LEADERS KNOW ALL OF IT MATTERS

Cervantes in his epic, DON QUIXOTE, originates the marvelous if frequently mangled phrase: 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating. By a small sample we may judge of the whole piece.'

Leadership is about the pudding as well as all the 'small samples' that constitute it. As I was thinking about all this, certain experiences from last year came dramatically to mind.

Last year I returned back to Tokyo after some time, a city I love, part of a culture I deeply respect (with all of its shortfalls and blinkers -- like all other cultures). I was running a conference at the Sheraton Grande Tokyo Bay. I was horrified to learn that they had no DSL connection in the rooms (now considered a 'basic' world wide, a la Tom Friedman's thesis on the 'flattening of the world'), no wireless, and no dial-up! This last because to use their phones to dial out with your computer modem, you apparently needed special equipment. They had some at the hotel, but only about 6-7 units! Not surprisingly, they were all loaned out, doubtless to other web-starved patrons.

Now, to be fair, Tokyo Bay is a Disney Hotel. That is to say, Tokyo's Disney Land is in Tokyo Bay, and all the hotels in that area, largely cater to families. Or at least this was the 'explanation' I was given by many people who were attending my session.

I was entirely unimpressed by this rationale. First, in the world's most technologically advanced society, this was a sheer outrage. Parents accompanying their kids couldn't possibly need to check e mails at night say? Moreover, which planet are the kids from? Who surfs the net more, kids or adults?

Now, they did have ONE computer on their premises which was internet-connected. It was on the Club Floor, and was only available 9 a.m. to 8 p.m! The queue for it was longer than for rations during the potato famine in Ireland.

'The proof of the pudding is in the eating' indeed. There was a catastrophic failure of leadership at the Sheraton in designing hotel facilities so out of step with the times, with today's kids, and the basic communication needs of modern society.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a 'tech junkie'. I like my time in splendid isolation, with nothing more technological than a bottle opener too. But not on a business trip, not in Tokyo.

LEADERSHIP QUESTION: What aspects of our own business are jarring in today's world, given our customers' overall expectations, given where we do business and our overall positioning? What doesn't 'fit' in with our overall service offering? That's where our leadership attention needs to go.

After that conference, we spent a week-end in Tokyo. I had wanted to buy my wife a Japanese kushi, a wooden hand-crafted comb, that takes several years to craft, is dipped in oils, and precisely designed so that it never catches your hair. The shop is 300 years old, and just off a major bustling thoroughfare, a 'find' where you'd least expect it. Yet it is an oasis of timeless quality, heritage and dedication.

Watching them encase the comb in a wonderful container and wrap it with such aesthetic reverence, almost devotionally, made me realise that we are just too much of an either/or species. Leadership is profoundly about both/and.

What I mean is that in the 80's we flocked to the Japanese addiction to quality and care. We 'TQM'ed' everything. Then in the rollercoaster innovation and technology rides of the '90's we began to think of the Japanese as too inflexible, and rigid and uncreative. Of course that stereotype ignores companies like Sony as well as huge swathes of Japanese society that have been at the forefront of design as well as product innovation. But even if we take that monochromatic assessment on board, at the comb shop I realised that we need enduring commitment alongside breakneck re-creation. Otherwise all we'll have is pointless flux. We need to ADD new options, not SUBTRACT extraordinary achievement that outlasts the whims of fickle fashion.

Leadership has to build a company and culture that endures, with some value-delivering rituals and commitments that are not dissimilar to the craft and dedication of the master comb maker, the master katana shaper (the classic Japanese samurai sword), or the master bonsai nurturer (the remarkable miniature trees cultivated in Japan). On the other hand, leaders must ALSO smoke out all that is pointlessly ritualised, bureaucratic, backward-looking and deadening. For example, the chauvinism towards women, the cronyism, the dysfunctional government and organisational structures, that abound not only in Japan but in so many traditional and even superficially 'modern' societies.

As we were getting out to dinner one day in Tokyo, I dropped several coins as I stepped out of my taxi. They were of relatively minor denomination, so I considered just leaving them for someone to 'find'. No chance!

Here in central Tokyo, well-heeled and impeccably groomed people just swarmed around and started pointing out to me where the coins were. To accommodate their generous attention, I picked a few up. Then, a lady tapped my wife on the shoulder, pointed out two coins we had missed, and picked them up herself and handed them to us. She gave us a smile to stave off any embarassment and moved on. Remarkable! The proof of the pudding is in the eating, indeed!

LEADERSHIP QUESTION: Where do we need dedication to quality and processes and reliably repeated experiences in our business? In contrast, where do we need mind-blowing innovation and extraordinary game-changing impact? Let's not confuse the two, and let's not ignore either one.

Moreover, are our daily behaviours (like the people helping with the coins) helping to broadcast what we believe in? If an alien walked through our offices, what would they say our values REALLY are (not what we profess, how we actually behave)?

Final vignette. Last year we also took some clients to Turkey for a Leadership Journey (for a description of our Leadership Journeys please visit our website). Just after, we spent a day drinking in the cultural and historical treasures of 'Nova Roma', this offshoot of Byzantium, this crucible of history, Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire, and now modern day Istanbul.

As we wandered among The Blue Mosque, and the converted Hagia Sofia (converted from Church to Mosque), we could only gape in slack-jawed wonder. Hagia Sofia, the Church of Divine Wisdom (the meaning of 'Sofia'), has been re-built thrice on the same spot. After being largely finalised by Justinian, it was later remade into a Mosque, and now is a museum. As a result, they have restored some of the Christian frescoes. So, alongside Islamic art and Quranic verses, are mosaics of Jesus and Mary and John the Baptist and more. As a mingling of religions and symbols and spirituality, it is mind-blowing.

As we walked between these two buildings, we were also walking between centuries, and crusades, and empires, and amazing devotion.

I couldn't help but think of the timeless beauty of these buildings. And while the religions that inspired them also produced untold suffering and cruelty, the beauty of the faiths have produced extraordinary expressions of human imagination and genius.

Today in our more agnostic age, we don't kill less violently. Our modern wars have not only been fueled by ancient religions. The two world wars were between secular countries for secular purposes. So too Vietnam and the killing fields of Cambodia for example. We kill with or without faith it seems...to our shame. The Tsunami that hit Asia killed only 3% of those that were killed in the Holocaust. We are, sadly, the greatest natural disaster this planet has seen.

Hence we need guidance, we need strategic leadership, but also ethical leadership, and the channeling of our energies to productive purposes. Businesses therefore that fill more than economic needs, families that provide more than just self-worship for patriarchs and matriarchs, but which produce citizens as future leaders for this world, are an overwhelming need.

So, we certainly stumble with or without faith. But without faith in something we truly and deeply care about and for, we seem to produce very little that is monumental. We only produce Sigiriya's and Notre Dame's and Blue Mosques when we are building it for something beyond ourselves. When our own private passions and vanities are the greatest end, there is scant leadership, and all we produce is disposable and insubstantial.

Today we pay our workers rather than enslaving them (or so we hope). That's progress certainly. But we still need towering purposes, and grand passions, and transformational visions, capable of creating something that can BOTH evolve AND yet endure, spaces and institutions that are both lasting beacons as well as timely centres for debate and regeneration. The key difference from the past is these purposes and passions and visions have to be SHARED. They cannot be the private plaything much less obsession of some tyrannical, political or even corporate potentate.

In greater and greater numbers people are seeking meaning. As leaders we have to celebrate that, and help provide it.

LEADERSHIP THOUGHT: What in our business deserves to endure? Is there anyting we've created, or that we stand for, that is worthy of a legacy? What in the future are we aiming for that will, in Steve Job's words, 'make a dent in the universe'? And as leaders are we asking for monuments to our own glory, or are we seeking to together co-create outrageous examples of human spirit, imagination and contribution?

As we ponder these vignettes, let's consider the following. If the proof is in the eating, and each piece reveals the whole, let's not only look at our 'whole performance' but also the pieces that make it up: The services we offer, the connectivity we provide, the quality and dedication our products and services embody, our reflexive behaviour, our support for each other every day and particularly in crisis, and our ability to imagine and invent and act on something that will add value not only today, but far beyond.

Omar Khan,
Senior Partner, Sensei International
Phone: 1 (212) 295 2191, Fax: 1 (212) 295 2121
e mail: omar@sensei-international.com

Omar Khan is a globally acknowledged leadership development innovator and success coach. He is a sought after change catalyst and a pioneer in transformational learning. He is the author of the acclaimed book SYNERGY as well as the newly released and much awaited, TIMELESS LEADERSHIP.