Page 74 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS FOCUS ON THE MISSION

to stay true to his department’s mission and get the job done and his prin-
cipal’s ability to stand back and trust him to do it. The White House
Fellows’ first program director, Tom Carr, said, “Great followers not only
solve their boss’s problems, but they also keep a close eye on their boss’s
boss’s problems. The president wanted Interior, as its mission, to bring
parks closer to people, and Veblen instinctively dove into getting that done.
He didn’t sit on the sidelines ‘learning about government.’ He sought and
got a grant of authority from his boss and struck out on his own to help
carry out the department’s mission.”
Veblen would return to his business career with Cargill and a decade
later would found two nationally prominent agribusiness consulting
firms—Food System Associates, Inc., and Enterprise Consulting, Inc.—
whose mission was to provide business leaders with the help they need to
identify and focus on their core mission and grow their businesses in an
increasingly harsh global business environment. Convener of The Superior
Business Firm Roundtable, Veblen recently authored The Way of Business:
An Inquiry into Meaning and Superiority, whose mission is to provide
American business practitioners and the general public with insight into
the role of business in society.
To be a great leader, you have to be intensely focused on the core mis-
sion of your organization: know it, understand it, and live it. It’s the filter
that lets in what you want to be spending your energy on and keeps out
unnecessary tasks that waste your valuable time. Anyone who has been in
the military will tell you that one of the first things you learn in boot camp
is that the mission is everything. Without it, people are left to flounder and
ultimately to fail.
Never forget that what counts in the end is results. The organization
must perform and achieve its mission; otherwise the organization is rud-
derless, its people lost. Make sure everyone in your organization can answer
these questions: Who are we? What do we do? Whom do we serve? At the
end of the day, the mission is the true North Star that guides every action
you take.

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