World’s Best Companies for Leaders

Tags

best companies, leadership, World's Best for Leaders

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

Advertisement

You Determine Culture

Tags

A Step A Day, culture

Ask an employee to define his organizational culture and you get a variety of responses. For most employees, organizational culture may be difficult to define but it is easily experienced. Culture is a collection of behaviours. It is determined by people like you and me.

According to Terry Deal & Allan Kennedy in Corporate Cultures
“A strong culture is a system of informal rules that spells out how people are to behave most of the time. A strong culture helps people to feel better about what they do, so they are more likely to work harder”

You as the manager largely determine the culture in your team. Your team members watch you like hawks. They observe what you say and what you don’t say. What you do and what you don’t do. This is observed on an on-going basis. They pick up their perception of your team’s culture from your behaviours. They get their cues on what is acceptable, what is desirable and what is unacceptable in the team based on your reactions.

I once saw a manager sitting in his office. There were several plaques and posters around him extolling the virtues of quality. When one of his team members gave him a report on the last week’s quality matrices, he tossed it aside and talked about why higher output was required from the team. You can well imagine the message the young team member got about the importance of quality!

Another manager was lecturing his team about why they must be punctual and start work on time. Their expressions, when they heard this ranged from disbelief to quiet sniggering. The reason was not far to find. That manager came late more often than not.
What the team members privately thought of the manager can well be imagined. In a later conversation, he said they had never mentioned anything about his late coming. I told him the reason perhaps was that they had no choice. Let them get a better job offer and he would then know the difference. When they walked out on him.

As a manager, you influence the behaviours of your team much more than you might imagine. How you conduct yourself is the best determinant of your team’s culture.

You determine culture. Be a good role model and the rewards will follow.

You can subscribe to this series using RSS at https://bprao.wordpress.com/category/a-step-a-day/feed

 

Was Wright Wrong?

Tags

Indian cricket team, John Wright

Enjoyed “John Wright’ s Indian Summers” written by John Wright with Sharda Ugra & Paul Thomas. Wright was the first foreign coach of India’s cricket team. His appointment set to rest, although temporarily, the Indian vs. foreign coach issue.

I was impressed by Wright’s professionalism. He brought a lot of passion to his role as India’s cricket coach. A job, he quickly found out, which was more in the limelight than he would ever have imagined.

At the end of the day, the team did prosper under his regime. With Ganguly as the aggressive captain and Wright as the sobering influence, India did much better than in past years. Amongst other achievements, they reached the final of the 2003 World Cup.

Here is BBC Sports assessment of his tenure as coach. India left on the Wright track.

I believe Wright did a lot of good for Indian cricket. If he is to be believed, before he took charge, “nets” was a leisurely affair where porters brought out the kits of the players and they condescended to bat after having pots of tea and sandwiches.

The book has some interesting stories: How communication is vital in the game. How Rahul Dravid declared when Tendulkar was on 194 in a Test against Pakistan. How Wright himself lost his temper and caught Sehwag by the collar when he had once again thrown away his wicket, the machinations behind the selection process, the heyday of Jagmohan Dalmia, the changing complexion of the game and status of the players thanks to television and big time sponsors. The game – and the new found stars- changed for ever.

All in all a good read, if you -like me-enjoy cricket and follow the fortunes of the Indian cricket team.

John Wright is right in all his observations on Indian cricket. In attempting to change the mind set of our players, and in getting higher leverage for the coach, was Wright wrong?