We Need To Reframe What We Call Entrepreneurship And Leadership

There’s just no room for certainty any more

Let’s play a game. It’s called ‘what if?’ I know you’re busy. Just bear with me for a few minutes. You're a leader. What’s your job? Go on, tell me. Write down three things about it. I’ll wait.

OK done? Chances are, you just wrote down some of the things you do. It’s probably recognizable from your ‘to-do’ list. When you get to the end of it (if you ever do), you just go straight back up to the top again, don't you?

Wanna try something else? Go ask someone on your team to describe you, in a work context of course. Chances are they’ll tell you what you are. These might be ‘reassuring’, ‘helpful’ or if you're doing well, ‘inspirational’ or if not so well, “pain in the …’

The point here is that what you do and who you are, are separate things. If you have a ‘to do’ list, then have a ‘to be’ list alongside. You won't ever get to the end of the latter, because you’ll have to keep ticking against it.

Leaders aren’t there just to do something. They’re there to be something. It’s the first lesson that came through in my research for my new book. It’s all about balance. Doing and being are at opposite ends of the spectrum. So are rational thinking and emotional thinking. So are spiritual experience and physical experience. Local and global. Tactical and strategic. Male and female. Me and we. 

So, my first ‘what if’ is clear – what if leadership was not about being one thing or another, but a balance of both?

Nothing revolutionary in that, you might say. And you’d be right. I’m no leadership guru. All I’ve done is build a global company from scratch over twenty years. I’m not a professor. Nor am I a leadership expert. So, I’m not telling you I’m right. I’m just asking you to consider what if?

Now, let’s try something more radical. Ready? What if everything you learned at school and university was wrong? I know, just what if? Would you deny it? Would you say it must have been right? Everyone else was doing it, so how could it be wrong? But think back to what you got scored on. Again, chances are, it was for individual achievement, for knowing the ‘right’ answers, for obedience and of course, passing exams. 

You got no marks for endurance, determination, collaboration, loyalty, empathy, compassion, patience, humility. I’ll stop there.
 

You got counted on all the things that could be counted. Not everything that counts can be counted. So, because it can’t, it doesn't get taught. So even if your education wasn’t wasted, at least we can agree that it didn’t prepare you for all of those skills above which are so very important in your leadership role.

There’s at least room for uncertainty, which brings me to my final ‘what if?’. What if all those people around you who are so certain, so sure, so utterly convinced that they were right, were wrong?

Yep, I know I can't prove it, but what if? Would we see a series of big surprises? Like a pandemic? Like a President who came out of nowhere? Like a financial crisis that no-one thought possible? Like a catastrophic change in our weather patterns?

We weren’t short of data in the financial crisis. We had highly qualified, very experienced, wealthy people with lots of information, but they didn't see a complete collapse. What if it was because they were all so certain? And we keep seeing this pattern. What if the people’s car company lied about emissions to the people? What if a global charity exchanged its aid in return for sex from the vulnerable people they were there to protect? What if the man who wrote the rules for Nasdaq created the largest ever Ponzi scheme?

The conclusion is that the only provenance of real certainty must be mediocrity. Leadership’s job is not to know the right answer; it’s to prepare for all the possible answers. Leadership’s job is not to be the smartest person in the room. Leadership’s job is to make everyone feel like they're the smartest in the room. Leadership’s job is not to recruit in its own likeness, because people who are the same, worry about all the same things. That’s why we need more diversity. Of course, it’s a matter of social justice, but it’s also a matter of business efficiency.

What’s the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in America? White middle-aged men? Asians? Hipsters? Not what you’d think. It’s Black females who are often leaders of single-parent families. These are households where you’ll find organization, leadership, fiscal planning, logistics, attention-to-detail, often better than you can find in a boardroom. So, we need to re-frame what we call entrepreneurship and leadership.

There’s just no room for certainty any more. Am I certain about that? Ha! Of course not. I’m just asking the question: ‘What if?’