Benevolent Leadership

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: It’s All About Who You Hire, How They Lead…and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader

Competencies: all leadership and self-development competencies

Who benefits: current and future leaders

Consultant Usage: excellent resource for leadership training; may be useful in executive coaching

What’s it about? I can’t think of a better opening, nor more accurate account of this book, than by quoting the description from the Amazon website linked page:

“With corporations now associated in the public mind primarily with greed and unethical practices, it’s more important than ever for leaders to move the focus back onto integrity, honesty, and doing the right thing. Mort Mandel, a CEO whom Peter Drucker esteemed in the same category as Jack Welch and Andy Grove, has spent the past seven decades mixing business and philanthropy, to the great enhancement of both. In this book Mandel shows how leaders can create lives of both meaning and profitability.”

It did not take me long to fall in love with “Uncle Mort”.

Mort Mandel is a Benevolent Leader. A good guy. A tough guy for sure, but pure of heart. I want to make a plea here in the beginning that if you have an interest in leadership, or are a leader, or seek to become a leader, you read this book. But read it with a critical eye. As much as I love this book and recommend this book, there are areas where I don’t fully agree with him. But then he’s made billions. The closest I have come to my first billion is my name, Bill. I have “ions” to go.

To give you a flavor I have picked out some chapters with mini reviews of their content:

Chapter 1, It Is All About Who: Mandel places the highest priority on hiring the best talent. Interesting, he makes a distinction between hiring the best and hiring the best available talent. His philosophy is to never settle. Wait if necessary. Woo talent over time. If you can find an excellent person but don’t have the right position, hire anyway. He says you will find them a position soon enough – and if they are as good as you think they are, they may well create their own position on their own initiative.

I wish he would have put some emphasis on matching the person to the culture, although he does a good job of talking “culture” in a later chapter. I also think he overplays intellectual intelligence at the expense of emotional intelligence. But he is 100% correct in making the hiring, development and retention of talent as the CEO’s #1 priority.

Chapter 3, Building A Rich, Deep, Ethical Culture: He begins this chapter with a story of how in the earliest days of his company they won a contract that was by far the biggest ever in the company’s history. But then they were informed that there would be a 5% “agent fee”. That’s “bribe” in the English language. His company walked away from the contract. In his own words: “I have a cardinal rule, and that is to never abandon principle.”

He puts ethics and values ahead of short-term gains. We need a lot more of that in modern society. I have to grin when I read that even in the later stages of his career he still reminds himself of his mother’s simple advice: “Right is right and Wrong is wrong”. He is also right when he goes back to Chapter 1 in saying that in hiring the right people you have to make sure you get folks with the same ethics and values – they know right from wrong and will never deviate from right. He also inserts a great quote from Warren Buffet: “Lose money for my firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for my firm and I will be ruthless.”

Chapter 6, Killing Yourself for Your Customer: His passion for super service, superior service just sends chills up my spine. Why don’t all companies think like this? It seems so obvious and so simple (Hello Direct TV). His company culture cultivates customer service. Employees are dedicated to customer service. They explore what the customer really needs. They constantly ask themselves how they can do better. They consistently ask how they can exceed expectations. He makes it crystal clear that any employee who doesn’t live up to the preceding sentences will be listed as “former employee”.

That’s a quick overview of three of my favorite chapters. Let me write about a couple more things I love about this book. He holds people accountable. No talking around a subject, just straight talk about performance – not a piece of paper on a yearly schedule but a heart to heart discussion when needed. I also very much like his business strategy of finding niches, making managed risks not bet-the-company risks. This is very much in line with current entrepreneurial thinking.

Overall, although never stated, I find most of the way he operates and believes to be compatible with the conscious capitalism model that I have written about and support. And it doesn’t hurt that the book is an easy, fun read with some great stories, including those of his mother who serves as his role model.

The one troublesome area for me is the company structure for his employees. To some extent I find him to be a micro manager. His company(ies) are filled with detailed rules that are carefully watched and enforced. Maybe because his primary business was in manufacturing it was necessary – but it seems that it could be stifling and certainly not conducive to creativity and innovation. He certainly treats his employees with personal respect – he illustrates that numerous times – but is that enough? This would certainly be worthy of a discussion.

Read it and make up your own mind.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.