What do CEOs do? A CEO Job Description.
Part 1: Responsibility, duty, and all that…

Note: You may also wish to read The Executive Mind-Set, which discusses executive jobs and the special skills needed to hold them.

This essay is written using “she” to refer to CEOs. There is no deep agenda hiding here. I’m in the business of helping people think outside the box, and gender is an obvious place to start.

Admit it. We all feel a touch of awe when someone has it: the CEO title. The power, the salary, and the chance to Be The Boss. It’s worthy of awe!

Too bad so few CEOs are good at what they do. In fact, only 1 in 20 are in the top 5%[1]. Many don’t know what their job should be, and few of those can pull it off well. The job is simple—very simple. But it’s not easy at all.

More than with any other job, the responsibilities of a CEO diverge from the duties and the measurement.

A CEO’s responsibilities: everything, especially in a startup. The CEO is responsible for the success or failure of the company. Operations, marketing, strategy, financing, creation of company culture, human resources, hiring, firing, compliance with safety regulations, sales, PR, etc.—it all falls on the CEO’s shoulders..

The CEO’s duties are what she actually does, the responsibilies she doesn’t delegate. Some things can’t be delegated. Creating culture, building the senior management team, financing road shows, and, indeed, the delegation itself can be done only by the CEO.

Many start-up CEOs think fund-raising is their most important duty. I disagree. Fund-raising is necessary, but the CEOs contribution is in building a superb business with the money raised.

What is the CEO’s main duty? Setting strategy and vision. The senior management team can help develop strategy. Investors can approve a business plan. But the CEO ultimately sets the direction. Which markets will the company enter? Against which competitors? With what product lines? How will the company differentiate itself? The CEO decides, sets budgets, forms partnerships, and hires a team to steer the company accordingly.

The CEO’s second duty is building culture. Work gets done through people, and people are profoundly affected by culture. A lousy place to work can drive away high performers. After all, they have their pick of places to work. And a great place to work can attract and retain the very best.

Culture is built in dozens of ways, and the CEO sets the tone. Her every action—or inaction—sends cultural messages (see “Life Under a Magnifying Glass”). Clothes send signals about how formal the workplace is. Who she talks to signals who is and isn’t important. How she treats mistakes (feedback or failure?) sends signals about risk-taking. Who she fires, what she puts up with, and what she rewards shape the culture powerfully.

A project team worked weekends launching a multimedia web site on a tight deadline. Their CEO was on holiday when the site launched. She didn’t call to congratulate the team. To her, it was a matter of keeping her personal life sacred. To the team, it was a message that her personal life was more important than the weekends and evenings they had put in to meet the deadline. Next time, they may not work quite so hard. The emotion and effect on the culture was real, even if it wasn’t what the CEO intended. Congratulations from the CEO on a job well done can motivate a team like nothing else. Silence can demotivate just as quickly.

Team-building is the CEO’s #3 duty. The CEO hires, fires, and leads the senior management team. They, in turn, hire, fire, and lead the rest of the organization.

The CEO must be able to hire and fire non-performers. She must resolve differences between senior team members, and keep them working together in a common direction. She sets direction by communicating the strategy and vision of where the company is going. Strategy sets a direction. With clear direction, the team can rally together and make it happen.

Don’t underestimate the power of setting direction. In 1991, at Intuit’s new employee orientation, CEO Scott Cook presented his vision of Intuit as the center of computerized personal finance. Intuit had just 120 employees and one product. Ten years later, it’s a billion-dollar company with thousands of employees and dozens of products. Worldwide, it is the winner in personal finance, bar none. The success is due in no small part to every Intuit employee knowing and sharing the company’s vision and strategy.

If vision is where the company is going, values tell how the company gets there. Values outline acceptable behavior. The CEO conveys values through actions and reactions to others. Slipping a ship schedule to meet quality levels sends a message of valuing quality. Not over-celebrating a team’s heroic recovery when they could have avoided a problem altogether sends a message about prevention versus damage control. People take their cues about interpersonal values—trust, honesty, openness—from CEO’s actions as well.

Capital allocation is the CEO’s #4 duty. The CEO sets budgets within the firm. She funds projects which support the strategy, and ramps down projects which lose money or don’t support the strategy. She considers carefully the company’s major expenditures, and manages the firm’s capital. If the company can’t use each dollar raised from investors to produce at least $1 of shareholder value, she decides when to return money to the investors. Some CEOs don’t consider themselves financial people, but at the end of the day, it is their decisions that determine the company’s financial fate.



[1] Pay no attention to the math background peeking from behind the curtain… back

This article was posted on Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006 at 5:04 pm and is filed under CEO, Leadership.

http://www.steverrobbins.com/articles/ceojob1.htm

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What do CEOs do? A CEO Job Description.
Part 2: Measuring your success as a CEO.

Knowing the job description is a good first step for a CEO, but to know how she’s doing, she needs to design her own measurement system.

Unlike inconvenient lower-level jobs, no one tells the Chief Executive how she’s doing. Do managers let her know she’s undermining their authority, making poor decisions, or communicating poorly? Not likely. Even when a CEO asks for honest feedback, the fear is there: non-flattering feedback may stall a promising career[1]. Even when a company uses 360-degree feedback, no one penalizes the CEO if she doesn’t act on the feedback.

The Board of Directors supposedly oversees the CEO, but they are far removed from day-to-day actions. Over time, they can evaluate performance, but they look mainly at share price and company strategy. They are rarely interested in—(or qualified to comment on!)—the CEO’s daily behavior.

But the CEO’s daily behavior will make or break the company! The CEO’s duties don’t change because they are unmeasured. Indeed, lax measurement makes it easy for the CEO to feel confident, even when she shouldn’t. Good feedback is the only way to know what’s working, but share price simply doesn’t do it. External measures measure the company, not the link between the CEO’s actions. A low share price tells her something’s wrong, but it doesn’t help her figure out what.

By measuring her performance based on her duties, a CEO can learn to do her job better. As explained in part 1, the CEO’s job is setting strategy and vision, building culture, leading the senior team, and allocating capital. The last of these is easy to measure. The first three are more of a challenge.

How does a CEO know she’s doing the vision thing? It’s hard. Having vision isn’t enough—that just takes a handful of mushrooms and a vision quest. Communicating the vision is the key. When people “get it,” they know how their daily job supports the vision. If they can’t link their job to the vision, that tells a CEO that her communication is faulty, or she hasn’t helped her managers turn the vision into actual tasks. Either way, a CEO can monitor her success as a visionary by questioning and listening for employees to link their jobs with the company vision.

Culture building is subtle, the culture a CEO sees may be very different from the culture of the rank-and-file. One company had a facilities policy that all equipment within 450 feet of the senior management offices was kept in top working order. Senior managers saw a smoothly running company, while everyone else saw neglect and carelessness.

Surveys about openness, values, and morale can be used to develop a measure of culture. The questions to ask aren’t rocket science. The book First, Break all the Rules gives a great questionnaire for measuring overall culture. Also, check turnover. When 95% of your workforce says they can’t wait to get to work, something is going right. If people rarely leave, and if it’s easy to attract top talent at below-market prices, you can be sure the culture plays a large role. If people leave (especially your top performers), again—look to culture. And don’t underestimate the power of walking around and counting smiles. If people are having fun, it will show.

The CEO’s success at team-building can often be measured through the team. Teams usually know when they’re effective. They can also rate their team using assessments that measure specific behaviors. For example, “I can trust my teammates.” “My teammates deliver their part of the project on time.” “Every member knows what is expected of them.” Regular team self-assessments can help the CEO track the team’s progress and hone her abilities to keep the team running smoothly[2].

Easiest to measure is a CEO’s capital allocation skill. In fact, financial measures are the ones made public: earnings and share price. But how can a CEO link those to her actual decisions? Working with her CFO, a CEO can devise financial measures appropriate to her business. Sometimes traditional measures are most appropriate, such as economic value added or return on assets (for a capital-intensive company). Other times, the CEO may want to invent business-specific measures, such as return on training dollars, for a company which values state-of-the-art training for employees. By monitoring several such measures, a CEO learns to link her budget decisions with company outcomes. Ultimately, the CEO’s should be creating more than a dollar of value for every dollar invested in the company. Otherwise, her best bet is to return cash to the shareholders for them to invest in more productive vehicles.

In startups, earnings begin low to nonexistent, and share price is more about salesmanship and vision than earnings. So the CEO gets almost no useful feedback about her capital allocation wisdom. She doesn’t know whether a dollar spent on a slightly nicer-than-necessary copy machine is wasted or is a wise investment in a long-term. Careful attention to the design and tracking of financial measures can help her prepare for the transition to an earnings-driven company.

In his 1988 Annual Report, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett included an excellent essay on CEO accountability. Click here to read Mr. Buffett’s observations on CEO measurement.

… in part three: “gotchas” of the CEO job.



[1] The CEOs don’t help the problem. Many of my CEO clients highlight the value of honest feedback from their coach. Yet they complain about employees who disagree with them, just don’t “get it” or don’t have enough information “to understand the real issues.” In a coaching call, they can hear feedback and consider it. At work, they treat disagreement as dissension, and then wonder why everyone’s a “Yes man.” back

[2] There are dozens of team effectiveness surveys. You can start by checking out http://www.cambriaconsulting.com, http://www.ccl.org, and http://www.pfeiffer.com. back

This article was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 5:25 pm and is filed under CEO, Leadership.

Friday, October 17, 2003

Making the jump from workhorse to leader
Boston Business Journal - by Stever Robbins

Your company is growing. You've now got a staff to do the work you used to do yourself, but you've been the company workhorse for so long you don't know how to steer the reins or drive the team.

While you will always have work you need to produce and manage yourself, it's your ability to delegate responsibility and lead others that contributes most to your company's long-term success. Becoming an entrepreneurial leader isn't easy, but these four steps will help:

1. Provide direction for people at the company.

Providing direction is the heart of leadership. Call it vision, strategy, mission or whatever. What's important is that you know your company's direction and communicate it relentlessly. Know the customer you serve and how you make their world better. Then make sure everyone in your company shares lives, eats and breathes that knowledge.

Direction is just before-the-fact decision-making. With direction, you can trust people to move the company forward without involving you at every step. Knowing the market, they can determine which alliances to pursue and what distribution will lead to success. Understanding the value your company provides, they can sift through opportunities and pursue those that will lead to prosperity.

2. Become a walking model of your desired values.

In a one-room shop, people know right from wrong by picking up cues from everyone else. But growth means more decisions are being made, often with conflicting ideas about what are, and aren't, priorities.

Leaders must set values. This means providing employees with answers to such essential questions as "What's important?" "What isn't?" and "How should trade-offs be settled?" But it also means living out those values. Because people watch actions, not words, leaders need to practice what they preach.

The CEO of a software company was famous for shipping products of dubious quality to make his quarterly numbers. He announced to a room of grateful employees that going forward, quality was No. 1. Two weeks later, he OK'd the shipment of a product known to be defective, just to hit a market opportunity. His actions said eloquently that quality just didn't matter.

3. Be consistent with your direction and your values.

Young companies are famous for being nimble and navigating changing markets. But after a couple of years, people start to burn out -- they begin looking for stability, and leaders can provide that, even when the outside world is chaos.

Leaders must bring stability to their vision and values. It's tricky to be stable and still respond to change, but too much change makes a leader look wishy-washy and fickle.

The good news is that keeping consistent values is easy. Values manifest in our choices and behavior. They rarely change over time and require no conscious thought. As long as your espoused values match your actions, consistency will be easy.

The bad news is that consistent direction in a changing world is damn hard. One solution is choosing a direction general enough to allow flexibility while still providing guidance. An architectural firm whose vision is "We design the world's best postmodern auditoriums" is asking for trouble. Styles change, and someday post-postmodern will be in. A more flexible vision could still provide strong direction: "We design physical spaces to help unite communities."

4. Connect strongly with people.

As organizations get bigger, people have less and less direct contact with the original team, vision and energy. New hires have a more "9 to 5" mentality, where commitment is shallow at best. Leaders must start going into the organization and truly connecting with the staff. This isn't about physical connection; you don't have to be out there giving them back rubs. You need to create an emotional connection to build a strong organization.

You create emotional connections many ways. One way is through shared values. If you have strong values and live them, hiring people who share those values will start the connection forming. You can also spend time understanding what people are good at and arranging moments for them to shine. Far from needing money to be motivated, most people welcome the freedom to show off what they can do best. Your job is to provide them with the forum and the opportunity.

STEVER ROBBINS is the founder and president of LeadershipDecisionworks Inc., a Cambridge-based training and consulting firm.










http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2003/10/20/smallb3.html

What do CEOs do? A CEO Job Description.
Responsibility, duty, and all that…
Part 1: A CEO Job Description
Part 2: Measuring Success as a CEO
Part 3: Pitfalls and solutions for the CEO
Part 4: Coaching tips to stay sane and skillful at the top of the heap.

Related podcast "What is a CEO's job?"

Related article The Executive Mind-Set

Related book on business leadership, It Takes a Lot More than Attitude...to Lead a Stellar Organization.

This essay is written using “she” to refer to CEOs. There is no deep agenda hiding here. I’m in the business of helping people think outside the box, and gender is an obvious place to start.

Admit it. We all feel a touch of awe when someone has it: the CEO title. The power, the salary, and the chance to Be The Boss. It’s worthy of awe!

Too bad so few CEOs are good at what they do. In fact, only 1 in 20 are in the top 5%[1]. Many don’t know what their job should be, and few of those can pull it off well. The job is simple—very simple. But it’s not easy at all. What is a CEO's job?

More than with any other job, the responsibilities of a CEO diverge from the duties and the measurement.

A CEO’s responsibilities: everything, especially in a startup. The CEO is responsible for the success or failure of the company. Operations, marketing, strategy, financing, creation of company culture, human resources, hiring, firing, compliance with safety regulations, sales, PR, etc.—it all falls on the CEO’s shoulders..

The CEO’s duties are what she actually does, the responsibilies she doesn’t delegate. Some things can’t be delegated. Creating culture, building the senior management team, financing road shows, and, indeed, the delegation itself can be done only by the CEO.

Many start-up CEOs think fund-raising is their most important duty. I disagree. Fund-raising is necessary, but the CEOs contribution is in building a superb business with the money raised.

What is the CEO’s main duty? Setting strategy and vision. The senior management team can help develop strategy. Investors can approve a business plan. But the CEO ultimately sets the direction. Which markets will the company enter? Against which competitors? With what product lines? How will the company differentiate itself? The CEO decides, sets budgets, forms partnerships, and hires a team to steer the company accordingly.

The CEO’s second duty is building culture. Work gets done through people, and people are profoundly affected by culture. A lousy place to work can drive away high performers. After all, they have their pick of places to work. And a great place to work can attract and retain the very best.

Culture is built in dozens of ways, and the CEO sets the tone. Her every action—or inaction—sends cultural messages (see “Life Under a Magnifying Glass”). Clothes send signals about how formal the workplace is. Who she talks to signals who is and isn’t important. How she treats mistakes (feedback or failure?) sends signals about risk-taking. Who she fires, what she puts up with, and what she rewards shape the culture powerfully.

A project team worked weekends launching a multimedia web site on a tight deadline. Their CEO was on holiday when the site launched. She didn’t call to congratulate the team. To her, it was a matter of keeping her personal life sacred. To the team, it was a message that her personal life was more important than the weekends and evenings they had put in to meet the deadline. Next time, they may not work quite so hard. The emotion and effect on the culture was real, even if it wasn’t what the CEO intended. Congratulations from the CEO on a job well done can motivate a team like nothing else. Silence can demotivate just as quickly.

Team-building is the CEO’s #3 duty. The CEO hires, fires, and leads the senior management team. They, in turn, hire, fire, and lead the rest of the organization.

The CEO must be able to hire and fire non-performers. She must resolve differences between senior team members, and keep them working together in a common direction. She sets direction by communicating the strategy and vision of where the company is going. Strategy sets a direction. With clear direction, the team can rally together and make it happen.

Don’t underestimate the power of setting direction. In 1991, at Intuit’s new employee orientation, CEO Scott Cook presented his vision of Intuit as the center of computerized personal finance. Intuit had just 120 employees and one product. Ten years later, it’s a billion-dollar company with thousands of employees and dozens of products. Worldwide, it is the winner in personal finance, bar none. The success is due in no small part to every Intuit employee knowing and sharing the company’s vision and strategy.

If vision is where the company is going, values tell how the company gets there. Values outline acceptable behavior. The CEO conveys values through actions and reactions to others. Slipping a ship schedule to meet quality levels sends a message of valuing quality. Not over-celebrating a team’s heroic recovery when they could have avoided a problem altogether sends a message about prevention versus damage control. People take their cues about interpersonal values—trust, honesty, openness—from CEO’s actions as well.

Capital allocation is the CEO’s #4 duty. The CEO sets budgets within the firm. She funds projects which support the strategy, and ramps down projects which lose money or don’t support the strategy. She considers carefully the company’s major expenditures, and manages the firm’s capital. If the company can’t use each dollar raised from investors to produce at least $1 of shareholder value, she decides when to return money to the investors. Some CEOs don’t consider themselves financial people, but at the end of the day, it is their decisions that determine the company’s financial fate.


Footnotes for Part 1

[1] Pay no attention to the math background peeking from behind the curtain… back
Measuring Success as a CEO.

Knowing the job description is a good first step for a CEO, but to know how she’s doing, she needs to design her own measurement system.

Unlike inconvenient lower-level jobs, no one tells the Chief Executive how she’s doing. Do managers let her know she’s undermining their authority, making poor decisions, or communicating poorly? Not likely. Even when a CEO asks for honest feedback, the fear is there: non-flattering feedback may stall a promising career[1]. Even when a company uses 360-degree feedback, no one penalizes the CEO if she doesn’t act on the feedback.

The Board of Directors supposedly oversees the CEO, but they are far removed from day-to-day actions. Over time, they can evaluate performance, but they look mainly at share price and company strategy. They are rarely interested in—(or qualified to comment on!)—the CEO’s daily behavior.

But the CEO’s daily behavior will make or break the company! The CEO’s duties don’t change because they are unmeasured. Indeed, lax measurement makes it easy for the CEO to feel confident, even when she shouldn’t. Good feedback is the only way to know what’s working, but share price simply doesn’t do it. External measures measure the company, not the link between the CEO’s actions. A low share price tells her something’s wrong, but it doesn’t help her figure out what.

By measuring her performance based on her duties, a CEO can learn to do her job better. As explained in part 1, the CEO’s job is setting strategy and vision, building culture, leading the senior team, and allocating capital. The last of these is easy to measure. The first three are more of a challenge.

How does a CEO know she’s doing the vision thing? It’s hard. Having vision isn’t enough—that just takes a handful of mushrooms and a vision quest. Communicating the vision is the key. When people “get it,” they know how their daily job supports the vision. If they can’t link their job to the vision, that tells a CEO that her communication is faulty, or she hasn’t helped her managers turn the vision into actual tasks. Either way, a CEO can monitor her success as a visionary by questioning and listening for employees to link their jobs with the company vision.

Culture building is subtle, the culture a CEO sees may be very different from the culture of the rank-and-file. One company had a facilities policy that all equipment within 450 feet of the senior management offices was kept in top working order. Senior managers saw a smoothly running company, while everyone else saw neglect and carelessness.

Surveys about openness, values, and morale can be used to develop a measure of culture. The questions to ask aren’t rocket science. The book First, Break all the Rules gives a great questionnaire for measuring overall culture. Also, check turnover. When 95% of your workforce says they can’t wait to get to work, something is going right. If people rarely leave, and if it’s easy to attract top talent at below-market prices, you can be sure the culture plays a large role. If people leave (especially your top performers), again—look to culture. And don’t underestimate the power of walking around and counting smiles. If people are having fun, it will show.

The CEO’s success at team-building can often be measured through the team. Teams usually know when they’re effective. They can also rate their team using assessments that measure specific behaviors. For example, “I can trust my teammates.” “My teammates deliver their part of the project on time.” “Every member knows what is expected of them.” Regular team self-assessments can help the CEO track the team’s progress and hone her abilities to keep the team running smoothly[2].

Easiest to measure is a CEO’s capital allocation skill. In fact, financial measures are the ones made public: earnings and share price. But how can a CEO link those to her actual decisions? Working with her CFO, a CEO can devise financial measures appropriate to her business. Sometimes traditional measures are most appropriate, such as economic value added or return on assets (for a capital-intensive company). Other times, the CEO may want to invent business-specific measures, such as return on training dollars, for a company which values state-of-the-art training for employees. By monitoring several such measures, a CEO learns to link her budget decisions with company outcomes. Ultimately, the CEO’s should be creating more than a dollar of value for every dollar invested in the company. Otherwise, her best bet is to return cash to the shareholders for them to invest in more productive vehicles.

In startups, earnings begin low to nonexistent, and share price is more about salesmanship and vision than earnings. So the CEO gets almost no useful feedback about her capital allocation wisdom. She doesn’t know whether a dollar spent on a slightly nicer-than-necessary copy machine is wasted or is a wise investment in a long-term. Careful attention to the design and tracking of financial measures can help her prepare for the transition to an earnings-driven company.

In his 1988 Annual Report, Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett included an excellent essay on CEO accountability. Click here to read Mr. Buffett’s observations on CEO measurement.



Footnotes for Part 2

[1] The CEOs don’t help the problem. Many of my CEO clients highlight the value of honest feedback from their coach. Yet they complain about employees who disagree with them, just don’t “get it” or don’t have enough information “to understand the real issues.” In a coaching call, they can hear feedback and consider it. At work, they treat disagreement as dissension, and then wonder why everyone’s a “Yes man.” back

[2] There are dozens of team effectiveness surveys. You can start by checking out http://www.cambriaconsulting.com, http://www.ccl.org, and http://www.pfeiffer.com. back

Pitfalls and Solutions for the CEO

A CEO can tank a company by not understanding their duties, or failing to set up good measurement systems. But it’s also true that the job itself can screw up the person, as well. It’s said that power corrupts, and few positions are more powerful than CEO. While the USA may be a democracy, our companies are legal dictatorships with the CEO calling the shots(1). While she may be having a great time playing Boss, the position may be taking a very human toll.

It’s all too easy for the CEO to become a … jerk(2) … without realizing it. They can forget—if they ever knew—what it was like to have a boss. They are free to ignore feedback that they don’t want to hear, and no one will call them to task for it. They can bypass the chain of command when they want to meddle. They can give themselves raises and genuinely believe they deserve it. And most dreadfully, they can forget what it is like to be “one of the little people”:worker I have to leave early today.
CEO Why?
worker To pick up my kids from daycare.
CEO Oh… looks genuinely perplexed … Why
don’t you have your nanny do that?
worker I don’t have a nanny.
CEO Oh… wanders away with a mildly confused expression


The worker was an incredibly productive person. She worked harder than the CEO, got more done, yet couldn’t have afforded a nanny if her life depended on it. The CEO didn’t intend to be a jerk, but his lack of empathy didn’t win many supporters.
A CEO can become arrogant by externalizing blame

Having no day-to-day accountability for her actions can also turn a CEO sour. When things go wrong, she can blame everyone around her without facing her own shortcomings. “My employees just don’t get it,” proclaims the CEO, never thinking for a moment that she is the one who hired them. Did she hire incompetents? Or has she failed to communicate goals consistently and clearly? “Market conditions have changed.” she declares. A nice excuse, but isn’t it the CEO’s job to anticipate the market and position the company for success under a variety of scenarios? Without someone to keep her honest, she can gradually absolve herself of all responsibility.
Believing in a title can lead to overconfidence

Arrogance also threatens a CEO. “Because I am CEO, I must know the business better than anyone else.” It has been said, but it just isn’t true. No CEO can be an expert in all functional areas. A CEO who is doing her job is spending time with the big picture. If she knows the details better than her employees, she’s either hiring the wrong people or spending her time at the wrong levels of the organization. It’s appropriate for a CEO to manage operations if absolutely necessary, but she should quickly hire good operational managers and return to leading the whole business.

If she also comes to believe that the CEO title grants infallibility, watch out. Even the Pope is only infallible a couple of times each century. But CEOs can reinforce their delusions of grandeur by giving themselves higher salaries (surely she deserves it! After all, salary benchmarks show how underpaid she is) and more perks. Then when layoffs come, the CEO wants applause for having the moral strength to make “hard choices,” quietly overlooking how her own poor decision making led to the need for layoffs.
CEOs can stop learning well

Of course, once infallible, there’s no more to learn, and a CEO may quietly stop learning. Without daily oversight and high quality feedback on how she does her job, she can mistakenly believe her actions lead to success. In reality, she may be doing the wrong thing, but her staff may be working around the clock to cover for her.

Furthermore, sins of omission aren’t penalized. A CEO who does an adequate job, but far less than she could/should have done—goes unnoticed. In hindsight, XYZ Software(3) could have had a $1 billion market niche, and gone public with a valuation of tens of billions. Instead, it stuck to one product, had little understanding of its markets, and ignored competition. Yet it still went public in a $300-million IPO. Was management penalized for a lack of vision and market responsiveness? Hardly! The top managers walked off with $60 million apiece, reinforcing the notion that they had done a great job. Yet with a slightly grander vision, the company might have been 10 or 100 times its size.

Setting vision is the CEO’s job, but nothing tells her if her sights are too low. She isn’t penalized for missing the grander vision. Such sins of omissions are a CEO’s worst enemy. She can be lulled into mediocrity by not knowing what would have been possible. The four-minute mile was considered impossible…until Roger Bannister ran it. Now, it’s commonplace. Likewise, a CEO may limit herself by not realizing she can do her job better.

Though salary benchmarks are common, performance benchmarks are surprisingly rare. Quality learning demands a CEO benchmark herself against other superb CEO’s. Her central learning question is not “are you doing a good job?” but “are other CEOs doing a better job and if so, how can you learn to measure up?(4)”


Footnotes for part 3

(1) Ok, ok. Technically the Board of Directors has hire/fire authority over the CEO, but the Board can’t control day-to-day operations. And while there are certainly boards that replace inept CEOs, it takes sustained incompetence over a long time to move a board to action. So for practical purposes, the buck stops with the CEO. back

(2) Her employees may use less diplomatic terms. back

(3) Names are changed to protect the innocent. back

(4) An excellent book on management best practices is “First, Break All the Rules” available by clicking here to go to the books page. back

Coaching tips to stay sane and skillful at the top of the heap.

These coaching assignments will help an executive avoid some of the pitfalls of the CEO job. They are simple, easy, and won’t take much time. They’ll help a CEO stay connected with workers, keep herself humble, and increase her learning while becoming more successful. The suggestions strive to be quick and easy to do, while still producing real results.
Make Space to Practice These Assignments

Set aside 5 to 10 minutes, daily, to developing as a leader and human being. This will be the time you think about the below topics and set your mind for the day. Schedule the time if necessary. Just make sure that you do what’s right for your growth.

Pace yourself. Life is long. Adopt these suggestions one or two at a time, and practice until you make them your own. Then move on. Forcing won’t help; this is about developing at your own natural rhythm. Do one assignment for a few weeks, then move on to another. Keep the ones that work for you and drop those that don’t.
Staying connected with “the little people”

Cultivate an attitude of respect—your respect for them. The “little people” are the ones turning your vision into reality. Meditate on this for a few minutes and ask yourself whether you can their jobs as well as they can. If you can, then you’re not hiring the right people—go change that! Otherwise, once a day, go talk to one of your low-level employees—someone more capable than you in their area of expertise—and learn from them. Choose a different person each day. Get as close to the front line workers as possible.

Listen with an open mind and learn. Learn about their job. Ask what works for them and what doesn’t. Above all, listen to their comments without judgment. Your goal is to connect with their experience of the world, not impose your own. Learn about their life. Find out what motivates them. Why did they come work for you instead of somewhere else? Simply by spending a few minutes understanding their life, you can greatly increase your appreciation of how they’re different (and similar!).

Share your vision and job with them, from a position of service. Pretend that your job is to make this person a success. Ask them how their job fits into the work the company does. If they don’t know, take on the responsibility of helping them understand how their job links to the vision. Clarify any confusion they may have about where the company is going. And ask them what you can do to help them succeed at doing their best. Then do it.
Staying humble

Acknowledge, often! Without your employees, your dreams and plans wouldn’t amount to much. Take every available opportunity to acknowledge the contribution of those around you and give them credit, especially in public. Feedback is rare in most companies, and positive feedback is rarest of all(1).

“Get” that it’s all your responsibility. When things don’t go the way you want, take responsibility—whether or not it’s your fault. The mindset of responsibility will put you in a much more powerful place than the mindset of blame. Regularly review circumstances asking, ”What could I do differently (or stop doing) to make a positive difference?” Identify the action and then take it. You’ll be surprised how much more power you have over externalities, operating from responsibility rather than blame.

Gather honest advisors to held you accountable for your behavior. Sometimes a Board of Directors will give honest feedback, but they are removed from your day-to-day behavior. Actively solicit feedback from third parties: friends, peers, associates. Share your issues and how you’re handling them, and ask for an honest assessment. Everyone in a comany is accountable to someone for their behavior, except the CEO. Make yourself accountable as best you can.

Identify your limits. Ask, “can someone else in the world do my job better than I am currently doing it?” If the answer is Yes, seek out that person and ask for their guidance in getting better. If the answer is No, validate that answer by asking your advisors, competitors, suppliers, customers, and employees. Many companies have crashed and burn because they believe they were the best, for no good reason but pride and ego.

Create measurable performance criteria for your executive team, including yourself. Make sure people within the organization know your goals, and know what you can be counted on to do. Hold yourselves accountable. If you don’t meet your goals, withhold your bonus, take no raise, and treat yourself exactly as you would treat an employee who missed their targets. It sends a powerful message to the company than you’re serious about performance.

Ask your direct reports, your Board of Directors, and anyone else you work with for feedback a couple of times a year. You can use a 360-degree feedback process or simply ask in an e-mail. It’s a lot easier to hear feedback on your performance if you’ve explicitly asked for it.

Videotape yourself receiving bad news. Watch the videotape and decide whether or not you would want to work for that person. If the answer is No, learn to chill when you hear bad news.
Learning well

Study excellent CEOs. Call a CEO you admire and invite them to lunch. Exchange tips and adopt tactics that others have found useful. Read books like First, Break All the Rules, which are broad-based studies of habits of top-performers. Adopt at least one new habit a month.

Create systems for gathering feedback. Interview customers, competitors, analysts, and others in your industry to know how your company and products are perceived. Make sure you’re gathering feedback that will disconfirm your beliefs about the world, as much as confirms it. For example, if you think you’re #1 in your market, don’t just ask customers why they like your products. Ask what other products they use, and how your products fall short.

Spend time learning about the fundamentals of a CEO’s job:
Setting strategy. The strategy and vision for the company determine where everyone will focus their efforts. Find a vision and strategy and use it to align your entire company.
Creating the corporate culture. Your culture will determine what people do and don’t try, who will stay, who will leave, and how business will get done. Culture starts with you. Decide how you want people to act and start modeling the behavior publicly.
Capital allocation. Every dollar you raise and spend should produce more than $1 of return for the company, or it’s a waste of money. Learn how to make these judgements.
Hiring and Firing. The job of executives is primarily team and culture building. Hiring and firing are must-have skills. Read, take classes, and review past hiring successes and mistakes. Do whatever you can to hone your abilities.
Raise the Bar

Hold yourself to higher standards next year than you did this year. Challenge yourself to learn to get more done with fewer hours and fewer resources while creating a more balanced life for yourself.

These are just a few of the things you can do to increase your chances for success as a senior executive. I also believe in working with a coach to identify and overcome (or compensate for) blocks in your performance. Success can be had with many different skill sets. The more you learn about yourself and your capabilities, the better you will be able to shape a job that works for you. The more you learn about the capabilities of those around you, the better you will be able to build teams that produce spectacular results.
Do Great Things!


Footnotes for Part 4

(1) Social psychology has shown that rewarding desired behavior is far more effective than punishing bad behavior or non-performance. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, our culture has evolved around using punishment as the main way of controlling behavior. Unfortunately, punishment doesn’t work very well. Interestingly, animal trainers have known this for years. For an excellent book on the subject, check out Don’t Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor. back

Further Reading

You may also enjoy the article The Executive Mind-Set and my book on business leadership, It Takes a Lot More than Attitude...to Lead a

From hrleaders.org

Ten Tips to Move Up When Everything Is Going Down

When economic concerns become a lead topic at the water cooler you know it's weighing on everyone's minds. It's true there hasn't been this much reason for economic concern in most of the working lives of most HR leaders, so we went to those who had been working since the 70's - and even some since the 60's to get their advice. Here are the top ten:

1. Things are never as bad as they seem. (They're never as good either.)

2. Accept uncertainty and help the organization to accept uncertainty.

3. Recognize and ignore what you can't change or do; focus on what you can change and do.

4. Tough times are the best times to embrace new challenges and learning.

5. Focus on the fundamentals - they matter in tough times more than in good.

6. Don't stop measuring - to make optimum decisions and to document your own contributions.

7. Ever wish you had been the calm, cool and collected person in the midst of a challenge? Now's the time to be that way.

8. Tough times offer HR a great opportunity. Instead of being the "bad news administrators" HR should be a proactive value creator for employees and management.

9. This will pass, the good we do in bad times will provide geometric returns in good.
10. Open additional communication channels by spending more time with employees and starting or expanding programs such as weekly brown bag lunches with HR.



Whatever the future brings, we here at HRLeaders will be here to help you with your mission, objectives and metrics.

Have more wisdom you think should be imparted on the next generation of HR? Send it along and I'll post a list to the site next week.


Leadership Quote

“Leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future.”
— Edwin H. Friedman

HR as Product: Be the Brand of Choice

From Judith Brown*
Rethink Your Role as a Human Resources Department

It is time for Human Resources practitioners to rethink their role and that of the HR department, not only for the purposes of contributing to the organization's bottom line, but also for their own survival.

HR continues to balance the demands of several different roles: business partner, internal consultant, operational and administrative expert and both employee and employer advocate. This may sound like business as usual, roles that aren’t likely to create a mad rush of HR people arming themselves for the future.

In reality, however, they are new. Although the questions may be the same, the answers most assuredly are not. The ongoing challenge is to establish new deliverables and to sustain strong partnerships with both internal and external customers. The ability to see the big picture-and to deploy the resources to address the big picture-will be more important than ever.
Determine Your HR Department's Current Reputation and Brand
If you were to ask your employees today, "What does the HR Department do?" would they mutter something unintelligible to you and make a run for it? If that is the case, your human resources department needs to rethink its role and do some in-house marketing, marketing research and public relations.

First, you need to ask yourself some important questions:
Do you know what your HR department's reputation is among the employees? When HR is mentioned, do managers picture savvy strategists, backward bureaucrats, or pleasant, people-pleasers?

Do employees understand and appreciate the importance of the HR department in furthering the organization's mission and objectives?

Does the HR department make an effort to market its services to the organization? If it does not, then it has the reputation it deserves. You can, however, easily correct this reputation.

Talk to Employees to Learn the HR Department Reputation and Brand
The key is to open up conversations with all levels of employees, and present yourself in the role of facilitator instead of enforcer. You have to get out of the HR office and into the world of your organization’s employees. Finding these answers requires dialogue, which means that HR must communicate. That communication must consist of equal parts of listening and promotion.

First, HR must listen carefully to what its customers need. Then it must promote what it has done and can do. HR staff must educate the organization about its capabilities and potential contributions. No one knows your capabilities as well as you do.

Employees, for the most part, still see HR as "those people who handle benefits and do interviewing." To position the HR function for the next decades, every HR practitioner needs to take on a public relations role-starting with your own employees. Think of yourself as a product and do some smart marketing.

The marketing of the HR department requires you to demonstrate your problem-solving skills, so others will know you do much more than simply process papers. The best form of advertising is the actions you take. By your actions, processes and programs, you can promote the HR department as a flexible, adaptable, solutions-oriented partner, a resource to whom the organization can turn when it needs problems solved.

Your HR department can be something that helps your organization when it needs help. To make your HR department even more beneficial, read about tips for HR image, repuation, and brand.


Tips for the Human Resources Department Image, Reputation, and Brand

According to Shari Caudron in her article Brand HR: Why and How to Market Your Image, "If you want HR to be perceived as more strategic, more valuable, more credible, more whatever, you need to start thinking like a business with a product and market your overall brand image."

As organizations continue to outsource non-value-added activities, HR is facing competition from outside vendors. If HR practitioners do not strive to build up the profession's overall image and reputation, they will lose services to organizations that understand what customer service and accountability are all about. These are Caudron’s eight great tips for building and enhancing the HR department's image and reputation.
Market Your HR Department's Reputation and Brand

Identify your customer's needs and perceptions.

The first step in creating or enhancing a brand identity is to determine who your customers are and what they need from the HR function. You will also want to know your customers’ current perceptions of the HR department.

Begin this process by identifying your customers. Are your primary customers executive managers, line managers or the entire workforce? What products and services do they use from HR? What would they like to receive from HR? Do they use HR services from outside HR vendors, and if so, why? How do they perceive the internal HR department?

HR departments could conduct employee attitude surveys to obtain answers to these questions, but to get truthful and more useful information, Caudron suggests it is worthwhile to hire an outside consultant to conduct the interviews in private. She states that "employees would more likely state their true feelings about HR if they are guaranteed anonymity."

It is important to conduct this type of analysis, to understand the difference between what you are providing and think your organization wants from you, and what they say they need. In today's organizations, there are so many perceptions about what role HR should play. HR conducts so many activities: training, recruitment, personal welfare, salary and bonus, and a whole range of other concerns, that "HR brand" development is challenging. In order to correct this, HR practitioners must research their current "brand" to figure out where they stand.


Craft an identity based on customer needs.

Caudron says that after you determine the needs and current perceptions of your existing customers, you can decide how you would like your customers to perceive the HR department. It is important to note that the function of the HR department will differ from organization to organization. In one organization, internal customers may want the HR department to provide great service in all of the traditional HR areas.

In others, customers may expect HR to take responsibility for productivity and growth. You have to decide what "brand" identity works best for your particular culture and then work to create a mission statement and organization that supports that identity.

As another example, in your organization, it may make sense to outsource routine tasks such as payroll processing so that the remaining HR staff can concentrate on more strategic matters. To achieve a solid brand identity, you cannot be all things to all people. You can try, but you will fail in the eyes of significant numbers of your customers.


Develop a mission statement that resonates with meeting customer needs.]

Having determined your identity, Caudron suggests taking the time to design a mission statement that will guide you through the changes and improvements that you need to make. The mission statement should define the HR function, the values and core principles the department will uphold, and the benefit HR expects to provide to the rest of the organization.

For example, the Los Angeles County HR Department's mission statement follows:

"To provide a human resources program that carries out Board priorities for a comprehensive and equitable County personnel system;

To assist departments in developing and maintaining a high quality workforce, enabling them to provide critical services to the public;

To establish Countywide policies and provide monitoring and oversight necessary to ensure consistent application of human resource policies, including recruitment, selection, promotions, training, discipline, employee benefits administration, workforce reductions, classification, compensation, employee appeals and disability benefits; and

To ensure fair and equitable job and promotional opportunities and services for both current employees and individuals seeking employment with the County of Los Angeles."

It is important to have a mission statement as it helps define your future goals and direction. The mission should not be empty rhetoric. It is a charter that outlines the HR pledge to the rest of the organization.

Read even more tips about building the HR department reputation and brand.

More Tips for the Human Resources Department Image, Reputation, and Brand

Deliver your promises.
Supposing, based on your customer input, the HR department needs to improve its customer service and supportiveness. This might require hiring more employees, empowering the receptionist to make decisions, or conducting team-building sessions. Customers want you to be more responsive.

Caudron recommends that since forging your new identity means delivering a promise, you must ensure that the staff, practices and systems in your department all work to support the goal of customer service. Staff your department with people who are easy to work with and who who are willing go the extra mile for line managers. Deliver what you promise in your mission statement.


Update your image.
Few consumer products are packaged without a distinctive logo and type of packaging. Can you imagine mistaking a can of Pepsi for a can of Coca-Cola? A bottle of Coors for a Bud Light? These companies understand that the look of their products communicates powerful messages to consumers.

The same applies to HR. If your HR department has made substantial improvements and changes, then you can use the packaging as a means of communicating those improvements to others. Develop a separate logo for your HR department, if you’d like, that expresses your mission, your commitment to customers, and your goals. The most important packaging piece, however, is the HR department itself.

If you want your HR brand to deliver the message of quality service, ensure that visitors to the department get what they need, with no hassle, friction, or needless hoops to navigate. You can spend millions of dollars redesigning your department and developing a logo, but if the people in HR are impossible to deal with, you have accomplished nothing in the eyes of your organization.


Spread the word.
After you have determined your identity, created a system in which you can consistently deliver on your promises, and packaged the HR department in a manner that conveys improvements, Caudron suggests it is time to "toot your horn."

For example, if you want human resources perceived as a strategic partner, take the time to quantify the strategic impact of a recent HR program or decision. Communicate this impact in board meetings, through your organization's newsletter, your web site or Intranet, or by developing special HR performance reports. The key objective, for positive notoriety, is to back up the overall message with hard data and specific success stories.


Enhance your visibility.
Another good marketing technique for HR, not only inside your organization, but also to the human resources world at large, is to publish articles in magazines and speak at HR seminars or conferences. This validates the internal changes you have madeand may capture the attention and interest of your management group.

You can heighten this visibility within your organization by including the program-specific managers and employees in the article or at the conference podium with you. Professionals love hearing from "real people" and they will spread the good word for you in your organization.


Continuously improve. Keep on keeping on.
Just as in the business world, where companies have to continuously review, revisit, and update their brands to meet customers' changing needs, so this advice applies to HR.

In the rapidly changing world of business, the HR profession must regularly be willing to make tough decisions about what it will and will not stand for. Every HR professional can craft initiatives using the same toolbox. The best will try new things, challenge conventional wisdom, and ask more questions more often.

With careful attention to forging an identity, your HR department can learn to provide what your internal and external customers expect. Your organization will love you and your HR staff members will take their place as "players," making a difference in the real world of your organization. Your positive HR department brand and reputation will support all you want to achieve.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judith Brown is the Director of Research at the International Personnel Management Association (IPMA) in Alexandria, Virginia. Brown, who has her Masters degree in Human Resource Management, has been working in the HR Center at IPMA for 5 years. She enjoys traveling, reading mysteries, dancing and gardening. You can reach her at 703-549-7100 or visit their Website: International Personnel Management Association.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2192552/online-games-put-future

Online games groom future business leaders

Learning the principles of team management and dragon slaying
Ian Williams, vnunet.com 21 Jun 2007
ADVERTISEMENT

IBM claims that online video games are helping to groom future business leaders, teaching them the core skills needed to successfully lead a team.

Closely-knit teams working on long-term strategy in close quarters will be replaced by virtual teams that constantly reinvent the business in multiple time zones the world over, according to the report.

The research suggests that online games, specifically massively multiplayer online role playing games, train leaders to deal with the motivational, emotional and social needs of their fellows.

IBM partnered with Seriosity, a software company that develops enterprise products and services based on online games, together with researchers from Stanford University and MIT.

"If you want to see what business leadership may look like in three to five years, look at what is happening in online games," said Byron Reeves, professor of communication at Stanford, and co-founder of Seriosity.

The team analysed over 50 hours of online gameplay, surveying hundreds of gamers and conducting interviews with gaming industry insiders.

The objectives were to better understand how successful leaders behave in online games, and to determine the aspects of game environments that leaders use to be more effective.

The research showed that the transparent environments created in online games made leadership easier to assume, and that leadership in online games is more temporary and flexible than it is in the business world.

Online games also give leaders the freedom to fail and experiment with different approaches and techniques, something that any Fortune 500 company that hopes to innovate needs to understand, according to IBM.

Online gamers self-organise, develop skills and settle easily into various roles. Leaders emerge who are capable of recruiting, organising, motivating and directing large groups of players towards a common goal.

"These games mirror the business context more than you would assume," explained Professor Reeves.

"They presage one possible future for business, one that is open, virtual, knowledge-driven and comprised of a largely volunteer or at least transient workforce."

Gaming leaders are more comfortable with risk, accepting failure, and the resulting iterative improvement, as part of their reality.

Many of these leaders are able to make sense of disparate and constantly changing data, translating it all into a compelling vision, according to the study.

"You can never stop earning the right to be a leader," said Tom Cadwell, an MBA student at Kellogg School of Management and former employee at Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of World of Warcraft.

"You always have to be sensitive to the concerns of members, and you always have to sell the decisions you make. Goodwill from past successes does not last forever."

The report concludes that online gaming environments facilitate leadership through:
Project-oriented organisation
Multiple real-time sources of information on which to make decisions
Transparent skills and competencies among co-players
Transparent incentive systems
Multiple and purpose-specific communications mediums

Full details of IBM's research can be found in two PDF reports:
Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders: Online games put the future of business leadership on display
Leadership in a distributed world: Lessons from online gaming

The Mid-Life Challenge: Make a Plan to Re-ignite Career Passion

From Craig Nathanson
Take Stock of Your Career Passion to Target a Career Change and a Career Search

Nobody will stop you in the hallway at work to ask if your career provides meaning and personal fulfillment. Recognizing that something’s missing in your career and vocational life and taking the initiative to change must come from within.

Serena Williamson found a way to turn her passion — helping writers hone their skills in order to get published — into the catalyst for a new, more fulfilling life. Serena now runs her own small publishing house.

Software engineer Bonnie Vining needed a new career that would value her warm personality, not suppress it. So she left the high-tech world and opened Javalina’s Coffee and Friends.

After Anita Flegg lost her engineering job, she embarked on a program of self-improvement. The journey led to personal discoveries and her calling: She provides information and support to those who, like her, suffer from hypoglycemia.

I have found that many high achievers who lose enthusiasm for their work share common traits:
Their work has little connection to the things they really care about. Work is a barrier rather than a path to fulfillment.


While they may be doing something they’re good at, it isn’t something they want to do. Unfulfilled professionals haven’t taken time to align their abilities with their interests.


They have never made a long-term plan to guide them toward a more fulfilling vocational life. They tend to set short-term goals, or set no goals at all.


As they reach mid-life and understand the need for meaning, they turn to their current workplace as a source of what’s missing. Most organizations, though, are structurally incapable of providing nourishment for the soul. So the mid-life employee’s frustration grows.

Mid-lifers like Serena, Bonnie, and Anita take stock of their lives and careers. They develop a plan to re-ignite their energy and enthusiasm for work. The process involves a number of steps, but the common thread involves taking responsibility for making life changes. Read on to learn how.

HR as Product: Be the Brand of Choice

From Judith Brown*
Rethink Your Role as a Human Resources Department

It is time for Human Resources practitioners to rethink their role and that of the HR department, not only for the purposes of contributing to the organization's bottom line, but also for their own survival.

HR continues to balance the demands of several different roles: business partner, internal consultant, operational and administrative expert and both employee and employer advocate. This may sound like business as usual, roles that aren’t likely to create a mad rush of HR people arming themselves for the future.

In reality, however, they are new. Although the questions may be the same, the answers most assuredly are not. The ongoing challenge is to establish new deliverables and to sustain strong partnerships with both internal and external customers. The ability to see the big picture-and to deploy the resources to address the big picture-will be more important than ever.
Determine Your HR Department's Current Reputation and Brand
If you were to ask your employees today, "What does the HR Department do?" would they mutter something unintelligible to you and make a run for it? If that is the case, your human resources department needs to rethink its role and do some in-house marketing, marketing research and public relations.

First, you need to ask yourself some important questions:
Do you know what your HR department's reputation is among the employees? When HR is mentioned, do managers picture savvy strategists, backward bureaucrats, or pleasant, people-pleasers?

Do employees understand and appreciate the importance of the HR department in furthering the organization's mission and objectives?

Does the HR department make an effort to market its services to the organization? If it does not, then it has the reputation it deserves. You can, however, easily correct this reputation.

Talk to Employees to Learn the HR Department Reputation and Brand
The key is to open up conversations with all levels of employees, and present yourself in the role of facilitator instead of enforcer. You have to get out of the HR office and into the world of your organization’s employees. Finding these answers requires dialogue, which means that HR must communicate. That communication must consist of equal parts of listening and promotion.

First, HR must listen carefully to what its customers need. Then it must promote what it has done and can do. HR staff must educate the organization about its capabilities and potential contributions. No one knows your capabilities as well as you do.

Employees, for the most part, still see HR as "those people who handle benefits and do interviewing." To position the HR function for the next decades, every HR practitioner needs to take on a public relations role-starting with your own employees. Think of yourself as a product and do some smart marketing.

The marketing of the HR department requires you to demonstrate your problem-solving skills, so others will know you do much more than simply process papers. The best form of advertising is the actions you take. By your actions, processes and programs, you can promote the HR department as a flexible, adaptable, solutions-oriented partner, a resource to whom the organization can turn when it needs problems solved.

Your HR department can be something that helps your organization when it needs help. To make your HR department even more beneficial, read about tips for HR image, repuation, and brand.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Judith Brown is the Director of Research at the International Personnel Management Association (IPMA) in Alexandria, Virginia. Brown, who has her Masters degree in Human Resource Management, has been working in the HR Center at IPMA for 5 years. She enjoys traveling, reading mysteries, dancing and gardening. You can reach her at 703-549-7100 or visit their Website: International Personnel Management Association.

Leadership Development Embedded into Culture of Top Companies


The leadership practices of the world's top global companies are an inherent part of their organizational culture, and their development of future leaders represents their long-term investment in running the business.

"By having the right leadership practices and processes in place, maintaining a strict focus on critical talent at all levels, and having a continuous desire to improve, [they] have cultures that cultivate and nurture their talent, and a reputation for doing it well," says Bob Gandossy, principal and a global practice leader in Hewitt's Consulting business.

The firm's 2007 list of what it describes as "Global Top Companies for Leaders" — including Nokia Corporation, Procter & Gamble and General Electric — features other leading companies that have built leadership development into their DNA.

These companies have also invested in developing global pipelines of management talent backed by a commitment from their senior-most leaders to continue investing in the intellectual capital of their organizations.

Top global employers are also focusing on growth as they enter new international markets and capitalize on the effects of globalization. Hewitt found that nearly 70 percent of the Global Top Companies cite business growth as their single most pressing organizational challenge over the next three to five years.

Have You Talked to Your Chief People Officer Lately?

If you want the people in your organization to have long, productive tenures, you’ve got to consider how dramatically the workforce is changing and how you can apply lessons from consumer products to your objective of keeping them productive and profitable over much longer periods of time.
Published on: Wednesday, January 16, 2008

If you have, then you may have gotten an earful about why your company isn’t keeping its employees as long as you’d like.

If you haven’t, get ready for an earful!

Six key workforce trends are about to make a big impact on your company (if they haven’t already):

Shrinking pool of skilled labor
Changing family structures
More women entering the workforce than men
Men admitting to work-life “balance” problems and historic dissatisfaction levels
Generations X and Y placing equal value on work and home
New workplace technologies that work so well you’ve got to change

Men and women are equally fed-up about the choices they are forced to make to find success advancing the proverbial corporate ladder. How many more will continue to flee from the organizations to try and build lives that do have significance personally and professionally? Learn how to implement an elegant framework that considers the four dimensions of individual careers: Pace, Workload, Location and Role in your company by following our posts over the next few days and attending our first GrowingBusinessLink online learning program: Mass Career Customization.

Register at the Oracle Featured Resource Center and be sure to receive an invitation to this signature event featuring Cathy Benko, vice chairman and talent officer for Deloitte and architect of the firm’s own efforts at career customization across large groups of employees. She’ll share first-hand tips on how to build a framework that boosts recruitment and retention and offer insights on how your own career can benefit.

Mass Career Customization: Customizing Career Paths to Grow Critical Talent

If you had the opportunity to customize pace, workload, location/schedule, and role to match your lifecycle, would you? Let us know how you were able to match your work life to your real life.
Published on: Wednesday, January 23, 2008


What do you get when you combine: a shrinking pool of skilled labor; non-traditional family structures; an increasing number of women in the workforce; the changing expectations of men; the evolving needs of Generations X and Y; and the increasing impact of technology? You get an antiquated workplace model that can’t sustain itself.

What is the primary issue facing your organization in attracting and retaining talent?
Source: GrowingBusinessLink.com program, Mass Career Customization, 2008

Success Book ~ Million Dollar Habits

Excerpt from Million Dollar Habits written by Robert J. Ringer

Part Time Verses Full Time Self-Discipline
There’s a big difference being self-disciplined in a certain situation at a certain time and being a self-disciplined person. Being a self-disciplined person is what the self-discipline habit is all about. Anyone can display self-discipline on occasion, but to get consistently positive results takes consistency. It’s the day-in, day-out practice of self-discipline that determines where you’ll be at the end of the week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Remember, a lifetime is nothing more than an accumulation of years, months, weeks and days, and what takes place in those smaller increments of time will determine whether or not your life, on a whole, is successful. If you aspire to play in the big leagues, you must be prepared to play every point as though it were match point. In other words, you have to be constantly focused. Dabblers are rarely, if ever, successful. It’s when you focus totally, intensely and consistently on one project – a project that has the potential to yield a worthwhile payoff – that you have the greatest chance for success.

January 22, 2008

Business Humor ~ A Story About Everybody!

A Story About Everybody!

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Top Ten Habits of Lucky People

1. Lucky people know what they want, therefore it is easier to recognize when it crosses their path. This is also one of the basic laws of attraction.

2. Lucky people have a great sense of what they ‘don’t want”, so they don’t spend a lot of time focusing on or chasing low priority goals and aspirations.

3. Lucky people see the big picture and have the ability to see the forest through the trees.

4. Lucky people do not generalize. By not having preconceived ideas or generalizations, it allows them to see opportunities that are often closed off to others.

5. Lucky people are open to new things and ideas. The more experiences one has, the greater chance of “stumbling” across something new and exciting.

6. Lucky people consider themselves lucky! Have you ever know someone that is constantly talking about how ‘unlucky” they are? Well, it’s the same concept in reverse. If you tell yourself how lucky you are everyday, before long, it actually becomes your reality.

7. Lucky people work hard and are willing to “pay the price” for the things they want. Have you ever heard the quote, “the harder I work, the luckier I get”?

8. Lucky people are optimistic. Their glass is half full and they tend to see the upside and opportunities in the challenges that confront them.

9. Lucky people listen to their gut. While our instincts tend to be suppressed from non-use, the “lucky” people of the world not only follow their gut, but trust and rely on it every day.

10. Luck is a state of mind – so make your state the size of Texas!

-Jim

January 14, 2008

Anatomy of Leadership: Leadership Styles

Much has been written about leadership: rules, pointers, styles, and biographies of inspiring leaders throughout world history. But there are certain leadership ideas that we ourselves fail to recognize and realize in the course of reading books. Here is a short list of things you thought you knew about leadership.

Leaders come in different flavors

There are different types of leaders and you will probably encounter more than one type in your lifetime. Formal leaders are those we elect into positions or offices such as the senators, congressmen, and presidents of the local clubs. Informal leaders or those we look up to by virtue of their wisdom and experience such as in the case of the elders of a tribe, or our grandparents; or by virtue of their expertise and contribution on a given field such as Albert Einstein in the field of Theoretical Physics and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of the Arts. Both formal and informal leaders practice a combination of leadership styles.

• Lewin’s three basic leadership styles – authoritative, participative, and delegative

• Likert’s four leadership styles – exploitive authoritative, benevolent authoritative, consultative, and participative

• Goleman’s six emotional leadership styles - visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and commanding.

Leadership is a process of becoming

Although certain people seem to be born with innate leadership qualities, without the right environment and exposure, they may fail to develop their full potential. So like learning how to ride a bicycle, you can also learn how to become a leader and hone your leadership abilities. Knowledge on leadership theories and skills may be formally gained by enrolling in leadership seminars, workshops, and conferences. Daily interactions with people provide the opportunity to observe and practice leadership theories. Together, formal and informal learning will help you gain leadership attitudes, gain leadership insights, and thus furthering the cycle of learning. You do not become a leader in one day and just stop. Life-long learning is important in becoming a good leader for each day brings new experiences that put your knowledge, skills, and attitude to a test.

Leadership starts with you

The best way to develop leadership qualities is to apply it to your own life. As an adage goes “action speaks louder than words.” Leaders are always in the limelight. Keep in mind that your credibility as a leader depends much on your actions: your interaction with your family, friends, and co-workers; your way of managing your personal and organizational responsibilities; and even the way you talk with the newspaper vendor across the street. Repeated actions become habits. Habits in turn form a person’s character. Steven Covey’s book entitled 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides good insights on how you can achieve personal leadership.

Leadership is shared

Leadership is not the sole responsibility of one person, but rather a shared responsibility among members of an emerging team. A leader belongs to a group. Each member has responsibilities to fulfill. Formal leadership positions are merely added responsibilities aside from their responsibilities as members of the team. Effective leadership requires members to do their share of work. Starting as a mere group of individuals, members and leaders work towards the formation of an effective team. In this light, social interaction plays a major role in leadership. To learn how to work together requires a great deal of trust between and among leaders and members of an emerging team. Trust is built upon actions and not merely on words. When mutual respect exists, trust is fostered and confidence is built.

SuccessCo

Practical Advice for Small Company CEOs Going Global
By William J. Holstein

January 17th, 2008 @ 1:58 pm

Categories: Management, Entrepreneurialism, Strategy, Economy, Corporate Governance, Best Practices

Tags: CEO, Strategy, Team Management, Management, William J. Holstein

Say you’re the CEO of a company ranging from say $30 million to $250 million a year and you’ve never being able to figure out a way to go global. That’s unfortunate but not fatal. You still have time. And in view of what’s happening to the domestic U.S. economy, now would be a great time to start figuring out how to export or possibly even invest abroad. There’s huge demand in the world for the kinds of niche products that many American manufacturers make, ranging from water filtration systems to bolts to jet engines. Based on my years of reporting on the subject, here are my tips:

–It’s a mistake to simply hire a vice president for international, probably someone who is foreign-born or who has experience internationally. Some CEOs think that’s the answer but it’s not. The v.p. for international will go on a series of trips and rack up big expenses. He’ll come back from a trip and tell you that there’s a market for your products in, say, Germany, if only you’d customize them or adapt them in some way. That’s almost always necessary but the v.p. won’t have the clout within the organization to force it to move out of its U.S.-centric view and begin adapting to international markets. Only you, as CEO, can force your organization to respond to the international challenge. A v.p. might help; but don’t put all the burden on his or her shoulders.

–You should gear yourself up personally. That means taking the wife on a vacation to a couple of possible export destinations and meeting socially with people in your industry. It might mean going to a conference or industry association meeting in a foreign capital. You need to manage the relationships with your foreign customers from the strategic level.

–A corollary is that relationships are crucial. There’s not much future in on-off shipments of widgets to a customer in China or India. What you want is an ongoing relationship of trust. That’s the CEO’s job.

–In addition to perhaps having a v.p. of international, you should gradually build a management team that includes several non-Americans or else Americans who have had experience internationally with larger companies. The whole company needs to buy in to the challenge. I’ve seen many companies where the “domestic people” want to keep doing business just as they have been doing it, without taking any of the risks of going international. The “international people” lack the institutional clout to force real change. The result is stalemate.

–Take steps over time. Don’t make sudden plunges. And be willing to invest capital over a two or three year period before you expect to see a rate of return. International markets can be lucrative but they take time. This is another reason why the CEO has to be personally involved–it’s possible that your profit rate in the short-term will be reduced as you invest in the long term. Only a CEO can make that judgment.

What have your experiences been like in global markets?

The Wisdom of Deliberate Mistakes

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Paul J.H. Schoemaker, Robert E. Gunther


The Idea in Brief

If you're like most managers, you frown on mistakes--yours and others. Why? Your organization demands optimum performance. And it rewards you based on the height of your successes, not the depth of your learning from failures.

Yet mistakes--done right--accelerate learning, thereby enhancing competitiveness for your firm. Consider advertising pioneer David Ogilvy. In ad tests, Ogilvy deliberately included "mistake" ads he thought wouldn't work. Most of these "losers" bombed as expected. But a few succeeded--and they pointed to innovative approaches in the fickle world of advertising.

Mistakes are costly, so how do you extract profitable learning from them? Schoemaker and Gunther recommend first determining when to make mistakes. For example, the time is right when you need fresh approaches to a complex problem and the potential learning from a failure far outweighs the potential expense. Also know which mistakes to make. The most profitable failures are those that challenge your company's unquestioned assumptions, such as "Our clients buy on reputation; they have limited price sensitivity."

In today's volatile business environment, the strategic advantage goes to companies that learn faster than rivals. Failing often, fast, and cheap may be the best way for your company to take the lead.
The Idea in Practice

How to make mistakes that pay off? The authors provide these guidelines:
Know When to Make Mistakes

Consider making deliberate mistakes when:

Potential gain outweighs possible cost. Ogilvy's cost of running additional ads was fairly small compared to the value of identifying which ad strategies worked best.

Decisions are made repeatedly. Citibank examined a key assumption informing its consumer credit-risk assessments: college students, with high debts and no job, were terrible credit risks. The company decided to issue cards to students without requiring parents to co-sign. The "mistake" led to a valuable discovery: parents bailed out student cardholders when they couldn't pay, and many students ultimately became valuable long-term customers.

The environment changes dramatically. To learn faster about the increasingly fickle consumer market, Procter & Gamble systematically makes frequent deliberate mistakes. For example, it challenged its long-held assumption that successful innovations only come from inside by making the "mistake" of using outside partners to develop products, some of which became blockbusters like the SpinBrush.
Know Which Mistakes to Make

Use these steps to make profitable mistakes:

1. Identify your assumptions. List deeply held assumptions about core areas of your business.

A management consulting firm listed 10 long-held "axioms" about how to run its business, such as "Cold calling on Fortune 100 clients won't work" and "It's not worthwhile responding to RFPs, since these clients are usually price shopping."

2. Select assumptions for testing. Ask what you'd do differently if you knew an assumption was false. The greater the impact on your organization of discovering an erroneous assumption, the more valuable disputing it may be.

The consultancy decided its assumption about responding to RFPs was worth testing--in part because discovering they were wrong to ignore RFPs could unleash a significant new revenue stream.

3. Create mistake strategies. The consultancy decided to respond to an RFP from a regional electric utility with an elaborate, customized, and high-priced proposal.

4. Execute the mistake. The proposal won the consultancy an invitation from the utility to explore several projects. The resulting work amounted to more than $1 million of additional consulting revenues.

5. Learn from the mistake. The consultancy now looks at new RFPs through a fresh lens and responds to RFPs it would have ignored before.

Copyright 2006 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Six Keys to Better Communication and Better Financial Performance
By Jessica Stillman

December 5th, 2007 @ 10:05 am

Categories: General, Management, Research

Tags: Financial, Manager, Financial Accounting, Leadership, Branding, Strategy, Finance, Management, Marketing, Jessica Stillman

Our recent post centered on a Harvard Business Review IdeaCast about what skills managers were missing got a lot of attention. Managers, it seems, want to know what’s more important–soft communication skills or more hard-hosed traits like perseverance? Global Consulting firm Watson Wyatt weighed in yesterday with its 2007/2008 Communication ROI study. It found:

“Companies with the most effective communication programs had a 47 percent higher total return to shareholders from 2002 to 2006, compared with companies that communicate least effectively.”

Nothing spurs managers to action like an opportunity to improve the bottom line, but what exactly should you do to reap the benefits of improved communication? Watson Wyatt laid out six key practices of high performing companies:

Focusing managers and other employees on customer needs
Engaging employees in running the business
Helping managers communicate effectively
Leveraging the talents of internal communicators to manage change effectively
Measuring the impact of employee communication
Branding the employee experience

And if you really want to see dramatic improvement, allow your employees to give feedback on issues that affect them. Only one in five companies do this, but companies with the best financial performance are ten times more likely to let their employees have their say.

Creative Investment Idea for Baseball Fans, Economists
By Jessica Stillman

January 23rd, 2008 @ 10:22 am

Categories: General

Tags: Earnings, Salary, Mike, IPO, Benefits, Recruitment & Selection, Investment, Financial Accounting, Financial Services, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Finance, Jessica Stillman

Imagine you’ve ponied up for an MBA, PhD, or a decade of world-class sports coaching. You’re looking for a job, but you could use some cash now. In the future, you’re likely to have substantial earnings but that’s no help to you at the moment. Or is it?

The economics blog Marginal Revolution today offers another post in its ongoing series, ‘Markets in Everything,’ and points out that if businesses can sell shares to raise capital, why not individuals?

Randy Newsom, relief pitcher for the Cleveland Indians, is selling 4% of his future major league salary. There are 2,500 shares in the IPO so each share gets you a claim to 0.0016% of his future salary including bonuses. Shares sell for $20 each.

Mike Makowsky… a rookie GMU PhD on the job market, is also entertaining offers for a share of his future salary. Mike is feeling rather risk-averse so as an insider, I recommend you buy now. Mike has a great career ahead of him and this opportunity won’t last long!

Of course selling shares of future earnings is a creative way to raise money, but it might just be a creative investment opportunity as well. In the the current market climate, supporting a rookie with great potential might be a fun and relatively stress-free way to take a break from agonizing over the stock ticker.

Surviving Your New CEO

Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Kevin P. Coyne and Edward J. Coyne, Sr.
The Idea

When a new CEO arrives, most senior executives worry about their jobs. Rightly so: chances are high they’ll soon find themselves out the door. Worse, they’re likely to land in a lower position or work in a smaller firm.

How to avoid these fates? Accept that many new CEOs make people decisions within 60 days—so first impressions count, say Kevin Coyne and Edward Coyne, Sr. If you want to stay, let your new chief know you’re ready to be on the team, and ask how you can help realize his vision. Then demonstrate your support through additional means—such as mirroring his working style and presenting an honest game plan for your area of responsibility.

The danger of being pushed out by a new CEO is real. But so are the opportunities—if you swiftly establish your value when the new chief arrives.
The Idea in Practice

The authors suggest these strategies for making a good first impression on your new CEO:
Show Your Goodwill

Absent strong signals from you, the new CEO will draw his own conclusions about your views. Take the initiative to talk about your responsibilities with him and your willingness to help him realize his vision.
Leave Your Baggage at the Door

Don’t burden the new chief with talk about any aspects of your own agenda—including your compensation, long-term plans at the company, or conflicts with other executives. And counsel your spouse to be scrupulously politic about your agenda.
Study the New CEO’s Working Style

It’s difficult to discern your new boss’s proclivities through observation. Ask about them directly.

Example: One plainspoken executive who gossips predicted would be an early casualty of the new regime asked his CEO how she wanted him to disagree with her. Specifically, “What kinds of facts—frontline stories or statistics—cause you to change your mind? Can I disagree in public or only in private? If I fail to convince you of my case, should I try again or just accept your decision?” He prospered throughout her 12-year tenure.
Understand the CEO’s Agenda

The new chief’s fate depends heavily on the company’s stock performance during his first year of tenure. So, provide constructive suggestions about actions he can take quickly to increase shareholder value.

Also confirm your understanding of the CEO’s agenda directly with him. Don’t rely solely on talking with board members about their possible directives for the new leader.
Present a Realistic and Honest Game Plan

Don’t sugarcoat strategic plans for your division. A too-rosy report might make your boss ask herself, “Who are you trying to kid?” If you don’t show the negatives, she may suspect that you don’t know them or that you’ll try to hide things from her.
Be on Your “A” Game

Secure face time with your new boss. The best way is to take on a special project in which you must interact extensively with him over a short period of time. He’ll appreciate spending time with you. And if his initial impressions of you were less than stellar, you might be able to turn his feelings around.
Offer Objective Options

Objectively explain previous budgeting decisions for your division, the rationale behind them, and how your new CEO’s priorities might warrant a reassessment of some of those choices. You’ll help the boss translate her vision into tangible decisions.

Copyright © 2007 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

Predicting the Effects of Leadership Change on Your Organization
By Lori Deschene

December 5th, 2007 @ 4:59 pm

Categories: Strategy, Productivity, Leadership

Tags: Board, American Red Cross, CEO, Leadership, Corporate Governance, Management, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Lori Deschene

The American Red Cross has gone through five leaders in eight years, prompting David Hoffman, CEO of DHR Recruiting to comment, “I don’t know how an organization gains any type of momentum with such frequent leadership changes, because each one comes in with a new vision or strategy.” Obviously, its better for a company to shed itself of a bad leader than to put its fate in the wrong person’s hands just to maintain consistency of vision. But change in the CEO spot isn’t always catastrophic.

Roger Wery, a director in consulting firm PRTM’s operational strategy practice, suggests several factors help predict the effect of leadership change:
The industry. Fast-paced industries like retail, fashion and technology are more sensitive to C-suite churn.
The type of change previous management implemented. Frequent fundamental change hurts an organization. Companies with a strong culture can combat that. So does the quality of management under the C-suite.
Effectiveness of the board.According to Wery, “The more dysfunctional the board, the more unstable the CEO is. You want the board to be constructively skeptical, but you ultimately want a collegian board.”

Over the past decade, CEO turnover’s been on the rise (a 59 percent increase between 1995 and 2006) and it doesn’t show signs of slowing down. A near-constant revolving door in the C-Suite is slowly becoming the norm — meaning organizations must be prepared to deal with leadership transition to minimize the damaging effects of change.

How To Get Rid of a Bad Director
By William J. Holstein

December 5th, 2007 @ 10:53 am


Categories: General, Management, Board Management

Tags: Solution, Gig, Board, Problem, Director, Corporate Governance, Business Operations, Corporate Law, William J. Holstein

So you’re the chief executive officer of a company and you rely on your board of directors for sound advice and counsel. But there’s one director who isn’t delivering. He or she doesn’t read the meeting materials before hand. Dozes during the meeting. Goes on long-winded rants not related to the business at hand. Clearly, this person is a problem and is detrimental to the culture and effective functioning of your board. So what do you do?

The traditional solution is to simply wait the person out. When the director’s term is up, the Nominating Committee simply doesn’t nominate him or her. The gig is up. Problem is, that can take a year or more. Damage continues to be inflicted.

Depending on the way your board is structured, a direct approach might work. If you are CEO and chairman, you have the right, indeed the responsibility, to act in your role as chairman of the board to advise the board member that some issues have arisen. But if you are the CEO and not the chairman, meaning that position is held by someone else, then the CEO can’t make a direct approach. Another formulation is for a board to have a lead director. In these situations, the CEO has to move with great delicacy. After all, the CEO works for the board. A couple solutions:
Self-evaluations. Every member of the board fills out a questionaire about each other member. If 11 directors are unanimous in saying that the 12th director is a problem, that gives the CEO/Chairman/Lead director enough ammunition to move. But the problem is, board members tend not to be very frank in these kinds of exercises. Caution and deference are built into their DNAs.
Independent third-party evaluation. There is no shortage of consultants who will come in and create a process in which they interview top management and everyone on the board. What’s said in these interviews is confidential so some candor may creep into the discussion. Even if the consultants clearly identify that a director is a problem, however, who delivers the message. Most boards don’t want an outsider to deliver the news. So it’s back to the dilemma of, who is the messenger of bad tidings?

So there is not any single magic formula for getting rid of a bad director. But the consensus is increasingly clear: don’t just wait it out. You must find a mechanism for signaling that there is a problem. And if the director in question doesn’t alter his or her behavior, then it’s up to the CEO/Chairman/Lead Director (depending on how the board is structured) to force a resignation. Tough love is required.