Bootstrap Leadership Blog

30 million people worldwide have read it.  Your father or grandfather probably had a copy of it on their shelf.  It was published in 1936, and yet, when released as an iPhone app in February, it immediately became the top-selling paid business app in the iTunes store.  A new edition (only the second since the original publication) will hit stores next year.  What is it?  How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.  Carnegie’s brainstorm of business advice has been translated into 47 languages, and is the most successful business book in history (by far).  In 2009 alone, it sold 300,000 copies – this for a book that is 74 years old! 

So who was this guy, and how did he tap into the mother lode of business counseling?  Born in 1888, Carnegie had virtually no business background when he wrote the book.  He was raised on a pig farm in Missouri, and moved east to become an actor in his early twenties.  He didn’t make it as an actor, so he tried selling trucks and writing western novels (neither of those ventures worked, either).  What did seem to stick was a class in effective business speaking that he began to teach at a Harlem YMCA in 1912 – a class that would form the basis for the book.

Carnegie knew a thing or two about marketing, for sure – in 1919 he changed the spelling of his name from Carnagey to Carnegie… probably to match the spelling of another pretty famous entrepreneur at the time.  Carnegie just intuitively “got” the relationship between public speaking and business success (these days, we’d call that connection “executive presence”).  Lots of prominent business people seem to have benefited from the connection.  Warren Buffett, for one, says that the course “changed my life.” 

 
The core elements of How to Win Friends and Influence People are Carnegie’s 30 principles of success, which are as applicable in one’s private life as they are in the business world.   Essentially, it’s a book about self-confidence, and how self-assuredness and poise makes us effective as people.  The 30 principles are all pretty basic themes: “let the other person do most of the talking” or “the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.”   But actually, that’s what makes the book so charming (and yes, so effective). 

 
Sometimes the best advice really is the basic stuff.  Carnegie himself used to tell audiences – “I’ve never claimed to have a new idea.  I present the obvious – because the obvious is what people need to be told.”  Sounds like good coaching to me (clearly, Carnegie would be an executive coach today – or maybe Dr. Phil). 

Everyone who has ever written a business advice book owes a debt of gratitude to Dale Carnegie.  Now, if they could only out-sell him!  This tells you something about the power of his simple ideas… sound, basic advice never goes out of style – something we might all remember as we look for ways to influence in our own lives.     

Jim Collins seems like a strange choice to write about failure.  His best-selling books Built to Last (1995) and Good to Great (2001) were celebrations of how to build a successful and sustainable company (both  are classics, and belong on every leader’s bookshelf).   Yet Collins has definitely taken a look at the other side of the coin with How the Mighty Fall (2009). 

In this small but powerful book, Collins asks the question about troubled companies - can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? And perhaps most importantly, how can companies reverse course?

In the book, Collins offers leaders hope that they can indeed learn to avoid decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse direction. Collins' usual exemplary research uncovers five step-wise stages of decline:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom.  In fact, every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline; there is nothing that says you get to stay on top just because you’re successful today.  Anyone can fall and most eventually do.  But, as Collins' research shows, some companies do indeed recover--in some cases, coming back even stronger--even after falling all the way to Stage 4.  Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery is generally achieveable, if leaders remain open-minded and heed the signs of peril.

I’m sure Collins would agree with the old leadership adage: “it’s when times are good that leaders really need to worry.”  Well, maybe you shouldn’t literally be worrying, but you should be staying close to customers, driving innovation, and paying attention to competitors, regulation and other risks to the business model.  If you’d like some help thinking about how to avoid a slippage, pick up How the Mighty Fall.  It’s a quick read with a lot of wisdom, from one of the best leadership thinkers of our time.

In 2002, Joe Folkman and Jack Zenger wrote one of the most comprehensive books ever written on the art of leadership. Their bestselling work The Extraordinary Leader, revealed the 16 key competencies that separate the top 10 percent of leaders from the rest of the pack.  It’s a terrific book, one that every leader should have on their bookshelf.  Now comes The Inspiring Leader (2009), in which they and coauthor Scott Edinger discovered, through an extensive study conducted over four years, that leaders who possess the ability to inspire and motivate outperform all others. 

What sets Folkman and Zenger apart from other leadership authors is their approach to looking at the subject through an empirical lens.  Just as Jim Collins studies companies to find out why certain firms succeed, these guys study leadership to determine what really matters.  In their latest work, the authors found that the impact of inspiring and motivating others is consistent across different kinds of organizations and within different cultures. The Inspiring Leader discusses the behaviors exhibited by the most successful leaders and includes advice on how to implement them.  Drawing from statistically significant findings, the book shows you how to establish a clear vision and direction, use the power of emotions, create stretch goals for your team, foster innovation and risk taking, and encourage teamwork and collaboration.  While not a surprising finding, per se, what’s impressive is how they build their case with real data.

In addition to The Inspiring Leader, Folkman & Zenger recently published a study of their analysis of the 10 Fatal Flaws that Derail Leaders (Harvard Business Review, June, 2009).  In two studies involving more than 450 Fortune 500 executives and 11,000 leaders respectively, they identified a list of the 10 most common leadership behaviors that cause leaders to fail.  Essentially, every bad leader had at least one of these tendencies, and many had several.  The list, in no particular order:

• Lacking energy and enthusiasm

• Accepting their own mediocre performance

• Lacking clear vision and direction
• Having poor judgment
• Not being willing to collaborate
• Not walking the talk
• Resisting new ideas
• Not learning from their mistakes
• Lacking interpersonal skills
• Failing to develop others

I can’t say I’m surprised by anything on this list, can you?  Sound like any of the bad bosses you’ve had?  Anyway, these guys are the real deal.  If you ever come across something written by Folkman and Zenger, buy it, and be sure to read it.  It will give you grounded evidence of what it takes to be a great leader.  Folkman and Zenger bring a lot of credibility to the study of leadership, and for that, my hat is off to them.  They certainly inspire me to bring a few facts to the table when talking about leadership!