For S-L to really catch fire in the corporate world there must be a correlation to bottom-line results and I DO believe that a financial case can be made! In the early 90's Kaplan and Norton introduced the concept of "The Balanced Scorecard" which places roughly equal weight on 4 components that effect company profitabily. There is equal weight on financial performance and non-financial indicators like employee/client satisfaction. S-L characteristics can be directly tied to parts of the Balanced Scorecard. In my industry, (financial services), there is evidence mounting that those companies employing a balanced scorecard approach, consistently outperform their peers in financial measures...more to come certainly, but I do believe you will see more of these connections being made between Servant Leadership and financial performance...
Wayne, I agree. I'm aware of some research that will be published in the near future that makes a strong and direct connection between servant-led companies and exemplary financial performance. On the other hand, I always remember the words of Jack Lowe, Jr., who recently retired as CEO of TDIndustries in Dallas: "If you do servant leadership because you want to make more money, it won't work. If you do it because it's the right thing to do, you'll make more money."
In my humble opinion, when organizations turn to servant leadership primarily as a financial strategy, they are setting themselves up for the deserved cynicism of employees and other stakeholders.
I agree - it's critical that S-L is embraced for the right reasons. I also believe strongly that when the research comes out S-L will gain a lot of attention. GTG companies will be very interested in this info. as will others. I look forward to this because of the skeptics who may not understand the value of S-L. Even if they do not initially enter the S-L model with the highest of intentions, along the way some people will gain understanding and embrace S-L for the right reasons and people's lives will be positively impacted. Mary Jo
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