Global Leaders: Who ARE these People?

Time was, companies that had foreign locations staffed them with local talent and sent home country (home, that is, to the company headquarters) leaders over to make sure it all worked.  We hope this is done in a somewhat more discerning way today.  We believe, in normal circumstances, these decisions should be based on an understanding of the local market and an assessment of the alignment of both the local/home cultures and the local/home business models. 


Looking at the degree of congruence on both these critical aspects of the business yields four potential business situations.  And an assessment of the situation for any company points to the leader type that best fits existing conditions:

·         Cultural Liaison (culture mismatch, business model match)

·         General Contractor (culture match, business model match)

·         Engineer (culture match, business model mismatch)

·         Architect (culture mismatch, business model mismatch)

CLICK HERE TO READ A MORE COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE FOUR TYPES AND THE CAPABILITIES REQUIRED.

By: Jon Wheeler, Partner of The Clarion Group

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How important is EQ in predicting future business stars?

WSJ article response 050213
It would be difficult to overstate the significance of this shift in the selection criteria under consideration in American business schools.

·       The entire credentialing process in education is ultimately linked to the ability on the part of society – and most particularly business – to evaluate the quality of graduates coming out of our schools.  The mere fact that schools (like my own, the Yale School of Management, as well as others) are willing to consider a change in credentialing is nothing less than monumental.  Credentialing is where the opportunity for “disruptive innovation” has the greatest leverage in impacting our educational system. 

·       Several very reasonable and important elements have traditionally converged toward assessments (SATs, GMATs, etc.) that are quantitative, including:

-        Objective criteria that eliminates the inequalities of favoritism, bias, preferential treatment, etc.  This is equally important in other countries like China, where entry into schools even at an early age directly impacts social mobility, including where one is able to live.

-        An economic emphasis on what we are now calling STEM skills:  the hard skills of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.   

-        At present, the “soft” EQ skills are evaluated in more qualitative ways only, making comparative assessments very difficult to scale.

·       But, businesses and governments (China, Singapore, etc.) around the globe have explicitly acknowledged that STEM skills, while critically necessary for economic growth, are not sufficient for leadership. They recognize that schools are not preparing young people for the kind of creativity, collaboration and innovative decision making required in an unpredictable, highly-complex, fast-changing, globally-diverse, socio-economic world.  These are leadership skills, not technical skills. 

·       The Institute for Public Policy Research warns of a coming “Avalanche” in higher education due to a mis-alignment of the value proposition of education in the face of a changing global economy.  Universities will be increasingly challenged to prove to both students and employers that there is sufficient value in what they offer.  That gap opens the door to the revolution in education that lies ahead.

·       A major factor in this mis-alignment is the movement from an industrial-based economy to a knowledge-based economy.  This is exponentially increasing the urgency of developing larger numbers of innovative, creative, collaborative workers.  Knowledge itself has replaced tangible, physical assets as the most valuable economic resource.  And it is estimated that a sizeable portion of the information we know today will be outdated by the time our children graduate.  Knowledge workers today must learn more than memorized content:  knowledge workers must learn how to learn.  The “higher level” skills once thought to be the purview of a small number of top level leaders is now essential at all levels of a business. 

·       Daniel Goleman is right:  schools need to teach Emotional Intelligence, not just select for it.   A few pioneers, like the International Baccalaureate programs, recognized decades ago that EQ is an essential aspect of a holistic learning pedagogy that starts from early childhood.  But they are the exception.  In general, our educational systems are way behind in knowing how to develop – or assess – critical learning skills, including EQ. 

And yes, EQ is not just how we “feel.”  EQ is an essential skill of understanding others and ourselves, and how we learn.  There is significant pedagogical research to suggest that learning is a social skill. One way to understand the work we do as Advisors to business leaders is to assist them in the transition from technical competencies (or content expertise) to essential leadership competencies not taught in business school.  The most successful business leaders we know tell us they learn every day they are on the job.  In our experience, this includes a broader range of intellectual and emotional capacities that include openness to learning new ideas and new ways of doing things.  This is lifelong learning at its best.

By: Roy Maurer, Partner of The Clarion Group

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Passport to global success: Change attitude as you change latitude

Global feels like the place to be.  For many companies, being merely domestic seems like cowardice, foolishness or surrender.  But stepping into the global fray requires more than bravery; it can require different knowledge, different strategies and tactics, and people with different skills and orientations. 

Questions that you should ask yourself about your company’s readiness to compete globally include:
 

• Does being global help us grow?

• Do we have the talent to do it?

• Can we operate as a good global citizen?

• Are we sufficiently innovative to compete?

• Are we trusted in our chosen venues?

Positive responses to these questions, or willingness to address the issues behind the negative responses, will substantially increase your company’s chances of success.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL REPORT ON OUR GLOBAL RESEARCH

By: Deborah Schroeder-Saulnier, Partner of The Clarion Group

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Boston Marathon Tragedy



Tragedy struck close to home yesterday.  Although we have employees in several states, our company is headquartered in Connecticut, so many of us have friends and family in greater Boston.  Boston is familiar to us – a city we visit frequently for both work and play, in fact two of our advisors were on their way to Logan Airport and could see some of the aftermath from the highway as they drove by.  This makes it all more real for us. 

For our country, a day of joy and celebration has been forever clouded, and yet, we can still celebrate the many who chose to run toward the explosion to help those in need, the first responders who worked tirelessly to aid the injured, those who will continue to work countless hours to find justice.  In the midst of chaos, courage and teamwork have once again emerged.

The Clarion Group, Ltd.

Complexity: The Courageous Way In

I have huge appreciation for all the work Siegel+Gale have contributed -- leading the way on simplicity.  This is especially timely coming on a day we received the 70 page policy for our new dental plan. Double the pain.

It is worth noting that the three principles Siegel and Etzkorn identified also help navigate the world of complexity that lies beyond anyone’s control.  The environment in which businesses compete is but one of many examples of “Complex Adaptive Systems” found throughout our natural world.  The “courageous way in” for business (and other) leaders is to openly acknowledge and accept the underlying dynamics (principles) of complex systems  --  three of which are pointed to indirectly by the authors:  

1. Empathy:  perceiving others’ needs and expectations.  Complex Adaptive Systems consist of thousands of independent interactions, be they consumers, patients, etc.  Immediate feedback is the universal mechanism through which value is recognized and transmitted.  Companies, as well as individuals, survive and thrive based on their ability to sense and respond to others.  And quickly.
    
2. Distilling:  reducing to the essence.  In complexity, the essence is holistic, non-linear, and ever emerging.  Within these dynamics, the ability to predict is challenged.  While more data may seem necessary, it is never sufficient.  The required left brain that the article astutely points toward is more than emotional.  It includes critical intellectual capacities to grasp essence:   to synthesize, recognize meaningful patterns, grasp the “whole,” creatively envision a future, etc. 
3. Clarifying: making easier to understand.  In complex systems, business leaders can enable clarity in two important ways.  First, to simplify a multitude of complex factors into clarity around the one or two levers (actions) that will impact the whole system most positively at this point in time.  Second, by establishing values.   Non-linear complex systems (business organizations) are extremely sensitive to “initial conditions.”  Common values establish the filter through which needs of others are identified.  These initial values are the most powerful mechanism by which to align organizations composed of thousands of individuals acting independently in the moment.

Complexity is here to stay. The challenge for business leaders is how to survive.  It takes courage to jump in -- knowing that no one can know what future will emerge.

By: Roy Maurer, Partner of The Clarion Group

 
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Nothing Exceeds like Excess

Empowerment needs constraints. Really? Really! There are many examples of individuals feeling over-empowered to fulfill a role or to represent it. Consider Dennis Rodman and his visit to North Korea. By many people's opinions, possibly including his host's, he did great harm in playing his self-declared role and exercising the rights he felt he had within it.

Empowerment needs guardrails, even if they are only loosely defined. These guardrails establish parameters that define where good is served and where it is not. Empowerment and constraints must, in fact, co-exist to achieve the most constructive outcomes.

By: Bill McKendree, Founding Partner of The Clarion Group

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Purpose on Purpose (leading with focus)

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/mitchell-reports/51276396/#51276396

Great businesses falter when they lose their sense of higher purpose, that is, the essence of what they stand for and their purpose for existing. Imagine a Disney that had lost its ability to create surprise and magic. Imagine if Apple is unable to reignite its heritage of disruptive innovation. Such faltering would be horribly disappointing.

When organizations falter, it is often because, for a range of potential reasons, they have lost their sense for the Higher Purpose. Such is the case with our elected officials in our federal government. Disparate factions setting our administration, the Senate and the House against each other; political parties digging into their own agendas, treating compromise as failure; and parties within parties furthering distracting all constituents from the essential issues. All this division leads to silo mentality, the collective eye on the greater good loses focus and the higher purpose gets lost.

Businesses gradually die when this pattern prevails, as do great nations.

As shareholders hold their executives accountable for the performance of the businesses, voters -- individually and collectively -- have the power to hold our elected officials accountable. If we let their collective malaise become ours, then the vortex of narrow and selfish intent will lead us to the inevitable.

We should learn from the examples that Andersen, FM Global, and Enron set for us.

What are your thoughts?

 

By: Bill McKendree, Founding Partner of The Clarion Group

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What does it take to make virtual work work?

In recent days, Yahoo! and Google have both made announcements about the difficulties of at-home work.  Yahoo! has now actually banned it, citing, among other things, a pattern of reduced productivity of at-home workers.  And one of Google’s top execs has talked about the negative impact of worker isolation when they telecommute.  These are interesting moves at this time and for these companies – companies that, at least from the outside, one would expect to be not only open to but also good at working virtually. 

Quite recently, we shared some thoughts on issues of employee engagement that might arise in virtual working organizations.  We don’t know all the factors that contributed to Yahoo!’s decision and Google’s view.  But they reinforce the importance of a couple of things:

1.     Understanding how people need to interact to perform.  When they should work independently and when interaction would be more productive.  If interaction is required, when it can be virtual (among telecommuters or not) and when being in person in a shared space would contribute positively to the intended outcomes.

2.     Understanding how internal systems and managers’ actions affect such interaction.  Internal systems and practices for sharing information, exchanging ideas and reaching decisions obviously impact the quality and timeliness of the end product.  Managers’ impact can come from how they enable useful systems and practices.  It also comes from how they behave themselves: how well they distribute information, how openly they share ideas and how clearly they make decisions. 

Yahoo! and Google’s actions remind us that it is neither simple nor easy to coordinate all the moving parts in a human organization.

By: Bill McKendree, Partner and Founder of The Clarion Group

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How important is stamina for leaders?

Pope Benedict’s recent announcement of his decision to resign is sending ripples throughout the Catholic Church and beyond.  It is a very unusual step for a Pontiff to take.  But it reminds us of things we know about CEOs of large organizations:  stamina and self awareness are crucial for peak job performance.

Our framework for top leaders, in addition to encompassing capabilities like problem solving and characteristics like interpersonal ability, has always included capacities – intellectual, emotional and physical.  CEOs and their top teams should pay attention to their own capacities, should understand how to feed and maintain them, and should be alert to their limits, deterioration or depletion.

Boards should also be mindful of these capacities in their top leaders.  They should have a plan in place for stepping in if they sense shrinking or limited capacity:  to help rebuild it, to help leaders take a Benedictine step out, and/or to replace them with someone who is running at full capacity. 

Articles on related subjects:

· 2010 Insightpaper: Succession Success
· 2000 ClarionCall: Capacity to Fly  By:  Chuck Andrew, Partner
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How Is the Virtual World Changing a Leader's Role?

Much has been written (some of it by us) about shifts in the relationships between companies and consumers, given all the changes that the digital revolution has wrought.  The net effect has been an increase in the voice of the consumer with respect to product design, delivery methods, and customer support, among other things.  Consumers are better positioned to co-create company products and services with the companies themselves.

Similar causes and similar effects are in play with the company-employee relationship.  The democratizing impact of the larger societal changes requires that leaders be less complacent and more intentional in the ways that they interact with their employees.  How are the current times demanding that leaders redefine their roles?  Should they even have “followers”?  Or do virtual workplaces, remote workers and ease of access to information put the power dynamic on its head.

If you have thoughts on this, we’d love to hear from you.
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Employee Engagement in an e-Bricks World

Employee engagement has traditionally been achieved through strategies that are work place specific.  The design, furnishing and population of office buildings can say a lot about how the company wants employees to interact or not, to build communities or silos, to honor hierarchy or to work around it.  But, as more and more workers are not working in offices, but are working from their homes or airports or local Starbucks, what happens to the sense of community?

Does the company have any influence over this?  Should they?  Can they?  We believe that leaders should still take actions to build the kind of communities that are required to achieve organizational goals and to maintain some group identity.  But leaders may have to be more intentional about such actions, since the physical plant is not as reliable an enabler as it was in the past.  Leaders will have to be facile with both physical interaction and virtual interaction tools, and wise enough to know when to use which. 

If you have experience with physical or virtual tools, if you think community is no longer relevant, or if you are just interested in exploring the concept further, please share your thoughts.   

 

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Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch

Culture's Role in
Creating Value

Why do you care about culture?  Because it can help or hinder the achievement of your strategy.  Culture can hold an organization together in tough times.  Culture can create the internal alignment that enables you to reproduce the customer experience at different times in different places.  Companies with strong cultures can differentiate themselves in the market and deliver superior business performance. 

But what’s different about it today?  Doesn’t it seem that there are more influences on culture and that leaders control fewer of those influences?  This article, Culture’s Role in Creating Value, provides some thoughts on the value of attending to culture, some perspective on how to view culture in this dynamic business environment and some questions you can use to evaluate your own culture.

If you have experience with good or bad cultures, if you think culture is irrelevant, if you know what has worked (or not) to shift culture, or if you are just interested in exploring the concept further, please share your thoughts.



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Blogfest: Ready, or Not? Synopsis

So it's been a few days since our blogfest...thanks to those who participated. The back and forth sharpens the mind in the moment but a little time has allowed me to step back and synthesize. Here are a couple of broader observations:

Where and how businesses interface with their markets is on the move and for more commodity products this is happening quickly, more complex products will take some time. Relationship has been an important dimension of distribution but we are learning to trust via digital connections very quickly. Gen Y and Millenials do it without reservation. The point is consumers will control the nature of the experience they want and businesses will have to provide alternatives with the shift to digital platforms more and more over time. Companies who have a heritage of being customer driven may have an initial edge but it's not sufficient to declare victory.

Shifting structures and mindsets is a big challenge. How to organize for both efficiency and innovation while shifting and expanding employees views of how to operate will take enormous effort and focus. The jury is out on whether mature businesses with long tenured employees can do this. Change is now CHANGE with viability at stake.

Ultimately, senior leadership must have clarity about the situation and what's in the near term horizon. Are they equipped to envision the way the market will evolve and can they bring their organizations in to the value co-creation game? What we know is most leaders will have to exhibit more courage and take greater risks than in the past to survive and they will have to decentralize innovation and decision making to thrive.

Are we alarmist? We believe we are futurists who are pushing the boundaries of how markets will function with evidence building every day and we're not alone. We'll post a CEO study recently produced by IBM that supports our assertion of a rapidly emerging 21st business model...they just don't take it quite as far...yet!

http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/gbe03485usen/GBE03485USEN.PDF

Our focus over the coming weeks will be to draft a "Gen Net" leadership success profile which we'll share here and our other forums sometime in June with another Blogfest to follow. We'll also talk about ways to engage others in the discussion..stay tuned.

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Ready, or Not?

(scroll down to share your comments)

Is the combination of mobile internet access and social media hurtling us towards a new 21st century business model? Online transactions and social media adoption are rising at stunning rates. What are the implications and, more importantly, where is this heading? Almost every day in our client work, we see the 20th century business and organizational models creaking under the stress of these forces while many businesses search for higher levels of organic growth.

The advisors at The Clarion Group have been observing and discussing this rapidly evolving situation and have come to the conclusion that we have entered into a period of dramatic change which is shifting the fundamental balance of power, at a seismic level, from businesses towards consumers. Consequently, the highly structured and centralized organizations of today will have to reinvent themselves into open and decentralized organizations where consumers participate in the innovation and value creation process.

The May 2012 issue of The Clarion Call offers our current thinking on what is happening and ways executives can engage their organizations in preparing for successfully competing in the 21st century. The implications for leadership, culture, organization design, and business models continue to evolve. We will keep watching for, experimenting with and discussing ideas and developing practices that work, and we hope you will engage with us in that exploration, starting with the following questions. 

• How is social media (and the expectations it creates) changing the relationship between companies and consumers in the businesses or industries that you know about?
• In what ways is the power shifting to the consumer?
• Do you think your company is ready for those changes? What are the challenges with your current operating model?
• What must leaders – and followers – do differently to engage in the network-enabled business world? What changes must be made in strategy, in structure and in culture?

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Movie Quotes To Lead By

Leaders look for answers and inspiration in many places. In books. In nature. In spiritual practice. In movies. Movies can grab us, can make us see another point of view, can linger with us. They can shape our ideas about how we want to be as leaders. They can spark ideas and creativity for working through challenges. They can remind us of what we know to be true and encourage us to act.

 

We’re happy to share the movie musings of our newest advisory Partner, Debbie Schroeder-Saulnier.  She reflects on quotes from three movies:  what the quotes meant in the context of the movies themselves and where those quotes take her in imagining applications for leaders in business today.  Join us as we explore Movies to Lead By!

We would love to hear from you about movies or movie quotes that work for you.  Please feel free to share.  It’s not (just) personal – it’s business.