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Growing Your Intellectual Capital By Ed Yager When it comes to identifying, coaching, and developing effective leaders at least two themes continue to rise to the top as among the most important. The first is not at all new. Robert Greenleaf began writing of the Servant Leader in the 60's and 70's. The Servant Leader philosophy underlays the thinking of today's management gurus (Stephen Covey, Meg Wheatley, Max DePree, Warren Bennis, Peter Senge, Ken Blanchard, and others). The concepts have been blurred by the concurrent trend toward non-hierarchical team thinking that has convinced too many leaders that to lead means to befriend. The management by walking around and other "prescribed practices" have too often deteriorated into the creation of a fun loving social environment. Leaders must demand respect through appropriate decorum, and followers the same. As Greenleaf says, "Discriminating and determined servants as followers are as important as leaders, and everyone from time to time may be in both roles." While so many focus on personality as a substitute for leadership, the greatness of leadership is found in more fundamental practices. This is why organizations that rely on narrow personality instrumentation for selection are so often disappointed with the results. Joe Batten, renowned consultant and author of one of the most successful management books in history, Tough Minded Management, lists 37 values that great leaders believe in and practice every day of their lives (in Insights In Leadership, edited by Larry Spears). Some of these that deserve the most careful consideration are these. 1. Openness and Emotional Vulnerability: Servant leaders let other people in and let themselves be open. They listen and ask at least as much, and usually more, than they also inform and tell. Most everything is on the table. 2. Consistency: They meet commitments, keep their word, and can be relied upon. 3. Involvement: They seek the involvement of their people in developing plans, goals. They bring them in early in the process to develop, not to rubber stamp work that has been done in isolation. 4. Psychological Wages: They provide for as much psychic reward as wage. 5. A Winning Formula: Integrity plus quality plus service says it all. 6. Positive Thinking: They believe negativism or negative criticism is never justified. 7. Results: They understand that the name of the game is results - not activity. 8. Accountability: they know that people are more efficient, more committed to, and more passionate about their work when they understand clearly what results are expected of them and have freedom in determining how to achieve those results. 9. Expectations of Excellence: They know that one of the finest gifts you can give another person is the gift of stretching expectations. They know the principles of the Self Fulfilling Prophecy are absolutely true - you get what you expect. The real question is addressed to the leader. How about you? Are you willing to discover the unmined potential in the power of the servant leadership style? Find more, much more, in the book Insights On Leadership. The second powerful trend is the shift in thinking about the real assets of an organization. Two decades ago a number of forward thinkers tried to find a model for valuing the human asset. They called it Human Resource Accounting. It went no where. In the book The Idea Economy by Roger Hendricks (A book I helped research and in so doing gained an appreciation for what was ahead) the point was made that "ideas" would be the things of value in the 21st century, replacing an economy based on valuing inventory and sales. Today it is called "intellectual capital". The fabulously successful magazine Fast Company is totally devoted to this concept. The successes that are out there, most of which have not even been dreamed yet, will go to those who best identify, nurture, retain and deploy their intellectual capital. "As an index, book value is dead as a doornail", reports Forbes Magazine. Yet it remains a constant point of reference of valuing stocks, especially on the tech heavy NASDAQ. There is repeated reference to the value of stocks and whether or not the price can be justified, often at 100 times book. The SEC defines intellectual capital as a combination of brainpower, brand names, and trade marks, It includes all "assets" currently valued at zero on the balance sheet. Perhaps I can summarize the wedding of the two (i.e., servant leadership and intellectual capital) in this metaphoric way. Picture the organization as a living organism, perhaps a tree. What are usually described as products, annual reports, customers, suppliers or the community at large can be thought of as the trunk, the branches, or the leaves. The investor typically looks over the tree in order to find fruit to harvest. No fruit - no investment. The leader, however, is ever concerned about the far greater mass of the tree that is underground. He or she devotes his or her life to the study of the roots, to the search of root rot that must be eliminated if the tree is to survive. They are concerned about nurturing, feeding and caring for the root and system in order to assure a healthy and ever improved crop in the future. Stephen Covey refers to the same servant leader concepts when he talks about the need to take care of the well known goose. If "intellectual capital" represents the buried root mass of the visible tree, if it indeed accounts for 2/3 or more of the real worth of companies, than the competent leader had better concern himself or herself far more with the practice of gardening and alot less time standing in the middle of the garden yelling at the tree for a poor harvest. |
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