Mastering the Cycles of Leadership. Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, Vikram Malhotra, Kurt Strovink.
Hey family. JP Morgan put this book on their list for students and interns. I am not going to turn this into a sermon. It is not a church book. But that list got my attention. If they want their young people reading it, I want us looking at it. This is book 9, the last one. Here is what I think they want you to walk away with. And here is what it hit in me.
This is the McKinsey team behind the bestseller CEO Excellence, now joined by Kurt Strovink. That earlier book was about the six things excellent CEOs do. This one is about when they do them, and it argues that leadership is not one steady state you achieve. It moves through distinct phases, and what makes you effective in one phase is not what makes you effective in the next.
They name four seasons. Spring is stepping up, deciding whether you are ready and becoming a credible candidate. Summer is starting strong, and they report that roughly thirty percent of CEOs do not make it past year three. Fall is staying ahead, where the danger is no longer failure but complacency after early success. Winter is sending it forward, preparing successors and handing over with grace.
Deciding if you are ready and broadening your skills enough to be a credible candidate.
Listen deeply, learn fast, and make bold early moves. About thirty percent of CEOs do not survive past year three.
After early success the enemy is complacency. The best reinvent and spot the next curve before the current one peaks.
Prepare successors early, hand over with grace, and focus on renewal.
You have to listen deeply and move decisively at the same time, and everyone is watching.
The strengths that got you through Summer are the ones that trap you in Fall.
Most leadership mistakes are the right move applied in the wrong season.
The book's core move is naming four seasons of leadership: Spring, stepping up. Summer, starting strong. Fall, staying ahead. Winter, sending it forward.
The reason that matters is that what makes you effective in one season is not what makes you effective in the next. Most leadership failures are not incompetence. They are a correct move played in the wrong season.
The way I ran Inspired Solutions at the beginning would break it now, and running it today the way I will need to at a hundred people would have killed it then. Knowing which season the company is in is most of my job.
A church planting season and a church sustaining season demand opposite things from a leader. People get hurt when somebody keeps running the planting playbook for fifteen years.
Ask which season you are in before you copy somebody's advice. Guidance for a founder is often wrong for someone in year one of a first real job.
Parenting a six-year-old and parenting a teenager are not the same job. Isabella and I have had to retire approaches that worked beautifully right up until they did not.
Spring is stepping up: deciding whether you are ready, and broadening your skills enough to be a credible candidate.
The work of Spring happens entirely before anybody offers you anything. It is unglamorous, it is invisible, and skipping it is why people get handed something they cannot hold.
Every certification, vehicle, and past performance reference we hold was built years before the opportunity that needed it showed up. You cannot assemble credibility after the solicitation drops.
I studied for years while very few people were listening. That stretch was not a waiting room. It was the training, and I would not have survived a larger platform without it.
This is most of what your twenties are for. Get broad, get credible, get known as someone who finishes. Do not spend that decade auditioning for a title.
The parent I had to be when my kids hit hard years was built in the ordinary years before that. There was no way to cram for it.
Summer is starting strong, and the authors report that around thirty percent of CEOs do not make it past year three.
They call the first 90 days a paradox. You have to listen deeply and move decisively at the same time, while everyone is watching and forming a permanent read on you. Do only one of the two and you fail in a predictable way: all listening looks weak, all moving looks reckless.
On a new contract the first ninety days set the customer's opinion of us for the whole period of performance. I listen hard and I still make sure something visible gets fixed early. Both, not one.
Walking into a new room, I learn the culture before I start changing it, and I do not wait so long that people conclude I have nothing to offer.
In a new job, ask a lot of questions and then actually finish one visible thing fast. That combination builds a reputation you will coast on for years.
Every new season in our family needed both from me. Understanding what changed, and then acting so the kids could see somebody was steering.
Fall is staying ahead. After early success the danger changes. It is no longer failure, it is complacency.
Their finding is that the best CEOs reinvent in this season, spotting the next curve before the current one peaks. Which is hard, because everything is working and everyone around you is telling you not to touch it.
The most dangerous moment for my company is right after a good year. That is when we stop hunting and start defending, and defending is how companies quietly lose the next cycle.
I ended a teaching series that was still growing rather than ride it until it went flat. Leaving while it is still working is the version of this decision nobody applauds you for.
When you get comfortable and good at your job, that is the signal to add something hard. Comfort is pleasant and it is also the beginning of being passed.
When things are calm at home is exactly when Isabella and I should be paying attention. Trouble usually shows up in a season when we stopped looking.
Winter is sending it forward. Great CEOs prepare successors early, hand over with grace, and turn toward renewal.
Early is the operative word. Succession started at the end is a scramble, and it usually damages the thing the leader spent a career building. The final measure of leadership is what stands after you stop holding it up.
I am building a company that should not need me in the room. If Inspired Solutions cannot run without me, then I did not build a company, I built a job with employees attached.
The point was never to gather a crowd around me. It is to hand people something they can carry and teach to somebody else after I am done.
Train your replacement on purpose. It is the fastest way to be promoted and the only way to leave anything behind that outlasts you.
Everything Isabella and I are doing is aimed at our kids being able to stand without us. That is the whole assignment, and finishing it well means becoming unnecessary on purpose.
This is book 9 of 9. These are books JP Morgan wants their new people and interns to read. What did you get out of going through this? Let's discuss this in the comments.
I love you.
This is the YEAR OF DISCOVERY.
Rick