Page 47 - How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

THE WHY OF WORK

and values. These individuals must balance their profes-
sional dreams, career enthusiasm, family relationships, and
retirement plans against business realities, office politics,
the demands of growth, and larger economic contexts. Let’s
face it: leaders who attend only to personal needs (theirs or
their employees’) may create caring organizations that end
up bankrupt. On the other hand, leaders obsessed only
with making money will likely be socially and emotionally
bankrupt if they fail at other things that matter: reputation,
relationships, sustainable purpose, engaged employees, and
the simple but invaluable experience of having fun at work.
Many insightful thinkers have attended to these issues.
This chapter summarizes the remainder of the book by
synthesizing and integrating diverse disciplines into our defi-
nition of how leaders create personal meaning and abundant
organizations.

From Turnaround to Transformation

Meeting both organizational and individual goals is seldom
easy. Leaders effectively connect the two when they create
a clear line of sight from employee meaning to customer
and investor confidence. McKell, the CEO of a large global
bank, survived the economic demands of turnaround by
streamlining staff, cutting costs, managing risk, divesting
toxic assets, and stabilizing profitability. McKell then real-
ized that to go forward he needed not only to complete the
economic turnaround but to begin a more fundamental
transformation as well—to change how both employees and
customers perceived and felt about the volatile but some-
times faceless bank.

28