Leadership - Innovation...What Matters Most

WHY LEADERS FIND INNOVATION CHALLENGING

Innovation challenges "current ways" that are not necessarily "Black Swans," per se, but rather a normal course of commerce in an instantaneous information-filled business world. In many respects, determining the priorities of change and executing to value are a CEO's greatest leadership challenge. And, for Boards who are charged with the responsibility of evaluating their company's CEO's progress and performance, it remains their most important duty.

We asked many of our clients why product and process innovations prove difficult.  It boils down to a leader's balance, and courage.

Knowing that innovation is disruptive to business models, organizational structure, and a company's traditional culture (note that Peter Drucker once pointed out that culture triumphs strategy any day), many CEOs, on balance, believe that change may be too disruptive, "career risky," and regardless, may not be achievable during their stewardship. And therefore many CEOs "play it safe." Yet, as challenging as it is to pivot with the velocity of change ever accelerating, "playing it safe" or not gaining first advantage rarely results in maintaining or moving toward a market-leading position.

Courageous leaders recognize this risk and opportunity cost of inaction. They seek to innovate and execute, and don't hesitate to reinvent their business proposition to sustain and/or extend their disruptive advantage. These leaders recognize that the actions undertaken, i.e. disruptive risk, is all things considered a superior alternative to becoming a laggard, requiring future triage to catch up and remain relevant.

Sometimes tune-ups are mislabeled as innovations, for example improving customer care, while true innovation requires a significantly different path, of broader dimensions, to accelerate enterprise opportunity. Be careful to know which is which, and why.

THE WINNING HAND IS TALENT

Leading innovation to tangible value is a difficult undertaking, and a truly "sensitive matter" fraught with complexities. It requires a clear vision, commitment, and flexibility. It must be planned carefully, resourced, and executed with care, taking into account unintended consequences will likely pop up.

The most successful CEOs recognize that talent wins out, most especially in times of significant adjustments. And the CEOs interest (and yes, professional preservation) in carefully attracting and evaluating the best talent for his/her inner circle is job one. Talent is their "secret sauce" necessary to shape and guide the economic future of their enterprise, not just to react to it.

Without a team of exceptional leaders guiding and "owning" change, transformation will fall short.

Forward thinking CEOs continually evaluate whether they have their best players in the most impactful roles. They view the recruitment of key executives as an ongoing responsibility, realizing that they oftentimes don't have the time to develop internally the special skilled talent that they need now.

THE BOTTOM LINE

We live in a world of two truisms: a rapidly reforming world, and CEO accountability to enhance value, taking into account the opportunities and obstacle, foreseen or not. And with the realities of short term measurements and "Black Swans," attracting and investing in exceptional, and oftentimes rare, executive talent is an investment that pays off. In most cases, the best teams claim the most wins.

It's what shareholders expect, and activists demand.

10 Leadership Lessons from the IBM Executive School

But failure was not an option for Mobley, and after many a dark night of the soul he hit upon the answer that turned IBM into the fastest growing and most admired corporation in the world…

In 1955 IBM’s legendary CEO, Tom Watson Jr., gave my mentor, Louis R. Mobley, a blank check and carte blanche to create The IBM Executive School. Fresh from successfully implementing IBM’s first supervisor and middle management training programs, Mobley confidently set about churning out executives as well.

The first thing he did, in conjunction with GE and DuPont, was hire the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the same company that still does the SATs, to identify the skills that make great leaders great. Once these intellectual skills were identified, Mobley and his colleagues at GE and DuPont assumed that spitting out executives would simply mean “training to the test.”

ETS dutifully rounded up a bunch of proven leaders and tested them every which way from Sunday looking for their common skills. The results were astounding and more than a little disturbing. As Mobley put it, “No matter what bell shaped curve we drew, successful leaders fell on the extreme edges. The only thing they seemed to have in common was having nothing in common. ETS was so frustrated that they offered us our money back.”

But failure wasn’t an option for Mobley, and after many a dark night of the soul he finally hit upon the answer. Unlike supervisors and middle managers, what successful executives shared were not skills and knowledge but values and attitudes. And over time Mobley identified the values and attitudes that great leaders share.

1) Great Leaders Thrive on Ambiguity. While most of us like black and white decisions, successful leaders are comfortable with what Mobley called, “shades of gray.” Great leaders are able to hold apparent contradictions in tension. They use the tension these paradoxes produce to come up with innovative ideas.

2)   Great Leaders Love Blank Sheets of Paper. Supervisors and middle managers use a framework of policies and procedures to guide them to the proper decision. They want a plan that reduces their job to filling in the blanks or what Mobley called “following the bouncing ball.” By contrast, leaders create the blanks that managers fill in. Like some business Einstein intent on reinventing the universe, every great leader relishes the opportunity to “think things through” from scratch.

3)   Great Leaders are Secure People. Successful executives thrive on differences of opinion. They surround themselves with the best people they can find: people strong enough to hold a contrary opinion and argue vociferously for it. Great leaders crave challenges, and this means hiring the most challenging people they can find with no regard for whether today’s challenger might be tomorrow’s rival.

4)   Great Leaders Want Options. Long before it became fashionable,Mobley was a huge proponent of diversity. However his definition meant a diversity of opinion rather than the kind we usually associate with political correctness. Mobley’s great leader constantly demands diverse options from his team, and uses these options to produce creative decisions.

5)   Great Leaders are Tough Enough to Face Facts. At heart Mobley was a spiritual man who valued the Truth for the Truth’s sake. Successful executives face facts, and this means being open to the truth even when it is not what we want to hear. One of the most successful executives I know offers cash rewards to anyone in his company who can prove him wrong. Great leaders have a nose for B.S and abhor it.

6)   Great Leaders Stick Their Necks Out. It is a natural human trait to fear being evaluated. We crave wiggle room so we can deflect blame and get off the hook when things go wrong. In business what is often passed off as a collaborative effort is actually just an attempt to avoid individual accountability. Great leaders want to be measured and evaluated. They continually look for ways to measure things that may seem immeasurable, and they cheerfully accept the blame when they are wrong or fail to deliver. The old adage that success has a 1000 fathers while failure is an orphan does not apply to great leadership.

7)   Great Leaders Believe in Themselves. While great leaders crave advice, options, and strong colleagues, they all share a profound belief in themselves and their judgment. Mobley described great leaders as “people stubbornly following their star who don’t know how to quit.” Holding this stubbornness in tension with a willingness to be wrong is perhaps the greatest trick that every great leader must perform.

8)   Great Leaders are Deep Thinkers. Managers get things done. Executives must decide on the things worth doing in the first place. Though very difficult to quantify, great leaders are deep thinkers. They constantly dive below surface “facts” searching for new ways to knit those facts together. Great leaders are generalists not specialists driven by an omnivorous curiosity. They know that the answers they are seeking will probably emerge from outside business and from disciplines that may seem utterly unrelated.

9)   Great Leaders are Ruthlessly Honest with Themselves. Self-knowledge is perhaps the most critical trait that all great leaders share. Leaders question assumptions and disrupt complacency by relentlessly asking the question: “What is the business of the business?” This exercise develops and refines the organization’s mission and purpose, and it is little more than the age old question “Who am I?” applied collectively. If you are not clear about the purpose of your own life how can you provide a sense of organizational purpose for others?

10) Great Leaders are Passionate. They may be loudly charismatic or quietly intense, but all great leaders care deeply about what they are doing and why they are doing it. Perhaps most importantly they care about people. Every business is a people business, and passionately caring about people whether they are employees, customers, vendors or stockholders is an essential leadership value.

Once Mobley compiled his list, he was faced with another even more difficult problem: How do you instill values and transform attitudes? He discovered that unlike supervisors and middle managers, executives shared another trait: They were constitutionally untrainable and reacted with hostility to any effort to “brainwash” them with “training.” Worse, Mobley discovered that values and attitudes are not only impervious to typical training techniques, but hectoring people to change often had the unintended consequence of hardening existing attitudes instead.

As the result some deep thinking of his own, Mobley eventually realized that what was needed was “a revolution in consciousness” rather than the kind of step by step curriculum that leads to a single “right answer.” Taking a leap of faith, he decided that the values and attitudes he was looking for could only be brought about as a side benefit or unintended consequence of what almost might be termed “spiritual work.” Rather than converging on a super set of skills, the IBM Executive School fostered the divergence that values uniqueness and individual authenticity.

The risk of failure was real, but if Mobley was going to produce people willing to stick out their necks he had to stick out his own first. He abandoned lectures and books in favor of games, simulations and other experiential techniques designed, not to “train,” but to “blow people’s minds.”

As for the personal accountability and measuring results, Mobley’s record speaks for itself. He ran the IBM Executive School from 1956-1966. It was his students that turned IBM into the fastest growing and most admired corporation in the world in the 1960s and 70s…

August Turak, Contributor to Linkedin 

Leadership, After All

The noted artist Willem De Kooning, as he aged, commented that, "you have to change to stay the same." Sometimes, as leaders, we find wisdom in rediscovering what we already know.

Having met with numerous Board members and corporate leaders recently, many seem to be off put off by the loss of control over many of the circumstances that previously could be “managed”. Many are questioning whether the old standards still apply.

We were struck by the following insight.

Recently, we asked several CEOs about future commitments, i.e. just how far forward they feel comfortable in predicting outcomes. The answer from most was one quarter... three months... astoundingly short given that when we asked this same question a few years ago, the answer was, on average, four quarters.

This suggests that in a time of uncertainty, in spite of the strength of current quarterly results, whether the light at the end of the tunnel is recovery or an out of control train speeding in our direction?

And, that it is very easy for CEOs and their boards to resist the falderal of the moment and be more easily influenced by the herd.

Our experience suggests that the most successful leaders actually embrace uncertainty. They see it as an opportunity for a re-commitment to the building blocks of excellence. As one notable CEO said to us, “the basics always win out.”

We know that ethical corporate cultures win out. We know that deep dive rigor and commitment to operational excellence, wins out. And we know that well disciplined and effective corporate governance is a huge plus in dealing with the unknown. All of this takes work and extraordinary discipline, especially today with daily fluxes and contrary information that impact how businesses do business.

The best leaders, we have observed, don’t become unbalanced by conditions that they can’t shape.  They know their troops are observing whether they are being led with calm and confidence.

However, “back to basics” doesn’t mean that leaders should stick their heads in the sand. Rather, it means stressing the “known” while being flexible to address matters beyond a leader’s control.

Today, though, there is a tendency to try and outsmart current conditions hoping to gain advantage. Many CEO’s have a fear of being left behind, and being criticized by their boards for not being more proactive. It is impossible to “map” uncertainty.

So, here's our prescription for CEOs and Directors.

Because you can't control the unpredictable, rely on what you know... that means drill deep in your business…then dig deeper.

Don’t outsmart yourself or believe that you can outsmart the markets.

For Directors, demand transparency of your CEO and be prepared to invest extraordinary time to fully comprehend the various levers of your company's value… know the how and when.

For CEOs, demand deep dive information and dig in yourself. Set the pace of expectations. Demand excellence.  Redouble your effort to communicate to all “stakeholders.” Be clear about issues, challenges and opportunities with your board and your senior team.

Be consistent, focused and relentless. Isn’t that what leadership is all about?

By Joel Koblentz on October 11, 2011, Managing Partner of the Koblenz Group

In the Midst of Change, What Needs to Stay the Same

Everywhere we hear re-occurring descriptions about how the workplace has changed to keep up with continuously changing business conditions and business strategy. Examples include throwing out job descriptions and the old org charts, and rapid deployment onto multi-disciplinary teams who learn through real-time collaboration about how to solve emerging challenges and problems. 

A new report from Booz Allen Hamilton and the Center for Creative Leadership, "Leading for Employee Motivation, Implications for Leaders in Turbulent Times," discusses changes in how people see their roles at work, from being "mission-focused" (aligned with the mission and strategy) or alternatively, "career focused" (staying for developmental opportunities that will be good for one's career) and a third group of people who stay feeling they are "out of options." Clearly the latter group are those people who quit but still show up most days, and they will follow a process even when it is deemed to be ineffective. People who are mission and career focused often identify systems and processes that inhibit their effectiveness, and quickly move on to color outside the lines. This is a challenge for scalable operations. As leaders, how often do we collect feedback on the effectiveness of systems and processes?

The leadership competencies that may not have changed, even in turbulent times, can be a good thing: "…sharing information, providing help, encouraging collaborative behavior among team members, and having the ability to inspire commitment to values or to a mission," according to the BAH CCL researchers, who go on to say,"a common thread among these competencies that are critical to leader effectiveness is the emphasis on the interpersonal nature of leadership that enables leaders to adapt their styles to the employees' different orientations. Leaders who bring charisma, humane and team orientation, and participative approaches that enable them to adapt to the employees' different orientations will be better able to motivate and retain employees."

Noel Tichy says that leaders whose calendars commit to investing 20% of their time with people are more effective. Scheduling time to talk with people helps both leaders and followers learn what they might not have guessed, adapt the conversation to be mission-focused or career–focused, and revisit processes and systems that need to be refreshed or revised. When we don't do that, an "air sandwich" develops between the strategy and those who implement it.

BLOG: Author: Joy Kosta

Leaders Should Know What to Do

Leaders need to be prepared. Often times this is just a simple matter of thinking ahead. There are certain circumstances that you can see coming. For example, if you take a new position and soon realize that you will probably need to let a particular person go, you should be prepared for that possibility. You should have thought through the best way to handle it and most importantly you should have thought through the ways you are not going to handle it–ways that could create an even bigger problem.

Making decisions is a big part of leadership and the more intelligent your decisions, the better of a leader you can become. A decision made on whim is much less likely to be the best choice as compared with a carefully planned out decision made in advance.

Leaders Create Leaders

A good leader leaves a legacy of leadership skills in others. Well led organizations become even more well led because of this. It all starts at the top with the organizational leader. If you invest in the people under you, they will learn how to invest in the people under them. If you avoid making promises you can’t keep to people under you, they will be less likely to break promises to people under them.

Many times you will find an organization that is extremely dysfunctional in a particular area. When you trace the problem, it becomes evident that the problem started with leadership at the very top. Everyone else followed the example that they were shown and turned a small flaw in one or two people into an organization wide dysfunctional problem.

How Leaders Set Themselves Apart From Others

The question I am sure every employee asks is "what makes him a great leader and not me?". Well I know that I asked myself that question when assessing people I have worked for over my career. I think Jack Welch has said it best in his book "Winning". I have always been a fan of Welch and have read all his books and even was a stockholder of GE for many years. In his latest book, "Winning", I think he really articulates what leaders do and after re-reading this book for a 2nd time it finally hit home. So, what leadership knowledge has Jack imparted upon us, here are his eight key points:

• leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, constantly assessing their progress and evaluating them along the way
• leaders make sure people breath the vision set, not just see it
• leaders get into people's skin, through positive energy and optimism
• leaders establish trust and credit. There is transparency and candor with their style
• leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions
• leaders probe and question how things are done to see additional opportunity or new methodology
• leaders inspire risk taking
• leaders celebrate

Also ask yourself does your CEO possess these qualities and if not how does your business rank against the competition. I would like to hear your comments. Also link to Meet the Boss.TV for more on leadership.

The Top 10 Leadership Qualities

Leadership can be defined as one's ability to get others to willingly follow. Every organization needs leaders at every level. Leaders can be found and nurtured if you look for the following character traits.



A leader with vision has a clear, vivid picture of where to go, as well as a firm grasp on what success looks like and how to achieve it. But it’s not enough to have a vision; leaders must also share it and act upon it. Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric Co., said, "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion."



A leader must be able to communicate his or her vision in terms that cause followers to buy into it. He or she must communicate clearly and passionately, as passion is contagious.



A good leader must have the discipline to work toward his or her vision single-mindedly, as well as to direct his or her actions and those of the team toward the goal. Action is the mark of a leader. A leader does not suffer “analysis paralysis” but is always doing something in pursuit of the vision, inspiring others to do the same.

• Integrity is the integration of outward actions and inner values. A person of integrity is the same on the outside and on the inside. Such an individual can be trusted because he or she never veers from inner values, even when it might be expeditious to do so. A leader must have the trust of followers and therefore must display integrity. Honest dealings, predictable reactions, well-controlled emotions, and an absence of tantrums and harsh outbursts are all signs of integrity. A leader who is centered in integrity will be more approachable by followers.
• Dedication means spending whatever time or energy is necessary to accomplish the task at hand. A leader inspires dedication by example, doing whatever it takes to complete the next step toward the vision. By setting an excellent example, leaders can show followers that there are no nine-to-five jobs on the team, only opportunities to achieve something great.
• Magnanimity means giving credit where it is due. A magnanimous leader ensures that credit for successes is spread as widely as possible throughout the company. Conversely, a good leader takes personal responsibility for failures. This sort of reverse magnanimity helps other people feel good about themselves and draws the team closer together. To spread the fame and take the blame is a hallmark of effective leadership.
• Leaders with humility recognize that they are no better or worse than other members of the team. A humble leader is not self-effacing but rather tries to elevate everyone. Leaders with humility also understand that their status does not make them a god. Mahatma Gandhi is a role model for Indian leaders, and he pursued a “follower-centric” leadership role.
• Openness means being able to listen to new ideas, even if they do not conform to the usual way of thinking. Good leaders are able to suspend judgment while listening to others’ ideas, as well as accept new ways of doing things that someone else thought of. Openness builds mutual respect and trust between leaders and followers, and it also keeps the team well supplied with new ideas that can further its vision.
• Creativity is the ability to think differently, to get outside of the box that constrains solutions. Creativity gives leaders the ability to see things that others have not seen and thus lead followers in new directions. The most important question that a leader can ask is, “What if … ?” Possibly the worst thing a leader can say is, “I know this is a dumb question ... ”
• Fairness means dealing with others consistently and justly. A leader must check all the facts and hear everyone out before passing judgment. He or she must avoid leaping to conclusions based on incomplete evidence. When people feel they that are being treated fairly, they reward a leader with loyalty and dedication.
• Assertiveness is not the same as aggressiveness. Rather, it is the ability to clearly state what one expects so that there will be no misunderstandings. A leader must be assertive to get the desired results. Along with assertiveness comes the responsibility to clearly understand what followers expect from their leader.
• A sense of humor is vital to relieve tension and boredom, as well as to defuse hostility. Effective leaders know how to use humor to energize followers. Humor is a form of power that provides some control over the work environment. And simply put, humor fosters good camaraderie.

Intrinsic traits such as intelligence, good looks, height and so on are not necessary to become a leader. Anyone can cultivate the proper leadership traits. So, can you define the leadership traits your managers and CEO have against these qualities?


By David Hakala on March 19, 2008 The Help