Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter by Gautam Mukunda

Author:Gautam Mukunda [Mukunda, Gautam]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
Published: 2012-08-13T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

BEYOND POLITICS

The Royal Navy, Business, and Non-Normal Science

THIS CHAPTER EXAMINES four leaders in three very different areas to see if Leader Filtration Theory holds outside of politics. The first is a legendary British admiral, the second and third are CEOs, and the fourth was a gifted surgeon and cancer researcher. Each existed in an environment in which filtration processes attempted to stop him from making an impact, and each found a way to bypass those processes and become an Unfiltered leader. Jackie Fisher transformed the Royal Navy just in time to fight World War I; Albert Dunlap destroyed Sunbeam; Jamie Dimon saved JPMorgan Chase; and Judah Folkman revolutionized our understanding of cancer.

The Admiral: Sir Jacky Fisher and the Royal Navy

Modern militaries are bureaucracies with strict hierarchies of rank and clear processes to choose commanders. How could any military leader bypass them? In democracies, civilian political leaders often have the power to intervene in military operations and pick a new military commander, but such intervention is rare. When it happens, however, the new commander may be someone who would never have been promoted through normal means. Civilians, as outsiders, can never know as much about candidates for military leadership as other officers do. This suggests that civilian intervention in promotion processes to elevate officers who would otherwise have been blocked from power could allow an Unfiltered Extreme leader to bypass the filtration process.1

Not all civilian interventions bypass filtration. When World War I began, for example, Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, forced Admiral Sir George Callaghan, then commander-in-chief of the British Grand Fleet, into retirement so that Sir John Jellicoe would take the position. Jellicoe was hardly Unfiltered—in fact he was widely considered the finest officer in the Royal Navy and expected to one day replace Callaghan. Churchill simply accelerated the time line. Civilian intervention produces an Unfiltered commander only when the civilians choose someone who would not otherwise have gained command.2

Sir John Arbuthnot “Jacky” Fisher, first Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, who twice served as First Sea Lord (the highest ranking officer) of the Royal Navy, may be the most renowned admiral never to win a battle. Fisher is most famous for building the HMS Dreadnought, the first all-big-gun battleship. The Dreadnought, which gave its name to all ships of similar design, revolutionized naval warfare. Fisher, however, did not become First Sea Lord through normal processes. Instead British politicians promoted him because of their belief that only Fisher could produce the cuts in naval budgets that they wanted. By choosing him they brought to power a man who forever transformed war at sea.

Fisher was born in Sri Lanka on January 25, 1841. He was sent to England to live with his grandfather at the age of six and joined the Royal Navy as a cadet at the age of thirteen. He was promoted to midshipman in 1856. He served with distinction in the Opium War and was promoted again in January 1860 and again in March 1860. In March

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