Leonard Leo is not a name known to most of Americans. Yet he has yielded tremendous leverage in a way that will have major ramifications for both society as a whole and business for years if not decades to come. He is hyperleveraging conservatism by grooming and choosing the individuals who will become federal judges or head government bureaucracies.

You see the axis of power in Washington DC is not always with our elected officials. It’s with those that have their ear and do the spade work of policy research. It resides in those backrooms where individuals are being chosen, groomed and then presented to our decision makers as candidates to take over government bureaucracies and judicial appointments that have significant impact on how we lead our lives and run our businesses.

Mr. Leo is the powerful executive vice-president of the Federalist Society, a nationwide organization of conservative lawyers, based in Washington.  And he has found a way to HyperLeverage Conservatism. A lesson for everyone – in business and politics – that demonstrates the power of combining a long term strategy, ground roots efforts, mentoring and patience to affect the landscape in profound ways.

Leo employs the 4P’s of HyperLeverage – People, Planning, Performance and Progress

The description of and methodology to apply HyperLeverage is detailed here.

The point of this blog is not to pass judgement on the politics of the Federalist Society. Rather it is to bring to your attention how using HyperLeverage – the proactive and intentional use of leverage – yield impactful and exceptional results that would rarely come from the normal course of activity.

Jeffrey Toobin writing in the New Yorker Magazine in 2017 describes Leo as being in effect Donald Trump’s subcontractor on the selection of Gorsuch. Leo is the consummate conservative influencer-in-chief. Profoundly more powerful than the talk radio heads, Rush Limbaugh Sean Hannity and Mark Levin because he employs the practice of HyperLeverage. He is more concerned with action than just talking.

Toobin further writes that “Leo, who is fifty-one, has neither held government office nor taught in a law school. He has written little and has given few speeches. He is not, technically speaking, even a lobbyist. Leo is, rather, a convener and a networker, and he has met and cultivated almost every important Republican lawyer in more than a generation.” It is this later activity that make him one of the most important and influential individuals that no one knows about.

In the first three years of the Trump Presidency, Mr. Leo and the Federalist society have put their imprimatur on the federal courts for decades. Conservative lawyers who might tend to favor businesses over the public interest will have more sway on federal benches. Important court cases in Federal District and Appellate courts will veer toward more business friendly decisions. Subsequent administrations will have to sit idly by waiting for their opportunity to stack the courts with their appointees.

How did this come about you might ask? It didn’t happen by chance. Rather the Federalist Society has been preparing for years for the opportunity to wield their influence over a new Republican president and a Republican controlled Senate. They hit the jackpot with Trump who came ill prepared for the avalanche of court appointments he would have to deal with. Enter – Mr. Leo, ready with a detailed and fully vetted list of hundreds of conservative lawyers and state judges ready to be nominated for their lifetime federal bench appointments.

HyperLeverage manifests itself in business not only in direct activities that affect profits and losses. Rather, it the entire business landscape that determines and influences the trajectory of business activity.

Take Aways

• Proactive and intentional use of leverage can have significant long term ramifications for business
• It’s not always obvious who wields the real leverage that effects the business landscape
• Organizations that play the ‘long game’ use the leverage of time horizon to their advantage