Global Leadership Summit 2015 Session 2: Jim Collins

• Spent the last few years at West Point Military Academy
• Today, I’ll share some of my reflections and learnings from that journey.
• “The re-education of Jim Collins”
• I finished my time in the chair with an one hour talk to the corp of cadets. I had an image of each of those young leaders as vectors going out into time and space.
• I want to translate what I learned from them to you.
• I believe that questions are better than answers.

1. What cause do you serve with Level 5 ambition?

• Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America – senior thesis for college: 1) every single kid deserves a shot at a solid K-12 education and 2) we should enlist every college kid to serve a 2 year deployment in our most impoverished schools
• If you have a charismatic cause, you do not need to be a charismatic leader.
• At the core of Level 5 is service. We’re talking ambition channeled outward, away from yourself.
• Ego-driven Level 4 leaders are good at inspiring people to follow them. Level 5 leaders inspire people to follow a cause.
• The ethic of service runs through West Point. All of them know that some of them might die in that service.
• You might think it is easier to have this Level 5 ambition at Teach for America or serving in the military. We originally found this by looking at leadership in the marketplace.
• Do what the greatest entrepreneurs and builders have always done. Do something that goes beyond just making money. Money is not the point of life. Commitment to service is not a sector choice; it’s a life choice.
• “To serve is to live.”

2. Will you settle for being a good leader, or will you grow to become a great leader?

• Peter Drucker said there would be a shift.
• We might be on for another shift. From organizations well-managed to networks well-led.
• Leadership is not personality. Leadership is not position, power, rank, title.
• “True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the choice to not follow.”
• To use title, rank, power to get something done is an abdication of leadership.
• General Eisenhower – “Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.”
• Beethoven learned from Haydn but didn’t copy him.
• Most great leaders don’t start as great leaders. They grow into leaders.
• Will you do what it takes to scale your leadership?
• If your BHAGs are big enough, you’re going to do have to grow?

3. How can you refram failure as growth in pursuit of a BHAG?

• BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)
• Does a BHAG have to be achievable?
• Free-climbing the Dawn Wall of El Capitan – Tommy, you just keep failing and failing and failing? You don’t understand Jim. I’m growing.
• On the other side of success is not failure, it’s growth.
• When I asked cadets, how many of you have failed, felt a profound sense of inadequacy? All 4000 hands went up.
• 2800 days after asking, Tommy stood on to of El Capitan

4. How can you succeed by helping other succeeds?

• We succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed.
• You are never alone.
• It’s impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life.

5. Have you found your hedgehog – your personal hedgehog? 

• What you’re good at may not be what you’re doing.
• I met a persistant hedgehog: Steve Jobs.  He exhuded passion, energy. He was a hedgehog.
• He had an idea that the most efficient man in the world was a man on a bicycle. And computers were bicycles for the mind.
• What if Steve Jobs had quit in 1985? What if Wendy had quit when noone would fund Teach for America early on? What if Churchhill had quit when asked? True creators stay in the game. We cannot control. We cannot predict every hand we get dealt in life. Sometimes we’ll good hands, sometimes we’ll get good hands. If you play every hand you get to the best of your ability that adds up to a huge compounding effect.
• Real creative impact accelerates, if you choose, after 50.

6. Will you build your unit – you minibus – into a pocket of greatness?

• In Good to Great, the leaders built their unit. They focused on their unit rather than their career.
• Be a first who leader rather than a first what leader.
• Figure out who should be on the key seats on the bus. Be rigorous, not ruthless. Take care of your people. In the end, life is people.
• Change your focus from taking care of your career to taking care of your people.
• My wife received a note from her cross country coach from over 4 decades ago.  My wife would go on to win the Hawaian IronMan.
• She returned to her school as a cross country school that won 4 state championships. You don’t run for you; you run for others.
• Investing in the kids, building a program, showing them what’s possible, changing their lives.
• The greatest leaders and people find a way to make an impact on people, real life flesh and blood people.

7. How will you change the lives of others?

• How will some people’s lives be better because you were on this earth?
• Life is people. I hope you take the advantage to be useful.
• It’s been my tremendous privilege to be back at the Summit.