NEVER RULE WITHOUT A MAGICIAN, A SAGE AND A FOOLClareClare212009-11-09T15:52:00Z2009-11-09T15:52:00Z1419723923Novak Associates199562806411.6568NEVER RULE WITHOUT A MAGICIAN, A SAGE AND A FOOLHow Great Advisors Help Leaders Soar- While Keeping Both Feet On The GroundCLARE NOVAKTHE KING’S JOB“We here at Profit Kingdom have a rigorous process for hiring new Kings. We’ve done our homework and read all the research on the characteristics Kings are supposed to possess. Furthermore, the behavior-based questions we have already asked determined that you have, in the past, demonstrated leadership behaviors. So congratulations, you’re our new King.”“Delighted. Looking forward to serving as your King. One small thing, have you got a job description?”“Now, see here, we noble types hired you as King because we thought you knew what you were doing. If you can’t do the job, there are other unemployed Kings we’ve been talking to.”“Just testing my subjects. Right then. I’m off to do what it is I do.”“That’s the spirit.”Later at the Chancery of Human Resources our King asks . . .“Lord High Chancellor of Human Resources?”“Yes, Your Grace?”“Have you got a job description for the position of King?”“Here, your Grace.” LHC, HR, sure she was being tested, had the requested job description, neatly written on foolscap, at the ready.“This is just a task list. ‘Create shareholder value; raise the kingdom to the nextplateau through maintaining a team spirit.’ Don’t I have staff to do that sort of thing?”“Yes, Your Grace.”“So what do I do?” “Just see your staff does those things, your Grace?”“Ah.”The King set about doing the only thing he was sure he was supposed to do, meet his senior staff. They were good people, all of whom seemed to see a different big picture and clearly believed their part was the most important part of the big picture. The Deputy Chancellor of the Aggiotage was on a mission to control the Acquisitions Department so as to wring every centime from favorable exchange rates available by purchasing from other lands. This put him clearly at odds with the Vice Chancellor of Acquisitions (Purchasing) who was desperately trying to limit favored-nation trading partner status to nations that actually delivered on their promises of goods and services. And the Lord High Chancellor of Operations didn’t see eye to eye with the Deputy Chancellor of Maintenance, heck, even the Master of the bloody Hounds had an opinion on everything. Nothing like contradictory advice to get a King off to a good start.After his one to one meetings with staff, the King wandered the halls of power alone and wondered just what it was he was supposed to do, how he would know if he were doing the job right and if he were really up to the job or whether he’d be faking adequacy for the next fifteen years.Talking to himself in something other than iambic pentameter, the King remembered an ancient definition of King, thanks to an old school chum who read and quoted obscure works of history. “The king is first and foremost a prince in the sense of the Latin word princeps, the first head, and as such he is representative of the community and minister to the common interest.” Not a bad start. Then ofcourse, the King needed to remember, “It is not an honor or a privilege to be king, but a duty which imposes further obligations as the needs of the people increase.” And, as if that were not enough responsibility, there was also this caution, “There are the laws of the state, the rights of the community. These the king must respect. If he violates them, loyalty is no longer expected of the subjects who have a right to rebel.” Sigh. Maybe he wasn’t so thankful for the old friend who quoted John of Salisbury.Fortunately for our ersatz Hamlet, there are plenty of people who have done the job before and even more writers who have analyzed kingly behavior. Unfortunately, much of the analysis focuses on currents in kingship rather than the flow of the river Kingship. Rivers have long histories; currents change quickly. A longer-term view of kingship, revealed in history and myth, yields a remarkably clear and spare job description:Nurture prosperityExercise stewardship of the urge to powerMaintain harmony and balanceRenew the kingdomPerform these four acts as the center of the kingdom, not as its head. Simple, right? Uh huh.Center of the KingdomRolling boulders uphill is tough work, just ask Sisyphus. Kings who place themselves at the top of the kingdom’s power structure create more work for their subjects, who now have to roll everything they do uphill In order to get the King’s attention. What tends to happen is that loyal subjects roll their boulders up the hill to the first flat spot and leave it there for the subject who lives slightly higherup the hill. The second subject may or may not choose to roll the boulder up to the next flat spot. And so on and so on . . . . Darn few boulders make it all the way uphill to the King. This phenomenon has been referred to as CEO disease. The higher in the organization you are, the less information andfeedback you get. One antidote is to rule from the center of the kingdom. When the King is thecenter, rather than the top, at least the subjects get to roll boulders on a level playing field.Susan Scott, who coached chief executives for many years, in her book Fierce Conversations uses a beach ball metaphor to describe organizations, inviting us to imagine each person in the organization is standing on a color on that beach ball. When the LHC, HR is standing on blue and looks down at her feet, her world is blue and when LHC, Aggiotage is standing on green, his world is green. Kings who rule from the center are standing on the spot where all the colors meet. These Kings can see at least a bit of blue and can better understand the blueness of the LHC, HR’s world. The center, where all the colors meet, is the spot through which all of the energy and information flows. Kings standing on that spot are the conduits of energy and information. They have the ability to direct the energy and information received to the place where it is needed. Let’s say The Lord High Chancellor of Finance happens to be standing on an unfortunate spot of red and is on a mission to slash costs; at the same time the Lord High Chancellor of Manufacturing needs to invest in equipment upgrades in order to produce enough to please the Lord High Chancellor of Conquests (Sales). Kings ruling from the center will have enough information to know the internal conflicts exist and to redirect energies to solving the problems. Pity the poor King who doesn’t know what’s going on with all those colors.Nurture ProsperityAn Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription from the second millennium, BCE sets the tone of nurturing prosperity for all to follow. “Thou hast stood as king upon the unyielding land and caused it to flourish.” Causing the land to flourish is the first of two aspects of nurturing prosperity; the second is to protect the flourishing land from external threat.Causing the land to flourish is the first responsibility of the King. It is important to understand that in ancient times the King and the land shared an explicit symbiotic relationship. Present day Kings may acknowledge the symbiotic relationship implicitly, if at all. Some current Kings do concern themselves with running an ecologically healthy kingdom while others pollute with abandon, apparently believing that their kingdom’s polluting ways will have no effect on their health.Historically, a spiritually and physically healthy King meant a spiritually and physically healthy land; a sick, weak or immoral King meant a sickly land. A number of high-profile Kings have been convicted lately for the spiritual ill health of misuse of the kingdom’s funds or falsifying revenues. Their kingdoms are left devastated and subject to takeover by neighboring kingdoms.The King’s first duty, then, was to keep himself physically and spiritually healthy. By this line of reasoning, England’s Henry VIII, old, fat, gout-riddled, and by some standards, morally bankrupt and so drunk on his own righteousness that he declared himself head of the church, was the direct cause of England’s woes, including imprisonments, murders, death sentences by the courts, riots, etc. Henry’s expensive court also rather tended to suck some of the “flourishing” out of land. Henry certainly didn’t corner the market in expensive courts, simply witness the six million dollar birthday bash thrown by a recently dethroned CEO and you’ll clearly see that Henry didn’t have a lock on lavish at the expense of the kingdom. Initially, the symbiosis between King and Land was based on the King’s divinity, as was the case with the Pharaohs of Egypt, or the King’s rule anointed by God as the medieval Kings of Europe. A divine or divinely anointed King had the power to, literally, create a prosperous land by envisioning it. In ancient Egypt, the Eye of Horus is a familiar hieroglyph. The Eye of Horus created what it beheld. Thus, the Divine Pharaoh, through the Eye of Horus, created what he saw. To create prosperity, the Pharaoh needed to envision a prosperous land. Our King of Profit Kingdom probably just calls this creating a vision for the kingdom. Our King would be right to call it that, provided that the vision was of a robust, healthy present and future. Living vision statements with blood and guts and heart do have the power to nurture prosperity for an organization. In Jim Collin’s book Good to Great, are studies that document how economic prosperity results for a company when the CEO leads the people to figure out what they and the company do better than anyone else. This unique vision promotes prosperity for the kingdom. As Moore and Gillette note in The King Within, “Whether he was thought of as divine or mortal, the king’s task was to further and steward the creation the Gods had entrusted to him.” Moms put it much more simply every day, “Take care of that toy because you are not going to get another one.”The ultimate example of nurturing prosperity is the ancient Chinese Lord T’ang. T’ang was noted for storing grain to feed the hungry, giving clothes to the poor, minting coin to buy back children sold by impoverished parents, and in a final act, sacrificed himself to the gods to end a terrible drought. No current Kings seemed to have attained this level of nurturing. Nurturing the creation the gods had entrusted to the King sometimes means fighting external enemies; this is the second aspect of nurturing prosperity. Kings throughout history mobilized citizens to defend the land against invaders. Good Kings picked their fights judiciously. Tuthmose I and Tuthmose II in Egypt were renowned for driving the Hyksos invaders from the land of Egypt. Because Egyptians believed it was necessary to have an Egyptian Pharaoh on the throne in order for Egypt to prosper, removing the Hyksos invaders from the throne would, by definition, restore prosperity. Ramses II was also known as a great King. Not only did Ramses II live long and prosper, he also extended Egypt’s borders across the Sinai thus securing for Egypt the primary land route her invaders inevitably chose. By closing this invasion route, Ramses II helped secure Egypt’s prosperity for posterity.History makes it clear that not all fights are good fights and therein lies the difficulty. As Richard Olivier says in Inspirational Leadership, the King “. . . is not looking simply to pick a fight, he wants to pick the right fight. That is, a fight he has the right to pick.” A fight he has the right to pick. This links stewardship back to the King’s moral and spiritual health; a morally healthy King will only pick fights he has a right to pick. Olivier discusses the case of Henry V of England, who asks his spiritualadvisor, the head of the Church, if he has the moral and legal right to pursue his claim over France. It is only after his spiritual advisor gives an unequivocal yes that Henry V begins to act on his vision of defeating France and winning back England’s land in France.There must be consideration of moral and spiritual guidance before deciding which fight to choose. A wise King will consult trusted advisors and carefully consider their input before deciding to fight. In the Bhagvagita, a sacred text of ancient India, no less a luminary that the divine Krishna counsels the Lord Arjuna that it is his duty to fight a war. The primary reason Krishna gives for fighting the war is that wicked people were disturbing innocent people. The innocent people were prevented fromplanting their crops and so would lack prosperity.Not all Kings have access to divine intervention and some believe they have it when they don’t. The good King must be able to distinguish between light and darkness, good and evil and other polar opposites. The shadow King chooses wrongly and shows as the bullying dictator or a Pontius Pilot. Each of those wrong choices betrays the land and abdicates responsibility for nurturing prosperity.Modern Kings must also decide which battles they have a right to fight and at what price. Does the King live in peace with a competitor? Engage in price wars with them? Buy them? Fight them on their own ground? These battle decisions impact the prosperity of the kingdom regardless of whether they are won or lost.Exercise stewardship of the urge to powerIn one version of the Arthurian legend, Arthur says:I am king. I must not lie, nor consent to villainy, falsehood or excess. I mustsafeguard reason and light. The faithful king must uphold the law, truth, justice, and faith. I would never wish to be disloyal for any reason, nor do wrong to the weakest or the strongest. I do not wish to be a cause for complaint, nor do I want the usages and custom that I must maintain by my lineage to die.Stewardship of the urge to power begins with the King. The King must practice stewardship of his internal urge to power before all else. Kings must first master themselves and exercise the power to rule their own impulses prior to ruling others. Shakespeare paints Henry the V, when he was still Prince Hal, as a bit of a playboy, drunkard and ne’re do well. At his father’s death, Prince Hal masters himself within a promise to his father and takes the responsibility to be a good King.My gracious liege,You won it, wore it, kept it and gave it to me,Then plain and right must my possession be,Which I with more than common painAgainst all the world will rightfully maintain.Appropriate use of power is key to a balanced kingship and flows from accepting responsibility for that which is the role of the King and letting go of responsibility for that which is not. Two common misuses of personal power by the King include abdicating power and seizing too much power. In Power Kingdom, petty Kings practice either liaises faire rulership or micro-management. Pearson describes the micro-manager perfectly in Awakening the Heroes Within:Shadow Rulers are ogre tyrants operating out of a scarcity mentality, believing thatthere is not enough, so my gain must be their loss. They also want to force others todo things, their way, and have tantrums if they are unsuccessful. If they are thwarted,they punch someone.One need not think too far for mythic examples of Kings misusing power. The Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass screaming “Off with her head” is certainly one. The boss who holds decision-making power tightly, allowing no decisions without his imprimatur is certainly another.Another way in which Kings violate a proper stewardship of their personal power is to try to retain power while abdicating responsibility. King Lear is, again, an exemplar. Lear seeks to retain his status, his retinue, and his expensive lifestyle after having abdicated the responsibility of ruling the kingdom. Lear attempts to substitute perceived power over others, his daughters, for his personal power, derived from his noble birth, long reign and acceptance of responsibility. Lears are rampant in US business. Numerous Kings have run their businesses into the ground while maintaining for themselves the “golden parachutes” of money, possession and power while their subjects are left both jobless and without retirement funds, those having been in now worthless company stock. Good Kings must not only exercise stewardship of their own power, they must also exercise stewardship of the urge to power among the powerful people around them. Knights, Lords and Vice Presidents’ personal power and ambitions all must be managed toward the long-term good of the kingdom. There are two ways to accomplish this: first by directing the desire for power toward a goal that benefits the kingdom, second by directing it against external threats to the kingdom. As an example of the former, King Arthur harnesses the power of his nobles to pursue a sacred quest for the Holy Grail. A Holy Grail, be it real or imaginary, is a positive goal for the kingdom to which thoseseeking power may strive. A business grail might be to achieve increased revenues in a sluggish economy. An example of the latter, directing the urge to power outward, is Henry V directing his nobles toward the goal of regaining English lands from the French. In a contemporary example, Vice Presidents can be directed outward toward capturing new markets or capturing market share from competitors.Failure to exercise stewardship of the urge to power in others can be disastrous to both Kings and kingdoms. Ancient Egypt’s seething caldron of intrigue resulted in the early demise of many contenders to the throne. Pharaohs frequently had many sons, often half brothers, many of them never made it out of childhood due to suspicious circumstances. Even those who made it to the throne had to be vigilant against their half-brothers, uncles and cousins. Woe to the Pharaoh who did not exercise stewardship over the urge to power in his nobles, viziers and family members. In the contemporary world, one marginally performing company had a gaggle of Vice Presidents who, rather than focusing on strengthening the company, focused on strengthening their own positions within the company. Alliances would form among them to target and take out another VP who was perceived to be vulnerable. The remaining VPs would then divide the spoils among themselves. The company eventually went bankrupt. Small wonder. One wonders about the King, who had clearly abdicated while still occupying the throne.Maintain harmony and balanceGood Kings balance opposites to maintain harmony in themselves and in the kingdom. As Moore and Gillette note, “By distinguishing between light and darkness, good and evil, and other polar opposites, discrimination provides us with gnosis, or insightful knowledge.” Alexander the Great cut the Gordian knot with the sword of gnosis. Solomon is legendary for distinguishing between the true and the false mother. Insights from the meeting point of opposites allow the wisdom of a creative solution. Good Kings are able to put “and” where others put “but.” It is possible to cut costs and improve quality.Whether called Ma’at, Dharma, Tao, Torah or both/and thinking, one goal for Kings is to maintain balance between conflict and harmony, change and stability, people and money. The kingdom’s balance and harmony begins within the King. In the Mahabharata, a sacred text of ancient India, a godly personage asks Lord Arjuna “O King, is your wealth being spent properly for protection of the people? Is your mind fixed on virtue? Are you enjoying the pleasures of life? I trust that you do not sacrifice religion for the sake of profit, nor profit for the sake of religion, nor indeed both for the sake of pleasure, which easily tempts men.” At this time Lord Arjuna can reply that yes, he is in balance among these things. Later when Arjuna waffles over whether he should fight a battle, Krishna admonishes him, “You haven’t harmonized your thought, word, and deed. You are thinking one way, but speaking another and acting in still a different way.”“You are thinking one way, but speaking another and acting in still a different way.” How many times has this act of imbalance been juggled by a CEO? It’s rather common for CEOs to tell employees that they are important, that they are the heart and soul of the organization while thinking about layoffs and cutting benefits. When opposites are in balance within the King, harmony results for the kingdom. It is said of Huang-Ti, the Yellow Emperor of China:His major power came from learning the secret harmony of all things . . . . he established cosmic order in China and in doing so, made civilization possible. Nature conformed to his wishes and through him, abundance was offered to the Chinese people.Harmony made the Chinese civilization itself possible. Harmony allows the kingdom to prosper, as resources will not be squandered on internal conflicts. Collins talks about leaders who have harmony in thought, word, and deed. These leaders are successful in creating balanced, prosperous kingdoms.The final balance Kings must maintain to keep harmony is the union of masculine and feminine. The energy of the warrior balanced against the energy of the lover. The balanced King looks to the people and their harmony and the land and its needs.Renew the KingdomKings must regenerate and renew. This might be accomplished literally through marriage and the birth of an heir, symbolically through ritual, or magically through the healing of a wounded King. In Shakespeare’s version of Henry V’s victory at Agincourt, Henry withdraws to England to wait; later the peace process begins with a meeting at which the Duke of Burgundy addresses the nobles present:What impediment (is) there . . . that . . . peaceShould not in this best garden of the world,Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage?Alas, she hath from France too long been chased . . . .One way to insure that garden is for Henry V to marry the princess Katherine. When King Charles agrees to the union, Queen Isabel adds her blessing:God, the best maker of all marriages,Combine your hearts in one, your realms in oneThat never may ill office or fell jealousy,Thrust in between the paction of these kingdomsTo make divorce of their incorporate league;That English may as French, French Englishmen,Receive each other, God speak this “Amen.”While Shakespeare ends Henry V before the issue of an heir, the regeneration of the French farmland devastated by war, presumably, begins. Kings of family-owned businesses may still renew by producing a next generation heir to the business. Other Kings may choose and groom successors to the throne. In a large investment firm, the King had clearly chosen and groomed a successor. Yet,the company held its breath when the day came when the King reached the mandatory retirement age that he himself had set. He did retire, thus insuring the orderly renewal of the kingdom.Symbolic renewal is the second method of renewing the kingdom. Moore and Gillette note that:Among the rituals used to secure this sacred energy were seasonal and new year festivals, and the sacrifices, coronations, marriages, and jubilees of kings. The king’s ritual journeys assured as firmly as his governmental and military activities, the continued stability and fertility of his kingdom. Pharaohs held Sed festivals on major anniversaries during their reign. The purpose of the Sed festival was to demonstrate to the people the physical prowess of the King in sport and in sporting (all the Pharaoh’s first wives and many of the “little sisters,” secondary wives, were present and expecting the Pharaoh’s attention). The Sed also contained strong religious components from which the Pharaoh sought the renewed blessing of the gods upon him and his reign.Fortunately or unfortunately, modern Kings only go on executive retreats at which even the only spouse may or may not be present. However, retreats can provide a ritual renewal of energy and direction when they have renewal as their core purpose and are well designed to meet that goal.Finally, wounded, sick or dying Kings may be healed with the intervention of the Magician. The Magician determines if the source of the disease is physical or moral and then determines and pursues the proper course of action. In a French version of the Percival legend, Percival is no longer able to give gifts; this inability hampers his relationship with his nobles and with other Kings. A Magician restores Percival’s ability and health returns to the land.In Celtic legends, the King’s ill health is the result of transgressing a geas, a single thing the King must not do, such as crossing a particular stream. The purpose of a geas is to place a limit on the King’s power. The King may not even be aware of the geas, and yet it has power. The Magician determines what the geas is and then the proper action to counteract it. Once the King is healed, health returns to the kingdom as well. In extreme cases, the King is old and dying and it is up to an innocent to perform an heroic deed to prove his worth, then to replace the dying King. The King is dead; long live the King. For those alive in the 1500’s or the 1970’s, John Barleycorn must die. John Barleycorn, the King of the grains, needed to die for grain to grow again. This last sounds a bit ominous for modern Kings. Yet it does remind them not to hang around forever. There comes a time to go and the right time is when the King no longer has the energy and the drive to do the job. The message is clear, renew or go. Knowing all of this, the newly hired King of Profit Kingdom might feel a bit daunted and wish he could be a bit of a Magician himself. No doubt many Kings wished they could just wave a wand to make it all better. Sorry, wrong century. Unfortunately for modern Kings, the roles of King and Magician that were originally one, in western and some middle-eastern cultures, separated some centuries ago. The original unity of the two roles occurred because Kings were considered divine in those cultures. The spirit of the divine allowed the King to perform the miracles now attributed to the Magician. Only one piece of the Magician’s role seems to cling to modern Kings and that is visioning. Several leadership studies position the ability to create and inspire a vision squarely on the King’s shoulders. Historically, this function has fluctuated between Kings and Magicians. The Pharaoh Hatshepsut had her own vision for herself and Egypt. However, it was Merlin, the Magician, who provided Arthur with the vision of Camelot. The lesson is that Kings must have vision or find someone who does. Our poor King, still sighing a bit and pacing the halls, wondered how he was supposed to do it all. Perhaps his school chum with the arcane knowledge could help and maybe a few other people he knew. Ah, wise King. Help is exactly what he needs and the help he needs is exact. Kings need three specific advisors, a Magician, a Sage and a Fool. All three of these advisors must behave impeccably, be trustworthy, courageous, virtuous, and above all be a friend to the King. They must be the kind of friend who loves the King enough and the kingdom enough to unceasingly follow their inner moralcompass toward vision, wisdom and honesty in every communication with the King.KEYS TO THE KINGDOMKings Love: People and resources of the kingdomKingly Work: DoNurture prosperity• Cause the land to flourish• Defend the flourishing land against internal and external threats• Pick the right fightExercise stewardship of the urge to power• Reign in the urge to power• Appropriately use power to nurture prosperity• Monitor the urge to power in others and channel it in positive directionsMaintain harmony and balance• “And” rather than either/or thinking• Balancing opposing forces, stability and change, war and peace• Alignment in thought, word and deedRenew the kingdom• Renew energy or admit kingship is no longer interesting and leave• Cultivate a successorKings Need:Three trusted advisorswww.business-leadership-qualities.com 484-467-5805©Clare Novak 2006