Why It Matters: Reflections on Practical Leadership
John A. White
Greenleaf Book Group Press (October 2022)
How and why great leaders achieve “admirable results, with exemplary character”
Christopher Lofgren cites Ahmed Yehia’s comment on great leadership in the Foreword to this book in which John White explains why practical leadership matters, especially in today’s world. The material in the book is based on a course that he taught, “Leadership Principles and Practices,” at the University of Arkansas.
Briefly, it was a course for seniors and graduate students that met for three hours once a week over a sixteen-week semester. Guest leaders met with the class for the first half of each period. “The balance of the time was devoted to discussions of assigned books on leadership and lessons from my leadership journey. Teaching the leadership course turned out to be the highlight of my fifty-six-year career as an educator and contributed to my receipt of the university’s top teaching award.”
White has had quite an impressive career as a leader in several different highly-demanding positions: Chancellor of the University of Arkansas; Dean of Georgia Tech’s School of Engineering; co-founder of SysteCon, an engineering consulting firm; leadership of NSF’s Engineering Directorate; member of boards of directors for Eastman Chemical Company, J. B. Hunt Transport Services, Logility, Motorola, Motorola Solutions, and Russell Corporation; and head of the American Association of Engineering Societies, Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, National GEM Consortium, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Foundation, Council of Presidents of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, and Southeastern Conference. His bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees are from the University of Arkansas, Virginia Tech, and The Ohio State University, respectively. He holds honorary doctorates from George Washington University and Katholieke Universitiet of Leuven in Belgium. Quite a career indeed.
Paraphrasing Peter Drucker, all organizations need leaders who do what is right. That really matters and so does having managers who do it right. White agrees with Yehia’s emphasis on exemplary character. I can easily think of several dozen high-impact leaders throughout history whose evil is incalculable. Hitler and Stalin, for example. White is uniquely qualified to review the changes in how practical and principled leadership has been identified and measured over the years, especially in the business world. Opinions are divided, sometimes sharply divided, about the defining what the characteristics of a practical (i.e. results-driven and purpose-driven) leader are and who best personifies them. Readers may not always agree with White’s opinions but I think they will agree that those opinions — based on decades of real-world experience — are worthy of thoughtful consideration.
I envy those who have taken John White’s “Leadership Principles and Practices” course at the University of Arkansas as well as those (including his students) who have had innumerable conversations with him about leaders and followers, not only in the business world but also in every other human enterprise.
Before ending this brief commentary, I presume to share my favorite passage in Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:
“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”
Viewed as gardeners, the best leaders “grow” others who will also become practical and principled, results- and purpose-driven leaders. In today’s world which is more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than at any prior time I can recall, that’s what REALLY matters.