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WHARTON
LEADERSHIP DIGEST
April, 2000,
Volume 4, Number 7
Contents
Leadership Conference: Leading with Speed at Wharton on May 18
Leadership Program: Lucent Technologies
Leadership Program: Ford
Motor Company
Leadership Learning: Improvizational
Theater
Academic Research: International
Experience and Financial Performance
Leadership Quote: U.S. Trade
Representative Charlene Barshefsky
Leadership
Conference: Leading
with Speed at Wharton on May 18
http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/conferences/conf_051800.shtml
Online registration is available at:
http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/chr/registration.htm
LEADERSHIP PROGRAM: Lucent Technologies
By
Anne E. Kurzenberger, Manager, Leadership Development, Lucent Technologies
Globalization.
Mega-mergers and acquisitions.
Spin-offs and start-ups. Talent
poaching. Competition from the small and unknown. E-commerce.
Ho
hum. Business as usual for
most companies in our current and often volatile market.
What may be business unusual
is how companies develop and sustain leadership development in this
environment, especially when the role of the leader has never been more
complex. Today’s leaders
are expected to demonstrate an increasing breadth and depth of knowledge
and experience, lead through constant change, and manage increasing
demands at a faster pace than ever before.
So where does the time, effort, and attention for leadership
development come from in the midst of all this?
For starters, leadership development processes must be clear and
simple; accessible anytime, anywhere; high-impact, and on going!
Like
most large organizations, Lucent attracts and recruits leadership talent
from the industry and
systematically identifies, develops, and retains strong leaders from
within. Also, like most
companies, Lucent has a leadership model that provides the framework for
diagnosis of individual leadership capability and for development
interventions.
For all developing leaders at Lucent, skill building
and skill-reinforcing workshops at key transition points of expanding
scope of work or influence are available and strongly recommended. These core learning events, delivered around the globe,
combine simulations, dialog, and exercises for participants to learn,
practice, and receive feedback on the leadership model attributes. Core learning events are followed by targeted development,
according to individual need and interest, to leverage strengths and close
performance gaps. Supplemental
interventions run the gamut, including additional coursework, coaching or
mentoring, expanded or new assignments, and additional assessment.
Leaders identified with high potential participate in
accelerated development experiences that provide intensive assessment,
complex simulations, 360-degree feedback, formal group learning, action
learning projects based on actual Lucent business scenarios, exposure to
and mentoring by officer champions, and facilitated development planning.
Present in all leadership development programs at
Lucent is the use of Leaders as
Teachers, the practice advocated by Noel Tichy in The Leadership
Engine. During learning
events, experienced leaders share their stories and lessons of experience
and facilitate group discussions. The
learning leaders, as well as the teaching leaders, benefit from the
experience.
Leadership development at Lucent is further supported
with web-based technology, accessible to all employees through the
intranet. Information and
toolkits (forms, presentation templates, guidelines) for high-potential
identification and succession planning are posted on the site, as well as
lessons of experience from selected Lucent officers.
In addition, any employee or coach may use a behaviorally anchored
rating scale to determine strengths and development areas against the
leadership model. Armed with
this information, site visitors navigate through a menu of development
options providing:
·
the fundamentals of planning for development including a
plan template,
·
suggestions for matching situations with interventions,
·
case studies,
·
learning checklists, quizzes and guided self-reflection,
·
methods for applying and sustaining lessons learned,
·
tools to evaluate the success of the intervention,
·
readings, external courses, links to other web sites by
leadership attribute,
·
key experiences to round out one’s repertoire,
·
lessons from hardships and setbacks,
·
suggestions for creating and managing formal and informal
developmental relationships.
Through core leadership learning events at key
transition points; leadership diagnostics; supplemental, targeted
interventions; broad-based and accelerated development tracks; teaching
leaders; and web-supported technology, Lucent offers a system to attract,
develop, and retain leaders that has impact and is sustainable.
So, is the job done?
Not by a long shot. Excellent
progress has been made and has achieved traction, but there is more work
to be done, especially in two areas:
(1) reaching deeper into
the organization to identify and cultivate rising talent, and (2)
transferring the learning outcomes of individual development to the
organizational at-large. This
will involve preparing leaders, who have benefited from
individually-focused development, to bring the lessons home, apply them,
develop their own lessons of experience, and ultimately teach other
leaders, thus increasing organizational capability and building the
leadership bench of the next generation.
Note: Anne Kurzenberger can be contacted
at <akurzenberger@lucent.com>.
LEADERSHIP PROGRAM: Ford
Motor Company’s New Business Leader Program
By
Tom Grant, Manager, Executive Programs, Leadership Development Center,
Ford Motor Company
Accelerating
the growth of future leaders is the focus of Ford Motor Company’s New
Business Leader (NBL) program, which reaches some 2,000 managers around
the world each year. Jointly
developed by internal and external resources to Ford, NBL had introduced
an innovative approach to leadership called the Quantum Idea Project (QIP).
The
Quantum Idea Project is intended to drive revolutionary change in Ford.
In the first phase of the NBL program, participants identify a
quantum idea that should help transform Ford into the world’s leading
consumer company for automotive products and services.
In
a second phase, the new business leaders form into cross-functional teams
to move their fresh ideas into action plans.
To assist this process, Ford executives lead sessions on topics
ranging from business acumen and managing change to leadership
fundamentals and “Influencing Up and Out.” Participants design a
specific plan of action and work on their “teachable point of view”
for more effectively advocating it.
During
the final phase, participants devote more than forty hours over a
three-month period to implementing the project.
They, of course, encounter many obstacles to implementation, and in
overcoming these barriers they further learn to sharpen goals, surmount
resistance, and take corrective action.
The best of their projects are reviewed by Jacques Nasser, Ford’s
chief executive, for their company-wide potential.
Participants
in the program receive detailed feedback from peers, subordinates,
managers, faculty, and team members on their performance and experience in
designing and implementing their project.
They are also mentored by senior managers throughout the program.
While project results are important, the real measure of success is
what these new business leaders learn from the experience rather than the
success of the projects themselves.
The
New Business Leader is based on precepts that move beyond traditional
development approaches. It
features an unique “up and out” thrust requiring every participant to
influence those “up” beyond the immediate organization and “out”
of the scope of his or her current job responsibilities.
It has also moved from:
- general
training to a focus on innovative change and entrepreneurial behavior,
- course-content
driven to action-initiative driven,
- textbook-rich
to feedback-rich,
- classroom-time
centered to project-results centered,
traditional
seminar to project workshop,
- professional
trainers to executive mentors,
- classroom
students to change agents.
While
participants broaden their business knowledge of Ford and their personal
leadership abilities, they are also introducing some 2,000 fresh ideas
into Ford every year, and that is adding a wave of entrepreneurial energy
to the business.
Note: Tom Grant can be contacted at <tgrant@ford.com>.
Additional information on Ford’s leadership initiatives can be
found in Keith H. Hammonds, “Grassroots Leadership – Ford Motor Company,” Fast Company.
Leadership
Learning: Improvizational
Theater
Can Rabbits Teach Leadership? No?
Think Again
By Mukul Pandya, Editor,
Knowledge@Wharton
 More than 50
executive MBA students stand in a circle in a Wharton classroom. On cue, one of them cups his palms downward under his lips,
simulating a rabbit’s teeth, while two others who flank him hold their
palms flat against the sides of his head, mimicking the animal’s ears.
Then, in voices as loud as they can manage, the three yell:
“Bunny! Bunny! Bunny! Bunny! Bunny!…” The shouting continues until
the man in the middle – the “teeth” – points at a woman standing
on the other side of the circle. Instantly,
she becomes the bunny’s “teeth,” while the two people beside her
become the “ears.” Again,
their voices ring out: “Bunny! Bunny! Bunny! Bunny! Bunny!…”
What on earth is going on – a wild party game?
Not quite. The
exercise forms part of a seminar organized last month by ImprovEdge, a New
York City training firm, which uses the techniques of improvisational
theater for executive development. Weird
as it might initially seem, the “bunny” exercise has a point.
It forces all the people in the circle constantly to be on their
toes – you never know when you might have to become the bunny’s teeth
or ears – and to respond quickly, together with others, to a sudden
development. As Frances
Barney-Knutsen, a founder of ImprovEdge, says: “In business you often
face situations where you have to think and act quickly. Improvisational
theater is great at helping you learn how to do that.”
Barney-Knutsen, who is also a director of risk
management in the New York office of a large global bank, was a founding
member of the Purple Crayon, an improv theater group at Yale University. While participating in Wharton’s executive MBA program, she
was struck by the similarity that management concepts such as teamwork and
innovation seemed to have with the principles of improv theater.
This inspired Barney-Knutsen and her associates – including Rick
Knutsen, Mike Everett Lane, Lisa Jolley and Steve Bodow – to launch
ImprovEdge in 1999. In
addition to Wharton’s program, ImprovEdge has conducted its three-hour
seminars for companies such as Bankers Trust (now part of Deutsche Bank),
Capital One and Citigroup, among others.
One such seminar – in which a Knowledge@Wharton
writer took part – began with the “bunny” exercise, which is an
instant, high-energy ice-breaker. This
was followed by a session in which all 50 odd participants had to pretend
to pass an imaginary ball to one another.
The catch in this exercise is that participants are free to define
and redefine what kind of ball it is.
Someone might view it as a baseball; another might change it to a
football, or golf ball, or even ping-pong ball.
To take part in this exercise, participants must keep their eye on
the ball – literally and metaphorically – a state of mind that has its
uses in business.
The group then broke up into five teams of 10 each
and went through independent exercises. In one session, the team was given
a project, and each team-member had to say something that added to the
project’s definition. The
team is required in this exercise to greet all suggestions—even strange
and inane ones – with a resounding “Yes!”
Example: Your team makes vases.
Each vase will be offered in bright colors.
“Yes!” They will be sold in flower shops.
“Yes!” The vases will double as paper weights and be sold
through office-supply chains. “Yes!”
In another exercise, one team member starts telling a
story. When the team
moderator points at another member, however, that person instantly
continues the story from the point where the first person left off.
Over time, this leads to the narration of very strange tales with
unusual twists and turns, and inevitably leads to much laughter.
Next, the moderator divides the team into pairs. Each pair serves,
in effect, as a two-headed person. As the team bombards the pair with
questions, each person in the pair replies with alternating words in the
sentence. Example: If the
question is, “How are you?”, the answer might be, participant A:
“I’m,” participant B: “fine.”
Since the pairs are chosen at random, the answers are often
unexpected as well as hilarious.
Yet another session requires participants to imagine
they are making a business presentation to say, a group of venture
capitalists. The team gets a
scenario to work with, and each individual’s role within the team is
defined. When the so-called presentation begins, though, the prepared
scenario goes out the window and the team is confronted with an entirely
unexpected set of circumstances. For
example, if the team members have been asked to pitch a concept for a real
estate website to the venture capitalists, they might be told that the
venture capitalists never invest in real estate.
It is up to the team to rethink its strategy on its feet and come
up with a coherent and possibly convincing response.
While some of ImprovEdge’s exercises are
intentionally zany, others come close to a Dilbertesque reality that
reflects much of what actually happens in many corporate settings.
At the end of the seminar, however– which at times comes close to
resembling a boisterous party – do these exercises actually teach
anything valuable?
They do – in at least three ways.
First, amid all the fun and games, an interesting
dynamic emerges when people in teams have to complete each other’s
sentences. Members of some
teams visibly support one another; in others, they challenge one another
or a veiled one-upmanship develops that undermines their combined efforts.
In both cases, the results clearly show the difference, as they do in
business situations. As Rick
Knutsen, an ImprovEdge instructor explains, “Some people have a ‘Yes,
but..’ approach, while others have a ‘Yes, and…’ approach. You can
either be a spoiler or a supporter.”
Second, the ability to practice being innovative and
team-oriented through such exercises is important at a time when companies
are being forced to become more open and less hierarchical. So, too, is
the ability to respond rapidly to unexpected developments a crucial trait.
As many people now believe, the battle today is no longer between
Big Business and Small Business, but between Slow Business and Fast
Business.
Perhaps the most
crucial reason to use improvisational theater as a method of training
managers might be that it teaches a simple lesson:
While preparation is important, spontaneity is even more so.
“Most business situations require preparation,” says Barney-Knutsen.
“Improvising is a complement to preparation. For example, in a jazz combo, all musicians must prepare
thoroughly, but once they have mastered their art they riff off one
another. It’s a balance
between structure and chaos.”
This balance requires a mindset that rarely comes
easily to those trained to manage. Letting
go, yielding control, going into free fall, flying blind, trusting
instinct – these are scary prospects, but nonetheless crucially
important. When people –
and companies – lose the ability to improvise, they can no longer
innovate. And those who fail
to innovate perish.
Note:
Mukul Pandya can be reached at <pandyam@wharton.upenn.edu>,
and Knowledge@Wharton can be viewed at <http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/>;
information on ImprovEdge is available at <http://www.improvedge.com>.
Academic
Research: International
Experience and Financial Performance
Catherine
M. Daily, S. Trevis Certo, and Dan R. Dalton of Indiana University’s
Kelley School of Business have examined the impact of international
experience on a manager’s likelihood of promotion to the top and on the
firm’s financial performance. A
manager’s international experience is defined as the number of
international assignments and the number of years in those assignments.
Drawing
on 367 large, publicly-traded, U.S. companies among the Fortune 500, they
find that in the period from 1994 to 1996, net of other factors:
- When companies replace
their chief executive with an outsider, the new CEO is more likely to
have had international experience than if the board chose an insider.
- Companies led by a chief
executive with more international experience perform better in their
return on investment, return on assets, and market-to-book ratios.
- The impact of CEO’s
international experience on a firm’s performance is especially
pronounced among companies with high fractions of their sales, assets,
and subsidiaries abroad.
The
authors conclude: “Outside
successor CEOs with international experience would appear to be a
promising investment with regard to corporate financial performance.”
Source:
Catherine M. Daily, S. Trevis Certo, and Dan R. Dalton,
“International Experience in the Executive Suite: The Path to
Prosperity,” Strategic Management Review, Vol. 21, 2000, pp.
515-523.
Leadership Quote:
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In commenting on her
negotiations with Chinese government officials regarding China’s entry
into the World Trade Organization, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene
Barshefsky observed that, in contrast to representatives of certain other
nations with which she had worked, Chinese negotiators saw the world as
one of mutual gains rather than zero sum.