While they are often popular icons of industry, narcissistic leaders are the opposite of the transformational CEOs in our study.
Michael Maccoby notes "narcissistic leaders can be poor listeners, sensitive to criticism, lacking in empathy and 'relentless and ruthless in their pursuit of victory.'" The transformational CEOs in our study were excellent listeners, collaborative - exploring many perspectives, were empathetic and were not motivated by personal recognition for their achievements.
Transformational CEOs are humble and less motivated by a desire to be recognized for their personal achievements than other effective senior leaders. They are motivated to make the overall organization successful. When asked what was most satisfying aspect of leading organizational change to create a high performing organization all 14 participants in a recent study told stories of how the people in the organization had accomplished something extraordinary. They were motivated to help enable the accomplishments of their team to better serve the customers, patients, students, etc.
The low need for personal recognition combined with other leader motivations and approaches such as low desire for sole responsibility, a collaborative leadership model and a systems thinking approach, create an environment for synergistic problem solving and creative solutions and strategies for sustaining high performance. These approaches to leadership eventually resulted in organizational culture change and the embedding of teamwork throughout the organization culture. Teamwork was the most common organizational culture value identified by most of the participating CEOs.
This post is the last in a series of the seven differentiating factors that make CEOs who have led Baldrige-based organization transformation different from other effective leaders.
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report and
white paper.
"Just give me the bottom line." Experience suggests that many executives do not want a lot of information; instead they want the “bottom line” or a few options to choose from. Staff are trained to do the analysis and develop a few options for the busy executive to choose from. Unfortunately, all too often this process allows the executive to avoid their own detailed analysis and limits the depth of their own systems thinking and understanding.
Transformational leaders use detailed information to understand the internal and external systems and environments and develop proactive strategies to succeed in today's complex and dynamic global environment. A systems thinking approach requires a comprehensive scorecard to analyze the complex and dynamic relationships in the modern organization and operating environment. In-depth analysis of the system enables the identification of key leverage points that create sustainable organization change.
The transformational CEOs in a recent study were strongly motivated to work with facts and knowledge and seemed to always want to know more. In fact, when compared to other effective leaders, the participating transformational CEOs had more in common with employees with respect to the information they were motivated to work with than the other leaders. As one Transformational CEO noted, “Baldrige organizations are very fact based. They also know that running tests and trials are critical to successful product or service changes that will impact customers and clients. These companies tend to be more measurement based (objective) vs. subjective. There is an old saying about ‘In God We Trust...all others must bring the facts’....”
Art and science of designing, managing and improving the organization system requires many types of information to help illuminate the system as well as systematic methods for improvement. All of the Transformational CEOs in the study used four very fact-based continuous improvement processes including: (a) strategic management system; (b) continuous improvement process (PDSA, Six Sigma, Lean, etc.); (c) benchmarking; and (d) Baldrige-based assessment and improvement. In addition, they used a leadership system with a comprehensive scorecard and results that included the current performance levels, trends over time, and comparisons to other high performing organizations to understand their performance and develop plans for improvement.
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research report on CEO Attitudes and Motivations.
In a resource constrained environment, achieving and sustaining high performance requires systems thinking to identify the "leverage points" that will have the greatest impact on overall enterprise performance for the least amount of effort and expense. Successful leaders are "architects" of enduring organizations by designing systems that create sustainable high performance for multiple stakeholders. Not only are successful leaders skilled at systems thinking, they are strongly motivated to work with systems and processes.
According to Bill McDonough, design is the first signal of human intent. The corollary - management and leadership system design is the first sign of leadership intent. Many of the transformational CEOs in a recent study demonstrated the ability to understand the organization as a system. The CEOs in the study understood the causal chain of engaged employees, quality products and services, customer satisfaction and financial success. This systems thinking approach enabled them to improve individual components in ways that improved the performance of the overall system.
While the design of the leadership and management systems are the first signal of leadership intent, the ultimate goal is overall organizational culture change. Sustainable organizational change requires the new behaviors and methods eventually become embedded in the culture of the organization. Our research suggests that the longer the new system is in place, the greater the chance the new behaviors and methods will become "habits" and result in an enduring organization.
Leaders who successfully transformed their organizations and achieved sustainable excellence have a different attitude. In fact, they differ in their attitudes and motivations from other effective leaders in seven ways:
1. Transformational CEOs are less likely to think that having sole responsibility is important.
2. Transformational CEOs are more likely to want to evolve or change and drive continuous improvement.
3. Transformational CEOs concentrate on the past and use experience to make decisions. They also have a strong tendency to focus on the future and use lessons from the past to help develop sustainable business strategies for the future.
4. Transformational CEOs are likely to be intolerant of the actions of others when they differ from their own or are not consistent across the workforce; that is, they are not very motivated to deal with people who have rules different than their own.
5. Transformational CEOs are strongly motivated to work with systems and processes.
6. Transformational CEOs are strongly motivated to work with facts and knowledge (information).
7. Transformational CEOs are less motivated by a desire to be personally recognized for achievements.
Also, there are 17 additional factors that set effective leaders in general apart from the general employee population.
Download the new report from the Monfort Institute on Leader Motivation and Attitudes for leading transformation.
I recently attended the Baldrige regional conference in Cambridge, MA. The conference featured presentations from the three recent Baldrige recipients. The first session of the day featured presentations from the senior most leader of each of the three recipients.
A common message that continues to emerge from the various journeys to sustainable excellence is the notion of changing the system, which in turn, changes the thinking and behavior of the organization members. If leaders are persistent and continue to reinforce this change it will eventually result in sustainable culture change. All too often leaders will initiate a new process and then move on to other initiatives without seeing the first initiative through. Sustainable transformation requires follow through and tenacity.
The power of changing the system v. focusing on fixing people is not a new idea. Deming and others have suggested that the system is the main cause of behavior in organizations and that management is the only group that can change the system. One of the presenters proposed that organizations should "act their way into a new way of thinking v. thinking your way into a new way of acting." To change action requires leaders to redesign the system.
Unfortunately, all too often organizations approach system change with an engineering mindset v. a human mindset and then wonder why their new system didn't achieve the desired results. Organization systems are, at their core, human systems! Consequently creating sustainable organization change requires a broad systems thinking approach.
As Rulon Stacy, the CEO of Poudre Valley Health System put it, "I expect employees to provide the best patient service and it isn't fair if I don't first meet the employees' needs." The challenge in developing sustainable business strategies is to design a system that facilitates employees in providing the best products and services to both internal and external customers.
Finding the right levers in the organization requires a systems thinking approach in order to create sustainable excellence. While the desired outcome might be improved financial performance, focusing on the financials is like trying to play basketball while watching the scoreboard. The CEO of a company I used to work for described it like this. While money is critical to the organization's survival and it is the “life blood” of the organization, it is not the only reason the organization exists. Like a basketball team, the organization focused on how the "team" worked together to move the ball down the court and put the ball through the customer's “hoop” time after time. The more we put the ball through the hoop, the more satisfied the customers were, the more they requested our services (repeat business), and the more they told their friends about the organization (referral business). Consequently, the organization enjoyed exponential growth and financial success.
Achieving and sustaining high performance requires a systems thinking approach that identifies the right levers to achieve sustainable organization change and excellence.
After executives begin to appreciate the extent of potential impacts from climate change on their own operations or those elsewhere in their supply chain, there is the inevitable question of how best to begin developing sustainable business strategies and implementing sustainability-oriented practices. Fortunately, there is a set of three recent books organizational sustainability by credible authors which will provide a great deal of assistance.
The first is compiled by a set of about 15 authors under the editorial leadership of Jeana Wirtenberg. This Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook includes significant attention to issues of leadership at various organizational levels, as firms seek to direct attention toward the measurement of “externalities” like carbon dioxide emissions, etc.
William Blackburn authored the Sustainability Handbook, which at 800+ pages is the most extensive of the three. The extensive diagrams and tables make it highly useable by those who want a break from endless text.
The third in the trio is Making Sustainability Work by Marc Epstein. This book gives extensive attention to both internal and external measurement systems for implementing Triple Bottom Line (TBL) evaluation and reward systems essential for developing a successful employee engagement strategy. Since most existing corporate measurement systems need major changes to comply with the G3 standards of the Global Reporting Initiative and the Carbon Disclosure Project, Epstein’s guidance can be very valuable to those executives responsible for society’s rising expectations for organizational transparency in various forms.
Given everyone’s busy schedules, it is worth noting that all of the above books can be read in parts and any sequence. In short, they can be used as reference documents.
It seems that the word sustainability has become very popular and is now the topic of conferences, books and articles, new corporate job titles, strategies, etc. In many of these instances, the focus is on the environment. But what is the definition of sustainability?
The Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." John Elkington et al. propose that sustainability is the new "triple bottom line" of sustainable economic results and value for society while preserving the environment. Sounds good but what does it mean for the modern business or organization?
A more specific definition might be: the design and transformation of organizations that consistently create value for multiple stakeholders (customers, investors, employees, partners and suppliers, and society) without compromising the ability of future generations and organizations to meet their stakeholders' needs. This requires ethical leadership that focuses on both the long- and short-term results and impacts of their organization and the system in which the organization operates. For the transformation to itself be sustainable, three dimensions of the organization must change: the management and operating systems, the culture, and the individuals.
References:
Elkington, J., Emerson, J., & Beloe, S. (2006). The value palette: A tool for full spectrum strategy. California Management Review, 48(2), 6-28.
