Elegant Leadership and Risk Taking

Recently Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of General Electric Co’s NBC Universal Entertainment, told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose: “It’s the sign of a leader to step up and say you know when something’s not working, and have the guts to reverse it”.

By the end of the interview, it was questionable whether Zucker, like Conan O’Brien, would be fired. That is the way we work. Take risks, win and get the equivalent of an Oscar. Lose, and get the boot!

Is there a better way? Can there be a middle ground where what is learned when risk- taking fails gets dissected, and gives those in the loop a chance to reform their thoughts and actions in a more positive way?

What is so often the case is that the “loser” is so busy defending what has happened and is feeling the heatwaves of being under constant attack, there is no time to learn from what has been going on.

As a culture, we are so addicted to winning, and accept that as the only way. We lose, yes – lose both sight of the value of the down side of risk taking, as well as the human cost of defending, explaining and justifying behavior.

Jeff Zucker may be in a stagnant time in his career. He may be used up in his CEO role. On the other hand, he may well be in a fertile time of learning from the mess and come up with some real and juicy ideas that will get NBC out of the doldrums. If he is fired, he will lose and so will whoever replaces him. There is always backlash where the pendulum often swings to the opposite side. Thus, conservative, risk adverse individuals often follow the risk takers and progress is paralyzed.

So, NBC, a paraphrase from the song “Give peace a chance”, think about it and “Give Jeff a chance”.