How To Channel Your Business Ambition

Leadership Workshop (10 of 12) - Start with Yourself

Leading at Light Speed is a powerful leadership book for businesses, public agencies, and nonprofits revealing the 10 specific ways an organization must act and behave to build trust, spark innovation, and create a high-performing organization.

The Ambition Paradox is a concept in Leading at Light Speed described in Chapter 9 along with three other Leadership Paradoxes. You must purchase the book in order to read all four.

True leaders are ambitious – but their ambitions are in service to something greater than themselves. Martin Luther King, Jr., Jimmy Carter, Cesar Chavez, Barack Obama - these were ambitious men who knew what to sacrifice for the good of the cause. Renowned management consultant Peter Drucker describes it as a dedication to the fundamental needs of the organization. When Louis Gerstner took over at IBM, he saw the need for far greater customer focus. Jack Welch, when he took the reins at General Electric, saw that the company needed to narrow its focus to businesses that were at the very top of its marketplace. When Darwin Smith took over at Kimberly-Clark, he saw the need to sell the mills and focus on the paper products business. Let it not be said that these were not men of ambition. But the important thing is that each of the men felt they had truly identified what the organization needed from them. No one told Gerstner or Welch or Smith to do these things. Each man had the drive to accomplish what needed to be done. Nevertheless, these were the essentials.

Leaders master the fine line between self-serving ambition and selfless ambition. What it comes down to in the end is that successful leaders are those who do not allow themselves to be put off by potential challenges and personal upset to the extent that they lose the drive to accomplish what is needed for the good of the organization. So when faced with the ambition paradox, ask yourself: “Am I willing to suffer some personal loss – even up to losing my comfortable way of life or my job – in order to do what’s right?” If the answer is yes, then you’ve found the path through the ambition paradox.

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