By now, you know that the Sunday NY Times Corner Office series is oft-quoted here to highlight varying aspects of leadership that flow from Adam Bryant’s conversations with notable CEOs and business leaders.
This week he interviewed Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female President of Harvard University. Communication is a critical factor in her leadership style, and I can concur with the extraordinary importance this has in a university setting, having spent 6 months consulting with UCLA. The university community is a diverse governance conundrum with many cooks and few bottle washers, so communication is vital across all of the constituencies and leadership platforms. It’s no less important in your organization but the style required in a university setting sets a high standard for what’s required from all business leaders.
She also emphasizes the value of MBWA … the leadership tactic of “Management by Walking Around” mentioned often here. She also emphasizes
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… or so says Fred Smith, Chairman and Founder of Federal Express.
By any other name, there is no substitute for making sure that everyone on your team is “aligned” … with the goals of the organization, its vision and mission, its values …. One way to discover a lack of alignment is to send out an anonymous strategy assessment to your leadership team, a simple but provocative tool that invariably uncovers the lack of consensus among key executives about the principal strategy, goals or challenges that are top priorities in the organization.
Industry Week, a veritable business magazine headquartered in Cleveland (of which a college classmate and friend, Chuck Day, was once Managing Editor), sheds some light on the topic of alignment and offers some ideas about how to measure the degree of alignment in your organization.
Try their simple suggestion about how to assess the alignment in your organization. I’ll bet it will uncover significant gaps that you didn’t think existed.
The North Bay Business Journal, a publication of the New York Times, is a weekly business newspaper which covers the North Bay area of San Francisco – from the Golden Gate bridge north, including the Wine Country of Sonoma and Napa counties.
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Article published – October 19, 2009
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” - Winston Churchill
At first, I figured it is was too late to talk about surviving the economic storm we’re in … and then, I thought, hey, this isn’t over. Maybe the sense of impending doom has dissipated but the reduced level of business activity and an increasing sense of frugality in a buyer-dominated market are going to be our unbidden passengers for quite a few more miles.
“Let us go into the storm … and through the storm,” said Winston Churchill as he prepared England to confront the Nazi regime in World War II. As it applies to our current business climate, I thought this might be a touch of hyperbole, but then I recalled that Churchill’s odyssey raged for five years, not just the single year we’ve navigated since September 2008.
Imagine Churchill, FDR and others slogging for five dreadful years through the greatest threat to civilization we have known. So, how do we get through four more years of this business cycle, a time frame proclaimed by many before employment gets back to 6 percent and more customary growth trends resume?
Consider these few concepts inspired by the triumph and tragedy of those years:
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I have mentioned on many occasions the Corner Office series in the Sunday NY Times which features an interview by Adam Bryant with a prominent CEO. The questions are consistent but invariably reveal an important reminder of key elements of leadership.
In a recent interview with Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, Rogers explained how important it is to be on the front lines, to employ the MBWA concept that keeps you in touch with what’s REALLY going on. He also emphasizes a point made repeatedly in Sword Tips … that a strong leadership team is an invaluable cornerstone of successful leadership. In an unusual reference, Rogers mentions it in the context of time management … that he can’t get done what’s on his plate unless he has built a trusted team, clearly shared the company strategy with them and demonstrates his trust in their ability to succeed.
A final reminder is a bugaboo for most business leaders …
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The NY Times runs a weekly column entitled the Corner Office, that discusses leadership lessons from CEO’s across a broad spectrum of companies. These interviews usually recall important tenets of successful leadership and serve as a valuable reminder about important lessons and how they should be applied.
This week, Adam Bryant interviewed Susan Lyne, CEO of Gilt Groupe. Lyne reports that she has learned the importance of being committed to “stepping back to think about the big picture,” a major challenge for most business leaders. A great way to do that is to grab a blank sheet of paper to begin.
I also like her suggestion about “office hours”, an idea she picked up from a colleague who was a former college professor.
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During the last several meetings of the CEO Round Table, we’ve invested a lot of time with leading experts to discuss “Talent Management” issues. Experienced CEO’s understand that building a high performance company centers around the recruiting, retention and performance of talented executives. In building our knowledge and insights into these critical challenges, we’ve improved our recruiting skills, launched goal and performance management initiatives among member companies and learned about the strengths and weaknesses of compensation as a high performance driver.
In my experience, few CEO’s devote the necessary time to Talent Management.
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Patrick Lencioni has got it right in his guest column in Business Week recently: There’s no substitute for taking an active interest in the lives of your employees. The MBWO – “managment by walking around” theory has always been popular in these pages as a simple, no-cost tool to stay in touch with employees … not to check up on them but to engage them in spontaneous dialogue, encourage their excellence, find out what’s getting in the way of their success, champion their ideas and causes.
You can help them find job fulfillment and dramatically increase their engagement in the company’s performance. Read this article, take it to heart and begin practicing it NOW!
I mentioned here before about the regular Sunday NY Times feature called the Corner Office, which summarizes conversations with various CEO’s about leadership, lessons learned, interviewing techniques, etc. Here are 4 key lessons:
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Dennis Zeleny, an established HR professional and frequent contributer to Forbes magazine, contributes another POV in a growing list of articles about How to Lead in Tough Times. I think his key points are right on, and represent a compelling summary of key elements of leadership for all times:
Welcome to Exkalibur. I’m Lary Kirchenbauer, President of Exkalibur Advisors, Inc. Please take advantage of our resources to help you build your business ... and let me know what more we can do to serve you.
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Lary has a remarkable ability to provide a clear and thoughtful analysis of the business drivers and potential outcomes facing private companies at each stage of development. His insight has provided a powerful framework for decision-making in many challenging situations.
Noah J. Rosenkrantz, CEO, GreenLine Systems
