If you study leadership–yesterday was a great day to watch television.
Sometimes we have a unique opportunity to compare the voice of two different leaders. Last night I watched to interesting interviews which I think should be examined by any student of leadership. Take a look.
As you watch these videos, what does it tell you about leadership–its pros, cons, culture, ideology, rhetoric, style, etc.. I think you’ll find it relevant.
Part 1: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
First, Larry King interviews Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was a fascinating take on leadership, ideology, and world view.
Jack Ma admits he doesn’t know too much about technology, but he says he makes up for it by hiring smart people who can make technology work for them. He is also focused on keeping operations lean, efficient, and value focused.
When you listen to Jack Ma notice how he has very carefully and clearly chosen who he wants to spend his time with. A different style than the Larry King interview.
Lenny Rhine admits that working for a non-for-profit isn’t always easy. “Yeah” he tells me over the phone, “there are times when it’s hard…I can tell you stories about being in Nigeria when the power goes out. I have my war stories.”
Before Lenny started regularly finding himself in third world countries without power, he was a librarian at the University of Florida. Lenny says, “Thirty of my 32 years there I was at the Heath Science Center Library.”
If you meet Lenny the first thing you notice is that he’s not shy. The second thing you notice is that he’s not the kind of guy who can sit still and say he’s having a great time. He’s always moving and thinking, using his arms and his eyes to help tell a story.
So it makes sense when he tells me that he got restless at the library. According to Lenny, “I needed more challenges. I had everything running smoothly…and I had the budget organized. I needed something else.”
That’s when Lenny started to take stock of his needs and his skills. He wanted to give back and make a contribution to society and he also knew a heck of a lot about medical research, journals, websites, and resources. It wasn’t long before Lenny realized what he could do.
“I found outreach a great way to challenge myself, and as a librarian it was easy.” He started talking to people involved with the University of Zambia and together they built the Essential Health Links Gateway—an online list of annotated links and resources health professionals in low-income countries needed but couldn’t necessarily find on their own. Additionally, Lenny helped develop workshops that helped new users navigate the gateway.
As Lenny’s passion for distributing important information to developing countries grew, he retired. This could be the end of Lenny’s story, but he refused to let his skills off to pasture. He wanted to continue sharing what he knew and, chances were he probably wouldn’t be able to sit still at home and say he was having a blast.
That’s when a chance meeting turned into an opportunity Lenny couldn’t say no to. In 2005 Lenny met Barbara Aronson in Brazil who spearheaded a small project called Hinari with the World Health Organization called. Hinari’s primary goal was simple. They wanted to give free access to online medical journals to people in developing countries. That just so happened to match Lenny’s goal.
“I talked to her for two and half hours” Said Lenny. “She encouraged me to help [Hinari] train.” It didn’t take long for Lenny to agree.
Lenny joined four other trainers who design and give workshops to medical professionals around the world. Today, Hinari helps 109 countries get free or low cost access to over 7,000 journal titles.
“It’s hard to measure our success,” Lenny explains, “It is hard to quantify the impact of the training.” But it’s not hard to see how an organization like Hinari can be invaluable. If trainers like Lenny can help a doctor get the information he needs quickly and without cost in an environment where internet connections and power are a luxury rather than a second thought lives can be saved and research can be conducted.
That’s why Lenny ends up in countries like Nigeria with his fingers crossed; hoping that there is electricity and the internet is working. Without it he can’t teach effectively.
But non-profit work isn’t all about hoping—it also demands a very strict allocation of resources. “I have a finite amount of money and I have to split it between my travel and my salary. It’s nominal—but it’s something I love. I get a lot out my job, so it’s worth it.”
Lenny continues, “The ability to make a contribution—give back —and travel keeps me going. When I see physicians look at articles they have been [trying to find] for over 10 years, they are just drawn in—and it’s a good feeling…The ability to contribute to a situation makes it better. We are only here once.”
Hinari has a huge mission and they don’t have a lot of resources, yet they still have a lot of momentum and they’re always growing and finding new opportunities. Lenny reasons that it’s because “everybody knows the agenda, egos don’t get in the way, and everyone really tries to do what’s best with whatever they have.”
It proves that a strong agenda, a rallying point everyone can agree on, can hold everything together even if it all hangs on a shoestring.
For more information about Hinari watch the video below.
6. I don’t care how long you’ve been around, you’ll never see it all. ~Bob Lemon, 1977
When we reach a position of leadership we like to think that we have learned a thing or two. But one of the ways to remain proactive is always remember that you don’t know it all. If you look at each day as a day you might just see, learn, or experience something new, you are ready to be a proactive and engaged leader.
5. You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970
Don’t forget that no matter how much you think you’re in control, no matter how much you think you can dictate the future, you must stay flexible. Every time you sit back and say “I’m in control of this situation” there is a good chance that it’s the other way around. There is always a new leadership challenge around the corner that will force you to re-evaluate every aspect of how you do business.
4. You don’t save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain. ~Leo Durocher, in New York Times, 16 May 1965
In leadership, you can get into a world of trouble if you don’t give each day 100% of your effort and focus. Being a proactive leader means that you must execute each task with your best tools and ideas. You can’t save your best for the next project because if you don’t get things done now there may not be a next project.
3. A game of great charm in the adoption of mathematical measurements to the timing of human movements, the exactitudes and adjustments of physical ability to hazardous chance. The speed of the legs, the dexterity of the body, the grace of the swing, the elusiveness of the slide – these are the features that make Americans everywhere forget the last syllable of a man’s last name or the pigmentation of his skin. ~Branch Rickey, May 1960
This isn’t your typical brain-dead baseball quote, but it does prove a point: Leadership, like baseball, isn’t about fancy clothes, Ivy League colleges, pretty faces, or skin color. It’s simply about getting things done. If you have all the skills necessary, if you have learned which tools are needed to execute, then you have the ability to become a proactive leader.
2. Baseball statistics are like a girl in a bikini. They show a lot, but not everything. ~Toby Harrah, 1983
Being a successful leader is more than just spreadsheets and bottom lines. If you don’t cultivate those you lead, if you don’t understand how their success is attained, you are heading towards trouble. When people in your team or organization stop achieving success, you need to know exactly how they got to where they are. Otherwise helping them recover will be close to impossible. Take the time to learn what motivates each employee. Learn about their strengths and weaknesses. This way if their numbers slip, you won’t just say “Work harder” or “Sell more or you’re fired”, you will be able to give constructive comments on how they can get things done again.
1. Always play a game with somebody, never against them. Always win a game, never beat an opponent. ~Andrew Bailey
It’s important as a leader to encourage those you lead to be competitive. But nothing good can come of playing people off one another. Don’t make groups fight each other for supremacy. These internecine battles might work in the short term to raise productivity, but in the end it will do nothing but build resentment and destroy any trust you have with your team.
Saad Mohseni is Afghanistan’s first captain of industry and chairman of Moby Group. In this week’s New Yorker, Ken Auletta profiles Mohensi who owns radio and television networks, an advertising agency, a movie production company, and many other businesses. Mohseni’s rise is important to American concerns in the region and may offer a view into what a post-occupied Afghan economy could look like.
After decades in exile, Mohseni returned to Afghanistan in 2002 with the hopes of raising money to begin producing radio content for news starved Afghans. Prior to Mohseni’s network only the state run Voice of Sharia was accessible to Afghans.
After pooling resources he was still about $200,000 short. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) stepped up and provided the remaining angel funding. “Without United States support, Saad Mohseni could not have succeeded at what he did” Auletta writes, “He needed that infrastructure, that capital expense that the government supported.”
Currently USAID sponsors “On the Road” a weekly reality show. Starting next year the State Department will pay for another program about, in the words of David Ensor, director of communications and public diplomacy at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, “cops who may be tempted by bribes but don’t take them.”
A major reason for the Karzai government’s unpopularity is the perception that corruption is condoned, particularly among the police. The show, Ensor explains, is meant to help recruit police by demonstrating “that cops can be heroes.”
Through Mohseni’s reality TV, dramas, and soap operas, young Afghans, especially woman, are beginning to view themselves as equal stakeholders in the Afghan society. Since the eve of the Soviet invasion many bright and ambitious young people have fled Afghanistan creating a brain drain that could impede Afghanistan from emerging as a democratic and economically viable nation. Mohseni’s programs and other NATO led initiatives can restrict this flow.
As should now be clear after many failed nation building excursions relying on ‘hard’ power all but ensures disaster. Instead, partnerships between state and non-state actors must be formed to foster a collectivist mentality and most importantly to provide hope to a people besieged by corrupt officials. By actively building and deploying political capital, Mohseni has paved a road of other entrepreneurial leaders to follow.
I asked 22 Cornell graduate students to list 5 people they considered leaders–good, bad, or evil. Answers ranged from the obvious, MLK Jr., to the personal, lacrosse team captain, but what’s compelling are the top results. With the exception of Obama’s presence, the top 10 list has looked like this for a number of years.
If you study leadership–yesterday was a great day to watch television.
