The Essence of Leadership

I write from time to time on issues of leadership. Some might wonder what leadership has to do with client service.  In my view, the answer is "everything."  I was struck some time ago by a slide provided by Tom Peters.  The quote he uses is this:  "Management has a lot to do with answers.  Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is "what do we intend to be?'  Not what are we going to do, but what do we intend to be."  If the answer to that question does not somehow involve a fanatical commitment to client service, your firm will never have what it takes to provide great client service. For this reason, leadership is central to the issue addressed in this blog.

If you are interested in leadership, read this article from Harvard Business School on-line publication Working Knowledge.  There is a great definition of a leader: "Leaders are "people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion." The other critical lesson is the explanation of what leaders do:

In a sense, great leaders have to be ambidextrous. On the one hand, they have to be able to execute capably within the current business paradigm, "the way we do business." On the other hand, they must be able to reflect on the current paradigm, find ways to fundamentally improve it, and manage the large-scale change to a successful conclusion. You need two hands, and a lot of commitment, to change the propeller on the airplane in mid-flight, but that capability is the essence of successful leadership.

 

Think of it this way: Someday your current job will be a line entry on your resume. Under the entry, you'll have two or three bullets to describe your major accomplishments. "Did a good job of doing what always was done" can't be one of them.

"Doing a good job of doing what always was done" is the ante; it's what you have to do to keep the job. The bullets, your major accomplishments, come on top. They are your successes at changing the current paradigm, and this is how you showcase your leadership.

By the way, there is a lot of power in reflecting at the beginning of a new job on what you want the two or three bullets to be, and deliberately setting about building them over the course of your job tenure. Otherwise, you run the risk of having them simply be the incidental byproduct of what opportunities happened to come your way.

  The result of quality leadership is success.  The failure of leadership generally leads to failure on a broader scale.  The article explains:

Some companies have a culture of relentless, almost compulsive, improvement. No matter how good the company is, it should be doing better. It reminds me of a Smithsonian exhibit on American ingenuity, "If We're So Good, Why Aren't We Better?"

By contrast, other companies are smugly stuck in the past. I remember one vice president telling me that his company was doing everything right because "if there were a better way, we would have found it, and we'd be doing it."

The lesson: When you have the lead, step on the gas. After all, that's how you got there.

Law firms are not usually places where great leaders are found.  They are structured in an "anti-leadership" form, creating a "herding cats" problem.  I'll write more on the structure issue later, but the importance of developing a leader should be evident from the HBS story.

Comments

[Patrick Lamb]

Thanks for the compliment and the corrected link. The change has been made.

[Dave Rakowski]

Hi Patrick:

Love the blog! Always provides food for thought.

The link for the HBS article isn't working though. I think you want this link instead:

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4983&t=dispatch

Hope this helps. Here's to a great 2006!

Dave Rakowski
Allentown, PA