Christopher Buckley recently wrote a terrific article on his parents, Pat and William F. Buckley, in the New York Times Sunday magazine. The younger Buckley reflects on the character of great men—a term he uses with great particularity—observing that his father was one and that there are really only a few great men (and I suspect he’d say even fewer great women).
Great men tend to assert total control over their domains, observes Buckley.
I love reading about characters like William F. Buckley—brilliant, commanding, confident, overbearing—sorts who do not suffer fools gladly. Not that I’d want to be the son of such a person (the senior Buckley walked out of his son’s Yale graduation because he was bored), but there is something absolutely captivating about a life lived large.
My interest is in the nature of greatness and how it might contribute to the entrepreneurial life. Christopher Buckley relates a story of how his father, an accomplished sailor and a control freak, wanted to move from an idyllic Caribbean anchorage on Christmas Eve, unable to leave well enough alone. Buckley the Elder insisted on hauling anchor and sailing across the harbor where he encountered a squall and ran aground ruining the Christmas tree, destroying the presents and fouling the gear. “Great men,” Christopher Buckley notes, “are not content to leave well enough alone.”
I agree. Entrepreneurs, also, are not content to leave well enough alone. But while part of me wishes I could be master of my own domain in the manner of William F. Buckley, my experience has been markedly different. During the start-up phase of my entrepreneurial journey, life was full of compromise and cajolery. I just couldn’t afford to demand what I wanted. Unless you are fully funded and have the staff of your dreams helping you, I think the lot of a true, start-up entrepreneur is one of begging favors, shamelessly asking for discounts on every conceivable product or service from good, decent people. People who are often very supportive and well-meaning, but people who cannot, understandably, reconfigure their own priorities to meet your own. My fantasy is that one of these days, I can go to my vendor of choice, pay the requested fee and demand great service.
And while most entrepreneurs cannot leave well enough alone, I wonder if there are certain behaviors, common in “great” men (and women) that can prove lethal to the entrepreneurial journey? You can’t behave like a martinet and hope to win people over and have them enthusiastically adopt your vision. This is especially so when dealing in a cross-cultural context. I’ve seen red-faced consultants from Europe pounding on a table strewn with mechanical schematics, berating young Ghanaian engineers; the cause is lost. Public humiliation of your partners gets you nowhere fast in West Africa.
And yet it seems that tyrants have always attracted a certain type of devoted follower.
I think it is more important to be true to yourself. On some level, being successful in business—and in life for that matter—has much to do with being comfortable in your own skin. If you are Churchillian in disposition, then by all means carry on; a great many successful entrepreneurs are cut from this mould. And to lead a vast and diverse corporation (or a geopolitical empire) with thousands of employees, clarity of vision and decisiveness are indispensable.
Just keep in mind that your partners and your customers have a keen perception of authenticity. If you are a tyrant-at-heart, so be it. Trying to paste a fig leaf over this facet of your personality is not going to work. You’ll probably go farther being true to your inner martinet, but you had better be so brilliant, so drop-dead successful at everything you touch that people will indulge your dismissiveness and lack of interpersonal skills. You don’t engender a lot of loyalty by walking out early from a graduation ceremony.
In my own case, I had to learn when to leave well enough alone, or else I would have lost all credibility with my colleagues in Africa. Perfectionism was the enemy of progress … and I suspect this might be the case in many emerging markets. The key was to articulate small, tangible goals and work towards them while remaining flexible enough to realize that some re-definition of goals might not be fatal to the large-scale enterprise.
In sum, if you are a more accommodating sort, there is no shame in that—even in the world of business. Not everyone is a Jack Welch—nor is it clear that Jack Welch could start a business from absolutely nothing. Not sure I’d bet against him, however. But in an era that for a long time has bestowed celebrity status on commanders and titans, we forget the value of nuance, the soft-play, that is as valuable as the perspicacity to know when to go for the jugular.
