Most of Kim’s life was spent in some of the poorest countries and communities in the world: Haiti, Peru, Mexico, and many countries in Africa. As cofounder of Partners in Health, a nonprofit medical organization that now works in poor communities on four continents, and as director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, Kim’s focus was on providing health and education for the poorest countries – and doing so in a way that made a point. The point being that it was the responsibility of physicians, anthropologists, and academics, and in a broader sense, all human beings, to think about the lives of the poorest people and ask, “What should we do? What has to be done next to make a real difference?” One day Kim answered his own question – what has to be done next? – and decided that he needed to try to lead organizations and others to have greater impact. This is when Kim began to focus on to serve is to lead, a slight twist on Frances Hesselbein’s famous servant leadership quote.
Kim’s leadership path accelerated at Dartmouth College, where he was president for three years. It was at Dartmouth that Kim began working with executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, who he says, completely changed his life, not only in the way he thought about leadership, but also in how he could apply the lessons he learned in coaching to large organizations.
For instance, at the World Bank, Kim was confronted with a suspicion of leadership training, especially among the PhD economists. “Academics tend to have a deep suspicion about leadership,” says Kim. He had come across this attitude already at Dartmouth. “When I was at Dartmouth, talking about the importance of leadership for our students, one of the professors told me, ‘You know we hate leadership.’ ‘What do you mean you hate leadership?’ I asked. ‘Leadership suggests followership,’ she said.”
They had a point in that scholars are supposed to teach young people not to blindly follow others but to think for themselves, which can be good and bad. Good in the sense that students learn to question authority and the status quo, which supports societal growth and positive change. But in the realm of leadership, it can be bad in that people assume that they shouldn’t ask for help, that they need to figure it out for themselves, even when they are stagnating in their own careers and damaging their people, teams, and organizations with poor leadership.
Kim believes that because of his example of working with Marshall and of bringing coaches into the Bank to work with people, the tide has turned. People who were having difficulty as leaders now ask for and get a coach and many of them have gotten better. Kim has witnessed remarkable changes and in one case, a person went from having the worst feedback ratings from their people to having the best. It takes time to change cultures and the World Bank culture is changing, thanks to leadership coaching.
One of the greatest benefits of coaching, Kim says, is being brought back to a place of humility, learning, and understanding that no matter how good he thinks he is, no matter how much he thinks he’s improved, there’s always room to get better. In fact, he reminds himself and others quite often, “No matter how holy you think your mission might be, it does not make you immune from bad leadership.”
It’s because of this awareness – that no matter how sanctified the mission and no matter how well-trained a leader is, few can sustain their best performance on their own – that Kim continues to work on his leadership skills with an executive coach and he supports and encourages others to do the same.
There is always room to improve, says Kim, whose role model for great leadership is Alan Mulally, former president and CEO of The Ford Motor Company. Alan, who transformed Ford during his tenure, did so, explains Kim, with commitment, a compelling vision and comprehensive strategy, and excellence in terms of leading an organization, not anger or toughness or ruthlessness. Alan led Ford through caring about everyone in the organization, by walking the halls, smiling and engaging everyone who worked there from executives to janitors. It was a revolution at Ford, says Kim. He’s not the only one who lists Alan Mulally as one of the greatest leaders he’s ever witnessed in action. Among the many accolades to Alan’s leadership include Fortune, which in 2013 recognized Alan as #3 on its World’s Greatest Leaders list, and Time, which recognized him as one of the World’s Most Influential People.
What Kim recognized and is most in awe of was the revolution that happened at Ford, the change for the better, that was instigated and guided by Alan with “a mixture of warmth and compassion linked to an absolute set of moral and ethical standards that everyone knew they could not violate.” When Kim was ready to take the World Bank Group through a huge change exercise, he asked Alan to join them for a few days. The result of the exercise, coupled with Alan’s visit, was transformational and continues to spread in a positive way. And, as Marshall has done, so Alan did, charging Kim and the Bank no fee other than to “get better, have fun, and do good.”
As Alan Mulally and Marshall Goldsmith volunteer and serve to support The World Bank’s powerful mission, “to eradicate extreme poverty on earth by 2030,” as Dr. Jim Kim devotes his life to what needs to be done next to make a difference, so you, too, can give of your time and talents if you aren’t already.
“Any kind of volunteer work is good,” says Marshall Goldsmith, who goes on to say, “Anybody who does any volunteer work should be praised. It’s great to help in a way that you’re leveraging your unique skills. Put your talents to good use. It feels good! Whatever I have done to help others has come back tenfold. And not just once, but a hundred times.” Especially in nonprofit organizations, the challenge for people, according to Kim, is that “sometimes we partake in toxic behaviors excusing them because we are on a ‘holy mission’ that is more important than how we behave towards each other.” And, because most nonprofits can’t afford leadership coaching, pro bono coaching relationships such as that which Marshall and Jim have forged are the only way leaders of these important organizations are going to get the coaching necessary to transform their leadership, make massive contributions, and create positive global change.
This is why Kim encourages all of us to go out and help. He wants us to hone our skills and offer our unique talents to nonprofit organizations whose missions we can get behind. For-profits can afford to pay for the services you can provide, but nonprofits often cannot. Specifically, as it relates to coaches, the missions of these nonprofits, the Girl Scouts, the Nature Conservancy, Bookshare, the animal shelter, are just as important as those of for-profits, and the conditions the leaders of these organizations face are often far more difficult and they need help.
So, let this be your call to action – develop yourself, practice your skills, and get out there and help. Do what you do best as a volunteer in an organization whose mission resonates with you. If we all work together and help each other, we will make the world a better place!
Reflection Questions
What do you think we should do to create positive change?
What can you do to help? Which nonprofit has a mission you want to serve?
What do you need to do next in your own life, career?
Note
1. December 2, 2017, Marshall Goldsmith interview with president of the World Bank Group, Jim Yong Kim, for the WBECS 2017 Online Summit. To view the full interview, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=FzIX4hqpMS8. Interview edited for Work Is Love Made Visible by Sarah McArthur.
9
Turning Defeat into Victory
Margaret Heffernan
Margaret Heffernan was born in Texas, raised in Holland, and educated at Cambridge University. She worked in BBC Radio and TV for 13 years, where she wrote, directed, and produced documentaries and dramas. She also produced music videos with the London Chamber Orchestra to raise money for Unicef’s Lebanese fund.
In 1994, she returned to the US, where she served as CEO for InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation, and iCAST Corporation. She was named one of the Top 25 by Streaming Media magazine and one of the Top 100 Media Executives by The Hollywood Reporter.
Margaret has published five books: The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto (Wiley, 2004) and Women on Top: How Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules for Business Success (Penguin, 2007). Her third book Willful Blindness (Simon & Schuster, 2011) was described by the Financial Times as one of the most important books of the decade. A Bigger Prize (Simon & Schuster, 2014) looks at what it takes for individuals and organizations to be truly creative and collaborative. In 2015, TED published Beyond Measure: The Big Impact of Small Changes, which looks at the defining characteristics of sustainably innovative organizations. Margaret’s TED talks have been seen by over 8 million people.
Margaret mentors global businesses leaders and writes for the Huffington Post and the Financial Times.
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The Internet bubble burst. We had always known it would. But when it finally happened, between 2000 and 2002,1 everyone looked shocked and confused. Well, almost everyone. I knew exactly what would happen next. Businesses like mine, well-funded by a publicly traded company, would come under huge pressure to cut costs. Salami cutting, we called it. Thin slices. More thin slices. I’d seen how this played out in recessions. It was impossible to protest against small cuts – after all, every company has some fat it can afford to lose. But that’s just the start. It goes on. And on. And on. Demoralizing. Debilitating. All the while, credibility and trust decline; the only growth areas are cynicism and black humor. Finally, these companies become what venture capitalists call the walking dead: productive enough to stay alive, but never robust enough to be valuable.
I’d seen it often and I dreaded it. So, with my CFO, I tried to reconfigure our business in such a way that it could grow and thrive in the new environment. We didn’t lack the nerve to imagine a radically different company. My partner and I even modeled a company with neither of us in it. Why? Because I believed then and I still believe now that the job of a leader is to serve the business. Not oneself, not friends or families or shareholders – but to serve the idea and the people on which the business depends.
We couldn’t do it. With all the mathematical, financial, technological imagination, nerve, and finesse we mustered, we could not construct a business model in which the company honored the investment of funders, employees, and customers. We spent months on planes, in ugly corporate meeting rooms, trying to find corporate parents who might find enough value in what we did to stomach the losses. We failed.
So, I went to my chairman and investor with an unusual request: shut us down. Now. He was stunned. No entrepreneur, he told me, had ever asked him to do that. Entrepreneurs typically will fight for the life of their company to their last dying breath. Was I a quitter?
No, I said. I’m not a quitter. If I thought we could succeed, I would fight until my last breath. But I could see only death by a thousand cuts that would destroy my credibility, wreck the pride and passion of my workforce, and inevitably breed disappointment, frustration, and anger. That wasn’t the business I was in or wanted to be in. And as CEO of a publicly traded company, I didn’t think he could, with integrity, continue to invest in a company whose own CEO could not see a way forward. So, he was perfectly at liberty to fire me. He didn’t want to do that, either.
My CFO and I went back on the road searching for a strategic investor; it was our only hope. All the time we were doing this, business as usual had to continue. Employees had to stay focused and keep building the value we were trying to rescue. I had a super-smart bunch of colleagues. Some had built one of the first-ever Internet browsers. Another had sent one of the first emails in history. Their genius had made our product remarkable and brilliant. I loved them for it and they loved the company because it had given them opportunities to discover and demonstrate their immense creative capacity. I owed them respect and honesty.
As I left my chairman wrestling with his admiration for what the company had achieved and the remorseless logic of my argument, another question arose: What should I be saying to my employees? I was urged to keep mum, to say nothing. It was temptingly simple. If I’d had an office to hide in, I could have stayed there, or on planes, and hidden the truth of where we were. But I’d always worked in the center of the office and hiding had never really been my style. So, I told them the truth: where we were, what we were trying, what might happen next.
I was strongly urged not to do this. I was warned against being too honest. Some of my investor’s bureaucrats adopted a patronizing tone, telling me that, having worked outside of the US, I was probably ignorant or naïve about levels of violence in America. I didn’t understand the risks I was running of backlash from disgruntled employees.
I didn’t care. I’ve always been honest with people I’ve worked with and this struck me as the wrong moment to change tack. I also have always believed that if you treat people as adults, they are more likely to behave that way. Many men told me I was naïve.
In the end, we couldn’t find a strategic investor. I went back to my chairman: You should close us down – or fire me. His board urged him to cut his losses and close the business. Reluctantly, he concurred. The day we had that discussion was sad for both of us. I’d won the argument. We’d both lost a business we loved.
Then I had to break the news to all the phenomenal people I’d hired over the years. The one concession I made to those who had been so worried about my truthfulness was that I allowed them to install a single security guard in our company meeting. I explained where we were, what we’d tried, and where we now were. There followed questions all US companies expect: about healthcare, pay, time frames, and what would happen to our customers, partners, and suppliers. This was a grown-up, professional discussion, after which most people went home, often together, some via a bar. No one was violent, but everyone was sad.
Then, in the weeks that followed, something remarkable happened. Using the office to conduct job searches and stick together with their colleagues, employees would come in after interviews and be glowing: talking about their work in the company made them see just how much they’d learned working there and how exceptional their achievements were. Talking about the past made them proud of themselves and their teams. Instead of feeling like failures, they all carried with them an aura of victory. Sure, the company was closing, but the experiences they had gained would remain with them forever.
Meanwhile, we unwound all the contracts and deals with partners, customers, and suppliers. Closing before we had to, we had the luxury of time and the money to do so honorably. Nobody who had done business with us woke up to find themselves shortchanged or let down. One business partner said he’d never had so much respect for a deal that failed. We became, and remain, fast friends. Reputations weren’t only preserved; they were enhanced.
Many of the brilliant people I worked with have gone on to create their own businesses. More than a few have continued to work together. Many stay closely connected, recommending each other for prime projects and choice assignments. And most still have and wear their company T-shirts with pride.
Intellectually and emotionally, this was the toughest time of my professional life. I found it harder to quit than it would have been to persevere. Like most entrepreneurs, I’m instantly inspired when told a goal is impossible. And I have a lot of stamina. But I came to realize that heroic actions, in this context, would be (as they often are) just a form of narcissism. True leadership required not doing the hard thing, but the right thing. Not to die trying, but to get everyone home safely. I felt then as I feel now: that the job of a leader is to do what is best for the business, for its people, and for the wider society it serves.
Today, I spend a lot of time with young people. They frequently ask me how they should think about their working lives and careers; these questions unnerve me. It is harder than it should be to recommend companies where I feel they will be treated with respect. I am challenged to identify responsible leaders.
But we need our young people to be optimistic and demanding, ambitious in the best sense of the wor
d. So, I tell them that they always have choices. Whatever the work is, you can decide whether to do it well or badly. What you do does not define you – but how you do it does. Leaders are the people who dare to think for themselves. And they are everywhere.
Reflection Questions:
Have you ever had to abandon or give up on a project/ business/enterprise? How did you come to your decision to end it or to persevere?
How did others (friends, family members, subordinates) react to your decision? Did their reactions make your decision harder or easier?
What lessons do you think you can learn from what might look like failure to an outsider? How can such failures actually foster your success?
Note
1. https://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes8.asp, accessed March 1, 2018.
10
What I See from My Window
Eric Schurenberg
Eric Schurenberg is the president and editor-in-chief of Inc. Before joining Inc., Eric was the editor of CBS MoneyWatch.com and BNET.com and managing editor of Money Magazine. As a writer, he is a winner of a Loeb and a National Magazine Award.
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The great Peter Drucker looked out his window and saw what no one else saw. His vision overturned centuries of thinking and led to a whole new vision of leadership. I, in turn, look out my window and, well, I daydream, mainly. The leadership canon has nothing to fear.
Still, the view out my window is pretty awesome, truth be told. My office at Inc. is on the north face of World Trade Center, on the 29th floor, hundreds of feet in the air over downtown Manhattan. That affords a nearly unbroken view north toward midtown and upstate New York beyond, with the gray-green moat of the Hudson River on my left.
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