The Freakonomics podcast recently started covering the topic of what it takes to be CEO, and was happy to hear that there is no secret formula, zilch. Though I couldn’t help but feel like yelling the whole time “you are asking the wrong question!” I think they could have spared us the other follow up episodes to this series - while entertaining, I feel that exploration has come at the expense of a deeper analysis. There are many other factors to consider – like composition of support teams, the organization’s history, and current economic conditions. How then do we end, or least tone down, the infatuation on leadership?
Freakonomics, in case you haven’t thought deeply about their CEO series, just gave you plenty of reason to throw out all your management books, skip all case studies on leadership, and refocus your efforts on a bigger question. I felt after listening to the first half and hearing there is no clear data on what it takes to be CEO, there is no secret formula or sauce, that they were really asking the wrong question. If no person is an island, why is this is a surprise? We should be asking more about the teams that CHOOSE to follow this person, and under which CONTEXT they operate. Leading a large organization is a complex undertaking, so we do the public a disservice by the constant infatuation with leadership at the individual level.
The idea of looking at individual leaders and the people (team) they attract, plus the context they operate, may sound a bit like Porter’s Five Forces, but that would only cover the CONTEXT part at most. I think of the idea of individual leaders, the teams they attract (and inspire), plus context, more closely related to complexity and Yaneer Bar-Yam’s ideas behind understanding complex systems.
Science research tries to breakdown everything into individual components, getting to the source (or cause). These frameworks offer great insight, but are not necessarily the best to study modern constructs like “leadership.” You can’t test an individual leader with the same rigor that science requires – such as controlled experiments and moving the leader from firm to firm, and industry to industry. Even if you have perfect information on an individual leader, it still leaves out significant information on team dynamics and context of the environment. This also happens within science and something as seemingly simple (ahem) as understanding the interaction between atoms - As someone stated before, you can know everything about hydrogen, you can know everything about oxygen, but know nothing about water.
Follow this thought experiment: take an individual leader, their skills and experiences, multiple by the interactions in managing a team of individuals (keeping in mind they are likely sub-leaders in their own area of expertise and domain of responsibilities), and then place them in the context of their industry, with competitors, and other external forces in the economy. Now try to answer this question – how successful will they be, and how do we replicate that success? The study of individual leadership offers little to zero insight to help answer these questions.
Using the water example again. How much insight can you derive from studying hydrogen when trying to understand how water will travel through a river basin, given certain weather and terrain conditions? How about studying oxygen? Even the study of individual water molecules is unlikely to yield useful information.
Let’s move past the point of studying individual leaders, and focus more on how they build effective teams to operate in a variety of environments (context). If you still need more convincing, then consider the career trajectory of NFL coach Pete Carroll. His first stint as head coach in the NFL is regarded by most as a failure. He became USC’s football coach under much opposition from the alumni base. Yet, he went on to create one of college football’s premier dynasties (not without controversy of course). He was able to come back to the NFL and win a Super Bowl for the Seattle Seahawks (and almost a second). It is very tempting to focus on who he is, but of course we would miss out on the differences of the manage personnel he built, the players under his leadership, and the competitive landscape of each during those different eras.
Extending the NFL example, we can compare and contrast Peter Carroll and another legendary coach, Bill Belichick (trust me, I’m not a Patriots fan, but the record speaks for itself). While appealing to study them as individuals, we have limited insight into whether copying their styles will lead to high probabilities of success. It is a richer field of study to consider the teams built around them, and the state of the league during their time. NFL rules change and evolve, so do playing styles – and these changes have occurred throughout the course of their tenure as well.
It is tempting to breakdown leadership to its small component, the individual person. Most of us think about our individual agency, desire to learn and grow, and ability to influence our future outcomes. The challenge is that we don’t operate in a vacuum, our actions and decisions impact the very systems we operate in, and those react and evolve with and without our influence. While we can’t completely disregard the impact an individual leader can have on a team, organization, and industry, the study of individual leadership is only the first step in trying to reproduce replicable systems, and trying to find a formula for success. A more thorough and worthwhile study will include team dynamics (building and managing) and the context in which they operate (industry and the broader economic environment). Let’s step back from our infatuation with individual leadership, and instead take an approach that studies the dynamics of whole systems. If we are going to look at individuals, it should be with a focus on how they built or influenced systems to channel success, and simply didn’t get lucky to be at the right place, and at the right time.