Succeeding In The C-Suite

Egon
Zehnder
International

Program for Advanced Leadership and Management

Succeeding in the C-Suite

January 27, 2011
08:30am – 12:30pm

Dr. Mark Byford
Johan H. Brand

Madinah, KSA

This presentation is confidential and specifically for use in the MILE PALM 2 program; it is not to be shared with any 3rd party without prior written consent of Egon Zehnder International © 2011

Introduction

Speakers for this morning

Mark Byford Consultant and Partner with Egon Zehnder International
London Office
MBA, INSEAD. Formerly Manager, The Boston Consulting Group, London;
MA, D.Phil., History, Oxford University, Junior Fellow, New College, Oxford.
United Kingdom

Johan H. Brand Consultant and Partner with Egon Zehnder International
Dubai Office
MA, Business Economics and Formerly several commercial management positions within
Procter & Gamble, Rotterdam/Brussels and Pepsi-Cola
MA, Business Law/Common Law,
International, Europe.
Erasmus University Rotterdam, The
Netherlands.

This presentation is confidential and specifically for use in the MILE PALM 2 program; it is not to be shared with any 3rd party without prior written consent of Egon Zehnder International © 2011 1

About Egon Zehnder International
Who we are
EZI: Size, Reach, Scope
The world’s leading privately held retained executive search firm - founded in 1964
3 core practice areas:
Executive and Senior-level Search
Leadership Strategy Services, including Management Appraisals and Talent Management
Non-Executive Director Board Appointments & Corporate Governance Advisory
Sector practice groups focus on in-depth experience and coordinated efforts in Financial Services, Technology, Industrial,
Consumer, Life Sciences, etc.

Consultants with Deep Industry Expertise
385+ Consultants with post-graduate degrees (MBA’s, PhD’s, LLM, etc.) from top academic institutions
10-15 years prior business experience in line management, finance or consulting prior to joining our firm

Highly Collaborative "Boutique" Structure
Our firm is privately held (owned equally and entirely by partners)
Operates as a single global entity, the firm has only one profit center
There are no economic barriers between offices or consultants

Strong Track Record of Speed, Quality, Results and Business Impact
3-5 qualified and interested candidates presented within 35 - 45 days
Long-term client relationships with significant percentage (80%+) of repeat business


Egon Zehnder International – strong global presence

The Americas
1 Atlanta 11 Miami
26 2 Bogotá 12 Montréal
31 3 Boston 13 New York
20
36
23 49 4 Buenos Aires 14 Palo Alto
24 28
5 Calgary 15 Rio de Janeiro
37 29 44
43 46 42 48 25 6 Chicago 16 San Francisco
30 7 Dallas 17 Santiago
50
40
38 30 8 Houston 18 São Paulo
45 9 Los Angeles 19 Toronto
22
39 10 Mexico City
32 35

41
Europe, Middle East, Africa
20 Amsterdam 36 London
5 12
19 21 Athens 37 Luxembourg
3
6 13 22 Barcelona 38 Lyon
16
14 21 33 51 23 Berlin 39 Madrid
58 62
9 7 24 Brussels 40 Milan
1 47
8 59 25 Budapest 41 Moscow
11 57
27 26 Copenhagen 42 Munich
52
10 34
27 Dubai 43 Paris
56 63
28 Dusseldorf 44 Prague
29 Frankfurt 45 Rome
2
54
30 Geneva 46 Stuttgart
60 31 Hamburg 47 Tel Aviv
53
32 Helsinki 48 Vienna
33 Istanbul 49 Warsaw
34 Jeddah 50 Zurich
35 Lisbon
15
18
Asia Pacific
17 61
4 51 Beijing 57 New Delhi
55
52 Hong Kong 58 Seoul
53 Jakarta 59 Shanghai
54 Kuala Lumpur 60 Singapore
~ 385 Consultants are located in all major 55 Melbourne
56 Mumbai
61
62
Sydney
Tokyo
markets in 37 countries worldwide. 63 Bangalore


Service portfolio of Egon Zehnder International:
Broadening out of core Executive Search practice

Executive Search Management Appraisal

Attracting leaders; Benchmarking
anticipating top people against
tomorrow‘s needs "best-in-class"

Egon
Zehnder
International

Turning the board Developing &
into a strategic retaining your
asset best people

Board Consulting Talent Management


Service, Sector and Functional Practices of EZI

Shared knowledge and global co-operation in service, sector and functional
practices

Service Practices Sector Practices Functional Practices
• Executive Search • Consumer • Marketing Officers
• Board Consulting • Financial Services • Financial Officers
• Leadership Strategy • Industry • Human Resources
Services, including • Life Sciences • Legal Officers
Management Appraisal
• Private Capital • CIO and IT/Business
• CEO Succession
• Services Processes
• Family Companies
• Technology & Communications
• Governmental and Non-Profit
• Sports
• Sustainability


Program for Advanced Leadership and Management


Dr. Mark Byford
Johan H. Brand



•Objective of this module is to increase awareness of what it takes to
succeed in the C-Suite
• What it takes to get to this aspirational level
• What it takes to be successful in the C-Suite

• Focus is on successful behaviours, building both your self awareness
and your awareness of those around you
• ‘You and yourself’
• ‘You and others’


Agenda

You & Yourself
• The Critical Challenges: your perspectives
• Drivers of C-Suite Success
• The role of Great People Decisions

You & Others
• Influencing others
• The Keys to Building Effective Teams
• How to Prepare for Your New Role


Agenda

You & Yourself

You & Others


49 of you responded to our PALM 2 Survey

Dear PALM participant,
We are looking forward to meeting you in January as part of the PALM 2 program for our module
'Succeeding to the C-Suite'.
As partners in Egon Zehnder International, we often deal with executives considering the challenge of
moving into the C-suite, or reflecting on their progress in a C-level role.
This will be the subject of our work with you during the program.
As part of our preparation, and to make sure that we focus on the topics that are of most interest to you,
we have compiled a very brief questionnaire which would like you to complete as soon as possible.
Your responses will be treated in complete confidence, and will only be shared in anonymous,
aggregated form. The questionnaire should not take more than ten minutes at the most to complete.
We would be grateful if you could complete the following questionnaire no later than 7th January.
Once you have completed it, you can print it or save it on your desktop. If you bring a copy of your
completed questionnaire to the program, then you can compare your views with the aggregated views of
all participants in the program.
We are looking forward to your participation and to meeting you in MILE next month.

With best regards,

Johan Brand (Dubai) and Mark Byford (London)


Survey respondents widely spread across industries…

Q. Which industry sector are you in currently?

All Other Responses
Business Services Sector Education
Public sector/
Government
Manufacturing/
Processing

Energy/Power Generation

Consumer goods
IT/Telecom

Retail/Wholesale
Financial Sector
Construction


… and almost half already in the C-Suite…

Q. How long have you been in the C-Suite already?

Not sure if I will get there
More than 5 years

Should get there in the
next 3 to 5 years

Between 3 and 5 years

For 2 years or less
Should get there in the Will be appointed within a
next 1 to 2 years year


…some feel well-equipped for the business challenges in the
C-Suite, but most feel there is more to learn
Q. To what extent do you think you already have all the skills
to deal with the C-Suite’s important business challenges?

Better than needed

At the right level

Some room for improvement

Major room for improvement

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%


… nevertheless, a high 85% feels confident to very confident
that they will be successful in the C-Suite!

Q. To what extent do you feel confident that you will be successful in the C-
suite?

Very confident

Confident

Less confident

Not confident

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%


You see almost all the core management skills
as very important
Q. How important do you think are each of these skills for you in the C-suite in
your specific business/organization?

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
Very important Important Neither important nor Unimportant Very unimportant
unimportant

Leading people Leading strategy Managing change
Delivering financial results Delivering operational results Managing external stake holders
Managing peers


But People, Strategy and Change were ranked by you overall
as the most critical skills to master…
Q. When thinking of the most important challenges of being in the C-Suite in your
specific business/organization, which of the following skills do you think are
most critical for your success?
Please rank (1 = most important)

Leading people

Leading strategy

1
Managing change
2
3
Delivering financial results 4
5
Delivering operational results 6
7
Managing external stake
holders

Managing peers

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%


… these are also the areas where you expect to experience
difficulty over the next two years
Q. How would you rate the level of difficulty that you expect to experience with
these skills in your specific business/organization over the next two years?

Managing change

Leading people

Leading strategy

Delivering financial results

holders

Delivering operational results

Managing peers

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

A lot of difficulty Some difficulty Neutral No difficulty Don't know


Delivery is the top priority for more experienced executives,
while potentials are more focused on managing others


1
In C-Suite already Leading strategy
2
3 years and over – Managing peers
3
top 3 ranking Managing external stake
holders

Leading people

Managing change

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%



Leading strategy 1 Expect to be in C-Suite
Managing peers
2
within 5 years –
3
top 3 ranking
holders

Leading people

Managing change

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Your most important business challenges in the C-suite
over the coming 1 to 2 years

…process and operational improvement, making most of peers think and work

in unity, changing the culture of the organization, managing change, creating

profits, how to orchestrate application of available innovations in line with

business needs, develop clear and powerful personal and business goals,

delivering major projects, keep the growth rate, cost control, attracting top 10% Focus on
talent, leading strategy, deliver financial results, managing change, managing
leading
priorities, deliver operational and financial targets, delivering results, building
people,
image as indispensable leader for my organization by proposing profitable managing
products and services, upgrading leadership and operational skills to keep up change,
delivering
with the growth of our company, managing change, leading people, managing
results
change, get growth in sustained market, building new company structure,

managing change, geographical expansion, deliver growth targets, leading

changes, get financial results, attracting top talent…


Most important business challenges in the C-suite over the
coming 3 to 5 years
…provide people and organizational leadership, modify a model strategy to be used widely,

set up the business leadership team for the organization, leading strategy, reaching 5 years

goals on turnover and bottom line, competition, recruiting sustainable talent, liaise between

‘old school’ and ‘new school’ of C-Suite level across companies, to ensure the strategic

planning process moves into operating plans with clearly defined responsibilities, to

measure planned goals with the achievements, succeeding to meet the strategy, have the Focus on
talent pool and pipe line full of leaders, define investment opportunities, competitive
people
strategy for sustainable growth, leading strategy, leading people, to implement 5 year leadership,
strategy, manage growth and strategy, manage the public in case of IPO, manage change, leading
strategy,
growing foreign offices, transformation to next level business model, managing people,
delivering
expansion in different categories/geographies, achieving the strategy goals, leading sustainable
strategy, building strong client relations, maintaining loyal customers, increase profitability, growth
deliver on financial and operational projections, respond to market change, Saudization,

international expansion, achieving targets while facing increasing competition and limited

resources, change the mindset of my leadership, financial, talent management…


Survey summary
The 49 respondents are widely spread among industries
• And almost half of you are already in the C-Suite

You are confident of success
• But most of you feel there is still much to learn

While you believe all the core management skills are important, you are particularly focused
on three of them:
• Managing Change, Leading People, and Leading Strategy

These are where you see most difficulty for you going forwards, though as leaders gain
more experience there is a shift of emphasis
• Those already in the C-Suite are more focused on delivering financial/operational results, and
less on managing key internal and external stakeholders

In the shorter-term, your predominant focus is on delivery and managing change, but
longer-term you are more concerned about creating or maintaining a sustainable strategy
• And the major potential barriers to success are largely people-related


Any changes of view as a result of your work during the past
two weeks?

Have your priorities changed as you have progressed through the PALM 2 programme?
• If so, how have they altered, and why?

Has the program increased your sense of the importance of certain topics?
• If so, which ones, and why?

“What are your experiences on this matter that you
would like to share with your fellow participants in
this PALM session?”


Agenda

You & Yourself

You & Others


EZI perspective on C-Suite

It’s the biggest leap!

Major discontinuities from previous levels
• Strategy
• People Leadership
• External stakeholders/owners
• “Decision maker of last resort”
• Absolute necessity to deliver results (operational and financial)
• …


What we look for in a C-Suite Executive

Like an iceberg, what lies under the water has much greater depth than that
which you see above the surface.

Critical Skills to date
Performance and Experiences

Competencies the role
Readiness for and Identity

Potential for the future


What we look for in a C-Suite Executive: key elements

Performance Readiness Potential Future
To Date For Role Trajectory

Value Critical Skills and Emotional
Creation Experience Fluency

Market Intellectual
Competencies
Perception Fluency

Identity Resolve

Development
Cultural Fit
Orientation

Drive


How do we assess readiness for the C-Suite?
Step One: Performance to date

Performance Understanding your performance to date, what value you
To Date have added to the organisation(s) you have worked in, is a
critical first step
Value
Creation
Points of consideration:

Market
• What business impact have you made so far? What value
Perception have you added?
• How are you perceived in the wider market?
• What possibilities could this open up?
- Are there limitations due to the past?


Self awareness starts with understanding how others see
you through what you have done

Knowing where you stand already
• What do those around you rely on you to deliver ?
– based on past experience and delivery
• What do others see as your “Personal Brand”?
Understanding “the other side of the coin”
• Everyone has weaknesses that are the consequence of their strengths
– Eg, someone who is very driven to deliver as fast as possible, may not be very
effective in consulting others’ opinions first
• You will be stronger for understanding your “other side” and its impact on how you are
perceived


Value
Creation
Value creation “gets you in the game”

Company Overview: Plectrum Plc - (historical 2006 – 2010) ILLUSTRATIVE

Name: Francois Lebon Revenues, currency £B 6.7
6.6 6.7
President 6.4
President 5.7
Nationality:
International French CEO North America
Paul Scott June Striver
Susan Arrowsmith
Location: UK
Education: Ecole Polytechnique
Languages: Asian French, English
President CFO
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Markets President
Dick Smith
James Kent Europe
Career Summary: Francois Lebon Market cap, currency £B
50
1998 – present Plectrum Plc Executive Directors 40
2000 – 2004 President, Major Markets (UK, Germany & Spain) 30
President 20
1999 – 2000 Counsel
General Managing Director, Global Supply
Global Marketing , Sales
Director
HR Director
Global IT 10
Fred Townsend
1997 – 1999 & Innovation
Managing Director, Emerging Markets James Terry Beam
Jim 0
Bill Bridges
2007 2008 2009 2010
1992 – 1997 Bluestream Plc
1997 – 1996 Marketing Director Worldwide
1992 – 1994 Managing Director France Share price, currency £

1988 – 1991 Groupe Affaires, Paris
Founding Partner

Comments:
• After an early career in fmcg and consulting, Lebon enjoyed a very fast trajectory at Bluestream,
making the executive board in five years. He was given increasingly complex markets to run,
being credited with the ability to focus on and constantly improve revenue, efficiency and
Operating profit, currency £B
profitability
2.1 2.0 1.9
• He was seen as the number two to CEO John Andrews but left when he realised Andrews was 1.4 1.7
not likely to step down in the near to medium future.
• In his last role at Plectrum Lebon was responsible for £3.5B sales, £800m profits and 20,000
staff. During the two years of his tenure there he was able to impact the business significantly,
and the share price moved from £6.50 to over £9.00. 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Financial Data Source: Capital IQ

Market
Perception
Your “Personal Brand”

• Strengths are the Executive’s “Personal
Brand,” their competitive edge that has
helped them deliver the most value
through their career
• Research shows executives should build
on strengths rather than solely focus on
weaknesses
• Many executives need help to articulate
their “Personal Brand” and how it can be
leveraged


Step Two: Readiness for Role
Readiness Understanding what is needed in the next role, and how far
For Role the skills you have developed equip you to meet those
requirements, is the second step
Critical Skills and
• Analyse what the role requires for success, and create a role
Experience
specification
• Establish which skills, experience, and leadership
Competencies
competencies are needed for an executive to succeed in the
role

Identity
• Check whether the executive believes the role is aligned
with who they are, whether it fits with their values and they
are prepared to accept the costs it will impose on them

Cultural Fit • Review cultural fit with the new organisation


Critical Skills and We analyse the specific business challenges
Experience
you will need to address to be successful?

Start with business goals
• What are the overall strategic priorities?
• What are targets in $, % growth?
• “How will the job holder contribute to achieving these goals?”
Focus on critical situations
• “Can you think of some specific situations that will be critical to success in meeting
these priorities?”

Work backwards from examples of people already doing some or all of the role
effectively
• “Do you have anyone who is performing this job effectively? Describe what it is that
makes them effective.”
• “Is there a competitor who is particularly good at this?”


Critical Skills and Relevant experience is then identified and
Experience
assessed against
Requested experience role profile for CEO position -
Feedback from Board Member discussions Illustrative
Board Experience Must have Nice to have Acceptable
Proven CEO
Executive Board Member
Sector Experience
Financial Services ? ?
Life Industry ? ?
Asset Management
Business Context
Driving Performance improvement
Leading a substantial and sustained change programme
Leading a growth agenda
International Experience
Global ?
Regional P&L
Functional Route
Regional General Management
Marketing/Sales


Our world-leading EZI scaled competency
Competencies
model is used to refine role requirements
Egon Zehnder International Core Competencies

• Team Leadership
• Strategic Orientation • Collaboration & Influencing
• Market Knowledge • Change Leadership
• Building Organisational Capability

Thought People
Leadership Leadership

Business
Leadership

• Results Orientation
• Commercial Orientation
• Customer Impact

A unique Role Specification is built by us, based on this
analysis
The Role Illustrative

Future
Challenges

Main Tasks & Responsibilities Behaviours/Values

Technical Skills Experience Required Competency Profile


“Identity” refers to how you see the new role
Identity
fitting with your career aspirations and values

What makes the role interesting to you? Why do you want it?

What are the important implications for you personally of taking on this role?
• Have you appreciated the impact of the time commitments, the level of personal
accountability, and the need to work through others

How would you describe the values of the organisation, and how far does it fit
with your personal values?

Identity is not about skills,
but about your aspirations and values:
self awareness here is key


Identity
Identity: what good looks like
Excited and energised by the possibilities of taking on the role

Understands the specific role requirements in terms of personal demands and
how life will change

Recognizes the job is to grow shareholder value, and this will require different
work focus

Articulates how leading people at the next level is different from his current role

Explicitly lives the values of the organization: knows that his actions will be held
to a higher standard than others

Prepares for role by seeking understanding from superiors and others who have
held similar roles


Cultural Fit Diagnosing Cultural Fit: EZI’s model of
organisational culture

Organizational Leadership Clarity of Direction
Clarity
• Leadership style • Vision & goals
Vision & goals
• Communication climate • Roles & responsibilities
Roles & responsibilities
• Decision-making and values • Performance targets
Performance targets

Culture
Diagnostic
dimensions

Learning and Renewal Performance Drive
• Motivation to deliver
Motivation to deliver
• Feedback
• Pro-activity
Pro-activity
• Development support
• Process orientation
Process orientation
• Innovation
• Attitude to risk
Attitude to risk


We also assess for risks of derailment:
Overview

Derailment occurs when a manager on the road to success is fired, demoted or
given a job below his actual level of achievements
• The most frequent cause for derailment is insensitivity to others
CEOs are very vulnerable to derailment because of the pressure at the top of the
pyramid
• The insulation from honest feedback further increases the risk for derailment by
preventing CEOs to be aware of the traits that are hurting them and their
organizations
Dotlich and Cairo list ten characteristics (derailers) associated with CEO failure
• Arrogance, melodrama, excessive caution, habitual distrust, aloofness,
mischievousness, eccentricity, passive resistance, perfectionism and eagerness to
please


Self-awareness is your key defence

The average person has two or three potential derailers, these derailers are the
flip side of very useful strengths
It’s only when people are unaware of the trait, deny its existence or fail to see its
downside that issues arise
• E.g., Arrogance is the flip side of self-confidence, crossing the line from self
confidence to arrogance would be for instance going from « fighting for what you
believe in » to « being unwilling to give up a fight no matter what »
The key to avoiding derailment is self-awareness – assessing the candidate’s
self-awareness and openness to feedback is thus critical
• Shipper and Dillard (2000) found that managers who were about to derail were more
likely to recover if they estimated their skills accurately and derailed managers can
recover if they are able to honestly evaluate their performance and learn from
experience (Kovach 1989)


Step Three: Future Potential

Potential Understanding your future potential, so that you can grow with
the role, and also manage new circumstances as they occur,
is the third step:
Emotional • Are you energized by empowering others to create a positive
Fluency (EQ)
impact? Can you inspire commitment, develop champions,
and build a self-renewing culture?
Intellectual
Fluency (IQ) • Can you make sense of complex information, discovering
new insights that transform past views or set new directions?

Resolve • Do you have the courage to persist to achieve goals of
substantial scope and difficulty despite challenges?

Development • Do you remain open to new experiences, ideas, knowledge,
Orientation
and people? Can you identify the new key success factor?

Drive • Do you understand what motivates you to succeed?


Emotional
Fluency (EQ)
Emotional Fluency: what good looks like
Describes success in terms of impact driven by others
• Does not require ego-boosting
Feels proud of the accomplishments of others and gives them the credit
• Excited knowing that he has had on impact on them

Feels satisfaction from empowering and encouraging others to take the lead
• Gets excited by the possibilities of channelling power into his team
• Enjoys influencing people to create change independently
Knows how to use power based on situation
• Sometimes overtly through formal authority and other times discreetly through
influence

Sets up successors for even greater success than he had


Emotional C-Suite leaders are typically motivated to work
Fluency (EQ)
through and empower others
Links to Personal Humility, a core value in Jim Collins’ “Level Five Leadership”
Demonstrates a compelling modesty
• Shuns public adulation, never boastful, but showcases the team’s achievements
Acts with quiet, calm determination
• Motivates others through inspired standards, not principally through charisma
Channels ambition into the company, not the self
• Sets up successors for even more greatness in the next generation
Looks into the mirror, not out of the window, to apportion responsibility for poor
results
• Never blames other people, external factors or bad luck

Source: HBR, The High Performance Organisation, July-August 2005; EZI

Intellectual Intellectual fluency enables C-suite
Fluency (IQ)
executives to handle complexity effectively

CEOs are dealing with so much complexity, they have to make decisions with
relatively small amounts of information
• So they need to be intellectually very agile
We are looking for two inherent skills
• Flexibility: taking the initiative to shift thinking to gather information at all levels
• Pattern recognition: making sense of highly complex information
In addition to education track record, we focus on the range of someone’s
thinking and discussion:
• Do they proactively shift their thinking – from technical or operational details to
strategy, function to line, and back again – thinking both broadly and deeply?
• Can they make sense of complex information, discovering new insights that set new
directions?


Resolve
Resolve is a key differentiator of outstanding
CEOs

Jim Collins describes resolve, which he calls “Professional Will” as a key
capability in great CEOs

• Demonstrates unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to
produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult

• Is able to take a counter view and hold his line

• Sets the standard for building an enduring great company; will settle for
nothing less

Source: HBR, The High Performance Organisation, July-August 2005; EZI

Development Development Orientation reflects a continuing
Orientation
desire to learn and develop, “learning agility”

“Analytically agile” managers learn “People agile” managers learn from
from study openness to the views of others
• Seek out the new, different, and better • Connect/network beyond normal
boundaries
• See patterns in diverse data
• Look for and test out alternatives • Seek guidance from others
• Experiment and analyze to learn • Search out people with different ideas on
key topics of interest
• Open to feedback: reflect on key
messages and incorporate findings into
their development plans


Drive
What motivates the candidate to succeed?
Q. “Your true motivation for being successful in C-Suite?”

Self achievement (“Fulfilling your potential”) is the key motivational driver for
over 2/3rds of respondents

Other motivational drivers that you mentioned are in the areas of:
• Power motive
• Financial gain / personal financial stability
• Leading other to achieve goals
• Desire to help others
• Being a leading Muslim in my field
• Family tradition
• Status


Self awareness is important!

“What are your experiences on this matter that you
would like to share with your fellow participants in
this PALM session?”


Agenda

You & Yourself

You & Others


Egon
Zehnder
International


What research shows about career success

You need to:
• Build good relationships
• Deliver hard results
• Leave a strong legacy
Once you become a manager, you deliver through others

Great People Decisions are essential for:
• Selecting great people
• Assigning the right person to the right job
• Developing the right successors


Factors for career success

Good fortune

Genetics

Three controllable factors
• Development
• Career Decisions
• People Decisions
Most of these factors have different weights at different stages of our life


Great People Decisions and Career Success

The ability to make great
people decisions is the most
powerful contributor to career
success

The farther along you get in
your career, the more
important they tend to
become


Great People Decisions are one of the few sources of
corporate performance

Five-year study: the largest content analysis ever undertaken, covering:
• 10 years of relevant data
• 160 companies
• 200 management practices that were thought to influence business success
Conclusion:
• Only a tiny fraction of these 200 practices make any measurable difference in
corporate performance
• Directly or indirectly, most of these key practices refer to the right people, including
talent and leadership

“The choice of chief executives has as much impact in profitability
as the decision by a company as to whether it will remain in the
current industry or move to a new one”.
Joyce, Nohria and Roberson

Great People Decisions can be the most important source of
company value

Year
effect

Industry
effect
Company
value
Company
effect

Leader In some markets, the leader effect
effect accounts for up to 40% of the variance in
value

Source: “When Does Leadership Matter?”, Wasserman, Nohria and Anand, Harvard Business School working
paper no. 01-063, April 2001

Jim Collins, “Good To Great”

Rigorous selection of 11 companies (out of almost 1,500), which achieved and
sustained greatness
• For at least 15 years
• Against comparable companies
The right leadership, and the right managers, were the two preconditions for
success

“First Who… Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would
begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they
first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the
right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.
The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be
wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”

Jim Collins


What you are looking for can be a moving target

Jobs at the top tend to have little stability as priorities and requirements rapidly
shift as a result of:
• Macroeconomics
• Competitors
• Technological changes


The most relevant competencies are the hardest to assess

Four core competencies for senior executives are:
• Strategic Orientation
• Team Leadership
• Collaboration and Influence
Each one of these (and many others) is very hard to measure!


In summary

Great People Decisions are very difficult
• As Jack Welch put it, “Hiring great people is brutally hard”
However, the first step is straightforward
• Awareness, to stay away from the usual traps
If you want to master people decisions, Awareness is an essential first step, but
only the first one: the other steps to master are:
• Knowing when change is needed
• What to look for
• Where to look, inside and out
• How to appraise people
• How to attract and motivate the best people
• How to integrate the best people


We will focus on these elements as we work through the
remainder of this session

• Knowing when change is needed
• What to look for
• Where to look, inside and out
• How to appraise people
• How to attract and motivate the best people
• How to integrate the best people


Agenda

You & Yourself

You & Others


External stakeholder management & the CEO role

A key difference: “The Buck Stops Here”

Shareholders/owners

Government

Regulators

Press

…


Understanding and building relationships with key
stakeholders is fundamental to success

Identify stakeholders
Identify stakeholders Build relationships
Understand attitudes and preferences
Understand attitudes and preferences and communicate

Understand each Build awareness of
stakeholder’s importance
stakeholder
’s informal networks


Interdependencies define the stakeholder landscape and
how to prioritise your time in communicating with them

“Keep Satisfied” “Manage Closely”
depends on you
Stakeholder

“Keep Fully
“Monitor only”
Informed”

You depend on Stakeholder


Understanding informal networks can be critical in many
contexts

Sometimes called the “shadow
organization” or “the company
behind the organization chart” Gareth Brown
Group
Mahmoud
• Every organization has such CFO
Controller

networks as people tend to defer Senior
finance
to others’ opinions when it managemen
Influences t
comes to important issues and Innovation
decisions projects
Maria
KM = key
Sanchez
• When people do this, the result Abdullah
driver
Internal
Kelly
is a set of channels of GM CMO Ex-school Auditor
communication and influence Influences
friends
that operate in parallel with the
Sam
formal ones Strongly Plant
aligned Manager
• These networks are important in
Ibrahim
supporting or blocking change Ex - HR


“Collaboration & Influencing” is a competency we test in
almost all executive candidates
Egon Zehnder International Core Competencies

• Team Leadership
• Strategic Orientation
• Market Knowledge • Collaboration & Influencing
• Change Leadership
• Building Organisational Capability

Thought People
Leadership Leadership

Business
Leadership

• Commercial Orientation
• Customer Impact

Succeeding In The C-Suite

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