Elevating Leadership
to a Higher Calling

Outside of church—and certainly in a business setting—one doesn’t often hear the word “stewardship.” Yet great business leaders are great stewards, asserts Jason Jennings.

Jennings, an author and authority on business leadership and productivity, spoke at last month’s MSCI Forecast conference. Jennings’ books are based on his research of the world’s best-performing companies and their leaders. He sees a relationship between a company’s financial performance and the integrity of its leader. In other words, he says, stock values and personal values are connected.

Jennings identifies five factors that differentiate great companies:

g Great organizations have a cause that’s about more than just making money. Most companies have a “mission” statement or a “vision” statement, often trite and largely ignored. Exceptional companies live to serve a cause, Jennings says. Causes are big, bold and inclusive, such as advancing the careers of women or minorities. Causes provide purpose, fuel passions, drive momentum, build cultures. “Your culture is your organization’s best competitive advantage,” he notes. “No one can take it away.”

One such company is steelmaker Nucor, Jennings says. Nucor is a steward of the environment, recycling scrap metal that might otherwise end up in a landfill. Nucor is also a steward of its employees, offering them production-based earnings incentives and a safe workplace with no layoffs.

g Great companies master the art of letting go. Not-so-great companies hang on to the past. Like a monkey with its fist stuck in the cookie jar, General Motors just wouldn’t let go of Oldsmobile, for example. How many millions might GM have saved if it had dropped the tired old nameplate and freed itself years sooner?

g Great companies have figured out that even satisfied customers leave. The notion that satisfied customers will keep coming back, and they’ll tell all their friends about you, is the type of conventional wisdom that produces conventional results, Jennings says. In fact, two-thirds of customers who take their business elsewhere will say they were “satisfied.” It’s not enough to attempt to provide a high level of satisfaction to all customers, Jennings says, rather the new rule in business is to completely satisfy the right customers.

g Great companies get workers to think and act like owners. They make sure the right people are empowered to make the right decisions. In such organizations, everyone is held accountable, but they are also well compensated for the value they create.

g Finally, Jennings says, the most successful executives understand that leadership is about stewardship. They share information, they coach, they mentor, they get their hands dirty. They feel a responsibility to pass along opportunity to others. They treat their work as a calling, not just a job.

Stewardship, in the common theological context, refers to an individual’s responsibility to maintain and use wisely the gifts that his or her God has bestowed. Under the secular definition, stewardship is about service over self-interest, abandoning power over others and working to preserve natural and human resources. Issues of faith aside, stewardship as a business philosophy is clearly a cause all leaders can embrace.