Monday, November 23, 2009

Go On!

The last chapter of the Character of Leadership: An Ancient Model for a Quantum Age challenges leaders to think about the legacy they are developing as they engage in leadership. The goal of that chapter is to get leaders to consciously establish a vision for the legacy they want to create.

Yesterday the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation announced a $20 million campaign to encourage Idaho high school students to Go On in pursuit of post secondary education. This generous contribution is loaded with legacy implications.

Yesterday's announcement is just one more in a long line of legacy investments made by the foundation funded by the revered founders of the Albertsons grocery store chain. Their legacy of giving continues even after they have long passed. There is hardly a place that a citizen of Idaho can turn that does not have some connection to the generosity of the Albertson family. Now their foundation is giving to the children of this great state, the education and economic future that has escaped so many.

As if that were not enough, history will be witness to the legacy these young leaders leave as they learn and then lead organizations around the world. Their lives (and ours) will be forever changed by the leadership legacy of a family whose generosity is a testament to their character.

Go On!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

To Maximize or Optimize

Do you ever have a recurring thought and wonder where it comes from? I have been processing (in my head) for the last week the concept of stewardship. According to Webster's Dictionary stewardship is "the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care." I first heard the notion of a leader as a steward during my ethics class at banking school. Dr. Kirk Hart shared the idea that leaders actions should focus on caring for the assets entrusted to them as though their value was generational rather than tied to a business cycle. This week I caught just a small clip of the PBS series on the National Parks and the idea of stewardship reasserted itself.

The idea of stewardship is also resonating with me because of our work on the character of leadership. It is not too far fetched to say that a leader who is serious about the character from which they lead will naturally contemplate the long term implications of such leadership and end up considering whether the highest use of their talent is to maximize shareholder wealth in the short run or to optimize shareholder wealth over the long term.

If you are interested in the implications of leaders as stewards let's talk!

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Character and Systems

An airplane is a great place to reflect about things. I used to dread flights because they seemed such a waste of time. Now I look forward to the opportunity to think without interruption (if you don't count the service cart hitting you in the shoulder and the armrest struggles with our seat mate). Yesterday as I was flying to Denver I read the November Harvard Business Review and its reflection on the work of Peter Drucker. Several articles profiled the contribution of this prolific thinker but what caught my attention was the article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter about how Drucker predicted that shifts in management practices made twenty years ago would lead to the excesses of today.

Drucker did not predict the future in a psychic way but what he did do is share his view that if you shift the reward mechanisms substantially in favor of managers that they will be motivated to take more risk in order to reach those incentives. We have all certainly seen the effects of that risk taking in the financial sector.

Drucker's view was focused on the systems that reward managers and create undo risk. Drucker would have advocated to change the system to protect the organization. A systemic perspective is legitimate but my view is that if organizations would develop the character of their leaders the system could would not have been out of balance in the first place. Great character is the fuel for great leadership and since leaders build the organizational systems let's focus on character first.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Tip of the Iceberg

Yesterday was a great day for the Character of Leadership model. I met with two different groups that were keenly interested in the model and its implications for personal and professional leadership. The first group was a leadership team that had read through the book and then set aside two hours for discussion of how, faith, justice, temperance, hope, wisdom, love and courage relate to the leadership they provide their teams. It was encouraging to see the seriousness with which they evaluated their leadership and sincerity with which they set some goals for themselves.

The second group consisted of several people who were interested in but had not necessarily read the book beforehand. Again, they were inquisitive about the book's origins and the were quick to apply the elements of the model directly to their own leadership.

Both groups were energized, challenged and encouraged by their application of the model. During the conversation there were several comments that energized me because these were the first people to review the book in my presence since its release. Here is a paraphrase of what they said:
  • The book was more personal than other leadership books they had read.
  • The chapters on faith and love were favorites and different than other leadership books
  • Our discussions just touched the "tip of the iceberg" of leadership
Our goal with this model is for it to reach 100,000 people in 1 year and yesterday represented 14 more people connected to the Character of Leadership; the tip of the iceberg.