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LEADERSHIP
Decisions, decisions
THE REAL LEADERS ARE THOSE WHO TAKE ACTION
By Raymond Hennessey
A
ny time I have a tough decision to make, I wonder what
James Burke would do.
Burke isn’t a household name, certainly not in the
modern pantheon of entrepreneurial leaders like Steve Jobs or
Elon Musk. But that’s not surprising. Burke spent nearly 40
years with the same company—Johnson & Johnson (13 of them
as chairman and CEO)—then went into public service as chairman
of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Neither role is
“hip” to the modern entrepreneur.
But you should know Burke—like, have-a-picture-of-him-onyour-office-wall
know him. If you’re serious about leadership,
serious about being a leader that your employees,
customers and stakeholders can be proud
of, you should understand, as he did, that it all
comes down to how you approach decisions.
Leadership is about bringing order to chaos,
fighting ambiguity and staying true to your
company’s—and your own—principles.
In Burke’s case, that meant making what
remains one of the riskiest corporate decisions
ever: spending $100 million to recall a product
that wasn’t actually faulty.
Burke led J&J through its darkest period.
In 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died
after taking capsules of Extra-Strength Tylenol
that had been laced with cyanide. Folks were
scared. No one knew how the drugs were being
tampered with. It was random. And it wasn’t
really J&J’s fault. The company wasn’t poisoning
its customers—a crackpot was.
But there was uncertainty among executives
and shareholders about what the company
should do. The costliest option was also the
most unprecedented, and it was the path Burke
chose: pulling 32 million bottles of Tylenol off store shelves
across the country.
In the end, it was worth it. Burke retooled the packaging
to make tamper-proof bottles, then relaunched. It wasn’t
long before Tylenol regained its market share, and J&J shares
regained their market capitalization.
I wouldn’t have done the same. I admit it. I would have
looked for a less-severe option, justifying this by saying I had
to be a steward of my shareholders’ capital. I would have loudly
defended my product’s safety and hired a team of PR pros and
marketing whizzes to deflect the negative press and put the focus
on the real criminal (who, incidentally, was never caught).
And I would have failed. Failed hard. I would have been guilty
of not responding to the true issue: the chaos and uncertainty
facing my customers. You see, Burke knew that the thing successful
leaders have in common is their ability to make difficult
decisions quickly and to remove doubts. They take uncertain,
amorphous situations and turn them into opportunities. Real
Train yourself
to recognize
chaos and to
hate it the way
nature abhors
a vacuum.
leaders are defined by what they do, not who they are.
That runs contrary to a lot of teaching these days. There’s a
cottage self-help industry that will tell you how many hours of
sleep you need, how much exercise to get or what books to read,
but it’s usually a load of crap, peddled by people who have never
led anything more than a conga line.
It’s not that easy. Managing employees, selling products and
staying innovative requires decision-making, not eight hours of
REM sleep. Every company, from startups to the largest corporations,
faces ambiguity. Leaders need to decide whom to hire,
which customers to target, which products to develop and how
to market them. Some of these decisions are
life-or-death—as was Burke’s dilemma at
J&J—while some lean toward the mundane.
But none are easy. There is rarely a right or
wrong outcome. Most choices come with
some degree of risk.
Think of the worst CEOs. Almost all
their failures came from a hesitancy to
make decisions. That means not setting a
clear vision for the company, not dropping a
customer who was taking up too much time
and resources for too little revenue, not responding
to new technology or competitors’
innovations, not firing a problem employee.
Rather than rising to the challenge, such
CEOs simply choose inaction.
Of course, you could make the wrong
decision. (There was, after all, New Coke.)
But the danger lies more in allowing ambiguity
to fester than in the consequences of
a poor move. To quote President Theodore
Roosevelt: “In any moment of decision,
the best thing you can do is the right thing,
the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you
can do is nothing.”
Rather than look at leadership as an all-or-nothing, bornnot-made
equation, the answer is simpler. Train yourself to
recognize chaos and to hate it the way nature abhors a vacuum.
It won’t matter if you decide you need a team of great people
to tackle a problem, or if you just want to do it yourself. It
doesn’t matter if you approach an issue with absolute certainty
or with a healthy amount of self-doubt. No one will care if
you create a clear communication plan or keep your reasons
to yourself. Just make a decision—unambiguously, and without
shame or worry.
In making the toughest decision a CEO can make, Burke
showed how easy it can be. That’s why I channel him now, and
why I often reach for a bottle of Tylenol when my own leadership
responsibilities start getting the best of me.
RAYMOND HENNESSEY IS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR OF ENTREPRENEUR.COM.
ILLUSTRATION © SHUTTERSTOCK/DIEGO SCHTUTMAN
50 ENTREPRENEUR MARCH 2015