Photo by Peter Simon

Photo by Peter Simon

It’s not enough to be a good leader, says HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter. Today’s societal challenges require advanced leaders—ones with the skills of an experienced CEO, the big dreams of a new entrepreneur, and the rare ability to build coalitions across organizations. In her new book, Think Outside the Building, Kanter profiles many such people, including Jeffrey Dunn (MBA 1981), the president and CEO of Sesame Workshop who brought the power of Sesame Street to refugee children, and offers a roadmap for others preparing to tackle our era’s biggest problems. “Mobilizing for positive institutional change should be the responsibility of aspiring and accomplished leaders everywhere,” says Kanter.
 
Why do we need advanced leaders now?

Problems like climate change, racial and gender disparity, health issues, and educational shortfalls are in the public view more and more every day. Why haven’t they been solved? My answer, in part, is that we need new approaches and new solutions. We need advanced leaders who are focused on the entire ecosystem, not one organization. We need people who think outside the building. Systems change is more complex; it’s a little messier—and you might not be in charge of every element—but the problem is significant and worth the effort of assembling coalitions and inspiring others to join.

What does it mean to “think outside the building”?

It’s all about thinking outside your silo, your sector, your industry—outside the walls—and understanding that change may be taking place somewhere beyond what you currently see. You have to be out there to see it. The new CEO in one of America’s major Fortune 20 companies encourages his executives to do at least one thing that’s new and different every week. Go someplace new; see something different that will stimulate the imagination. If you want innovation, you have to move beyond the familiar, challenge conventional assumptions, and identify a fresh approach.

You say that business success can be an obstacle to tackling intractable problems.

Success can sometimes be a trap, because it makes you want to repeat what you just did as opposed to adopting new modes and tackling a problem in a very different way. It gets harder and harder to see the bigger picture when everything around you reinforces one way of doing things. If you’re at the top, the temptation is to want to stay there, rather than jump into unfamiliar sectors where you don’t have all the answers. That leaves an opening for entrepreneurs to seize the new opportunities and displace you. It also makes it harder to find new ways around the barriers that prevent long-standing problems, such as climate change, from being solved.

How can we foster this kind of leadership?

Universities have a role to play when they replace the ivory tower with the goal of serving society. Universities can bring together groups of people that are highly diverse, with a range of backgrounds and ages. The right kind of field-based, problem-oriented education can get people out of the building and help them understand the perspectives of those who are grappling with problems on the ground. It’s one thing to talk about climate change in the abstract, for example, and it’s another thing to go to a coastal island in the South Pacific and see how they’re trying to cope.

Businesses can do this, too. I have long recommended that an important part of leadership development should be to send people out to new and different places to encounter problems they’ve never seen before and try to solve them. The idea of a corporate service corps of rising talent is taking hold in leading companies.

What is the path forward for the would-be advanced leader?

First, dream big. Some of my favorite stories in the book are about people who take on something that seems impossible—fixing nutrition disparities in the inner city, tackling the refugee crisis, financing healthier oceans. These ideas come from bringing a new perspective, taking the time to reflect, and getting feedback from stakeholders who don’t always agree. Second, create a compelling narrative that shows why change is not only necessary but possible. Third, find allies and supporters. That’s the hard work of convincing people that the idea could succeed. Entrepreneurs do these things all the time. But advanced leadership is doing this with the goal of making a big difference in the world.
 
Many people are expecting the next generation to address the world’s challenges, but in the book, you are looking to the baby boomers.

The baby-boomer generation has a great opportunity to create change because there are so many people of that generation who want to have an impact on the world, and they have decades left to do it. Experience counts in advanced leadership—but so do fresh ideas. The best combination is millennial entrepreneurs and experienced leaders working together.

Post a Comment