STANDING FOR HIGHER EDUCATION & EXCELLENCE
CREATING CONNECTIVITY
Introduction
Anglo-Saxon capitalism or the Anglo-Saxon model is a form of free-market economy that exists in the rich English-speaking nations. Namely, the advanced economies such as the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and New Zealand.
It is a free-market model that emerged from the Chicago School of Economics in the 1970s. Anglo-Saxon capitalism dates back to the ideas of classical economist Adam Smith (1723-1790). Economists today call Mr. Smith – a Scottish economist, philosopher, and author – the ‘father of modern economics.’
Anglo-Saxon capitalism contrasts with the Rhine capitalism of Germany (German Model) and the Nordic Model. The Scandinavian nations practice the Nordic Model. We also refer to the Rhine Capitalism of Germany as the German Model.
In the English-speaking nations, levels of taxes and regulations are low. Additionally, the provision of services by the public sector is lower than in the other models.
The Anglo-Saxon Model also has stronger property rights and contract enforcement. There are lower barriers to free trade.In fact, many companies claim that doing business in the Anglo-Saxon Model nations is easier. There are also fewer regulations regarding labor markets.
There is strong rivalry between supporters of the Anglo-Saxon and European economic models.
In the German and Nordic Models, there is more focus on wealth distribution. Compared to the Anglo-Saxon economies, in the German Model there is more state control.
Economists also refer to the German and Nordic Models as the Continental Economic Model or European Model.
Opponents of the Anglo-Saxon model add that it neglects the interests of stakeholders. The term ‘Stakeholders’ refers people who may have worked for the company for a long time.
Additionally, those against Anglo-Saxon capitalism claim that stock markets, where emotions dominate, are too volatile.
Continental Model supporters prefer having knowledgeable bankers making decisions regarding investment financing.
Proponents of Anglo-Saxon capitalism say that banks can get too friendly with companies, and subsequently cannot be impartial. Capital markets punish companies that fail in their business plan, they add.
Supporters of the Anglo-Saxon model argue that it is better at promoting innovation. Furthermore, the Anglo-Saxon model creates competitive advantages that result in greater overall wealth, they add.
Advocates of the continental model say their system has less inequality than Anglo-Saxon capitalism. Continental model supporters also claim that their system has lower levels of poverty.
The Financial Times Lexicon says the following about Anglo-Saxon capitalism:
“The “Anglo-Saxon” variant of capitalism is thought to be characterized, at the level of states, by lower taxes, looser regulation, a weaker social-safety net and greater ease for firms to hire and fire employees – and to take each other over.”
“At the level of individual firms and businesses, Anglo-Saxon capitalism is said to emphasize the interests of shareholders, rather than other stakeholders such as employees. Its critics say that it emphasizes short-term profits at the expense of long-term planning.”
In fact, there are several countries with Anglo-Saxon capitalist systems that are not native-English speaking nations. For example, in Spain, Greece, and some newer European Union members, Anglo-Saxon capitalism dominates.
The Asian model is more similar to the Continental Model than the Anglo-Saxon model. It focuses on greater rates of capital formation.
However, the Asian model exists in a variety of forms, rather than just one. Additionally, this model involves a significant amount of experimentation.
Examples of Asian models are the economies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. (1)
„Those searching for reasons the American economy is uniquely severe and unbridled have found answers in many places (religion, politics, culture). But recently, historians have pointed persuasively to the gnatty fields of Georgia and Alabama, to the cotton houses and slave auction blocks, as the birthplace of America’s low-road approach to capitalism.
Slavery was undeniably a font of phenomenal wealth. By the eve of the Civil War, the Mississippi Valley was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the United States. Cotton grown and picked by enslaved workers was the nation’s most valuable export. The combined value of enslaved people exceeded that of all the railroads and factories in the nation. New Orleans boasted a denser concentration of banking capital than New York City. What made the cotton economy boom in the United States, and not in all the other far-flung parts of the world with climates and soil suitable to the crop, was our nation’s unflinching willingness to use violence on nonwhite people and to exert its will on seemingly endless supplies of land and labor. Given the choice between modernity and barbarism, prosperity and poverty, lawfulness and cruelty, democracy and totalitarianism, America chose all of the above.
Nearly two average American lifetimes (79 years) have passed since the end of slavery, only two. It is not surprising that we can still feel the looming presence of this institution, which helped turn a poor, fledgling nation into a financial colossus. The surprising bit has to do with the many eerily specific ways slavery can still be felt in our economic life. “American slavery is necessarily imprinted on the DNA of American capitalism,” write the historians Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman. The task now, they argue, is “cataloging the dominant and recessive traits” that have been passed down to us, tracing the unsettling and often unrecognized lines of descent by which America’s national sin is now being visited upon the third and fourth generations.“ (2)
While “Main Street” might be anywhere and everywhere, as the historian Joshua Freeman points out, “Wall Street” has only ever been one specific place on the map. New York has been a principal center of American commerce dating back to the colonial period — a centrality founded on the labor extracted from thousands of indigenous American and African slaves.
Desperate for hands to build towns, work wharves, tend farms and keep households, colonists across the American Northeast — Puritans in Massachusetts Bay, Dutch settlers in New Netherland and Quakers in Pennsylvania — availed themselves of slave labor. Native Americans captured in colonial wars in New England were forced to work, and African people were imported in greater and greater numbers. New York City soon surpassed other slaving towns of the Northeast in scale as well as impact.
Founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam in 1625, what would become the City of New York first imported 11 African men in 1626. The Dutch West India Company owned these men and their families, directing their labors to common enterprises like land clearing and road construction. After the English Duke of York acquired authority over the colony and changed its name, slavery grew harsher and more comprehensive. As the historian Leslie Harris has written, 40 percent of New York households held enslaved people in the early 1700s.
New Amsterdam’s and New York’s enslaved put in place much of the local infrastructure, including Broad Way and the Bowery roads, Governors Island, and the first municipal buildings and churches. The unfree population in New York was not small, and their experience of exploitation was not brief. In 1991, construction workers uncovered an extensive 18th-century African burial ground in Lower Manhattan, the final resting place of approximately 20,000 people.
And New York City’s investment in slavery expanded in the 19th century. In 1799 the state of New York passed the first of a series of laws that would gradually abolish slavery over the coming decades, but the investors and financiers of the state’s primary metropolis doubled down on the business of slavery. New Yorkers invested heavily in the growth of Southern plantations, catching the wave of the first cotton boom. Southern planters who wanted to buy more land and black people borrowed funds from New York bankers and protected the value of bought bodies with policies from New York insurance companies. New York factories produced the agricultural tools forced into Southern slaves’ hands and the rough fabric called “Negro Cloth” worn on their backs. Ships originating in New York docked in the port of New Orleans to service the trade in domestic and (by then, illegal) international slaves. As the historian David Quigley has demonstrated, New York City’s phenomenal economic consolidation came as a result of its dominance in the Southern cotton trade, facilitated by the construction of the Erie Canal. It was in this moment — the early decades of the 1800s — that New York City gained its status as a financial behemoth through shipping raw cotton to Europe and bankrolling the boom industry that slavery made.
In 1711, New York City officials decreed that “all Negro and Indian slaves that are let out to hire … be hired at the Market house at the Wall Street Slip.” It is uncanny, but perhaps predictable, that the original wall for which Wall Street is named was built by the enslaved at a site that served as the city’s first organized slave auction. The capital profits and financial wagers of Manhattan, the United States and the world still flow through this place where black and red people were traded and where the wealth of a region was built on slavery. (2)
https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/anglo-saxon-capitalism/ (1)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html (2)
American Business Visions & Ideas
„I will build a motor car for the multitude. It shall be large enough for the family, but small enough for the unskilled individual to operate easily and care for, and it shall be light in weight and it may be economical in maintenance. It will be built of honest materials, by the best workmen that money can hire, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it shall be so low in price that the man of moderate means may own one and enjoy with his family the blessings of happy hours spent in God’s great open spaces.“(1)
– Vision of Henry Ford (1903).
„Ford’s action transformed American industrial society.“ (1)
– Peter Drucker, economist and management guru.
„There was no way to escape the fact that Henry Ford was the great business impresario of his era – or any era for that matter.“
– Douglas Brinkley, author, Wheels for the World
„In November 1999, Fortune magazine named Henry Ford (Ford), founder of
the Ford Motor Company (Ford Co.) as the ‚Businessman of the 20th Century.‘
Ford was accorded this honor for transforming the lives of billions of people
and revolutionizing the automobile world by creating a car which was affordable
to the common working middle class.
Ford was chosen ahead of three other finalists –
Alfred Sloan Jr. (General Motors), Thomas Watson (IBM), and Bill Gates
(Microsoft) – as the 20th century business leader. Sheryl James (James),
Detroit Free Press, reporter, feature writer, and winner of the 1991 Pulitzer
Prize for feature writing (journalism), said, „Ford Motor Co.’s founder
was a charismatic risk-taker who relentlessly pursued his vision.“
In December 1999, Ford was named the ‚Automotive Entrepreneur of the Century‘ by the Car of the Century (COTC) International panel of journalists and historians for his invaluable contributions to the world and in particular to the field of automobile manufacturing. Dick Holzhaus, founder, COTC International (Netherlands), commented, „The twentieth century can, in retrospect, be regarded as the ‚century of the car‘ – a revolution of technology and lifestyle. In this revolution, Ford Motor Company paved the way both as a manufacturer and as an industry leader. It was Henry Ford’s vision to give people unprecedented mobility that changed the lives of millions throughout the world.“6 These awards and recognitions were in recognition of Ford’s invaluable contributions to the automobile industry.“ (1)
Peter Drucker (Claremont Graduate University)
„The very great achievers, a Napoleon, a da Vinci, a Mozart, have always managed themselves. This in large measure made them great achievers. But they were the rarest of exceptions. And they were so unusual, both in their talents and their achievements, as to be considered outside the boundaries of normal human existence. Now even the people of modest endowments, that is, average mediocrities, will have to learn to manage themselves.
Knowledge workers, therefore, face drastically new demands.
They have to ask:
1. Who am I? What are my strengths? How do I work?
2. Where do I belong?
3. What is my contribution?
4. They have to take relationship responsibility.
5. They have to plan fort he second half of their lives. (2)
„In many cases, they were deceptively simple: Who is your customer? What have you stopped doing lately (so as to free up resources for the new and innovative)? What business are you in? For those who worked hard enough to puzzle out the answers, the experience could be truly profound. “If you weren’t already in this business,” Drucker asked Jack Welch when Welch became the CEO of General Electric, “would you enter it today? And if the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?” This led Welch to his pivotal strategy of fixing, selling or closing every business in which GE was not No. 1 or No. 2 in the market. Above all, Drucker pushed his clients to stop simply making plans and to start taking action. “Drucker purified my mind,” said Donald Keough, the former president of Coca-Cola. “He would tell me after each session, ‘Don’t tell me you had a wonderful meeting with me. Tell me what you are going to do on Monday that’s different.’” (3)
Ford was
credited with enhancing the standards of living of people with his inventions
like the quadricycle and the Ford Model T, and his use of the assembly-line
production approach in the early 1900s. Ford had formulated a philosophy of
three Ps – People, Products and Profit – for his company. Explaining the
relationship between the three Ps, he said in 1916, „I don’t believe we
should make such an awful profit on our cars.
A reasonable profit is right, but not too much. I hold that it is better to sell a large number of
cars at a reasonably small profit……I hold this because it enables a larger
number of people to buy and enjoy the use of a car and because it gives a
larger number of men employment at good wages. Those are the two aims I have in
life.“
„Prof Drucker, you have defined management as a practice rather than a science. Do you think that this definition will be held in the future? Which trends can be expected in the development of management? In your opinion, which will dominate, rather hard or rather soft elements of prosperity in today’s understanding?
Peter F Drucker: Management is definitely not a “science”, as the word “science” is used in the English-speaking countries. It is equally not an “art”. It is a Practice. In that, it is similar to medicine, which it resembles in a good many other respects as well – for instance, in the need in many situations for a careful diagnosis, rather than a standard prescription. And, as in medicine, the results are not “scientific”. A successful doctor is one who cures his patients. A successful executive or manager is one whose enterprise prospers. In medicine you have a good number of foundation disciplines which are the “medical sciences”: chemistry, physiology, anatomy, and so on. But the end result is not knowledge as it is in a “science”. It is a cured patient. Management, similarly, has a substantial number of foundation disciplines. A successful manager must know a fair amount of psychology, for instance; a fair amount of economics; a fair amount of statistics – which, by the way is the one area where most executives today are most deficient. But at the same time, these are foundations rather than the practice itself. Management resembles medicine also, in that there is both a “hard” side to it and a “soft” side to it. The physician needs a lot of standard data, from taking the patient’s temperature, to taking the patient’s weight, and to prescribing a specific diet, or a specific medicine. But the physician also needs to look at the patient as a human being, and not as an inanimate object. Similarly, the executive in any organization, whether a business, a non-profit organization, or a government agency, needs both “soft” and “hard” skills. In both areas we are in a period of tremendous changes. Look at the “hard” areas first. Globalization – and it is no longer future but very much present – demands a good deal of very “hard” knowledge – of markets; of customers; of non-customers; of changing technologies. It demands clear and quantifiable goals. It demands a fair amount of very “hard” skills such as cash-flow management and foreign-exchange management. At the same time there are fundamental changes in the composition of the work force. The center of gravity of the working population is rapidly shifting from people who work with their hands to people who are “knowledge workers”.“ (4)
Drucker from the German Perspective (Universität Mannheim)
Hochschulen verschmähen deutschen Management-Guru
„Er wird gerne als Management-Guru bezeichnet. Vorstände und Geschäftsführer, Berater und Autoren von Managementbüchern zitieren seine Weisheiten noch heute mit Vorliebe. Peter Drucker, der am 19. November 100 Jahre alt geworden wäre, gilt als wichtigster Managementvordenker des 20. Jahrhunderts. Doch sein wissenschaftliches Vermächtnis ist weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten.“
DÜSSELDORF. Auch wenn er vielen als Erfinder des modernen Managements gilt, so hat er dies immer abgestritten, erklärt Winfried Weber, Professor für Managementlehre an der Universität Mannheim. Tatsächlich habe Drucker als Erster formuliert, welche Aufgaben Führungskräfte erfüllen müssen, wie sie gutes Management erlernen können und warum dieses für alle Organisationen so wichtig ist.
„Er hat ein neues Fach, die Managementlehre, begründet“, fasst Weber zusammen, der gerade ein Buch über Drucker herausgegeben hat. An den betriebswirtschaftlichen Fakultäten aber fällt nur sehr selten der Name Drucker. „Vor allem an deutschen Universitäten wird er kaum gewürdigt“, weiß Weber. Managementlehre steht hierzulande auch nur selten auf dem Lehrplan angehender Betriebswirte, während an international renommierten Business-Schulen Druckers Lehren durchaus diskutiert werden.
Dabei begann Drucker seine wissenschaftliche Laufbahn in Deutschland. Der gebürtige Wiener studierte in Hamburg und Frankfurt. Zu Beginn der Großen Depression verlor er seinen Job als Investmentbanker, 1933 emigrierte er zunächst nach London und später in die USA. Er lehrte erst in New York und dann bis zu seiner Emeritierung in Claremont, Kalifornien. Zu Beginn der 40er-Jahre war Drucker einer der Ersten, der mit empirischen Methoden arbeitete – er analysierte die Strategie des Autoherstellers GM.
Danach jedoch interessierte er sich nur noch für die ganz großen Managementfragen und schrieb viele Bücher. Drucker wollte den Managern zuschauen und eigene Schlüsse ziehen. Die wissenschaftliche Forschung verfolgte er nicht mehr weiter, Rufe an renommierte Universitäten wie Stanford und Harvard lehnte er ab. Der Wissenschaftstheoretiker Thomas Kuhn urteilte über Drucker: „Er hat sich nicht mehr in die Normalwissenschaft begeben.“ (5)
Universities spurn German management guru
„He is often referred to as a management guru. Board members and managing directors, consultants and authors of management books still like to quote his wisdom today. Peter Drucker, who would have turned 100 on 19 November, is considered the most important management thinker of the 20th century. But his scientific legacy has largely been forgotten
DÜSSELDORF. Even though he is considered by many to be the inventor of modern management, he has always denied this, explains Winfried Weber, Professor of Management Studies at the University of Mannheim. In fact, he says, Drucker was the first to formulate the tasks that managers must fulfil, how they can learn good management and why it is so important for all organisations.
„He founded a new subject, management theory,“ summarises Weber, who has just published a book on Drucker. At business faculties, however, the name Drucker is very rarely mentioned. „Especially at German universities, he is hardly appreciated,“ Weber knows. Management theory is also rarely on the curriculum of prospective business economists in this country, while Drucker’s teachings are certainly discussed at internationally renowned business schools.
Yet Drucker began his academic career in Germany. Born in Vienna, he studied in Hamburg and Frankfurt. At the beginning of the Great Depression, he lost his job as an investment banker, and in 1933 he emigrated first to London and later to the USA. He taught first in New York and then in Claremont, California, until his retirement. At the beginning of the 1940s, Drucker was one of the first to work with empirical methods – he analysed the strategy of the car manufacturer GM.
After that, however, he was only interested in the really big management questions and wrote many books. Drucker wanted to watch the managers and draw his own conclusions. He no longer pursued scientific research, turning down calls to renowned universities such as Stanford and Harvard. The science theorist Thomas Kuhn judged Drucker: „He no longer entered normal science.““
https://www.icmrindia.org/free%20resources/casestudies/henry1.htm (1)
https://academic.udayton.edu/lawrenceulrich/LeaderArticles/Drucker%20Managing%20Oneself.pdf (2)
https://www.drucker.institute/perspective/about-peter-drucker/ (3)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/90303/1/773159398.pdf (4)
Peter Senge (MIT Sloan School of Management)
Senge management
theories are influential, academic theories that focus on organizations
creating environments where people — both leaders and subordinates — are
learning. The Peter Senge theory of learning organizations creates an
environment where people are engaged in their work and committed to the vision
of the organization.
The management theory of Peter Senge is dense with factors that include
thinking intuitively and going beyond the basic framework of the organization.
A Peter Senge learning organization requires new kinds of leadership models.
1. Peter Senge mental models reflect his belief that the way we process
information, the way we see reality, is often wrong. This theory also suggests
that we keep viewing the world the same way over and over again, when we should
be responding to situations in different ways.
2. Peter Senge theories are written for practicing and aspiring managers. His
work is to help managers turn their organizations into learning organizations.
3. The Peter Senge systems thinking believes that in order for organizations to
excel in todays climate, they need to be creative and self-sustaining. If
organizations are consistently learning, they will be adapting to the new
information and changes that are a constant in today’s world.
Prof. Joseph L. Bower (Harvard)
Leadership and Business Lessons
The Himalaya Experience (Harvard)
by Michael Useem
Our Twin Otter was descending at a dangerously steep angle, but at the last minute the pilot managed to pull the nose up and ease us onto the runway. We had arrived at the gateway to the Himalayas—a tiny airstrip surrounded by snow-covered peaks in the village of Lukla, elevation 9,350 feet. With fully laden backpacks and a keen sense of adventure, we began our journey into the mountain range capped by Mount Everest.
We went to the Himalayas to learn about leadership in one of the outdoors’ most stunning yet demanding classrooms. For the next 11 days, our team of 20 trekkers, including MBA graduates and midcareer executives, hiked some 80 miles over rough terrain to reach a high point of over 18,000 feet. Through our experiences along the way, we heightened our understanding of what true leadership is all about.
Of course, we didn’t need to travel halfway around the world to appreciate the basic principles of leadership. All of us already recognized that leadership requires strategic thinking, decisive action, personal integrity, and other worthy qualities. Yet we also knew that converting such abstract concepts into practice is often an elusive process. Indeed, few behavioral concepts defy translation into reality as much as those that involve leadership.
We made the trip to Mount Everest not because it could teach us things about leadership that we couldn’t have learned elsewhere but because the lessons there would have a far greater urgency. When problems arose, they could rapidly worsen—or be resolved—depending on how quickly people put into action those theoretical leadership concepts. For the hundreds of trekkers who have attempted to reach the summit of Mount Everest, effective leadership has often literally meant the difference between life and death.
For us, hiking along the lower slopes, the decisions we would make would not have the same life-or-death consequences. Nevertheless, our journey would push us in untold ways. Most people in our group had no mountaineering experience whatsoever; many had never spent a single night camping in a tent. So hiking ten miles a day over tough landscape at high altitudes would test people as they had never been tested before. And although we planned to stay along the lower ridges of Mount Everest, we were well aware of the dangers of altitude sickness and careless mistakes—a bad slip could result in a sprained or broken ankle, a minor disaster in such a remote location.
With our senses heightened to such risks, we would be more receptive to the leadership lessons we would learn. Specifically, over the course of our journey, four essential principles emerged: Leaders should be led by the group’s needs; inaction can sometimes be the most difficult—but wisest—action; if your words don’t stick, you haven’t spoken; and leading upwards can feel wrong when it’s right.
From Gettysburg to Everest
Before we look at the lessons in more detail, first a word about the genesis of the Mount Everest program. The impetus for the expeditions dates to the early 1990s. At the time, recruiters from investment banks, consulting firms, and other companies said that they liked the functional skills of Wharton graduates, but they also wanted those newly minted managers to be able to lead. Their markets were far too unpredictable and fast moving for anything less. But teaching leadership in the classroom was one thing; actually implementing those skills in the workplace was quite another.
To help fill that gap, I began creating off-site experiences intended to enhance our graduates’ understanding of leadership. The first was a one-day program in which our executive MBA students walked the Gettysburg battlefield and discussed the leadership lessons of that pivotal struggle more than a century ago. The Himalayas presented another, more powerful venue for the same kind of inductive learning. Not only could participants benefit from the historical expeditions of others, they could also learn from their own unfolding experiences.
So four years ago, my associate Edwin Bernbaum, the director of the Sacred Mountains Program at the Mountain Institute, and I launched an annual program that is open to our MBA and executive MBA graduates, as well as to managers who have completed one of our executive programs. Each participant can bring along a guest, perhaps a spouse or coworker, with the proviso that everyone is a student and must take part in all activities. A typical group consists of some 20 men and women, ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s. For months before arriving in Nepal, participants work themselves into the best physical shape possible, exercising aerobically five or six days a week, often on a hilly trail, a treadmill, or StairMaster. Some have even hired personal trainers to prepare for the journey.
During the treks (this article draws on four of them), we explored the leadership terrain through three methods that continually reinforced one another, often in unexpected ways. First, we held daily seminars over lunch and dinner, drawing on preassigned materials, including books, articles, and cases of the past triumphs and disasters of mountaineers who have attempted to reach the Himalayas’ uppermost ridges. Second, every day two participants took their turn as leaders, assuming responsibility for the day’s hiking assignments, logistical issues, and seminar topics. The day leaders also handled personnel problems ranging from irritation to illness. Each night, the entire group held a discussion to learn from everyone’s experiences, analyzing the tribulations we had faced and miscalculations we had made. Third, as we hiked the path toward the base camp of Mount Everest, we encountered climbers who just days earlier had themselves been on its highest slopes or even its summit. We learned from their firsthand accounts, especially when they talked frankly about the mistakes they had made and the things they would have done differently.
Now to the lessons themselves.
Lesson 1
Leaders Should Be Led by the Group’s Needs
On the first day of our journey, we departed from Lukla by midmorning, wending our way along village homes, terraced fields, and valley walls. The trail, which was the sole path to Mount Everest from our direction, was so steep and narrow along its many miles that hikers, porters, and yaks had to carry all gear and provisions required for the journey. By late afternoon, we arrived at our campsite, nestled in a deep valley with a roaring stream nearby and icy peaks above.
That evening, we presented shirts emblazoned with a trek logo to each of the 25 Sherpas who would be our trail guides and yak herders in the days ahead. The act was more than just a token gesture. Each of us was now part of a team, and the success of our expedition would depend greatly on how well we worked with one another. Often, that would mean subjugating one’s own needs to those of the group, and we discussed how it was especially important that leaders not let their own interests cloud their judgment when making decisions that would ultimately affect everyone.
Several days later, this principle was brought home to me in a very personal way. An American whom we had met on the trail walked into our campsite at dusk. We had pitched our tents far above the timberline at 14,150 feet, the highest campsite of the trip. Our unexpected visitor reported that her brother was showing the classic symptoms of altitude sickness: nausea, dizziness, and an uncertain gait. If untreated, we knew it could become fatal, but the only sure treatment was to walk him down to a far lower altitude. That would have been harrowing, however, since night was falling and the descent with the stricken hiker would take hours.
Fortunately, our physician for the trek, a graduate of our executive MBA program who specialized in emergency medicine, had packed a full load of medicine. She advised treating the suffering trekker and placing him on an hourly watch to ensure that his symptoms did not worsen during the night. She anticipated that with the early light of dawn, he would be able to walk himself safely down to a lower altitude.
The unexpected encounter raised several conflicting concerns. First, the brother and sister were the children of one of my colleagues at Wharton. Because of that connection, I felt compelled to walk down with the ailing trekker that night to be absolutely sure that his condition didn’t deteriorate. But second, I was also responsible for the well-being of my own group, and I knew I had to keep that responsibility uppermost in mind. And third, I was myself exhausted by the day’s doings, and the last thing I was fit for at that moment was a long nighttime descent. After weighing these competing considerations, I made up my mind to follow our physician’s advice, but if the hiker’s health declined during the night, I would make the difficult descent with him.
Fortunately, our doctor had it right: The young man weathered the night, and the next morning he was able to walk himself down to a safer altitude. Several days later, we found him fully recovered in the thicker air of the region’s main trading village at 11,300 feet. The incident strengthened my own resolve to keep personal interests from taking precedence over what was best for all.
This concept was reinforced each day of the journey. As our trekkers took turns being leaders for the day, they gained a deeper appreciation of how difficult it can be to put the needs of the group first. Like everyone else, the leaders for the day arrived late in the afternoon at our camp, dog-tired, famished, and sometimes chilled. Their primary responsibility, however, was to ensure that everybody arrived safely, and they had to tend to the immediate needs of others before addressing their own. Placing team needs ahead of one’s own can be an abstract concept, but it is put to a primal test when a person is hungry, tired, and cranky. Being the last to eat and the last to sleep helped drive this lesson home. Each of us had to rise to the occasion no matter how miserable we might have felt.
In business, executives and managers are frequently tempted to put their own careers first. They may let their egos cloud their thinking or find convenient ways to rationalize decisions that are based purely on their own interests. They may also lose sight of the needs of their teams, bending over backwards to please their bosses or single-mindedly focusing on shareholder demands. Ultimately, though, much of the strength of an organization depends on leaders who are concerned with doing what is best for their followers.
When leaders truly serve and subordinate their private welfare to that of all others, their authority often becomes unquestionable.
Days later, that lesson was driven home in an unexpected way when we reached a monastery that is home to the spiritual leader for the region’s largely Buddhist population. By arrangement, we were able to receive a private audience with the high monk, the reincarnate lama. With the aid of interpreters, we engaged in a freewheeling discussion of Buddhist concepts of leadership. The high monk left us with two indelible affirmations. First, leadership is built by serving. Second, when leaders truly serve and subordinate their private welfare to that of all others, their authority often becomes unquestionable.
Lesson 2
Inaction Can Sometimes Be the Most Difficult—But Wisest—Action
As darkness descended on our high campsite at 14,150 feet—higher than the summit of Colorado’s Pikes Peak—our discussion focused on the next day’s big event. We were to rise at 2 am to depart for a long hike to the highest point of our trek, a rocky crag called Chukhung Ri some three and a half miles above sea level. The climb required no ropes, but we knew it would demand strength of will: The distance would be daunting and the air thin. Each of us was privately wondering if we had what it would take—not only to reach the summit but, more important, to back away if the circumstances dictated.
Pondering that issue, we turned our discussion to Arlene Blum, who led an all-women’s expedition to climb Annapurna, considered one of the most dangerous peaks in the Himalayas. In the mid-1970s, Blum had tried to join other expeditions but was denied membership because her presence would allegedly undercut the male camaraderie deemed so important for success. So she decided to organize her own team of ten women to reach the summit of the 26,545-foot mountain, the world’s tenth highest.
Blum recruited well: Each of her climbers was a world-class mountaineer with a fierce determination to reach the summit. But even if everything went well, not all of them would make it to the top. Expedition mountaineering requires a massive team effort to establish a route and move supplies up the mountain so that on the final day a small group can make the ultimate push to the top. If just one person reaches the summit, all members bask in the glory of that success. This stands in sharp contrast to the recent advent of commercial mountaineering, whose goal is to place all the paying clients on the summit, with success credited only to those who actually stand on top.
On October 15, 1978, after an arduous push from a high camp, two of Blum’s team made it to the summit. It was a crowning moment for the group, for women, and for mountaineering: The whole world had been waiting to see if Blum’s expedition could equal the accomplishment of the all-men’s French team that had been the first to ascend Annapurna in 1950.
A day later, however, two other members of Blum’s expedition wanted to reach the summit themselves. At first Blum resisted because her team had already achieved its objective of placing at least one member on top, and the expedition would gain little if others repeated that feat. But the two climbers insisted they be given a chance. Finally, Blum relented. Two days later, the bodies of the two mountaineers were found below the summit, evidence pointing to a fatal fall.
Without a driving urge to succeed, Blum’s team would not have been able to move the supplies up the mountain, and the first two climbers would likely have had to stop short of their goal. But the team also needed an equally keen awareness of risk among all of its members. The second two climbers pushed that envelope too far, forever marring what would otherwise have been a brilliant accomplishment.
As we turned to our own challenge for the next day, our discussion revolved around the same two polar concerns. Many of us were eager to climb to the highest possible point, and we knew that would require all the mental and physical reserves we could summon. At the same time, we told ourselves that without an objective appraisal of our own limitations and of the potential perils of the hike, we ran the risk of allowing our desire to reach that goal to recklessly overwhelm our good judgment, possibly endangering ourselves and others.
Tempering the desire for action in business is likewise difficult. Many executives have been promoted precisely because of their instinct for decisive action. They have been rewarded for being able to pull the trigger when others can’t, to fund a risky but potentially lucrative project, or to fire an under-performing manager. Often, though, doing nothing is the wisest course if the alternative is to act precipitously. And not only must leaders keep an eye on themselves, they must also dissuade others from rash decisions.
The next day’s hike promised a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view the Himalayas from a spectacular vantage point. But the risks were significant: a long, rocky, steep trail with several particularly demanding stretches. With that information in hand, several in our party wisely decided that they would not attempt to reach the high point. Instead, they would accompany us for only part of the hike, stopping on a ridge at 17,000 feet.
At 3:00 the next morning, we started off across the dark terrain, our headlamps bobbing along the trail, giving the appearance of a pearl necklace snaking its way up the mountainside. Those who had decided against trying to reach the high point arrived at the 17,000-foot turnaround location by mid-morning and returned safely back to camp by midafternoon.
The rest of us pushed farther up to the high point of 18,238 feet on Chukhung Ri, arriving by noon at one of the most stunning vistas in the world. Gigantic glaciers flowed below on both sides, huge peaks soared in front, and a mammoth ice wall of the world’s third highest mountain rose just behind. As we emerged from the total concentration of climbing to finally look around, we marveled in silence at the majestic view.
Later, a few people who had initially underestimated their abilities to reach that summit but were encouraged by their teammates to try for it remarked on how grateful they were to have been pushed beyond what they thought they were capable of. They had gained a first-hand appreciation for the role that others can play in helping people overcome their personal doubts and fears to fulfill their potential.
But for those who are instinctive risk takers, as most leaders are, tempering that inclination can be extremely difficult. A few days earlier, as we were heading for our high camp, one person in the group became dizzy and disoriented. Even so, he insisted that he was fine, and others encouraged him to go on. Later, his altitude sickness worsened. Still, he continued to believe that he could make it. The chief executive of a small industrial company, he was not used to sitting on the sidelines. But others on the team had become worried about his safety. Finally, after a long discussion with a group of us, he agreed that he should turn back with one of the guides and rejoin us when we returned to a lower elevation. The conversation leading up to that decision was difficult and time consuming, but I believe that everyone involved learned from it. For me, it reinforced the idea that although leaders need to help people go for the highest achievement of which they are capable, they must also be keenly aware of the hazards ahead and take the necessary—and sometimes unappealing—steps to avert too grave a risk.
Lesson 3
If Your Words Don’t Stick, You Haven’t Spoken
Upon our return from Chukhung Ri to the high camp, we were elated by our sense of victory, if utterly spent by the price of achieving it. Many knew that the 18,238-foot summit would most likely be the highest point on which they would ever stand.
The next day had been set aside to give people time to recover. Some worked on their diaries; others opted to do nothing. But several in the group hiked to nearby vistas, such as a lake on the slopes of Ama Dablam, a Matterhorn-like spire jutting above us. I, along with four hikers and two guides, decided to walk toward the base camp of Mount Everest.
By early afternoon, we reached a tiny settlement called Lobuche, perched alongside the enormous Khumbu glacier upon which the camp is located. After a brief rest, we decided to return to our own camp by crossing the glacier, a mile-wide jumble of loose rock and precipitous slopes. The hike across proved very tedious, and we were still on the trail when everyone else was back at camp at 6 pm the scheduled time for dinner. Alarmed by the possibility of an injury or worse, t he day leaders at our camp dispatched a group of Sherpas with hot tea to find us before dark. We met them just 30 minutes from camp and were back before dinner was over.
At first, people were greatly relieved that we had returned safely, but after confirming that we were all fine, their mood changed to anger. Several criticized me for not communicating my plans better. “We didn’t know where you were,” one said. “We needed more information about what might have been causing your delay. Without that, it was difficult to decide whether to send a rescue party or to wait.”
Initially, I was defensive. When I had left that morning, I had firm plans in mind, and I thought I had communicated them to several others over breakfast. But now I realized that I must have just casually mentioned the possibility of crossing the Khumbu glacier because nobody could recall my mention of it by the time they realized we were missing. And, more important, I had not stated clearly that they shouldn’t worry if we weren’t back by 6 pm, since crossing the glacier might make us late for dinner. Unwittingly, I had become a textbook example of how not to communicate.
In trying to rectify the situation, the worst thing I could have done would have been to downplay my errors, which would have sent the wrong message about how we all needed to communicate. To make sure I didn’t do that, I explicitly reviewed what I should have done, and I apologized to everyone for the mistakes I had made. Regardless of what had been said during breakfast, I was ultimately responsible for making sure that the day leaders knew about my plans. My failure to do so not only caused our team to become unnecessarily alarmed, it also resulted in unnecessary work for our Sherpa guides.
Business managers often make the same mistake, failing to grasp the crucial distinction between telling people something and delivering that information so that it really sticks. I ndeed, poor communication is one reason why many companies that have devised brilliant strategies fail miserably in executing them. When leaders make their strategic intent abundantly clear—as Wal-Mart’s management has in proclaiming its strategy of “low prices, every day”—employees know what to do without requiring myriad further instructions. Achieving that clarity, however, is often far more difficult than managers appreciate.
When leaders make their strategic intent abundantly clear, others know what to do without requirimyriad further instructions.
Although my missteps did not have dire consequences for our group, poor communication did lead to disastrous events on Mount Everest on May 10, 1996. On that ill-fated day, described in the best-seller Into Thin Air, a freak blizzard caught dozens of hikers near the summit, killing eight.
During the weeks of preparation for their trek, commercial team leaders Rob Hall and Scott Fischer repeatedly told their clients about the “two o’clock rule.” On the day they would attempt to reach the summit, they would have to do so by 2 pm; otherwise they’d have to turn around even if they were within sight of the top. The rationale was clear: Climbers needed time to descend and reach the high camp before nightfall, where the relative security of their tents, sleeping bags, and oxygen could protect them. If they failed to reach camp by dark, they could die on the exposed ridge where windchills can plunge to 100 degrees below zero.
Although Hall and Fischer repeatedly emphasized the two o’clock rule, they evidently failed to do so persuasively. Many of the 33 climbers who had left the high camp just after midnight on May 10 were still pressing for the summit after 2 pm, and Hall and Fischer themselves did not reach the top until well after that time. The consequences were tragic. After 5 pm, when all the climbers should have been crawling into their life-protecting tents back at the high camp, a violent storm hit the mountain and killed five climbers in the party (and three others on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest) caught in the open, including both Hall and Fischer.
Lesson 4
Leading Upwards Can Feel Wrong When It’s Right
One of the most magnificent settings of our trek was Tengboche, a ridge at 12,670 feet that is the home of the region’s best-known monastery. With a commanding view of Mount Everest, Tengboche has long been a stopping point for virtually everyone on their way to Everest.
It was at this location that the final, equally powerful lesson was driven home. We had been debating the events of Into Thin Air, and among our questions was whether one of the commercial clients, Beck Weathers, might have averted the disaster that nearly resulted in his death. On his way up the summit ridge, Weathers became temporarily blind, and his team leader, Rob Hall, instructed him to stay put until Hall returned from the summit to lead him safely down to the high camp.
But Weathers failed to ask Hall to elaborate on his terse instruction, and as a result Weathers spent the entire day waiting for his leader to return. Caught in the killer storm later that afternoon, Hall never did come down, and Weathers’s resulting delay in descending left him badly exposed when the storm hit. After he lost consciousness, others left him for dead. He somehow survived the storm but suffered grievous frostbite on his hands and face. In retrospect, had Weathers pressed Hall, his superior on the expedition, for more information, they could have developed a contingency plan: If Hall wasn’t back by an agreed-upon time, then Weathers should head down with another guide or teammate.
After much discussion about Weathers, our ongoing debate was aided by a serendipitous encounter. Along the Tengboche ridge, we happened to meet another of the principals who had miraculously survived the 1996 disaster, Sandy Hill Pittman. She and Weathers had been among the many clients who had left the high camp at 26,000 feet just past midnight on May 10. Having already debated the events of that fateful day, and with the summit of Mount Everest on our horizon, we asked Pittman if there was anything she would have done differently. Her response was unexpected.
Pittman’s guide, Scott Fischer, had moved slowly toward the summit during the early morning hours of May 10. She had recognized that he was off his game, but she said nothing as they headed for the summit. She was too focused on her own ascent and too confident in Fischer to worry about his condition. Later that day, however, as the storm enveloped the mountain, Fischer sat down on the way back and never stood up.
Pittman told us that she wished she had done more to help him. Earlier on their expedition, Fischer had insisted that his clients build teamwork among themselves to ensure that they would assist one another during a crisis, and his demand proved lifesaving for Pittman, who was rescued from the storm by her team members. But she had not done enough for Fischer. His leadership had saved her life, she said, but hers had fallen short in saving his.
Pittman’s frank assessment of her actions helped bring home the notion that leadership is not just about mobilizing those below; it’s also about marshaling the people above. After all, everyone is fallible, and even the most experienced CEOs and other top executives have blind spots. Our responsibility, then, is to help them avoid the pitfalls that they haven’t seen. Of course, leading upwards often feels wrong because of the hierarchical culture prevalent in most companies, and it requires tremendous diplomacy and tact to avoid a political blunder that can derail or end a promising career. At the same time, many great companies have foundered because of faulty decisions made at the top while middle managers sat on their hands. The harrowing experience of Weathers and Pittman—and the difference that upward leadership might have made for them and for Scott Fischer that day—stands as a forceful reminder for keeping this leadership principle in mind. In effect, we all need to be ready to lead even when we are not in charge.
At the end of our journey, we spent our final evening together in Kathmandu, recapping the various things we learned, both from our achievements and from our mistakes. We were tanner and fitter—and noticeably thinner—than we were when we first arrived in Nepal two weeks earlier. We were also more aware that good leadership requires many capabilities and actions, and we had a deeper, fuller appreciation of what it really takes to lead.
During our trek, we had hiked some 40,000 vertical feet, and we had gazed upon four of the world’s six highest summits. Humbled by our own experiences and by those of other trekkers in the Himalayas, we realized more than ever that mastering leadership is an ongoing journey. Indeed, as difficult as our hike up the lower slopes of Mount Everest was, the harder work would commence as we applied the principles of good leadership to our management responsibilities in the years ahead.
https://hbr.org/2001/10/the-leadership-lessons-of-mount-everest
Canada Geese (Rider University)
„Near the home of one of the authors of this book, scores of Canada geese spend the winter. They fly over the house to the nature pond nearby almost every morning. What is distinctive about these flights is that the geese always fly in a V pattern. The reason for this pattern is that the flapping wings of the geese in front create an updraft for the geese that follow. This V pattern increases the range of the geese collectively by 71 percent compared to flying alone. On long flights, after the lead goose has flown at the front of the V for a while, it drops back to take a place in the V where the flying is easier. Another goose then takes over the lead position, where the flying is most strenuous. If a goose begins to fly out of formation, it is not long before it returns to the V because of the resistance it experiences when not supported by the wing flapping of the other geese. Another noticeable feature of these geese is the loud honking that occurs when they fly. Canada geese never fly quietly. One can always tell when they are in the air because of the noise. The reason for the honking is not random, however. It occurs among geese in the rear of the formation in order to encourage the lead goose. The leader doesn’t honk—just those who are supporting and urging on the leader. If a goose is shot, becomes ill, or falls out of formation, two geese break ranks and follow the wounded or ill goose to the ground. There they remain, nurturing their companion, until it is either well enough to return to the flock or it dies. This remarkable phenomenon serves as an apt metaphor for our chapter on teamwork. The lessons garnered from the flying V formation help highlight important attributes of effective teams and skillful teamwork. For example:
❏ Effective teams have interdependent members. Like geese, the productivity and efficiency of an entire unit is determined by the coordinated, interactive efforts of all its members.
❏ Effective teams help members be more efficient working together than alone. Like geese, effective teams outperform even the best individual’s performance.
❏ Effective teams function so well that they create their own magnetism. Like geese, team members desire to affiliate with a team because of the advantages they receive from membership.
❏ Effective teams do not always have the same leader. As with geese, leadership responsibility often rotates and is shared broadly as teams develop over time.
❏ In effective teams, members care for and nurture one another. No member is devalued or unappreciated. All are treated as an integral part of the team.
❏ Effective teams have members who cheer for and bolster the leader, and vice versa. Mutual encouragement is given and received by each member.
❏ Effective teams have a high level of trust among members. Members demonstrate integrity and are interested in others’ success as well as their own.
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
The Turn of the Tide (Rider University)
„The Turn of the Tide Not long ago I came to one of those bleak periods that many of us encounter from time to time, a sudden drastic dip in the graph of living when everything goes stale and flat, energy wanes, enthusiasm dies. The effect on my work was frightening. Every morning I would clench my teeth and mutter: “Today life will take on some of its old meaning. You’ve got to break through this thing. You’ve got to!” But the barren days went by, and the paralysis grew worse. The time came when I knew I had to have help. The man I turned to was a doctor. Not a psychiatrist, just a doctor. He was older than I, and under his surface gruffness lay great wisdom and compassion. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” I told him miserably, “but I just seem to have come to a dead end. Can you help me?” “I don’t know,” he said slowly. He made a tent of his fingers and gazed at me thoughtfully for a long while. Then, abruptly, he asked, “Where were you happiest as a child?” “As a child?” I echoed. “Why, at the beach, I suppose. We had a summer cottage there. We all loved it.” He looked out the window and watched the October leaves sifting down. “Are you capable of following instructions for a single day?” “I think so,” I said, ready to try anything. “All right. Here’s what I want you to do.” He told me to drive to the beach alone the following morning, arriving not later than nine o’clock. I could take some lunch; but I was not to read, write, listen to the radio, or talk to anyone. “In addition,” he said, “I’ll give you a prescription to be taken every three hours.” He then tore off four prescription blanks, wrote a few words on each, folded them, numbered them, and handed them to me. “Take these at nine, twelve, three, and six.” “Are you serious?” I asked. He gave a short bark of laughter. “You won’t think I’m joking when you get my bill!” The next morning, with little faith, I drove to the beach. It was lonely, all right. A northeaster was blowing; the sea looked gray and angry. I sat in the car, the whole day stretching emptily before me. Then I took out the first of the folded slips of paper.
On it was written: LISTEN CAREFULLY. I stared at the two words. “Why,” I thought, “the man must be mad.” He had ruled out music and newscasts and human conversation. What else was there? I raised my head and I did listen. There were no sounds but the steady roar of the sea, the creaking cry of a gull, the drone of some aircraft high overhead. All these sounds were familiar. I got out of the car. A gust of wind slammed the door with a sudden clap of sound. “Am I supposed to listen carefully to things like that?” I asked myself. I climbed a dune and looked out over the deserted beach. Here the sea bellowed so loudly that all other sounds were lost. And yet, I thought suddenly, there must be sounds beneath sounds—the soft rasp of drifting sand, the tiny wind-whisperings in the dune grasses—if the listener got close enough to hear them. On an impulse I ducked down and, feeling fairly ridiculous, thrust my head into a clump of sea-oats. Here I made a discovery: If you listen intently, there is a fractional moment in which everything seems to pause, wait. In that instant of stillness, the racing thoughts halt. For a moment, when you truly listen for something outside yourself, you have to silence the clamorous voices within. The mind rests. I went back to the car and slid behind the wheel.
LISTEN CAREFULLY. As I listened again to the deep growl of the sea, I found myself thinking about the white-fanged fury of its storms. I thought of the lessons it had taught us as children. A certain amount of patience: you can’t hurry the tides. A great deal of respect: the sea does not suffer fools gladly. An awareness of the vast and mysterious interdependence of things: wind and tide and current, calm and squall and hurricane, all combining to determine the paths of the birds above and the fish below. And the cleanness of it all, with every beach swept twice a day by the great broom of the sea. Sitting there, I realized I was thinking of things bigger than myself—and there was relief in that. Even so, the morning passed slowly. The habit of hurling myself at a problem was so strong that I felt lost without it. Once, when I was wistfully eyeing the car radio, a phrase from Carlyle jumped into my head: “Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.”
By noon the wind had polished the clouds out of the sky, and the sea had merry sparkle. I unfolded the second “prescription.” And again I sat there, half amused and half exasperated. Three words this time: TRY REACHING BACK. Back to what? To the past, obviously. But why, when all my worries concerned the present or the future? I left the car and started tramping reflectively along the dunes. The doctor had sent me to the beach because it was a place of happy memories. Maybe that was what I was supposed to reach for: the wealth of happiness that lay half-forgotten behind me. I decided to experiment: to work on these vague impressions as a painter would, retouching the colors, strengthening the outlines. I would choose specific incidents and recapture as many details as possible. I would visualize people complete with dress and gestures. I would listen (carefully) for the exact sound of their voices, the echo of their laughter. The tide was going out now, but there was still thunder in the surf. So I chose to go back 20 years to the last fishing trip I made with my younger brother. (He died in the Pacific during World War II and was buried in the Philippines.) I found that if I closed my eyes and really tried, I could see him with amazing vividness, even the humor and eagerness in his eyes that far-off morning. In fact, I could see it all: the ivory scimitar of beach where we were fishing; the eastern sky smeared with sunrise; the great rollers creaming in, stately and slow. I could feel the backwash swirl warm around my knees, see the sudden arc of my brother’s rod as he struck a fish, hear his exultant yell. Piece by piece I rebuilt it, clear and unchanged under the transparent varnish of time. Then it was gone.
I sat up slowly. TRY REACHING BACK. Happy people were usually assured, confident people. If, then, you deliberately reached back and touched happiness, might there not be released little flashes of power, tiny sources of strength? This second period of the day went more quickly. As the sun began its long slant down the sky, my mind ranged eagerly through the past, reliving some episodes, uncovering others that had been completely forgotten. For example, when I was around 13 and my brother 10, Father had promised to take us to the circus. But at lunch there was a phone call: Some urgent business required his attention downtown. We braced ourselves for disappointment. Then we heard him say, “No, I won’t be down. It’ll have to wait.” When he came back to the table, Mother smiled. “The circus keeps coming back, you know.” “I know,” said Father. “But childhood doesn’t.” Across all the years I remembered this and knew from the sudden glow of warmth that no kindness is ever wasted or ever completely lost.
By three o’clock the tide was out and the sound of the waves was only a rhythmic whisper, like a giant breathing. I stayed in my sandy nest, feeling relaxed and content— and a little complacent. The doctor’s prescriptions, I thought, were easy to take. But I was not prepared for the next one. This time the three words were not a gentle suggestion. They sounded more like a command. REEXAMINE YOUR MOTIVES. My first reaction was purely defensive. “There’s nothing wrong with my motives,” I said to myself. “I want to be successful—who doesn’t? I want to have a certain amount of recognition—but so does everybody. I want more security than I’ve got—and why not?” “Maybe,” said a small voice somewhere inside my head, “those motives aren’t good enough. Maybe that’s the reason the wheels have stopped going around.” I picked up a handful of sand and let it stream between my fingers. In the past, whenever my work went well, there had always been something spontaneous about it, something uncontrived, something free. Lately it had been calculated, competent— and dead. Why? Because I had been looking past the job itself to the rewards I hoped it would bring. The work had ceased to be an end in itself, it had been merely a means to make money, pay bills. The sense of giving something, of helping people, of making a contribution, had been lost in a frantic clutch at security. In a flash of certainty, I saw that if one’s motives are wrong, nothing can be right. It makes no difference whether you are a mailman, a hairdresser, an insurance salesman, a housewife—whatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well. This is a law as inexorable as gravity. For a long time I sat there. Far out on the bar I heard the murmur of the surf change to a hollow roar as the tide turned. Behind me the spears of light were almost horizontal.
My time at the beach had almost run out, and I felt a grudging admiration for the doctor and the “prescriptions” he had so casually and cunningly devised. I saw, now, that in them was a therapeutic progression that might well be of value to anyone facing any difficulty. LISTEN CAREFULLY: To calm a frantic mind, slow it down, shift the focus from inner problems to outer things. TRY REACHING BACK: Since the human mind can hold but one idea at a time, you blot out present worry when you touch the happiness of the past. REEXAMINE YOUR MOTIVES: This was the hard core of the “treatment,” this challenge to reappraise, to bring one’s motives into alignment with one’s capabilities and conscience. But the mind must be clear and receptive to do this—hence the six hours of quiet that went before.
The western sky was a blaze of crimson as I took out the last slip of paper. Six words this time. I walked slowly out on the beach. A few yards below the high water mark I stopped and read the words again: WRITE YOUR TROUBLES ON THE SAND. I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell. Kneeling there under the vault of the sky, I wrote several words on the sand, one above the other. Then I walked away, and I did not look back. I had written my troubles on the sand. And the tide was coming in.“
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
Leadership & Making The Right Move
„Being promoted to manager is a good sign you’ve been successful to date — however, the road from this point forward gets trickier to navigate. Your job is no longer just about getting the work done. You’re more likely now to find yourself juggling conflicting demands, delivering difficult messages, and addressing performance problems. While there is no guidebook of straightforward answers to your new challenges, having a clear philosophy can provide a firm foundation from which to operate.
With respect to your career, a philosophy is simply a cohesive way of thinking about your role. Very few people take the time to establish one. Most managers live in a reactive mode, responding to issues based on gut feelings, past experiences, and examples set by others. The success or failure of this approach is often determined by your temperament (some people are naturally more gifted managers than others) and the caliber of your role models—two factors largely out of your control. Whether you’ve been lucky in these areas or not, having a core philosophy can help guide you through the day-to-day and the job’s tougher moments.
The idea of “servant leadership” is a great place for new managers to start. Robert Greenleaf coined the term 35 years ago, but the concept is still vital and empowering. Granted, “servant” doesn’t sound nearly as powerful as “boss,” but it has the potential to deliver far more of what most of us are really after: influence. The reason is simple. When you have a servant mentality, it’s not about you. Removing self-interest and personal glory from your motivation on the job is the single most important thing you can do to inspire trust. When you focus first on the success of your organization and your team, it comes through clearly. You ask more questions, listen more carefully, and actively value others’ needs and contributions. The result is more thoughtful, balanced decisions. People who become known for inclusiveness and smart decisions tend to develop influence far more consistently than those who believe they have all the answers.
Servant leadership is most powerful when applied to managing employees. The first step in embracing this mindset is to stop thinking that your employees work for you. Instead, hold onto the idea that they work for the organization and for themselves. Your role as servant is to facilitate the relationship between each employee and the organization. Ask yourself, “What will it take for this employee to be successful in this relationship?” And, “What does the organization need to provide in order to hold up its end of the bargain?” When these questions drive your thinking, you advance both parties’ interests. (The same principles apply to managing products, supply chains, and customer relationships, but we’ll keep our focus on employees here.)
Does servant leadership prohibit telling people what to do or correcting their behavior? On the contrary, it means that you must do these things to facilitate an individual’s success within the organization. The key is that your mind is in “servant mode” when you perform the daily tasks of management.
For instance, assigning work should be a thoughtful process that balances business goals with an individual’s interest, skills, and development needs. Not every routine task has to be so thoroughly considered. But whenever significant assignments are made, putting them into context maximizes their impact. An employee who understands why she has been asked to do something is far more likely to assume true ownership for the assignment. When she owns it, you become more guide than director. You ask how you can support her and how she would like to report progress rather than tell her these things. An employee who believes her boss understands her strengths, values her input, and encourages her growth is likely to stick around for the long-term.
Clearly, the servant approach to assigning tasks requires more thought and preparation than simply dishing them out. It takes time. But remember that you are actually multitasking—you are making sure the work gets done while simultaneously strengthening the individual’s relationship with the organization.
Adopting the servant philosophy should also make it easier to provide corrective feedback. You are merely a facilitator, and facilitators aren’t angry, frustrated, or resentful when they deliver feedback, because it isn’t about them—it’s about the relationship between the two other parties. For that reason, exercising the servant frame of mind makes development conversations feel less personal. You aren’t disappointed in your employee’s actions; you are simply explaining how they get in the way of what he’s trying to accomplish for himself and the organization. When your only agenda is setting someone else up for success, your words tend to be received more openly. True upset happens when either party’s interests are allowed to suffer over time without intervention. It must be the manager’s primary concern to balance those interests.
By definition, developing a reputation takes time. However, when you are consistent with the servant approach, people know what to expect from you and trust ensues. Trust, combined with the smart, inclusive decision-making discussed earlier is a surefire way of gaining influence.
We’ve just scratched the surface of the many challenges that you will confront as a first-time manager. There is simply no way to anticipate them all. But a core servant leadership philosophy will provide critical guideposts to help you manage in real time. Whatever your temperament, a serving mindset will keep you out of the reactive and self-protective patterns that can impede your success. Servant leadership may not appeal to those who are attracted to a more traditional idea of power, but it should be the choice of those interested in influence and results.“
https://hbr.org/2015/09/new-managers-need-a-philosophy-about-how-theyll-lead
Edward de Bono (De Bono Group)
Master Mind
Edward de Bono (The Business Voice / World Leaders at Your Desk)
Spence Silver had been trying for years to get someone in 3M to adopt his unsticky glue. Art Fry, another scientist with 3M, had heard Silver’s presentations before. One day while singing in North Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Fry was fumbling around with the slips of paper that marked the various hymns in his book. Suddenly, a visual image popped into his mind. I thought, “Gee, if I had a little adhesive on these bookmarks, that would be just the ticket.” So I decided to check into that idea the next week at work. What I had in mind was Silver’s adhesive. . . . I knew I had a much bigger discovery than that. I also now realized that the primary application for Silver’s adhesive was not to put it on a fixed surface like bulletin boards. That was a secondary application. The primary application concerned paper to paper. I realized that immediately.”
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
„Assume that there are four volumes of Shakespeare on the shelf. Assume that the pages of each volume are exactly two inches thick, and that the covers of each volume are each one-sixth of an inch thick. Assume that a bookworm began eating at page 1 of Volume 1, and it ate straight through to the last page of Volume IV. What distance did the worm cover? Solving this problem is relatively simple, but it requires that you overcome a stereotyping block to get the correct answer.“
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
Using the code letters for the smaller ships as a guide, what is the name of the larger ship?
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
Without lifting your pencil from the paper, draw four straight lines that pass through all nine dots.
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
The figure below shows seven matchsticks. By moving only one matchstick, make the figure into a true equality (i.e., the value on one side equals the value on the other side).
http://slideplayer.com/slide/17956382/105/images/15/The+Matchstick+Configuration.jpg
„This emphasis on using alternative thinking languages, especially visual thinking, has become a new frontier in scientific research (McKim, 1997). With the advent of the digital revolution, scientists are more and more working with pictures and simulated images rather than with numerical data. “Scientists who are using the new computer graphics say that by viewing images instead of numbers, a fundamental change in the way researchers think and work is occurring. People have a lot easier time getting an intuition from pictures than they do from numbers and tables or formulas. In most physics experiments, the answer used to be a number or a string of numbers. In the last few years the answer has increasingly become a picture.”
https://fac.ksu.edu.sa/sites/default/files/developing_management_skills-8th_edition.pdf
The American way?
High Profile Communications
Prof. Michael Sandel (Harvard)
In preparation for my assignment as Head of Human Resources in a large plant engineering company, the management board required me to attend a Leadership Course at Harvard.
In order to be able to follow the very complex and professionally demanding contents of the course, extensive training in the English language was necessary.
The company was able to win Ms König for this task, who prepared me for Harvard with her professional and linguistic competence in an excellent way…(continued in German in „Referenzen“)
I would be happy to recommend Ms König any time.
SIEGFRIED HOBRACK, HEAD OF HUMAN RESOURCES (A.D.)
TODAY PARTNER OF HOBRACK CONSULTING RESPONSIBLE FOR RECRUITING PROFESSIONALS AND LEADERS
