Might two people better run this thing? The forgotten art of dual leadership
Did you know that Sparta had two kings? Or that Rome, before the days of tyrannical rule, was led by two consuls? Looking back on systems of ancient government, one starts to wonder: whatever happened to dual leadership?
Sparta’s governance grew out of royal twin babies getting muddled so nobody could tell which was the elder. Rome’s early founders thought having two people at the top would curb ambitions until, well, a notably ambitious figure tore the system apart with disastrous consequences.
In its time, Aristotle wrote of Sparta’s dual kingship as the key to the state’s stability. But what about its everyday practicalities? How did co-leaders not step on each other’s toes? How did they carve up responsibilities? And in Rome’s case, how did they plot an ‘org chart’ for an empire that ruled the known world?
Sparta, rather amazingly, followed what today might be called ‘symmetrical dualism’. An article in the Hau Journal notes: ‘Equal in privilege and identical in function, both kings dealt in the matters of religion, laws and military.’ In other words: they were responsible for exactly the same things.
There was some independent rule while on campaigns. ‘Either king could lead armies into war… it was not permitted for both the kings to lead an army at the same time. One king always had to remain in Sparta in order to prevent anarchy, or the ever-frequent helot (slave) uprising. When a king goes on a foreign expedition he is the leader in all matters relating to the war.’ But heaven knows how they managed domestically during peacetime.
Any tension, it seems, was thought to be of societal benefit. ‘The kings held opposing opinions on issues, thus providing a voice for citizens on either side of the issue.’
Romans did things a bit differently. ‘In Roman kingship traditions everything happens as if the Spartan concept of twinned rulers were consciously rejected in favour of a complementary dualism.’ (Roger, you look after the Circus Maximus, you’re good at that, I’ll take the Colosseum.) Consuls could veto each other’s decisions, and so perhaps all a bit easier to manage.
Co-running a company, I’m fascinated by this. When starting out, we had a simple analogy:
We are a restaurant. Till [my business partner, CEO and founder] is front of house, enticing clients through the door, seating them at their table and taking their order. I’m head chef — cooking up everything with the team in the kitchen.
But we soon outgrew the metaphor. We’re no longer a client acquisition and production company, we’re a production and marketing company — and marketing (an in-kitchen process) needed Till to run it.
Matt Ridley observed that there’s no human being alive today who single-handedly knows how to make a computer mouse. It’s simply too complex. The same is true for the development and promotion of online courses. There’s likely nobody alive today who can effectively manage both curriculum design and Facebook advertising. (If you think you can, please email me.)
Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, took Churchill’s famous saying on democracy (‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others’) and applied it to hybrid organisations:
‘It’s not because Intel loved ambiguity that we became a hybrid organisation. We have tried everything else, and while other models may have been less ambiguous, they simply didn’t work. Hybrid organisations are not great in and of themselves. They just happen to be the best way for any business to be organised.’
Dual leadership can be tricky, but it’s lessons from history such as these that help guide us.
On employing dual leadership throughout an organisation, David K. Williams, CEO of Fishbowl, writes in Harvard Business Review: ‘We’ve chosen our pairs carefully — we align paired leaders for maximum contrast in thinking and analytical styles… One is linear in style; the other creative. The result is a manifestation of true synergy.’ So more of the Roman school then.
But it’s not all upside: ‘There’s no question our payroll is higher because of our paired leadership strategy.’ David continues: ‘Some of the individuals who get paired don’t particularly like each other… Two key individuals we partnered cornered us with persistent questions. What if we can’t agree? Who arbitrates? What if one partner is holding the other one back?’ But: ‘Ultimately, they adapted. At present, it’s fair to say that if we changed the model, the majority of our team would be extremely disappointed, because they’ve come to appreciate the shared responsibility model.’
We’ve test-driven a dual structure for the past few months and it’s going extremely well. Here are a few personal learnings.
1) If you’re emperor or empress, there are things people aren’t telling you. You really do have no clothes (or at least a very skimpy outfit!). Having people report to you, no matter how candid, isn’t the same as having someone in the business who’s eye-level with you.
2) You’ll be prevented from making many stupid decisions. Having someone so frequently check your thinking and reveal blind-spots, it makes you wonder, not having this kind of person in my personal life, how many howlers am I actively making there?
3) You each have to be okay with the other making a quick decision. There’s not always time to communicate.
4) But you need to be humbly okay later realising it might have been a bad one. When this happens, swallow your pride and find a way to put things right.
5) Try not to sandbag each other. If it’s a mildly bad decision, you might be better just going with it.
6) Forgiveness is important; you’ll both make plenty of mistakes.
7) You have to be open to feedback. It’s the only way. And at times it can be really difficult. Till and I know each other’s domain well enough to be overtly challenging editors (and so knowing when to hold back is key too), but we’re both the better for it.
Finding you’ve lost your way in business? Things organisationally a muddle? Could taking a lesson from the ancients and partnering with somebody help steady the ship?
