Fórum Internacional
de Liderança e
Sustentabilidade
2010
O I Fórum Internacional de
Liderança e Sustentabilidade foi
promovido pelo Grupo Bridge, com o
objetivo de discutir fatos, tendências,
desafios e perspectivas da Liderança no
atual contexto da sustentabilidade.
Através da visão da Liderança sob a
perspectiva das áreas de Educação,
Empresa e Sociedade, o evento
estabeleceu
ao seu final um
levantamento dos principais desafios
para a atuação da liderança em cada
uma das áreas, a fim de orientar os anos
que virão.
Participam do evento a Drucker
Society Global Network, a International
Leadership Association (ILA) e o
Mirum: Vivamus est ipsum, vehicula nec, feugiat rhoncus, accumsan id, nisl. Lorem
ipsum dolor sit a
met, consectetuer
Aconteceu em São Paulo, em junho de 2010, o I Fórum
Internacional de Liderança e Sustentabilidade: Soluções
Transformadoras
Instituto Sagres, com o apoio do
Instituto de Liderança do Brasil (ILB).
Estiveram presentes no evento como
palestrantes
Prof.
Odir
Pereira,
representando a ILA e o ILB, Prof. Jair
Militão, do Instituto Sagres, Lawrence
Greenspun, da Drucker Society Global
Network e Celso Braga do Grupo
Bridge.
Neste informativo apresentamos um
resumo de cada palestra realizada pelos
participantes, de forma a permitir que o
conteúdo seja disseminado
.
Agradecemos a todos que estiveram
presentes e contribuiram para que o I
Fórum tenha sido um sucesso.
Conteúdo:
Uma visão a partir do campo do
trabalho
2
Uma visão a partir do campo
educacional
4
Uma visão a partir do campo
social
5
Sustentabilidade
nas atitudes
humanas:
1. Ecologicamente correta
2. Socialmente justa
Liderança e
Sustentabilidade:
Uma visão a partir do campo
do trabalho
Celso Teixeira Braga
Entendo que sustentabilidade é um
termo que se refere ao conjunto de
atividades humanas sociais, econômicas,
culturais e ambientais que são pronunciadas
pelos homens em relação, no qual está
intrínseco
o
empreendimento
ecologicamente correto, economicamente
viável, socialmente justo e culturalmente
aceito. Percebo neste sentido que não posso
falar de sustentabilidade sem falar dos
aspectos de humanização que envolvem os
que agem como um elemento fundamental
de qualquer situação que chamemos
sustentável.
No campo organizacional, assim como nos
campos educacional, social, econômico e
cultural, todos deveríamos estar envolvidos
em sustentabilidade uma vez que todos
viveremos as consequências da não
sustentabilidade. Mas o que de fato tem
ocorrido no campo organizacional?
A prática sustentável ainda está, na maioria
das vezes, relacionada a uma área de
sustentabilidade, que acaba sendo entendida
como a fonte da organização de onde se
produzem projetos sustentáveis. Contratam
um especialista, e às vezes uma pequena
equipe, que luta para envolver a empresa
num esquema sustentável, buscam assim
projetos para dar apoio à comunidade, ações
para lidar melhor com as questões
ambientais, cuidam de dar direcionamento a
projetos internos de susbstituição de
materiais de produção por materiais
ecologicamente corretos, assim como várias
outras iniciativas que são excelentes e vem
envolvendo, de certa forma, as pessoas da
organização.
Parece-me
então
que
as
organizações
entenderam, através de seus acionistas como
líderes, que a sustentabilidade será
necessária. Não sabemos, no entanto, se
entendem o que a sustentabilidade significa
de um ponto de vista mais abrangente, que é
o envolvimento de todos. Claramente se
torna um grande desafio escapar do limite de
uma área, de projetos que são criados de uns
para os outros, se nós queremos que existam
ações e empreendimentos sustentáveis em
que todos estejam realmente envolvidos.
Vejamos a sustentabilidade como uma
prática diária e conjunta que se faz por
pessoas conscientes, o que implica que todos
estejam em uma relação de proximidade,
num diálogo aberto e livres para ações
criativas e transformadoras.
No cenário organizacional esta mudança está
em curso e também o principal personagem
que pode influenciá-la de modo efetivo: o
3. Economicamente viável
4. Culturalmente aceita
Líder! Porque ele é um modelo a ser
seguido. O papel da liderança deixa neste
exato momento de ser técnico para ser
educador. Educação para a vida ou para a
sustentabilidade se quisermos dizer. Onde
ele assume as funções de filósofo, psicólogo,
antropólogo, artista, arquiteto e muitas
outras que possam estar ligadas à natureza
humana.
A liderança sustentável fomenta ações
conjuntas, mais integradas hierarquicamente
falando, mais responsáveis a partir dos
envolvidos, onde há maior autonomia, há
engajamento de propósitos, há significado
para a direção sustentável.
Dito deste modo podemos entender que
estamos no caminho, já que percebo muitas
lideranças e empresas indo nesta direção
porém devemos pensar se a velocidade de
nossos passos está adequada1, e se estamos
pensando em como ajudar a liderança a
assumir este novo papel.
As
lideranças que estão há mais
tempo na posição ainda veem a
função como autoridade máxima,
como técnica, e ficam mais isolados
entre si. Liderança de áreas,
departamentos, divisões todos bem
separados onde uns não interferem
nas direções dadas pelos outros.
Tornando-se algo mais pessoal do que
integrado. ― Talvez sua área tenha
dificuldades, mas se a minha estiver
bem. Cada um com seus problemas‖.
Para os mais novos ocorre a
necessidade de se afirmar, ficando
também isolados. ―Se uma liderança
foi substituída, por exemplo, por uma
promoção, assumirei sua antiga
função e o melhor é acabar com o que
ela vinha fazendo, fazer tudo
diferente, assim vou mostrar meu
talento‖.
O que estamos vivenciando na
liderança tem demonstrado que haverá
pouca chance de alcançarmos a
velocidade correta se não criarmos um
projeto de educação sustentável, que
inclui a percepção da natureza
humana nos sentidos antes já citados:
O
aumento da proximidade na relação traduz maior conjunto e cooperação com
menor competição, não estamos contra os outros, mas com eles num juízo comum
sobre a realidade. Neste sentido se cria o sujeito coletivo e se pode viver com uma
prática que tem significado.
A liderança no ambiente empresarial pode viver a partir de princípios de
sustentabilidade como algo que está fora de sua consciência, sendo assim algo a que
deve se adaptar, se encaixar ou se adequar, porém, só poderemos perceber uma real
sustentabilidade se estes princípios forem algo que fazem parte da consciência das
filosóficos,
psicológicos,
antropológicos,
arquitetônicos,
artísticos e humanos, para a educação
de nossas lideranças. O fato é que
muitas
lideranças
estão
desconfortáveis com esta situação de
transição, o que nos leva a ter um bom
discurso sobre sustentabilidade, mas
lideranças e, como tal, estão presentes em toda a coerência de suas ações.
uma prática incoerente. O mundo
interno do sujeito está em conflito
com o externo. Esta ação irracional
da própria existência pede uma
grande parte baseado nas estruturas militares de distribuição do poder para as
intervenção,
se
a
luta
for
demasiada dura a ação deve ser
terapêutica, porém há um modo
que temos percebido ser efetivo, o
do aumento do diálogo e do
aumento da proximidade na
relação, quanto mais dividimos as
dificuldades abertamente como
conjunto mais podemos aprender
uns com os outros, isto levaria a
queda de resistências e barreiras.
Como provocar uma percepção de sustentabilidade nas lideranças?
Através de uma nova visão dos modelos hierárquicos!
O desenho vertical das lideranças, adotado desde a época da industrialização, e em
decisões, serve bem à manutenção de uma proposta onde há menor diálogo, maior
distanciamento da realidade, quando se trata dos que decidem versus os que
executam e também serve para manter a relação mais distante, construindo assim um
ambiente que limita as consciências dos indivíduos executores levando-os a agirem
segundo interesses espúrios à sua humanidade.
Ao escaparmos deste desenho, em buscade algo mais integrado onde todos fazem
parte do todo e ampliando o diálogo em todas as camadas hierárquicas, podemos
propor um desenho que parte de responsabilidades ampliadas e onde as lideranças
são fomentadores de princípios sustentáveis, e que portanto, abrem a possibilidade de
serem contrargumentados em suas decisões, fazendo com que o que está sendo
pronunciado pelo conjunto ganhe dimensão de estímulo à recriação do ambiente, de
modo a atender a viabilidade econômica, a aceitação cultural, a justiça social e a correta
aplicação ecológica na dimensão da práxis transformadora.
I Forum
Internacional de
Liderança e
Sustentabilidade
Palestras
Soluções
Vivências
Possibilidades
Discussões
Aprendizado
do processo educacional.
Educar para a sustentabilidade é
Liderança e
procurar 26
atingir a que ponto de
15
No ponto de partida 12
estão situados os
Lorem ipsum dolor
Lorem ipsum
Sustentabilidade:
chegada?Lorem dolor
antropológicos,
gnosiológicos,
Sitpressupostos
amet, consectetuer
Sit amet,
consectetuer adipiscing
Sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing
psicológicos,
seja, a visão
adipiscing
elit. sociológicos,
elit.ou
Pellentesque
nunc tellus,
nunc tellus,
Partimoselit.
dePellentesque
que lugar?
Uma visão a partir do Pellentesque
iaculis quis, volutpat eget,
de homemnunc
que o educadoriaculis
tem. quis, volutpat eget,
Que caminho
seguimos?
tellus, iaculis quis,
bibendum ac.
bibendum
ac.
volutpat eget, bibendum
campo educacional ac.No ponto de chegada estão os objetivos e os Que currículo podemos oferecer?
Jair Militão da Silva
fins da educação.
No caminho está o método, ou seja, o
procedimento de condução do educando.
28
A
idéia
de
um
desenvolvimento
sustentável inclui a noção de atenção à
totalidade dos fatores presentes em uma
dada situação. A harmonia dos fatores
presentes, humanos e não humanos,
procurará ser organizada com vistas à
continuação da espécie e do ambiente em
que insere.
Um olhar a partir do campo educacional que
focalize o tema da sustentabilidade trará
como contribuição a consideração do que
sejam situação educativa e currículo.
Pode-se dizer que houve educação quando
ocorreu uma mudança do ser humano, de um
ponto a outro, mediante um caminho, com a
adesão livre e consciente deste ser humano.
Em termos mais precisos, para a filosofia da
educação, educação é a continua superação
de um ponto a outro, mediante um caminho.
Superação significa que uma dada situação é
transformada em outra e na nova residem
resquícios da anterior sendo, todavia, uma
situação nova em relação à anterior. Ou seja,
na superação não há ruptura, mas sim
continuidade transformada.
Estes três elementos: um ponto de partida,
um ponto de chegada e um caminho são os
fatores cruciais de uma situação educativa e,
para efeito de análise, oferecem avaliação
Lacinia litora
Uma analogia tem sido feita, ao longo da
Consectetuer est. Class
constituição
do campo
educacional, entre a
aptent
taciti sociosqu
ad
litora
torqu.
educação e a ação do escravo grego –
chamado pedagogo - que conduzia as
crianças e jovens até o estádio para as aulas
de ginástica: o pedagogo precisava conhecer
a casa da criança ou jovem – ethos -,
precisava saber o destino final – onde ficava
o ginásio, precisava conhecer um ou mais
caminhos para conduzir o jovem ou criança,
com a adesão deste ou desta. A título de
ilustração, torna-se interessante lembrar, que
o jovem ou criança, no ginásio, antes das
aulas passava pelo vestibular – local no qual
se preparava para as aulas, geralmente
passando óleo no corpo.
Outra contribuição oriunda do campo
educacional é a noção de currículo,
entendido como o conjunto de experiências
que o educador (família, escola, etc.) oferece
ao educando. O currículo é constituído por
temas, juízos de valor sobre estes temas e
formas de comunicação destes temas e
destes juízos de valor.
Uma contribuição da educação para o tema
da sustentabilidade pode ser feita, então, a
partir das noções de situação educativa e de
currículo.
Um exame, ainda que breve, sobre quem é
o homem, pode-nos dizer que, entre outros
atributos, ele é um ser, fundamentalmente,
Mauris
voltado para
a ipsum
vida. lacinia
Ele quer viver e
Consectetuer est. Class aptent
perpetuar-se.
Toda
estrutura
antropológica
taciti
sociosqu
ad nostra.
está constituída para manter a vida
individual e da espécie. Todavia, como ser
dotado de imensa gama de alternativas de
ação, nesse uso da liberdade, o homem pode
até mesmo agir contra a vida pessoal e
30
coletiva.
Não há, como acontece em outros seres
vivos, uma determinante biológica para as
respostas às demandas ambientais. Há, sim,
condicionantes, diante dos quais o homem
tem relativa liberdade para responder, o que
exige decisões contínuas.
Essas respostas organizam-se a partir das
experiências vividas por cada homem e por
cada grupo humano.
―A educação pode oferecer efetiva
influência para que respostas favoráveis
à sustentabilidade apareçam.‖
Tendo em vista a disponibilidade de tempo
no presente encontro destacarei um tema que
merece contemplar a organização curricular
de situações educativas voltadas para a
sustentabilidade: o educar-se para a
transcendência.
De fato, a ânsia por vida pode fazer com que
o ser humano veja no outro um adversário a
ser superado, no ambiente um fonte de vida
a ser usufruída até o esgotamento. O medo
da morte pode levar à morte.
Um exame das grandes civilizações mostra
que grandes obras que superaram o tempo de
vida de uma única pessoa foram realizadas
em nome de um ideal que transcendia a vida
individual. Exemplo disso são as catedrais,
que tinham sua construção com duração de
séculos e que visavam exaltar a grandeza de
Deus; a Grande Muralha da China, que
visava à proteção de todo o Império; grandes
fortunas feitas com vistas a fortalecer os
herdeiros, perpetuando o clã familiar; etc.
Leadership and
Sustainability –
Transformative
Solutions:
The Extraordinary
Power of the Ordinary
Lawrence Greenspan
Introduction: C. K. Prahalad and The
Fortune at the Bottom
In April of this year, we lost a wonderful
thinker and an even better person. C.K.
Prahalad, whom the Times of London
ranked as the world's leading management
scholar, died unexpectedly on April 16 after
a brief illness. Prahalad—a professor at the
University of Michigan and an expert on
corporate strategy who had advised major
companies around the globe—is known best,
perhaps, for the pioneering work in his book,
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid in
which he identifies the poorest of the world's
poor as an untapped market worth as much
as $13 trillion.*
Ou seja, o que educa para a transcendência é
a busca de vida; a crença de que a vida pode
perpetuar-se para além da morte individual;
a existência de um fim último que ultrapassa
o tempo existencial individual.
Prahalad's insight is, at its core, a
recognition of the extraordinary power of the
ordinary, of the rich economic potential
locked within the vast, underserved and
often-neglected core of humanity that forms
the foundation of society's financial pyramid.
A experiência de que eu não morro quando
Prahalad's perspective is also, first and
saio de mim para conviver com o outro, para
partilhar
meus
recursos,
pode,
gradativamente formar o ser humano para a
busca de transcender o tempo próprio de
vida e buscar contribuir para a vida das
futuras gerações.
foremost, an optimistic one. It sees
opportunity where others see misfortune, and
a source of wealth where others see only
poverty. But it is also grounded in reality
and in the notion championed by Peter
Drucker that a company's first responsibility
is to earn a profit. Since the publication of
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid in
2004, countless companies have built
successful
businesses
by
following
Prahalad's dictum that serving the billions of
people who subsist at or below the poverty
level is a way both to do good and to do well
at the same time. It is a sentiment with which
Peter Drucker would have readily agreed.
Prahalad's "Fortune at the Bottom" thinking
resonates, I would argue, across the
spectrum of human experience and applies
just as poignantly and persuasively to the
concept of leadership as it does to economic
circumstance. For there exists, I believe, an
abundance of effective leadership at the
bottom of the world's hierarchy of power and
authority. Just as tremendous wealth and
opportunity reside within the lifeblood of the
population's poorest, untapped wellsprings
of leadership and positive influence are
possessed by those who hold no specific
position of authority or command, but are
the CEO's of their own lives, the vicepresidents and mid-level managers of their
families, and informal leaders among their
friends and associates.
If we are going to survive and flourish—if
we are going to create a sustainable
society—we will need to nurture and unleash
the leadership skills of the average person as
well as cultivate and capture the capacity of
the common man to accomplish uncommon
things.
Drucker put it this way about organizations
in his book, Concept of the Corporation, but
I would argue that the same applies to
society as a whole: "No institution can
possibly survive if it needs geniuses or
supermen to manage it. It must be
organized in such a way as to be able to
get along under a leadership composed
of average human beings."
Drucker Institute
― Because every day brings insight and
motivation from Drucker for getting the
right things done.‖
We must, in short, find the extraordinary within the ordinary.
comfortingly over her back, whispering,
"You're okay, you're okay, you're okay."
Let me illustrate this process with a story
from my own life, and let me suggest that if
we want to search for models of sustainable
leadership that we begin with the first
leaders to which almost all of us are
exposed—our parents.
And I remember one summer day when my
family was on vacation at a lake in the state
of Michigan. I don't remember what I was
doing to annoy Jeanne, but I know I must
have been doing something because—and I
saw this unfold as if it were in slow
motion—she ran across the room to my
The Ripples Story: The Power of
the Average
baseball cards, which I had taken on
vacation with me, grabbed my 1969 Willie
Mays baseball card, pulled Blankie out of
her mouth, stuffed Willie in, plugged her
mouth with Blankie and started chewing.
"What?" I say, trying to look all innocent,
holding on to my baby sister. "What did I
do?"
Now, translating that to Brazilian: this is the
equivalent of your little sister eating your
autographed picture of Pelé!
And when I reach my mother, she clasps her
hand around my wrist and drags me out the
front door of the cabin toward the lake. And
I'm thinking, "My mother is going to drown
me for being mean to Jeanne."
I have an
older brother—Michael—and a
younger sister, Jeanne. When we were little,
if we were annoying Jeanne, she was limited
in the number of ways she could get back at
her much bigger brothers. If she hit us, we
just laughed. And if she called us names, we
laughed even harder because being called a
"poopy-head" really didn't faze us at all.
So she needed to find some kind of
weakness, some way that—as a little girl—
she could gain power of us. Eventually, she
discovered what she'd been looking for—the
thing we valued the most in the world, our
prized possession—our baseball card
collection.
Now, my sister was one of those little
children who carried her blanket, called
"Blankie," around with her everywhere she
went; only she carried Blankie in her mouth,
not her hands. So, if Michael and I were
being mean to Jeanne, she would run up to
our baseball card collection, pull Blankie out
of her mouth, grab a baseball card, stuff it in
her mouth, cork her mouth with Blankie, and
start chewing and chewing and making a
face at her big brothers who weren't so tough
after all.
So, like any red-blooded American boy
who'd just seen his 1969 Willie Mays
baseball card disappear into his little sister's
mouth, I grabbed the other end of "Blankie,"
and I began to turn, and turn, and turn—
around and around and around—and with all
my might, I let go, and (CLAP LOUDLY),
Jeanne splattered against the wall.
For a moment or two, she kind of stuck there
against the wall, like some cartoon character.
Then she opened her mouth—and you know
that feeling when the wind gets knocked out
of you and you can't breathe? (GASP
TWICE). And out of her mouth falls Blankie
(GASP TWICE), and out falls half-chewed
Willie. And I know that once my sister
catches her breath, she is going to start
screaming, and Mom's going to come in, and
I'm going to get it.
But my mother had heard the tumult from
the next room. And she comes in and says
(WITH HER FINGER BECKONING ME
TO HER), "Come here."
"Come here," she says.
So I dig my heels into the gravel and sand,
and she drags me down to the edge of the
lake where she bends down and picks up a
rather large stone. And it's like a scene from
the Bible, and I'm thinking now that my
mother is going to stone me for being mean
to my sister, and then she is going to drown
me.
But, instead, she turns my wrist over, points
to the lake, and—indicating the rock—says,
"Throw it."
Now I'm seven or eight years old. I have no
idea what's going on.
"Throw the rock," she says.
Well, this I understand. So I throw the rocks.
"Well," she says, pointing toward the lake,
So I run up to her, and take her in my arms,
and I'm smoothing my hand
enim mattis nonummy
Molestie ornare amet vel id fusce, rem
volutpat platea. Magnis vel, lacinia nisl, vel nostra
"What happened?"
Peter Drucker's Insights
on Effective Leadership
Drucker's insights on leadership derive in
no small part from his work with some of
the world's most important leaders from
the public, private, and social sectors—
from the Truman, Eisenhower, and
Kennedy administrations in the United
States; to the CEOs of General Electric,
Procter and Gamble, and Toyota; to the
heads of the Salvation Army, the Girls
Scouts, and the American Red Cross.
"I look. "It sank," I say.
mattered, and what I did mattered—and on a
grand and important scale.
"That's correct. What else?"
"Nothing," I say.
"Look again."
"Oh, it made waves. Look, they're still
going."
"Ahh. They're called ripples," my mother
says," and when you throw a rock into a
lake, it is never just that rock entering a lake
because it sends out ripples that go on and
on, and like you said, they're still going
now."
"When you're mean to Jeanne," my mother
said to me, "you're not just being mean to
Jeanne. You're upsetting me. And because I'm
upset, I'm short with your father. And then
your father goes out, and . . ."
"And the same," she said, "is true when you
do something good. It's never just that one,
little good thing in that moment, but it sends
ripples of goodness that go on and on and
on, and you'll never even know all the
goodness that comes from that one little
thing you do."
Even as a little boy, my mother taught me, I
possessed significant power. The decisions I
made and the actions I took exerted a
profound influence on a myriad of people
and events. By virtue of being a person
interacting with the world, I was a leader. I
There
exists—to
borrow
Prahalad's
terminology—a fortune of leadership at the
bottom of the pyramid of power. If
cultivated properly, it can be unleashed as a
force for immeasurable good in society. It
can sustain and empower us to reach our
potential both as individuals and as a
civilization. It has nothing to do with
presidents, prime ministers, corporate CEOs,
or wealthy entrepreneurs. It has everything
to do with average, ordinary, seemingly
common people, who possess power that
collectively dwarfs anything wielded by the
high and mighty.
In an informal way, everything I ever needed
to know—anything any of us need to
know—about sustainable leadership was
taught to me by my mother in the summer of
1971 when she had me throw a rock into a
lake.
More formally and more recently, I have
gained insight into leadership by studying
the ideas and ideals of Peter Drucker as the
senior program manager of Claremont
Graduate University's Drucker Institute, an
organization whose mission is to better
society by stimulating effective management
and responsible leadership.
And yet Drucker described himself simply
as a "social ecologist"—someone who
observed the way humans interacted with
the world around them in the same way
that a natural ecologist observes the way
organisms interact with each other and
their environments.
Keep that in mind, please, as we explore
the elements of effective leadership
Drucker identified in more than 60 years
of work. You will see that they are not
grand ideas for some elite group of
powerbrokers in unusual circumstances;
they are, rather, lessons that apply to all of
us as we fulfill our everyday
responsibilities as stewards for the world
around us. They are guideposts to a model
for sustainable leadership, for the
extraordinary power of ordinary people to
exert a positive influence upon society.
In tackling the subject of leadership,
Drucker began with the notion of what
was NOT a quality of effective and
responsible leadership: charisma. To
understand this, we must first take a brief
look at Drucker's biography – at the world
he observed in his formative years as a
thinker and writer.
Drucker was born in Austria in 1909 and
went on to study in Germany, where he
witnessed firsthand the rise of the Nazis.
In fact, they burned and banned some of
his earliest writings.
As you might imagine, this left quite an
impression on him. And it framed the way
he thought about leadership. In particular,
it made Drucker fearful of the way that
people are apt to allow charisma—above
all else—to singularly define leadership.
―History knows no more charismatic
leaders than (the 20th) century‘s triad of
Hitler, Stalin and Mao—the MISleaders
who inflicted as much evil and suffering
on humanity as have ever been
recorded.‖ Drucker
―Charisma,‖ Drucker added, ―becomes the
undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible,
convinced of their own infallibility, unable
to change. This is what happened to Stalin,
Hitler and Mao"
Later, Drucker would similarly gripe about
the ―personality cult of CEO supermen‖ in
American industry. But there is a flip side to
this, according to Drucker—and it‘s often
overlooked.
―Effective leadership doesn‘t depend on
charisma,‖
he
explained.
―Dwight
Eisenhower, General George Marshall, and
Harry Truman were singularly effective
leaders, yet none possessed any more
charisma than a dead mackerel.‖ So, if it‘s
not charisma, what is leadership? What
makes a leader?
Well, Drucker put it like this: ―Leadership is
mundane, unromantic and boring,‖ he wrote.
―Its essence is performance.‖ Or as Stanford
University's James March once described it:
"Leadership involves plumbing as well as
poetry."
The insight here in terms of a leader's
responsibility to perform is unmistakable:
"In human affairs," Drucker wrote, "the
distance between the leaders and the average
is constant. If leadership performance is
high, the average will go up."
To ensure a high level of performance,
Drucker states, effective leaders measure
their results.
way is no solution, as our current financial
crisis has made abundantly clear. The
responsibility of a leader to perform includes
the responsibility to perform ethically.
identifying and preserving the core values of
an organization.
When you leave here today, you might
reflect upon the basic principles and values
that serve as your own ethical foundation as
As such, Drucker links performance to
another key component of effective
leadership: trust. Leaders earn trust through
consistency. "To trust a leader, it is not
necessary to like him," Drucker said, "Nor is
it necessary to agree with him. Trust is the
conviction that the leader means what he
says."
well as the foundations of your
organizations. Write them down and keep
them someplace very visible.
"It is a belief in something very oldfashioned called 'integrity.' A leader's actions
and a leader's professed beliefs must be
congruent. . . Effective leadership . . . is not
based on being clever; it is based primarily
on being consistent."
If you cannot answer "Yes" to the former
and "No" to the latter, then you have not
passed "the mirror test".
To ensure trustworthiness, integrity, and
consistency, Drucker, suggested that leaders
partake faithfully in what he called ―the
mirror test.‖ It works this way: When you
look in the mirror in the morning, do you see
the kind of person you want to see? The
mirror test, Drucker wrote, ―does not spell
out what ‗right‘ behavior is.‖ It assumes,
instead, ―that what is wrong behavior is clear
enough—and if there is any doubt, it is
‗questionable‘ and to be avoided.‖
Drucker added that by following this
standard, ―everyone regardless of status
becomes a leader‖ and remains so by
―avoiding any act which would make one
the kind of person one does not want to be,
does not respect.‖
They put away their goals for six months,
and then they come back and check their
performance against the goals to determine if
they are working toward their strengths.
Of course, getting the right results the wrong
In addition to ensuring the core values of an
organization, a leader must champion its
mission—the organization's reason for
being.
"The foundation of executive leadership,"
Drucker wrote in Managing for the Future,
"is thinking through the organization's
mission, defining it and establishing it,
clearly and visibly. The leader sets the goals,
sets the priorities, and sets and maintains the
standards . . . The leader's first task is to be
the trumpet that sounds a clear sound."
When a Silicon Valley executive named
Rajiv Dutta took over PayPal some years
ago, the company was a total mess. It was
losing money. It was lagging in innovation.
And employees were running scared because
some company called Google
threatening to get into the business.
was
The barbarians were at the gates.
Even more important for leaders is to keep in
mind a code that Drucker thought should be
the first responsibility of EVERY
professional—indeed of every person. It was
established more than 2,500 years ago by the
Greek physician Hippocrates:
They should literally write down, "What do
I hope to achieve if I take on this
assignment?"
Then, before each endeavor, ask yourself,
1)"Am I certain that I will do no harm?" and
2)"Will pursuing this goal violate any of
these core beliefs?"
PRIMUM NON NOCERE – Above all, do
no harm.
How
much
healthier
would
our
organizations be, would society be, if we
each thought about this—every time, without
fail—before we acted?
In a similar vein, leadership involves
Amid all this turbulence, what Dutta
managed to do was excite everyone—from
those in the executive suite to the clerk
answering the switchboard—by recasting
PayPal‘s mission and trumpeting its call.
And as he framed it, PayPal wasn‘t just in
business to process payments. Instead, it
stood at the crossroads of a broader
evolution of currency across the globe: a
historic march from coins to paper money to
credit cards to electronic commerce.
Suddenly, everybody felt like
part of
something bigger. Indeed, they WERE part
of something bigger. Something meaningful.
Something important.
Dutta goes so far as to credit the
resultingahe bottom of the world's hierarchy
―the resulting shift in attitude—a shift in
which employees now felt more inspired
than
scared—with
an
extraordinary
turnaround in the company‘s financial
performance.
Dutta's willingness to talk openly to his
employees at PayPal about the threat posed
by Google is related closely to another
Drucker principle for effective leadership:
Face the facts—no matter how scary they
might be. ―A time of turbulence is a
dangerous time,‖ Drucker declared, ―but its
greatest danger is a temptation to deny
reality.‖
In his new book, called DENIAL, Harvard
Business School‘s Richard Tedlow defines
the concept simply:
―You ignore the
obvious,‖ he writes. ―Why? Because you
BUSINESS REVIEW asserted last year in
an article, titled, dauntingly, ―Leadership in
a (Permanent) Crisis.‖
promising.‖
―Many will fail, of course, and the way
forward will be characterized by midcourse
corrections,‖ the piece went on to say.
But that‘s OK. ―Take a page out of the
technology industry‘s playbook: Version 2.0
is an explicit acknowledgement that products
coming to market are experiments,
prototypes to be improved in the next
iteration.‖
Bill Pollard, the former CEO of
ServiceMaster and a Drucker consulting
client and close friend, says that one of the
most valuable things he learned from
Drucker was that ―the potential for the new
simply don‘t want to confront it. You know
the consequences, but you don‘t know. You
see, but you don‘t see. ―Denial is the
unconscious calculus that if an unpleasant
reality were true, it would be too terrible, so
therefore it cannot be true. It is what
Sigmund Freud described as the combination
of ‗knowing with not knowing.‘ It is, in
George
Orwell‘s
blunt
formulation,
always requires testing and piloting.‖
‗protective stupidity.‘
thing is worth doing, it is worth doing
poorly to begin with . . . to learn from
experience.‖
Leaders are those who are able to turn a
discerning gaze upon the organization and
see not only the potential for what could be
but the reality of what is, including pitfalls
and dangers.
Drucker said that, "The most important task
of an organization's leader is to anticipate
crisis."
This
requires
building
an
organization that "is battle-ready, that has
high morale, and also has been through a
crisis."
And if we are going to be effective leaders,
we'll need not just to see crises coming but
be prepared to deal with them. This requires
an ability to adapt and change, to try
something new, to experiment.
We tend to think of difficult stretches as the
worst time to try new things. But the way
Drucker saw it, new initiatives should start
out small and not require a huge amount of
resources.
―Run numerous experiments,‖ HARVARD
abandonment of the old and of the
unrewarding,‖ he wrote, ―is a prerequisite to
successful pursuit of the new and highly
―For a new idea to be successful it must get
off the drawing board and beyond a market
analysis or focus study group. It‘s important
to get started—to (begin) servicing a few
customers to learn from the practical
application of an idea. Ideas can be studied
and analyzed until they are suffocated. If a
Another
involves
resources
achieved
critical aspect of leadership
learning when to stop pouring
into things that have already
their purpose—or will never
achieve their purpose.
―The most dangerous traps for a leader are
those near-successes where everybody says
that if you just give it another big push it will
go over the top,‖ Drucker warned. ―One tries
it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third
time. But, by then it should be obvious‖ that
it‘s not working.
And so you stop. Yet this is often the hardest
thing for any of us to do, especially when
ego is invested, when turf is being protected.
But as Drucker pointed out, ―The corpse
doesn‘t smell any better the longer you keep
it around.‖
It is hard to overstate the importance of this
Another aspect of being a good leader
involves striking the right balance between
internal focus on the organization and an
external consideration of the common good.
As a matter of survival, Drucker noted,
nothing
short
of
"single-minded
concentration on the part of the institution"
is necessary. "But at the same time," Drucker
hastened to add, "leaders must take
responsibility for what happens to the
community at large."
This engagement with the community can
take on many forms.
Government leaders, we believe, have a
special role to play as conveners and
catalysts in this process of forging
partnerships for common tasks among
various types of institutions.
Similarly, individual leaders from all sectors
must answer Drucker's call for commitment
to the broader community. The power of this
calling can be seen in the work of some 9
million nonprofit staffers around the country
as well as the more than 60 million
Americans who volunteer annually.
It can also be seen in companies such as
Proctor and Gamble, Dannon, and Unilever,
who have figured out how to make a social
aim part of their core business strategy.
Unilever, for example, has supported an
international hand-washing campaign that
promotes both good health and good
business for its line of soaps.
In this manner, Unilever is tapping into what
Prahalad identified as the opportunity to do
good and do well at the same time.
Drucker put it this way: "What is needed [to
create thriving communities] is for leaders of
all
institutions
to
take
leadership
responsibility beyond the walls" of their own
organizations. ―There is need for the
acceptance of leaders in every single
institution and in every single sector that
they. . . have two responsibilities.
core Drucker tenet: ―Planned, purposeful
As such, Drucker links performance to
another key component of effective
Ferhoncus de plub
Omare foremne
Lemacord Promwn
ILA 2010 Conference Leadership 2.0:
Time for Action
Em outubro acontecerá a Conferência Internacional da
ILA em que mais de 3.000 líderes de 40 países se
reúnem. O Grupo Bridge participará, falando sobre o
Novo Sistema de Aprendizado para Inovação – TIME
FOR INOVATION; escolhido entre mais de 500
projetos inscritos.
Acompanhe novidades em breve.
whether we'll
successfully.
move
forward
―They are responsible and accountable for
Nevertheless, we clutter our lives
and schedules with unnecessary "stuff."
the performance of their institutions, and that
requires them and their institutions to be
concentrated, focused, limited.
Punch the term "information overload" into a
Google search and you get more than 1.4
million hits—itself a sign of the problem.
―They are responsible also, however, for the
community as a whole. This requires
commitment. It requires willingness to
accept that other institutions have different
In his great little book The Ten
Commandments for Business Failure, former
Coca-Cola President Donald Keough cites
one analysis that found the typical corporate
values, respect ... these values, and ... learn
what these values are. It requires hard work.
But above all it requires commitment,
conviction, dedication to the common good.
employee is besieged by 133 emails every
day.
A final insight from Drucker on leadership is
one from which we could probably all
benefit: to remember to hit pause every now
and again—not for our organizations, but for
Some systematically fight off this onslaught.
For instance, when Patty Stonesifer became
CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, she made a point of keeping her
Fridays unscheduled so she could study,
learn, and refresh herself.
ourselves, personally.
Keeping the calendar blank isn't easy,
however, even for the most well-intentioned
executive. Often, Drucker warned, "within a
few days or weeks, the entire discretionary
time will…be gone again, nibbled away by
new crises, new immediacies, new trivia."
must guard against. Put any project or deal
into motion, and "it's difficult to stop,"
Keough asserts. "There is a tendency toward
group wishing in decision making wherein
everyone is so eager to make something
happen that straight thinking becomes
almost impossible."
Keough's advice for any leader: Cease what
you're engaged in every now and again and
chew on it for a while. "Time to think is not
a luxury," he says. "It is a necessity…Unless
somebody stops to think…it's easy to make
the same mistakes over and over."
For his part, Peter Drucker shared these
sentiments. "Follow effective action with
quiet reflection," he said. "From the quiet
reflection will come even more effective
action."
With that, I‘m going to pause myself—and
give everyone a chance to reflect on what
we've learned.
i
ma
gin
e
It's the creation of empty time and space—
moments when we shut off all outside
distractions and give ourselves the
opportunity to think—that can determine
whether we're organized effectively and
That's why the most able time managers, he
explained, "keep a continuing log and
analyze it periodically," cutting additional
activities as necessary. Still, it's not just
"inbox shock" and meeting fatigue that one
.