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The future of the U.S. auto industry looks bleak. This summer, citing weakening demand, Moody’s cut its outlook from stable to negative. Edmunds predicted a drop in sales from 17.3 million in 2018 to 16.9 million in 2019, and AlixPartners forecasted additional dips to 16.3 million in 2020 and 15.1 million in 2021.
This industry, however, has previously been in dire straits and roared back—driven by bold, visionary leadership.
Lee Iacocca is remembered for launching the Ford Mustang, rescuing Chrysler from the brink of bankruptcy, and, after other leaders had rejected the concept, championing the minivan. Though far less flashy than the Mustang, Automotive News reported that the humble minivan “became one of the most profitable consumer products ever created, inspired a raft of copycats, and helped Chrysler reap billions of dollars in sales for decades.”
“It takes a special genius to look at what everyone else is looking at and be the only one to see the vast hole in the market, the gaping need so elemental that consumers might not even be able to put it into words,” Frank Ahrens wrote in Forbes. “Steve Jobs did this. So did Iacocca.” Although visionary leadership, in the style of those household names, may seem like an innate quality, leaders can foster it in themselves — and must, if they want to reach the top.
In fact, Rob-Jan de Jong, a Wharton professor and author of Anticipate: The Art of Leading by Looking Ahead, told HR Magazine that visionary leadership, or the “ability to lead and engage others with your future-oriented, purposeful picture” is “the core skill that separates leaders from managers.” Here are three steps leaders can take if they aspire to follow in Iacocca’s footsteps.
Embrace Imagination
When academics James M. Kouzes and Barry Posner asked thousands of workers which qualities they sought and admired in a leader, “forward-looking” ranked second (behind honesty). It was truly a hallmark of leadership, too: Whereas only 27% wanted their colleagues to be forward-looking, 72% wanted their leaders to be. “No other quality showed such a dramatic difference between leader and colleague,” Kouzes and Posner wrote in the Harvard Business Review.
Since the future is difficult to predict, leaders should embrace their imagination if they want to be forward-looking. “Taking the time to ponder alternatives to your firm's current ways of doing things and exploring possibilities for change can be a portal to seeing the future,” explained James Kerr, global chair of consulting practices at leadership advisory firm N2Growth, in Inc. “It is through such consideration that break-through thinking occurs and the potential to great advances are revealed.”
One forward-looking leader is Philip Krim, founder of Casper, a company that reimagined the process of mattress buying. Instead of operating stores staffed by teams of salespeople, Casper’s entire ordering process occurs online. Casper’s customers receive their mattresses in the mail, compressed in a large box, and then have 100 nights to decide if they want to keep it (or return it without hassle).
“We love leaning into the crazy stuff,” Krim told Fortune. “It’s how we built a brand.” Since its launch in early 2014, Casper has grown to a $1.1 billion market share; it posted a $373 million net revenue in 2018. Surprisingly, it also launched its first brick-and-mortar store last year, and has plans to open hundreds more — demonstrating that being future-oriented and creative does not always require reinventing the wheel.
Zoom In, Then Out
During his research for Principles, Ray Dalio, former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, asked leaders such as Bill Gates, Reed Hastings, and Jack Dorsey to take detailed personality tests. He discovered that one trait of visionary leaders, whom he calls “shapers,” is their ability “to see both big pictures and granular details (and levels in between) and synthesize the perspectives they gain at those levels, whereas most people just see one or the other.”
Manu Melwin Joy, a professor at India’s SCMS School of Technology and Management, agreed. “They strike a balance between the rational right-brain and the intuitive left-brain functions,” he wrote in an article about visionary leaders. “Their thinking is broad and systemic, at once taking in the big picture and the underlying or interlinking patterns. It is out of this ability that they then create innovative strategies to help actualize their vision.”
A good example is Paul Polman, who recently stepped down from his role as Unilever’s CEO. During his tenure at the company, he focused on both the granular — selling consumer goods — as well as the bigger picture of environmental responsibility, through his Sustainable Living Plan, which had the ambitious goal of halving Unilever’s impact while also doubling its revenue.
“I use the term VUCA to describe the world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous,” Polman told The Guardian. “It is very difficult for people to get a total picture. The food, water, energy nexus is so inter-related that it is for most people too difficult to know where to start and where to end." Polman’s ability to see that total picture, in addition to the more granular issues affecting his business, is likely why he has been heralded as “a standout CEO of the past decade.”
Be Bold — and Resilient
To be truly visionary, leaders cannot be afraid of risk. They should also be willing to persevere — as in the case of Iacocca and Chrysler — through great challenges. As Dalio wrote in his book: Shapers “are extremely resilient, because their need to achieve what they envision is stronger than the pain they experience as they struggle to achieve it.”
“Working to create change at a societal level is not a short-term game,” explained Kaytura Felix, a managing director of leadership development for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Change leadership is about taking action today—and tomorrow...and the day after that...and the day after that—undeterred by the fact that the big payoff may be years or even generations away.”
Take Anita Roddick, who founded The Body Shop in 1976, an era when testing cosmetics on animals was a universal practice. “[T]he cosmetic companies said you couldn't do it any other way," Michelle Thew, CEO of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, recalled to The Independent. "The Body Shop provided a model to show the companies you could.” With Roddick’s company playing a “pivotal” role, animal testing was banned in the U.K. in 1997, and in the European Union in 2009.
Roddick’s most important cause, however, was fair trade, which she promoted tirelessly, and which she turned from an unknown concept into an internationally-recognized qualification. Though the results, again, took decades to materialize, Roddick persevered. She is now hailed as a visionary leader who revolutionized business. “She did, indeed, change profoundly the way we look at the world,” Michael McCarthy wrote in The Independent, “by changing the way we looked at business, and seeing the scale of what that could do.”
For those who yearn to make the transition from effective executive to visionary leader — as Polman, Roddick, and Iacocca did — imagination, perspective, and resilience will be requisite qualities. While some have criticized Iacocca’s personal and business failures since his death, most have instead focused on his influential leadership style, with many comparing him to modern-day giants such as Elon Musk and Mary Barra. As Jim Press, former head of Toyota Motor Sales USA and former president and vice chairman of Chrysler LLC, told Crain’s Detroit Business: "I always asked myself, ‘What would Lee do?’ when faced with tough choices. He was a true visionary."
