Problems

In good times, a group’s shared work becomes a rhythm. People know what’s expected and how they fit. They respond to what comes based on what’s been learned from the not-so-different past. Life and work proceed — habits and routines, familiar work and outcomes.

But when an urgent novel problem erupts — unfamiliar, pressing, dangerous — the rhythm breaks. The group falters. Uncertainty spreads. What now? What next?

This is where leadership often begins — with confusion and the search for answers.

In Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film Seven Samurai, a poor and isolated village faces the mortal threat of another raid by bandits. They will take everything, and the villagers, alone and without protection, will starve. They try something almost unimaginable to them: hire samurai to protect them. In a nearby town they find Kambei, an aging but capable samurai. They have nothing to offer but rice and adventure. He hesitates, but eventually agrees out of compassion for their plight. He doesn’t promise safety against 40 or 50 bandits. He doesn’t rally them with slogans. He walks the perimeter, studies the land, draws a map. Survival begins with seeing the terrain clearly.

But that is not enough. Tough problems don’t yield to cognition alone. The villagers are terrified, ashamed of how they’ve treated samurai on the run before, and mistrustful of Kambei and his little band of six samurai warriors. Kambei’s calm cannot reach them. When he and the villagers are stuck in anger and mistrust, another kind of leadership emerges. Kikuchiyo, the wild, impulsive would-be samurai who grew up just like the villagers, sees what Kambei cannot. He yells, mocks, cries. He knows the problem from the inside, and sparks sympathy between the groups. At a critical moment, it is his presence and understanding that turn anger into laughter.

Leadership is not a single voice or method. It’s the work of facing problems, patiently and persistently. Some problems are long-standing; some are new and baffling. Some answers are reached through cool logic; others from personal experience and a flash of insight. However it goes, the work of the leader is to tackle the biggest problems. When Alfred Sloan took over General Motors in the 1920s, the problem was keeping a sprawling company from falling apart. When he retired decades later, after building a behemoth, there were even more problems. He put it simply in the last line of his memoir: “The work of creating goes on.”

Leaders don’t eliminate problems. They confront them, and help the group solve them. And they know they’ll keep coming.