Next Stop - The 21st Century

Jim Stuart

Cofounder
The Leadership Circle
Tampa, Florida

Passion. Creativity. Commitment. Those are the qualities that companies need most if they want to win in the new world of business. Those are also the qualities that are most lacking at most companies.

In most workplaces, people still feel as if they're just a part of the means of production. Why? Because their leaders treat them that way.

How can we invent organizations in which people stop feeling like cogs and start working with a spirit of creativity and commitment? By reinventing our approach to leadership. Robert K. Greenleaf, who retired from AT&T in 1964, coined the term "servant leadership." Behind that term is a simple but powerful idea: Leadership derives naturally from a commitment to service. You know that you're practicing servant leadership if your followers become wiser, healthier, more autonomous -- and more likely to become servant leaders themselves.

I've led from a place of servant leadership, and I've led from a place of top-down leadership -- and there's no question which kind of leadership is more effective. My classmates at Harvard Business School used to call me the Prussian General: For many years, that was my approach to leadership. Then I was hit by a series of personal tragedies and professional setbacks. My wife died. A mail-order venture that I had started went bankrupt. The universe was working hard to bring a little humility into my life. Rather than launch another business, I accepted a friend's offer to head an aquarium project in Tampa.

I spent the next six years in a job that gave me no power, no money, and no knowledge. That situation forced me to draw on a deeper part of myself. We ended up with a team of people who were so high-performing that they could almost walk through walls. Why, I wondered, was I suddenly able to lead a team that was so much more resilient and creative than any team that I had run before? The answer: Somewhere, amid all of my trials, I had begun to trust my colleagues as much as I trusted myself.

As we head into the 21st century, I hope that leaders will ask themselves this simple question: What kind of company are you trying to build? A profit machine in which everyone feels alienated? Or a "legacy" company -- an organization in which there is shared excitement about feeling a larger sense of purpose?

Jim Stuart (jstuart902@aol.com) was executive director of the Florida Aquarium, which opened in Tampa in March 1995 -- "on time and ahead of budget," he says. He has run several companies, including Val-Pak and Needlecraft Corp., and for 12 years, he served in various roles at Quaker Oats, a company that was cofounded by his great-grandfather. For the past five years, Stuart has taught at the University of South Florida Graduate School of Business. The Leadership Circle, which Stuart cofounded with Eric Klein and Bob Anderson, is a two-year program for CEOs and their spouses that will convene its first session in the spring of 2000.

Anita Roddick

Founder and cochair
The Body Shop
London, England

I'd like to address my advice to young women who are entering the business world. To them, I say, Challenge everything that you've ever been taught. Too much of what you've learned in school does not reflect the new realities of life, of the workplace, or of making a living.

If you're going to work for a company, work for one that you can relate to emotionally. Look at its founding principles, and make sure that they match your own principles. Also, look for companies that prize creativity. I really believe that women have a special knack for creativity. If you want to join a big company, make sure that it recognizes the importance of family. But don't think bigger; think better.

Most important, try to find profitable work that has a genuine social purpose -- work that addresses some great need in society. One of the biggest social disasters of modern society is loneliness. Forget selling over the Internet. Direct selling -- not just mailing catalogs, not just letting customers visit your Web site, but going into communities and entering people's homes (the way Mary Kay and Tupperware have always done it) -- could become a huge market. That kind of selling builds community and creates connections, especially in countries that have aging populations.

That's why we started direct selling in the UK several years ago. Through a business that we call the Body Shop Direct, we hold parties around people's kitchen tables. We get highly trained employees to organize parties in people's homes, we invite 10 to 15 people, and then we sell our products. There is an incredible sense of isolation in the world today. Any young person who finds an antidote to loneliness will have found a business that will last forever.

Anita Roddick (anita.roddick@the-body-shop.com) started the Body Shop in 1976, with a $6,000 bank loan. Today, the company brings in nearly $1 billion in annual revenues and operates more than 1,600 stores in 47 countries.