American Way Magazine Article

EXECUTIVE 2000
By Melissa Chessher

Meet Jim Crupi. His global connections rival FedEx. His resume reads like a crazy quilt of experience. And presidents and CEO's seek out his business wisdom. We suggest you pay attention.

Speculating about tomorrow is as old as Adam. There's just something about the human condition that makes guessing, worrying, hoping about the future's contents a necessary component of today. And whether it's predictions about the number of Elvis sightings in fast-food parking lots or picks of the hottest stocks, people pay to hear about tomorrow. But there's something odd about economic predictions - maybe because there's an implicit pocketbook link or maybe because much of economic forecasting has a dark quality (downsizing, anyone?). Whatever the reason, they just lack the frivolity of a good Elvis or Liz Taylor prognostication. However, as a former Harvard economics professor and noted author John Kenneth Galbraith once said, the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

A recognized authority on international business, leadership and the future, Dr. James Crupi challenges traditional assumptions about power, authority, status, and achieving success.

But when you come across someone with obvious business smarts and a sense of humanity who sounds as if he knows what he's talking about, you pay attention. Meet Jim Crupi, president of Strategic Leadership Solutions and a recognized authority on international business, future trends, and leadership development. A former US Army company commander, Crupi has served as a consultant to US presidents as well as many Fortune 1000 corporations, including Coca-Cola Co., Turner Broadcasting Corporation, and AT&T, to name a few. A self-described family man with a reflective disposition, he considers his faith and family his highest priorities. Crupi's the kind of person who prefers handshakes to formal business agreements, and to make sure he knows what he's talking about, he reads about 30 magazines and at least two books a month, and travels about 250,000 miles a year. He also happens to be just the man you need to listen to about the approaching millennium.

AMERICAN WAY: You do a lot of work with executives all over the world. What do you perceive as the biggest "not getting it" areas?

JIM CRUPI: Couple of areas. Probably the biggest thing leaders need to understand is that authority is a luxury they no longer have. A good question executives might ask themselves is, "If they take away my title will they follow me?" An executive must learn to be a leader who is more of a symphony conductor, an architect, a coach, not a leader who is more like a general, an authoritarian type. That's not how [executives] got to where they are and so they say, "Why should I change?" And for somebody to come in and say, "You gotta be more coachlike, you gotta be more of a team player," it doesn't mean anything to them ... [But] the day of the know-everything manager is over. Not only do they not know everything, everybody knows they don't know everything. In the old days, you were a manager because you had the knowledge and you had the power based on that knowledge. You had insight. People weren't going to make decisions unless you said it ... All that has changed. The object [now] is to take the brilliance of the ideas of the people who work with you and focus on them ... to affect the direction of the business, to affect growth, and to affect strategic issues. Most managers don't get that.

Another issue is that while people talk about globalization, they have no idea just how important it really is to the future of their companies. When you look at [most boards of directors in the United States], they are all Americans ... The truly global companies understand that they can't afford to be like that.

The third thing executives don't get is that the nature of what a company does for employees is going to change dramatically. No company, in my opinion, seven or eight years from now, is going to pay an employee a pension. The are going to give the employees the money and they are going to tell the employees, "It's your responsibility to manage your own retirement." ... Companies aren't going to pay healthcare insurance anymore. They are going to give you the money they would have contributed toward healthcare and they are going to say, "Hey, it's your responsibility to manage your own healthcare. It's not mine."

AW: What will be the most important skills for executives in the new millennium?

JC: The leaders of the future, whether they are executives, politicians, educators, are going to have to do two things really, really well. They are going to have to learn to talk in pictures, and they are going to have to be storytellers. It is ironic to me that we are in a media/technological age and what we really want are leaders who can talk in parables. How's that for a spiritual irony? I'll give you an example ... When I was in South Africa a couple of years ago, I was in Johannesburg and I was with Nelson Mandela and there were about forty of us in the room. [Someone asked], "President Mandela, how could you have spent twenty-seven years of your life in prison?" Now, you would have thought Mandela would say, "Well, don't you understand that apartheid is morally wrong and there are fifteen reasons why I was willing to do this" and list those reasons. Well, people would have agreed with five, disagreed with five, and been in the middle on the other five. He didn't do that. He said, "I need to blame this on my mother. Years ago my mother taught me there are only three kinds of people in this world. One person goes through life and leaves nothing behind. Not even their name. Another kind of person does bad things to people. And another kind of person leaves his life just a little bit better that they found it. How could I have let my mother down?" You could have heard a pin drop in that room. The moral imperative was obvious. And we were all with him. Why? Because we all have mothers. See? That's power. And if you ask me who are going to be the real significant leaders of the future, it's going to be the philosopher queens and kings. It's going to be the people who understand how to communicate visually.

AW: How important is the individual going to be in the next millennium?

JC: Boy am I glad you asked that question. Maybe that would be my number one thing that executives don't get. In fact, I want to make it my number one. Executives don't get that the new unit of business is the individual, not the company ... When one person can carry around the computing power that a medium-sized company had in 1985, then you've changed the rules of the game ... And so what does that mean? Three primary things: Jobs are going to follow people, not the other way around. Companies are going to where the workers are; workers are not coming to the companies ... There's a company [in Atlanta] called the Southern Company. Last night, while you and I were asleep, their technological software problems were being solved in Bangalore, India ... The war for talent that is about to kick in in this society is mind-boggling. The third thing is that the companies will advertise work to be done, not job positions. We call this outsourcing. Look on the Internet. Work to be done. And that's another whole discussion. The Internet is as radical a system as the invention of the telephone.

AW: Faith Popcorn's new book (Clicking: 17 Trends That Drive Your Business and Your Life) is about the changing role and the growing power of women in the future. What are your thoughts about women in the working world?

JC: Women were locked out of the economics of the past. That tells me that they're locked into the economics of the future because they don't have the paradigm problem that men have in the modern economy. They weren't part of the old economy, and because of that they are naturally suited to not get locked into looking at things a certain way. Plus, women tend to be more process-oriented, which is exactly the skill you need in a team-building, information- oriented society. So women are going to have more influence than they've ever had in their lives.

AW: I saw a statistic in The New York Times that said that the percentage of married women with pre-school age children who work outside their home has increased five times over what it was in 1950.

JC: Yeah. But guess what else is happening? Women who go out in this work force are saying, "This isn't what I thought it was cracked up to be. And not only that, there are still issues I have to deal with ..."

AW: Like the laundry.

JC: Yes, and that being a mom is really important and it's more important than work. Now the irony is that we're moving into an information age where women can work out of their homes, they can do things. In a funny way, technology may turn the home into the agricultural field of the past, where parents work alongside children, children learn values, you're able to maximize time with kids, and interaction of work ethic and values begins to take on a whole new meaning in the lives of these children who are moving into this post-industrial society.

AW: Wouldn't that be great.

JC: Absolutely. It's where it's going. Now women have a choice, a much more dynamic choice. And they are able to start a business inside the home. Right now, if things keep going the way they are going, fifty percent of the businesses in this country will be owned by women. Forty-seven percent of the work force will be female.

AW: Hearing you talk about women's strengths reminds me of what former labor secretary Robert Reich called symbolic analysts-workers who are great at sorting through the information and deciding what's important. He predicted that they'll be the upper crust of the employment pool.

JC: Women and minorities in general are going to gain more influence, [because] if you're overwhelmed with information and you've got to make quick decisions, how do you make those decisions? You make them on the basis of intuition. You go with your instincts. Most people who have been in a minority position have wonderfully developed instincts. They've had to develop those instincts to survive. Now when you apply those instincts to a world of work, a world of fast change, they become major competitive advantages. If you don't have instinctive abilities, you are not going to be as effective a decision maker in the future as you were in the past. How do you develop intuitive decision making skills? You have to know a lot more about a lot of different things ... You [have to be] extra sensitive to little pieces that to other people may not mean a lot, but ... could be the dawning of a major thread of opportunity.

AW: Would you briefly capsulize how you organize business leaders by generations?

JC: We're talking about a primarily male, predominantly US phenomenon. You've got the first generation: sixty-five to eighty-five, product-oriented, authoritarian, traditional, conservative. They built the country, the communities, the corporations. They believe the way you make things happen is you get a small group of people, you put money on the table, and you move unilaterally. Then you've got this second generation: fifty-six to sixty-four [who] grew up under McCarthyism, where stepping out of line was dangerous. They had to deal with limited commitment, parents who were traumatized by the Depression, and grew up believing every dollar was earned at risk ... They're probably the finest managers we've ever produced; they took management and made it a science. They're perceived by the first and third generation as transitional. Then you have the third generation: thirty-five to fifty-fivish, baby-boomer types extended. And they're coming in now and they're conservative but they’re not traditional, and they don't believe the way you get things done is with a small group of people, money on the table, move the commodity, and make it happen, because life is too complex, information is too specialized, society is too diverse. You have to build networks and coalitions to get things done. It's a different kind of leadership.

AW: How does all of that relate to the business environment?

JC: The explanation I like to give is using a sports analogy. The [old] style is like a football team: Quarterback calls the plays, halfbacks run the score, linemen block. When I played on the line in school, I understood that I wasn't going to score. I could blame the quarterback, I could blame the halfback, they could blame me. If you translate this into business, manufacturing blames sales, sales blames marketing, marketing thinks the financial people are clueless, and everybody thinks the executive team is absolutely clueless. There's a lot of finger pointing.

AW: What's the new model?

JC: The new model is like a basketball team. Anybody can score. Get the ball to the open person. Individual skills are highly important. You can have a Michael Jordan, but you still may not win without coordinated effort. Flexibility is demanded. Mistakes are highly visible. There's always constant change. You organize and reorganize, always looking for the opening to win ...

This is a generation that understands that the power they have is greater than it is ever going to be. Years ago, if you wanted to build a newspaper or a newsletter, you'd have gone out and gotten investors, hired editors and writers, built printing presses et cetera. Now, if you have a computer, what you can do is mind-boggling. The only investor my son needs, for example, is his dad. People are starting businesses for very little money ... In my opinion, this is not about resources, this is about will ... One of my favorite stories is, in Vietnam, we had flights go over every day to bomb bridges, trying to keep the Vietnamese from crossing those rivers. But they moved thousands across those rivers. And a friend of mine was in Vietnam, and he was talking to a Vietnamese businessman who at the time of the war was a twenty-four year old Vietnamese general. At the end of the meeting, he asked the guy, "How'd you get them across the river?" And the guy says, "Well, we built the bridges six inches under the water." Who builds bridges six inches under the water? Committed people with limited resources who outthink their competition. So my point is, if I really want to find out how good you are, I'm not going to give you more resources; I'm going to take them away. You're going to get real creative real fast. This is more about what you do with what you have than what you have.

AW: Back to the generations. I think we left one out.

JC: You've got this generation that you might call the baby busters: twenty-four to thirty-four, more or less ... They are going to be more liberal. They are going to define success not by what happens in the head, but by what happens in the heart. The baby boomers want to change things; the baby busters want to fix things. They think things are broken. They look around and they say, "You've raised me in a society with the highest divorce rate, you took away the one thing that meant something to me - a human relationship. You bankrupted my country. You destroyed my environment and you're telling me what to do?" This is a generation that looks at the baby boomers and says, "I'm not going to wait until I'm your age to realize what is really important in life. This is more about making a life than it is making a living. You have sacrificed too much and I'm not going to do it and not only am I not going to do it, I don't have to do it. Because I have flexibility ... If I'm talented and educated, I can build a business, I can carve out an economic niche." And as we move into the twenty-first century, and the skills shortage hits in key areas, they are going to be the one's interviewing people; people aren't going to interview them. This has already started to happen in certain areas.

AW: How has competition changed?

JC: The biggest change is that if you think you're in an industry today, you are going to die. For example, why didn't bankers see the AT&T Universal Card coming? Because they were bankers. The notion that a telecommunications company could come out with a credit card never entered their minds. So the biggest change is that you can no longer look around your industry and say, "There's where my competition is coming from." Your competition may come from the software engineers, from areas totally outside what you are doing. Why didn't Xerox see Canon coming? Because they thought Canon made cameras. Never mind that the core technology was image reproduction. So you've got to really understand the core of your business so you don't get blinded by industry think.

AW: People love to know or hear what experts think are going to be the hot jobs. What are your thoughts on that?

JC: You know, I'm not into that kind of stuff. I can sit here and think, this is kind of a no-brainer. When you look at society and where it is going, what do you have to have? ... You're either going to have to be extraordinarily talented or educated. That doesn't mean Ph.D.; you could go to a technical school. But being a high school graduate isn't enough anymore. You've got to have some sort of education beyond that or some kind of talent or skill you learn you have and figure out how to maximize its value.

I could sit here and say that the hot jobs are software engineers. If you can write code, you can write your ticket. If you know how to fix a computer, you can write your ticket. I could go into all these little things. And they wouldn't be any different than what anybody else is going to say to you. Now we come back to what I believe. Just because those are hot jobs (A) doesn't mean you are going to enter them, (B) doesn't mean that you'll be successful.

AW: What does the average businessperson need to know about the future?

JC: The average businessperson needs to know that, number one, their marketplace is not domestic, it's global. Number two, they are fundamentally going to have to change the way they lead and manage people. Number three, the speed of change is only going to get faster. Number four, their experience is not as valuable as it used to be - only their ability to adjust, adapt, and leverage that experience is. That's part of this paradigm shift of freedom versus responsibility, recognizing that the name of the game now is giving people freedom so they can prove that they are responsible, rather than saying they have to show that they are responsible before they get freedom.

AW: Why will our experience no longer be valuable?

JC: Things are moving so fast that if you hold on to your experience too long, you'll get trapped into old ways of looking at things. When you have a paradigm shift, everything goes to ground zero. What does that mean? It's not what you've been taught that matters. It's how fast you can learn. Can you learn faster than the person next to you?