Dwight Eisenhower, Common Sense, and Leadership

Hello. This is Wayne Rivers at The Family Business Institute. Thank you for participating in our blog. We appreciate that.
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All right, so this week I want to talk about Dwight D. Eisenhower, common sense, and leadership. And there's a great story
... I've always been intrigued with this story. It may or may not be true. I've read disputed accounts of whether or not this
story is true or not, but it's a great story. It's about Ike when he was president of Columbia University, prior to being
president of the United States.

Now, why is this important? Why am I talking about an old dead president, and Columbia University, and all this other
stuff? Because it illustrates good, old fashioned common sense. But even more importantly, it illustrates some good points
about leadership.

So, the story is this: they were doing a lot of expansion at Columbia, post-World War II, and the designers were arguing
about where to pour the sidewalks around the new part of the campus. And man, they had this big bicker going on, and
Eisenhower was sitting in his office, and he sort of calmly said, "Well, why don't we not pour any sidewalks? We'll grow
grass, and we'll let the students go where they will, and then once we know what the pathways are a year later, then you
can come in and pour the concrete where they've already trod down the grass. We'll know, in other words, if we just let
people guide us."

I think it's a great story. It illustrates several things. Number one, the wisdom of crowds. We talked about that book in a
blog about a year ago. People collectively are smarter than people as individuals, and Ike instinctively, with his Kansas
common sense, just knew that.

The second things it illustrates is a form of spontaneous order, because people don't need to be told how to get from
point A to point B. They can figure it out on their own, and if they're working in groups, they can influence each other. So,
there it is: instead of needing concrete to tell me where to go, I'll go where the group goes. I'll go where my common
sense tells me to go, how to get from point A to point B.

The third thing it illustrates, and this is key, and that is the simple wrong-headedness of dictating where other people
should go. It does not work. People are going to go in their own direction. You've got to find a way to corral that energy
within your own organization, within your own values, and within your own culture. But people can't be directed. They
can't be dictated to. They don't like that. We're human beings, and in America at least, we seek freedom. And being
imposed on by some higher power is just somehow anathema to us, and it doesn't really work very well.

The fourth thing it illustrates is the value of watching and listening to other people to guide you in your leadership. There
are several examples. Manufacturers. The manufacturers of scientific instruments and medical instruments don't usually
come up with innovation. Scientists and doctors do. They know what they need to perform a certain task, or to analyze a
certain problem. So, they inform the manufacturers, who then turn around and produce the products.

Electrolyte sports drinks, I bet every one of you has some Gatorade in your office refrigerator somewhere, that didn't
come from soft drink manufacturers or beverage makers. It came from the University of Florida football team. They would
get so dehydrated in the Florida heat and humidity, they needed a better way to replenish themselves, and they more or
less invented Gatorade, which is now a multibillion-dollar industry of its own.

Windsurfers. Windsurfers would hit waves and go up in the air, and as soon as they hit the water their feet would come
off the board and they would fall over. So, they fixed foot straps to their boards so ... Snowboarders use these today. And
they came up with that innovation. The manufacturers copied them.

So, there's a value in watching and listening to others who actually put their hands on things, projects and procedures,
and use them, and letting them help design. Let them inform the process so you get the optimal design.

So, where does this apply to you? I can tell you one way it applied to us: I went to a client's office, and they had this open concept. It was so cool! It was so beautifully designed. It was so modern. I came back all enthusiastic, and I wanted to tear
all the walls out of our building and just have this open-concept, so we'd have complete open collaboration. And almost
immediately I started to get signals from my team that that wasn't going to fly. I was getting emails with articles attached,
explaining why open-concept is a bad idea. I actually took a tour of one of my peer group member's office where they had
dozens of noise makers at the top of their cubicles in their open-concept, and everybody pretty much hated it. So, I learned
right away that my idea to try to impose this open-concept workspace on everybody was a horrible idea. It took no time
for my group to tell me.

And that's a sample. If you're thinking about changes in your office, changes to procedures, changes to systems in your
company, let those ideas be directed by the people that are actually going to use them. In your project planning, let those
projects be designed by the people that have to execute the projects. Let them inform you, rather than dictating how
things are going to get done.

And finally, as you think about the big picture, your business plan, your culture, your values, all of that, let that bubble up
from other people in the organization, rather than imposing it on them. It'll just work so much better. It's so much more
organic. And I've found it here just to be easy. I don't have to sit around and try to dream up what our culture is. I just let
our folks inform me what our culture is, and that seems to work much better. And of course, if we're going in the wrong
direction, I have a problem. But so far, so good.

Your leadership will improve if you allow other people to participate in the way you think, the way you act, and the way
you make decisions. That's our blog for this week. I'd love to have your comments. I'm sure there's some disagreement
among you.

This is Wayne Rivers at The Family Business Institute. Thank you.