND THEY CAN’T MAKE DECISIONS WITH THE BALL.

 

JACKSON: I UNDERSTAND THAT. BUT I THINK IF YOU GIVE THE SYSTEM A CHANCE, THEY’LL LEARN TO BE PLAYMAKERS. THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO LET EVERYBODY TOUCH THE BALL, SO THEY WON’T FEEL LIKE SPECTATORS. YOU CAN’T BEAT A GOOD DEFENSIVE TEAM WITH ONE MAN. IT’S GOT TO BE A TEAM EFFORT.

 

JORDAN: OKAY, YOU KNOW ME. I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A COACHABLE PLAYER. WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO, I’M BEHIND YOU.

From that time on, Jordan devoted himself to making the new system work, and Jackson devoted himself to persuading each player to surrender his “me” for the “we” of being part of a team with a great mission. Beginning in 1991, the Bulls jelled as a team and won three straight NBA titles.

Today, Jackson has nine NBA titles—as many as anyone in NBA history. He elevates the players and the team above himself. Although some argue that his teams won just because they had great players, Shaquille O’Neal knows better. After Jackson left the Bulls, he moved to Los Angeles and led the Lakers, starring O’Neal, to three straight NBA titles. O’Neal said he would have no title rings if it were not for Jackson.

O’Neal and Jordan played a combined 13 seasons and never won a championship without Phil Jackson as coach.

Innovators and High Achievers Are Made, Not Born

For centuries, people debated why some individuals achieve greatness—whether it was God-given ability, the right early environment, perseverance, courage, hard work, or luck. Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, who were larger-thanlife military leaders, often are cited as examples of great leaders who were born to lead. Alexander was the son of a king and a princess, and Aristotle taught him. Napoleon’s father was a lawyer, and Napoleon was educated at the prestigious Brienne and the École Militaire.

However, for every Alexander or Napoleon, history provides examples of people born to power and privilege who were low achievers and poor leaders. For example, Louis XVI was the grandson of a king, and his wife, Marie Antionette, was the daughter of an emperor and an empress. Louis was weak and incapable and preferred to spend his time playing instead of leading. While the country was in financial crises, Marie flaunted her wealth. When hungry mobs marched on the palace, she refused to make any concessions and set the troops on them. At a time of great crises, both of them failed.

We don’t believe that innovators, high achievers, or great leaders are born with all the skills to succeed. Yet even if they are, they still must develop their talents. Great leaders know that people and organizations must be taught to take powerful keys to reach their potential.

By the time World War II broke out, Eisenhower and Churchill were already near the top of their respective fields. Most great leaders—such as Fred Smith, Oprah Winfrey, Dwight Eisenhower, Sam Walton, Winston Churchill, and Abraham Lincoln—rose from the bottom to the top of their fields. They knew that leaders are made and that leadership could be taught.

With the keys for finding great opportunities, we maximize the chances that we’ll find the great opportunities of our time. With the keys to mobilize support, we can find the highest meanings of others and motivate them to invest their time, ideas, and resources. With the keys to seize great opportunities, we can rapidly seize the opportunities and deliver the rewards. Great innovative leadership is the result of mastering these 10 keys.

To close this book, let’s return to this profound ability of the most successful people.

The Profound Aspect of the Keys

More than 500 years ago, the powerful and rich Lorenzo de’ Medici brought Michelangelo to live in his palace after he discovered Michelangelo’s talent. Lorenzo also brought many of the fine poets, writers, and philosophers of the times to live in his palace.

Many of these gifted people were followers of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Plato believed that people, buildings, and mountains are imperfect copies of ideal forms that exist in the ideal realm. He said that our souls come from the ideal realm and that we can remember these ideal forms if we search deeply for them. Young Michelangelo absorbed these ideas and combined them with his Christian beliefs. He came to believe that the ideal form was an idea held in the mind of God, and it was his creative task to see it and to free it from its marble bonds.

That is why Michelangelo saw David staring at Goliath, the enemy, at the moment of decision, not at the moment of triumph—as other artists had. That is why he was able to see where David was in the stone before he began to carve.

In closing, we hope that these 10 keys will inspire you to become more than you are today. We also hope that following the path of these great leaders will move you closer to capturing the profound ability to find and seize opportunities that lead to great success.

Self-Evaluation Exercise

Pertaining to your own leadership skills, you . . .

 

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	Put your organization’s success above your own
	Develop others to grow and contribute
	Take interest in finding and delivering that which is most meaningful to stakeholders
	Coach others to be successful
	Search for others’ skills and special abilities, then help them find areas where they can maximize their effectiveness
	Believe that your personal success is tied to helping others to maximize their effectiveness

Place a check in the left-hand column for all that apply.