Everything I Thought I Knew about Leadership Is Wrong

It's taken me a while to learn these things. When I returned to Perot Systems, my first job as a leader was to create a new understanding of myself. I had to accept the shattering of my own self-confidence. I couldn't lead anymore, at least not in the way I always had. There was a time during that first year at Perot Systems when I would go home and look in the mirror and say to myself, "You don't get it. Maybe you ought to get out of this business. You're like a highly specialized trained beast that evolved during one period and now you can't adjust to the new environment."

I told myself I was having the same experience as a caterpillar entering a cocoon. The caterpillar doesn't know that he'll come out as a butterfly. All he knows is that he's alone, it's dark, and it's a little scary. I came out the other end of the experience with a new understanding of leadership. I don't have to know everything. I don't have to have all the customer contacts. I don't have to make all the decisions. In fact, in the new world of business, it can't be me, it shouldn't be me, and my job is to prevent it from being me.

In my early days at Perot Systems, people came to me and asked for "the plan." When I told them, I don't know the plan, they got angry with me. All I would say was, I don't know the plan. If that disqualifies me from being a leader, then you'd better go get another leader. We're either going to figure out the company's future together or we're not going to do it at all.

I made it clear that there were a whole set of things that I couldn't do -- and that for the good of Perot Systems I wouldn't do. I couldn't get us into businesses or out of businesses. I couldn't set the company's strategy, delineate the company's tactics, or write the field orders for our competitive battles. I couldn't decide what products to launch. I couldn't be that kind of leader. I could do that in the old days at EDS because the competition was stable and I had overpowering knowledge. If I tried to do that today, I'd make every wrong move in the book. The way to be a leader today is different. I no longer call the shots. I'm not the decision maker.

So what is my job as a leader? The essence of leadership today is to make sure that the organization knows itself. There are certain durable principles that underlie an organization. The leader should embody those values. They're fundamental. But they have nothing to do with business strategy, tactics, or market share. They have to do with human relationships and the obligation of the organization to its individual members and its customers. For example, our most controversial value --the one that was narrowly approved -- speaks to our commitment to the community. It was also the one I argued most heatedly for. And today, it's one our entire organization supports fervently.

The second job of the leader is to pick the right people to be part of the organization and to create an environment where those people can succeed. That means encouraging others to help develop the strategy and grow the philosophy of the company. It means more collaboration and teamwork among people at every level of the company. I am now a coach, not an executive. When people ask me for a decision, I pick up a mirror, hold it up for them to look into, and tell them: Look to yourselves and look to the team, don't look to me.

The third job of the leader is to be accessible. I want to be open to people in a broad range of their experiences in life if they need it, and I want to be accessible for two-way communication that's honest, open, and direct. During my years at EDS I communicated the way most CEOs do: I showed up on stage every six months and delivered a pep rally speech. I wrote memos that went to the top dozen people in the company and had meetings with them every two weeks.

Today I travel with my laptop and get e-mail from all over the company. I get thousands of messages per month, some of them trivial, many important. Everyone in Perot Systems knows they can e-mail me and I'll read it -- me, not my secretary. Electronic mail is the single most important tool I have to break through the old organization and the old mind-set. E-mail says that I'm accessible to anyone in our company in real time, anywhere. I am an instant participant in any part of the organization. No more dictating memos that get scrubbed before their formal distribution to the corporate hierarchy. Now, when I hear about a win in a hotly contested competition, within an hour of the victory I'm sending out congratulatory e-mails to our team members around the world. The impact from that kind of direct communication is enormous.