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Advice From Leaders
by Rick Gilbert
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Summary of “World Business Forum, 2005: Leadership Speaks”
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PowerSpeaking, Inc. – official name change
WORLD BUSINESS FORUM: LEADERSHIP SPEAKS
Two weeks ago, I attended an extraordinary program at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The program featured some of the country’s top business leaders: Jack Welch, Rudy Giuliani, Lou Gerstner, Jr., Michael Porter, Anne M. Mulcahy, Craig Venter, Steve Young, Jim Collins, Larry Bossidy, Barry Diller, and even a surprise visit from 95-year old Peter Drucker.
Here is an “executive summary” from these business leaders.
Advice for leaders at all levels
The following 10 recommendations were touched on by at least two of the speakers, and in some cases, almost all of them.
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Have a strategy and communicate it constantly to employees to generate excitement.
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Create a sense of urgency.
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Knowing what
not to do is as important as knowing what to do.
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Leadership means being inspirational.
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Leadership candor and directness are critical.
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When things go wrong, take the blame and talk about your mistakes openly.
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Hire people smarter than you are.
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Reward the doers — and pay them more.
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Humility: Leadership is
all about others all the time. Give others the credit when things go well. Take the blame when things don’t work out as planned. (As if to confirm this, just last week, as Mark Hurd was taking the reins at HP, he commented: "Building great companies isn't all about the CEO.")
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Nature/nurture. Are leaders born or created by circumstance? Probably both.
Things leaders should avoid
Much of this advice may be a bit contrary.
Avoid:
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Trying to capture all aspects of your market. For example, Jaguar just announced they are discontinuing their low-end models.
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Striving for work/life balance. According to Welch, partly because of globalization, work demands are only going to increase.
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Devaluing HR. Welch noted when he recently spoke at a conference of 5,000 HR executives, he asked how many felt they had equal status with the CFO. Only 50 (1%) raised their hands. He went on to comment that phony performance reviews or poorly designed incentive programs can be as bad for the company as phony Sarbanes-Oxley reporting. HR must have status.
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Believing the old myth that recognition is more important than money.
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Expecting you can have it all. Jim Collins noted that about half the executives he studied had personal lives that were a mess. For them satisfaction and purpose came from work, not family.
One of the best presentations was the unannounced appearance of former San Francisco 49er quarterback Steve Young, who, by the way, went to law school after his football career, and now works in the finance industry.
One of his messages was that in business as in life, you have to trust your gut instincts.
He said, “Learning to trust and to ‘throw blind’ is how I went from good to great as a quarterback. You must trust your gut instinct. I got lots of criticism for sometimes holding the ball even though Jerry Rice was in the clear.”
He explained, “The reason was, I was relatively small at just 6 feet. I would be under attack from a couple of linebackers who were 6’8” and weighed about 300 pounds. I couldn’t see Jerry, so I would hold the ball. It finally dawned on me that in such situations, I had to trust my gut and throw to where I thought Jerry would be.” Sort of a Zen thing.
He ended with a story about the last play of the last Super Bowl game he played. He threw blind to Jerry, and was immediately thrown to the ground by one of the linebackers. “My face was shoved into the grass. I couldn’t see a thing, but I was aware that the 80,000 fans had gotten suddenly quiet. I knew instantly that meant Jerry caught the ball, and we had won.” He said, “It was a moment in life I will never forget.”
Summary
The World Business Forum Conference was a very stimulating two days. Listening to some of the world’s top business leaders generated lots of ideas for us to think about. I think the biggest take away for me was from Steve Young.
The idea of trusting your gut instincts in business is so critical. Being able to “throw blind” may sometimes mean the difference between being “good” and being “great.”
Rick
OFFICIAL NAME CHANGE
Our company was originally incorporated as Frederick Gilbert Associates. Our flagship training has always been
PowersSpeaking®. Since most people know us by that name, we decided to change the name of the company to
PowerSpeaking, Inc. We just received notification from the Secretary of State that the name-change is now official.
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