Belief: The Underpants Gnomes Method of Leadership

The primary function of a leader in any organization is to believe. A leader is someone who must carry the torch in the darkness and light the path towards the desired end goal. They must have unwavering belief in their cause, their mission, their people and their ability to achieve what may at first appear impossible or in some cases outright ridiculous.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Emmy Award winning cartoon series “South Park,” which explores current events in an often satirical way, addresses the concept and philosophy of business several times, but none with such clarity and resonance with the business community as the 1998 episode “Gnomes.”

In “Gnomes,” one of the 4th graders claims his underpants are suspiciously disappearing. What he discovers is a race of gnomes are stealing his underpants as part of a business plan wherein “Phase 1” is simply “Collect Underpants” and “Phase 3” is “Profit.” The immediate question becomes, “What is Phase 2?”—which the gnomes cannot answer. This episode has been used to illustrate folly in both business and politics in the New York Times, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal …to name a few. However, I believe these periodicals are missing the point.

Leaders inspire their people, their countries and their organizations to do impossible things for extraordinary results, but they do not always have the details of how exactly those results are going to be achieved.

John F. Kennedy inspired a nation with his 1962 “We Choose the Moon” speech in which he said: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

The “Underpants Gnome” version of his plan may have looked like this:

• Phase 1: Make speech
• Phase 2: ?
• Phase 3: Beat Russians to the moon

Which does not inspire the most confidence, as at that very moment no one in the world knew how to successfully travel and land on the moon or if it was actually possible. There was a lot of theory and potential, but no road-map for “Phase 2.” JFK believed that the nation could achieve this incredible task and do it before the end of the 1960s. Without such extraordinary and unshakable belief, the US and Russia may have never achieved the scientific, environmental and financial gains of harnessing the power of space which continue to benefit the world now almost 50 years later.

There is a veritable ton of business literature available to train you how to manage your team, sell your product or service and how to engage your customer to create a successful enterprise. You can learn every mechanical “Phase 2” process and best practice in the world but true leadership is not about process, it is about belief. Leadership is creating a big hairy audacious goal and inspiring the people around you to believe in that goal …and more importantly in their ability to achieve it and make the impossible, possible.

So don’t worry about having all the answers—history is full of stories like the Space Race and of people making incredible and seemingly absurd goals based on shaky premises. If you truly believe in your idea, hold on to it and you will find a way to realize those dreams while inspiring everyone else around you. And when they ask you how you did it—just tell them you learned everything you need to know about leadership from the Underpants Gnomes.

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