All Posts Tagged With: "leadership"
Creating Value for Society
“It is in the enlightened self-interest of business to forge economic growth models that create larger societal value than shareholder value alone.”
I doubt if there are many on Wall Street who agree with this opinion, which was put forward in this article by S. Sivakumar, group head of the Agri & IT businesses of Indian conglomerate ITC. But then, I’m not sure anyone on Wall Street really cares about shareholder value either. Accumulating personal wealth seems to be their driving force.
The Great Recession being felt worldwide can be laid at the doorstep of corporate—and personal—greed, housed by soulless companies like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and others. By wrecking the economy for the 99%, they spawned Occupy Wall Street, a movement that has become an international voice against the damage being caused by these companies.
Sivakumar’s company is a refreshing alternative to Wall Street gluttony. ITC has been “water positive” for nine years (created twice as much freshwater potential than it has consumed), “carbon positive” for six years (sequesters twice as much carbon as it emits), and “solid-waste-recycling positive” for four years (recycles all wastes from its industrial operations). “In addition, these innovative business models have led to the creation of sustainable livelihood opportunities for over 5 million people from among the most vulnerable of Indian society,” Sivakumar writes.
ITC has delivered these results without damaging financial performance: Total shareholder returns have grown at a compound rate of 25.6% per year for the last 15 years.
Here’s what Wall Street companies—and the…
24Oct2011 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedA Baldrige Legend
Bob Galvin died last week at the age of 89. He ran Motorola, the company his father founded, from 1959 to 1988, transforming it from a national company with sales of $290 million to a global corporation with sales of $10.8 billion.
Galvin helped launch the Baldrige program. Under his leadership, Motorola had become a global quality leader. Six Sigma became a systematic approach to quality improvement at Motorola, where Galvin notoriously demanded 10x improvements in quality and cycle time from one year to the next. In a Financial Executive report, he bragged that “we hardly take a serious interest in less than a 50% improvement” in cycle time. To make his point, he described a Motorola pager that had taken 44 days to make to customer specifications that, through quality and cycle time improvements, was being delivered in less than two hours.
He took these improvements personally. I interviewed him at his office in Schaumberg, Illinois, in 1991 for my first Baldrige book. He talked about lobbying for a national quality award, Motorola receiving one of the first Baldrige Awards given in 1988, and serving on the Baldrige Board of Overseers. But his eyes really lit up when he described his company’s efforts to improve quality and reduce cycle time. He pointed to the “In” basket on his desk, which contained one bound report. He told me he had set a personal cycle time goal to turn around any report that crossed his desk for feedback within 24 hours of receipt and…
17Oct2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBringing Your Priorities to Life
According to Doug Conant, former CEO of Campbell Soup, “a leader’s job is to take people from where they are today to where they need to be tomorrow and to do so as quickly as possible and in a way that is sustainable.” Conant’s results at Campbell Soup suggest that his leadership approach is effective: The company was the worst performer of all major global food companies when he arrived as CEO in 2001. In 2009 it outperformed the S&P Food Group and the S&P 500.
Along with Mette Norgaard, Conant has written a book about his leadership philosophy called Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments. IndustryWeek reviews the book here.
In his book, Conant describes how he turned around Nabisco Food Company, his gig before going to Campbell Soup, “with a philosophy of being tough-minded on the standards and tender-hearted with people.” “Some joked that my approach was a cross between Pollyanna and Don Quixote,” he said, “but I have no apologies. The people were highly engaged and delivering excellent results. We grew earnings at a double-digit rate for five straight years. If that’s a sign of weakness, I’ll take it every time.”
He used the same approach—successfully—at Campbell Soup. The approach focuses on TouchPoints, those moments when two or more people get together to deal with an issue and get something done. As the authors write, “in our experience, these TouchPoints are the real work. They are the moments that bring your strategies and priorities to life, the…
13Oct2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedOne Step to Better Results
Consider the list of concerns that most senior leaders have:
- I must meet the goals that I and others have set for our organization.
- I need to know what is or might keep us from reaching those goals.
- I need to think long-term but I also need results now.
- I need to get everyone on the same page.
- I need to make good decisions about allocating resources, both human and financial.
- I want to minimize surprises and firefighting and make our continued success predictable.
- I want to keep my job—or get a better one.
The list can be overwhelming if a senior leader has to focus on each concern individually, but it is manageable if all concerns are addressed by a systematic approach to leadership.
The Baldrige model provides a proven, systems approach.
A leader sees his or her organization through the filter of his/her area of expertise. The CFO views the organization differently than the COO. While the CEO has broader responsibilities, he or she arrived at that position with a filter, having been a CFO or COO or leader of another function before taking the top post. This inhibits a systems perspective of how the organization does what it does, and without that systems perspective, it is very difficult for a leader to identify the right goals and strategic objectives, align every employee and activity with achieving those goals and objectives, and integrate the daily work of all employees to move the organization as one toward its mission and vision.
Leaders who understand and integrate the Baldrige model develop…
9Oct2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedBottom-Up Baldrige
One of the most common questions I get from managers and employees who believe Baldrige is exactly what their organizations need is: How do I get senior leaders to see the value of this?
Paige Lillard has an answer that worked.
I came across an interview on the Baldrige program’s Web site, link here, with Lillard, VP of business excellence at Turner Broadcasting System. Turner Broadcasting employs more than 9,000 people at such networks as CNN, TBS, and TNT.
Lillard has a small consulting team within Turner Broadcasting that is responsible for helping units within the organization achieve their goals. She does this through the Baldrige model.
Lillard was in the audio department in the early 1990s, an extrovert spending her days alone in an audio studio, and she wasn’t happy. She started learning about total quality management and was intrigued by the concept of leveraging employee engagement and involving them in creating and improving processes. She talked to her manager and asked to discuss it with their VP. She asked him what kept him up at night and he said he wanted to get more out of the staff. Lillard outlined her ideas and he supported them and they started building a performance excellence system.
Her interest in TQM led her to Baldrige. She was given permission to form a sub-department to implement test the Baldrige framework. In the first six to nine months, her little group increased customer satisfaction 23%, employee satisfaction 50%, and the capacity of its room 65%. “That was the…
29Sep2011 | Steve George | 1 comment | ContinuedBuilding a Community of Excellence
Saint Joseph, Missouri, plans to become a Community of Excellence. St. Joseph is the home of 2009 Baldrige Award winner Heartland Health, which I’ve written about here and here. Its CEO, Dr. Mark Laney, recently spoke at an annual event for area business leaders about what they could do to achieve the quality standards and performance of Heartland, which was described in the St. Joseph News-Press here.
The announcement of St. Joseph’s intent to become a Community of Excellence followed Dr. Laney’s speech. The concept has gained traction about three hours away in Columbia, Missouri, which is the home of another Baldrige Award winner, MidwayUSA. Its CEO, Larry Potterfield, has helped organize a community excellence initiative it calls a Baldrige Performance Excellence Group. I wrote about Columbia’s effort here. The group has produced a BPEG booklet that provides a blueprint for creating your own Community of Excellence including how to start your own BPEG, how to structure it, who to involve, events, bylaws, dues, and key processes. You can read the booklet here (pdf). In the preface to the booklet, Harry Hertz, director of the Baldrige National Quality Program, wrote, “Monthly meetings, and the local networks and contacts that are developed, are a key to helping organizations get on track, stay on track, and accelerate their journey to performance excellence. The support provided by these community groups should lead to mutual learning and breakthrough improvements for their members.”
One of the greatest attributes of the Baldrige model is its universality: The same model is relevant…
13Sep2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | ContinuedWhere Are the Disconnects in Your Organization?
This year, Baldrige examiners were asked to assess their organizations using the Baldrige program’s questionnaires: “Are We Making Progress as Leaders?” for examiners who work in management or “Are We Making Progress?” for examiners who do not. The questionnaires ask for level of agreement with statements related to the Baldrige Criteria, in the case of employees, or their perceptions of their organizations, in the case of leaders.
In a few areas, the 173 employees and 294 leaders who took the test differed significantly. These disconnects suggest problems with processes, communication, or both:
- Know how to measure work quality: 78% of employees said they know how while 51% of leaders agreed that they do
- Use work quality measures to make improvements: 74% of employees said they did while 43% of leaders agreed
- Customers are satisfied with work performed: 85% of employees agreed compared to 69% of employees
- My boss and organization care about me: 69% of employees agreed compared to 84% of leaders
It’s important to note that the employees and leaders who answered the questionnaire do not, for the most part, work at the same organizations. And the employees in the group are Baldrige examiners: One would expect them to know how to measure work quality and use those measure to make improvements. If the questionnaires were administered to leaders and employees in one organization, the results might be different.
You can test that theory by rolling out the questionnaire in your organization. If you do, you will still find disconnects between what employees believe and what…
9Sep2011 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
