Special Issue: Leading in a Time of Uncertainty

Transcription

Volume 33 Issue 4 2010
People
&
Strategy
Special Issue: Leading in a Time of Uncertainty
Special Issue Editors: Lee J. Konczak and Kathy Molloy
PERSPECTIVES
Impacting Leadership with Neuroscience
David Rock
Counterpoints:
Paul R. Lawrence/Terry Hogan/Christine R. Williams/Tobias Kiefer/Marshall Goldsmith
E x pert p a n e l
The Leadership Challenges Facing HR:
Top CHROs Share Learnings and Advice for What’s Next
Steve Steckler
n e w rese a rc h
C-Suite Challenges and the Economic Meltdown: What’s Next for Senior Leaders?
Roland B. Smith/Michael Campbell
P R a ctic a l F r a m e w o r k s
Leadership Agility: A Business Imperative for a VUCA World
Nick Horney/Bill Pasmore/Tom O’Shea
A Context-Oriented Approach to Leader Selection: A Strategy for Uncertain Times
Lucy Povah/Kate Sobczak
T h o u g h t l e a d ers h ip
Leadership as Connection: A Radical Approach
Lucira Jane Nebelung
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People
&
Strategy
Volume 33 Issue 4 2010
articles
departments
16
4 From the Executive Editor
The Leadership Challenges Facing HR: Top CHROs
Share Learnings and Advice for What’s Next
Steve Steckler
24
C-Suite Challenges and the Economic Meltdown:
What’s Next for Senior Leaders?
34
Leadership Agility: A Business Imperative for a VUCA World
42
A Context-Oriented Approach to Leader Selection:
A Strategy for Uncertain Times
50
Leadership as Connection: A Radical Approach
Roland B. Smith/Michael Campbell
Nick Horney/Bill Pasmore/Tom O’Shea
Lucy Povah/Kate Sobczak
Lucira Jane Nebelung
Ed Gubman
5 From the Special Issue Editors
The Leadership Issue
Lee J. Konczak and Kathy Molloy
3 A Tribute to Bill Stopper
6 P
erspectives: Point/Counterpoint
Impacting Leadership with
Neuroscience
David Rock
Counterpoints:
Paul R. Lawrence
Terry Hogan
Christine R. Williams
Tobias Kiefer
Marshall Goldsmith
14 i4cp Research Corner
56 HRPS News
57 Book Reviews
Reviewed this issue:
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
By Ronald Heifitz, Marty Linsky and
Alexander Grashow
Deciding Who Leads
By Joseph McCool
Join us on Twitter
Bootstrap Leadership
For industry news, HRPS events and membership
updates and special offers, follow @HRPS on Twitter.
Giving Voice to Values
By Steve Arneson
By Mary C. Gentile
People
&
Strategy
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Building a Strategic HR Function
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Perspectives Editor
Anna Tavis
2
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
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I
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Volume 33/Issue 4 — 2010
3
from the executive editor
Leadership and Gratitude
A
n intrepid reporter once asked
the Rolling Stones if there was an
overriding theme to their music.
“Sure,” replied Mick Jagger. “All our songs
are about women.”
If there has been an overarching theme to this
journal for the past three years, it has been
leadership. No matter what topics we’ve presented, our goal has been to help you become
a better business leader. We’ve worked hard
to provide thought-provoking, cutting-edge
information so you could make better decisions. Since success in HR is about influence,
more than authority, our intent has been to
increase your knowledge so you could be as
influential as possible. I hope we’ve succeeded
in some meaningful measure.
One of the things we know about leadership
is that in comes in many forms. It can be loud
and demanding, or it can be quiet and unassuming. The latter description fits one of the
greatest colleagues and friends this journal
ever had. Bill Stopper, who edited the front
section of this journal for many years, passed
away in October 2010. Bill was a gentleman
in every sense of the word, but he had firm
convictions about HR and how it could help
build better companies and improve people’s
work lives. He brought those beliefs to this
journal and to our publications committee in
ways that guided us all. Bill was a wonderful
friend to me, and I miss him dearly.
Much more personally rewarding and
enlightening is guiding a team of brilliant,
energetic and committed peers. My relationships with them were my ultimate source of
inspiration and motivation. Moreover, they
taught me how to bring out the best in volunteers—any team really—by paying close
attention to individual needs, attending to
those needs as much as possible, and emphasizing team engagement through positive
and open collaboration and communication. I am deeply indebted to our team for
the lessons in leading each member gave me.
I will try my best to apply them every chance
I get.
This is my last issue as executive editor of
People & Strategy, and it has been my deep
So, a BIG thank you to all the team: Anna,
Amy, Greg, Sue, Jeana, Steve, Lee, Kathy,
Patsy, John, Richard, Jay, Theresa, Arthur
and Yochanan. Thanks also to some names
that are not on the masthead: Lisa Boyd,
Chris Lopez, Walt Cleaver, Kevin Rubens,
David Schmahl, Cindy McCauley, Mark
Vickers, Alexis Fink, Jim Walker, Fred Frank,
Craig Taylor, Rich Hughes, Pat Wright and
James Dulebohn. I could not have done this
without you.
This is my last issue as executive editor of People &
Strategy, and it has been my deep pleasure to serve
you in this role. It’s been a lot of work, but, as with
most volunteer efforts, the more I put into it, the more
I got out of it.
That’s why it’s fitting that we offer this special
issue, devoted to leadership in the coming
decade. Our issue editors, Lee Konczak and
Kathy Molloy, with assistance from Greg
Kesler, our leadership articles editor, have put
together a terrific and far-ranging discussion
of leadership. They’ve touched all the bases,
from empirical research to detailed frameworks to interviews with top leaders to love.
You’ll just have to read it to grasp all the
threads they weave together, but you’ll be
richly rewarded when you do. My great
thanks to Lee, Kathy and Greg who demonstrated the leadership traits of excellence,
accountability, persistence, patience, judgment, agility and diplomacy, among many
others, in creating this issue.
4
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
pleasure to serve you in this role. It’s been a
lot of work, but, as with most volunteer
efforts, the more I put into it, the more I got
out of it. I have been enriched greatly by
working with the contributors and colleagues
with whom I served as an associate editor
from 2002-2007 and executive editor from
2008-2010.
And therein lies another lesson in leadership.
This role, like most leadership roles, achieves
its goals only by working with a team, in this
case the magnificent team of editors whose
names you see on our masthead. My big
learning from the last three years is that satisfaction lies not just in completing the
task—the publication of a winning issue.
Joe McCann, who has many years of experience with this journal, takes over as executive
editor with the next issue and will do a superb
job. Joe recently served as dean and professor
of management at the Davis College of Business at Jacksonville University. He brings a
fresh perspective to People & Strategy while
maintaining our commitment to excellence.
Our overriding theme for the journal may be
leadership, but my overwhelming emotion at
this time is gratitude. Thanks to all of you for
supporting People & Strategy.
Happy Reading,
Ed Gubman
from the special issue editors
Leading in a Time of
Uncertainty: The Next Decade
I
t is no surprise that we are looking for new
ways to think about, find and develop
leaders for the decade ahead, given the
seismic shifts in our institutions and infrastructures during the last decade. We began
the new century with a technology-bust
recession, followed it with a terrorist attack
on American soil, and then saw a housing
boom, bubble and bust the almost destroyed
the global economy. We expect that dramas
of accelerating change, uncertainty, crisis and
complexity will continue to form businesses
and workplaces for the foreseeable future.
ing how the brain of a leader “functions in
real time,” in part to find the link between
leader behavior and leader development.
Many thanks to Anna Tavis for her work in
organizing and writing Perspectives!
Our i4cp research corner, developed by
Mark Vickers, brings new research on leadership agility, a theme that runs all through
this issue.
Our first long article opens with a conversation among a select group of Chief HR officers,
We reached out to applied researchers, business leaders
and HR executives to help us look for innovative ways
to think about, identify, develop and position leaders.
As we prepared this special issue of People &
Strategy focusing on leadership, this volatile
context caused us to ask some tough questions.
What does it take to be successful as a leader in
today’s business environment? What will leaders need to do differently as we contemplate the
next decade? How do leaders ‘re-engage’ the
workforce and facilitate high performance?
What types of frameworks and tools will enable
leaders to successfully navigate the challenges
they will confront in the next five to 10 years?
We address these questions by bringing you new
ideas and perspectives to stretch your thinking
about leadership, new research on leader development, and practical tools and tactics to put to
use now and in the (at least a few) years ahead.
We reached out to applied researchers, business
leaders and HR executives to help us look for
innovative ways to think about, identify, develop and position leaders. We are proud of the
work by our authors, who bring you these
thought-provoking insights.
We start with the new basics: the brain of the
leader. Our Perspectives section highlights
David Rock, whose work focuses on research-
moderated and compiled by our colleague,
Steve Steckler. This riveting conversation presents the reflections of top HR leaders regarding
leading the HR function, their own careers,
and their thoughts on the future
Next, Roland Smith and Michael Campbell
of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)
catalog the nature of leadership challenges
that lie ahead from the perspective of C-level
leaders, based on an on-going research project they are conducting.
Our next article provides models and tools
for developing agile leaders in this business
environment characterized by Volatility,
Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity
(VUCA). Authors Nicholas Horney, Tom
O’Shea and Bill Pasmore provide an example
of a company that embraced VUCA to change
its ways.
How does one go about selecting the best
leaders in this climate of uncertainty and
change? Lucy Povah and Kate Sobczak argue
that applying contextual or contingency variables to hiring criteria makes for more
effective selection of leaders and show you
how to do it.
Capping our series of articles is a thoughtpiece by Lucira Jane Nebelung titled,
“Leading as Connection: A Radical
Approach.” The author looks at the inner
state of leadership and asks us to consider
leading as a form of deep connection, even a
form of loving. She shows us the power of
connection to effect bottom-line success.
Our book reviews, edited by Patsy Svare and
John Bausch, spotlight four current works on
leadership: Bootstrap Leadership, Giving
Voice to Values, Deciding Who Leads and
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership to help
you pursue these issues further.
We thank each of the contributing authors for
their persistence and focus on excellence. In
addition to our colleagues, Anna, Mark,
Steve, Patsy and John, we also thank our
managing editor, Theresa Wojtalewicz, for
her meticulous attention to detail and management of the publication process. Many
thanks to Greg Kesler, our senior editor, who,
by asking the tough questions at the right
times, helped us stay focused on the most
important messages. Finally, special thanks to
Ed Gubman, the executive editor of the journal, who prodded and counseled us toward
ever more concise and effective communication. We are sad to know that this issue is Ed’s
last as executive editor, but we feel honored
to have had the opportunity to work under
his wise guidance.
Lee J. Konczak
Kathy Molloy
5
From the Perspectives Editor
Anna Tavis, Perspectives Editor
As the first decade of the 21st century draws to a close, we can
look back confidently at the 20th century and call it the management century. Peter Drucker’s centennial in 2009 became a
testimonial to the success we have had in management development. The situation is quite different, however, when it comes to
leadership “science.” There are more than 60,000 books on leadership on our shelves, and we still have not “cracked the code” on
what true leadership really means and how it can be achieved.
Twenty-first century neuroscience is now attempting to come to
leadership’s rescue. Brain research is entering leadership discussions center stage and may help to close the gap between our goals
and our practices. People & Strategy invited David Rock, the
pioneer of brain-based thinking about leadership and the founder
of the NeuroLeadership Institute, to lead our discussion for this
special issue. Rock’s article “How Neuroscience will Impact Leadership” sets the stage for a breakthrough conversation among Paul
Lawrence, a Harvard scholar, Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s
best-selling leadership author, and three practitioners: Terry
Hogan of Citigroup, Christine Williams, of NASA and Tobias
Kiefer of Booz and Co.
According to David Rock, we now are able to access those areas
of the brain where important leadership brain functions take
place. We can even pinpoint specific training and development
activities to influence brain centers to drive more effective behavior in four key domains, including the leader’s ability to: 1) solve
problems and make decisions 2) regulate emotions, 3) collaborate,
and 4) facilitate change.
The following exchange of ideas is a mere anticipation of the
breakthroughs yet to come. Our selection is an invitation to all
students of leadership to continue to follow the hard science
that is radically changing the ways we train and develop 21st
century leaders.
Impacting Leadership with Neuroscience
By David Rock, Founder of Neuroleadership Institute
W
6
hile speaking at a conference
recently, I asked a room full of HR
and training professionals if they
wanted to improve the quality of the leaders
in their organizations. Everyone raised a
hand. Then, I asked who was confident they
knew how to develop their leaders. Not a
single hand went up.
Up until now, most of our leadership theories
evolved out of behavioral observations, or
through social psychology research. It
appears that this approach has not delivered
what it was supposed to do. Despite the fact
there are now more than 60,000 books on
leadership, there is no broad agreement on
what exactly leaders do, or what it takes for
them to do their jobs successfully.
explores the neuroscience underpinning
four key leadership skills, called the four
domains of NeuroLeadership. These
domains include:
This situation is not an isolated occurence. A
2008 study showed that ‘improving leadership’ was the second most urgent human
capital imperative for most companies’ business strategies. Given how widespread the
problem is, perhaps we need a breakthrough
here, something so fundamental that would
offer a new approach to the very foundations
of leadership thinking.
Recent developments within neuroscience
have given us the ability to shed some new
light on how the brain functions in real time.
This new brain research may provide the
missing link between leadership behavior
and leadership development. Since 2007,
there has been an effort to gather relevant
neuroscience findings into a new field called
‘NeuroLeadership.’ NeuroLeadership
4. The ability to facilitate change.
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
1.The ability to solve problems and make
decisions;
2.The ability to regulate emotions;
3.The ability to collaborate with others; and
While the NeuroLeadership field is still new,
there already are identifiable benefits to
applying neuroscience research findings to
our understanding of leadership characteristics. Clearly, there are tangible benefits to
improving leadership development techniques. Multiple studies show that the best
Neuroscience is offering more theoretical
breakthroughs that already are making a big
difference. Using neuroscience to explain leadership
issues now is happening across major, corporate,
government and non-profit organizations...
leaders have both strong business and interpersonal skills. Yet many leaders have focused
on their business skills and let their interpersonal skills lag. Telling leaders to be more self
aware, authentic or to create trust can be both
a tough sell and mission impossible for the
trainers and coaches.
brain tests rather than questionnaires. We
even have a way to measure overall neural
integration, a marker for adaptability. As
these technologies become more widely available, we can get better at putting the right
people into the right jobs, as well as target
development needs to the individual.
How do you take someone who has become
a hard-nosed executive and build his or her
soft skills, after decades of being rewarded for
driving results? To begin, you need to speak
in a respectful language, which means a language based on hard data, like brain research.
Drawing on the four domains of NeuroLeadership, program designers and facilitators are
able to explain the theoretical foundations, in
biological terms, of most aspects of self and
social awareness. At our annual NeuroLeadership Summit, hundreds of leadership
practitioners discuss the benefits of underpinning a leadership development intervention
with neuroscience. In short, science gets leaders turning to programs they normally would
not do. It has them switch off their BlackBerry devices while they are there, and helps
them ease into ideas that otherwise could be
personally threatening.
Another emerging area of research involves
the ability to predict directly a leaders’ effectiveness. In a lab at MIT, scientist Alexander
Pentland is able to accurately predict who
will succeed in an influencing task, without
needing to hear what the leader says. The
approach draws on biological signals like
body movements and tone of voice, based on
research called ‘Honest Signals.’
Several other benefits to drawing on neuroscience are just emerging. We are beginning
to test leaders’ brain functioning to gain clues
about how they will operate in certain conditions. For a while we could test how well
someone could solve linear and non-linear
problems. Now, we also can test for how well
people regulate their emotions, how well they
connect emotionally with others, and how
well they focus their attention, all based on
Finally, with a more accurate understanding
of what leaders do and an ability to quantify a leader’s abilities, we can begin to
measure and therefore improve leadership
programs more successfully. Currently,
billions of dollars a year are spent on leadership development, with very little
understanding of what we are trying to
achieve, and minimal capacity to measure
outcomes with hard data.
Improving the quality of our leaders has
never been more important. Neuroscience is
offering some theoretical breakthroughs that
already are making a big difference. Using
neuroscience to explain leadership issues
now is happening across major corporate,
government and non-profit organizations,
including NASA, the National Defense University, Citibank, Microsoft and other firms
around the globe. While the research is still
new, the benefits are available to change the
way we lead.
David Rock is the founder and CEO of
Results Coaching Systems (RCS),
which has operations in 15 countries
across the globe. He co-authored a feature article with neuroscientist Dr.
Jeffrey Schwartz, called ‘The Neuroscience of Leadership.’ He also wrote,
‘Managing with the Brain in Mind.’ He
is the author of several books including
‘Coaching with the Brain in Mind’
(Wiley & Sons, 2009), and ‘Your Brain
at Work,’ (Oct. 2009). Rock founded
the NeuroLeadership Institute and
Summit, a global initiative bringing
neuroscientists and leadership experts
together to build a new science of leadership development.
Drawing on the four domains of NeuroLeadership,
program designers and facilitators are able to explain
the theoretical foundations, in biological terms, of
most aspects of self and social awareness... and
helps them ease into ideas that otherwise could be
personally threatening.
➤
7
perspectives – counterpoints
How the Brain Enables
Good Leadership
Paul R. Lawrence, author of Driven to Lead:
Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership
(Jossey-Bass, 2010).
L
eadership has yet to make the leap from
art to science. I believe that recent
research into how the human brain
makes decisions, combined with recent discoveries in human evolution, now offer the building
blocks of a useful science of leadership.
From Animal Instinct to Human
Decision Making
Other animals have instincts and physical traits
suited to their environments. Humans have
instincts, but these only get the decision-making process started. We take a wide variety of
information into account and only then figure
out what to do. And while humans are not
individually very strong, quick or deadly, they
are very effective in groups because, unlike
other animals, they can trust their companions
to help them rather than opportunistically rob
or abandon them. A human making a decision,
unlike an animal obeying an instinct, has to
consider others’ survival as well as his or her
own—even when those imperatives conflict.
Such decision making is the foundation of
complex human societies, organizations of all
kinds and leadership.
• The drive to comprehend—to make sense
of the world and ourselves, which enables
forecasting, inventing and problem solving.
Each of these drives monitors signals from
our sense organs, adds its own evaluation,
and sends the signals to other parts of the
brain. Imagine a CEO whose company has
just lost a key long-term contract because a
competitor dropped its prices. The drive to
acquire tells him to push sales harder. The
drive to comprehend tells him to learn how
his competitor cuts prices. The drive to defend
tells him to downsize. The drive to bond tells
him not to cast good employees overboard.
Clearly, these last two imperatives conflict.
These four drives are not a metaphor.
Researchers can now see them at work inside
the brain. For example, brain-imaging studies
have shown the nucleus acumbens “lighting
up” with increased blood flow when people
choose a generous rather than a selfish
option—the drive to bond in action.
The Four-Drive Decision
Amazingly, the variety and even conflict of
the drives is not the problem—it is the solution. It stimulates another part of our CEO’s
brain, the prefrontal cortex, to formulate possible responses that are sent back to the drives
for review until a solution is “good enough”
for all four.
The Four Drives
How does this apply to everyday leadership?
Let’s look inside the brain. Humans evolved
four basic drives, each essential to both survival and good leadership.
• The drive to acquire—to get what we need
or value, from food, shelter and offspring
to expertise and promotion at work.
• The drive to defend—to protect what we
need or value, including our company’s
market share and reputation.
• The drive to bond—to form long-term,
trusting, caring relationships that go
beyon d m u t u a l b e n e f i t , i n c l u d i n g
relationships with coworkers, customers,
suppliers and investors.
8
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
Paul R. Lawrence is the Wallace Brett
Donham Professor of Organizational
Behavior Emeritus at Harvard Business School. During his 44 years on the
Harvard faculty, he taught in all the
School’s programs and served as chairman of the Organizational Behavior
area and also of both the MBA and
AMP programs. He did undergraduate
work in sociology and economics at
Albion College and did MBA and doctoral training at Harvard. His research,
published in 26 books and numerous
articles, has dealt with the human
aspects of management.
Neuroscience Provides
Tools to Navigate the New
Business Reality
Terry Hogan, Director, Executive Development,
Citibank
T
he four domains of NeuroLeadership;
problem solving, emotion regulation,
collaborating and facilitating change
provide an interesting lens through which to
examine the field of global leadership development. Leaders today face greater challenges
than ever before as they work across multiple
geographies, functions, product lines and
national cultures. Leaders in a globalized
business world are often managing this multiplexity with the same toolkit they had
previously, long before the tall technical silos
and corporate hierarchies, which at one time
helped to bring efficiency and productivity,
gave way to a cross-border, matrixed, digital,
virtual and protean workplace.
Problem formation, intercultural acuity, cocreation and the balance between change
agentry and adaptation are the new cardinal
points for global leaders, who must now charter new mental maps. The neuroscience of
leadership juxtaposed on the global mindset
suggests that there is no longer an option for
teaching leaders business skills or soft skills,
because there is no longer a difference between
the two. A mechanistic view of leadership cannot apply to an unpredictable, global world.
We need a holistic view of the leader, leadership competencies, and the models,
frameworks and methods for development.
Neuorscience provides a useful framework
for understanding how leaders gain insights
while learning to work in new ways across
traditional boundaries in a borderless world.
Leadership, and especially global leadership,
is a transformational learning experience,
wherein new ways of thinking and behaving
occur through fundamental paradigm shifts.
Global leaders must be able to scan the environment for meaningful data points that
allow them to formulate effective strategies
and plot new courses of action. These data
points often come from unexpected sources
in another part of the company or the world,
or come through combining products and
services in a new way for an emerging market,
or by being able to recognize and understand
the cultural influences that make for differences in local business practices. Leaders,
therefore, need to be able to see and process
information in new ways, making connections between phenomena that have never
been linked before in their minds. This is systems thinking, and it is the hallmark of
resourceful and innovative leaders throughout history.
The dialogue between the science of the brain
and the art of leadership demonstrates this
kind of systems thinking. This missing link is
actually one of many that will help us to
develop people to lead in an interconnected
world. Another such critical link is cultural
neuroscience It looks at the mutual influences of biology, cognition and social
psychology, and promises exciting implications for the development of global leaders.
Disparate academic disciplines are but a mirror image of the silos in corporations. The
need for systems thinking in the development
of leaders also calls for us to work across the
functional support silos of learning and
development, organizational development,
expatriation, human resources, talent management, diversity and compensation.
Reductionist thinking from academics or corporate HR practitioners cannot develop the
skills required to perform effectively in a
global world. The multiplexity of an interconnected world calls for our collaboration
as well. As this continues to happen, we will
finally have an opportunity to develop these
skills in global leaders.
Terry Hogan is director of Citi’s Executive Development where she is
responsible for the design and delivery
of senior leadership development programs, team training and other
organizational support interventions.
Her current research focuses on linking
overarching business objectives and
learning and organization development to global leadership and
intercultural competency. She holds a
master’s degree in Intercultural Relations and Global Leadership from the
School of International Studies at the
University of the Pacific and the Intercultural Communication Institute and
a Bachelor of Science degree from
Oregon State University.
Applying Neuroscience to
Leadership Development:
Designing Learning with
the Brain in Mind
Christine R. Williams, Director, Systems
Engineering Leadership Development, NASA
A
s a science and technology organization, NASA has always had strong
commitment to employee training
and development. Technical learning involving the hard sciences aligned well with our
culture and mission, and as a result was wellreceived by our employees and managers.
This was not always true of the leadershipdevelopment activities that focused more on
Leaders, therefore, need to be able to see and
process information in new ways, making connections
between phenomena that have never been linked
before in their minds.
self-awareness and learning to improve
employee and organizational performance.
This learning was normally referred to as soft
science or the more commonly used, and less
complementary name “touchy feely.”
In 2008, as part of NASA’s efforts to enhance
the critical skills of systems engineering,
NASA leadership took a deeper look at the
factors that contributed to mission success.
By studying successful systems engineers,1 it
became clear that technical expertise was
only a part of the equation. The defining factor between good and great systems engineers
was indeed the effective implementation of
the softer sciences, such as the ability to
engage and motivate employees, build effective teams, communicate well at all levels and
think systemically. Mission success depended
on what was then defined as the “Art and
Science” of systems engineering.2 To build on
this understanding, NASA initiated a new
developmental program to accelerate the
development of the Art and Science of systems engineering.
While an understanding of neuroscience
already had been introduced into a few NASA
leadership programs, with the creation of a
new Systems Engineering Leadership Development Program we now had an
opportunity to integrate what we learned
about neuroscience into every part of our
program design. From the start of the program, we taught participants about the brain
and discussed how we intended the design of
the program to work with human needs and
our evolutionary preferences rather than
against them.
We designed every aspect of the program with
the brain in mind, from the length and flow
of learning activities to how we introduced
and built the learning community. Logistics
was a major factor in creating the right environment for learning. We changed factors
such as lighting and even the food we served
for breaks. The design of stretch assignments
was particularly challenging as it took these
leaders completely out of their comfort zones.
We had to make it safe for them to not only
give up the usual control of selecting their ➤
9
own assignment, but we also had to create an
environment that made it safe for them to fail,
recover and grow.
While creating a more effective learning environment was our first step, our ultimate goal
was to have these developing leaders understand what we were doing and how we
changed the program to meet their needs
more effectively, and reduce, overwhelm, and
mitigate the fight, flight or freeze response, so
they could do the same when they returned
to their organizations. This next step is still
emerging as part of the program’s design to
help these leaders take their personal experience out of the classroom and back into their
organizations where they can implement
structures and processes that improve
employee effectiveness and success.
Christine R. Williams serves as the head
of the Systems Department within the
NASA Academy of Program, Project
and Engineering Leadership (APPEL).
Her programs are considered worldclass by both industry and government
standards, and she has been invited to
speak internationally on the topics of
leadership development, executive
coaching and the application of
advances in neuroscience to improving
employee learning. Williams received
her BS in Oceanography, and later
graduated Summa Cum Laude from
The Johns Hopkins University with an
MS in Organizational Development
and Applied Behavioral Science.
10
Neuroscience has started to impact leadership
development and it will further shape it.
NeuroLeadership is more than a framework. It
influences entire training designs and approaches…
Neuroleadership—More
Than Another Leadership
Framework
Tobias Kiefer, Global Director Learning &
Development, Booz & Company
I
t is a cold and rainy winter day. I am in
the process of designing a new leadership
program. I experience the frustration of
more than 60,000 leadership books. I decide
to go a different route: Design a change program with the “learner’s brain in mind” – by
combining deep emotional moments that
require peak attention from participants and
finally bring participants to generate their
own insights and takeaways. No frameworks,
no preselected leadership skills participants
should memorize.
Neuroscience has started to impact leadership development and it will further shape it.
NeuroLeadership is more than a framework.
It influences entire training designs and
approaches—on multiple levels:
1
Williams, C. & Derro, M.E. (2008). NASA Systems
Engineering Behavior Study. National Aeronautics
and Space Administration. Retrieved September 19,
2010 from http://www.nasa.gov/news/reports/
NASA_SE_Behavior_Study.html
1.The Value of Leadership Programs: The
data neuroscience is providing is certainly
the meat for rationalizing investments into
people development. It helps to stop the
myths around leadership development
and adds data to the rumors about human
behavior. It will help to sell the value of
leadership programs. NeuroLeadership
links changed behaviors to business
results—with data and metrics.
2
Ryschkewitsch, M., Schaible D., Larson, W. (2008). The
Art and Science of Systems Engineering*. The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration,
Retrieved September 19, 2010 from http://www.nasa.
gov/pdf/311198main_Art_and_Sci_of_SE_
LONG_1_20_09.pdf
2.Training Design and Investment: Remembering one of the key insights about the
brain, that no two brains are alike, will
help to shape training and coaching
toward positive change. By considering
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
key factors like Attention, Generation,
Emotions and Spacing (AGES-Model), we
can design programs that will radically
change the nature of training for both
facilitators and participants. It offers
chances to reduce costs for training. We
already have first indicators that the average cost structure will change
dramatically: From spending almost 50
percent of training costs on travel and
accommodation towards spending more
than 80 percent on real learning.
3.Understanding Fundamentals of How the
Brain Works: Explaining the core functions of the brain to participants (and I am
really talking about the core) will help
drive the changes in people further.
Looking at the current environment, with
cost pressures on the one hand, and more
than ever the need for innovation, creativity
and leadership, on the other, we need more
effective change approaches than what we
have today. We need more than training—we
need real change. Change starts with understanding the current status, the system (the
brain), and creation of insights.
NeuroLeadership—the conversion of the art
and science of leadership development should
be considered a great tool to make this happen. It is the tool that rationalizes the kinds
of programs designed a few years ago—by
coincidence and by trusting intuition and
insights. It led, in our case, to a program full
of deep emotional and experiential moments
of silence and learning spread over two
weeks. The program has become one of our
flagship programs and serves as the framework for more AGES-based models. It is
NeuroLeadership put into practice.
Dr. Tobias Kiefer is the Global Director
Learning & Development at Booz &
Company–a global management consultancy. Kiefer is known for his
approach to tie highly experiential
modules into high performance leadership programs. As coach, trainer and
motivational keynote speaker he uses
experiential and neuroscientific elements to enable smarter thinking and
to achieve better results with his clients. His experience from extreme
outdoor sports and his experience as
consultant and leader of a global team
create a variety of insights in his programs. Since March 2010, he is
participating in the Postgraduate Certificate of Neuroleadership.
Removing Obstacles to
when Leaders Are Already
Successful
Marshall Goldsmith, best-selling author of MOJO
and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.
N
euroLeadership is a fascinating field,
which may uncover the key to helping
leaders develop the soft skills they
need to take themselves, their teams and their
organizations to the next level. This can be a
significant challenge when what these leaders
have been doing has been met with success.
We tend to repeat behavior that is followed
by positive reinforcement. The more successful we become, the more positive
reinforcement we get, and the more likely we
are to experience the success delusion. This
forms our belief “I behave this way. I am
successful. Therefore, I must be successful
because I behave this way.”
The good news is that our positive beliefs
about ourselves help us become successful.
The bad news is that these same beliefs can
make it tough for us to change.
Belief 1: I Have Succeeded
Successful people have one consistent idea
coursing through their veins and brains: “I
have succeeded. I have succeeded. I have succeeded.” This strong belief in our past success
gives us faith to take the risks needed for our
future success. This positive belief can become
a major obstacle when behavioral change is
needed, as we all tend to reject or deny feedback from others that is inconsistent with the
way we see ourselves. Thus, it is very hard to
hear negative feedback and admit that we
need to change.
Belief 2: I Can Succeed
Successful people believe that they have the
capability to have a positive influence on the
world—and to make desirable things happen.
They believe that through the sheer force of
their personality, talent and brainpower, they
can steer situations in their direction. This
unshakeable belief presents another obstacle
to helping them change behavior. When we
believe that our good fortune is directly and
causally linked to our behavior, we can easily
make a false assumption. “I am successful. I
behave this way. Therefore, I must be successful because I behave this way. It can be
especially challenging to help successful leaders realize that their success is happening in
spite of some of their behavior.
Belief 3: I Will Succeed
Successful people are optimists. Optimists
tend to chronically over-commit. It can be
extremely difficult for an ambitious person,
with an “I will succeed’ attitude to say “no”
to desirable opportunities. This ‘I will succeed’
Few of us are immune to the success delusion.
belief can sabotage our chances for success
when it is time for us to change behavior.
When I ask people who attend my programs
why they did not implement changes they said
they would, the most common response is, “I
meant to, but I didn’t have time.” They
believed that they would get to it later, but
‘later’ never came. Our excessive optimism
and resulting over-commitment can be as serious an obstacle to change as our denial of
negative feedback or our belief that our flaws
are actually the cause of our success.
Belief 4: I Choose to Succeed
Successful people believe that they are doing
what they choose to do, because they choose
to do it. They have a high need for self-determination. This usually works in favor of
successful people when they apply it to
achieving their mission. It can work against
them when they should “change course.” The
old saying ‘winners never quit’ is often true.
These four success beliefs all filter through us
and create in us something that we do not want
to believe about ourselves. I call it the success
delusion. Few of us are immune to the success
delusion. Pick one of your own quirky or unattractive behaviors. Now ask yourself: Do I
continue to do this because I think it is somehow associated with the good things that have
happened to me? Does this behavior help me
achieve results? Overcoming the success delusion requires vigilance and constantly asking
yourself, “Is this behavior a legitimate reason
for my success, or am I just kidding myself?”
Marshall Goldsmith is the millionselling author of What Got You
Here Won’t Get You There – a New
York Times bestseller, Wall Street
Journal No. 1 business book, and
Harold Longman Award winner for
Business Book of the Year. His newest book, MOJO, is a New York
Times (advice), Wall Street Journal
(business), USAToday (money) and
Name
Bio. Weekly (non-fiction)
Publisher’s
best seller. It is now available online
and at major bookstores.
11
Research
Corner
It’s the easiest thing in the
world to criticize today’s
business leaders for
short-term thinking, but
just consider what they’re
up against. A meager
23 percent of participants
in a 2010 i4cp study on
leadership agility said
their executives operate
in a “fairly stable” or
“somewhat changing”
environment. That means
most executives are
trying to lead others in
a continuously shifting
and sliding landscape,
one that’s laden with
cutthroat competition.
Developing Agile Leaders for the
21st Century
P
icture today’s executives as generals
leading troops across a rugged,
unmapped, quake-prone battlefield,
against many different armies in a struggle to
the death that never ends. It’s not for the faint
of heart.
What separates high and low market performers in this tumultuous business universe? We
know it’s not stability. Our research, conducted in partnership with Prof. Bill Joiner,
co-author of the book Leadership Agility,
shows that respondents from organizations
reporting higher market performance actually are more likely to say that their business
environments (both inside and outside their
organizations) are continuously or rapidly
changing.
It’s the ability to thrive on change, rather
than create stability, that is the differentiator.
Here are seven research-based recommendations for organizations and their executive
leaders who wish to respond more effectively
to change.
1.React quickly. Too often, leaders think the
best answer to managing change is to slow
the pace. This provides them with the illusion of control. However, twice as many
respondents from high-performing compared to low-performing organizations
say their firms are adept at recognizing
and responding to strategic challenges in
a timely manner. Knee-jerk reactions
should be avoided, but quick reflexes are
essential.
2.Anticipate well. High performers also are
more than twice as likely to be proactive
in anticipating and initiating the changes
needed for sustained high performance.
3.Be visionary as well as strategic. In highperformance organizations, direction
setting at the executive levels is much more
likely to be visionary as well as strategic,
when compared to their low-performing
counterparts.
4.Set clear expectations for and model agile
leadership behaviors. Don’t expect your
leaders to guess what “agile” means.
Executives at high-performing organizations are about twice as likely to set such
12
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
expectations (to a high or very high extent)
and to model them.
5. S elect and reward based on agility. Compared to low performers, high-performing
organizations are about three times more
likely to include leadership agility (to a
high or very high extent) in selection and/
or promotion criteria and in reward-system decision making.
6.Harness the power of teams. Executives at
low-performing organizations are much
more likely than high performers to
engage one-on-one with employees and
delve into the details of their work. Execs
at high performers focus on developing
teamwork, but holding teams and individuals accountable, without delving too
far into the work details.
7.Be consistent about feedback. At lowperforming organizations, three fifths of
respondents say that, to a high or very
high extent, “there are mixed messages
about the desirability of candid conversation and feedback.” At high-performing
organizations, that number shrinks to
about a third of respondents.
Very few executives expect 2011 to be a year
in which business change suddenly slows.
They still will need to react—and quickly—to
new events. But they will not be able to
spend all their time in a bullet-dodging, reactionary mode.
In the coming year, business leaders must
make the time to examine future issues.
Clearly, they will emphasize the next few
business quarters, but high performers are
unlikely to stop there. Executives at these
organizations will conduct strategic-planning
sessions that look well into 2011 and beyond,
and they will make visionary decisions about
how they’d like to see their organizations
evolve over several years.
Visionary decisions do not need to be all-ornothing, bet-the-ranch choices. As Clayton
Christensen and Michael Raynor note in
their book The Innovator’s Solution, “Too
often, the very attempt to grow causes the
entire corporation to crash.” But agile executives do need keep their eyes on the horizon,
looking at the ways markets change and initiating actions that enable effective responses.
Description of organization
Just as importantly, executives must make
agility one of the key prerequisites for future
leaders, especially those in the all-important
high potential pipeline. What they do not
want are people who jump from fad to fad,
giving the impression of organizational attention deficit. What they do want are employees
who know when to make course corrections,
how to communicate those corrections, and
how to set inspiring but realistic goals for
the future.
Not only must today’s leaders model agile
behaviors themselves, they must recruit,
select and reward others capable of those
behaviors. Agile future executives will emerge
from the high-performance teams on which
agile organizations rely. Today’s executives
should keep their eyes on the best of those
teams, because they often contain the seeds
of future organizational success. iRC
Don’t be the hurdle.
Research shows that high-performance organizations
excel in five domains of human capital. To learn more,
download our free white paper at
i4cp.com/hpo
13
The Leadership Challenges
Facing HR:
Top CHROs Share
Learnings and Advice
on What’s Next
By Steve Steckler
14
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
The Chief Human Resources Officer’s job has never been more crucial, and, at the same time,
more challenging. The severe economic downturn and slow recovery has impacted leader and
employee engagement across industries and across the country. Frequent CEO succession,
new financial regulations and ethics scandals, along with more active and engaged boards of
directors, have added to the complexity that confronts HR leaders. And many of us still are
locked into what seems the HR function’s never-ending search for relevance and impact.
W
ith this as context and leadership
as the focus of this special issue,
this is the right moment to engage
in a rare and candid conversation with a
small group of CHROs. We asked what they
learned about having impact, being successful and about the serious challenges facing
both HR leaders and the function.
You will recognize many of these leaders; they
are well-known within our field, some reaching business media fame. They are from iconic
brands and companies and have been acknowledged for their impact and for developing
great business and human resources talent.
We specifically selected a group largely madeup of those who already have completed their
careers as CHROs, although one or two said
that they might be tempted to re-enter the
arena. Most are currently consulting, teaching, writing or serving on boards. This
created a singularly high level of candor and
openness, including some raw self-reflection.
We also included a relative newcomer to the
role for her comparative perspective. Our
interviews occurred during the final weeks of
summer 2010.
The level of exchange exceeded our expectations. A small number of common themes
emerged, including what was particularly difficult about being successful in the role, in
what areas many of these leaders felt ill-prepared and what they learned about their
leaders and the HR function. In addition, they
shared a loud warning to current HR leaders
about what may be next.
Steve Steckler: Mark Hurd’s story at Hewlett
Packard was just reported, so let’s talk about
ethics and the responsibility that human
resources and HR leaders should have in
company ethics. With so many scandals over
the years in U.S. companies, what role does
HR play?
Ursie Fairbairn: Well, I think HR definitely
has a role. I think that, to play that role successfully you have to have facts, you have to
be connected and you need to be courageous.
And sometimes that means you are placed in
a very vulnerable position whether that scandal is a business scandal or whether that
scandal is a personal scandal.
Our CHRO panel and their former companies:
◾ Dick Antoine; Global Human Resources
Officer at Procter & Gamble
◾ Bill Conaty; Senior Vice President of
Human Resources, General Electric
◾ Ursie Fairbairn; Executive Vice President
of Human Resources and Quality at
American Express. Prior to that, she was
senior vice president of human resources
at Union Pacific
◾ Libby Sartain; Executive Vice President
of Human Resources at Yahoo! Inc. Prior
to that, she was vice president of people
at Southwest Airlines
◾ Dick Sibbernsen; Executive Vice President
of Human Resources for AT&T. Prior to
that, he was chief human resources
officer for BellSouth Corporation
◾ Ian Ziskin; Corporate Vice President
of Human Resources and Chief
Administrative Officer at Northrop
Grumman Corporation. Prior to that
he was executive vice president and
chief human resources officer at
Qwest Communications
Our current CHRO is Kalen Holmes. She is
executive vice president of partner resources
at Starbucks.
Bill Conaty: I think that the best thing that
HR can do and that the CEO can do is make
integrity the all-encompassing value of the
company. Sure, we all have got a list of values
that are important that describe how you
work and how you behave and what is
expected of you, but integrity has got to be
the centerpiece of the whole deal. I know in
GE when it came to integrity violations, we
said one strike and you’re out. You weren’t
going to get a second chance.
Libby Sartain: I think that it is our job to
monitor the behavior of our people and
ensure that ethical behavior is a way of life in
our organizations. My experience is that
most of us take it seriously and we partner
with our CEOs. As part of that partnership,
we point out where there are issues that are
concerning. HR can have a separate relationship with the board. If a situation cannot be
resolved inside, is serious, or involves the
CEO or a top executive, we must talk with
the board when these things happen and recommend a course of action. I have known
several CHROs that have had to go to the
board and recommend that their bosses be
fired over these situations.
Dick Antoine: HR is the guardian of the values of any company or organization. It’s what
we are uniquely charged with doing. We must
protect those values and we must defend
employees who have small voices and smaller
jobs in organizations. And we do this through
a combination of training and education and
reinforcement of the values. We also do it by
consistently enforcing discipline in cases
where values are violated that normally will
mean termination regardless of level in the
organization.
Ian Ziskin: The short answer is yes, HR does
play a role and should play a role going forward. HR contributes, perhaps most
uniquely, by ensuring that there are mechanisms in place in the organization to make it
safe for people to tell the truth, to surface ➤
15
CAHRS
Recent Research on
the CHRO Role
team and the individuals making up the team, and the board of
directors. They also devote considerable time with the HR leadership team and individuals who make up that team. In other words,
they must be both business leaders and HR leaders.”
In 2009, the Cornell Center for Advanced Human Resources
Studies (CAHRS) published the results of their first Chief
Human Resources Officers Survey, “Strategies and
Challenges of the Chief Human Resource Officer: Results of
the First Annual Cornell/CAHRS Survey of CHRO’s.” Our
colleague Pat Wright led the study. Many of its conclusions
mirror perfectly the comments of our interviewees.
“In addition, CHROs view their roles as strategic advisor, counselor/
confidante/coach to the executive team, and talent architect as
being the most important aspects of their job in terms of impact
on the business, and the ones in which they spend signficant
amounts of time. In addition, while they spend the greatest amount
of time as leaders of the HR function, they do not view that role
as particularly high impact.”
The survey was sent to CHROs at U.S. Fortune 150 companies and to
10 additional CHROs at CAHRS partner companies. The study focused
on a number of areas, including the different roles and responsibilities
that CHROs considered to be the key parts of their jobs and how they
allocated their time to different stakeholders and to these roles. The
study found that there were seven distinct roles of the CHRO:
◾ Leader of the HR function (22% of time spent)
◾ Strategic adviser to the executive team (21% of time spent)
◾ Counselor/confidante/coach to the executive team (17% of time spent)
◾ Talent architect (17% of time spent)
◾ Liaison to the board of directors (10% of time spent)
◾ Workforce sensor (8% of time spent)
◾ Representative of the firm (5% of time spent)
Consider how closely these findings reflect what our CHRO panel said.
Moreoever, when the seven areas are combined based on total time spent
with stakeholders, CHROs spend the majority of their time with their peers
and the CEO.1
Sartain: Well, I had two very different situations at the two companies where I was the
head of HR. I had been at Southwest for seven
years before I was promoted to become head
16
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
Both the 2010 CHRO Survey Report and the Executive Summary of the
2009 CHRO Survey can be downloaded from: www.ilr.cornell.edu/
cahrs/research/.
Wright, Patrick M. (2009). “Strategies and challenges of the chief human resource officer: Results of the first
annual cornell/CAHRS survey of CHRO’s.” 6.
1
Wright, Patrick M. and Stewart, Mark. (2010). “From bunker to building: Results from the 2010 chief human
resource officer survey. Cornell Center for advanced human resource studies (CAHRS).” 4.
2
Wright, Patrick M. and Stewart, Mark. (2010). “From bunker to building: Results from the 2010 Chief human
resource officer survey. Cornell center for advanced human resource studies (CAHRS).” 4.
“The results reveal that CHROs focus their attention in two general directions. They serve as business leaders who spend
significant amounts of time with the CEO, the executive leadership
Steckler: Let’s talk about what was most
surprising to you when you first took the
CHRO role?
Wright and Stewart found that CHROs were now increasing their focus on
retaining talent, building HR capability, spending more time with their HR
leaders and addressing high potential talent.3 CHROs were also giving
more time to their role as HR leaders and as the talent strategist/architect.4 For their CEOs, talent tops the agenda, and the lack of HR talent
is one of the key obstacles to achieving the CEO’s agenda for HR.5
3
Here is a portion of the 2009 report:
things that are wrong and to surface things
that are right for that matter. There should be
tools that you use to solicit input and feedback and make it safe for people to tell you
what is on their minds. I don’t believe that
HR has sole responsibility over that, but
somebody has to be the advocate. I think the
law department would say that it has a role
to play and the finance organization would
say that it has a role to play.
In 2010, the survey was expanded to the U.S. Fortune 200 and asked
many of the same questions. Additionally, Wright and Mark Stewart, Ph.D.
also focused on the CHRO’s relationship with the board of directors, along
with identifying innovative practices that had been developed and implemented within their HR organizations. They found that the financial crisis
that influenced 2009 survey responses had been replaced with a more
optimistic view. They describe the move from “bunker” to “building.”2
Wright, Patrick M. and Stewart, Mark. (2010). “From Bunker to building: Results from the 2010 chief human
4
Wright, Patrick M. and Stewart, Mark. (2010). “From bunker to building: Results from the 2010 chief human
5
of HR. In working for the same company, my
biggest surprise was that as you reach a new
level in the organization, there is sort of a new
culture, a new set of unspoken norms and
rules at that level. If you are not aware of that,
you can make some mistakes. After a few
years as head of HR, I was put on the executive committee, and at that point, I was the
first HR person ever at the table. Even though
I believed that I had been placed onto the
executive committee because of what I had
accomplished as the head of HR, I still had to
earn my seat on the executive committee once
I was there. At Yahoo, when I joined the company as head of HR, the company was so
young that I had a lot of surprises. There was
not any organized executive committee and
no cadence about how decisions were made
and no one really felt that was necessary. So
we had to create an informal operating com-
mittee, and I worked with the COO to do
that. Later, we had to establish formal decision rules so that we could get “stuff” done.
Dick Sibbernsen: For me, at both companies,
the surprise was how each company you are
at, has a different business model with different ways of making money. There were
different ways that power was structured and
decision rights created. It really brought
home that there is not a prescription for success, but a range of solutions and that how
you get the performance needed to achieve
strategy is going to be different from company to company.
Fairbairn: Although I had held senior HR
roles before at other companies, each time I
became head of HR, first at Union Pacific and
then at American Express, I was always sur-
S
prised about the ability to influence and that
the amount of opportunity to have an impact
was so huge. There were so many ways that
you could make a big difference, including
helping leaders be more effective, helping the
board select the right successor, helping to
implement new technology, helping the leadership team be more effective.
Antoine: When I was named CHRO at Procter & Gamble, except for being a plant HR
manager 20 years prior, my background was
exclusively in operations rather than HR, so
a lot of it was surprising and a learning experience. One specific area of surprise was that
I was able to shape the role. It evolved from
a narrower definition when I started, to a
pretty broad role that included a significant
role with the board of directors.
Conaty: Although, I spent my entire career
with GE and moved up within the company,
when I took the top HR role for all of corporate human resources for the entire
company, the stakes became much higher.
You are now dealing with the CEO of the
corporation and you know at GE, a dozen or
15 different business units, versus working
for just one singular business unit and one
CEO. The job was much broader with stronger constituencies. You really learn whether
you have the ability to see the bigger picture
and really make a significant impact on a
much larger stage.
Ziskin: For me, the most surprising thing was
that sometimes what leaders said they wanted
from HR, didn’t really match their own
behavior. I have had this experience twice, as
head of HR for Qwest and then at Northrop
Grumman. People seemed very clear at first
about the things that they were looking for
out of the HR function and out of the CHRO:
Generally, the things that you typically hear,
be a good business partner, lead change and
invest in talent and help improve the performance of the business. But as I stepped into
both jobs, I found that there was much greater resistance to actually making some of those
things happen then you would imagine. It also
meant that peers on the leadership team might
also have to change, do things differently and
be more receptive to the concepts that you
were trying to sell as the new head of HR. This
also included other people in HR, who were
clamoring for more of a voice and for more
of a seat at the table. They wanted to influence
more things that they saw could be done differently and better, but even they were
reluctant to change to achieve some of the
things that they said they wanted.
Kalen Holmes: Compared to this group, I am
a new CHRO. I have been in this role at Starbucks for just about a year. I spent a lot of
time with Howard Schultz, our president,
chairman and CEO and with others on the
senior leadership team during the interview
process. Through those discussions, it became
apparent that Starbucks was entering a very
exciting time as a company. The most surprising aspect for me entering this role is the pace
at which we are entering our new evolution
of growth; and, therefore, the immediate
focus we are putting toward organizational
capability and process to ensure we are
readying the organization for this evolution.
Steckler: How did being in the role change
your perspective about the company, leadership and HR?
Fairbairn: Several things come to mind: When
you have more information, you are better
able to prioritize and diagnose the issues.
Sometimes you do all of your homework
when you are not yet the head of human
resources, but when you are inside, you
understand it so much better and you, therefore, are more able to do your job superbly
well. The second would be the importance of
leadership. Leadership is so crucial in differentiating between the just average, the good,
the very good and the excellent.
Ziskin: I agree. Great leadership does matter.
Sometimes you might be able to convince
yourself that any large, complicated organization can succeed despite itself and keep
things chugging along irrespective of who is
in charge. But at the same time, you know
that who’s in charge does make a difference
in terms of the tone they set, the priorities on
which they focus, the questions they ask and
the people with whom they surround themselves. Great leadership has a multiplier effect
that goes deeper down into the organization.
I think that I learned a lot about the importance of quickly figuring out whether the
leaders that you have are the ones who are
going to take you to the next level. The role
that HR has is in bringing that question up
and then taking responsibility for doing
something about it.
Sibbernsen: I believe that the main job of the
CHRO is to set up the context in which the
senior leaders can really do a deep dive and
deep thinking about their people issues. Set
the context, start the conversation and set up
the going forward priorities. Identify five or
six priorities, and then come up with the solu-
tions. I would say that there are four
categories that the CHRO is going to spend
75 percent of his or her time around: defining
what the key organization implications of the
business strategy are; facilitating a real deep
discussion and deep thinking; the third bucket is then working up the solutions. Fourth is
developing a project plan to go forward and
to get these solutions into the operating system of the company. Delivery of all of this has
to be linked to business outcomes. Did we lift
revenue? Did we lift the productivity? Most
companies are pretty good at strategy. The
performance gap is execution. This is the
sweet spot for the CHRO. What are the capabilities to perform this work? That is where I
think the very value of an effective CHRO
comes into play.
Conaty: When I took the top HR job at GE,
I felt that I had become a true insider of the
company. Literally and figuratively, you
become a corporate insider from the standpoint of the technical, compensation and
reporting rules. The other thing from an HR
perspective, which I think is critical here, is
that you become the HR face of GE, and
people want to know who the face of GE is
from an HR standpoint. You become part of
the outside world with the HR Policy Association, later the National Academy of
Human Resources. Your network expands.
Steckler: Do you think that the leader of HR
should come from the HR function? What
about coming from outside the function?
Sartain: A lot of people are threatened by
someone from outside the function, I am not.
If there is a solid leader in the business that
the company wants to move into the position
for a while, that can be a good situation. We
can then feel good when that leader then
acquires a much better understanding about
what it takes to deliver HR and can go to their
peers with that insight. At the same time, I
have seen people come in and not know what
they are doing and make big mistakes. The
only way it can work is if they have very
strong lieutenants in the HR function below
them and they listen to those folks while helping them better serve the organization. I also
think that it is great for an HR person to
move into a business role and add value there.
Fairbairn: I think that it can be done, and
there are certainly companies who have a history of that. I think that they generally go
through a period where the HR function is at
a disadvantage. On the other hand, I have ➤
17
Steckler: So how do you better prepare HR
leaders for working with the board?
Conaty: Look at what we have done with the
National Academy of Human Resources. We
have established the CHRO Academy where
we spend a day and a half with newly minted
VPs of HR. We spend a lot of time of talking
about these kinds of issues, dealing with a
board on succession, dealing with the board
on strategy. I wish that I had had this before
I took the SVP job at GE.
Steckler: What about other areas that were
personally challenging about being in the
CHRO role?
learned that for every organizational situation, there are no absolutes. There can be a
line person who can become a great head of
HR, if they have the right mindset, the right
learning, if they have the right team, if they
listen and not only talk and if they have a
leader who supports them. And here is a perfect parallel. Many companies believe in
picking a CEO from inside, but if that hasn’t
worked then you have to go outside.
Antoine: Understanding my background,
which was almost totally from operations, I
will now give you the blanket statement. I
think it’s a really bad idea to put someone in
charge of HR who doesn’t know and understand HR. So putting me in charge of it was
a really bad idea. It turned out some people
would say it was a great idea, but I don’t agree
with that assessment. Unfortunately, there is
a belief among many, I won’t say the majority, but certainly a lot of CEOs and a lot of
senior leaders of companies that anyone can
do HR. And I think that’s wrong, completely,
absolutely wrong. HR has a technology and
a methodology and skills around it just like
finance does, or research and development or
marketing or any other function. Would you
have a CFO with no finance or accounting
experience? Why would it be OK to have a
CHRO without previous HR experience?
Steckler: What was most personally challenging for you about the role?
Conaty: I would say for me it was learning
the HR role from the standpoint of dealing
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PEOPLE & STRATEGY
with the board of directors. That is the only
HR job in the company where you have direct
involvement with the GE Board of Directors,
and as you might imagine the GE Board of
Directors is a pretty star-studded group of
rock stars.
Fairbairn: I agree. Working with the board
was the most challenging part of the role.
When you take on this role the first time,
there are so many things that you need to
understand and no HR person has done it all;
if you had, you would be too old to then take
on the CHRO role. You need to learn how to
deal with the board in an effective way, recognizing that you have to balance between
the board as the representative of the shareholder and your boss, the CEO, who is the
leader of the organization. Once you have
done it once, it gets easier.
Ziskin: Yes, it’s in working with the board.
Prior to taking on the CHRO role, you have
much more limited exposure to and experience with the board then you really need to
have to be effective in the role, and so there
is really no great proxy for that. It is a shortcoming in how we develop and prepare our
future HR leaders.
Antoine: Managing the boundary between
senior leaders and the CEO. On the one hand,
you are trying to help the senior leaders with
advice and career perspective and on the
other hand, you are trying to keep the CEO
informed of critical concerns and development issues while protecting the confidences
of the senior leaders that talk to you.
Sartain: The most challenging work is longterm strategic workforce planning. It was a
little easier at Southwest because we had one
business and we could plan our growth. We
had to plan ahead to order the number of
airplanes we needed in the future up to five
years in advance. We didn’t always know the
cities we wanted to open that far in advance,
but we had a long list of possibilities. With
every plane ordered, we knew the number of
workers we needed to add and HR could plan
for staffing. The unknowns were what the
economy and the competition would be
doing in the future. At Yahoo, even though
we knew that there were not enough software
programmers in the United States to meet all
of the needs that we had in software programming, it was difficult to plan ahead for
the next tech center. We needed to open tech
centers in other parts of the world, but we
knew that we did not want to put a tech center where everyone else was putting one, and
the competition didn’t tell us where they were
going. Yet, sometimes we would tend to focus
more on the here and now or the next week,
rather than three years from now. We were
growing fast, so we didn’t always have all of
the planning tools we needed. I think that
some of the bigger, more mature, companies
were better at it than we were.
Ziskin: The other thing that was most personally challenging to me was being able to figure
out who the people were within HR that I
needed to invest in, to try to give them the
tools that they needed to help me be part of
the changes that I was attempting to bring
about versus the people who were probably
just good people, had good experience, but
they are weren’t really going to help me. You
believe that if you give everyone enough
information, enough feedback, enough ratio-
nale, enough support, they will eventually
come around to join what you want them to
be part of. But that doesn’t always happen.
Steckler: What is so difficult about being successful in the CHRO role?
Holmes: In my view, HR leaders are not any
less—or more—successful than other senior
leaders. The CHRO plays multiple roles and
you have to manage and prioritize your focus.
First and foremost, you are the leader of a
global function and you have to lead that
global function, no one else will do it for you.
So I think it is important to spend a lot of time
developing your own function, putting the
right attention and direction to it, along the
way ensuring that you have the right talent,
and the right kind of team around you to
drive the business forward. At the same time,
you have to be the senior generalist for the
CEO and for the senior leaders.
Sartain: Everybody has a point of view about
talent and about people. If you are the finance
person or the head technologist or the chief
counsel or whatever else, you don’t have as
many people who think they know as much
as you do about what it is that you do. You
really have to have an expertise that adds
value beyond what everybody else thinks
they know about it. And often, we are the
people who have to say “no,” or have to make
the toughest decisions and that doesn’t always
make us the most popular leader in the room.
Fairbairn: Three things: One, there is so much
to do. Two, the issues are really complex—
they are not simple but inter-related, global,
and they are complicated. Three, the issues
are people issues and people issues that you
deal with are never simple. So I think it is the
complexity and then balancing the complexity of the issues with the appetite for solutions.
It is a hard job, and it never ends, and that is
another element. It just goes on and on.
Ziskin: I think that the things that make it
most difficult are that the fact that you are in
a role that is viewed by most people as a support, advisory and influence role. But you also
have accountability for driving change, making unpopular decisions in some cases like we
talked about earlier. You are making hard
calls about how the business should be organized and who should be in key leadership
roles. Not that you are making those decisions by yourself, but you are influencing
certainly the CEO and others who have to
make those decisions. You are trading on
your own personal relationships with people
and credibility, and they can choose to support you or not. And then you have to make
decisions about how much you are willing to
battle to fight for something that you believe
is right and important but perhaps less
important than other things.
needed and what you should do. Build the
priorities and then build up the relationships.
Use power effectively and understand who
has got the power and who doesn’t. You have
to use power constructively and establish key
relationships.
Antoine: I think the difficulty is twofold. For
people who are coming from operations or
from the line, you have to get used to getting
things done through influence with little formal authority. I think most people who come
into the role struggle with it for that reason.
All of a sudden you’ve got this incredibly
broad portfolio, lots of responsibility, but
little authority. The second thing that I found
difficult and I think most people do, is the
breadth of the role. It’s from the mundane
cost control to needing to be knowledgeable
in all of the expert areas within HR like compensation or benefits or organization
behavior, organization design and more. At
the same time, you have your relationships
with the C-suite team, other members of the
senior management team, the senior HR
team, the CEO and the board.
Steckler: I have seen top HR leaders try to
elevate themselves almost a half-step or full
step above their peers on the management
team to get closer to the CEO because they
believed that is part of their role. What do you
think about that?
Fairbairn: I am in the school that you do not
do that. It is not helpful to accomplishing
your goals to put yourself ahead of your business colleagues as peers. You have a very
special relationship with the CEO by the very
nature of what you do. But you need to make
your relationship really bring value to your
colleagues and to your peers as well. And if
you are seen as in the pocket of the CEO, or
seeing yourself as one step closer to the CEO,
I think that that has a possible detriment to
your effectiveness overall.
It goes back to getting the priorities right... Build the
priorities and then build up the relationships. Use
power effectively and understand who has got the
power and who doesn’t. You have to use power
constructively and establish key relationships.
Conaty: I think that it is balancing that delicate tightrope walk of being a business
partner at one end and an employee advocate
on the other. I actually see some HR leaders
become so ingrained and obsessed with
becoming a business partner that they forget
why they are at the table. They become so
business- and analytically focused that they
miss their role. Unless you can be both, you
really are not going to be successful. So when
I was in the CHRO role, I had to balance that
and not be hesitant to be that employee advocate for all 350,000 people.
Conaty: If the organization deems you to be
in the CEO’s pocket and that is how you carry
yourself, you are dead. I can list a dozen
CHROs who have been fired after enjoying
an initial strong relationship with the CEO. I
tell people who think that their role is to
establish great rapport only with the CEO
that will keep you alive for about a year.
Then, something will hit you that you don’t
know where the hell it came from and it’s
your peer group and it’s your subordinates
that take you out.
Sibbernsen: It goes back to getting the priorities right. That’s number one. You have to
avoid coming into an organization with a set
of prescriptions and prescriptive solutions in
your briefcase and start to find problems to
solve. That is just the opposite of what is
Steckler: What are the most serious challenges facing the HR function in the future?
Holmes: The continued globalization of the
world, specifically the growth of Asia Pacific
and what that means to heads of HR in help- ➤
19
ing to ensure that the right talent, the right
capability and the right processes are in place
to become truly global. I think that there are
very few companies today that are truly
global, and it is going to become even more
important as you look at the growth estimates for the next five to 10 years in Asia. The
other challenge is the workforce demographic that is going to be entering the workforce
over the next five to 10 years and their expectations of aligned real-time communication
channels that flow both ways, as well as their
ability to craft and shape their jobs. I think
that the traditional hierarchical management
structure is going to become even more challenged if we don’t better understand how to
organize, align, galvanize and energize the
workforce that is about to join us.
Fairbairn: I think one of the challenges is having enough talented, motivated, experienced
people ready to take on the top HR job. It’s
a combination of things. The job has grown,
expectations are higher, and there are more
companies that really want a strong contributing HR function, and we are not filling that
pipeline effectively enough. To clarify, it’s
supply and demand. Most of us have done a
good job at developing talent; it’s when you
assess the supply and you look at jobs that
are open and for how long they remain open,
there is just not enough of a pipeline. To have
choice because the selection process is skills,
experiences and chemistry and that means
you need a larger supply of truly good successors, and I think we as a function are not
doing enough of that.
Ziskin: I would pick a few. One is making
sure that you have the right quality and quantity of leadership talent. Leadership depth is
important because even the best companies
increasingly are going to have a hard time
holding onto people, and so you can’t just
have one solution for each job. You need to
have more because it is equally likely that that
good person is going to be courted by somebody else. The second challenge is around the
reconciliation of performance with ethics.
CEOs and other people who are moving into
leadership positions are really under the
microscope to show whatever performance
they are going to show in much shorter periods of time. In that type of environment and
the pressure that comes from budget cuts and
the economic downturn and all of the other
things that are going on out there in the
world, even the most ethical people are going
to be challenged. It is about creating an environment where you have a culture that is
based on driving performance while at the
20
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
same time you have a culture that highly values ethical behavior.
Sartain: We are all going to have to do more
with less. I do not think that we are going to
have all the resources we need at our disposal the way we might have in the past. So
how do we continue to deliver the most
important things without all the resources
that we feel we need?
Sibbernsen: When I look back on it, I think
that HR has got to do a better job of aggregating and analyzing the business intelligence
around the workforce. When their line managers come and say, I have to remodel the
structure, I have to consolidate these operations, I have to merge product lines—that is
going to become more and more of a frequent
item. And companies have to do it faster.
Number two is that HR has got to be much
better at quickly identifying the high-performing talent, the mission-critical talent.
The third challenge would be that HR has got
to do a better job of getting a common set of
definitions around people investments and
people processes. Get them better aligned,
better understood and more user-friendly for
line leaders.
Antoine: Making sure that HR is a good business partner. In a lot of organizations, we are
in really good shape. In a lot of others, we are
not. Until you fix that, these questions about
a seat at the table, which drive me crazy, will
continue. I think the ability to be flexible and
adaptable is really critical because we are in
a chaotic world, and look what’s happened
in the past year or two. That’s what I worry
about the most, because nothing stays the
same for very long anymore.
Conaty: I believe that the biggest challenge
for HR is the credibility of the organization
itself. This is the time that HR leaders really
need to step up and be counted. Because right
now, I’m convinced that in most companies,
employees are on the short end of the stick
and that in these tough economic times
where “take-aways” are the name of the
game, you know you better have somebody
that is in there plugging for employees and
making sure that you don’t overreach on the
“take-aways.” Employees do understand
when you’re in dire straits and you’ve got to
take tough actions, but when the sun starts
to come back out again, they expect you to
react to that too. So I would say that these
companies who have reinstated 401(k)
matches, as an example, those companies are
probably getting “high fives” from their
employees saying, “Hey this company does
care, they took it away from us but as things
got better they gave it back.” And then there
are other companies where employees are
saying, “Hey what gives, our earnings are up,
everything is moving in the right direction
but they don’t seem to want to give us our
perks back, and the reason they don’t is
because they know no one is going to leave
anyway.” Until things really get better in the
economy, companies won’t really feel the
pinch of departures, but people who have
been true blue and loyal over the years and
have not answered the head hunters calls are
now going to do so.
Steckler: Any other challenges facing HR?
Conaty: As mentioned before, one of the
greatest challenges for HR going forward is
the developing and growing our own future
HR leaders. And my point there is that seldom, with few exceptions, do we develop our
own HR leaders for major corporations. I
did it at GE. I had four people who could do
my job when I left. Dick Antoine had a few
people. Name me some other major corporations where that has happened. We all too
often, are the biggest violators of succession.
We talk and preach about CEO succession
and developing internal candidates and the
like and we are the shoemaker’s children
when it comes to HR. Still the majority of
top HR slots go to somebody from outside
the company.
Steckler: What was the toughest decision
you made or action you had to take as head
of HR?
Fairbairn: For me, I think those are always
the individual people decisions when you
have to deliver a tough message. A message
that communicates that someone is not doing
a good job, when you need to tell someone
that we are all finished waiting for the good
job to make itself apparent. I think that if
those decisions at some point become no longer difficult, it may not be the right job for
you anymore.
Sartain: Any decision that affects another’s
livelihood is a difficult one. For me, the
toughest ones have been when there has
been a reduction in force and you know not
only do you have to help the whole company reduce, but you have to reduce your
own team.
Ziskin: I agree. I have been involved several
times in making decisions that somewhat
dramatically reduced headcount to take cost
out of the business in the name of survival or
in the name of improved performance. No
matter how many times I’ve done that, I
always find that is the single most difficult
decision; and I promised myself that if I ever
stopped feeling badly about doing these
things, I should probably get out of HR and
do something else.
Sibbernsen: The hardest decisions, I agree,
are those that involve letting people go, even
if you do it for the right reason and you do it
right. And you have to take care of the people
that remain, too.
Antoine: I think one of the really tough
aspects of our job is when you have to separate senior managers of the company for the
violation of ethics or principles of the company. In the 10 years, I had fortunately only
a few of those situations to deal with. Now
I’m distinguishing between decision and
action here. The decision was easy. At least in
P&G, if you violate the ethics or the values
of the company, you go. But then doing it,
having to talk to those people, who were individuals that I knew as colleagues usually for
many years, the action was really hard.
Holmes: I agree that, by far, the toughest decisions are when you have to let an employee
go. Any time you are impacting someone’s life
it is a difficult situation. Therefore, it’s important that all actions surrounding these
situations are handled respectfully—for all
involved.
Conaty: I had so many tough ones that it is
hard to pick one out. But probably the toughest was when I was in the aircraft engines
business and we had a major integrity issue
in marketing. I don’t want to talk about the
specifics, but in the end we had to get rid of
23 high-level executives within the aircraft
business. And I really put my job on the line
arguing back and forth with the corporate
office as to why we should discipline our
people based on the role they played. You can
imagine dealing with Jack Welch on that
issue. He literally wanted everybody involved
in any way to be let go. I disagreed and persevered, at that time when I didn’t have a long
relationship with Jack. I told him that that
would be absolutely the wrong thing to do. I
asked him to trust me to make sure that anybody that was really a violator receives the
appropriate action. While if there were other
people who were part of the organization but
were not directly involved, I could mete out
the discipline in an equitable way. And, quite
honestly, that is how I ended up with the SVP
job. Welch really loved the way I handled it,
loved the way that I would fight back.
Steckler: Let’s talk about the economy. With
the economic “reset” and continued turbulence, what are the implications for HR
leaders and their organizations?
Ziskin: Everybody who has gotten comfortable with the fact that retention is up and that
their attrition is down, shouldn’t get too comfortable. I believe that as the economy
continues to improve, I think even happy
people—those that are perfectly happy where
they are—are going to be chased after by
other companies. Also, we are going to have
to pay attention to the people who want to
stick around versus those who don’t and segment the way that we treat talent, because
companies aren’t going to have the resources
or the time to focus equally on everyone.
Antoine: I agree. I think a big challenge is how
do you re-engage employees. Especially if you
are one of the companies that had let a lot of
people go and you cut back benefits, trimmed
wages and so on. You have a lot of work to
do to earn back the appropriate level of loyalty and commitment. If you had to have
layoffs, but you did it in the right way, I
would argue then I think it’s easier. If
employees saw you doing everything you
could to avoid what had to be done, and that
that pain was shared equally all the way up
to the top of the company, then I think it’s a
lot easier to get them back.
Fairbairn: I think that the implications for
HR are probably similar to the implications
to lots of organizations. But the adjectives
that come to my mind are: flexibility, comfort with high velocity and resilience. You
just need you need to be ready for every
change and for creating change, for selling
change and then realizing that you, too, have
to change.
Steckler: I want to express my appreciation
to each of you for participating in these interviews. Your level of openness and candor
about the CHRO role, leadership overall and
the future challenges facing HR, are all
important contributions. Thank you!
Steve Steckler has held senior HR line
and staff positions at WPP, Marriott
International, TRW, Citibank and
Ciba-Geigy. Most recently, he was
director of HR Integration for Microsoft’s Venture Integration team,
responsible for integrating acquired
companies and leaders. Steckler joined
Microsoft as director of Strategic Talent Planning, managing a team focused
on senior talent development and succession management. Steckler is an
associate article editor of People &
Strategy journal and is a member of
HRPS’s Board of Directors.
21
C-Suite Challenges and the
Economic Meltdown:
What’s Next for Senior Leaders?
By Roland B. Smith and Michael Campbell
22
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
“The future will be loaded with opportunities. Leaders must have the skills to take advantage of
those opportunities, as well as the agility to sidestep the dangers.”
Bob Johansen, from the book Leaders Make the Future
W
hat capabilities will organizations
need to be successful over the
coming decade? What strategies
must be in place to ensure an organization
has the leaders it needs to effectively navigate
complex challenges? How will those leaders
be developed? Where do top leaders need to
adjust behavior? How can human capital
executives help?
Exhibit 1: Connecting Business Strategy to Leadership Development
The Challenges Ahead
To address these important questions, we
look at the leadership challenges faced during
the recent financial meltdown, as seen through
the eyes of C-level executives. We highlight
early findings from Phase One of a threephase research initiative conducted by The
Center for Creative Leadership on the challenges top executives faced toward the end of
the 2000-2009 decade.1 We compare the prerecession challenges up to 2006 with
challenges faced in the midst of the global
recession in 2009, and evaluate changes that
may have occurred as a result of the economic downturn. By analyzing the challenges
most frequently mentioned by C-Suite leaders
and their peers, we identify needs for developing individual leaders, as well as needs for
developing the collective leadership capabilities (where leaders across multiple levels of
the organization are collectively aligned
around solving complex challenges).
(McGuire, Palus, Pasmore, & Rhodes, 2009).
We know that challenges and development
needs of leaders differ depending on the
leader’s level in the organization (Charon,
Drotter, & Noel, 2001). Understanding the
challenges those at the apex of an organization face provides insights into the individual
development needs of executives at the next
levels down. Furthermore, knowing what
‘keeps a CEO up at night’ also has implications for the type of collective leadership
capabilities an organization needs to develop
to solve complex organizational problems.
Our goal in Phase One, then, is to help organizations define the leadership behaviors and
capabilities critical to navigating challenges
successfully, both now and in the future.
The thinking underlying our approach is outlined above in Exhibit 1, adapted from
Pasmore & Lafferty (2009).
According to this model, a leadership strategy
aligns an organization’s business strategy
with its leadership development efforts by
defining the quantities, qualities and collective capabilities of the leadership talent
required to execute the business strategy.
Logically, a leadership strategy drives the
Leadership Development Strategy, which
outlines the design and types of leadership
development initiatives to be implemented.
Leading in a
Complex World
Since 2003, CCL has aggressively tracked
changes in the nature of effective leadership.
These appear as changes in kind as well as in
complexity. Two criteria were used to define
“complexity:” 1) the challenges were not
readily solved using previously successful
approaches and strategies; and/or 2) the challenges seemed to evolve or into new,
multi-faceted challenges over time.
Prior to the recent economic downturn (officially dated December 2007 by the National
Bureau of Economic Research), our research
showed that flexibility, collaboration, crossing
boundaries, and seeing leadership as a process
as opposed to a formal position were gaining
importance over merely making the numbers
as the most critical challenges facing leaders
(Martin, 2007). A 2009 CCL study found that
organizations identified four skills/capabilities
as most important for their leaders in the
future: leading people, strategic planning,
inspiring commitment, and managing change.
Unfortunately, these are among the weakest
competencies for today’s leaders (Leslie, 2009).
Building on these earlier findings, we focus
here on the challenges faced by top executives
at the group and enterprise level, including
Chief Executives, Operating Officers, Presidents, Managing Directors, and equivalent
government and military roles.
1 CCL’s Senior Executive Challenge Research Initiative is a 3 phase research project focused on understanding how senior
executive leaders navigate complex challenges. Phase 1 consists of reviewing and understanding the leadership challenges
facing senior executives looking for trends and themes. Phase 2 involves senior executives identifying a complex
challenge they have successfully navigated and the leadership behaviors and actions that drove that success. Phase 3
involves senior executives identifying a complex challenges that was not successfully navigated, and the leadership
behaviors and actions that lead to those results.
➤
23
LEADING OTHERS
LEADING SELF
Exhibit 2: The 14 Challenge Categories
Individual Impact & Personal Style
More Personal Control & Influence
Balancing Multiple Work Priorities
Work/Life Balance
Role Change or Transition
Influencing & Persuading Others
Developing Others
Leading a Team/Group
Challenge Examples: Leading
Across Multiple Groups
Leading Across Multiple Groups
LEADING THE
ORGANIZATION
Strategic Issues
“Transforming the organization from divisions
that are ‘thinking small’ to a collaborative
organization that sees broader potential.”
Culture Issues
Talent Management
“Developing relationships with outside
stakeholders—including analysts, vendors,
and shareholders.”
Business Operations & Performance
We have some idea of the complexity these
top executive leaders face through the type of
activities that define their roles, including:
strategic decision making, crafting and communicating a vision and direction, developing
organizational structures and processes,
managing relationships with multiple stakeholder groups, ensuring the growth and
development of organizational talent, and
shaping and sustaining an effective organizational culture (Boal & Hooijberg, 2000). We
know that strategic priorities and outcomes
of both individuals and groups of leaders are
heavily influenced by the experiences, values
and personalities of the individuals holding
top-level positions (Hambrick, 2007). There
is no single right answer or approach to the
complex challenges leaders at the top executive level face. Yet the decisions they make
impact the entire organization.
What the Executives
Told Us
Each of the 158 top executive leaders participating in our two senior leadership
development offerings (Developing the Strategic Leader and Leadership at the Peak)
responded to the open-ended Internet-survey
24
“Listening to often conflicting direction [from
the board], and this has led to a sometimes
contentious relationship.”
Leading Change
Organizational Growth & Expansion
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
1. A bility to lead and to influence across
multiple groups and constituencies
Often this involves building, maintaining and
leveraging relationships that span organizational boundaries. Examples include
developing trusting relationships with a
board of directors, working with a chairman
who was formerly CEO, influencing peers
from other functions or units, interacting and
communicating with financial analysts,
shareholders, labor representatives, vendors,
customers, investment partners and the government. Some of the challenges executives
identified in this category are listed below.
Less Personal Control & Influence
question, “What are the three most critical
leadership challenges you currently are facing?” Many of the challenges described by
these top executive leaders were multifaceted,
with most challenge statements consisting of
multiple complex challenges. We attempted
to make sense of these challenge statements
by identifying specific complex challenges
embedded in the statement, pulling out those
specific complex challenges, and then categorizing them to understand the underlying
issues faced by these top executive leaders.
We identified 14 challenge categories and a
total of 606 challenges. They are listed in
Exhibit 2 based on the degree of control or
influence an executive has over the challenge.
The Top Four Complex Challenges
Each of the identified challenge categories
deserves further exploration and discussion,
but we will highlight only the four most frequently mentioned areas. These are: leading
across multiple groups, strategic issues, talent
management, and business operations and
performance. Nearly half of the challenges
(47 percent) identified by respondents deal
with some aspect of these four categories.
Let’s look at each of these four challenges, in
order of frequency.
2. Strategic Issues
Another of the four most frequently faced
challenges involves strategy—including how
to define and communicate a clear direction
for the future and create organizational alignment. Challenges include developing the
vision, goals and strategies for the organization and making decisions based on those
strategies.
Challenge Examples: Strategic Issues
“Setting a long-term vision and motivating
personnel to work daily to strive for the longterm goal.”
“Communicating the direction and the
progress we are making.”
“Assisting to establish a common vision and
strategy with our executive management and
the board.”
3. Talent Management
Talent management issues are the third type
of challenge that top executives most frequently identify. “Talent management”
includes ensuring the organization has and
retains the right personnel and delves into
issues such as recruitment, compensation,
development, succession, human capital
resource constraints and downsizing. Respondents also described the challenges involved
in motivating and inspiring teams and
increasing morale, engagement and commitment to the organization.
Challenge Examples: Talent Management
“I lead a young start up organization and
there is a very shallow bench. Everyone is
a working manager and at times it feels as
everyone is far too tactical in their roles.”
“Assuring development of leaders throughout
the organization for now and in the future.
Like many organizations, we will experience
an exodus of the baby boomer leaders at
some time in the future, so we need to be
ready by identifying and developing the next
generations to continue a strong organization
in the future.”
“Improving the level of leadership management
skills throughout the organization with
rewarding merit, accountability, goal setting,
and performance feedback as key issues.”
4. Business Operations and Organizational
Performance
The fourth type of challenge involves business operations and organizational
performance. Both impact the execution of
strategy. It should come as no surprise that
top executives are very concerned about
bottom-line results driven by the operations
and performance of their organizations. They
are challenged with implementing or improving organizational programs, projects and
processes to drive overall results. They also
face the challenge of developing new business, addressing new markets and increasing
revenues and profitability.
Challenge Examples: Business Operations & Performance
“The need to raise quality standards across
the organization.”
“Learning how to transition an organization
from a nascent startup to a successful
operation.”
“Resources—finding sufficient qualified
resources to execute our work.”
The Impact of Environmental
Uncertainty—Some Surprises
One of the questions we were curious about
is whether the challenges these leaders face
change under differing degrees of environmental uncertainty. The global economic
crisis that first hit the United States in 2008
and continues to affect global markets provides a unique opportunity to gauge how
extreme uncertainty may impact the challenges executives face. If the challenges of top
executive leaders do change under different
degrees of uncertainty, then those changes
may reflect the need for different approaches
to leading. We compared and contrasted the
challenges top executives described in 2006,
prior to the full impact of the global recession, with those described by a different set
of executives in 2009.
Exhibit 3 (page 28): The Four Challenge
Types Mentioned Most Frequently in 2006
and 2009
While we acknowledge that we are using a
relatively small sample, there appears to be
little difference in the frequency or types of
challenges described at these two points in
time. For both timeframes, the challenges
mentioned most often are the same: leading
across multiple groups, strategic issues, talent
management and business operations and
performance. Even under differing degrees of
environmental uncertainty, as defined by the
change in economic conditions, the top execu t i v e l eaders we studied were still
experiencing the same types of complex challenges and with relatively the same frequency.
We offer two possible explanations for this
lack of difference. One is that these types of
challenges are core and enduring to the work
of a top executive leader regardless of environmental circumstances. The second is that
the way in which these leaders articulated
these challenges does not fully capture the
intensity or the urgency of the challenge as a
result of the down economy. The economic
crisis could be an unacknowledged contextual factor that is accelerating the speed with
which top executive leaders need to find solutions for these core challenge types.
Interpreting the Findings
We want to emphasize three points in our
analysis of these executive challenges. The
first point addresses the 2006 vs. 2009 comparison. Our initial expectation was that we
would find clear differences between the challenges faced prior to the economic crisis and
those faced during the crisis. We were surprised that there was little difference in the
types and frequencies of complex challenges
faced by the top executive leaders we studied.
The implication for the coming decade is that
these challenges will continue as barriers to
organizational prosperity unless leadership
Leadership Challenges Identified by Top Executives
Sample, Study Design and Methodology
CCL collects biographical and assessment data on top executives who attend our leadership
development programs called Leadership at the Peak (LAP) and Developing the Strategic
Leader (DSL). LAP is a five-day leadership program with a target audience of executives in
the top three tiers of the organization who also: have 15 or more years of management
experience, leadership responsibility for 500 or more people, and are responsible for a
budget of $50 million or more (CCL, 2010). DSL is also a five-day program with a target
audience of upper level executives and senior leaders whose work has long-term, strategic
implications for the organization (CCL, 2010). As part of the assessment battery these
leaders complete for the program, we ask a very simple question: What are the three most
critical leadership challenges you are currently facing?
For our study, we took a sample from the LAP and the DSL population and identified 158
top executive leaders (i.e. leaders at the top tier of their respective organizations as defined
above) from 135 organizations and across 34 different industry sectors to understand the
challenges they faced. The average top executive was male (89 percent), born in the United
States (82 percent), and had an average age of 48. The industry sectors represented
spanned across the business sector (e.g. manufacturing, finance, consumer products,
pharmaceutics, energy, retail), the private non-profit sector (e.g. education, insurance,
healthcare) and the public non-profit sector (e.g. government, aerospace, defense). The
sample of top executive leaders we studied is relatively small, however, the research a)
represents a very specialized population, b) uses an open-ended survey designed to provide
increased detail, breadth and depth, and c) is comparable in sample size to other measures
of CEO challenges (e.g. The Conference Board, 2008).
We employed a content analysis technique to analyze the open-ended responses. A team
of four CCL researchers reviewed a sample of participants and their challenges and developed a codebook based on the strategic leadership and leadership development literature.
To minimize individual bias and interpretation, the team of four CCL researchers then conducted multiple coding and agreement sessions to categorize each challenge statement.
➤
25
Exhibit 3: The Four Challenge Types Mentioned Most Frequently in
2006 and 2009
Frequency
Rank
2006
n=108
2009
n=50
1
2
Strategic Issues
Strategic Issues
3
Talent Management
Business Operations &
Performance
4
Business Operations &
Performance
Talent Management
development approaches are adapted to
build future executive talent to navigate these
issues. We see these as fundamental top executive leadership issues that began prior to the
economic meltdown.
The second point of emphasis is that, while it
may be helpful to understand how each of
these four complex challenges is unique, they
are not mutually exclusive of each other. Our
analysis has identified what we refer to as
‘challenge chains.’ The 14 challenge categories we identified, and in particular the four
most frequently mentioned challenges, are
often linked together in various permutations. As opposed to identifying a top
executive challenge as ‘influencing,’ our analysis has sought to provide a clearer
understanding of these challenges by identifying more of the context. Who is the
executive trying to influence? How does the
executive want others to behave? And for
what purpose? Consider the following challenge statement from one of the executives
surveyed: “Convincing other leaders to devel-
op and own strategies which instill customer
orientation and positive public perceptions
through measurable outcomes.”
As shown in Exhibit 4, the challenge of strategic issues is at play because of the need for
“other leaders to develop and own strategies.” There is the challenge of leading across
multiple groups to “instill customer orientation and positive public perceptions.”
Ultimately, these efforts have a business
operations and performance challenge in
achieving “measurable outcomes” through
strategy execution. These complex challenges
are intertwined and impact one another.
Another insight from this same example is
that this top executive, no matter how wellseasoned and developed as a leader, is not
able to single handedly navigate and solve the
complex challenges described. This conclusion leads to our third point of emphasis. The
top four most frequent challenges identified
in this analysis only make up 47 percent of
the total number of challenges we catego-
Exhibit 4: Deconstruction of a Complex Challenge Chain: 0
Strategic Issues
“Convincing [other leaders to develop and own strategies] that
[instill customer orientation and positive public perceptions] through
[measurable outcomes.]”
Business Operations
& Performance
26
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
Leading Across
Multiple Groups
rized. So why focus on these four? We see
these four challenges as not only indicators
of the individual development needs or competencies of top executives, but also
organizational level challenges that will
require greater collective leadership capabilities throughout the organization.
Going back to our example, there is a need for
this individual executive to have the skills,
knowledge and competence to successfully
navigate this challenge. There is also a need
for leaders throughout the organization to
‘develop and own strategies,’ ‘instill a customer orientation and create a positive public
perception,’ and achieve ‘measurable outcomes.’ Understanding the leadership
challenges these top executive leaders face
provides insights into defining a leadership
strategy that will guide the efforts required for
developing individual executive competencies
and wider organizational leadership capabilities aligned with organizational needs.
Implications for
Leadership
Development
Our analysis provides insights into the challenges top executive leaders face, which have
implications for the skills, knowledge and
experiences leaders at this level require for
success. Because these are complex challenges that defy known solutions, they are
indicators of the types of collective leadership
capabilities needed throughout an organization. What are the implications for the
development of executive leadership skills
looking forward? Because establishing leadership development efforts associated with
each challenge should ultimately lead to
improvements in business operations and
performance, our development recommendations will initially focus on leading across
multiple groups, strategic issues and talent
management. Business results and operational excellence are assumed competencies
(Sessa, Kaiser, Taylor, & Campbell, 1998).
Development Area 1: Implications
for Leading across Multiple
Groups—Boundary Spanning
One way to think about the challenge of
leading across multiple groups is to understand how these groups are situated across
specific boundaries. There are five missioncritical boundaries leaders encounter:
vertical, horizontal, stakeholder, geographic
and demographic (Yip, Ernst, & Campbell,
2009). The top executive leaders we studied
identified challenges across four of these
five boundaries.
Vertical boundaries often deal with upward
relationships with a board of directors and
downward with direct reports and subordinates. Vertical boundary challenges include
managing talented direct reports who are
struggling to collaborate together, communicating unpopular decisions and establishing
accountability among subordinates.
Horizontal boundaries deal with the challenges of leading across roles, functions, and
units. One of the most frequent and critical
challenges that executive leaders face is
the ability to lead across silos and work collaboratively with leaders across different
functions; to see the organization as a whole
as opposed to independent parts (Yip,
et. al, 2009).
The executives we studied also faced challenges with leading across stakeholder
boundaries that exist outside of the organization. These external stakeholder groups
included: customers, communities, alumni
and the government. When times of extreme
uncertainty turn into times of organizational crisis, the importance of stakeholder
relationships is quickly magnified. Organizations such as General Motors, Toyota and
BP have each experienced significant crises
over the last three years. As a result, each
firm’s top executives have spent significant
face-time with important stakeholders, such
as customers, the government and the community (e.g., Herszenhorn & Vlasic, 2008;
Linebaugh & Mitchell, 2010; Broder, 2010).
The ability of each organization to weather
these crises will depend greatly on how top
executives and other leaders position themselves and the organization across
stakeholder boundaries.
nization is one way to address the need to
help leaders dealing with the leading across
multiple groups (Ernst, Hannum, & Ruderman, 2010). Practical suggestions for
developing boundary spanning capabilities
include (Ernst & Yip, 2009):
Geographic boundary challenges involved
the executive’s ability to lead increasingly
dispersed global structures. Among the
unique geographic boundary challenges
faced by top leaders are how to communicate
and collaborate effectively across large, geographically dispersed operations.
• Reframe Boundaries – Work with leaders
to develop their ability to establish and
communicate a common vision and
strategy that acknowledges the common
interests of the groups and mobilizes those
groups toward shared goals.
The final mission-critical boundary that top
executives did not address in our study, but
must be aware of and able to address, involves
demographics. Leaders will need to be skilled
in leading others of different demographic
traits such as gender, ethnicity, nationality
and cultural beliefs. While the top leaders
who participated in our challenge study did
not specifically describe demographic boundary challenges, it seems inevitable that they
will face them as organizations expand their
global reach.
Efforts to develop boundary-spanning leadership capabilities among top executive
leaders as well as collectively within the orga-
Exhibit 5: Strategic Issues Sub-Themes
Achieving Organizational Alignment
“Effectively communicating the vision and strategic direction while achieving alignment in an
environment with so many economic, operational, and individual distractions.”
“Helping the management team identify and gain alignment around the major drivers that will
transform the company.”
Maintaining Engagement & Confidence
“Keeping our employees informed about our company’s financial strength and sharing with them the
action plans that we have implemented that will enable us to weather the economic storm we are in.”
“Ensure that I carve out time to walk and talk throughout the organization to get 'ground truth' and
stay connected with employees at all levels, as well as providing them feedback as to the overall
mission and their role in realizing those goals.”
Refining Existing Culture or Establishing a New Culture for the Future
“Transitioning from a ‘command and control’ organization to a ‘collaborating and learning’
organization focused on the customer.”
“Culturally we have always been ‘the little organization that could.’ We are starting to falter due to
competition, the economy and a lack of resources.”
Balancing Multiple Priorities & Making Wise Choices
“Manage a globally dispersed group of projects and individuals, and balance short term vs. long term.”
“Determining whether or not certain facets of our business are ‘fads’ or trends. The answer to this
partially determines our strategic course of action with the marketplace.”
• Acknowledge Boundaries – Help leaders
‘see’ the group boundaries that exist before
they are able to span them. Assist leaders
in defining and understanding the
differences between different groups.
• Create Boundary Spanning Experiences –
Design experiences such as cross-functional
or global assignments that will help
facilitate learning boundary spanning skills.
Development
Implications in
Practice – A BoundarySpanning Diagnostic
Many organizations are using crossfunctional and cross-regional
assignments to accelerate the development of leaders and prepare them to
wwith a senior leader who was preparing to take on a large-scale,
cross-global assignment, and conducted a boundary-spanning diagnostic.
This diagnostic helped the leader identify the key goals and challenges of the
assignment, and the boundaries the
leader would need to work across to
overcome those challenges. After defining the key challenges, this leader was
able to identify critical demographic
boundaries between different nationalities and cultures, horizontal
boundaries between different functions, and geographic boundaries
separating people by distance. By identifying these boundaries, the leader was
able to bring members of these groups
together and reframe their different
views and goals into a unifying vision.
By conducting the boundary-spanning
diagnostic at the early stages of the
assignment, the leader was better prepared in taking on the role.
➤
27
for Strategic Issues – Thinking,
Acting, Influencing
Leadership is clearly the starting point of
strategy, yet few companies recognize the
leadership capacity that new strategies will
require. The failure to assess leadership
capacity systematically before launching strategic initiatives can leave executives
scrambling to fill gaps at the last minute—
with significant negative consequences (Hsieh
& Yik, 2005). Many of the leaders from our
study did not identify strategy creation as the
challenge. They did, however, identify several
challenges related to strategy execution.
Exhibit 5 organizes some of the verbatim
challenges around strategic issues into subthemes. Sharing sample verbatim responses
illustrates these strategic challenges.
When considering the complex challenges
associated with strategic issues, the “how” of
strategic leadership includes developing
executives who are more effective in strategic thinking, acting and influencing (See
Exhibit 6). Leaders not only need to understand the active role they play in guiding
their organizations through the strategic
challenges related to complexity and uncertainty, but also need to be clear on the
requisite behaviors that effectively motivate
and influence people in times of change.
Development efforts that focus on building
top executive skills and collective capabilities
could incorporate:
• Establishing Accountability & Feedback –
Hold leaders accountable for the quality of
their strategies, and then provide those
leaders feedback on the quality of their
strategic thinking, acting and influencing.
• Building Learning into the Strategy
Process – At different points in the strategic
cycle, incorporate opportunities for
learning, observation and assessment
(Sull, 2007).
• Practicing – Consider using simulations
that allow leaders to practice strategic
thinking, acting and influencing and build
in feedback to support the learning
experience.
Development
Implications in
Practice – Strategy
Simulations
CCL uses a strategy simulation as part
of its Developing the Strategic Leader
(DSL) Program. The simulation is
based on a real-world company and
reflects the complexities of modern
organizations and has no right answer.
Instead, participants generate revenues
based on the decisions they make during the simulation and make a number
of decisions about how they want to
position the company and then define
the tactics and strategies to achieve
organizational goals.
During the simulation, there are consistent patterns to how the skills sets
for strategic thinking, acting and influencing play out. In round 1 of the
simulation, participants tend to work
in siloed, non-inclusive groups where
there is considerable effort and time
placed in analysis (strategic thinking)
but very few decisions are made or
strategies executed. In round 2, participants are driven by low revenue
gains in round 1 to make a lot of decisions (strategic acting), though many
of these decisions are executed independently and disconnected from the
overall goals of the organization. In the
final round, the participants realize
that there is a greater need for collaboration between each of the divisions
and groups (strategic influencing) to
make smarter decisions that improve
the revenue output of the entire organization. By having process discussions
and feedback between rounds, partici-
Exhibit 6: Skill Sets for Strategic Thinking, Acting and Influencing
Strategic Thinking
Understanding the complex
relationship between the
organization and its environment.
Utilizing that understanding to
make decisions that facilitate
the organization’s enduring
success.
28
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
Strategic Acting
Taking decisive and timely
action consistent with
the strategic direction of
the organization, despite
the ambiguity, complexity,
and chaos inherent in
organizational life.
Strategic Influencing
Engendering commitment to
the organization’s strategic
direction by inviting others into
the strategic process, forging
relationships inside and outside
the organization, and utilizing
organizational culture and
systems of influence.
pants see how the ability to think, act
and influence strategically goes beyond
their individual efforts and is instead a
collaborative and collective process.
for Talent Management
One of the most consistent findings across
studies on talent management is that bestpractice organizations have top executives
who are more committed to and involved in
talent management (e.g. APQC, 2004;
Hewitt, 2005). Organizations that report
greater levels of top leader engagement in talent management efforts also indicate more
effective outcomes than organizations with
lower levels of senior leader involvement
(Lamoureux, Campbell, & Smith, 2009). The
degree of top executive commitment and
engagement to talent management efforts
also impacts the organization’s culture and
mindset on talent development (Michaels,
Handfield-Jones, & Axelrod, 2001).
The top executive leaders we studied face
challenges of attracting and competing for
the best talent, developing a robust talent
pipeline for the future, dealing with resource
constraints that prevented the development
or acquisition of needed talent, as well as
decisions about down-sizing. These leaders
also face the challenge of maintaining
employee morale, engagement and commitment. Critical to navigating these
challenges is a skill we refer to as “development agility.”
We define development agility as a leader’s
ability to coach, mentor, support, guide and
develop employees so they can fully capitalize
on developmental experiences and opportunities. Most of a leader’s development occurs
on the job through experience (McCall, Lombardo, Morrison, 1988), yet many
organizations do not find ways to maximize
these learning experiences (McCall, 2010).
Building leadership capabilities around
development agility puts top executives and
other leaders directly in touch with the organization’s talent, providing a faster and surer
way to develop talent on the job. Ways to
increase leadership’s development agility
could include:
• C r e a t e A c c o u n t a b i l i t y fo r Ta l e n t
Development – One of the reasons top
leadership ownership of talent is seen in
best practice organizations is because
leaders in these organizations are held
accountable for their performance in
developing others.
• Develop the Developers – A skilled HR
professional who can coach and mentor
executives and other leaders can help build
these talent ‘developer’ skill sets.
• Provide On-Going Support – Don’t limit
contact with your top talent to a yearly or
quarterly meeting. Encourage executives
and other leaders to give others feedback,
to ask what they’re learning from a job or
assignment, and to share their own lessons
of experience and managerial wisdom.
Development
Implications in
Practice: Developing
the Developers
Coaching often is seen as a critical skill
for effective leaders, and one of the
more difficult skill sets to develop.
Enhancing coaching skills is one area
where organizations look to maximize
their efforts around talent management by having executives become
more personally involved in the process of developing others.
A professional services firm with which
CCL worked had been conducting
yearly performance and bonus conversations for several years, and they
wanted to expand these interactions
into more targeted development conversations. A consumer goods organization,
with a very sophisticated successionmanagement process, was challenged
with how to accelerate the development of its high potential talent while
also keeping it committed and engaged
with the organization. In both cases,
enhancing the coaching skills of senior
leaders was seen as a lever for helping
high potentials make the most of their
developmental experiences.
Executives often have access to a tremendous amount of information about
high potentials, both through the organization’s performance and talent
systems as well as the executive’s personal observations. What executives
tend to lack are tools and training on
how to have the actual development
conversation. Exercises, such as coach-
ing role plays, can help executives
practice the development conversation
and then receive feedback and suggestions on how to make the conversations
more effective. Enhancing coaching
skills to ‘develop the developers’ is one
way for organizations to build the
development agility of their leaders.
represent the critical leadership challenge facing HR executives. Therefore, we offer a
perspective framework for leadership development that focuses on building
organization-wide capabilities and the connections among business strategy, leadership
strategy and leadership development strategy.
(Refer back to Exhibit 1)
Another approach is to align formal
leadership development training that is
traditionally targeted at high potentials
with ‘developer’ training targeted at
more senior levels. Another consumer
goods organization with which CCL
has worked has created a leadership
development program that puts high
potentials and their supervisors into
shared development experiences. While
the high potential group is receiving
individual leadership development
training, a parallel group of their supervisors is receiving training on coaching
and mentoring to help their high potentials maximize the learning from the
training. The process has multiple
‘check ins’ that promote on-going support toward the high potential’s
development in the context of real and
critical organizational work.
Every business strategy has human capital
implications. Growth strategies may require
the development or acquisition of additional
managerial talent. Partnership strategies may
require enhanced collaboration competencies. A leadership strategy identifies those
implications by describing the collective leadership capabilities needed to effectively
execute the strategy (Hughes & Beatty, 2005).
The complex challenges that top executives
face partially reflect the gap between the business strategy and the leadership capabilities
required to execute it.
The Implications for
and the Human
Capital Executive
This study identified four of the most frequently mentioned challenges of top executive
leaders that appear to remain consistent during different levels of environmental
uncertainty. Understanding the complex
challenges of leading across multiple groups,
strategic issues, talent management and business operations and performance has
implications for developing leadership capabilities that include boundary spanning
leadership, strategic thinking/acting/influencing, and development agility. We also have
placed emphasis on the implications of
understanding these complex challenges for
developing top executive leaders, as well as
developing the collective leadership capabilities of the organization.
At this point, an important question is, “How
do you build an organization’s collective
leadership capabilities?” This question may
HR executives need to help define the leadership capabilities for the future based on the
strategies and direction of the organization.
A leadership strategy looks at human capital
elements such as: the quantity of current and
projected leaders; the qualities desired in
terms of demographics, diversity and background; the skills and behaviors needed to
implement the business strategy. The leadership strategy should also describe: the
collective capabilities of leaders (at different
levels of the organization) acting together to
navigate complex challenges, and the desired
organizational culture to facilitate success
(Pasmore & Lafferty, 2009).
Once the leadership strategy has been developed, the HR executive can design the talent
management systems and mechanisms that
will develop the types of leaders needed.
These talent management decisions reflect
what we refer to as a leadership development
strategy. A leadership development strategy
looks at ways in which organizations will
source, recruit, identify, develop and grow
leaders to build an organization’s collective
leadership capabilities.
What’s Next?
What, then, is the task of senior executives
over the next decade? In our research, organizations identified as best-in-class relative to
succession and talent management had senior
leaders that clearly understood their roles,
were personally involved in developing next
generation and emerging generation leaders,
29
and held themselves and others responsible
and accountable for continuously identifying
and developing talent. While fluent in business processes and strong in areas related to
business acumen, we find many top executives need clarity, support and tools relative
to the human side of the business. These leaders have a significant responsibility in
increasing the strategic agility of the enterprise, in defining, shaping and refining the
culture and in leveraging talent in service of
the business strategy.
Many executives are consumed with strategy
creation and execution and in pushing and
driving business results. Many neglect human
and cultural strategies that can pull results.
We clearly see these top executive leaders as
orchestrators of talent, responsible for the
overall alignment of the leadership strategy
with the evolving business strategy. However,
successfully navigating these rapids of change
not only demands a refined or even new set
of skills, knowledge, abilities and experiences, but often requires the services of an
experienced guide.
We clearly see the need for human capital
executives to serve in the guide role. Accordingly, their task is to develop current and
future top business executives able to successfully lead during times of complexity, change
and uncertainty. In so doing, human capital
executives need to determine more aggressively if the leadership development
processes and systems in place match the
needs for the future.
We encourage human capital executives to
conduct “challenge studies” for leaders at different levels within their organizations to
more clearly understand the past and be better prepared for the future. These studies
would involve reviewing the challenges successfully and unsuccessfully met and the
behaviors associated with each. It would ultimately inform the behaviors required to
refine and execute the business strategy now
and in the future.
Center for Creative Leadership. (2010). www.ccl.org.
Retrieved Agust 12, 2010, from http://www.ccl.org/
leadership/programs/DSLOverview.aspx.
National Bureau of Economic Research. (2008). Determination of the December 2007 peak in economic activity.
http://www.nber.org/cycles/dec2008.html: Authors.
Palus, C., Horth, D., Selvin, A., & Pulley, M. (Winter
2003). Exploration for development: Developing leadership by making shared sense of complex challenges.
Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research
55(1), 26-40.
Ernst, C., Hannum, K. M., & Ruderman, M. N. (2010).
Developing intergroup leadership. In E. Van Velsor, C. D.
McCauley, & M. N. Ruderman (Eds.), The Center for
Creative Leadership handbook of leadership development
(3rd. ed.), (pp. 375-404). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Pasmore, W. & Lafferty, K. (2009). Developing a leadership strategy: A critical ingredient for organizational
success. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Ernst, C., & Yip, J. (2009). Boundary spanning leadership:
Tactics for bridging social boundaries in organization. In
T. Pittinsky (Ed.) Crossing the divide: Intergroup leadership in a world of difference. Boston, MA: Harvard
Business School Press.
Hambrick, D. C. (2007). Upper echelons theory: An
update. Academy of Management Review, 32, 334-348.
Heifetz, R. (1994). Leadership without easy answers.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Herszenhorn, D. M. & Vlasic, B. (December 4, 2008). Auto
executives still find skeptics. New York Times. Retrieved
f r o m h t t p : / / w w w. n y t i m e s . c o m / 2 0 0 8 / 1 2 / 0 5 /
business/05auto.html
Hewitt Associates. (2005). Research highlights: How the
top 20 companies grow leaders. Lincolnshire, IL: Authors.
Hsieh, T. & Yik, S. (2005). Leadership as a starting point
of strategy. The McKinsey Quarterly, 1, 67-73.
Hughes, R. & Beatty, K. (2005). Becoming a strategic
leader: Your role in your organization’s enduring success.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Lamoureux, K., Campbell, M., & Smith, R. (2009). Highimpact succession management: Best practices, models
and case studies in organizational talent mobility. Bersin
& Associates. Retrieved from http://www.bersin.com/Lib/
Rs/Details.aspx?docid=10339342&title=High-ImpactSuccession-Management-Best-Practices-Models-andCase-Studies-in-Organizational-Talent-Mobility&id=
Leslie, J. B. (2009). The leadership gap: What you need,
and don’t have, when it comes to leadership talent. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Linebaugh, K. & Mitchell, J. (February 24, 2010). Hearings escalate fight for reputation. Wall Street Journal
Online. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10
001424052748704240004575085431430328518.html
Martin, A. (2007). The changing nature of leadership.
Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
APQC. (2004). Talent management: From competencies
to organizational performance. Houston, TX: Authors.
McCall, M. (2010). Recasting leadership development.
Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 3, 3-19.
Boal, K. B. & Hooijberg, R. (2000). Strategic leadership
research: Moving on. Leadership Quarterly, 11(4), 515-549.
McCall, M., Lombardo, M., & Morrison, A. (1988). The
lessons of experience: How successful executives develop
on the job. New York, NY: Lexington Books.
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
Michaels, E., Handfield-Jones, H., & Axelrod, B. (2001).
The war for talent. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Charon, R., Drodder, S., & Noel, J. L. (2001). The leadership pipeline: How to build the leadership-powered
company. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
References
Broder, J. M. (June 17, 2010). BP’s chief offers answers,
but not to liking of house committee. New York Times.
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/
politics/18spill.html
30
Center for Creative Leadership. (2010). www.ccl.org.
Retrieved August 12, 2010, from http://www.ccl.org/
leadership/programs/LAPOverview.aspx.
McGuire, J. B., Palus, C. J., Pasmore, W., & Rhodes, G.B.
(2009). Transforming your organization. Greensboro,
NC: Center for Creative Leadership.
Santayana, G. (1905). The life of reason or the phases of
human progress. New York, USA: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Sessa, V. I., Kaiser, R., Taylor, J. K., & Campbell, R. J.
(1998). Executive selection: A research report on what
works and what doesn’t. Greensboro, NC: Center for
Creative Leadership.
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execution. MIT Sloan Management Review, 48(4), 30-38.
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executive suite. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative
Leadership.
Roland B. Smith Ph.D., is senior faculty and lead researcher for the Center
for Creative Leadership (CCL®). His
work at CCL includes facilitating the
Leadership at the Peak program for
senior executives and leading other
custom engagements. Smith received
his bachelor’s degree in Finance and a
master’s degree in Instructional/Performance Technology from Boise State
University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Idaho.
Michael Campbell is senior research
analyst for the Center for Creative
Leadership (CCL®). Campbell is a lead
researcher on CCL’s initiative to examine talent and succession management
in a global context, and CCL’s Senior
Executive Research Initiative. Campbell earned a bachelor’s degree in
Business and a master’s degree in Communication from the University of
Colorado at Colorado Springs. He is a
certified CCL executive coach.
HR People & Strategy
New Name
Supports
Changing
Needs of
Membership
This spring, HRPS became HR People & Strategy (formerly the Human Resources
Planning Society). The impetus behind the change was HRPS’s drive to stay in front of
the ever-changing and dynamic business environment. “HR Planning” had different
connotations in 1977 than it does today, and HRPS is taking the next step to recognize
the overwhelming importance that Talent places as the great strategic and competitive
differentiator for organizations.
As part of redefining its identity, HR People & Strategy has a brand new Web site, too.
Explore and engage in the many new features at www.hrps.org.
Share ideas and
expertise.
Learn about
upcoming events.
Create a dynamic
member profile.
Connect with
fellow members.
Search for articles
and resources.
Access educational
Webcasts
Share, collaborate, exchange and grow – that’s why HRPS is here and we hope you are, too.
Visit www.hrps.org to build your member profile and connect with others today.
Leadership Agility: A Business
Imperative for a VUCA World
By Nick Horney, Ph.D., Principal, Agility Consulting
Bill Pasmore, Ph.D., SVP, Center for Creative Leadership
Tom O’Shea, CMC, Principal, Agility Consulting
32
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
In this volatile world, more and more companies will strive to become "Velcro organizations" in
which people and capacity can be rearranged and recombined creatively and quickly without major
structural change. The winners won't stop focusing on quality, cost, and efficiency, but they'll be
paying a lot more attention to agility, too.” C. K. Prahalad, Businessweek, September 10, 2009.
In Volatile Times –
Agility Rules
Speed, fitness, flexibility, agility…words more
often used to describe a world-class athlete
than an organization or its leaders. By all
accounts, the 21st century is bringing a frenzy of innovation driven by the continuing
digital revolution and expanding global markets. Our current environment of accelerated
uncertainty and change is not going to blow
over and settle down.
The term VUCA, coined by the US Army War
College, describes the dynamic nature of our
world today and has caught on in a variety
of organizational settings to describe a business environment characterized by:
• Volatility – The nature, speed, volume,
magnitude and dynamics of change;
• Uncertainty – The lack of predictability of
issues and events;
• Complexity – The confounding of issues
and the chaos that surround any
organization; and
• Ambiguity – The haziness of reality and the
mixed meanings of conditions.
CEOs are struggling with how best to lead in
a VUCA world. Most of the old rules do not
apply now when people connections matter
at least as much or more than solid structures.
Boundaries around companies are shifting,
forming global networks of complex stakeholder relationships. A CEO does not have
one lever to pull to create and sustain organizational success.
For example, replacing less successful leadership talent with successful leaders from other
organizations can help, but it is not sufficient.
Rather, levers must be pulled in unison, something David Nadler and Michael Tushman
refer to as creating organizational congruence (Nadler & Tushman, 1997). Leaders
achieve the congruence needed to sustain success in a VUCA world only by making
continuous shifts in people, processes, technology and structure. Leading this subtle and
complex dance requires the capability to
sense and respond to changes in the business
environment with actions that are focused,
fast and flexible. This is what we mean when
we describe leadership agility.
Provide guidance and direction to
teams working across time zones,
cultures and organizational barriers.
Leaders rarely work with team members on
a face-to-face basis, forcing them to rely on a
range of virtual communication channels.
And team members come from a variety of
disciplines, cultures and experience levels,
Leadership and Organizational Agility: A Comparison of High-Performing
And Low-Performing Firms.
Organizational Performance -- measured by profitability, market share, revenue growth
and customer satisfaction
i4cp Agility Research Items
Percentage of Responses
from HIGH-PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS
Percentage of Responses
from LOW-PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS
Can anticipate and initiate changes
needed for sustained high performance
49%
20%
Can recognize and respond to strategic
challenges in a timely manner
58%
30%
The above chart shows highlights from a
recent study of leadership and organizational
agility by i4cp. (i4cp, PR.Com press release,
March 11, 2010). The research involved 454
global leaders and illustrates higher performance from organizations embracing agility.
What Does Leadership
Agility Look Like?
While few would argue about the need for
greater leadership agility, not many are able
to articulate specific action plans for leaders
to become more agile. Where do we begin?
What levers hold the most promise for
increasing agility in our leaders on a sustainable basis?
Let’s explore some specific requirements of
agile leaders. These four are not the full range
of agile behaviors, but they are necessities in
attaining agility.
making clarity of communication and mutual understanding an even greater challenge.
Effective leaders will learn to balance the
requirements of task completion and relationship development with equal finesse.
Take more risks by briskly connecting talent and moving information
and knowledge around the globe.
Leaders are required to complement full-time
employees with part-timers, consultants, suppliers and even customers as part of the
broader definition of the company’s workforce. Effective and efficient talent
management models enable high-performing
companies to source, assess, assign and develop this mix of talent across various projects
and initiatives. User-friendly technology supports these models and allows them to
incorporate multiple sources of global information about the workforce into
decision-making processes. A global learning
management system helps support effective
talent management.
➤
33
Maintain a laser-like focus on
employee commitment and engagement across generational, global,
cultural and demographic boundaries.
We have witnessed just how easy it is to lose
the commitment of employees whose talent
is most needed in times of uncertainty. The
Center for Work-Life Policy research indicates that employee loyalty plunged from 95
to 39 percent from June 2007 to December
2008 (Hewlett, 2009). With employees residing in a sea of project and matrix relationships,
a major challenge lies in assigning accountability and focusing attention on strategic
priorities. Agile leaders learn to keep the balance between the right amount of delegation
and the right amount of strategic direction,
so teams of people can sense and respond to
changing needs in their customer worlds. This
means creating the environment for employees to develop improved work solutions and
new products/processes, allowing needed
decisions to happen on more of a just-in-time
basis, closer to the customer.
Make collaboration among suppliers, partners, customers, part-time
employees and consultants a signature part of organizational culture.
Functional silos have no place in an agile
organization, and agile leaders regularly need
to model collaborative behavior. Furthermore, agile leaders are learning how to infuse
collaboration into work processes, job roles,
and measures, rewards and development systems, thus generating changes in mindsets
and behavior. They need to identify the key
customer/supplier relationships in which
both sides benefit from collaborative innovation. It also can mean creating collaborative
physical and virtual spaces that allow relevant stakeholders to have access to, post and
comment on relevant ideas and materials.
Developing Leadership
Agility at a Consumer
Products Company
Let’s look at how leaders at a consumer products company, Land O’Frost, in Lansing,
Illinois are addressing the turbulence and
uncertainty in their industry. In 2008, they
began investing in creating agile leaders as a
key component of their competitive growth
strategy for the next five years. Land O’Frost
is a privately held maker and marketer of
“Great Tasting Lunchmeats™” under the
labels Premium, DeliShaved, Taste Escapes,
Bistro Favorites, to name a few. Land O’Frostbranded lunchmeat products rank third in
market share in the highly competitive lunchmeat category, alongside products from much
larger competitors Oscar Meyer from Kraft
Foods and Hillshire Farms from Sara Lee
Corporation.
So, how can a mid-sized, privately held firm
like Land O’Frost compete with such mega
brands in serving the needs of power retailers
like Walmart, Kroger and the other major
food retailers? Just ask David Van Eekeren,
the 38-year-old, third-generation Land
O’Frost president, and he will tell you it is all
about great and safe products and a talented
workforce led by agile leaders.
Recognizing the importance of developing
LOF’s leadership talent to lead the enterprise
into the next half century, Van Eekeren
knew it was time to invest in establishing a
corporate human resources function. He
hired Steve Sakats as the company’s first vice
president of Human Resources. Sakats
brought perspective and experience in human
capital development from American Express,
ARAMARK, Nabisco and others to help the
LOF leadership team map a strong strategic
commitment to future growth through leadership agility.
Fall 2008 brought the sudden and disarming
economic crisis that crushed global confidence and paralyzed so many organizations
and leaders. However, Van Eekeren was
enthusiastic about pushing forward with creating an updated strategic plan that would
capture and sharpen the vision, primarily
through the development of leaders with agility at every level of the organization.
Beginning in October 2008 and into the first
quarter 2009, the Land O’Frost leadership
team worked together aggressively to build
the first tier of a strategy map reflecting the
34
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
ing the surge in commodity meat prices and
adjusted our promotion strategy to reduce
the impact of higher meat costs. That type
of change would have taken considerably
longer in the past if it happened at all. We
have been rewarded with sales velocity far
greater than the industry as a whole.
Generating Confidence – Our focus on
leadership agility gave us the confidence to
declare our intentions to be a growthoriented company. Our first training session
invited 75 employees. Our second training
session increased the number of employees
to 90 and also included our sales brokers
for a total of more than 140 participants. It
was the first time we included both groups
in any company function. The sense of team
and the commitment to our future have
never been higher. The enthusiasm of our
team is evident in our employee engagement
results where our percent engaged is twice
the norm for the 3/IIT survey. It provided a
road map to success that everyone has been
able to rally around. All associates know
how we define success and how they play a
specific role in contributing to success.
vision for the future, that embraced an enterprise-wide focus on leadership and
organizational agility.
Van Eekeren demonstrated his investment in
building a leadership talent pipeline in February 2009 by bringing 75 key managers and
sales team members to Chicago for a leadership development retreat. This had never
been done before at Land O’Frost. The meeting enabled the leadership group of 75 to
work cross-functionally to develop the new
strategies and requirements for agile leaders.
Small groups of six to eight participants discussed how to anchor shared leadership
commitments to key business strategies. They
did this by creating leadership agility compe-
tencies and metrics derived from key agility
indicators. Key agility indicators aligned
company objectives from sales, operations,
finance, human resources, marketing, etc.
This work resulted in a very high shared leadership understanding of the keys to success
for all parts of the enterprise and set up very
clear direction for continuous development
and reinforcement of leadership agility.
Here’s Steve Sakats, the Human Resources
leader at LOF, on how creating agile leaders
provided LOF the following business results:
Anticipating Change and Initiate
Action – These were critical elements of
our leadership agility capability-building
initiative. Key leaders focused on monitor-
The Agile Model® was developed in 2002 from multidisciplinary (e.g., psychology, leadership/management,
operations, manufacturing, DOD, etc.) survey and
applied research on leadership requirements in our
increasingly turbulent and uncertain world. The Agile
Model® is focused on the alignment between people,
process and technology, operationalized through the
five critical drivers or factors of leadership agility … the
ability to anticipate change, generate confidence, initi-
Liberating Thinking – The number of
new product ideas and projects has
increased significantly. Also, our rigor and
structure for new product introduction has
been greatly increased. Our process
leveraged new thinking about our commitment to technology with LOF TV
broadcasting in each facility, along with the
introduction and use of emerging trends in
corporate social networking. We created the
LOF Agile Wiki: “A Virtual Corporate
Meeting Place for Achieving Our Audacious
Goals.” The Wiki was designed to provide
collaboration and an interactive platform to
support our focus on an agile corporate
strategy with postings of the strategy map,
project status on all key initiatives and chat
rooms to encourage idea generation to
support innovation and employee engagement projects.
ate action, liberate thinking and evaluate results. The
Agile Model®has been reviewed by an independent third
party Industrial/Organizational psychologist as demonstrating strong reliability for each of the constructs in
the model (each of the drivers has a Coefficient Alpha
above .90 where .75 is the minimum required to demonstrate reliability). These key drivers represent
important behavioral processes for selecting and developing agile leaders.
➤
35
FOCUSED
The Agile Model®
Anticipate
Change
SENSING – understanding forces of change that influence stakeholder success and
creation of early warming systems of impending change that can impact success
MONITORING – having effective processes for tracking performance and trends to
identify patterns that impact the organization
Generate
Confidence
FAST
Leadership Agility Skills
VISIONEERING – creating clarity on the core value proposition of the enterprise
engineered into what the workforce does every day to produce desired outcomes for
all stakeholders
CONNECTING – establishing clear line of sight for all stakeholders with how each
can contribute to the enterprise and person success
ALIGNING – establishing and living the congruence of vision, value, priorities and actions
ENGAGING – operating with high levels of inclusion and a climate that delivers the
discretionary level of effort from all stakeholders
BIAS FOR ACTION – establishing an execution culture where a sense of urgency
around improvement and all stakeholder satisfaction is a basic shared expectation
Initiate
Action
DECISION MAKING – creating capability for fast, effective decision-making at all levels
COLLABORATING – encouraging ideas and gaining insights across organizational
boundaries and from multiple stakeholders
BIAS FOR INNOVATION – establishing permission and expectations that innovation is
a universal requirement for all stakeholders’ participation
CUSTOMER FOCUS – establishing on-going alignment and understanding of
customers to be able to offer business solutions that meet their needs and often
identify unrecognized needs
FLEXIBLE
Liberate
Thinking
IDEA DIVERSITY – establishing processes to encourage and secure innovation
inputs from all levels and stakeholders in the enterprise
CREATING EXPECTATIONS – providing clear and measurable priorities and resources
that are aligned for all stakeholders and desired outcomes
Evaluate
Results
REAL-TIME FEEDBACK – providing timely and accurate feedback on key success
measures for all stakeholders
FACT-BASED MEASUREMENT – using performance metrics grounded in solid
information measurement to allow reliable insights and conclusions
Evaluating Results – Maybe the most
important aspect of our leadership agilityfocused growth strategy has been
transitioning from an internally to an
externally focused company. One example
High
Performance
Low
Performance
High Professional/Master
Contributor
Consistently produces
exceptional results
and high performance
ratings. Knows current job
extremely well. May not
effectively adapt to new
situations.
Agile High Performer/
High Professional
Consistently produces
exceptional results and
high performance ratings.
Demonstrates ability to
adapt to new situations
as necessary.
Strategic Agility Asset
Outstanding, clearest
example of superior
performance and agility.
Has the ability to take on
major stretch assignments
in new areas. Anticipates
and preemptively acts on
changing trends that impact
the organization.
Key Performer/Solid
Professional
Consistently meets
expectations. Knows
current job well. Has not
demonstrated ability to
adapt to new situations.
Adaptable Key Performer
Consistently meets
expectations. Knows
current job well and
enhances skills as
appropriate. Can adapt
to new situations as
necessary.
Rising Star
Consistently meets
expectations. Knows the
job well. Demonstrates
ability to anticipate change
and initiate action.
Low Performer/Low
Agility
Not delivering on results
as expected. Does not
adapt to change well.
Inconsistent Performer
Delivers results
inconsistently. Knows the
job and may be a passive
learner. May adapt to new
situations if necessary.
Diamond in the Rough
Delivers results erratically.
Has demonstrated agility
potential but is not living
up to it.
Low Agility
36
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
is shifting our measurement of customer
satisfaction, both externally and internally,
from strictly measuring “on-time” delivery
to basing our performance on customer
surveys and the customers’ scorecard of us.
High Agility
Talent Management
Tools and Methods
for Identifying and
Developing Leadership
Agility
Too many talent management strategies
reflect outdated assumptions about how,
where, and by whom work is accomplished.
They portray a more static view of work and
do not account for the VUCA world. This
volatility requires the kind of agility we have
been discussing. Here are some specific illustrations of how human resource executives
can apply talent management processes for
the identification and development of leadership agility.
Selection – Assess Leadership
Agility Using Structured Interviews.
Some sample questions might include:
• Give an example of when the leader has
performed well in a work environment that
featured rapid change and/or ambiguity.
How did the leader enjoy this work
environment, and what did the leader
learn?
• Give an example of when the leader’s
ability to be decisive was put to the test—
when the leader had to convey a sense of
urgency in decision making. What was the
situation, what factors did the leader
consider when making the leader’s decision,
and what was the outcome?
• How does the leader determine when he/
she needs to gather more information
before making a decision, versus making a
decision based on the information that the
leader has at hand? Give recent examples
of when the leader has made a quick
decision based on the information the
leader had immediately available, as well
as a situation where the leader opted to
collect more information before making a
decision. Which decision-making style is
more comfortable for the leader, and why?
• Give an example of when the leader has
modified his or her personal style to achieve
an important work objective—what was
the situation, how did the leader change his
or her approach, and what was the
outcome?
High
Potential Assessment
High Potential/Strong
Leadership Agility
Solid Performers/Moderate
Leadership Agility
Underperformers/Limited
Leadership Agility
Underperformers/Weak
Leadership Agility
Low
Low
Performance Results
Development – Using Scenario
Planning for Talent Management
Discussions
Agile human resource executives can apply
techniques like scenario planning about possible future business directions and talent
needed by organizations. Scenario planning
involves projecting possible situations and
then deciding what the organization would
do, or how it would react, if that situation
actually occurred. Scenario planning discussions provide a forum for identifying the
knowledge, skills and attributes leaders will
need in new and different business environments. By forcing discussion of different
alternatives, leaders can move away from
more rigid, status quo thinking about their
future people needs.
High
ANTICIPATE CHANGE
Talent Review – Applying the “Two
by Two” Talent Review Process
with Lenses Focused on Agility
The two-by-two talent review process illustrated in the following graphic, demonstrates
how each person is reviewed based on potential and results with an additional lens of
Feedback – Using 360-Degree
Feedback and Customized
Leadership Agility Development
Guides
Several 360-degree tools are available to
human resources for the assessment of leadership agility. Leadership agility guides can be
created to support leadership agility 360
assessments. Here is an example of the type
of performance dimensions that can provide
LAP GUIDE
Organizational Awareness
The ability to understand and learn the power relationships in one’s own or other organizations,
identifying who the decision-makers are and who can influence them and predicting how individuals or
groups will react to new events ore situations.
Understands Climate and Culture:
Achieves results by recognizing and
using the corporate culture and language
of an organization to shape own actions.
Understands what can and what cannot
be said or done in specific situations.
Exemplar Behaviors
• Incorporates knowledge of different
cultural (ethnic, national, geographic,
etc.) norms when planning behavior
and strategies to maximize
effectiveness.
• Incorporates knowledge of functional
(e.g. Engineering, Finance, IS, etc.)
norms when planning behavior and
strategies to maximize effectiveness
LEVEL 3
Developmental Activities
1. Identify an individual who functions particularly
well in your work culture. Make a list of what
makes him/her successful at functioning in
this environment. Use this information as a
development tool for allowing yourself to function
more successfully in your environment. Critically
observing those who are successful in your
working environment is a quick way to identify what
your corporate culture values.
2. A
sk an individual that has just entered your
organization to identify the differences he/she
sees between your organization and their past
employer. This will give you a new (outside) opinion
on what is unique about your organizational
culture. An “outside” or new perspective often
helps you identify issues previously overlooked.
3. P
rior to working in other functional areas, attempt
to identify a coach in that part of the organization
who can describe their cultural nuances. This will
give you a more complete understanding of your
organization’s culture and allow you to function
more effectively in other functional areas.
Talent Review – Applying the
“Nine-Box” Process Focused on
Performance and Agility
As illustrated in the nine-box graphic, each
person is reviewed based on his/her performance and his/her leadership agility. The
boxes labeled Strategic Agility Asset, Agile
High Performer and Rising Star would all be
considered as high potential leaders and
should deserve special attention for developmental assignments, projects and training.
agility, reflected by the color of each circle.
The dark green represents the strongest leadership agility, and the red represents the
weakest leadership agility.
Understands Underlying
Organizational issues:
LEVEL 4
Developmental Activities
Achieves results by understanding
the reasons for an organization’s
ongoing behavior, and/or the underlying
problems/opportunities and/or political
forces impacting the organization in
relation to the external world.
1. G
ather information on the history of your own or
your customer’s organization to begin to improve
your understanding of various underlying or political
forces/influences.
Exemplar Behaviors
• Incorporates knowledge of underlying
cultural and political forces that have
substantial influence on long-term
decisions when planning behavior and
strategies.
2. F ind a mentor within the organization who can
provide you with information on top management’s
organizational issues and politics.
3. A
nalyze a recent decision or program that may
have been perceived as illogical or irrational.
Determine what some of the thinking or politics
behind the decision may have been, and discuss
your analysis with your manager or mentor.
•U
ses knowledge of management’s
unstated agendas, issues and
political forces/events to recognize
opportunities which would not
otherwise have been identified.
➤
37
a set of measurable criteria to help leaders
understand the professional, on-the-job
behaviors that they can display to improve
their leadership agility and therefore their
chances of success on the job.
Each dimension is described at four levels,
where level one is the most basic, and level
four is the highest level of complexity. The
levels are cumulative, which means that a
person who is operating at level four can also
operate at levels one, two and three. Level one
does not mean “poor,” rather it is a valid level
at which to operate in certain positions.
Conclusion
In summary, leadership agility is the capability
of a leader to dynamically sense and respond
to changes in the business environment with
actions that are focused, fast and flexible. It
is about a leader’s ability to prepare all
employees for a VUCA world that enables
them to shift their mindsets and supporting
skills from “I know change is coming, but I
can’t really see the potential changes that
might impact our organization” to “I see
change coming and am prepared and already
doing something about it.”
In short, we must anticipate. Human resources
can help increase leadership agility by:
• Understanding what is required of leaders
to survive and thrive in a VUCA world;
• Identifying their individual leadership
agility strengths and development needs;
and
• Embedding leadership agility in their talent
management processes.
References
A.T. Kearney and the Public Policy Group of the London
School of Economics (2003). “Improving performance in the
public sector.” An A.T. Kearney Study on Agile Government.
Economist Intelligence Unit (2009). Organizational agility: How companies can survive and thrive in turbulent
times. London: Authors.
Galbraith, J. (April 2009). “Designing matrix organizations that really work.” Corporate Leadership Council,.
Hamel, G. (2010). “The mix manifesto.” Retrieved from
www.managmentexchange.com.
Holsapple, C. and Jones, K. (2005). “Exploring secondary
activities of the knowledge chain.” Knowledge and Process
Management, 12 (1), 3-31.
HRPS Press Release (2006). “Adapt and thrive.” HRPS
National Conference.
38
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
IBM (2010). “Capitalizing on complexity.” IBM Global
CEO Study.
IBM (2008). “The enterprise of the future.” IBM Global
CEO Study.
Johansen, B. (2007). Get there early: Sensing the future to
compete in the present. pp.51-53. San Francisco, CA:
Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Joiner, B. (2009). Creating a culture of agile leaders: A
developmental approach. HRPS People & Strategy, 32 (4),
29-35.
Kanter, R. (2004). Confidence. New York, NY: Crown
Business Publisher.
McCann, J. (2009). Resilience, turbulence and agility.
HRPS People & Strategy, 32 (3).
Peyret, H. (2009). “The down economy is accelerating the
adoption of key agility indicators.” Forrester Research
whitepaper.
Prahalad, C.K. (September, 10, 2009). In volatile times,
agility rules. Business Week.
Rothwell, W., Prescott, R., Taylor, M. (2008). Human
resource transformation: demonstrating strategic leadership in the face of the future. Mountain View, CA:
Davis-Black Publishing.
Sambamurthy, v., Bharadwaj, A., and Grover, V. (2003).,
Shaping agility through digital options: Reconceptualizing
the role of information technology in contemporary firms.
MIS Quarterly, 27(2), 237-263.
Shafer, R. (2000). “Are you ready to compete? Building an
agile 0rganization,” A CAHRS publication with permission from HR Magazine.
MIT Sloan School of Management (June 2006). “Business
agility & IT portfolios." Center for Information Systems
Research, National Science Foundation grant number IIS0085725. MIT’s Sloan Center for Systems Research
(CISR).
Sull, D. (2009). The upside of turbulence. New York, NY:
HarperCollins Publishers.
Nadler, D.A and Tushman, M.L. (1997). Competing by
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York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Tushman, M.L. and O’Reilly, C.A. (2002). The innovative
organization. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.
Slywotzky, A.J., Morrison, D.J. and Andelman, B. (2002).
The profit zone, New York, NY: Random House.
Nick Horney, Ph.D., is principal of Agility Consulting and Training. Horney developed
The AGILE Model® that the book Human Resource Transformation recognized as “the
best leadership model for addressing the dynamics of our fast-paced world.” He has been
recognized as an expert in strategic agility by several publications. and organizations He
has served on the Board of HRPS, co-chaired the HRPS Affiliate organizations and been
a presenter on the topic of agility at several HRPS Annual Conferences. Horney has
written articles for The National Productivity Review, Training and Development
Journal and in 2000 he co-authored a book entitled Project Change Management.
Horney received his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University
of South Florida.
William Pasmore, Ph.D., is an organizational practice leader at the Center for Creative
Leadership (CCL®). Pasmore leads CCL’s efforts to help clients develop the larger organizational leadership systems that increase their overall performance and enable their
individual leaders to thrive. He co-founded the SIGMA program (Social Innovations in
Global Management). Pasmore has published 21 books and numerous articles, including
The Board’s New Roles in Succession Planning, How to Make Sure Your Next CEO is
a Winner, Choosing the Best Next CEO, Designing Effective Organizations, Creating
Strategic Change, Research in Organization Change and Development, and Relationships that Enable Enterprise Change. He holds bachelor’s degree in Aeronautical
Engineering/Industrial Management and a Ph.D. in Administrative Sciences, both from
Purdue University.
Tom O’Shea, CMC, is a principal of Agility Consulting and Training. He specializes in
strategic business development, leadership agility and organizational improvement
practices. O’Shea is a Certified Management Consultant and a former chapter president
for the Institute of Management Consultants – the premier professional association for
management consulting. He has been a featured presenter at HRPS Annual Conferences as well as the Organizational Development Forum and authored a series of articles
on leadership agility for Biz Life Magazine. In 2009 Forrester Research acknowledged
Agility Consulting as a “pioneer” in the field of leadership agility. O'Shea received his
master’s degree in Organizational Psychology from East Carolina University.
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By Lucy Povah, BSc (Hons), MSc, CPsychol, A&DC Inc – Vice President of Consulting, Assessment
Kate Sobczak, BSc (Hons), MSc, CPsychol, A&DC Inc – VP of Consulting, Learning & Development
40
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
The economic downturn that began in December 2007 and the subsequent recession have
changed the landscape of business dramatically. These events, more than ever, require our
executives to perform as all-weather leaders; individuals with the right mix of skills and
characteristics to make the right decisions, whatever challenges they face.
C
onsider Amazon and Netflix, who
have emerged as stronger, with greater competitive advantage than
competitors Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster, who struggle with new commercial
challenges and uncertainty. At the time of
writing, Amazon is expanding, and Netflix
subscribers and shares are on the up, particularly after striking a deal with Apple that will
include a streaming video service from Netflix. In contrast, Barnes & Noble is for sale
and Blockbuster has filed for bankruptcy.
The New Yorker noted Blockbuster’s slowness to evolve in relation to e-books and its
nimble competitor Amazon. Its leaders’
inability to learn and adapt quickly to changing markets proved fatal. Likewise, B&N’s
leaders believed that their “clicks-and-mortar” strategy would viably carry them into the
future; instead it has slowed its growth (Surowiecki, October 18, 2010).
models are the same, there are some consistent
themes in the current thinking.
We know that a great leader can make all the
difference to the success of an organization.
However, some leaders thrive in one firm and
then fail in another. What accounts for this
difference? Change. Organizations change
over time and businesses require a leader who
has the capacity to adapt to the changing
context. By narrowly focusing on a leader’s
individual characteristics, rather than also
looking at how individual characteristics fit
into a broader organizational, cultural and
socio-economic context, we may lose the
opportunity to evaluate and select leaders in
a holistic and business-driven way. Given the
unpredictable and uncertain times that we
currently face, failing to take a more holistic
view of leader selection is likely to detract
from organizational success.
We present a leadership model for the ‘all
weather leader,’ arguing that the leaders of
successful companies demonstrate learning
agility. We define “learning agility” as the
ability to learn from one’s experiences and
apply that learning to new and different situations. Further, we discuss the role of ‘context’
in successful leader selection, focusing here
on rigorous assessment of organizational culture in assessing candidate fit. Our L-I-V-E-D
model highlights the pivotal role of learning
agility in leadership and explains how these
key elements can be assessed.
Despite the importance of selecting the right
leaders, we repeatedly encounter organizations whose leadership selection models are
decidedly lacking in delivering the leadership
talent that is needed. More often than not,
current selection approaches involve numerous interviews focused on past career history
and accomplishments. We know this
approach falls short in these times. The game
has changed, and agility has become one of
the most important competencies for the next
decade. Does your business need leaders who
will replicate what already exists or do you
need something different?
What Makes an ‘Allweather Leader’?
Where Does Culture
Fit in?
Warren Bennis (1998) said, “It seems the more
that is written about leadership, the less we
seem to know.” And he’s right; there appears
to be a myriad of sometimes conflicting leadership theories and models that identify the
critical competencies and behaviors required
to excel as a leader. While no two theories or
Organizational culture is how we do things
around here, the glue that holds the organization together as a source of identity and
distinctive competence (Bass, 1992; Schein,
1992). Shamir and Howell (1999) discuss
how the study of leadership needs to reflect
not only leaders’ personal characteristics, but
also the situational factors that influence
leadership effectiveness. Country culture also
is a factor, and recently, there has been global
research discussing cross-cultural leadership
traits. For example, House, Hanges, Javidan,
Dorman and Gupta (2004) found that certain
leadership traits like integrity are universally
endorsed while other traits are culturally contingent (e.g., the importance and meaning of
the traits “participative” and “team-oriented”
are highly dependent on specific culture settings). This reinforces the importance of
taking a cross-cultural perspective in selecting leaders for our global businesses.
From ‘Person-Centered’
to ‘Context-Centered’
Leadership
To date, considerable focus has been given to
the individual characteristics required of the
leader, a ‘person-centered’ approach. We
believe that a paradigm shift must continue
away from this traditional focus to also
embrace the context in which the leader has
to operate; a ‘context-centered approach.’
Historically, contingency models of leadership (e.g., Fiedler and Garcia 1987; Hersey
and Blanchard, 1984; Vroom and Yetton,
1973; House and Mitchell, 1974) touched on
the “context” issue by discussing the interaction amongst variables, like the personal style
of the leader and situational factors such as
the characteristics of people being led and/or
the nature of the task. These early models
tended to focus on more tactical as opposed
to more strategic contingency factors.
Context-centered leadership goes further and
focuses more broadly on demands that the
environment makes on the leader and includes
both internal and external factors, such as the
internal organizational culture and the external conditions in the marketplace. Bromwell’s
work (2008) suggests organizational context
likely influences the relative importance of
➤
41
specific skills and attributes required for
effective leadership. Understanding precisely
what these are and how they impact that particular organization will determine what
qualities the leader needs to possess to ensure
the right fit between leader and organization.
Combining the analysis of the current context—the external conditions, business
strategy and internal culture—alongside the
analysis of the person—traits, behaviors and
competencies—allows us to select the leaders
who best fit the business and can drive it in
the desired direction.
an individual’s attitude or values. These elements may be emphasized or weighted
differently based upon the particular context
in which they are required. In the next section, we discuss why each of these is important
to leadership.
IQ — Intelligence
For our purposes here, we define intelligence
or cognitive ability as the “mental activity
directed toward purposive adaptation to,
Before we can determine the fit of a particular leader
for a given situation, we must understand the key
elements of leadership.
By focusing on the dynamic relationship
between the leader and the business/organizational context, businesses are more likely
to find leaders who break the mold and challenge some of the sacred cows in the C-suite,
while appreciating and shifting the current
culture. Before we can determine the fit of a
particular leader for a given situation, we
must understand the key elements of leadership. What are those key elements?
The Five Core
Elements of Leadership
Looking across numerous leadership theories/models (trait theories such as John
Gardener’s leadership attributes, behavioral
models such as Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, contingency models such as
Hersey-Blanchard’s Situational Theory, and
Bass and Riggio’s (2006) transformational
model), we see there is broad agreement
around a number of measurable elements
related to personal traits of leadership effectiveness. For example, Yukl (1994) describes
influencing/motivating, maintaining effective
relationships and making decisions as consistent themes across the leadership research.
Dubrin (2001) discusses emotional stability,
enthusiasm, drive and trustworthiness as key
traits for effective leaders. These all map onto
the elements we will discuss as part of our
leadership model: an intellectual element, an
emotional element, an element that focuses
on an individual’s motivation to succeed and
42
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
selection and shaping of, real-world environments relevant to one’s life” (Sternberg, 1985,
p. 45). Sternberg’s theory comprises three elements: analytical, practical and creative, all
of which are keys to managerial intelligence
(Sternberg, 1997). Cognitive ability has been
shown to be the best single predictor of job
performance in a wide range of occupations,
as well as leadership success (e.g., Dulewicz
& Higgs, 2002; 2003b; Ones, Viswesvaran,
& Dilchert, 2005). Research by Pearman
(1999) reports that cognitive complexity (IQ)
accounts for nearly 24 percent of successful
leadership. However, while intelligence is an
important element, there is strong evidence
that the brightest individuals are often not the
best leaders, as they struggle to work with less
intelligent colleagues. While strategic and
quick thinking, High IQ leaders often fail to
understand and motivate colleagues (Goleman, 1995).
EQ — Emotion
Emotional intelligence is defined in the literature as the awareness of and ability to manage
one’s own emotions, as well as the emotions
of others (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). Goleman
(1995) added that emotional intelligence
includes the ability to analyze and understand relationships, take someone else’s
perspective, resolve conflicts and manage
one’s own anger.
Research suggests that the most successful
leaders possess high levels of Emotional Intel-
ligence (EI), while leaders with lower levels of
EI are more likely to derail from senior positions (Higgs and Dulewicz, 2002). Prati,
Douglas, Ferris, Ammeter and Buckley (2003)
state that “the emotional intelligence of the
team leader is important to the effective functioning of the team; the leader serves as a
motivator toward collective action, and
facilitates supportive relationships among
team members.”
VQ — Values
The VQ or Values element focuses on integrity, honesty, sincerity, trust and respect and
is the basis of what many leadership theorists
have described as “character.” O'Reilly and
Pfeffer (2000) compared the performance of
eight companies that had superior results in
their sector with the performance of similar
companies, matched on size and industry sector. The more successful companies had
approaches to leadership that were based on
values. As the authors put it, “The most visible characteristics that differentiate the
companies we have described from others are
their values and the fact that the values come
first, even before stock price.” Their values
acted as guiding principles that helped them
make crucial and difficult decisions. VQ has
a solid base of research (Hogan and Hogan,
2001; Collins, 2001) and is clearly important
when it comes to role-modeling desired
behaviors and walking the talk. Self-management, e.g. courage (VQ), accounts for a little
more than 16 percent of successful leadership
(Pearman, 1999).
DQ — Drive
According to Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991),
drive has been referenced in the leadership literature as a broad term that includes
achievement, motivation, ambition, energy,
tenacity and initiative. In the current model,
DQ is concerned with the engagement aspect
of leadership that inspires people into action.
It covers passion, self-motivation, resilience
and tenacity (Dulewicz and Higgs, 2003a).
Decisiveness, e.g. action and results orientation
(DQ), accounts for slightly more than 13 percent of successful leadership (Pearman, 1999).
The Fifth Element —
LQ — Learning Agility
We see Learning Agility as the “X” factor in
this dynamic and unpredictable business
Exhibit 1: Phases of
learning agility
1
2
3
4
5
6
Becoming aware of needs
Having a perception of one’s
environment through mindfulness
of the gaps between skills and
requirements.
Experimenting with new
behaviors
Critical change phase with
different behaviors followed by
learning review and adaptation.
Raising self-perception of the
learning cycle
Internalize elements of Kolb’s
four-stage process from others.
Seeking feedback
Add extra input to the learning
process from others.
Internalizing learnings
New behaviors become integrated
into the skills set of the Leader.
Seeking new experiences
Ensure a high level of exposure
to different and challenging
situations.
world. This is the ability to learn from one’s
experiences and apply that learning to new
and different situations. Focus on “learning
agility” derives from research by Sternberg,
Wagner, Williams and Horvath (1995). They
distinguished learning agility as different
from basic intelligence and related it to concepts such as ‘street smart,’ ‘savvy,’ or
possessing ‘common sense.’ Sternberg found
that this learning intelligence was more predictive of organizational success than basic
IQ. Eichinger & Lombardo (2004) later
defined learning agility as being “able and
willing to derive meaning from all kinds of
experience.”Their business, Lominger (2000),
researched learning quotient (LQ) across 10
companies and built an informal assessment
model around the trait.
While learning agility cannot be taught, it can
be developed in those who have the innate
trait. Maintaining momentum with planned
experiences that stretch the leader is a key
element in developing learning agility. Exhibit 1 describes the phases a leader goes through
on his/her journey toward learning agility.
Understanding its importance in a global and
turbulent business environment, a number of
organizations are addressing learning agility
in leadership selection. The authors have
designed assessment programs incorporating
learning agility for Asda (the U.K. subsidiary
of Wal-Mart) and for Grundfos, a global
equipment manufacturer.
Learning Agility —
The Integrative Factor
How does learning agility relate to the other
key components of leadership? We see learning agility as the integrative factor that
governs the ways in which the five core elements combine to deliver the level and nature
of leadership required by the organization’s
context.
Using our “hand” analogy, learning agility
provides the ‘thumb’ for the leader, which
interacts with the other four ‘digits’ (elements) of intelligence, emotions, values and
drive. For example, if leaders are able to learn
from their experiences and adapt to different
contexts, they will be able to deploy the suitable levels of intelligence, values, emotions
and drive for the situation.
Consider the manner in which learning agility interacts with intelligence: An individual
with high intelligence but low learning agility
may be able to perform better in examinations requiring accurate recall of knowledge,
as compared to a person with high learning
agility but average intelligence. However, put
the high IQ individual into a different environment and he or she may fail to ask
penetrating questions to increase understanding, may not consider the motives and
expectations surrounding action, and, above
all, might not recognize the situation as a
learning opportunity at all. Conversely, we
know that people with high learning agility
will be more likely to seek out information
from their surroundings and carefully and
consciously apply that knowledge to help
them form better judgments. The same types
of interactions pertain to learning agility and
values, emotions and drive.
Achieving a ‘Fit’
Between Leader and
Context
We use a “hand and glove” analogy, as shown
in Exhibit 3, to describe the concept of “fit.”
Exhibit 2: The five core elements of leadership.
ity
ng
i
arn
il
Ag
Le
lligence
IQ – Inte
Given what we know from this research,
leaders who demonstrate learning agility
consistently exhibit the following behaviors:
VQ – Values
• Seek out new challenges.
• Seek feedback from others and self-reflect.
EQ – Emotion
s
• Record ‘learnings’ for future review.
• Evaluate their experiences and draw
practical conclusions.
DQ – Dr
ive
• Plan what they will do as a result.
➤
43
Exhibit 3: Leader-context fit.
Determining ‘fit’ entails evaluating the internal and external factors that define the
organization’s context, based on the current
reality and the vision of the anticipated future.
What are the external conditions and challenges that must be faced in the external
environment? What business strategy must be
executed to address the external challenges?
Is the company growing, or does a new growth
platform need to be developed and executed?
Is the current organizational culture going to
facilitate strategy execution or does it need to
change? The answers to these questions help
define the competencies needed by an effective
leader for that organization.
In essence, an effective selection process
measures ‘the hand’ of the leader and ensures
it suits the context/‘glove’ to promote a successful ‘fit.’
44
The business strategy will detail whether the
organization is looking to expand, diversify
or consolidate its offerings. For other organizations, the strategy may be about surviving.
The business strategy will then break down
the overall goal into tangible actions for relevant regions/markets and products or
services, etc. The type of strategy will inform
the required internal culture. If the organization is wishing to follow an aggressive growth
strategy with significant diversification, it
may need to shift the current culture to be
successful. Alternatively, if the strategy
requires stability and security, the current
culture still may be valid.
Exhibit 4: Culture audit results
for working on tasks.
Determining the Current
vs. Desired Culture
In turbulent times like these, you should
review your culture to understand fully the
current state and where your organization
needs to go in the future. One way of doing
this is to undertake an internal culture audit.
There are several tools on the market that
assess internal culture. We use our Cultural
Alignment Indicator (CAI), which measures
where the organization currently lies on
various aspects of culture. Our tool groups
these into three areas: working on tasks,
working with people and change, and learning orientation. For example, the aspects of
working on 10 tasks are broken down into
bipolar scales, as shown here:
T1
Deliver Perfection 
Defining the Glove for
Your Organization
T2
Remain Focused 
T3
Be Structured 
Remain Flexible
T4
Be Measured 
Be Dynamic
The glove represents the context in which the
leader must work—the external conditions,
the business strategy and the internal culture.
External conditions include market conditions, customer feedback and competitor
research. Given the current conditions, is
your organization seen as a market leader,
a smaller, but trusted player, or a rapidly
emerging threat? This, in turn, is likely to
impact the business strategy.
T5
Provide Options 
T6
Be Ambitious 
T7
Persevere 
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
T8 Get small things right 
T9
T10
Be Considered 
Make Savings 
Meet Requirements
Multi-task
Offer Simplicity
Be Content
Know when to quit
Focus on big things
Be Decisive
Invest in the best
For the purposes of assessing and selecting
leaders, we administer the culture audit to
Case Study: Context-based Leader Selection at a Top UK Retailer
Company Z, a UK supermarket group recognized as one of the UK’s
top ‘Every Day Low Cost’ (EDLC) retailers, realized it needed an infusion
of new leadership talent to help it weather the effects of the world
recession. Despite its favored market position, Company Z was facing
fierce competition. Prices were being driven down, while quality expectations remained high.
With its reputation of caring for customers, colleagues and excellence,
Company Z was positioned to attract luxury-oriented customers forced
to move “down-market.” However, retailers often perceived as ‘higher
cost but higher quality’ started playing a new game as well, such as
pushing two-for-one type meal deals, targeting a population hungry for
luxury at low cost. Company Z faced the challenge of attracting that
population, as well as other target markets. Perhaps go online? Maybe
offer more non-food products such as electrical, home ware, clothes
and toys? Uncertain, it needed a shot of new thinking.
A new strategy would call for a shift in organizational culture at Company Z, one that promotes innovation, willingness to risk new ideas
and encouraging the reflection time that accompanies learning. That
kind of culture is a far cry from the fast-paced, performance-driven
norms of the retail world. Company Z would have to synthesize formerly opposing cultural styles—fast-paced versus reflective, creative
and innovative versus highly action-oriented, an internal focus and
tradition of nurturing and caring versus an external focus on the market and frequent change.
This shift in emphasis would require more commercially oriented leaders who focus on the competition, market conditions and consumer
spending habits, while remaining quick-acting and decisive with new
market shifts. Currently, its leaders were respected for having the
ability to build relationships, understand and influence others, with
high emotional intelligence, integrity and levels of drive.
Company Z’s existing leadership selection model was heavily focused
on growing talent from within, its leaders often selected in their own
image. Promotions were made during internal talent reviews, based on
anecdotal data and gut feeling, rather than objective selection criteria.
It was no surprise that the prevailing, heretofore highly successful,
culture went unchallenged. It became clear that Company Z needed
an infusion of more learning agile leaders, and, in the current climate,
that required new leaders placed in key roles throughout the company.
key stakeholder groups, e.g., the top team,
managers and a sample from each department and level. We then have in-depth
discussions regarding how much they want
the new leader to fit this current culture profile—how much the individual is expected to
maintain the status quo or break the mold.
We have found it helpful to facilitate dialogue
among key stakeholders to discuss which of
the cultural aspects add most value or are
most critical for success of the business strategy. This provides useful information for the
preferred profile of a potential leadership
candidate.
Through consultation with Z, we developed the contextual behaviors
required at different management levels using the LIVED model. Previous attempts to recruit leaders from the outside had not always proved
successful. While these outsiders possessed the qualities existing
leaders lacked (Learning Agility, Intelligence), they didn’t always have
sufficient levels of the culturally acceptable qualities—Values, Emotion
and Drive—to ensure a good fit with the organization and often left
soon after joining. We needed to help Z select leaders who demonstrated acceptable behaviors in all LIVED areas, but with an emphasis
on LQ and IQ for the highest levels of management, given the desired
strategic direction.
The new LIVED selection process was a significant leap from the previous interview-based process. It included a 360, simulations,
personality assessment, and a structured interview. This multi-method
approach provided a holistic picture of the individual while allowing
robust coverage of all LIVED areas. By reviewing past experiences
(interview), current performance (360) and work-style preferences
(personality assessment) and evaluating performance in a new situation (behavioral simulation), it allowed us to explore the individual’s
level of learning agility and how readily they could transfer their knowledge and experience and apply it in a different context.
The outputs allowed the executive team to identify which individuals
had the traditional and culturally acceptable profile and which individuals could potentially add something new or different to senior
management, particularly in the areas of LQ and IQ where current
leadership skills were weakest. This information could then be used
to make talent decisions for internal colleagues and to identify where
external talent should be recruited into the business.
Participants, HR and executives all have received this process very
positively, with 95 percent of all feedback being enthusiastic. It provided decision makers with information that led to discussions of how
to develop more strategic and learning agile leaders through job and
project rotations. Already there has been recognition that every individual has different things to contribute to the business and that
having a one-size-fits-all leader can create problems. Elements of
Learning Agility are now viewed as key levers to pull to not only improve
individual leadership effectiveness but also broader organizational
effectiveness.
Some organizations use their annual employee survey to assess the current culture of the
organization. The results then can be discussed with key strategic stakeholders to
explore which directions on the bipolar scales
they want the organizational culture to move
and strategies for achieving this. An example
is shown in Exhibit 4.
culture. For example, say your organization
would like to shift the culture to be more
pragmatic with a faster pace. Certain task
behaviors within the culture support this and
align to the leadership area of ‘drive.’ Thus,
when assessing drive, it is crucial that a candidate demonstrate these behaviors to a very
high degree.
A culture tool also can be used to assess a
candidate’s fit. We ask the person to complete
the tool, rating each scale based on his or her
preferred culture. This ‘fit’ can be defined
more closely by understanding how each
leadership characteristic aligns to the desired
Assessing the ‘Hand’ of
the Leader
Once the aspects of culture are determined
and the external conditions are understood, ➤
45
we settle on how to best measure the five key
leadership components (Quotients) within
the LIVED model. Table 1 represents an overview of each LIVED component and how to
assess each component to ensure future leaders can demonstrate the required skills.
We recognize that learning agility is more
difficult to assess than the other quotients set
out in our leadership LIVED model. However, we still must face this challenge in this
time of uncertainty. Effective leaders must
demonstrate this capability or risk poor performance, especially through tough and
changeable times.
We use a variety of assessment methods to
ensure comprehensiveness, validity and
robustness of the process: behavioral assessments (simulations, a competency-based
interview and a 360-degree feedback assessment), ability tests and a personality
questionnaire. This multiple-method
approach allows for the fact that certain tools
are better at assessing some LIVED components than others as is shown in Table 2.
Table 1. The LIVED Model and How to Measure It
LIVED
Sub-components
Why is it important?
How can it be measured?
LQ
•Open-mindedness
•Ok to make mistakes,
but not to repeat them.
•Personality questionnaires
•Must develop self and
others or get left behind.
•Business Simulations
(e.g., Inbox with ‘real time
feedback’ on actions taken)
•Flexibility
•Willing to reflect/change
•Learn from mistakes
•Keep up-to-date
•Interest/curiosity
IQ
•Specific aptitudes
•Dealing with complexity
•Cognitive judgment
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Associates.
46
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
•Potential and
performance are related
to intellectual abilities,
specific aptitudes and
overall common sense.
•Critical reasoning
•Capturing Candidate
reflections after a scenario.
•Psychometric ability tests
e.g. abstract, verbal,
numerical, and spatial tests
•Business Simulations e.g.
a Case Study or Analysis
Exercise
•Situational Judgment Tests
VQ
•Moral and ethical values
•Diligence
•Conscientiousness
•Integrity and reliability
•Honesty and sincerity
•Trust and respect
EQ
•Recognize/manage own
or others emotions
•Manage impact on others
Conclusion
The concept of leadership ‘fit’ never has been
more critical than it is now. Knowing that fit
is an ideal concept, we can approximate it
more closely with a solid set of contextual
tools. Assessing “person-centered” leadership remains essential, but it can be made
more accurate and realistic when assessed
within the organizational and business context. The concepts of measuring ‘fit,’ both in
leadership characteristics and culture, provide organizations with a basis upon which
to identify effective leaders, leading to
improved business performance and bottomline results. We further suggest that the most
important personal leadership characteristic
required is that of learning agility—the integrative factor that enables the all-weather
leader. In the words of Bennis and Thomas
(2002), “Learning to learn is the key to
becoming a leader.”
•General intelligence
•Constantly search for
improvement, reach for
excellence.
•Exploratory Interviews
•Influence others
•At the heart of a leader
must lie trust
•Trust is built on acting
in accordance with,
and being seen to act
in accordance with
your stated values and
principles.
•Passion/vitality
•Self-motivation
•Tenacity/resilience
•Initiative/ambition
•Psychometric tools e.g.
integrity tests (Giotto test)
•Business Simulations e.g. a
Role play or Group Exercise
•Working with colleagues
and stakeholders,
understanding their
views and being able to
get your point across.
emotional intelligence tests
•Being motivated to do
something
personality questionnaires
(Saville Wave)
•Interpersonal sensitivity
DQ
•Competency Based
Interviews (CBIs) e.g.
focusing on Honesty and
Integrity
•Passionate about doing
it to the best of your
ability.
•Focus/Goal/Result
orientated
•360 feedback
•CBIs e.g. focusing on past
achievements
Table 2. Measurement Methods
LIVED
Component
360 Feedback*
Analysis Exercise Presentation*
Ability Test
Deep Dive
Interview
LQ
√
√√
IQ
√
√√
VQ
√√
√
√√
EQ
√√
√√
√
DQ
√
√√
√√
√√
√√
√
Key: Blank = no measure, √ = measure, √√ = strong measure
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47
Leadership as Connection:
A Radical Approach
By Lucira Jane Nebelung
48
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
This article makes no apologies. We have a point of view that we offer to human resource
leaders: The fundamentals of effective leadership are centered on who we are as people, not
on our HR systems and programs. Moreover, these fundamentals will make all the difference in
effectively navigating our uncertain future in the next decade.
Two themes underpin our discussion of these fundamentals. The first is that the most effective
leaders hold a clear purpose and intention for leading, and they act on that intention in ways
that others can understand and feel. Our second is that, despite what we all know about the
oft-made distinction between leading and managing (Kotter, 1990), there is a tendency to
manage rather than lead when the situation calls for leadership. We see a missing or forgotten
factor—an intention for the well-being and highest potential of others—that bridges the gap
between leadership models that are familiar to us and the leadership needs of the next 10 years
and beyond. By shifting our focus back to a few fundamental things, such as leader purpose
and intention, we are better able to move through the turbulence that we confront and the
complexity of the systems that we cannot control.
New Rules for Leading
The first decade of the 21st century has
shown us the extent to which the business
game has changed and the enormous size of
the challenges faced by business leaders who
have to balance short-term profits with sustainability-focused decision making and
organizational practices. Whether we have
caused and/or failed to respond in a timely or
careful way to catastrophes, such as the
explosion of Deepwater Horizon and the
ensuing oil spill, crises such as the global economic meltdown, or natural disasters such as
the Haitian earthquake, Indonesian tsunami
or Hurricane Katrina, it’s time for The Organization Man (Whyte, 1956) to meet The Art
of Loving (Fromm, 1956). Both were bestselling classics and, while you may think the
material is dated, after nearly 55 years they
remain in print because their messages continue to resonate with us as competing
paradigms of leadership.
The transactional mindset and focus on compliance and conformity of people as objects
in The Organization Man were crafted
around a mechanistic view of organization,
prevalent at that time. Executives were seen
as managers of a mechanistic, top-down
structure of power and authority, comforted
in the idea that someone was in-control and
had the power to keep our world intact. In
today’s business world of complex matrices
and networks spanning the globe, we know
this approach no longer works.
in these leaders that is greatly needed in the
turmoil of the next 10 years and beyond.
They are able to generate relationships and
connections that result in creation, change
and collective (organizational) success. We
call this a “radical approach to leading.”
Yet, the mindset of The Organization Man,
with its focus on top-down, expert leaders
continue to color our assumptions about leadership and organization today. How is it
possible in this 21st century for us to know so
much about what it takes to energize, engage
and generate excellence in others, but find so
many people feeling disregarded, disrespected
or just plain ignored by their leaders?
In describing leaders, we use the word “radical” in two ways. The first use is the
predominant meaning of the word as “unconventional,” “extreme” or “uncompromising.”
The second use comes from the etymology of
the word as meaning “going to the origins,
essentials” or “fundamental.” Our view of
leading is both unconventional and fundamental to the effectiveness of leaders.
Radical ‘One Thing’
Evolving Views on
Leadership
We all know leaders with special, intangible
characteristics that enable them to make
transformational changes with enduring
results. They are able to render seemingly
impossible turnarounds, or pioneer gamechanging products, services and strategies,
even in the most difficult business environments. There, also, are those who quietly lead
their organizations to solid results year after
year, as Jim Collins described in Good to
Great (2001). We see a common competency
In the late 1970s three views of leadership
emerged to play a major role in subsequent
and current leadership models. Abraham
Zaleznick (1977) first made the distinction
between leadership and management that
was later expanded on by Kotter (1990).
Robert Greenleaf (1977) wrote the seminal
essay on Servant Leadership, and James
MacGregor Burns (1978) first made the dis- ➤
49
tinction between Transformational and
Transactional Leadership. It appears that
most, if not all, of our more recent research
on leadership are related to these three views.
During the 1990s, in looking for the balance
between getting sustainable versus quick
results, researchers started breaking the
taboos regarding the soft aspects of leading,
and introduced emotions as significant to a
leader’s effectiveness. Daniel Goleman helped
develop the concept of Emotional Intelligence
(1995) and subsequently demonstrated the
critical importance of Self-Awareness, SelfManagement, Social Awareness and
Relationship Management, along with other
specific leadership styles related to the
achievement of business results (2000). Jim
Collins (2001) wrote about Level 5 Leadership from his research described in Good to
Great. He identified the distinguishing characteristics—deep personal humility and
intense professional will—of leaders in 11
out of the 1,435 companies that achieved and
sustained stock returns three times the market’s for 15 years after a major transition.
Throughout the last decade, other key voices
in the study of leadership have come forward
to tap into the importance of connection,
emotion and values-based expression of leadership. These include Bennis and Thomas,
Crucible of Leadership (2002); Bill George,
Authentic Leadership (2003); Robert Quinn,
Building the Bridge as You Walk on It, (2004);
Boyatzis and McKee, Resonant Leadership,
(2005); and recently, Kouzes and Pozner’s
Five Practice Model, described in The Leadership Challenge, recently updated in 2008.
Three consistent themes on the nature of
leadership appear in all these models: relationship/connection, interiority or inner
states, and change/creation (results). Effective
leaders generate, from within themselves,
relationships and connections that result in
creation, change and collective (organizational) success.
Love as the Essence of
the Radical Leader
Given that organizations are essentially
structured networks or systems of relationships, we might explore the possibility that
the “resonance” described in “primal leadership” (Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, 2001)
is actually an intention of “love.” This is not
romantic attraction or affection. We define
“love” here as a leader intention of wanting
50
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
We see love as the underpinning, a conscious-stated
intention that underlies all actions and behaviors; it is
not a separate factor in a leadership model.
the best for all concerned: employees, shareholders, customers, community and society
(including the environment). What makes a
leader “radical” is also having a clear intention about his or her own decisions and
actions, thereby connecting inner state and
external behaviors—in other words, bridging
the gap between “the walk and the talk”—to
take actions that achieve the well-being of all.
The business value of this is convincingly
demonstrated in the book Firms of Endearment (Sisodia, Wolfe and Sheth, 2007). By
striving to “endear themselves to all stakeholders” (customers, employees, partners
(vendors/suppliers), investors and society)
equally, the 28 companies they studied produced a cumulative 10-year return of 1,026
percent, compared to 331 percent for the 11
companies in Collins’ Good to Great and 122
percent for the S&P (p. 137-8).
In the foreword to Bill O’Brien’s book, Character at Work (2008), Peter Senge says that
“Bill served as architect of one of the most
dramatic, sustained corporate revivals that I
know of.” O’Brien was marketing VP and then
CEO of Hanover Insurance from 1969
through 1991. In 1970, Hanover was essentially bankrupt. Senge describes how Hanover
went from the bottom and grew to the point
that it was ranked in the top quartile in profitability and growth in its industry during the
1980s, the only company that had not also
been in the top quartile in the 1970s. Interestingly, O’Brien saw “love,” defined as a
“predisposition toward helping another person to become complete,” as essential to
generating results and creativity, and that “this
is the primary responsibility for everyone
within our purview (as leaders).” For O’Brien
“love” is an internalized intention in the practice of what he calls generative leadership and
the source of Hanover’s turnaround success.
We see love as the underpinning, a consciousstated intention that underlies all actions and
behaviors; it is not a separate factor in a leadership model. Erich Fromm in The Art of
Loving provides one such comprehensive
perspective. He offers specifics on the nature
of love that are consistent with each of the
leadership models referenced earlier and evident in the Hanover turnaround. Fromm
views love as an “interpersonal creative
capacity,” and describes four components of
love that are interdependent, interior states
or ways of being. These components are Care,
Understanding, Respect and Responsiveness.
Care is the active concern about the wellbeing and growth of all. This is to care about
oneself and others. This relates to being generative. This is not to “take care of,” which
can take away or restrict one’s autonomy, as
in “let me take care of that for you.” The
opposite is apathy or indifference.
Understanding is seeing deeply into whom
we are; our uniqueness and what we bring.
This is actively seeking and learning about,
knowing and valuing what we and others
offer and truly want and need. The opposite
is ignorance or unawareness.
Respect is granting freedom to be who we are
and grow in our own way without judgment,
the autonomy for full expression and generating possibility. It enables and allows the
drive to self-realization. The opposite is control or disregard. We note that, as part of the
prevailing mindset, respect can also mean/
imply “to obey,” as in “respect your elders,”
but that’s not what we mean.
Responsiveness is active sensitivity and conscious response to fulfillment: our innate needs
for relationship, purposeful contribution, selfdetermination and growth (Nebelung, 2001).
It is about being present with relaxed alertness
to oneself and others. The opposite is withdrawal or lack of engagement.
The integration of all four factors enables
leading as love. Care, Understanding, Respect
and Responsiveness are not behaviors or a
series of actions; they are integrated and
internalized within us as an intention of love
that governs how we relate as leaders. Conversely, if our inner states and actions as
leaders are the opposite, characterized by
apathy/indifference, ignorance/unawareness,
control/disregard or withdrawal/lack of
engagement, this is the resonance that we will
create, and it will be reflected and seen in
the organization.
how they were thinking, feeling and acting
(or not) according to the vision.
This is not about being soft. What needs
emphasis is that individual and group
accountabilities do not go away. When love
is defined as the basis for organizational relationships, there is a mutual commitment
among people for results, which means that
one is bound to tell the truth and does not
avoid conflict. Accountability and meeting
commitments are an integral part and a natural outgrowth of organizational relationships
characterized by love.
The intention was that Cox would make a
difference in people’s lives; that everyone
would benefit (employees, customers, community) because Cox Communications
touched them. Excellence and accomplishment were interwoven with caring and
growth. In making these intentions, these
leaders recognized that if they were dedicated
to the process of growing others, they must
simultaneously be dedicated to the process of
growing themselves. They created a collective
identity about what it meant to be a leader in
Cox and established practices that reinforced
their growth experience.
Example: Cox Communications
Arizona
ness. From 2004 to 2007, in just more than
two years, it experienced explosive growth,
nearly doubling revenues from $700 million
to $1.3 billion. In 2009, Cox Arizona generated $1.6 billion in revenues. Potential was
realized when a purpose-based, clear intent
moved to focused action.
There are several key things about Cox that
are consistent with Hanover Insurance. First,
as O’Brien (2008) says, “Transformational
cultural achievements require the replacement of an inferior value for a higher one.”
In both Cox and Hanover, one of the higher
values was that of love. For both organizations, these were not negotiable, and they
could not be compromised.
For example, each leader had a “buddy” (an
intense, confrontive, deeply caring relationship) that would keep them honest. They built
a collective identity, a singular purpose that
enabled them to confront the difficulties of
being a team dedicated to their own and each
other’s growth. “Serving people” was central
to and explicit in this vision, which outlined
how Cox leaders would create caring (love),
growth, meaning and contribution at the
deepest and highest levels. Their intention
was to achieve the vision of Cox Arizona as
the exemplar for the industry in excellence,
productivity and results.
The second is, as O’Brien puts it, “A value is
only a value when it is voluntarily chosen.”
This caused O’Brien as CEO to oppose the
Board when it asked for measures and consequences around the values. Neither O’Brien,
nor Rizley, believed in forcing compliance.
People were free to engage or not, and some
chose to leave. Finally, O’Brien was “adamant
that no real change could start to occur unless
new ideas were internalized and eventually
became a transparent part of the organization’s own way of doing things.” Rizley’s
focus on caring about employees, clients and
community demonstrated the same thing.
By 2004, Cox was ready for Stevens’ transformational leadership approach, which
provided a common language and framework
for change and was based in four tenets (love
(care), growth, contribution and meaning).
Stevens says that these were non-negotiable
for leaders and were actively utilized in running the business. They became the principles
that guided the development of the vision, the
development of the leaders as individuals and
a team, as well as business decisions.
The vision was not communicated until all
executives both embraced and internalized
the collective intention and demonstrated
fierce commitment to it and their accountabilities. The depth of this individual
commitment was partially gauged by reviewing business and HR policies, practices and
procedures through the lens of the vision and
changing them so they were consistent, which
led to organizational alignment. Commitment also was gauged through observation of
their direct interactions with each other. At
one point, one member of the executive team
was not engaging fully. By collectively acting
toward this individual with unwavering,
aggressive caring, and by continuously reaching out to him as a person and not forcing
compliance, the executive team brought him
into relationship, giving him a sense of
belonging and ultimately attaining his
uncompromising commitment.
In addition to Cox Arizona, there are a few
companies that actively use “love” as their
leadership intention. Southwest Airlines’
founder Herb Kelleher is legendary for this.
The airline’s Mission Statement and Commitment to employees states: “Employees will be
provided the same concern, respect, and caring
attitude within the organization that they are
expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.” Another company that comes
close is W. L. Gore with four relationship principles that actually guide its operation:
Becoming a cohesive team required intense
and uncomfortable individual and group
work at the top two leadership levels. This
involved frequent, ongoing examination of
where they were relative to the vision. These
leaders challenged each other and confronted
Cox wanted to win and financial results were
seen as a direct measure of its achievement and
success in caring about and growing people.
The company believed that caring about and
fulfilling employee, customer and community
needs are the cornerstones of a profitable busi-
The turnaround of Cox Communications of
Arizona is very consistent with our argument
that when leading as love is an intention,
it can result in sustainable business success.
In a recent Harvard Business Review post
and through personal communication, transformational leadership consultant, Cleve
Stevens (May 6, 2010; August 13 & 16,
2010), describes how Cox went from failure
to success. Stevens consulted with Cox on
the turnaround.
In 2000, Steve Rizley took over as CEO of
this largely failing operation. He held the
unshakeable belief that people do grow and
change. He also had a solid personal intent to
create a cohesive leadership team that would
define and then bring the organization to its
fullest potential. Rizley began by doing the
painful work: replacing leaders who did not
share Rizley’s philosophy of caring for the
organization and its people, or who chose not
to engage in clarifying where the organization should go.
• Fairness to each other and everyone with
whom we come in contact
• Freedom to encourage, help, and allow
other associates to grow in knowledge,
skill, and scope of responsibility
• The ability to make one's own commitments
and keep them
• Consultation with other associates before
undertaking actions that could impact the
reputation of the company.
For these and a few, select, other companies,
putting people and creative realization first is
the key to their success.
➤
51
Focus on Leading,
Not Managing
We believe that the majority of leaders have
not integrated the criticality of relationships
into their practices because their focus has
been on managing (controlling) complexity.
We also think that, with the degree and volume of change facing us over the next 10
years, it will be extremely difficult, if not
impossible, to manage our way to growth and
profitability. We cannot manage the people
side of change. At best, we can manage change
with respect to the installation of technology,
etc., but when it comes to people, “change
management” is an oxymoron.
In the examples given, the inner state of leaders creates the resonance; we cannot buy
resonance by reinforcing behaviors. It must
come voluntarily from within. And as both
O’Brien and Rizley demonstrated, this inner
state must and can be voluntarily chosen by
creating an environment of caring relationships (love) among the leaders. This kind of
environment inherently develops leaders
because of the accountabilities provided by
the commitment to relate as love. If we are to
effectively engage the turbulence of our times,
it is time to consciously and actively make
choices about how we relate, how we lead
people, and what and how we manage.
Conclusion
We have argued that when leaders come from
an internalized intention of love, seeking fulfillment and what’s best for all, everyone feels
it and its potential is reflected in the organization’s governance, processes, management
practices, culture (resonance) and success.
This resonance takes the organization beyond
any expected results.
Most recently, we have had an opportunity
to witness the intention and action of love in
the 2010 Chilean Mining incident. Shift foreman, Luis Urzua, first demonstrated “leading
as love” by enabling his men to endure the
first two harrowing weeks on two days worth
of rations. What could have been yet another
mining disaster became a story of triumph
over unbearable circumstances, because of
the specific things Urzua, his team, and many
others from around the world, did to ensure
the safety, emotional health and physical
health of the miners through their long ordeal
underground.
52
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
We might say that love is the business of leading; if you aren’t willing to love, you have no
business being a leader. As a challenge, put on
a critical eye for the next 24 hours: How many
of your company’s practices and your own
interactions and the interactions you observe
are based in love that fosters creative realization? How many are based in and/or generate
control and/or fear? What do you see happening and with what results? Choose an
instance where the company experienced
unexpected, extraordinary results. What were
the dynamics? Perhaps you will catch clear
glimpses of Care, Understanding, Respect
and Responsiveness at play—in other words,
leading as love.
References
Bennis, W.G. & Thomas, R.J. (September 2002). Crucibles
of leadership. Harvard Business Review OnPoint. Digital
March 3, 2009.
Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant leadership:
Renewing yourself and connecting with others through
hope, compassion and mindfulness. Boston MA: Harvard
Business School Press.
Kahane, A. (2010). Power and love: A theory and practice of
social change. San Francisco CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Kotter, J.P. (December 2001). What leaders really do. Harvard Business Review OnPoint. Digital March 3, 2009.
Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (1990, Fourth edition,
2008). The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B.Z. (2010). The truth about leadership: The no-fads, heart-of-the-matter facts you need to
know. San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.
Nebelung, J.C. (2001). The emerging business paradigm:
Work and business as expressions of humanness. Unpublished manuscript.
O’Brien, W.J. (2008) Character at work: Building prosperity
through the practice of virtue. Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press.
Quinn, R.E. (2004) Building the bridge as you walk on it:
A guide for leading change. San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.
Sisodia, R.S., Wolfe, D.B. & Sheth, J.N. (2007). Firms of
endearment: How world-class companies profit from
passion and purpose. Wharton School Publishing.
Sorokin, P.A. (1954, 2002). The Ways and Power of Love.
Philadelphia PA: Templeton Foundation Press.
Stevens, C. (May 6, 2010). What employees need from leaders. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://blogs.
hbr.org/cs/2010/05/four_things_employees_need.html.
Burns, J.M. (1978). Leadership. New York NY:
Harper & Row.
Stevens, C. (August 13 & 16, 2010). Personal communication.
Collins, J.C. (January 2001). Level 5 leadership: The triumph of humility and fierce resolve. Harvard Business
Review OnPoint. Digital March 3, 2009.
Southwest Airlines Mission and Commitment. Retrieved
from: http://www.southwest.com/about_swa/mission.
html?int=GFOOTER-ABOUT-MISSION
Collins, J.C. (2001). Good to great: Why some companies
make the leap… and others don’t. New York NY:
HarperBusiness.
Toomey, M. (2006). The three disciplines. Unpublished
manuscript.
Collins, J.C. & Porras, J.I. (1994, 1997). Built to last: Successful habits of visionary companies. New York NY:
HarperBusiness.
Whyte, Jr. W.H. (1956). The Organization Man. New York
NY: Simon and Schuster, Inc.
Zaleznik, A. (1977). Managers and leaders: Are they
different? Harvard Business Review.
Fromm, E. (1956). The art of loving. New York NY:
Harper & Row Publishers.
George, B. (2004). Authentic leadership: Rediscovering
the secrets to creating lasting value. San Francisco CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Gore, W.L. Company Guidelines. Retrieved from: http://
www.gore.com/en_xx/aboutus/culture/index.html
Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. New York
NY: Bantam Books.
Goleman, D. (March – April 2000). Leadership that gets
results. Harvard Business Review OnPoint. Digital
March 3, 2009.
Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (December 2001).
Primal leadership: The hidden driver of great performance.
Harvard Business Review OnPoint. Digital March 3, 2009.
Greenleaf, R..K.. (1977 (monograph - 1982)). The servant
as leader. Robert K. Greanleaf Center. See also: Spears,
L.C. (2005). The understanding and practice of servantleadership. Servant Leadership Research Roundtable
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acad/sls/publications/conference_proceedings/servant_
leadership_roundtable/2005/pdf/spears_practice.pdf.
Lucira Jane Nebelung is EVP of Stakeholder Relationship Enhancement
with Blue Owl Corporation, a SaaS
company specializing in Stakeholder
Relationship Management (SRM). She
partners with Blue Owl’s clients on
implementation, aligning people with
company purpose through leadership,
management and employee learning
and change practices. She is also on the
faculty of the Graduate Institute/Center for Leadership Studies – Masters of
Arts of Organizational Leadership
(MAOL). She welcomes all comments
and can be reached at: LJNebelung@
BlueOwlCo.com
A Must Read
The Practice of
Adaptive
Leadership
Authors: Ronald Heifitz,
Marty Linsky and Alexander
Grashow
Publisher: Harvard Business
Press
Reviewer: Larry Voeller, senior
director, Talent Management,
St. Jude Medical, Inc.
Worthwhile
Skim It Over
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership gives experienced leaders a language for capturing the
complexities of their world, a framework for understanding their challenges, and tactics for intervening
on those challenges. It builds on the authors’ previous work Leadership Without Easy Answers, and
leaders and executive coaches should add this new
book to their collections.
Readers unfamiliar with the authors will find the first
section of The Practice of Adaptive Leadership particularly helpful as it provides a thorough grounding
in the theory behind the practice. Adaptive leadership is “the practice of mobilizing people to tackle
tough challenges and thrive.” Adaptive challenges
(which can only be addressed through changes in
people’s priorities, beliefs, habits and loyalties) are
contrasted with technical challenges (which may be
complex, but can be solved by applying current
know-how). Experienced leaders have their share of
both, of course, but technical challenges simply call
for resources and time, whereas adaptive challenges call for courage and skill.
This book is devoted to diagnosing and acting on
adaptive challenges, explored first at the organization level and then at the personal level. While the
book has a linear sequence, I took the authors’
suggestion and browsed sections of the book with
a particular challenge in mind. I noted their belief
that diagnosis is the single most important leadership skill and often the most undervalued capacity,
and I found several concepts very useful as I thought
about my particular situation. Their metaphor of
Deciding Who
Leads:
Author: Joe McCool
Publisher: Peter F. Drucker
and Masatoshi Ito Graduate
School of Management,
Claremont Graduate University
Reviewer: Sarah Smith Orr,
executive director, Kravis
Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College, and
adjunct professor
Deciding who leads ... why is this subject so important? Leaders of organizations are accustomed to
taking risks—people hiring is one of those risks;
some hires work out and some don’t. The cost of
a bad executive hire can range from three to five
times the misfit executive’s annual salary and up
to hundreds of times the value of that same management salary.
Enter Joe McCool, author of Deciding Who Leads.
McCool begins with the premise that leadership
recruiting and succession—identifying and hiring
the best people—must rank as the most pivotal
agenda for today’s organizations. He describes the
factors contributing to the “global war for talent”
and establishes executive search as an essential
management tool of corporate and nonprofit man-
book reviews
Bottom of the Stack
“getting on the balcony” to observe the system in
action and their section on organizational archetypes were particularly helpful. Their notion of
orchestrating the conflict that comes with adaptive
change reminded me of the inevitability of conflict—
not to be avoided, but to be worked through as an
essential step toward real harmony.
“You are a system as complex as the one you are
trying to move forward” claim the authors as they
examine diagnosing and acting on adaptive challenges at a personal level. Again, I found myself
moving around the book for the most relevant content.
This “field book” provides ideas, resources, practices and examples to guide adaptive leadership
work in any context. But don’t expect a series of
step-by-step recipes for success. The authors’
refusal to settle for simplistic answers is precisely
why this book is so useful. They correctly posit that
leadership is an art, not a science, and suggest that
the practices described in the book be seen as
sources of learning and disciplined experiments,
not as simple formulas to follow.
The authors remind us “leadership demands inspiration and perspiration.” So does the development
of an important contribution to our understanding
of effective leadership. For over a decade, the
authors have committed to the hard work of exploring new leadership territory informed by careful
thought and their experience in the classroom and
boardroom. They deserve our gratitude.
agement succession. He leads you to the conclusion
that the executive search consultant is a vital agent
in winning the war for talent.
This isn’t surprising considering McCool is an expert
in the field of executive recruiting. In this book, he
discusses the new leadership mandate, provides
case studies, identifies the ramifications of a bad
executive hire, describes the key ingredients in best
practices, and shows how search is a highly effective means of achieving diversity. For prospective
clients, he provides a model for collaboration with
search consultants.
McCool writes that executive search consultants
are individuals with a unique package of skills: sto-
➤
53
book reviews
Deciding Who
Leads
(continued)
A Must Read
Worthwhile
rytellers, agents of change, culturally sensitive, and
skilled in multiple languages. They are “people who
use their art of persuasion, social graces, assignment-specific jargon, and people-reading skills to
assess candidates’ fit for the role and to sell them
on the employer’s history, vision and strategy.” At
the conclusion of the chapter titled, “The Headhunters’ Identity Crisis,” he states that the “world’s best
executive search consultants try to get a read on
what’s in the candidate’s head as well as what’s
inside that candidate’s heart and soul and how the
whole person can boost or damage organizational
esprit de corps and financial performance.”
Whether you are a senior executive seeking to
attract and recruit top executive talent, a human
resources professional or actually involved in the
search business, this book is a valuable resource.
The book’s layout allows you to select a specific
area of interest where examples, best practices and
recommendations are found. As one who has used
Bootstrap
Leadership
Author: Steve Arneson
Publisher: Berrett-Kohler, San
Francisco, 2010
Reviewer: John Noonan, VP,
HR Services, CNO Financial,
Inc., Carmel, IN
In Bootstrap Leadership, Arneson offers 50 minichapters, each focused on a particular activity that
leaders can follow to improve. The book is organized
into five sections: How Are You Showing Up as a
Leader? Add Something New to Your Game, Get Curious about the World Around You, Step Out of Your
Comfort Zone, and It’s Not About You.
This is a self-help, self-coaching book that, sadly,
misses the mark on two counts: First, it portrays a
very narrow view of leadership. Second, it misses
its primary audience.
On the first count, if you think that leadership is all
about leaving a legacy of people liking you, you probably will enjoy this book. “My philosophy of
leadership is that it is all about the people, not the
task,” Arneson states. He focuses largely on selfassessment, self-development and worrying about
what others think about you.
In the book’s Foreword, Dave Ulrich clearly and succinctly summarizes five basic rules for leaders to
follow (his Foreword is my favorite part of the book).
Unfortunately, Arneson ignores the first two: shape
the future and make things happen. The author pays
scant attention to understanding markets or customers, having a compelling business strategy,
driving results, organizing work groups, sizing up
talent, or balancing the interests and needs of multiple stakeholders.
54
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
Skim It Over
Bottom of the Stack
the services of an executive search consultant, I
found the book very useful. I particularly liked the
last two chapters, the first of which has a focus on
the engagement of an executive search consultant,
and the second of which describes best practices
for senior management recruiting.
The stand out quote? “More and more, executive
search consultants and corporate talent management and talent acquisition leaders believe that
success in corporate management succession is all
about finding tomorrow’s leaders today and engaging them well ahead of any formal approach.” Now
there’s a powerful teaser. Have this book handy as
you create the people strategy for your organization’s future. You’ll be glad you did!
With respect to audience, the book is clearly targeted to leaders themselves. I am guessing that
HR, OD, and coaching professionals are secondary
audiences. However, I cannot imagine any of the
leaders I know buying this book and working their
way through all of its exercises and activities. They
might do one or two; perhaps three or four. But five
or more? Highly doubtful. The scope of the exercises covers such a broad range that a leader would
need a complete top-to-bottom makeover to work
seriously through many of the described activities.
And leaders would have to read through the entire
book to find the one or two that would work best for
them.
The author and the publisher would have been better served by positioning the book as a reference
guide of potential coaching activities. To that end, I
will keep this book on my shelf as a reference for
activities I could propose to leaders whose issues
center on self-awareness or relationships with
peers and direct reports. For most readers, I would
recommend instead either The Successful Manager’s Handbook (PDI) or a book by Michael Watkins
titled Your Next Move: The Leader's Guide to Navigating Major Career Transitions.
book reviews
edited by John Bausch and Patsy Svare
A Must Read
Giving Voice
to Values:
How to Speak Your
Mind When You Know
What’s Right
Author: Mary C. Gentile
Publisher: Yale University Press
Reviewer: Dwane Lay, Manager, HR Global Operational
Excellence at Ingersoll Rand
Worthwhile
Skim It Over
Bottom of the Stack
Giving Voice to Values is a classic example of a
writer working to her strengths. Mary C. Gentile
brings her 10 years at Harvard Business School and
her current work at Babson College to bear in crafting this book. The results are not surprising.
tips for practicing out loud against resistance,
developing a personal-professional profile, and
finally creating responses to the common rationalizations of behavior that conflicts with those
personal values.
As can be the case with works of academia, nearly
half of the book is comprised of case studies, references to other scholarly works, or over-analysis of
concepts. Early in the book, the author spends three
pages explaining her perspective on “values” as
opposed to “ethics” or “morals,” though she already
had established her framework on the first page.
This trend continues throughout the text, with some
examples or quotations lasting for five to seven
pages at a time.
Choosing to forego arguments around the values
themselves, Gentile instead focuses on voicing and
acting upon those values. Leveraging self-examination tools, included in the appendix, and delineation
between multiple types of value conflicts, strategies
and tactics are discussed in effort to prepare the
reader for real-world opportunities.
Giving Voice to Values does provide usable information. Even with the academic bent of the author,
excellent points are made regarding the practical
ways in which we can prepare to handle value conflicts in the workplace. Yes, the book begins with
the previously mentioned discussion around “values” before examining several assumptions about
values that are so common sense they are nearly
inarguable (i.e. everyone has values they follow,
standing up for your values is easier when others
join you, and context impacts the difficulty of voicing one’s values). From there, the author walks the
reader through the process of examining values,
All that said, Giving Voice to Values is more textbook than instruction manual. The content is
well-examined. It could make a fine cornerstone
for a university lecture or training program. It is
probably best-suited for those new in the business world. For veteran leaders and practitioners,
it may bring to mind some of the common sense
tools in value-based decision-making that are at
times neglected.
55
HRPS news
Speakers include
(as of November 30, 2010):
 Amy Kates
 Cindy Brinkley
HRPS Walker Prize Recipient; Editor of
People & Strategy and
Managing Partner,
Kates Kesler
Senior VP, Talent Development, and Chief Diversity Officer, AT&T
HRPS Global Conference
April 3–6, 2011
JW Marriott Starr Pass
Tucson, Arizona
 Brian Fishel
 Mary Eckenrod
VP, Global Talent Management and Learning Solutions,
Research in Motion
(manufacturer of
Blackberry®)
 Gregory Kesler
Ann Rhoades
Senior Executive VP,
Enterprise Talent Management and Executive Development,
Bank of America
HRPS Walker Prize Recipient; Editor of
People & Strategy and
Managing Partner,
Kates Kesler
Founding Executive VP
of People, and Current
Board Member, Jet
Blue Airways, President,
People Ink and CEO,
CareLeaders
 Tamara Erickson,
McKinsey Awardwinning Author and Expert on
Collaboration and
Innovation
 Jeanne Meister
Co-founder, Future
Workplace and Author,
The 2020 Workplace:
How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop,
and Keep Tomorrow's
Employees Today
A full schedule of events, complete speaker roster and session details are available at www.hrps.org.
Innovation in Talent Management Practices Drives
2010 HRPS Fall Forum
With the many daunting challenges facing our
country, hosting the 2010 HRPS Fall Forum in
a city where courageous thinkers and risk takers demonstrated the lasting power of
leadership was the right choice! The “City of
Brotherly Love” and amazing weather provided
the ideal backdrop for the Forum, which was
held in partnership with the Philadelphia HRPS
affiliate (HRLF). The Forum distinguished itself
by both its innovative format and member/
practitioner-powered content, highlighting the
best thinking in talent management (TM).
Chip Pardee, COO of Exelon, and Phil
McCullough of the Institute of Nuclear Power
Operations provided the business leader perspective on talent management with their
kickoff presentation. They highlighted the
urgent need for thoughtful and strategic talent
management to power the resurgence of nuclear energy as a viable future energy source,
given the rather stark demographics of the
industry. Whole generations of hiring were lost
in nuclear power when it fell out of favor. Now
business leaders and talent managers are
56
PEOPLE & STRATEGY
making up for lost time and hiring with planned
and potent responses.
Our general session “thought leadership”
(topical) speakers provided plenty of ideas for
reflection and action by participants. Goutam
Challagalla, professor from Georgia Tech, began
the sessions by giving the audience some
sobering insights into the demographic trends
that need to be top-of-mind for TM practitioners
(ask any participant about the significance of
“2.1”). As a fitting, symmetrical close to the
conference, another academic, Doug Lynch of
Wharton, challenged TM practitioners to look
critically at what we routinely accept as facts
within our profession. Lynch urged us to confront our assumptions to build the credibility of
the profession and asserted that scientific rigor
is a key to making that happen. In between
these provocative, cerebral “bookends,” was a
line up of general session presenters who
served as the heart and soul of the meeting,
including the wonderful Bev Kaye and practitioners from AT&T, Zappos, Assurant, Dell, Abbott
Labs, Unilever, Chick-fil-A, IBM, and Rohm and
Haas. Each presentation drove home important
points about the applicability and transferability of talent management practices that make
a difference in successful organizations.
Planning already is underway for October 2011
when we will be moving the Forum to another
top East Coast location in the Baltimore/Washington area, and partnering with our Washington/
Northern Virginia affiliate (HRLF). Because the
greatest value we bring participants is providing
a sharing forum for applicable, doable, provable
and replicable content, we invite our readers to
“show us what you got.” If you are a TM practitioner with content that will advance our
profession and help us to understand how to
best drive business success, please contact
[email protected].
Congratulations and thanks to the volunteers
who brought the 2010 Forum to life, including
HRPS Board Members Valerie Norton and
Donna Trujillo, as well as HRPS members Greg
Dartis (AT&T) and Cindy Lubitz.
Imagine a 21st-century workplace
with high-performing managers
Where “operating like a well-oiled machine” is not just a catchphrase. How would it impact your business results? The truth is,
managers can play a pivotal role in increasing employee engagement and driving performance.
Manager Redefined: The Competitive Advantage in the Middle of Your Organization, by Towers Watson senior practitioners Tom
Davenport and Stephen Harding, showcases an innovative model of manager performance where all the moving parts work
together to deliver results. How? By managing everything except people.
Find out how to use this new model to boost manager effectiveness and learn about other talent management strategies at
www.towerswatson.com/manager-redefined.
Benefits
Risk and Financial Services
Talent and Rewards
towerswatson.com
ctful Collaborate HR Strategy Immersio
People and Impactful Peo
Connect Think HR Strategy Re
Powerful
Rejuvenation Time D
gy
Collaborate
Deeper Immersion
L
te
at
HR
rsion
Enga
Learning People
Off-site
hink Retreat
Thi
Personal
and Impac
Rejuvenation
Engagement
me
pactful A Meet Up
HR Strategy
laborate
Retre
gagement Rejuvenation
Think Off-site and Impact
eople Time
Retreat
Immersion
Collaborate
Deeper Immersion
HRPS Global Conference 2011
April 3–6, 2011
JW Marriott Starr Pass
Tucson, Arizona
Retreat
mmersion
Off-site
IT’S YOURS TO E X PE R IE NCE.
Register online at www.hrps.org.Retreat
HR Strategy
Engagement
Learning PeopleTim
Off-site
Think Retreat
Engagement
Time
Personal
and Impactful

Special Issue: Leading in a Time of Uncertainty

Transcription

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