Chapter Excerpt: Above the Clouds - Dundurn
Oct 10, 2024

Chapter Excerpt: Above the Clouds

Above the Clouds by Arkadi Kuhlmann provides business leaders with crucial insights about the importance of business culture in a dizzyingly complex global marketplace, and offers a seasoned antidote to navigating blind through our increasingly competitive landscape. Check out an excerpt below, and don't forget to order yourself a copy on our website or your favourite book retailer.


WE NEED (BETTER) LEADERSHIP MORE THAN EVER

Why culture-driven leadership?
     
Simple: it works. And it works much better over time than the alternative, which I am defining as context-driven leadership. Context-driven leadership is defensive in nature and directed at mostly short-term outcomes. Why is time important? A recent study reported in Barron’s annual Top CEOs issue concluded that “the median tenure among the S&P 500 companies” was less than five years. Ten years ago the average was more than seven years. And unfortunately, tenures continue to shrink. A CEO with ambition and big plans likely won’t have a lot of time to lead a company to greater success.
     
It would seem to make sense, therefore, for a CEO to focus on short-term goals, achieve successes in the limited timeframe allotted them. It turns out, that’s not a good route to take. The argument in this book is that culture-driven leadership is the only viable option that will deal effectively with those shorter and shorter timeframes. In other words, culture-driven leadership can address complexity better. How do I know this? Personal experience. This book isn’t about me, however. It’s about leaders of the future. Who will they be? What will they need to know? Most important. Are you one of them?

•••

    Whenever I think about culture — what it means — I recall a meeting back in the early 2000s, when I was in the process of securing a location for the new ING Direct USA corporate offices in Wilmington, Delaware. My Dutch investors expected me to select a more conventional location, like New York or Boston. Not only was Wilmington not a traditional banking centre, it was home to the biggest credit card companies. What in the world was an upstart internet savings doing there? “That’s just the point,” I said. “What better place to be the David to the industry Goliath?”
     They came out for a visit. I was worried, of course, they’d decide I was in over my head, but by the end of the visit, they had bought into my strategy, which, boiled down to this: Why take a conventional approach to building a business that is all about breaking the rules? When I explained my thinking, the chairman pulled me aside. He wanted me to know that he liked my plan and added that I was the only American he could trust.
     
I thanked him but didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth. “I’m Canadian.” It was for me a classic and incredibly illuminating leadership moment that I have never forgotten. Know who you are; even better, know who others assume you are.

•••

    I am a passionate advocate of culture-driven leadership. I think that leadership is more important than ever — but not just any kind of leadership. Over the course of the book, I hope it will become clear why culture-driven leadership is the most effective kind of leadership, the kind most likely to ensure the sustained success of a company or organization.
     Our need for talented leadership is one of the biggest challenges we face in the decade ahead. Not long ago, I received a call from a friend and colleague. A respected and extremely talented administrator and academic at a prestigious business school, he wanted me to know he was turning down an opportunity to extend his contract. Naturally, I was stunned. I asked him why. He told me that he felt that he was increasingly having to fight what was a “no win” battle. Every day he was faced with a new test he had to pass; the energy that he would have preferred to spend on the exciting and important leadership challenges of planning for the future was being sucked up by having to mediate the endless squabbling of rival factions. Frankly, it wasn’t the first time I had heard a leadership colleague expressing serious doubts — not about leadership — but the possibility of leadership.
     
I’ve spent the largest part of my career as a passionate advocate on behalf of culture-driven leadership. It’s a position that was unusual early on in my career, but not anymore. Today, you can stumble across a reference to it on almost an hourly basis. In an online search I made recently for “business culture articles” turned up about 835 million results; there were about the same number on “corporate culture.” Unfortunately for me, I also found 3.7 million references to books about business culture. Why another? I wrote this book for two reasons: first, to discuss the unprecedented challenges businesses face today; and second, to review again why culture-driven leadership will be such a valuable tool meeting those challenges.

WHY CULTURE IS SO IMPORTANT

Shaping a culture is a formidable task. Only the best leaders can accomplish that feat. Emotional maturity, authenticity, and a strong character are all essential leadership qualities, and all are crucial to successfully lead a culture-driven company. Unfortunately, these and other valuable qualities needed to be a great leader are not taught in a classroom. They can be developed, but only life can provide the necessary lessons.
     
Also essential is an alignment between the leader’s passion, the company’s mission, and the corporate culture in which everything transpires. To have an impact in this new environment, a leader’s ethos must be closely aligned with the culture of the company they hope to lead. Aspects of that culture might be particular to that corporation, but it’s also likely that the culture as a whole is reflective of a much broader culture, reflecting the language and nationality, or ages and interests, of the employees. A leader whose own culture is in step with a company’s culture is likely to be much more effective. The most important question to ask about corporate culture is whether workers think they’re in a job — or on a mission. A visionary leader is on a mission and inspires their employees to feel that way, too.


Arkadi Kuhlmann is the founder and current CEO of ZenBanx, the revolutionary global banking platform. He has been involved with seven successful startups, and was the founder and CEO of ING Direct. He is the author of several books, including The Orange Code and Rock Then Roll. He divides his time  between Toronto, Canada; Menlo Park; California, and Wilmington, Delaware.