True North
Discover your Authentic Leadership

Editor's Note by Warren Bennis:

As the world becomes ever more dangerous and our problems more complex and dire, we long for truly distinguished leaders, men and women who deserve our respect and loyalty. Instead, we have suffered far too much bad leadership in recent years. The business media have exposed one scandal after another—criminally greedy CEOs, boards that do little more than rubber-stamp executive whims, companies willing to trade customers’ lives for profits, and corrupt and partisan political leaders. Too many of our so-called leaders have functioned best as subjects of the brand of satire perfected on television by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

 

But Bill George and Peter Sims’s True North is about a very different kind of leader, the kind that we can be proud to follow. In this ambitious and important book, one of America’s most respected corporate leaders and his talented younger collaborator show that ethically grounded leadership is not only possible, it is often the most effective leadership of all. It is an optimistic message that falls on grateful ears.

 

To write their guide to authentic leadership, George and Sims interviewed 125 leaders in many arenas. The authors chose men and women whose leadership appeared to be grounded in their character. The subjects range in age from twenty-three and ninety-three, and have distinguished themselves in corporate life, as entrepreneurs, as social innovators, in political life, and in the study of leadership itself. Some, like statesman and former Bechtel head George Shultz, have contributed in many fields. Some, like Starbucks founder Howard Schultz and educator and frequent political commentator David Gergen, are household names. Others are less well-known but have quietly made important contributions to our lives, including young Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach America. Financial entrepreneur Charles Schwab; Avon CEO Andrea Jung; Amgen head Kevin Sharer; philosopher of design David Kelley; Judy Vredenburgh of Big Brothers, Big Sisters—all the leaders who appear in True North offer firsthand insights into the nature of authentic leadership and the way to develop it.

 

One of the revelations of True North is how critical these leaders’ personal stories are in shaping their leadership. Time after time, those interviewed describe a turning point in their lives—a crucible, I call it—that transformed them into the leaders they are today. These tales of how they became the people they are reveal their most deeply held values, their most passionate beliefs. Howard Schultz recalls how, as a child of seven, he was forever changed by the news that his delivery-man father had slipped on a sheet of ice and broken his ankle. The accident lost Schultz’s father his job and the family its health insurance and economic security. That experience led Schultz to create a global business, one built not on lattes and frappucinos but on the conviction that every worker deserves respect and health care.

 

“Those early memories are with me all the time,” Schultz tells the authors. “I wanted to build the kind of company my father never had a chance to work for, where you would be valued and respected, no matter where you came from, the color of your skin, or your level of education. Memories of my father’s lost health care led to Starbucks’ becoming the first American company to provide health insurance for every employee, including part-time workers.”

 

Such autobiographical stories continue to inspire the leaders who lived them, keeping their moral compasses pointed toward True North. The tales are inspiring for readers as well, and marvelous to read. Novartis Chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella’s story

is a saga of Dickensian proportions. It begins with the Swiss-born Vasella’s achingly lonely childhood, filled with physical pain and emotional loss. At the age of eight, he was struck with tuberculosis and meningitis. He was sent away to recuperate for a year—a year in which his parents never visited him. As a teenager, he joined a rowdy motorcycle gang that drank too much and fought too quickly. But Vasella and the other leaders of True North are not defeated by their struggles and setbacks. Instead, they learn from them and find their futures in them.

 

In his gang, Vasella recognized his own ambition and began to fashion a career in which he had more control. He went to medical school and later rose to the top of one of the world’s leading health care companies. Today his leadership is grounded in his personal knowledge of poverty and ill health. “As CEO,” Vasella told the authors, “I have the leverage to impact the lives of many more people. I can do what is right, based on my moral compass. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what we do for other people.”

 

There are more than one hundred such stories in this fascinating, important book. Some are funny, some are cautionary, all are compelling. After a friend of mine read True North before publication, he noted how different it is from most business books. Instead of simply telling readers how to get ahead, True North offers a practical five-part program for developing their best selves and shows how authenticity and integrity shape great leadership. My friend wants to give the book to his children to read.

 

As CEO of medical-device giant Medtronic, Bill George was known as much for his integrity as for his business success. Now on the faculty of the Harvard Business School, he (with coauthor Peter Sims) has written a worthy successor to his best-selling Authentic Leadership. Building on that book’s wisdom, True North goes even further, revealing just how powerful authentic leadership can be—and, best of all, how to achieve it.

 

Warren Bennis

Santa Monica, California

October, 2006