Fast Company Book Club
Achieve Healthcare
Eden Prairie, Minnesota
Bill George, Authentic Leadership
Karen Winkler, a fiercely loyal Fast Company reader, Company of Friends member, and a member of the information systems team at Achieve Healthcare in Eden Prarie, Minnesota, was looking for an opportunity to start a Fast Company-related discussion group within her organization.
In October, Fast Company announced the first Readers' Choice Award selection in the Fast Company Book Club: Authentic Leadership, by Bill George. Not only is George a Minnesota business celeb, he's one of Winkler's personal heroes. "That's when it hit me to organize a Fast Company reading group," she says.
To help kick off the first meeting of Winkler's discussion group at Achieve, George joined the reading circle, answering participants' questions and signing copies of his book. Here are some highlights of the Dec. 16, 2003, event:
Book Club: Can you shed more insight on how authentic leadership manifests itself in the day-to-day operations of a company?
Bill George: It starts with sharing your mission with everyone. For Medtronic, this meant sharing the mission with patients, physicians, nurses, and technicians. What happens is that you create a bond with your customers. Do you relate to your customers' ultimate mission? That alignment is really crucial.
Book Club: Sometimes it feels like you have so many different masters to serve. How hard is it to strike the right balance?
George: It is hard. You'll get these gurus on Wall Street talking about shareholders and providing shareholder value. But what hareholders are they talking about? The retirees, long-term investors, institutional investors, and day traders? At Medtronic, we always said we were not about maximizing shareholder value -- that is, we weren't out to satisfy the needs of day traders. It's about meeting long-term patient needs. I think this is why Honeywell isn't doing well. They're caught up in that.
Book Club: What about the masters who try to direct product development?
George: That's the toughest problem. You've got to find the sweet spot in the marketplace where you can satisfy everyone as best you can. You want to be responsive, but you also can't get pushed around too hard.
Book Club: Have you ever used an advisory board to deal with those issues?
George: I have, and at a place like Medtronic, you're going to have a lot of doctors. Doctors tend to be pretty strong willed. They get in a room, and they want to compete with each other. I think that's good. But I think you must have a mixed group. You've got to have the gurus along with people from the mainstream.
Book Club: What works best to remove silos within an organization?
George: Bringing people together on a regular basis, from across functions to talk about the mission. I tended to be pretty aggressive with this. I would have 12 people in my office at once, reminding them that what they're doing represents the company. I also think you should let cultures diverge. We had an acquisition with a company in Memphis that tended to be very formal in how it handled meetings, even when the guys from Silicon Valley showed up in T-shirts and shorts. I thought, that's fine as long as they still make great software. You have to have a tolerance of that. It's hard sometimes, but it's important. What really matters is getting agreement on the values and the mission of the company.
Book Club: How widespread is authentic leadership in today's companies?
George: I think there's a hunger at the middle level and there's so much bitterness. And I think with this hunger, there's a new generation of leaders that want to go back to more authentic leadership. You're seeing that happen by replacing CEOs -- I think what happened at Motorola is a great example of that.
Report written by Ryan Underwood. Photographs courtesy of Carol Olson (Bill George) and Ruth Running (discussion group).
Learn how to organize your own Fast Company Book Club discussion group. And join the online discussion about this Readers' Choice Award selection.
