Читать книгу Leading with Character - Джим Лоэр, James E. Loehr - Страница 10

Leadership has never been more important than it is right now. As I write this, the world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout. Unemployment in the United States is reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression, and economies around the globe are reporting negative GDP growth. Businesses up and down Main Street are closed, many forever. On top of this, the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis has fueled pent-up social and racial unrest across the country and around the world. Twenty cities in the United States are under curfew, and the military has been deployed. Trust in institutions and “the system” is falling, as uncertainty and fear grow.

Leadership in moments like this really matters. I'm talking about leaders everywhere, at all levels of society: heads of state and CEOs, leaders in our communities and in our schools, leaders in the arts, in academia, in the world of sports. Even in our own family. We all have a role to play in making the world better, and the crises we are experiencing today underscore that point.

These overlapping crises we are facing will, I believe, be the ultimate test of leadership in our lifetime. What leaders do now, and just as importantly, how they lead, will likely shape their legacy.

That means finding ways to be the leader you want to be and that our neighbors, our employees, our people, and our planet need you to be. As Jim Loehr points out in this urgent, eye-opening, and actionable book, that means leading with purpose.

Jim's is a voice that we need to hear right now, especially, as he puts it, “those of us who are fortunate enough to be in a position of leadership.” His perspective on leadership – what it entails, what it requires day after day – could not be more timely.

I've been fortunate to know Jim for nearly 20 years, so I've become very familiar with the specific kind of leadership that he has been talking about over the course of his career: purpose-driven, moral, compassionate leadership born of character and nurtured by intentionality and hard work. And in this book, he gives you a clear guide to developing a personal credo that captures what you hope to accomplish through your leadership, which you then need to apply, or try to apply, at every encounter you have and every decision you make. That's how we display our true character, Jim writes, and how we “chisel our true essence from the bedrock of life, one moral decision at a time.”

The book is called Leading with Character, and one's purpose in life is the through line, the fuel, and the catalyst for it all. In the pages that follow, you'll get what I've gotten out of my experience working with Jim over the years. It is a necessary examination of the relationship between character and leadership and what leading with character means. It is an eminently practical guide to defining one's own personal credo and to training the leadership muscles that will help you live up to it. And it is a stirring meditation on the elements of one's legacy – how it's much more about how we treat others than what we do for ourselves, and why we must work at it every single day with intent and discipline.

What you walk away with is both a framework and a toolkit for becoming a better, more thoughtful leader. It's a guide to training and strengthening your leadership muscles, much as you would train a muscle group in the gym: with focus, commitment, and determination. And it is a roadmap that, when followed with intent, will better prepare leaders to treat people as they should and to confront the challenges they will inevitably face – and that we are all facing now.

I've been in training, so to speak, and developing my “leadership muscles” for more than 40 years, while working at three “institutions.” I started my career in the U.S. Army (founded 1775), which I joined out of college and where I spent four years as an officer in West Germany at the height of the Cold War. Next came Procter & Gamble (founded 1837) where I spent 28 years in Brand Management and General Management, including leading the company's business in Southeast Asia and eventually rising to Group President of the $7 billion Global Male Grooming business, when P&G made the largest acquisition ever in packaged goods, buying Gillette for $57 billion in 2005 and then running that iconic business for six years. Those experiences helped shaped me as a leader and prepared me to take on my current role, at Levi Strauss & Co. (founded 1853), where I've been the CEO for the past nine years.

The common thread between these organizations is that all three are values-led and purpose-driven, with cultures that emphasize character and a strong moral compass. That is why, I firmly believe, they have all endured for generations – through wars and economic crises, through natural disasters and pandemics, through astounding technological advancements and tumultuous social upheaval, and even through their own occasional missteps.

As a leader, I am the product of my experiences, assignments, and the leaders that I've worked for. I've also been fortunate to have wonderful mentors and coaches along the way, including, Jim Loehr.

Over the past two decades, Jim has been a coach and friend who has helped me to define who I am and the kind of leader I am today. I've worked with him on several occasions – often, I can see now, at what turned out to be critical points in my life and career. Soon after I took the helm at LS&Co., for example, he pushed me to think very intentionally about the kind of leader I wanted to be – what my legacy would be. He forced deep and occasionally uncomfortable self-reflection that involves facing brutal truths about yourself and working consistently to reach for that next level. From Jim, I learned the importance of journaling as a way to force thoughtful introspection on a daily basis. While I may miss a day or two here or there, journaling (almost) every day – and the thoughtful interrogation and self-reflection it elicits – is something that I know has contributed to my success.

It is not easy, but that's why it's so invaluable. Jim challenged me to become a purpose-driven, compassionate leader, born of character and nurtured by intentionality and hard work. And ever since, he's challenged me to keep working on it. Every day.

I joined LS&Co. for three main reasons (there are always only three reasons, right?). First, the Levi's brand. I grew up wearing Levi's, and to me it was one of the most iconic brands in the world. Unfortunately, it had fallen into disrepair and had lost its relevance. Could it be reinvigorated? I firmly believed that it could. To me, it was a great challenge.

Second, the company's values. This was a company that commits to “Profits through Principles” and has a long legacy, going all the way back to Levi Strauss himself, of giving back and making a difference in society. We desegregated our factories in the south 10 years before it became the law of the land. We were one of the first companies to offer healthcare benefits to same-sex partners in the United States. We pulled all funding of the Boy Scouts when they banned Gay Troop Leaders in the early 1990s, and then didn't waver despite getting more than 130,000 letters and emails, almost all of which announced an intention to boycott Levi's. Making a difference and not being afraid to take a stand, even if unpopular, is what the company is made of. That resonated with me and made me want to be a part of it. And, history has proven the company's stands to be right with the benefit of hindsight.

Third, the company was in trouble. It had not created any shareholder value in over a decade. Sales had plummeted, the company was highly levered with over $2 billion of debt, and the Levi's brand had become irrelevant. My own two boys never wore Levi's as teenagers. A far cry from my generation! Back in my day, if you went to Woodstock (I was still a few years too young), you were either wearing Levi's or you were naked.

So I took the job, wanting to turn the company and the brand around, and wanting to leave a legacy, to make a difference. This was one of America's greatest brands, and one of America's oldest companies. The chance to turn the company around, make the brand what it was when I was a kid, where I begged my mom to take me two towns away to buy a pair of Levi's before I started middle school. And, I believed one key to turning the company around was to lead with our values as a company.

That is to say, I had a purpose. I had a vision of what I wanted to accomplish and what I wanted to leave behind, and that has been crucial to everything that's happened since. What's more, I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted my legacy to be: to be more about how I led rather than just the results we achieved. That we could and would get great results not just because of WHAT we did, but because of HOW we did it. Always choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. Innovating in ways that could improve the business and our industry. Not being afraid to take a stand on tough issues of our day and, in doing so, putting the Levi's brand back at the center of culture.

Over the past seven years, we've delivered revenue and profit growth every single year, excluding the impacts of foreign exchange, and we've created significant shareholder value. The Levi's brand has arguably never been stronger. Sales last year were $5.9 billion, up from $4.6 billion when I joined. We successfully returned the company to the public markets in March 2019 with a very successful IPO, and at that time I recommitted that we were not backing off of our values even as a public company.

As much success as we've had as a company over the last seven years I am more proud of HOW we did it. What made us successful through the turnaround was our commitment to those values. Never have I been more convinced about the importance of leading with character. We doubled down on our values. We have innovated around sustainability and have not backed away from the Paris Climate Agreement and our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint. We are innovating with lasers and with new fibers, like cottonized hemp, both of which require dramatically less water than their legacy counterparts. In 2016, when the president banned immigration from seven Muslim countries, we were very quick to take a stand on this unprecedented unilateral Executive action. Not only did we speak out against it publicly, we also supported court cases with amicus briefs. And, importantly, we put our money where our mouth was and committed dollars from the Levi Strauss Foundation to support non-profit organizations around the country to support marginalized communities impacted by the Executive Order.

In 2018 after the Parkland shooting in Florida, we decided to take a stand to end gun violence in America. Every day, 100 people in this country die as a result of tragic gun violence. Every death is a sad one. Almost everyone knows someone who has died as a result of gun violence. Our children today practice lockdown drills at school, just like we practiced “duck and cover” drills to protect us from nuclear bombs from the Soviet Union when I was a kid. However, unlike the nuclear bombs from the Soviet Union, which never happened, our kids know that school shootings are a real threat – they see it on the news and they know that it happens. Their lives have been forever impacted by school shootings and lockdown drills. It is one of the most contentious issues of our day – but staying silent on the issue longer was not an option for us.

Our goal is not to repeal the Second Amendment. It is to end senseless, needless gun violence, which is possible. In January of 2019, we wrote a letter to the House of Representatives to support HR 8, which called for universal background checks, a proven measure that a majority of gun owners support, to reduce guns getting into the wrong hands. The legislation passed with bipartisan support. The letter to the House had three CEO signatures on it, besides mine. Later, in September 2019, we sent a similar letter to the Senate, to get the Senate to move on its counterpart bill. That letter had over 160 CEO signatures. By being the point of the spear along with three other CEOs in January, we have built a movement of business leaders to make a difference in ending tragic gun violence in this country. We are not done with our work – but election season is upon us, and we are not giving up.

I will end where I started. The COVID pandemic has wiped out much of the financial progress we've made as a company. As proud as I am of the turnaround, I now know that my legacy as a CEO will be around HOW we navigate the pandemic and residual crises around it. Our 3100 retail stores around the world and most of our wholesale customers’ stores have been closed for over two months. Our revenues, like many retailers, have taken a hit, and I suspect the recovery, and our return to $6 billion in sales, will take time. We are navigating the most uncertain time I've ever faced in my career. People have been working from home for nearly three months now. Uncertainty and volatility are our daily challenges.

But through it all, I continue to be guided to make the hard decisions in the grey area by following our values and committing to “do the harder right over the easier wrong” at every step. It's not easy, balancing all of the critical stakeholders in the business: shareholders (including family members – descendants of Levi Strauss), employees, retirees, partners, suppliers, and customers. It is a fragile ecosystem with massive uncertainty, and weighing it all requires a strong moral compass and a conviction, above all else, to do what is right.

I can draw a direct line from much of this to the time I've spent with Jim and the lessons and exercises he discusses in the pages that follow. They have been a fantastic resource for me over my career, and I know they can benefit you, too. Leading with Character can help you sharpen and define your potential legacy and in the course of doing that, will make you a better leader in all aspects of your life.

Chip Bergh,

President and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co