The Stallion Solution

I recently read an excellent article by Bob Uhler on the “Stallion syndrome.” Bob defined Stallions as “very impressive in appearance, very strong in performance and very hard to manage.” Indeed, they exist in almost every organization. Leaving them unchecked is a sure path to going over the falls. They need to be mentored, moved to different jobs or fired.

In my experience, not all Stallions are equally bad. They come in three categories: The good, the bad and the ugly.

The good stallion excels at both marathons and sprints. He focuses on long term goals (marathon) and delivers short term results (sprint), and does not care who gets the credit. He leads with integrity and balances humanity and economics. He does not believe in chance, fate or good luck: he works long hours, is never satisfied with the status quo, and is passionate about his business, the industry he serves and the welfare and well-being of his team. He has deep knowledge of his industry and the competition, projects confidence and attracts talent. He is not afraid to simultaneously tackle both incremental and radical innovations to free his company from the pull of the past and seize new growth opportunities as markets change – this Stallion is a zebra in a herd of buffalo. He is fully committed to his business and the people who help him succeed. He hires A players to round out his team, and builds a world-class model of competitiveness and ethical leadership. His main weakness is that he does not manage “across” as well. To his peers he appears arrogant and self-serving. Yet he is loved by his team and customers, and delivers outstanding results without seeking accolades.

The bad stallion delivers results for the short term, but short-changes the future. He listens not to learn and improve, but to argue. He has an enormous ego fueled by great aggrandizement stories, takes credit for good team performance, and attributes poor performance to others or outside factors over which he has no control. He is arrogant and self-serving, leading to dysfunctional silo behavior and collateral damage. He is so impressed with his own brilliance that he creates his own rules at his company’s expense. He preaches good values but fails to follow his own advice, cutting corners and setting double standards for his team and himself. He equates wealth with success and image with leadership. He surrounds himself with unquestioning yes generals, sees his peers as enemies and not intimate allies. His team’s talents eventually leave, making the company marginally worse. Bad stallions inevitably falter.

The ugly stallion is the perfect destructor. His career shows strong growth. While he has ascended the organizational totem pole by performing well in positions of increasing responsibility and challenges, they are all within his domains of expertise. He has not acquired any new knowledge or learned new skills. He is now leading a team into uncharted territory and a directionless environment where he chases everything and ends up with nothing. He avoids staff meetings, and indecision reigns. Excuses become the norm. His level of incompetence has reached a dangerous point. Even though he knows how to mask this well, it is only a matter of time before the house of cards he has created for his team collapses.

The worst thing for leaders is to succumb to the boiled frog phenomenon. Like the frog that remains in the pan if the water is heated slowly, they don’t react quickly enough to their Stallion Dilemma and their companies go into a downward spiral. As composer Hector Berlioz observed, “Time is a great teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its pupils.” Don’t be a passive spectator. Set the standard, model the behavior you want to see. Mentor your good stallions, encourage bad stallions to move to the competition or leave, and re-position ugly stallions in the right roles or fire them. Always keep an eye on role model behaviors that build enduring healthy organizations, motivate employees, drive sustained success and create lasting value. You have too much at stake to let your stallions run wild.