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Excerpt from Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching Prologue The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. from Chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching Some business leaders just have it. You know it when you see it but you can't really identify it or classify it. You might call it judgment or instinct or intuition; you may say it's the "touch" or the "knack". You can't put your finger on it, and you don't know what to call it. The fact is, it doesn't have a name. And that's okay, as long as you are able to see for yourself what happens when leaders know how to be: a particular CEO or executive VP or department head just has a way of making things turn our okay for everybody in the group while achieving excellent business results. Not that every idea or plan or product is a rousing success, but the leader and the employees accept the outcome, learn from it, and move on to the next project with passion and enthusiasm. If you look beyond the workplace, you find that the leaders and employees are fulfilled not only by their work but in their personal lives as well. They are passionately involved in their communities, and they experience deep joy and connection with their loved ones. When you see all these results, you are seeing the good work of wise leaders. Despite attempts to explain the success of these leaders, the characteristics that bring it about are not explainable. Business school scholars do case studies from time to time, trying to define what they think they observe in order to replicate it as a system. Then to the dismay of the scholars, it -- whatever "it" is -- doesn't work in another setting or with another manager. What is most valuable doesn't have a name. The wise leader is comfortable with the mystery of that and doesn't waste energy trying to figure it out. She doesn't need to label everything and doesn't let herself be limited by the desire for any particular result. She knows that her job is to bring people together in the workplace and, through training as well as through personal encouragement, to assure that they understand how their individual jobs connect with the greater purpose of the business. Once that's done, she trusts that committed people working together in a community of effort will produce more than she could ever have prescribed through a formal strategic planning process. This is the basis for real power.
- James A. Autry & Stephen
Mitchell, Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching.
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