Five Leadership Tips Informed by a Life of Learning: Business Legend Fred Smith

Writer’s note: This interview, two weeks before Fred Smith died, turned out to be the very last of his long, long career. And it occurs to me that the sadness at Fred’s death is dwarfed by the impact of his life. In only one interview, that impact almost knocked me over. As I was leaving our extended time talking, I asked if he’d be getting out of bed. He matter-of-factly said no. Then he declared, as he does, “Death is the gateway to eternity.”

Mostly, I knew that Fred Smith was in his nineties—a relic born circa 1912 and by some act of God still dispensing leadership advice in 2007. That’s sweet, I thought. Zig Ziglar dedicated a book to him. That’s sweet too. Howard Butt admired him. Christianity Today named an international award for him. His bio said he was veep of operations for Gruen Watch Company, consultant to Mobil, Caterpillar, Genesco. In Dallas, he built a food packaging brokerage firm. Awards and honorary degrees seemed to trail him.

All impressive, but now, for goodness’ sake, he was ninety-five.

I also knew his weekly “Breakfast with Fred” meetings (www.breakfastwithfred.com ) were well-attended. And though my mental picture of that was stuffed chairs, doilies, and dusty Venetian blinds, some interest was piqued.

So I called to set an appointment and actually got sweet Fred, who boomed, “What other has-beens are you talking to?”

And I arrived—something told me to be punctual—to a hospital bed in an open and airy back bedroom to meet Mr. Smith, tall and commanding even when horizontal, prepared for the interview with five salutary statements, supporting points, and illustrations.

“Let’s take some of my ideas that I don’t see written about much. This will give you something fresh,” he said in his corner-office voice. Then he watched as I plugged in my laptop and ordered myself next to the bed.

And then he opened his mouth and taught me, saying:

“First, leadership is more than a list of characteristics. It is a chemical mixture of characteristics in light of the times. Churchill was great in war, thrown out in peace, and yet we think of him as one of the great leaders. It’s like biscuits: you have ingredients, mixture, and then the heat that combines them. So the times are important to define the individual’s ability at leadership.”

I was still typing the stiffness out of my fingers and working to keep up. He slowed to my pace.

“General Motors was known to have three or four people who could take over the presidency at the time depending on what they needed. I remember when the vice president of manufacturing was made president—then when Roger Smith was president. You have financial men, legal men . . . the temperature of the times determines who is really a leader. See, you have maintenance leaders and then you have growth leaders.

“One’s a risk taker?” I ventured. Some part of me still hoped this would be a Q&A.

“Yes, there was a time when I’d say the phone company could use a maintenance CEO. But when all the competition in communication came in, you had to have a different type. Same thing with the railroad—missed the boat because they thought they were in the railroad business when they were in transportation.”

Mr. Smith was warming up.

“Peter Drucker said there are three important questions and he gave me those on a placard and signed it. Someone hand me that over there.”

Now I held a small poster signed by Drucker that said:

“My son, Fred, once asked Peter to speak to a group of CEOs. Peter walked into the room and said, ‘Gentlemen, remember the task is the reward.’ ”

We seemed to have slipped onto a frontage road, at least, so I asked a question I’d come in with. I said, “You’re 95 and have had a full life. Some of your most productive years were well after the age when most people retire. What do you have to say about retirement?”

“You just change your focus, change your occupation.”

Glancing again at the questions I’d come in with. I boldly asked another: "Where does a businessman find meaning in life?"

“Can you think of a more meaningful part of life than a job? If you’d gone through The Depression and seen people lined up at employment windows and soup kitchens: men who wanted to support families and couldn’t find jobs. There’s no greater social good than furnishing jobs.”

Then he motioned as if to return to the outline in his mind.

“Point two: Any time you use the word motivation, you should be able to substitute the word thirst. And motivation should always be mutual. If you want people to do what you want, that’s manipulative. If you do what’s mutually helpful, that’s motivation.”

And the motivation is money? Isn’t that a low motivation?

“If you’ve ever been out of a job or not had it, it’s like air. With money you have options, without it you don’t. It’s like blood: I make blood to live; I don’t live to make blood. I always speak of an accumulation rather than a worth. A millionaire may not be worth a plug nickel but he’s accumulated $10 million.”

Fred said he got the thirst thought from Howard Rome, onetime head of psychiatry for the Mayo Clinic.

“I had a penchant for psychiatrists, had several outstanding psychiatrist friends. In fact, the other day I wrote a list of 20 things I’ve learned from psychiatrists.”

Would he mention one?

“I used to lecture with a psychiatrist. He was at our home on my 50th birthday and said, ‘Now that you’re 50, make longer plans.’ I said, ‘Now I know why you’re a psychiatrist, you’re nuts.’ He said, 'No, when you start making shorter plans, your subconscious is telling you to die.’ "

But that was enough straying off topic.

“Point three,” Fred said. “Character is the basis of genuine leadership. Maxey Jarman [his mentor, president of General Shoe, later Genesco] said to worry not whether people like you but whether they respect you. If they respect you, they’ll follow you.”

I asked what he thought of Christians letting soft-faith definitions of leadership turn them into weak leaders.

He said being born again can’t guarantee good leadership. He said there are few good Christian leaders and few good leaders, period. (Later he said: You meet a lot of melon-headed Christians. Their idea of tolerance and charity befuddles their seeing reality.)

Then back to his outline.

“Point four: It’s necessary to want and to know how to use power. You have to want to be a leader.

“Point five: Three books I recommend. I’m sure you read From Good to Great, the greatest book on management I’ve ever read. The best business metaphor I’ve heard: you want the right people on the bus, in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus. Where I would expand that is that he did not talk about the driver of the bus. It’s a great metaphor but the driver has to have the vision and the means of getting there. David Rockefeller, chair of Chase Manhattan Bank said his responsibility as CEO was to cast the vision for the organization.

“The second book is Making the Corps—the story of taking a raw recruit straight through to a full-fledged marine. I read a review of it and thought it was a great management book. In fact, if the church would follow those principals, they’d build strong Christians. Principles like how to help people be dependent on each other and be worthy of that dependence . . . how to be willing to accomplish the mission no matter how difficult. And the pride of being the best.

“The third book is Berle’s book on Power, really an update of Machiavelli’s The Prince. It says the leader needs to know 1) that power is always personal; it needs an organization to amplify it. That’s a wonderful way to say it. And 2) it should always operate on a mandate. I would spend a lot of time in leadership working on the mandate. It must be just as strong for the leader as it is for the followers.

And then he illustrated the idea of a leader's mandate.

“At a high school in Cincinnati where our children played in the band, a young bandmaster understood mandate. He went out to form a championship band, and when you played poorly, he’d say, ‘You can’t play like that in a championship band.' That became the mandate for him—and them. And a mandate should always be commanding to the leader just as much as to the followers.

“Berle’s said, ‘The leader must have an absolutely clear vision of where he wants the organization to go and his team has four qualities: 1) skill and attitude, 2) people bought into the vision, 3) with enough autonomy to be creative in their own right, 4) and accountability—they’ve got to know exactly when and to whom they are accountable.’

“I would really work on mandate and a vision. People need to know what meaningfulness is in what they’re doing.”

Sweet ol’ Fred was delivering his lengthy outline note-free and my fingers were flying.

“A leader has a vision and a great deal of art. As De Pree says, managing is like playing jazz. I developed a system of management in which I went by feeling not by fact, because a feeling always precedes a fact. And if you can read the feelings you can correct.

“Two illustrations:

“There was a survey in New York Philharmonic of the greatest conductor, and Toscanini won because he could anticipate mistakes and keep a player from making them. For example, he’d see a lack of concentration in someone.

“John Wanamaker said of the mule that he balks in his head before he balks in his feet. Not everyone can discern feelings, but if you can, you can avoid unfortunate facts.”

The imposing 95-year-old man in the hospital bed looked straight at me and said:

“I had a vice president who would tear up when he would lie, his eyes would get moist. I learned to watch his eyes and if they were clear, I could believe him. And if they weren’t, I knew he was lying.

“Another thing about a leader: he should know that he’s a supervisor, not a super worker. We had our heat treat department in a corporation, and the foreman was one of the finest heat treat men you could find anywhere. But he looked at everything that came through the department. So when we expanded, we had to change supervisors because he was giving us constipation in the production. Through his orifice everything had to pass.

“See, a leader develops people who can do the job better than he can and then delegates to them. Delegation is the great system by which real leaders, long-term leaders, big leaders, work. A local entrepreneur who owns a big company said that changed his work schedule from 12 hours to six.

“Best advice I ever gave myself: when you take a job, list the things that only you can do and delegate everything else. You’ll find that list is rather short.

“A lot of CEOs are ego driven. It’s totally different if they’re responsibility driven. Maxey was driven by responsibility. He told me once, ‘It’s not our 26 plants, it’s our young people we’ve given the opportunities to be leaders.’

“Truett Cathy has given millions of dollars to young people in scholarships. If you’ve got an ego leader, he satisfies his ego off his positions. If he’s responsibility driven, he sacrifices his ego to his organization.”

"That’s asking for a lot of maturity," I said. " It would almost take Christian commitment."

“When I was lecturing in business, I’d say that my idea of a good executive is a tough mind with a soft heart. A tough mind to diagnose and a soft heart to treat. Christ had a tough mind; he said you’re going to hell, a dirty sinner. I know preachers who wouldn’t say that to me. Then Christ said, ‘Though you are a dirty sinner going to hell, I love you enough to die for you.’ With his tough mind, he diagnosed; with his soft heart, he prescribed. And now I’ve made all the points.

I murmured, "Wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove". And I said, in closing, "One small question: did you enter business already a believer?"

I don’t know. I think when I joined the church at seven . . . I believe I joined the church rather than accepting Christ. But I have never seen a biblical principal that would not work in business: honesty, transparency, humility, truthfulness—all are fundamental to good leadership.

And then Mr. Smith told me that was all the points.

1. Leadership is more than a list of characteristics.
2. Any time you use the word motivation, you should be able to substitute the word thirst. And motivation should always be mutual.
3. Character is the basis of genuine leadership.
4. It’s necessary to want and to know how to use power. You have to want to be a leader.
5. Three books I recommend: From Good to Great, Making the Corps, and Power.

We at TheHighCalling.org respectfully submit a fourth book: Breakfast With Fred published September 4, 2007. And we share this message from his family: "On August 17, 2007, Fred Smith finished the Race and is now in the presence of his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Smith family thanks you for your many prayers."