Managing Leadership^®

Some years ago, I was on a beach of a not-so-remote nation which was developing rapidly. I was looking out to sea with a group of locals who were highly educated, and who seemed perfectly sophisticated and at ease with the modern world.

And then it hove into view: an American aircraft carrier. It steamed majestically by on its way to a nearby port for a shore visit. It was magnificent, unhurried, unperturbed. Capable at once of nuanced flexibility and of terrible focus, it was the most powerful fighting machine on the surface of the globe.

It took a long time to go by. I admired its clean lines, its flight deck bristling with aircraft that could perform reconnaissance and strike missions hundreds of miles distant, its superstructure studded with communications devices spanning the electromagnetic spectrum.

When it began to recede into the harbor, I turned, smiling, to my friends, to share my excitement. But upon observing their expressions, I was struck silent. They had seen something altogether different than had I.

My experience had been of pride and admiration. Theirs had been of something between incomprehending awe and terror; almost worshipful.

These people with whom I watched the passage of this great ship were the children of parents who had only limited contact and familiarity with the world that created such vessels. Their grandparents had even less, essentially none. The cultural undertow flowing through their lives overwhelmed the surface, the superficial knowledge that only this generation had attained, and more tenuously than many know; thin armor indeed as defense against a direct confrontation with such evidence of such development.

In their faces there clearly was no recognition of the bounds that might constrain such power. Indeed, yet greater momentum was given to the really widely held convinction in this region that those who could produce that mighty warship must be able to make the very skies thunder and the deep earth shake.

What else could they do? What could they not do? What are these people to make of it?

Now, this post is not about aircraft carriers, nor is it about who has attained what technology or the circumstances behind that. It is about these perceptions, which are facts in this part of the world.

True or not, hyperbolic or metaphorically insightful, there is no escaping the very real way they influence how everything from history to economic behavior unfold. Receding, persistent, advancing – the tendency to hold views or fears such as these remain to a meaningful extent a part of the intellectual and emotional terrain that all who enter this region, or who host visitors from this region, must learn to navigate.

Tomorrow, we will venture to ask what that all means for all of us. Please do stop by.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of collisions between contrasting world views arising from differing historical experience, please see this latest contribution, published in Business Week, from the “leadership according to . . .” category – this one about how popes lead.

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