Leadership is one of those inexhaustible topics about which one can
never learn too much. The only problem with "learning" about it
(at least by reading) is that 98% of what’s written about it is either:
pluperfectly self-evident; the recitation of charming anecdotes
from which it’s entirely impossible to draw general observations (and
usually featuring Churchill, Lincoln, and a General–Eisenhower, Patton,
or Grant); or theoretical pap with the ulterior motive of advancing the
author’s consulting career.
Then there are the rare authors who actually have something to say,
and today we’re looking at Robert Caro, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
and biographer who talked
to Harvard Business Review about
lessons from Lyndon Johnson’s leadership style.
Interestingly, Caro not only wrote exhaustive biographies
of LBJ, but
also of
Robert Moses, the famously autocratic czar of New York City public
works projects for 44 years, whose mission was to remake the City in
his image—and the legacy of whom those of us who
live here enjoy, descry, and take for granted every single day. Caro’s
blunt in his choice of subjects:
"To use biography [to explain power], of course,
you have to pick subjects who understand, and whose lives show they understood,
how to acquire power and use it. I picked two men to write
about: first, Robert Moses, because he understood urban political power—how
power is used in cities. Robert Moses was never elected to anything in
his entire life, but he held power in New York City and State for forty-four
years, enough power to shape the city the way he wanted it to be shaped."Then I turned to Lyndon Johnson because he understood national political
power—understood
it better, I think, than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. If you
pick men like that, and find out and analyze how they got power and how
they used it, you can get closer to an understanding of the true nature
of power: how it works in reality—its raw, unadorned essence."
Wait a minute, you’re saying: I thought we were talking about "leadership"
here, not about "power."
Caro thinks that, at the
highest level, they’re indivisible: "Many people want
to be leaders, but very few are leaders in the sense that I
mean it: using great power for great purposes."
How, then, did LBJ assimilate power unto himself? By befriending—and
more than befriending—the most powerful people in the institution. First
in the Texas legislature it was Alvin Wirtz, in the US House it was Sam
Rayburn, and in the US Senate it was Richard Russell of Georgia, leader
of the Southern block. He became, as he himself described it, a
"professional son" to powerful men. He would flatter,
he would go out of his way to "just happen to be" in the Capitol every
Saturday when Russell, a bachelor and a lonely soul, would be there,
he would tell Russell, a baseball fan, that he loved baseball despite
LBJ’s having no interest in it whatsoever.
Isn’t this sheer manipulation?
Indeed; but LBJ employed these tools to achieve what he envisioned: Civil
Rights (surely his finest hour), the War on Poverty (unwinnable, but
his heart was in the right place), Vietnam (a searing, scarring, terrible
misadventure of wasted and betrayed blood and treasure). And
Johnson knew how to read people (watch their eyes, don’t listen to their
words).
Aspects of this exercise (Caro’s exercise, that is) in comprehending
power and how leaders wield it are profoundly repellent, but we also
find ourselves leaning in, responding to the irresistible magnet of the
story of a rise to greatness. Here’s how Caro summarizes
what he’s up to:
"All my books are about power and about how leaders use power
to accomplish things. We’re all taught the Lord Acton saying that power
corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But the more time I
spend looking into power, the less I feel that is always true."What I
do feel is invariably correct—what power always does—is reveal. Power
reveals. When a leader gets enough power, when he doesn’t need
anybody anymore—when he’s president of the United States or CEO of a
major corporation—then
we can see how he always wanted to treat people, and we can also see—by
watching what he does with his power—what he wanted to accomplish all
along."
All of my readers, and all of your partners and colleagues, are, I am
confident, benevolent, wise, and possessed of the utmost in generous
and humane spirits.
But it doesn’t hurt to know how two of the 20th Century’s greats got
where they were, either.
