Leadership Writings: The Legacy of Joe Smerkers
Commemorating the writings and hope of Joe Smerkers
The Story of Leaders Anonymous
Leaders Anonymous was the culmination of Joe Smerkers' professional career. The leaders-anonymous.com website is dedicated to his work, hope, and the difference he was trying to make in organizations and others. It’s a collection of Joe’s writings that allows you to get behind the words, into his thoughts, and ultimately, the evolution of his thinking that led to Leaders Anonymous.
In 1995, Joe transitioned to writing on leadership and personal transformation issues, and supporting executives - through dialogue, storytelling, group interaction, and mentoring - to think through their roles as leaders of change.
In 1995, Joe began writing monthly letters in which he shared his thoughts on how the pillars of accepted norms of effective leadership and organizational effectiveness were ineffective and, in most cases, failed. He wrote about topics he felt limited thought and the importance of reaching full potential to urge one to see the potential for themselves and their organizations, culminating in a revolution, a revelation in thought and actions to allow individuals and organizations to unleash the real value of their human capital and to reach their full potential. For Joe, it culminated in his epiphany of Leaders Anonymous in late 1995, which he fleshed out in more detail in 1996.
To provide some context - In the 1990s, Corporate America was still very rigid in its thinking and how it functioned. Organizations were still very top-down in their leadership style. It was more common than not for a leader to state the “what” and the “how” for an organization to meet their goals. It was a time when you could see new competitors coming over the hills hundreds of miles away, and shifts in products and customer segments moved slowly. Organizations could be somewhat ineffective and still win. Today, everything can change by lunch, and it is not an option for winning organizations to be highly effective.
Joe wrote about Leaders Anonymous as if he had reached the destination point of his thinking and experiences, the culmination of his life’s work - I believe it was just the beginning. Leaders Anonymous was an “out there” thought in 1995 and in some respects is still today - difficult to think through pragmatically and put in action where a direct line to performance can be drawn. I believe Joe would have seen this and continued to shape and form Leaders Anonymous on the anvil to a format that could be more readily accepted and successfully implemented. This is speculation due to Joe’s passing in 1997.
The leaders-anonymous.com website was created to commemorate and publish the work of Joe Smerkers. It’s to be used to continue to advance his work and be adopted to advance individuals and organizations in reaching their full potential.
About Joe Smerkers
Written By A Friend
We bump into people at different points in our lives who can change our trajectory for success. This was the case for me in 1983 when I was a student at Skidmore College, and I had the opportunity to learn from Joe Smerkers, my marketing professor. Joe was a tough professor who emphasized and rewarded thorough critical thinking. I was fortunate to take three business courses with him.
As I came to learn, Joe Smerkers emerged from humble beginnings as the son of a building maintenance worker in Philadelphia, PA. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Florida Atlantic University and then served in the USMC in Vietnam. Following that, he obtained an MBA from J. L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Joe held various positions in strategic planning, marketing, and engineering with General Electric and Bendix before joining Skidmore as an assistant professor. In addition to his role at Skidmore, Joe founded a management consulting firm, Smerkers & Company, INC., in 1983. The firm served several vertical markets, focusing on marketing and strategy development.
Although successful in building his client base, Joe became increasingly unfulfilled in creating sustainable change with his clients. This was due to a combination of clients not optimizing the implementation of his work and observing leaders failing to embody true leadership. For many consultants, this would create a greater dependency on their relationship, but for Joe Smerkers, it was about the sustainable change he was trying to foster. In 1995, he transitioned to writing on leadership and personal transformation issues, supporting executives through dialogue, storytelling, group interaction, and mentoring to help them think through their roles as leaders of change.
Ultimately, it was in his writing that Joe found his real professional purpose in life. He founded Leaders Anonymous and began to shape his vision when, in October of 1996, he received the diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer. Joe passed at the age of 50 in November of 1997, leaving behind a wonderful family, which he often wrote about in his work.
There are moments when we reconnect or cross paths with certain people for a reason. In 1988, having just received my MBA, I reconnected with Joe Smerkers and met with him at his office. Joe wanted to see a copy of my resume. He read it, ripped it up, and said, “This is not you.” He was right. I had allowed the career center at my university to influence me with industry norms of how a resume should read, and in doing so, I lost my voice. My complete focus was on landing a consumer goods brand management position. Joe asked me to work on a couple of projects with him while I pursued that, which turned into a wonderful opportunity to collaborate with Joe Smerkers to build the business. Through this experience, I learned I was an operator, not a consultant, and in 1990, I left the firm. Looking back over 35 years later, a career in the consumer goods industry was not my path in life. We continued to keep in touch.
Joe Smerkers found his real professional purpose in life; he was selfless, influenced many, and has been missed and remains in the thoughts of many since he passed.