What Debashis is saying is that making money, and then making more money, is not a fair claim to leadership. We are tickled to think that the man or woman in the newspaper or some magazine is, by virtue of a record Return On Investment, a leader. We congratulate the college president who can consistently achieve budget surpluses for his institution. But you cannot lead without making things better for society as a whole. It is not a numbers game.
Leadership is a greatness game.
Perhaps the most controversial chaplet in my book is where I speculate how different we would all look at leadership if this were a moneyless world. Money is simply one of many resources commandeered by a leadership team. The leaders who resonate in history are those who saw their job as giving birth to a new idea and then nurturing it just as they would nurture their own child. Recall the world in Le Petit Prince where he meets an inhabitant who only speaks in numbers. This quick tour of two years, or more, of my life, work, research, and conclusions does a frail job of communicating the feel and the flow of The Anatomy Of Fire.