Recommended Readings December 5, 2007
Geery's Reviews and Summary
- Ulrich, Dave, and Norm Smallwood. Leadership Brand: Developing Customer Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, Harvard Business School Press, 2007.
- Gratton, Lynda, and Tamara J. Erickson, Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams, November 2007, Harvard Business Review.
Wedmesday afternoon: December 5, 2007
Dear Friends,
From years of experience, reading and learning, we all know that leaders must
deliver results. We also know that great leaders build the organization's
leadership pipeline for ongoing success. Finally, we know that leaders care
about the brand of their organization. They can answer the mission critical
question, What do you want to be know for by your customers?
Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood in their new book, Leadership Brand: Developing
Customer Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value
(Harvard Business School Press, 2007), say there is a another new question,
namely To achieve that brand identity, what leadership and management skills do
people need to have? For example, at Toyotas Lexus division, their brand is
The pursuit of perfection. Therefore, the answer at Lexus is that leaders need
to excel at managing quality processes.
As they write, the leadership
brand is the identity of the firm in the mind of the customers made real to
employees because of customer centric leadership brand.... leadership brand
occurs when leaders knowledge, skills, and values focus employee behavior on
the factors that target issues that customers care about. Realizing that it is
the strength of the leadership bench that promotes investor, customer, and
employee confidence in the future, which translates into higher market value,
Ulrich and Smallwood explore how to build a leadership brand and then how to
measure the success of the leadership brand.
While I did enjoy reading
this book, especially the first 97 pages as they outlined their core concepts
and material, I did find it hard to see how some of the models and concepts
would work in smaller for-profit companies and in nonprofit settings. Upon
reflection, I realized that my greatest fears were that many executives will
read the book, and then start writing complex and very detailed leadership brand
statements. The book has the potential to create another mission statement land
rush such as we saw back in the mid-90s when Tom Peters and Stephen Covey
pointed out that having mission statements made all the difference. While there
is value in the models and suggestions that the book offers, I believe they will
work best in a large for-profit settings, especially as part of an HR
Departments strategic plan. This level of work would be very good for
clarifying where and how to invest in leadership development and training.
In a smaller for-profit or nonprofit organization or agency, the
exercise of defining the knowledge and skills that leaders should have in order
to deliver the organizations brand would be a good exercise for a corporate
retreat or part of a strategic planning cycle, but I do not think it needs to be
written like a mission statement and integrated into the strategic nexus.
Instead, it could be a good template for HR talent development activities.
Overall, for those who are in HR and developing leaders, or those executives who
are already exploring the subject of brand development and brand management,
this step-by-step guide is a good resource.
On a different note, I did
read a most marvelous article this fall, one I wish many others would take the
time to read. Lynda Gratton, and Tamara J. Erickson in their article, Eight
Ways to Build Collaborative Teams (November 2007, Harvard Business Review)
write that executing complex initiatives like acquisitions or IT overhauls
require a breadth of knowledge that can only be provided by teams that are
large, diverse, virtual and composed of highly educated specialists. The
challenge is that the above characteristics have an tendency to decrease
collaboration and increase dsyfunctionality on a team.
Gratton, a London
Business school professor, and Erickson, president of the Concours Institute,
studied 55 large teams and identified those with strong collaboration despite
their complexity. Here are the eight success factors they discovered:
1. Signature relationship practices that build bonds among the staff in memorable
ways.
2. Role models of collaboration among executives which helped
cooperation trickle down to staff.
3. The establishment of a gift
culture in which managers support employees by mentoring them daily, instead of
a transactional tit-for-tat culture.
4. Training in relationship skills
such as communication and conflict resolution.
5. A sense of community
which corporate HR can foster by sponsoring group activities.
6. Ambidextrous leadership - leaders who are both task-oriented and
relationship-oriented.
7. Good use of heritage relationships by
populating teams with members who know and trust one another.
8. Role clarity and task ambiguity achieved by defining individual roles sharply but
giving teams latitude on approach.
While the article provides much more
depth around the above eight success factors, the authors explain that as
standard teams comprise larger groups of people the company will need to
increase the capacity for collaboration by making long term investments that
build relationships and trust, and smart near-term decisions about how teams are
formed and run. Overall, an exceptional article and one worth seeking out to
read!
I hope this holiday season brings you many good books to read and
many opportunities to read them. If you run into a good book, please share the
title with me as I am always on the look out for quality material.
Thanks!
Warmly,
Geery