Leadership by the Numbers
June 11, 2009
Several years ago my wife and I took our oldest daughter to an alumni event hosted by the university that she would be starting at that fall. The student government association was handing out key chains that proudly proclaimed “Almost 70% of XYZ University students have never driven while intoxicated.” Cheri and I both had the same immediate thoughts; that means that almost 1-in-3 students had driven while drunk and why would the university be advertizing that number, especially to parents who were about to entrust their teenagers to them for the next four years?!
I just finished reading an article about the role that the top flight business schools and their graduates may or may not have played in helping to create the current economic crisis. The article concluded by stating that there are signs that the business schools and their graduates are starting to “get it” and offered as an example that “nearly” 20% of Harvard Business School’s 2009 graduates signed a MBA Oath to “serve the greater good” in their business careers. Again, my first thoughts were; that means over 80% didn’t sign the oath, and why, especially given the current public sentiment towards business executives, would anyone be proud of that number?
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Ross Perot gave one of my all-time favorite lines. In response to then Governor Bill Clinton’s statements about the improvements Arkansas had made in education during his terms, Perot said, “Let’s say you have a penny and I give you another penny. Now percentage wise you’re doing 100% better, but you still only have two pennies.” Numbers and percentages can be a great tool to communicate a point or build confidence in your argument, but you always need to remember they can be looked at from different angles. I’m sure that compared to schools where half the students have driven drunk “almost 70%” is a good number, and getting “nearly 20%” of your graduates to sign a greater good oath may be 100% more than would have signed it in the past. Unfortunately, on their own, both of those numbers are very sad.
In order for leaders to be effective they have to be able to instill a sense of trust in their followers, especially a sense that they have a firm enough understanding of what is currently happening that you can believe them about what they say should happen in the future. With both the University’s key chains and Harvard’s Oath, you can’t help but ask, if they can’t see how bad their own “progress numbers” are, how can we ever expect them to really fix the problems?
