Leader's Capacity to Sustain Change

Another important comment to come from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship report, Step Up: A Call for Business Leadership in Society comes from Levi Strauss & Co’s former CEO, Phil Marineau.

An important component of changes in management practice is building the capacity to sustain that change. This can be done within the company through, for example, the kinds of internal universities found at GE or BD. It can be done by influencing the curricula of business schools so that, for example, what they teach is more innovative in their approach to ethics. Marineau:

I don’t think business schools teach leadership [in a meaningful] way. They teach ethics as some sort of compliance course, rather than an integrated approach to, “This is how I’m going to interact with the marketplace, me personally and me as a business.” Business leaders have the capacity to make business not only a source for economic wealth, but also a force for social change.

What’s going to distinguish [a student] from the other person who had 800 on their GMAT scores and all A’s in college? Why is one person going to succeed versus another in terms of accomplishing their objectives? It’s going to be your ability to be a leader, simply defined as an agent of positive change. What’s going to contribute to your leadership? It’s going to be your ability to earn people’s trust.

Posted by Michael McKinney at 01:17 AM
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