A WARREN BENNIS BOOK

This collection of books is devoted exclusively to new and exemplary contributions to management thought and practice. The books in this series are addressed to thoughtful leaders, executives, and managers of all organizations who are struggling with and committed to responsible change. My hope and goal is to spark new intellectual capital by sharing ideas positioned at an angle to conventional thought—in short, to publish books that disturb the present in the service of a better future.

BOOKS IN THE WARREN BENNIS SIGNATURE SERIES

Branden | Self-Esteem at Work
Mitroff, Denton | A Spiritual Audit of Corporate America
Schein | The Corporate Culture Survival Guide
Sample | The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership
Lawrence, Nohria | Driven
Cloke, Goldsmith | The End of Management and the Rise of Organizational Democracy
Glen | Leading Geeks
Cloke, Goldsmith | The Art of Waking People Up
George | Authentic Leadership
Kohlrieser | Hostage at the Table
Rhode | Moral Leadership

Copyright © 2007 by Bill George. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

George, Bill (William W.)

True North : discover your authentic leadership / Bill George with Peter Sims ; foreword by David Gergen.—1st. ed.

p. cm.—(Warren Bennis series)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8751-0 (cloth)

1. Leadership. 2. Organizational effectiveness. I. Sims, Peter. II. Title.

HD57.7.G4582 2007

658.4’092—dc22

2006100386

HB Printing

Acknowledgments

True North is the result of collaboration with my coauthor, Peter Sims, and my colleagues at Harvard Business School, Diana Mayer and Andrew McLean. They have been tireless in their dedication to exploring with me how people develop as authentic leaders, to interviewing these leaders, and to assessing their inputs. Peter, in particular, has proven to be a true collaborator; he has provided exceptional understanding of the next generation of authentic leaders and of the meaning and impact of authentic leadership. Diana did a superb job in interviewing leaders across the United States and sharpening our thinking. Andrew led the research methodology, keeping our team on track with proper protocols and knowledge of other leadership research studies. We also received very valuable insights and guidance throughout the entire process from Warren Bennis, our executive editor, as well as from Susan Williams and Byron Schneider at Jossey-Bass.

We are especially grateful to the 125 leaders who offered their personal stories and their perspectives on leadership during the interviews, and their willingness to share with the current and future generations of authentic leaders and all those who want to understand leading from the leader’s inside point of view. Without their openness, this book would never have been possible.

During the editing process, John S. Rosenberg, Jean Martin, Jeff George, Penny George, Grace Kahng, David Gergen, Carolina Helmick, Doug Baker, Chi Nguyen, and Matt Breitfelder were especially insightful in sharpening the text and the writing. Richard Sheppard did outstanding work on the graphic designs. We also appreciate the inputs of Bill Buzenberg, Charlie Dimmler, Paula Goldman, Daisy Wademan, Ryan Frederick, Ron Sonntag, Michal Petrzela, Matt Cain, Bryan Droznes, Kathleen Kelly, Jeannette Lager, Renée Will George, Jon George, Christopher Gergen, Daniel Salvadori, Julian Flannery, Scott Starr, Fawzi Jumean, Ori Brafman, and Gigi Sims. Special thanks go to Carol Mierau, my assistant at Medtronic, and Kathy Farren, my assistant at Harvard, for all their efforts on the book and research project. My colleagues at Harvard—Nitin Nohria, Jay Lorsch, David Gergen, Joe Badaracco, Lynn Paine, Srikant Datar, Ronnie Heifitz, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Howard Stevenson, Joe Bower, Scott Snook, the members of the Leadership and Corporate Accountability teaching group—and my MBA students at Harvard have been especially helpful to me in my understanding of leadership and in support of my efforts, as have Peter’s colleagues at Stanford, Charles O’Reilly, Joel Peterson, and Beth Benjamin.

None of this would have been possible without the unwavering support, encouragement, insights, and patience of my wife, Penny, from whom I have learned so much about people and leading them.

To all of you, Peter and I are deeply grateful.

The Authors

Bill George was chief executive of Medtronic, the world’s leading medical technology company, from 1991 until 2001 and chairman of the board from 1996 to 2002. Under his leadership, Medtronic’s market capitalization grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, averaging 35 percent a year. Currently, he is professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and serves on the board of directors of ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, and Novartis. He has also served on the board of Target Corporation.

He is the author of the best-selling book Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets of Creating Lasting Value (Jossey-Bass, 2003). He has made frequent appearances on television and radio, including The Today Show, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, CNBC, Bloomberg News, and public radio. His articles have appeared in Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, and numerous other publications.

He has been named one of the “Top 25 Business Leaders of the Past 25 Years” by PBS, “Executive of the Year—2001” by the Academy of Management, and “Director of the Year—2001-02” by the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is currently a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and World Economic Forum USA and has been board chair of Allina Health System, Abbott-Northwestern Hospital, Greater Twin Cities United Way, and Advamed.

Earlier in his career, he was an executive with Honeywell and Litton Industries and served in the U.S. Department of Defense. He has been executive-in-residence at Yale School of Management. He received his BS in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech and MBA from Harvard University, where he was a Baker Scholar, and an honorary doctorate from Bryant University.

Peter Sims helped found the London office of Summit Partners, a leading global investment firm, and established “Leadership Perspectives,” a course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business while he was a student there. He also served previously as part of the Deloitte Touche Tomatsu Global Strategy Team.

Sims has served as a member of the President’s Visiting Committee at Bowdoin College and on the board of directors of Summer Search. He received his MBA from Stanford and an AB, magna cum laude, from Bowdoin. He lives in San Francisco.

Editor’s Note

As the world becomes ever more dangerous and our problems more complex and dire, we long for truly distinguished leaders, men and women who deserve our respect and loyalty. Instead, we have suffered far too much bad leadership in recent years. The business media have exposed one scandal after another—criminally greedy CEOs, boards that do little more than rubber-stamp executive whims, companies willing to trade customers’ lives for profits, and corrupt and partisan political leaders. Too many of our so-called leaders have functioned best as subjects of the brand of satire perfected on television by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

But Bill George and Peter Sims’s True North is about a very different kind of leader, the kind that we can be proud to follow. In this ambitious and important book, one of America’s most respected corporate leaders and his talented younger collaborator show that ethically grounded leadership is not only possible, it is often the most effective leadership of all. It is an optimistic message that falls on grateful ears.

To write their guide to authentic leadership, George and Sims interviewed 125 leaders in many arenas. The authors chose men and women whose leadership appeared to be grounded in their character. The subjects range in age from twenty-three to ninety-three and have distinguished themselves in corporate life, as entrepreneurs, as social innovators, in political life, and in the study of leadership itself. Some, like statesman and former Bechtel head George Shultz, have contributed in many fields. Some, like Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and educator and frequent political commentator David Gergen, are household names. Others are less well known but have quietly made important contributions to our lives, including young Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach For America. Financial entrepreneur Charles Schwab, Avon CEO Andrea Jung, Amgen head Kevin Sharer, philosopher of design David Kelley, Judy Vredenburgh of Big Brothers, Big Sisters—all the leaders who appear in True North offer firsthand insights into the nature of authentic leadership and the way to develop it.

One of the revelations of True North is how critical these leaders’ personal stories are in shaping their leadership. Time after time, those interviewed describe a turning point in their lives—a crucible, I call it—that transformed them into the leaders they are today. These tales of how they became the people they are reveal their most deeply held values, their most passionate beliefs. Howard Schultz recalls how, as a child of seven, he was forever changed by the news that his delivery-man father had slipped on a sheet of ice and broken his ankle. The accident lost Schultz’s father his job and the family its health insurance and economic security. That experience led Schultz to create a global business, one built not on lattes and frappucinos but on the conviction that every worker deserves respect and health care.

“Those early memories are with me all the time,” Schultz tells the authors. “I wanted to build the kind of company my father never had a chance to work for, where you would be valued and respected, no matter where you came from, the color of your skin, or your level of education. Memories of my father’s lost health care led to Starbucks’ becoming the first American company to provide health insurance for every employee, including part-time workers.”

Such autobiographical stories continue to inspire the leaders who lived them, keeping their moral compasses pointed toward True North. The tales are inspiring for readers as well and marvelous to read. Novartis Chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella’s story is a saga of Dickensian proportions. It begins with the Swiss-born Vasella’s achingly lonely childhood, filled with physical pain and emotional loss. At the age of eight, he was struck with tuberculosis and meningitis. He was sent away to recuperate for a year—a year in which his parents never visited him. As a teenager, he joined a rowdy motorcycle gang that drank too much and fought too quickly. But Vasella and the other leaders of True North are not defeated by their struggles and setbacks. Instead, they learn from them and find their futures in them.

In his gang, Vasella recognized his own ambition and began to fashion a career in which he had more control. He went to medical school and later rose to the top of one of the world’s leading health care companies. Today his leadership is grounded in his personal knowledge of poverty and ill health. “As CEO,” Vasella told the authors, “I have the leverage to impact the lives of many more people. I can do what is right, based on my moral compass. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what we do for other people.”

There are more than one hundred such stories in this fascinating, important book. Some are funny, some are cautionary, all are compelling. After a friend of mine read True North before publication, he noted how different it is from most business books. Instead of simply telling readers how to get ahead, True North offers a practical five-part program for developing their best selves and shows how authenticity and integrity shape great leadership. My friend wants to give the book to his children to read.

As CEO of medical-device giant Medtronic, Bill George was known as much for his integrity as for his business success. Now on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, he (with coauthor Peter Sims) has written a worthy successor to his best-selling Authentic Leadership. Building on that book’s wisdom, True North goes even further, revealing just how powerful authentic leadership can be—and, best of all, how to achieve it.

Warren Bennis
Santa Monica, California
October 2006

This book is dedicated to my wife, Penny, my faithful partner for the past thirty-seven years, who has helped me stay on course to True North, and to our sons, Jeff and Jon, and our daughters-in-law, Renée and Jeannette, who represent the best of the new generation of authentic leaders.

Foreword

Growing up in the shadow of a great university, I always believed that the smartest person made the best leader. That was only natural in an academic family where my dad was a professor of mathematics and two of my older brothers became professors of medicine and psychology. Our family and friends placed great store in intellectual achievement, so I just assumed that smart people were the best at most things, including leadership. Boy, did I have some things to learn.

Moving to Washington in my late twenties, I began my education in the real world in earnest. Over a period of some three decades, I had the privilege of serving as an adviser to four presidents in the White House and working alongside leaders in government, the press, business, and other fields. Many of them were outstanding individuals, and I shall always cherish their friendships. They also taught me a lot about leadership. Yes, there is no substitute for ability: to lead others, you must know what you are doing, have deep curiosity, and develop keen judgment. Competence counts. But what ultimately distinguishes the great leaders from the mediocre are the personal, inner qualities—qualities that are hard to define but are essential for success, qualities that each of us must develop for ourselves, and qualities that are explored here in these pages with great clarity and insight by one of America’s most authentic leaders, Bill George. This is a gem of a book that will guide you on your own journey.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!