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Plan to take advantage of every opportunity. |
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The invincible awards in American business go to companies like Microsoft with its take no prisoners attitude, McDonald's who is everywhere, and Starbucks who owns the high ground in gourmet coffee. The list goes on. |
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A common characteristic of these premier organizations is a strong founding leader who set a course and kept the organization on the course. Strong companies are founded by strong individualswhen they leave, the stamp of their culture becomes the core of the organization's future. |
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At Ogilvy & Mather, founder David Mather established the practice of sending each new branch head a nested set of wooden dollseach doll opens to reveal a replica of a smaller doll. Inside the smallest is a message, "If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs; but if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, Ogilvy & Mather will become a company of giants."
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Personal leadership is where "art" takes over to control the application of "science." This does not mean that principles are ignored but rather that the successful leader understands how to properly apply the principles. |
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The ultimate success of the organization is dependent on the inspiration and leadership of the executive at the highest level. Using the authority the position commands, the senior leader can set in motion a chain of events that will cascade changes throughout the entire organization. Effecting these changes and making them work require a leadership style dramatically different from the old paradigm. |
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No leader does it alone. As Kets de Vries points out in Life and Death in the Fast Lane: "The derailment of a CEO is seldom caused by a lack of information about the latest techniques in marketing, finance, or production; rather, it comes about because of a lack of interpersonal skillsa failure to get the best out of people who possess necessary information." |
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Coca-Cola has a chief learning officer whose job it is to figure out how to institutionalize the sharing of experiences between branch offices, countries, and people, and to turn Coke into a "learning organization." "The ability to learn faster than your competitors may soon be the only sustainable competitive advantage," says Arnie De Geus, head of planning at Royal Dutch Shell.2 |
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