What does leading boil down to?

Recently my wife and I babysat our niece for a day. We took her to the kiddies cinema to watch an animated movie called Argonuts: Mission Olympus.

It was your typical against-the-odds-adventure with typical humour and fun characters along the way. I loved how the Greek Gods are depicted as a petulant, egotistical and childish family. But, when the hero's of our story are facing their villains in the big struggle towards the end of the film a predictable disappointment washed over me.

The hero of the story, the littlest of mice (Pixi) is studious with big dreams. Everyone mocks Pixi for her ambition to be a famous adventurer like her hero Jason (and the Argonaughts).  She grumbles with a fire in her eye - she'll show 'em one day! An opportunity to 'save the day' presents itself and Pixi takes the initiative to answer the call along with her small band of reluctant misfits. They go on their merry way to save the day (I'll spare you the twists and turns of the plot line). Pixi shows her qualities along the journey and is officially anointed the leader of their band mid-quest.

As I was saying previously, [spoiler alert] at the crescendo Pixi and her mates are about to be wiped out by the big-bad-villain when Pixi has a flash of brilliance. Her years of homework of physics, history, chemistry and maths pays off as she imaginates ingenious plans and instructs her friends to execute them all in the space of a few seconds (a theme we had seen throughout the story). Everyone falls into line and the plans are carried out to nullify the baddy paving the way for our Hero to fulfill her destiny.

I am all for empowerment, but it is at this point of the movie I got agitated. We have seen this story our whole lives and it continues to be fed to the youngest of children. It goes something like this:

Ambition + Talent + Dictate = Leadership

You may want to substitute some elements of that equation, but it is a summary of the nonsense we are fed. If you want to be the captain then be the best player. If you want to be a leader then know it all. If you want to get something done tell them what to do. Sound familiar?

Many of our job promotions are still run on this deeply ingrained perspective. I see it in sports commentary and press conferences every week. The research is in and it is time we moved forward from this outdated model. Leadership is not about being the smartest/cleverest/strongest/loudest in the room.

All my research in The Rhythm Effect points me to the conclusion that leadership is all about resource management. In the book I refer to the metric of Effort, which is a human measure of resource. We have other resources: monetary budgets, timelines, tools, equipment, knowledge, skills, capacity, storage, software, branding... the list goes on for each of our nuanced situations.

Since my formative days of leadership in the retail space I have observed that almost anyone can get the job done. But can a person get the job done in the allotted 38.5hrs a week. Can you get the job done with the resources at your disposal? Anyone can buy a win (I'm looking at you Manchester City). Anyone can work 50, 60, or 70+ hours a week (to a point). Anyone can simply sweat and struggle more (once again, to a point). These are not binary symbols of commitment, good work, or role modelling. Often, they are symptoms of our lack of capability to manage the resources we have influence over.

This is where leadership skillsets, strategy, and social ability come into play. The ingredients and methods quickly become complex and are difficult to fit into a Hollywood movie blockbuster storyline.

Samuel Langley versus The Wright Brothers is an example made famous by Simon Sinek in his 'Start With Why' talk. Samuel Langley had all the resources - the biggest budget, best people, tools and infrastructure. But, the Wright Brothers beat him to the first Flying Machine. Overture, the big established player of Internet Advertising in the early 2000's was the stand out candidate to perfect targeted advertising for internet search engines, but were beaten by a little garage company called Google (The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle, 2018). John Bertrand versus Dennis Conners in the 1983 America's Cup was the ultimate sporting mis-match where design, sports psychology and strategy brought down a 132 year dynasty (Aussie Assault 1983). 

In these cases, the smaller party managed their perceived meagre resources much better than the larger ones. That was their competitive advantage.

We have seen this story hundreds of times in the public domain as well as in our own personal/professional lives. Often labelled as David versus Goliath scenarios, our opportunity is to demystify the leadership qualities required to chase any pursuit no matter where we sit on the David/Goliath spectrum. At the heart of it is a leader able to pull together their resources and maximise their output in a sustainable way. This is what I believe leadership boils down to.

We tend to find it takes a different skillset than the heroic leaders we see on our pop culture screens. Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't seem to think the real ingredients of leadership are entertaining enough. My hope is we engage deeply in the realities of leadership and performance so we can pass this onto the generations coming up behind us.

In a world with finite resources this message is only becoming more and more relevant.