Liquid Leadership

From Woodstock to Wikipedia—Multigenerational Management Ideas That Are Changing the Way We Run Things

Brad Szollose

• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781608320554
• eBook ISBN: 9781608320790
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Leaders can transform the generation gap in the workforce into an engine for generating maximum performance. Easing the tensions between generations in the workforce demands a new type of leadership, one based on adaptability, transparency, and strength. With his actionable program, Brad Szollose shares the wisdom and the tools necessary for anyone to acquire the flexibility and insight of a liquid leader. This wide-ranging discussion by a pioneering Internet entrepreneur provides an entirely new perspective on the major factors affecting businesses today. The author reveals seven immutable laws that can enable any leader to maximize the effectiveness of any organization. From placing people first to leaving a lasting legacy, the liquid leader knows just the right techniques to motivate individuals to perform at their best. ?Liquid Leadership will help readers avoid getting caught up in a workforce culture clash and learn how a dynamic approach to everything from communication to social commitment can bridge the culture gap.

Whatever Happened to
the Future?

Imagine a little boy sitting on the floor of his family’s living room, watching television. He is fascinated by a live broadcast—in black and white, of course; the flickering image on the screen is of a man in a space suit, descending a ladder. Anyone alive today knows that image: the first man landing on the moon. It was 1969, and two men were actually standing on another world more than 250,000 miles away. It was the beginning of a new era.

Imagine being that young boy. Everything in his world promised a future where men and women could travel to the farthest corners of the galaxy. This wasn’t science fiction or an overactive imagination; all across America, television shows and the media were all telling him, This is going to happen. His toys were about the future. Theaters were putting out a barrage of movies to tell him about the future: The Day The Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Omega Man, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green (was Charlton Heston busy back then or what?). There were British shows too, like Dr. Who, Space: 1999, and UFO. Eventually, THX-1138, Star Trek, and Star Wars would also make it to the big screen.

In the future, the young boy would be able to work in a domed city on the moon, use a flying car or a jet pack to fly to work, and have a business meeting in a floating satellite encircling Earth. His teachers were telling him so. His parents were telling him. Even his scoutmaster was telling him. There was proof—now “astronaut” was a job title, and there he was, driving a jeep on the moon.

This future was going to happen … it was real … it was just a matter of time.

Well, if you haven’t guessed it by now, that little boy was me. And if you were anything like me, by the time you grew into adulthood, a tiny part of you still expected that future they promised—a world where technology would be the support structure, seamlessly integrated into our lives. By the year 2000, technology was going to solve all our problems.

We were also warned about the future. If we didn’t keep up, we would be feeling a sense of overwhelming anxiety, what Alvin and Heidi Toffler called “future shock.”

Well, if you are like me, you are a little disappointed in the future so far. I was supposed to be commanding my own starship by now. So yes, I am a little disappointed. But I can tell you something that might make you a little happier: We are on our way. Yes, I am excited that the technology part is going to keep evolving. But more important, I am excited that for the first time in recorded history, technology may give the human race a chance to put aside our petty differences for a greater purpose and connect globally, a chance to work and play together as brothers and sisters around the world.

Unbeknownst to most of us, certain paradoxes have arisen, and they are what is puzzling the Cusp Baby Boomer. Perhaps I can explain it best like this: There seems to be a new race of beings on planet Earth. They think differently, they act differently, and they want to do things bigger than we could have imagined. These aliens work side by side with us. They are called Generation Y.

As a Cusp Boomer, I managed to stay in touch with this future I had envisioned, by hanging out with the youth while at the same time staying abreast of the latest technological trends, from video games to the Internet to CD-ROMs to laptops and iPhones and iPods. I listened to my nephews as they grew up, and in every company I consult with, I take the Gen Yers out for coffee and pick their brains. These are my techniques for catching the flow of all these new ideas, new trends, and new technologies.

I recently ran into Camille, the daughter of a family friend. My wife and I had watched her grow up and lost touch. Now, at twenty-five, she was excited to see us and catch up, to share with us her new marriage to an incredible guy named Frank, a new farmhouse in Maine, and a new job managing an information-based company for the past two years. When I pressed her about this, she began to explain in detail how she managed more than twenty-five employees in several states, on several continents, and in multiple time zones—all while working from home. She connects via her laptop and videoconferences on Skype. Now, Camille runs a tight ship, but she admits she hasn’t been face-to-face with any employees for the past four months. Everything is virtual.

This is the generation prepared for the future.

Whether you want to accept it or not, the younger generations—those born in the past quarter century—deal with a completely different reality from us Boomers and Generation Xers at so many different levels. Gen X is what I like to call the buffer generation—neither completely a Boomer nor part of Generation Y, they have computer and gaming skills yet think like a Baby Boomer. They are trapped between the two worlds but never completely in one category, almost like outside observers between the two generations. They like listening to Pearl Jam but save for retirement.

Although we all work side-by-side, we are not alike. As coworkers, if not managed properly, these groups may sink into total chaos and disharmony and never understand why.

So perhaps we are not living on the moon or flying in a car, but technology has changed how we work, how we play, how we romance, and how we pay. Like it or not, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle. This is the age of technology, and we all have to keep moving forward. It took barely twenty-five years for the computer to change us completely. It has established brand-new paradigms, impacted our thinking processes, and changed how we live life and conduct business. Computers have changed where, when, and how we work.

Most people today are in touch with more information in one week over the Internet and in our workaday world than our grandparents processed in their entire lifetime. Life is simply speeding up. It took one hundred years for the Industrial Age methodologies and infrastructure to become the global norm, yet the computer—the ubiquitous tool of the Information Age—took only twenty-five years to permeate our world. Not much time to adjust.

Everyone, leaders included, must stay aware of the new ways in which businesses are being run. The average person can partake in global commerce from the comfort of his or her own home. Amazing, isn’t it? Instead of resisting, we must embrace and flow with it all. Do you want to be stranded on the shores of the past, or do you want to keep up and stay relevant?

It’s easier said than done. So how do you intend to bridge the gap? The best way is to be so flexible that you can take any shape, any direction—so flexible that you can create your own strategic plan. You must adopt a type of fluid, adaptable leadership: Liquid Leadership.

This book is based on my experience of being an Information Age entrepreneur. In the following pages we’ll look together at what is going on from a managerial standpoint; we’ll examine leadership styles from long-established corporations, especially those that have survived for centuries, showing how properly applied leadership skills are the essence of success. I have chosen to review some businesses that have been screened before, primarily because they are innovators and survivors—but we will be exploring their creativity from a new perspective. We will also look at the workforce within these companies: their age range, the integration of technology, their methodologies and results.

Throughout history, whenever human beings lived in a system that allowed freedom of creation and reward within a stable environment, there was an explosion of productivity and abundance. This is proof that centralized control leads to stagnation, while open freedom leads to innovation. Thus we must explore the way we are running things to ensure this sort of productivity. By studying the problems encountered by each of the groups we examine, from the Woodstock generation to the Wikipedia generation, we can gain a clear understanding and provide guidance to those experiencing the multigenerational management shift that is changing the way we run things.

Please keep in mind that technology continues to change and progress. By the time you finish reading this book, lots of concepts may change. My advice? Just be aware of where your business sector is going, how your brand is seen in the Information Age, and what you need to do to remain relevant to your target audience and customer base. Quality is not job one anymore; amazing is. Produce amazing results by getting customers to fall in love with your company—with your products and with everything you do. Anticipate what your customers’ needs are before they do … and dare to wow us!

The future is now.

The Credo of the
Liquid Leader

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless—like water. Now you put
water into a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it
becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now
water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

—Bruce Lee

I

t was all the way back in 1997, but I remember the invitation card well. Printed on a bone-white stock, it cordially requested the presence of my wife and me at the State Theater at New York City’s Lincoln Center, to attend Forbes magazine’s eightieth anniversary party. Clearly etched on the invitation was a quote by the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

It was one of my own favorite quotes, but I wondered why it had been included on the invitation. Did it refer to the wave of new technology brought about by the dot-com revolution, or only to the fact that the magician David Copperfield was scheduled to kick off the festivities with a private performance?

I was, at that point in my career, very familiar with dot-coms, having cofounded one myself only a few years earlier: K2 Design, Inc. Not only had Douglas Cleek and I created the first full-service interactive agency in the history of advertising, but we’d given the world its first dot-com as well, launching our IPO in 1996 for $7 million. It had taken a lot of ninety-five-hour weeks to sustain a growth rate of 425 percent for five straight years, and by the time of the Forbes magazine party, I was feeling tired in every way possible—mentally, emotionally, and physically. Even so, I was ready to be entertained.

Torrential rain had fallen from the Manhattan skies at the exact moment my wife and I had been required to exit our cab, sans umbrella, at the front of the New York State Theater (now the David H. Koch Theater), and hustle across the pavement. We arrived in the main hall a little wet—and promptly forgot about it, dazzled as we were by the oversize glass diamonds inlaid into fifty-foot expanses of crushed burgundy- and gold-colored velvet, stretching from floor to ceiling. There’s a reason they nicknamed this theater the Jewelry Box.

As we took our seats, I noticed members of the Forbes family sitting in the balconies. The lights dimmed. Steve Forbes and many of the people associated with Forbes magazine took to the podium and spoke.

Then the real presentation began. A fifteen-minute movie explained to the New York business elite that every hundred years a technological revolution comes along that’s so big, it changes our way of life forever. They were talking about the Internet and about the young entrepreneurs who were permanently changing the business landscape. I thought, So that’s why I was invited.

Of course the movie ended with the same Arthur C. Clarke quote from the invitation, blazing from the screen in gigantic white letters against a burnt sienna background:

Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.

Then the movie screen disappeared, and David Copperfield performed some “real” magic.

After an amazingly intimate performance made up of big-stage illusions mixed with sleight-of-hand card tricks and ending with an indoor snowstorm, we returned to the main lobby. Under dim lights, surrounded by neon-lit palm trees and waiters and waitresses in sci-fi costumes, we watched as a light show and dance music turned the sweeping carpeted staircases and marble-floored lobby into a scene from the future. It seemed as if we had been beamed into the future. Over cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, I met Donald Trump and David Copperfield.

Far away from the festivities, I noticed, Steve Forbes and his wife, Sabina, were enjoying the party—and strangely enough, without facing a long line of well-wishers. I introduced myself and my wife, and we spent twenty minutes chatting with our hosts. It was as if we were old friends.

“I just took my company public,” I told him.

“And which one is that?” He appeared to be genuinely curious.

“K2 Design.”

“Congratulations. You know, because of guys like you, things will never be the same.” That was an understatement. Yet as a longtime entrepreneur, I hadn’t seen anything special about what I’d been doing. To me it was just another business venture.

That was the moment I first began to step outside my old paradigm. It wouldn’t be long before I realized that the dot-com boom had been the direct result of a different kind of thinking—not just technological advances, but a new type of computer-savvy workforce, with workers who acted more like entrepreneurs than employees. With global opportunities at our fingertips, the business world was undergoing a fundamental change. Something new was on the horizon, but where and how would we get there?

And then an even bigger question: Who would lead us? Historic hierarchies were in the process of being destroyed. Ev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Author’s Note
• Contents
• Foreword
• Liquid Leadership