Article,
Beware the Shortcut to the Top
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, (February 2002)Professor and Dean.
Abstract
THE FAST TRACK TO THE TOP may look attractive, but people frequently
are given new leadership responsibilities for which they are not
ready, says Robert Joss, dean of the Business School. ?Many companies
don?t think through when to put certain people in certain jobs, assuming
that they?ll be OK?and inadvertently setting them up for failure,?
Joss says. ?That?s a significant problem in many organizations.?
The question of leadership, what it is and how to develop it?in organizations
and in yourself?was the topic of a one-week seminar conducted by
Joss. It was one of 11 small, innovative classes offered to second-year
MBA students before the start of the 2001-2002 academic year. Each
class revolved around a faculty member?s favorite area of research
and was limited to 10 students to provide an intimate, intensive
learning experience. The aim of the seminars was twofold: to integrate
research and teaching more strongly and to build community among
students and faculty in an academic context. Stanford?s low student-faculty
ratio and cross-disciplinary approach to management allowed the experiment
with this teaching form. Other seminars included How to Make Ideas
Stick, Working for Change for Women in Organizations, Advanced Investment
Strategies, and Strategy and Organization in the Brewing Industry.
Illustrations by James Steinberg
The dean?s Issues in Leadership seminar delved into several academic
research papers and books but also confronted the students with some
real-life conundrums. Should you aim for fast-track careers? Can
intellectual ability make up for lack of work experience?
One key lesson is not to place too much stock in one?s success as
a student. ?A student has been able to do nearly everything on his
or her own, and that can be deceiving in terms of leadership ability,?
says Joss. ?There?s a big difference when you have to get work done
through others. Learning how to inspire as well as control is a difficult
thing, and you learn it through practice.? The dean, who earned his
MBA and a PHD at the Business School, was chief executive officer
of the Australian financial consortium Westpac Banking Corp. and
prior to that served as vice chairman of Wells Fargo & Co.
The Pipeline Approach
The need for hands-on leadership experience is a key theme in a new
book that was assigned as one of the readings in the seminar. The
Leadership Pipeline, by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel,
criticizes companies that look for their leaders only among the ?best
and brightest.?
?Businesses are full of intelligent, good-looking people from top
schools who are failing because they don?t know how to get anything
done,? the Pipeline authors argue. ?Succession programs often place
these people in leadership positions based on their potential?they
look the part, they have the right pedigree, they impressed someone
with their ideas and ability to articulate them.? Such people often
don?t stay in one place long enough to learn from mistakes, master
the right skills, or gain the experience they need for performance.
The right way to perpetuate an enterprise, they argue, is to fill
the pipeline with people who can be drawn upon to fill the next leadership
level up. The writers draw on their experience running training programs
at General Electric and Citigroup, two companies known for leadership
development.
This performance-based definition of potential turns the focus squarely
on one?s ability to do the job at one?s current leadership level.
Performance now becomes ?the admission price? for future growth and
development. The strategy permits few, if any, shortcuts. This is
because the leadership hierarchy is not a series of undifferentiated
steps that would allow the energetic junior executive to skip a couple
of stops on the way to the top. Instead, each management level involves
a major change in job requirements, time, allocation, and work values?all
requiring new learning and demonstrated mastery.
In large, decentralized companies, the hierarchy may constitute as
many as six such career passages, or bends, in the pipeline. These
range from managing oneself as an individual contributor to managing
a team, to managing managers, to managing a function, to managing
a business, and ultimately to managing an enterprise.
The leadership hierarchy is not a series of undifferentiated steps
that would allow the energetic junior executive to skip a couple
of stops on the way to the top.
The authors are critical of the fast-track career path. ?The pipeline
isn?t a straight tube but one with six 90-degree bends or turns,?
they caution. ?At each one of the bends, people need to slow down,
reflect, learn, and develop.?
To Joss, this doesn?t mean that you should not try to speed up your
progress. ?The book suggests how you ought to fast-track,? he says.
?If you?re in a hurry, you should try to shorten the time on each
track or on each level, rather than skipping. If you skip the acquisition
of experience, you?re certainly taking on some risk of having a very
large gap in your knowledge or skills.?
But what if your boss tells you you?re needed to fill a position two
or three levels up? Most people would probably grab the chance without
a second thought. Joss urges caution. ?Either take it with your eyes
open and figure out how you?re going to cover that lack of experience?maybe
through some coaching, maybe your boss can help you out?or do a realistic
self-appraisal and say, ?That?s too big a risk. I?m not ready and
I?m just going to fail in that job because I don?t have enough background.??
He realizes that the latter option sounds unrealistic to most people:
Why would you ever turn down a promotion? But he points to a parallel
in college sports. ?You see it all the time,? observes Joss. ?A good
basketball player who is a junior could be encouraged to turn pro,
but the kid says, ?That?s a big risk.? In college, you get much more
coaching and more chances to work on the fundamentals. When you go
to the pros, you?ve got to be ready to play every night. So, many
of them choose to stay another year, even though it may be at great
short-term economic cost to them.?
Level 5 Leadership
Consultant and former Business School lecturer Jim Collins, MBA ?83,
reinforces criticism of the ?star? system in another of the seminar
readings. In the course of a five-year research project into hyperachieving
companies, he chanced upon a counter-intuitive pattern. People generally
assume that transforming companies from good to great requires big
personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, he says.
Instead, he found that these companies? leaders were individuals who
blend ?extreme personal humility with intense professional will.?
Although fearless, they were also modest and shy, motivating others
with inspired standards rather than inspiring charisma.
His study examined the 11 Fortune 500 companies between 1965 and 1995
that met his stringent definition of ?good-to-great? transition.
That is, after performing no better than the general stock market
for 15 years, they steadily transformed themselves into dramatic
and sustained overachievers, registering cumulative stock returns
at least three times the market average over the next 15 years.
The 11 firms included paper company Kimberly-Clark under CEO Darwin
E. Smith; Gillette under CEO Colman Mockler; Abbott Laboratories
under CEO George Cain; and Wells Fargo under CEOs Dick Cooley and
Carl Reichardt. All fit the profile of quiet, resolute leaders in
contrast to more ego-driven CEOs of their less successful competitors.
Collins? interpretation of his findings in his book Good to Great
is that to build ?enduring greatness? requires a ?level 5? executive,
whose ambition is for the institution, not for himself.
Joss agrees with Collins? observations. ?It?s a mark of all outstanding
leaders that their egos get reasonably suppressed,? he says. ?They
care more about other people and about the cause, which is to build
a great company. And that shows through in discipline and will, and
also in humility.?
Emotional Intelligence
Other key seminar sessions involved discussion of emotional intelligence,
personal renewal, and the tasks that leaders actually perform in
their work. ?Leaders are mostly made, not born,? says Joss. ?They
are made by being put into challenging jobs that require them to
earn followers in order to perform.? This acquisition of experience
and the related development of effective behaviors are essential
complements to the acquisition of management knowledge, which is
the central purpose of an MBA program. ?Leadership is a performing
art, just like diving or singing, and the instrument is you. It takes
lots of practice and it takes considerable self-knowledge and self-management.?
by Cherian George
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Helen K. Chang, 650-723-3358, Fax: 650-725-6750
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... And Others Don?t,
Jim Collins, New York: HarperCollins, 2001
Leadership at the Turn of the Century, John P. Kotter, in John P.
Kotter on What Leaders Really Do, Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 1999
The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company,
Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter, and James Noel, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2001
Personal Renewal, John W. Gardner, McKinsey Quarterly (No. 2, pp.
71?81), 1991
What Makes a Leader? Daniel Goleman, Harvard Business Review, Reprint
#93306, 1998
