Leadership and the God Problem

A little question

In his book Good To Great, Jim Collins poses a small but very interesting question:

What is the key to organisational excellence?  Why do some businesses thrive whilst others bumble along at the most mediocre of levels?

The answer is obvious…  Leadership

• If you have an operations problem you need better leadership
• Profit problem – better leadership
• Poor employee engagement – leadership will fix it

Amazon has Jeff Bezos, Apple had Steve Jobs. The cure and cause of all organisational problems is leadership.

The people follow the example of those above them ~ Chinese Proverb

Is it really that simple?  Is the reason for all organisational problems simply poor leadership?

Is our faith in leadership based on fact or belief?

In the Middle Ages people were beset by a whole host of problems…

• Plague
• Pestilence
• Earthquakes
• Floods
• Fires
• Famine

What was the cause and cure of all middle-ages man’s problems?  – Well, we have “stone age man”.

The answer was obvious… God

700 years ago they put their hearts and souls into worshipping their God and he solved their problems.

Take a good look at York Minster and think about how it was built.  Worshipping God was a truly serious business.  What could we build now with that much manpower?  Think about it for a while and you quickly realise how much they must have believed that God was the answer to all their problems.

Now we know differently

Far be it from me to decry the existence of a god, but today we understand the world a little differently:

• We understand where disease comes from and can cure much of it.
• We understand weather patterns and can protect ourselves from them.
• Famine is largely a man-made problem, not an environmental one.

We have come to realise that the solution to all our problems isn’t simply to worship God.

So here is the conundrum…

Is it ignorance that makes us think that good (God-like) leadership is the cure to all of our woes?

Maybe there is there something else going on.  Is leadership the only answer?

I have no idea.  But it is an interesting question.