This video is an excerpt from an interview conducted at the Monfort Institute, University of Northern Colorado, 2010.
Highlights
- Successful leaders of organizational transformation are personally involved.
- CEOs in our study were not what you would call “mahogany row” leaders – they did not sit in their offices and delegate via memos.
- These CEOs were very hands-on, yet they were not micro-managers – they were involved in setting the direction, following up, and ensuring that people had what they needed to do their work and achieve the vision.
- They also spent time coaching the next generation of leaders, working with their leaders to enable them and help get them engaged in leading the journey.
- At the same time, they gave feedback to their leaders and, on a couple of occasions, had to remove some leaders and hold them accountable for the journey.
- These CEOs had a systematic way of doing Management by Walking Around (MBWA) – they scheduled their walkarounds and asked questions like do you have the tools to do the job, is there anything I can do for you, they also gave them reinforcement.
- They also spent time listening to other stakeholders, including customers – in one organization, the senior executives were scheduled to listen to the customer care line.
References
The concepts presented in the video are from my CEO Leading Transformation research. For more on these concepts, check out the two papers that describe and discuss all the concepts included in the leadership framework.
Latham, J. R. (2013a). A framework for leading the transformation to performance excellence part I: CEO perspectives on forces, facilitators, and strategic leadership systems. Quality Management Journal, 20(2), 22.
Latham, J. R. (2013b). A framework for leading the transformation to performance excellence part II: CEO perspectives on leadership behaviors, individual leader characteristics, and organizational culture. Quality Management Journal, 20(3), 22.
