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2013-11-28 14:06:34
Sydney Finkelstein
In many countries around the world, economies are still struggling to stimulate
growth and drive themselves out of recession. And business leaders are failing
to come up with solutions. The rollout of Obamacare in the United States by its
namesake has become a case study in incompetence. Other political leaders from
President Francois Hollande in France to Canada s tabloid sensation, mayor of
Toronto Rob Ford have regularly demonstrated a paucity of talent at the top.
Is this our future? Are we destined to be mired in a slump of leadership
forever?
It s easy to read all the headlines and believe mistakenly we are living in
an era devoid of great leaders. But that is simply not true. At all levels of
society we see greatness in leadership, people trying to change the world,
entrepreneurs building businesses of value and chief executives of the highest
integrity rebuilding economies.
The US holiday of Thanksgiving is upon us, so maybe it s time to give thanks to
some of the interesting people who refuse to accept failure and strive warts
and all to make something happen.
So thank you, Evan Spiegel, chief executive officer and co-founder of Snapchat,
a company that created a smartphone app that shares photos and instant messages
that disappear a few seconds after they are viewed. The gratitude isn t for
creating an app that few people over 25-years-old understand, but for having
the courage to try to build your own business in the face of enormous
temptation. Whether this turns out to be a Marc Zuckerberg-like success story
at Facebook, whose decision to remain independent may be what Spiegel is trying
to emulate, or a less successful Andrew Mason-like story at Groupon, who turned
down a $6 billion dollar buyout offer from Google only to be pushed out as CEO
three years later, remains to be seen.
Thanks should also go to Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, for
revolutionising multiple industries simultaneously. He has fundamentally
changed how people buy and read books. He also changed how retail stores
operate, forcing them to lower their prices while simultaneously adding
overnight delivery and store pick-up options for customers. When the history
books are being written about this era of business, only Apple co-founder Steve
Jobs will get more ink than Bezos, maybe.
With digital technologies not only disrupting industries like books and music,
but also taxicabs (Uber), travel (Google Maps; Kayak), and even university
education (edX; Coursera), the best CEOs recognise that you can t sit back and
see what happens when the world changes.
Take CEO Ajay Banga at MasterCard. Rather than watch as PayPal and Square,
among others, create digital credit cards that might displace the ubiquitous
plastic in our wallets, MasterCard has been testing a series of products and
apps designed to simplify how consumers buy things online, at sporting events
and even in parts of the world where safe and reliable non-cash transactions
are virtually non-existent. Who knows which, if any, of their many experiments
will become the killer app, but if you re not in the game you don t have a
chance. Ajay Banga, thank you for showing us how giant companies can still
innovate in the face of uncertain change.
It takes courage to experiment in larger companies, knowing that many, if not
most, of the shots you take will go wide of the net. Ironically, the stigma of
failure is greatest at the businesses that can most afford a few misses. Yet,
the greatest examples of recasting business models popularly known as the
pivot occur in the small entrepreneurial startups that live with the
narrowest margins for error.
For providing the best examples of leadership in the face of uncertainty, for
providing real-time case studies on the power of adaptability, and for bringing
a radical freshness to economies lucky enough to nurture rule-busting
entrepreneurs, I say thank you to Daniel Ek of Spotify for moving from a music
sharing product toward becoming the operating system for music; to Evan
Williams and Jack Dorsey for allowing their startup, Twitter, to morph from a
tool for status updates to the information network it is today; and to Pony Ma
of Chinese internet giant, Tencent, for being that rare example of a market
leader willing to completely upend its strategy by shifting from desktop
dominance to mobile platforms.
That each of these leaders is being richly, often enormously, rewarded for
their success does not take away from their accomplishments. It is also
important to note that most jobs are created by entrepreneurial companies,
making these companies the superstars of economic growth. For me, it is enough
that they have created something that never existed before and that those
creations bring value enjoyment, convenience and sometimes even new business
opportunities to many other people.
Excellence in leadership is not limited to business builders. Individuals can
make a difference at their local schools and religious institutions by
volunteering their time, energy, and money. It s easy to start feeling better
when you start tallying up leaders this way, because there are many people who
need to be counted, and thanked.
To those graduating with highly marketable skillsets from universities around
the world, thank you for taking on giant, almost intractable, problems. Thank
you, also, to the many undergraduate and Master of Business Administration
students who are taking jobs in the education sector, driven by a desire to
make a difference in an industry that can t seem to get things right.
In the face of economic headwinds around the world it s easy to forget how many
talented people have stepped forward to take on leadership challenges in all
sorts of organizations. While stories about the Rob Fords of the world make
headlines, every now and then it may be worth remembering that the vast
majority of leaders in business, government and non-profit sectors alike
are creating value for multiple constituencies. An occasional thank you is
not unreasonable.
"If you re not in the game you don t have a chance."