Leadership: Learning From Success and Failure

Abstract

In 1987, newly elected Flint, Michigan Mayor Matthew S. Collier faced a series of seemingly insurmountable leadership challenges. In this article, Collier retrospectively analyzes two specific leadership challenges - a success and a failure. Using a framework of analysis espoused by Dr. Ronald Heifetz of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, former Mayor Collier takes the reader into the trenches of how a city's complex financial problems were resolved through effective leadership, and why a major economic development initiative may have failed due to ineffective leadership.