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Tag: "Start Up CEO"

Is Uber CEO a Bad Leader Or Just An Asshole?

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is in the news yet again.  This time it’s because of a heated argument between Kalanick and an Uber driver that was videoed.  The conversation between the Uber driver and the Uber CEO starts innocently enough, but quickly turns dark when the driver calls out Kalanick for his continued changes of pricing and services which as the Uber driver puts it has “bankrupted” him and cost him “$97,000.”

Now add to this the recent scathing blog post written by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler  which recounted claims of unbridled sexual harassment, and the indifferent reaction from the Human Resources department.  Reports of a corporate culture of pure Darwinistic survival of the fittest environment pollute the internet.

So the question is this; is Uber CEO Travis Kalanick a bad leader or just an asshole?  Now some of you may say, “what’s the difference?” And you may be right to say this as we are in the midst of a  generational leadership crisis.   As Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker once wrote, “The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” If Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is willing to tolerate sexual harassment, allow a predatory corporate culture, and as we witnessed in the video altercation, speak condescendingly to an Uber driver, what can me make of this? Legendary Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Willink has said, “It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.”  And sage Chinese philosopher Confucius tells us that, “There is never a case when the root is in disorder and yet the branches are in order.”

If Uber is in such disarray internally, we can wisely infer that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is also internally in disarray.  A leader’s internal mental state is projected outwardly and is manifest within the organization. A leader that is stable, fair and prudent has an organization that is stable, fair and prudent.

Of course once the embarrassing video came out Kalanick had to offer the standard mea culpa.  In a memo to his employees, he wrote, “To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement. My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away. It’s clear this video is a reflection of me—and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.”

He’s obviously a bad leader.  And it’s obvious that’s he’s never bothered to read about how Alexander the Great, Hannibal Barca, General George S. Patton and other leaders were revered by their followers.  You see, a great leader leads from the front.  He knows that any failure his followers suffer is his failure first and foremost.

And as to whether or not Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is an asshole, watch the video and decide for yourself. As for all of you Uber drivers out there, the writing is on the wall, as soon as self driving cars are approved and ready to go, you’re all going to be replaced.

If Kalanick is serious about getting some leadership help, I’m more than happy to help. Give me a call Travis.

 

 

March 1, 2017 | 0 comments | View Post

Hannibal, Leadership and Earning Your Team’s Respect

One of the main ways that a new leader fails is when they are about to become the new leader of a group. Nothing is more important in leadership than setting the right tone for your group. Because many people confuse having a title with having authority, the alienate their team from the first day.  Their attitude is, “I’m the new boss and when I say jump, you say ‘how high?’ are we clear?”  Now compare that approach to how legendary Carthaginian warrior and general Hannibal Barca  took the reins of power and did so with tact, and respect towards his men. Hannibal came close to destroying the Roman Empire between 201 and 218 B.C.E., but that’s a story for another time.

Now imagine the scene if you will,  a ferocious army that had been commanded by Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father.  They had been assembled to hear Hannibals first speech to the troops as their new commander.  Hamilcar was deeply respected and beloved by his me, and had taken his death hard.  Sadly, Hamilcar had died during a battle when he essentially sacrificed himself to save his two sons who were also at the battle.  Some time later after Hannibal’s brother-in-law Hasdrubal was assassinated, Hannibal was promoted to commander-in-chief by the army and confirmed in his appointment by the Carthaginian government.

One time before a battle, Hannibal had his army was assembled so he could speak to them.  He said:

“Now as for me, my men, there is not one of you who has not with his own eyes seen me strike a blow in battle; I have watched and witnessed your valor in the field, and your acts of courage I know by heart, with every detail of when and where they took place: and this, surely, is not a thing of small importance. I was your pupil before I was your commander; I shall advance into the line with soldiers I have a thousand times praised and rewarded; and the enemy we shall meet are raw troops with a raw general, neither knowing anything of the other.”

Hannibal acknowledged the past bravery and feats of his men in battle.  He reminded them that he always fought side by side with them, rather than sitting in safety far behind the fighting.  Are you this kind of leader?  Do you have this kind of leadership in your organization?

Hannibal was was the first to enter battle and the last to leave the field.  He ate the same food as his men, and rather than sleeping on a nice soft bed in a tent reserved for officers, he slept on the cold, hard ground alongside his men. Is it any surprise that his men would die for him?  Would any of your team die for you?  Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but to what extent would any member of your team go to protect you? If you haven’t fostered that kind of loyalty among your team, take a step back, pause, reflect and ask yourself, how can you EARN this kind of intense respect from you team?

March 29, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

What Can We Learn From Donald Trump and Leadership?

The stratospheric rise of Donald Trump as the Republican party front runner can offer us many real world lessons about leadership.  Keep in mind that I’m looking at this from a clinical perspective.  Whether you’re pro Trump or anti Trump, you can’t argue the fact that he was created a massive following in a very short period of time.  Why? If you are willing to keep an open mind, let’s unpack this phenomena known as Donald Trump.

The brilliant sociololgist Max Weber would sum up Trump’s success in one word: charisma.  The etymology for the world charisma is Greek, meaning of divine origin.  Weber wrote about charisma being “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin…an on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.”

Isn’t that what Trump has managed to do when he claims that all he does is “win?”  He has positioned himself as a demi-god imbued with supernatural powers. And he has promised to use his powers to improve the lives of his followers.

A soft spoken, non-charismatic person will never elicit the rabid loyalty that Trump has among his followers. One only has to look at Jeb Bush to see this was proven true. Despite the establishment power and money behind Jeb, Trump was able to steam roll right over him (along with the others) without breaking a sweat.

We could say that the core of Trump followers make up a cult.  The word cult is derived from the Latin word cultus which means “worship.”  Most cults are made up of people who felt alienated from society at large and have congealed around a shared common belief in one person whom they feel crackles with charisma and can take them to the “promised land.” In this case the disgruntled masses of Trump followers feel that the GOP has thrown them overboard.  Add in a convenient enemy whether real or imagined that the group can focus their collective rage on and you have the formula for a powerful movement.  I can tell you right now that the Republican establishment has no idea what they’re dealing with, and the more they try to crush Trump, the more power they give him.

In one of the most insightful books every written on human nature and mass movements, Eric Hoffer shared his timeless wisdom. The True Believer: Thoughts on The Nature of Mass Movements sums up the rise of Trump in 168 tightly written pages. Below are a few noteworthy quotes from the book:

“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy.”
If the above quotes seem frighteningly accurate and appropriate to the rise of Trump, keep in mind that Hoffer wrote this book in 1951!
In the book on messianic movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn, he shows a pattern of these movements rising during times of economic instability and social upheavals.  What makes the Trump movement so powerful (and potentially dangerous) is that it mirrors many of these past violent movements.
A good leader helps create a vision of what could be and then points the people in that direction.  He plays the role of the grand conductor. There’s an element in Trump’s followers of wanting him to be a father figure who will “make American great again.” Daddy will fix things once and for all. By appealing to people’s base instincts he has catapulted himself to the front of the GOP pack.
Trump leads by voicing the collective thoughts of his followers. Followers who feel that the system has betrayed them. He positions himself as the one who will fix things and give them the live they had been promised. The life they have always dreamed of.
As Napoleon once said,  “A leader is a dealer of hope.”  And to his followers, that’s what Trump represents, a leader who will reestablish their sense of hope for a life better than the one they have now.
So what are the leadership lessons and take aways from Trump’s rise?
  1. People must believe that you have special powers or abilities. At the very least they must think that you are more talented than they are.
  2. Find or create an enemy for your team/group to rally against. Apple has Microsoft, Redbull has Coke and Pepsi, Harley has the fear of being a boring old man.
  3. Rally your team around a collective vision of something that is better and larger than themselves.
March 18, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Hardcore Leaders Lead From the Front

One of the common themes occurring today is how many “leaders” lead from behind. Whether it be the chicken hawk politician grandstanding and eagerly offering to send young men and women to fight and die in some third world shit hole, or the CEO that promises the Board of Directors revenue goals that have no basis in reality and then expects everyone else in the organization to move heaven and earth to make it happen, one doesn’t need to look far to see that what passes off as leadership today is sadly lacking. In order to get the most out of your people, you’re going to have to lead from the front.

Over 2,300 years ago, a young Alexander the Great was preparing his men to go into what would be a very brutal battle. What he told his men is something that all leaders and aspiring leaders. At one point in his talk, he said this, “‘Perhaps you will say that, in my position as your commander, I had none of the labours and distress which you had to endure to win for me what I have won. But does any man among you honestly feel that he has suffered more for me than I have suffered for him? Come now, if you are wounded, strip and show your wounds, and I will show mine. There is no part of my body but my back which has not a scar; not a weapon a man may grasp or fling the mark of which I do not carry upon me. I have sword-cuts from close fight; arrows have pierced me, missiles from catapults bruised my flesh; again and again I have been struck by stones or clubs—and all for your sakes: for your glory and your gain. Over every land and sea, across river, mountain, and plain I led you to the world’s end, a victorious army. I married as you married, and many of you will have children related by blood to my own. Some of you have owed money—I have paid your debts, never troubling to inquire how they were incurred, and in spite of the fact that you earn good pay and grow rich from the sack of cities. To most of you I have given a circlet of gold as a memorial for ever and ever of your courage and of my regard. And what of those who have died in battle? Their death was noble, their burial illustrious; almost all are commemorated at home by statues of bronze; their parents are held in honour, with all dues of money or services remitted, for under my leadership not a man among you has ever fallen with his back to the enemy.”

Can you imagine a CEO today giving the modern version of this speech? Alexander made it clear to his men that he had always fought side by side with them.  He didn’t talk about it, he LIVED it!

Are you leading by example as Alexander did?  Would your team die for you?  No, okay, then what would be the modern day work related equivalent? Perhaps working on a weekend for no pay?  Perhaps missing a wedding anniversary in order to make a deadline. Would your people do any of these things for you?  No?  Then ask yourself this, what have you done for your team in order to engender the kind of ferocious loyalty that Alexander the Great did.

 

 

February 29, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Hardcore Leadership and How to Manage Knowledge Workers

One of the biggest disconnects regarding leadership has been brought about by our rapidly evolving technology. When I say “leadership,” I define that as someone people follow. And when I say “Hardcore Leadership” I define that as a leader who knows what it takes to get his people to the highest levels of achievement and makes it happen. With the exception of aristocracy, during most of history, leaders were in place because (hopefully) they had many years of experience and could teach and guide their followers on the details of how to do the job right.   The top down model of management, often referred to as Theory X held that a hierarchical model where the guy on “top” made all the rules because he was the boss.  He said jump, and his people asked “how high?” The new model is referred to as  Y Theory, meaning that the organization was flat, more collaborative and less autocratic.

So what happens when the old  leadership model of master craftsman teaching the young apprentice his job no longer applies? The big shift in leadership is this: how do you lead and manage people who know more about their work then you do?  With the explosion of new networking technology (Software Defined Everything and the Internet of Everything for example)  how does a manager who came up learning antiquated programming languages or outdated networking technologies tell a millennial how to do his job? The smart answer is they don’t.  A leader’s new responsibilty is to eliminate any friction in the organization that prevents the knowledge worker from doing their job.  The second duty of a Hardcore Leader to to help his people collaborate effectively.  As technology becomes every more ingrained in our world, helping teams to work effectively together. Thankfully that’s a leadership skill that has always been important and will never become outdated.  Your job as a leader is to empower your knowledge workers.

A Hardcore Leader working with knowledge workers is going to have to create an environment that crackles with the energy of compelling sense of purpose. Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but you can’t deny that he brought out the very best in his people.  Was he hard on them? Hell yes he was, and look what he created.  Many years ago when I was in the Navy, I attempted to become a Navy SEAL, sadly I was injured and  didn’t finish the program (that’s a story best shared over a drink). One of the things that struck me about being at BUD/S (Basic Under Water Demolition/SEAL) was how one of the classes that had recently graduated had a saying, “A day without a hammer is like a day with out sunshine.”  That always stuck with me, because it was a clear acknowledgement that in order to become the best, you needed someone to push you harder than you thought you could go. And that is what a Hardcore Leader needs to understand; that part of your job is to clear the path for your team, and push them to achieve heights they didn’t think possible.

If technology has become so complex that a manager can’t offer any feedback or help to solve a complex problem, then his job becomes obsolete if he doesn’t bring anything else to the table.

February 25, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post