An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Leadership the Jesuits Way

(3 steps that XYZ Telco didnt do to turn their aspirations into reality)

1. They invited recruits to turn to a corporate aspiration into a personal mission.

2. They created a company culture that stressed heroism, modeling the virtue themselves.
3. They gave each person an opportunity to enlarge himself by contributing meaningfully to an enterprise greater than his own interest. Frederick Herzberg: You cannot motivate anyone to do a job unless he has a good job to do.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

HEROISM: Eliciting great desires Leaders who energized themselves and others through heroic ambitions.

Reaching that performance plateau is enormously challenging in its own right, remaining on that plateau is even harder. A restless countercultural instinct to keep challenging the status quo was built on Jesuits heroism.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

THE POSTURE When a better path presented itself, their change-ready posture of living with the one foot raised inclined them to leap into action instead of stewing indecisively. Throw me out of the door and Ill find a way to climb in the window.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

HEROIC LEADERSHIP
- is motivating oneself to above and beyond performance by focusing on the richest potential of every moment. Company motto: Magis (Latin for more) the restless drive to look for something more in every opportunity and the confidence that one will find it. Its not the job thats heroic; its the attitude that brings about it.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

HOW THE WORLDS LARGEST EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM CAME TO BE Problem: Recruits - will choose from the European educational system

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Standards/Qualifications: - spiritually engaged - totally committed - intellectually superior(in the top 1% of Europes elite) - capable of debating theology in Latin with leading Protestant theologians and of explaining the same ideas in the vernacular peasant children - ready to cross the globe on 48hrs notice - equally comfortable working in university lecture halls as in plague hospitals - ready to take orders or design their own strategies.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Suggested Solutions:
1. Lowering standards just a bit. 2. Aptissimi (the very best) or Quamplurimi et quam aptissimi (as many as possible of the very best)

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Applied Solution: Molding the raw human material themselves. They opened residential communities for their trainees within the precincts of universities at Paris, Louvain, Cologne and elsewhere. The Jesuit managers supervised trainee spiritual development while Europes finest faculties provide academic formation. Problem: Duke of Gandia

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Solution:
Open a school there for the citys youth and shoehorn a few of their own Jesuit trainees into the classes. 40th anniversary: 150 colleges formed the bedrock of Catholic higher education in Europe. It became the most influential higher education network.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Existing system:
- No elementary or Secondary education - No free or subsidized education - No minimum standards for entering the profession (teacher)

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

Martin Luther : primary education

Jesuits: Secondary education

Advantages: Global Organization and ready responsiveness

Strength: Matched the needs of times

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

HEROIC LEADERSHIP GETS DIFFICULT: COMING UP SHORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS Heroic leadership is never ending, challenging work. It involves the willingness to continue questioning and probing ones approach, tactics, values and culture. Leadership is often is a swim against the current. And as hard as it s to swim upstream, it becomes all the more difficult once the seductive opportunity to turn around and drift with the flow presents itself.

An Uninterrupted Life of Heroic Deeds How Heroic Leaders Envision the Impossible and Do It

THE CHALENGE OF CLINGING TO HEROISM

Modo de Proceder: be mobile, open to new ideas, blind to national borders, mutually supportive and restlessly disposed to continuous improvement.