Entrepreneurial Leadership – Lessons from a CEO

by: Susan Foley - June 29th, 2011   Filed under: Corporate Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Leadership Skills Add Comment

Anne Mulcahy the former CEO of Xerox recently spoke at the Commonwealth Institute in Boston.  www.commonwealthinstitute.org.  She started her talk by saying, ““Amazing things happen through difficult times.”

Her rise to the top of Xerox was as much of a surprise to her as it was to others.  The company was facing a financial crisis when she was asked to become the CEO.  There was no job interview just a request from the board.  It was “a time of dramatic crisis.”

As one of only five women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies at the time, Anne was handed a company on the brink of collapse.  Not only was the company in financial crisis, it was facing scrutiny by the securities and exchange commission. There was no time to waste.

The new CEO faced a daunting task.  It would put her leadership skills to the test.  Her first challenge was getting the other senior executives on board.  There were only a few things that she wanted from them - no second guessing, belief and loyalty. Although not all of her direct reports wanted to stick around, she was surprised to find that everyone else signed on.

In retrospect it is easy to see what worked and what didn’t but in Anne’s case a lot of the things she did were exactly what the company needed.  What she learned along the way:

  • Spend time listening - listen to customers and employees
  • Communicate face to face - meet with people where they are
  • Make goals clear - let employees know what is expected
  • Give people a roadmap - give people a sense of hope grounded in reality
  • Be honest - need to be transparent and honest with customers and employees
  • Lead and manage to values - have a clear and consistent set of values
  • Challenge the status quo - make the tough, difficult calls
  • Focus on things that matter - things that add value not complexity
  • Inspire your people - inspire them to be and do more
  • Invest upstream - cut costs and increase productivity while investing upstream

Anne said that the greatest piece of wisdom came from Warren Buffet who told her “don’t spend any time with bankers.  Focus on customers and employees.” Anne knew that getting the financials fixed was critical, but investing in the future was just as important.

In the business world there is harsh punishment for not making your numbers. It took extraordinary courage for Anne to look beyond the ninety day window that analysts look at.  She knew that without loyal customers and engaged employees there was no future for Xerox.

Anne Mulcahy is an entrepreneurial leader.  Not only was she trying to save a company, she was reinventing it at the same time

Internal Entrepreneurs – Growth or Cost Leadership

by: Susan Foley - June 15th, 2011   Filed under: Business Growth, Entrepreneurial Leaders, Uncategorized Add Comment

As IBM approaches its 100th anniversary they are at a pivotal turning point – growth or cost cutting.  Like many companies IBM has spent a lot of the last decade streamlining operations and cutting costs.  Now they must decide whether to continue on the current path or forge a new path to growth.

The decision that IBM makes on this strategic issue may decide the fate of two individuals poised as potential successors to Sam Palmisano, CEO of IBM. The selection of one candidate could signal a continuation of cost cutting, the selection of the other a shift in focus to growth.

Although both candidates have similar backgrounds, one candidate has spent the last several years running sales and building the services business. The other has been effective at cost cutting which has helped raise profits.  http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_25/b4233022707215.htm

We need both of these capabilities in our leaders – growth and cost cutting.

The ability to do both at the same time requires a unique set of skills not often found in the same individual.  Traditional leadership practices are important for leading and streamlining the core business but entrepreneurial leadership is needed for building new growth businesses.

Growth and cost cutting are two sides of the same coin – leadership.

The paradox of leadership is that we can no longer think of everything in terms of either/or.  We must look at everything as an and/also.  We must learn how to cut costs at the same time that we are building new growth businesses.  Leaders must learn to live and work with this paradox.  It requires a new level of leadership and development that goes beyond established executive training programs.

In the article, Developing Multidimensional Leaders, Jeffrey Sugerman is quoted as saying, “In studies that we conducted,…the ones (leaders) who were viewed as most effective were good at everything, maybe differing degrees, but they weren’t just good at one thing.  The effective leaders we found were much more flexible in the range of leadership styles and competencies they could bring to their organizations.” http://clomedia.com/articles/view/developing-multidimensional-leaders

Organizations can no longer rely on developing leaders who excel in a few dimensions.  We need leaders who have the capabilities to deal with a rapidly and dynamically evolving business environment which include both growth and cost reduction.

It is not growth or cost leadership but growth and cost leadership that are needed in our leaders.