Is your boss better than you? Does he or she get it, have a clearer idea of what the fundamental issues are, what direction the firm ought to be following, what steps to be taking to get there?
Did you go to Harvard? No? Is everyone who did smarter than you? Do they automatically deserve a better, more rewarding – or more amply rewarded – future than you?
How did your boss get to be boss? How did all of those others get in to “better” schools? If we are all more astute and able than them, how come we aren’t rising to the top? Why are they?
Did we not read the right books on leadership, attend the best seminars and workshops, get the most fashionable credentials? Did we not work as hard or harder, follow the leaders and the rules, gain experience upon which we reflected with deep insight, generating incisive judgment?
Where’s the presumptive merit in all of this? The justice? What does it say about our view of individual leadership in organizations? Is there, perhaps, something behind all of this other than what ought to be there? What sorts of concealed machinations are really turning the wheels of life and work? Is the grandeur with which we paint these figures after the fact only fig-leafing the truth of the matter – or of the way our perception of that truth is, with our complicity, managed?
Let’s make a brief, and final, visit to Leo Tolstoy”s War and Peace to see what it might have to offer us on this topic.
The main characters spend the greater part of the book desperately scrambling to figure out what “it” is all about. Both spurred and burdened by the expectations, and skepticism about their ability to meet them, inherent in their social circles, they each waver between despondently finding nothing but pain and futility in life, and determining that the secret in it lay in this or, later, that.
But, it turns out, the one who really “got it” was not a player in the lofty circles from the heights of which the main protagonists tormented themselves and each other. He was a peasant. Unencumbered by the superfluous perceptual baggage and crippling self-importance of the elites, he had clearly and simply cut through to the heart of the matter. He saw what it is all about, and how to order his life and actions on that understanding. But the leadership class was institutionally unable to comprehend this, and at their order, he was shot for failing to keep up with those who didn’t get it.
Do you feel like that, sometimes?
—
Today’s tip: Speaking of feeling under-appreciated, you’re not alone. Please be sure to view this must-read piece about being all dressed up with nowhere to go by Michael Wade, the Execupundit. Enduringly effective managers create for themselves the “good problems” he describes. Do you?
—
Please do take a moment to subscribe, either by email or RSS reader, to be sure you receive future articles as they’re published.
Technorati Tags: boss, Harvard, leadership, work, leader, experience, insight, judgment, merit, justice, organization, Leo Tolstoy, Michael Wade, Execupundit, manager
Sphere: Related Content
4 Comments
Jim, excellent post. It seems that too often the world views ‘leaders’ as sports heroes or political figures who have large throngs of followers. In reality, some of the greatest leaders are people of whom most of the world has not heard, like the character you mention from Tolstoy’s book.
Anyone who makes the decision can and will become a leader. I work with product managers; people who for the most part do not have direct reports, yet they rely on many others for their success. They have to be leaders; to lead on purpose. Anyone who wants to can become a leader.
Thanks for the great post. I’m happy to have found your blog. -Michael
Hello Michael,
Your application of this idea to your work with project managers, who often are depended upon to make things happen with resources over which they have little or no authority, is excellent – this is a really useful avenue for exploring how leadership in organizations really works; even, ultimately what it really is.
Thanks for your visit and your kind words. I hope other viewers will click through the link you provided to your own terrific site – I’m now a happy subscriber!
Your discourse on “War and Peace” accurately points out that elite education is more of a hazard to than an advantage. This applies to managing people and to every other human endeavor.
The reason is that we are all born with a gut, a conscience which I like to call our “good/bad compass”. This compass allows to understand what is right to do and what is wrong. But elite education convinces most that the rational brain with its powers of reasoning can always come to the right conclusion given the correct data without reference to the compass.
History teaches us that this is not true. The history of man’s inhumanity to man is strewn with examples of reason’s inability to recognize bad from good. The Crusades, Nazi Germany, Communism, Socialism and a myriad of other movements and programs, all prosecuted in the name of doing the right thing, have been gross failures resulting in great damage to large numbers of people.
I would include in this list today’s efforts to support anthropogenic climate change and most welfare programs. The elites always believe that they know better, but my take is that only those who have retained their “good/bad compass” can be trusted.
Best regards, Ben
Hello Ben,
Your recounting of historical examples of the shortcomings, to say the least, of elitist approaches to problems – uninformed by either common sense or what you refer to as the “gut,” the moral compass, is illustrative.
The additional, current programs in this vein that you point to are also designed to place us all in the care of expert specialists whose knowledge we cannot hope to match, and whose prescriptions we must submit to.
That’s not to say that they are ill-intentioned – or even that the problems they address may not be real – just that the instinct to go right to the experts, bypassing debate and surrendering control, has not shown itself over time to be a reliable or helpful one.
Thanks for adding this element to the subject of the post!
Post a Comment