By Tom Rasmussen

The year is 1982.  There is a small store at Pike Place Market in Seattle selling custom-roasted coffee beans.  Their new retail operations director has proposed that they expand into the business of selling coffee drinks, as well as roasting and selling coffee beans.  The owners of the company reject the idea believing that coffee is better enjoyed at home and that selling beverages will distract the company from its primary focus.  The retail director, however, believes that the coffee shop experience, modeled after European coffee bars, is an idea that could potentially be very profitable.  In 1986, the retail director breaks from the company and opens up a small chain of coffee bars in the Seattle area. 

One year later, the coffee bars had become so successful that the former director purchased the coffee roaster and rebranded his string of coffee shops with the name of the original Pike Place location. I'm sure that most of you have recognized the business in question as Starbucks and the retail director as Howard Schulz. 

I like this story for several reasons. First off, I like the company. I own stock and frequent My Starbucks regularly. However, this story also illustrates the premise of this article beautifully. My premise is this: Faith plays an important part in leadership. Another way to state this (without using the "f" word) is that our personal commitments to ideas or visions inform and influence how we lead our organizations, companies, and work teams as much or more than cold hard facts.

It should be readily apparent from the story above that both the owners and Schulz were operating in the realm of personal commitment as they made decisions regarding the company in the early eighties.  The original owners held a commitment to the art of coffee roasting.  Their company had built a reputation for gourmet coffee roasting, and they had numbers to prove it. Scores of people locally and nationally ordered coffee beans from their company.  This personal commitment had paid off in customer loyalty and in the bottom line.  Schulz, on the other hand, had experienced the coffee-bar scene on a trip to Milan, Italy.  He came back with a personal commitment to the idea that there was money to be made in offering people the coffee-bar experience as well as a cup of gourmet coffee brewed from artfully roasted beans.

Let's turn to Michael Polanyi, a twentieth-century chemist and philosopher, for direction toward understanding how personal commitments (faith) can serve us well in our leadership.  In his book Personal Knowledge, which deals with the nature of knowledge especially in the realm of scientific inquiry, Polanyi states that his goal is "... to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know that it might conceivably be false."  Polanyi finds that the concept of scientific detachment is a misconception because every scientist brings personal commitments to the endeavor.  Those commitments or beliefs set the trajectory for research and offer an interpretive framework for understanding the results.   As Polanyi reviews the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century, he finds that most of them began not from analyzing mountains of empirical data but from personal insights. For instance, Albert Einstein formulated the theory of general relativity long before he offered proof for it.  He took that stand in faith that his hypothesis was true before analyzing mountains of data rather than after. His theory flew in the face of the prevailing thought in the field of physics for his day. It was his personal commitment to his theory, held in the face of the possibility that it might not be true, that guided his work. To be fair, his critics held equally strong personal commitments holding to the status quo.

It would be tempting at this point to laud the winners.  Schulz and Einstein held fast to their beliefs and history proved them victorious.   However, we could list many, if not more, entrepreneurs, researchers, and visionaries of all kinds who stuck to their beliefs but did not find success.  That is the second half of Polanyi's assertion to believe "... even though I know that it might conceivably be false."  In other words, there is inherent risk embedded in a stand of faith. Doubt and faith are far closer cousins than faith and certainty, because there is inherent risk in every entrepreneurial startup, in every new invention, in every decision that a leader must make regarding their organization. That is not news to any of you who have led for any time. 

Polanyi's assertion has many implications in areas of epistemology and philosophy in general, but how can this inform us as leaders?

Consider the power of the intangible asset of faith.

As a leader, your strong belief and personal commitment to the vision, mission, and people of your organization is easy to underrate because it is intangible.  While holding strong to these is not a silver bullet for success, the absence of these can cause your organization to be less than it can be.  Boise is home to one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturers: Micron Technology.  Beginning in 2007, the semiconductor industry suffered a slump in prices for a number of reasons.  This slump was exacerbated by the general recession. Micron took a number of measures to stay in business, one of which was to curtail manufacturing at the Boise site.  Many analysts wondered whether the company would even survive.  Micron's competitors also suffered from that same slump, but Micron did more than merely cut back during this time.  They continued work in R&D and even increased efforts in some technological areas.  To put it in terms of our topic, the leadership remained committed to the vision and mission of the company, even when the realities of the marketplace seemed the darkest.  They also displayed faith in the competency of their engineering and manufacturing staff.  Efforts to retain as many key people as possible resulted in Micron coming out of the slump with a technological advantage over most of their competitors. The company wasn't able to save every job, but they saved many jobs.  Micron is not only still in business, but emerged from the downturn a larger and stronger company than when they entered it.

Believe in the yet to be known.

We often refer to the future of cutting-edge technology, untapped markets, and emerging trends as unknowns, when in reality they are yet to be known or in the process of being known. What appears to most of us as an unknown will appear to some as possibilities.  Ten years ago, the notion of Facebook as having any sort of market potential would have seemed ludicrous. Now, not only is it a multi-billion-dollar company, but it has spawned an entire genre of internet applications called social networking. Very little if anything about the internet in 2001 could have predicted the ubiquitous cultural presence that Facebook has in 2011.   What is the next area affecting your organization that is in the yet-to-be-known category?  Your existing business won't necessarily give you those answers. The great possibilities of the yet to be known may actually contradict the current empirical data.  Those leaders who successfully tap those emerging areas do so primarily on a faith commitment, believing in the future even while considering the risk to their present situation.

Instill faith in those you lead.

The following quotation is attributed to Carly Fiorino, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard. "...the only difference between "vision" and "hallucinations" was the number of people who could see what you were seeing."  As a leader, your personal commitment to vision, ideas, and strategies is only as good as your ability to instill those same qualities in those you lead.  Not everyone in the organization will have the same commitment as you, but they must at least be able to believe that you can see it clearly. In this world where intellectual capital is often valued higher than brick and mortar, the human resources of your organization are one of your most critical assets. Even in today's job market, why should they stick with your organization? Often times, it will come down to whether they believe there is a future in your organization worth sharing.  The very act of staying or hiring on with a company is an act of faith on the part of employees asking, "Can I see more of a future with your company than I can with another?" That question is answered to a large degree by what an employee or prospective employee believes about your organization. The other question is: "Do you as a leader have faith in those you lead and do they know it?" Edward Demming postulated decades ago that the single factor most directly related to a person's job satisfaction was knowing that what they did was valued and made a difference.

Faith - It's not the "f" word any more.

Edward Demming also said "The most important things cannot be measured." That is quite a bold statement coming from the man who urged us to measure everything in pursuit of total quality.  It is tempting to write off those things which cannot be measured because they don't fit into our empirical world of counting widgets.  However, history has proven that it is often faith in the intangible world of possibilities that has created new products, technologies, and led to organizational growth and effectiveness.

Tom Rasmussen is an IT professional with Micron Technology. He earned a bachelor of Music Performance from the University of Idaho and a Master of Divinity from Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle. He is married to Lorene Rasmussen and enjoys playing saxophone in a Boise Jazz Fusion band called Doctor Cool.