I have a strong passion for history and am a voracious reader of classical works. I strongly believe the secret to understanding the present and future is to study the past. The human condition necessitates that we will repeat the mistakes of the past unless we understand and learn from them.
In the corporate world, periodic white papers and training courses are created to stay abreast of the latest leadership trends. However, leadership lessons and maxims from antiquity remain highly relevant to situations encountered in the present day. There are many texts to choose from, but for the purposes of this article, I will focus on “The Prince” by Machiavelli, “Rhetoric” and “Nicomachean Ethics” by Aristotle, “De Officiis” by Cicero, and “Republic” by Plato. Perhaps, if I have time and the interest is there, I will make subsequent articles on this topic utilizing different authors and philosophers.
The Prince by Machiavelli
This is one of my favorite historical texts that is timeless and can correlate to situations encountered in the present day. Machiavelli created this as a practical guide for ruling and thus can be considered a practical guide for how to lead and negotiate the political minefield in organizations. Key takeaways are as follows:
- An “eye” for talent and empowerment: Machiavelli states there are three types of knowledge: the ability to understand by yourself, the ability to leverage what others understand, and a lack of an ability to understand yourself or through others. The first types of knowledge are crucial for a leader and the third is detrimental. There is a clear need for leaders to delegate and focus their energy on the most crucial efforts. Leadership must possess an ability to effectively evaluate talent and empower them in order to most effectively accomplish goals.
- Proper control of expenses and strategic investment: Machiavelli uses the example of Caesar, who was considered generous to the Roman people, but also spent excessively. Machiavelli states that Caesar would have destroyed the empire had he not been assassinated. The leadership lesson is clear. The ability to balance the operating expense model, while strategically investing in market opportunities and employee development are crucial for setting up the organization for future growth and success.
- Proper discipline of staff: According to Machiavelli, it is ideal that the prince is both loved and feared, but if one has to choose, then fear is the most logical choice. By the nature of their position, leaders have coercive power and the ability to punish. However, it is vital that employees perceive any punishment as fair and warranted. I do not believe it is important that staff loves their leader, but they must respect them. The leader should establish trust and mutual respect with their staff and demonstrate the ability to balance discipline, when necessary, with improving staff engagement and productivity.
- Staffing and Work Design: Machiavelli states that “mercenary and auxiliary arms are useless and dangerous” when describing these types of soldiers in defending principalities. This principle can be extrapolated to the organization’s staffing model. Leaders within an organization must decide which functions are crucial and value added and determine if the knowledge, staff engagement, and quality risks are warranted if using contractors or contingent workers to staff the function.
- Prioritization and Efficiency: When describing the German tendency in protecting themselves from a siege, Machiavelli describes a tactic whereby they would hold little countryside outside of their walls and have enough work and food for the citizens to sustain the population within the walls. This made a siege of a German principality an unattractive prospect. For leaders, the underlying business processes and assets should be rationalized to remove the inessential elements periodically to optimize the processes and asset composition. This is at the core of “LEAN” thinking.
Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
Out of Aristotle’s historical works, Rhetoric and Nicomachean Ethics are two of the most important. Rhetoric describes the art of communication and persuasion, which is highly relevant to leaders today. Nicomachean Ethics describes the highest human good, happiness, and the activities that are a means to that end. Key takeaways are as follows:
- Recognition: In Rhetoric, there are three types of rhetoric targeting three classic audiences. These types are political, forensic, and ceremonial oratory of display. The last type correlates to recognition. Recognition serves as a low cost method of encouraging high levels of performance. When you recognize staff in team meetings, in email newsletters, or formally at town hall type events, this serves to motivate the staff member and demonstrate the desired behaviors among the staff.
- Communication and Perception: According to Aristotle, there are three things which inspire confidence in the speaker: good sense, good moral character, and good will. These traits also elicit trust among the team, which helps in accepting the delivered message. For the leader, always be aware of how you are perceived and craft your message to align accordingly.
- Strategy and Tactics: In Nicomachean Ethics, every activity aims at a specific telos or goal. In my observation, many leaders have myopically focused on interim tactics and lost sight of the ultimate objective, thereby failing in the long term (i.e. winning a battle, but losing the war). The specific vision and end goal need to be elevated and split from supporting goals to properly align tactics to strategy.
- Reward Structure: Aristotle describes various forms of justice, once of which is called distributive justice. In this form, an individual receives a reward in proportion to their merit. The more an organization can be perceived as a meritocracy with its promotion and incentive structure, the more engaged its workforce will be and the more attractive it will be to top talent as a potential future employer.
- Training and Competencies: Aristotle recognized that intellectual virtue required both experience and time. Often, hiring managers seek the fabled “purple squirrel”, exhibiting impatience with the value that developing hired staff can ultimately provide. Corporate training programs should be aligned with talent staffing to hire a certain profile and then define a specific developmental road map to enhance both their competencies over the horizon of time.
De Officiis by Cicero
This document, translating to “On Duties”, is Cicero’s treatise on the best way to live one’s life and balance moral obligations. This was written in Cicero’s last year alive, 44 BC, as a letter to his son who was studying philosophy in Athens. Key takeaways are as follows:
- Cicero defined four cardinal virtues which were wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance. These can be extrapolated to ideals for the leader to incorporate into their methodology.
- Wisdom can assume the form business, economic, and technical subject matter expertise in the leader’s area of practice.
- Justice can assume the form of impeccable business and personal ethics.
- Fortitude can assume the form of the ability to make difficult decisions, be accountable for the consequences, and exhibit steady and reasoned leadership during periods of business disruption and beyond.
- Temperance can assume the form of emotional intelligence, reliance on logic for decision making, and a balanced perspective.
The Republic by Plato
The Republic is Plato’s best known work and was a very influential philosophical treatise. It is written as a Socratic dialogue where Socrates debates the meaning of justice, why people behave justly, and the idealized societal structure. Key takeaways are as follows:
- Sustainability: Socrates describes the ideal city, where the size in controlled to ensure proper governance and maximum utility for its citizens. Unmanageable growth can be a detriment to a company resulting in inefficiencies and higher operating expenses. Sustainability and specifically sustainable growth should be at the forefront for leaders. Organizational design should incorporate internal controls around the size and footprint of the organization to maximize sustainability and market opportunity. These controls should include geographical controls to strategically focus on stable and emerging markets, product line controls to rationalize the product offerings based on demand, margin, and profitability, and controls around the employee footprint.
- Gender Roles: With the guardians (leaders) described by Socrates, he states that women will be afforded the same opportunities to lead as men as the sexes will share their pursuits. For leaders and companies, leadership credibility and promotion should recognize the ability to lead equally.
- Senior Leadership Incentives: In Socrates’ ideal city, the aim of establishing genuine guardians (true leaders) was to maximize the city’s happiness and not the guardians specifically. Management incentive structures should be structured according to a similar principle to align with long term organizational goals. Such measures can include market penetration/growth, return on invested capital, discounted cash flow, and employee satisfaction/attrition as opposed to shorter term quantitative measures like operating expense reduction, EBITDA improvement, EPS, share price, etc.
- Leadership Training and Development: Similar to the final point under the Aristotle section, Socrates describes education for the guardians which includes fifteen years of practical leadership experience and a balanced education comprised of music, gymnastics, mathematics, and dialectics. Companies should make a significant investment in developing their internal leadership pipeline and succession planning, as opposed to usually seeking outside candidates. The training for future leaders should include experience of increasing scope and scale as well as a variety of topics such as strategy, ethics, functional knowledge, sustainability, optimization, communication, and situational leadership techniques.
As I encounter situations in my current leadership role, I always look to the past to determine correlation(s) and then potential strategies for engagement. I invite all of you to embrace the knowledge of antiquity as a powerful tool to assist in shaping the present and the future!
-Jonathan Ozovek
