Start-Ups Need a Team From OZ
By Patrick Lencioni
The other day I met with the CEO of a well funded, seemingly well positioned start-up company. This particular executive was in a funk about the lack of enthusiasm within his company, and after a few minutes of discussing the situation, he described the root cause of his problem: "there's no heart around here."
He went on to explain that no one within the company, including him, was deeply passionate about the mission of the firm. While plenty of the company's executives and employees were very excited about their market opportunity, no one really lived for the business. He could not think of a single employee who loved what he was doing, just because it was fun.
As a result of all this, the company was beginning to struggle.
This lack of heart is not an uncommon problem for many of today's start-ups. Too often, they lack a key executive who brings a sense of idealism, passion and fanaticism to the table. This person can also provide the organization with a boost of energy during tough times.
Okay. Now bear with me here.
For some reason - maybe because it is summer time, or maybe because I have young children at home - this situation made me think about the movie The Wizard of Oz, and the eclectic cast of characters that it brought to life. Like that ensemble, a company needs a mix of leaders with different talents and tendencies who can provide an appropriate balance of leadership styles.
In the example above, the company resembled the Tin Man who needed a heart in order to be complete. It became very clear to the CEO that without heart, there was little chance of success. To address that need, the CEO is now searching for a new executive who is fanatical about the business and will bring passion and enthusiasm to it. Most likely, that executive will be involved in customer service or marketing, functions that interact with clients and prospects.
Whatever the specific role of "the heart", one of the informal responsibilities will be to give employees a sense of connection to customers, and bring to life an understanding of customers' excitement for the company's products. And if the company encounters difficult times, this person will play a key role in rallying the troops.
But having an executive with a heart alone is certainly not enough for an organization. Like the Scarecrow, a company also needs a brain. This role is often filled by a chief technology officer or a head of strategic planning, someone whose job is to explore every opportunity that will help the company maximize its potential. This requires patience, objectivity and intellectual precision.
The purpose of the brain is to counter-balance the heart and make sure that the company's passion is checked by its logic. A company with a heart and without a brain often experiences surprising drops in morale when the dreams and aspirations of its passionate leaders don't quite materialize as soon as or in the way that everyone expected.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a company needs what the Cowardly Lion lacked: courage. While this characteristic is certainly important in every leader, it must be embodied by the CEO. There is no one else who can provide an organization with the backbone to make difficult decisions and face the consequences of those decisions in the way that a chief executive must. An organization without a courageous leader at the top will certainly struggle, no matter the make up of the executives deeper in the firm.
Every executive team, then, must embody the collective desired traits of these characters from Oz. What is more, it is extremely rare to find all of the traits represented sufficiently in just one person.
What about Dorothy? How does the movie's most central character fit into the leadership mix?
She represents the outside influence that companies need to avoid stagnation. Dorothy is the catalyst who keeps the executive team focused on being passionate, smart and courageous, and does so with a fresh perspective that only an outsider can bring.
Within the organizational realm, Dorothy can be represented by a variety of people: board members, consultants, industry analysts, friends of the firm. What is important to realize is that no one within a firm can adequately play this role, because it requires significant levels of objectivity and credibility that an insider usually cannot achieve.
Her ability to challenge conventional wisdom and question supposed realities can provoke the organization to take actions that they would otherwise never consider, whether that is acquiring a competitor, launching a new product, or identifying a cultural problem.
Now, for those of you Oz purists, you will undoubtedly remember that the Tin Man, Scarecrow and Cowardly Lion did not really lack their respective traits at all. In fact, they merely needed to be reminded of the capabilities that they thought they had been lacking. This is also a key role for Dorothy - to bring out the latent potential of people who are so close to their own world that they have lost some perspective.
And while it is common, and often necessary, to look outside an organization for an infusion of heart, brains, or courage, it is worth noting that in many cases, it can be identified and developed from within. So, as Dorothy might say, there's no place like home.