Lee Thayer passed away on May 31, 2020.

By Phil Liebman
I always said, Lee Thayer was extremely perishable, with no particular expiration date. Well, we all have an expiration date. We mostly don’t know when that is. Today we finally know Lee’s:  Lee passed away on May 31, 2020.
His guidance, his teachings and his thinking have been summarily influential to my own thinking about developing leadership. Lee devoted the last 60 years of his life to shaping the thinking of countless business leaders following a successful and distinguished, albeit frustrating career in academics in some of the worlds most prestigious universities. He described the 35 years teaching, from which he retired in 1991 as an ongoing research project he “put up with” – and for the remaining years of his life devoted himself full-time to his passion,

 “ … to help committed CEOs and other top executives transform themselves into leaders and their organizations into healthier, more vigorous, and more adaptive high-performance organizations. “

Lee was my mentor in leadership development, my teacher about all things leadership and most things in life, my inspiration for wanting to explain things – and help people understand them – and my friend.

Many who knew Lee casually would fault the caustic crust that you first encounter. He was easy to dislike if you didn’t care for what he had to say or what you might choose to learn from the wisdom he had accumulated from both his study of humanity and his enormous thirst for the wisdom of the stoics and other great thinkers throughout history.
But that crust was a deliberately crafted tool designed to provoke others to react, to think, to grow. Lee would be quick to point out that any tool is only as good as the hands it is in…   Lee wielded his tools mightily and deftly – he was a virtuoso provocateur.

I also knew Lee as a deeply human, immensely caring man. He didn’t care if you saw that – and perhaps on some level didn’t want people to see that side of him, but it was impossible to avoid if you kept coming at him, crashing into the spiny crust and allowing him to open your mind to experience what it means to be a learning being – one who lives and thrives in the learning mode.

The bones of many of those who hold us all up – were made stronger by Lee Thayer. His influence resides in every layer of what we do and what we should continue doing all our lives.

Above all else, Lee reminded me how perfect it is to be highly imperfect. All great leaders are that way. Our imperfections are what define us as the unique beings we are. And how we think informs who we are, as who we are informs what we choose to and can are prepared to accomplish in life.

I am a better version of myself thanks to Lee Thayer – and so are many of the people he has touched through me. He has left a treasure trove of writings that provide a great roadmap to the leadership journey that was his life. In a sense – that journey doesn’t have to end, as it will live on – as long as the pages keep turning and people keep learning from him.

It is often hard to say goodbye to those we care deeply about. But Lee left so much in his wake – that will keep me learning from his wisdom and insight, his passion for rattling my cage – and the enormous love he had for making the work a better place – by helping those who lead us more competent, more exceptional and more efficacious.

Lee was a lover of jazz, stoic philosophy, the visual arts ( his wife Kate is a well-established painter) – and of poetry. The immortal words of Walt Whitman seem to speak to this moment as well as any words might:

Photo Credit: Phil Liebman ©2017

O Captain! My Captain!

By Walt Whitman
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
                   But O heart! heart! heart!
                           O the bleeding drops of red,
                              Where on the deck my Captain lies,
                                 Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
                        Here Captain! dear father!
                           This arm beneath your head!
                              It is some dream that on the deck,
                                 You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
                        Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
                           But I with mournful tread,
                              Walk the deck my Captain lies,
                                 Fallen cold and dead.

About Lee – as explained in his own published works:

Lee Thayer is best known for his acerbic wit, his engaging style, his sense of humor, and for the depth and breadth of his intellectual resources. Accompany those traits with his accomplishments and the work he does in this complex world of ours, and you begin to get an idea of Thayer’s vision for the “thinking, being, and doing” of leadership.

Thayer’s goal is to visualize the ideal, and then to figure out how to get there by starting with the actualities of the present circumstances.

Like some of the rest of us, he wants to leave this world a better place. And he’s doing it-organization by organization. Many say that in his craft he has no peer. His approach is as unique (often counter-intuitive) as it is powerful. It works. It is a life-changing experience for those who are fortunate enough to work with him.

Thayer’s work begins with an invitation from an exceptional and exceptionally committed CEO-to partner with that CEO for the purpose of transforming his or her organization to an outstanding level of performance, while learning the kind of leadership required to deserve a great organization. (A high-performance organization is one that does everything it does better than anyone else-and improves upon that every day-giving that organization a sustainable competitive advantage.)

Thayer gets into “the trenches” with those who are going to make it happen, to help them every step of the way. As he says,

“It isn’t what you know that creates excellence. Ninety-five percent of it is in the implementation. For that, you may need a guide and a mentor-someone who’s been there in all kinds of conditions. ”

  • Thayer’s career as a pioneer and influential innovator in the design and development of high-performance organizations-and in the kind of leadership required of the top executive to achieve that-has spanned more than four decades. It has often been observed that he has rattled more CEOs’ cages than anyone else.

Having come from a high-level executive position in industry himself, coupled with his experience as a jazz performer and arranger and his university degrees in the humanities, engineering, and psychology, Dr. Thayer has developed a revolutionary and practical framework for understanding what it takes to lead the way to creating great organizations, in the’ how’ as much as the’ why’. He and his CEO partners often have to invent the pushes and pulls required to achieve the kind of excellence that others can’t figure out how to copy.

Early on in his career, he served as consultant to several of the Fortune 500 and other notable companies, such as IBM, AT&T, Westinghouse, Boeing, Curtiss-Wright, Pratt-Whitney, McDonnell Douglas, Phillips, Shell, General Motors, Sealtest Foods, and Hallmark. He has consulted with the U.S. Air Force, the Postal Service, numerous banks and other institutions, universities around the globe, and West Point.

He was the consultant behind the now well-known success story at Johnsonville Foods-which Tom Peters referred to as “the most remarkable example of organizational transformation” he had ever seen.

He has taken his extraordinary problem-solving skills to the Scandinavian countries (esp., Finland and Norway), to Australia, to the UK and most European countries, and to Canada, Mexico, and China. Today, he limits his work to small to medium-sized organizations where, as he says, the impact is more immediate and measurable.

His other “career,” as a distinguished university professor in major universities both here and abroad (e.g., the Harvard Graduate School of Business, The University of Amsterdam, Queensland University of Technology in Australia, Universidad Complutense in Mexico, etc.) was an ongoing research project he “put up with” for thirty-five years, before “retiring” in 1991 to devote full time to his passion which, as he has described it in interviews, is

” … to help committed CEOs and other top executives transform themselves into leaders and their organizations into healthier, more vigorous, and more adaptive high-performance organizations. ”

Doing so, many have observed, has brought life back into those organizations, and has lifted the quality of life of its employees, both at work and at home.

  • Thayer has been invited to work in most of the major leadership development programs in the U.S. and abroad, to share the wisdom he has gained during his many years of working and coaching “in the trenches” with his carefully-selected CEOs to make outstanding performance a way of life. Thayer has conducted hundreds of seminars and has spoken before thousands of top executives, and has been recognized with grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Education, the Danforth Foundation, and NASA.

He has been recognized as a Ford Foundation Fellow, as a Danforth Teacher, and as a Fulbright Scholar.

Truly a Renaissance man himself, Dr. Thayer is one of the most sought-after seminar speakers and consultants in the world.