Growing strong future leaders is being sacrificed
by Miki SaxonPost from Leadership Turn Image credit: clix CC license
By Wes Ball, author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. Read all of Wes’ posts here.
Corporate ADD (see last Tuesday’s posting) may be one of the chief causes of the lack of “leadership training” in corporate America today, other than a simple lack of know-how. Who has time to nurture a subordinate or to model “strategic leadership” in an environment that is all tactical all the time? And, as noted in last Tuesday’s posting, this only gets worse as you go up the corporate ladder.
The danger is that lower-level employees are the only ones with any perceived freedom to experiment or to make truly strategic proposals… at least until they realize that there’s no one upstairs who is listening. That’s when the young ranks of “best and brightest” start looking for another place of employment.
Not all Alpha companies, as I describe them in my book, The Alpha Factor, avoid this problem, but I was lucky enough to work for two where young employees were encouraged to experiment. At one of them, I made a bold comment about how staff at my level were being under-utilized, and the VP of my division challenged me to prove what I could do. That opened up an opportunity for me to initiate a limited, but strategic initiative that created my first big personal success at growing sales.
Be aware, however, that just because a company is the Alpha of its category doesn’t make it the greatest place to work. Some of the Alphas I discuss in the book have extremely threatening cultures, but they seem to work because they are designed to nurture a specific type of employee that can thrive under that management style.
What are your thoughts on how to nurture future strong strategic leaders?
Your comments—priceless
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:42 am
I was a big fan of Jack Welch’s thinking – identify the brightest and invest training and opportunity in them.
However recently I have mixed with a heap of entrepreneurs who all run successful businesses, and none of who completed year 11 at school.
So now I am a little puzzled, why is it that successful entrepreneurs can be less educated than business leaders?
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Ian:
This is probably the best comment I have ever seen, because it hits at the core of what business is all about and why big companies are nothing to fear. It also flies in the face of most of what we are taught in business school and hear through mainstream business media.
Although we could talk for days on this subject, here is the simple answer:
Success has little or nothing to do with education. (Sorry, professors.) It has everything to do with clear vision, belief in your ability to overcome obstacles, persistence, courage, willingness to do what is necessary to succeed, ability to convince others to support you in your vision, ability to see and understand customer needs, and willingness to accept delayed gratification. Few of those, if any, are taught in school.
This may sound unfair, but Jack Welsh did a great job of creating an environment that sounds good to the media (only the best survive) and actually works sometimes within the bounds of “professional management,” as long as a very strong dictatorial leader is in charge. But start-ups and small businesses cannot work by the same rules.
Give me an uneducated person with the attributes I described above, and I’ll show you someone who will succeed one way or another. Show me a professional manager who can work within a Jack Welch environment, and I’ll show you someone who can work in a Jack Welch environment. Outside of that, especially in a smaller, higher risk, less forgiving environment (and, yes, that’s what a small company is!), he probably won’t be very successful.
If you’d like to talk about this more, you can email me directly at w.ball@ballgroup.com.
Wes
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Wes, The traits you describe are embedded in a person’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and it is MAP that brings out the best in people—and people R companies.
Professional managers don’t always succeed in a large environment, even when they’re at the top—just look at Robert Nardelli’s debacle at Home Depot.
Intel supposedly had a similar culture, but wasn’t. Intel CEOs governed with passion while Welsh governed more on fear. Intel paranoia was always directed at the competition, whereas GE managers lived in fear of their numbers—and numbers don’t lead to innovation.
There are many kinds of learning that never see the inside of a school. A brilliant CEO once said to me that education loses 20% of its value each year, so after five years it had little bearing on his hiring.
Education these days is about doing well on tests, rather than learning. For more on this read CandidProf’s 2-part post tomorrow and July 9th. Actually, read it and weep—I did.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:51 pm
I was going to pick on Nardelli myself, but I’d like to give him a chance to redeem himself with Chrysler. Jack Welch has created many over-driven, under-nurturing guys.
Actually, Intel has struggled with the same problem as GE. I hired a bright guy from there, and he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome from the experience. Anytime you know that the bottom 10% over a short time period will be gone (no matter how good they are), it makes some people find creative ways to look good (often at the expense of other co-workers) and makes others find more positive, nurturing environments.
That’s not always bad, but it has little to do with the kinds of skills needed to run a small to medium-sized company well.
July 2nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
“it has little to do with the kinds of skills needed to run a small to medium-sized company well.”
Seems to me that it has little to do with running any company well.
However, Intel still managed to foster innovation as opposed to GE. Innovation has been one of Immelt’s greatest challenges.