Re: What do you do?

Description: Moss Kanter helps leaders lead better.

Question: Beyond a simple title, how would you describe what you do for a living?

Transcript: What I do for a living is I try to make a difference in the world.  And I realize that’s not very specific and I should pin it down a bit.  But I am very interested in how we make the systems around us work to produce benefits for the people in them and the people that they serve.  That’s always been very important.  I work with large companies, some of the most important global giants in the world.  But I . . . I work with them about change, about transformation, about a positive impact.  I’ve always stood for empowerment of people.  And I do this through a combination of ways.  It’s the words I say and the words that I put in other people’s mouths, because I get quoted frequently.  It’s through direct advice, doing research and projects for particular organizations.  It’s through my students at Harvard Business School and occasionally at Harvard College . . . the undergraduates that I influence.  It’s through my faculty colleagues.  Now I’m working with faculty from public health and education, law, government and business on a new project where we think we can deploy leaders at later stages in their lives to solve key problems of the world – poverty, education, public health, environment.  So . . . so I get a chance to work in all those domains, but I work through helping leaders become better leaders of major institutions.

Question: What sparked your interest in strategy and innovation leadership?

Transcript:  This is what makes the world go around.  It’s strategy.  It’s defining a vision . . . a mission.  And but it’s not only implementing what you’ve already done; it’s doing something new and better.  Not for the sake of being different, but for the sake of improving upon what’s been done before in order to have a bigger impact on more people.  There are about six billion people in the world today, and a large number . . .  Actually I shouldn’t say six billion people in the world.  I’m not sure what the number is.  I recently spoke to somebody who was participating in developing the earth charter.  And he said, “Well we could then do something for six billion people in the world.”  And I said, “Yes, but there may be three billion people of the world who won’t care about the earth yet because they’re still hungry.  They still need food on the table every day and a better life for their families.”  I believe that business – particularly socially responsible business – can be a potent force for making a difference in all of those areas.  And in recent years, the businesses that I work with are companies that are trying to not only be effective and innovative themselves in the interest of shareholders and profits, but they are also trying to make a difference in all of the countries and communities in which they operate.  To do that they have to be very strategic.  They need excellent value-based leaders.  And they certainly have to know how to innovate.  I feel that the world desperately needs innovation . . . innovation.  I believe that the world desperately needs innovative solutions to problems.  It needs creative thinking.  I think that it’s exciting.  It’s open-ended.  I think the 21st century has . . . has the . . .  I think that the 20th century can be the time when we finally could become one planet lifting the fortunes of everybody, exploring other galaxies.

I was very influenced by Star Trek.  I really loved that idea that there are other worlds out there to explore.  It could also be a century of bloody conflict and tensions; but I want to help educate leaders who are going to ensure that their power, their resources, their organizations are guided to help make the world a better place.

Question: What can business leaders today learn about innovation and strategy from the past?

Transcript: There have been many efforts to write about strategy, leadership, innovation, organizational change.  This became particularly popular in the recent era – the last 30 years – that we can call the “global information age”.  In the machine age – the industrial age – it was certainly important to innovate.  And technological innovations and breakthroughs have shaped our world . . . from the automobile and the airplane, to air conditioning to all the bells and whistles of technology.  But in the global information age where people can be so interconnected, it became even more important to seek new models.  And in fact a whole new set of feisty, new entrepreneurial companies – starting with Apple computers in the 1970s – said, “We’re gonna do things differently and we’re going to democratize technology.”  Apple’s first slogan was “Bicycles for the mind.”  And I thought that was a brilliant way of talking about providing a new utility for people to communicate with.  And so we’ve known a great deal about innovation through the years.  And we’ve had successive waves of effort to research and write about innovation.  And there are a few lessons that have been enduring.  I was one of the early writers about this modern wave of innovation in 1983 in a book called “The Change Masters”.  And much of what I discovered then about the culture for innovation, what stimulates creativity, what steps an innovator has to go through in order to get acceptance for an idea . . . those are all the same.  After all, innovation is something that is only good in retrospect after it’s worked.  We all say we want more innovation, but we don’t want crazy ideas.  We want things that are proven.  But before they are proven it’s very hard work.  Not simply to have the idea – to create the invention – but to convince other people . . . to reshape the context so that there will be receptivity for the innovation.  And the lessons about change and resistance to change are enduring.  I’m sure they’ve been with us for centuries, since the Greeks, the Arabs or the Chinese inventors in early civilization.  They must have all heard, “It’s impossible.  We’ve tried it before and it hasn’t worked.”  Well innovators are up against the same thing no matter what their era.  And today in the 21st century, we continue to rediscover those same lessons about what produces change.

Question: What are the tenets of a turnaround?

Transcript: Turnarounds mean that something has not been working and has often gone downhill.  I distinguish losing streaks and winning streaks as two very different phenomenon.  When things are going down, people get depressed.  They believe they will always go down.  When companies start losing money . . . when sports teams start losing games and continue to lose . . . when non-profit organizations lose their funding . . . when countries lose wars or lose hope and start heading downhill, that’s a losing streak.  And so to turn that around toward a winning streak is not just a matter of solving the immediate problems – financial, or it’s been the wrong strategy and model, or . . . or there have been some operational problems, there have been leaks in the building, there were disasters that were unexpected – it’s also a question of people’s attitudes, feelings, expectations and morale.  And so you not only need a financial, strategic and operational turnaround, but also a psychological and emotional and cultural turnaround to rebuild confidence.  Confidence is just an expectation of success . . . that we can do it.  We can make it happen.  And when leaders lead a turnaround, they have to make people believe that they can finally make something happen after so many losses.  And that’s very, very difficult.  In a losing streak people give up.  They lose hope.  They go passive.  And so a great deal of the work of leadership is not only solving the immediate problem.  It is also lifting people’s spirits and giving them confidence in advance of victory.

Question: Are leaders born or made?

Transcript: I certainly believe leaders can be made.  I think some people who are extraordinary are born leaders and they probably showed it from an early age at one end of the continuum.  And I think at the other end, there may be people who could never be a leader no matter what they did.  But I think everybody has in them the potential to lead.  And the question is whether the circumstances evoke that . . . whether they’re given the opportunity; whether they’re given the chances to practice; mentors who advise them, who guide them, who tell them not to make stupid mistakes; whether they’re given the education so that they have the intellectual ability.  Because remember leaders are not just emotionally powerful because people want to follow them.  They’re also often intellectually powerful.  That is, they have an important idea that thinks beyond the current situation.  They can set an agenda for change.  And so you need a certain intellectual ability.  Education helps.  What I see is that in places – whether it’s countries, communities, or companies – that are . . . that have a positive culture . . .  Let me start that again.  What I see in communities, countries and companies that have a positive culture – that are on a winning streak that build confidence – is that they also produce more leaders because they empower more people to take initiative on actions they see.  But in organizations or communities that are closed, bureaucratic, hierarchical, topped down, one person – or a small pool – controls everything, therefore shutting everybody else out of the opportunity to lead, and to develop further their skills and leadership.

I think Nelson Mandela in South Africa had to be a natural leader.  There are very few people in the world who could have done what he did.  I mean 27 years in prison, and coming out and repairing a troubled nation and forgiving his enemies.  He’s off the charts when it comes to leadership.  I think you probably have to be born Mandela.  On the other hand, I think all of us can find our inner Mandela.  That is reach more deeply into ourselves to pull out the best parts of ourselves that help us lead.  And whether we’re encouraged to do that or not has a great deal to do with the culture that surrounds us and the support we get from our colleagues.  So yes.  With encouragement, a positive culture, and support from colleagues, more people can become leaders.

Question: What is the most exciting thing going on in business today?

Transcript: The most exciting thing going on in business today is the match between a company’s resources and problems in the world, which both triggers innovation that the world benefits from and that the company benefits from.  I think that’s phenomenal.  It’s not corporate social responsibility.  It’s corporate innovation, but take . . . taking on big problems.  Problems of clean water in places that don’t have it; problems of education.  And in the course of doing that, companies are developing products and services, and the world is benefiting.  That’s thrilling.  I mean I love to see companies succeed and make money.  They need to.  They can’t sustain themselves without good business models.  On the other hand, when they can get business benefits and also help people advance or improve their lives, that’s really thrilling.  And I love the amount of creativity and creative thinking that’s going on in some very big companies.  That’s also exciting to me by the way, because we’ve moved through an era where we thought big . . . big was bad.  Big companies were bureaucratic.  They were stifling.  They were dinosaurs, and only the small, feisty entrepreneurial companies could make a difference in the world.  That was in part because of the .com era, in part because of now the Googles of the world.  However, today it’s also exciting to watch big companies become feisty innovative makers of change.  I love the creativity and innovation that goes into positive and productive change.  It’s inspiring.  It’s personally fulfilling.  And it’s a model that stimulates all of us to aspire to greater things.  We do not have to accept the world as it is.  We can take the best parts and learn how to preserve them, and we can solve the remaining problems.

Recorded on: 6/13/07