Part One: The Leader’s Checklist
A checklist is only as good as its underlying foundation, and the foundation is only as solid as the materials and engineering that go into it. To build the Leader’s Checklist, I have tapped not only my own experience but also that of an array of investigators, researchers, thinkers, and practitioners.
From development work with hundreds of managers and executives in leadership programs in Asia, Europe, North America, and South America, from research interviews with many managers in the United States and abroad, and from witnessing managers facing a range of critical moments, I have concluded that their thinking and experience point to a core of just 15 mission-critical leadership principles that vary surprisingly little between companies or countries.1
From my own reading, too, I have become convinced that with leadership, as with much else, brevity is the soul of wit. Albert Einstein once described the calling of modern physics as an effort to make the physical universe as simple as possible—but not simpler. The Leader’s Checklist is likewise at its best when it is as bare-bones as possible—but not more so. I have tried to hold to that in these pages.2
Working with participants in a wide range of leadership programs has also been critical. I asked them how they would lead. I put them in a manager’s shoes at a particularly challenging leadership moment. I elicit their experience-based, pragmatic knowledge of what they view as requisite for the effective exercise of leadership.
One such moment that works consistently well to draw out the core principles centers on the then-chief executive of IBM, Louis Gerstner, at a time when he had just acquired software maker Lotus Development Corporation for $3.5 billion. The acquisition had been resisted by Lotus at first, but its chief executive and board accepted the takeover after IBM sweetened its initial offer a week later by more than 10 percent.
The day after the purchase was announced, Gerstner traveled from IBM’s headquarters in Armonk, New York, to Boston to meet with half the Lotus workforce, which had been assembled by the outgoing Lotus CEO to help employees learn what their future held. Many were skeptical about their takeover by a computer hardware company with little experience in software development, and many were worried about relocations and layoffs. Even before the acquisition, Lotus had announced a plan to cut 15 percent of its managerial ranks, and IBM itself had been undergoing a massive restructuring and downsizing in the wake of its own struggles at the time. For Lotus employees, now the property of IBM, there was plenty to be anxious and doubtful about.
I ask one of the program participants to take the role of Lou Gerstner at the assemblage, and the other program participants to listen as if they were the anxious and skeptical Lotus employees. After witnessing the reenactment, which includes a round of questions for the CEO from employees, I then ask participants what they as Lotus workers would want to learn from and about the IBM chief executive, their new leader, if they were to remain with the merged companies and work harder during the coming months.3
An even dozen leadership principles emerge from this exercise, and they do so consistently—whether the managers are working in investment banking, high technology, or public service; whether they are functioning in good times or bad; and whether they are located in China, India, or the United States. I have become convinced that these principles should find a place on any Leader’s Checklist regardless of period or locale. Indeed, these principles constitute, in my view, the vital foundation of a universally applicable Leader’s Checklist. Three additional principles emerge from the accounts with which I began this volume.
Multiple sources affirm the importance of these core principles, including studies of the qualities of leadership by academic investigators, reviews of leadership development programs among well-established organizations, and consideration of what leaders report has served them well. Here is a brief sampling of sources that corroborate the 15 principles:
Principles 1 (Articulate a Vision), 2 (Think and Act Strategically), and 3 (Honor the Room). Two well-informed observers, educator Howard Gardner and researcher Emma Laskin, explored historical sources on twentieth-century luminaries ranging from Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi to Margaret Thatcher and George C. Marshall, and concluded that their common leadership threads included an exceptional ability to define a compelling vision for change, devise a strategy for achieving it, and honor those followers who were being asked to achieve it.4
Principles 4 (Take Charge) and 5 (Act Decisively). The U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidates School places great emphasis on taking charge and acting decisively. To build an ability to make rapid decisions under stress with incomplete information, would-be Marine commanders learn to make do with a “70-percent” solution, not 100-percent consensus; explain unambiguous objectives and leave their subordinates to work out the details; tolerate mistakes if they point to stronger performance next time and are not repeated a second time; and view indecisiveness as a fatal flaw—worse than making a mediocre decision, because a middling decision, swiftly executed, can at least be corrected. In a similar vein, Warren Bennis, an academic observer and a university administrator, concluded that effective leaders were most often defined by a driving determination to reach a goal, an ability to generate trust and communicate optimism, and a bias for action when ambiguity prevails.5
Principle 6 (Communicate Persuasively). Drawing on what leaders themselves report is also a rich lode. There is no shortage of leaders willing to reveal what has worked, or sometimes failed, in their own exercise of power. Inevitably, some of these accounts are exercises in vanity, self-promotion, or self-justification, but the best of such self-reporting furnishes useful insights from the front lines of leadership. CEO Dawn Lepore of online retailer Drugstore.com, with revenue in 2010 of $450 million, offered that while she was “very comfortable with ambiguity,” when “you’re leading a large organization, people are not as comfortable with ambiguity, and they want you to be clearer about what’s happening, where you’re taking them. So I had to get better at communicating what I was thinking.” Communicating must also be two-way, reported Carol Bartz, CEO of Internet provider Yahoo, who saw the act of hearing as essential, if not always natural: “I have a bad habit—you get half your question out and I think I know the whole question, so I want to answer it. And so I actually had to be trained to take a breath. I really want to listen. I want to engage, but I have to shut up.” 6
Principles 7 (Motivate the Troops), 8 (Embrace the Front Lines), and 9 (Build Leadership in Others). Peter Drucker, who studied managers in action over six decades, deemed effective leaders to be those who delegated much but retained authority over what was most strategic for the organization. But effective leaders also had a habit of personally visiting the front lines, giving rise to the title of one of Drucker’s publications on the subject, “Not Enough Generals Were Killed,” a slighting reference to World War I army commanders who remained far from the battle lines while ordering soldiers into pointless rounds of trench warfare. To Noel Tichy, a university professor who also directed General Electric’s leadership program for several years, building troop strength is a matter of creating other leaders throughout the organization. American Express, China Mobile, General Electric, and many other organizations have created and refined such programs to instill leadership across the ranks.7
Principles 10 (Manage Relations), 11 (Identify Personal Implications), and 12 (Convey Your Character). Frances Hesselbein, who led the Girl Scouts for more than a decade and then led an organization for nonprofit leadership, emphasized the value of personal mentoring, flattening the hierarchy, and hearing dissent. For researcher Daniel Goleman, vital qualities are exceptional self-awareness, self-regulation, and personal empathy, a combination that he has termed emotional intelligence. An academic team that studied middle managers in financial services, food processing, and telecommunications in 62 countries, ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe, concluded that leaders should avoid developing autocratic, egocentric, and irritable styles.8
Principles 13, 14, and 15. I share accounts later in the book that underscore the value of the three final principles.