Heroic Leadership

by Chris Lowney

  CHAPTER 1

  Of Jesuits and J. P. Morgan

  fter living for seven years as a Jesuit seminarian, practicing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to the Jesuit general in Rome, I morphed into corporate man. On Friday afternoon, my role model was the Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius Loyola, whose writings reminded us seminarians that "poverty, as the strong wall of the religious life, should be loved." The following Monday brought a new career in investment banking-and new role models. One managing director lured talented would-be recruits with the tantalizing prospect of becoming "hog-whimperingly rich." I never quite got the image, but I did get the point.

  At first I kept a low profile. My head was often spinning, and even casual conversation left me acutely aware that my background was, to say the least, a bit different from that of my new peers. When fellow new hires regaled colleagues with tales of amorous scores that summer, what was I going to talk about-making my final weeklong silent retreat or purchasing my first non-black suit?

  It was my great fortune and privilege to have left the best company in one "business" only to land at the best company in another. J.-P. Morgan headed Fortune magazine's list of mostadmired banking companies every year but two of the seventeen I worked there-two facts that, I hasten to add, are coincidentally rather than causally related.

  A LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE

  Mighty though the House of Morgan was, we struggled with a long list of challenges, none of them unique to either J.-P. Morgan or the investment banking business. One core issue cropped up again and again: eliciting the leadership from our teams that would enable J.-P. Morgan to emerge a winner in a highly competitive industry. I served Morgan as a managing director in Tokyo, Singapore, London, and New York, discovering that our leadership challenge knew no geographic boundaries. I was also fortunate enough to serve successively on the firm's Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Investment Banking Management Committees, where I, who apprenticed in a seminary, and Management Committee colleagues, who apprenticed in the world's best business schools, all grappled with the same challenge of recruiting and molding winning teams.

  We hired those supersmart, ambitious, and strong-willed people whom Tom Wolfe famously tagged "masters of the universe" in The Bonfire of the Vanities. And like Wolfe's protagonist, our masters of the universe frequently suffered tragic downfalls. Raw talent and sheer ambition didn't always translate into long-term success. Many up-and-comers blazed meteoric paths through Morgan skies: first shining brightly in the number-crunching roles assigned to junior "cannon fodder," then flaming out spectacularly when challenged with the "grown-up" tasks integral to company leadership. Some were terrified of making major decisions; others terrorized anyone who dared make a decision without them. Some were great managers so long as they managed only numbers; their management repertoire didn't extend to thinking, feeling human beings, who are less easily manipulated than spreadsheets. Ironically, many were uncomfortable with change and with taking personal risks-even though investment banking's fast pace had lured them to the business in the first place (in addition, of course, to the prospect of hog-whimpering wealth). Not only was the industry highly cyclical, but it was roiled by sweeping fundamental realignment: by the time I left Morgan, every one of the ten largest U.S. banks had been through a transforming merger.

  It was clear that only a handful of banks would emerge as winners in our changing, consolidating industry. And the winners likely would be those whose employees could take risks and innovate, who could work smoothly on teams and motivate colleagues, and who could not only cope with change but also spur change. In short, leadership would separate the winners from the losers.

  At Morgan, we took whatever initiatives we could to elicit the mindset and behavior we needed. In the course of one such initiative, I experienced a small epiphany. J.-P. Morgan was in the process of instituting "360-degree feedback," a then cutting-edge practice. Annual performance assessments would incorporate input not only from one's direct manager but from subordinates and peers as well. We proudly thumped our chests as one of the first companies to implement this "best practice" on a broad scale.

  Really?

  Hadn't I seen this somewhere before? I vaguely recalled a longago time in a galaxy far away, when I often dressed in black and when I loved poverty as the "strong wall of the religious life." The Jesuit company also had a 360-degree feedback system of sorts. In fact, its 360-degree feedback process had been launched approximately 435 years before it caught on at Fortune's perennially mostadmired bank and in the rest of corporate America.

  A CENTURIES-OLD COMPANY

  Come to think of it, the Jesuits had also grappled-quite successfully-with other vital challenges that confronted J.-P. Morgan and still test great companies today: forging seamless multinational teams, motivating inspired performance, remaining "change ready" and strategically adaptable.

  Moreover, the Jesuits were launched into an environment that, though four centuries removed, had telling analogies to our own. New world markets were opening as voyages of discovery established permanent European links to the Americas and Asia. Media technology was evolving: Gutenberg's printing press had transformed books from luxury goods into more widely accessible media. Traditional approaches and belief systems were questioned or discarded as Protestant reformers mounted the first widespread and permanent "competition" to the Roman Catholic Church. Because the Jesuit company was cast into this increasingly complex and constantly changing world, it's no great surprise that its organizational architects prized the same mindset and behaviors that modern companies value in today's similarly tumultuous environments: the abilities to innovate, to remain flexible and adapt constantly, to set ambitious goals, to think globally, to move quickly, to take risks.

  I was intrigued by what sixteenthcentury priests might teach us twentyfirst-century sophisticates about leadership and about coping with complex, changing environments.

  As I started to look beyond the obvious fact that an investment bank has a different mission than a religious order, these equally obvious parallels fell into focus. And as I considered Ignatius Loyola and his early Jesuit colleagues in this context, I became convinced that their approach to molding innovative, risk-taking, ambitious, flexible global thinkers worked. In some ways-dare I say it-it worked better than many modern corporate efforts to do the same.

  My epiphany provided the impetus for this book. I began this project fascinated by the parallels between two very different moments in history. I was intrigued by the challenge of exploring what sixteenthcentury priests might teach us twenty-first-century sophisticates about leadership and about coping with complex, changing environments. I finished the project completely convinced of the value and timeliness of what the early Jesuits have to offer.

  REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP

  Some elements of the Jesuit approach are increasingly finding validation in recent research-for example, the link between self-awareness and leadership. I'm sure Loyola would be pleased that the research is finally catching up with his intuitions. But we haven't completely caught up with him, and some aspects of Jesuit-style leadership carry the uncomfortable and even kooky ring common to provocative new ideas. For example, Loyola and his colleagues were convinced that we perform our best in supportive, encouraging, and positively charged environments (so far so good), and so he exhorted his managers to create environments filled with-I say it with trepidation, picturing my hard-charging Morgan ex-colleagues-"greater love than fear." But after living with the idea of a loving work environment for a while, it seems to me more wise than kooky, and I hope readers will find similar wisdom in Loyola's ideas after living with them for a while.

  What has been most revolutionary and most refreshing for me personally is that
these principles address one's whole life and not merely one's work life. The Jesuits' principles made the company better because they made individual Jesuits better. Their principles are rooted in the notions that we're all leaders and that our whole lives are filled with leadership opportunities. Leadership is not reserved for a few Pooh-Bahs sitting atop large companies, nor do leadership opportunities arise only "on stage" at work. We can be leaders in everything we do-in our work and in our daily lives, when teaching others or learning from others. And most of us do all those things in the course of any given day.

  I've been fortunate to work with some great leaders, and I'm convinced that Ignatius Loyola and his team were great ones as well. That's the only reason for paying attention to the ideas they offer about leadership. Loyola also happened to be a saint, and he and his Jesuit colleagues were Catholics, priests, and, thus, all men. I've tried to refrain from basing judgments on these facts in order to measure them by one criterion only: how well they led themselves and others. Similarly, I ask the reader to shake off whatever positive or negative feelings that he or she may harbor about Loyola's particular religious beliefs or males-only organization. Whenever possible I've stripped overtly religious imagery and phrasings from quotes; Jesuits did not become successful leaders simply by adhering to particular religious beliefs but by the way they lived and worked. And their way of living holds value for everyone, whatever his or her creed.

  In the end, Loyola's latter-day colleagues may be more rankled by the religious content that's missing from this book than some others will be by the religious content that remains. But Loyola himself established the Jesuit success formula of attacking realworld opportunities with real-world leadership strategies, and colleagues observing him coined the Jesuit maxim "Work as if success depended on your own efforts-but trust as if all depended on God."' Loyola's successor, Diego Lafnez, echoed the sentiment in blunter terms: "While it is true that God could speak by the mouth of an ass, this would be considered a miracle. We are tempting God when we expect miracles. This would certainly be the case in a man who lacks common sense but who hopes to be a success merely by praying for it."2

  In the end, I'm confident that readers will give Loyola and his team their due. After all, the "leadership lessons" genre has proven flexible enough to embrace such unlikely gurus as Attila the Hun, Winnie the Pooh, the Mafia Manager, the Founding Fathers, and W. C. Fields. Surely any tent big enough to fit such a cross section of leaders also has room for a sixteenth-century priest and his colleagues!

  WHY THE JESUITS?

  Founded in 1540 by ten men with no capital and no business plan, the Jesuits built, within little more than a generation, the world's most influential company of its kind. As confidants to European monarchs, China's Ming emperor, the Japanese shogun, and the Mughal emperor in India, they boasted a Rolodex unmatched by that of any commercial, religious, or government entity. Yet, infused with restless energy, Jesuits seemed less content at imperial courts than out testing imperial frontiers. Though their journeys deposited them at the very ends of the world as then known to Europeans, they invariably probed each boundary to understand what lay beyond it. Jesuit explorers were among the first Europeans to cross the Himalayas Tibet, to pad e to the headwaters of the Blue Nile, and to chart the Upper Mississippi River.

  As confidants to European monarchs, China's Ming emperor, the Japanese shogun, and the Mughal emperor in India, the Jesuits boasted a Rolodex unmatched by that of any commercial, religious, or government entity.

  Their colleagues back in Europe focused the same will to achieve and intense energy on building what would become the world's largest higher-education network. With exactly no experience running schools, they somehow managed to have more than thirty colleges up and running within a decade. By the late eighteenth century, seven hundred secondary schools and colleges sprawled across five continents. By one estimate, Jesuits were educating nearly 20 percent of all Europeans pursuing a classical higher education.

  Jesuits in Europe and their colleagues farther afield leveraged one another's efforts in a richly symbiotic relationship. Jesuit astronomers and mathematicians in Rome supplied Jesuits in China with the technical know-how to win unprecedented prestige and influence in that country-as heads of the astronomical bureau, reformers of the calendar, and personal advisers to the emperor. Jesuits in remote outposts more than repaid any favors of their European colleagues by enabling them to burnish their corporate mystique as scholars and pioneers who were plugged in all over the world. French Jesuits proudly presented King Louis XV with a copper-plated edition of the first comprehensive atlas of China, prepared by French colleagues in China at the emperor's behest. Educated Europeans eagerly learned about Asia, Africa, and the Americas through nearly a thousand works of natural history and geography penned by Jesuits all over the globe.

  Their coups were by no means only academic. Though religious strife bitterly divided Protestants and Catholics in CounterReformation Europe, fever sufferers of all religious persuasions gratefully used the quinine distilled from what widely became known as Jesuit's bark, while benzoin-based Jesuit's drops soothed those afflicted with skin irritations. Jesuits had learned of both herbal medicines from indigenous new world populations.

  This innovative, wide-ranging Jesuit company still exists. Once dwarfed by larger religious orders, it has long since become the world's largest religious order.3 Its twenty-one thousand professionals run two thousand institutions in more than a hundred countries.4 More than 450 years have passed since its founding; this longevity alone is a remarkable testament to success in the Darwinian corporate environment. The Jesuits are marching inexorably toward their five hundredth anniversary; by comparison, a mere sixteen of the hundred largest American companies of the year 1900 survived long enough to celebrate a centennial.

  Why were, and why are, these Jesuits successful? What spurred their creativity, energy, and innovation? How have they succeeded while so many other companies and organizations have long since fallen by the wayside?

  FOUR PILLARS OF SUCCESS

  What often passes for leadership today is a shallow substitution of technique for substance. Jesuits eschewed a flashy leadership style to focus instead on engendering four unique values that created leadership substance:

  • self-awareness

  • ingenuity

  • love

  • heroism

  In other words, Jesuits equipped their recruits to succeed by molding them into leaders who

  • understood their strengths, weaknesses, values, and worldview

  • confidently innovated and adapted to embrace a changing world

  • engaged others with a positive, loving attitude

  • energized themselves and others through heroic ambitions

  Moreover, Jesuits trained every recruit to lead, convinced that all leadership begins with self-leadership.

  This four-pillared formula still molds Jesuit leaders today. And the formula can mold leaders in all areas of life and work.

  This book examines not only what made sixteenth-century Jesuits successful but also who leaders are and how they are molded in every generation-including our own. The Jesuit founders launched their company into a complex world that had probably changed as much in fifty years as it had over the previous thousand. Sound familiar? They speak to us not as experts in dealing with an antiquated sixteenth-century landscape but as experts in eliciting confident performance despite uncomfortably shifting landscapes-in whatever century.

  This book looks closely at what made the early Jesuits successful and then relates that wisdom to the person or organization today who wants to learn and to practice effective, wholeperson leadership.

  They speak to us not as experts in dealing with an antiquated sixteenthcentury landscape but as experts in eliciting confident performance despite uncomfortably shifting landscapes.

  Succeeding chapters explore the four Jesuit principles in greater detail, illustrating each with anecdot
es drawn from Jesuit history. Some stories fit familiar perceptions of what priests do for a living; others certainly don't. Nor does every story show the Jesuits at their best; equally illuminative are the instances when they failed their own leadership principles. Even great companies stumble, and Jesuit stumbles proved particularly spectacular. Their high-profile tactics and successes regularly won them almost as many enemies as admirers. An exasperated John Adams once vented to Thomas Jefferson, "If ever any congregation of men could merit perdition on earth and in hell, it is the company of Loyola. Our system however of religious liberty must afford them an asylum."5 Not every nation proved as tolerant as "the land of the free." By 1773, the Jesuits' growing ranks of detractors caught up with them, winning papal approval for their total global suppression. Hundreds of Jesuits were jailed or executed; others were deported to wander Europe as refugees. (The story of the great suppression is detailed in chapter 10.)

  Most readers already know that this disastrous suppression did not end Jesuit history. Indeed, if ever there was a striking display of leadership, it was the company's phoenixlike resurgence after a forty-year suspended animation. Our Jesuit leadership story will draw anecdotes from the two-hundred-odd years from their founding through the suppression, a period I'll arbitrarily call early Jesuit history.

  The very last thing these early Jesuits would have considered themselves to be was leadership pundits. They rarely if ever used the word leadership as management consultants might employ that term today. Instead of talking about leadership, they lived it. The following chapter outlines their unique leadership values in greater detail, values that differ starkly from what's bandied about in today's crowded field of leadership gurudom. The next chapter also explores the dire need for greater personal leadership throughout our society, and contrasts three popular contemporary leadership stereotypes with the countercultural Jesuit vision of effective leadership.