Lumberjack or a Ballerina?

In response to the post yesterday about Citrin & Smith's ideas on leaders, reader Canadian Headhunter comments:

Leaders are people who aren't overly sensitive. They don't mind telling other people what to do or even bossing other people around. And, they don't mind making mistakes. They can send young guys into battle and have them die, sometimes stupidly and maybe lose a few nights sleep over it.

It's probably good that we're not all like that but there are lessons in their examples from which we can all learn.

I think he's got something there. But that something brings to mind a meeting with a potential client some ways back. His company had lavish offices and offered perks--soft and hard--commensurate with the upper circles they did business in. Yet he was fond of reminding managers and staff who didn't agree with him that "the elevator goes both ways." This is true, we said. But after enough up-down cycles, you may still be boss at the top, but you'll be alone. And you'll be shackled not with resourceful thinkers, but with drones who only hook up to you for life support--A paycheck. This CEO was hoping to perpetuate his company as one that offered unconventional, high-return solutions, and one that "values people". After leaving our intial meeting, when asked "What did you think?", one of our group joked:

"He's a lumberjack who thinks he's a ballerina."

A lumberjack. Or a ballerina. A lot of leaders think they have to be either. Some are one, but try to come off as the other, hence the joke. Many executives will go for the squishy stuff but don't understand the dynamic at play and muff it because it's not "them". Truth is, powerful strategic leadership is a natural derivation of your assembled assets, organizational and otherwise-, matched with your personal ambition and real personality, warts-and-all. The result is real and attractive, not wimpy as most assume. Yet many adopt the Attilla or John Wayne Model, because they were leaders, quote, unquote. Or, just as bad, some try to be as nurturing as Mr. Rogers. Neither is long-term useful or particulary satisfying.

They don't teach us the power of emotions and aspirations in business school and so, many leadership courses are stale and surface because of it. Too bad. Because these are real factors--the 90% of the iceberg you don't see, in marketing, labor negotiation, management and most visibly, customer service. They are real, but they don't often factor. And that's what Citrin & Smith's are trying to say. It's what Jim Collins and Jon Katzenbach and Watts Wacker are trying to say: "Wow! I want some of that!" is an emotional response, not a formula Boston Consulting Group or McKinsey came up with. TCO or WACC won't get people to throw themselves on a metaphorical hand grenade or suffer the climb of any mountain worth tackling. And Wow is not a best practice you get off the rack. Nor are employees or customers who covet a brand or a company like a tiger protecting her cubs.

But before Wow! comes, you have to believe in something. Something besides how necessary it is to meet next quarter's numbers. Executives will invariaby fail this test, as measured by employee retention and magnetic cultures, because they're trying to execute a "best practice" that's "best" for someone else, but is a shoehorn-fit for them and their companies. They're trying to emulate rather than create something authentic and uniquely leverageable. CFO magazine even points out here that from a margin and marketshare perspective, Best Practices are an operational tool at best, a long term loser and often an express elevator to the parity basement. Yet many allow BPs to substitute for a corporate philosophy. That's like making salad with rocks. So best intentions fail. Smart executives fail. And they lose patience and incorrectly say, ahh, that stuff doesn't work, having never known fully what they were really trying to create.

In my experience, real, sustainable leaders believe something almost metaphysical about business or their companies that's attractive to wide groups of people. That doesn't mean they're freaked-out arm wavers or gurus. They just show people futures they didn't realize they had, even if their sole contribution is to just get out of their people's way and enable them to create those futures. Again, what Citrin & Smith are saying.

What Canadian Headhunter notes about tough, steely-eyed decision makers is true. Sometimes you have to put people on point or sacrifice groups of tehm, although it's very rare that that is a first, second or even third resort, unless you've been very derelict in your duties. Still, if and when it has to happen, people will assent to being asked to suffer. And do it willingly. But only if it's in aid of an abstract shared ideal that they're serving, rather than provable cold hard facts of say, a balance sheet.

This "Abstract" trumping of "Fact" is only counter-intuitive to people who view leadership as a job description instead of what it is: An expansive opportunity, and a noble obligation. And as Citrin & Smith are saying, in a sometimes sideways fashion, helping your fellow man pays dividends. For both of you.

[update: forgot to include a link to Canadian Headhunter
above.]