The Leader's Journey with Lee Thayer

We Need to Make More "Jobs"

Well, maybe. But that's hardly the answer to our inability to compete on the global state.

Should we overlook the fact that almost every country in the world outperforms our students on standardized exams - we come in right behind Bangladesh? Maybe what we need is simply more students.

These are now dated statistics - but not so long ago 600,000 workers in Japanese auto companies produced 1.2 million cars per year. It took 2.5 million workers in the U. S. to produce the same number. Is it more of those kinds of "jobs" we need?

At the same time, they required one accountant to our six to do the same work. Is the answer to employ eight to one?

A "job" in America is something the average American "gets"in order to get a paycheck to buy what he or she thinks they deserve. The average Chinese saves 20 times more than the average American. Let us encourage more spending and less saving. Although how that would help the trade balance is a mystery to everyone but our Washington economists.

But, yeah, let's spend money we haven't got to make jobs we don't need. Then we can all line up for a hand-out. Every single member of Congress will gain from the bail-outs. If YOU don't, who is fooling you?

Backing Up On the "Way Forward"

I don't claim to be as clever as all of those politicians who are making a lot more money than I am. But there are a couple of things I just don't understand, even so. If the way out of the economic mess we're in is to spend enough money to get us back where we were, what kind of "change" is that?

If we sunk ourselves with a borrow-and-spend mentality, how is doing more of that going to bring us to our brave new world?

As poor as some of them are (by contrast), the Chinese save 25 times more than we do. If our government says, "Get out there and spend, spend, spend..." didn't that contribute to the hole we dug ourselves into in the first place? Americans already owe more than they make. Why, if that didn't work, do we want to bring it back?

If our government is our exemplar, and their overriding policy is to borrow more in order to spend more, and by default perhaps encourage us to do that, is that the way out?

A democracy requires fiscally-responsible citizens. Maybe big government comes about as the answer to the problem that there are no longer enough of those kinds of voters to make small government possible. The more voters there are who can't - or won't - be responsible for themselves, the more government agencies are required to do that for them. Is that what the founding fathers had in mind?

And where did our present economists go to school - if what they learned was that a consumption and service economy is more viable in this globalization world than inventing and exporting something of tangible value to the rest of the world? The answer is not "jobs". It is competence, and it is relevance. Those are not our present government's criteria.

"We're going to balance the budget" is just "woo" talk - somewhat akin to "I will lover you forever," or "Our toothpaste is better than anyone else's." Are we citizens really that dumb? Or are we voting our own personal interests - nothing beyond that? One hears very little these days about self-responsibility. Has democracy come to mean the right to buy whatever you want?

Who's Responsible?

There has been much talk in recent months about how there may be better methods for selecting future leaders. There have always been failures, and these days, we are simply more aware of them. Most of all that palaver hinges on making the wrong person responsible.  Here's a more realistic take on the problem.

It is ultimately the candidate's problem - or should be in a world right side up. Besides, it take two to tango. Few would-be leaders walk into the arena with a gun to their heads. They worked at getting cast in the role - probably even fibbed a bit. So how did unilateral selection get to be the problem? Here's how it should be seen in a world right side up.

If the candidate isn't smart enough to figure out that he or she is likely to be a failure in that role, then that person is not a very viable candidate for that role. That's most people. If the candidate is smart enough to know that he or she could be a failure in the role, then that person has the primary qualification for the role. If you know why and how you would be likely to fail, then you're probably smart enough to avoid doing so. So many leaders fail. If they're smart enough to be leaders, why wouldn't they know if they are one of those?

It's mainly a matter of who owns the problem of choosing. If it's the selection committee or even worse experts, the choice will be wrong more often than it is right. If we play at being grow-ups, and approach it as if it were (it is) the candidate's problem, then the candidate has to reveal wheter or not she has the "right stuff." The "right stuff" is knowing oneself well enough to avoid choosing oneself for the role.

Getting the person who ought to own the problem to own the problem is the first step in building a high-performance organization.

How many interviewers do you know who got fired for making such a critical mistake? Where the wrong person owns the problem (whatever it is), the outcome is usually bad.

Destiny is in the Definition - Part 2

You can judge your leaders by whether they agree with you or not. But if they don't produce consequences that are good for the long-term best interests of the society - which is to say all of us - then they may simply be toxic (to use a popular term in its popular use).

Look first to determine how superbly they performed their leadership role in all of its aspects. For example, CEOs have a moral obligation to make the larger economy better than it was when they stepped into that role. Their role says they are to serve the best self-interests of all of their stakeholders, not just those who track only the numbers.

Then measure the consequences some 20 or 30 years after they have left office. What President has not promised to make a better world for all of us? If you bought into that, how's that working for you?

Recently the Harvard Business Review (blogwise) offered an open forum on the question: "Should leaders be 'frank' or 'deceptive'?" That a really weird question. Are we to imagine Hamlet asking, "To be or not to be 'frank'? - that is the question." Or "To be or not to be 'deceptive'? - that is the question." And since when is candor or deception - like "love" - not in the eye of the beholder?

The question is surely not "frank" - since the asker does not reveal what's in it for him. And if the "leader" is not "frank," does that mean necessarily that she is being "deceptive?"

But that's what definitions can do for you. They can lead you down dead-end streets. If a "leader" is just a bag of tricks, why would we need a new term for that? We've had those people and many names for them since the beginning of time. Or did human history begin in 1980?

Destiny is in the Definition - Part 1

Define a word, and you have launched or facilitated what you will do in its name. A good example is the word "leadership." Whatever it means to you will predict what you will do in its name. It will predict to how you will interpret the "leader's" performance. And it will predict to how you interpret what others say about "leadership." If you use it as a synonym for "management," then you may use the two words interchangeably. If you don't know exactly what someone does, then that person may be a "leader" because he or she is influential. A president might be viewed as a "leader" for no particular reason other than that we attach that label to him or her.

Now, there may still be two or three leader-mongers out there who don't or can't see leadership as a performing art. Leadership is a role, not a person. Thus those few may miss the only two important criteria for judging a "leader's" performance in that role:

1. How well the incumbent plays the role he or she got into; and
2. What the residual consequences were of how he or she played the role.

The first criterion is easy enough. But, since most people don't play life according to how well they perform the roles they get themselves into, they think it's all a matter of ad hoc opinion. You can applaud or damn your spouse's performance as a spouse. My guess would be that either way, you're not looking at that person's role description (if they even have one). What is the "leader's" unique role in every instance? A Broadway actress is "successful" if the show is sold out for months, not because you can mimic her singing. And our "leaders"?

Most people would rather skip the second criterion. That's because they don't want to be held accountable for their own impact on other people - or the society. They think"freedom" gives them the prerogative to ruin other people's lives - what ever their motives.

More in Part 2...

Leadership is a Performing Art

Leadership is a performing art. What this means is that we are either given roles to play in life, or we forge a role for ourselves. In either case, our lives are a function of how well we perform those roles - not how elevated that role is, but how well it is performed. So, to develop the capacity to be a leader, you have to look at everything that people do or don't do in terms of performance.

The leader intends to be the author of some aspect of the future - to interfere with the unfolding of history, of the story that would have been if that leader had not intervened. Leaders are measured by their performance. If they intend to be successful, they have to measure others by their performance as well.

It is how well an organization performs that counts. It is thus how well the people who comprise the organization perform their roles that counts. A healthy organization is one whose members have assumed full responsibility for shepherding their own lives in the context of the life of the organization. The right measure of any organization is it performance - which depends primarily on the performance of those who comprise it.

Performance is not about play-acting. It is the serious business of becoming fuly and increasingly competent in one's role - individual or organizational. The real qualities of the good life come from becoming increasingly more competent at life, whether at work or elsewhere.

To be a leader, you have to perform well in a leadership role. How your organization performs depends on how the people who comprise it perform. Leaders know that the only measure of performance is performance.

Voices in the Melee

It seems that the primary entitlement these days is that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. So I'll add my voice to the melee - even knowing that opinion free-for-alls may accomplish nothing in the end but the extinction of this civilization. Let me explain.

Native americans lived for 35,000 years or so on this same land. They didn't last that long by making everyone's voice equal to everyone else's voice. They were truth-seekers like us. They believed that wisdom could be shared only by those who were capable of receiving it.

This presents a problem for would-be leaders. They have to kow-tow to the least capable to get their votes - since there are far more of the least capable than there are of the most capable. Which reminds us that the Greeks who experimented with democracy and became convinced that it wouldn't work. So when our would-be leaders in Washington or in the executive suite talk, who are they talking to? If they aim to make a world that accommodates the least of us, it would not be fit for the best of us.

Terrible choice - to get elected. They have to make promises to whomever happens to be voting, about whatever their current interests seem to be. That may make them rich and powerful. But it will make of us a "third-world" country. If they don't know how to make a world in which all know who and what to follow, then their success is our failure.

We've been on that path for some years. Real leaders are makers, not vote-getters. It is said that President Obama "won" (according to Jack Welch and other celebs). But won what? The prerogative to speed up our demise as a civilization? I can barely make out what his agenda is, other than catering to those who voted for him. Yeah, he made promises. Now he has to deliver on those promises, no matter what the costs to our civilization. I don't even know what kind of world he wants to live in. Makes me wonder if he does....

Leadership and Change - That's What Leaders Do

Things change. What leaders do is to create a world that would not have existed without them. Change is unavoidable. Changing some part of the world from the way it is to the way it ought to be, is the work of leadership.

Michelangelo said he saw the finished sculpture in the raw slab of marble. He task was to release it, to change it from what it was to what he envisioned. To bring about something that never existed before. That's what leaders do.

Much of all this talk about change seems to suggest simply rearranging things. Leaders do not simply rearrange things. Leaders create a future out of their vision of it. Consider these thoughts:

• Managers change things. Leaders compose the future.
• What people want is to be relevant. Changing them does not make them relevant. Being a part of making the future does.
• The leader's relevance and influence lie there.

Another thought. Change is often painful. People will not like you for making changes that affect them personally. People may enjoy talking about change. But when it comes right down to it, they would prefer the status quo. That is why, in any contest between change and the status quo, bet on the status quo.

Leaders are change agents. It is their cause they serve, not the sentiments of the day.

Perversity, Cooking, and Leadership - Let's Just Order In

I love perversity. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in touch with reality very often. The rationality that we try to impose on the world doesn't often work. The assumptions through which we observe the world more often then not, "spin" what we see out of shape.

For example, people have lost interest in food preparation at home. Or maybe they are just increasingly incompetent to do so. Or maybe (if yo've got the wherewithal) it's just easier to go out or order in. All we can know for sure is that there has been a steep decline in home cooking. At the same time, there has been an increasing number of cookbooks published, and the number of cooking shows on television have increased significantly too. Seems a bit perverse, doesn't it?

But where I want to go with these cultural perversities is this: As people have become less and less capable of leading themselves - for whatever reason - there has been a huge increase in the number of books published about leadership, as well as a surfeit of seminars on that subject. In other words, the spate of books about leadership might be interpreted as a loss of the capacity for providing it, coupled with an increase in simply reading about it (see the parallel with home cooking and cookbooks in the previous paragraph). People who have no intention of equipping themselves to prepare to be leaders are enchanted by the notion of reading about it. Most leadership books either offer pages and pages about the obvious, or emulate the writers of science-fiction (or of soap operas).

All this might suggest that what today's so-called leaders do best is try to apply the latest ideas about leadership (there are none) without understanding how to create an idea or make any real contact with the reality in which they attempt to apply those fads. People who can't think for themselves are fair game for the predators who want to peddle ready-made recipes. People who can't cook buy cookbooks that promise to make it "easy" - that is, that require no thinking on their part. The popularity of the "Dummie" books makes the point.

About all such matters, we live in a cookie-cutter world. More and more would-be leaders fake their way along -  not by being the cutter, but by being the cookie.

About "Communication!"

When I was a child growing up on my Irish grandparents' small, self-sufficient farm in southeast Kansas, I was intrigued by the notion of "communication." Having no one my age to talk to, I tried talking to the animals - and we had most kinds. I pretended that they pretended that they understood. So, I thought: that's the way communication works.

With their eyes rolling around in their heads, and their chewing gum as if it was a cud, I spent 40 years as a professor because it seemed I had come full circle. I did learn a lot on the trip.

Many years later, I am still intrigued by the notion of communication. I have the proper background for it - degrees in the humanities/literature, engineering, psychology, and a lifelong interest in music. For me, communication is the infrastructure for everything human. Talk, with oneself or with others, precedes everything. And this is crucial: communication is not about the "sender" but about the "receiver." All consequences flow from how the receiver interprets things. We may reify the "message." But there isn't one until the receiver says there is.

My new book, Communication! A Radical Philosophy for Life's # 1 Problem, is a sort of summation - after a lifetime of teaching and research - of perhaps how we ought to be thinking about it if we want to live in the world most people only dream about.

It is intended to enable you to think about in ways that are more grounded in reality than most of our academic and popular "theories" about it. If you better understand it, the more advantage you will have over it.