Don’t Give Up on the Charismatic CEO
The charismatic style of business leadership has taken a beating lately, but it remains essential to revolutionizing productivity and the boundaries of the possible.
Thomas Alva Edison: faker, maker and charismatic revolutionary.
Photographer: Bettmann/Bettmann via Getty Images
For the past 60 or so years we have lived in an age of charismatic capitalists. The paragon of the species was Steve Jobs. I happened to be in Moscow when he died on October 5th, 2011, and I remember watching as a giant poster of his face was unfurled on the side of a skyscraper and Russians gathered around in silence, holding candles and sometimes weeping.
But charismatics have thrived outside Silicon Valley. General Electric Co.’s Jack Welch was treated as a demigod for supposedly reviving the conglomerate form. Michael Milken was revered (and reviled) for spinning junk bonds into gold. Enron Corp.’s Jeffrey Skilling told a beguiling story of freeing natural gas from “the constraints of molecules and movement.” At Alibaba Holding Group’s 18th birthday party the company founder, Jack Ma, dressed as Michael Jackson and danced to the song “Billie Jean” in front of 40,000 cheering employees.