The Pitfalls of Success

Everybody wants to succeed, to be a success. Yet strangely enough, success can be one of the hardest things of all to deal with – especially for leaders.

Leadership emerges in a group when the group faces a problem, and the worse the problem is, the more group members are willing to give leaders power. On the other hand, if a group is doing just fine, not facing any particular problems, it doesn’t need much leadership. So those who hanker after the power, prestige, and visibility that comes with leadership should recognize that leadership can also be a booby trap.

If a leader is called upon to solve a group’s problem and actually does solve it, then there is no more need for a leader regarding that particular problem. This is one reason why totalitarian or autocratic leaders spend so much time manufacturing crises and telling their followers that terrible problems will ensue if someone else is made their leader. Hitler was a genius at it. This is also the reason why groups are often better off without leaders if they can solve their problems for themselves.

There is really only one way a leader can remain a leader and still compile a consistent record of success and effectiveness, and that is by rolling with fate. Persistence is a good trait in a leader, but stubbornness is not. Winston Churchill may be the 20th Century’s best example of a leader who served brilliantly under one set of circumstances – namely, war – but failed to keep his credibility after his side won the war.

Business leaders and entrepreneurs who succeed time after time do so mostly because they have a knack for responding to or anticipating the fickle demands of the marketplace, not because they have any power to dictate the decisions of consumers. Once a group’s problem is solved, members almost automatically seek new problems and challenges. If leaders don’t want to get run over by their followers, they have to seek new problems and challenges too.

The Business of America

Calvin Coolidge is one of the least quoted America presidents because he was usually reluctant to say much of anything. But one thing he did say has stuck with us. “The Business of America,” said Calvin Coolidge, “is business.” His declaration epitomizes an influential school of thought which claims that business is and should be the dominant American institution. Some have proposed, in fact, that the United States government should be run like a business.

The notion that leadership in all sorts of organizations and enterprises should mimic the behavior of business leadership is rooted in the history of business itself. About 160 years ago, when large-scale formal organizations first began to appear all over the landscape, business organizations had one definite advantage over democratic governments and other multi-purpose organizations. The clear and constant discipline of the bottom line, which separates profit from loss, gave business leaders a target and a method to measure all aspects of performance. The development of management as an academic subject made its initial gains in the world of business. Nowadays management principles are taught to leaders and would-be leaders in education, religion, government, medicine, and dozens of other fields.

In times of economic recession, the pressures of budgets make the application of business methods even more logical. Ironically, the success of business management principles, the affluence produced by American business, and concern for certain side effects like environmental pollution, have given rise in some quarters to a shift in emphasis from production to service and from preoccupation with the bottom line to social responsibility. One of the most promising developments in the realm of organizations, including businesses, is the focus on the "triple bottom line:" people, profits and the planet. If Calvin Coolidge were around today, he might be tempted to revise his most famous remark. “The business of America”, he might say, “is America.”