Leaders help themselves by helping others
"High sentiments always win in the end. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic." -- George Orwell
Today we encounter a pair of Great Moments in Management, both arising as a result of a book I read by mistake.
The first Moment comes from Joe White, describing his attitude as he took over as dean of the University of Michigan Business School:
"Some people describe being dean as the professional equivalent of 'herding cats.' But I never found it that way. Rather, I figured my job was to understand what made everybody tick, then appeal both to their highest collective aspirations ('We intend to be the world's best business school and be recognized as such') and to their most selfish ('No one wants you to have an endowed chair, more colleagues, and a big research budget more than I do, but you'll have to do a great job of teaching, writing, and service if it's going to happen'). My job description, as I saw it, was simple: I would help the members of the school community make their individual dreams come true in exchange for their helping make our collective dreams for the school come true."
The difference between "cat herder" and "dream alignment" is the difference between an ordinary boss and a great one -- one pushing, the other lifting.
White is now president of the University of Illinois and author of "The Nature of Leadership: Reptiles, Mammals, and the Challenge of Becoming a Great Leader." His book certainly got me thinking, but I wasn't thinking when I set up an interview. I saw the title, saw that White was from a university, and jumped to the conclusion that the book was about what we could learn about leadership from biology.
Then, in preparing to interview White, I cracked open the book and found how wrong I'd been. But since the interview was set and I have a fondness for academics -- my father having been a college professor, as well as two uncles, one at Washington University and one at the University of Illinois -- I decided I'd press ahead. And while I didn't learn anything about biology, I loved the book. And I loved talking with White -- if the University of Illinois were a stock, I'd be buying.
The book's title actually evolved from a faculty softball game when White was still a B-school dean: accounting department versus the organizational behavior (human resources) department, or, as the organizers called it, "Reptiles vs. Mammals." White tells us that this distinction reflects one in the larger university setting, the hard-numbers types versus soft-science types.
The realization that he had two types of people to lead -- and thus that he had to be two leaders in one -- was a moment that changed his view of the world, writing that it was not quite up to the blinding-insight standard of "the Biblical story of Saul being struck down by God on the road to Damascus -- but for me, it was close to that."
From then on, White not only had to remember that he needed to match his talk to the listener, but that he needed to develop both sides of his own character.
Our other Moment comes from White's cost-reduction effort back when he worked at Cummins Engine. You'd think that cost-cutting would be pure accounting, pure Reptile. And yes, there was the usual tightening . However, White also made it a warmhearted effort -- he went to engineering and gave them what he calls a "dream deal," which was a chance to create an engine that was "lighter, cheaper, more powerful, cleaner, and less thirsty." The biggest savings were, he reported, not in cutting old costs but in making new, more efficient products.
And that takes us back to where we began, the art of aligning personal goals with organizational ones. Leadership is really a simple calculation: The percentage of people in an organization willing to work very hard to help make you successful is far smaller than the percentage of people who are willing to work very hard to make themselves successful in a way that helps the organization. Pick a team.
Dale Dauten can be reached at dale@dauten.com. 
