I would argue that leadership is not rocket science. In fact, it’s far more art than science at all. But there are important and valuable lessons that you can draw from our understanding of the natural world around us that we can apply to become more effective as leaders.
The Law of Conservation of Mass was discovered in 1785 by Antoine Lavoisier, suggesting that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Albert Einstein took this concept a step further, noting that the same concept applies to energy – and that both mass and energy remain constant factors within a system. So what does this have to do with leadership?
The concept is simple.
The laws of science suggest that both energy and physical mass can only be transformed and have consequences. When we endeavor to transform energy or matter, we might produce intended or unintended consequences. Both can be valuable and instructive and might be constructive or destructive. Often the value is determined by how we learn to use what we discover.
The principal function of leadership is to guide change to accomplish some established goals by influencing how people perform and contribute. Leadership is agnostic to whether that goal is considered good or bad. You can lead people down any path, and the quality of the consequences is always a matter of interpretation after the fact. Even leaders driven by noble causes might produce results that undermine the fail or even undermine the aspirations of those who follow them.
Drilling down on this thought, consider that every action and every accomplishment has consequences. When we build a tower to help us see farther, it will invariably block someone else’s view. Whether we create or destroy to meet our aims, what we accomplish will be experienced as a solution to some and a problem to others. In many of his writings about leadership, Dr. Lee Thayer suggested that every solution to any problem invariably creates some new problem. This view fed the idea that part of a leader’s role is to determine which problems you would prefer to have – and obviate the rest.
Drilling down on this thought, consider that every action and every accomplishment has consequences.
Going back to science, all efforts to transform things consume some kind of energy. To begin with, it takes a particular sort of effort to prepare yourself to lead such efforts. Rarely does transformational leadership happen spontaneously. And when it does, it is usually an unintended consequence. Unintended consequences are occasionally fortuitous in product research. One famous example was 3M’s invention of the Post-It note – which was a failed effort to make a more permanent paper adhesive. Beyond the preparation and the trial-and-error of the research and development efforts, someone needed to recognize the failed experiment’s potential and champion the new product. As much as the product itself transformed 3M’s consumer products division, it was leadership that caused it to happen.
Companies that you might consider to be visionary are simply disciplined at seeing beyond what they were looking for – and noticing unexpected opportunities as a result.
The other side of the equation is those leaders who see their strength, not in building things, but taking a wrecking-ball to the status quo. It is sometimes necessary to destroy something to make room for what might replace it. When people get too cozy in the status quo – they resist that kind of change – and the potential for transformation is lost. Many companies have failed by becoming “fat and lazy,” allowing their competition to roll right over them. It wasn’t that Blackberry couldn’t imagine being overtaken by Apple with their iPhones; they fully imagined the threat and simply dismissed it to their peril. Kodak invented digital photography back in 1975 but remained more comfortable hanging on to film. We know where that went. The list of examples can go on and on.
The problem with wrecking balls is how they provide rapid transformation with little need for thought and planning. It’s far easier to destroy things than build them.
A high-rise building might take years to design and construct – and can be leveled with a few strategic swings of a wrecking ball, converting all the energy that went into building it into a pile of rubble. History has proven that nature will do the same, causing everything to decay over time. Great civilizations have crumbled to foundations and buried under sand and soil. The wrecking ball may just accelerate the inevitable. It can also be a vital tool for fashioning the kind of progress that advances society and enhances the lives of many. Like any tool, it is only as good -or bad – as the hands, it is in.
Leaders are catalysts. We engage the necessary resources to transform what is into what can be. And like an actual catalyst in chemical reactions, the leader is there only to enhance the conditions in which the reaction takes place. As a leader, you drive the transformation – and then disappear from the solution. Problems requiring the leader’s presence are perhaps the clearest examples of how solutions to some problems become more significant problems than those that are solved. Fidel Castro led the Cuban revolution to free the citizens from Batista, only to install himself as the next despot. This sort of problem doesn’t only apply to politics. Many companies have been built or rescued by CEOs who can’t resist enriching themselves and increasing their power even though, by doing so, they are failing those they serve. You don’t need to look any further than Enron’s story to find a perfect example of how greed can destroy a company and the lives that depend on it.
Leaders are catalysts. We engage the necessary resources to transform what is into what can be.
If you bear in mind that matter cannot be created or destroyed, you might begin to see the logic in understanding that the organization makes the leader successful and not the other way around. It takes energy that you, the leader, expend to develop yourself, the organization’s infrastructure, and the people who actually do the work and the sense of meaning that forms the purpose around which all of this is tied. The energy you employ is then transformed into the accomplishments of the organization. The satisfaction gained by all those who contribute to that success is a form of nourishment that both rewards people with the material support they need to tend to their lives and the sense of joy that elevates their desire and capacity to grow. When you make success about yourself, you rob the organization of both the resources it needs to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage and the energy of those who must perform for the transformation to occur in the first place.
This is what matters most.
It is how leaders view themselves and their roles. When you understand and embrace your responsibility to transform human energy and resources into things of real and enduring value that serve a greater good beyond your personal needs and interests, you find that you have the strength to remove obstacles, cause people to become inspired, and change the world for the better. It is the only thing that matters. That is how you protect what matters most and conserve the power of those you lead to transform today into a better tomorrow.
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