After analyzing data from more than 15,000 interviews with CEOs and other business leaders, Geoff Smart, Randy Street and Alan Foster describe what they learned in their book, Power Score: Your Formula for Leadership Success.
Foster and Street spoke with Knowledge@Wharton.
Key takeaway: “What we have found is there are, in fact, three factors that drive success and leadership. Physicists have been looking to figure out a Grand Unified Theory that describes how the universe works. We figured if they can describe the universe, surely we can describe leadership. In fact, we have three factors that describe what success looks like.”
“What we found is that they go about accomplishing three things: They set the right priorities, they get the right people in the right roles, and then, they make the relationships work.”
“All three matter. It’s something like a triathlon: If you can’t swim, you will not win the triathlon. The same is true with the PWR score — P, W and R, you have to be able to do all three. Most leaders only do one, or maybe two, of those really well. Very few actually think to do all three, much less are really good at all three. But the statistics are amazing. Those who do all three well are easily twice as successful as the average leader, and 20 times more successful than leaders who don’t do any of those three things.”