We have all been inspired by a lot of people in our careers. Role models can help us learn to be leaders and stretch beyond our comfort zone. Mentors help us work through problems that seem intractable but guide us to realize they are common issues with plentiful solutions. We all remember too the big charismatic personalities we worked for, leaders who my coach always describes as Chief Entertainment Officers. Many of us are also grateful to the career champions who give us our big breaks and change our direction or momentum. Then, for me at least, there is one more group. The best of the best. They may fit into one or more of the prior categories, but they are the few truly brilliant people we get to spend time with that are a level beyond the rest. I have worked with 3 in almost 30 years.
These were remarkably different people in every sense. In background, wealth, leadership style, business focus, age and interests. They had different attitudes to risk but were all long-term thinkers. They were incredibly instinctive about everything they did and had the self-confidence and track records to back it up. They listened a lot but formed their own judgments carefully with a deep reliance on their gut, experience and their intuitive read of the people they were hearing from. Despite their standout abilities they were often - though not always - the most courteous and respectful. Despite their many differences I found there were three traits they shared that were central to how they approached business.
The first characteristic was a determined ability to reduce any business to its core, central essence. The business model reduced, almost ad absurdum, to the very few things that mattered. Through that, they built confidence in knowing what was important and had a complete disinterest in the myriad other activities and ideas that were thrown at them in the boardroom. Many found them simplistic as a result. They were, but in a profound and highly thoughtful way. They could tune in and show the flaw in any plan because they went straight to these foundational dynamics and looked for appropriate focus and progress. Interestingly none of the three were micromanagers so they did not attempt to intervene and stop all the other stuff. It simply didn’t matter to them. They wanted you to know that they knew it didn’t matter. They expected you to adjust accordingly and focus on the core. They left you to figure it out. As a consequence, they were leaders that were simultaneously principled and pragmatic.
An important extension of this was the second characteristic. They were each deeply skeptical of difficulty. They would constantly see management teams try too many things and, worse, too many unrealistic things. Ideas that would cost more than they would deliver. Ideas that waste time and money. They didn’t like turnarounds and they didn’t like rebuilding business models. They wanted simple straight-forward focus on a scalable core idea. They knew that teams can get behind an idea like that and focus on getting consistently better at it. Churn frustrates progress. Difficulty is often at the expense of simpler, more impactful moves. A version of this philosophy was captured very neatly in Cynthia Montgomery’s book The Strategist where she talked of the myth of the super-manager. It is amazing how we all rush to sign up to incredibly difficult missions, over-looking business model realities, industry and competitive dynamics. We are all guilty.
Finally, and perhaps least surprising, the 3 leaders matched their talent with incredible drive. Their motives underneath this drive were quite different. They were pursuing different endgames. Yet, in each case they were doing it because they wanted to. Viscerally. They had long passed the point of needing to do anything and yet the paths they each picked were time consuming, intense and unrelenting. They didn’t demand the same drive in others, the way that weaker leaders often make service and sacrifice the price of loyalty. We all have periods of overwork and prioritizing our career but it is very difficult to maintain an exceptional level of focus and drive for the long term. It has to be woven into every aspect of what you do and boundaries blur. It may not be a healthy or attractive model for many. Nonetheless, these three leaders were who they were because of their drive. They sustained that commitment over a very long period of time and as a result could each achieve extraordinary things.
It's a privilege to learn from the best. Three simple ideas. Boiling any business down to the real essence. Eschewing difficulty in favor of nurturing the core consistently and carefully. Applying a continuous determination for progress and making the next move forward.
A pretty profound formula. I was lucky to have the chance to learn from them.