In looking at the_charismatic leader model, we think the world is heading in exactly the opposite direction. Just lo0k at the twenty-first century. Nearly the entire world has moved toward democracy. The very essence of democracy is to avoid overdependence on any single leader and put the primary focus on the process. Even Churchill - perhaps the single greatest leader of the last century -was secondary to the nation and its processes, kicked out of office at the end of World War II. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini -these were charismatic leaders who did not understand that they were fundamentally less important than the institutions they served. And even if you don't buy the analogy between the shift to democracy and the evolution of corporations, the great charismatic leader model has one fundamental flaw. And this will not ever go away — not now, not in the twenty-second century, not in a thousand years: All leaders die. To transcend this unchanging reality of human mortality, the focus must be first and foremost on building the characteristics of the organization, instead of being a great charismatic leader.

Man's chief purpose is the creation and preservation of values: that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance ultimately, to the individual human life. Only in so far as values are fostered—through art and religion and science and love and domestic life—men can effectively use the machines and powers that have enabled them to tame nature and secure human existence from the worst outrages and accidents that forever threaten it. Civilization, our very capacity to be human, rests on that perpetual effort. If any nation or group thinks that the job is finished, or if man puts his confidence solely in the instruments and forgets the ends and ideals and metaphysical purposes-then the structure crumbles away: then man himself is finished.