10 BCBusiness NOVEMBER 2015 PORtRait: adaM BlasBERg
Ask 20 people what their denition of lead-
ership is and there's a good chance you'll get
20 dierent denitions. That's because, while
there is a science to good leadership, it's also
an art: what works for one leader in one orga-
nization very much depends on who they are
and the circumstances in which they lead.
Of course, you can mould leaders in ways
that work for an organization with particular
values—and many organizations attempt just
that. My rst job out of university was with
General Electric, which is famous for its lead-
ership-training program. The John F. Welch
Leadership Center was built by GE in 1956 in a
small town 45 minutes north of New York City
called Crotonville, and just about anybody on
the management track spends a few weeks
of their life at the leafy 59-acre campus. For
GE—with over 300,000 employees globally—
effective management means decentralized
management, given the massive scope of its
operations. You need to instill consistent values
so that leaders from Boston to Buenos Aires
to Beijing know the "GE way" to compete in a
rapidly changing world.
I got a lot out of my time at Croton-
ville (although obviously not enough:
I left GE two years later), but this com-
mitment to leadership development
is, in many ways, a relic of a bygone
era. I marvel today at the thousands
of dollars spent ™ying me to New York
throughout that rst year, all to incul-
cate me with the "GE way" of doing
things. Today, companies' training
budgets are dramatically reduced—
and certainly not wasted on a 22-year-
old fresh out of university (and without
any discernable passion for home
appliances). Furthermore, there's a
growing belief that the "GE way" or
"Apple way," or even the "Hootsuite
way," is no longer a relevant basis
upon which to train leaders—that the
GE of 2020 will be markedly dierent
from the GE of 2015 and that inculcating them
with the values of today leaves them wholly
unprepared to lead tomorrow.
Jack Welch served as GE's
CEO for over two
decades, and while his reign is not without
controversy (his was a brutish and person-
ally remunerative era: he received a $420-
million "walk-away" package in 2001), Welch
is memorable for his many management dic-
tums. One of my favourites: "Before you are
a leader, success is all about growing your-
self. When you become a leader, success is all
about growing others."
It's a lesson that many of the world's great
companies—as well as some of the local suc-
cess stories featured in our annual leadership
feature ("Leadership Lessons," p.34)—have
taken to heart. Leadership may be more dis-
persed than ever before, and the "great man
theory" largely debunked, but the power to
empower still comes from the top.
C O N T R I B U T O R S
Matt O'Grady, Editor-in-Chief
mogrady@canadawide.com / @bCbusiness
Veteran Vancouver writer Kerry
banks ("The Law of the Land, "
p.58) got interested in aboriginal
law while working on a story about
the Tsilhqot'in decision. "I wasn't
really aware that there is this
specialty before. It's a very fast-
growing segment, " he says. "You
often have trouble, especially in
business stories, in getting people
to open up or get back to you, but
the lawyers answered their own
phones, got back to me quickly and
were very good interviews."
benjamin Haab, who photo-
graphed Fort St. John Mayor
Lori Ackerman ("The Conversation, "
p.17), says Ackerman is very
comfortable in front of a camera
but really lit up when she talked
about her grandkids. Raised on a
nearby dairy farm, Haab worked in
film in the Lower Mainland before
returning to Fort St. John with his
wife to raise their family.
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