LeadershipNow Communique

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	April 2006
	Welcome to the LeadershipNow Communique It's not easy to find, let alone create the time to read the leadership material that will have an impact on your life. By way of this communique we offer you a prescription to these modern maladies. Focusing on leadership issues, we hope to help you separate what truly matters from what is merely interesting. Here you will find ideas to think about and descriptions and links to not just the popular sources, but to some of the more useful products and resources we have found.

LeadingThoughts > Risk-Taking

"If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough."

—Mario Andretti

"Progress always involves risk; you can't steal second base and keep your foot on first."

— Frederick Wilcox

"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."

— Mark Twain

LEADERSHIP AS BRAND
By Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood

The concept of brand is known to all—everywhere we go, product brands are pervasive. We know that brand creates value over generics for both products and firms. Similarly, it is our belief that a firm brand is sustained and enhanced by the firm's leadership brand. Leadership brand represents the identity and reputation of leaders throughout a company. Leaders demonstrate a brand when they think and act in ways congruent with the desired product or firm brand. Leadership brand exists when leaders at all levels of an organization demonstrate a consistent reputation for both attributes and results.

Thinking about leadership as a brand instead of simply something leaders do offers a number of insights into leadership effectiveness and into creating sustained and consistent leadership that enhances firm value:

Brand has both core and differential elements. All cars have steering, suspension, cylinders, and other components which make them go. Without quality parts, the car will not work. Many of these core components are invisible to customers, but they are a viable component of the automobile brand. But while a Yugo and Lexus have the requisite components to be a functioning car, they are very different brands. The Lexus' pursuit of organizational perfection brand identity leads the company to continually innovate and put into the car features that differentiate the car (e.g., styling and design) and that customers relate to. Likewise, we believe that there are core elements of leadership that are generic to any successful leader. Leaders need to think about the future and act in the present; they need to engage individuals and govern organizations; and they need to demonstrate personal qualities that give them credibility. But, what differentiates branded leaders is the ability to reflect in their leadership style the attributes and results that customers want to see in their firm. Lexus leaders would be driven to continuous learning and improvement while Yugo leaders would be focused on managing costs and delivering efficiencies. The leadership brand in a firm should reflect the customer expectations for the firm.

Brand puts leadership into business terms. Leadership rhetoric is often plagued with ambitious but fuzzy terms such as transformation, vision, aspiration, character, and empowerment. A leadership brand focuses on quantifiable business terms of customer share and market value. We have argued that the ultimate return on a leadership investment should be a "return on intangibles" (a new ROI for leadership) that shows up in a firm's stock price. When leadership brand connects to customer share and/or market value, the rationale for leadership investment is much easier to make.

Brand is unique and not generic. What company, for example, doesn't include such competencies as "has a vision," "communicates well," "builds teams," and "engages employees" in its assessments? While these generic competencies offer the core elements of leadership, a leadership brand goes further. A leadership brand pushes leaders to move from generic leadership to targeted leadership. In our work we have proposed the "so that" question to move from generic attributes to focused results. At Marriott leaders communicate so that customers experience exceptional service, the Marriott brand; while at Pfizer leaders communicate so that innovation can more readily occur, the Pfizer brand. For each competency, if we ask the "so that." query, we evolve to a specific result that is tied to the strategy or identity of the organization.

Brand must have efficacy or it will not last. Leaders who declare a leadership brand must live and breathe them or they will create cynicism and lose credibility. Leadership brand efficacy occurs when employees, customers, and investors believe-and see-that promises made at the top are promises that will be kept.

Adapted from Leadership As a Brand originally published in the March 2006 Issue of Link & Learn.

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Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?

Too many companies are managed not by leaders, but by mere role players and faceless bureaucrats. What does it take to be a real leader—one who is confident in who she is and what she stands for, and who truly inspires people to achieve extraordinary results?

Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that leaders don’t become great by aspiring to a list of universal character traits. Rather, effective leaders are authentic: they deploy individual strengths to engage followers’ hearts, minds, and souls. They are skillful at consistently being themselves, even as they alter their behaviors to respond effectively in changing contexts. .
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Change the Way You See Everything:
Through Asset-based Thinking

This brilliantly simple book on the philosophy known as Asset-Based Thinking, instills success-oriented habits in even the most die-hard cynic. Its transformational lessons--conveyed through unique photographic metaphors and inspiring stories from real people--reveal how the slightest shift in perception can lead to monumental results in both business and in life. ABT is not just positive thinking, but rather a systematic observation of "what works."
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LeadingBlog

We have begun a blog. We plan to highlight issues of interest to leaders and links to sources of information in the web. Check it out and if you are so inclined, leave a comment or two.

CLASSICS REVISITED
Classic books every leader should be familiar with.

The Fifth Discipline: Completely Updated and Revised 2006

This revised edition of Peter Senge’s bestselling classic, The Fifth Discipline, is based on fifteen years of experience in putting the book’s ideas into practice. The new edition contains over one hundred pages of new material based on interviews with dozens of practitioners at companies like BP, Unilever, Intel, Ford, HP, Saudi Aramco, and organizations like Roca, Oxfam, and The World Bank. It features a new Foreword about the success Peter Senge has achieved with learning organizations since the book’s inception, as well as new chapters on Impetus (getting started), Strategies, Leaders’ New Work, Systems Citizens, and Frontiers for the Future. More >>