How (46 page)

Say what you will about Krazy George Henderson, but there is no denying that he is a paragon of charismatic leadership. No one participates in his Waves because he is hired by the stadium to start them, nor do they follow because he bangs his drum loudly. They follow because he reaches out to them, shares his vision, enlists them in the big picture, and perseveres in spite of those who think he’s a crackpot or who would rather eat their hot dogs in peace. And he gets things done; people stand and cheer.

Inspire

We know that rational people, for the most part, avoid pain and seek pleasure. Rational people, the common thinking says, will be motivated by more pleasure and less pain, more money and less censure. When you are in a position of authority, then, and you want to get things done, you give people more carrots and fewer sticks, right? Informed acquiescence cultures are built on this simple thought. Motivational thinking, in the form of carrots and sticks, dominates these organizations. While we can’t deny the reality that no one works solely because they enjoy it or it fulfills them (or we would call it “play” rather than “work”),
motivation
as a leadership principle is not self-sustaining. The person who hands out $20 bills in order to make a Wave eventually either runs out of money or the cooperation of recipients who decide that $20 isn’t really enough. Motivation requires an
object
of motivation, a carrot or a stick, some external means by which to propel or compel action. Motivation has its place, but we know that in a world of HOW motivation is not enough. A leader seeks a self-sustaining method of generating action. To make Waves, you must seek to
inspire
.

Inspiration comes from a dedication to beliefs and values, the pursuit of big ideas and significant contributions to others, and a commitment to communicating this dedication and pursuit to others. Isn’t it different to be inspired than to be motivated? Everyone knows what it is like to be inspired. You can be inspired by a movie, by a book, or by an experience that happened to you, inspired by what you want to accomplish, or inspired by the actions and efforts of others. Values are inspirational, as is the pursuit of goals greater than yourself. Inspiration calls forth your best efforts and your most creative thinking. If you are inspired to land on the moon, or inspired to start or participate in a Wave, you don’t care about carrots and sticks; you have a higher calling. Just as trust elicits trust, inspiration elicits belief. Informed belief—the marriage of the questioning and unquestioning parts of the mind—is a powerful, self-sustaining force. Like everything else in the Leadership Framework, inspiration circles back on you. Seeing others inspired inspires you in return. Leadership is about inspiration. Leaders inspire, and seek to keep the atmosphere of inspiration—the call to significance—alive in others. You don’t have to be the boss to do this; anyone can, and in a world of HOW, where the quality of your effort is as important as its end result, everyone should.

Be Principled

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the city of New Orleans, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) handed out money to people in a helter-skelter fashion with almost no basic fraud-prevention systems. Emergency aid was subsequently used to purchase season tickets to the New Orleans Saints football games, a large dinner at a Hooters restaurant in San Antonio, a $200 bottle of Dom Pérignon, an all-inclusive weeklong Caribbean vacation, and several “Girls Gone Wild” videos. Thousands of incarcerated criminals received emergency housing allowances.
¹²
“We just made the calculated decision that we were going to help as many people as we could,” said Donna Dannels, acting deputy director of recovery for FEMA, speaking to a Congressional oversight committee a year later, “and go back [later to] identify those people who we either paid in error or [who] defrauded us.”
¹³
Dannels made this statement after a nonpartisan Government Accounting Office study revealed that as much as $1.4 billion—one-quarter of the total monies FEMA distributed in the wake of the disaster—was lost to fraud and abuse.

Decision making, in general, flows from one of two sources: pragmatism or principle. Pragmatic decisions seek to solve the immediate problem in the most expedient manner, like FEMA in the face of Katrina. Pragmatic thinking tends to embrace short-term benefits and alleviate immediate pain, but it produces unintended consequences with often long-term ramifications. If FEMA were a for-profit company, for instance, its losses from fraud would be dwarfed by the loss of its credibility and reputation. Who would choose to invest in an insurance company that reimbursed the purchase of “Girls Gone Wild” videos? What possible explanation can remediate the impression that choice leaves on the market?

In the course of a business day, we are all called upon to make countless decisions. If we are self-governing and adopt a leadership disposition, we make even more. What kind of spacecraft do we build? What should the design look like? What kind of people should we hire? What should I say when I return this phone call? Leaders are constantly making decisions, and a given team or organization might make hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions each day. If each one of us makes decisions based on short-term, pragmatic considerations—what will sound good, what will make the problem go away, what will close this deal—the errors of unintended consequences—like
Girls Gone Wild
—just spiral out of control. We can’t control or imagine the ramifications of all those short-term decisions.

What would happen, for instance, if, after a successful quarter of doing or saying whatever it took to make your numbers, you put all of your customers in a room and walked out. What would they think of you if they started to compare notes?

“Hmmm, they let you do a six-month pilot? They told me they don’t do pilots.”

“You got a three-year contract? They told me they would only do a five-year contract, no matter what.”

In a transparent, connected world, this happens every day, both physically and virtually. And not just about company practices, but about your individual behavior, as well. Comparing notes is cheap and easy, and we do it countless times a day via the vast store of information and communication technology easily at our fingertips. That puts a premium on consistency. The world of HOW calls for conduct that creates long-term, self-sustaining continuity, which builds trust and further alignment between you and the world around you. I propose a corollary to Mark Twain’s famous quote about telling the truth (though not as eloquently phrased): “Always act on principle. That way, you won’t have to keep track of all the intended and unintended consequences of your actions.”

Seeing through the lens of HOW leads you to make decisions based on principle—a sound, central core of beliefs that expresses long-term values. In a transparent world, where everything that can be known will be known, only principled decision making can guide the kind of consistency of purpose you need to build trust and reputation. Acting from principle rather than pragmatism also makes you more efficient and nimble. Because you will not spend as much time dancing with rules or comparing short-term gains, you can act more intuitively and with more clarity rather than in a slow and calculated fashion. The best possible decision will be more immediately apparent to you because it will spring from your deepest values. You will act with more certainty, confidence, and trust in your choices.

If you want to become enduring and self-sustaining, you must focus your thinking through the lens of principled thought, and let those values-based considerations inform everything you do or say.

Be Rigorous about the Truth of the Present

Shortly after Steve Wynn opened the eponymous Wynn Las Vegas resort in 2005 to great fanfare and acclaim, he realized he had a problem.
¹⁴
Dealers and floor people in Wynn’s casinos are usually the best-paid in the industry and derive most of their income from tips that are pooled and divided among the frontline service personnel who run the gaming tables. “I made a mistake,” he told me from Macau, where he was working on his newest project. “It turned out, unfortunately, that the dealers were making all of the tips and the floor people and supervisors who serve the customers side by side with the dealers were not receiving any, meaning the dealers were making more than their supervisors. This disparity caused dissatisfaction and resentment among the floor people, who thought it unfair. Plus, because of the inverted compensation structure, I had difficulty recruiting dealers to step up and become supervisors. The casino was suffering.”
¹⁵

You can only take risks, as we know, when you have a strong foundation of trust. Trust enables risk, which allows innovation and leads to progress: TRIP. But when mistakes are made and realized, a leader has only two choices: to let them be and absorb the cost or to expend the resources necessary to correct them. In Wynn’s case, he had to choose between an inverted and unfair compensation structure that was detrimental to the growth of his operation, and disrupting the morale of his dealers by altering their pay package and jeopardizing their trust. “It was a terrible scenario,” Wynn said. “I thought about it for months, but I couldn’t let it stand. This was the first time in my whole career that I had to double back and do something that would hurt my employees’ compensation package. It felt like cutting off one of my fingers.”

No matter how painful or personally embarrassing the truth may be, leaders step up and face it head-on. Over the course of many face-to-face meetings, Wynn told his dealers he was revamping the way the tip pool was divided to create greater rewards for those who stepped up and accepted more responsibility. “I told them I had made a mistake, that it was my job to treat everyone fairly, that a group of them were getting screwed, and that I was going to make a change. I said, ‘Look, I’m here, and I’m going to meet with every employee in this company, every dealer, because I owe you now and forever an explanation of the thinking behind our decisions, especially one that impacts your life.’ ”

Despite his transparency, the dealers were predictably (and perhaps understandably) upset. Even after many discussions, some of them filed suit in the district courts and with the Labor Commission. Ultimately, those lawsuits were dismissed. Even after the rigors and combativeness of a lawsuit, however, Wynn did something remarkable. “I took the guys who sued me for coffee,” he said. “I told them how much I respected them for standing up for what they thought was right. I told them that not only did I not have any hard feelings, but I actually felt they were correct to promote what they thought was right, and to have the guts to stand up for it and not just grouse in the back room. I am also meeting with all the employees to tell them how proud I am that, even though they disagreed with me and even though they thought that I had made the wrong decision, they never, ever took it out on the floor of the casino with the customers.”

Wynn, and anyone in his position when a problem is found, had many ways he could have avoided taking action directly. Many of us have been on the receiving end of memos, e-mails, or delegated proclamations from the top of the organization giving us bad news about our jobs. But Wynn chose to deal with the problem head-on and directly. I asked him why he chose that road. “When you make a decision that you feel is the right decision for the long-term benefit of the enterprise, it still may be wrong,” he said. “It could explode in your face; it could be embarrassing, humiliating, or even catastrophic; but that is absolutely not an excuse for not making that decision, nor standing up for it in front of others. That’s probably at the heart of leadership.”

You can’t build a skyscraper like Wynn Las Vegas on a foundation that is not solid, or worse, that you “sort of believe” is solid. You can’t land a rocket in the Sea of Tranquility if you don’t know whether the surface is rock or powder. A leader needs to know, so a leader is rigorous about the truth of the present. The more rigorous you can be about the truth of your present condition—what is solid and what is not, what works and what malfunctions—the better you can pursue the future. A leader peels the onion to get to the truth, no matter how difficult or evanescent that truth may be. Leaders believe it is healthy to ask the tough questions, toss ideas back and forth, confront problems when they arise, and wrestle truth to the ground. Getting bad news, understanding what is broken, understanding what’s shaking, understanding where the house of cards is and where real killers of the future lurk. To make your visions reality, you must not be afraid to see everything there is to see.

The opposite of rigorous truth means indulging some blind spots or living in a state of plausible deniability and superficiality, a habit that leaders should banish from their thinking and approach. Leaders must know how solid is the foundation before they take leaps, build skyscrapers, and innovate, and be rigorous about the journey along the way.

Be Reflective, Especially about Your Own Nature

As much as most of us relish conditions of harmony, simplicity, synthesis, and coherence, nowhere do they exist at all times. Even monks who live on mountains have to struggle to get a decent meal now and again (though they produce much spiritual calm, their P&Ls leave something to be desired). More often, our world is full of conflict, complexity, and ambiguity. To become a person capable of getting your HOWs right, of focusing not just on the WHAT of the outcome, but simultaneously on the HOW you do WHAT you do, you must learn to feel comfortable within these conditions. To be self-governing means to be reflective, especially about your own nature.

Our virtues are typically our vices. Lawyers are trained to argue and tend to win a lot of arguments. People disposed to winning arguments, however, often face a challenge in the realm of personal relationships, because relationships are rarely about winning or losing. So seeing through the lens of HOW, a lawyer devoted to strengthening her synapses with others reflects: When do I talk too much? When do I listen? When am I argumentative? When am I zealously advocating? Am I enlisting? Am I not? Is the Wave really happening? Are people really getting up because they’re inspired or are they getting up because I motivated them? We must reflect about our virtues and our vices and be rigorous about our own truths.