The Book Discover Your True North by Bill George is an amazing read on various aspects of leadership. Tried to summarize my takeaways and learnings from this book in this blog post. The Book starts by quoting Warren Bennis. The author mentions Warren Bennis as the father of Leadership and further points that Bennis says Leadership is not genetic but result of a lifelong a process of Self-discovery.

“Timeless leadership is always about character, and it is always about authenticity.”

True North helps leaders stay focused and aligned. It comes from their core beliefs, values, and principles.

Authentic leaders who follow their True North have learned from their crucibles and setbacks. They have the resilience to resist pressures and seductions. They know they must be authentic to gain legitimacy with those with whom they work and the multiple stakeholders who have vested interests in their organizations. They are committed to building sustainable value for their institutions, while producing near-term results.

The most engaging aspect of this book are the numerous stories of leaders from the corporate world. This is helpful for the readers to understand what led to making of these leaders. The Book is divided into three parts.

Part 1: Your journey to leadership.

An interesting learning on how Childhood can influence leaders is well illustrated through examples of Starbucks and Wells Fargo.

• Howard Schults the founder of Starbucks: Howard Schultz’s childhood was full of difficulties. His father lost the job due to an accident and didn’t have health benefits thus leading to immense financial strain. He grew up seeing his parents arguing about bill payments. The influence of his childhood led him to build a company his father would be proud to work at. He went on to build Starbucks a worldwide coffee giant where substantial employee benefits and higher wages are the incentive for attracting talent and making it a great place for workers.
• Dick Kovacevich CEO of Wells Fargo: The CEO of Wells Fargo Dick Kovacevich’s childhood had a great influence on him as a result when competitors were cutting manpower due to automation and computerization, Kovacevich made Wells Fargo the most customer friendly Bank thus navigating the 2008 crisis better than the competitors.

How Leaders can loose their way in their journey. The book quotes the example of former McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta and his downfall after achieving all the wealth, success and fame.

The book mentions that leaders who lose their way may not be bad but deviate from their True north by getting carried away from their own success. Possible highlighted reasons: Loose touch with reality, fearing failure, craving success and letting success get to their heads and Loneliness within.

Crucibles of Leadership

Another learning from the book was about crucibles as an essential element for growing into a leader as crucibles tests our limits. Well explained through the example of Danielle Vasella former CEO of pharma giant Novartis and Marilyn Carlson the CEO of Carlson Group.

Danielle Vasella and Novartis: Vasella was diagnosed with tuberculosis at the age of 8 and had to spend a full year in sanatorium with no one visiting him. After he recovered, he lost his sisters and thereafter his father. Despite all challenges he graduated from a medical school in Switzerland. With a desire to help people and improve their lives he joined Sandoz which eventually merged with a competitor to become Novartis. Vasella rose up the ranks to become the CEO of Novartis. With his continued passion to improve people’s lives he expanded the research budget for Novartis and worked towards getting Novartis launch many life saving drugs. The life threating disease during his childhood was the crucible for Vasella to build Novartis into a research giant.

Marilyn Carlson Nelson – After losing her young daughter Marilyn joined Carlson group and later on became its CEO. Her daughter’s loss was a crucial turning point in developing her as a leader when she devoted herself to serving others and empowering the lives of 150000 employees of Carlson group.

The book also mentions story of Oprah Winfrey and how she emerged as a leader while growing up in a poverty struck neighborhood and built her media empire.

Part Two: Developing as an Authentic leader

Important to know and understand yourself: Well explained through example of Ariana Huffington from Huffington post worked 18 hours a day until one day when she collapsed due to exhaustion. This made her eventually realize the importance of well being along the journey to success.

Emotional Quotient (EQ): The Book mentions Daniel Goleman author of Emotional Intelligence whose research states that EQ becomes an important factor in defining the success of a leader. This is illustrated by the P&G example of Durk Jager its former CEO who despite being brilliant was asked to go by the management. His management team rebelled against him as he tried to impose his intellect on others. His successor A G Lafley having understood the P&G culture, went on to build a successful leadership team and scaled up the organization.

Self Awareness: In the quest for Self-awareness, it is important to learn from failures and not go in a self-denial. High level of self-awareness and self-acceptance also helps in controlling emotions and outbursts which are helpful for leaders to evolve.

• Well explained by mentioning the example of David Pottruck the Co-CEO of Charles Schwab very clearly highlights this. David Pottruck was a hard worker but aggressive and pushy for results. Due to this attitude, he was poorly rated by his boss. Pottruck later worked on changing himself and went on to lead Charles Schwab making it one of the most admired companies to work for in America.
• Examples like Chade Meng Tan quoted as the Jolly good fellow at Google and a few more describe the importance of self-awareness and self-acceptance in details.

Values: Clear understanding of values helps leaders establish the principles to lead.

• The book mentions story of Narayan Murthy founder of Infosys. Narayan Murthy and the founders at Infosys wanted to demonstrate that Business can be done in legally and ethically. Having stuck with their principles they refused to pay bribes and were made to wait for a year to get a telephone connection. Since they founded Infosys, the founders stuck to their values despite of all ups and downs transforming Infosys into a leading global IT giant.

How Values are tested under pressure is further demonstrated through examples of:

• Jun Huntsman the founder & chairman of Huntsman Corporation a Chemical giant. How he navigated and survived bankruptcy.
• Sallie Krawcheck CFO & President of Global Wealth and Investment Management division at Citigroup put client interest first and advocated returning clients’ money on certain products. The then CEO of Citigroup Vikram Pandit disagreed with her. However, Sallie stuck to her point and was later on fired by Vikram Pandit.

Discovering your sweet spot…It is important to balance your internal and external motivations and build on your strengths. Stepping out of your comfort zone helps leaders realize the potential they may not have realized otherwise.

• Charles Schwab and company. Its founder Charles Schwab founded the company as one of the first low brokerage stock broker. While he built the company he realized he was suffering from dyslexia. His desire to help Americans build wealth was the biggest motivation while building the company. This helped him find his sweet spot and overcome his weaknesses.

Support Team: Having right support team makes a big difference to navigate the turmoil’s, ups and downs for a leader. Every leader is vulnerable and having close people with whom you can share confidential talks will be a big support at the time of need. Right mentors can make a big difference. Very nicely explained through examples of:

• Starbucks – When Howard Schultz was building Starbucks he trusted Scholar Warren Bennis to share his fears and vulnerabilities.
• Facebook – Mark Zuckerberg found his mentor in Don Graham CEO of Washington Post. Zuckerberg spent lot of time with Graham learning how CEO’s spend time and make critical decisions.

Best mentors always put the interest of their mentees first.

Part Three: True North Meets the real world

Leaders cannot operate in vacuum and should always strive to empower people to solve problems and navigate challenges.

I to We approach. Well explained through example of Steve Jobs and Whole Foods.

• Steve Jobs was fired from Apple as the organization found him persuasive for his own projects thereby neglecting other team members. After getting fired Jobs learnt the importance of nurturing teams. While the books quotes one of his colleagues mentioning that Steve Jobs at times acted weird even after this transformation, he was surrounded with leaders like Tim Cook who had high EQ to navigate team dynamics.
• I liked the quote of Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey mentioned in the book “We don’t sell Healthy foods to earn profits. We earn a profit to sell healthy foods”. When Whole foods was going through a phase of slowdown Mackey worked on his transformation from a lone ranger to a team person. This I to We approach led to successful scale up at Whole foods leading to a turnaround.

Purpose of Leadership…the book quotes that “Most Leaders find the purpose of their leadership emanates from their Life story.” Well explained through the example of Ken Frazier:

• Ken Frazier CEO of Merck. Frazier was born in a very poor family thus living a difficult childhood in a troubled neighborhood. Ken Fraziers purpose was to help people. After getting appointed as CEO of Merck he enhanced the R&D budget, sold the consumer business to focus on core Pharma business and acquired an antibiotic maker Cubist.

Aligning organization and shared purpose: The war between Cola Giants PepsiCo and Coca Cola. After getting elected as CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi could foresee the shift of consumer preferences towards health products. Her strategy at PepsiCo to broaden the product portfolio towards Healthy products initially led to a backlash as rival Coke was gaining market share focusing on traditional Cola drinks. Nooyi refused to give up and worked on getting the right sense of focus within her employees. The strategy of Performance with purpose paid off over the years as PepsiCo regained lost market shared.

Empowerment: The word empowerment doesn’t mean freedom to do anything. It means empowerment and accountability of tasks.

To gain mutual respect the book quotes: Here are some of the things empowering leaders should do to gain the respect of their colleagues:

• Treat others as equals

• Listen actively

• Learn from people

• Share life stories

• Align around the mission

Some quoted examples from the book:

• Anne Mulcahy CEO of Xerox:  Anne Mulcahy is credited to turn around Xerox and get the company out of Bankruptcy. While she was elected as CEO, Xerox was facing liquidity crisis and bankruptcy. Mulcahy worked on getting confidence of the team, got the departments to talk directly, travelled extensively to meet customers and ensured the team was together in this crisis working with a purpose. Despite being challenging and demanding the expectations she set from employees was realistic. She was eventually successful in averting Bankruptcy and getting Xerox back on track. A case worth reading.
• Alan Mulally CEO Ford: When Alan Mulally took over as CEO of Ford from Boeing, he ensured each leaders accountability by conducting weekly in depth reviews. While he was tough, he was caring and open thus ensuring leaders are accountable for their positions. He realized the problems at Ford worked towards a strategy to make a lineup of cars as per customer needs and ensured a turnaround at Ford.

The last chapter in this book talks about Global Leadership. Interesting to learn about the concept of Global Intelligence GQ in order to develop as a global leader. In an uncertain and volatile world it is critical for organizations to understand their geopolitical context and what kind of events can impact the business. Having diversified cross functional teams spread across the globe will certainly be an advantage in times to come.

• Paul Polman transforming Unilever: Paul Polman was the first externally hired CEO at Univeler. He worked on understanding the culture at Unilever which he realized was more Euro focused. He along with his team of top 50 Unilever executives created a Unilever Sustainable Living Plan where they concluded that “Sustainability was the True North of Unilever”. He transformed the leadership team at Unilever with people who had a growth mindset and were from across the globe and set a target of getting 70% of Unilever revenues from emerging markets up from 41%. Under Polman’s leadership Unilever started the Unilever Development Leadership Program to prepare future leaders for volatile and uncertain world.
• Novartis moving headquarters: To tap global talent and scale up globally Danielle Vasella the visionary founder at Novartis moved its headquarters from Basel Switzerland to Cambridge Massachusetts
• David Thai founder of Highlands Coffee Company: Inspired by the success of Starbucks David Thai started the Highlands Coffee company in Vietnam by selling packaged coffee and eventually went on to create a retail chain of stores. He was the first Vietnamese native living overseas to start a company in Vietnam.

Emerging markets are an important ground to groom global leadership and increase GQ. To emerge as global leaders, it is important to develop the seven elements which the books mentions as important traits for GQ:

• Adaptability

• Awareness

• Curiosity

• Empathy

• Alignment

• Collaboration

• Integration

To learn and understand the concepts of leadership in detail along with many more corporate stories I highly recommend reading the book Discover Your True North.