The rarest commodity is leadership without ego | Bob Davids | TEDxESCP

Management is control. As a manager, you can control quality, time and money. But whichever one of those three takes precedence, the other two will suffer. Leadership is different; leadership is about leading people. Keep in touch with the people you lead and be in their shoes. The people you are leading will give you their support.

Bob Davids started his first business at the age of 12. At 20, he entered the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Bob has headed six successful companies and is now building a high-end resort in Indonesia. He is co-author of "Leadership without Ego: How to Stop Managing and Start Leading."

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Hello,

my name is Bob.

I am a designer

and an entrepreneurial businessman,

and today I want to talk
about management and leadership.

The reason I'm here today
is because I met Bob Townsend in 1980.

Some of you may
have heard of Bob Townsend;

most of you probably haven't.

He was the CEO that built Avis Rent a Car,

and he wrote a breakthrough book

in the 1960s,

called "Up the Organization."

"Up the Organization"
is still the number one book

at the Wharton Business School
on the must-read list.

That's 50 years of being number one,

so I suggest you take a look at it.

It's really a book about leadership,
culture building, without ego.

Bob Townsend
walked into my office in 1980,

and he asked me if I had 15 minutes.

I said, "Of course."

He said, "I'm interviewing
the management team

because I'm going to join
the Board of Directors at this company

and I always want to speak
with the management before I do."

"Oh, please come in and sit."

I looked at my watch:
15 minutes, not a problem.

Five hours later, he left my office.

(Laughter)

I was stunned.

I had never been in the presence
of that much energy.

He told me about his book
"Up the Organization";

I hadn't heard of it.

At five o'clock that night,
I ran out to the nearest bookstore

and I got it.

I read it from cover to cover that night;

it changed my life.

I had always had the same ideologies,

the same thoughts about leading people.

But his book gave me
a structure, a framework,

that I could hang it on,

and I used it as a guideline
for the rest of my life,

and I'm still using it.

The same year,

I was overlooked for a promotion
to be the CEO of the company.

I was in my 30s.

I thought I was ready;

the company didn't.

Bob Townsend suggested
that I further my education;

that was a good idea.

I says, "Well, maybe I'll go do an MBA."

He says, "No, never do an MBA.

(Laughter)

There's too many managers already.

The world is short of leaders;

we don't need any more managers."

Managers, leadership -
I thought they were the same.

I would hear people say,

"I manage six people,"

"I lead a team of six people" -

must be the same.

32 years later,

I'm here tonight to tell you
it's not the same.

Management is control;

in business, we call it
the "triple constraint of management."

There's three things

and only three things
that you could control.

You can control quality,

time and money.

Whichever one of those three
takes precedence,

the other two will suffer.

If quality drives your organization
or your product or your service,

the other two will suffer.

It takes more time and more money
to create the quality.

If price determines
your product or service,

then you will have
to give up the quality

and do it much cheaper.

If time - you have to do it in time -

to do it quickly,
it will cost you more money,

and the faster you go,
the less quality you will have.

So control is the management,
the interplay, of time, quality and money.

So where are people?

Well, people come under leadership.

There's a big difference.

In World War II, Dwight Eisenhower

was the Allied supreme commander
of all the forces.

He would train his generals.

He would take a chain

and stack it up on the table.

And then he would ask the generals,

"If I push that chain,

which way will it go?"

And he would hear a lot of answers.

The correct answer
is you really don't know.

But he said that if I took the chain

and I picked it up by the end,

and I pull the chain,

which way will it go?

The answer is it will follow you.

And there is the essence of leadership:

if you push the people,

down deep inside,

you really do not know
which way they will go

or what they're really thinking.

But if you can lead them
and get them to follow you,

then you have the skill
that everybody should have -

is to be a leader.

I went to China, lived there for 13 years.

I built a company,

started with a handful of people,
and we ended up with 8,000 people.

We had to build a factory
to house 8,000 people.

On occasion, I would go to Guangzhou

and walk around and inspect the site.

I have a technical background,

so I felt I had a little bit
of expertise in construction.

And one monsoon-rainy afternoon
we're walking along by the foundation

and I look down in the ditch
and I see five or six men working

and they're installing a sewer pipe.

And they had a level,

and I'm looking down,

and I see that they're making
the pipes level.

Well, I have enough technical background

to know that a level pipe
is not going to flow

and it's going to get buried
under the foundation,

so we're going to have lifetime problems

because we'll never get to this to fix it.

So I thought about
telling them how to fix it,

and then I realized
I didn't speak Chinese.

So I took off my shoes,
and I jumped in the trench.

I know that a one-inch pebble
underneath one end of the level

will be just about 2% grade -

that's what we needed.

So without saying a word,

I grabbed the level,
I took a rock and I held it.

I went back two pipes, and I raised it up.

I signaled for them
to put some sand under the pipe,

and we got it just right.

And I went to the next pipe,
then I did it again.

And on the third pipe,
I hand it to the men in the trench,

and I had them hold the pebble
under the level until I got it just right.

Then I asked them
to do one more, and they did.

And then I got out of the trench,
took my shoes and went back to the hotel.

That incident became viral in the company.

I had no idea what was going to happen.

But inside, I was realizing
what Bob Townsend had told me.

If I had pushed them

and I had yelled at them
and told them what to do,

I probably wouldn't know
where they would go.

But by grabbing the level
and pulling them,

showing them exactly what to do

without saying a single word,
in a totally different culture,

they listened.

That incident went
through the whole company,

and they realized that it was –

it's a symbol that I would jump
in the trenches with them:

the big boss would jump in the trench
in the mud and pull them.

I had no idea it was going
to be so powerful.

But it really paid off.

There are some great leaders
that have pulled a lot of people.

My favorite is Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi united two religions,

ended a more than 100-year colonial empire

by motivating the British to leave.

He did so in a peaceful manner,

and basically, he just stopped eating.

That's powerful!

Power comes when the people
that you are leading

give you their support.

When that support comes to you,

I call that like power.

They offer you the power,
and then they watch you.

If you take that power
and you deflect all of it back to them,

then they give you more.

And then if you give more
back to them, the second wave,

they give you even more.

But if you start to take
some of that power,

they start giving you less.

And those leaders that accept the power
make a critical mistake

because now the power that's going to come

and give them more
and more and more power

falters and goes away.

I can point out many leaders
around the world, even today,

that are falling
because they took the power.

They didn't give it back
to the people they were leading.

Leadership is a gift.

You can't buy it, you can't sell it,

can't trade it.

You either have it or you don't.

I went to a design school,

and they said, "You were accepted here

because you have shown
a lot of creativity.

We can't teach you creativity.

That sounds like leadership.

But if you have that skill set
and you have that talent,

what we're going to do
is we're going to hone it,

we're going to polish it.

We're going to give you discipline

so that you can apply your skill,"

and they did.

Leadership is the most valuable
commodity on the planet,

and it is the rarest commodity we have.

It's not food, the lack of food;

it's not the lack of water;

it's not oil or minerals;

it's leadership.

But it's not any form of leadership.

It's the Townsonian model
of doing it without ego.

If you can follow the footsteps
of Mahatma Gandhi, Ronald Reagan -

Ronald Reagan used to send
his staff home at Christmas time

so they could be with their families.

He says, "You don't worry about me.

You guys go home,
take care of yourself."

He's putting everything back.

You take a look

at the Czechoslovakian leader
that just died, Václav Havel.

A simple man, drove his same car,
became the leader of the country.

He took nothing, and he gave it back,

and his country made a peaceful conversion
to democracy and freedom.

That's leadership.

Herb Kelleher was the CEO founder
of Southwest Airlines.

He would go out
and work one day a month

handling baggage in the company.

Bob Townsend used to spend one day a week
renting out cars at the counter.

You need to be in touch
with the people you lead,

and you need to be in their shoes.

So I just want to leave you
with one thought -

all of you here that are studying
and going on to be managers and leaders,

remember,

if you have that skill set,
to hone it and discipline it

because it is the rarest commodity
in the planet, and the world needs you.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)