How Great Leaders Think

by Lee G Bolman

  Symbolic Leaders Develop and Communicate a Hopeful Vision

  One powerful way in which a leader can interpret experience is by distilling and disseminating a persuasive and hopeful image of the future. A vision needs to address both the challenges of the present and the hopes and values of followers.

  Where does such vision come from? One view is that leaders create a vision and then persuade others to accept it. If we look at Howard Schultz, we see that the reality is more subtle. Schultz didn’t know he wanted to be in the coffee business until he tasted his first cup of Starbucks coffee, and his image of coffee shops as places for connection and community only began to crystallize as he toured espresso bars in Italy. Schultz’s magic lay in his intuitive ability to assemble a vision from bits and pieces that were already there in a scattered and inchoate form.

  Leadership is a two-way street. No amount of charisma or rhetorical skill can sell a vision that speaks only to the person selling it. Leaders play a critical role in articulating a shared dream by distilling a unique, personal blend of history, poetry, passion, and courage.

  Symbolic Leaders Lead by Example

  These leaders demonstrate their commitment and courage by plunging into the fray. In taking risks and holding nothing back, they reassure and inspire others. In Chapter Six, we saw Anne Mulcahy take the top job at Xerox in 2001, when the building was burning and few thought she had much chance of putting out the fire. Her financial advisers told her that bankruptcy was the only choice. But she was determined to save the company she loved, and became a tireless, visible icon working to get the support she needed to make Xerox a success. When Howard Schultz returned as Starbucks’s CEO after an eight-year hiatus, he threw himself back into the business he loved—not because he had to, but because he believed that his instincts and example would provide the spark the company needed. His passion and resolve communicated to others that Starbucks could and would reclaim its soul.

  Symbolic Leaders Tell Stories

  Howard Schultz has described Starbucks as a “living legacy” to his father. The stories he tells about growing up poor in a subsidized housing project in Brooklyn, New York, shape his values and the culture he has built at Starbucks. He has never forgotten the time in 1961 when he was seven years old and his dad broke his ankle at work. Fred Schultz hadn’t liked his job as a truck driver for a diaper service, but now he couldn’t work and had no income or health benefits. Howard Schultz felt that his father deserved better. Even when Starbucks was losing money in its early days, Schultz insisted on providing health care coverage and stock options for employees. At times when Starbucks’s business slumped, investors or analysts sometimes pressured him to goose the bottom line by cutting the health care benefits. That suggestion was always a nonstarter for Schultz. In his mind, a company can be great only if it provides the benefits and pride that his father never experienced.

  Stories abound in successful companies. Ritz-Carlton is renowned for its platinum standard of guest service: “Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.” Employees carry a list of “service values” with them while at work, and focus every day on a value selected for special attention. During frequent “lineups,” cross-sections of employees meet in a ritual to reinforce the importance of guest service and to hear and tell stories of employees who have gone out of their way to satisfy guests. For example, a family that had stayed at a Ritz-Carlton arrived home to a crisis: their toddler’s treasured stuffed animal, JoJo, had been left behind. They sent an emergency message to the hotel, which put out an all-points bulletin. Housekeeping searched the room and the laundry. Bellmen, concierges, and other staff member scoured the premises. Once JoJo was finally tracked down, a creative Ritz-Carlton staffer took him around the hotel and photographed him in assorted locales—the kitchen, the lobby, a guest room, and so on. She then packaged JoJo with the photos and a note indicating that he had had a wonderful time and made many new friends during his stay. The little girl was thrilled. Her delighted parents may never stay at any other hotel.

  Stories succeed because they are truer than true. We want to believe them rather than to scrutinize their historical validity or empirical support.

  Symbolic Leaders Convene Rituals and Ceremonies

  Rituals and ceremonies are special times in the life of a group or organization. During such occasions, people swap stories, renew ties to one another, and recommit to cultural values. Schultz relied heavily on ritual and ceremony to restore the company’s ties to its cultural roots and vitality.

  Recall that his first step was to close Starbucks stores for a “reeducation of baristas.” Baristas are Starbucks’s front line, with direct contact with customers, what Jan Carlzon of SAS called “The Moment of Truth.”18 Schultz did not conceive of the event as a skill session, but rather as an opportunity to get baristas to fall in love with coffee again, to regain passion for every cup they served.

  Once the front line was energized, Schultz convened a series of special events, beginning at the top and building to the New Orleans extravaganza involving ten thousand store managers. All these occasions focused on renewing the soul and spirit of the company.

  CONCLUSION

  Symbolic leaders infuse magic into organizations through their artistic focus on history, shared values, heroes, ritual, ceremony, and stories, and serve as icons who embody a group’s values and spirit. People yearn for meaningful work in organizations that unite commerce and compassion, the wallet and the heart. They want to make a difference. They can find what they are looking for in organizations with a vibrant and cohesive culture that breathes meaning, life, and hope into everyday doings.

  NOTES

  1. “Our Tribal Culture,” WD-40 Company, http://www.wd40company.com/about/careers/our-tribal-culture/.

  2. “Our Passion,” WD-40 Company, http://www.wd40company.com/about/careers/our-passion/.

  3. “Our Core Values” [video], WD-40 Company, http://www.wd40company.com/about/careers/our-tribal-culture/.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Schultz, H. Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul. New York: Rodale, 2011, p. 24.

  6. Ibid., p. 25.

  7. Ibid., p. 38.

  8. Ibid., p. 3.

  9. Ibid., p. 112.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid., p. 131.

  12. Ibid., p. 198.

  13. Ibid., p. 200.

  14. Ibid., pp. 203–204.

  15. Ibid., p. 206.

  16. Ibid., p. 13.

  17. Ibid., p. 12.

  18. Carlzon, J. Moments of Truth. New York: Ballinger, 1987.

  Chapter 9

  Seeking Soul in Teams

  Teams often fall short because they come together rationally but not spiritually. Uncommon spirit—or soul—is often the key ingredient of wildly successful teams or “hot groups.”1 Lockheed’s Skunk Works is one famous example of an autonomous team unhampered by bureaucracy; it built America’s first jet fighter as well as the legendary U-2 surveillance aircraft. Another is Steve Jobs’s band of “Pirates,” swashbucklers and rebels who seceded from the main Apple campus to work on special projects: “It’s better to be a pirate than join the Navy.”2 But there are many others. Breakthroughs in medical research rarely happen without a team of scientists deeply committed to finding a cure for a deadly disease. The sports world is riddled with stories of athletic teams playing above their heads to snatch victory against overwhelming odds.

  Leadership is often viewed as the work of extraordinary individuals, but in great groups, leadership is almost always shared and fluid. Leadership initially focuses on assembling individuals with the right stuff and building powerful cultural bonds that inspire and sustain team members through the ups and downs of challenging work. As a widely reported recent example, one of these tightly knit teams, Red Squadron of Seal Team Six, shot and killed Osama bin Laden to end an exhaustive ten-year effort to avenge the death and devastation of 9/11.

  This was not the team’s
first covert mission, and it would not be their last. They are a permanent operational unit bonded by a cultural fabric woven over time. “They are bound together by sworn oaths and the obligations of their brotherhood.”3 Red Squadron has learned from the history of previous missions, both successes and failures. Stories carry its lore. Members have their own language. Ritual and ceremony reaffirm the team’s sacred and secret covenant. The team acknowledges heroic actions within the tight circle, but secrets stay inside. For example, no one but the members of Red Squadron will ever know who fired the two rounds that killed bin Laden.4

  Prescriptions for building such extraordinary teamwork often emphasize the intensive training and structural precision of groups like the Seals, and they only hint at the deeper symbolic secret of how groups and teams reach a state of grace and peak performance. Former Visa CEO Dee Hock captured the heart of the issue: “In the field of group endeavor, you will see incredible events in which the group performs far beyond the sum of its individual talents. It happens in the symphony, in the ballet, in the theater, in sports, and equally in business. It is easy to recognize and impossible to define. It is a mystique. It cannot be achieved without immense effort, training, and cooperation, but effort, training, and cooperation alone rarely create it.”5

  Accounts of team success often lack the fine-grained nuance needed to portray the rich symbolic tapestry at the heart of such extraordinary performance. In the provocative case of Red Squadron, most details of the team’s culture are shrouded in secrecy. In other examples, observers miss the subtle cultural clues that might help leaders get better at creating cohesive, high-performing teams in their place of work. But occasionally someone tells a story of teamwork with sufficient detail and time span to provide tangible hints and guidelines for achieving magic.

  THE EAGLE GROUP: REASONS FOR SUCCESS

  The Soul of a New Machine is Tracy Kidder’s dazzling yearlong account of a small group of engineers at Data General who, in the 1970s, created a new computer in record time.6 Despite scant resources and limited support, the Eagle Group outperformed all other Data General divisions to produce a new state-of-the-art machine. After accomplishing the mission, the group disbanded, and the members left to pursue other interests. The technology is now antiquated, but lessons from how the team pulled it off are as current and useful as ever.

  Why did the Eagle Group succeed? Were the project members extraordinarily talented? Not really. Each was highly skilled, but there were equally talented engineers working on other Data General projects. Were team members treated with dignity and respect? Quite the contrary. As one engineer noted, “No one ever pats anyone on the back.”7 Instead, the group experienced what they called “mushroom management”: “Put ’em in the dark, feed ’em shit, and watch ’em grow.”8 For over a year, group members jeopardized their health, their families, and their careers. Another engineer exclaimed paradoxically, “I’m flat out by definition. I’m a mess. It’s terrible. It’s a lot of fun.”9

  Were financial rewards a motivating factor? Group members agreed collectively that they did not work for money. Nor were they motivated by fame. Heroic efforts were rewarded neither by formal appreciation nor by official applause.

  Perhaps the group’s structure accounted for its success. Did the group have clear and well-coordinated roles and relationships? According to Kidder, it kept no meaningful charts, graphs, or organization tables. One of the group’s engineers put it bluntly: “The whole management structure—anyone in Harvard Business School would have barfed.”10

  Can tenets of the political frame unravel the secret of the group’s phenomenal performance? Perhaps group members were motivated more by power than by money: “There’s a big high in here somewhere for me that I don’t fully understand. Some of it’s a raw power trip. The reason I work is because I win.”11 They were encouraged to circumvent formal channels to advance mission-related interests: “If you can’t get what you need from some manager at your level in another department, go to his boss—that’s the way to get things done.”12

  Although the structural, human resource, and political frames shed some light on the Eagle Group’s success, the invisible force that gave the team its spirit and drive was a shared and cohesive culture expressed through symbols and symbolic activities that embodied the deeper aspects of the team’s inner workings.

  Signing Up

  Joining a team involves more than a rational decision. It is a mutual choice marked by some form of ritual. In the Eagle Group, the process of becoming a member was called “signing up.” New recruits were told that they were volunteering to climb Mount Everest without a rope despite lacking the “right stuff” to keep up with other climbers. When they protested that they wanted to climb Mount Everest anyway, they were advised that they would have to prove they were good enough. After the rigorous selections, one of their leaders summed up the process: “It was kind of like recruiting for a suicide mission. You’re gonna die, but you’re gonna die in glory.”13

  Through the signing-up ritual, an engineer became a full-fledged member of a group with a special calling and agreed to forsake family, friends, and health to accomplish the impossible. It was a sacred declaration: “I want to do this job and I’ll give it my heart and soul.”14

  Leadership Diversity as a Competitive Advantage

  Though nearly all the group’s members were engineers, each had unique skills and made distinctive leadership contributions. Tom West, the group’s official leader, was known as a talented technical debugger. He was also aloof and unapproachable, the “Prince of Darkness.” Steve Wallach, the group’s computer architect, was a creative maverick. Before accepting West’s invitation to join the group, he went to Edson de Castro, the president of Data General, to find out precisely what he’d be working on:

  “Okay,” Wallach said, “what the fuck do you want?”

  “I want a thirty-two-bit Eclipse,” de Castro told him.

  “If we can do this, you won’t cancel it on us?” Wallach asked.

  “You’ll leave us alone?”15

  Wallach signed up.

  Leadership diversity among the group’s top engineers was channeled into specialized functions. Wallach was a wunderkind who liked coming up with an esoteric idea and then trying to make it work. He created the original design. Rasala, one of his lieutenants, was a craftsman who enjoyed fixing things, working tirelessly until the last bug had been tracked down and eliminated. West, their boss, buffered the team from upper management interference and served as a group “devil.” Alsing, the code writer, and his group named “Microkids” created “a synaptic language that would fuse the physical machine with the programs that would tell it what to do.”16 Rasala, Alsing’s counterpart, and his group, the “Hardy Boys,” built the physical circuitry.

  Understandably, there was tension among these leadership roles and subgroups. Harnessing the resulting energy pulled the parts into a cohesive team.

  Example, Not Command

  Wallach’s design generated modest coordination for Eagle’s autonomous subunits. The group itself had some rules, but paid little attention to them. De Castro, the CEO, was a distant god. He was never there physically, but his presence was always felt. West, the group’s official leader, rarely interfered, nor was he visible in the laboratory. He contributed by creating an almost endless series of “brushfires” so that he could inspire his staff to put them out. He had a mischievous knack for finding drama and romance in everyday routine.

  Alsing and Rasala followed de Castro and West in creating ambiguity, encouraging inventiveness, and leading by example. Heroes of the moment gave inspiration and direction. Subtle and implicit signals rather than concrete and explicit guidelines or decisions held the group together and directed it toward a common purpose.

  Specialized Language

  Every unified group develops words, phrases, and metaphors unique to its circumstances. A specialized language both reflects and shapes a group’s culture. Shared lang
uage allows team members to communicate easily, with minimal misunderstanding. To the members of the Eagle Group, for example, a kludge was a poor, inelegant solution—such as a machine with loose wires held together with duct tape. A canard was anything false. Fundamentals were the source of enlightened thinking. The word realistically typically prefaced flights of fantasy. “Give me a core dump” meant tell me your thoughts. A stack overflow meant that an engineer’s memory compartments were too full, and a one-stack-deep mind indicated shallow thinking. Eagle was a label for the project; Hardy Boys and Microkids gave identity to the subgroups. Two prototype computers were named Woodstock and Trixie.

  A shared language binds a group together and is a visible sign of membership. It also sets a group apart and reinforces unique values and beliefs. Asked about the Eagle Group’s headquarters, West observed, “It’s basically a cattle yard. What goes on here is not part of the real world.” Asked for an explanation, West remarked, “Mmm-hmm. The language is different.”17