Leadership Isn't a Solitary Journey
Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, the new CEO at Belgian chemical company Solvay who appears on our cover, is very clear and direct about a keystone to being successful as a disruptive leader.
“You are not a transformational hero who is carrying the weight of the transformation on your own shoulders,”he told us.“You need to have a strong team around you who have the ability to support the changes.”
It’s sometimes hard to think in those terms, especially when considering the responsibilities that leaders are faced with. But person after person told us that disruptive leadership is not a solo act.The vision for your enterprise’s future may be yours — and you have to have a bold vision — but it takes a team of people who have bought into that vision to make it a reality, because that’s what disruptive leaders do.
• They ask tough questions. Not “why didn’t we” questions but “why can’t we” questions.
• They present a bold vision, one that seems impossible on its face.
• They align everything in the enterprise to turn that vision into a reality.
• They inspire everyone on their team and in their organization to make that vision happen.
So if you are still trying to shoulder the burdens of leadership alone, stop.
Look around you and see who you are surrounding yourself with? Are they, as our own Nathan Rosenberg asks in this issue, committed to your vision for the future or merely complying with your directives?
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
Editor in Chief, Insigniam Quarterly
The document discusses entrepreneurial leadership and attempts to define it. Entrepreneurial leadership combines aspects of entrepreneurship and traditional leadership. It involves taking risks to innovate, having a vision to inspire others, and empowering employees to achieve goals. Organizations need entrepreneurial leaders who can adapt to constant changes in technology and customer demands. While leadership, management, and entrepreneurship can overlap, entrepreneurial leadership requires a willingness to take calculated risks and make choices to move an organization forward. Developing entrepreneurial skills within an organization can help emerging leaders test their abilities before becoming external entrepreneurs.
The 21st century leadership model needed for today's organizations will be based on coaching people to reach impossible dreams, build organizations that change as fast as change and workplaces where people give the gif of their passions, talens, and best ideas. This article will help you to lead a coaching revolution in your company.Oue 100 y
Tech giant Microsoft’s India-born CEO Satya Nadella’s first book in which he explores his personal journey, the company’s ongoing transformation and the wave of technological change will hit the future.
The book titled “ Hit Refresh “ carries a foreword by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Some of my Key picks from the Book
Page 38 & 39- 3 Business & leadership principles learned from Cricket
• Compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation
• Put your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition.
• One brilliant character who does not put the team first can destroy the entire team.
Page 119
• “ To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in the field of Shit “ – We can look at a leader as an operator of a machine. Machines are built up using a lot of different cogs of all sizes that coherently work together as one giant machine. So be definition it is important to select cogs that you know you can trust and rely on before operating your machine. Since without these cogs, it all falls apart and you would not be able to operate anything.
Page 119 & 120 -Leadership Principles
• Bring clarity to those you work with. By taking internal and external noise and synthesizing a message from it to deliver to your team.
• Leaders generate Energy, not only on their own teams but across the company.
• To find a way a way to deliver success to make things happen. This means driving innovations that people love and are inspired to work on; finding balance between long-term success and short-term wins; and being boundary-less and globally minded in seeing solutions.
Page 125 – Our Partners
• “ For everyone working with partners, I encourage you to ask yourself “ What could be?” and explore new, creative ways to do interesting things that add value back to our platforms for customers” .
Page 126 – Four initiatives every company must make a priority
• Engage with your customers base by leveraging data to improve the customer experience.
• Empower your own employees by enabling greater and more mobile productivity and collaboration in the new digital world of work.
• Optimize operations, automating and simplifying business process across sales, operations & finance.
• Transform products service and business models ( Become a digital company)
Page 166– Quantum Computers
• “ Quantum computers will not stake the form of new stand-alone, super-fast PC but will operate as a co-processor , receiving its instructions and cues from a stack of classical processors” .
The document provides an overview of Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes and his work developing theories on organizational lifecycles and management. Some key points:
- Dr. Adizes is the founder of the Adizes Institute, a top management consulting firm. He has authored 15 books on organizational lifecycles and management that have been translated into 24 languages.
- Adizes developed a model of 10 stages in an organization's lifecycle from courtship to death. He believes the optimal stage is "PRIME" where an organization achieves balance between control and flexibility.
- Remaining in the PRIME stage is challenging as organizations must constantly work to maintain this balance and avoid complacency.
The reluctance gap creates a barrier between every layer of functional leadership and collectively accounts for a substantial amount of 'missing' leadership capability. Addressing the gap allows leaders to be fully present and engaged and they can, in turn, build engaged teams
Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?"
Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.
In his previous bestseller, Built to Last, Jim Collins explored what made great companies great and how they sustained that greatness over time.
One point kept nagging him, though — great companies have, for the most part, always been great, while a vast majority of good companies remain just that: good, but not great. What could merely good companies do to become great, to turn long-term weakness into long-term supremacy?
Collins and his team of researchers used strict benchmarks to identify a group of eleven elite companies that made the leap from good to great and sustained that greatness for at least fifteen years. The companies that made the list might surprise you as much as those left off (the likes of Intel, GE
and Coca Cola are nowhere to be found).
The real surprise of Good to Great isn’t so much what good companies do to propel themselves to greatness — it’s why more companies haven’t done the same things more often.
The document discusses entrepreneurial leadership and attempts to define it. Entrepreneurial leadership combines aspects of entrepreneurship and traditional leadership. It involves taking risks to innovate, having a vision to inspire others, and empowering employees to achieve goals. Organizations need entrepreneurial leaders who can adapt to constant changes in technology and customer demands. While leadership, management, and entrepreneurship can overlap, entrepreneurial leadership requires a willingness to take calculated risks and make choices to move an organization forward. Developing entrepreneurial skills within an organization can help emerging leaders test their abilities before becoming external entrepreneurs.
The 21st century leadership model needed for today's organizations will be based on coaching people to reach impossible dreams, build organizations that change as fast as change and workplaces where people give the gif of their passions, talens, and best ideas. This article will help you to lead a coaching revolution in your company.Oue 100 y
Tech giant Microsoft’s India-born CEO Satya Nadella’s first book in which he explores his personal journey, the company’s ongoing transformation and the wave of technological change will hit the future.
The book titled “ Hit Refresh “ carries a foreword by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
Some of my Key picks from the Book
Page 38 & 39- 3 Business & leadership principles learned from Cricket
• Compete vigorously and with passion in the face of uncertainty and intimidation
• Put your team first, ahead of your personal statistics and recognition.
• One brilliant character who does not put the team first can destroy the entire team.
Page 119
• “ To be a leader in this company, your job is to find the rose petals in the field of Shit “ – We can look at a leader as an operator of a machine. Machines are built up using a lot of different cogs of all sizes that coherently work together as one giant machine. So be definition it is important to select cogs that you know you can trust and rely on before operating your machine. Since without these cogs, it all falls apart and you would not be able to operate anything.
Page 119 & 120 -Leadership Principles
• Bring clarity to those you work with. By taking internal and external noise and synthesizing a message from it to deliver to your team.
• Leaders generate Energy, not only on their own teams but across the company.
• To find a way a way to deliver success to make things happen. This means driving innovations that people love and are inspired to work on; finding balance between long-term success and short-term wins; and being boundary-less and globally minded in seeing solutions.
Page 125 – Our Partners
• “ For everyone working with partners, I encourage you to ask yourself “ What could be?” and explore new, creative ways to do interesting things that add value back to our platforms for customers” .
Page 126 – Four initiatives every company must make a priority
• Engage with your customers base by leveraging data to improve the customer experience.
• Empower your own employees by enabling greater and more mobile productivity and collaboration in the new digital world of work.
• Optimize operations, automating and simplifying business process across sales, operations & finance.
• Transform products service and business models ( Become a digital company)
Page 166– Quantum Computers
• “ Quantum computers will not stake the form of new stand-alone, super-fast PC but will operate as a co-processor , receiving its instructions and cues from a stack of classical processors” .
The document provides an overview of Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes and his work developing theories on organizational lifecycles and management. Some key points:
- Dr. Adizes is the founder of the Adizes Institute, a top management consulting firm. He has authored 15 books on organizational lifecycles and management that have been translated into 24 languages.
- Adizes developed a model of 10 stages in an organization's lifecycle from courtship to death. He believes the optimal stage is "PRIME" where an organization achieves balance between control and flexibility.
- Remaining in the PRIME stage is challenging as organizations must constantly work to maintain this balance and avoid complacency.
The reluctance gap creates a barrier between every layer of functional leadership and collectively accounts for a substantial amount of 'missing' leadership capability. Addressing the gap allows leaders to be fully present and engaged and they can, in turn, build engaged teams
Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?"
Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.
In his previous bestseller, Built to Last, Jim Collins explored what made great companies great and how they sustained that greatness over time.
One point kept nagging him, though — great companies have, for the most part, always been great, while a vast majority of good companies remain just that: good, but not great. What could merely good companies do to become great, to turn long-term weakness into long-term supremacy?
Collins and his team of researchers used strict benchmarks to identify a group of eleven elite companies that made the leap from good to great and sustained that greatness for at least fifteen years. The companies that made the list might surprise you as much as those left off (the likes of Intel, GE
and Coca Cola are nowhere to be found).
The real surprise of Good to Great isn’t so much what good companies do to propel themselves to greatness — it’s why more companies haven’t done the same things more often.
The document discusses 21st century management concepts, including boosting staff levels to reach organizational goals, focusing on learning, evaluation, and continuous improvement for employees, and ensuring strategies are supported by the right people and technologies. It also emphasizes the importance of talent management to understand employee capabilities, global strategies that consider all global market opportunities, and using customer surveys to strengthen organizational branding.
This document contains summaries of several articles on leadership. The first article discusses that no leader is perfect and the best leaders focus on their strengths and find others to make up for their limitations. It also outlines four steps in a leadership framework: sense making, relating, creating a vision, and inventing. The second article discusses how leaders can use difficult experiences or "crucibles" to reflect on their values and grow as leaders. The third discusses a study that found the most effective leaders have personal humility and professional will. It also notes that leadership can develop under the right circumstances.
Prime Leaders have unique abilities that allow them to see opportunities where others see obstacles, solutions where others see problems, and possibilities where others see none. They inspire confidence in difficult times and motivate employees to achieve high goals. Prime Leaders transform inspiration into concrete results through informing and directing employees. Their leadership skills include the ability to forge unity among diverse views, respect all perspectives, and find common ground. Studying Prime Leaders' skills can help companies struggling in today's economy to achieve their goals.
This document discusses creating an environment of innovation through leadership. It emphasizes that leadership is key to fostering innovation, noting that great organizations have great leaders, not great structures. Leading innovatively requires moving fast, taking risks, learning and adapting. The document outlines elements needed for an innovative culture, including leadership, teamwork, rewards, learning opportunities, and corporate buy-in. It provides examples of leadership from various historical periods and cultures, and distinguishes between leadership and management. The goal of leading for innovation is cultivating people and a growth mindset.
This document summarizes the key benefits of CEO peer groups based on the experiences of the author, who has run peer groups for two years. The main benefits discussed are: 1) Being surrounded by other successful leaders pushes members to achieve more; 2) Peer groups encourage bigger thinking and risk-taking; 3) Members receive honest feedback and can address weaknesses; 4) Cross-pollination of ideas from different industries sparks innovation; 5) The "master mind" effect of collaborative brainstorming; 6) Vulnerability and support among trusted peers; 7) Finding people who understand the challenges of leadership.
The document summarizes a leadership conference with several speakers. Welby Altidor discussed nurturing creativity in companies and building trust to foster creative courage. Vince Molinaro talked about leadership accountability and the behaviors of accountable leaders. Dr. Tasha Eurich covered the importance of self-awareness, particularly the seven pillars of internal self-awareness. Amanda Lang emphasized the need for an engaging culture that allows questions to foster innovation and change. Joe Biden concluded the event by stressing that leadership requires making tough decisions and owning the consequences.
Warren Bennis Leadership Excellence - July 2014Joe Clark
This document summarizes the July 2014 issue of the Leadership Excellence Essentials magazine. It provides overviews of several articles in the issue, including an article on leadership lessons from tug-of-war, traits that differentiate elite leaders, ways to foster heroic leadership, and factors that impact creative performance and innovation. It also lists additional articles on developing the next generation of leaders, evaluating leadership effectiveness, and demonstrating leadership in small businesses. The summary highlights some of the key topics and lessons discussed in the magazine issue.
This document discusses adaptive leadership and how it differs from traditional management. It provides summaries of what traditional managers and leaders do, as well as why agile teams need leaders rather than managers. The core mindsets of adaptive leadership are described as embracing ambiguity, envisioning and evolving, enabling collaboration, and riding paradox. It also discusses how to transition from being a manager to a leader, including setting your vision, leading with trust, and serving others. Key behaviors that foster trust are recognized, including showing vulnerability.
An enabler seeks to unlock latent potential in people and help them achieve their goals. Their role is to provide clear direction and encouragement, coach and support people, recognize good performance, ensure ongoing progress, select the right staff, resolve conflicts, encourage innovation, remain unpredictable, and act with integrity. An effective enabler communicates goals, involves people, delegates responsibility, provides honest feedback, and helps correct issues. Their role is to foster individual, team, and strategic excellence through meritocracy, speed, imagination, and excellence in execution.
Leading Change
Change is accelerating in our business world, and those who can embrace and drive it will be the winners. Globalization, restructuring, and workforce diversity are changing the way business is done, and leaders often must adapt at warp speed. With constant change, we have to do more with less, faster, cheaper and better. Doing our best is no longer enough. Leaders must frequently face changes in the business environment that seem to require miracles to overcome. The reality is that business is often a game of setting seemingly impossible challenges and making progress on these challenges. Resistance to change is widespread, and people leading change must often do so against a tide of resistance and predictions of failure. Fear of failure and disappointment are frequently the motivation for this approach. Often these well-intentioned people call their attitudes "realistic" or "practical." Unfortunately, people who resist new ideas, and change in general, ignore the influence of their own attitudes and beliefs on their “reality”. Successful change leaders must understand how people react to change, and be ready and able to lead and support their teams in successfully navigating required changes. These “change agents” must learn to personally deal with the pressure of constant change, and even welcome it, learning to surf the waves of change rather than being dragged under the waves. This module will provide you with an understanding of the change process, the role of resistance, and your role in leading change, so that you and your people can embrace change as a doorway to new possibilities.
Highly recommended course for everybody who seeks to find himself at dynamic 21st century environment! https://lnkd.in/eHabDGj
You'll find it @ https://www.coursera.org/learn/leadership-21st-century
Jack Welch believed in leaders who inspire others with a clear vision for improvement. He advocated for managing less through close supervision and empowering employees to make their own decisions. Welch also emphasized the importance of articulating a vision to inspire others, keeping messages and processes simple, and maintaining an informal culture where challenging ideas is encouraged. He saw change as an opportunity and believed the best ideas could come from anywhere.
This document provides a summary of lessons in team leadership that can be learned from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It discusses the importance of teamwork, passion, personal accountability, and other "soft skills" in achieving success. The document emphasizes that preparation, effort, determination and resilience are key to winning, both in sports and business. It also stresses the importance of culture, emotional control, coaching skills and learning from setbacks. The overall message is that common-sense lessons about teams, effort and heart can be applied from the Olympics to leadership in organizations.
Leadership Excellence January 2011 IssueDon Sandel
This document summarizes innovations at HCL Technologies to create a more collaborative and transparent organizational culture. The CEO, Vineet Nayar, led six major changes: 1) Making financial data transparent to all employees; 2) Establishing an online forum for open feedback; 3) Implementing service level agreements between internal departments; 4) Allowing open evaluations of managers by employees; 5) Developing an online peer-review process for departmental plans; and 6) Giving employees ownership in the company's strategy. These changes aimed to shift away from a traditional hierarchy and empower employees.
The manager dilemma: why we need to rethink our approach to management... and...PeopleFirm
The document discusses the problem of companies promoting functional experts to management positions without ensuring they have the proper skills to manage people effectively. It recommends flattening organizational structures with fewer managers, redefining management roles to focus on people skills over functional work, carefully selecting new managers based on their interests and abilities in managing others, and providing leadership training to prepare new managers for their roles. Implementing these changes would help companies develop stronger managers and improve employee experiences and performance.
Ten ways that managers can be more engaging leadersTerrence Seamon
The document outlines 10 practices that managers can use to become more engaging leaders, as described by Terrence H. Seamon. The 10 practices are organized into an acronym called ALICE which stands for Align & Appreciate, Listen & Learn, Involve & Improve, Communicate & Coach, and Energize & Empower. These practices focus on getting employees focused on goals, appreciating individual talents, listening to different views, involving employees in decision making, providing feedback, and motivating employees. Research shows that engaged employees increase productivity and profitability for companies, and that managers have the biggest influence on engagement. By consistently using these 10 practices, managers can become engaging leaders that improve employee engagement.
The document describes the Adizes Management Method, which identifies four key management roles: Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur, and Integrator. It explains that each role is necessary and focuses on a different imperative in problem solving. The document also outlines 10 stages in a company's lifecycle according to the method, from Courtship to Death. It contrasts good management styles with mismanagement styles.
Leadership Excellence February 2013 IssueDon Sandel
The document is a magazine focused on leadership development and organizational productivity. It contains several short articles on various leadership topics. The main article discusses the problem of low employee engagement in most organizations and proposes that this is due to management indifference or inability to improve engagement. It outlines a hierarchy of six levels of employee capabilities, with the top three - initiative, creativity, and passion - being the most valuable for competitive advantage but also the hardest for managers to inspire. The article argues managers must focus on building organizations that deserve employees' extraordinary efforts and gifts, rather than just getting more from employees.
The document discusses 21st century management concepts, including boosting staff levels to reach organizational goals, focusing on learning, evaluation, and continuous improvement for employees, and ensuring strategies are supported by the right people and technologies. It also emphasizes the importance of talent management to understand employee capabilities, global strategies that consider all global market opportunities, and using customer surveys to strengthen organizational branding.
This document contains summaries of several articles on leadership. The first article discusses that no leader is perfect and the best leaders focus on their strengths and find others to make up for their limitations. It also outlines four steps in a leadership framework: sense making, relating, creating a vision, and inventing. The second article discusses how leaders can use difficult experiences or "crucibles" to reflect on their values and grow as leaders. The third discusses a study that found the most effective leaders have personal humility and professional will. It also notes that leadership can develop under the right circumstances.
Prime Leaders have unique abilities that allow them to see opportunities where others see obstacles, solutions where others see problems, and possibilities where others see none. They inspire confidence in difficult times and motivate employees to achieve high goals. Prime Leaders transform inspiration into concrete results through informing and directing employees. Their leadership skills include the ability to forge unity among diverse views, respect all perspectives, and find common ground. Studying Prime Leaders' skills can help companies struggling in today's economy to achieve their goals.
This document discusses creating an environment of innovation through leadership. It emphasizes that leadership is key to fostering innovation, noting that great organizations have great leaders, not great structures. Leading innovatively requires moving fast, taking risks, learning and adapting. The document outlines elements needed for an innovative culture, including leadership, teamwork, rewards, learning opportunities, and corporate buy-in. It provides examples of leadership from various historical periods and cultures, and distinguishes between leadership and management. The goal of leading for innovation is cultivating people and a growth mindset.
This document summarizes the key benefits of CEO peer groups based on the experiences of the author, who has run peer groups for two years. The main benefits discussed are: 1) Being surrounded by other successful leaders pushes members to achieve more; 2) Peer groups encourage bigger thinking and risk-taking; 3) Members receive honest feedback and can address weaknesses; 4) Cross-pollination of ideas from different industries sparks innovation; 5) The "master mind" effect of collaborative brainstorming; 6) Vulnerability and support among trusted peers; 7) Finding people who understand the challenges of leadership.
The document summarizes a leadership conference with several speakers. Welby Altidor discussed nurturing creativity in companies and building trust to foster creative courage. Vince Molinaro talked about leadership accountability and the behaviors of accountable leaders. Dr. Tasha Eurich covered the importance of self-awareness, particularly the seven pillars of internal self-awareness. Amanda Lang emphasized the need for an engaging culture that allows questions to foster innovation and change. Joe Biden concluded the event by stressing that leadership requires making tough decisions and owning the consequences.
Warren Bennis Leadership Excellence - July 2014Joe Clark
This document summarizes the July 2014 issue of the Leadership Excellence Essentials magazine. It provides overviews of several articles in the issue, including an article on leadership lessons from tug-of-war, traits that differentiate elite leaders, ways to foster heroic leadership, and factors that impact creative performance and innovation. It also lists additional articles on developing the next generation of leaders, evaluating leadership effectiveness, and demonstrating leadership in small businesses. The summary highlights some of the key topics and lessons discussed in the magazine issue.
This document discusses adaptive leadership and how it differs from traditional management. It provides summaries of what traditional managers and leaders do, as well as why agile teams need leaders rather than managers. The core mindsets of adaptive leadership are described as embracing ambiguity, envisioning and evolving, enabling collaboration, and riding paradox. It also discusses how to transition from being a manager to a leader, including setting your vision, leading with trust, and serving others. Key behaviors that foster trust are recognized, including showing vulnerability.
An enabler seeks to unlock latent potential in people and help them achieve their goals. Their role is to provide clear direction and encouragement, coach and support people, recognize good performance, ensure ongoing progress, select the right staff, resolve conflicts, encourage innovation, remain unpredictable, and act with integrity. An effective enabler communicates goals, involves people, delegates responsibility, provides honest feedback, and helps correct issues. Their role is to foster individual, team, and strategic excellence through meritocracy, speed, imagination, and excellence in execution.
Leading Change
Change is accelerating in our business world, and those who can embrace and drive it will be the winners. Globalization, restructuring, and workforce diversity are changing the way business is done, and leaders often must adapt at warp speed. With constant change, we have to do more with less, faster, cheaper and better. Doing our best is no longer enough. Leaders must frequently face changes in the business environment that seem to require miracles to overcome. The reality is that business is often a game of setting seemingly impossible challenges and making progress on these challenges. Resistance to change is widespread, and people leading change must often do so against a tide of resistance and predictions of failure. Fear of failure and disappointment are frequently the motivation for this approach. Often these well-intentioned people call their attitudes "realistic" or "practical." Unfortunately, people who resist new ideas, and change in general, ignore the influence of their own attitudes and beliefs on their “reality”. Successful change leaders must understand how people react to change, and be ready and able to lead and support their teams in successfully navigating required changes. These “change agents” must learn to personally deal with the pressure of constant change, and even welcome it, learning to surf the waves of change rather than being dragged under the waves. This module will provide you with an understanding of the change process, the role of resistance, and your role in leading change, so that you and your people can embrace change as a doorway to new possibilities.
Highly recommended course for everybody who seeks to find himself at dynamic 21st century environment! https://lnkd.in/eHabDGj
You'll find it @ https://www.coursera.org/learn/leadership-21st-century
Jack Welch believed in leaders who inspire others with a clear vision for improvement. He advocated for managing less through close supervision and empowering employees to make their own decisions. Welch also emphasized the importance of articulating a vision to inspire others, keeping messages and processes simple, and maintaining an informal culture where challenging ideas is encouraged. He saw change as an opportunity and believed the best ideas could come from anywhere.
This document provides a summary of lessons in team leadership that can be learned from the 2014 Sochi Olympics. It discusses the importance of teamwork, passion, personal accountability, and other "soft skills" in achieving success. The document emphasizes that preparation, effort, determination and resilience are key to winning, both in sports and business. It also stresses the importance of culture, emotional control, coaching skills and learning from setbacks. The overall message is that common-sense lessons about teams, effort and heart can be applied from the Olympics to leadership in organizations.
Leadership Excellence January 2011 IssueDon Sandel
This document summarizes innovations at HCL Technologies to create a more collaborative and transparent organizational culture. The CEO, Vineet Nayar, led six major changes: 1) Making financial data transparent to all employees; 2) Establishing an online forum for open feedback; 3) Implementing service level agreements between internal departments; 4) Allowing open evaluations of managers by employees; 5) Developing an online peer-review process for departmental plans; and 6) Giving employees ownership in the company's strategy. These changes aimed to shift away from a traditional hierarchy and empower employees.
The manager dilemma: why we need to rethink our approach to management... and...PeopleFirm
The document discusses the problem of companies promoting functional experts to management positions without ensuring they have the proper skills to manage people effectively. It recommends flattening organizational structures with fewer managers, redefining management roles to focus on people skills over functional work, carefully selecting new managers based on their interests and abilities in managing others, and providing leadership training to prepare new managers for their roles. Implementing these changes would help companies develop stronger managers and improve employee experiences and performance.
Ten ways that managers can be more engaging leadersTerrence Seamon
The document outlines 10 practices that managers can use to become more engaging leaders, as described by Terrence H. Seamon. The 10 practices are organized into an acronym called ALICE which stands for Align & Appreciate, Listen & Learn, Involve & Improve, Communicate & Coach, and Energize & Empower. These practices focus on getting employees focused on goals, appreciating individual talents, listening to different views, involving employees in decision making, providing feedback, and motivating employees. Research shows that engaged employees increase productivity and profitability for companies, and that managers have the biggest influence on engagement. By consistently using these 10 practices, managers can become engaging leaders that improve employee engagement.
The document describes the Adizes Management Method, which identifies four key management roles: Producer, Administrator, Entrepreneur, and Integrator. It explains that each role is necessary and focuses on a different imperative in problem solving. The document also outlines 10 stages in a company's lifecycle according to the method, from Courtship to Death. It contrasts good management styles with mismanagement styles.
Leadership Excellence February 2013 IssueDon Sandel
The document is a magazine focused on leadership development and organizational productivity. It contains several short articles on various leadership topics. The main article discusses the problem of low employee engagement in most organizations and proposes that this is due to management indifference or inability to improve engagement. It outlines a hierarchy of six levels of employee capabilities, with the top three - initiative, creativity, and passion - being the most valuable for competitive advantage but also the hardest for managers to inspire. The article argues managers must focus on building organizations that deserve employees' extraordinary efforts and gifts, rather than just getting more from employees.
The document provides an overview of Progressive Corporation's financial highlights and performance for the second quarter of 2007, noting lower growth in written premiums, earned premiums, and net income compared to the previous year. It discusses the company's strategy of adjusting rates to prioritize customer growth over margins and highlights some signs of progress, including increased new business applications and improved customer retention metrics. The letter to shareholders characterizes the quarter's results as disappointing numerically but expresses confidence that actions taken to reduce rates, increase advertising, and improve customer experience will lead to stronger performance over time.
This guide details common mistakes made by employees in Section 1 and by employers in Section 2 and Section 3 of the Form I-9 and best practices for avoiding such errors.
Powering SOX, NERC, FERC Compliance -Energy Industry MetricStream Inc
This document discusses an energy company's implementation of MetricStream to improve its compliance processes. The company faces numerous regulatory requirements that were previously managed through an internally-developed system. MetricStream will provide the company with an integrated platform to streamline compliance for regulations like SOX, FERC, and NERC. It will establish a centralized framework to map processes, risks, controls and assessments. MetricStream will also automate workflows, surveys, and reporting to improve efficiency and transparency across the large, complex organization.
Stringent corporate governance, and accountability reforms, that
followed the corporate failures of the past, have dramatically
changed today's business environment - placing great responsibility
on the management and demanding seamless operations.
Organizations across the globe are constantly being challenged to
navigate through a proliferation of new standards and expectations
in a way that supports performance objectives, sustains
value, and protects the organization's brand. Whether we like it or
not, all corporations have to comply with regulations and at the
same time establish their credibility with investors, other stakeholders,
and the broader public. All these factors, brought together,
have fuelled the convergence of distinct, yet entwined
disciplines of the Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC).
Financial Services Expertise in Business Applications Services, Product Engineering, Applications Testing and Professional Services for Retail Banking, Capital Markets, Credit Services and Insurance
ComplianceOnline Virtual Seminar - IFRS and Effective Fraud Prevention Strate...ComplianceOnline
ComplianceOnline brings to you a full day virtual webinar session which will help you understand the IFRS basics and the risk areas and how to recognize the opportunities for fraud and develop strategies to deal with it. Whether you will be involved in preparing IFRS financial statements or analyzing those statements, come to this class to discover where the high-risk areas are and what you can do about them.
ComplianceOnline PPT Format 2015 SEC’s New Whistleblower Rules 5.12.2015Craig Taggart MBA
This document is a presentation about the SEC's new whistleblower rules and their implications for compliance programs. It discusses key changes to the whistleblower rules, elements of an effective training program, how to mitigate retaliation claims, and guidance for potential whistleblowers. The presentation covers topics such as qui tam suits, internal reporting procedures, evaluating whistleblower tips, and international whistleblowing trends. It aims to help organizations develop useful information from whistleblowers while avoiding legal risks.
The company was facing challenges in managing risk across its global operations due to a lack of consistent reporting, data analytics, and collaboration between teams. It implemented the MetricStream enterprise risk management platform to gain visibility into its entire risk profile, integrate fragmented risk initiatives, and identify and assess key risk exposures. The MetricStream solution automated reporting, enabled real-time data analysis, and provided tools to monitor and track risks, issues, and remediation efforts. This helped align the company's risk management activities with its corporate goals.
The document discusses leadership and provides insights from various leaders. It argues that genuine leadership has little to do with position and instead involves taking a stand for needed change. It distinguishes between transactional leadership, which focuses on daily goals and incremental change, and transformational leadership, which alters the course of history by raising aspirations. True leadership requires developing an inspiring vision and values, recognizing opportunities to make a difference, and daring to take action. The document outlines 10 elements of a leader's DNA, including being an iconoclast, having empathy, communicating an impossible future, being a game changer, and driving results. It argues that leadership skills can be learned through specific behaviors.
Great leaders come in all shapes and sizes, genders and cultures, but they all possess many of the qualities I’ve highlighted in the Think Oak A to Z of Leadership Qualities
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Leadership is an important skill, but even more important is the ability to lead well. A strong leader inspires, encourages, and empowers those around them. Here we share with you several of the skills associated with successful leaders and what it means to embody those abilities as a truly great leader.
Getting your team to do what you want them to do can be an uphill battle at times. Lack of resources means high stress and frustration for this managing people.
Persuasive Leadership is about putting the Leader back in control, focussing on Mindset, Mission and Momentum to achieve results!
The document discusses leadership and what makes an effective leader. It distinguishes between managers and leaders, noting that while managers focus on stability and controlling resources, leaders look to the future and engage people. Leaders inspire followers through their vision and values rather than relying on formal authority. The document suggests that true leadership comes from the qualities one possesses, not their job title or position in the organization. Effective organizations need both managers and leaders to work together to achieve goals and guide the organization.
This document provides an overview of a course on developing business and economic acumen and bringing out the best in people. The course objectives are to help participants make informed decisions that strengthen competitive advantage, develop business acumen, apply best practices of great managers, bring out the best in people, and close the gap between potential and realized talent. The course focuses on analytical thinking, economic analysis, decision making, communication, adaptability, and leadership. It is designed to both teach these concepts and serve as a resource after the class.
Successful people exhibit several key characteristics that allow them to achieve high levels of success and leadership. They have strong mental and physical stamina that enables them to be highly productive and finish important projects. They are also natural born competitors who are motivated by challenges. Additionally, successful leaders are empathetic towards those they lead but also bold and willing to take risks to come up with innovative ideas. They possess laser-focused concentration that allows them to focus on individual tasks efficiently without dividing their attention through multitasking. Moreover, successful leaders are not afraid of failure and see it as an opportunity to improve themselves and learn from mistakes.
Leadership is the ability to influence others to achieve organizational goals, which requires skills like vision, motivation, and setting an example. Good leaders also establish trust by communicating effectively, caring for employees, recognizing their contributions, and ensuring tasks are understood and accomplished. The principles of leadership include knowing yourself, being technically proficient, making timely decisions, training employees as a team, and dealing with criticism constructively.
This document provides summaries of four New York Life employees who exemplify leadership qualities:
1) Philip Cavan started as a phone salesperson and worked his way up to Corporate Vice President through hard work and helping others realize their potential.
2) Maambo Mujala is an Actuarial Associate who leads by example and builds relationships between teams to improve collaboration.
3) Christopher Elson balances enforcing compliance rules with providing excellent customer service by treating all people with respect.
4) Serene Zegarelli keeps marketing team members focused and committed to projects through effective communication and motivation.
How to beacome leader with Help of ManagementSunny Tandan
This document discusses several key points about effective leadership and management. It states that leadership skills are not innate for everyone but can greatly impact a leader's success. Some effective leadership strategies discussed include setting a good example for employees, recognizing strengths and weaknesses in team members to assign responsibilities accordingly, prioritizing respect from employees over friendship, understanding what motivates individual team members to set meaningful goals, and recognizing that a leader's success depends on the success of their team. Regular communication and meetings with employees are emphasized as important.
'Leadership skills don't come naturally to everyone. But they can play a major part in a leader's success'... The latest addition to our slide-deck library looks at 'Management & Leadership' skills
Unrelenting Change and What to Do About ItPeopleFirm
In today's do-it-now world, change is unrelenting. So, what steps do leaders need to take to make sure their people are ready, willing, and able to meet that change and thrive?
Autocratic Leadership and Qualities of a Good Leader
Introduction
Maintain your relevance and stay adaptable in today's time in an ever-changing environment? Become a better leader by learning how to efficiently adapt to change yourself accordingly. Adoption is the most important key to success in entrepreneurships.
Big changes of adoption happened in the past in the smartphone industry. Before Android started in smartphones, at that time it was the most popular Nokia brand. But when the Android operating system started in the smartphones officially. The key decision in Android history was Google's commitment to make Android an open-source operating system. That allowed it to become highly popular with third-party phone makers. Just a few years after the launch of Android 1.0, smartphones powered by the new OS were everywhere.
Autocratic Leadership and Democratic Leadership aren't good for a company, in leadership a person's combination of both in great leadership. Qualities of a Good Leader, that makes a person Good leader in entrepreneurship.
Leadership is not just about achieving company goals, and making the company profitable and focusing on business stability. In a business, leaders who are the main key person who decides the company or organizational future and contribute to achieving company goals and visions. How much a company will become successful totally depends on a business leader, who leads the company commands.
Leadership responsibility, solving the huge problems and focusing on solutions. Those are mainly focused on problem solving approaches. And a solution oriented person in a company. That person takes the responsibility of a company. Regarding company growth, company profitability, company stability.
In today's society we need to require a different set of skills than it did in the past. It's undeniable that social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok have dominated and changed the way we compete in the business landscape. With a sea of competitors, it now matters how we present ourselves online and how we create experiences that are attractive to our clients and customers.
Although some leadership skills, qualities and leadership habits remain the same, refusing to adapt to the current norm will make it difficult for a leader to stay in the game. Most challenging: how do we adapt to change in this fast-paced digital world? But how do we keep up and stay relevant as a leader?
The document discusses key concepts for taking a company from good to great. It discusses the importance of level 5 leadership, which focuses on the company rather than the individual leader. It also emphasizes the need to first get the right people on the team before deciding on strategy ("first who, then what"). Companies must also confront the brutal facts of reality and maintain faith that they can prevail. The hedgehog concept involves focusing on what a company can be best at and is passionate about. A culture of discipline with the right people can avoid bureaucracy and sustain great results.
The chief executive role is a tough one to fill. From 2000 to 2013, about a quarter of the CEO departures in the Fortune 500 were involuntary. Senior executives often think about a overwhelming to do list, delivering short term and long term results, and finding and keeping the right talent. This is in addition to developing a cohesive high-performing culture, as well as inspiring and engaging employees. Given the rapid rate of disruption and emerging competitors in sectors previously protected by patents and high entry costs, developing leadership for this unpredictable environment is not only required - it is essential for survival
This document discusses leadership and the differences between managers and leaders. It provides definitions of leadership as influencing, guiding, or commanding people. Leaders are described as those who achieve a position, demonstrate charisma or personality, lead by moral example, or hold power. The document contrasts managers, who focus on planning, organizing, directing, and controlling tasks, with leaders who focus on inspiring and motivating people to accomplish a shared vision. Common activities of both include planning, organizing, directing work, and controlling, but with different approaches. The document concludes with principles for new leaders to follow and tips for managing oneself as a leader.
This document outlines the methodology of Managing The Mist, a consulting firm that helps organizations create "mist-free" high performance cultures during change initiatives. The methodology involves 5 rules: 1) getting organizational house in order by aligning strategies, processes and behaviors; 2) asking employees for input instead of just telling them changes; 3) developing leaders to step back and focus on continuous improvement; 4) embracing failure so employees are not afraid to take risks; 5) holding each other accountable through feedback and evaluation of actions and results. The firm uses experiential learning techniques to build high performance cultures and measures impact to ensure a return on investment.
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The best corporate legacies do not simply occur by chance. They are created by the bold and driven by the visionary. Corporate legacies shine the brightest when they transcend a single product, service or industry.
Take Apple. When the corporate giant combined a phone, a music player and the internet to make the iPhone, Steve Jobs and co. not only created a new future for themselves; they also expanded the idea of what a tech company could be and in what industries it could play. They rewrote the boundaries of what is possible. That is a true legacy.
“Without the iPhone revolution, it is hard to imagine a technology company entering the transport industry or designing a device that can steer cars around while receiving and transmitting streams of data,” John Gapper at The Financial Times wrote earlier this year.
But the sheen of a great legacy can disappear quickly if major missteps are made, drama drives headlines or executive competency is questioned. We have seen several recent examples of this, including HSBC, Wells Fargo and United Airlines. And the risk
of a legacy being tarnished is higher in today’s world of constant connection, where good news travels fast but bad news travels faster.
Samsung is another prime example. For years, the company’s legacy has been built on quality and innovation, but that legacy is in jeopardy following last year’s debacle with the Galaxy Note 7. According to the Reputation Quotient Ratings report by The Harris Poll, in 2015 Samsung was the third most-respected company among U.S. consumers. In the 2017 poll, its ranking fell more than 40 points. For better or worse, corporate legacies are not stagnant—they shift over time with every move leaders make. You will always have an impact.
This issue is full of stories from executives about how they plan to build legacies at their companies. I hope they inspire you to create your own.
IQ Insigniam Quarterly is our award winning magazine. We showcase thought leadership by executives for executives who are dedicated to transforming the practice of management and leadership.
The document provides an overview of the consulting firm Insigniam and discusses topics related to disruption and transformational leadership. Specifically, it introduces Insigniam as a firm that helps large organizations generate breakthroughs through innovation consulting. It also previews several articles in the issue that discuss how leaders at companies like Kaiser Permanente, DBS Bank, and BP have navigated disruption by embracing innovation and transforming their organizations. Additionally, it highlights Insigniam's services and solutions for strategic transformation and growth.
No single topic has been more top-of-mind over the past year for CEOs around the world than organizational culture.
Finally, leaders are recognizing corporate culture for what it truly is: an essential and unavoidable determinant of company performance. It influences, shapes and distorts the perceptions, thoughts and actions of the people within the enterprise—and often makes the difference between success and failure.
Yet some organizations still have to learn this the hard way. Just ask Volkswagen, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and Toshiba. In 2015, each
of these enterprises was rocked by high-profile scandals that undermined customers’ goodwill and cost significant sums to repair. At the root of each of these scandals was a broken—or even toxic—corporate culture.
In February, after Moody’s downgraded its assessment of Toshiba in the wake of the company’s major accounting scandal, the Financial Times said, “The scandal exposed not only a corporate culture where employees were afraid to speak out against bosses, but also weaknesses across most of Toshiba’s businesses after the inflated figures were corrected.”
Ultimately, it is the CEO who is responsible for building and driving culture throughout the organization. And when that culture becomes a liability, it is the CEO who is held accountable. For example, in April, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos was still seemingly defending
his company after a scathing 2015 New York Times article described a workplace where employees were forced out after suffering from cancer and other personal crises. In his 2016 letter to investors, Mr. Bezos wrote, “A word about corporate cultures: for better or for worse, they are enduring, stable, hard to change. They can be a source of advantage or disadvantage.... We never claim that our approach is the right one—just that it’s ours—and over the last two decades, we’ve collected a large group of like-minded people. Folks who find our approach energizing and meaningful.”
Building a sustainable culture that drives the right results is not easy. In fact, according to Insigniam’s latest Executive Sentiment Survey, two-thirds of CEOs and managing directors report that installing or leveraging the right corporate culture is either not going well or they are still trying to figure out how to make it happen.
When CEOs do get it right, however, culture can lead to unprecedented innovation, growth and performance. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told USA Today, “Ultimately, what any company does when it is successful is merely a lagging indicator of its existing culture.”
So if your company is coming up short, take a careful look at whether the culture is supporting strategy. And do not be afraid to make drastic changes.
ORDINARY PERFORMANCE IS A LOSING PROPOSITION
To win the future, leaders in today’s organizations must be bold. Whether the goal is to increase efficiencies, transform a business model, set a new strategic direction, bring an innovative product to market or drive culture change, to truly break through to be transformational leaders we must reject the status quo. We must stretch to imagine new and aggressive— even uncomfortable—outcomes, and act differently to execute on what we envision. And in the end, we must produce remarkable results.
At Insigniam, our focus has always been to move beyond the ordinary and achieve the remarkable. It’s in our DNA and our name. Insigniam derives from the Latin word “insignia,” meaning “marked as remarkable.” We act to help enterprises create remarkable performance.
These days, so-called unicorns like Uber, Airbnb and Snapchat are often mistakenly lauded as remarkable achievements. But let’s not be confused
by billion-dollar valuations. They signify potential that doesn’t necessarily translate into lasting value and results. Just ask Evernote, Dropbox and Theranos, three embattled unicorns grappling with issues like high executive turnover or questions about the true value of their respective technologies. And then there are Box, Fitbit and Square, unicorns that went public only to generate less-than-stellar results.
For true examples of remarkable results, we need to consider executives like Darren Childs of UKTV. After becoming CEO of the London-based broadcasting company, Childs rejected the status quo and pivoted the network’s strategy to focus on producing original and online content. The ROI? UKTV is one of the most-watched commercial broadcasters in the United Kingdom. Profits and revenues are now nearly three times greater than when he started. Remarkable indeed.
Childs saw his industry rapidly changing and decided to act before it was too late. As volatility becomes the new normal across much of the economy, will you be able to turn opportunities others can’t see into remarkable results? I know this much: Bold, unorthodox leadership is the only way to transform the status quo into something extraordinary.
Shideh Sedgh Bina
The document provides an overview of an issue of the Insigniam Quarterly magazine. It includes summaries of articles on reinventing procurement at Carnival Corp., companies looking beyond distributors to directly serve customers, reinventing leadership at Barry-Wehmiller, and innovation in China. Other brief articles discuss smart shoes from China, the convergence of cars and computers, and Google's rebranding under its new Alphabet parent company structure.
EXECUTION: WHERE THE RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD
The strategy may be brilliant, even breakthrough. But if it can’t stand up to competitive, technological and regulatory realities—as well as internal attitudes and processes—the plan’s objectives will most likely go unmet.
It’s all about the execution, which is the focus of this issue of Insigniam Quarterly. In our cover story, Pascale Witz, executive vice president of global divisions and strategic development at pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, discusses changes she’s engineered since joining the company in 2013.
Sanofi, currently in the early stages of a series of new product launches—the most ambitious in the company’s history—faces enormous executional challenges as it introduces six new medicines this year and up to 18 more over the next five years. In pharma, that’s light speed, and Witz will be at the center of the activity. Come 2016, Witz will lead Sanofi’s diabetes and cardiovascular global business unit.
Ramani Ayer, former chairman and CEO of The Hartford and now the member of two boards including Hartford HealthCare, knows the challenges of execution well. “A lot of organizations have great vision and great strategy,” says Ayer, this issue’s Boardroom interviewee. “But execution is what differentiates very successful organizations from those that have not been successful.”
You’ll see other examples in this issue of leading companies smartly executing their strategies amid complex, rapidly evolving business environments. I encourage you to borrow some of the lessons they’ve learned about execution.
Speaking of execution, we’re introducing an exciting new look for Insigniam Quarterly with this fall issue. To enhance your reading experience, we’ve developed a crisp, more modern feel: bolder graphics and photos, brighter colors, new headline treatments and a new selection of typefaces for enhanced readability. Also revamped to reflect these updates is quarterly.insigniam.com, which is now cleaner and better organized.
We’ve created a new department called “Browser History,” a roundup of reviews of topical books, websites and apps to help keep you abreast of the latest trends in business. Another new department, “Perspectives,” provides insights from leading scholars about the world of business.
We will, of course, continue to execute on our mission of transforming the world of business and the practice of leadership and management by creating thought leadership for executives, by executives.
I hope you like our new look, and I look forward to your feedback.
Finding the Factors that Fuel Growth
No one disputes the science behind Mother Nature’s growth process.
For plant life to flourish,the necessity of sunlight,water,and nutrients can’t be argued.
So why would we go about enterprise growth with any less certainty? After all, we have conducted thorough research to unearth the factors that lead companies to not just survive, but thrive.These prerequisites to growth can then be incorporated
at every level.
Take corporate culture, for instance. Some may think that culture is too intangible
to be molded.Yet our research, described in this issue, outlines nine specific facets of corporate culture and how they must be oriented for abundant growth.This,in turn, provides a clear road map for executives.
The same can be said for leadership.When executives fight inhibitory factors such as corporate myopia,and embrace risk and creative processes,growth through innovation is around the corner.
A quick glance at Fortune 500 companies reveals some truly exemplary case studies in growth, such as that of Cardinal Health, which ranks No. 22 on the esteemed list. Our in-depth interview with our cover subject, Donald Casey Jr., the CEO of the company’s medical segment, reveals how Cardinal Health has positioned itself for expansion during a time of unprecedented change in the healthcare industry. In many ways, Casey’s approach has taken into consideration the 10 disruptive forces in healthcare we identify in this issue,and Cardinal Health is now excelling into the future.
Even when an organization is riddled with apathy,suffering from dwindling profits, and facing a seemingly inevitable demise — we’ve found a fertile breeding ground for opportunity.We visit with turnaround expert and Arcadis U.S.CEO John Jastrem, who outlines what to do when it seems like the enterprise is out of options.
The truth is that, given the right tools and information, any company can take decisive
action that will lead to expansion.And in that vein,I present our spring 2015 issue,which considers the many sides of corporate growth from multiple perspectives. Dramatic growth only appears to be just out of reach,and here at Insigniam, we eagerly look forward to partnering with you in the journey to achieve new corporate goals.
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
Editor in Chief, Insigniam Quarterly
The Power of Technology to Transform
Our mission at Insigniam is to transform the world of business and the practice of management and leadership, unleashing the power of inspired human performance while catalyzing breakthrough results and remarkable value.The methods we utilize include breakthrough performance, cultural change, transformational leadership, and innovation within organizations — one way to do this swiftly and effectively can be by the adoption of well-conceived technology strategies. It’s also true that the ability to leverage these emerging technologies can be vitally dependent on how they are embraced by an organization’s culture.
With rapidly evolving technologies providing a new climate for potent organizational change,this issue of Insigniam Quarterly focuses on methods to meet these challenges and fundamentally alter the way business is done.The power of technology to transform can be realized in a number of areas that directly impact key organizational goals.
• Change brought about through technology requires you to think and behave differently, resulting in a big impact on a company’s manner of operating.
• Strong leadership is a prerequisite for a technology-driven transformation.
• Updates and changes in technology are essential for maintaining an
organization’s effectiveness.
• Disruptive leadership can give way to transformative technology initiatives,but
if not implemented properly, they can become disruptive in the wrong way.
• Relating back to the power of words and how people communicate,companies often overestimate technologies while underestimating the network of
conversations and relationships in their enterprises.
In this issue, we share stories of success and innovative thinking, starting with our
cover story on Suresh Vaswani and his efforts as president of Dell Services to drive technology-led transformations both for clients and within Dell. Hint: It’s all about merging the leadership of business strategy and corporate technology.The former CTO at growing online marketplace Angie’s List,Robert Wiseman provides industry- leading insights on how businesses either evolve or die from technology strategies.
Articles on Health 2.0 and the rapid implementation of mobile health care technology reveal opportunities for massive growth in that space.And on the subject of transformative change, we discuss the role of leaders in shaping the conversation around change so that employees can view it as a powerful opportunity.
While seizing this opportunity for transformation is frequently necessary to survive and thrive, not every emerging technology will prove to be a game changer.The key is continuing to look ahead — falling behind isn’t an option.
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
Editor in Chief, Insigniam Quarterly
Transform Your Definition of Transformation
Recently, during a lively dinner conversation with a large group of friends, the subject of change was brought up.A dear friend of mine, herself a C-Suite executive, made a point that change is not only inevitable but also necessary for growth and survival.
While I hardly dispute the value of adaptation, who wants to simply survive? Far too often, people confuse change — a product of the past — for transformation, which is the process of unlocking uncharted possibilities that are completely new and revolutionary.
But transformation, whether you’re cultivating an entirely new corporate culture or bringing a groundbreaking new product to market, can be risky. Consider the iPhone, something I consider to be a transformational product that created, not just added, value. Had the product been based on a gimmick or billed as being able to offer an experience beyond its capabilities, not only would Apple’s reputation — and stock — have paid a price, but so too would have consumer sentiment.This could have had a negative impact on R&D investments as demand for over-hyped smartphone products dwindled.
As we know, this was not the case. Not only has the iPhone been wildly successful but it has also transformed the way we interact and communicate.As is our position at Insigniam, transformations almost always require many large, critical initiatives to be executed simultaneously toward a unified goal, without losing any altitude in current operational efficiency — something we refer to as Breakthrough Performance.
But do all transformations look the same? Hardly. In the case of our cover story — an interview with Mary Kay Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green — the cosmetics giant’s transformations were calculated and measured, and have resulted in more than 50 years of sustained success. On the other hand, in the case of Hager Group, it took a transformational leader in the form of CEO Daniel Hager to reinvent his family’s company into an unstoppable competitive force — one not only intent on surviving, but thriving.
With that, I present our fall issue, focused on the challenges and successes wrought by transformation.Transformation can be treacherous, but on behalf of everyone at Insigniam, we look forward to partnering with you along each step of the journey to help you arrive at a destination you can only imagine.
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
Editor in Chief, Insigniam Quarterly
This document provides an overview of key issues facing the global healthcare industry in 2014. It discusses demographic shifts leading to increased rates of noncommunicable diseases. Innovation is seen as essential for healthcare organizations to adapt. The document outlines several critical success factors for healthcare transformation, including putting patients first, understanding their needs and experiences, avoiding copying other organizations' approaches, ensuring efficient revenue cycles, and fostering partnerships. Overall it frames healthcare challenges as "wicked problems" that require new approaches to solve.
You Have a Transformation Strategy, but is Your Organization Part of it?
I’m sure you’ve heard of gorilla glass. It’s probably on the front of your smartphone, and its strength has saved you from a broken phone more than once.
But it’s not just you and your smartphone that gorilla glass has saved. It also saved Corning Inc.The breakthrough product is the result of a cultural transformation at the specialty glass and ceramics maker.
For Peter Volanakis, Corning’s former COO, saving Corning was all about having the right culture in place. It was a culture that allowed a product like gorilla glass to lose money for 14 years before it found its way onto more than 100 million mobile devices. Inside this issue of Insigniam Quarterly, he shares the value of a company’s culture in transformative environments and offers his three keys to transforming culture.
While the Corning story is definitely instructional and inspirational, it’s far from unique. In our decades as international consultants, we’ve seen it time and time again. A company wants a breakthrough transformation. It wants to grow, but it can’t. Its culture is holding it back.
Throughout this issue, we talk about transformations, both big and small. From Delta Airlines buying its own oil refinery to control fuel costs to the keys to a successful merger. And at the center of each of these transformations is culture. Culture is the very core of how the people in an organization think, perceive opportunities, and behave, and it either supports a transformation initiative or culture stifles it.
As the saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” It doesn’t matter how well thought out your plans are, if all the elements of your people are not on the same page with your strategic needs, then your initiative will be for naught.
Consider the company featured on our cover, Danone. For the French food products multinational, the culture change included a whole new leadership approach, adapting its culture to emerging markets and listening to its customers. Listening not in the cliché way that we all say we listen to customers. Danone is actually bringing them into the R and D process.
That was a bold step, but it was necessary if Danone wanted to be a global player. It’s time for a hard look at where you want to be and to ask yourself if it’s your corporate culture that’s preventing your breakthrough transformation from taking
flight.
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
Editor in Chief, Insigniam Quarterly
Move the Innovation Needle Faster and Further
As international management consultants for several decades, we have long said that business needs a breakthrough, years before innovation became a catch-all buzzword to address what’s ailing many organizations.
The reality is that many enterprises are mired in red tape, with leaders unsure how to move the needle from complacency to competitiveness. One of our 2013 Insigniam Executive Sentiment Survey respondents puts it plainly:
“If we do not innovate in areas of operations, we will be consistently bringing up the rear and not leading in our industry.”
This plea for transformative innovation inspired the launch issue of Insigniam Quarterly, our thought-leadership journal designed to help businesses fulfill a commitment to reaching unprecedented results.
Our publication is not about our story; it’s about tangible and lasting results from leaders and their organizations around the world.
Inside, leaders who routinely move the innovation needle faster and further share their breakthroughs, from Pete Valenti’s invigoration of Bausch + Lomb’s pipeline to exploring growth and profit from creative leadership at Levi Strauss, Glazer’s, and Ryan, the latter of which is poised to become a disruptive force among the big four tax firms.
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
Editor in Chief, Insigniam Quarterly
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The Ready-Made Garments (RMG) industry in Bangladesh is a cornerstone of the economy, but increasing costs and stagnant productivity pose significant challenges to profitability. This study explores the implementation of Lean Management in the Sampling Section of RMG factories to enhance productivity. Drawing from a comprehensive literature review, theoretical framework, and action research methodology, the study identifies key areas for improvement and proposes solutions.
Through the DMAIC approach (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), the research identifies low productivity as the primary problem in the Sampling Section, with a PPH (Productivity per head) of only 4.0. Using Lean Management techniques such as 5S, Standardized work, PDCA/Kaizen, KANBAN, and Quick Changeover, the study addresses issues such as pre and post Quick Changeover (QCO) time, improper line balancing, and sudden plan changes.
The research employs regression analysis to test hypotheses, revealing a significant correlation between reducing QCO time and increasing productivity. With a regression equation of Y = -0.000501X + 6.72 and an R-squared value of 0.98, the study demonstrates a strong relationship between the independent variables (QCO downtime and improper line balancing downtime) and the dependent variable (productivity per head).
The findings suggest that by implementing Lean Management practices and addressing key productivity inhibitors, RMG factories can achieve substantial improvements in efficiency and profitability. The study provides valuable insights for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers seeking to enhance productivity in the RMG industry and similar manufacturing sectors.
Leading Change_ Unveiling the Power of Transformational Leadership Style.pdfEnterprise Wired
In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the essence of transformational leadership style, its core principles, key characteristics, and its transformative impact on organizational culture and outcomes.
1. VO L U M E 1 , I S S U E 4 | W I N T E R 2 013
REINVENTING
AN
ENTERPRISE
Solvay’s CEO
Jean-Pierre
Clamadieu talks
about building a
new company after
a merger.DISRUPTIVE
LEADERSHIPWHO IS INVENTING THE RULES
IN YOUR MARKET?
Building Circles of Trust
Simon Sinek explores
how to lead so that
people can thrive.
Survival at
the Tipping Point
Can a focus on results
instead of revenues
transform your business
in a time of uncertainty?
2. The last couple of decades proved to us that winning as
an executive required the ability to effectively and quickly
manage change. Agility and speed were the passwords
into the winner’s circle.
But, if yesterday’s winners were the masters of change
management, then who are the winners of tomorrow? How
do you gain a competitive edge in a world where leaders
and enterprises have already developed the ability to
embrace and integrate ongoing change?
Today, to lead among leaders is to be the person who sets
the course, changes the rules, and rewrites conventions,
the person who invents the rules of the game.
— JENNIFER ZIMMER
PARTNER, INSIGNIAM
3. LETTER
J
Jean-Pierre Clamadieu, the new CEO at Belgian chemical company Solvay
who appears on our cover, is very clear and direct about a keystone to being
successful as a disruptive leader.
“You are not a transformational hero who is carrying the weight of the
transformation on your own shoulders,” he told us.“You need to have a
strong team around you who have the ability to support the changes.”
It’s sometimes hard to think in those terms, especially when considering the
responsibilities that leaders are faced with. But person after person told us that
disruptive leadership is not a solo act.The vision for your enterprise’s future
may be yours — and you have to have a bold vision — but it takes a team of
people who have bought into that vision to make it a reality, because that’s
what disruptive leaders do.
•• They ask tough questions. Not “why didn’t we” questions but “why can’t
we” questions.
•• They present a bold vision, one that seems impossible on its face.
•• They align everything in the enterprise to turn that vision into a reality.
•• They inspire everyone on their team and in their organization to make
that vision happen.
So if you are still trying to shoulder the burdens of leadership alone, stop.
Look around you and see who you are surrounding yourself with? Are they,
as our own Nathan Rosenberg asks in this issue, committed to your vision for
the future or merely complying with your directives?
Shideh Sedgh Bina
Founding Partner, Insigniam
WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 1
LEADERSHIP ISN’T A SOLITARY
JOURNEY
4. WINTER 20132 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
18
HARNESSING THE POWER OF COOPERATION
Simon Sinek introduced the Golden Circle. He
suggested we Start With Why. Now, with a new
book coming in January, he looks at how we can
create an environment where people thrive.
26
SURVIVAL AT THE TIPPING POINT
How do you move forward when the road ahead
is uncertain? For one North Carolina healthcare
provider, it was focusing on what they do, not what
they earn.
36
THE FOUR WAYS OF BEING THAT CREATE THE
FOUNDATION FOR GREAT LEADERSHIP, A GREAT
ORGANIZATION, AND A GREAT PERSONAL LIFE
Werner H. Erhard and Dr. Michael C. Jensen
46
PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP
What does a modern leader look like? We asked
some of today’s top executives their thoughts on
leadership, the challenges leaders face, and why
being disruptive is more important than ever.
FEATURES
DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP
IS NOT A SOLO ACT
Jean-Pierre Clamadieu
says that in a changing
world disruptive leadership
is what will take Solvay to
the next level.
COVER
STORY
30
TABLEOFCONTENTS
5. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 3
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Shideh Sedgh Bina
shidehbinaIQ@insigniam.com
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Nathan O. Rosenberg
nrosenberg@insigniam.com
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER Ralph Gotto
DIRECTOR OF WORLDWIDE Karen Turner
CLIENT SERVICES kturner@insigniam.com
DIRECTOR OF SPECIAL PROJECTS Alexes Fath
PUBLISHER Gordon Price Locke
gordon.locke@dcustom.com
MANAGING EDITOR Jarrett Rush
jarrett.rush@dcustom.com
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kyle Phelps
kyle.phelps@dcustom.com
ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR Emily Slack
PRODUCTION MANAGER Pedro Armstrong
IMAGING SPECIALIST John Gay
ACCOUNT SERVICE MANAGER Jas Robertson
EDITORIAL QUERIES
750 N. Saint Paul Street
Suite 2100
Dallas, Texas 75201
www.dcustom.com
214.523.0300
For advertising information, contact Jas Robertson at
214.937.9811 or jas.robertson@dcustom.com
Insigniam Quarterly is published by D Custom, 750 Saint Paul Street, Ste. 2100, Dallas, Texas 75201.
Copyright 2013 by Insigniam. All rights reserved. Letters to the editors may be sent to Insigniam
Quarterly c/o D Custom, 750 Saint Paul Street, Ste. 2100, Dallas, Texas 75201. No part of this
publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the
publisher and Insigniam. Printed in the U.S.A. Magazine patents pending. For subscriptions, please visit
www.insigniamquarterly.com.
Q U A R T E R LY
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 4 | WINTER 2013
“To be disruptive is to acknowledge the fact that we need to
change and that we need to accept and make moves that
sounded impossible yesterday.”
— JEAN-PIERRE CLAMADIEU, SOLVAY
THE TICKER
Leadership stories, books, and great ideas
TOP LINE
Leadership by the numbers
BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS
What is your destination, and are people clear on where
you are going?
BOARDROOM POV
What is your appetite for risk?
DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP
Nathan Owen Rosenberg, Insigniam
Disruptive leadership is the art and science
of creating the future.
GLOBAL LEADERS
Effective leaders share the same characteristics, no
matter where they call home.
TO EVOLVE YOUR BUSINESS,
TAKE OTHERS ON YOUR JOURNEY
Hugh Jones at Sabre Airline Solutions shares how a
shift in perspective is transforming his enterprise.
IQ BOOST
Jon Kleinman, Insigniam
Own all of your actions — both what you did and did
not do — that lead to an outcome.
04
08
10
14
22
52
56
DEPARTMENTS
On the cover
Solvay’s Jean-Pierre Clamadieu
says leaders must acknowledge
the need to be disruptive.
VO L U M E 1 , I S S U E 4 | W I N T E R 2 013
REINVENTING
AN
ENTERPRISE
Solvay’s CEO
Jean-Pierre
Clamadieu talks
about building a
new company after
a merger.DISRUPTIVE
LEADERSHIPWHO IS INVENTING THE RULES
IN YOUR MARKET?
Building Circles of Trust
Simon Sinek explores
how to lead so that
people can thrive.
Survival at
the Tipping Point
Can a focus on results
instead of revenues
transform your business
in a time of uncertainty?
Insigniam and its publisher, D Custom, distribute
this editorial magazine to share the opinions
and insights of companies and their leaders on
impactful global business issues. Insigniam
Quarterly’s inclusion of a company or individual
does not indicate that they are a client of Insigniam.
Remuneration is not provided for editorial
coverage. Individuals appearing in Insigniam
Quarterly have done so with direct consent, or
provided consent by a designated authorized agent
in addition to being disclosed on the magazine’s
audience and purpose.
56
6. THE TICKERTHE TICKER
LEAPFROGGING INTO
DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP
Disruptive leadership requires leaders to fundamentally
disrupt the mindset that has often led to success thus far.
Author and speaker Soren Kaplan quickly admits that
business schools and traditional management training
absolutely do not prepare managers to put disruptive
leadership techniques into action. Managers rise through
ranks where predictability and control are rewarded, not
disruption and innovation. Business schools simply don’t
prepare leaders to be misunderstood or criticized nor
how to handle that sort of dissonance.
To guide people trained for predictability and control
in the art of disruption, Kaplan crafted the five-step
acronym LEAPS: Listen, Explore, Act, Persist, and Seize.
Disruptive leadership requires embracing the unknown
and ceding control in favor of the opportunity to gain new
insight or uncover opportunities, Kaplan says in his 2012
book, Leapfrogging: Harness the Power of Surprise for
Business Breakthroughs.
1/LISTEN
Listen to yourself,
not just conven-
tional wisdom.
2/EXPLORE
Work to escape
your comfort
zone, and get the
management team
out of its comfort
zone.
3/ACT
Encourage lead-
ers to take small,
simple steps and
be ready to adjust
rather than control
how things unfold.
4/PERSIST
Urge leaders
onward in spite
of failures and
reframe them as
opportunities to
learn from.
5/SEIZE
Encourage leaders
to be agile and
flexible to take
advantage of unan-
ticipated events.
7. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 5
Advocates for change should have
more sympathy for people in positions of
authority, argues Ron Heifetz, co-founder of
Cambridge Leadership Associates and author
of Leadership without Easy Answers.
Peopleinpositionsofauthorityfeelenormous
pressure to act like they know what they are
doing, he says. Further, leaders are expected to
protect people from painful change, rather than
prepare a team for a period of sustained dis-
equilibrium and experimentation while the
group seeks out new answers,Heifetz says.
Organizations should also distinguish
authority and leadership, in order to foster
greater experimentation and disruptive
leadership. Authority is formal power that
comes from a title. It provides direction and
order. Leadership is more inspirational. It’s
closely tied to ‘why’ something is being done,
and is not necessarily tied to the person
in the highest position. Distinguishing the
differences between these two will help
enterprises recognize and reward leadership
exercised from a wide range of perspectives
— not just the authority granted in an
organizational chart.
SYMPATHY FOR AUTHORITY
HCL Technologies, an Indian information technology company,
has distinguished itself in the competitive world of South Asian IT
businesses by putting its employees first, even ahead of its customers.
The move — begun in 2005 — is built around disrupting a key
corporate and service business tenet that customers come before
workers.
The aim of the new effort was to build trust between managers and
workers,and make managers — even up to the C-suite — accountable
to everyone in the organization.
Fast forward eight years, and the employees who were put first are
now leading version 2.0 of the program.The second phase includes a
program to link employees on HCL’s own internal social networking
platform, companywide events focused on making a difference for
customers, and encouraging social responsibility across the company.
HCL has more than 85,000 employees in 31 countries, and
produced the equivalent of $4.6 billion in revenue in its most recent
fiscal year.
MAKING EMPLOYEES THE FOCUS,
EVEN AHEAD OF CUSTOMERS
85,000
31
4.6
EMPLOYEES
COUNTRIES
REVENUE
(IN BILLIONS)
BY THE NUMBERS
http://www.hcltech.com
8. ALGORITHM
HEURISTIC
MYSTERY
EXPLORE
EXPLOIT
THE TICKER
WINTER 20136 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
Innovative thinking in business typically resists
standardization and formulas, but Roger Martin, Premier’s
Chair in Productivity & Competitiveness and Director of
the Martin Prosperity Institute at the Rotman School of
Management at the University of Toronto, has articulated
a methodology for combining analytics and intuition to
grow business.
Martin describes a “knowledge funnel” for business
success that flows from mystery (or problem) to heuristic
(rule of thumb) to algorithm (repeatable formula).
That process may lead to results, but doesn’t guarantee
continuing success, as Martin cautions in his 2009 book,
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next
Competitive Advantage.
For leaders to have continued success they must provide
their enterprise with room to fail, and not simply lead the
company into exploitation mode,he cautions.Exploitation
itself — getting the most out of what you know how to
do today — is not necessarily bad, but leaders looking to
institutionalize innovation must establish a culture (and
compensation structure) that encourages exploration
and provides room to fail. By finding and defining new
problems, or mysteries, leaders will lead their companies
back to the widest part of the knowledge funnel.
FIND THE FORMULA, THEN FIND THE NEXT PROBLEM
9. America needs more business
statesmen—men and women who are at
the forefront of public policy debates to
ensure the country’s collective long-term
growth and fiscal health. CED Trustees
represent the reasoned, nonpartisan
voice of business on major public policy
issues. If you are interested in becoming
a CED Trustee please contact
Mindy Berry, mberry@ced.org.
www.ced.org
Are You a Business Statesman?
3X Find out why companies like HP, Fossil, Texas Farm Bureau Insurance Company,
Teradata, Omni Hotels & Resorts, Lennox Industries, Inc., and Dell have turned to
us for content marketing strategy and brand communications programs.
Learn how you can join them in transforming your marketing at
dcustom.com/contentstrategy.
If you want to generate more revenue,
maybe you need a new plan.
CONTENT MARKETING PRODUCES
THREE TIMES THE LEADS PER
DOLLAR THAN TRADITIONAL
MARKETING AND ADVERTISING.
10. TOPLINE
BY THE NUMBERS
COMPILED BY GEOFF WILLIAMS
ORVILLE AND WILBUR WRIGHT
On December 17, 1903, the famous
brothers opened up the world. By creating
the first successful airplane, they gave
the everyday person the ability to travel
everywhere in the world. Today there are
93,000 flights each day worldwide.
JOHN WALSON
In 1948, by running a cable from an antennae he’d installed in the mountains above his Pennsylvania
home so he and some of his customers could receive a stronger TV signal from the stations in
Philadelphia, the owner of the Mahanoy City General Electric appliance store invented cable television,
ultimately changing how we think of television and the networks.
HERB KELLEHER
The Texas lawyer co-founded
Southwest Airlines in 1967.
Where the Wright brothers made
air travel possible, Kelleher helped
make it affordable.
A SHORT TIMELINE OF DISRUPTIVE LEADERS
Industry analysts said Henry Ford was crazy to drop the price of his
ModelT, but profits went from $3 million in 1909 to $25 million in 1914.
Ford’s U.S.market share rose to 48
percent in 1914 after they dropped
the price of the ModelT to $99.
$99PRICE OF A MODEL T IN 1914
$220PRICE OF A MODEL T IN 1909
48%
8 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY WINTER 2013
THE NUMBER OF CARS FORD MADE IN
1914 WITH ONLY 13,000 WORKERS.260,720
11. KEVIN SYSTROM AND MIKE KRIEGER
When cameras were first added to cellphones, they
were not good for taking more than a grainy image.
Fast forward a few years and the cameras were
upgraded, but they were still little more than a nice
feature, an add on. That is until 2010, when Systrom
and Krieger introduced the world to Instagram.
SERGEY BRIN AND LARRY PAGE
The two computer science students changed how we
search the Internet when they founded Google in 1998.
With Google Drive, Google Glass, and myriad other
products, they continue to innovate how we interact with
our computers, our phones, and the Internet.
STEVE CHEN, CHAD HURLEY,AND JAWED KARIM
Before this trio founded YouTube in 2005, the Internet was not a place for
video. The site — purchased by Google in 2006 — proved, though, that
video can work on the web and helped bring about original web series from
the networks and major studios, changing our viewing habits and where we
watch our favorite “television” shows.
$3.6 billion in
annual revenue
The pertinent numbers for Netflix, a company that has been an undisputed
disruptive leader since it was founded in 1997
33million
members
Countries with Netflix
Countries without Netflix
COUNTRIES
40
WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 9
12. WWINTER 201310 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
BLOOD,SWEAT&TEARS
WHAT IS YOUR
DESTINATION?
When aligning a clear strategy, accountability and
communication are keys to success.
BY JEFF BOUNDS
WhenVirginiaAlbanesetookthe
helmaspresidentandCEOofFedEx
Custom Critical in June 2007, the
time-sensitive,customshippingarm
of the logistics and transportation
giant was at a crossroads.
It was working to protect its
core business in a mature market,
grow its new truckload brokerage
division, and also determine how
best to work with the other FedEx operating companies.
Trying to do so many things meant that managers had competing
priorities. One manager would tell an employee to do one thing,
13. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 11
QUALITIES OF
A DISRUPTIVE
LEADER
Here are some traits of
top executives who can
bring positive, wholesale
change to an organization,
according to Virginia Alba-
nese, president and CEO of
FedEx Custom Critical.
NOT SATISFIED WITH
THE STATUS QUO
A disruptive leader “is not
interested in riding out the
wave,” Albanese says.
COMPETITIVE
“They want to win, they
want to grow,” she says.
OPEN TO CHANGE
They must also be open
to the intense labor that
comes with the kinds of
discussions Albanese
had with her staff. “Having
discussions like that and
doing nothing with it is very
demoralizing to the staff.
But the execution is a lot of
work.”
OK WITH FAILURE
Nobody likes it when
things don’t go as planned.
“But you must be open to
the fact that some ideas
won’t work,” Albanese says.
“If it’s not going to work,
say it.”
whileanothermanagerwouldhaverequestedthatsameemployeedosomething
different, and both directives were supposed to be the most important.
Ground-level employees were feeling the dissonance above them in the
management and executive ranks.
“People had good intentions,” Albanese says. “It’s not like they had rogue
ideas. But everyone had differing opinions on what the priority was, on what
needed to be accomplished.”
CREATING TEAM ALIGNMENT
Albanese had to create alignment. Priorities needed to be made clear.That’s
no small feat at even the smallest of organizations, but it’s especially difficult for
a business unit that currently has roughly 600 employees and 2,500 contractors
and drivers.
14. WINTER 201312 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
BLOOD,SWEAT&TEARS
BY THE NUMBERS
600
26%
EMPLOYEES
2,500
CONTRACTORS
AND DRIVERS
GROWTH
Albanese and her team created a three-point plan to get FedEx Custom Critical’s
troops on the same page.
èè First, Albanese gathered her executive team to figure out what the
business’priorities were,and what they weren’t.
èè Second, she had similar discussions in off-site meetings with managers
of FedEx Custom Critical.
èè Finally,Albanese and her team created a communications plan to get the
word out to the rank and file — and to make those employees realize
that, finally, every manager and executive was operating with the same
priorities.The plan included everything from motivational meetings in
arena-type settings to one-on-one sessions with individual employees.
Once those meetings were completed,Albanese had employees sign a wall in
the company cafeteria at FedEx Custom Critical’s base in Green, Ohio, to show
that they understood the mission moving forward and would live up to the new
way of doing things. She changed the screen savers on employees’ computers to
reinforce her messages.She even had managers hand out $5 bills to workers who
could recite,without prompting,what the new plan was all about.
REFOCUSING ON CUSTOMER SERVICE
A big part of Albanese’s vision was about improving customer service.
When Albanese first became CEO, she recognized that agents needed
15. more solutions for their customers. While customer service was always strong,
employeesdidnotalwayshaveafullportfolioofpotentialsolutionsforprospective
clients. For instance, personnel nearly always recommended the same fix to
customers’ shipping problems: “exclusive use” trucks, vehicles that customers
can call whenever they need to move a high-value item such as artwork, factory
machinery, or pharmaceuticals. But what if the customer would be best served
by, say, using the air transport services of another FedEx arm?
Under the new plan, agents who took calls from prospective clientele were
trained to suggest a full gamut of FedEx services, not just the ground-based
offering that FedEx Custom Critical provides. That has resulted in a positive
change in the variety of shipments that the unit is booking, including air and
other avenues for getting high-value freight from point A to B.
And if that means revenue goes to other areas of FedEx and not Albanese’s
unit, well, so be it.
“When customers are happy, they’ll come back to you again and again,” she
says. “We made sure that people understood that giving the customer the right
solution at the right time will get them to call back again. Customers want
solutions. They don’t just want what you’ve got.”
So far, those customers do appear to be calling back. FedEx Custom Critical
has grown 26 percent since Albanese became CEO until the fiscal year ended
May 31, 2013.
And customers appear to be happier with how FedEx Custom Critical treats
them. Internal metrics, such as the “service quality index,” are up. (Called SQI
for short, these metrics measure how quickly a customer’s call is answered,
on-time pickup and delivery service, and the availability of equipment when
customers call.)
“Virginia is one of those rare breeds of leader who can create vision and
strategy, inspire people to bring their best to their jobs, and be creative while still
demanding high performance,” says Insigniam founding partner Shideh Sedgh
Bina. “Throughout the time we have worked with her and her organization
it is evident that she does that all with the customer front and centermost.”
While the bulk of the improvement initiative was done in about two months,
Albanese says the process will never end. From the cafeteria wall to kickoff
meetings for each fiscal year, FedEx Custom Critical is constantly working on
ensuring that everybody knows the company strategy and the desired outcomes.
“We continue to communicate in a variety of ways,” Albanese says. “From
our daily email to all employees showing the previous day’s business results to
regular leadership meetings, videos, and town hall meetings, we strive to ensure
everyone knows how we are doing and where we are going.”
WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 13
HOW TO LEAD
DISRUPTIVELY
Executives who want
to bring positive change
to their organizations had
better be ready to roll up
their sleeves, according to
Virginia Albanese, president
and CEO of FedEx Custom
Critical. “This is hard work,”
she says.
Here are some tips from
Albanese on how to be a
disruptive leader.
• ENSURE you have solid
leaders in place who
can not only formulate
strategy, but execute
on it as well. These
leaders must be able to
communicate the strategy
well and have the trust of
their employees.
• DEVELOP a plan that’s
clear and concise.
Everyone in the
organization needs to be
able to understand and
get on board with it.
• ASSEMBLE a
terrific strategy for
communicating your
plan consistently and
repeatedly.
• CLEAR
ACCOUNTABILITY for
each team member is
vital. Each member of
your organization must
understand where he or
she fits into your plan
and why their particular
positions are vital.
“WE MADE SURE THAT PEOPLE
UNDERSTOOD THAT GIVING THE CUSTOMER
THE RIGHT SOLUTION AT THE RIGHT TIME
WILL GET THEM TO CALL BACK AGAIN.”
16. T
THEBOARDROOM
Though he likes to refer to himself as a “reformed
banker,” Dennis McCuistion, former CEO of Texas-
based The American Bank, still finds himself regularly
having professional conversations with financial industry
executives. Like just the other day, when McCuistion,
now director of the Institute
for Excellence in Corporate
Governance at the University
of Texas at Dallas, was at a
roundtable meeting with, as
he puts it, “a whole mess of
board directors” from banks
located around the country.
“So,” McCuistion recalls, “I
say to them, ‘As directors, wouldn’t you all agree that
you’re pretty much change agents? And wouldn’t you
agree that you’re mainly there to encourage the manage-
ment team to make a positive disruption in leadership, at
least from time to time?’ Well, they all nod their heads
Having a disruptive leader isn’t enough. For successful and
effective change, the board needs to be willing to take a
chance and potentially lose now in order to gain later.
BY JOE GUINTO
WHAT IS YOUR
APPETITE FOR RISK?
WINTER 201314 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
17. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 15
and say,‘Yes, sure, of course.’ So then I ask them,‘So how
come you all sit in the same chairs at your board meetings
every month? Do you really value change, or do you just
say you value it?’ ”
Too often,the answer to that question — whether from
directors in the financial industry or other industries — is
not what CEOs who believe in the power of disruptive
leadership would like to hear.“Many boards,”McCuistion
says,“especially those with entrenched membership,con-
sider change abhorrent,unless — and this is a big unless —
there is a problem with the company’s performance.That’s
unfortunate.Because it’s often better to have change,even
radical change, before you get into problems.”
That was certainly the case at one company where
McCuistion was a board director. From 2003 to 2007,
McCuistion, who has hosted his own PBS business talk
show for the past 24 years, was a board member at Affili-
ated Computer Services. That company,founded in 1988,
started out as a data processing firm with modest revenues.
But by the time McCuistion joined the board it had $4
billion in annual revenue and had morphed into a business
processing outsourcing company. Three years after he left
his directorship, ACS had hit $6.5 billion in revenues and
was acquired by Xerox in a blockbuster merger.
“Virtually the entire strategy of that company was
changed — successfully — four different times in a 22-
year period from its founding to the time it was acquired
by Xerox,” McCuistion says.Why? Not because financial
results were poor. Far from it.ACS was highly profitable
during each major shift in strategy.But management fore-
saw changes coming in the marketplace for information
technology and data processing services and decided to
get out ahead of those changes rather than,as McCuistion
puts it,“waiting for the company to go in the dumper.”
18. WINTER 201316 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
THEBOARDROOM
MAKING THE CHANGE
Making the changes atACS required,as it does with every
company,the active participation of the board.So how did
management get directors to go along with four corporate
reinventions even when the bottom line was solid? For one
thing, McCuistion says,ACS was able to assemble a board
that understood the company and its marketplace.
“The biggest problem you have as a CEO,
and I have been there a few times in my life,
is that it is the loneliest position there is,”Mc-
Cuistion says.“Who do you talk to? Often,
when you talk to your management team,
they just tell you what they think you want to
hear.So,when you’re a CEO who is propos-
ing change, you need the board to assist in a
dialogue about what the changes need to be
and to understand the upside of the strategy you’re proposing
and the risks inherent in the strategy. Then the board can
make an informed decision about whether to accept this
kind of disruption to business as usual or not.”
In a way, assembling a board of directors that gets your
business may seem obvious.But it isn’t always done.Take the
case of one major company in McCuistion’s backyard —
Plano,Texas-based J.C.Penney.The retailer suffered a major
meltdown under the disruptive leadership of formerApple
executive Ron Johnson,who came into J.C.Penney seeking
to do nothing less than reinvent the American department
store. Instead, J.C. Penney saw its revenues cascade by $4
billion and its stock value fall by more than half before the
board finally terminated Johnson just 18 months into his
tenure.Of those 12 board members,just two had hands-on
experience in the retail industry.
“Was there significant industry expertise on this board —
people who would know something about what the retail
business is?”McCuistion asks.“You need some people on a
board who have‘been there and done that,’and I think that
may have been where J.C. Penney’s board lost their way.”
YOU NEED SOME PEOPLE ON A BOARD WHO
HAVE ‘BEEN THERE AND DONE THAT,’ AND
I THINK THAT MAY HAVE BEEN WHERE J.C.
PENNEY’S BOARD LOST THEIR WAY.”
19. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 17
TAKING THE RISK
Still,to the credit of J.C.Penney’s board,they were will-
ing to OK a radical reinvention of a 100-year-old company.
But how do directors,as McCuistion says,accept that they
should “change seats” sometimes even when that means
accepting the risk that comes along with disruptive leader-
ship plans? McCuistion has a few thoughts on that.
1 ESTABLISH A CORPORATE “RISK APPETITE.”
“Risk appetite is a phrase that has only come into the
corporate governance vernacular in the last five years,”Mc-
Cuistion says.“It means the board has to decide how much
risk it is willing to take to better compete.That helps the
management team know what they’re likely to sell to the
board when they propose a change.”
2 SET A TOLERANCE LEVEL FOR RISK.
At J.C.Penney,the board’s risk appetite was clearly large.
But it doesn’t seem to have set a “tolerance level,” or spe-
cific parameters that would quantify that appetite for risk.
“As a director, when change is proposed, you have to be
able to say to the senior management,‘OK, we’re willing
to make this change, and here’s what we’re willing to let
that change cost us,’ ” McCuistion says. “Maybe that’s a
10 percent decline in sales over six months or a specific
loss of revenue or profit over a year. But it should be
specific, because that lets management know what their
performance benchmarks are. And if those aren’t hit,then
management knows that either the board is going to pull
back or they’re going to have to come back and re-sell the
board on a new strategy.”
3 MEASURE THE CHANGE PERFORMANCE.
On ACS’s board,McCuistion was on the audit commit-
tee, which meant he had oversight of the company’s vora-
cious appetite for mergers and acquisitions.ACS’board had
a specific tolerance level for the risk it was willing to take
in those acquisitions and monitored them carefully for a
year-long period before fully folding the acquired company
into ACS. “Directors have to be able to regularly monitor
what’s going on when you’re making big changes,” Mc-
Cuistion says.In fact,McCuistion says that being able to see
how changes are unfolding can sometimes give the board a
bigger risk appetite.That was the case at ACS.“The more
we were able to watch and see that these acquisitions were
going well, the more confidence we had in management’s
proposals,” McCuistion says.
A RADICAL RISK
$34 $14NOVEMBER 2012
STOCK PRICE WHEN RON
JOHNSON WAS HIRED
% DECREASE OF THE STOCK PRICE
DURING RON JOHNSON’S TENURE
THE NUMBER OF MONTHS
RON JOHNSON WAS CEO
AT J.C. PENNEY
APRIL 2013
STOCK PRICE WHEN RON
JOHNSON WAS FIRED
48%
$4,000,000,000THE AMOUNT REVENUE DROPPED BY
The board at J.C.Penney approved the radical vision
of former CEO Ron Johnson,but it never set a
tolerance level for what it could cost the company.
17
* *
* STOCK PRICES ARE ROUNDED TO THE NEAREST DOLLAR
20. 18 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY WINTER 2013
S
Simon Sinek can predict your future. By simply walking
through the hallways, he can tell whether your business will
succeed or fail.That’s because Sinek believes an organization’s
future doesn’t hinge on its stock ticker,but in the attitudes and
cultureofitsemployees.Dopeoplefeelsafeatwork?Sheltered
from perceived danger? Do they know, deep down, that the
leaders have their best interests in mind
and will take care of them?
In his first book, Start With Why,
Sinek examined how focusing first
on why an enterprise exists can better
inform both what it does and the how it
does it, thus creating a more successful
and compelling company. The book
and his TED talk — viewed almost 13 million times —
launched Sinek into the spotlight as a modern philosopher
for executives, entrepreneurs, and organizational leaders. His
latest book, Leaders Eat Last:Why some teams pull together and
others don’t,coming out in January,delves into the who of any
organization — its people — and how leaders can create an
HARNESSING THE POWER
OF COOPERATION
Simon Sinek introduced the Golden Circle. He
suggested we Start With Why. Now, with a new
book coming in January, he looks at how we can
create an environment where people thrive.
BY STACEY CLOSSER
21. INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 19WINTER 2013
environment built for success.
Sinek began his pursuit by asking a series of questions
about leadership and how it intersects with the very nature
of humanity. Sinek says he wanted to know under what
circumstances do humans best function?What he discovered
was that people are designed to work as a community.When
we look out for one another,we all benefit.As Sinek explains,
even our chemical make-up rewards us for this behavior with
feelings of fulfillment,acceptance,and safety.
So to answer his question of “What makes a great leader,”
Sinek had to determine: “In what environment does
cooperation naturally thrive, and how do you create that
environment as a leader?”
This is what Sinek says he learned.
DANGER IS NOT THE DANGER
In the time of the cave man, danger was constant.
Unpredictable weather,predatory animals,limited resources,
and hostile geographic phenomena threatened humanity’s
very survival. Quite literally, life was not safe.This was the
reality of the world then,and it remains the reality today.Even
though predatory animals are
now most often observed in
enclosures, Sinek says that
other dangers have emerged,
especially in business — the
fickleness of Wall Street,
a wavering economy,
unpredictable world events,
aggressive competitors, and
new technologies that render
businesses obsolete.
For example,McDonald’s leaders could not have predicted
that a small sandwich chain would pass it as the largest fast food
restaurant in the world, but that’s what Subway restaurants
has done. In 1982, Subway founder Fred DeLuca set a goal
of the chain opening 5,000 stores by 1994.The company hit
that mark by 1990.Today the number of stores is approaching
40,000,andthecompanyisshootingfor100,000by2030.And
now the sandwich chain is the top choice for workers at lunch,
passing McDonald’s in the first quarter of 2013.
These outside dangers cannot be controlled by the
22. 20 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY WINTER 2013
individual employee. Within this
chaotic environment resides your
organization.Ifyou’vebuiltitproperly,
Sinek says, the company offers a ring
of safety engineered to help not just
investors,boardmembers,andC-level
executives, but the entire enterprise.
A circle of trust that reaches the
outermost edges of an organization
ensures that the company will survive
and thrive.Why? Because people, all
people,function best in environments where they feel safe.
If leaders create a hostile work environment within the
organization, Sinek says employees will be forced to protect
themselves from internal dangers as well.Think about it: If
you’re an employee and you’re constantly worried you’ll lose
your job,you’re less likely to take risks,be innovative,push for
change,or promote a colleague’s ideas.
Employeeswhodonotfeelprotectedatworkfeelvulnerable,
self-interested,cynical,paranoid,and stressed — for biological
reasons. Managers can’t just instruct their teams to trust one
another and cooperate.Those are not things people decide to
do,but rather the natural result of team members feeling safe
and having a shared value set.Those are things that can only
be developed over time.“There’s no app that can speed that
up,”says Sinek.
DEFINING THE CIRCLE OF TRUST
Sinek says leaders have two responsibilities when
maintaining a healthy circle of trust.First,they’re responsible
for determining how porous the circle is.Who is allowed to
join? By what criteria are new employees measured? Hiring
managers must give value to candidates’ overall character as
Simon Sinek’s mission is to help people wake up every
day inspired to go to work and return home every night
fulfilled by their work.His first book, Start With Why, offered
theessentialstartingpoint,explainingthepoweroffocusing
onWHY we do what we do, before getting into the details of
WHATandHOW. StartWithWhy becameaninstantclassic,
with a loyal following among Fortune 500 companies,
entrepreneurs, nonprofits, governments, and the highest
levels of the U.S. Military.
Now Sinek is ready to reveal the next step in creating
more productive organizations. He explains, in simple
terms, the biology of trust and cooperation and why they’re
essential to our success and fulfillment.Organizations that
create environments in which trust and cooperation thrive
vastlyoutperformtheircompetition.And,notcoincidentally,
their employees love working there.
But “truly human” cultures don’t just happen; they are
intentionally created by great leaders.Leaders who, in hard
times, would sooner sacrifice their numbers to protect their
people,ratherthansacrificepeopletoprotecttheirnumbers,
are rewarded with deeply loyal teams that consistently
contribute their best efforts, ideas, and passion.
As he did in Start With Why, Sinek illustrates his points
with fascinating true stories from many fields. He implores
ustoactsoonerratherthanlater,becauseourstressfuljobs
areliterallykillingus.Andheofferssurprisinglysimplesteps
for building a truly human organization.
LEADERS EAT LAST:
WHY SOME TEAMS PULL
TOGETHER AND OTHERS DON’T
“LEADERS HAVE TO MAKE THE
PRIORITY THOSE WHO ARE
RESPONSIBLE FOR THE COMPANY’S
SUCCESS, AHEAD OF THOSE
WHO SIMPLY BENEFIT FROM THE
COMPANY’S SUCCESS.”
23. INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 21WINTER 2013
Instudyingtheleaderswho’vehadthegreatest
influence in the world, Simon Sinek discovered
that they think, act, and communicate in the
exactsameway—andit’sthecompleteopposite
of what everyone else does. Sinek calls this
powerful idea The Golden Circle. Imagine three
concentric circles. In the outermost ring is the
‘What.’ It’s what you do.The second ring covers
“How”you do it.The innermost ring, the bullseye,
is the “Why.” Sinek’s Golden Circle provides a
framework upon which organizations can be
built, movements can be led, and people can be
inspired.And it all starts with why.
Any organization can explain what it does;
some can explain how they do it; but very few
can clearly articulate why. Why is not money or
profit — those are always results.Why does your
organization exist? Why does it do the things it
does? Why do customers really buy from one
company or another? Why are people loyal to
some leaders, but not others?
Starting with why can help inform an
organization’s what and how. Using examples
ranging from the Wright brothers to Apple
ComputerstoMartinLutherKing,Jr.,Sinekshows
howthisprocessworksinbigbusinessandsmall
business, in the nonprofit world, and in politics.
Those who start with why never manipulate, they
inspire.Andpeoplefollowthemnotbecausethey
have to; they follow because they want to.
wellastheirrésumés.EvenifacompanyhiresalltheIvyLeagueMBAs
in the world,it’s no guarantee they will create a cooperative company.
The second thing leaders determine is the size of the circle of trust.
Sinek says that when the circle is extended to all employees in an
organization everyone feels secure and is inclined to look after the
customers and clients.
Sinek references the universal travel experience of having a front-
lineemployeebeingtotallyunreasonablebecause“thosearetherules.”
How many times have you heard someone say,“Sorry, sir, I have to
follow the rules, otherwise I’ll lose my job?” Sinek asks. Compare
that to the employee who is empowered to make decisions that will
directly impact customer satisfaction.
Companyleadershipisresponsibleforlookingafteritspeople,who
will then,in turn,take care of customers.
“Leaders have to make the priority those who are responsible for
the company’s success, ahead of those who simply benefit from the
company’ssuccess,”saysSinek.Sometimesthatmeanstakingafinancial
hit to save the jobs of your loyal employees or giving them the benefits
they deserve.To get those results,leaders often have to go to battle.
Employees at Costco don’t get paid double their Sam’s Club
counterparts by coincidence. Someone had to go to battle for
that.And guess what, those investments have translated into higher
productivity and sales for Costco.
HONORING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
Humans are anthropologically engineered to support the idea
that the alpha,or leader,reaps more rewards because he or she takes
on more of the risk. Sinek says he found that people are perfectly
comfortable with someone more senior getting a bigger paycheck,
a nicer car, bigger office, or more attractive spouse.There are huge
perkswithbeingthealpha,butitdoesnotcomeforfree.Whendanger
appears on the horizon, the alpha is expected to rush in to meet it.
That is the cost of leadership.
“This is why we are so viscerally offended by some of the CEOs
of investment banks who have such ridiculously, disproportionately
high salaries,” Sinek says.“It has nothing to do with the money. It
has to do with the fact that they have violated a deeply ingrained
social contract.We know that they did not sacrifice themselves for
their people to get that money.In fact,we know that sometimes they
sacrificed their people to get the money.And that’s what offends us.
It’s not the money. It’s the failure to uphold the very definition of
what it means to be a leader.”
A leader protects those in their group and offers them a circle of
safety.It is a decision,and Sinek says to not be surprised when it’s hard
work.Beinginchargedoesnotgrantyoutherighttodoless,butgives
you the responsibility to do more.Sometimes that requires you to put
your own reputation or even career on the line. But the reward is a
dedicated workforce that feels safe,cooperates,survives,and thrives.
WHAT IS THE
GOLDEN CIRCLE?
WHAT
HOW
WHY
24. WINTER 201322 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
ARE YOU GETTING
COMMITMENT OR
COMPLIANCE?
Disruptive leadership is the art and science
of creating the future.
BY NATHAN OWEN ROSENBERG
26. his issue of Insigniam Quarterly is all about
disruptive leadership. But at the risk of
contradicting ourselves, Insigniam
consultants would tell you that the
term disruptive leadership is redundant.
The effective practice of leadership is
disruptive.
But too many companies confuse leadership with
managementandleadershipwithtitleorposition.Theyequate
these — no distinction.
Management and leadership are both important disciplines
for any executive, but they are in no way the same. Leadership
has nothing to do with title or position or an organizational
chart. And yet too many companies impute leadership intent
and leadership practices onto someone just because of that
person’s title. The sad truth is that the most effective leader
may be far from the C-suite.
THE NEW LEADERSHIP PARADIGM
Until recently, managers and executives were not expected
to be leaders. When I went to the United States Air Force
Academy, only two other institutions of higher learning
taught leadership as an academic subject: the U.S. Military
and Naval academies. Today, it is a subject in virtually every
MBAprogramandistaughtinmanyundergraduateprograms.
Why the change? In the post-war era up until close to the
end of the century, there was so much demand for goods and
services that all an executive had to do was keep the enterprise
well functioning. In fact, in many cases, disrupting the status
quo was antithetical to good business practices.
Intoday’smarketplace,thatisnearlytheoppositeofwhatan
executive should do. Effective leadership changes a company’s
trajectoryanddisruptsthestatusquo.Predictableperformance
is not enough.
Everycompanyhascompetitors,manyofwhichareunseen
becausetheyarenotthetraditionalcompetitors.Everycompany
has others working to put it out of business. If leaders do not
disrupt their business, someone else will.
For big luxury automakers, the big competition is coming
from a company that did not even exist 10 years ago, Tesla.
Thesearecompaniesthatwerethoughttobebulletproof.They
are in an industry with a barrier to entry that is so high almost
no one new could get in. Yet, here’s Tesla.
While the company will not pass any of its more established
competitorsanytimesoon,itisgrowingmorequicklythanthe
marketleaders.Thecompany’sstockopenedtheyeartradingat
roughly $35 a share. By the end of October the share price was
over $160. With a 2013 sales estimate of 21,500 vehicles, it is
nippingattheheelsoftheLexusLS600H,adirectcompetitor.
At Insigniam, we say that the executive function is to create
a previously unimagined future for the enterprise and then to
empower and enable the people of the enterprise to fulfill that
future. In other words, leaders unhook from the predictable
future of their companies and invent and implement new,
exciting futures for their enterprises, putting the enterprise on
a new trajectory.
THREE LEADERSHIP PRACTICES
ElonMuskheadsTesla;healsoistheCEOofaprivatespace
transport company and co-founded PayPal. He is obviously a
leader. His way of thinking about the future is consistent with
the first of three traits that all disruptive leaders have.
èè Leaders aren’t looking for the future; they’re
creating it.
The future is unknowable, but that does not stop all too
many executives from trying to forecast what the future will
bring.(Thatisananalyst’swork.)Leadersdeterminewhatthey
want the future to be, and then determine what must happen
to create that future. They identify the possibilities and what
they need to do to wrestle them into reality.
WINTER 201324 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
T
2002 2003 2004
6 BILLION
4 BILLION
2 BILLION
800 MILLION
600 MILLION
400 MILLION
200 MILLION
THE POWER OF A BOLD VISION
Ask most anyone what caused the decline and
bankruptcyofBlockbuster,themovierentalchain,
and they will probably answer “Netflix.”
While the subscription-based movie rental company
definitely helped bring Blockbuster down,it wasn’t the
reason that Blockbuster failed. No, Blockbuster failed
because of a lack of vision. Leaders there failed to see
whattheleadersatNetflixandHulusaw—theInternet
wouldfundamentallyalterthewaythatpeopleconsume
movies and television.
BLOCKBUSTER
NETFLIX
HULU
27. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 25
èè In the face of uncertainty, disruptive leaders
move forward.
It is our nature: when we encounter uncertainty, we freeze.
Disruptive leaders have learned to overcome those instincts.
Uncertainty does not stop them. Instead, they move forward.
That is not to say that they are reckless. They are always
questioningtokeepfromgoingdownablindalley,and,even,to
stopdiggingwhentheyfindthemselvesinahole.Theymaintain
a good contention between confidence and questioning. But,
they are biased towards action, as Tom Peters says.
èè Disruptiveleadersenrollothersintheirfuture.
In a breakfast of ham and eggs, the chicken contributes,
but the pig is committed. Leaders have conversations to gain
the authentic commitment of others. Commitment is not
compliance. Leaders are willing to give up control to allow
others to choose. In most large corporations, it would be rare
for someone to tell her boss that she will not do something
asked of her. She is complying, not committing. Almost every
corporate culture is a culture of compliance. Until you have
a culture where it’s OK to say, “No,” you will never have any
way of knowing if you have real commitment.
THE MANY FACES OF DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP
Most companies are set up to protect the business model.
Theyaresetuptoprotectkeysourcesofincome.Noonewants
to disrupt those things. In actuality, that is exactly what they
needtodo.Maintainingthestatusquoovertimeisasureroute
to failure. A lack of disruption is a lack of leadership.
Leaders understand this. In the recent industrial past, we see
leaders who had a willingness to revolutionize and radicalize.
JACK WELCH
As head of General Electric, Welch laid down the
challenge for his people: General Electric will be No. 1 or
2 in a market segment or we will get out of the business.
KONOSUKE MATSUSHITA
The founder of Panasonic put a laser focus on quality,
setting a goal of creating perfect products — a
commitment that most American executives could not
get out of their mouths at the time.
There are also examples of disruptive leaders who are not so
obvious, because an effective leader is not a personality type
or a set of qualities. Disruptive leadership is not a particular
leadershipstyle.Aswehavesaid,itisallaboutbringingacreated
and proprietary future into the present.
One quieter leader who is in the middle of disrupting his
industryrightnowisRayConneratBoeing.Anexecutivevice
presidentandthepresidentandchiefexecutiveofficerofBoeing
Commercial Airplanes, Conner is not a loud, charismatic
leader. He is just a solid executive who stuck his neck out for
the future that he saw in Boeing’s 787 (an airplane that I will
stickmyneckouttosaythatitwillchangecommercialaviation).
Conner and his colleagues took on the multiple aspects of
bringing a new airplane to market. The 787 took ideas and
possibilities explored in a failed breakthrough project and gave
them another chance to see the light of day. The new plane is
constructedmostlyofcompositesmakingitmorefuelefficient.
The cabin is pressurized to a lower pressure, meaning fewer
headaches, reduced dizziness, and less fatigue for passengers.
The launch of the 787 has not been without big problems
thathavecostbothBoeinganditscustomers.However,Boeing
stock is up well over 50 percent since the grounding of the 787
fleet in January. Much of that increase can be attributed to
growth in the commercial division.
This is an airplane that will revolutionize the market, and
it is all because Conner and other Boeing executives created
a future, and he and the people of Boeing committed to that
future —stoodforit.And,intheend,that’sthemostimportant
thing that a disruptive leader can do.
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 20122005 2006
Blockbuster files for bankruptcy in
September 2010. It posts a net loss
of $569 million for the year
Netflix launches streaming service
2011
DISH Network pays approximately $321
million for Blockbuster when the company’s
assets are auctioned off at bankruptcy court.
2013
DISH announces it will end
Blockbuster’s on-demand video
service and close the remaining 300
retail stores by early 2014.
28.
29. SURVIVAL AT
THE TIPPING
POINTHow do you move forward when the road ahead is uncertain? For
one North Carolina healthcare provider, it was focusing on what they
do, not what they earn.
W
hentheyoungsonoftwonursesatNorthCarolina-
based Cone Health suffered a serious head injury in
askateboardaccidentearlierthisyear,thecompany’s
staffers went out of their way to make sure the boy got the best
carepossible,evenvolunteeringtheirtimetodrivetheboytoan
out-of-state rehabilitation center every weekend.Cone Health
CEOTim Rice used that story,told in a 12-minute video,to
open a corporate board retreat this past fall.
“When the video ended — and you better have had a tissue
handy at that point — I told the board that our people,and the
kindofcaretheygive,iswhywe’rehere,” hesays.“Andweneed
torememberthataswebeginthediscussionsaboutourfuture.”
Thosediscussionswerenoteasyones.Coneisjustoneofthe
many U.S.healthcare providers dealing with an unprecedented
upheaval in their nearly $3 trillion industry. The federal
Affordable CareAct,budget cuts at the state and local level,and
a soft economy has prompted a wave of industry consolidation
and a cascade in revenues. Among the biggest hits to revenue
is an overhaul of Medicare.
Revenues are expected to fall by $379 billion nationwide in
thenexteightyears,atimethatmostanalystssaywillbemarked
by deflation in most healthcare costs.As a result, healthcare
companies are merging at a heated pace, not just to expand
market share, but to slash costs in an effort to make up for
the expected revenue loss.One healthcare research firm found
that industry mergers have more than doubled from 2009
to 2012, and another reports that one-fifth of all the nation’s
5,000 hospitals are likely to seek mergers in the next few years.
Meanwhile, the industry is also shifting its focus to a more
proactive model of patient care — one focused on preventing
illness and injury.
Taken together,all of that change could make any healthcare
executivefeelabitill.Howdoyouleadwhenyourentireworld
is being disrupted,when your whole industry is in the middle
of a massive transformation? For Cone Health’s leaders, there
are a few key ways they’re trying to do just that.
NO. 1 // IN TOUGH TIMES, TAKE BETTER
CARE OF YOUR CUSTOMERS AND THE BOTTOM
LINE WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF
Fouryearsago,Coneexecutiveslookedovertheirprofitable
bottom line and their years of solid revenue growth and
decidedthatthosenumbersweren’tsufficient.Thecompany’s
leadership felt Cone Health needed a new direction.
“Atthattimewewereproducingprettygoodmargins,”Rice
says,“and the board was saying‘What are you worrying about?’
But we saw a freight train coming our way. We believed we’d
be taking in $125 million less per year than we had been taking
in if we didn’t do something to get in front of changes in the
marketplace.”
SoConeHealthembarkedonatotalculturaltransformation.
The goal: Put patients and providers first and compete on
performance — on how well patients do under their care —
on a national basis.
BY JOSEPH GUINTO
30. WINTER 201328 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
“ThedecisionbytheConeleadershiptoinvestinensuring
it has the right culture to provide exceptional care while
adapting and innovating flew in the face of common sense,”
says Shideh Sedgh Bina, Insigniam co-founding partner.
“Common sense says that when facing looming shortfalls
you focus all of your attention on
efficiencies and cost cutting. Yes,
the Cone leaders had to make
some tough fiscal decisions, and
they did that while reinventing
the very core of their culture.
Now that takes guts — and
wisdom.”
Today, the entire healthcare
industry is steering in that same
direction. Doctors, hospitals,
and pharmacists are all seeing
their financial rewards tied to
making their patients better, not
just providing treatment.
And consumers of healthcare
are about to become better able
to comparison shop among the
providers who give the best care
to their patients. According to a
study published in 2013 by the
Healthcare Innovation Center
at Oliver Wyman, by next year,
some 85 million consumers
with $600 billion in purchasing
power may be shopping for their
own healthcare, and many of
them “will be making their own
decisions about coverage for the
first time.”
Thatmeanshospitalswillhavetocompetenotwiththecare
providerdownthestreetoracrossthestate,butwithproviders
across the country. Walmart is already making that happen
for its workers. It provides travel expenses to some workers
who are willing to seek out top care providers nationally.
So how does Cone compete with providers in, say, Cali-
fornia?Through a key core principle.The company’s top goal,
set during its cultural transformation, is not to boost profits.
It is, simply, to rank among the top decile of all hospital
organizations nationwide in terms of what is known asTriple
Aim Performance:patient experience,quality of care,and cost
management. As a result of that effort to be in the top decile
inTriple Aim,the company has dramatically increased patient
safety, employee engagement, employee retention, and has
boosted its scores in key areas of patient satisfaction by a rate
that’ssixtimesbetterthantheaveragehospitalnationwide.From
there,they hope,that profits and growth,even in the turbulent
future,will follow.
“This is a business, and
financial results matter,” Rice
says. “But providing top care is
still the key context for gauging
everything we do. And that has
been really embraced by our
clinicians. Tell me what surgeon
goes into surgery in the morning
andsays,‘I’dliketodoanaverage
surgery’?”
NO. 2 // HONESTY
IS THE BEST POLICY, OR
TREAT EMPLOYEES LIKE
GROWNUPS
After decades of solid revenue
andprofitgrowth,thisyearCone
has struggled just to break even,
whichiswhyRice’sboardretreat
discussions were not easy. Cuts
and changes to Medicare outlays
at the federal and state level cost
thecompany$30millionjustthis
year.Asaresult,Conelaidoff150
people and left another 150 open
positions vacant. Those were
the first layoffs in the company’s
history.
So how did the executives spin
that news to their employees? They didn’t spin it at all. They
just told them.
“Our employees are smart people,” Rice says. “And we
treat them that way. We all feel the pain of the layoffs. But
if we can tell people the ‘Why’ behind any decision we’ve
made,they’llunderstandit.Sure,therehavebeensomepeople
sniping.Andwithmorethan10,000employees,you’regoing
tohavethat.Byandlarge,though,peoplehaveacceptedwhat
we’re doing because we’ve tried hard to be transparent and
over-communicate the ‘why’ behind our decisions.”
That“over-communication”isoneresultofthecompany’s
culturaltransformation.“We’veestablishedanincreasedlevel
of trust and an increased level of communication across the
With an uncertain future, leaders at Cone Health — like Terry Akin
and Tim Rice — decided to tranform the healthcare network’s
culture from one focused on revenues to one focused on results.
31. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 29
organization that is key in times like these,” says Terry Akin, Cone’s
president and chief operating officer.
“The core of the new Cone is a bold and inspiring future — the
opportunity to transform healthcare itself in service of a healthier
community,” says Jen Zimmer, a partner at Insigniam who worked
with Cone on its transformation. “When the enterprise is mobilized
in service of something bigger than its own survival and the leaders
lead in an authentic manner almost anything can be said and heard.”
NO. 3 //WHEN THE INDUSTRY IS STRUGGLING,
DON’T FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THE PRESENT — THE
FUTURE STILL MATTERS.
Cone executives say they are pushing innovation and risk-taking
now, even though the industry is in a period of uncertainty. Or,
perhaps, because the industry is in a period of uncertainty.
“We have immediate financial issues to deal with,” Rice says.
“And we will deal with those. But our focus has to be on the future,
because this business, a year from now, won’t look like it does today.
A lot of things we think of as providers may be very different in the
very near future. We may not need to do near as many amputations
because we’re controlling diabetes better now. We may not need
near as many beds in the ICU because more patients are sent home
to use home monitoring equipment now. We need to start planning
out the breakthroughs that can happen in the industry and planning
for what that’s going to change in terms of what a hospital looks like.
“Themessagewe’recommunicatingtoourboard,toourleadership
team, and to our people is that the tipping point for our industry is
no longer coming. We’re at the tipping point. And we have to stay
out in front of the changes that are coming.”
Akinsaysthat’swhythecompanyhasbeencombiningforceswith
other regional healthcare providers in recent years, including 2013,
and has been tasking leaders at all levels of the organization to find
ways to simultaneously cut costs and improve patient outcomes.
“We have wanted to avoid being in reactive mode,” he says. “We
wanttodefineandshapeourfutureratherthanhaveitshapedforus.”
NO. 4 // REMEMBER, AND REMIND YOURSELF
OFTEN OF, THE CORE MISSION.
Cone begins every executive meeting with a patient story — the
same kind of story it told at the start of this fall’s board retreat. The
reason: to remind leaders that their business exists for one reason, to
care for patients.
“Intimesofstress,andwe’reallgoingthroughthefinancialstresses
in this industry right now, the numbers can be a huge distraction
from the reasons we’re here,” Rice says. “But for our patients and
our people, we can’t let that happen.”
$3TRILLION
$379 BILLION
85 MILLION
$600 BILLION
10,000
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
FACTS & FIGURES
REVENUES IN THE
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
ARE EXPECTED TO FALL
IN PURCHASING
POWER WILL BE
BUYING THEIR OWN
COVERAGE
CUSTOMERS WITH
NUMBER OF CONE
HEALTH EMPLOYEES
IN THE NEXT 3 YEARS
33. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 31
JEAN-PIERRE CLAMADIEU SAYS THAT IN A
CHANGING WORLD DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP IS
WHAT WILL TAKE SOLVAY TO THE NEXT LEVEL.
BY CHRIS WARREN
34. WINTER 201332 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
labs to also include how efficiently manufacturing
plants operate and how flexible and responsive customer
relationships are managed. And it is in the successful
formulation, articulation, and implementation of these
changes that Clamadieu sees the essence of disruptive
leadership.
“To be disruptive is to acknowledge the fact that we
need to change and that we need to accept and make
moves that sounded impossible yesterday,” he says.
While that may sound revolutionary to some,
Clamadieu believes periods of disruptive leadership are a
fact of life for companies that want to thrive in a quickly
changing and complex global economy.
“There could be some situations where you develop
such a successful business model that you think the most
important thing is to not change a bit of it,” he says. “My
feeling is that those situations are not common today.”
Clamadieu’s efforts at disruptive leadership at Solvay
ean-Pierre Clamadieu is willing to make a bet. The chief
executive officer of Solvay SA is certain that if you asked
employees at the chemical giant’s Brussels headquarters
how much the firm has changed since his tenure began
in May of 2012 you would get remarkably consistent
answers.
“They would say that they barely recognize the
company,” says Clamadieu, who previously was chairman
and CEO of the French chemical company Rhodia, which
he helped lead back from the brink of insolvency before
navigating its acquisition by Solvay in September of 2011.
Although Clamadieu disputes that perception —
“People tend to overreact to change,” he says — he happily
acknowledges that he has been a disruptive leader of this
venerable, 150-year-old institution, which has more
than 29,000 employees worldwide and a broad product
portfolio that includes essential and specialty chemicals,
polymers, and vinyls.
Indeed, during the course of his time at the helm of
Solvay, Clamadieu has outlined and begun implementing
a number of fundamental changes to how the company
operates, many of which have profound implications for
how individuals do their jobs. For example, Clamadieu
has dispensed with Solvay’s traditionally centralized
decision making.
“We are quite large, and we’re dealing with a lot of
businesses in many geographies,” he says. “We are only
going to be successful by empowering the people very close
to the battlefield and then holding them accountable.”
Clamadieu says he has also worked on extending
innovation at Solvay beyond the research and development
J
35. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 33
have yet to reach the two-year mark, but he already has a
number of practical tips for other executives considering a
similar approach.
HAVE A CLEAR VISION
The global chemical industry had total revenues of
$3.6 trillion in 2011 and is expected to grow 47 percent
by 2016. When Clamadieu was first appointed CEO of
Solvay, his marching orders from the board of directors
were very clear. It’s a mandate that he can recite without a
moment’s hesitation.
“We want to be a global leader in the chemical
industry and be one of the companies that participates in
the reshaping of this industry,” he says. “And to achieve
that we need to be among the best performing chemical
companies.”
Being able to clearly and concisely enunciate a big
picture vision, says Clamadieu, is vital because it provides
a context as well as a purpose for
all the disruptive changes that are
necessary in order to achieve it.
In other words, it helps people
understand why meddling with
the status quo — in everything
from procuring raw materials to
marketing to operations — matters.
Not coincidentally, having clarity also helps focus
executive decisions about what changes and disruptions
are truly required.
“You have to develop one simple idea of where you
want to go and what you want to achieve collectively and
make sure all the strategies and elements are aligned with
this vision,” he says.
DON’T GO IT ALONE
Among certain circles, there is a romantic notion that a
Jean-Pierre
Clamadieu’s charge
when he took over
leadership of Solvay
was to make the
company a leader in
the global chemical
industry and play a
role in its reshaping.
Clamadieu knew
that would require
disruptive leadership.
36. WINTER 201334 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
CEO can be a disruptive and transformational leader all
by him or herself. Clamadieu disagrees.
“You are not a transformational hero who is carrying
the weight of the transformation on your own shoulders,”
he says. “You need to have a strong team around you who
has the ability to support the changes.”
Building a strong leadership corps is one of Clamadieu’s
strengths, says Katerin Le Folcalvez, a partner at
Insigniam. One of the many things that she says helps
Clamadieu stand out as a leader is his careful hiring and
focus on finding people with the right attitude in addition
to the right skills.
“He surrounds himself with people who share with
him the ability to question their own ways, turn over
every stone, and challenge themselves,” says Le Folcalvez.
Clamadieu says there are a number of things he and his
executive team did that have helped encourage Solvay’s
tens of thousands of employees to support the changes.
One is simply not to change course frequently, either
in the communication of the company’s vision or in the
strategy to achieve it.
Jean-Pierre Clamadieu
says that for disruptive
leadership to work,
leaders need a team
of people around
them who support the
vision of the future
everyone is working
towards. “You are not
a transformational
hero who is carrying
the weight of the
transformation on your
own shoulders.”
JEAN-PIERRE CLAMADIEU’S PRINCIPLES
OF DISRUPTIVE LEADERSHIP
7 Have a clear bold vision: Be able to state a big-
picture vision for the enterprise.
7 Don’t go it alone: Surround yourself with a strong
team that supports change.
7 Be visible and accessible: It’s important for people
to hear about the vision from you — repeatedly and
often.
7 Be persistent with big ambitions: Do not
settle for solid results. Keep working until big,
transformational goals are met.
37. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 35
“It’s important that you show some consistency in the
way you act,” he says.
Equally important is to have the patience to let what
can feel like drastic changes sink in and be accepted and
embraced by the employees who will implement them.
“You need to give people time to understand what you
want to do so that they’re willing to move alongside
you,” he says. “Otherwise, you are not a leader. You’re
just sitting alone in a room making nice presentations.”
BE VISIBLE AND ACCESSIBLE
These days, Clamadieu spends about 50 percent of his
time visiting Solvay facilities and employees around the
globe. He does this because he knows just how important
it is for as many of his colleagues as possible to hear about
the company’s vision and the need for disruptions from
him personally.
“Part of disruptive leadership is understanding that when
people hear about it they are a bit lost and the first thing
you need to do is reassure them and help them understand
what is being done and why,” he says.
Interestingly, Clamadieu says that
those conversations are easier in some
places than in others. For instance, he
says that Brazilians generally are quick
to embrace change while Europeans are
more instinctively suspicious.
“Their first reaction is often to be on
the defensive,” he says.
Regardless of the initial reception,
Clamadieu says he always tries to make
the company’s overall vision relatable
and exciting for each individual.
“Yes, you may have been doing things
like this for 10 years and now that job is
disappearing but we will find something
new for you that allows you to make a
new contribution,” he says. “And that
change could and should mean personal improvement and
personal development. It’s very important to show that this
transformation is not just for stock management, but that it
can also bring opportunities to people.”
BE PERSISTENT
Even though Clamadieu is exceptionally proud of
the progress Solvay has made since he became CEO —
net sales in 2012 were up 2 percent from 2011 to €12.4
billion (approximately $16.8 billion) and net debt went
down from €1.8 billion (approximately $2.4 billion) in
2011 to €1.1 billion (approximately $1.4 billion) in 2012
— he still sees much work to be done. For instance,
in his travels to company outposts he has been asking
employees at all levels whether they have felt the impact
of the new emphasis on decentralized decision making.
“People say, ‘No, we haven’t, because you have given
more authority and empowered my boss and he has
become a bit worried because with that empowerment
comes responsibility,’ ” he says. “They say their bosses are
too focused on their own issues to empower those under
them, so it will take time to make sure decentralization
doesn’t stop.”
SELLING DISRUPTION
In some ways, Clamadieu’s own transition from leading
Rhodia from the brink of bankruptcy to taking over the
reins of Solvay has been surprisingly seamless.
“I used to say that at Rhodia we were facing a liquidity
crisis, but the root cause was a trust crisis; it was internal,
the employees not trusting the leaders
and where the company was going,”
he says. “Although we had to rebuild
the balance sheet, we also had to
rebuild trust and the way to do that
was not that different from today:
setting a goal, explaining how we get
there, and making progress quarter by
quarter.”
In some ways, being a disruptive
leader focused on change was actually
easier for Clamadieu at Rhodia than it
is at Solvay.
“When you’re in an emergency
situation, people don’t ask why we need
to change. They understand that you
are on the side of a cliff and absolutely
need to turn the steering wheel in a
different direction,” he says. But at Solvay, which has a
strong balance sheet and no large, immediate challenges
Clamadieu has had to make a stronger case for disruption.
“The challenge is a bit bigger for the CEO to explain
why the situation needs disruptive management,” he says.
“In our case, it is because the world is changing.”
Clearly, Clamadieu has made his case well. And it’s a
job he relishes. “I would not lead a company that didn’t
need big changes,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to take a
mundane CEO job.”
TO BE
DISRUPTIVE IS TO
ACKNOWLEDGE
THE FACT THAT WE
NEED TO CHANGE
AND THAT WE
NEED TO ACCEPT
AND MAKE MOVES
THAT SOUNDED
IMPOSSIBLE
YESTERDAY.
39. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 37
GREAT LEADERSHIP,A
GREAT ORGANIZATION
A GREAT PERSONAL LIFE
The four ways of being that
create the foundation for
BY WERNER H. ERHARD AND MICHAEL C. JENSEN
40. 1
n this paper we argue that the
four ways of being we identify as
constituting the foundation for
being a leader and the effective
exercise of leadership are also the
the foundation for an extraordinary
organization and the foundation of
an extraordinary personal life.
We start with a brief overview of each of these four
foundations before going into an expanded discussion of each.
AN OVERVIEW
èè Being Authentic
Being authentic is being and acting consistent with who you
hold yourself out to be for others, and who you hold yourself
to be for yourself.When leading, being authentic leaves you
grounded and able to be straight with others without the use
of force.
èè Being Cause In the Matter of Everything InYour
Life
Being Cause in the Matter is a stand you take on yourself and
your life.A stand is a declaration you make, not a statement of
fact.Being Cause in the Matter is viewing life from and acting
from the stand that “I am cause in the matter of everything in
my life.”Being willing to view life from this perspective leaves
you with power.You are never for yourself a victim.
èè Being Committed to Something Bigger than
Oneself
Being committed to something bigger than oneself is the
source of the serene passion (charisma) required to lead and to
develop others as leaders and the source of persistence (joy in
the labor of) when the path gets tough.
èè Being A Person or an Organization of Integrity
In our model, integrity for anything is the state of being
whole, complete, unbroken, sound, in perfect condition1
. For
a person and any human organization, integrity is a matter of
that person’s word or that organization’s word being whole
and complete — nothing more and nothing less. Integrity is
required to create the maximum opportunity for performance
and quickly generate trust.
A WORD ABOUT VALUES
In our discussion here we are not concerned with values
— that is,we are not concerned with what is considered good
as opposed to bad, or right as opposed to wrong.We advocate
these four principles not because they are “right,” but simply
because they are in each individual’s personal self-interest
and in each organization’s self-interest.These insights into the
actual nature and function of the four aspects of the foundation
for great leadership, great organizations, and a great personal
life create workability, trust, peace, joy, and private and social
value.They provide a path for individuals, organizations, and
societies to realize much of what people generally think ethics
and morality produce.And,if we look at the state of the world
around us,obviously that latter path has not worked.
FOUNDATION ONE: BEING AUTHENTIC
Being authentic is being and acting consistent with who you
hold yourself out to be for others, and who you hold yourself
to be for yourself.
Surprisingly, there is nothing authentic about any attempt
to be authentic. Any attempt to be authentic on top of our
inauthenticities is like putting cake frosting on cow dung,
thinking that will make the cow dung go down well. In any
case, the attempt to be authentic is a put on and therefore
inauthentic.
One cannot pretend to be authentic.That, by definition, is
inauthentic. Remarkably, the only path to being authentic is
being authentic about one’s inauthenticities. Being authentic
is being willing to discover, confront, and tell the truth about
your inauthenticities — where you are not being genuine,real,
WINTER 201338 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
I
1
SeeErhard,Jensen,andZaffron(2009),“Integrity:APositiveModelthatIncorporatestheNormativePhenomenaofMorality,Ethics
and Legality.” Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 06-11. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=920625
Dr.Michael C.Jensen is the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of BusinessAdministration,Emeritus at Harvard Business School.He has played an important
role in the academic discussion of the capital asset pricing model,stock options policy,and corporate governance.
Werner H.Erhard is recognized worldwide as a business,management,and humanitarian leader.He has consulted for numerous corporations and charitable
and governmental agencies.
41. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 39
EDITOR’S NOTE:
The following article is excerpted by the
authors from an academic paper on which
they are working.While different in style and
length from our typical IQ article, you can be
sure that it is worth your time to read and,
even study, this article. Erhard and Jensen
are making a significant contribution to the
field of leadership development and the
effective exercise of leadership. Moreover,
their work reinforces, illuminates, and expands
the principles and practices that Insigniam’s
clients have found so valuable:
èè At the core of Insigniam’s leadership
development work is the notion that
leadership starts with taking a stand — the
access to which is your word. In particular,
Jensen and Erhard’s seminal work to
define integrity as “working as your word”
elevates that notion and extends it in
multiple dimensions.
èè One highly effective supply chain executive
who has worked with Insigniam for a
decade says that his most impactful
learning is that, if he touches or sees it,
he is responsible (a leader is responsible);
that discovery is harmonic with the authors’
foundation of being cause in the matter of
everything in your life.
42. or authentic. Specifically, being authentic is being willing to
discover, confront, and tell the truth about where in your life
you are not being or acting consistent with who you hold
yourself out to be for others,or not being or acting consistent
with who you hold yourself to be for yourself.
Most of us think of ourselves as being authentic; however,
each of us in certain situations,and each of us in certain ways,
is consistently inauthentic.
SOME EXAMPLES OF OUR INAUTHENTICITIES
We as persons and in our organizations desperately want
to be admired. For many, admiration is the most valuable
coin of the realm. Almost none of us is willing to confront
just how much we want to be admired, and how readily we
will fudge on being straightforward and completely honest in
a situation where we perceive doing so threatens us with a loss
of admiration.We will do almost anything to avoid the loss of
admiration — stretch the truth,manipulate the facts,hide what
might be embarrassing or unpleasant or even awkward and,
where required,outright lie.
We also all want to be seen by our colleagues as being loyal,
protesting that loyalty is a virtue even in situations where
the truth is that we are acting “loyal” solely to avoid the loss
of admiration. And, in such situations, how ready we are to
sacrifice authenticity to maintain the pretense of being loyal,
when the truth is that we are “being loyal” only because we
fear losing the admiration of our close colleagues,subordinates,
or bosses.
In addition, most of us have a pathetic need for looking
good (and in certain situations this shows up as wanting to be
liked), and almost none of us is willing to confront just how
much we care about looking good — even to the extent of
the silliness of pretending to have followed and understood
something when we haven’t.
Each of us is inauthentic in certain ways.While this may
sound like a description of this or that person you know, it
actually describes each of us — including you the reader and
each of us authors.We are all guilty of being small in these ways
— it comes with being human.
If you cannot find the
courage to be authentic about
your inauthenticities, you can
forget about being a great
leader or having a great personal
life. And an organization that
cannot be authentic about it’s
inauthenticities will experience
great conflicts,costs,and inevitably loss of reputation.
Great leaders, great organizations, and those who lead great
personal lives are noteworthy in having come to grips with
these foibles of being human,not eliminating them,but being
the master of these weaknesses.
IS BEING AUTHENTIC IMPORTANT TO BEING A LEADER?
Quoting former Medtronics CEO and now Harvard
Business School Professor of Leadership Bill George:“After
years of studying leaders and their traits, I believe that
leadership begins and ends with authenticity.”2
To be a leader and to have a great organization and to have
a truly great personal life, you and your organization must be
big enough to be authentic about your inauthenticities and
your organization’s inauthenticities.This kind of bigness is a
sign of power, and is so interpreted by others. Being a leader
requires that you be absolutely authentic,and true authenticity
begins with being authentic about your inauthenticities; and
almost no one does this.
THE ACTIONABLE ACCESS TO AUTHENTICITY
As we have said, the only path to authenticity is being
authentic about your inauthenticities. In order to achieve this
you must find in yourself, that “self” that leaves you free to
be authentic about your inauthenticities.That “self,” the one
required to be authentic about your inauthenticities, is who
you authentically are.
And you will know when this process is complete when you
are free to be publicly authentic about your inauthenticities,
and have experienced the freedom, courage, and peace of
WINTER 201340 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
2
George, Bill. 2003, p.11. “Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value”. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
IF YOU CANNOT FIND THE COURAGE
TO BE AUTHENTIC ABOUT YOUR
INAUTHENTICITIES, YOU CAN FORGET
ABOUT BEING A GREAT LEADER OR
HAVING A GREAT PERSONAL LIFE.
43. 2
mind that comes from doing so.And this is especially so when
you are authentic with those around you for whom those
inauthenticities matter (and who are likely to be aware of them
in any case).
FOUNDATION TWO: BEING CAUSE IN THE
MATTER
By “Being Cause in the Matter” we mean being cause
in the matter of everything in your life as a stand you take
for yourself and life, and acting from that stand. To take
the stand that you are cause in the matter contrasts with it
being your fault,or that you failed,or that you are to blame,
or even that you did it.
It is not true that you are the cause of everything in
your life.That you are the cause of everything in your life
is a place to stand from which to view and deal with life,
a place that exists solely as a matter of your choice. The
stand that one is cause in the matter is a declaration, not an
assertion of fact.It simply says:“You can count on me (and,
I can count on me) to look at and deal with life from the
perspective of my being cause in the matter.”
BEING CAUSE IN THE MATTER MEANSYOU GIVE UP THE RIGHT TO
BE A VICTIM
When you have taken the stand (declared) that you are
cause in the matter of your life, it means that you give up
the right to assign cause to the circumstances or to others.
That is you give up the right to be a victim. At the same
time, taking this stand does not prevent you from holding
others responsible.
As we said, it is not true that you are the cause of
everything in your life. Being cause in the matter does not
mean that you are taking on the burden of or being blamed
for or praised for anything in the matter. And, taking the
stand that you are cause in the matter does not mean that
you won’t fail.
However, when you have mastered this aspect of the
foundation required for being a leader and exercising
leadership effectively, you will experience a state change in
effectiveness and power in dealing with the challenges of
leadership and living a great personal life (not to mention
the challenges of creating a great organization).
In taking the stand that you are the cause of everything
in your life, you give up the right to blame others or the
environment. In fact, you give up the right to blame the
circumstances for anything that is going on with you or
your organization.
WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 41
44. 3
4
FOUNDATION THREE: BEING COMMITTED TO
SOMETHING BIGGER THAN ONESELF
What we mean by “being committed to something bigger
than oneself” is being committed in a way that shapes one’s
being and actions so that your ways of being and acting are
in the service of realizing something beyond your personal
concerns for yourself — beyond a direct personal payoff. As
they are acted on, such commitments create something to
which others can also be committed and have the sense that
their lives are about something bigger than themselves.This is
an important aspect of a great personal life,great leadership,and
a great organization.
BEING COMMITTED TO SOMETHING BIGGER THAN ONESELF IS
THE SOURCE OF PASSION
Without the passion that comes from being committed to
something bigger than yourself, you are unlikely to persevere
in the valley of tears that is an inevitable experience in the lives
of all true leaders.Times when nothing goes right, there is no
way, no help is available, nothing there except what you can
do to find something in yourself — the strength to persevere
in the face of impossible,insurmountable hurdles and barriers.
And, by the way, every great personal life includes having to
come to grips with one or more of these profound challenges.
When you are committed to something bigger than yourself
and you reach down inside you will find the strength to
continue (joy in the labor of).
EXAMPLE OF A VALLEY OF TEARS THAT ALMOST EVERYONE
EXPERIENCES: THE MID-LIFE CRISIS
At some point in life we all stop measuring time from the
beginning and start measuring it from the end. It shifts from
how far have I come to how much time and opportunity
do I have left?
No matter how good you look, no matter how good
you’ve gotten your family to look, and no matter how
much wealth, fame, power, and position you have amassed,
you will experience a profound lack of fulfillment — the
incompleteness,emptiness,and pain expressed by the common
question:Is this all there is?
Let us be clear: There is nothing inherently wrong with
wealth, good looks, fame, power, or position, but, contrary
to almost universal belief, they will never be enough. And
facing up to that leaves people and organizations disoriented,
disturbed, and lost. No matter how good you look or how
much you have personally amassed,
it will never be enough to avoid
this crisis. Dealing with the crisis of
“Is this all there is?” lies in having a
commitment to the realization of a
future (a cause) that leaves you with a
passion for living.
This principle, being committed
to something bigger than oneself,
applies to corporate entities as well as
to human beings.Value creation for
both is the scorecard for success.Value creation is not the source
of corporate or personal passion and energy.Being committed
to something bigger than oneself is the source of that passion
and energy. Every individual and every organization has the
power to choose that commitment — there is no “right
answer.”It is creating what lights up you and your organization.
FOUNDATION FOUR:
INTEGRITY — A POSITIVE MODEL
Definition:We use the first two definitions of integrity from
Webster’s New World Dictionary: 1. the quality or state of
being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety 2.
the quality or state of being unimpaired; perfect condition;
soundness.
We use the phrase “whole and complete” to represent
our definition of integrity. Defined this way, integrity is
WINTER 201342 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
VALUE CREATION IS NOT THE SOURCE
OF CORPORATE OR PERSONAL
PASSION AND ENERGY. BEING
COMMITTED TO SOMETHING BIGGER
THAN ONESELF IS THE SOURCE OF
THAT PASSION AND ENERGY.
45. a positive phenomena, not a virtue. There is nothing
inherently good or bad about it, it is just the way the world
is. (We show how morality and ethics are related to our
definition of integrity below.)
An object has integrity when it is whole and complete.
Any diminution in whole and complete results in a
diminution in workability.Think of a wheel with missing
spokes, it is not whole and complete. It will become out-
of-round, work less well, and eventually stop working
entirely. Likewise, a system has integrity when it is whole
and complete.
TheLawofIntegritystates:Asintegrity(wholeandcomplete)
declines,workability declines,and as workability declines,value
(or more generally,the opportunity for performance) declines.
Thus,the maximization of whatever performance measure you
choose requires integrity.
Attempting to violate the Law of Integrity generates
painful consequences just as surely as attempting to violate
the law of gravity. Put simply (and somewhat overstated):
“Without integrity nothing works.” Think of this as a
heuristic:If you or your organization operate in life as though
this heuristic is true, performance will increase dramatically.
And the impact on performance is huge: easily in the range
of 100% to 500%.
WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 43
46. INTEGRITY FOR A PERSON (OR AN ORGANIZATION)
In this positive model,integrity for a person is a matter of a
person’s word,nothing more and nothing less.You are a man or
woman of integrity,and enjoy the benefits thereof,when your
word is whole and complete.Your word includes the speaking
of your actions as in“actions speak louder than words.”
HONORINGYOUR WORD
While keeping your word is fundamentally important in life,
you will not be able to always keep your word (unless you are
playing a small game in life). However, you can always honor
your word.Honoring your word is:
1.Keeping your word,OR
2. Whenever you will not be keeping your word, just as
soon as you become aware that you will not be keeping your
word (including not keeping your word on time) saying to
everyone impacted:
i. That you will not be keeping your word,and
ii. That you will keep that word in the future and by when,or
that you won’t be keeping that word at all,and
iii. What you will do to deal with the impact on others of the
failure to keep your word (or to keep it on time).
YOUR WORD DEFINED
WORD 1 – WHAT YOU SAID: Whatever you said you
will do, or will not do (and in the case of do, doing it on
time).
WORD 2 –WHATYOU KNOW:Whatever you know to
do,or know not to do,and if it is do,doing it as you know it
is meant to be done (and doing it on time),unless you have
explicitly said to the contrary.
WORD 3 – WHAT IS EXPECTED: Whatever you are
expected to do or not do (unexpressed requests) and in the
case of do, doing it on time, unless you have explicitly said
to the contrary.
WORD 4 – WHAT YOU SAY IS SO: Whenever you
have given your word to others as to the existence of some
thing or some state of the world, your word includes being
willing to be held accountable that the others would find
your evidence makes what you have asserted valid for
themselves.
WORD 5 – WHAT YOU STAND FOR: Whether
expressed in the form of a declaration made to one or more
people,or to yourself,as well as what you hold yourself out
to others as standing for (formally declared or not).
WORD 6 – MORALITY, ETHICS, AND LEGALITY:
The Social Moral Standards, the Group Ethical Standards
and the Governmental Legal Standards of right and wrong,
good and bad behavior in the society, groups and state in
which I enjoy the benefits of membership are also my word
WINTER 201344 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
3
Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C., 2013. “Four Ways of Being that Create the Foundations of A Great Personal Life, Great Leadership and A
Great Organization — PDF File of Powerpoint Slides” (September 12). Harvard Business School NOM Unit Working Paper No. 13-078. Available at
SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2207782
47. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 45
4
Alloway, Tracy and Kara Scannell (2013). “Jury finds Tourre Defrauded Investors”, Financial Times,
August 1. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18098490-f86a-11e2-b4c4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2f5BKytNd
WITHOUT INTEGRITY
NOTHING WORKS.
(what I am expected to do) …unless I have explicitly and
publicly expressed my intention to not keep one or more of
those standards,and I am willing to bear the costs of refusing
to conform to these standards (the rules of the game I am in).
NOTE: These six categories define one’sWord,they do not
define integrity.
THE BAD NEWS
We can say with great confidence that no one (including
us authors) is a person or organization completely in
integrity. That self-satisfied view is one of the causes of
the universal lack of integrity in the world. To repeat:
the common belief that we have made it as people and
organizations of integrity is one of the major factors
contributing to the systemic worldwide lack of integrity.
The fact is integrity is a “mountain with no top,” so we
had better get used to (and grow to like) climbing. Even
when people (and other human entities, such as banks,
corporations, partnerships, and other organizations) have
some general awareness of the damaging effects of out-
of-integrity behavior, for the most part they fail to notice
their own out-of-integrity behavior. As a result, they end
up attributing the damage from their out-of-integrity
behavior to other causes. They systematically believe that
they are in integrity,or if by chance they are at the moment
aware of being out of integrity, they believe that they will
soon get back into integrity.
However, the combination of 1) generally not seeing
our own out-of-integrity behavior, 2) believing that we are
persons of integrity, and 3) even when we get a glimpse of
our own out-of-integrity behavior, assuaging ourselves with
the notion that we will soon restore ourselves to being a
person of integrity keeps us from seeing that in fact integrity
is a mountain with no top.To be a person of integrity (or
bank or other organization of integrity) requires that we
recognize this and “learn to enjoy climbing.” Knowing
that integrity is a mountain with no top, and being joyfully
engaged in the climb, leaves us as individuals with power,
and leaves us known by others as authentic, and as men or
women of integrity (or organizations of integrity). While
counterintuitive,owning up to any out-of-integrity behavior
and dealing with it with“honor”actually leaves one showing
up for others as a person of integrity. Recognizing that we
will never “get there” also opens us up to tolerance of (and
an ability to see and deal productively with) our own out-of-
integrity behavior as well as that of others.
THE COSTS OF DEALING WITH AN OBJECT, PERSON, GROUP,
OR ENTITY THAT IS OUT OF INTEGRITY
Consider the experience of dealing with an object that
lacks integrity.Say a car or bicycle.When it is not whole and
complete and unbroken (that is a component is missing or
malfunctioning) it becomes unreliable, unpredictable, and
it creates those characteristics in our lives.The car fails in
traffic, we create a traffic jam, we are late for appointments,
fail to perform, disappoint our partners, associates, and
firms. In effect, the out-of-integrity car creates a lack of
integrity in our life with all sorts of unworkability fallout.
And this is true of all our associations with persons or
entities that are out of integrity.The effects are huge, but
generally attributed to something other than the lack of
integrity.
In the Appendix to Erhard and Jensen (2013)3
we apply
these principles to the Goldman Sachs’ experience with
its Abacus Mortgage Backed Securities Scandal in which
Goldman violated 7 of its 13 Goldman Business Principles
(their word to their clients, employees and the world).
Goldman employee Fabrice Tourre was found guilty of
defrauding investors. See Alloway and Scannell (2013)4
. In
addition, Goldman paid a $550 million fine to the SEC
for its actions surrounding its Abacus mortgage backed
securities, a record at that time.Applying the principles laid
out in this paper to Goldman’s actions we conclude that
Goldman was: 1.Out of integrity because it did not honor
its word:violating in part or in whole,7 of its 13“Goldman
Sachs Principles.” 2. Inauthentic because it was not true
to what it holds itself out to be for itself, its employees, its
clients, and the public and 3. Not committed to something
bigger than itself. (We could find nothing in the Goldman
literature indicating that it was committed to anything
bigger than itself.)
48. What does a modern leader look like? We asked some of today’s top
executives their thoughts on leadership, the challenges leaders face,
and why being disruptive is more important than ever.
PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP
WINTER 201346 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY
49. WINTER 2013 INSIGNIAM QUARTERLY 47
here has been a shift in what’s expected of leaders over the last 30 years. No longer can a leader just keep a steady
hand on the rudder of an enterprise. Today, leaders are expected to cut a new path in the marketplace for their
organization, to disrupt business as usual. They are expected to have a bold vision of the future and marshal
the forces that it will take to get there. No one understands the shift in what it means to be a leader better than
those who are actually leading. That’s why we talked to several of today’s top leaders and asked them about the
challenges they face, how they overcame them, and the importance of disruption. What we found out was eye
opening, and educational. These leaders had several characteristics in common. They are not just visionary,
they are at work making sure a particular future is possible. The future they seek is bold, compelling,
and captures the very essence of winning. They take time to build trust and bring people along
— speaking authentically and operating with consistency and integrity. They encourage inventive
and unorthodox action. They build their company’s culture, then they build it some more.
— Shideh Sedgh Bina
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE UNIQUE CHALLENGES
THAT LEADERS TODAY FACE, AND HOW SHOULD
THEY ADDRESS THEM?
Resources are much more limited in my industry today than
before.Regulations cover nearly everything and are changing
constantly. Currency fluctuations have a massive impact on
international businesses. These issues can be addressed by
developing and following a long-term vision for the business
and building the capability in the organization to understand
the strategy, know each unit’s role in delivering this strategy,
and setting up processes which enable action, with a clear
understanding of each unit’s freedom to act.
WHATARETHETHREE OR FOUR FACTORSTHATARE
MOST CRITICALTO MANAGINGASA DISRUPTIVE
LEADER? HOW DOYOUADDRESS EACH ONE?
Having a clear vision of the future — Requires long-
term focus on the key factors to deliver.
Challenging employees to be better than they think
possible—Supportingrebelsandpeoplewiththecommitment
to deliver.
Forgiving mistakes and learning from them —
Requires clear examples to be credible.
IN A RECENT INSIGNIAM EXECUTIVE SENTIMENT
STUDY, 87% OF EXECUTIVES SAID THAT
INNOVATION WAS CRITICAL TO THEIR CONTINUED
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE,YET ONLY 15% FELT
THEIR ORGANIZATIONS WERE WELL PREPARED
TO DELIVER THE REQUISITE INNOVATION. INYOUR
OPINION, WHY IS THERE SUCH A DISPARITY?
The speed of business is accelerating. Most organizations
thrive on what they have done well in the past. This difference
creates the issue. Few organizations support and reward
innovation in a clear way.
CANYOU QUICKLY SHARE SOME OFYOUR
LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES AND HOWYOU
ADDRESSED THEM?
When I started in my new job, most people believed our
most advanced development project was too late and too
expensive to develop. I identified the key success factors with
a cross-functional team approach and challenged them to deal
with the issues.A year was cut from the time,and cost reduced
significantly.As a result, a partnership deal was possible which
delivered significant short-term revenue.
WHAT HAVEYOU DONE TO CREATE THE
CONDITIONS FOR SUSTAINED INNOVATION INYOUR
ENTERPRISE?
Not enough! More process is needed and the support of the
true innovators should be clearer to the whole team.
DR. DAVID EBSWORTH
CEO, GALENICA LTD. // CEO, VIFOR PHARMA //
CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, GALENICA AG