Speaker praises Lincoln’s leadership style
Abraham Lincoln’s leadership style exemplifies what is needed for corporate executives today, a Fortune 200 company vice president said.
Jerry Bussell, vice president of operations at Medtronic, was the keynote speaker for a Business Operational Excellence seminar, sponsored by the business college. As president of Bussell Lean Services, he said he advocates a people-first leadership style.
“Lincoln has all the qualities of any great leader I know,” Bussell said. “He was humble, yet he had great resolve.”
Bussell said he has done extensive research into Lincoln’s life, career and presidency. He is currently working on a book about his findings, he added.
Bussell said only 36 percent of corporate employees trust their leaders, which, he said, makes it hard to accomplish anything as a leader. He said he wanted to urge the audience to gain a reputation of honesty and integrity in life.
He said the best way to gain trust is to show others interest and compassion.
“Lincoln loved the people,” Bussell said. “He would always talk to them in common language and show that he really cared.”
Bussell also said Lincoln would use stories to communicate his messages.
“He was able to get his points across to people in a logical way by illustrating it to them,” Bussell said.
He said while Lincoln did not have any military training, he was known to stay up late at night and read books from the Library of Congress about military strategy.
Bussell encouraged everyone to gain Lincoln’s level of persistence. He said Lincoln once wrote a letter to his cabinet telling them that he might not get re-elected, but they should keep going with the policies they implemented. Bussell praised this mindset and said many of Lincoln’s accomplishments wouldn’t have been possible without this determination.
“You have to make it your purpose to not give up,” Bussell said.
However, he said Lincoln’s commitment to what he was doing would be in vain if the processes through which he was working would have been faulty. He said in both the presidency and in the business world, leaders need to make sure the systems they are using to reach a desired goal are the correct ones and will be the most effective.
“We take good people, put them in bad processes, and make them bad people,” Bussell said.
Again, referring to Lincoln’s obsession with being hands on and personal, Bussell said Lincoln was famous for wanting to witness all problems firsthand.
“His secret was he didn’t want anyone to tell him about the problem, he wanted to see it,” Bussell said.
He then explained Lincoln’s ability to look at situations with clear objectivity, particularly citing his practice as a lawyer, who would argue both sides of the case against himself. He would make his own case, then rebut it, and continue the debate all by himself in preparation for the actual court.
Bussell said at some point, performance is crucial.
“This is all cool stuff,” he said, “but you’ve got to get the results.”
He told a story about himself as he was growing up, when he would often go to his dad with complaints about obstacles hindering attainment of goals.
He said his dad would say, “Tell your problems to Jesus, because he’s the only one who cares. Now go get the results,” Bussell said.
He compared business to a tennis match, in which one player’s head is turned toward the scoreboard the whole time and gets frustrated that he isn’t producing results. In business, he said, leaders need to focus on the process in order to produce.
His final point was: Leaders need to have the ability to be innovators and see future possibilities. Lincoln, he added, was the only president to ever hold a patent, and he never turned down an inventor who wanted to talk to him. Even Thomas Edison looked up to Lincoln as a role model, Bussell said.
Bussell, many times, compared Lincoln to executives at Toyota, saying they both follow the Bussell’s leadership model. He said Toyota is always forward thinking and actually has goals laid out for where it wants to be by 2100. Still, he said, the executives are very focused on being a part of the work and standing beside the workers to see problems and how to solve them. He said Toyota’s problems are solved one at a time in order to get the right results.
Bussell said that a key to a business school’s education is teaching how to be a leader. He said right now, too much of school is case studies and not actual doing.
“You don’t give people the answers to questions,” he said. “You give them the tough questions.”
Maintaining integrity is another important leadership quality a school should focus on, he added.
“If you do the right thing, you may fail, but at least you failed doing things the right way,” he said.
“As a land-grant institution, the mission of Utah State University is to serve as an engine of economic growth for our community, the state, the nation and the world,” said Huntsman Dean Doug Anderson. “Jerry’s provided extraordinary service to the university as a member and chairman of our Shingo Prize, offered each year to companies that operate with excellence. We are proud and grateful for his leadership, and for the work he has done to improve productivity, quality and safety in many companies around the world.”
– bracken.allen@aggiemail.usu.edu