Brian Armstrong is on a mission. The CEO of Coinbase is creating an open financial system for the world. He has shut down all non-mission-focused politics in his company. His approach to leadership could be mistaken by liberal leadership gurus as a kind of domineering tyranny. But if he follows three ethical guidelines, he can change the world and still be considered an enlightened leader.
Earlier this year, before the pandemic had taken grip in the West, Jennifer Garvey Berger and Zafer Gedeon Achi wrote an interesting paper for McKinsey Quarterly called Understanding The Leader’s Identity Mindtrap: Personal Growth for the C-Suite.
Their advice is rooted in respectable research into adult cognitive and moral development. Its recommendations are as follows: grow beyond the self-centred, rational ego; connect with purpose; tune in to what your body tells you; discriminate between subtly different emotions, drawing upon their richness; and be compassionate toward yourself and others.
The most mature type of leaders, continue Berger and Achi, adjust with grace to whatever they encounter, and do so with the finely honed improvisational skills of the jazz virtuoso. Influencing and being influenced by the emerging reality, these self-transforming leaders are the cultural virtuosos of the business world.
Aristotle recognised these leaders two and a half millennia ago. These are people who are able to assess each moment as unique, and each situation as distinctive. To do this demands a form of practical wisdom. Aristotle called it phronesis. It’s an extraordinary achievement for any human to reach the stage where they’re capable of understanding phronesis and embracing it. Cultural virtuosos are remarkable people. But there is a leadership stage beyond the virtuoso.
Charlie Parker: history maker
Being a skilled jazz improviser is not the same as inventing ‘jazz improvisation’. When Charlie Parker moved improvisation from the margins to the centre of jazz in the early 1930s, he changed the world and values of jazz. More than a cultural virtuoso, he was a cultural history-maker. Similarly, today’s world calls for something more than great improvisers exercising their virtuosity. We need leaders who can go further and invent new commercial cultures. The most outstanding leaders – those who I call cultural history-makers – understand this.
Berger and Achi’s views on “how to thrive in complexity,” great though they are, will only get you so far. Why? Because, they avoid the biggest mind-trap of all. They take the contemporary liberal ethics of self-doubt and irony not as a historical contingency but as a given. They offer dialogue and well-designed conversations as the way to leadership. By contrast, a utopian voice with the courage to push towards their vision of the truth without seeking consensus may be regarded as illiberal, dictatorial and intolerant.
Yet the history-making CEO (as profiled in my last blog) is a utopian leader who takes an illiberal approach when it’s necessary to establish a new truth. Cultural history-makers, like Brian Armstrong, get this. They have mastered phronesis, but they also have an (often instinctive) ability to seize an Augenblick—a history-making moment of truth—when something happens that makes them question aspects of the world that others aren’t able to see or acknowledge.
For instance, there was a time when the ‘IBM company man’ was our role model in the world of business. But does that feel authentic today? Of course not, he (and it was always a ‘he’) has drifted into history.
Nowadays, it is the individualistic, competitive and deal-making way of being of the entrepreneur that is under threat. Waves of discontent from a politicised pandemic, anger at increasing inequality, and at least two major social movements (BLM and XR) are challenging the speculative entrepreneurial way of life. It’s not sustainable. The greatest cultural history-makers of this generation are the ones who blow the whistle on this – and, crucially, see beyond it.
Brian Armstrong is attempting to succeed in his mission to bring cryptocurrency to the whole world and keep his diverse teams committed to the cause and un-distracted while also acknowledging and responding to the heightened cultural politics.
Churchill – genius or failure?
These history-making leaders tread an exceptionally risky path, one that is partly dictated by ‘moral luck.’ Not everyone who acts upon their moments of truth will succeed, or be proven correct. It therefore takes even more courage to do what you believe to be right, particularly when events conspire against you or the temptation to lose focus is intense. Churchill was hailed as a genius for some of his wartime decisions. They worked and are therefore now regarded as the ‘correct’ decisions and he as a hero. Yet there was often no guarantee they would succeed and, if they hadn’t, would his actions now be regarded as criminal and he as a failure or worse?
Armstrong will need to keep his “laser focus” on the mission but, at the same time, listen carefully to his employees. Any history-making mission depends on an alliance of people with diverse concerns and priorities. The alliance will only hold if actions are taken each day to further the mission and reinforce the ties between its members. A day without mission-driven action risks losing the alliance. However, the CEO needs to stay alert to the risk of factionalism at all times. Diverse groups can split apart at any time and it is not enough for a CEO to ignore the petitions of one group or other. Get it wrong and the alliance breaks, the mission fails, and the moral luck swings against the CEO’s legacy.
There are, however, three ethical guidelines, inspired by the philosopher of radical transformation Alain Badiou, that can help you navigate aspects of moral luck and develop the illiberal leadership skills that set you very firmly apart from the despots and reactionaries of outright illiberalism.
First, you need the discernment to know what‘s truly good for civic society. That level of wisdom only comes with hands-on life experience. That’s why you need to be a cultural virtuoso first. How much of the current societal and environmental damage has been caused by 20-something finance and tech whizz-kids inventing and scaling up cool stuff but lacking the wisdom to foresee its impact? Armstrong needs to keep his eyes and ears open to the calls for greater equality in his company. The opposite of discernment is delusion, dishonesty and distraction.
Second, you’ll need courage to stay with the truth of the mission. When you venture into the unknown you will always risk your reputation among your peers. The attacks of corrosive criticism and the gravitational pull of the current world are intense. You need to be prepared for this. Armstrong sounds like he is.
Third, you’ll need openness. The greatest and most well-founded fear of the liberal is that of totalitarianism and the tyrannical leader. Avoid blind conviction. Stay open to examination and discussion. And recognise that what counts as fact and what counts as rational and relevant will change as circumstances change. Armstrong will need to stay alive to this as circumstances change.
If you’re in the moral luck space, you’re taking decisions that are going to transform people’s sense of what a good life is. You have to commit to them fully but also stay open. And you will do because you are not just a cultural virtuoso, you are a cultural history-maker.
I’m writing these blogs to share my 30 years of expertise in leading transformational change in major organizations. As an experienced strategic coach, I enable CEOs to embrace the mission that matter to them. Contact me through LinkedIn or visit Missions That Matter.
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