suffered through a succession of leaders who lost sight of the mission,
oppressed the people, and reverted to idol-worship.
The worst curse, which occasionally came to pass, is uttered in Isaiah
3:4: ‘‘I will make boys their officials, mere children will govern them.’’
THE IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP
DEVELOPMENT
The leaders of the Bible, as well as today’s most astute business and civic leaders, wanted competent, mature leaders with the right priorities and
values following in their shoes (or sandals). That we now have over a
billion followers of Judaism and Christianity and millions of synagogues
and churches with a well-organized, planned leadership process is a tes-
timony to their legacy.
But there are some corporations that are just as ‘‘religious’’ about
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continuous leadership development, many of them among the most
successful companies in their industries. GE under Jack Welch (and also
undoubtedly under his successor, Jeffrey Immelt) was totally vigilant
that its officials not be ‘‘boys,’’ but rather fully developed leaders who
had undergone ‘‘trial by fire’’ and achieved the difficult goals set for
them.
‘‘I want a revolution, and I want it to start at Crotonville,’’ said
Welch, referring to GE’s famed Management Development Center,
begun in 1956 and recently renamed the Jack Welch Management De-
velopment Center. Crotonville has traditionally been the place where
GE’s new ideas and the battle plans for implementing them have been
generated.
Many CEOs pay ‘‘lip service’’ to their organization’s leadership de-
velopment efforts, perhaps connecting briefly by conference call or
sending a canned video message at the beginning of a session. But
Welch put his helicopter where his mouth was. He flew to Crotonville
every two weeks, where he engaged in freewheeling ‘‘learning experi-
ences’’ with his executives, and didn’t miss a session in his sixteen years as chairman.
Many familiar with Jack Welch’s hard-nosed, bottom-line approach
initially doubted his commitment to executive development. At the be-
ginning of his tenure, many of his division heads were diverting funds
allocated for executive development to other areas of their budget, in-
cluding the ‘‘bottom line.’’ Welch made sure that executives who coop-
erated with the executive development efforts were rewarded and that
those who did not suffered consequences.
Although a cult of personality grew up around Welch, he realized
that GE’s success was largely due to careful executive development and
succession planning, with lots of good leaders in the pipeline in case
anything ever happened to him or another key player. The day after he
had suffered a heart attack, he was pleased that GE stock actually went
up $1. When the press intimated that he had no apparent successor, he
responded, ‘‘That is far from the truth . . . It’s like an obsession. I’m
always talking with Paolo Fresco (GE’s vice chairman), even when
we’re out for a drink. ‘What’s so-and-so like; can he take a balanced
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view of things; or to what extent does he bring in new ideas?’ It’s on
my mind constantly, and finding the right person is the most important
thing I can do for my group at the moment.’’2
Welch’s most fervent wish echoed the plea of Moses: ‘‘May the Lord
. . . appoint a man . . . so the people will not be like sheep without a
shepherd.’’ (Num. 27:16–17) Welch’s efforts at Crotonville and else-
where to continually develop his executives assured him that there
would be no shortage of competent shepherds.
Andrew Grove of Intel is another executive who reinforced his com-
mitment to leadership development with extra dollars in an executive’s
bonus. Like Welch, Grove truly enjoyed the process of teaching his
potential successors. Grove went into the classroom to teach several
times a year. ‘‘I’ve always had an urge to teach, to share with others
what I’ve figured out for myself. It is that same urge that makes me
want to share the lessons I’ve learned.’’3
Grove insisted that every executive at Intel do some teaching. He
believed that you can learn to make the tough decisions only from
people who have been there, not from outside consultants. It’s not as
old as GE’s or the Bible’s, but during his tenure Grove did develop a
good, solid ‘‘leadership engine.’’
Larry Bossidy, former CEO of Allied Signal, also realized that devel-
opment of new leaders is not only a key to profitability, it’s also very
satisfying in terms of feeling like you’ve left a legacy, not just an income statement. ‘‘How am I doing as a leader? The answer is how the people
you lead are doing. Do they learn? Do they manage conflict? Do they
initiate change? You won’t remember when you retire what you did in
the first quarter of 1994 . . . What you’ll remember is how many people
you developed.’’4 Bossidy is so committed to, and so rewarded by, the
leadership development process that he has founded a company com-
pletely devoted to executive development.
None of us, particularly top executives, likes to dwell on this topic,
but we are all going to die someday. In March 1996, a plane carrying a
group of top executives on a trade mission crashed in Bosnia, leaving
their organizations in differing states of preparedness for executive suc-
cession. Asea Brown Boveri’s president and CEO died, and the com-
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199
pany could come up with only an interim replacement. Bechtel had no
replacement at all for P. Stuart Tholan, president of Bechtel Europe,
Middle East, and Southeast Asia. But Foster Wheeler, a $4.5 billion
engineering and construction company in New Jersey, had no such gap-
ing holes because they had done careful succession planning for unan-
ticipated events.
The U.S. government has a succession plan in place in case of the
death, impeachment, or resignation of our top executives. We have
become all too familiar with it through the cases of John F. Kennedy,
Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and Bill Clinton. But it exists for a rea-
son, and smart companies ensure that they too have a succession plan in
place that addresses all contingencies, even the ‘‘unthinkable.’’
In practice, this means that a company should be constantly assessing
all of its ‘‘high potentials’’ so that in an emergency or planned move, all are placed where they can make the maximum contribution and be
most fully developed. This also may mean ‘‘prodding’’ the CEO, since
no one likes to confront the possibility of their own disappearance or
death.
One leader who confronted and accepted his disappearance and
death long before it took place was Jesus. He consciously prepared his
followers to take up their complementary responsibilities after he was
gone, giving specific instructions as well as inspirational motivation. He
even gave his ‘‘executives’’ new names befitting their new roles. To the
disciple formerly known as Simon, he said, ‘‘And I tell you that you are
Peter [which means rock], and on this rock I will build my church.’’
(Matt. 16:18)
A modern example of someone who knew the importance of devel-
oping and appointing a successor is Roberto Goizueta of Coca-Cola.
‘‘To Goizueta, succession was the logical culmination of a program he
designed to develop and promote talented people. He saw the decision
to delegate authority as one of his three main tasks . . . And he saw
designating a successor as the ultimate act of delegation.’’5
‘‘In the beginning’’ of biblical leadership, leadership development
and succession planning were not done consciously. Much of the activi-
ties took place naturally and spontaneously. The experience of Noah
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
and the flood, for instance, makes any ‘‘Outward Bound’’ or similar
‘‘outdoor education’’ experience seem like a leisurely float down a bab-
bling brook (which indeed many of them are). But as time passed, the
nation’s leaders began to realize that they would survive as a people and
a culture only if they had strong leaders who could defend them against
outside threats (Philistines, Egyptians, lions, and wolves) and internal
decay (loss of purpose, idol-worship, excessive jousting for power).
Particularly with the institution of the monarchy (but even before), it
was imperative that systems be put into place to assure the competency,
purposefulness, and morality of top leadership, and also that there was a
‘‘leadership engine’’ capable of producing the next generation of lead-
ers. Then as now, it was important to develop a system of mentoring
and role modeling and to provide developmental assignments to pro-
spective leaders, whether they were royalty or not.
Noel Tichy has written, ‘‘A person may have all the traits of a leader,
but if he or she doesn’t personally see to the development of new lead-
ers, the organization won’t be sustainable.’’6 The ‘‘organization’’ that
began with the Bible has sustained itself for almost sixty centuries; mod-
ern corporations would do well to borrow some of its techniques.
MENTORS, COACHES, AND ROLE MODELS
One of the most vivid images from the Bible is that of Moses mentoring
Joshua in the ‘‘tent of meeting.’’ These sessions are particularly intrigu-