People at Work & Play

What keeps people from getting where they want to go at work? It’s rarely a shortfall in technical expertise that limits them, but rather a shortcoming in their social, communication, and self-management behaviors says Peggy Klaus, author of “The Hard Truth About Soft Skills” .

You might like to test your soft skills prowess by taking the on-line quiz at her site.

Even at the risk of over simplification, a good read is “Good Boss or Bad Boss. Which are You?” by Paul R. Brown in the New York Times.

As I went through the list of attributes that made bosses good or even bad, one point was re-inforced in my mind. Ultimately, it is the way we conduct ourselves that makes these impressions on others. The points listed are not earth shaking. They are so simple yet we do not give them the required importance or priority.

The good news is that no one became a good boss from the day he/she was born. They learnt the ropes as they went along, learning from their mistakes and picking up good practices and habits from more effective others.

The bad news is that if we are not careful and practice effective managerial skills as a matter of course, we could become complacent and lazy. Within a short while, we slide downhill as we ignore the things we gave importance to yesterday.  Sooner than later we end up as a bad boss!

So it’s really up to you. Take your pick. Would be rather be know as a good boss or a bad one?

The annual survey from the global management consulting firm, the Hay Group and the Chief Executive magazine has General Electric as the world’s best company for leaders for the second successive year.

Procter and Gamble has retained its second position this year. Johnson & Johnson moves up to the third spot followed by Unilever ( not in the top 20 in 2006)  and Coca -Cola.

At ranks 6 to 10 are Siemens, PepsiCo, L’Oreal, Toyota, and Hewlett Packard. See the entire lists for 2007 and 2006 here.

The maximum number of companies are from the US (11), while 8 are from Europe and 1 is from Asia. The annual survey considered a total 790 companies around the world.

 In the study, 86.1% of respondents feel that, compared to a few years ago, the urgency to develop leaders in their organization has increased.

The survey identifies 7 best practices that are most effective for leadership development. However, it is the top three practices in this list that drive the rest. If companies are willing to do the ‘heavy lifting’ in these three practices, they will greatly increase their chances of keeping their leadership pipeline full.

The top three of the 7 best practices identified in 2007 account for 68% of the variance in leadership development outcomes. The best organizations for leaders have firmly established the conditions necessary for sustainable leadership.

This includes three key elements

• Leadership development of all kinds is occurring at all levels in the organization
• Managers are held accountable for their leadership behavior and the work climates they create
• Development of teams is just as critical as development of individuals

Do you want everything to be…just perfect? Do you get irritated if things are not done according to your standards or the way you would do them? Being a perfectionist has attendant dangers.

Several recent studies stand as a warning against taking the platitudes of achievement too seriously. The new research focuses on a familiar type, perfectionists, who panic or blow a fuse when things don’t turn out just so. The findings not only confirm that such purists are often at risk for mental distress — as Freud, Alfred Adler and countless exasperated parents have long predicted — but also suggest that perfectionism is a valuable lens through which to understand a variety of seemingly unrelated mental difficulties, from depression to compulsive behavior to addiction.

“It’s natural for people to want to be perfect in a few things, say in their job — being a good editor or surgeon depends on not making mistakes,” said Gordon L. Flett, a psychology professor at York University and an author of many of the studies. “It’s when it generalizes to other areas of life, home life, appearance, hobbies, that you begin to see real problems.”

Concentrate on doing well in everything you do. But ask yourself, is perfectionism worth the efforts and time you invest?

Writing in the New York Times, Nelson Schwartz asks whether the time has come for a new type of CEOs.

The key need for today’s CEO seems to be that he/she must be a team builder. Says Prof. Warren Bennis, University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California and a thought leader on leadership: “It’s someone who can assemble a team that functions as smoothly as a jazz sextet,” .

This view is echoed by Michael Useem, William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania & Director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management there. Says Prof. Useem: “The academic research says if you want to predict what the future financial performance over the next one to three years will be, you need to know the top team”.

Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for executive programs at the School of Management at Yale, says the style of today’s best chief executives differs from both the empire builders and the cleanup specialists.

Business schools are also opting for the 3.0 approach. At the Yale School of Management last year, Mr. Sonnenfeld said, the dean and faculty threw out the old first-year curriculum that emphasized individual disciplines like finance and marketing and replaced it with a team-oriented approach, with professors teaching these subjects jointly. In addition, he said, “We have students, faculty and staff assemble their own teams as part of their training to be future execs.”

At the time I read it this article in Knowledge @Wharton had been read 31, 985 times. I am sure many more will read it for the insights provided.

This is on leadership by Reuben Marks, the veteran Chairman & CEO of Colgate Palmolive.

An alumnus of Harvard (MBA, class of ‘63), Reuben Mark has spent his entire career in Colgate Palmolive rising from advertising trainee in 1963 to being CEO & Chairman of the Board since 1986. He is slated to continue as Chairman in 2008 after handing over his CEO responsibilities.

Key points that emerge are:

• Leadership is an on-going process with incremental improvements being key for organisational growth
• Integrity in leaders is of the essence
• Leaders maintain business focus
• Leaders are strong in maintaining financial discipline
• Practicality and common sense are more important than we think
• Leaders create a caring environment and appreciate contributions

As a point of interest, I also liked the “Living our Values” section in the Colgate Palmolive website.

What makes bosses highly successful? What do you like best in your boss?

Leigh Buchanan, Editor at large at Inc.- the Daily Resource for Entrepreneurs has a nice article on Good & Great Bosses. She presents her list of universal habits of great bosses.

In keeping with the theme, I commented : Good bosses want the moon. Great bosses set challenging yet realistic expectations.Good bosses have one distinct style. Great bosses know how to flex.

Economic Times’ Business Leader of the Year for 2007 is Mr. K. V. Kamath, MD & CEO of ICICI Bank.

Kundapur Vaman Kamath is a product of the erstwhile KREC, Surathkal now called the National Institute of Technology, Karnataka at Surathkal and the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Kamath raised over $11 billion in debt and equity in the last six months, creating the most valuable financial institution in the country. Three factors Kamath to capture investor imagination. The first is his ability to identify changing trends way before others in the industry. Second, under his leadership, the group has mastered the art of moving a new line of business from the drawing board to the market in 90 days. Third and most significant is his ability as a dream merchant to sell the ICICI and India story and raise capital in a manner that is audacious in both timing and size.

Mr Kamath has been instrumental in ICICI Bank’s exemplary success in talent management and career development.

When a misprinted fare—Fiji for $51—got snapped up by hundreds of travelers, Travelocity CEO Michelle Peluso had to decide whether to honor the fare at a cost of almost $2 million or run the risk of damaging the company’s customer-friendly branding campaign .

Read about what I believe was an excellent example of customer-centred leadership in this case titled “What Price Reputation?” in BusinessWeek.

Chip Conley has an excellent article in Fast Company titled” Change Management:What’s The Divorce Rate in Your Company?

Like Chip, I am a big fan of Abraham Maslow. I believe his work on the Hierarchy of Needs was relevant when he first wrote about it over 50 years ago, is relevant now and will be relevant in the future.

Effective leaders have understood that the secret of getting superior performance is to understand the “key drivers” which motivate each individuals. As we say, we must know “which buttons to press” for each person.

Have you used this yourself to bring out the best in your team?