A book review by Dr. Owen A. Anderson, The Hawthorne Corporation, August 2009
The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership by Steven B. Sample (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2003)
LEADERSHIP LESSONS FOR HARD TIMES
In a recent Sunday New York Times, a new study of 100 large firms reported on what business has learned following the recent crisis. How were they going to address the twin threats of short term thinking and unethical greedy behaviour? What did they learn? The answer: Not much.
Public trust in the business sector is now at an all time low and it wasn’t very high to start with. This guide to leadership fundamentals will help business turn this dismal situation around.
The author of The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, Steven Sample, is an electrical engineering professor by trade, a musician, an inventor, and President of the University of Southern California. You will be confounded and delighted with your encounter with this practitioner of leadership. Sample co-taught a course entitled “The Art and Adventure of Leadership” while President of USC. The course studied 25 historic figures starting with Kind David and Napoleon, and included contemporary modern leaders. Construct your own list of who you want to study.
Sample illustrates why an important first step to leadership fundamentals is to create a role and mission statement: For USC this is a one page statement of identity and the basis on which to improve. Remember your mission statement articulates your core values. Then one must have a strategic plan with a limited number of priorities. The distinguished planner Michael Kami said that 3 – 5 priorities are all you can handle. This is an important point to remember at your next planning session. Doing this exercise needs original thinking and unconventional approaches. You cannot copy your way to excellence. Good things started to happen at USC once everyone understood the vision. They participated in and owned the mission.
Steven Sample warns us to always guard our intellectual independence. You have to do the hard work of reading and thinking. His focus is on how we can use what we learn in our lives and work. What are the foundations of leadership?
First Leadership can be learned and applied. It is situational.
Always see the grey, think of options, and delegate widely. Challenge all conventional wisdom – it may well be true, but you still need to challenge it and work it through so that it becomes your own wisdom.
Be careful about labels and names, and work on the definition of the problems at hand. You should have a trusted advisory panel to keep you on track and on mission. Always revise goals as appropriate and debrief on a regular basis.
Try and create a big vision – “therefore make no small plans . . .” is the motto written over the entrance to the dining room at the Banff Centre for Management and the Arts.
Know your company story and see it as it is (but not worse) and tell it as it is – (but not better than it is).
Set a new standard or bench-mark for yourself, raise the level and everyone’s expectations for your Company.
When you walk into work think like this: “At any moment I could learn something”. Then give that learning away.
Focus on how you think and define the problem, then redefine the problem.
Be proactive as Stephen Covey taught us and be provocative as the late Justice Nemetz recommended.
Sample devotes a lot of effort to encouraging leaders to read.
“You are what you read”. Read only the best books first. Make conscious choices about what to read. This intellectual part of your life is an essential element for leadership. Surveys show that this element is missing in many people’s lives.
The leader’s job is to inspire and motivate – leaders lead individual followers primarily through the spoken word – you must listen and then talk to your people in person.
As General Schultz former Secretary of State said of the Contrarian’s Guide: “Read this book at your own risk You just might learn something startling”.
Dr. Owen Anderson is The Vancouver Board of Trade’s literary critic-in-residence
