Law firm leadership

Lee Iacocca suggests in his new book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone? that there are factors that can be used to predict whether someone will be a good leader. After chastising both the President of the United States and presidents of many American companies, he sets forth his list of 9 C’s:

Curiosity
Creative
Communicate
Character
Courage
Conviction
Charisma
Competent
Common sense

According to the review in USA Today, April 23, 2007, Iacocca says the biggest C is crisis. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. While this may be true in large measure, just getting through the day seeking to lead a group of peers (or "herding cats," as some would say) is crisis enough to bring out the best qualities in his list of 9 for today’s law firm managing partners and leaders.

And, if we read Jim Collins works, Built to Last and Good to Great, we know that there is no one successful style of CEO. There are many. Iacocca suggests that no one has all of the qualities in his list. With Collins works in the backdrop, it’s clear we don’t need to be the best in all of Iacocca’s categories in order to be considered a good leader. It’s just nice to have a simple list to target our efforts.

His directness carries over to evaluations of the presidential candidates today as well as references to autos, energy and other countries.

Categorized in: Management