How Great Leaders Think

by Lee G Bolman

  We’ve looked at the power of the structural and human resource frames. Both are essential to enlightened leadership, but even together, they are still not enough. Neither grapples very well with the political dynamics that are an inevitable feature of social life. That’s where we’ll go in Chapter Six, the first of the political chapters.

  NOTES

  1. Argyris, C. “Skilled Incompetence.” Harvard Business Review, Sept. 1986. Available at https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/search?term=argyris%2520skilled%2520incompetence&navigation=0.

  2. National Transportation Safety Board. “Aviation Accident Report: World Airways, Inc. DC-8-63F-N802WA, King Cove, Alaska, September 8, 1973.” Washington, D.C.: National Transportation Safety Board, 1974. http://libraryonline.erau.edu/online-full-text/ntsb/aircraft-accident-reports/AAR74-06.pdf.

  3. Gregor, J. Group Chairman’s Factual Report of Investigation. Washington, D.C.: National Transportation Safety Board, 2013. http://dms.ntsb.gov/public%2F55000–55499%2F55433%2F544904.pdf.

  a Lao-tzu, quoted in T. Cleary, The Essential Tao. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1992, p. 29.

  Part 4

  Political Leadership

  Political leaders see a world of contests among individuals and interest groups competing over scarce resources. They recognize that they need to plunge into the political arena to move their organization where it needs to go.

  Political leaders clarify what they want and what they can get.

  They assess the distribution of power and interests.

  They build linkages to key stakeholders.

  They persuade first, negotiate second, and coerce only if necessary.

  Chapter 6

  The Leader as Politician

  In the 2014 Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, California, bitter controversy surfaced around a float featuring two men joining in a lavish same-sex wedding ceremony. It was a first for the parade, welcome to some and anathema to others. It was only one of many skirmishes in a conflict that had been swirling around the United States for years. The battle lines divided political parties, neighborhoods, towns, church congregations, families, and legislatures, among many other groups. The U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and an increasing number of states had legalized same-sex marriage, but the conflict continued and resolution seemed remote.

  Same-sex marriage, of course, is only one of many contentious issues that pervade life in any nation or society. You have probably realized, perhaps painfully, that politics is an everyday feature of life. Maybe you wish it were otherwise and wonder why we can’t just push politics aside and focus on getting the job done. But, like it or not, politics is here to stay. Ignoring that reality sets you up for chronic frustration and failure. We often blame politics on various individual flaws like selfishness, myopia, incompetence, and hunger for power, but the real wellsprings lie deeper—in our circumstances rather than ourselves.

  Every group and organization is political, for two reasons: (1) individuals and groups have divergent interests and values, and (2) they live in a world of scarce resources. It is impossible for everybody to get everything they want. Examples are endless. Did you get the promotion you expected, or did someone else? Will a new automobile assembly plant be built in Alabama or South Carolina? Should taxpayers spring for tens of millions to build a new arena so that the local major league team won’t decamp? Such conflicts inevitably spawn political maneuvering. You may not like the idea of thinking politically; many people don’t because they see politics as sordid and amoral. But, like it or not, to be an effective leader, you need to understand and leverage political dynamics rather than shy away from them.

  Take a look at what was at stake politically for Anne Mulcahy, who became president of Xerox in August 2001. Politically, it looked as though the deck was stacked against her. Few observers gave her much chance of success: “Xerox had $17.1 billion in debt and $154 million in cash. It was about to begin seven straight quarters of losses. The credit markets had slammed shut. An SEC investigation of the Mexico unit was about to spread to other parts of the company. Reorganizations of the sales force and the billing centers had led to chaos. In 2000 the stock fell from $63.69 a share to $4.43, the company lost 90% of its market cap, and the best and brightest headed for the exits. The board had one last chance—and, boy, was she a long shot.”1

  Warren Buffett summarized her plight succinctly: “You didn’t get promoted. You went to war.”2 Yet three years later, Businessweek put Mulcahy on its list of the best managers of 2004. The stock was up, the company was profitable again, and Mulcahy had met earnings targets ten quarters in a row. Her success formula combined passion, hard work, and deft handling of the political challenges she faced.

  Her predecessor, an import from IBM, had been fired after only thirteen months on the job, partly as a result of “executive-suite discord so intractable as to amount to corporate civil war.”3 Mulcahy understood what many would-be leaders never fully appreciate: position power is important, but it is never sufficient. Organizations and societies are networks as well as hierarchies, and the power of relationships is a crucial complement to the power of position. In simplest terms, network power amounts to the power of your friends minus the power of your enemies. Mulcahy saw and acted on the need to rally friends while converting skeptics and enemies into allies. Her deft combination of patience, persistence, and diplomacy offers an instructive example of the leader as positive politician.

  POLITICAL SKILLS

  The leader as politician needs to master at least four key skills: agenda setting,4 mapping the political terrain,5 networking and forming coalitions,6 and bargaining and negotiating.7 We use Mulcahy’s leadership at Xerox to illuminate each of these.

  Setting Agendas

  Structurally, an agenda outlines a goal and a schedule of activities. Politically, it is a statement of interests and a scenario for getting the goods. In reflecting on his experience as a university president, Warren Bennis arrived at a deceptively simple observation: “It struck me that I was most effective when I knew what I wanted.”8 Whether you’re a middle manager or the CEO, the first step in effective political leadership is creating an agenda with two major elements: a vision balancing the long-term interests of key parties, and a strategy for achieving the vision that recognizes competing internal and external forces.

  There is an intimate tie between developing a vision and gathering information. You need to understand how key constituents think and what they care about to ensure that your agenda meshes with their concerns. In the course of gathering information, you can also plant seeds, “leaving the kernel of an idea behind and letting it germinate and blossom so that it begins to float around the system from many sources other than the innovator.”9

  Mulcahy’s vision had two prongs: an immediate goal of staving off bankruptcy, and a long-term vision of making Xerox once again a great company. But vision is merely an illusion unless you have a strategy that recognizes major forces working for and against your agenda. Mulcahy saw that her most pressing task was to build confidence and support among internal and external constituents who could make or break her effort to put the company back on its feet.

  Mapping the Political Terrain

  It is foolhardy to plunge into a minefield without knowing where the explosives are buried and that a safe path exists. Yet managers unwittingly push ahead all the time. They launch a new initiative with little or no effort to scout and chart the political turf. A simple way to develop a political map for any situation is to create a two-dimensional diagram showing players (who is in the game), power (how much clout each player is likely to wield), and interests (what each player wants). Figure 6.1 illustrates the political map that Mulcahy faced on her first day in the job. Her strongest allies are Xerox insiders, who may not all be reliable, and their clout is relatively low. Some of the most talented players at Xerox have been leaving for other jobs because they have doubts about the future, and they’re
tired of internal discord. Customers are free agents—they could stick with Xerox, or abandon what may become a sinking ship. The board is a powerful player wanting her to succeed, but it also has fiduciary responsibility for the enterprise’s financial health. Her biggest challenge is the bankers and financial advisers. The bankers are in a dilemma. They don’t want Xerox to go bankrupt because their loans might not be paid back. But it would be worse to throw good money after bad, and Xerox’s weak cash position means that it can’t survive without a credit lifeline. Mulcahy needs the advisers to help her find a path through the financial wilderness, but they insist that bankruptcy is the only option.

  Figure 6.1. Mulcahy’s Challenge: A Political Map

  The map makes it clear that Mulcahy will fail unless she can get key external constituents to move in her direction. The map in Figure 6.1 is a starting point and a guide to key questions: How well does she know the political landscape? Has she identified the key players? How do they line up on the issues? Does she have the power she needs? If not, how can she get it?

  Misreading the political landscape can lead to costly errors. There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of John LeBoutillier. That’s because he made one mistake that undermined a promising political career. Shortly after he was elected to Congress from a wealthy district in Long Island, LeBoutillier fired up his audience at the New York Republican convention with the colorful quip that Speaker of the House Thomas P. O’Neill was “fat, bloated and out of control, just like the Federal budget.” Asked to comment, the usually voluble O’Neill was terse: “I wouldn’t know the man from a cord of wood.”10 Two years later, LeBoutillier unexpectedly lost his bid for reelection to an unknown opponent who didn’t have the money to mount a serious campaign—until a mysterious flood of contributions poured in from all over America. When LeBoutillier later ran into O’Neill, he admitted sheepishly, “I guess you were more popular than I thought you were.”11 LeBoutillier learned the hard way that misreading the political map and overlooking the power of potential players can lead to catastrophe. That’s why it’s critical to treat the map as a work in progress—a guide to be tested as you move along.

  If you put yourself in Anne Mulcahy’s position, would you have taken the job, knowing how big the problems were? And if you had accepted, how would you have tackled the challenges ahead?

  Networking and Building Coalitions

  With an agenda and a map in hand, Mulcahy can move to developing relationships with key constituents. The top job gives Mulcahy substantial authority, but also makes her dependent on the cooperation of a large number of internal and external players. The first task in building networks and coalitions is to figure out whose help you need. The second is to develop relationships so that people will be there when you need them. The political map helps pinpoint the key constituents. The next question is how to get their support. In her study of successful internal change agents, Rosabeth Kanter found that they typically started by getting their boss on board, and then moved to “preselling,” or “making cheerleaders”: “peers, managers of related functions, stakeholders in the issue, potential collaborators, and sometimes even customers would be approached individually, in one-on-one meetings that gave people a chance to influence the project and [gave] the innovator the maximum opportunity to sell it. Seeing them alone and on their territory was important: the rule was to act as if each person were the most important one for the project’s success.”12

  If you’re Mulcahy and take that advice seriously, you’d be doing a lot of travel—and that’s what she did: “Constantly on the move, Mulcahy met with bankers, reassured customers, galvanized employees. She sometimes visited three cities a day.”13 She promised to go anywhere to save a Xerox customer. She also located key allies who could provide skills or information she needed. She had no finance background and asked a financial analyst she had worked with previously to teach her Balance Sheet 101. She found another ally in Ursula Burns, who was planning to bail out of Xerox before Mulcahy recruited her. Burns became Mulcahy’s deputy and enforcer who managed internal issues while Mulcahy focused more on the outside. Senior executives soon learned that it was better to meet their targets than to have to explain to Burns why they had missed.

  Once you cultivate allies, you can move to “horse trading”: promising rewards in exchange for resources and support. Mulcahy met constantly with bankers and financial advisers; she gradually, painstakingly convinced them that she and Xerox had a future in which they could afford to invest. Internally, she needed a strong and loyal executive team. She met personally with more than one hundred top executives to sell them on the opportunities and ask them directly if they were willing to be “all about Xerox.”

  The basic point is simple: leaders need friends and allies to get things done. To sew up support, they need to build coalitions. Rationalists and romantics sometimes react with horror to this scenario. Why should you have to play political games to get something accepted if it’s the right thing to do? One of the classics of French drama, Molière’s The Misanthrope, tells the story of a protagonist whose rigid rejection of all things political is destructive for him and everyone involved. The point that Molière made four centuries ago still holds: it is hard to dislike politics without also disliking people. Like it or not, political dynamics are inevitable under three conditions most managers face every day: ambiguity, diversity, and scarcity.

  Bargaining and Negotiation

  We often associate bargaining with commercial, legal, and labor relations transactions. From a political perspective, bargaining is central to decision making. Negotiation makes a difference whenever two or more parties with some interests in common and others in conflict need to reach agreement. Labor and management may agree that a firm should make money and offer good jobs to employees, but part ways on how to balance pay and profitability. A fundamental challenge in negotiations is balancing win-win and win-lose. Advocates of win-win believe that better results come when parties are creative and cooperative in searching for mutually beneficial solutions. The win-lose view depicts bargaining as a hard, tough process in which you do what it takes to get as much as you can.

  Fisher and Ury developed one of the best-known win-win approaches to negotiation in their classic Getting to Yes. In their view, people too often engage in “positional bargaining.” They stake out positions and then reluctantly make concessions to reach agreement. To Fisher and Ury, positional bargaining is inefficient and misses opportunities to create something that’s better for everyone. They propose an alternative: “principled bargaining,” built around four strategies.14

  The first strategy separates people from the problem. The stress and tension of negotiations can easily escalate into anger and personal attack. The result is that a negotiator sometimes wants to defeat or hurt the other party at almost any cost. Because every negotiation involves both substance and relationship, the wise negotiator will “deal with the people as human beings and with the problem on its merits.”15

  Fisher and Ury’s second strategy focuses on interests, not positions. Being locked into a particular position, you might overlook better ways to achieve your goal. A famous example is the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. The sides were at an impasse over where to draw the boundary between the two countries. Israel wanted to keep part of the Sinai; Egypt wanted all of it back. Resolution became possible only when they looked at underlying interests. Israel was concerned about security: no Egyptian tanks on the border. Egypt was concerned about sovereignty: the Sinai had been part of Egypt from the time of the pharaohs. The parties agreed on a plan that gave all of the Sinai back to Egypt while demilitarizing large parts of it. That solution led to a durable peace agreement.

  Fisher and Ury’s third strategy is to invent options for mutual gain instead of locking on to the first alternative that comes to mind. Having more options increases the chance of a better outcome. Mulcahy’s financial advisers insisted that Xerox’s cash position was ho
peless and that she had to declare bankruptcy. Mulcahy looked for other options—and found them. Some were painful, but, she concluded, necessary. One of her worst moments was closing down a division that she had built, releasing people whom she had hired. It wasn’t their fault, she said, and the only thing she could do was walk the halls and say, “I’m sorry.”16

  Fisher and Ury’s fourth strategy is to insist on objective criteria—standards of fairness for both substance and procedure. Agreeing on criteria at the beginning of negotiations can produce optimism and momentum, while reducing the use of devious or provocative tactics. When a school board and a teachers’ union are at loggerheads over the size of a pay increase, they can look for independent standards, such as the rate of inflation or the terms of settlement in other districts. A classic example of fair procedure finds two sisters deadlocked over how to divide the last wedge of pie between them. They agree that one will cut the pie into two pieces and the other will choose the piece that she wants.

  How does a leader decide how to balance win-win and win-lose approaches to bargaining? At least two questions are important: How much opportunity is there for a win-win solution? and Will I have to work with these people again? If an agreement can make everyone better off, creating value is the right course. If you expect to work with the same people in the future, it is risky to use scorched-earth tactics that leave anger and mistrust in their wake. Leaders who get a reputation for being manipulative, self-interested, or untrustworthy have a hard time building the networks and coalitions they need for future success.