1992 News & Observer file photo
Sanford
Fifty years ago, Terry Sanford was on the verge of taking his leadership to a new level. Already a decorated World War II paratrooper, well-regarded attorney and former state legislator, Sanford was at a crucial cusp between the rising star he'd been and the legendary North Carolinian he would become - Duke University president, U.S. presidential candidate, U.S. senator, distinguished teacher and writer.
In November 1961, Sanford was wrapping up his first year as governor of North Carolina. It had been a highly productive span focused on the things that governors usually worried about - education, roads, jobs. It was the kind of work that creates a good legacy. But Sanford wanted to leave a great one. And, over the next few years, he would figure out what it took. By the time his single term as governor ended in January 1965, he had secured crucial federal support for expanding Research Triangle Park, launched a series of groundbreaking education and cultural programs and made civil rights a top priority. A Harvard study named Sanford, who died in 1998 at age 80, one of the 10 greatest American governors of the 20th century.
How did Sanford begin moving, precisely a half-century ago, from good to great? One key answer remains highly relevant today as our state seeks to accelerate economic growth and deepen social impact: He gave creative thinking its due. Unlike many leaders, then and today, he also understood how to nurture it: by shaking up organizational cultures before they grow stale.
Our colleague Dan Buchner, an international authority on design thinking, works with major corporate and government clients around the world on sparking innovation. He reports that they often overlook or are unwilling to accept a fundamental tenet - that innovation really starts with organizations welcoming misfits and oddballs who don't think the way everyone else does. When companies get too focused on hiring talent that won't rock the boat, the descent toward irrelevance has already begun.
That's why Sanford began 1962, his second year in office, by setting his sights on John Ehle.
On the surface, it was an unlikely partnership. Ehle, a novelist and professor in Chapel Hill who is now a member of the N.C. Literary Hall of Fame, knew so little about politics that he misspelled Sanford's name in his journal after their first meeting. Working in government didn't appeal to Ehle, who repeatedly turned down personal pleas from Sanford to join his team. But if you knew Sanford, this union was completely logical. "He looked for people who had ideas, and he was comfortable with a lot of ideas floating around at the same time," says Howard Covington Jr., co-author of "Terry Sanford: Politics, Progress and Outrageous Ambitions."
As Covington recounts, Sanford had read a newspaper piece by Ehle about the decline of the arts at UNC-Chapel Hill, Sanford's alma mater, and what could be done to turn it around. He saw Ehle as precisely the kind of creative type whom governors typically never made room for on their staffs - and whose innovative thinking could energize his entire administration. Sanford didn't relent until the writer had signed on as a special assistant, using a private grant at first to pay his salary.
Tom Lambeth, a key Sanford assistant at the time and later head of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, was befuddled by Ehle's penchant for slipping into Sanford's office unannounced. He regarded him at first as "that man who was coming in through the back door and ruining Terry's schedule."
Lambeth's assessment today: "Some ruining!" In a few short years, Ehle's ideas helped transform North Carolina's business and arts landscape in lasting ways. In an unusual move at that time, Ehle chased down national foundation dollars to form the North Carolina Fund, a nonprofit that fought poverty across the state through education, job training and community development programs. The initiative, a model for Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, was, according to Covington's book, "creative, even revolutionary, and produced self-sustaining programs that remained a generation later."
Ehle played key roles in founding the N.C. School of the Arts and the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics, helping launch a national trend in education for gifted students. He also proposed the commission that launched the state's still-thriving film industry.
It was a pattern that Sanford repeated for the rest of his career: surround himself with people who thought differently than he did, make time to listen to their ideas and line up the resources to follow through when their suggestions seemed worth the gamble. It all sounds pretty straightforward. And yet, too many leaders and organizations today do exactly the opposite, preferring the security of familiar notions, little ambiguity and minimal risk.
Now is not the time for status-quo thinking.
As we look to infuse fresh perspective into our state, communities and organizations, we should be asking ourselves this: Where are our own John Ehles?
Christopher Gergen is founding executive director of Bull City Forward, on the faculty of the Hart Leadership Program at Duke University, and co-author of "Life Entrepreneurs." Stephen Martin, a director at the nonprofit Center for Creative Leadership, is author of the forthcoming book "The Messy Quest for Meaning" and blogs at www.messyquest.com.
