Picture this: a massive global company with more than $100 billion in annual revenue and hundreds of thousands of employees is searching for a new CEO. They interview a slate of candidates with years of experience running large enterprises, managing scaled teams, and knowing the ins and outs of the sector. Instead of choosing one of these highly experienced and tested options, they hire a rising star in his early 30s, a bright individual contributor who has lots of fresh ideas but no management experience at all.
While it might be compelling to see how the up-and-comer performed as CEO in a reality show kind of way, a board’s fiduciary responsibility to the company's shareholders would never allow for this kind of wild swing.
Why, then, did New York’s Democratic primary voters just make an equivalent hire to run the world's most important city?
In some important ways, the jobs of CEO and mayor aren’t that dissimilar. Hang out with mayors and you won't hear a lot of political grandstanding; they'll tell you that paving roads and keeping libraries open aren't Democratic or Republican issues. Being a good mayor or a good CEO demands deep management experience, the ability to make responsible decisions with many unknown variables, and bring in more money than you spend. Set the direction. Hire well. Deliver results.
None of this is a knock against Zohran Mamdani, the likely next mayor of New York. Hopefully, he will rise to the occasion. But it's worth exploring why voters right now are so keen to elect candidates who would never be chosen to run big companies.
The answer lies in two trends that are colliding to reshape the way people vote and think about politics. First, the power of incumbency is dead and insurgency is now far more powerful. At a time of intense dissatisfaction with the status quo, voters on both ends of the spectrum are embracing Barney Stinson’s cardinal rule: new is always better.
Second, even though voter dissatisfaction is super high, the outcome of elections have a limited tangible impact in most people's daily lives. Political discourse is more about what we believe at the macro level than how we see our lives changing. As a result, people treat elections as a reflection of philosophy, rather than as a job interview.
CEOs have much more authority over their companies than mayors do over their cities, and their impact is much more directly felt. Companies live and die by their leadership, to a far greater extent than cities — and as a result, they are incentivized to be more risk averse than voters.
Who’s doing it right?
The answer is both — and neither. The public and private sectors both have things to learn from each other when it comes to selecting and empowering leadership. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu was elected on fresh energy and idealism, but she leaned on veterans to manage operations. A parallel example is Satya Nadella, whose rise through the ranks of Microsoft gave him the perspective and mandate to radically transform the company in a way no outsider could have.
Good city leadership teams have a combination of hard-earned experience and youthful passion, and if Mamdani goes on to win the general election, I’d hope that he has the self-awareness to pair his ambitious proposals with experienced leaders who know how to implement them.
At the same time, there are plenty of companies that have fallen into the trap of assuming what worked yesterday will keep working tomorrow. Their products and culture grow stale and the risk of younger, hungrier companies displacing them grows. The private sector could certainly use a dose of what makes political upstarts like Mamdani so compelling.
Leadership is context-specific. But courage, humility, and judgment transcend sectors. Whether you're running a city or a company, the most successful leaders double down in their strengths while empowering up and comers to cover their blindspots.
The best leaders compel people to dream big, but you don't earn that right unless you start by earning their trust that you are an effective manager. That's a timeless lesson for both government and the private sector.
David Meadvin, a recovered political speechwriter, is CEO of the corporate advisory firm One Strategy Group.
