Americans dream of a political leader with the wherewithal to erase the government’s budget deficits, slash its debt, and restore its international reputation. As enormous, or even impossible, as the task sounds, Anne Mulcahy performed a similar feat during her ten-year tenure at Xerox.
As CEO, she took a near-bankrupt brand, whose name had at one time been synonymous with copying, and transformed it into a lucrative enterprise admired for its originality. Under her leadership Xerox went from losing $300 million per year to pulling in $1 billion in annual profits in the span of five years.
How was Anne Mulcahy able to orchestrate such a dramatic turnaround? I argue that a primary reason for her success was her capacity to communicate vision with imprecision. While she was crystal clear as to where Xerox needed to go, Mulcahy embraced ambiguity and, in doing so, fashioned an agile corporate culture that valued flexibility.
Embracing Uncertainty
In leadership literature, clarity has become a fashionable word and for good reason since leaders have responsibility to set the direction of their organization. However, many leaders mistakenly attempt to define the path forward before convincing their people about the urgent need to reach the destination. Leaders touting specific strategies are in for trouble, for plans constantly must be reworked or even scrapped entirely as unforeseen developments arise.
Mindful of the unpredictability of tomorrow, transformative leaders are evangelists rather than tacticians. They first seek to persuade people to align with the vision before worrying about finding the perfect plan for accomplishing it. Transformative leaders have faith in their people. They believe that as long as their teammates are convinced why the vision is important, they resourcefully can figure out how to make it happen.
To be clear amid uncertainty, transformative leaders tell stories. Storytelling inspires people to move toward a destination without committing the error of specifying the roads they must travel to reach it. While at Xerox, Anne Mulcahy and the leadership team authored a mock Wall Street Journal article and circulated it to employees.
The fictitious story, dated five years into the future, included glowing customer testimonies, praise from business analysts, and reports of the corporation’s return to profitability. In writing the news piece, Mulcahy’s goal was not to outline the exact way forward, but to reinvigorate the emotional connection workers had to Xerox and its mission. The message of the story was that Xerox once again could become a brand of which to be proud.
In giving an interview to Adam Bryant of the New York Times, Anne Mulcahy stressed the growing need to come to terms with uncertainty.
One of the things that is mind-boggling right now is how much we have to change all the time. For anybody who’s into comfort and structure, it gets harder and harder to feel satisfied in the company. It’s almost like you have to embrace a lot of ambiguity and be adaptable and not get into the rigidness or expectation-setting that I think there used to be 10 years ago, when you could kind of plot it out and define where you were going to go. I think it’s a lot more fluid right now. It has to be. The people who really do the best are those who actually sense, [and almost enjoy], lack of definition around their roles.
As a leader, your ability to narrate your vision equips people with the sense of direction needed to face uncertainty with confidence. What story are you telling your people to help them focus on an unchanging mission rather than on ever-shifting plans?
John Maxwell grew up in the 1950s in the small Midwestern city of Circleville, Ohio. John's earliest childhood memory is of knowing that he would someday be a pastor. He professed faith in Christ at the age of three, and reaffirmed that commitment when he was 13. At age 17, John began preparing for the ministry. He attended Circleville Bible College, earning his bachelor's degree in 1969. In June of that same year, he married his sweetheart, Margaret, and moved to tiny Hillham, Indiana, where he began his first pastorate.
While serving in his second church, Maxwell began to study the correlation between leadership effectiveness and ministry effectiveness. On July 4, 1976, while preaching at a service commemorating America's bicentennial, John sensed that God was calling him into a ministry to pastors. Within days after that event, pastors began to contact him, asking for his assistance in nurturing their churches. Over the next four years, on an informal basis, John helped scores of fellow pastors. Then, in 1980, he was asked to become Executive Director of Evangelism for the Wesleyan denomination.
Though his time at Wesleyan headquarters was productive, John soon realized that his deeper desire was to help pastors from numerous denominations. He knew that desire would be unfulfilled if he were to stay at denominational headquarters. As a result, in 1981 John accepted the call to return to the pastorate, this time at Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego, California area. But he did so with the church's blessing to pursue his vision. The Skyline congregation allowed him to continue mentoring and assisting pastors even as he led them to new levels.
In 1985, as he continued to equip and encourage other pastors, John took the next crucial step in leadership development. He founded a new company called INJOY and created the INJOY Life Club, featuring a monthly tape for leaders. The fledging operation, established in the corner of a garage, was soon bursting at the seams. The INJOY Life Club tapes were received with great enthusiasm, and the number of subscriptions quickly increased from hundreds to thousands. Simultaneously, the demand for other resources and seminars exploded. Pastors from coast to coast were responding, and their desire for help was even greater than John had anticipated.
As the years passed, INJOY began demanding more and more of John's time. In 1995, he resigned from his position as senior pastor at Skyline following a very fruitful 14-year tenure. The church had tripled in size and its lay ministry involvement had increased ten-fold. Dr. Maxwell is in great demand today as a speaker. Through his bestselling books, audio and video resources, and major conferences, he communicates directly with more than one million people every year. He is frequently asked to speak for organizations such as Promise Keepers and Focus on the Family, but his greatest joy and desire is to help pastors become better leaders.
Because the need for leadership development knows no borders, John established EQUIP, a non-profit organization which trains leaders in urban communities, academic institutions, and within international organizations. EQUIP is also spearheading a movement which has enlisted more than one million pastoral prayer partners who covenant to pray specifically for those who shepherd God's flock.
John continues to seek new opportunities to help churches and church leaders. He knows that one thing is constant: the only hope for the world is salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives life abundantly.