Playing by different rules – the secret to a leader’s success
. One key practice, which was problematic in Jobs’ leadership, which many charismatic and visionary leaders also have is their very strong views and very strong preferences.
Business Guru Warren Bennis stated “leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Genius, pioneer, and innovator are words often used to describe Apple founder Steve Jobs. He brought an imaginative sense to technology which began as a business with his friend Steve Wozniak.
Apple grew to become one of the world’s largest corporations. In the journey came the Macintosh computer, the iPad, and the iPhone. Jobs’ product launches turned into headline-making events. Job was a charismatic visionary and his passion for his products was on full display. Nevertheless, there were also stories of his harsh and controlling behaviour at work.
Guy Kawasaki author of Wise Guy: Lessons from Life stated in the book: “In the Macintosh Division, you had to prove yourself every day, or Jobs got rid of you.” He was known to humiliate people in public and be offensive and rude.
Probably because he wanted his vision to come to reality and anyone who did not deliver on his vision his way would bear the brunt of his temper as he was known to be impatient. It is said that he set near-impossible tasks for his team.
Some were able to stand up to him and in turn gained his respect, but Apple lost many talented people because of his harsh leadership style. One key practice, which was problematic in Jobs’ leadership, which many charismatic and visionary leaders also have is their very strong views and very strong preferences.
This may be seen as a good quality as deliberate action is required in order to bring the vision to reality. On the flip side, this type of leadership creates fear and a stressful work environment leading to low staff morale and toxicity.
Conversation
Those who directly worked with Jobs has stated that “it was difficult to have a conversation with him let alone debate. He often wanted things to go his way”. What did this mean for his staff? Does working for the kind of visionary leader that Jobs was usually mean doing what one is told without it being a collaborative process? Leaders like Jobs can make it difficult to be collaborative or work together. However, Jobs managed to cultivate a fiercely loyal customer base in the process. But once the visionary leader is gone, it is not always the case that the vision carries through.
Perhaps Apple has been fortunate to have past chief operating officer (COO) and now CEO Tim Cook follow and share the vision of Jobs.
Elon Musk another visionary leader has been making the headlines in business news over the past many years regarding lawsuits over toxic workplace culture.
Jeff Bezos has also been highlighted as a visionary whose workplace culture at Blue Origin was toxic and dysfunctional leading to mistrust and low morale.
Founder leaders of successful brands have a cult of personality such as Sam Walton, Jobs, Richard Branson, Musk, Walt Disney, Marc Benioff and hundreds more across the world.
As pioneers and visionaries, one mistake they may make is to think that everyone in the company is as clear on their vision as they are. They have a vision and the vision is clear to them, they therefore just assume that their vision is clear to everyone. In some cases such leaders fail to acculturate the vision outside of them. When it is time to retire, so many visionaries replace themselves with operators.
Operators could do a visionary job, but they have to know that it is a different job and the skill set that they have developed over their 20 or 30-year career as a chief finance officer (CFO) or COO has to change in the role of a CEO.
As can be witnessed in many organisations started by individuals considered visionaries, so many of these individuals replaced themselves with their CFO or COO. When asked about their choice of person, they say the same thing “I trust him/her more than anybody”. It is true that they may know more about the workings of this company however they require a different skill set.
Visionaries do a disservice in business by thinking of CFO or COOs as their number two in the company. What is required is a partnership between visionary and operator leaders making it a “push me-pull you” situation.
Visionary and operator
Entrepreneurial organisations have two types of leaders at their helm — visionary and operator. The operator could optimise their role by working as an integrator to build alliances inside and outside the organisation.
Looking at an organisational chart or accountability chart, the major functions of the business for example, sales and marketing operations, finances, and such are evident.
Sitting atop the organisation, there are two types of roles that are evident operator/integrator and visionary. Visionaries are people that have a lot of ideas. Most of those ideas may not be good but some would be eureka moments.
Visionaries are typically very imaginative at solving big creative problems for the leadership team. They are typically the founder of the organisation although not always the case, typically very entrepreneurial and have a good barometer of the culture of the organisation. They tend to operate more on emotion than logic.
An operator or integrator is very different from a visionary. Integrator is the type of person that creates organisational clarity, and are excellent at communication in the organisation They typically execute the business plan, especially those that operate on logic.
They create organisational focus, accountability, team unity and are good at managing big projects.
If an organisation has a visionary leader without an integrator/operator, this might be the root of why the organisation is chaotic. These roles complement each other and work well in synergy for the development and delivery of creative business ideas.
There are occasional cases where visionary leaders have perfected the craft of being an integrator or operator too. Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, was known to be a visionary. He was also fixated on looking after his employees who In turn looked after each other and the care trickled down to the customers. Often cited as a transformational business leader, he believed the most important role of a leader is to build a strong culture by hiring the right people.
With his “culture of commitment,” he believed that happy associates would lead to happy customers, a differentiator in the airline industry.
At the end of the day, Don Dodge summed the situation very succinctly “succeed and you are a brilliant visionary. Fail and you are a delusional loser.”
Barot is a business and financial analys. [email protected]
