Delusions of grandeur

I was struck over the weekend by an ad for the Pennsylvania University Management Program.  Beneath the statement, ‘NOW I INVENT INSTEAD OF PREDICT.  I AM A VISIONARY’ a silver-haired senior excutive sits at the shoreline of an expansive lake, gazing out to the horizon.  With his strong chin and resolute expression, the man seems poised to get up and walk across the water, bring peace to the Middle East, solve the world’s energy crisis and reform MPs expenses all before lunch.

I appreciate that if you want to attract people to your expensive management programme you need to make it sound impressive.  ‘I USED TO STEAL ALL MY BEST IDEAS FROM COLLEAGUES BUT NOW I’M A SELF-SUFFICIENT MUDDLER-THROUGHER’  clearly doesn’t have the right ring to it.

Leadership in organisations is crucial to their success but even still, most achievements come through collective efforts, nurturing talent, and at times, good luck.  I wonder how many of the senior executives at Lehmann Brothers or at Northern Rock felt that they were visionaries.  Now we know that many had only a limited understanding of the risks affecting the businesses they ran.  So perhaps one of the positives we could take from the banking crisis (and also the way in which some MPs have used the parliamentary expenses system) is to beware of hubris – more humble leadership could be a good thing.