Take responsibility
President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that read, “The buck stops here,” and Ginsburg says that leaders have to take on that ultimate responsibility in order to be successful.
“People expect leaders to lead and to take responsibility when things are looking good as well as when they’re looking bad,” he says. “When we started the year in 2009, we saw a scenario, some of which was bad and others of which were very bad. It was a challenge to get everybody on the same page, to agree to the financial discipline to hold expenses in check and to maximize every opportunity for revenue, and they expected me to lead those efforts.”
You have to know what it takes for your business to be successful.
“In order to take responsibility, you have to have your arms around your business, and you have to thoroughly understand each aspect of it,” Ginsburg says.
You might have gotten to your position because you were particularly good at finance or sales or administration, but it takes expertise in more than one area to be a successful overall leader.
“In order to be a leader of consequence, you have to be able to really cross all those disciplines and not say, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about that,’ or, ‘I don’t want to get involved with that,’” he says. “While it’s the comfort zone of most people in one area or another, to be an excellent leader, you have to go outside your comfort zone and learn things you didn’t want to know. You have to learn lessons and go back and learn things that aren’t intuitive for you, that will create the opportunity to help your managers deal with problems that when you bring them in your office, you don’t just okey-doke them.”
This aspect of leadership was particularly important for Ginsburg as he took companies public in his career.
“I’m not an accountant, but if you’re the CEO of a public company, you’re expected to sign all sorts of documents,” he says. “You’re expected to understand how any given decision will flow through a financial statement.”
