Moses on Leadership: Or Why Everyone is a Leader

182 Pages·2001·0.62 MB·English

by  Richard Koch

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the relevant copyright,
designs and patents acts, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior
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M O S E S
on
L E A D E R S H I P
O R W H Y E V E RY O N E
I S A L E A D E R
RICHARD KOCH
CAPSTONE
Copyright © Richard Koch 1999

The right of Richard Koch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First Published 1999
Capstone Publishing Limited
Oxford Centre for Innovation
Mill Street
Oxford OX2 0JX
United Kingdom
http: //www. capstone. co.uk

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism
and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1–900961–60–1

Typeset in 11 / 15 Bembo by
Sparks Computer Solutions, Oxford
http: //www. sparks. co. uk
Printed and bound by
T.J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

This book is printed on acid-free paper
Digital processing by The Electric Book Company
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For Chris and Donna

Contents

PREFACE VII
Everyone is a Leader vii
A new source of insight into leadership - religion!. vii
Leadership as a journey xi
Your own leadership journey xiii
PART 1 THE MOSSES TOUR 1
FIVE STEPS TO THE PROMISED LAND 3
Step one: crossing the Red Sea 5
Step two: forming a tribe 5
Step three: the visit to Mount Sinai 6
Step four: journey to the Promised Land 7
Step five: arriving in the Promised Land 7
Back down to earth 8
OOPS! GETTING THROUGH THE RED SEA 13
How do you get started? 14
Think before you jump in! 15
FORM A TRIBE! 27
A patience primer for leaders 27
Danger ahead for followers 29
The leader’s step by step guide to forming a tribe 29
ON TOP OF MOUNT SINAI 63
Four common types of purpose 65
Approach 1: serving one stakeholder’s interest 66
Approach 2: serving two or more stakeholders 69
Approach 3: reaching a future goal 71
Approach 4: a higher ideal 76
The Ten Commandments 79
The leaders’ guide to receiving the Ten Commandments 80
On to the home straight 83
THE LONG SLOG TO THE PROMISED LAND 87
A warning to leaders 87
Ten guidelines for leaders 89
QUIT WHILE YOU’RE AHEAD 99
How do you know you’ve arrived in the Promised Land? 99
Two tests of safe arrival 100
Drawing a political map of the Promised Land 106
What should leaders do next? 106
PART 2 LEADERSHIP FOR EVERYONE 119
DO YOU WANT TO BELIEVE? 121
The unbelievers 121
The happy heathen 121
Where do you stand? 122
THE ANATOMY OF LEADERSHIP 129
1 Passion 129
2 Determination 130
3 Honesty, integrity and values 130
4 Vision 131
5 Fit with the times 131
6 A sense of the practical 132
7 Time 132
CONCLUSION: BECOME A LEADER! 135
APPENDIX A IS YOUR COMPANY DAMNED? 141
APPENDIX B CONVERTING MANAGERS INTO LEADERS: THE
CHALLENGE BELOW-DECKS 153
APPENDIX C WHY FIRMS WITH RELIGION WILL WIN 157
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 161
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 163
INDEX 165
Preface

Everyone is a Leader
You’re probably a leader.
Every executive is a leader or a potential leader. Anyone who has people
reporting to her is a leader-maybe a very bad one, but a leader nonetheless.
Every supervisor is a leader. Even executives who are apparently lone
wolves, who supervise nobody, have influence and therefore need to think of
themselves as leaders.
Something like a quarter of all employees in developed countries have
leadership responsibilities. That’s tens of millions of Americans, Germans
and Japanese, tens of millions of French and British people.
But leadership is not confined to work.
Many other people, who are not managers or even not in business, are
leaders. All parents are leaders. All volunteers are leaders. All teachers are
leaders. All writers and communicators are leaders. Those in politics are
leaders.
This is a book for you.
A new source of insight into leadership - religion!.
Here are some insights into leadership. The insights have been tested
against one of the great stories of leadership - Moses and the Israelites. For
those of you unfamiliar with the story, it is explained on page 3. But it is a
Preface: Everyone is a Leader viii
story of naked leadership, of a man taking his people from disease and
oppression through many trials and difficult times to the famed promised
land. It is a story whose main events are well documented. It is the ideal
test for any theories about leadership.
The Moses story is also much more than a test of ideas about leadership. It
helps us see what leadership really is - a process of giving direction and
creating followers. It also shows us that leadership is not all that difficult:
you don’t have to have a great intellect; you don’t have to be tall; and you
don’t need a magnetic personality. You have to know where you are headed;
you have to have some beliefs and values that will be attractive to your
followers; and you have to have good timing. With these ingredients, you
can be a great leader. The task you face is not simple, but it is not calculus.
You need to take your sense of direction, your beliefs and values and your
judgement and do three things.
1 Start with a cause
To lead well, you must excite.
Good leaders turn people on. A tiny minority of leaders do this by what most
of us think of as inspiring leadership: by charisma, force of personality,
unusual charm or compelling presence. You either have this or you don’t,
and most of us don’t. If leadership required charisma, the world would be a
much poorer place.
It doesn’t require exceptional interpersonal skill to excite people. It requires
a Cause: something that gets people to want change to happen.
Freedom is a great Cause. Eliminate starvation is a great Cause. Build a
cathedral is a great Cause. A Cause is attractive to those you want to
influence. Good Causes are often about moving away from something as
much as they are about moving towards something. Freedom from
(persecution, slavery, starvation) more than freedom to (do what you like,
own a house, work 35 hours a week). In business, ‘safety’ can be a good
Cause, as can ‘quality’, especially when these causes are safety from injury
and quality rather than shoddy work.
Preface: Everyone is a Leader ix
You cannot become an effective leader without a Cause. You cannot
contribute to progress without a Cause. You cannot do good or ill without a
Cause. Without a Cause, you leave little imprint on the world.
A Cause mobilises. A Cause attracts. A Cause that you can persuade others
to get excited about is the beginning.
2 Found a religion
A Cause gives you direction and it gives you some early followers. A Cause
positions you on the first rung of leadership. The next rung is to convert your
early followers into disciples. This requires creating a religion.
We are not talking here about a cult - a fanatical group of people driven
forward by a weird set of beliefs. But we are talking about the secular
equivalent. The equivalent of a cult in business terms, in family terms or in
organisation terms. A successful leader creates a group of followers who are
determined, committed in their beliefs and self-confident about what they
are trying to do. It’s a form of cult: a clan, band or tightly knit organisation.
In the terms of this book, it’s a religion.
Most business people do not realise the force of religious zeal. If you are
going to lead people in a way that turns them on, you need to give them a
sense of purpose, and bind them into a winning team with its own distinct
ways of doing things. The organisations best at doing this are religions:
always have been. Religions create that sense of common purpose that
energises people.
There is a tendency today to think that business is a process to be
engineered or re-engineered, downsized or upsized; a set of economic
transactions, defined by customers, suppliers and competitors; a quest for
nothing more (nor less) than constantly compounded profits and market
values. Of course, business is all of these things. But successful business is
an expansionary crusade, or it is nothing. Every successful business is an
expansive religion. It is constantly gaining converts, both as co-operators
(employees, suppliers, distributors) and as customers.