How (45 page)

In 1964, Disney began to buy unproductive orange groves near Orlando, Florida, for what was called the “Florida Project.” It was one of Walt’s grandest notions. But, as the project developed, he developed lung cancer and soon died. His brother Roy and a team of Disney’s hand-selected and trained designers picked up the ball and saw it through to completion; Walt Disney World opened in 1971, the largest theme park ever imagined. He had enlisted them in his vision and they had made it their own. Roy Disney died three months later, but succession plans were in place, and Donn Tatum became the first non-Disney family member to be chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company.
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The dream lived on.

Ask yourself a practical question: Do you want to be promoted from your current position? Now put yourself in your superior’s shoes for a moment. Can he or she promote you if you are the only person who can do what you do? If the job won’t get done unless you stay there and continue to be the hero, it makes no sense for the business to ever promote you. If heroism is what’s getting the job done, you will stay right where you are to keep getting the job done. If, however, you build a self-sustaining approach to your job, a clock that can tell time without you, it is far more likely that you can get promoted—in fact, more likely that you
will
. Not only will you have excelled at the discharge of your responsibilities, but also you will have built something larger than yourself and made a contribution to the whole organization.

For example, many large and medium-sized businesses require sales and services teams to use a web-based customer relationship management (CRM) application like
Salesforce.com
. Essentially a centralized database platform, these tools provide each company rep a way of recording and storing detailed information about sales contacts, leads, and ongoing negotiations in which they are involved. Too often, I think, a tool like this is perceived as busywork, an administrative tax on the hardworking reps who, after a long week on planes, trains, automobiles, cell phones, and BlackBerrys, must then spend additional hours plugging all their notes into the system. Seen through the lens of HOW, however, this is a leadership opportunity, a chance to build continuity, to inform and enlist the team. Should you catch the flu a day before a closing pitch, the continuity you’ve built into the CRM application enables someone else on the team to easily step up, grab the ball, and bring home the business.

If you build a system that can be run by others, train others so that they may step up and take more responsibility, or enlist those around you in a team-based approach that is more efficient and profitable, a superior can then say, “The business doesn’t seem to need you as much to accomplish that goal; we could use you better in this new position.” The key ingredient to progress, to getting ahead, is to leave a foundation behind.

CIRCLES IN CIRCLES (A THOUGHT)

These five behaviors—envision, communicate and enlist, seize authority and take responsibility, plan and implement, and build succession and continuity—form the foundation of a self-governing disposition. The rest of the Leadership Framework amplifies, refines, and reinforces these basic concepts, creating a circle of leadership attributes.

A thought here about circles: Waves, we know, go
around
. Studies show us they start much more easily in closed-loop stadiums where everyone can see one another, and much less easily in, for instance, motor speedways, where the audience lines one side of the stadium. Leadership, in some way, mirrors this geometry. The Leadership Framework creates a self-perpetuating circle of energy, like a Wave in a stadium. When two kids hold hands, lean back (trusting one another not to let go), and spin around, they can achieve great speed with little effort, and the energy between them continues to grow as long as they hold on. When they let go, all that energy disburses. The Leadership Framework mirrors that idea. As we talk through the Leadership Framework, you will notice that for everything a leader
is
, there is something he or she
is not
. When your actions take you out of the framework, you sacrifice its self-propelling energy and, like those dizzy kids, crumple in a heap on the grass.

The other remarkable thing about the framework is that it allows us to be really aggressive and fiercely competitive in pursuit of our goals. Its interlocking nature leaves us freer to innovate, to take chances, and to act spontaneously without losing sight of our core values, the center around which we spin. Because it helps us see things through our core, we can see the shortest, most expedient path to achievement. Though the wild uncertainties of daily business can sometimes leave us lost in unfamiliar terrain, the Leadership Framework always tells us where home is, and helps us see the sure path to get there. By holding on tightly to the circularity of the framework, we can generate that much more speed and energy on our journey.

THE LEADERSHIP FRAMEWORK, CONTINUED

In Spite Of

Everything worth doing encounters resistance along the way. To move a big rock requires you to fight gravity and inertia. To climb a mountain requires you to overcome the effects of thin air. Say, for instance, you return from giving a presentation to a potential partner. The discussions went well and you feel the prospect should be doing business with you and not your competitor. But one person in the meeting announced to the room that the company doesn’t have room in its budget this year. What is your attitude when you hear this? What is your disposition to obstacles?

In 1905, Madam C. J. Walker started selling a scalp conditioning and healing formula, Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, door-to-door to African-American women throughout the South and Southeastern United States. Walker, the daughter of former slaves, had been orphaned at age 7, married at 14, and widowed with a child at 19. She worked doing laundry to put her daughter through school before she envisioned a new life for herself. “I got my start by giving myself a start,” Walker said. In spite of obstacles far greater than any that most can imagine, Walker grew her enterprise into a company that employed 3,000 people. She became the first known African-American woman to become a millionaire. “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South,” she was fond of saying. “From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground.”
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It would be hard to imagine anyone who envisioned and accomplished so much in the face of seemingly overwhelming obstacles than C. J. Walker. She pursued her vision
in spite of
obstacles, and this deeply ingrained attitude was central to her ability to thrive. If you want to make a Wave happen and the person to your right doesn’t want to stand up, are you done? Do you sit back down Waveless? Yet we’ve all seen Waves happen in which people at first don’t want to stand up, but then get caught up in it. It becomes a great Wave. This can occur only when its leaders persevere in spite of initial resistance. A self-governing leadership disposition helps you ask the question, “How do we help our partner find the budget they need to support the program?”

I’ve never met a good sailor who hasn’t sailed in rough waters, and I have never seen a vision, never heard an interview, and never read a biography about someone who achieved something worthwhile that did not include stories about gutting out rough times, overcoming obstacles, and getting there
in spite of
all that got in the way. It’s a fact that you will face obstacles; it is a constant of life. What matters is not the obstacle, but HOW you think about obstacles, HOW you approach them, and HOW you behave in the face of them. Leaders believe they will find a way
in spite of
the forces aligned against them. They never walk away because of a problem. Sometimes you won’t succeed despite your best efforts, but if you don’t start with the
in spite of
disposition, you will seldom win.

Confront Complexity and Ambiguity

We live in a world full of conflict. Had we infinite resources, perhaps we could say yes to everything and wouldn’t need to make tough choices. Perhaps we wouldn’t even need a Leadership Framework. But the world is full of conflict, full of competing desires, interests, objectives, agendas, and possibilities. So, much as we need to cultivate an
in spite of
disposition, we must also embrace the complexity and ambiguity. Even the best-made plans can go awry, and to expect smooth sailing and steady winds sets you up to struggle when inevitable adversity hits. Over dinner in Los Angeles, venture capitalist Alan Spoon told me, “There is always going to be good news and bad news. The good news takes care of itself; it’s the bad news that takes work. That’s where you’ll spend your time.”
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Leaders know this going in; they understand that conflict is natural, and anticipate the need to lead in the midst of conflict.

Again, it boils down to disposition. Leaders stare in the face of conflicting desires and individual interests, and of limited, not unlimited, budgets. They open some doors and they close others. They make principled decisions in the face of conflict and so set a steady course through rough seas. Leaders are thirsty for truth and they go after it. By definition, the future that they have envisioned and the present are in conflict; change must occur to achieve something new. Within this tension lies the opportunity to thrive, but only in the hands of those willing to confront it.

Similarly, leaders eschew essentialism and reductionism in the approach to their goals. The goal is never about one thing, like profits or productivity or quality. Leaders acknowledge the inherent complexity of every journey. They balance many voices and many goals and seek to fulfill the needs of the many stakeholders in every effort. In the face of a multitude of choices, the self-governing person looks wisely and deeply to the core values at the center of their framework and makes considered decisions about the best way to uphold them.

Wield Charismatic Authority

We have taken as one of our foundational attributes that leaders seize authority. But what kind of authority? Stand up or I’ll punch you? Do this because I’m your mother or father, or because I’m your boss? In Japan during World War II, the Japanese military began sending their airmen, known as kamikazes, on
tokko
: suicide missions. Many young Japanese men died during these missions, but a few lived to tell the tale of what it was like. One of them was a Japanese Navy pilot named Shigeyoshi Hamazono. In his wartime memoir,
Suiheisen
(
The Horizon
), Hamazono describes being prepared to die for his country, but recalls an encounter he had before leaving on a mission on April 6, 1945. He tells of Vice Admiral Ugaki, who gave a farewell speech to the Kokubu No. 1 Air Base kamikaze pilots, of whom Hamazono was one. Ugaki shook their hands and said, “Please die for your country.” After finishing his remarks, he asked if anyone had any questions. A veteran pilot, whom Hamazono respected, stepped forward and said, “I am confident that I can sink two enemy transport ships with just the bombs carried by my plane. If I sink them, may I return?” Ugaki reportedly answered, “Please die.”
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Authority typically comes in two forms: charismatic authority and formal authority.
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Formal authority derives from reference to power, usually hierarchical power. “I’m your parent. In my house, I’m right, even when I’m wrong.” That is formal authority (and also the reason why most of us grow up and leave home).

Many young men died on both sides of that brutal war, and Ugaki is an extreme example, but we see examples of formal authority like “Please die because I ordered you to” wielded every day in matters from the mundane to the sublime. You get an e-mail that consists of one sentence, “Do this by four o’clock.” The implication is clear: “because I’m the boss.” Are you enlisted? Or has the wielding of formal authority introduced friction into the relationship? You might acquiesce for any number of rational reasons—you are new at the company, your boss is quite senior, she could help your career—but are you enlisted? Are you inspired? Formal authority lacks the ability to inspire and enlist. It can, at best, demand acquiescence, a grudging or even willing going along with the order. Each time leaders wield formal authority they deplete their store of it. It’s like a bank account; the more you withdraw the less you have. Eventually, willing acquiescence turns to grudging acquiescence, which turns to subtle undermining, and even outright rebellion. The delays and distractions of those you lead in that way steadily mount, and their productivity and responsiveness steadily decline.

Charismatic authority, in contrast, compounds itself. What if, instead, that four o’clock e-mail says, “If you can get this done by four o’clock, it will help our team win in these three ways.” The e-mail enlists you by sharing how the task fits the larger vision; what originally seemed an arbitrary deadline now becomes an integral part of a vision to succeed. Vision and enlistment breed charismatic authority. Charismatic authority derives not from power but from principled action toward others, from referencing beliefs and principles and reaching out to others with them, and from a desire to get your HOWs right and make Waves. It is earned every day, in every HOW. You build charismatic authority with every action toward others, so rather than deplete their bank account of authority, you build it. Sometimes it takes a little extra time, but the time is an investment that is paid back with interest, a short-term cost for long-term gain. Thus authority itself becomes a Wave, self-sustaining, going around and around until no one can remember where it started but everyone is glad they were a part of it.
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