The Surprising Difference Between Careerism and Leadership

Coming off of our weeks long discussion about Stephen Covey's effectiveness I thought I would mix it up. This week I want to give you a guest post. The rest of this post was written by Bill George who is a professor at the Harvard Business School.

In my new book, Discover Your True North, I challenge readers to ask themselves this key question: Are you leading with purpose or just trying to get ahead?

Do you actually believe in something larger than your compensation, your career trajectory or your next success?

I often tell young leaders, if their work has no meaning or satisfaction, they are better off quitting and sitting on the beach until they decide what they want to do.

Many people's work is completely disconnected from their values and their purpose. This lack of purpose isn't something to deal with by working with a nonprofit in your spare time. If you don't take action to address this disconnect, it can become like an insidious cancer that eats at your soul. Long-run, a lack of purpose can lead to burnout, poor decision-making and even moral derailment.

Understanding Your Purpose

Your purpose is the genuine deeper meaning in your work. It reflects why you do what you do.

Understanding your purpose is essential to becoming a better leader. People who lead with a sense of purpose that is aligned with their company's purpose make better long-term decisions and are more authentic.

But this is not as easy as it sounds. Discerning your purpose takes a combination of introspection and real-world experiences before you can determine where you want to devote your energies.

The first step to knowing your purpose is to understand your life story. We all face times of crisis, pain or rejection in our lives. Reflecting on the life you've lived helps you to discover your True North - the beliefs, values and principles most important to you.

Before you take on a leadership role, ask yourself: "What motivates me to lead this organization?" If the honest answers are simply power, prestige and money, you are at risk of being trapped by external gratification as your source of fulfillment.

This never works. Why? Simply, you can never have enough money, fame or recognition. When you give someone else the power to decide if you're successful (whether it's the Forbes 400 list or an invitation to Davos), you lose. If you allow some external force to define your success, you have essentially abdicated your soul.

There is a deep voice inside you that yearns to bring your unique gifts to this world. If you neglect that voice, you create deep misalignments that eventually will surface.

Purpose at Work

Ken Frazier traveled a unique road en route to becoming CEO of Merck, the leading pharmaceutical research company. Born before the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, Frazier's grandfather was a slave in South Carolina. He sent his son, Frazier's father, to live in Philadelphia. With no formal education, Frazier's father became a janitor, yet taught himself to read, reading two newspapers a day. In spite of his limited opportunities, he had a profound influence on Frazier's life.

After his mother died when he was 12, Frazier and his sisters had to fend for themselves after school, avoiding the gangs that dominated the streets outside his house. "I learned very early from my father that one has to be one's own person and not go along with the crowd," Frazier says. His father asked him, "Kenny, how are you going to carry on your grandfather's narrative of being free and your own person? You better do what you know is right, and not be fixated on what other people think of you.”

While studying at on Penn State scholarship, Frazier decided he wanted "to become a great lawyer like Thurgood Marshall, affecting social change." At Harvard Law School, he was acutely aware he wasn't from the same social class as his classmates. He wryly notes, "Lloyd Blankfein [CEO of Goldman Sachs] and I were the only students who 'were not of the manor born.”

Shortly after he joined Merck, Frazier took on the extremely difficult task of defending Merck from over 40,000 lawsuits filed after the pain drug Vioxx was withdrawn from the market due to alleged cardiovascular problems. Frazier did so successfully, catapulting him into the CEO's chair where he faced a greater challenge: short-term shareholders pressured him to cut back Merck's research as several of its competitors were doing. Frazier stayed the course, committing to spend a minimum of $8 billion per year on research in order to pursue cures for devastating diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.

Reflecting on his sense of purpose, Frazier explains, "Merck's purpose is aligned with my personal sense of who I want to be and what I hope to contribute to the world. At Merck, you have the opportunity to make tangible contributions to humanity. There's a yearning in all of us to leave something meaningful behind, because we know we have a short time on earth. Merck gives me the chance to leave something to people 20, 50 or even 100 years from now because we did the right things today.”

Asked what his father would say about his remarkable success, Frazier says modestly, "He'd say, 'The boy did what he was supposed to do.'”

Turning Purpose Into Action

Your leadership purpose is not meaningful until it is applied to solving problems you encounter in the real world. When you align your personal purpose with an organization's mission, you unlock the full potential of people in the organization.

That's what I tried to do at Medtronic where we connected employees' True North with the company mission of "restoring health, alleviating pain and extending life." My successors, especially current CEO Omar Ishrak, have pursued this mission with vigor, contributing to the 100 times increase in the company's market value over the past 26 years. More importantly, the number of people each year restored to full health has grown from 300,000 to 15 million.

As long as you focus on your True North, understand your purpose and use it to make a difference in the world, you can leave a legacy that inspires those who follow.

Sharpen the Saw

This week is the last of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If you recall, from earlier, the first three habits were characterized as “Private Victories.” And, the second three habits Covey called “Public Victories.” As one might expect, the private victories come before the public victories.

This final habit is all-encompassing and universal. The idea comes from that old anecdote which says, if you have five hours to chop down a tree, four of those hours should be spent sharpening your saw.

We all know that without effort it is virtually impossible to stay sharp. Covey writes, “As soon as we leave the external discipline of school, many of us let our minds atrophy.” I believe this is a rather unfortunate mistake. To counter this natural tendency to atrophy I like a quote I once heard. The quote said, “The only time you can coast is when you are going downhill.”

For most of us, it takes a crisis for us to work on improving ourselves. Knowing this, Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying, “Every generation needs a revolution.” But, Jefferson was being overzealous.

I agree with Peter Drucker who said, “We now know that 'revolution' is a delusion...It results from senile decay, from the bankruptcy of ideas and institutions, from failure of self-renewal.” Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out that revolutions do not demolish the prisons of the old regime; they enlarge them.

To my way of thinking, staying sharp, self-renewal, entrepreneurship, and growth are all virtually synonymous. Entrepreneurship is fundamentally about renewal. It is about constant, never-ending improvement. It is about growth, which I believe is life's imperative.

I talk a lot about my love for Peter Drucker. But, if I had to pick one book, as my favorite of all time, it would probably be Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. As it turns out, Csikszentmihalyi used to teach at the same school as Drucker. Actually, Mihaly is still there though Peter has passed.

There are so many important lessons to take away from the book Flow. However, for our purposes today, I wish to point out one lesson in particular. If you really understand what Csikszentmihalyi is saying, you realize that growth is the imperative of life.

If you will allow me to get nerdy for a minute, I would like to make a quick reference to physics. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a governing principle of the cosmos. Without getting too deep into it, just understand that the second law has to do with a concept known as entropy.

To put it in lay terms, entropy is practically synonymous with the words decay and death. If you truly understand entropy, you realize that life exists because it can. And, life is completely dependent on growth. It is like what the character Andy said in the move The Shawshank Redemption. We need to either, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Sharpening the saw is the living part. It is growth. You may know the name Ray Kroc from McDonald's fame. Kroc put it this way, “As long as you are green, you are growing. As soon as you are ripe, you start to rot.” In slightly different terms, Steve Jobs said, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

However you wish to think of it, growth is the imperative and we must always sharpen our saw. Covey states, “I commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it – one hour a day for the rest of your life.” Sounds good to me.

Synergize

Have you been following me over the last few week? I sure hope so. I have been running through each of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Today, we discuss the sixth habit. Which is the third, and final, of what Covey calls “Public Victories.”

This blog is about effectiveness and entrepreneurship. It is meant to link the two ideas together. For the most part, entrepreneurship requires the building of organizations. Drucker said we live in a society of organizations. And, synergy is all about organizations.

There are many important functions in a large and successful business. And, no one person can be good at all of them. So, we must hire, or partner with, people who can do the jobs we are not good at. Thus, as you can imagine, we need self-awareness and the ability to identify our strengths.

Drucker recommends we always ask ourselves the question, “What should my contribution be?” In order to answer that question we must identify the mission of the organization, the necessary tasks, and our particular strengths. Then, we can match strengths to tasks. This is harder than it first appears.

An example would be the entrepreneur who prides him/herself on being an “Idea person.” That person is basically saying they are not good at execution. In turn, an idea person needs to partner/synergize with an execution person. A good example would be the partnership between Charles Kettering and Alfred Sloan.

Even if you are good at both ideas and execution, the world is much too vast and complicated to know it all. Most people believe they are objective and see the world the way it is. The problem is that we tend to see the world, not as it is, but as we are. For this reason, it is wise to value differences of opinion.

Covey would say, “The essence of synergy is to value differences. Synergy means two heads are better than one. It is the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. One plus one equals three, or six, or sixty.”

If Sloan had to come up with the ideas, he might not have gone far. Conversely, had Kettering needed to be an executive he would have struggled. So, in some ways, we could say that synergy is similar to teamwork. The only problem is that synergy is much more than teamwork.

Teamwork can often involve an element of uniformity. I think we have all heard that funny quote of Henry Ford saying, “You can have whatever Model-T you want. As long as it is black.” Additionally, John Wooden was one of the best college basketball coaches of all time. And, one thing was for certain, on Wooden's team, you did it his way.

As I have mentioned, synergy is different. With synergy we value the differences. You could have uniformity, with the Model-T, because it was the only show in town. And, uniformity also applies to basketball because it is a pretty simple game.

The great game of business is different. Basketball has not changed much in one hundred, or so, years it has been around. But, business changes constantly. Remember MySpace?

To stay ahead, in business, requires great talent and diversity. Which is very difficult. Most of us seek out people who are similar. Differences often create friction. The great organization builder knew how to lubrication that friction so they were able to utilize the concept of synergy.

A great example of an organization builder would be Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln is, arguably, the greatest President in United States history. And, one thing Lincoln was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, was a great organization builder.

If you have never done so, I encourage you to read the great book Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The book explains the political genius of Abe Lincoln. And how, one man cobbled together a team that saved, and reinvented, America.

Lincoln's success was the very essence of synergy. Difficult but worth it. As Covey wrote, “When properly understood, synergy is the highest activity in all life.”

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

We are now on to Habit #5 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think this habit is extremely straightforward. At least it is on an intellectual level. However, when it comes to execution, when it comes to implementing this habit, it is one of the hardest. In fact, in this post (click here) I suggest that Habit #5 is the second most difficult of the habits.

I actually could not think of a lot to say about this habit. Seeking to understand before we try to be understood is a pretty simple idea. Simple in theory but difficult in practice. So, let me quote Covey. Central to the habit of “Seek first to understand, then to be understood,” is the idea of empathic listening.

Covey writes, “When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand.” He continues, “Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.”

Obviously, this habit is all about listening. And, as Peter Drucker would say, listening is not a skill. Listening is a discipline. To seek first to understand, requires that we listen, which requires discipline. And, that is a lot of what makes this habit so difficult.

So often we think that we do not have time to listen. We all have a lot on our plates and time is of the essence. Covey says, “There are people who protest that empathic listening takes too much time. It may take a little more time initially but it saves so much time downstream.”

Miscommunication is a very real problem in this day and age. We are all extremely busy. Or, at least we convince ourselves that we are. We are always in a hurry. And, being in such a rush causes us to be much more likely to fool up our communication. Often times this miscommunication causes more problems than it solves. As paradoxical as it may sound, being in a hurry can waste a lot of time. Sometimes we need to slow down to speed up.

As it applies to entrepreneurship, this habit is at the very heart of selling. When it comes to selling our goods we are well advised to behave like doctors. That is to say, we need to diagnose before we prescribe.

Entrepreneurs are problem solvers. In this way, entrepreneurs are a lot like doctors. The essence of economic value derives from the solving of real problems. As it turns out, there are any number of people out there trying to solve false problems. Meaning, they bring a product or service to the market that solves a problem people do not really care about.

So, a fundamental question is, “What do people really care about?” That is a diagnostic question. Again, we want to diagnose before we prescribe. And, diagnosing before we prescribe is simply another way of saying, understand before you solve. If you want to sell somebody your solution, you are well-advised to first understand their problem. As the name of the book suggests, this all about becoming more effective.

One word of caution, do not assume you know people's problems. I think we all know that cliche about what happens when we assume. Rather than assuming we need to ask questions and listen.

Think Win/Win

This post marks a turning point in our discussion about The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Today is about Habit #4 which means we are now transitioning from independence to interdependence. From private victories to public victories.

Independence must come before interdependence. Stephen Covey writes, “Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make.” One of the main problems is that independent people often look at the world from the perspective of Win/Lose.

In this blog I apply effectiveness to the realm of entrepreneurship. Obviously, entrepreneurship is conducted in a capitalist economy. And, the fact of the matter is, capitalism is based upon competition.

For most people, competition necessarily means a Win/Lose mindset. What's more, we are raised playing games that reinforce the Win/Lose mentality. Sports being the most prominent example. And, a lot of people get frustrated with the current trend towards giving trophies to all participants. So steeped are we in the tradition of winners and losers that we sometimes have a hard time thinking Win/Win.

Don't get me wrong, sports were created to have winners and losers. And, giving trophies to the teams that do not win is pretty silly. That said, some people approach every aspect of life from a competitive perspective. In order for a competitive person to win, someone else is expected to lose.

The problem is that life in general, and business in particular, are different in rather significant ways. I will not discussion life in general. Let us only talk about business. Business contains elements of both competition and cooperation.

As a matter of fact, several years ago a couple of business professors, Barry Nalebuff and Adam Brandenburger, teamed up to write a book about the paradoxical nature of business. The book was titled Co-opetition and it applied the mathematical model of game theory to the realities of business.

As the name of the book suggests, business is part competition and part cooperation. And, the two parts exist simultaneously. In turn, being overly competitive can backfire because it keeps us from being able to cooperate.

Of course, we want to compete against our "competitors." Ford battles with Chevy and Coke tried to destroy Pepsi. But, we need to be careful to not do battle when we should be cooperating.

The most obvious example is our customers. I think most people understand the importance of not fighting with your customers. We should be serving our customers, not battling them. Even as obvious as that should be, many people use war metaphors and almost view their relationship with their customers as a military campaign.

Those of us who are enlightened enough to think Win/Win with our customers often happily go to battle with our suppliers. Which is most unfortunate. After all, are we not our suppliers customers?

Covey says, “There are three character traits essential to the Win/Win paradigm: integrity, maturity, and abundance mentality.” I think the preceding statements is self-explanatory. The real key to implementing the Win/Win mindset is “No Deal.” Whenever we go into a negotiation, or agreement, we need the option of choosing no deal. If we do not believe we are being properly served, we can call the whole thing off.

This much might seem straightforward. If we think we are being mistreated, we always have the option of walking away. Much more difficult is pulling the plug when it seems our negotiating partner is getting a raw deal. Covey writes, “It's twice as tough as Win/Lose. To go for Win/Win, you not only have to be nice, you have to be courageous. You not only have to be empathic, you have to be confident.”

The old saying says that business is war. And, to a point, I agree. As stated, there exists a profound and permanent tension in the cola wars. Car companies would sooner shoot themselves in the foot than give up even one iota of market share. That said, most of business is actually about cooperation. As a general rule you want to cooperate with your employees, co-workers, suppliers, and customers.

Being competitive can be adaptive, it can be the source of much needed drive and energy. But, being competitive can also be destructive and backfire. It is your job to decide when to compete and when to cooperate. As a suggestion, most of the time, you want to be thinking Win/Win. It is the very essence of interdependence, and it makes both sides stronger.