Author: Nailia Tasseel

This week's story strikes at the profundity of values that inform the actions of great leaders.

As a young boy in a small Alabama town, Tim Cook had an experience that continues to shape his leadership to this day. Cycling home past a black family’s house one afternoon, he saw a cross on fire, and a circle of hooded Klansmen around it.

He yelled “Stop”, and one of them turned around and lifted his hood. It was the deacon of a local church. Fast forward nearly half a century, Tim Cook is now the CEO of one of history’s most successful companies.

When he talks about what Apple does, he doesn’t just say it makes computers and phones. Instead, he draws from his personal experience, and articulates a “respect for human dignity” as Apple’s guiding principle. He sees Apple not as a tech company, but as one whose primary business is actually “advancing humanity”.

“Growing up in Alabama in the 1960s”, he said, “I saw the devastating impacts of discrimination. And it would change my life forever. For me, the cross-burning was a symbol of ignorance, of hatred, and a fear of anyone different than the majority.

“Regardless of the path that one chooses, there are fundamental commitments that should be a part of one’s journey. I found at Apple a company that deeply believed in advancing humanity – through its products and through the equality of all of its employees. Now much has changed since my early days at Apple. But these values, which are at the very heart of our company, remain the same.”

Cook explains how Apple’s engineers always strive to prevent people with disabilities from being left behind by technological advancement. “And we never, ever analyse the return on investment. We do it because it is just and right”.

Great leaders articulate compelling visions that set their company’s mission in the context of the wider world. This vision does not necessarily need to be as altruistic as Cook’s but it must be deeply felt – and communicated to the organisation in such a way that employees are inspired to share the journey.

Read more about great leadership in our new report: Leadership for the New World.

Continuing on this sports kick this week, today’s story comes as an excerpt from James Kerr’s fantastic new book Legacy, which presents leadership lessons drawn from the exceptional success of New Zealand’s rugby team, the All Blacks. But fear not, a knowledge of or interested in rugby is not a prerequisite. This particular story illustrates how one of the best things leaders can do is simply cultivate other leaders. 

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A local resident was having problems with petty crime. A gang was breaking into his car, a rather pretty Saab 900 Turbo. Every time he changed the locks, the car was broken into again. One day he decided not to lock it – and so the gang began to use the car as a toilet. In despair, he approached the local police. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ he demanded. ‘We don’t have the resources,’ the constable replied. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

Teenage Kicks was born.

A five-a-side football tournament for disaffected youth, the purpose of Teenage Kicks was simple yet powerful: to turn gangs into teams.

In a community suffering from no jobs and nothing to do, the idea was to create a structure of meaning: a sense of purpose, belonging, teamwork and, most importantly, personal responsibility. It relied on a concept of ‘Pass the Ball’, defined as ‘enabling and empowering the individual by entrusting them with responsibility for the success of the team’.

It worked like this.

The organisers took care of the venue, the referees, the equipment, the stewards and the schedule, and then set about handing over responsibility – passing the ball – to the area’s disaffected youth.

They targeted existing gang members, and those likely to fall into the gang lifestyle. The first targets were alpha males, aged between nineteen and twenty-five, who displayed qualities of natural leadership, courage, respect, and the ability to involve and motivate others.

These natural leaders were invited to become Managers – a role that resonated in a community sandwiched about halfway between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur Football Clubs. The Manager’s first responsibility was to find a Captain for their team – to pass the ball to them. And the Captain’s first responsibility? To pick a team.

And the team’s responsibility?

To turn up for every game on time. If they didn’t the team was disqualified; not just from that game, but from the whole tournament.

In this way the responsibility was passed on and caught by everyone involved.

Perhaps a dozen teams were expected to turn up on the first night. Fifty-two teams arrived on time and ready to play. Over the next four weeks no team was disqualified.

Ten years later, Teenage Kicks is still going strong.

Pass the ball.

This has been an extraordinary World Cup so far.

I won’t pretend I saw this coming, but in retrospect there was some writing on the wall. A year ago, in the Confederations Cup – a sort of precursor to the World Cup – Spain did beat Tahiti 10 to nil, but then lost to host Brazil 3-0 in the final in unimpressive fashion.

Spain has dominated international football for quite some time, winning the World Cup in 2010 and the European championship in 2008 and 2012.

Last night, Spain fell 2-0 to Chile after a remarkable 5-1 loss to the Netherlands in the opener. After just two of three matches in the group stage, Spain is out.

Several attackers and fixtures of Spain’s midfield engine room – Xavi, Xabi Alonso, Andrés Iniesta, David Villa – are into their 30s. And more importantly, their signature tiki-taka style of play, which relies on an endless, dance-like series of short passes, seems to have been figured out.

The Dutch and the Chileans rather impolitely refused to allow the Spaniards to knock the ball back and forth and constantly find open space the way they’ve been used to doing all these years. That crestfallen look on the Spanish players’ faces seemed to suggest they knew they’d lost something quite fundamental to their success, their trusty ace in the hole.

It may be too soon to say that tiki-taka is dead. But what seems apparent is that Spain found a winning system that worked for them. While they were milking it for all it was worth, the world around them was changing.

Then again, perhaps it was simply the pressure on the players to keep winning, whether in the World Cup, the Euro, or the Champions’ League. These things are of course cyclical; maybe it wasn’t age or tactics at fault but a psychology that says someone will always rise, eventually, to take your place. This kind of thinking might make the Apples and Googles of this world quiver just a bit.

Either way, Spain’s defeat reminded us that change is always happening somewhere, whether it be within the institution or surrounding it. There’s nothing permanent about a winning formula. Change will happen; the best institutions can do would be to manage it, to stay proactive, to keep making decisions – even if they’re wrong decisions.

A couple of years ago, we had the pleasure of working with Steve Wynn at his brand-new Wynn hotel and resort in Las Vegas. It’s a spectacular place.

For the 9,000 or so employees, it might be easy to see the gleaming chandeliers, the giant pools, grand atriums and expansive casinos, the plush restaurants and nightclubs – and think that the waiters, the concierge, the cleaners, the salespeople all play secondary roles. Not the case.

Our programme with the Wynn was designed to highlight the unique and all-important contributions hotel employees make in “creating an experience our guests will never want to leave”. Part of the programme involved collecting stories of times when employees played a crucial role in giving guests a particularly memorable experience.

Here’s one of our favourites:

When a couple looking like tourists visit a jewellery store like Wynn & Co., most sales people would run for cover. But not our store manager Troy Adams. He struck up a conversation to try to make them feel welcome.

They were celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary, they’d never been to Las Vegas, and they were amazed that anyone could spend that kind of money on a piece of jewellery.

‘Feel what it’s like’ said Troy, as he walked the couple around he store, placing a $350,000 bracelet on the woman’s wrist. When he showed them an $85,000 Rolex watch, the woman remarked that she would never be able to afford one. Troy mentioned that there was a ‘starter Rolex’ for $3,000 and suggested she try it on.

‘Wrap it up, we'll take it!’ said her husband. To his wife’s surprise, he added, ‘I don’t care if you think we can’t afford it, I want you to remember this moment for the rest of your life.’

They would have never dreamed of buying until they experienced Troy’s hospitality. That’s powerful!

For his part, Steve Wynn was pleased with the results of the storytelling programme:

“This business of storytelling, and finding a way to give individual recognition to people by allowing them to tell their stories every day and publishing them, is the single greatest idea that I have heard in business of any kind, whatsoever.”

We recently spent some time in Eastern Europe working with a telecommunications provider. We wanted to draw out some ‘pride stories’ from the senior managers we were working with to help bring the organisational narrative to life.

One woman, who had spent many years earlier in her career working as a TV news reporter, told us that she continues to feel a draw towards any breaking news event.

Shortly after beginning her present role, she saw a report on TV of a terrible accident involving a group of students whose coach had crashed off the road in a remote Albanian valley. Feeling a tinge of regret that she was not at the scene, for a moment she questioned her move into corporate life.

The next day, one of her old colleagues called her up. “You must be proud to work for your company”, she was told. It transpired that hers was the only network covering the valley where the coach had crashed, and without it, the students would not have been able to call for help.

What's more, the TV reports she'd been watching were completely relying on her network to get their report live on air. It was a tragic event, but the executives in the room could feel some sense of pride that their network almost certainly saved lives.

 

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