5650 Grad assignment

Leading_Out_Loud_A_Guide_for_Engaging_Others_in_Cr..._----_Foreword.pdf

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Foreword

One of my earliest memories of Terry Pearce was when I was invited to speak to his class at the Graduate School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. It was one of the most popular classes in the school, yet it was in a soft subject for a prestigious graduate business program. I found it somewhat surprising that these MBA students were more interested in my own personal metamorphosis from Harvard lawyer, Silicon-Valley deal- maker, and founder of start-ups than they were in the business formulas for success. When I recognized the emphasis on passion, I knew Terry was onto something meaningful. This was not the usual business school communication class of PowerPoint slides and technique. Terry was asking the students to discover a starting point for what they wanted to change in the world by imploring self-examination of what moved them. The class was far more about inspiration than it was about learning how to sound smart to venture capitalists or corporate recruiters. The first edition of Leading Out Loud was already popular, and the class was clearly going far beyond the book’s original concepts to a broader inquiry. I thought this was absolutely appropriate, because my experience had suggested that for people to be great, to accomplish the impossible, they need inspiration more than financial incentives. Business to me has always been more about the romance of the big idea than the finance of the exit. For the last few years, I’ve been engaged as a Virtual CEO and investing partner at Kleiner

Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm. I picture myself as a cloud that surrounds the key management group of a start-up, helping them apply leadership principles, lending my own convictions about the necessity of knowing and implementing the fundamentals of the business. More important, I encourage the group to employ the skills of foraging, finding and inspiring people with the broadest implications of what the business is trying to do in the world as a way of building an enterprise that will have staying power—not just in the market, but in the souls of those who engage in it. I look for missionaries, not mercenaries; entrepreneurs who strive for meaning and significance in their careers and in their lives. I’ve been in a few meetings with budding entrepreneurs exploring the question of the

sequence of the words values, value, and valuation. Which of these comes first in those who would institute change in the world? Values are the fundamental tenets that you want to express in the enterprise, value is what difference your idea will make to the greater good, and valuation is what an outside constituency judges your contribution is worth in monetary terms. This seems to be the order that gives the most satisfaction, and the one that actually provides the clearest portent for success. Many of Terry’s clients, like most of my own, are in business. Like most areas of life,

business has the potential of being an instrument for positive change. It is a vehicle for creative expression—for changing things for the better, a field for bringing forth an idea that expresses an ideal. Just as artists use a palette and a canvas for this process, business leaders inspire

Pearce, Terry. Leading Out Loud : A Guide for Engaging Others in Creating the Future, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ambertonlibrary-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1113459. Created from ambertonlibrary-ebooks on 2022-01-28 18:03:01.

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others to interpret a spreadsheet and a marketing projection. Politicians might use their passion to commission a public opinion poll, to interpret the results from a ballot box, their colleagues’ reaction to a draft of legislation, or feedback from constituents. In each case, the source of creativity that generates potential for change is within the individual leader and that leader’s team. What Terry has done in Leading Out Loud is to name the internal principles that are

essential to get beyond the popular to the meaningful, prescribe a process for each person to discover what is inside that prompts that conviction, and then suggest a precise process for getting it out. What makes this work unique is the guidance he provides in getting to what really matters in implementing change. Terry comments on many distinctions in the work—inspiration and motivation, loyalty and

satisfaction, progress and change, results and meaning—yet the one that seems central is his distinction between the French verbs for listening, écouter and entendre. One implies getting the words and providing an answer, the other grasping the meaning and the essence of the other. Listening for words and answering logically is easy and often not satisfying. Attending to the other is receiving meaning, empathizing, and responding in kind. These distinctions are central to the message of Leading Out Loud. The primary value of this work is that it helps us experience what matters in our desire to

lead—it is not more money or even prestige. It is the chance to express a value that is dear to us in a practical way, to institute a legacy of change that will live beyond us and that will inspire others. This can only be accomplished with introspection and discipline, not one or the other, but both. Knowing who we are and finding ways to express ourselves in a way that inspires others to create a different future . . . that is true leadership. In Leading Out Loud, we see principles unfold that are about self-knowledge and empathy,

discovering our own values, deepening our emotional awareness, and connecting with others in ways that are not just numbers or opinions. Then Terry introduces the discipline necessary to actually get something done, a Guide to keep us from losing our awareness while also focusing us on the practical. He describes this Guide as a “biography with a purpose.” This is an appropriate description of a questioning protocol to discover the essence of what matters in the implementation of any change, whether a start-up, a corporate restructuring, or a change in culture. You, the leader, are at the center of it, and your values and the value the change will deliver will determine how others evaluate it with their hearts as well as their heads. The process of discovery offered by this Guide is invaluable to our ability to inspire. I’ve often maintained that it takes a different kind of person to lead in various phases of change, and Terry combines the dominant characteristics of that theory into one discipline. In the world of fast-moving start-ups, it’s frequently too hectic for all this to unfold, but to strive for such balance and integration is indeed striving for the best of life. Reading Terry’s latest edition brings to mind a powerful challenge from another great writer,

Ernest Hemingway. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway writes, “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.” That is the quest of a lifetime, and in Leading Out Loud, Terry helps us find that sentence within ourselves and express it with the

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full conviction of our mind, heart, and soul.

January 2013

RANDY KOMISAR

Silicon Valley

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