I’ve recently watched two HBO productions that had me thinking : The Inventor, a documentary about the Theranos scandal, and Chernobyl, a mini-series of the worst accident in nuclear history, but which captured a basic truth about why it happened. “The Chernobyl disaster was more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than it was about bad engineering or abysmal management and training.”
The depiction of Soviet decay and bureaucratic shenanigans in Chernobyl, reminds me that we’re relying on free market capitalism to help us innovate our way out of today’s crises , such as climate change. The Theranos story, meanwhile, reiterates the new cult-of-personality phenomenon that has invaded corporations and business schools.
The kind of leader glorification that allowed Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes (and WeWorks Adam Newman, and Ubers Travis Kalanick, and even Elon Musk) to deceive most of her employees and allegedly defraud investors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars stands as among the most pressing threat to progress.There was a period in post-World War II America in which a star CEO would have been seen as a menace. After witnessing the rise of dictators before and during the second World War and the catastrophe that followed, there was a commonly shared feeling that the leader should not be a messiah or godlike figure. Companies emphasised a behavioural and context-specific approach to training managers instead. But that gave way in the ’80s when we went back to leadership as a form of idol worship, as pop-business school theories took hold as America tried to out manage Japan.
Since then, the CEO saviour story has become particularly pernicious and resilient. We tell stories—whether in the press or in classrooms—about new CEOs arriving at their organizations with a grand plan. Often it goes horribly wrong because they don’t engage with the people. They don’t listen to the employees, they don’t understand the context. But we often see and teach that a leader is someone who has a special vision of the future, has access to information that the rest of us don’t have in their quest for success, and actually, quite the opposite of often true.
And when it all goes sideways, creating job losses or other calamities, the leaders simply move on to their next leadership post. The disappointed company, meanwhile, goes looking for a new rescuer.
It’s frustrating that in modern, free societies where we cherish debate and representation, imperious CEOs rule the day. The rank-and-file may have better insights into the organization than the leader, and seeking their voices would be helpful to management, while also likely enhancing employee engagement. Yet few companies are managed with democratic processes.
Mmmm something for me to ponder as I teach leadership to executives. How to get the voice of the employee louder in the Board room.