The Nub of Leadership: Helping/Inviting Others to

“Discover Their Greatness”

Tom Peters & Friends/10.04.05

The Context

“The Creative

Age is a wide-open

game.”

—Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class

“A focus on cost-cutting and efficiency has helped many organizations weather the

downturn, but this approach will ultimately

render them obsolete. Only the constant pursuit of

innovation can ensure long-term success.” —Daniel

Muzyka, Dean, Sauder School of Business, Univ of British Columbia (FT/09.17.04)

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like

irrelevance even less.” —General Eric Shinseki, Chief of Staff. U. S. Army

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent,

but the one most responsive to change.” —Charles Darwin

The Invitation

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more

and become more, you are a leader." —John Quincy Adams

“I don't think we inspire people to ‘become more,’ I think we help them discover who they really are. In a way, we help

them become who they already are. Who they were created to

be. We don't take them BEYOND their being, we help remove

unnatural obstacles that keep them

from being.” —Dustin/Comment/tp.com/09.05

Organizing Genius / Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman

“Groups become great only when everyone

in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute

best.”“The best thing a leader can do for a Great

Group is to allow its members to discover their greatness.”

Leadership’s Mount Everest

“allow its members to

discover their greatness.”

Item #1 … from Tom Peters’ “Leadership50”:

1. Leadership Is a …

Mutual Discovery Process.

Leaders-Teachers-Mentors Do Not “Transform People”!

Instead leaders-mentors-teachers (1) provide a context which is

marked by (2) access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities (projects) which (3) allow

people to fully express their innate curiosity and

(4) engage in a vigorous discovery voyage (alone and in small teams, assisted by an extensive self-constructed network) by

which those people (5) go to-create places they (and their

leaders-teachers-mentors) had never dreamed existed—and

then the leaders-teachers-mentors (6) applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops,” and ring the church bells

100 times to commemorate the bravery of their “followers’ ” explorations!

The Tough Guy as Beggar: In the end, management

doesn’t change culture. Management invites

the workforce itself to change the culture.” —

Lou Gerstner/IBM

Are you Ready?

“Human creativity is the ultimate

economic resource.” —Richard Florida,

The Rise of the Creative Class

Imagine …

“dream more, learn more, do more , become more”

“help them become who they already are, who they were created to be”

“free to do his or her absolute best”

“allow members to discover their greatness”

“allow people to fully express their innate curiosity; to go to-create places they had never dreamed existed”

“invite the workforce itself to change the culture”

Brand = Talent.