Flip the Script
Enough with the Heroes — Enough with the Corporate Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card
The Paradise Papers, and the excellent reporting that can be found in its wake, again illuminate our need to update the way we view leadership and business. Enough with the heroes — and seriously, raise the gutter-low expectations of corporate behaviour and value creation.
1. No more heroes
There is an endless narrative of heroes, often bestowed on men with some degree of commercial success. A woman or two also of course, but mostly men — who have left a successful carrier to do something normatively unexpected, who have come from nothing into fortune, who have lead a business through transformation, who if nothing else is charismatic and handsome. Leaders. Entrepreneurs. Visionaries. The saviours of our time.
We love them and raise them. Affix them to thrones made of fortune and fame — the Bransons and Bonos and Cooks of the world.
Our expectations are so high they soar like Icarus and then we are bitterly disappointed when the good leaders are not all that. Taxes, sexual harassment, private jets, corruption, there is an endless list of ways we can and will be disappointed. Because times change and norms change (thank god) and nobody is perfect. So we take the heroes down and some bounce back (this most often applies to white males) and some don’t (this often applies to women, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income background, well pretty much everyone except white middle to upper class male).
The problem here is simple: The concept of a perfect hero, a cultural patriarch for us to trust and follow, is no longer valid. The concept of hero is not helpful to us anymore.
In a world of constant change, of transformation we need to afford everyone the space to learn. It is a space for our humanity, humility and ability to embrace new insights and do better. This has to be true for leaders and followers, and has to be a space without pedestals and without the excessive rewards for so called heroes.
It is extending the empathy we need leaders to extend to us.
2. Raise the bar for corporations
In contrast we live in a time when we accept just about anything from a corporation. The bar of our expectations are so ridiculously low, it can only be found in the gutter named “we all know, in the end, they only care about the money”.
Instead of outrage, the feeling that lingers for many is “I knew it”. Unfortunately, what this does is reaffirm our belief that the only reason for a company’s being is money. Profits. Shareholder value.
The flip side of allowing our leaders humanity and learning, is the need to drastically raise the bar of our expectations of companies. We need to expect value created not only for shareholders, not even only for customers — but for the entire map of stakeholders. This map includes co-workers and their families, citizens, living beings in the environment we share, special interest groups, suppliers and the list goes on.
Holistic value creation is not easy. But it is the bar we need to set, and then strive for with purpose and transformation.
I am an explorer of the future of corporate governance, working towards a world of integrated, interconnected innovators. Come say hello on LinkedIn.
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