Thought Leadership

One of the best business writers today, Lucy Kellaway, stirred up interesting debate on the topic of being boring in a recent column in the Financial Times (or read at IrishTimes.com). She believes that if CEOs are boring, their businesses might go more smoothly and uses the example of GE’s leader Jeff Immelt to prove that point.

Quoting a recent study by Stephen Kaplan from the Chicago Booth School of Business and a Harvard Business Review blog by Joel Stein, Kellaway proposes that dull CEOs tend to be determined, detail oriented and hard working. She warns against associating the word “boring” with “bad” and calls for a re-branding of the boring CEO, whose success may be based on simplicity and innate happiness.

Boring CEOs aren’t stupid; but they have narrow interests and hone in on the small things in life, the small things that fill every working day. She says they are good at what Jim Collins calls “rinsing your cottage cheese” and cites two more role models for boring CEOs: John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates.

Despite the hype about being boring, I’m not convinced that most thought leaders can “pull off” being boring. Kellaway’s exceptional exceptions fail to persuade me that the majority of CEOs should strive to be boring – that seems too low a hurdle for all of you energetic, charismatic thought leaders.

Are you a boring CEO? Do you want to be? Would you prefer to be a thought leader who’s interested and interesting? Ask, assess, then act.

In the previous posting Luck versus Experience: Pushing Boundaries in “Extreme Business”, I referred to the jar of luck and the jar of experience that thought leaders draw from when running an “extreme business.”

Venture capitalist Anthony Tjan recently wrote a blog for the Harvard Business Review that discusses “How Leaders Lose Their Luck,” which was based on his upcoming book called Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck. Luck can actually be cultivated in a business, he believes. He listed seven attributes and attitudes of lucky people in business.

Are you demonstrating the right attributes and attitudes to help you open your business life – your jar of luck – to serendipity? Ask, assess, then act.

From the Harvard Business Review article, How Leaders Lose Their Luck
While researching our forthcoming book — Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck — my co-authors and I made a fascinating discovery: a surprising number of company founders and business-builders attribute much of their success to luck. Almost 25% of those we surveyed came out as “luck-dominant” on the Entrepreneurial Aptitude Test we devised; many more gave luck at least partial credit.

As we dug deeper, it became clear that it was not just random chance that these people were talking about. Luck in business can be cultivated, through the combination of what we call a lucky attitude and a lucky network. A lucky attitude is a disposition open to serendipity and, well, luck. A lucky network is a wide network of relationships that may at first have little to do with any business objective, but somehow later come into great relevance. We can all think of an example.

Here’s the paradox, though. Once they have made it to the top — after they’ve reached high levels of entrepreneurial or corporate success — leaders often become disconnected from the crucial lucky qualities and relationships that helped get them there in the first place. By definition, the top is less of a journey and more of an arrival point. A newfound reputation is difficult to risk.

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