Wow! Whether you are a college football fan or not – I encourage you to watch the last 2 minutes of the Monday night football BCS title game on January 6th. What happened in the last half of that game and in particular the last one minute and 50 seconds is what should happen everyday!

Jameis Winston (Photo credit: bmward_2000)

Florida State was 20 points behind at half time. That is pretty normal. What happened in the second half will make history. Not just because Florida State ended up winning over Auburn 34-31, or because they played well, but because of their quarterback Jameis Winston’s inspiration, leadership and relentless belief that they can succeed. This belief manifested itself in perhaps the most significant 2 minutes of football history, where a team coming from behind won by ‘sheer determination’. Jameis behavior was outstanding to watch. He encouraged everyone, even when they were so close to losing, he never stopped smiling and fighting, even with 11 seconds to go when they still had not won!

Hey, we can bring the same level of enthusiasm, drive, courage and leadership to our tech companies. Look at Blackberry, Kodak, Nokia (list goes on) who threw in the towel when the going got tough. What was missing in the picture? There wasn’t an inspired leader to drive the company forward, to make people ‘believe’! Instead CEO’s get shuffled as soon as thing go south. What would have happened to these same companies if you put a Jameis-like character to inspire people? Imagine where Blackberry could have been today.

Let’s treat our precious human intellectual talent with the inspiration it deserves. Much like football, tech companies can and should find the ‘right’ inspiring leaders. We talk about the importance of the Culture of Innovation in ProVoke. Leadership needs to embrace, encourage and motivate having the right “culture” in companies. A culture of success and not just meeting/exceeding the revenue expectation. Culture is permanent, the latter is not!

We have lost the art of inspiration in our companies. We have replaced it with fear, lack of action and by punishing experimentation and failure. More importantly, we

have decided that we don’t need inspiring leaders. Florida State would have lost badly had it not been for an engine like Winston. Why not inspire our talent in our great companies? Inspire them with pride, joy and fabulous consequences of risk? Like the last half of this game, tech companies have quarters. We need effective leaders to get people through the losing quarters so there can be huge winning quarters.

Effective leaders are those whom people want to follow (voluntarily), because following them is a great journey. Not because they have to. There is a big difference between title and true influence, and inspirational leadership. Truly inspiring leaders attract people, you get an adrenalin rush being around them, you feel great and are highly productive. Somehow we lost our mojo in the leadership of our tech companies. A lost art which we need to resurrect and do so quickly!

Also, let’s be clear: Net worth does not mean inspirational leadership. Just because a CEO has a huge compensation package, it does not make them an inspirational and influential leader. Feared: Yes. Influential leader: Not necessarily!

Biggest job of a CEO: To inspire, drive and motivate the organization. Is your CEO doing that for you?

Like Florida State I believe we can bring inspirational leadership back to the tech arena. Folks this isn’t about Monday night football or Hollywood. This is about life. Between birth and death we would rather be around those who make magic happen, than those who cause us fear, doubt and slowdown/kill our progress. Who would you rather be around?

Let’s create, find and nurture our next Winston’s all over the world!