My nineteenth key to an “A” is association. How often have you heard, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Yet, don’t you do so, over and over? We are quick to judge. In Blink,[i] Malcolm Gladwell addresses the subject of quick judgments, documenting instances where experts do so very accurately, as well as instances where they don’t. A more extensive treatment of the subject is found in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.[ii]
Two aspects of association critically important for leaders are 1) be selective about people with whom you choose to associate and 2) be careful about making judgments too quickly. Not only are books judged by their covers, but people are judged by those around them. As Iacocca observes, “You can tell a lot about a person by looking at who his friends are.”[iii] S. Truett Cathy advises, “Associate yourselves only with those people you can be proud of whether they work for you or you work for them.”[iv] Who you hang out with sends messages; be aware of the messages you send. There’s a saying about people who hang out with hogs getting dirty, but they aren’t University of Arkansas Razorback fans. Only in Arkansas can you call a person a hog and it be taken as a compliment.
An important element of association is networking. Making and maintaining connections proved to be instrumental in my professional career. While I thought I was good at networking, my son, John White III, puts me to shame. He’s organized and intentional in building and sustaining his network. He stays in touch with people better than anyone I know. There’s a reason people claim, “What you know and how much you know aren’t nearly as important as who you know.”
* * *
The twentieth key to an “A” is arbitrariness. Albeit infrequently, there are times when a leader must be arbitrary. Logic, reason, and wise counsel are ignored and the leader acts arbitrarily. It’s not a my way or the highway approach; neither is it a speak softly and carry a big stick approach. Instead, it’s an “I hear you and I understand where you are coming from, but this time we are going to do such and so” approach.
Coleman Peterson shared with students in my leadership class an instance in which David Glass, Walmart’s CEO, acted arbitrarily. All division heads were told to reduce their budgets by five percent. Peterson tried as hard as he could to get Glass to give him some slack and not force him to make the 5 percent budget cut. After listening to Peterson for what Glass surely thought was far too long, he told Peterson, “Sometimes you just have to be arbitrary. Make the reductions.”
Reportedly, General Colin Powell once said, “I only have to do so much compromising. There comes a time when I can just say, ‘Do it!’”[v]
A leader must occasionally exert force in order to overcome organizational inertia and effect change. Typically, people don’t want to change. They have the attitude of Walt Kelly’s comic strip character, Pogo, “Change is great. You go first.”
Budget reallocation isn’t simple. I had to do it at NSF, Georgia Tech, and Arkansas. I forced uniform budget reductions across organizational units and then reallocated money to units based on needs articulated in budget requests. It wasn’t popular, but it achieved what I had in mind. As Erich Bloch taught me, it’s easy to implement change when you’re provided budget increases. However, if it’s a priority and budgets are limited, you sometimes have to be arbitrary.
________
Next: Keys to “A”s in Leadership–Part XIII (Authenticity and Acting)
[i] Malcolm Gladwell, Blink, Little, Brown and Company, New York, NY, 2005.
[ii] Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY, 2011.
[iii] Lee Iacocca, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY, 2007, p. 91.
[iv] S. Truett Cathy, It’s Easier to Succeed Than to Fail, Oliver-Nelson Books, Nashville, TN, 1989, p. 83.
[v] Oren Harari, The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 2002, p. 24.
