Soren Kaplan: An interview by Bob Morris

Soren Kaplan is a Managing Principal at InnovationPoint, where he works with organizations including Visa, Colgate-Palmolive, Medtronic, Disney, Philips, PepsiCo, and numerous other global firms. Soren previously led the internal strategy and innovation group at Hewlett-Packard (HP) during the roaring 1990’s in Silicon Valley and was a co-founder of iCohere, one of the first web collaboration platforms for online learning and communities of practice. He is an Adjunct Professor within the Imagineering Academy at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. His latest book is Leapfrogging: Harness the Power of Surprise for Business Breakthroughs, published by Berrett-Koehler (2012). He holds Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in Organizational Psychology and resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, two daughters, and hypo-allergenic cat.

Here is an excerpt from my interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing Leapfrogging, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Kaplan: Hands down, it’s my wife. Personal growth is all about looking in the mirror, uncovering your unquestioned assumptions, and gaining empathy for others so you can do things differently. My wife’s the best at pushing me to do these things!

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Kaplan: My family and I went to Paris for a year so I could focus on writing my book. We experienced a lot of things. We put our kids into public school even though they didn’t speak French. We travelled around France and other parts of Europe. We experienced a lot of different personal surprises during that year ranging from food to culture to people.

One of the big epiphanies I had was walking into a little café called Caféotheque to work on my book. I didn’t realize at the time that of the 35,000 cafés in Paris it was ranked the #1 coffee spot. It was unlike any other café. There were no French waiters with white aprons, outside seating with high cane back chairs, or French food. But the owners had done something that truly changed the game for what it means to be a café in Paris. As I sat in the café I was surprised by how they were running their café. There were a lot of elements which made it a game-changer.

The fact that I had stumbled into this café which was a breakthrough while wanting to write about innovation made me realize that I needed to do some research about surprise. So I then researched surprise. I talked to leaders who I felt had really changed the game so I could understand the back-stories of their more public success stories. I discovered that the whole notion of surprise is an unspoken but critical ingredient to breakthrough innovation. The information about the leaders’ personal surprises led me to some bigger research, thinking and theories about uncertainty and surprise.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Kaplan: I studied Organizational Psychology, which is all about how people and teams collaborative and work together. Early on I was working in marketing, business strategy, and innovation. I didn’t see the overt connection. Now I realize that organizations are really just groups of people all trying to work effectively together to make meaningful things happen. I think my education underlies everything I do.

Morris: What do you know now about business world that you wish you knew when you when to work full-time for the first time? Why?

Kaplan: Certain areas of business need to be formulaic with detailed processes where you want to minimize uncertainty. The thing I wished I knew earlier on is that this mindset pervades just about everything in business and leadership, but when you’re going for breakthroughs or charting uncharted territory, relying on a set formula can be your downfall. It’s about fast learning, iteration and even accepting small failures.

Morris: Of all the companies that you have observed, which – in your opinion – best illustrates how important it is to reconsider assumptions when encountering unexpected developments? Please explain.

Kaplan: There’s often an assumption that if we were to take all the right tools, templates, methodologies, and analytics and put them into the big corporate meat-grinder then the result will be innovation. I suggest that big breakthroughs, which change the game and challenge assumptions, are not as formulaic as those who believe in standard business rules and processes want to believe. There is certainly a set of leadership competencies that can be taught and learned, but they’re different from what is been trained for today. Things like balancing data analysis–what the data is telling you–with your intuition and your gut and being able to take steps that combine data with gut, data and intuition, and become open to what Scott Cook of Intuit calls ‘savor surprise’.

Here’s the example. In the 1990’s, Intuit introduced a software program called Quicken to balance checkbooks at home. But kept hearing that small businesses were using this software, which they believed was impossible because small businesses need real accounting software. The leadership team at Intuit ignored this data for over a year. When they decided to look at this ‘pop-up guidepost’, this surprise, they realized that small businesses were using their software incorrectly because they didn’t like accounting. They didn’t know how to do real accounting for their businesses. They didn’t start their businesses to be accountants, and so they were using the wrong software because it was simple.

Intuit had also assumed that the market for the provision of software was saturated, but they realized that maybe it wasn’t. So they revisited their assumptions about why small businesses were using their software, and about the related market opportunity. When they introduced QuickBooks and within 3 months they had captured 70% market share.Because they opened up to surprises, they found a big opportunity that might have otherwise been missed.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Carmine Gallo on “the Apple experience”: An interview by Bob Morris

Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. A former journalist for CNN and CBS, Gallo works directly with the world’s top business leaders to craft compelling messages, tell inspiring stories and share innovative ideas. Gallo is a popular keynote speaker and has addressed executives at Intel, Cisco, Medtronic, Hewlett Packard, SAP, Pfizer, Linked In, Chevron, and other global brands. Gallo writes bestselling books including The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, the winner of an Axiom award for one of the best business books of 2011. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs has become an international bestseller, translated into 14 languages. Gallo’s subsequent book, The Power of Foursquare, reveals how businesses leverage new mobile marketing tools to attract, reward and engage customers. His latest book is The Apple Experience: Secrets to Building Insanely Great Customer Loyalty, published by McGraw-Hill in 2012. He graduated from UCLA and has a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern. Gallo lives in Pleasanton, California, with his wife and two daughters.

Here is an excerpt from my second interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

*     *     *

Morris: Who are Apple’s “internal” and “external” customers? To what extent (if any) does Apple treat them differently? Please explain.

Gallo:
 
The Apple Store “internal” customer refers to Apple Store employees. “External” customers are you and me, the folks who walk into the store to buy a product. Apple likes to say the soul of the Apple experience is in its people: the internal customer who is hired, trained, motivated, and empowered to do what is right for the customer.

Morris: What are the defining characteristics of Apple’s “insanely great customer experience” both internally and externally?

Gallo:
 I believe you can understand the Apple Store experience in two words: enriching lives. Those are the first two words on the Apple Store credo card that all employees are encouraged to carry. When you “enrich lives,” magical things start to happen. You hire employees who are passionate about serving the customer. You empower employees to spend as much time with a customer as they deem necessary. You design interesting spaces and multimedia displays in the store so customers can see and touch the devices. You can create innovative programs like One to One to help customers unleash their inner genius. It all starts with the vision to enrich lives; a vision that was very important to both Steve Jobs and former Apple head of retail, Ron Johnson (now CEO of J.C. Penney).

Morris: In two of your previous books, the focus is on Steve Jobs: his innovation and presentation “secrets.” To what extent does Apple’s “insanely great customer experience” illustrate any of those secrets? Please explain.

Gallo:
 I wrote The Apple Experience because we had much more to learn from Steve Jobs. In fact, some Apple Store employees told me they had read The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs and applied the principles to the sales floor, the “red zone,” as its known. That made me think: If the Apple Store is creating the next generation of customer service and some employees are using my book as a guide, then I have a real opportunity to capture and perhaps even influence the next level of the customer experience!

Morris: To what extent did Disney stores provide a model for Apple stores? To what extent did Apple stores provide a model for AT&T stores?

Gallo:
 I think it was just the opposite. Believe it or not, Apple inspired Disney! An executive who had the task of reinventing and revitalizing the Disney Store asked Steve Jobs for advice. Jobs’ response: Dream bigger. No better advice has ever been given. The new Disney Store will look a lot like Apple Stores complete with immersive, multisensory experiences, open space, uncluttered, and more. AT&T was also directly inspired by the Apple Store model. For example, walk into an AT&T retail location and you will be greeted within ten feet or ten seconds of entering the store. You’ll find the same approach in the Apple Store. The first “step of service” in the Apple Store is to greet a customer with a “personalized, warm welcome.” The way someone is greeted significantly impacts that person’s perception of the brand.

Morris: What are the basic tenets of “Disney’s People Management Philosophy”? What is its relevance to the Apple organization?

Gallo:
 Disney employees deliver a consistent experience because the organization is dedicated to a 4-step approach to people management: selection, training, communication and care. The same four tenets apply to Apple and to any other organization committed to improving the customer experience. You must select people who can deliver a superior experience, train them to do so, teach them to communicate effectively with customers, and care for them so they enjoy working with the company.

Morris: What is the three-step process by which Apple hires people? Why is being “fearless” a necessary trait?

Gallo:
 This is very powerful. The Apple Store likes to hire people who (1) display grit. Grit means they can handle pressure. (2) Can deliver a Ritz-Carlton level of customer service with the proper training and (3) could have gone toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs. Let me clarify the last point. Few people could have gone toe-to-toe with Steve Jobs. But it’s a question meant to gauge whether or not the job candidate displays fearlessness. In order for an effective feedback loop to occur, a company must have employees who are not afraid of giving and receiving feedback. They must be ‘fearless.’

*     *     *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

Carmine cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

http://www.appleexperiencebook.com
 
http://www.carminegallo.com

Saving the World at Work: A book review by Bob Morris

Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference
Tim Sanders
Crown Business (2008)

Note: Here is a review of a book I read when it was first published in 2003. I recently re-read it prior to reading and reviewing Sanders’ latest, Today We Are Rich: Harnessing the Power of Total Confidence.

Why did Tim Sanders write this book? He answers that question in the first chapter: “I want to recruit you, and train you, for the Responsibility Revolution. I want to help you feel good about your company and grow more good within it. I want to help you feel more fulfilled by your job, by helping your company to see the value of giving back to the larger world.” This declaration should come as no surprise to those who have read Sanders’ previous books, Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends (2002) and then The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s Dreams (2006). He really does believe that it is possible to link personal goals with business goals while adding value, do so without a great deal of funding, and thereby reduce a company’s “social inefficiency.” This book is best viewed as an operations manual for “infectious revolutionaries,” one in which Sanders explains how to use various “business social” and assessment skills.

Sanders’ use of the words “revolution” and “revolutionary” are not hyperbolic. He wants to help achieve what Clayton Christensen characterizes as “movements punctuated with disruptive innovations that either create new markets or reshape existing markets.” These movements will change, radically, how companies do business. That is certainly true of Aveda, IBM, Interface, Lush, Medtronic, Patagonia, SAS Institute, Timberland, and Whole Foods. These disruptive movements occur in five phases and Sanders devotes a separate chapter to each: First, a major change of circumstances that dramatically impacts how we think about the business landscape, creating in Phase Two a new set of values prior to the arrival of the innovators in Phase Three; then, “as the new values reach a tipping point of mass popularity, the fourth, and most extreme, phase of a business revolution occurs: disruption.”

In Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel describes it this way: “First, the revolutionaries will take your markets and your customers. Next they’ll take your best employees. Finally, they’ll take your assets. The barbarians are no longer banging on the gates, they are eating off your best china.”

During the final phase, what Sanders calls The New Order, companies develop proficiency in service to new markets, innovators become more sophisticated, and customers become more demanding. “Eventually, surviving companies will satisfy the new market needs and the competition will then turn to who does it best.” The process of natural selection continues as new “infectious revolutionaries” appear, disrupting the terms of engagement in what continues to be a Responsibility Revolution.

Of special interest to me is what Sanders has to say about what he calls the “saver soldier,” a highly motivated individual who leverages work as a platform to help save the world. She or he is convinced that a business can do well by doing good. In fact, each company should. Sanders examines various saver soldiers, three of whom (e.g. IBM’s Jeff Immelt, Patagonia’s Yvon Choinard, and Aveda’s Horst Rechelbacher) “have stated that they don’t expect to achieve their vision single-handedly; they need foot soldiers to scout, innovate, and execute new ideas.” Sanders identifies and examines “The Six Laws of the Saver Soldier” in Chapter 8 that, together, offer an appropriate belief system for newly enlisted “troops.” For example, The Law of Abundance (#3) essentially asserts that there is always enough to go around. That is, “doing good” and “doing well” are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, Sanders insists, they are inter-dependent. It would be very difficult (if not impossible) to have one without the other. Companies that are actively engaged in the Responsibility Revolution will probably attract the “best and brightest” people and then retain them. What these companies offer will have greater appeal to customers. Most important of all, these companies will make a difference to their society, indeed to their planet, while gaining and then sustaining “an unshakable edge” over their “laggard competitors.” Tim Sanders asks, “If not now, when? If not you, who?”

Meanwhile, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock….

Why Middle Management Should Fear Social Media

Here is an article written by Sean Silverthorne for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

*     *     *

 

The View from Harvard Business

Over the last six months I’ve detected a growing number of management gurus lauding the arrival of social media as a mainstream communications tool in the modern business organization. This technology, they agree, breaks down hierarchies and promotes direct communication from top to bottom, from country to country, and from company to customer.

Harvard Business School professor Bill George, a former CEO at Medtronic, calls social media in business the most powerful trend of 2010. But if you are a middle manager, social managing might not be such a great thing. As George writes in HBS Working Knowledge:

“The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when layers of managers are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work — designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services — to step up and lead without a hierarchy.”

If you are a middle manager, Bill George’s words must cause some soul searching. Is my main function really just as a go-between between upstairs and downstairs? If true, how must the role evolve over the next decade to create value for the company?

Worth Reading

Leadership in the “Culture of Sharing” Era (BNET)

*     *     *
Sean Silverthorne is the editor of HBS Working Knowledge, which provides a first look at the research and ideas of Harvard Business School faculty. Working Knowledge, which won a Webby award in 2007, currently records 4 million unique visitors a year. He has been with HBS since 2001. Silverthorne has 28 years experience in print and online journalism. Before arriving at HBS, he was a senior editor at CNET and executive editor of ZDNET News.

Saving the World at Work: A Book Review by Bob Morris

Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference
Tim Sanders
Crown Business (2008)

Why did Tim Sanders write this book? He answers that question in the first chapter: “I want to recruit you, and train you, for the Responsibility Revolution. I want to help you feel good about your company and grow more good within it. I want to help you feel more fulfilled by your job, by helping your company to see the value of giving back to the larger world.” This declaration should come as no surprise to those who have read Sanders’ previous books, Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends (2002) and then The Likeability Factor: How to Boost Your L-Factor and Achieve Your Life’s Dreams (2006). He really does believe that it is possible to link personal goals with business goals while adding value, do so without a great deal of funding, and thereby reduce a company’s “social inefficiency.” This book is best viewed as an operations manual for “infectious revolutionaries,” one in which Sanders explains how to use various “business social” and assessment skills.

Sanders’ use of the words “revolution” and “revolutionary” are not hyperbolic. He wants to help achieve what Clayton Christensen characterizes as “movements punctuated with disruptive innovations that either create new markets or reshape existing markets.” These movements will change, radically, how companies do business. That is certainly true of Aveda, IBM, Interface, Lush, Medtronic, Patagonia, SAS Institute, Timberland, and Whole Foods. These disruptive movements occur in five phases and Sanders devotes a separate chapter to each: First, a major change of circumstances that dramatically impacts how we think about the business landscape, creating in Phase Two a new set of values prior to the arrival of the innovators in Phase Three; then, “as the new values reach a tipping point of mass popularity, the fourth, and most extreme, phase of a business revolution occurs: disruption.”

In Leading the Revolution, Gary Hamel describes it this way: “First, the revolutionaries will take your markets and your customers. Next they’ll take your best employees. Finally, they’ll take your assets. The barbarians are no longer banging on the gates, they are eating off your best china.”

During the final phase, what Sanders calls The New Order, companies develop proficiency in service to new markets, innovators become more sophisticated, and customers become more demanding. “Eventually, surviving companies will satisfy the new market needs and the competition will then turn to who does it best.” The process of natural selection continues as new “infectious revolutionaries” appear, disrupting the terms of engagement in what continues to be a Responsibility Revolution.

Of special interest to me is what Sanders has to say about what he calls the “saver soldier,” a highly motivated individual who leverages work as a platform to help save the world. She or he is convinced that a business can do well by doing good. Sanders examines various saver soldiers, three of whom (e.g. IBM’s Jeff Immelt, Patagonia’s Yvon Choinard, and Aveda’s Horst Rechelbacher) “have stated that they don’t expect to achieve their vision single-handedly; they need foot soldiers to scout, innovate, and execute new ideas.” Sanders identifies and examines “The Six Laws of the Saver Soldier” in Chapter 8 that, together, offer an appropriate belief system for newly enlisted “troops.” For example, The Law of Abundance (#3) essentially asserts that there is always enough to go around. That is, “doing good” and “doing well” are not mutually exclusive.

On the contrary, Sanders insists, they are interdependent. It would be very difficult (if not impossible) to have one without the other. Companies that are actively engaged in the Responsibility Revolution will probably attract the “best and brightest” people and then retain them. What these companies offer will have greater appeal to customers. Most important of all, these companies will make a difference to their society, indeed to their planet, while gaining and then sustaining “an unshakable edge” over their “laggard competitors.” Tim Sanders asks, “If not now, when? If not you, who?”

Meanwhile, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock….

What is the worst mistake a leader can make?

Through Imagining the Future of Leadership, a symposium at the Harvard Business School and accompanying blog series [click here], expert thinkers gathered to investigate what is necessary today to develop the leaders we need for tomorrow.

Here is a ”must watch” video during which nine world-renowned authorities on leadership discuss what they consider to be the worst mistake a leader can make.

To watch this video, please click here.

Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Medtronic
; co-author of Authentic Leadership and True North

Evan Wittenberg, Head of Global Leadership Development, Google, Inc.

Dr. Ellen Langer, Professor, Harvard University

Andrew Pettigrew, Professor, Sïad Business School, University of Oxford

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Affiliate Professor of Organizational Behavior, INSEAD

Carl Sloane, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Jonathan Doochin, Leadership Institute at Harvard College

Scott Snook, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School and retired Colonel, US Army Corps of Engineers

Daisy Wademan Dowling, Executive Director, Leadership Development at Morgan Stanley

Bill George’s Perspective on the HP Tragedy: An Authentic Leader Loses His True North

Bill George

Here is an excerpt from Bill George’s blog. To read the complete article, please click here.

The Mark Hurd situation can only be considered a tragedy for everyone involved.

Hurd is one of the most outstanding leaders in the U.S. In 2005 he took over an ailing technology giant and restored it to greatness in just five years. He refocused HP on itsoriginal mission and values and built the company around its strengths – technology, customer service, and managerial discipline. He built a much stronger organization with excellent leadership at all levels, and unified a dysfunctional board of directors.

During a short span, he turned HP into the world’s largest technology company and expanded its revenues to $125 billion and nearly $9 billion in profits.  The markets rewarded his leadership, and HP’s market capitalization has doubled during a period in which the S&P declined in absolute terms. He leaves behind a company that is demonstrably stronger than it was when he took over.

So what happened here? Did the HP board act “in a cowardly manner,” as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison charged in his letter to the New York Times?

No, the HP board acted in a unified manner to address an extremely difficult situation. Most likely, the board was blindsided when it received the letter from Jodie Fisher charging Hurd with sexual harassment. The board did the responsible thing in conducting a thorough investigation that concluded there was no basis for the sexual harassment charges, but that Hurd had violated basic HP employee policies regarding expense reporting and other issues.

Should the board treat Hurd differently from other HP employees that had committed similar indiscretions? Its answer was “no,” that the values and principles of the company had to take precedence over any individual, no matter how well he had performed or how valuable he was to the company. So the board’s unanimous decision was that Hurd had to resign. Reports out of the company indicate that HP’s global employee base was overwhelmingly in support of the board’s decision.

As much as the HP board doesn’t want to go through yet another CEO search, at least this time around it has excellent candidates both within and outside the company.

Hurd has built a strong executive team with several excellent successor candidates. If the board chooses to go outside, it will have outstanding applicants lining up to be considered for the top job in Silicon Valley.

The question remains, how did an exceptional leader like Hurd let himself get into this position? We’ll never know how Hurd let himself get into this position, nor is it ours to judge. But his greater error was to dig the hole deeper. This is a classic case of Murphy’s Law of Compound Loss; i.e., when something goes wrong, individuals often compound their problems by trying to cover up the initial problem. For example, President Richard Nixon’s cover-up of the Watergate break-in is what compounded his problems and led to his resignation.

Hurd could have acknowledged his liaison in the first place and wound up with only a reprimand. Instead, he compounded his problem by submitting inappropriate expense accounts. Then, when the HP board initiated its investigation – which it was compelled to do by Fisher’s letter – Hurd made an agreement with her that kept her from cooperating with the board’s investigation. In business, we call this “hush money.” In criminal law the proper term is obstruction of justice. After his resignation was announced, Hurd allowed his close friend, Larry Ellison, to defend him by attacking the HP board.

*     *     *

To read the complete article, please click here.

Bill George is professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, the author of four best-selling books on leadership, including True North, and the former chair and CEO of Medtronic.

Bill George on the new 21st century leaders

Here is an excerpt from article written by Bill George for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Kharana, and Scott Snook.)

During the last half of the 20th century, business leadership became an elite profession, dominated by managers who ruled their enterprises from the top down. Influenced by two World Wars and the Depression, organizational hierarchies were structured along military lines, with multi-layered structures to establish control through rules and processes. People climbed the ranks in search of power, status, money and perquisites, as described in William H. Whyte’s 1956 classic, The Organization Man, and Sloan Wilson’s 1955 novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.

In the last quarter of the twentieth century the stock market became increasingly short-term, causing corporate leaders to concentrate on quarterly earnings, often to the exclusion of long-term growth. In the past decade it all blew up, from the ethical scandals exposed by Enron and WorldCom to the Wall Street meltdown. As a result, people lost trust in business leaders to build sustainable institutions instead of serving themselves and short-term shareholders.

What happened? The hierarchical model simply doesn’t work anymore. The craftsman-apprentice model has been replaced by learning organizations, filled with knowledge workers who don’t respond to “top down” leadership. Seeking opportunities to lead, young people are unwilling to spend ten years waiting in line. Most important, people are searching for genuine satisfaction and meaning from their work, not just money. For example, Medtronic’s 38,000 employees are motivated by the company’s mission of “restoring people to full life and health.”

In response to these changes, a new generation of leaders is reshaping the best-led global companies. Authentic leaders focused on customers are replacing hierarchical leaders that focus on serving short-term shareholders. Typical of these leaders is Unilever CEO Paul Polman, who recently told the Financial Times, “I don’t work for the shareholder. I work for consumers and my customers.”

In the 21st century the most successful leaders will focus on sustaining superior performance by aligning people around mission and values and empowering leaders at all levels, while concentrating on serving customers and collaborating throughout the organization.

* * *

The ultimate measure of effectiveness for leaders is the ability to sustain superior results over an extended period of time. Organizations filled with aligned, empowered and collaborative employees focused on serving customers will outperform hierarchical organizations every time. Top-down leaders may achieve near-term results, but only authentic leaders can galvanize the entire organization to sustain long-term performance.

We need them to rebuild the trust that has been lost in capitalism.

Bill George is professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, the author of four best-selling books on leadership, including True North, and the former chair and CEO of Medtronic.

* * *

(Editor’s note: This post is part of a six-week blog series on how leadership might look in the future. The conversations generated by these posts will help shape the agenda of a symposium on the topic in June 2010, hosted by HBS’s Nitin Nohria, Rakesh Kharana, and Scott Snook.)

Some of the ideas contained in this article appeared in Bill George’s March article on WSJ.com, The New Leaders: Collaborative, Not Commanding.

To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Daily Alerts, please visit dailyalert@email.harvardbusiness.org.

Interview: Bill George

Bill George

George is a Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School where he teaches leadership and leadership development. He is the author of two best-selling books, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership and Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value. George is the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic and also serves as a director of Goldman Sachs, Novartis, ExxonMobil, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the World Economic Forum USA.

Note: I conducted this interview in 2007. George has since published Seven Lessons for Leading in Crisis (2009) and is now in the process of completing a second interview.

Morris: First, please explain what you mean by “authentic” leadership.

George: Authentic leaders are genuine people who are true to what they believe in. They have a clear sense of the purpose of their leadership, they practice their values consistently, lead with their hearts as well as their heads, build long-term connected relationships, and lead integrated lives. More specifically, they are people who demonstrate the highest integrity, are committed to building enduring organizations, who have a deep sense of purpose and are true to their core values. They have the courage to build their companies to meet the needs of all stakeholders, and are dedicated to serving society through their leadership.

We need to increase the prevalence of authentic leaders in all areas of our society, not just in business but in government, religion, and the military. We need more leaders who genuinely desire to serve others through their leadership. Authentic leaders are more interested in empowering people they lead to make a difference than they are in power, money, or prestige for themselves. They are as guided by qualities of the heart, by passion and compassion, as they are by qualities of the mind.

Morris: How can someone prepare to become an “authentic” leader?

George: To become an authentic leader, you must develop yourself, just as a great musician or athlete does. People are born with the gifts of leadership but must develop those gifts by:

1. Developing their self-awareness and emotional intelligence.
2. Testing their values under pressure.
3. Balancing their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.
4. Building a support team.
5. Leading an integrated life.
6. Developing a clear sense of the purpose of their leadership.
7. Empowering other people to step up and lead.

Morris: Here’s what seems to be a “chicken or egg” question. Which comes first: authentic leadership at all levels and in all areas of any organization, or, a culture that nourishes such leadership?

George: Individuals must fervently want to be authentic leaders first, but their development can be greatly enhanced in a culture that nurtures authentic leaders. However, inauthentic leaders will not change or survive for long in an authentic culture. Far too many studies of “leadership” focus their attention on leaders on top – often “celebrity CEOs” — when, in fact, authentic leadership is needed at all levels and in all areas of organizations.

At twenty-three, Jonathan Doochin was the youngest leader interviewed; while a senior in college, he created Harvard’s Leadership Institute. Ninety-three-year old Zyg Nagorski was the “senior” leader” of those interviewed; after running the Aspen Institute’s Executive Programs for a decade, he stepped aside at seventy-five and then, with his wife, started the Center for International Leadership and continues to conduct values and ethics seminars eighteen years later. Obviously, authentic leaders come in “all shapes and sizes” (and ages!) but despite the differences between and among them, they are all committed to helping others to become authentic people, if not authentic leaders.

The importance of creating and then sustaining an authentic culture cannot be overestimated.

*     *     *

To read the complete interview, please click here.