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Humility vs Hubris

by Ron Potter
Image Source: Dennis Jarvis, Creative Commons

Image Source: Dennis Jarvis, Creative Commons

When I met with Wayne Hastings for the first time to discuss the writing of our book, Trust Me: developing a leadership style people will follow, I carried with me a research paper I had been reading that eventually became Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great. In his book Jim described what he termed a “Level 5” leadership style that was present every time a company went from being a good company to being a great company. The two pillars of that style were humility and a strong will to endure and succeed. Our book outlined 8 leadership principles that began with humility and ended with endurance, the same characteristics.

Jim is now publishing a new book titled How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In where he looks at the signs that we can detect that indicate a company may be on it’s way down from great to good (or worse).

What’s the number one sign? Hubris!

Hubris (/hju:bris/)

Excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance
Overbearing pride or presumption; arrogance

Wikipedia says:

“It was also considered the greatest sin of the ancient Greek world because it was not only proof of excessive pride, but also resulted in violent acts by or to those involved.”

Humility: the first principle in great leadership
Hubris: the first step of the fall from glory

Are you a great listener?
Do you accept the brutal reality of your situation?
Do you have great faith in people?
Do you see it as your job to help everybody perform at their best or be in a place where they can be successful?
Or, do you believe you’re successful because you (and your team) have figured out the right way to do things. You’re smart. You know what you’re doing. Hubris?

The links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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BlogLeadership

Seven Deadly Sins

by Ron Potter

PrudenceMost of us know about the seven deadly sins:

Lust
Gluttony
Greed
Sloth
Wrath
Envy
Pride

And I must admit that while I’m not guilty of all of the sins all of the time, I have been guilty of all of the sins some of the time. But, are you familiar with the four Cardinal Virtues?

Prudence
Justice
Restraint
Courage

I’ve been spending some time looking at the four and in particular the first of the virtues, Prudence. One of the intriguing definitions of Prudence is:

“The perfected ability to make right decisions.”

What better descriptor of corporate leadership could be found? The perfected ability to make right decisions!
As I began to explore the concept for prudence further, it presented itself as a process. Prudence breaks down into the functions of:

Deliberate
Decide
Do

These are my words, not the words of the great scholars that describe the process, but what a great process to reach right decisions.

Give it good deliberation
Use a great and well defined decision making process
Go out and execute

Since 2000, one of the “deadly sins” that I’ve seen become more and more prevalent in corporate cultures is the attitude of quick deciding instead of quick learning leading to good decisions. With a quick deciding attitude, teams will ignore, steam roll, belittle or dismiss any behavior that appears to be or feels like it is slowing down the deciding process. In other words, a quick deciding mentality approach is anti-deliberation. It just doesn’t lead to prudent or wise decisions.
What we don’t have time for in our corporations today is non-prudent decisions. We must regain the technique of good deliberation to make great decisions quickly.
Let me know what you think. What is preventing our corporate leadership teams from spending the right amount of time deliberating so that we can then make good decisions? What are the roadblocks?

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BlogLeadership

Humility is Still Number One

by Ron Potter

A back issue of BusinessWeek (May 11, 2009) reviews a book by soon-to-be Regulatory czar Cass Sunstein titled, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide. BusinessWeek says:

“What jumps out from the book is Sunstein’s mistrust of human judgment in everything from politics to business, especially when people band together.”

They go on to say:

“There’s a whiff of elitism in Sunstein’s apparent call for enlightened experts (like himself) to gently correct the cockeyed masses.”

However, they say:

“Sunstein also believes wrongheaded views can be kept in check. Part of the answer is putting people with humility, curiosity, and openness in power.”

I don’t have any faith in the elitism view that a few very smart people with what Sunstein calls “Liberal paternalism” are the answer to anything. I meet too many smart, hardworking, dedicated people every day who go to work with great values and the intent to make things better. But, isn’t it interesting that even the “Liberal Parent” says I wouldn’t have to step in and “fix” things if people would simply put leaders in place who have humility as their number one trait.

Jim Collins in his book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t identifies the number one trait of great leaders as humility.

In my book, Trust Me: Developing a Leadership Style People Will Follow, we identify the number one trait of great leaders as humility. None of the other traits work without it.

Check your ego at the door every morning. It will make you a better leader.

The links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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BlogCulture

Loss of a Manufacturing

by Ron Potter
Image Source: Peetje2, Creative Commons

Image Source: Peetje2, Creative Commons

I remember reading an editorial written in a very prominent newspaper about the loss of manufacturing jobs. The editorial was well written and was very fact based. It was questioning the wisdom of allowing another country to dismantle the very equipment required to support the local textile industry, ship it to another country where they paid a much lower wage and then ship the finished goods back at a much cheaper price than could be produced locally. The author was wondering if it were wise to let our desire for cheap goods supplied through a large retailer destroy the very manufacturing that was the base for much of the country’s economy.
In the news recently was the fact that the local textile industry lost a half-million jobs in 2007 and is expected to lose another half-million jobs in 2008.

The first editorial was written in England in the late 1700’s about the textile industry setting up shop in New England, America. The recent news article was written about the job loss in India as the textile industry moves on to cheaper parts of the world like Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Has the textile industry been the early indicator of manufacturing shifts around the world since the time of the early Egyptian empire? Maybe all of the hand wringing about the loss of our manufacturing base is simply a natural evolution of global manufacturing cycles that have been in place for hundreds or thousands of years.

There are a couple of things I find fascinating about this shift and loss of jobs. I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan so I’m very close to the US Auto industry. At the same time that we are experiencing this loss, General Motors and other manufacturers are searching for highly skilled engineers and innovative mechanical minded people to keep up with the complex design and manufacturing end of their business. And with the adjusting of the US dollar on the world markets, it is now becoming cheaper to do complex manufacturing in the US than it is in other parts of the world. What I worry most about all of this is the complete failure of our public education system and the diminishing numbers of US students attending our higher education systems. In an era when graduating from High School, going to work in the manufacturing sector and experiencing a nice middle-class livelihood has just come to a crashing halt, we need to be fixing our education system so that we can better compete in a rapidly changing global economy.
More on “The Concept Economy” next time.

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