Nearly Meaningless Leadership

I recently attended a series of lectures on ‘Advanced Principles of Leadership’ held by one of the local business schools. During the first lecture, the assigned speaker attempted to tackle the issue of “what practical steps a business leader can take when different stakeholder groups have competing and conflicting goals within an organization”. For instance, in a hospital, nurses (one stakeholder group) may have a goal of increasing salaries while the executive team (another stakeholder group) may have a competing goal of keeping costs down, while Human Resources (still another stakeholder group) may have a competing goal of attracting and retaining top nursing talent.

How should a hospital leader deal with such a thorny issue?

According to the lecturer, the best thing a hospital leader could do under these circumstances would be to craft a mission statement that was “nearly meaningless” so that each competing stakeholder group could read their own agenda into it. (You did NOT read that incorrectly. This lecturer literally advised us to avoid siding with any particular group and instead try to appease them all by creating a ‘nearly meaningless’ mission statement. Even worse, he defended this recommendation. This is NOT leadership!)

When it came time for audience feedback, I was the first to speak. I told the speaker that his advice was ‘practically worthless’ and that the best business leaders in the country are in disagreement with his views. I recommended that he read Jack Welch’s latest book, ‘Winning’. In the opening chapters Welch gives some great recommendations about mission statements; namely, that they need to be clear, specific and measurable. I also suggested that he take some time catching up on the current backlash against vague and meaningless ‘corporate speak’ by visiting the dilbert.com website and spending some time playing with Dilbert’s ‘Mission Statement Generator’.

Afterward, I met with the leaders of the business school and demanded that I get my money back.