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May 30, 2008
Exclusive: Values and Business Leadership
Colonel Kenneth Allard (US Army, ret.)
Back when I was teaching at West Point, a Texas alum who had made more oil money than either God or JR Ewing offered some timeless wisdom to my cadets: "Everything that the military does is just a violent form of economics." So the reason why my time is now principally spent teaching MBA students rather than fighting Soviets, Serbs or Leftist insurgents at MSNBC should be obvious if you have:
a. Checked the price of gas recently;.
b. Tried to sell your home to anybody except the local highway authority;
c. Noticed that corn futures are higher than at any time since the Civil War; or
d. Wondered why "CEO compensation" is one of the few categories in which the U.S. economy leads the rest of the world hands down.
The connection between those dots is called strategic planning, which varies from country to country. The Chinese map such things carefully, learning lessons from foreign competitors while patiently laying the groundwork to capture future markets. In corporate America, however, strategic planning is typically what you do between now and next Tuesday, which explains a lot about why foreign economies are eating our lunch. So while we teach our MBA students about the ferocious global competition they face, the bottom line is always about leadership.
I teach at the University of Texas San Antonio, which this spring let me teach an experimental course in business intelligence, focusing on cyber defenses, war-gaming and other 21st century leadership techniques. Open-source intelligence and social networking were just some of the tools students used to analyze several local companies facing that new wave of competition. But the course began with Nicholas Taleb's brilliant best-seller, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Black swans, once thought not to exist, suddenly turned up, just like certain other unlikely events: tsunamis, stock market crashes or the collapse of the Soviet Union. Taleb's point is that the improbable becomes more likely as global change becomes exponential, moving from the comfortable old world of "Mediocristan" to the scarier climes of the new "Extremistan."
Like the college football hero contemplating life in the NFL, companies even remotely interested in surviving this daunting environment need to be faster, smarter, more agile and a whole lot less bureaucratic. And something else as well: better run and far better led. My management students are beloved though unscientific samples: but if they are any indication, there is reason for concern. Tragically, those bright young 30-somethings have already learned that corporate America is mostly about authority, position and "enhancing the bottom line" (which often seems identical with Protecting Number One). There are legendary stories of companies where employee suggestion boxes were removed through mutual disinterest. Or where the CEO had an open-door policy: but also an executive assistant trained to whisk right back out again any employee unwise enough to wander in. As Don Imus puts it: "You just can't make this stuff up."
Because my management course is run as something of a closet insurgency against bad corporate leadership, good examples compel correspondingly closer attention. Appropriately enough, much food for thought was provided during last week's San Antonio media blitz by Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy. In his interview with our local paper, Cathy sounded little different from most corporate execs: checking out the competition, worrying about the rising price of commodities and "deciding not to participate" in the recession.
But it was during his appearances before two San Antonio churches where his real message came across: that cutting-edge leadership is timeless, rooted in strong personal values and a corporate culture which actually lives them. Chick-fil-A believes in keeping its franchises closed on Sundays: but also in turning faith-based virtues into strategic commitments: "We will generate more business in six days than the competition does in seven."
Such personal examples also suggest why the 60,000 young people working behind Chick-fil-A counters have been well-trained to treat customers and co-workers with conspicuous dignity and respect. You get some, you give back a lot. And maybe it's just good business: but couldn't this thing about "going the second mile" pay off in ways other than just selling chicken sandwiches?
Col. (Ret) Ken Allard is an executive-in-residence at UTSA, the author of Warheads, and a columnist with the San Antonio Express-News. E-mail comments: Warheads6@aol.com.
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