Why corporate leaders do not make good politicians?
The interesting aspects of politics, corporations and popularity contests.
Someone asked Jamie Dimon if he would run for President. Thankfully he declined. Most CEOs and top management people are good at boardroom politics and maneuvering egotistical, strong leaders to their way of thinking. So it is presumed that people who succeed in corporate world may be able to out-think, maneuver, manipulate grass-root politicians easily. But people who have a successful corporate career do not make good politicians.
Incentives matter!
Corporates pay employees to keep their opinions aside and align with objectives of the leader. Thus, each corporate leader is backed by efficient and organized performance. There is hardly any wasted effort. But most employees do not put their heart in it. You may say this is more-head-less-heart approach.
Politicians collect people who align with their opinions and make them work towards their objectives. They do not get “employees” they get followers. Politicians take the less-head-more-heart approach. It is also the reason why supporters of the party we do not support appear dumber or more stupid to us.
Followers are crux of the matter.
The highly efficient and precisely engineered corporations churn out very high level of performance. But importantly, the average or mean performance of follower organizations is much below the corporate performance.
The performance of the follower-driven political parties is all over the place. At its best, it is more impactful than the corporate performance. Political parties connect with emotion which is a powerful driver. Followers die for their leaders, corporations can never evoke such loyalty. The second critical ingredient is passion.
Followers need passion.
Many people have followers - media personalities (news anchors specially), beauty queens, actors etc. These days even Tiktokers have lots of followers. Just having followers is not enough.
Followers need to have confidence in your views and they need to connect with you passionately. While corporates use monetary incentives to align all heads, you cannot align any heart with money. Hearts are aligned with dreams so real the followers can see, smell, hear and touch them. Once aligned, the followers will back their leader to the end of the world.
I have not seen this culture in corporations. Yes, some bosses create that culture within their teams. But these are smaller teams. In size and scale, corporations are not able to do it. Naturally, the people who succeed in corporate lives are not well tuned to political ventures.
Donald Trump a curious case?
The success of Donald Trump, the billionaire chief of Trump business empire is different. Trump, the corporate leader did not win the political race. Trump the media personality won it. All his inserting himself into Home Alone movie, the Apprentice and regular public appearances led to his political success.
What do you think?
Trump was in Home Alone? 😂
I heard a comment from Jim Rohn yesterday that seems applicable here:
"Be a student not a follower."
What might the world look like if we empowered (expected?) people to be learners? What if taking responsibility for our own lives became our top priority?