November, 1998 - Volume 3, Number 2

The New World Explorers

Business school professors Hal Gregersen, Allen Morrison, and Stewart Black compare today's company leaders with early explorers such as Ferdinand Magellan (who discovered the passage through the southernmost tip of South America and the Philippines). Company managers now face a world that is "just as dangerous, filled with brutal storms of competitors, endless seas of change, seemingly strange cultures, confusing market channels, and unknown frontiers of technology." Once Magellan and others had charted their new lands, their work was done, but for company managers now, their territories are continuously changing.

When companies are asked whether they have the leadership required to sustain their explorations, however, modern-day Magellans are in short supply. The authors surveyed human-resources managers responsible for executive development at 108 large U.S. companies in 1997. The managers forecast that having sufficient numbers of global leaders in their ranks would be the single most important factor in their future worldwide success or failure (ranking above financial resources, communications technologies, workforce quality, and political stability). They also reported that the numbers were still far from sufficient.

Drawing on interviews with 130 executives of fifty companies in Asia, Europe, and North America, the authors extracted what are deemed the critical capabilities of global leaders: Knowledge and skills for operating in specific national settings are at the top of the list, but so too are transcendent qualities including integrity, savvy, inquisitiveness, and an ability to make personal connections with people from diverse cultures.

While such capabilities are seen as essential, less than one in four of the U.S. firms had a formal system for cultivating them in the ranks. The authors asked the 130 executives to identify "an exemplar of future global leadership" in their firm, and when the authors asked the latter to identify what had been critical to their own development, they singled out international experiences that included wide detours from the beaten path and wholesale dives into local cultures.

Source: Hal B. Gregersen, Allen J. Morrison, and J. Stewart Black, "Developing Leaders for the Global Frontier," Sloan Management Review, Fall, 1998, p. 21-32 (http://web.mit.edu/smr-online/past/1998/smr4012.html).

Learning from a General

Though the presidential administration of U. S. Grant is not considered distinguished, his service as military commander is rich with management lessons. Al Kaltman, a company executive, has drawn out 250 leadership principles from diverse moments in Grant's career extending from his enrollment at West Point to the command of the Union Army during the Civil War.

"Bureaucrats do the dumbest things": Grant was named Hiram Ulysses Grant at birth, but the Congressman who appointed him to West Point mistakenly filled in his name on the application as "Ulysses S. Grant." When Grant arrived at the military academy, he was told that it didn't matter what his parents had named him, the name on the application was what counted. If Hiram U. Grant was to be admitted for study, he would have to change his name.

"Know Your Competition": As a Union commander, Grant attacked Fort Donelson even though it was defended by a larger and well entrenched Confederate force. He had known the fort's commander before the Civil War, and he "judged that with any force, no matter how small, I could march up to within gunshot of any entrenchments he was given to hold." The assault proved successful, and Grant later spoke with another Confederate general: "He said to me that if he had been in command I would not have got up to Donelson as easily as I did. I told him that had he been in command, I should not have tried in the way I did."

"Talk to Your Boss": Several weeks after his capture of Fort Donelson, General Henry W. Halleck repeatedly asked Grant for information on his troop strength, and receiving none back, informed General George McClellan that Grant had refused information and strayed beyond his authority. McClellan ordered that Grant be relieved from his command. This was later rescinded when Grant made it known that he had received none of the messages from Halleck.

"Take Your Children to Work": Grant asked his 12-year-old son to come with him when he set forth to capture Vicksburg, a pivotal city on the Mississippi river. Grant later wrote: "My son accompanied me throughout the campaign and siege, and caused no anxiety either to me or to his mother.... He looked out for himself and was in every battle of the campaign."

"Carbon Copies Are Always Pale": Grant observed of many Union generals early in the Civil War: "They were always thinking what Napoleon would do. Unfortunately for their plans, the rebels would be thinking about something else."

"Never Make Predictions to the Press": When a reporter asked Grant how soon he could attack Richmond, the capital of the confederacy defended by General Robert E. Lee, Grant replied, "I will agree to be there in about four days. That is, if General Lee becomes a party to the agreement. But if he objects, the trip will undoubtedly be prolonged."

"If You Keep Shooting the Messengers, They Will Stop Coming": Grant recommended the promotion of George Meade but also made note of an important deficiency: "He was unfortunately of a temper that would get beyond his control, at times, and make him speak to officers of high rank in the most offensive manner. No one saw this fault more plainly than he himself, and no one regretted it more. This made it unpleasant at times, even in battle, for those around him to approach him even with information."

"Know When to Look Gift Horses in the Mouth": Before his capture of Fort Donelson, Grant had smoked pipes. Just before his troops were attacked by Confederate soldiers near the fort, one of his commanders gave him a cigar, and he carried the cigar during a rallying of his troops to repulse the attack. Newspaper reports described him as smoking a cigar in the midst of the battle, and he began to receive thousands of boxes of cigars as gifts. He smoked far more than he otherwise would. In 1885, he died of throat cancer.

Source: Al Kaltman, Cigars, Whiskey & Winning: Leadership Lessons from General Ulysses S. Grant (Paramus, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1998).

Management Development Through Videos

Wharton Executive Education offers six videos on leading issues in management:

• Achieving Competitive Advantage
• Achieving Competitive Advantage: Managing for Organizational Effectiveness
• Aligning Supply and Demand: Creating the Right Supply Chain for Your Product
• Creating Customer Value: The Essentials of Marketing
• Finance and Accounting for the Non-Financial Manager
• Rethinking the Labor Contract: Employment Strategies for the Post-Reengineering Era

Each about an hour long, the video learning programs are accompanied by a study guide, and some are also available in French, Dutch, and Portuguese. Four of the programs are produced in collaboration with WGBH-TV in Boston, and two are jointly produced with Video Management in Brussels. Information on French, Dutch, and English language videos for distribution in Europe is available through Video Management at http://www.mindquest.com, and Portuguese versions can be obtained through Mind Quest based in Bela Horozonte (Brazil) at http://www.videomanagement.com. Information on the English language videos is available at http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/execed/vidpages/vidmain.html.

In response to a question of what makes for "effective leadership":

"There's no question that the role of being a strategic architect on a global scale is increasingly important.

"What "you see in terms of CEO profiles is, first and foremost, extraordinarily good strategic thinkers who understand the changing nature of the industry structure and are shaping it themselves with their own moves. And at the same time I sense that there is still a very strong premium on outstanding execution and that will continue to pay rich dividends."

"Capital markets are extremely demanding, they want transparency, they want to know what's going on. Dialogue with the capital markets, explaining the strategy, is more and more important. And delivering results, of course - the transparency of that to the marketplace is more important today than ever before."

Source: From an interview with Rajat Gupta, Managing Director of McKinsey & Co., in World Link (the magazine of the World Economic Forum), September-October, 1998, p. 30.