Below are some of my observations on some of great and not so great leadership moments that I have seen.

Death of Peter Drucker:

The death of Peter Drucker, one of the greatest leadership and management thinkers of this century, warrants an entry in our Hall of Fame or Shame.
We particularly liked the following leadership principles introduced to corporate leaders by Drucker:
· An organization should have a clear purpose with specific measurable goals.
· Leaders should reach an agreement with subordinates on objectives to be achieved, then step back to let them find the subordinates find the best way to accomplish them.
· Leaders lead people by drawing upon their strengths, not by prescribing tasks for them.
· Marketing organizations should focus on what the customers want to buy, rather than on what businesses may want to sell.
· Not-for-profit organizations should start acting like businesses, but with "changed lives" rather than profits as their bottom lines.

The Rolls-Royce Partnership:
The year is 1904.

Henry Royce has just built his first gasoline electric car. A meticulous self-taught engineer, he lacked the sales and marketing skills and needed to sell cars. Unlike many of us Royce admitted that he lacked these skills.

Enter Charles Stewart Rolls, an aristocrat with money and a passion for excitement (i.e. balloons and cars). An agreement was struck. Henry Royce would build the cars; Charles Rolls would sell them.

The new company built several different cars (four-six and eight-cylinder models) but made the decision to focus all of its attention on designing and building one model, the six-cylinder Silver Ghost. The new model was sent on two demonstration runs (of 3,220 and 24,150 km in length) under the strict scrutiny of the Royal Automobile Club, with stops only to change tires and refuel.

The Rolls-Royce partnership, focused on one car model, had established its reputation as the manufacturer of the best car in the world and had the marketing smarts to capitalize on that reputation. And the rest is history.

Example of a compelling, successful vision:
Thomas Edison once told me "I want to make electricity so cheap, that only the rich can afford to burn candles." Think about it, how often do you use electric lights? How often do you use candles? Did Edison not succeed big time?

The wrong man for the job:
The Director of the US Patent Office, in 1899 proclaimed that "everything that can be invented has been invented". (Do you not think that he was the wrong man for his position?) It often takes a year or more to know the capabilities and attitudes of people who we have hired.

Important insight into Strategy:
Michael Porter, from Harvard University explains strategy as "choosing to run a different kind of race, one that you've set up to win". Michael Porter did a great service for everyone in clarifying strategy as a game plan to win. I may name a ship after Porter.

Leader locked in time:
Upon learning that the Titanic had struck an iceberg, her captain called for the ship's carpenter. The captain had spent much of his career on wooden hulled ships, but I can't picture a ship's carpenter trying to patch the huge iron-hulled Titanic.

Market Creation
It is leadership skills and not the availability of money or marketplace opportunities that determine the growth of an organization. There was no mass market for low cost automobiles until Henry Ford created the market by raising daily wages and driving down the cost of mass produced automobiles.