Old Story:
One day, all the animals of a forest gathered to choose their
king. The monkey danced great that everyone felt
delighted. So, his name was proposed for kingship. Everyone voted in his
favour and he became the king.
But the fox couldn't tolerate the monkey rising to a high position. He
felt envy of him and decided to humiliate him. One day, the fox was
roaming around searching for food and saw a trap laid by some hunter. It
had a piece of meat in it as bait.
The fox was intelligent enough to stay away from the trap. But he was
sure that monkey wouldn't. So, he approached the king and brought him to
the trap. The fox then said, "Here is a dainty piece of meat, sir! As a
true subject of yours, I didn't touch it. So, enjoy it Your Honour!"
The monkey extended his hand for the meat and got trapped. The fox then laughed and said, "Kingship needs a lot of wisdom, sir!"
Moral: Kingship needs Wisdom
Old Story in the present leadership context:
In today's business leadership, there are two different types of smartness:
“One, is being in the Red zone – that means you are more
aggressive, you are always looking for what is the next opportunity, and
you are looking at the big picture, the big vision, and you want to
stay on that visionary perspective but you do not pay sufficient
attention to how that vision gets executed. Whether it is cost issues,
quality issues, delivery issues, you feel it is not your job.”
“The second kind of “smartness” – being in the blue zone – is about
being cautious and careful, paying attention to operational excellence,
paying attention to the supply chain, paying attention to the execution
of the problem. Making sure it gets done impeccably, it gets done on
time, under budget to the highest customer satisfaction. This is
obviously a gift that many organizations would love to have.”
These two different paradigms of smartness are embodied by the last two
men who have run the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company,
Apple. The late Steve Jobs was the archetypal “red leader”, while the
current CEO, Tim Cook, personified the “blue leader” in his previous
role as the Chief Operating Officer.
However, both men made the
necessary and crucial move away from just being a smart leader to
becoming a 'Wise' leader.
Wise leadership is as simple as avoiding the extremes of
both “red” and “blue” leadership styles. This requires a certain dancing between the
two different styles - And.. continuous
movements, dynamic movements, is what generates wise leadership. It is not just
coming to the centre and stop. That’s not wise leadership – that’s dead
leadership.
How then does one go from being a smart leader to a wise
leader? One school of thought suggests being aware of one’s own identity and
actions is a good place to start. “Through that self-awareness, grows a depth
of something that goes beyond smartness,” says Roger Lehman, Affiliate
Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. “One of the
issues is that smart leaders keep using the same formula even when the context
or the situation or the market has changed, and what was smart becomes
ineffective. Without self-awareness, it’s very hard to move out of your
smartness.”
“Smart leaders make New Year resolutions and set quarterly
milestones, charting progress against ambitious plans and goals. Wise leaders,
however, take a different approach: they root themselves in a noble purpose,
align it with a compelling vision, and then take action — not just for that
year, but for the rest of their lives. That noble purpose becomes a North Star,
giving direction when the path ahead is hazy.”
Moral: Be a Wise leader to be a lasting Business leader.
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