Thought Leaders, February 15, 2007

Jim Kouzes is co-author with Barry Posner of the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, with over one million copies sold.  He is also an Executive Fellow at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Leavy School of Business at Santa Clara University.  The Leadership Challenge, available in 11 languages, has been a selection of the Macmillan Executive Book Club and The Fortune Book Club.  It is the winner of 1989 James A Hamilton Hospital Administrator's Book, the 1995 and 1996 Critic's Choice Award and was a Business Week best seller in 2001 and 2002.  Jim and Barry have also co-authored Creditability, How Leaders Gain and Lose It? Why people demand it? This book was chosen by Industry Week as one of the 10 best management books of 1993. Their other books include Encouraging the Heart, the Leadership Challenge Workbook, and the Leadership Challenge Journal.  Based on solid research involving over 70,000 surveys, 1,000 written case studies, and 100 in-depth interviews, these books describe the leadership principles and processes that generate high performance in individuals and organizations.

Jim and Barry developed the widely used and highly acclaimed Leadership Practices Inventory or LPI, which is a 360-questionnaire assessing leadership behavior.  The LPI has been administered to over 250,000 individuals and over one million observers have provided feedback using the LPI.  

Jim is a highly regarded leadership scholar and experienced executive, and The Wall Street Journal has cited him as one of the 12 best executive
educators in the US. His clients have included such companies as Accenture, Applied Materials, AT&T, Bank of America, and Boeing.  Jim served as president, then CEO and chairman of the Tom Peters Company from 1988 until 2000. Prior to his tenure there, he directed the Executive Development Center at Santa Clara University.

KE:  Jim, you and Barry have had tremendous success with The Leadership Challenge and the Leadership Practices Inventory.  Why take time out to write another book, and why this book in particular?

JK:  All our other books prior to A Leader's Legacy have been descriptive or prescriptive works, meaning they're either descriptive of the principles and practices of exemplary leadership that we had uncovered in our research, or they have been prescriptions about how to put those findings into practice. Our editor thought it was about time we got down from the podium and wrote a bit more of a reflective piece based on the lessons we had learned over the last 25 years.  So we took a step off
the platform, we took a deep breath or two, and explored some of those thornier and more personal issues about leadership that had not necessarily lent themselves to the five practices, or to the seven essentials that we had written about before.  So it is a refreshing change for us, and something we are likely to do again.

KE:  You talk a lot in the book about "legacy."  Will you please define that term for us?

JK:  Perhaps a little story would help to introduce it.  We had the opportunity to interview someone by the name of Gail Mayville, who was at the time at Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. This was a few years ago, but I think the story is very relevant to the question.  This problem has been resolved; however, at the time of our interview with Gail, the company was growing so rapidly that the factory at Ben and Jerry's was overloading the local waste treatment facility. Because of that, the local townships told Ben and Jerry's that if they did not do something about the waste treatment problem, they would shut the factory down.  
Well, Gail was an administrative assistant at the time, not a quality manager, factory manager, or environmental manager.  She heard about this problem, as everyone else did, and she thought she might have a solution. So she approached management and they said they would be glad to hear it.

She said, "Well, it is pigs."  She said, "I grew up on a farm in Vermont and on the farm there were some pigs. So, maybe pigs would like to eat this ice cream waste." They thought this was a nutty idea but nothing else had worked so far, so they implemented it, and put her in charge. She eventually became environmental manager as a result of this. They put the ice cream waste in barrels, they hauled it out to the farms, put ice cream waste in troughs and pigs just waddled on up, ate it and loved it! It was a temporary solution to the problem, they later
implemented a permanent solution, but nonetheless, Gail had the initiative to do something to address the issue.

When Gail was asked why she did it, she said the following: "For me personally, I am driven by my concerns for the legacy I am leaving my children, the environmental legacy." Gail's response is really the best live behavioral example of what legacy really means. Our leadership
legacies are those tangible and intangible conditions we pass along to those who follow us. In Gail's case, she wanted to leave her children a more sustainable and hospitable environment, and that drove her to do
something about the waste coming out of the factory. For others, it might be the inspiration to excel, or the desire to pursue a life of service, or a belief in oneself. Whatever it is, we can be sure of one thing: We will be remembered not for what we do for ourselves, but what we do for others.  

The legacy perspective reveals that we make a difference. Then, the only question remaining is, "What kind of difference do I want to make? "How do I want to be remembered by those who will inherit my life's efforts?"
And, the question that follows that is, "In what ways am I, and am I not, living my life right consistent with this memory?"

KE:  You state in the book's opening, "a heartfelt quest to leave a legacy is a journey from success to significance." How so?

• Why talking about attitude problems is counterproductive. 
  
• How to diagnose the underlying problem with an employee. 
  
• The sequence of steps to resolve the problem. 
  
• The role of the performance appraisal system in changing behavior.