True North: Interview with Businessman Philanthropist Bill George on His New Book on Leadership
Written by John Weeks
True North: Interview with Former Medtronic CEO Bill George on Integrative Medicine and His Best-Sellers on Authentic Leadership
Summary: Bill George is known to many in the integrative medicine movement as the spouse of a powerful leader, Penny George.
Penny George co-founded and served as the first president of the Bravewell Collaborative
of philanthropists for integrative medicine. Bill George, as it turns
out, has a resume in his own right that had something to do with
allowing the Georges to be so generous. He had a very successful tenure
growing Medtronic from a $1.1 billion market value to $60+ billion
during the 1990s. But what's been building his resume lately are two
best-sellers on leadership which have had a high impact in the business
community. The first was Authentic Leadership (2003) which connected leadership with values. His 2007 exploration of these leadership themes is entitled True North. The Integrator reached Bill George for a short interview on the new book, on leadership, and on what's needed in medicine.
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Bill George, a.k.a. Penny's spouse
Bill George is known to many in the integrative medicine movement as the spouse of a powerful woman, Penny George.
Penny George co-founded and served as the first president of the
Philanthropic Collaborative for Integrative Medicine, which since
changed its name to the Bravewell Collaborative.
Okay, Bill George actually has an accomplishment or two of his own. The
quantitative side of Bill George's reputation is a singular measure
which quickly grabs the attention of those who are either deeply
aligned with American capitalism, curious about pure power, or both.
The man took over a successful medical technology company known as
Medtronic when it had a market capitalization of $1.1-billion. George
left it a decade later with a market capitalization of about
$60-billion. So if Bill George opens his mouth, a lot of would-be
captains of industry will pay attention based on the sheer weight of
that accomplishment.
Yet when Bill George opened his mouth a few years back with the first
of his two books, what brought him his audience was something on the
qualitative side of the man, to which he attributes a good deal of
his success. The first book was a best seller entitled Authentic Leadership. The second, True North, (Jossey-Bass, 2007) is another best seller, in which he and co-author Peter Sims interview
125 business leaders to explore what makes up "authentic leadership."
In his forward, Bill George does, still, acknowledge his spouse, better
known to the integrative medicine crowd. He credits Penny George for
teaching him "so much about people and (about) leading them."
In fact, the two Georges are deeply partnered in their philanthropic work with the George Family Foundation
as they have been in other key decision points in Bill George's life.
To learn a bit more about the man - and to help bring the lesser known
George out of his wife's shadow - the Integrator caught up with
Bill George in late April to talk about the book and particularly about
his views on leadership and on integrative medicine. (Readers interested in learning more about Bill George's leadership ideas can go to www.truenorthleaders.com.) Integrator: So how is the book doing?
Bill George: It's been on some best seller lists, gotten
lots of good coverage. I've given several dozen speeches. They've
shipped over 50,000 copies.
Integrator: You and your associate interviewed 125 business leaders about their own lives and leadership styles. Were there any surprises?
Bill George: My colleagues suggested I try to discover specific traits, characteristics or styles of leaders. They were were worried we were just going to get mush back from the interviews. In
3000 pages of interviews, we found no clear leadership traits. Leaders
are complex people who cannot be easily described by lists of
characteristics. But we learned that life stories are what is really
important. Not life history, but one's life story. It's how you frame
your life. We all have these crucibles. It's what we make of them.
These leaders frame and re-frame their lives around these crucible
events.
Integrator: What were your crucibles?
Bill George: They're in
the book. Being the only son of a father who felt a failure. Getting
rejected for a few leadership positions. Not becoming CEO at Honeywell.
The death of my mother when I was 24, then my fiance's death. Then
Penny coming along. These were my crucibles. Integrator: There are themes in your writing which are quite consonant with integrated health care thinking.
Bill and Penny George
Bill George: I got a nice note about the book from Rachel
Remen.* She said: "It's about the authentic (you). We are talking about
mind, body, heart and spirit. In discovering our wholeness, we discover
our leadership." Integrator: You speak in both books about the need for a leader to care for his or her self.
Bill George: Every leader who has failed has failed to lead
themselves. They get caught up in the adoration of the outside world.
They bow to pressure of the outside world. Leaders need to be grounded
in their own personal life, their family life and their community. They
need to lead from the heart and practice solid values.
Bill George's 5 Dimensions of an Authentic Leader
Pursuing purpose with passion
Practicing solid values
Leading with heart
Establishing enduring relationships
Demonstrating
self-discipline
Integrator: You list the dimensions of authentic
leadership. I wonder, given the profile that environmental issues
and global warming have, particularly in the last year, whether you
think that there ought to be another dimension, this contribution to
global health.
Bill George: I don't look so specifically at this. We look more
generally at what is your legacy to the world. Are you doing something
for poverty, education, the environment or health care. Helping people
to be wealthy can be a contribution. We try to be non-judgmental.
Integrator: You and your spouse have been huge contributors to integrative medicine. What would you say about leadership in medicine?
Bill George: Leadership is woefully inadequate in medicine. We need to have doctors driving it instead of administrators. There is a reason doctors should be leading as they understand medicine far more deeply than administrators. I am a great believer in Mayo's patient-centered model. I also prefer the not-for-profit model. We need more patient-centered institutions like Mayo.
Integrator: Anything else?
Bill George: Medicine is way too political. Doctors need to start early in understanding leadership, and in avoiding political battles. * Rachel Remen, MD is an
author and leader of the movement to transform medical education
through integrative medicine principles.
Comment: Reading George's work is
to take a measure of the dominant business culture. His leadership themes
provide a kind of reassurance. The hunger expressed in the sales of George's
books is for an integration of values among the for-profit leaders of
the economy we inhabit.George offers corporate leaders a message that
health, wholeness, collaboration and community can be aligned with
dramatic business success.
Many of us who are involved in the integrated healthcare movement live
a reverse image of the corporate leaders who are both the interview
subjects in True North and the audience which has taken George's work to heart. For foot-soldiers
in the chronically underfunded grassroots movement to transform medicine through advancing health care, things are different. Heart, passion and community are the coin of the realm.
Unfortunately, they are often the only coins. Our arrows point to our
true norths, but, alas, a fuel shortage often keeps us from moving
efficiently in the direction that we are pointed.
I personally have some curmudgeonly concerns about the extent to which
heart-based values can be thoroughly aligned with a viciously competitive world. This is especially true when that world is
organized principally around maximizing the return on investment. That
said, the value in reading these books is that there is something in Bill George's work which
suggests that the body-mind-spirit of the dominant business community may daily be opening new receptor sites for health creation. The book imparts both a language and a sense of culture which may help you find them.
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for inclusion in a future Your Comments article.
Yet when Bill George opened his mouth a few years back with the first
of his two books, what brought him his audience was something on the
qualitative side of the man, to which he attributes a good deal of
his success. The first book was a best seller entitled 
