Summit on leading in crisis

Recently I was lucky enough to score an invitation to the Summit On Leading In Crisis hosted by Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, and now Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. George gathered four very experienced panelists to discuss their “personal stories from the trenches”.

Bill George began the discussions with observations from his new book, “7 Lessons for Leading In Crisis”. I’ve read the book since the forum, and it’s a good read. George sees crises as opportunities for excellent leaders to show what they’re worth. He calls crisis “The Ultimate Test of Leadership”. The seven lessons range from “Face Reality Starting With Yourself” to “Go On The Offense, Focus On Winning Now”. The seven lessons are the basis for a useful discussion with your managers and leaders about how they face crises and where they have opportunities for improvement. Earlier posts by George had slightly different lessons, and these look as if they have changed to make them more useful to a general audience, (as opposed to an earlier post by George on the Wall Street Journal site where one of the lessons was "Build a mountain of cash, and get to the highest hill.").

At the summit the book was sold with a study guide that I think was just as useful as the book. It provided each of the lessons with a set of questions and conversation starters that many leadership teams and coaches could include in their regular after action reviews.

George’s opening remarks mainly centered on our current economic crisis. His point was that it wasn’t a failure of mortgage lenders, economic policies or government regulation. The current crisis is a failure of leadership. Each of the speakers following Bill took up his theme, followed by some of their personal illustrations. Here are a couple that stuck with me…

Mary Carlson Nelson, Chair and former CEO of Carlson Companies was the first to speak after Bill. She made the valuable point that it can be easy to blame leadership without recognizing that there are many great leaders in great organizations who have been caught up in the current economic cycle and are weathering the crisis as best they can.

David Gergen, Director of the Center for Pulblic Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, talked widely across politics and the economy. Overall he came down on the side that it’s not just great leadership that will get us out of this…it also takes the light hand of appropriate regulation to stop the worst excesses of a free for all economic market. I liked his philosophy. Life is rarely a case of either this or that, most things are usually a case of both this and that.

Anne Mulcahy, Chair and former CEO of Xerox, talked about how most of the recovery in our economy will actually be driven by small nimble organizations rather than large multinationals and conglomerates. Many of the books and theories of leadership look as if they are written for CEOs and super-executives. In reality, the millions of actions of regular people and small to mid-sized organizations acting with integrity in their own best interests drive most of business and most of our economy.

Finally, John Donahoe, Chair and CEO of eBay. Donahoe was what you would expect from a West Coast high tech executive…relaxed in chinos and an open shirt, engaging and personally humorous. (I wonder what he was like before eBay as a high-powered consultant from the east coast). The story that I remembered most of Donahoe’s was his description of his son’s job search post college. You might imagine that Donahoe could call up any one of his network and find a “job” for his son. I’ve even known CEO’s in large public organizations who have found “internships” for their children, knowing full well the positions their children are getting are nothing like a real job in terms of the way they are treated or experiences they will be given. Donahoe’s boy is looking out for his own future like any other college grad. Apparently he sat at home for a long time with no job until he eventually volunteered to work for free at something he loves.

I liked that story best of all the summit tales. Taking personal responsibility, acting with integrity and finding a way of making a valuable contribution to others are real markers of leadership.

The summit will be televised on TPT and local public television stations in the near future. The audio is available from Minnesota Public Radio and I imagine it will soon be broadcast nationally. Check it out for some very interesting reflections on leadership from some very heavy hitters in business.