Canadian HR Reporter’s “CEOs Talk” feature provides perspectives from top organizational leaders on subjects related to business success, organizational effectiveness, corporate culture and the role and contribution of HR.
In a related vein, “HR Manager’s Bookshelf” takes a look at some of the books being published for CEOs and other general management readers. For HR practitioners, it may be helpful to know more about what senior line and staff executives are reading and thinking about.
These books about change, organizational trends, management and leadership capabilities are, of course, also of direct interest to strategic HR professionals.
And HR-centric topics are gaining the spotlight among CEOs and line managers and executives from operations, finance and marketing and sales.
Recent years have seen an increasing trend for these former HR-centric topics to gain the spotlight among line managers and executives at the CEO level, as well as in operations, finance, marketing and strategy.
The Company of the Future
By Frances Cairncross, 229 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2002), ISBN 1-57851-657-9.
At bookstores or 1-800-565-5758, www.mcgrawhill.ca
Economic uncertainty and technological change, combined, present a daunting challenge for management. This book, by the management editor at The Economist, is aimed at C-level executives and also has special significance for senior HR and organization development professionals. Key themes of collaboration and the importance of teams permeate the 10 rules for survival that form the core of the book.
“Internet technologies will profoundly alter the structure of the company and of many business practices. But they will do so only if accompanied by capable management, with the support of empowered and intelligent employees. Getting corporate structure right will be just as important for making the best use of Internet technologies as acquiring the right software and hardware.”
Readers will find an overview of past management revolutions and the current rapid rise of the Internet with its huge implications for doing business, including purchasing, supplier and customer relationships and branding. However, the strongest implications are related to managing people through innovation, decision-making and management of knowledge assets.
The view of corporate structure trends is particularly important. The author sees companies moving toward:
•flatter, less hierarchical, more flexible and adaptable structures;
•more outsourcing, franchising and alliances;
•greater stress on innovation and entrepreneurship; and
•using the Internet to enable and shape change.
There’s a chapter devoted to recruiting (internally and externally), retention, outsourcing talent and training and development. The recommended future focus for HR management is to segment employees according to their value to the company and design appropriate strategies for each group; astutely use Internet technology in staffing and learning; and adopt talent brokering and the development of virtual teams.
Other chapters focus on the challenges of communicating and developing corporate culture among mobile employees (e-mail, intranets, portals); leadership and management approaches based on the importance of people skills and networks of relationships; and fostering teams and communities.
This book will be appreciated by:
•HR strategists;
•professionals in organization design;
•general managers with a broad view of the economy, technology and organizational change;
•readers interested in leadership issues; and
•those who read and enjoy The Economist, with its crisp, understated but slightly self-important style.
The Agenda
By Michael Hammer, 270 pages, Crown Business (2001), ISBN 0-609-60966-1, www.randomhouse.com
Hammer, best known for his blockbuster bestseller Reengineering the Corporation (Harper Business, 1993), now offers core ideas for the “post-bubble, hard-to-profit, customer economy.”
Examples and case studies from manufacturing, energy, insurance, high tech and other sectors are used to illustrate key points:
•how to make your company easy to do business with;
•develop real internal and external collaboration and teamwork;
•put processes first, “systematize creativity;” and
•use measurement for improving, not accounting.
Senior HR and change management professionals will be particularly interested in the chapter which addresses the theme, “Manage without structure.” Hammer makes this observation: “Corporate managers definitely do not play well with others. They are as territorial as lions or wolves, and the more senior they are, the more territorial. This behavior is not genetic; it is induced by the ways in which companies are organized.”
He goes on to recommend an end to the “tyranny of the organization chart” by moving away from sharply defined business units with autonomous managers, toward approaches that make managerial teamwork the rule rather than the exception; and rewarding leadership that puts the enterprise as a whole ahead of subunit results.
In a chapter called “Prepare for a future you cannot predict,” experiences of companies like IBM, American Express and
H-P illustrate key capabilities:
•an early warning system to identify changes requiring quick response;
•rapidly designing and installing new ways of working; and
•creation of an organization infrastructure to support the first two capabilities.
In writing, and in his many speeches and seminars, Hammer’s market is CEOs. HR strategists and change agents can use books like this to familiarize themselves with mainstream management thinking and business directions.
The Heart of Change
By John Kotter and Dan Cohen, 190 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2002), ISBN 1-57851-254-9. At bookstores or 1-800-565-5758, www.mcgrawhill.ca
Harvard leadership expert John Kotter’s writings, including his 1996 book Leading Change (Harvard Business School Press, ISBN 0-87584-747-1), have been influential in moving the subject of organizational change from the HR and organization development field into the mainstream of general management attention.
Here, with Deloitte Consulting’s Don Cohen, he builds upon the earlier book’s eight-step change process, using research from hundreds of interviews across organizations undergoing large-scale change. For each step, the authors demonstrate how to — and how not to — foster the behaviour change required for real business and organizational results:
•Increase urgency: get people to say “Let’s go, we need to change.”
•Build the guiding team: a powerful group to guide change.
•Get the vision right: the strategy for the change effort.
•Communicate for buy-in: foster support and actual behaviour change.
•Empower action: help more people feel able to act, and actually act, on the vision.
•Create short-term wins: build momentum while diminishing resistance.
•Don’t let up: sustain wave after wave of change, not a one-time effort.
•Make change stick: keep the winning behaviour going despite the pull of tradition and turnover of change leaders.
For each of the eight steps, there’s a separate chapter with four or five short, anonymous stories or scenarios, each with a “hook” to capture the senior executive reader’s attention and demonstrate the need for creative approaches to change. The focus is on business transformation situations, process improvement, customer satisfaction, financial performance, quality assurance — all generic, bread and butter industry concerns.
From the publisher’s description of the book:
“The single biggest challenge in any transformation is not culture, strategy or systems — but getting people to change their behaviour. And people change their behaviour less because they are given analysis and data designed to shift their thinking, than because they are shown a compelling truth that influences their feelings. Emotions then trigger action — impelling people to behave in the often radically different and difficult ways that substantial change demands. This see-feel-change pattern lies at the heart of every successful change effort.”
While the brevity of the book and its series of vignettes may disappoint seasoned change management professionals, it has appeal for busy line managers and makes for great airplane reading. The Heart of Change could prove to be a valuable tool in raising executive level awareness of their own role and skills in leading change, and generating buy-in for investment in change planning and implementation.
Execution
By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, 278 pages, Crown Business (2002), ISBN 0-609-61057-0, www.crownbusiness.com
Often there’s a glaring gap between a stated goal and the associated action, between strategy and achievement. In recent years, senior managers increasingly use the term “execution” to address this challenge: “We need to execute on our targets.” While this ‘e’ buzzword may sometimes grate as an oversimplification, book sales indicate that many readers welcome this new title that treats execution as a management discipline integrally related to strategy.
Bossidy is a celebrity CEO with a background at GE, AlliedSignal and Honeywell. Charan is a leading academic and consultant associated with Harvard and the Kellogg School. Together they issue a call to action for senior leaders to do more than hold off-site vision sessions and develop strong strategic plans. They urge leaders to maintain direct involvement in the operational actions required to translate strategy into reality: “Execution is the major job of the business leader.”
For example, one job no leader should delegate is “having the right people in the right place.” This means not only a direct role for the leader in selecting key people, but also in candid appraisals, rewards decisions, developmental experiences and serving as a role model. (“Leaders get the behaviour they exhibit and tolerate.”)
Seven essential behaviours for leaders are outlined:
•know your people and business;
•insist on realism;
•set clear goals and priorities;
•follow through;
•expand people’s capabilities;
•reward the doers; and
•know yourself.
The tone of the writing is illustrated in this section from a chapter on creating a framework for cultural change:
“The base premise is simple: cultural change gets real when your aim is execution. You don’t need a lot of complex theory or employee surveys to use this framework. You need to change people’s behaviour so that they produce results. First you tell people clearly what results you’re looking for. Then you discuss how to get those results, as a key element of the coaching process. Then you reward people for producing the results. If they come up short, you provide additional coaching, withdraw rewards, give them other jobs or let them go. When you do these things, you create a culture of getting things done.”
Examples and lessons, both positive and negative, are drawn from a handful of large U.S. companies including Dell Computer, Lucent Technologies, EDS, GE, Compaq and AT&T.
The Leadership Challenge
By James Kouzes and Barry Posner, 458 pages, Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer (3rd ed. 2002), ISBN 0-7879-5678-3. Distributed by Wiley Canada, 1-800-567-4797, www.wiley.com
In an international survey the authors found four factors to stand out clearly as leading characteristics of admired leaders:
•honest;
•forward-looking;
•competent; and
•inspiring.
With this guiding insight, the revised, expanded and updated version of the bestselling book The Leadership Challenge takes a long, thoughtful journey through leadership and serves as a field guide for leaders, a sort of “personal coach” in print. The context is today’s reality: heightened uncertainty, the need to put people first, global economy, electronic connections, recognition of the importance of social capital, speed and a changing workforce.
The book explores “five practices of exemplary leadership” and the specific commitments they entail:
•model the way, based on clarifying your own values and aligning actions with shared values;
•inspire a shared vision, using imagination and enlisting others by appealing to their aspirations;
•challenge the process, constantly innovating, experimenting, learning and making gains;
•enable others to act, fostering collaboration through shared power and trust; and
•encourage the heart, providing a sense of recognition, appreciation, celebration and community.
With quotes, stories and guidance from a wide array of leaders in different kinds of situations, and an extensive bibliography, this book provides a rich digest of ideas and lessons. The authors define leadership broadly, applying it to managers at any level, individual contributors, even volunteers, in any organization or industry sector.
Ray Brillinger is a senior consultant with IBM Business Consulting Services. He provides change management, business transformation and organization effectiveness strategy and implementation support to clients. He can be reached at (905) 316-8733 or [email protected].
In a related vein, “HR Manager’s Bookshelf” takes a look at some of the books being published for CEOs and other general management readers. For HR practitioners, it may be helpful to know more about what senior line and staff executives are reading and thinking about.
These books about change, organizational trends, management and leadership capabilities are, of course, also of direct interest to strategic HR professionals.
And HR-centric topics are gaining the spotlight among CEOs and line managers and executives from operations, finance and marketing and sales.
Recent years have seen an increasing trend for these former HR-centric topics to gain the spotlight among line managers and executives at the CEO level, as well as in operations, finance, marketing and strategy.
The Company of the Future
By Frances Cairncross, 229 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2002), ISBN 1-57851-657-9.
At bookstores or 1-800-565-5758, www.mcgrawhill.ca
Economic uncertainty and technological change, combined, present a daunting challenge for management. This book, by the management editor at The Economist, is aimed at C-level executives and also has special significance for senior HR and organization development professionals. Key themes of collaboration and the importance of teams permeate the 10 rules for survival that form the core of the book.
“Internet technologies will profoundly alter the structure of the company and of many business practices. But they will do so only if accompanied by capable management, with the support of empowered and intelligent employees. Getting corporate structure right will be just as important for making the best use of Internet technologies as acquiring the right software and hardware.”
Readers will find an overview of past management revolutions and the current rapid rise of the Internet with its huge implications for doing business, including purchasing, supplier and customer relationships and branding. However, the strongest implications are related to managing people through innovation, decision-making and management of knowledge assets.
The view of corporate structure trends is particularly important. The author sees companies moving toward:
•flatter, less hierarchical, more flexible and adaptable structures;
•more outsourcing, franchising and alliances;
•greater stress on innovation and entrepreneurship; and
•using the Internet to enable and shape change.
There’s a chapter devoted to recruiting (internally and externally), retention, outsourcing talent and training and development. The recommended future focus for HR management is to segment employees according to their value to the company and design appropriate strategies for each group; astutely use Internet technology in staffing and learning; and adopt talent brokering and the development of virtual teams.
Other chapters focus on the challenges of communicating and developing corporate culture among mobile employees (e-mail, intranets, portals); leadership and management approaches based on the importance of people skills and networks of relationships; and fostering teams and communities.
This book will be appreciated by:
•HR strategists;
•professionals in organization design;
•general managers with a broad view of the economy, technology and organizational change;
•readers interested in leadership issues; and
•those who read and enjoy The Economist, with its crisp, understated but slightly self-important style.
The Agenda
By Michael Hammer, 270 pages, Crown Business (2001), ISBN 0-609-60966-1, www.randomhouse.com
Hammer, best known for his blockbuster bestseller Reengineering the Corporation (Harper Business, 1993), now offers core ideas for the “post-bubble, hard-to-profit, customer economy.”
Examples and case studies from manufacturing, energy, insurance, high tech and other sectors are used to illustrate key points:
•how to make your company easy to do business with;
•develop real internal and external collaboration and teamwork;
•put processes first, “systematize creativity;” and
•use measurement for improving, not accounting.
Senior HR and change management professionals will be particularly interested in the chapter which addresses the theme, “Manage without structure.” Hammer makes this observation: “Corporate managers definitely do not play well with others. They are as territorial as lions or wolves, and the more senior they are, the more territorial. This behavior is not genetic; it is induced by the ways in which companies are organized.”
He goes on to recommend an end to the “tyranny of the organization chart” by moving away from sharply defined business units with autonomous managers, toward approaches that make managerial teamwork the rule rather than the exception; and rewarding leadership that puts the enterprise as a whole ahead of subunit results.
In a chapter called “Prepare for a future you cannot predict,” experiences of companies like IBM, American Express and
H-P illustrate key capabilities:
•an early warning system to identify changes requiring quick response;
•rapidly designing and installing new ways of working; and
•creation of an organization infrastructure to support the first two capabilities.
In writing, and in his many speeches and seminars, Hammer’s market is CEOs. HR strategists and change agents can use books like this to familiarize themselves with mainstream management thinking and business directions.
The Heart of Change
By John Kotter and Dan Cohen, 190 pages, Harvard Business School Press (2002), ISBN 1-57851-254-9. At bookstores or 1-800-565-5758, www.mcgrawhill.ca
Harvard leadership expert John Kotter’s writings, including his 1996 book Leading Change (Harvard Business School Press, ISBN 0-87584-747-1), have been influential in moving the subject of organizational change from the HR and organization development field into the mainstream of general management attention.
Here, with Deloitte Consulting’s Don Cohen, he builds upon the earlier book’s eight-step change process, using research from hundreds of interviews across organizations undergoing large-scale change. For each step, the authors demonstrate how to — and how not to — foster the behaviour change required for real business and organizational results:
•Increase urgency: get people to say “Let’s go, we need to change.”
•Build the guiding team: a powerful group to guide change.
•Get the vision right: the strategy for the change effort.
•Communicate for buy-in: foster support and actual behaviour change.
•Empower action: help more people feel able to act, and actually act, on the vision.
•Create short-term wins: build momentum while diminishing resistance.
•Don’t let up: sustain wave after wave of change, not a one-time effort.
•Make change stick: keep the winning behaviour going despite the pull of tradition and turnover of change leaders.
For each of the eight steps, there’s a separate chapter with four or five short, anonymous stories or scenarios, each with a “hook” to capture the senior executive reader’s attention and demonstrate the need for creative approaches to change. The focus is on business transformation situations, process improvement, customer satisfaction, financial performance, quality assurance — all generic, bread and butter industry concerns.
From the publisher’s description of the book:
“The single biggest challenge in any transformation is not culture, strategy or systems — but getting people to change their behaviour. And people change their behaviour less because they are given analysis and data designed to shift their thinking, than because they are shown a compelling truth that influences their feelings. Emotions then trigger action — impelling people to behave in the often radically different and difficult ways that substantial change demands. This see-feel-change pattern lies at the heart of every successful change effort.”
While the brevity of the book and its series of vignettes may disappoint seasoned change management professionals, it has appeal for busy line managers and makes for great airplane reading. The Heart of Change could prove to be a valuable tool in raising executive level awareness of their own role and skills in leading change, and generating buy-in for investment in change planning and implementation.
Execution
By Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, 278 pages, Crown Business (2002), ISBN 0-609-61057-0, www.crownbusiness.com
Often there’s a glaring gap between a stated goal and the associated action, between strategy and achievement. In recent years, senior managers increasingly use the term “execution” to address this challenge: “We need to execute on our targets.” While this ‘e’ buzzword may sometimes grate as an oversimplification, book sales indicate that many readers welcome this new title that treats execution as a management discipline integrally related to strategy.
Bossidy is a celebrity CEO with a background at GE, AlliedSignal and Honeywell. Charan is a leading academic and consultant associated with Harvard and the Kellogg School. Together they issue a call to action for senior leaders to do more than hold off-site vision sessions and develop strong strategic plans. They urge leaders to maintain direct involvement in the operational actions required to translate strategy into reality: “Execution is the major job of the business leader.”
For example, one job no leader should delegate is “having the right people in the right place.” This means not only a direct role for the leader in selecting key people, but also in candid appraisals, rewards decisions, developmental experiences and serving as a role model. (“Leaders get the behaviour they exhibit and tolerate.”)
Seven essential behaviours for leaders are outlined:
•know your people and business;
•insist on realism;
•set clear goals and priorities;
•follow through;
•expand people’s capabilities;
•reward the doers; and
•know yourself.
The tone of the writing is illustrated in this section from a chapter on creating a framework for cultural change:
“The base premise is simple: cultural change gets real when your aim is execution. You don’t need a lot of complex theory or employee surveys to use this framework. You need to change people’s behaviour so that they produce results. First you tell people clearly what results you’re looking for. Then you discuss how to get those results, as a key element of the coaching process. Then you reward people for producing the results. If they come up short, you provide additional coaching, withdraw rewards, give them other jobs or let them go. When you do these things, you create a culture of getting things done.”
Examples and lessons, both positive and negative, are drawn from a handful of large U.S. companies including Dell Computer, Lucent Technologies, EDS, GE, Compaq and AT&T.
The Leadership Challenge
By James Kouzes and Barry Posner, 458 pages, Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer (3rd ed. 2002), ISBN 0-7879-5678-3. Distributed by Wiley Canada, 1-800-567-4797, www.wiley.com
In an international survey the authors found four factors to stand out clearly as leading characteristics of admired leaders:
•honest;
•forward-looking;
•competent; and
•inspiring.
With this guiding insight, the revised, expanded and updated version of the bestselling book The Leadership Challenge takes a long, thoughtful journey through leadership and serves as a field guide for leaders, a sort of “personal coach” in print. The context is today’s reality: heightened uncertainty, the need to put people first, global economy, electronic connections, recognition of the importance of social capital, speed and a changing workforce.
The book explores “five practices of exemplary leadership” and the specific commitments they entail:
•model the way, based on clarifying your own values and aligning actions with shared values;
•inspire a shared vision, using imagination and enlisting others by appealing to their aspirations;
•challenge the process, constantly innovating, experimenting, learning and making gains;
•enable others to act, fostering collaboration through shared power and trust; and
•encourage the heart, providing a sense of recognition, appreciation, celebration and community.
With quotes, stories and guidance from a wide array of leaders in different kinds of situations, and an extensive bibliography, this book provides a rich digest of ideas and lessons. The authors define leadership broadly, applying it to managers at any level, individual contributors, even volunteers, in any organization or industry sector.
Ray Brillinger is a senior consultant with IBM Business Consulting Services. He provides change management, business transformation and organization effectiveness strategy and implementation support to clients. He can be reached at (905) 316-8733 or [email protected].
