LEADERSHIP IS OVERRATED

Another entry in the library of special-forces warriors–turned–business gurus, but with many points worth pondering.

“Most people don’t quit their jobs. They quit their bosses.” So write former Navy SEAL Buckett and corporate executive Mefford, who reject the current mania for business-leadership books in favor of what a CEO such as the late Jack Welch would likely consider anarchy. The operative notion is that bosses hinder the more productive organization of loose teams whose members are eager to contribute ideas and actions to the common good, much as military people ideally operate as colleagues in a common enterprise. One exercise to test whether a given civilian enterprise is working as an effective team is “killing the leader,” borrowed from the military as a thought experiment to find out what would happen if the leader were suddenly to be absent, whether because of death, retirement, or vacation. “What we learn from combat,” write the authors, “is that if you are weak, eventually something stronger will come to take you out.” A major contributor to that weakness in the business world, they add, is a bad boss, either uninspiring or incapable—and all too often inclined to petty tyranny. Workers don’t want that, write Buckett and Mefford. Instead, they want to feel as if they’re not cogs in a machine, trusted and as autonomous as possible, with leaders who encourage but don’t interfere. “The solution to workplace dissatisfaction doesn’t lie in high-functioning leaders; it lies in high-performing teams,” they write. The point is well taken not just on the civilian front, but also by scanning the headlines—with, for instance, a democratic Ukraine holding its own against a better-armed and more numerous but poorly led Russian army.

Better than most books in the genre and a welcome manifesto for creating productive workplaces.