Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 specific ways an organization must act and behave to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.
The Ambition Paradox is a concept in Leading at Light Speed described in Chapter 9 along with three other Leadership Paradoxes. The other three are available upon purchase of the book.
True leaders are ambitious – but their ambitions are in service to something greater than themselves. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Barack Obama – each had ambition, but they harnessed their personal ambition to a larger cause. Peter Drucker, the famed management consultant, describes it as a singular focus on defining what the organization needs. When Louis Gerstner took over at IBM, he saw the need for far greater customer focus. Jack Welch, when he became the head of General Electric, was able to see that the company needed to rid itself of any business that was not at the top of its marketplace priority list. When Darwin Smith took over at Kimberly-Clark, he saw the need to sell the mills and focus on the paper products business. It can not be denied that these were ambitious men. But more importantly, each believed they knew what it was that the organization needed from them. No one told Gerstner or Welch or Smith to do these things. Each had the ambition to get it done. At the same time, these were the things that needed to be done.
Leaders master the fine line between self-serving ambition and selfless ambition. Despite potential challenges for the organization and a risk of some personal pain, a succussful leader is able to identify and willing to carry out the things that the organization needs most. So when faced with the ambition paradox, ask yourself: “Am I willing to suffer some personal loss – even up to losing my comfortable way of life or my job – in order to do what’s right?” If the answer is yes, then you’ve found the path through the ambition paradox.
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