Campbell - The leaders code: mission, character, service, and getting the job done

Copyright 2013 by Donovan Campbell

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Campbell, Donovan.
The leaders code : mission, character, service, and getting the job done / Donovan Campbell.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64420-0
1. LeadershipUnited States. 2. Servant leadershipUnited States.
3. United States. Marine CorpsCase studies. I. Title.
HM1261.C36 2013

303.340973dc23 2012035575

www.atrandom.com

Jacket Design: Scott Biel

v3.1

The greatest among you will be your servant. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

J ESUS C HRIST

America suffers from a leadership crisis. The economic downturn of the past three years has highlighted this shortcoming, but the downturn is only the symptom, not the cause, of our malaise. As the disease has deepened, institutions that define our views of ourselves and of our country, among them business and government, have lost substantial credibility. Their leaders are largely viewed as greedy, selfish, hypocritical, criminal, shortsighted, incompetent, or all of the above.

This widespread destruction of trust has left a leadership vacuum that is slowly becoming filled with despair. For the first time since modern polling began, a majority of Americans believe that their country will be worse for their children than it is for them. We trust no single leader, or class of leaders, to fix what is broken, because no one has offered up a compelling vision backed by powerful positive examples. In fact, the opposite has occurredwhether they are sports figures like Lance Armstrong, political crusaders like Eliot Spitzer, or business titans like Dick Fuld, Jon Corzine, or Bernie Madoff, many of the leaders we trusted have been revealed as cheaters, criminals, or incompetents. We have lost faith in our leaders, and when faith leaves, hope soon follows.

Much of the blame for this sad state of affairs rests in our business class. The spectacular bursting of the housing bubble caused the high tide of our economy to recede, and as the waves have rolled out they have left corruption, lies, and outright criminality in their wake. Though some players are reaping what they sowed, not all are receiving their just rewards, a fact that fuels a deep sense of unfairness across America. Making matters worse, very few, if any, leaders have admitted fault and taken responsibility for the messes they created. And all this at a time when many ordinary Americans have lost their savings, their jobs, and the roofs over their heads.

But if our trust in business is bad, our trust in politics is worse. Those we elect to write our laws often seem to have trouble obeying them, fueling a widespread perception across America that politicians hold Americans to one set of rulesthe lawand themselves to anotherpersonal/political convenience. Recent years have witnessed an IRS head who hasnt paid his own taxes, congressional tax-dodgers who propose to raise levies on their countrymen, and leaders on both sides of the aisle who publicly clamor for reform but privately block all efforts to fix whichever institutions contribute most heavily to their reelection campaigns. Hypocrisy and corruption seem the most nonpartisan qualities in evidence. Every month brings yet another story about a politician taking bribes, or forgetting to pay their taxes, or diverting public money to private projects, or soliciting prostitutes even as they prosecuted their johns.

Making matters worse, no political leader has emerged with a credible plan to fix our dysfunctional system. LegislatorsRepublicans and Democrats alikearrive in Congress promising to clean up corruption and increase transparency, but the ethics violations, the closed-door deals, and the secret earmarks continue unabated regardless of who is in charge. And few will compromise, for most are concerned solely with vanquishing the opposition at all cost. Small wonder, then, that polling reveals that public trust in government is at its lowest measure in decades. We have witnessed two whipsaw elections in just four years, as Americans have tried one party and then the other. Both have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

The reasons for our current mess are complicated, but one important underlying cause is that many in our leadership class have ceased to focus on building individual character. They may pursue a winning business strategy or a political victory, but they very rarely chase after virtue with the same energy with which they chase after fame and fortune. The goal is the ends, with scant regard for the means. Indeed, it often seems that sacrificing character is the price of success in ones chosen arena, and a win-at-any-cost mentality is arguably the most common trait among the ultrasuccessful. Many of our most prominent leaders are supremely talented, intelligent, driven, and visionary. Far fewer are righteous; fewer still even try.

In the same way that leaders have lost focus on virtue, so also has our leadership literature wandered. For at least the past twenty years, the vast majority of books on leadership have focused on methodology, that is, on practical steps for getting wherever it is that you want to go. A reader can pick up books on how to network their way to promotion, how to transform a small business into a large one, how to inspire others, and how to achieve personal happiness along with a large bank account and a small waistline. Many leadership books are little more than treasure maps to health and wealth, giving scant attention to the basic question of who you should become along the journey. There are few, if any, works that outline the various virtues, or character traits, necessary for a life of true significance. There are fewer still that challenge their readers to eschew material success, and perhaps even happiness (for a time), if it comes at the cost of character.

The problem with these how-to leadership books in todays climate is this: America has lost faith in its leaders precisely because those leaders have done exactly what the books have said to do. Our leaders have effectively pursued gainthey have run the playbooks wellbut their material success has often come at the cost of their individual character. Many business and political leaders have been remarkably good at achieving their personal goals, but we do not trust them anymore, because the result of success divorced from morals has wreaked havoc on our broader society.

However, there is one national institution that is widely respected both for its virtue and its effectiveness. This institution teaches a strong, clear leadership model, one that is routinely put to the test under the most demanding circumstances imaginable. This institution bases its model on well-defined virtuespersonal character traitsand it teaches these virtues to every one of its leaders through rigorous training that happens immediately upon entrance.

Unsurprisingly, this institution commands widespread admiration from Americans of all stripes, and its leaders are nearly universally respected. Indeed, this organization seems to be the only thing in America that Americans uniformly trusta recent poll put its approval rating at more than 70 percent. What national institution could command such widespread admiration at a time of such widespread national disenchantment? The United States military.