Category — Leaders

“Great crisis leaders are not like the rest of us; nor are they like mentally healthy leaders,” writes Nassir Ghaemi in the Wall Street Journal (7/30/11). They are leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln — all of whom had one thing in common. They all suffered from depression. Both Gandhi and King attempted suicide, and Lincoln was under a suicide watch at one point. Churchill admitted that he “avoided ledges and railway platforms, for fear of an impulsive jump.” The link between madness and genius apparently doesn’t apply “just to poets and artists but also to political leaders” and business leaders, too.

This is especially true in turbulent times, when “a different kind of leader — quirky, odd, even mentally ill — is more likely to see … opportunities that others cannot imagine.” Saner leaders do better in prosperous times, when it’s good enough to allow the “past to predict the future.” But depressed leaders have an edge when things aren’t so good because their illness heightens their sense of empathy and realism, “(though not necessarily in the same individual at the same time”). Lincoln, for instance “was not the stereotypical decisive executive, picking a course and sticking with it. He adapted to a changing reality and, in the end, prevailed.” Churchill “saw the Nazi menace long before others did.”

A heightened sense of empathy, meanwhile, “seems to prepare the mind for a long-term habit of appreciating others’ point of view.” Gandhi and King didn’t seek to defeat their opponents, but rather “to heal them of their false beliefs.” King believed that nonviolent resistance “was a psychological cure for racism, not just a political program. And the active ingredient was empathy.” This doesn’t fly when “society is happy,” but when “traditional approaches begin to fail … great crisis leaders see new opportunities. When the past no longer guides the future, they invent a new future … They are realistic enough to see painful truths, and when calamity occurs, they can lift up the rest of us. Their weakness is the secret of their strength.”

In 1957, a young flack named Bill Safire was ordered to "round up some of New York’s most promising businessmen," reports Katherine Rosman in the Wall Street Journal (11/25/09). Bill was working for a P.R. firm called Tex McCrary at the time, and one of his bosses was feeling competitive pressure from a rival firm, Ruder Finn, which, rumor had it, was connected to the Young Presidents’ Organization. It was hoped that this new group of up-and-comers would help feed new business into the firm.

At first, they met over breakfast, then dinners, on Wednesdays. While the group had more than 20 members at various times, the idea was that it would be "small enough to maintain intimacy yet large enough to ensure that at least 10 members would show up" to each meeting. And so the group was called the Wednesday 10. They were mostly in their late 20s, Jewish, and many were sons of immigrants. Few enjoyed wealth, but "most went on to become luminaries in their fields."

It was, in short, a social network. Meetings began with personal updates, and "centered on career development." While only men were allowed, it drew its strength from its professional diversity. "It helped me to understand why other people do what they do — which is important in life and business," says Robert Menschel of Goldman Sachs. Fifty-two years later, they are still meeting, albeit less frequently, on Wednesdays. Bill and seven other members have now passed on, and it appears likely the group will die with its members. Oh, well. For the rest of us, there’s LinkedIn.

Tide detergent remains one of Procter & Gamble’s largest and fastest-growing brands because it “is doing well by doing good,” says P&G chief marketing officer Jim Stengel in a Fortune magazine interview with Geoffrey Colvin (9/17/07). Jim says Tide, even at age 61, is high-growth because its brand team has “surprised and delighted” with a “new compact size, which is great for the environment, great for our retailers, and great for the consumer.” He says it’s also because P&G has “done a lot of work to get more people to wash in cold water, which is terrific for energy savings.”

Jim says consumers are responding to Tide because “they want to trust something. They want to be understood, they want to be respected, they want to be listened to. They don’t want to be talked to … People really do care … about the values of a brand and the values of a company, ” he says, adding: “Businesses and brands that are breaking records are those that inspire trust and affection and loyalty by being authentic, by not being arrogant, and by being empathetic to those they serve.” He says the key for P&G was moving away from its traditional focus on “functional benefits” and concentrating instead on being “inspirational.”

For example, Pampers went “from being about dryness to being about helping Mom with her baby’s development.” Says Jim: “It all begins with this idea that we want to make life better … We don’t accept that there are any commodity categories,” he adds, citing the success of Charmin and Bounty in a “commodity” category like paper goods. Bottom line, says Jim is that, “marketing is at the center of the company … I wouldn’t be sitting here six years into this job if our equities weren’t stronger, our innovation pipeline wasn’t stronger, our organization wasn’t stronger. Those are the kinds of things a CMO needs to be accountable for and should be measured on.” ~ Tim Manners, editor