HBS: Can the "Masks of Command" Coexist with Authentic Leadership?

Bill George, former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic and now a professor at the Harvard Business School, thinks he knows the answers.

George lays out the elements of "authentic leadership" in his book of the same name. They are:

"(1) pursuing purpose with passion: Authentic leaders must first understand themselves and their passions;

(2) practicing solid values: values are personal, but integrity is required of all leaders;

(3) leading with heart: it means having passion for your work, compassion for the people you serve, empathy for the people you work with, and the courage to make difficult decisions;

(4) establishing enduring relationships: people insist on access to, as well as openness and depth of relationships with, their leaders;

(5) demonstrating self-discipline: this requires accepting full responsibility for outcomes and holding others accountable for their performance."

Working with Mother Teresa

An important step towards Medical Onshoring (pat. pend.) ..

Once upon a time, someone whom I befriended volunteered for a year with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. My friend's letters were very gripping -- how, at the moment of death, the very great and mutual gratitude between patient and caregiver that fairly glowed. Pretty intense stuff. (And yes, Calcutta was like the Mumbi of "Slumdog Millionaire").

When my friend, age 34, returned to the U.S., many questions arose about what to do next. After long -- and sometimes pointed -- discussions, my friend decided to apply to medical school. Fifty of them. I suggested 10 was probably enough. At least 15 applications went out.

As a "Public Ivy" master's graduate, I explained what was required. I edited the admissions essay.

Accepted at Northwestern. Accepted at Harvard. Dang.

This was just another step in the process of developing Medical Onshoring (pat.-pend.). And doing what you can, with what you have.

Not politics. Not power and turf-wars. Not just money.

Just doing what has to be done, 110%.

A cautionary tale: Harvard's financial hubris

Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new school year began, but at Harvard University it was as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard's Cambridge, Mass. home, the start of a grand expansion that was to eventually almost double the size of the university. Budgets were plump, and students from middle-class families were getting big tuition breaks under an ambitious new financial aid program. The lavish spending was made possible by the earnings from Harvard's $36.9 billion endowment, the world's largest. That pot was supposed to be good for $1.4 billion in annual earnings.

Behind the scenes, though, a different story was unfolding. In a glassed-walled conference room overlooking downtown Boston, traders at Harvard Management Co., the subsidiary that invests the school's money, were fielding questions from their new boss, Jane Mendillo, about exotic financial instruments that were suddenly backfiring. Harvard had derivatives that gave it exposure to $7.2 billion in commodities and foreign stocks. With prices of both crashing, the university was getting margin calls--demands from counterparties (among them, jpmorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs (nyse: GS - news - people )) for more collateral. Another bunch of derivatives burdened Harvard with a multibillion-dollar bet on interest rates that went against it.

Res ipsa.

Harvard's Michael "Healthcare" Porter in Israel

America's best in Israel ..

"No, No , No" exclaimed Michael Porter, chastising the Associate Director of a major medical center in Israel, "You have to raise your hand." Such blatant breaches of HBS etiquette were relatively frequent over the course of the week long IXP, which drew a wide range of participants, many of whom were unfamiliar with the peculiarities of the typical HBS classroom.

The Value-Based Health Care Delivery IXP, co-led by Professor's Porter, and Elizabeth Teisberg (formerly of HBS and currently a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia), was a multi-disciplinary immersion program based on the framework presented in the book, Redifining Healthcare. The book, which diagnoses the problem of competition in the modern healthcare system, introduces a broad set of strategies which providers, payers, employers and the government can use to improve value. The immersion program was designed as an extension of the book, and involved case studies and subsequent discussions of companies and organizations who have implemented strategies that demonstrate the principles outlined by Porter and Teisberg.

Program participants came from all corners of the healthcare sector. In addition to 17 HBS MBA students with prior healthcare experience (10 of whom were MD MBA's), there were students from Harvard School of Public Health, Kennedy School of Government, and Harvard Medical School. Participants also included many medical residents and practicing physicians, most of whom were affiliated with hospitals in the Boston area, including several heads of departments and several senior surgeons and administrators. Finally, there was also a significant international contingent, with participants flying in from Ireland, Israel, England, and Canada.