Leadership

With the war in Iraq looming over and state of affairs with our political leadership. I am reminded of the quote by Henry Miller “One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea whether a good one or a bad one.”. So what’s the deal in the corporate world? What makes a leader and how are they different?

We have had a bunch to think about lately; The Carly issue at HP; The Phil Condit issue at Boeing; The David Kearns issue at Xerox not too long ago.

A month or so ago I read the a clip the “The urge to merge”, “Boardroom Barons”, “Viacom's Troika”, “Leaving Loaded at HP” (April 23^rd, 2005) in the column “The CEO hall of shame”, published by The LA Times. The editor spoke about how some of these leaders have not delivered on the promise.

Try searching for a book on leadership at the world’s largest bookstore and you will find thousands over thousands of books and articles. I spent time reading a couple, some I really liked, some I really enjoyed and some they just occupy space on my bookshelf. They all seem to have some things in common:

• Develop strategies that capitalize on strengths and capabilities
• Anticipates competitive trends
• Deliver short term objectives and develop capabilities to meet long term targets

If leadership can be summarized into a couple bullet points why is it so difficult to spot the likes of ‘Neutron Jack’? Why do we associate Chain saw Al with Neutron Jack with Jac the Knife and Harold Sydney together?

Do we really know why some of these turn around kids performed so poorly? If these succeeded to get to the top why weren’t they able to stay atop? Can we measure and spot true leadership or it is a something very nebulous? Is strong and successful leadership a matter of luck? Or is it just a misstep by an individual in to the limelight that catapults him or her to the top spot?