Written by: Jeff Moore, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
We’re in a leadership crisis now. Executives often put “leadership” at the top of a list of qualities they’re looking for, and yet in the next breath they talk about the ability to “manage” people. Management is crucially important when applied to processes and systems, not people. In our disruptive, unstable world we’re desperately in need of leaders who demonstrate the courage to move out of their comfort zone to tackle the impossible. As Thomas Friedman found during research for, “The Start-Up of You,” employers are now looking for people who can “invent, adapt, and reinvent their jobs every day.” Why do we continue to cling to the Industrial Age concept of managing people? The answer: leading people is ‘hard.’
This is a story from a period in our history when leadership was not considered to be a ‘soft skill.’
In 1942 General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project chose J. Robert Oppenheimer to lead a team of scientists at the Los Alamos Weapons Laboratory whose goal was to build an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could build one. Few people in our history have been tasked with a more daunting challenge. Failure could result in existential consequences for the world! There was little evidence from Oppenheimer’s past to indicate that he was up to this challenge. He had never led anything more than a small group of graduate students and he was being asked to transform a large group of strong-willed individuals into a high performing team.
Oppenheimer was a world renowned theoretical physicist known for his towering intellect and eccentric behavior, which at times bordered on the bizarre. He was extraordinarily curious, but had little interest in areas that involved practical application. As Bird and Sherwin wrote in “American Prometheus,” “Oppenheimer’s approach to learning physics was eclectic, even haphazard in that he would focus on the most interesting, (typically) abstract problems in the field, bypassing the basics.”
Why would General Groves select Oppenheimer to lead this enormously challenging project? He and Oppenheimer were from different planets! Groves had an impressive resume, having supervised major projects including the construction of the Pentagon. He was a quintessential manager who viewed his people as human resources to be procured, allocated, and deployed. Managing people can work in fixed work environments where a script is provided, making repetition and efficiency the keys to success. Groves' approach was simple: “Follow me and do your job.” As his former aide, Col. Kenneth Nichols said, “Men serving him grudgingly admired his ability to get things done. He is the most demanding. He is most critical. I hated his guts and so did everybody else, but we had our form of understanding.”
Groves’ decision to hire Oppenheimer precipitated a clash of cultures. Many of Groves’ like-minded peers in the military pushed back on the decision. Why did Groves resist the entreaties of his like-minded peers and select Oppenheimer to lead this enormously important project? How did a lifelong manager come to identify and value leadership qualities?
Groves was impressed that Oppenheimer could relate to his managerial challenges. Bird and Sherwin wrote that “Oppenheimer was the first scientist Groves had met who grasped that building an atomic bomb required finding practical solutions to a variety of cross-disciplinary problems.” He was also impressed by Oppenheimer’s suggestion that “the new lab should be located in some isolated rural site rather than in a large city – a notion that fits nicely with (his) concerns for security.” But Groves also understood that the complexity of the task confronting scientists at the Los Alamos Weapons would require creating a fluid work environment, an environment where scientists could sustain an “invent, adapt, and reinvent” mindset. He was convinced that Oppenheimer could create this kind of environment.
Oppenheimer struggled in his new role initially. Bird and Sherwin recounted that Oppenheimer had to “conjure up skills he did not yet have, deal with problems he had never imagined, develop work habits entirely at odds with his previous lifestyle, and adjust to attitudes and modes of behavior that were emotionally awkward and alien to his experience.” Despite these obstacles Oppenheimer made the transition quickly to the astonishment of those around him. As one of his colleagues recalled, “The once eccentric theoretical physicist, a long-haired, left-wing intellectual (became) a first-rate, highly organized leader.”
How was Oppenheimer able to evolve from eccentric professor to first-rate leader? What fueled his dramatic transformation was his ability to connect. Oppenheimer was not just curious about ideas. He was also curious about people. He was a relationship-builder. As a professor his relationships with students involved engaging them in wide ranging theoretical discussions. At Los Alamos he would have to build relationships with a team of scientists who were charged with developing a weapon that could change the course of history.
Oppenheimer began by building personal relationships to earn trust. He made an effort to connect with everyone working at the laboratory – from Nobel Prize winners to the janitors – conveying that he cared about them as people. And he refused to micro-manage their work. During visits to the experimental sites, he took a keen interest in the work the scientists were engaged in, but never got involved in the performance of experiments.
Once Oppenheimer earned trust he leveraged it, but not like managers who try to squeeze as much as possible out of their people. Leaders empower his people to get the most out of themselves.
Oppenheimers challenged his ‘followers’ to lead by competing. To ‘tackle the impossible’ they would have to channel the origin of compete: ‘to strive together,’ Oppenheimer lived in a time before the essence of what it means to compete became distorted. The 21st century incarnation is ‘cutthroat.’ Competing is feared because it is now viewed as strictly zero-sum. This has led us to resuscitate the Industrial Age concept of “working together” (aka collaboration), a time of incremental change when fixed work environments sufficed. Fear of competing has kept us from doing big things (unless they can be monetized).
Leadership is hard and messy! Oppenheimer created an environment where scientists were motivated to embrace the mess and produce something novel – quickly! He cultivated in them the willingness to build competitive relationships, but he understood that before you can build competitive relationships with others you have to develop a competitive relationship with yourSELF. He knew that every action a person decides to take begins with an internal conversation. When the pressure was on, instead of asking himself “How can I avoid taking responsibility for this to manage my brand,” he looked inward and chose to lead. He relished being challenged to move out of his comfort zone, solve problems unconventionally, and persevere through inevitable setbacks. This could be what Groves gleaned when he said he was struck by Oppenheimer’s “overweening ambition.”
Oppenheimer was willing to “tackle the impossible” and his people fed off of it. He was able to challenge them to bring their best selves to the team. He held colloquiums, bringing scientists together to debate. When the military pressured him to “short-circuit the debates,” he insisted that the scientists had to be “free to argue.” He considered this to be crucial to the process of solving the novel problems they were confronted with. Oppenheimer rarely viewed a problem as unsolvable. He pushed his people to look at different ways to attack a problem until they found a solution. Occasionally he brought groups from different fields together to do collective problem-solving. When a team’s experiments failed or when their theories hit a wall, members of other teams could get involved and offer their ideas. Oppenheimer created a competitive cauldron. Scientists did not hesitate to challenge each other and, just as importantly, accepted being challenged! But it was never meant to be personal. Outside of work hours he arranged for dinners where scientists could relax and socialize. What happened in the cauldron stayed in the cauldron!
Bird and Sherwin shared the perspectives of many of the scientists who worked at Los Alamos. “His mere presence seemed to galvanize people to greater efforts,” said one colleague. Another “marveled at how often Oppie seemed to be physically present at each new breakthrough in the project” and how “his continuous and intense presence” motivated them. Yet another colleague said “He made you do the impossible.”
People managers promote company culture. Everything must be tangible and measurable. Procure, allocate, and deploy – rinse and repeat. Squeeze the turnip! Oppenheimer cultivated a spirit, the sense that everyone involved was excited about getting better together every day!
As Hans Bethe, head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos, later said, “Los Alamos might have succeeded without (Oppenheimer), but certainly only with much greater strain, less enthusiasm, and less speed. As it was, it was an unforgettable experience for all members of the laboratory. There were other wartime laboratories of high achievement. But I have never observed in any one of these other groups quite the spirit of belonging together, the urge to reminisce about the days of the laboratory, quite the feeling that this was the great time of our lives. That this was true was mainly due to Oppenheimer. He was a leader.”
Jeff Moore, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jeff is the CEO of Moore Leadership LLC. He helps business leaders build championship companies by cultivating Strivership, an ethic of continuous improvement based on the origin of competition: 'to strive together.' Striving together is crucial in an age of innovation because people must continually embrace the challenge of stretching beyond perceived limitations. Championship companies exude a spirit of Strivership, the sense that everyone involved is excited about getting better together every day.
During his coaching career at the University of Texas, Jeff's Longhorn Tennis Teams won 2 NCAA Championships, appeared in 2 NCAA finals, advanced to 3 Final Fours, and won 18 conference titles. He is a member of the Longhorn Hall of Honor and the College Tennis Hall of Fame. He has also been named National Coach of the Year and was Conference Coach of the Year 10 times.
Jeff's clients have included Applied Materials, Harvard, Bazaarvoice, University of North Carolina, Civitas Learning, Vanderbilt, Auctane, Northwestern, Infinia ML, and Powwater and he is the author of "Strive Together: Achieve Beyond Expectations in a Results-Obsessed World."
