I was reading this article in ‘Harvard Business Review’. Here is the summary of this article.
To become an effective leader, one need not necessarily be a man with charisma. What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight phases.
1) They asked, “What needs to be done”.
This question, almost all the times will have more then one urgent task. Jack Welch came up with answer, every five years, “what are needs to be done, now” and each time he came up with different answer.
2) They asked, “What is right for enterprise”.
Asking this question while making important decisions do not some times guarantee the best results, but not asking this question always leads to bad decisions.
3) They developed action plans.
Executives are doers. Knowledge is of no use for executives unless it is been translated into deeds. But before jumping in to action, executive needs to plan his course of action. How he wants to execute, about desired results, problems, check-in points etc.In addition to an execution plan, this action plan should contain a system for checking the results. Typically two; one halfway through and other towards the end. Without an action plan executives becomes a prisoner of events.
4) They took responsibility for decisions.
5) They took responsibility for communicating.
6) They were focused on opportunities rather then on problems.
Problems should be taken care of off course, but taking action on problems will not create results, it prevents the damage, where as focusing on opportunities produce results. Executives should put their best people on opportunities then on problems.
7) They ran productive meetings.
Decide before meeting, what kind of meeting this would be and set a fixed agenda. Its equally important to take MOM and distribute the action items to all present in the meeting. Also, it’s important to follow-up on these action items.
8) They thought and said, “we’ rather then “I”.
Effective executives differ widely in their personalities, strengths, weaknesses, values and beliefs. All they have in common is, they will get the things done. Effectiveness is a discipline and like any other discipline, effectiveness can be learned and must be learned.
I think we all have a lesson to learn from this article.
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3 comments:
Following important points are also important.
Connectivity with employees.
1. Does your company CEO connect
with employees well? OR is just connected with this immediate layer of VPs?
2. Is the immediate manager connected with his team? OR he pretends to be , by visiting them once in a while
Walking the talk: Can your company CEO walk the talk?
Failure ownership: Can your company CEO own the failure of his strategies in front of his employees?
Vision: Does your company CEO have a vision?
The eight points mentioned, are the traits identified with succesful CEOs.
When CEOs are successful, many success stories are printed and later on "abstracted" to identify such 8 point rules by management gurus, now try applying these rules, it should work like a scientific formula, but it does not in real life, because leadership cannot be taught, its within,managers are not "made", they are born.
On similar lines, I remember a success greedy delivery head and practise head with the following anecdote.
I remember one delivery head trying to ask a practice head to "abstract" "rules" for success in winning project and asked him to apply that abstraction to other project, as if it were a scientific formulae, that yields result.
Can you repeat success OR you want to command it?
There are different scenarios, in which these CEOs have made good decisions, and those have resulted in success, it complex to abstract them in terms of formules, rules etc.
the comments by "anonymous" are precisely correct. the article seems to be written out of a typical American mindset to formulate success. but practically, it's never possible to repeat success just by such formulation. the recipe for success is not as straightforward as "Alu paneer" :)
Americans are the best business managers, so nothing wrong in seeing this from 'American' perspective.
We need to take what is the truth! They are the best!
And morever, leaders are born, but if they don't develop these qualities, they are as good as nothing. Being a polished business leader is the need of the hour!
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