LEADERSHIP STRATEGY: APPOINT AQUARIAN LEADERS TO SENIOR POSITIONS

leadership is more important than strategy

“I think leadership is more important than strategy—and I say that as a former McKinsey guy,” admits James Citrin, of Spencer Stuart.

  Excerpt from Reveries Magazine

What he means is that the autocratic Philip Purcell, the meglomaniac Jeffrey Eisner, and the “queen of keynote” Carly Fiona were losers in terms of management style.  CEO’s like Terry Semel of Yahoo and Ed Zander of Motorola were “in,” according to James—whose search firm placed both CEO’s.  “Strategy is important,” adds James, “but the same strategy executed by two different leaders will have dramatically different results.”

The news is that the strongest leaders are those with high ethical standards, who lead by example, and who build a strong effective team around them,” says Sydney Finkelstein of Dartmouth’sTuckSchool.  “These traits are the hot buttons now,” he says, “rather than having a cowboy ride in to provide a magic answer for the company.”

This new genre of players has  been called,  “Aquarian CEOs — “farsighted, tolerant, humane and practical—with  the courage of their own convictions, even when staring down the myopic sights of Wall Street.”  Aquarian players have included  include Jim Senegal of Costco, Dave Neeleman of JetBlue, John Mackey of Whole Foods and Brad Anderson of Best Buy. “People are expecting more from the companies they’re working for, more from the companies they’re doing business with, and more from the companies they’re buying from,” comments Raj Sisodia, a marketing professor at BentleyCollege.

Raj, along with Jag Sheth of Emory University, and writer David Wolf, completed a study  that will be the basis of a forthcoming book called, “Firms of Endearment” Wharton.  Raj and Jag came up with 35 companies that scored well on human performance issues, such as how they treat suppliers, environmentalists, and the community. They also factored in the inspiration quotient of CEO’s. When they compared the target group’s numbers to the financial performance of other corporations, they found that companies in their sample returned 758 percent over 10 years, versus 128 percent for S&P’s 500.

This post sponsored by The Baton Management System