C.E.O. Evolution Phase 3 – New York Times
In this quote:
Mr. [X] “is disarmingly unpretentious,” he added. “…he towers over other C.E.O.’s when it comes to putting in people stronger than himself or his ability to talk about setbacks.”
Is this Toyota’s Katsuaki Watanabe? No, it’s Proctor & Gamble’s A.G. Lafley, who the NY Times (via Warren Bennis and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld) claims is the prototype for the new style CEO. If that’s really true, seems like a good trend. They say we’re moving away from the old CEO type – the empire builder with an “outsized ego” (they pointed at Jack Welch) who is too insecure to have strong people around or under them (they pointed at Stan O’Neal).
The new CEO has to be more than just smart, they also have to be leaders and to build teams. Imagine that! They also point to Boeing’s W. James McNerney Jr. as another prototype of this type of leader, along with Anne Mulcahy, chief executive of Xerox.
“They’ve got to have not just the cognitive ability to run a major firm, which Stan O’Neal definitely had, but the ability to make people feel like they’re working together,” Mr. Bennis said.
I hope Bennis meant that they wouldn’t just “feel” like they were working together, but that teamwork was actually happening.
“Both felt the need to make sure the top hundred people know that they’re in this together, that their fates are correlated,” Mr. Bennis says. “That’s what it will take to succeed in this century.”
Just the top hundred? That’s a start, I guess, although it’s a typically execu-centric view of the world. How about getting the whole company to think their fates are correlated? Now that would be amazing leadership, don’t you think?
So what do you think? Will we see the end of the top-down, command-and-control CEO who has to have all the answers? Are these researchers studying the leadership styles of Toyota, correlating that with their amazing financial performance? I’m anxious to read Jeff Liker’s new book, Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way
Thanks to the person who ordered 10 copies through my amazon link!
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About LeanBlog.org: Mark Graban is a consultant, author, and speaker in the “lean healthcare” methodology, focused on improving quality and patient safety, improving access, reducing costs, and fully engaging healthcare professionals. He is also the Chief Improvement Officer for KaiNexus.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
15 years ago, in one of my business management courses for my undergraduate degree, each of the students was challenged to come up with a motto. That motto was to be our standard for how we, as future managers, would lead our people.
After spending agonizing minutes in contemplation (it was college, after all and the local bar was ‘calling’), I laid out my motto. “If everyone in the room is smarter than me, I had better be the one calling the meeting.”
When asked to define my motto, it was simply that if I wanted to be successful, I had to surround myself with talented people who’s decisions I could trust. Many times over the last 7 years, I have looked back at that Word document and thought about it from a Lean perspective.
Even today, that is my North Star. As Lean Facilitator, I have people temporarily assigned to my office for approximately 12 months. My goal is for each of them to be able to do what I do when they return to their respective departments. I stress to them the importance of calling the right people together to solve problems. If the manager is there, but the employee is really the one who needs to know, include them. It can truly open lines of communication and eliminate hours of waste.
This type of leadership has yet to fail for me as a manager.
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“the empire builder with an “outsized ego” (they pointed at Jack Welch) who is too insecure to have strong people around or under them”…if Welch was too insecure to have strong people around him, how did he put up with Immelt, Nardelli, and McNerney?
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David – maybe I summarized that badly.
They were saying:
Welch = huge ego
O’Neal = Not comfortable with strong underlings
Interesting how McInerny came from GE and he’s very different, they say, than Welch.
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