Slow Leadership

I owe you, my readers, some hint of where we will be going, if you stay with me as this year progresses. Otherwise, you may justifiably decide to look elsewhere for whatever you have been finding on this site.

I am going on a quest: a quest to discover how leaders can combine productivity with humanity. I want to understand how corporate executives can practice civilized behavior, follow ethical values and develop greater wisdom, without ignoring those insistent demands of business: profit, efficiency and competitive success.

I refuse to believe it isn't possible. Mankind has already achieved so much—socially, politically and technologically—and this seems a small requirement in comparison. Nor can I accept it as unimportant. How we live; how we invest our limited capital of time, energy, interest and capabilities, is surely more important than how we invest our money; and look how much time, activity and newsprint is spent on that. Money can be replaced. Once spent, our lives can not.

Unless you are willing to accept a shoddy material abundance as all the future has to offer—and I refuse to do that—it is your duty to yourself and to others to find a better way. That will be the goal of my quest, and I invite you to join me. You can come to lend a hand; or simply for the entertainment of watching me lose myself in blind alleys, and fall into manure-filled ditches. Either seems a good enough reason, so long as you enjoy the ride.

Starting The Quest

Where shall we start? Not, I think, with one of the many worn-out concepts that delight business and management writers—though why they should is beyond my comprehension. They call to mind beginning a gourmet meal with an appetizer made from fish so old and fragrant even feral cats won't touch it. Perhaps mousse of hundred-year-old red herring, well laced with the arsenic of buzzwords and condescension.

I want to start instead with leaders themselves. I want to find what they think about and worry about. What concerns them most as leaders, and so what may drive them to find better ways of doing it. I also want to consider our common humanity, which is violated by treating employees like animals to be exploited, then kicked out when they are of no further use. The audit mentality that permeates today's organizations like toxic mold lavishes greater care on machines, which are classed as assets, than it does on people, whom it labels as costs.

It does not have to be like this. We can have efficient, profitable enterprises that also treat the people who work there in appropriate ways for a civilized nation. All it takes is the willpower to make that a goal; and the courage to face down the demons of greed, convention and fear that come out to block the path.

That is my quest, and I repeat my invitation: join me as I set out to find the grail I am seeking—how Slow Leadership can restore the craft of the leader to an honorable place and a worthwhile expression of human values. I'll be glad of your help and will try to be humble at your laughter when things go wrong. Like all quests, it's the journey that matters as much (or more) than the goal.