Helping Leaders perform better
A commitment to make things happen, along with the willingness to learn can help leaders overcome today’s complex challenges
As a performance coach I spend a lot of time with CEOs and senior executives who are profit center heads. Their decisions have a large impact on the success or failures of their organizations. In my role as the Executive in Residence at the NUS Business School I facilitate the building of bridges between academia and industry – I speak to a lot of Business Leaders, HR practitioners, and heads of Learning & Development looking at their evolving needs particularly in this economic downturn.
My interaction with leaders tells me that these days they spend a lot more time focusing on efficiency rather than effectiveness. Doing the right things is just as important if not more in times of crisis. Leaders spend more time managing than leading. They tend to do two things well – manage their Financials keeping a sharp eye on cash flows and Operations where continuous cost reduction is the mantra. But what they do not do well is to bring the focus back on Growth, and the management of Human Capital. These are closely interrelated factors, and require genuine leadership.
Let me talk a bit about growth. What leaders find is that the very competencies that have brought them success so far does not help them anymore. Further, all the past assumptions they have made regarding their business or industry are no longer valid. They have to revisit their business model and find new ways of revitalizing their value propositions. Their biggest challenge is that they do not have the required customer insights to be able to understand evolving needs to develop appropriate strategies. Their people do not have the experience – (neither do they) to quickly ascertain the changing trends in the market place and figure out a way to retain their competitive advantage. They have not invested in foresight studies to be able to identify milestones of developments that they can take advantage of. So their continued focus is on protecting market share invariably by offering price discounts. But as the market shrinks all this does is to put more pressure on the need for cost reductions. There are significant slivers of opportunity even in this downturn and leaders find it hard to tap into them.
Now let me relate a little story about managing talent. I got approached by a profit centre head who was asked by his management to take a 20% pay cut. His team was very unhappy about this as they were top performers for many years and for the last two years had been head hunted along with their boss by a competitor who was willing to give them a 15% raise. They left. But the sad part of this story is that they represented 40% of their company’s profit and 30% of the total revenues- all from China. Their competitor on the other hand did not have any business in China and were now going to hit the ground running. The CEO there was willing to make selective investments to grow the business. He believed in the Jim Collins principle – first who then what. One of the leadership challenges that I have found is that HR practitioners are not well integrated into the strategic aspect of decision making by CEOs. It is not only their fault because CEOs don’t pay much attention to them and see Finance and Marketing as more critical levers of business. I do not agree that you can save every job in the organization. In today’s market you need to go out and hire new talent. There is an acute shortage of people who have the confidence and ability to drive growth in an economic downturn. Finding and hiring them can be a competitive advantage. One must also not forget that it is essential to get ready for the upturn that is bound to come. I do hear a lot of grumbling about the shortage of good talent. This is just not true. There is a lot of talent available, and the irony is that this talent is looking for a home and cannot seem to find it.
Whether a leader is trying to drive growth or effectively manage human capital, what is needed is changes in the behaviors of leaders. Changes that can have a significant impact on the desired outcomes. I recently gave a talk at a People related conference titled ‘Can You Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?” What I argue is that the single most important success factor is the ability and willingness of leaders to learn. This in itself can become a competitive advantage. Going back to University for Continuing Professional Development is an excellent option but then busy executives don’t have the time. Training is not the answer. Training does not help in changing behavior. It is good for teaching new skills, but leadership is a process and you need lasting results. Hence the need for professional coaching which can truly deliver deep, serious, sustainable changes in behavior in a non judgmental way. The return on investment from coaching leaders is far higher than any form of training. Such a huge amount of money is being spent on subsidizing training. This is good. But we must not forget the leadership. Their decisions have a huge impact on the economy and yet there is no funding available to help coach them to do the right things. As a regional hub with over 7000 MNCs, Singapore can position itself as the best country in the region to help develop leadership behaviors if we choose to invest in this space as much as we are investing in training of junior staff.
Finally, let me comment on the personality of most leaders I interact with. They are almost all highly achievement oriented. But I find that a very large percentage are left brained with strong analytical skills and even stronger technical skills (that is how they got to the top) with comparatively poor social skills. They are generally the quiet leaders whose strength is not in their ability to galvanize people with their vision or motivation skills, which can be a major deterrent to driving growth in a market where infusing your people with self belief can be the single critical difference between success and failure.
Pratap Nambiar
Executive in Residence, NUS Business School
CEO Thought Perfect Pte Ltd
This article was published in August issue of People Trends Magazine.