William George
Linchpins are the essential building blocks of great organizations. Saying that a linchpin will scale organizational growth is a given; therefore, what does it take to turn a linchpin into a leader?
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Transcript
Sanjog Aul [00:00:22]:
Hello, and welcome to this segment on CIO Talk Network. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. As always, we invite you to join the discussion on Twitter and look for this show as hashtag linchpin and hashtag leadership. Today’s topic is Turning Linchpins into Leaders ,and I have the honor of having William George, who’s the Author of Discover Your True North, and he’s a senior fellow with Harvard Business School. Hello, Bill. How are you?
William George [00:00:49]:
Nice to hear from you. Glad to be on with all your listeners as well.
Sanjog Aul [00:00:53]:
Thank you so much again. So the reason we wanted to do this, basically cover this topic is we know there are a lot of organizations who are trying to always grow and groom people. Now they get lucky in some cases where they have people who would do whatever is assigned to them. They’re always very excited and very resourceful, and we can call them perhaps linchpins. But the fact that they are contributing to the growth, can we automatically think and or, envision them becoming leaders? Because that is not exactly same as being a linchpin. So what realistically can be done or should be done to make sure we harness what linchpin bring and if possible, convert them to leaders? So that said, like to first ask you today compared to yesterday, and we were talking before the show started, is the world changing the way an individual contributes and connects with others, the way the team works together and works with other teams, and the way the organizations are structured in terms of hierarchy. There is a change. There is a difference. So people as they are individual contributors, how do they fit into the newer mode of the way the organizations are moving forward?
William George [00:02:05]:
When I wrote my book Discover Your True North, which came out last August, we interviewed an additional 47 people, in addition to 125 we interviewed about ten years before. And what we found was leadership has changed dramatically in the last ten years that today hierarchy and bureaucracy is out because the organizations that have a much flatter organization, much more horizontal where people communicate and collaborate are the ones that are winning in the marketplace. The organizations that instead of exerting power over other people, empower people across the organization. And think of leadership and not a few people at the top, but thousands of leaders who step up from the organization is critical. And one thing I learned in my days at Medtronic was that in every organization there are informal leaders. These are people you might you would call linchpins because they’re vital to the performance of the enterprise. They’re the ones that make it go. They don’t necessarily have the biggest titles, but they’re the ones that make the organization go. And any leader has to identify who those people are and be constantly in touch with them, be wandering around the offices, the factories, the labs, the stores, the places of service business like we had at Medtronic in the hospitals and really be in touch with the people that are making your organization grow. And they’re the ones that are evolving as real leaders if they get empowered to step up. And that’s the job of the top leadership.
Sanjog Aul [00:03:39]:
So the way you almost made linchpin synonymous to leaders or a linchpin being a leader in the making, when the way you define it, it almost seems that if someone can get the job done, someone is resourceful, the person has the potential. But when we talk about leaders, they have to also have the charisma, the way they can inspire people, they inspire change and many other things. But if a person is a solo gig of sorts, like an intrapreneur who’s doing whatever they’re supposed to do to get the job done, does that automatically qualify them to be looked at as someone as a potential candidate to become a leader?
William George [00:04:15]:
I think it does. And I don’t think that leaders have to have charisma. I think they can be strongly introverted. You can have tremendous leaders among scientists who lack total charisma. But when they’re working with people, they inspire other people by their commitment to the enterprise, to the desire to make a difference, to create breakthrough ideas, to help a customer, to go that extra mile. I mean, we had a lot of salespeople at Medtronic who would do anything to help the doctors, so the doctors can in turn help a patient. And they would spend all night driving across a state to try to get a product there, so doctors do surgery at 6:30. They were real linchpins in the organization. They made it go. And yes, we look for them to step up. They don’t need titles. It’s not about titles. It’s about commitment to make things go. And I think that’s essential. But I think we’ve had a very limited view of what is a leader and it’s almost like a leader is a manager coming out of Management 101 MBA school. That’s not true. Leaders are at all walks of life. And it’s the job of senior leaders in the organization to figure out who they are and empower them to step up and give them the opportunities.
Sanjog Aul [00:05:24]:
So the way you explain, that means anyone who’s a linchpin, the person can, of course, be seen as a, okay. We are gonna invest in you. The approach of investing would depend on what’s your definition or an organization’s definition on what they want to see in a leader. So if you were to since you’ve interviewed so many people as who are leaders and they are also trying to become the newer flavor of leaders, what is that new flavor? What’s that benchmark we are supposed to pursue?
William George [00:05:54]:
Well, the new flavor of leaders is people that know how to align people around the mission and values of the organization. And I used to say to people at Medtronic, look, our mission is to restore people to full life and health. And when I got there, we were restoring 300,000. Now the number in my left is about 6,000,000. Today, it’s 30,000,000. If that doesn’t inspire you to do your work, to do a breakthrough in the technology or to put out a high quality product where someone’s life hangs on the balance, then you’re working in the wrong place. You should move on. And I think that’s really critical that people have this mentality that I’m passionate about, but the leaders have to convey that. And then they have to empower people to do that. It’s not about giving them rules and regs. It’s about empowering them to step up and lead and say, you can lead each in our own way. We need to get away from the stereotypic definition to what is a leader and really open it up and look at the entire diversity of the workforce and give everyone the opportunity regardless of where they come from, what their backgrounds are, educational, ethnic, racial, religious, those things don’t matter. What matters is your commitment to make a difference.
Sanjog Aul [00:07:04]:
Now let’s look at organization and let me compare that to two different form of groups, which you see in nature. So you look at bees. Until you have a queen bee, you don’t have the bees working together to build that group that they are supposed to. Then there is a swarm of ants where there is no specific leader, but they are just working together to move the swarm wherever they have to move. Yep. So which type of organization do you think is going to exist tomorrow now knowing that in the same organization, you will have some linchpins and some would not be there. So you cannot have a swarm of ants with some bees in it, or you cannot have bees with the people who are just working together in linchpins.
William George [00:07:48]:
Well, Tony Hsieh, who founded Zappos, had written a book and he’s tried to go to the Holographic Organization, which is basically the answer you’re describing. I’m not quite there. I really feel we need leaders in all aspects of our organization. I’m not in the Queen Bee model either. I can understand exactly what you’re saying because that implies that the Queen Bee is telling everyone what to do. I think the job of leaders at all levels is to inspire people to come together, collaborate across organization lines. Let me give you an example of an organization that does that amazingly well, very few people understand Accenture. They have 275,000 people. Many of them are highly, highly trained in computer technology, IT, they’re experts. And they have experts in just about every domain. They have health care IT experts and they have experts in manufacturing IT and they have experts in financial, FinTech as they call it. But I can tell you, they have no headquarters. There’s no corporate organization. And so everything has to be done on a horizontal basis. It’s 24/7 via computers, via iPhones, whatever. But they have great underlying systems that make the place go. If they didn’t have those systems, it would fall apart. So they have the underlying systems in place to make it go. But then the people have the mentality of we need a team together. And you have many teams. You have a team to work on this project, and I have three other teams I’m working with. So you cut across lines. And it is a great system. And I think that’s the shape of the future organization right there.
Sanjog Aul [00:09:18]:
So in that example, the one which you took where people are working together, they’re very smart, and they know what to do. And, of course, the system and the processes and the mindset and the culture has been creating what you just mentioned is almost like a swarm of ants working together. And it also in a way conveys that what you did or what that organization did as part of the hiring and grooming process is they built a bunch of linchpins. So if there is any non-linchpin or someone who’s not having that specific set of traits, then that person will automatically manage themselves out. But that’s not the case in the majority of the organization. So how then an organization, number one, identify linchpins, number two, create more of them, and number three, somehow have the coexistence, to have those linchpins and the ones who are not coexist because we can’t suddenly convert everyone into a linchpin?
William George [00:10:13]:
Well, I think you want to hire people for their expertise and their dedication. You have to have competence and you have to have character. And if you don’t have both of those things, you can’t be an effective part of this organization. So if you lack either one of those, you’re not going to make it. And so you have to manage out the people who lack competence and you have to manage out those who lack character. And if you don’t have them, then one bad apple there who’s just interested in getting ahead for himself or herself can really drive out good people. And so I think it’s the job of leadership to manage those people out of the organization. Frankly, a good hiring process tests not just for IQ, but EQ. I think you just hire really smart people, but if they’re jerks or they’re all out for themselves, you’re making a big mistake. That’s why an organization like Google where it has some of those brilliant people in the world are so careful in how they hire and you put a lot of money into it. I think the next step, you have to put a lot of money into the development of your people. And what happens is when there’s pressure from the stock market, the first thing to go is development of people and training budgets. And I think that’s a huge mistake. I don’t think you should ever cut the R&D budget, but a lot of people look at people as just commodities right now. We’re just paying minimum wage. Let’s get the lower end people. I think that’s wrong. I’d rather have a few good people. As the Marines say, a few good men and women. I’d like to have a few good people and make sure they’re really committed and doing a great job because they influence everyone else. And that rotten apple at the bottom of the barrel who’s politically motivated out for themselves can drive out a lot of good people and can confuse a lot of good people. So I think it’s the job of the top leaders to manage those people out of the organization. But really to invest in the people, the linchpins, as you’re saying, and ask everyone to step up as a leader. Every one of those people can become a leader. They have to have the passion to do it. They have to have the compassion for the people they’re serving, and they have to have some empathy for their coworkers, and they have to have the courage to step up. And I think those are all qualities we can develop in people.
Sanjog Aul [00:12:20]:
So when we are looking at, a linchpin, if I were to go by the theoretical definition, is someone who gets the job done and is resourceful. I’ve come across people and I’ve worked with people who themselves can be rock stars, if you will. You know, give it to them and they will make it happen. But then they would say, oh, leave me alone. Let me be independent. Let me not deal with this person. I cannot work with someone else as well. And they’d kinda wear that badge with pride, if you will. But then that person is automatically saying that while you may be linchpin and an individual contributor, but you are not fit to be taken to the next level or perhaps you have to find a way to crack this problem of how do you get them to remove that badge that I cannot work with anyone, etcetera. So let’s hold your thought. Let’s take a quick break. When we come back, Bill, let’s explore this. How do we turn around those people who are self defeating because of those traits? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.
Sanjog Aul [00:14:21]:
Welcome back. So, Bill, when we look at a linchpin, typically, we say, okay. You’re an individual contributor. You can do a job. You’re responsible. You’re accountable. All that is good, but then we have also seen many of them carrying this badge with pride that, oh, I can do this, but I am better off left alone and work independently. And, as you said, in some cases, they could come across as jerks. So do we just I and I’ve had this conversation on the show with other CIOs and leaders. They say I am better off letting them go versus creating that casting effect in the team. But when we are looking at converting the linchpins into leaders, so do you think those people should be simply sifted out, or is there some potential for them to be converted?
William George [00:15:05]:
Oh, I think there’s definitely potential for them to be converted. See, I think we go to the nature of work today. I don’t think there’s any such thing today as working alone. Let’s take Merck, a company of great scientists. You know, scientists and their labs have to collaborate. The problems they’re solving are too complex for any one individual to solve on his or her own. So they need to collaborate. It’s not just about going away for a day and really think and come back, but then you have to collaborate. And I think you have to know how to collaborate across geographic lines, across functional lines. That’s what makes organizations go. And so there’s nothing wrong with people that are really expert in what they do, but they’ve got to collaborate with other people. The salesperson is really an outstanding salesperson, doesn’t want to be a sales manager, can but really needs to collaborate and takes advantage of the expertise in the organization and is not just a solo performer. So I think we’ve gone away from this model of this is soccer, not golf. We’re not looking for great golfers. We’re looking for great soccer players and ought to be a part of a team. Now maybe you’re the goalie and you’re singularly good at what you do, and they aren’t going to put you up trying to score goals, but you still have to collaborate with your teammates and I think it’s all about that in the organization today. So we’ve got to convince the people who want to be just solo performers, you’ve got to collaborate. Now I love Mavericks. That’s fine. Be a Maverick. Let’s honor the Mavericks. But let’s get them to work with other people to bring their ideas to fruition because they can’t do it single handedly.
Sanjog Aul [00:16:35]:
And what can be done about it? So you mentioned they should be doing it, but what’s that brainwashing, if you will?
William George [00:16:41]:
Because they have a Oh, it’s that brainwashing. Come on. It’s training. It’s development. It’s working with them. That’s the job of the leaders. And it’s not just the CEO’s job. It’s their group leaders. It’s persuading them that this is how we get things done here. This is what makes this organization great. This is what makes Google great. Google has brilliant individual contributors, but they’ve got to work with other people. So does Apple, you know, so does Facebook. But they still have to work with other people. You can’t no man is an island as John Donne said. We’re all part of the main. And I think we need to have people understand if you can be part of the organization, you need to be a part of the organization. You’re not just out there. And this is, you know, I’m in an academic institution where a lot of people think they are isolated, and that’s not good. I think we need to be a part of the whole.
Sanjog Aul [00:17:30]:
So if in such cases I’m going to dig a little deeper here. So I’ve had situations where people would actually show interest. They are great workers as individuals, but they would show that their interest is above their organizations. So now in this case, if someone like me, for example, if I was a leader of a company or someone who’s trying to, you know, mentor someone like that, what am I supposed to understand about their stand there? Is that because we are not giving them enough as an organization that’s why this person feels this way? That they are important more important than the organization?
William George [00:18:06]:
If they really think that and you work with them and they still think that, then they should go ahead and go work they should leave the organization. At Medtronic, what we do after about 6 months, we have what’s called a Mission and Medallion ceremony. We talk about the mission of the company, why we’re all working together to achieve this mission and restoring people to full life and health. And at the end of the time, our Founder and then I did it as CEO and now the current CEO does it, gives everyone a medallion and that medallion signifies that you’re part of the organization. You have that on your desk or your place of work or your bench at work and everyone has those with great pride, the same from the CEO to the factory worker. But that’s a signal that symbol that you’re part of the organization. And if you can’t buy into that then I think it’s time to move on because we have to come together and align around this mission and values. And if you can’t do that then there’s no place for you. In the end, I believe in giving everyone a chance. But I don’t care what your job is. If you’re a sales clerk at Target or a checkout clerk, you kind of buy into the idea of making customers feel good about their visit at Target, they’re guests in your store.
Sanjog Aul [00:19:19]:
So we spoke about teamwork. And one other thing which comes as a key ingredient of teamwork is that there’s a mutual respect. If someone is a linchpin, very resourceful, smart, sharp, gets the job done, gets the medals and the attaboys on their back, but then there are other people because of their personal needs or maybe a preference. They choose to become that nine to five worker who’s assigned a job and they get it done. But they are part of the same team which linchpin also is. How do you get linchpin to respect the person who’s doing the regular nine to five job and earning an honest living and still play the team? Because in their mind, it could very well be that anyone who is like me is the one who I’m gonna respect.
William George [00:20:01]:
Are they both committed to the mutual goals of the enterprise? If the nine to five is not, if it’s just a job and they have no interest in the mission of the enterprise, in other words, just go back to the Target example, they want to make their guests feel really good about being in the stores. If they don’t get that and they’re just putting in hours, then they have to move on too. There’s no place for them in the organization. But if they get that and they just want to do their job, but they’ve got kids at home and they have to leave at 5:00 to take care of their kids, I get that. But they’re really dedicated in that time. They’re really great with customers. They’re great with fellow employees and they’re there to really make everyone have a good feeling about fulfilling the mission of Target, to use that as an example. But I don’t think there’s a place for people in organizations that don’t care about the organization. I really don’t. I think there’s a place for people that are just solid performers that do their jobs well. They don’t have to be stars. I think those people are invaluable, but if they have no loyalty and they can’t develop loyalty, then it may be time to move on.
Sanjog Aul [00:21:09]:
So if you are looking at this linchpin to become leaders, one of the traits of a leader is the person has some vision. You do not have to be the top leader to have a vision. But then in case of linchpins or at least the ones who are very sharp and get the job done, they have ideas in many cases, but they may not necessarily have developed that, you know, the trait of being able to have a vision about where we could go and even they could share the vision with the team and even the people higher up. How do you how do you get these people to start getting beyond the idea generation, the ideation process and become a vision development?
William George [00:21:48]:
I went through this in Medtronic all the time. We have a vision collectively of coming up with new medical therapies, very innovative therapies. And some of the innovators for Mavericks, they want to go off and do their own thing. Great. Go get a group of people and go work on the labs and see what your team of six or eight, ten people can come up with and then come back to us. That’s where Google Maps came from. At Google, that’s where a lot of the breakthrough ideas come. I’m all for that. But that’s all a part of our overall mission of the company. And if you’re contrary to that, if you’re really opposed to it and you don’t buy into it again, then they’re going to pull the organization apart and they’re going to pull everyone else down with them because everyone else is saying, hey, look at those people, they don’t even care about our mission, or people sit around and they talk about social talk at work when they should be helping customers. It’s one of my pet peeves. I think you’ve got to buy into what we’re doing collectively because each one of us represents the organization. Everyone we interact whether it’s a fellow employee, a customer, a supplier, an outsider represents that organization and we have to collectively be committed to the mission and the values. And if you’re committed to the mission but not the values then also you can’t work there. If you’re not committed to doing business with integrity or you’re not committed to the highest quality, or the best service, then there’s no place for you.
Sanjog Aul [00:23:13]:
So the very interesting part that you mentioned that everybody has to collectively thinking about, in the best interest of the business. But if you think the shepherd model, if someone is saying, okay. I’ve got a bunch of very interested and driven people, and there is no one to really shepherd them and group them and at least become like a swarm which moves in a given direction, then it is dissipated energy.
William George [00:23:36]:
Yes. It is.
Sanjog Aul [00:23:37]:
So then go anywhere. We need the shepherd of the sheep, exactly. They’re moving together. Otherwise you have anarchy and chaos and you have conflict. And then what happens in an organization like that, you start writing a lot of rules to bring people in line and then you become a bureaucracy and no one wants to work there and you can’t get anything done. And that’s just not the kind of organization I envision.
Sanjog Aul [00:24:06]:
So if you are saying that you need sheep and shepherd both, so would you think that linchpins, while they’re becoming the leaders or at least we’re developing the traits, they have to become a little bit of a sheep to follow someone and then learn what’s the value of or are they kind of learning by watching or learning by experiencing how a leader is leading?
William George [00:24:25]:
Like following your analogy, I was on a sheep ranch in New Zealand a year and a half ago and I watched these sheepdogs. And I watched them shepherd the sheep, bring the sheep together. They’re not in charge. The shepherd was there. He was giving them whistles and he was directing them through his whistles. They’re the ones doing the work but they’re bringing they’re in effect keeping people in the flock. And if one sheep got out of the flock, the sheepdog would work really hard to get people back into the flock. So I think you need the sheepdogs as well. They’re not the leaders but they are the people that say, hey, sir Rob, you need to get on board here and we need to have you part of the enterprise. I know it’s how you treat that customer and that’s just not the way we do things. So you depend upon those people who don’t have titles, but they’re really critical to the enterprise. And those are linchpins.
Sanjog Aul [00:25:17]:
Yeah. So with that said, with that analogy extending it, would you make a linchpin or a titled linchpin a shepherd, a sheepdog, or a sheep?
William George [00:25:25]:
Well, I think more like the sheepdog, but then they certainly have the capacity to step up and become the shepherd and give them that opportunity. Okay? And I think everyone has that capacity if they wanna step up.
Sanjog Aul [00:25:37]:
Would you make the sheepdog synonymous to a manager or still be a leader or leading from the middle?
William George [00:25:44]:
No. No. These are just linchpins in the organization to keep everyone together. Keep people going. They’re coworkers. They’re not managers. In fact, frankly I would rather have leaders and not managers, but that’s my own bias. But no, I think they’re the ones that keep everyone together. They’re the subtle leaders. I remember seeing a guy who was at a resort once and he said, I’m the one that keeps all the—he’s just an employee. He said, I keep all the employees in line. All these young people come in here. I have to acculturate them into we’re in a part of a community here. You need to be a part of this community. He didn’t have a manager’s title. He just worked there, but he’s very proud of what he did in bringing people into the flock.
Sanjog Aul [00:26:26]:
If you found an organization where there are a bunch of linchpins but not many of them are getting elevated to a leadership position or a leadership responsibility or role, what could be going wrong in their grooming process?
William George [00:26:42]:
Well, I think it’s the idea of elevation. I think it’s thinking of elevation in terms of title, salary, promotion, status. And I think it’s more about empowerment of getting people to step up and lead in place, lead right where you are, bloom where you’re planted and step up to that role right now. Maybe the title, maybe the money and all those things will follow. But it’s not like you get the title and then you lead. I don’t believe in that at all. That’s an old fashioned bureaucratic model. And I think young people today, particularly millennials, they want to lead now. Don’t make them stand in line. Give them an opportunity. Open the door and let them go. Give them a budget. Let them go and let them go do their thing in collaboration with others.
Sanjog Aul [00:27:25]:
Given where the focus is on shareholder value more than relatively more than the employees, which should not be the case, but that’s the reality that we are dealing with. What is it that we have to do in order for the people who are essentially the leaders today to shift that focus and look at these linchpins and timely convert them into leaders so that it doesn’t become a pressure cooker and eventually the organization crumbles. But please hold your thought. We’ll come back from the break. Please tune listeners. We’ll talk after we wrap.
Sanjog Aul [00:28:58]:
Welcome back. So the question is, Bill, when we are looking at shareholder value being more important and Wall Street analysts are more important than the people within, what do you think can be done to insulate that ongoing effort to keep identifying and grooming these linchpins into leaders so that we become that type of an organization that you mentioned, which is around the world. And most of them are linchpins, and it’s just moving forward as a result.
William George [00:29:26]:
I think there’s a misunderstanding of how shareholder value is created. Shareholder value is like the end of the equation, a plus b plus c equals d. What’s a? A is you have to create value for your customers and any company that’s not creating greater value for its customers than its competitors goes out of business. That’s why Yahoo is going out of business, why BlackBerry and Nokia went out of business, that’s why Kodak went out of business, because they were not creating greater value for the customers, like General Motors went bankrupt and Sears Roebuck struggled. And so that’s got to be your job. But the people that do that are the employees and the employees are inspired not by getting the shareholder value up, not by getting $0.02 a share more, they’re inspired by helping customers by creating great customer service, breakthrough ideas like that engineer who works at Apple creating a great product, that’s that pride and that gets translated. And then if you do that, if you create superior value for your customers and you have employees that are motivated to do that, you will create revenue growth, greater revenues and ultimately greater profitability and that leads to shareholder value. In a session at Harvard Business School yesterday with 50 CEOs, we said you cannot cost-cut your way into prosperity. So the pressure from shareholders to cut, cut, cut, cut people’s salaries, cut their bonuses, cut the number of people, lay off 10,000 people is a flawed notion that that’s going to give you prosperity. That’s just going to give you a little bump in the stock price. There’s no evidence that taking that cash and giving it back to the shareholders increases the stock price long term. All it does is short term bump, then those shareholders sell your stock and you’re left holding the bag and you have a depleted enterprise. And that’s what so many leaders have fallen into that trap. So I’m very, very much opposed to that and feel strongly that people have to focus on creating value for customers. And the great shareholder value creators are all great value creators for customers. All of Medtronic’s value of its shares, which gone from $1,100,000,000 to $115,000,000,000 today, all came from helping patients heal, get better, be restored to full life and help from new medical therapies. That’s where it all came from. And that’s true of any company. That’s true of why is Google the most valuable company in the world or Alphabet as it’s called now, and because they created value for their customers.
Sanjog Aul [00:31:51]:
So what you just said definitely is understood by the masses. And that’s why they tend to say, when it is so understood and it’s so clear and intuitive, why we still persist going in the same direction. Is that so the leader — the way I look at a leader is the person should be fearless. But are we being fearful because of which this persisting?
William George [00:32:15]:
Some of the most fearful people are old line CEOs trying to keep their jobs and trying to satisfy what I call the shareholder of the last five minutes, not long term committed people. And they lack courage. They’re not prepared to take them on. Take a guy like Paul Polman, Unilever’s CEO, I wrote about in my book, Discover Your True North. Paul would take on shareholders. He was getting a lot of pressure to improve the share price at Unilever. And he said, look, I’m not here to serve the shareholders. I’m here to serve consumers and my customers. And if I do that, well, the shareholders will benefit long term. But the short term view we have in our society and it varies with the distance from Wall Street. So the closer you are to New York, the greater those pressures are. And money becomes the goal and it’s a short term gain. And that’s why I think this is really not a good thing for our society.
Sanjog Aul [00:33:07]:
So you and I can, of course, scream at the top of our lungs, but how to make these people actually listen? Do we just bide our time so that these people who are just saving their jobs and many thousands of employees and the overall value that we could have otherwise delivered suffers?
William George [00:33:24]:
I think we need new leaders, and I’m very pleased to see the new leaders stepping up. At Harvard Business School where I teach, we do new leader programs twice a year, and we invited them to come back yesterday. We had these 50 large company CEOs coming to our program and they really are stepping up. These are exactly the things we’re talking about on your radio show, exactly what we talked about with the CEOs of the very large companies. You’d recognize the names of these companies. These are all major global companies.
Sanjog Aul [00:34:15]:
So now interestingly, linchpins, although I’d like to bring the conversation back to linchpins, and we say we need new leaders. So let’s say if we look at these linchpins who are otherwise doing great contribution and we have to groom them. Guess what? In many of the organizations where these linchpins exist, they’re also learning by watching what the leaders are doing, almost like parents. Right?
William George [00:34:36]:
They’re role models. The leaders are role models. You’re right.
Sanjog Aul [00:34:38]:
Role models. And if you are teaching them the wrong game of golf or wrong game of soccer, then these linchpins could be grossly undermining their own potential by acquiring certain traits without recognizing that they’re falling into that trap of shareholder value being higher or being put more at more prominence than the rest of the value delivered to the organization’s people. How do you prevent that?
William George [00:35:04]:
That’s the job of the leader or, if you want to follow the sports analogy, that’s the job of the coach. That’s what they’re called to do. And if they don’t do that, if they say they got a person with a lot of potential that just wants to play for themselves, and they won’t pass the ball, they won’t give it up to anyone else, they won’t recognize the team, they won’t recognize that getting an assist when somebody else scores a goal is just as important as getting the goal yourself, then you have to train them or there have to be rewards and punishments for people that play that way. They aren’t going to get to play. They can come to training and if they don’t get it, then they don’t get in the game. And in an organizational sense, they may have to leave the organization. People like that will pull you down.
Sanjog Aul [00:35:53]:
And so the point I was trying to make, you are so accurately, suggesting what should be done. But here, the challenge is the people at the top in organizations who are not thinking like true leaders and they’re just trying to bide their time for the job, to save their job. But linchpins exist. So who do they go ahead and learn from? Because they are learning some of the bad habits perhaps subconsciously from those people who are trying to convey that, hey, if you want to become a great leader, you have to show success and success could be by shareholder values and you have to cut costs. So these linchpins are getting the wrong lessons. How do you isolate them from getting those?
William George [00:36:28]:
That’s the job of other linchpins and leaders in the organization, to bring them into the mainstream of the organization and teach them, coach them, develop them about how things work here. That’s not the way we do it at our company. Let me explain to you how we do things. And you’re an outlier and you’ve got a lot of potential, but you have a choice. You can either become part of the company or you can be outside the company and then eventually you’ll go away.
Sanjog Aul [00:36:56]:
But Bill
William George [00:36:57]:
And I don’t see any other choice. Either develop them or go ahead.
Sanjog Aul [00:37:01]:
Yeah. So I wanted to ask you this. What you’re suggesting again is that somebody in the organization does this with these linchpins. But are they gonna go against the DNA of the top dog who is actually running the organization who may not be doing the right things?
William George [00:37:15]:
Yeah. That’s why it’s up to the top leaders to get rid of and we talk about that. Get rid of the outliers, the jerks, the people that are pulling the organization down. And by the way, one of the reasons you keep these people is because they have good performance by the numbers. They take credit for what everyone else does, but they may be driving the organization totally the wrong way. And so it’s your job to ensure that you don’t let people in this organization survive that way. And I’m on a number of boards of directors. I tell you, we counsel people like this out of the organization, even though they’re top performers and they’re in senior positions. You just can’t let them be the dominant factors in the organization or you’re going to pull the whole organization down.
Sanjog Aul [00:38:02]:
So a successful organization is usually when it listens to its people. And we would, in this case, focus on linchpins to say, what is a good mechanism to listen to these people so that because they would have bright ideas, and one of the things which would totally demotivate them is if that’s put on the side and not acted upon timely. And that should be—go ahead.
William George [00:38:23]:
Go ahead. Finish up. Sorry.
Sanjog Aul [00:38:25]:
So if you were to get a good mechanism of ideation, which is coming from linchpins to consideration, rationalization, prioritization, and execution, if this was not in a proper workflow and a feedback loop, it will not get these linchpins to really test out what they are thinking and also not motivate them enough to come up with even new ideas and actually move into that path of leadership. So sometimes ideas are dime a dozen, but it doesn’t follow through. What do you have to change in an organization so these linchpins always remain motivated?
William George [00:39:02]:
Well, I think the top leaders need to be with the people and understand the culture of what’s going on, not spending their time in boardrooms or in conference rooms looking at PowerPoint charts and looking at numbers all the time. They’ve got to get out and feel how the numbers are generated. That means they’ve got to get out with the people. They’ve got to be going to the lunchrooms. They’ve got to be going all over the company, whatever business you’re in and talking to the people in the IT department or talking to the people in the accounting department or on the factory floor or in the labs or in the field where the service people are. And if you’re not doing that, if you don’t have that direct contact, people want to know who’s the real leader that I’m dealing with here. In addition to that, you can do town hall forums and expose yourself to all kinds of questions, unfettered town hall forums, no kind of canned questions or things you have to send in, but just take them and really deal with people. What are their real concerns? And I think that’s the way you figure out what’s going on. That’s one of the hardest things top leaders have to do is figure out what’s going on and then carry it out. And I think that’s absolutely essential. It’s not just critical, it’s essential for any leader today to do that at all levels of the organization. Because the people I used to say to people, I don’t do any work at Medtronic. My job is creating an environment so you can do your jobs. And if I’m not doing that, then I’m failing in my work.
Sanjog Aul [00:40:26]:
One is management or leadership by walking around, which you just mentioned, where we listen to people, etcetera. Another is to actually create a culture and also a process which will allow those ideas to actually see the daylight, which is a big source of motivation for these linchpins to continually work through that mode and continue to add value. But sometimes, while you may motivate people to come up with ideas, when they do come up with ideas, the execution fails. Who comes up or who solves that problem? Because that is the true motivation for a linchpin to see their ideas turning into a real value or a service or an offering by the company which moves it forward. Because they feel that now they are part of something where they are being heard and their ideas are being implemented.
William George [00:41:17]:
Execution fails because a linchpin tries to work as a solo performer. It doesn’t call in collaborators and colleagues who have expertise they don’t have. No one person has the expertise to solve problems or to be the main show. I think you need a team. And if you don’t ask other people to work with you and help solve those problems, it will fail. If you get everyone committed to execution, it is all about execution. There are a lot of good ideas that never come to fruition because they’re not fully executed. But that means you’ve got to have diverse set of people contributing from their own capabilities to ensure that you have top execution and that things happen really well.
Sanjog Aul [00:42:01]:
In the way you explained and you responded to this question, what you are suggesting is the success of a linchpin isn’t actually in their hands; the organization as a whole has a large contribution towards it. Because if they are not the ones who are collaborating with people and they are not the ones who are pushing this forward, it’s not gonna happen. Is that what you’re saying?
William George [00:42:20]:
Yes. That is what I’m saying.
Sanjog Aul [00:42:23]:
Okay.
William George [00:42:23]:
So if that’s the case, push it forward. Go ahead.
Sanjog Aul [00:42:26]:
Yeah. So should it be the linchpin who should push it forward or should there be some organizational support?
William George [00:42:32]:
Well, you know, again, I’m in the leadership mode, but that’s the job of leaders at all levels to do that. So organizational support is leaders who step up and do that and bring people together and bring their ideas together and have expertise across a variety of domains. That’s their job, to bring people together to do that.
Sanjog Aul [00:42:52]:
Let’s take a quick break, listeners. We’ll be right back, and then let’s go to the basics of how do you identify a linchpin at the time when you are hiring them. Because, of course, we said that if you want to build the right organization, you have to have the people who are necessarily being a baggage to move on or find some other place to work, but then at the same time, you need a funnel. You need people to be flowing in, but at that time, the hiring becomes very critical. So the key question, how do you identify a linchpin at the time of hiring? Please stay tuned listeners. We’ll be right back.
Sanjog Aul [00:44:21]:
Welcome back. So, Bill, when we say that we want to build a good organization, we will do some cleanup, but you have to have a funnel going where you have the right type of people getting pulled in, and most of them should show traits of a linchpin. So what would that process look like? How would you identify a linchpin at the time when they’ve not even started working with you?
William George [00:44:40]:
Well, I think we hire too much on resumes and too much on IQ tests and things like that. I think you want to hire based on a combination of IQ and EQ, EQ being emotional intelligence, your self awareness, your social skills, your ability to relate to others, your knowledge of who you are and your passion to have a purpose to make a difference in the world. And I think we spend not enough time on the latter. We look at too much expertise and the mistakes I’ve made is hiring for expertise and not for caliber, not for character, not for looking at people’s ability to go beyond and who they are. I think this takes a much more intense interview process and I think it’s a huge mistake that a lot of organizations make. And so I think that what I have discovered in interviewing hundreds of leaders, hundreds and hundreds of leaders and knowing many, many of them personally that to be a great leader today, you have to be a good person. That means you have to have capability, your IQ, and you have to have EQ, emotional intelligence. And if you don’t have both those qualities, you will not advance and turn into a great leader.
Sanjog Aul [00:45:52]:
Now that said, suppose we bring in the right type of people in the room. And then at the end of the day in the organization, we have to groom them, and we have to first know what qualities we have to actually focus on in terms of developing. As you mentioned, Bill, like a musician or an athlete, but they need a team of people and a process in which they will be developed to their true potential. What would that look like?
William George [00:46:16]:
Well, I think it starts with all of our work, it says, and all the research says there are no such thing as fixed traits and characteristics of successful leaders. The academic community has been looking at that for fifty years and they haven’t come up with it. They’ve done 1,400 studies and they produce nothing because they’re looking for statistical validation of external traits and characteristics. There’s no such thing. You can’t say extroverts are better leaders than introverts. There are tremendous leaders of many types. It all starts with who you are as a person. What is your life story? What are the influences? What are the things that have influenced you? I was interviewing yesterday the head of one of the world’s largest investment banks and he grew up in the projects in Brooklyn. He was the son of a postal clerk and somehow he was very smart and he graduated early and did well and he got opportunities and he’s done really well but he had an internal drive and he said he worries about, you know, will the other people that are raised with wealth have that same drive? So who are you as a person? Where do you come from? What’s your ethnic background? What’s your commitment? What’s your belief structure? What are your values? And searching through that and understanding that’s really how do you know the difficult times in your life when you were impoverished or you were very, very ill and you thought you might die or your parents divorced or you felt rejected by the group, you felt discriminated against? That’s the crucible of life, where you find out who you are and how you respond to that. I have one person I’m thinking of as a CEO of a very, very large company, Merck, Ken Frazier, who’s the grandson of a slave. And I said, Ken, are you ever discriminated against? He said, Bill, I’m discriminated against all the time, but I’m not going to give you the power by getting angry about that. That’s your problem. If you discriminate against me because of the color of my skin, that’s your problem. And I’m not going to give you the satisfaction to think you wounded me because you know what? I’m going to walk right by this. It’s not my problem. And I think that’s really a good way of looking at it. It’s a very human way of looking at it. So when you get past that, then how do you gain self awareness? We have to get out of our 24/7 mode and do some reflection. I say a minimum of 20 minutes a day really reflect, am I doing what’s really important to me? Am I focusing on the immediate or am I focusing on the important? I think you need to make sure you’re focusing on important things. And then you have to work in a group and get honest feedback, and I think the best feedback is 360 feedback. And when you can get that feedback from other people, not bosses, in fact most companies like GE now are banning their performance management systems they’ve had in place for thirty years, and going to honest feedback. The best feedback he gets from your colleagues and your subordinates. That’s the very best because they work it every day and they see the good, the bad, and the ugly. And see then through that process you’re developing your self awareness and this gives you a self confidence, a self set and self esteem that you can then go on and do a lot more. And then you have to test your values. It’s not enough to say I have these values. You have to test them under pressure. What things are going wrong? Are you going to be true to your values? And then you find what we call the sweet spot. Your sweet spot is that place in the organization where you’re highly motivated by the work and you’re really good at it. If you can find that sweet spot, so you’re playing to your strengths, not your weaknesses, you’re surrounding with people that complement your weaknesses, but you’re also highly motivated by the work. If you’re not motivated, then you’re in the wrong place. Life’s too short to spend your life doing that.
Sanjog Aul [00:49:52]:
So when you look at developing these people, and sometimes, the level they reach is also corresponding to what level of coaching they got or the quality of the coach, if you will. So what kind of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, even the best athletes and best musicians have their own these hidden fears of sorts. What can we expect to receive from these linchpins, if you will, if we are right in the process of converting them to leaders?
William George [00:50:21]:
We find these fears and doubts come out most effectively in small groups. We have a small support group. I just came from my men’s group. Seven other guys and I meet every Wednesday morning. We talk about these real issues. What are our fears and doubts? What are the things we’re worried about at this stage in our life or our career? And why am I so fearful I might lose my job? You might open up a whole new window into the world that you haven’t even seen because you had to close that first door to open up the next one. And so I think fears and doubts are very real, but you can best deal with that in a small group, a support group that you feel cares about you and has your interest at heart. And by the way, you have their interest at heart too. So it’s a peer group. It doesn’t have to have a coach. Coaches are good to help you with this, but sometimes it’s better to have that peer group.
Sanjog Aul [00:51:05]:
And would you say there’s a common denominator or, like, we try to standardize everything. So if somebody’s trying to learn how to coach these linchpins or be even a peer group to effectively respond, are there typical questions that you see coming out from like, these questions being raised by the people who are otherwise linchpins and are being stretched to become a leader and they say, okay. This is what my fear is and you see a commonality across the board?
William George [00:51:29]:
Well, I certainly see the fears. I don’t think there’s commonality in coaching, and I think coaches that don’t reveal themselves and what their fears and doubts are aren’t very good coaches. I’m much more of a peer coaching, peer mentoring model, where we work together and I share with you what my fears are, what my doubts are and you share with me yours. I share with you my difficult times and you share yours. So it’s much more of a peer approach. It’s not a one up, one down. I don’t like the idea that someone’s judging you or telling you what to do because I’m not sure they’re all wise either. And I think it’s working through these really important things in life and that’s kind of the way I see it. But you need that sport team. You need people you can really count on. And make sure you don’t have sycophants around you to tell you how great you are. The higher up you go, the more likely you are to be surrounded with these kinds of people. And they’re really dangerous to your success.
Sanjog Aul [00:52:24]:
So when you — and this is the last question — when you look at the leaders within a company and who are supposed to be doing their job of molding these linchpins into leaders, what’s your message and appeal to them?
William George [00:52:38]:
That you need a company with not just a few leaders at the top, but you need leaders at all levels. And you need empowered people; every person in your organization has got to be empowered to fulfill the mission of the organization. So the only way you’re going to get that is to build that broad base of leaders throughout the organization and take the talented people and help them develop as leaders. They don’t have to have big titles. They don’t have to go to the top. Maybe they shouldn’t be Vice President of Engineering. Maybe they should just be a great software developer. But they are, in effect, leading their software group. And so I think it’s really important that you think of it that way.
Sanjog Aul [00:53:16]:
On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Bill, for sharing your thoughts on how organizations can turn linchpins into leaders and how linchpins who themselves recognize that they have the potential to step up and go out and become the best they can be. Thank you so much again.
William George [00:53:33]:
Thank you very much for having me. It’s a great discussion. You asked a lot of good questions.
Sanjog Aul [00:53:38]:
And, thank you so much again, Bill. Please like us on Facebook listeners, search for CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CIO Talk Network. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week. Take care, and God bless.
