Professor Joe F. Thompson on Leadership

Looking back on my career, I see that I’ve made very few real decisions, and not really many real preparations. Mainly I walked through open doors. But somehow I saw those doors, and when they opened I was prepared. Maybe I even pushed a few of them open. And maybe I led others to some good things on the other side, or at least left a path.

Find what’s wanting to happen

The central thing a leader does is choosing the path to follow. A National Geographic photographer told me one time back in the 90s when I was trying to incorporate art with computational science (he was talking about getting the great picture after just having gotten a good picture): “Look for what’s wanting to happen.”

That’s essential for a visionary leader.

My own career was launched when one afternoon I read a technical paper, written by a man I’ve never met, and I saw the door.

I agree with John when he says that leaders pull and managers push. Both are necessary, more of the latter. At this point in my career, I recognize the principles and concepts that John puts forward, and in some measure have been guided by them through the years—they are familiar to me. But at his age I could not have identified them—I have them now, but did not have them then.

Presidents know where to sit

Somehow I found them along the way, but I’ve realized in retrospect that I came to leadership through insecurity. In high school and college, I was the president, or some top officer, of just about every organization I was in—and I was in a lot of them. I realized late in college why: that the president always knew where to sit upon entering the room. So an essential part of my early impetus to leadership was, ironically, insecurity.

Into the heart of danger

Not having an articulation of leadership principles as I started out, I’ve kept a mental store of quotes (either from others or crafted to encapsulate something) for ready guidelines. First, back in high school I read a book, a mystery, called The Heart of Danger. I have no idea now what the book was about, but there was a line in it—“Go straight into the heart of danger, and there you will find safety”—that I appropriated and rephrased for my own guidance: “Go straight into the heart of circumstance, and there you will be at ease”. This has served me well, telling me to go right through that open door, without tentatively testing the water. Being a tall skinny kid, I needed that. And I have continued to need it. I have always been a mixture of high confidence and insecurity.

Failure and growth

It’s particularly important as you go through your career to be able to fail without accepting failure. My high school yearbook has quotes under each senior’s picture, and mine was “Failure is not in his line”. I was fortunate to realize early enough that one must not let it be that way, and I have failed at some ventures. But on that point, I did get some early advice from somewhere, I think maybe while at NASA just out of college —to fail early when it doesn’t count, learning in the process.

And another good point I’ve learned along the way, that might be given even more emphasis since even Presidents of the United States haven’t learned its importance, and that is that when there are losses to be taken, from some sort of failure, take them early for they will only grow. While the damage from the failure is containable and sustainable, the results of the cover-up are devastating.

Winners, losers, and great science

As to winners and losers, here’s my own definition: Losers put in a certain amount of effort, which may even be of excellent quality, and then sit back to await the result; winners don’t limit the effort, but stay at it until the result is achieved. I think I have won some proposal competitions this way.

Related to this, is one of my own quotes (though I might have heard it somewhere) that I’ve applied in interviewing people for positions: “The only way to live an ordinary life is to be ordinary”. By an ordinary life I’ve meant a nice and peaceful one, warning folks with that in mind not to consider the position.

Great science and engineering, like great art and literature, comes from gradients, not from uniformity.

My mentors

Mentors come in various forms. Some of mine have been people, young and old, through the years. And some have been authors. Of change, I’ve carried around a slide for use as needed at technical meetings, from Faulkner (one of my principal mentors, though I never met him):

It is because a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk a change.

Another thing he said was:

That was what a fellow had to guard against – laying down on the ground. For the ground would start to draw him back inside.

I’ve continually warned myself by recalling both of these, but with mixed success, and to be ever wary of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (but more of that in another writing sometime). There’s still another Faulkner thought that has served me well in dealing with people:

I think that a man tries to be better than he thinks he will be. I think that is his immortality, that he wants to be better, he wants to be braver, he wants to be more honest than he thinks he will be and sometimes he’s not, but then suddenly to his own astonishment, he is.

The measure of success

As to the measure of success for leaders, some time way back I had the opportunity to address the faculty at an opening convocation at the start of a fall semester. After speaking dutifully to the faculty for a few minutes, I went in on the university administration, saying that the only measure of success of the university administration (leader) was the success of the faculty (team), and that the main function of the administration was to kick obstacles out of the way of the faculty.

There is no other measure of success for a leader than the success of those who follow.