By Sander A. Flaum
As a lifelong observer of leadership, one thing I've learned is that leaders don't sleep very well. They often wake up in the middle of the night with a start, plagued by troubling thoughts that competitors may be stealing their best ideas, recruiting their best people, taking over their customers or reconfiguring their best products. Who wouldn't wake up after experiencing such nightmares?
Having been mentored by a number of great CEOs, what I've learned is that the antidote to this kind of sleeplessness is to plan for the worst-case scenario and to use your negative thoughts in a positive way. Does this sound like I've got a case of mild paranoia? You bet! I would argue that some degree of paranoia is an indispensable tool for a leader who wants to stay sharp and maintain an “edge.” And this is true whether your milieu is the world of for-profit and non-profit business, academia or politics. Leaders in the for-profit world are more likely to acknowledge that looking over one’s shoulder is good business practice, but it’s also true in the non-corporate world. Academic leaders have to be paranoid that their top professors will leave if they're not happy or being underpaid. A non-profit leader worries that her competitor is out to steal her ace grant writer or contributor. And politicos know that they can never take their eyes off what the other party is doing, even for a second.
Certainly the word “paranoia” tends to make us feel uncomfortable. After all, its dictionary definition is “Exhibiting or characterized by extreme fear or distrust of others.” But I truly believe that in order to maintain a robust, competitive edge, every leader has to consider the possibility of his or her organization being spied on, stolen from, copied and/or plagiarized.
Greg Young, president and CEO of NeoPharm, a pharmaceutical manufacturer client of mine, tells the following illustrative story. While at his former job at a medical device company, Greg worked with someone who had tremendous impact on his leadership style and his success. This colleague was totally convinced that some smart company out there was going to develop the delivery mechanism to provide hospitals with sterile water out of the tap at patients' bedsides, instead of using delivered-to-the-site IV bags. This potential nightmare kept him up nights. And he made sure it also disturbed the sleep of all of his colleagues.
At the time, Greg’s company manufactured a million IV bags every day at its plant in North Carolina. For many years, since that first startling wake-up call, all the key people at Greg’s former company have gathered together every year to hear the latest expert information about what firm was closest to being able to produce sterile water from a tap. As Greg said at one of these meetings, somebody, sooner or later, is going to be able to do it and it’s his job not to be caught off guard trying to unload the equivalent of a $500-million garage in North Carolina. This leader uses his paranoia to keep his company ahead of the curve and ready for each new development.
It’s easy to see the necessity for paranoia in the context of R&D and technological innovation. Where it becomes subtler is in the realm of the interpersonal, especially when business decisions come down to personal preferences. This “personal paranoia” is a hallmark of my own and others' successful business practice. As CEO of Robert A. Becker, a large advertising and marketing firm, I challenged our people to construct an extremely rigorous performance evaluation system so that we were always striving to be, in our clients' estimation, the best. Besides the traditional internal evaluation, we also asked our clients to complete an external assessment to help us improve our service to them. It was imperative for us to know whether or not our managers and creative people were connecting with our clients. We knew that if a client didn't like the person they were dealing with at our firm—whatever the reason—he would eventually go someplace where he was more comfortable. Again, we knew it was in our best interests to remain somewhat paranoid.
The best way to deal with these personal preference issues is to create an early warning system. Pay attention to “below the radar” signals—customer body language, tone of voice, facial expression, etc. Be vigilant about looking for the unspoken clues of dissatisfaction. If your client is unhappy and you can't identify any problem with the work you supply, keep looking—first to yourself, and then to your people, and make any necessary adjustments. This process is not easy. I have had to take people off client accounts, not because of poor work performance, but because the client simply didn't connect with them. I have also had to be honest with myself over the years, and sometimes pull myself off accounts for the same reason. This is just one of the difficult tasks that leaders sometimes need to perform.
So, my message to present and future leaders is to remain a bit paranoid about new expertise, emerging technologies, products, systems and sales strategies, your people’s and your customers' contentment and much more. Sure, you're going to lose sleep some nights. But you'll also sleep more soundly most of the time, knowing that you're looking out for your business' best interests.
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Author Bio: Sander A. Flaum is managing partner, Flaum Partners, Inc., and Chairman, Fordham Leadership Forum, Fordham Graduate School of Business. Contact him at sflaum@flaumpartners.com.
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