Are you a Sisyphean or Archimedean Leader ?
“… the world will do most of the work for you, provided you cooperate with it by identifying how it really works and aligning with those realities. If we do not let the world teach us, it teaches us a lesson.”
- Joseph Tussman
In Greek mythology Sisyphus was the founder and King of Ephyra (now Corinth) who was punished by Hades for cheating death. His punishment was rolling a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down every time it neared the top — repeating this for eternity. Tasks that are laborious and futile are therefore described as Sisyphean.
We obtain leverage when an input force is amplified to provide a greater output force. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world” was attributed to Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and scientist who lived from 287 to 212 BC.
Visionary CEO Andy Grove[i] described managerial leverage within organisations as “the output generated by a specific type of work activity. An activity with high leverage will generate a high level of output; an activity with low leverage, a low level of output.” Grove believed that “A manager … must shift his energy and attention to activities that will most increase the output of his organization. In other words, he must move to the point where his leverage will be the greatest”. The larger the leadership role, the more important leverage becomes. In the words of General Stanley McChrystal[ii] “Unless you are going to do the task yourself, then the development time you spend on the people that are going to do that task, whether they are going to lead people doing it or are actually going to do it, every minute you spend on that is leveraged, is exponential return”.
We can think of leadership as a continuum bounded by “Sisyphean” and “Archimedean” leaders. The characteristics of, and outcomes from each archetype are summarised below -
If the case is so compelling then why aren’t there more Archimedean leaders ? Venture capitalist and author John Doerr says the answer can be found in where leaders spend their time -“The art of management,” Grove wrote, lies in the capacity to select from the many activities of seemingly comparable significance the one or two or three that provide leverage well beyond the others and concentrate on them.” As we progress into larger roles, each change requires that we let go of the things that worked in previous roles. And those things that are higher leverage, the force multipliers, are difficult. I have been personally challenged with this in leadership roles and observed many others grapple with it. The table below summarises the limit case of where each archetype spends their time –
There is another facet of how we use our time if we are to avoid our own Sisyphean reality. It is not just what we are doing, leverage also comes from time spent thinking about the future. Having studied thousands of leaders over decades, Roselinde Torres[iii] believes that “Leadership in the 21st century is defined and evidenced by three questions.” The first of these questions, Torres says, is “Where are you looking to anticipate the next change to your business model or your life? The answer to this question is on your calendar[iv]. Who are you spending time with? On what topics? Where are you traveling? What are you reading? And then how are you distilling this into understanding potential discontinuities, and then making a decision to do something right now so that you’re prepared and ready?”.
What distinguishes great leaders ? Torres says it is their mindset, “Great leaders are not head-down. They see around corners, shaping their future, not just reacting to it.”
[i] High Output Management, Andy Grove, 1983
[ii] General Stanley McChrystal interview with Tim Ferris, July 2015
[iii] For further detail refer to the stratums of work described by Elliot Jaques in Requisite Organisation, A Total System for Effective Managerial Organisation, 2017
[iv] What it takes to be a great leader, Roselinde Torres TED October 2013. In her talk the other two questions are “what is the diversity measure of your personal and professional stakeholder network?” and “are you courageous enough to abandon a practice that has made you successful in the past?”
[v] Aligns with Grove who wrote “strategic changes doesn’t just start at the top. It starts with your calendar” i.e. where are you spending your time.
