Learning to be a CEO

“No one is born a CEO, this is an acquired skill”, says Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston. Furthermore he says, you learn the skills on the job.
So what are the key skills in the journey to learning to be a CEO? The journey has three stages to it:
Stage 1: Followership
This stage calls for reflection on one's personal values and belief systems and attempt to bring about congruence between them and those of the immediate boss and the organization.
This stage can very often call for great soul-searching and can be quite tortuous.

Stage 2: Managership
This stage calls for learning  new execution skills - trusting others to deliver just as well as you, building collaborative teams and learning to balance between giving too much control and too much leeway to team members

Stage 3: Leadership
As a CEO one has to graduate from managing people to managing ideas. Not only does one need come up with one's own Ideas that inspire people,  but also to encourage your people to think and to come up with ideas of their own. This means learning the key skills of empathy and listening.

Evolving your Leadership Style

“When people say they have cracked the code to success, it feels so wrong because there could be many right ways of doing it”, says actor Sushant Singh Rajput.

That's exactly how I feel about leadership. Googling for ‘leadership’ presents you with millions of styles, models, options, processes, perspectives and experiences on the topic - which one do you make your own?

My take - there is no single right way of leading people,  each of us has to discover his  own style.

Tip: Open image page on leadership style. Choose a framework that you feel is closest to your preferred style. Use the Plan, Do, Check, Act process, experiment, reflect, improve and know that you need keep on evolving your very own leadership style.

Let me know how it works for you.

Communicating to Win

The internal memo Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sent out to rally his staff amid reports of uncertain future, is an object lesson on personalised leadership communication. He sets the tone by saying, :”....There’s a lot I could say, but there is only one thing I wanted to say: Thank you.” Talking next of how Twitter is still the first choice of people everywhere for news, he ends by expressing gratitude for members of his immediate team. And this is the most interesting part. Each pen sketch lists Dorsey’s observations of his team member's unique attributes such as drive, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, attention to detail etc. It ends with a humorous mention of the member's personal habit or quirk which strikes a personal chord.

A few examples:
Adam Bain - “constant use of when!!
Kayvon  - “tendency to chew on his hoodie sweater.”
Leslie - “2x talk speed.”
Omid - “how he’s changed everything he owns to a shade of blue.”
Sierra - “ability to be in two places at the same time.”
Vijaya - “secret love for McDonald’s (to the point of having a McDonald’s iPhone case).

MyLearning
Good communication, minute observation skills and a great sense of humour, can be a powerful mix for effective leadership. It can help hold teams together in a crisis and in good times, help build a culture in which trust can thrive.

The Leader's Quest

“The way I found that works for me is I theme my days. On Monday…... I focus on management and running the company…Tuesday is focused on product. Wednesday is focused on marketing and communications and growth. Thursday is focused on developers and partnerships. Friday is focused on the company and the culture and recruiting. Saturday I take off, I hike. Sunday is reflection, feedback, strategy, and getting ready for the week.” - Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter

#BusinessPoint
The constant quest for a wise leader is how to reduce the humongous into the doable, and the complex to the simple.

Fostering Innovation

Leaders can foster creativity by setting goals with clear boundaries but at the same time breaking all the rules, often unspoken. Our creativity and innovation is often capped by these unspoken rules, which condition our thinking process. - Franklin Tang, CEO Philip Tang and Sons

INSIGHT
An organization's spoken rules define the ’musts’, while the unspoken ones define the ’shoulds’. Articulating the unspoken, transforms them into ’coulds’.

Hands On and Hands Off Leadership

Xiaomi cofounder Bin Lin knows how to lead by example. On a day the company launched it's latest phone, packages were to go within hours of orders coming in. With thousands of deliveries in the pipeline, the pressure was on the assembly line, which was falling short of hands. Lin, apparently, jumped in and personally packed several of the phones to ensure timely shipments. The first phone was delivered to a buyer within a record time of two hours from the flash sale closing.

Insight
Wisdom in leadership lies in not only choosing when to be a hands-on leader, but also when to be hands-off.

Charismatic Leadership

The Vijay Mallya debt saga has become the subject of case study at B-schools. The IIM-B study is focused on corporate governance. It discusses the need of organisations to balance the interests of 5 stakeholders - customers, owners, employees, suppliers & society - for consistent high performance. Learning lies in how excessive focus on ‘pampering’ customers, or the obsession in companies to meet the interest of ’owners’ can lead to disaster.

Insight
Charismatic leadership is a double-edged sword. It brings results, but proves disastrous when the leader starts feeling s/he knows best.

The Scopes of Leadership

A leader needs many tools to be successful in our volatile world at the same time - a telescope, a microscope and a stethoscope. A telescope to view disruptive forces, a microscope to see the near term shocks and opportunities and a stethoscope to maintain their organisational health. - Noshir Kaka, MD McKinsey India

Insight
Each of us is a leader managing three dimensions of leadership:
1. Leading Oneself
2. Leading People and
3. Leading  the organisation
Each instrument has to be used discriminately & in the right context. Each plays out differently & with different levels of dominance at every level of the organisation.

Filter for Leadership Ideas

“This consuming interest in leadership and how to make it better has spawned a plethora of books, blogs, TED talks, and commentary. Unfortunately, these materials are often wonderfully disconnected from organizational reality and, as a consequence, useless for sparking improvement.” - Jeffrey Pfeffer, McKinsey Quarterly

Insight
Ideas for sparking improvement of your leadership style need to be curated using a two level filter system:
Are they relevant to your organizational reality and context?
Do they feel a comfortable fit with who you are and where you want to go?
#KnowYourself   #Connect2Coach

The Art of Leadership

"The art of leadership is not to spend your time measuring, evaluating. It’s all about selecting the person. And if you believe you selected the right person, then you give that person the freedom, the authority, the delegation to innovate and to lead with some very simple measure.” - Pierre Nanterme, CEO Accenture.

Insight
As a leader how much do you trust yourself to trust your people? How much do you trust yourself to tell your people what to do and let them do it their way?

The Soft Side of Leadership

SoftBank president Nikesh Arora’s corporate identity has been of a no-nonsense high achiever who valued his privacy. However, at a recent business awards ceremony, Arora, held his wife's hand through much of the evening. And when it was his turn to speak, he choked up talking about his ailing father and family.

Insight
When a leader reveals his soft human side, people warm to him. Displaying vulnerability is as much required of a leader,  as showing the strong invincible side. The wisdom of leadership lies in knowing when.

What Leadership Style Works Best for You?

Latest research by McKinsey across 81 countries, across diverse geographies  indicates the  4 key skills of successful leaders as:
1. Solving problems effectively,
2. Operating with a strong results orientation,
3. Seeking different perspectives and
4. Supporting others:

Insight
Search for ‘leadership’ on the Web & you get thousands of results. Research too, constantly throws up new and diverse results. But what works best for you? #CoachConnect

Leaders Build Cultures

Warren Buffett has often noted that you build a reputation over years and decades, but you destroy it in a blink of an eye,. Well, Volkswagen just blinked.
The most critical work of an incoming CEO may be to rebuild and overhaul the culture where this sort of deception occurred, says Charles Elson, a governance expert.

#Viewpoint
The Volkswagen case is a rude reminder of the role leaders in creating organizational culture. Employee performance is a function of assumptions & behaviours leaders encourage, promote, or turn a blind eye to. And these assumptions and behaviours drive the results.

Evolution of a Leader

Acording to LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, a CEOs skills and responsibilities need to evolve according to the size and needs of the company:
Small company
(1 to 50 or100 people, depending on industry)
# build a strong team
# work on a few clearly defined problems
# focus on establishing company's identity

Medium company
(50 or 100 to 500 or 1000)
# focus on process and organization
# setting new set of priorities
# training employees on how to meet new goals

Large company
(500 or 1000+)
# focus on leading company strategy
# developing and maintaining corporate culture
# creating  appropriate structure for company
# ensuring right people in essential  roles
# making the most important hires
# empowering employees to meet their goals

9 Thoughts to Craft The Leader In You

Though much of the art and science of leadership remains unchanged over time, it needs to be crafted to suit the needs of the current environment. The following stories of contemporary leaders and views of leadership gurus, should give you food for thought to craft your individual leadership style and craft it to suit your time and context.. 

1.Reinvent Yourself  

"Companies fail or are successful because they either get or miss market transitions", says John Chambers, CEO and Chairman of Cisco. ..."What Cisco has done is that we compete on market transitions, not against competitors...We have reinvented ourselves five times"

Reinventing is not a necessary evil to be undertaken to undertake to survive. Being inquisitive - a hankering to learn new things, can lead to seeing the world of work as an opportunity and make it easier to adapt - a quality essential in the present times.

2 Give your people permission to fail

"One of the saddest things that happen with creativity...I think sometimes it isn't expressed because of fear," says Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel. "Everyone is born very very creative. But at some point it can be scary to do something new." To overcome this fear, Snapchat encourages the idea of 'failing fast', since it's better that those failures happen in private before being released on users.

3.Play for Win-Win

Unlike Steve Ballmer, Satya Nadella is clear that times have changed and he is taking tough decisions. For him,  competition is not a zero sum game. Just because Android wins does not mean Microsoft loses.  If Android wins great. I'll also put Office 365 on Android so it can be a win - win,  it doesn't have to be a win - lose.

3. Make the right life choices

"There is nothing like work-life balance, there is only one life", believes Padmasree Warrior, former CTSO of Cisco. Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman Of Microsoft India, agrees with her wholeheartedly. "You live life the way you want it. Life is about choices," he say

4.Practice brevity in communication

A Microsoft research reports that the average person's attention span is just 8 seconds, a second less than that of a goldfish.  For humans it used to be 12 seconds in 2000. Abundant reason why CEOs and you and me, need to communicate well internally and externally in the most effective manner.

5. Surround yourself with the best people

Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist usually gets involved worn CEOS in their first 100 days  that they  build up their credibility quickly. And this what she tells them, in that order - listen to customers, surround yourself with the best senior management and communicate with the board.

6. Make your knowledge 'future ready'
"Half-life of knowledge is getting shorter and shorter with new breakthrough technologies and discoveries," says Management Guru Jagdish Seth, Management guru.."Therefore old perspectives and evidence are no longer relevant.We need to develop or discover new perspectives which are suitable for tomorrow's world"

7. Tailor your communication to the audience

Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik explains how in the Gita, there is a three way communication between Krishna the speaker, and three receivers; Arjuna, the seeker of knowledge, Sanjay the transmitter of the knowledge  and Dhritirashtra, who is eager to know only the fate of his sons. This, Devdutt observes, is aimed to draw attention to the complexity of any communication. Are people around you interested in what you are saying (Arjuna),  are they merely memorising (Sanjay), or are they just disinterested or even suspicious (Dhritirashtra)? 

Tailor your communication accordingly.

8. Be Considerate of your people

On his last journey from Guwahati to Shillong for a speaking engagement, the late president's car was being escorted in front by three soldiers travelling in a Gypsy. Seeing one of them standing throughout the journey, Kalam repeatedly asked his aide to request him to sit down, but his aide was not able to get him on the phone. At the end of the journey, Kalam invited the soldier to his room, shook hands with him, thanked him and enquired whether he had eaten.

9. Appreciate - Motivate

Debutant Actress Ruhi Singh says, "When you enter the sets of (film director) Madhur Bhandarkar's film, you hear words like 'jalwa' (charisma/luster/ splendor) and 'aag laga de' (be on fire) which is a driving force for us. I had to shoot a waterfall sequence in the night, and it was freezing cold. But I could only do it because (Madhur) makes sure everyone feels comfortable before filming." 


Call To Action
Time to craft your own leadership recipe? Set the fire going!

How to be reborn

Kishore Biyani with his Big Bazaar and Pantaloons (now with Aditya Birla Group) was a first mover in big format organized retail. Now he is seriously exploring to practice being 'Reborn'. Biyani's theme of Reborn essentially is about the need for an organization to reinvent itself....
Read on...
http://eepurl.com/bqPazr

Backing Your People

An industrialist complained to Modi about a few bureaucrats who he felt were "not working properly and should be changed." Modi's rejoinder was scathing: "You manage your company, and let me manage my government."

 Leadership Lesson :
Standing up for your people instils in them the confidence to take initiative, undertake and innovate in their duties.

Strategise and focus

In the French fighter jet Rafael,  the guns are so sensitively controlled,  that you can aim and fire the guns with just a turn of the head. This is so because being a fighter jet, the pilot needs to concentrate more on the fighting strategy than on flying the plane.

Leadership lesson: Once you have prioritised the actions your teams need to take, make the tasks around the key priorities simple to do and try to eliminate as many actions around the unrelated ones. 

Why Customer is King

ET Panache,  is a supplement which comes with the Economic Times. It calls itself an "Advertorial and Promotional feature," a polite way of saying  all news in the supplement will have to be paid for.  So in today's issue we have billionaire industrialist Yohan Poonawala complaining about his dissatisfaction with premium auto maker Porsche. His SUV caught fire and he is apparently unhappy about the way the company has handled the complaint. This is bad press for Porsche.

Now, whether Poonawala has paid for the news to be featured  as headline news, maybe pure speculation, but what made him vent his ire in this manner? He says he contacted the India director the morning after the accident, who told him he will revert within 48 hours with a solution. Next,  says Poonawala,  he was informed that the director has left for a 'pre scheduled meeting' to Germany,  where he would bring up the issue. An anonymous source has told the paper that it takes a minimum of two weeks to address an issue like this,  and that an investigator is  his way down from Germany.

So where did the India director go wrong in dealing with Poonawala? Considering he is a car aficionado and a billionaire to boot, should the director have been in constant personal touch with him? Should be have offered Poonawala another car as a temporary replacement?

There are several possibilities here,  but only one lesson in customer relationship management -  do not take your customers lightly. They have any number of forums, paid, and free, to vent their spleen on you. 

And that can have serious consequences for your company's image.

Business Leaders Should Walk The Talk

Today's Corporate Dossier carries a story on how the young bunch of managers at Airasia - the latest low-cost airline about to be launched in India - are actually  living the philosophy of 'low-cost'. 29 year-old Gangtok-born Ningku Lachungpa is in charge of the ancillaries.As part of shoring up ancillary revenues, she is doing her bit to understand every discipline to live up the tagline of making more people fly. As part of this effort, Lachungpa takes the suburban train every morning from near the airport, where she lives, to her spartan 600 sq.ft. office, situated atop a mall."When I come to the office in a taxi, I don't put down that down in the office expense as each of us are aware that even a Rs. 10 saving is a saving."

Similarly, when Aditya Ghosh, CEO of leading low-cost airline Indigo and his boss Rahul Bhatia, MD, had to go for a meeting of the private airlines' captains with the Prime Minister, they travelled in a small, unassuming hatchback. 

Indigo Airlines CEO Aditya Ghosh (L) and MD Rahul Bhatia (R)

The rest came in their fancy limos.

Living the management philosophy

In the Puranas, as mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, explains, Vaikuntha, the abode of Vishnu, is the land of happiness. It is a playground or ranga-bhoomi and is described as a place which attracts Laxmi, the goddess of wealth. Vishnu always attracts wealth and is popularly worshiped as Shri-nath or Tiru-pati which means lord of affluence and abundance. On the other hand, Indra the king of the devas, who resides in his paradise, Swarga, is constantly chasing Laxmi, and trying to prevent the asuras from taking her away.The fundamental difference between Vishnu and Indra is that Indra thinks only of himself and his shareholders. They all feel entitled, like shareholders. On the other hand, Vishnu thinks of everyone - his employees, customers, shareholders, vendors, society at large, in other words - stakeholders. Thus ensuring affluence and abundance.

At times, business leaders and senior executives forget that the people they lead are closely watching their every move and action.  When leaders start living out the key brand proposition and what their company stands for, with actions such as the ones cited above, it can go a long way in inculcating an ideal organizational culture. A culture which results  in more sales, more growth and more profits, making every stakeholder - employees, customers, shareholders, vendors, society at large happy!

So, would you like Vishnu, attract wealth, or like Indra, chase it? The choice is yours.