Leadership forgotten

There are many ways to inspire and ignite a spark beneath those who are working to rise up through the ranks in their respective professions. Several years and companies ago when I was a much younger lad, one of the development pieces we were to perform consisted of reading through a few books on leadership and development. At the time, I thought that wasn't too bad of an idea.

I won't bore you with the titles or author names as there were several and frankly, they are irrelevant, at least to me. It wasn't that there weren't lessons to be learned. I think one can learn something from nearly anything they read as long as the presentation is coherent. The lessons taken from these sort of books can be either good or bad. That doesn't always mean they are right or their lessons reflect how the business world actually works.

I remember one such 'lesson' was on how companies should go about passing on the helm to a successor. The case study was a very large and well known corporation. The man who built and guided this company was considered one to put the welfare of the company first. The true way to continue growth and success was to chose someone who had the same values. That is an excellent lesson, if it were true in practice.

Over the years in my career I've come to realize that lesson is for a bygone time, an era that no longer exists. I've gone through too many changes in the business models of my career to believe many of these leaders understand the basic ideas of how the business runs. Sure, there are changes in every industry. One must adapt to ever-changing environments, but too often now the attempt at growth undercuts the foundations of the company. Wall Street and stock prices now drive the business instead of a solid base. The investors come first. Unfortunately that is what is getting so many businesses in trouble. Growth that can't be sustained ultimately leads to failure of the company and where is the investors now? They're left with loss or nothing at all.

And what happens to those who run these companies when things begin to go bad? They wind up with golden parachutes worth more than the combined payroll of all the rest of the associates in the company. Hardly the lesson put forth in the book and certainly not something commonly in practice in this day and age in the business world.