Heroic Leadership

by Chris Lowney

  The challenge of clinging to heroism

  The Jesuit education network best illustrates the difficult struggle that faces maturing companies trying to cling to whatever heroic impulses led to their greatness. The early schools thrived by taking utmost advantage of the Jesuit modo de proceder: be mobile, open to new ideas, blind to national borders, mutually supportive, and restlessly disposed to continuous improvement. Superbly educated in core disciplines yet driven through indifference to seize new intellectual currents, Jesuits married traditional scholastic disciplines and the best ideas of progressive humanism in their schools. At Clavius's insistence, even a marginal, up-and-coming discipline such as mathematics found its way into the Jesuit core curriculum-at the time a unique innovation in classical education. (Obviously, it caught on.) Like the very best learning organizations, headquarters institutionalized the exchange of ideas through their Ratio studiorum (plan of studies). Suggestions and best practices flowed into Rome from Jesuit educators all over the world and were circulated back to the field in revised plans of studies.

  For a company dedicated to living with one foot raised, red flags should have gone up as soon as Jesuits at headquarters began talking about completing and finalizing the Ratio studiorum. The completed document instructed Jesuit theologians to hew definitively to the teachings of the great St. Thomas Aquinas. Not that any Jesuit in the late sixteenth century would have nominated a different authority, but the finality of it contradicted the founders' world-embracing, wide-open vision. At least so it seemed to the last surviving cofounder, septuagenarian Alfonso Salmeron. Most companies expect curmudgeonly dissent from the elder generation, but not the rebuke that the youngsters are becoming too conservative! Salmeron argued that instead of definitively endorsing any one theological authority, the company should maintain the open, optimistic stance that one of their own might someday devise an even better approach than that of Aquinas, "which Blessed Ignatius of happy memory expected." 17

  Even as the curriculum became more rigid, the school network experienced runaway success, which in turn threatened other Jesuit leadership principles. At first just one of many Jesuit operations, the network soon absorbed nearly three-quarters of all available manpower. School system culture inevitably started to clash with broader Jesuit culture. Schools weren't very compatible, for example, with Loyola's cherished mobility, flexibility, and adaptability. High-quality schools flourish in part because of staffing continuity from one year to another. Yet Loyola had envisioned a team ready to "leave unfinished any letter" in order to respond to new and urgent opportunities, and it simply wasn't feasible to dash out of a classroom lecture or interrupt an academic semester to journey to India on forty-eight hours' notice, as Xavier had done.

  Schools required school buildings. Jesuits became increasingly saddled with property holdings and the mundane preoccupations that came with them. Their mission poised them to respond innovatively to unfolding opportunities, but Jesuit managers were forced to reserve at least some creative energy for keeping the boiler running and the school roof from collapsing. Their mindset and risk appetite must have been affected by the nitty-gritty of school life: maintaining the physical plant, retaining a stable staff, and keeping up with labor-intensive work. The earliest Jesuits behaved like light infantry. Abiding by Loyola's counsel not to become committed to mobility-inhibiting jobs, they easily packed up and decamped for new opportunities. But disengagement was more challenging for a team running a school; there were implicit commitments to the student community, not to mention to the physical plant itself.

  Loyola, model of Jesuit indifference, claimed he would have little trouble reconciling himself were the Jesuits ever dissolved: "If I recollected myself in prayer for a quarter of an hour, I would be happy, and even happier than before." 18 How easy was it for Jesuit managers to maintain this vital mindset once they found themselves presiding over hundreds of schools that were fabulously successful? It's much easier to risk everything on ambitious new ventures when you have nothing to lose than when you have lots to lose. The same struggle presented itself on a person-by-person level: could Jesuits working in well-established institutions maintain the same change readiness and risk appetite that colleagues who didn't have institutional affiliations possessed?

  Bad things happen-and heroism evaporates-when leadership becomes confused with surviving, getting ahead, or watching one's back. A New York Times profile of one rising organizational star will sound depressingly familiar to too many employees at major corporations. The Times portrayed a "bright and effective organizer" who "never upstages his boss." He engineered a relentless rise up the ladder by "working tirelessly" through a succession of increasingly responsible assignments, "building alliances and leaving no imprints." Unsurprisingly, one insider complained that "he's certainly smart and adept at protecting himself, but we have no idea where he stands on most crucial issues." 19

  Yet it's probably unfair to smear the subject of the profile. After all, he was merely following the conventional, well-established trail that leads to the top of almost any organizational hierarchy. It would be counterproductive for an ambitious would-be leader to manage his or her ascent differently. The problem is that while no organization wants "go along to get along" leaders, it becomes difficult to weed out such a culture once it has taken root. When corporations do break out of this cycle, it is often thanks to the inspired heroics of those who focus on genuine leadership values rather than on managing their careers or on how they appear to others. It usually takes heroes to save companies from themselves.

  Who was the subject of the Times profile? A rising political star in China's Communist Party. It's disheartening to realize that the profile of a Communist Party bureaucrat could easily describe a rising star in corporate America.

  For years the Jesuits pulled off a heroic feat that no other government or private institution was foolish enough to even consider. Providing secondary education to the poor was well beyond the pale to the majority of sixteenth-century Europeans (and seventeenth-century Europeans, and much of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europeans, for that matter). Early in the endeavor, Juan Polanco prepared a fifteen-point treatise outlining the Jesuit rationale for entering the education business. It reduced to utterly matter-of-fact terms an unprecedented, remarkably ambitious aspiration: "The poor, who could not possibly pay for teachers, much less for private tutors, will [make progress in learning]." Talk about a BHAG.

  Almost from the outset, though, this vision of providing quality education to the poor came under severe stress. It was all well and good that the Jesuits were offering a free secondary education, but primary education still wasn't free. The cost of a tutor to teach their young children how to read and write outstripped the means of most poor families, and consequently many illiterate, poor chil dren landed on the doorsteps of the Jesuit secondary schools. Two difficulties ensued as Jesuits mounted remedial reading and writing classes to bring these illiterate children up to speed. However effective the remedial training was, most of these students never completely caught up with the more privileged students who were beneficiaries of primary schooling. And no child benefited when newly literate "graduates" of remedial lessons were eventually streamed into classrooms with far more advanced students. And then there was the challenge of staffing the remedial classes, yet another demand on the already stretched company.

  It became clear even within Loyola's lifetime that the demands of the welcome-all-comers approach were sapping company resources. The Jesuits came up with a logical if fateful solution: restricting enrollment to literate students. The Jesuit curriculum was the most demanding in Europe. Youngsters could hardly hope to master that curriculum from an illiterate starting point. But because only the well-to-do had the means to secure primary education for their children, generally only well-off children cleared the literacy hurdle to qualify for enrollment. Jesuit schools increasingly (if unintentionally) became institutions catering primarily to the well-off. The tren
d assumed a life of its own. The rigorous curriculum and well-qualified faculty sealed the Jesuits' reputation as educators of choice for the noble and wealthy. Of course, influencing the influential was a core company strategy, and Polanco's treatise had also argued that "those who are now only students will grow up to be-.-.-. civic officials-.-.-. and will fill other important posts to everybody's profit and advantage."20 By the early 1600s, admission to the Jesuit school at Parma, for example, was restricted to boys of verifiable noble lineage. Molded to fit these young men's station and destiny in life, the Parma curriculum supplemented traditional academic studies with courses in horsemanship and in designing defensive fortifications.21

  Nothing had gone wrong. It was the world's finest school system, and it continued to be. It was serving customers who were essential to the company's top-down strategic approach.

  Magis-driven heroic leadership, though, has something to do with pulling off what seems impossible to everyone else. The Jesuits built a school system that was impossible for any European to have conceived at the time. But an even more impossible school system eluded them. Maybe more magis would have made it possible.

  Magis-driven heroic leadership involves bold imagination and the desire to take bold chances. Jesuits freed themselves from the European mindset in order to see the world through a very different lens. And so heroes in India and in Paraguay ventured far out on limbs, not pausing to worry whether those limbs would support them. How could they not take the chance? They were involved in the "greatest enterprise in the world today." And those limbs held while Paraguay Jesuits pushed a progressive agenda for indigenous rights that few of their contemporaries would have dared imagine, much less approve or attempt. Those limbs held while de Nobili in India, Ricci in China, and others like them fashioned new modes of expressing the Christian message.

  But over time there came moments when the end of a limb seemed too precarious a perch. Jesuits took more compromising positions on African slavery and on who could be admitted to their ranks. Oddly enough, Jesuits prospered most when they mustered all the heroism and ingenuity they could to continue their high-wire acts. It was only once they looked down and began retreating to safer-looking perches that their corporate balance became suddenly wobbly.

  CHAPTER 1 0

  "Exceptional Daring

  Was Essential"

  How the End of Risk Taking

  Almost Ended the Jesuits

  'ew companies maintain the leadership edge necessary for success from generation to generation-let alone across centuries. Consider that only sixteen of the top hundred U.S. companies of the year 1900 were still around at century's end. Why do so few successful companies survive? Success breeds complacency. Or market leaders turn defensive, conservatively glancing back rather than looking forward for new opportunities or threats on the horizon. Magis-driven leadership, the continued focus on what lies ahead and on what more ambitious goals can be achieved, remains the only reliable way to ensure that important parts of the vision and mission remain vital and aren't overlooked-or discarded altogether.

  The Jesuits might have shifted gears, but they didn't reverse course or abandon their leadership principles. They didn't go from being a change-ready, world-embracing, and magis-driven company to a stodgy, risk-averse bureaucracy. Even while restrictions on New Christian candidates were being refined in Rome, de Nobili was daubing sandal paste on his forehead with General Acquaviva's support. Even while Jesuit instructors were building toy fortifications with noble students in Parma, Jesuits were building real cities and fortifications alongside the Guarani in Paraguay. The leadership principles that had helped them achieve tremendous growth and success were very much in evidence as the company neared its two hundredth anniversary.

  But perhaps those principles didn't as thoroughly grip this company that now had a lot to lose. The mid-eighteenth century saw the Jesuits pitched by what their official historian at the time called "violently tossing waves." True to both his namesake and the Jesuit heroic tradition, that same commentator, Giulio Cesare Cordara, argued that his company could have avoided the shipwreck that befell them: "I believed that to handle misfortunes of an uncommon nature uncommon means should be employed.-.-.-. I was convinced that exceptional daring was essential and that not an inch of ground should be yielded."' Unfortunately, the exceptional daring that characterized Loyola, Xavier, Goes, Ricci, de Nobili, and dozens of others was badly lacking at their Rome headquarters when the Jesuits needed it most.

  THE BYPRODUCT OF UNPRECEDENTED SUCCESS: A LONG LIST OF ENEMIES

  No neatly ordered textbook-style list would do justice to the complex crosscurrents battering mid-eighteenth-century Jesuits. European enemies of the Jesuits were everywhere: conservatives and progressives, politicians and priests, devoutly loyal Catholics and inveterate enemies of organized religion. It was an unlikely coalition drawn together by one platform alone: wanting the Jesuits to go. It is easy to explain the detractors' motivations but much harder to understand how their antipathy gradually overcame the Jesuit company. It is difficult, even now, to find the "tipping point" at which this company at its zenith turned suddenly vulnerable.

  Enlightenment thinkers took aim from one end of the ideological spectrum. Advances in the sciences helped spur a broader movement dedicated to "rational man's" search for universal laws governing nature and society. Enlightenment philosophers, determined to honor only truths demonstrated through reason or experience, ascribed little value to revealed religion. Nor did they think much of pronouncements grounded on what they deemed arbitrary papal authority. If liberating Europe from dominance by the Catholic Church and its superstitious rites represented total victory, Voltaire saw defeating the Jesuits as the first step toward that triumph. "Once we have destroyed the Jesuits we shall hold a good hand against the detestable thing [i.e., the Catholic Church in France]."2 He knew firsthand what he was talking about: the Jesuits had educated him. Toppling them would not only be a visible, symbolic blow to the church, but it would also conveniently sideline those most capable of refuting Enlightenment arguments. The first volume of Denis Diderot's Encyclopedie had been hailed, including by its less-than-modest chief editor, as a triumph of the new, enlightened approach to intellectual enterprise. Jesuit commentators had rained on the self-congratulatory parade by noting that many of the volume's articles had been cribbed wholesale-including from Jesuit authors. Any wonder why Diderot and others thought their movement would be better off without Jesuit input?

  Anti-Jesuit salvos flew from the opposite flank as well. Jesuit theologians had vigorously opposed a Catholic reform movement known as Jansenism. As fierce defenders of the doctrine of human free will, Jesuits detected a defense of predestination in the Jansenists' stress on divine grace. In response, Jesuits engineered various papal condemnations of Jansenism. But they didn't count on Jansenism's Rasputin-like staying power or on the movement's politically powerful sympathizers in the French church and government. Bested by the Jesuits in the niceties of theological debate as early as the mid-1600s, Jansenists a full century later were still publishing pamphlets that leveled indiscriminate, unsubstantiated, scudlike attacks on the hated Jesuits:

  Always giving free rein to their limitless ambition to increase their power and domination, they [the Jesuits] have piled up funds and immense riches by any means available, either by gifts which they have begged from unsuspecting kings, or by goods which they have extorted from towns and cities, or by invading the ranks of merchants of every nation with a sordid kind of commerce which is unlawful to priests and religious, or by stripping families of their inheritances either violently or seductively)

  Both the Enlightenment thinkers and the Jansenists considered the Jesuits their most powerful ideological opponent-but for different reasons. Enlightenment champions of reason and free will attacked the Jesuits as the most visible and prominent defenders of the Catholic Church. On the other side, the Jansenists were attacking the Jesuits' ardent adherence to the doctrine o
f free will. By the mid-1700s the Jesuits were too deeply embattled to appreciate the irony of their predicament.

  But there was another problem. Jesuits inordinately relished these high-profile polemical battles. Loyola had been prescient nearly two centuries earlier in warning one of his team to tone down the rhetoric: "We [already] have a reputation among some persons who do not trouble to find out the truth, especially here in Rome, that we would like to rule the world."4 Perhaps this tendency to look for a fight was a corporate Achilles' heel.

  More crucially, one wonders whether creeping intellectual arrogance hadn't clouded the change-ready, world-embracing vision that was instrumental to their early success. Perhaps the earlier, "exceptionally daring" Jesuit teams could have more constructively engaged Enlightenment thinkers. Whether Clavius with Galileo, de Nobili with his Brahmin converts, or Ricci's successors with the Chinese emperor, imaginative Jesuits had managed to find common ground with those who had radically different viewpoints from their own. Odd that this open disposition had deserted them with the Enlightenment thinkers, many of whom had been educated in Jesuit schools and trumpeted at least one theme dear to the Jesuits themselves: belief in the dignity, potential, and exalted nature of the human person.

  Whether Clavius with Galileo, de Nobili with his Brahmin converts, or Ricci's successors with the Chinese emperor, imaginative Jesuits had managed to find common ground with those who had radically different viewpoints.