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WHARTON LEADERSHIP DIGEST
December, 2003, Volume 8, Number 3
CONTENTS
Leadership
Conferences: Leading in an
Era of Uncertainty and Change
Decisive
Action: What
Leaders Do When Their Firm Hits a Wall
Failure
to Communicate: A Failure to Lead
Ideas on
Management: Synopses
by Manageris
Quote of
the Month: Back to the
Drawing Board
What
is Leadership? Observations
from a Basketball Coach
Leadership
Conferences:
Leading in an Era of
Uncertainty and Change
The
annual Wharton Leadership Conference in Philadelphia has been expanded to
two conferences -- one in San Francisco on March 23, 2004, and one in
Philadelphia on June 2, 2004.
Both conferences are focused on
"Leading in an Era of Uncertainty and Change." What
qualities and capacities will rising managers require if they are to
succeed in an era of increasing market turbulence, investor impatience,
and public cynicism? How can current leaders identify and nurture
the right talent in their ranks that of necessity will bring a distinctive
approach to the challenges ahead? The two conferences are devoted to
exchanging ideas on how great leadership can best be developed and applied
in an era of uncertainty and change -- whether in the private, public, or
non-profit sectors.
John Byrne, Douglas Conant, and Marilyn Carlson Nelson
By
Jim Pawlak, Editor, Biz Books
 By
Jim Pawlak, Editor, Biz Books
Ruthless
Execution – What Business Leaders Do When Their Companies Hit the Wall
by Amir Hartman (Financial Times-Prentice Hall, 2003).
Amir
Hartman uses "ruthless" to define total commitment to
reinventing the firm by assessing where you are, where you want to be and
doing what must be done to get there.
Ruthless execution starts with the realization that when sales are
flat or profits are falling, running the business the same way will only
produce the same unsatisfactory results.
Growth requires change in all facets of a firm.
 Hartman
sees many companies treating only the symptoms of hitting the wall, and
not the causes. They apply
corporate band aids like budget cutting and layoffs in response to
difficult times. He writes:
"Band aids don’t fix inefficiencies or a lack of focus in
companies; they only curb the spending in quick fashion."
Shrinking the company won’t make it great; reinventing it will.
Hartman
takes you inside the reinvention done by the leaders of Cisco, GE,
Honeywell, IBM, Novartis, and other firms.
While Hartman’s examples focus on large firms, most of his sound
advice applies to every business.
Chapter
8, "Critical Capabilities: Actions That Make a Difference",
identifies common denominators that these leaders/companies used to
reinvent both internal structure and marketplace focus.
The chapter begins with "The Ruthless Execution
Checklist" – Four questions about how the business is managed:
1.
Do you have a cost and working capital management program that is driven
throughout the business? It’s
not about managing by the numbers (i.e. historical results); it’s all
about managing to the numbers (i.e. future expectations).
2.
Do you have a proactive and disciplined approach to identifying and
assessing potential acquisitions and divestitures?
A book on bad mergers and acquisitions would fill more pages than a
book on successful ones. As
for divestiture, keeping a business unit that doesn’t fit the new model
will only drain resources (i.e. management’s attention, money, staff).
3.
Do you regularly assess whether the corporate center is adding distinctive
value to each business unit? The
corporate center isn’t an Ivory Tower or the Tower of Babble.
It’s a decision-making, communication, support and coordination
system.
4.
Do you effectively and swiftly manage out non-performers?
You can’t get the most from your top talent if they have to deal
with non-performers.
Note:
For information on direct distribution of Jim Pawlak's Biz
Books reviews, he can be reached at bizbooks@hotmail.com.
 By
John Baldoni
Two recent high profile
catastrophes cast light on an age‑old problem. The first was the
breakup of the Columbia shuttle as it speed across the Texas sky on
February 1st, 2003. The second was the sudden power outage on August 14th
that affected some 80 million consumers in the Eastern part of the United
States and Ontario. The first accident cost the lives of seven astronauts;
the second accident cost a loss of faith in the power grid as well as
billions of dollars. While both accidents were different in root causes,
both shared a single similar fault – a failure to communicate.
The most glaring
communication failures make headlines, but failure to keep people in the
know or to report an emergent problem are hardly unique to disasters.
Communication lapses in fact are so recurrent that the very phrase,
"failure to communicate" -- popularized a generation ago in the
Paul Newman movie, Cool Hand Luke
-- seems to be a near universal. Communication beakdowns occur
routinely, but it takes a spectacular event like the Columbia disaster or
the Eastern power outage to remind us how consequential they can be.
What can we do to ensure that communications flourishes to the
betterment of the enterprise?
Scan
the horizon.
Nothing remains the same for very long. Leaders are responsible for
looking outside the organization to discover what customers are thinking
and purchasing -- and how competitors are responding to the changing
market conditions. By
scanning the organization's horizon, leaders help their organization
anticipate the future to avoid blindsiding by it. market.
Keep
an ear to the ground.
Leaders listen to what people are saying -- but also what they are not
saying. Problems occur in all
organizations, but it is the well lead organization that learns about
incipient problems before they emerge.
Front-line military officers, for instance, frequently look over
the shoulder of their troops not only to assure performance but also to
learn of early warning signs of threats to performance.
Ask
questions. One of the surest ways
to find out what is going on within an organization is to pose questions.
Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, is an inveterate questioner. He
helps keep himself up to speed by incessantly posing queries during his
many forays around Amazon facilities.
Create
feedback loops.
It is useful to install devices by which employees can voice an opinion
and receive a response. Feedback systems are easy to implement with
e-mail, but providing a thoughtful response requires a commitment to
active communication. But
then again, that's what communications is all about – two-way feedback
and follow-up.
MBWA.
David Packard pioneered "management by walking around" as he
built Hewlett-Packard. Doing so took him out from behind his desk and into
meeting, hallways, cafeterias, shop floors, and sales centers where the
real work occurred, and his MBWA has become an industry standard.
Integrate
communications into your disaster plans. Have a disaster plan in place with two‑way
communications, and test it so that employees feel comfortable with it.
Most fire, rescue, and trauma teams maintain such plans and rehearse them
regularly. In the absence of a rehearsed disaster plan, effective
communication is one of the first casualties of a catastrophe.
Communication is the glue
that holds organizations together. It
helps prevent calamity and fosters performance.
Through self-conscious development and frequent practice of the art
of organizational communication, communication failures should become
communication successes.
Note: John Baldoni is a
leadership communications consultant who works with companies and
non‑profits organizations. He is the author of several books on
leadership including Great
Communication Secrets of Great Leaders (McGraw-Hill, 2003). He can be
reached at jbaldoni@lc21.com
and his website can be found at www.johnbaldoni.com.
 Founded
in 1992 by two INSEAD graduates interested in disseminating new management
thinking, the Paris-based Manageris group works with a network of
professors, consultants, and executives to publish a monthly assessment of
two books or concepts with practical management implications.
Information on Manageris is available here;
a sample assessment -- on price optimization -- can be found at here.
Quote
of the Month:
Back to the Drawing Board
 "There
should be a leader of the board who is not the CEO ....
In some boardrooms, this person
is labeled 'lead director' or 'presiding director,' and in others
the leadership mantle is conferred on a committee chairman.
Whatever the specific arrangement, there is an emerging view, even
in the United States, that every board must have such a leader ....
"Boards should be as
small as feasible. A smaller
group of directors will find it easier to interact and reach decisions
subject to the need for enough directors to do the work of the board and
its committees ....
"It's time to
recognize the enormous burdens that boards carry and understand that there
is no universal 'right' answer .... Directors
cannot ignore external calls for change, but they must be wary of those
that are so simplistic or punitive that our best business practitioners
can't or won't accept seats. Directors
need to think creatively to find the best-tailored solutions when they go
back to the drawing board to design corporate boards that work effectively
in the twenty-first century."
Source:
Colin B. Carter and Jay W. Lorsch, Back to the Drawing Board:
Designing Corporate Boards for a Complex World (Harvard Business
School Press, 2004), pp. 16, 17, and 200.
 By
Matt Doherty
[Editor's note:
Matt Doherty is the former Head Basketball Coach at the University
of North Carolina and the University of Notre Dame. Matt was the 2001 AP National Coach of the Year as he led the
Tar Heels to a share of the ACC Regular Season Championship in his first
year coaching in Chapel Hill. As
a player, Matt was on the 1982 National Championship team at UNC, starting
alongside Michael Jordan and James Worthy.
He graduated from UNC in 1984 with a degree in Business
Administration. He refers to
coach Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina.
Dean Smith has more wins than any other coach in NCAA history, and
Matt played for him from 1980 to 1984.]
We talk a lot about leadership. What is it? How
do you measure it? Can you
develop it? Are you born with
it? What ensures it? Does it come with the title?
Does it have to be earned?
Leadership is essential in running any organization
or institution, whether it is a big time corporation or your household.
The key in being a leader is that you have to have followers.
Who are people willing to follow?
What type of person will people follow?
Some key ingredients come to mind that I believe a
good leader must have:
1. Respect -- you must respect all those around you from the janitor to
your top salesman. Respect
also involves ethics. Ethics
is an area where our country seems to have slipped.
Ethics is respecting what is “right vs. wrong” when you think
no one is watching. This
carries over to your personal life. You
are a role model for your organization and if your people see you
preaching one thing at work, but living your life another way, they will
question your character. Respect
is what we all want and need. If
we don’t feel respected we will not work hard for the boss and in some
cases people will try to tear down the boss and organization.
I had the pleasure of spending a day with the Carolina Panther’s
owner Jerry Richardson. Mr.
Richardson played in the NFL for the Baltimore Colts and then found
success in the business world with Hardees.
He was gracious to me at a transitional time in my career as I sit
out my first year from coaching after 15 seasons.
I love to pick the brains of successful people so I asked Mr.
Richardson if he had a mission statement written up for his organization.
He did and he was candid in discussing this with me.
The first value on his and his corporation’s list is respect!
You notice it right away, too!
From the security guard at the gate, to the receptionist, to his
players and coaches! 360
degrees of respect flowing through the organization from Mr. Richardson to
his employees to their guests and fans and back through to the top!
It makes for a great work environment!
Plus, we all have basic needs as human beings and one of the most
important human needs is respect!
2. Competence -- a leader must be competent in his
field. In the military, a
General should have experience in war and have shown competency in battle
before he is to lead an army. Can
he think on his feet? Is he
resourceful? Does he make
good decisions? People will
not follow incompetent people! Plain and simple!
I was a basketball player at the University of North Carolina and
played for legendary Dean Smith. He
had a track record of unbelievable success.
Therefore, you trusted everything he told you and the older players
reinforced his message if there was ever any doubt.
Coach Smith’s competence caused us to “jump in with both
feet”, not questioning his directives.
The confidence we had in him lead to many victories, even when we
were faced with difficult circumstances!
3. Caring -- a leader must show that he cares for
his people as individuals. Spend
time with them. Get to know
them. What are their
likes/dislikes? Listen to
them. Connect emotionally. Truly
serve your people. If a
person feels valued, they will “give it all they have” for the boss.
Money isn’t the most important motivator for employees!
I have enjoyed reading about successful coaches and none has been
more successful than Dick Vermeil of the Kansas City Chiefs.
He constantly spends time with his players, inviting them over to
his house for dinner with he and his wife.
Even with wealthy, superstar NFL players, the emotional connection
is important. If you know
that your boss truly cares about you as a person you will “run through a
wall” for him or her.
4. Toughness -- this seems contrary to #3, but
leaders are faced with difficult decisions that require a toughness to
execute. Leaders also
face setbacks that they need to be able to bounce back from, and this
requires toughness. In
athletics, you need to demonstrate true care for your players and staff,
but there are times when a person on your team is eating at the foundation
of your organization. When it is determined that that person needs to be
terminated, you as a leader have to have the toughness to execute the
departure of this individual. However
emotionally difficult this can be, you still have to go back to #1 and #3,
respect and caring. You need
to deal with this departure in a classy and respectful way.
The other side of toughness you have to demonstrate is when things
aren’t going well, the company is losing money, or your team is on a
losing streak. My second year
as the coach at UNC we had the worst record in school history, but I
needed to try to be strong for my players, staff and family.
To me, the best way to do that was to put things in perspective. The World Trade Center attacks occurred just before that
season. I have a beautiful
and healthy family. My life
was good, even in light of a bad season.
5. Vision -- a leader must have direction; a plan
that is so clear in your mind that you can feel it, see it, taste it, and
then share it. This
shared vision motivates the team. Part
of your vision is to see potential hazards and prepare the organization
for these possible “bumps in the road.”
As a leader, you not only have to expect good things to happen, but
what about bad things? As a
parent, you prepare for emergencies by having a First Aid kit available.
It is no different as a leader in your organization.
As a basketball coach, I need to be prepared for late game
situations when we are down three points with two seconds to go. Have I prepared my team in practice for this situation so
when it does occur we don’t panic?
This situation may never happen, and you hope it doesn’t, but you
need to be prepared. Just
like a parent hopes they don’t have to use the First Aid kit.
But they are glad they have it, just in case. The other part of “vision” I really enjoy is sharing my
vision to my staff and team. I
like painting a picture of success. Dream
a little dream and work your tail off to make it happen! When we were at Notre Dame we faced Ohio State in our first
game. Ohio State was ranked
#5 in the country at the time, coming off a Final Four the year before.
We were a new staff taking over at Notre Dame.
In preparation for that game, we would talk about how fun it would
be to go into their “house” and beat them.
That nobody, but our team, was expecting us to come close, no less
win. How we wouldn’t
celebrate on the floor because we expect to win, but we will celebrate
like heck in the privacy of the lockeroom!
We won on a buzzer-beater by David Graves and you should have seen
the celebration in that lockeroom! Paint
the picture! Dream that dream! And
chase that dream with all the passion you have!
6. Passion -- the leader that has a passion for
his “work” is thinking about his “job” most of the time.
This leads to new ideas and an energy that is felt throughout the
organization. Passion also
helps a leader overcome setbacks because it generates the energy it takes
to get back up after being knocked down.
My wife says I am either “all or nothing.”
Well, I love to think about basketball.
I leave a legal pad by my bed so I can jot down a thought or play
that may come to mind in the middle of the night.
I might do the same at a red light, or worse, a green light!
That passion creates an energy that is contagious.
Soon everyone in your organization feels it and feeds off it,
creating a fun and exciting place to “work.”
7. Communication -- a leader must be able to
communicate his vision and directives.
It must be clear and precise.
No gray area, because your people need to know exactly what is
expected of them. Listening is also a key component. Don’t always take what is said for face value because
people don’t always tell the boss the truth.
Sometimes they say what they think the boss wants to hear.
Listen to the non-verbals - tone and body language.
Tone and body language make up 90% of communication!
10% is content! Wow! Those non-verbals go both ways!
I think Dean Smith was a great communicator as he clearly defined
roles for his players and also defined clear goals for his teams.
He could do it in such a way that made you realize you could have
individual goals that worked hand-in-hand with team goals.
Dr. Jerry Bell from Bell Leadership in Chapel Hill, NC told me
about how tone and body language make up 90% of communication, and that
was never more evident to me than when Coach Smith would be in a huddle
during a tight game. For example, in 1982 we were playing Georgetown for the
National Championship in front of over 60,000 fans in the Superdome in New
Orleans. We were down one
point with 32 seconds to play and Coach called a time-out.
Here he was coaching for his first title in several attempts.
The only thing that eluded him was a National Championship.
Yet he spoke so calmly and confidently in that huddle that it gave
us a calm, confident feeling as we left the huddle!
Then a freshman named Michael Jordan smoothly hit the game winning
shot with 17 seconds left on the clock!
8. Discipline -- you have to demonstrate
discipline in all aspects of your life, personal and business.
Discipline is required to “stay the course” and be prepared for
the future. To again
reference Coach Smith, he would often say, “ A disciplined person is a
truly free person.” What I
think he meant by this was, that if you are disciplined with your
decisions you will not be a slave to bad choices.
Then you will have the freedom to live the life you choose.
Coach Roy Williams, the head basketball coach at UNC, was an
assistant for Coach Smith for ten years then he went on to be the head
coach at Kansas for 15 years before returning to his alma mater in April
of this year. Having played
for Coach Williams while he was an assistant at UNC and then having worked
for him for seven years as an assistant at Kansas I saw a man that is
probably the most disciplined person I know! Practice always started on
time. We a had a structured
practice plan that we would use outlining what we were to accomplish each
day. He always went to church
and expected the freshmen to attend church, hopefully developing a habit
that would carry over to the rest of their lives.
Many of these ideas were developed under Coach Smith, but Coach
Williams had to have the discipline to carry these ideas forward each and
every day! And he did!
9. Organizational skills -- it requires discipline
to stay organized. To
a large degree, this can be delegated by having a good staff to keep order
within the company. You
need to be freed up to do what you do best -- lead!
Coach Smith was incredibly organized with basketball, but he
didn’t have the time to handle everything.
Therefore, he had a very talented staff of assistants, namely Bill
Guthridge, who was responsible for the day to day running of the program,
along with Coach Smith’s secretary.
These assistants kept the organization operating smoothly, which
freed up Coach to do what he did best and enjoyed most, leading his team
and organization.
10. Humility -- I think this is a key component.
Nobody likes to be around someone with a big ego.
Are you secure with yourself?
Can you laugh at yourself? Do
you share the credit? Do you
take some blame? Do you spend
time with your employees? Yet
you still are the boss. There
is a balance here. Coach
Smith was well known for always putting his players first.
Seniors were always on the cover of the media guide.
He wanted a player to be the one to talk on TV after a big win.
Yet he would always take the blame for a loss!
He would also poke fun at himself in front of the team, but we
always knew that he was the boss.
Trust is the biggest factor of all.
The reason I didn’t list this in the 10 key ingredients is
because trust is a by-product of these ingredients.
If you do most of these 10 keys well, trust will come.
As we know, trust is the biggest key to any relationship!
The more your people trust you, the more they are willing to follow
you.
Charisma is another trait people talk about.
I believe this is often misunderstood.
Some people associate charisma with style or the ability to talk
well. I have seen people who
are the “average Joe” exude charisma because they are authentic, real
people. People you like to be
around. Charisma comes in all
shapes and sizes. I have seen
charismatic people who are bad leaders because they lack character.
And I have seen unassuming people with a lot of charisma because
they are authentic, competent people that care for the people around them.
A person may not have all of these traits.
You need to understand your weaknesses and play to your strengths.
You need to have people handle the areas where you are not as strong.
That is why selecting members of your team is critical.
You need a staff that complements you, while being loyal and
working hard. Create an
environment of high-energy team players that will all pull in the same
direction, and you can accomplish anything you want to.
Also, I think it is critical that you have a team member that is
close enough to you that they can say anything they want to you behind
closed doors. Someone you
respect, that is in the “foxhole” with you that can tell you the
truth, even if it hurts like heck.
The good news - leadership is an art that can be
developed. Some people have
some great gifts that give them a head start in being good leaders.
Others have to spend more time developing it.
The opportunity to grow as a leader and see the results is most
rewarding. To develop and
lead a “team” to victory is the sweetest feeling in the world!
The shared pride associated with winning is euphoric!
You can do it! It just
takes some “work”!
Note: Matt
Doherty can be reached at mattdoherty@alltel.net.
Copyright
1996-2003, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management
University of Pennsylvania.
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