Few founders stay with their companies for the duration. According to research conducted by Harvard business professor Noam Wasserman, 50% of founders lasted less than four years and fewer than 25% of founders led their companies’ initial public offerings. While CEOs like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Jobs are justifiably lauded for leading the ventures they started to extraordinary levels of success, they are the exceptions to the rule.
Selecting a CEO to replace the founder of a company when the time comes presents special challenges. Entrepreneurs typically have a vision for a product or service that offers unique value to the marketplace and they are passionately committed to building a successful company. Moreover, entrepreneurs often bring a creative spark and powerful sense of purpose to the workplace every day, which inspires and motivates the employees. For both the founder and the Board of Directors, the decision to move on must be handled with finesse to avoid disrupting the organization and to ensure that needed changes are made.
It’s incumbent on the board to address the issue of CEO succession with founder at the outset of their relationship and to identify the circumstances when appointing a new CEO will be in the best interests of the company. By developing an effective partnership with the founder from the outset, the Board has the best chance of reaching an amicable agreement with the founder to ensure a smooth transition to a new CEO and possibly creating a new organizational role for the founder. Failure to broach the succession question early on may lead to misunderstandings with the founder when the Board determines a leadership change is necessary.
When the time comes to transition to a new CEO the Board should address the following issues:
-What role will the founder play in the transition to a new CEO and what role, if any, will the founder have in the organization moving forward?
-What elements of the organization need to be preserved and what elements need to change in order to grow the organization?
-What skill sets and experiences will be required of the new CEO?
-How can the transition to a new CEO be managed to minimize organizational disruption and ensure the retention of key employees?
While the founder to CEO transition is rarely a seamless process, there are success stories:
-Estee Lauder appointed Fabrizio Freda as CEO, replacing William Lauder, a member of the founding family, who remained with the company as executive chairman. The two executives have worked together extremely well for several years, producing a more than 600% increase in the company’s stock price.
-TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie voluntarily stepped down as CEO and he and the board agreed to appoint Jim Alling as the new CEO, Mycoskie acknowledged that running a large company was not his strength. He stayed with TOMS as “chief shoe giver,” and is largely involved in advancing the company’s social mission.
-eBay founder Pierre Omidyar stepped aside completely and devoted himself to philanthropic interests when Meg Whitman was brought in as CEO in 1998. Under Whitman’s leadership, eBay grew at a very rapid pace for the next several years.
Each founder to CEO transition is different. Understanding the complexity of the situation and managing the transition thoughtfully is critical for an organization to evolve from start-up to a viable and sustainable organization.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
As Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of online retailer Stitch Fix, becomes the only female leader of a tech IPO in 2017, her history points to lessons for other female leaders – the importance of both a STEM background and a driving sense of purpose.
A landmark study, conducted by Korn Ferry with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, found nearly 60% of female leaders got their start in STEM (40%) or business/finance/economics (19%). Lake’s background combines fashion, retail, and technology, and her firm delivers personalized styling through proprietary algorithms.
On the first day of trading for Stitch Fix, which is now valued at $1.4 billion, Lake sent out a message that highlighted the company’s purpose for its online personal styling: “When you feel great, when you feel your best, it opens up a world of possibility.” This highlights another commonality with other female leaders: More than two-thirds of the women interviewed and assessed as part of the study said they were motivated by a sense of purpose and the belief that their company could positively impact the community, employees, and the world around them.
Stitch Fix has been hailed as “another way to be a tech startup,” with growth that has been steady but “not outrageous.” But Stitch Fix is not without its challenges. A major competitor is Amazon, which reportedly plans to launch an apparel subscription called Prime Wardrobe.
As a woman CEO, however, Lake may be able to draw upon a strength possessed by many female CEOs: They are often committed to making profound changes at their organizations. General Motors Chaiman and CEO Mary Barra is credited with sweeping changes at the automaker, including selling its European operations and reviewing the vehicle model lineup.
Lake has received attention not only for her company, but largely because of her gender. Fewer than 8 percent of all IPOs in 2017 were led by women, and Stitch Fix is the only woman-led tech IPO for the year. But there are broader issues for women in technology, too: gender gaps in pay and opportunities, and well-documented gaps in obtaining venture capital funding.
For every woman who breaks through, the news is not only encouraging, but the path she took in pursuit of success becomes enlightening to others. In addition to the importance of STEM and being purpose-driven, other attributes highlighted in the study that distinguish female CEOs in all fields include:
The examples of successful female CEOs show what can be done to accelerate the development of women leaders. This includes early identification of high-potential talent and providing opportunities to them that play to their strengths. Not only do mentors encourage women to strive to become CEOs, but as sponsors they can actively help advance women’s careers.
For Lake, an IPO is a laudable achievement. But not her next role begins, as the CEO of a publicly traded company. Lake captured that in a tweet, in which she thanked supporters and spoke of embarking on “this next chapter.”
What remains to be seen for Lake and Stitch Fix is how this next chapter plays out. But on its first day of trading as a publicly traded company, having a female CEO in the tech industry was already groundbreaking.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
You know the feeling…you’re faced with a difficult issue, and examine it exhaustively without arriving at a solution. Finally, you adopt a fresh perspective and – voilà – a resolution starts coming into focus. Sound familiar?
We experienced this epiphany at Korn Ferry during our work to create a roadmap for developing more women CEOs in the Fortune 500. Supported by a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, our just-completed research is part of the Foundation’s 100×25 initiative, which aims for at least 100 Fortune 500 women CEOs by 2015.
Instead of taking the traditional tack – focusing on barriers that impede women’s progress in their climb to the top – we decided to turn this issue upside down and analyze the success of the tiny minority of women who have actually made it to the corner office of a major company. In essence, why had they made it when so many others had not? What was the “secret sauce?”
We reached out to current and recent women CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies – bear in mind that there have been only 94 women CEOs ever in the Fortune 500 – and were thrilled with the response. Participants included 57 women CEOs, 41 of Fortune 1000 companies and 16 of large private company equivalents. Through in-depth individual interviews focused on their personal history, career, and key personality traits and drivers, and by completing Korn Ferry’s proprietary executive assessment, the women CEOs generously gave of their time, providing a view into the elements that had enabled their success.
Insights and potential paths forward bubbled to the surface as we quantified common success factors. For one thing, these women worked harder and longer to get to the top. They were four years older than male counterparts, and worked in a slightly higher number of roles, functions, companies, and industries. They were driven by achieving business results, but also by something more: a sense of purpose and their belief that their company could have a positive impact on the community, employees, and the world around them. In addition, the women CEOs had traits that set them apart, time and again, including courage, risk-taking, resilience, agility, and managing ambiguity. And they understood how to engage the power of teams.
Regrading common backgrounds, the women shared STEM and financial backgrounds that served as a springboard, enabling them to prove themselves with precise, definable outcomes that were also crucial to the success of the business. Yet, despite their evident potential, the women didn’t generally set their sights on becoming CEO; many never even considered it until a boss or mentor encouraged them. Instead, they focused on hitting business targets rather than on their personal career advancement.
While we consider all of our client work important, it has been a distinct honor and a real privilege to be intimately involved with research that has such far-reaching potential to enable needed, groundbreaking change. Companies face many novel challenges in our rapidly, ever-morphing, and increasingly competitive business environment.
Significantly, the picture that emerged from our research of women leaders included such traits and competencies as courage and the ability to successfully navigate uncertainty and ambiguity in a constantly shifting environment. This description is, in effect, also a profile of the modern leader, well aligned with key, new challenges that today’s boards are finding in short supply, but high demand.
Moving forward from the research, we are currently building out action steps, including working with a group of Beta companies to apply what we learned to design specific programs geared to cultivating more women leaders. As success builds on success, we hope this initiative will grow exponentially – like pebbles in a pond, each generating its own ripple of change – until critical mass is undeniable.
Longer-term, we envision a world where women – including my own daughter – are developed and encouraged to reach for their highest career aspirations, and where companies can fully utilize this crucial resource. After all, women comprise half of the world’s talent base, and neglecting to leverage that talent is akin to hopping to the finish line on one foot when companies should, instead, be unleashed to pursue their strategic vision at maximum speed, with every resource at their disposal.
By Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services
Over the past year, there have been numerous and increasing examples of egregious lapses in ethical judgement on the part of leaders across industry and government. These lapses, and the leaders who made them, have harmed customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The actions they took also eroded the trust we have in leaders and severally damaged the reputations of the executives involved and the organizations they work for, resulting in loss of shareholder value and the emergence of a rallying cry for sincere Leadership Trust.
Ethical lapses and toxic behaviors generally don’t happen in a vacuum; they tend to originate and thrive in autocratic, ego-driven, and hierarchical cultures that that lack both transparency and trust. These cultures are bred by leaders who speak of, but don’t embody a clear set of positive values and honest communication.
Research shows that, in these types of “bully” cultures, employees fear speaking up. At the same time, technology has created a level of transparency and democratization of information that increases potential exposure. In today’s market, where dynamics are constantly changing, losing your footing can be devastating for a company and can result in a low degree of Leadership Trust across the organization and with customers.
It has always been important for Boards and CEO’s to articulate the organization’s values clearly and consistently but today’s’ leaders must also demonstrate these values and serve as examples to all stakeholders. We know that the most successful CEO’s are driving transformations by creating cultures that are characterized by openness, honesty, and enthusiastically embrace the challenges facing the organization. Instead of presenting themselves as having all the answers, they create forums where the best ideas come forward – not just the ideas of the powerful or the favored few. These CEO’s move beyond emails and webcasts and are actively present and engaged with their employees. As Jim Hackett, the CEO of Ford recently said in a NY Times discussion, “…if you want to lead others, you must have their trust. And you can’t expect to have their trust without personal integrity.”
In place of an autocratic and fear-based culture, successful leaders are nurturing environments that are creative, inclusive, agile, and more empathetic. It all starts with leaders who express the values of the organization and establish connectivity with every layer in the organization. A great example of this is Mary Dillon, CEO of Ulta Beauty. Dillon is a hands-on manager who frequently visits stores, talks to store associates, and works the counters. She embraces inclusiveness and encourages everyone to express their views on the business. She is willing to admit when she doesn’t have the answers and she does not tolerate bad behavior. Under Dillon’s leadership, Ulta has grown to become one of the most successful retailers, in the US at a time when the industry overall is reeling.
The data is clear. A company’s level of Leadership Trust can either accelerate a business or hold a company back. Transparent, inclusive, and trust-based cultures discourage toxic behaviors and help to marshal the full power of the entire workforce toward achieving an organization’s goals. A powerful, positive culture is a huge strategic competitive advantage in today’s competitive marketplace and CEOs who optimize this through their own leadership will thrive.
By Nels Olson, Vice Chairman and Co-Leader of Korn Ferry’s Board & CEO Services Practice
The recently announced 2017 Nobel Prize winners demonstrate a variety of abilities – some of which are fascinating to examine against the qualities required to successfully lead an innovative and sustainable organization.
The physics prize was awarded to a team of scientists who cooperated to construct a device to measure distant gravitational waves and confirmed Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. In contrast, the economics prize was awarded to Richard Thaler, a trail blazer who identified what he believed were false assumptions in contemporary economics and helped to create a new field, Behavioral Finance.
How does this apply to organizations and leadership? Briefly, organizations need both innovators and collaborators. They need people who can work with new ideas and concepts to develop new products, channels, and work processes. And they need collaborators who can unite people with different perspectives to pursue a common goal.
We know that learning agility is critical to the success of individual leaders, CEOs, and organizations. Individuals with learning agility get promoted more quickly and organizations with highly agile executives have 25% higher profit margins than their peers, according to our research.
But learning agility isn’t uniform. There are five areas of agility: self-awareness, mental, people, change, and results. While all facets of learning agility are critical, especially for those in senior leadership roles, different situations and different strategies call for different mixes of learning agility.
The Nobel prize winning physicists in all likelihood exercised a high degree of “people agility” as they collaborated with many other scientists and across several institutions to build the LIGO detector that ultimately enabled them to detect waves from a collision between two massive black holes 1.3 billion years ago.
A leadership parallel is an organization that has a strategy of growth through external acquisitions. To merge organizations efficiently and get people from the two organizations to work together requires leaders with a high level of “people agility.”
Dr. Thaler, the Nobel prize winning economist, was different type of innovator who likely scored high on mental and change agility. His innovative work riled the economic establishment a bit. He told a story of a famous economist at the University of Chicago where he taught who refused to make eye contact when they passed in the hallways due to their intellectual differences.
The organizational counterpart to Dr. Thaler might be an engineer who invents a new product that makes obsolete an existing product manufactured by the organization. The rolling out of the new product and the demise of the existing product could very well create dislocation and acrimony from people invested in the older product.
In today’s fast changing economy and marketplace, many organization are asking employees to become more innovative and creative. As demonstrated by the recent Nobel prize winners, learning agility has several different flavors. Leaders who understand and can calibrate the varieties of learning agility in their organizations, will have an edge in driving innovation and growth.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
None of us have a solution to fix our world so that we’ll never witness another tragedy like what we saw this week in Las Vegas. What’s particularly troubling is that horrific events are happening with greater frequency and our society is becoming increasingly divided and insecure. While we may not have answers, as leaders, we need to think about our response.
We have choices as leaders. As we discuss the events of last week and the underlying issues, we need to account for our remarks and actions. Are we elevating the discussion and touching what is best in people or are we, perhaps unwittingly, increasing the sense of helplessness and fear among our colleagues and friends?
It’s important to affirm that there are exponentially more individuals on the planet committed to what’s right and good than there are aberrant individuals who wish to harm others. And, even in the midst of the Las Vegas tragedy, there were heroes: first responders who rushed unprotected into the ongoing carnage in an attempt to stop the shooting and save lives.
Neuro-science tells us that we’re not at our best when we’re afraid. We fall back into a fight or flight mindset from which it’s difficult to access our best thoughts and formulate effective, creative solutions to the problems confronting us. We are living in an era that requires our best thinking and our most creative solutions. We cannot afford to stay in a mindset of fear.
Leadership requires courage. Aristotle called courage the first virtue, because it makes all of the other virtues possible. A courageous leader will face difficult problems and move forward despite opposition, incomplete information, and risk of failure.
The best leaders are also vulnerable. A vulnerable leader is willing to stay open, does not insist on being the smartest person in the room, and will listen and thoughtfully embrace the perspectives and opinions of others.
I’m reminded of a quote: “Not all those who wander are lost” from The Lord of the Rings. There are no easy answers to the Las Vegas shooting or other difficult issues confronting our society. If we face problems with courage and vulnerability and always seek to bring out the best in others, we’re not lost. Solutions will emerge.
Albert Einstein once said, “How do I work? I grope.” It’s extraordinary that one of the greatest scientists in history would use the word “grope” to describe his work process. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that for all of us.
When we’re operating from a fight-or-flight/boxed-in mindset, we’re unable to generate the breakthrough ideas and discoveries needed to transform the world – or heal evil. If we wish to move forward from the tragedies in Las Vegas and elsewhere, we will need to avoid blame, simplistic responses, and divisiveness and explore new avenues, remaining curious about different points of view. We must be willing to “grope” or “wander” as we find a better way.
Society may very well be at a turning point. As leaders at this critical time, let us endeavor to build trust, affirm what is best in all of us, and with courage and humility help to unite people around enduring principles of hope and a common purpose.
By Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services
Inspiring trust is arguably the most important attribute of a great leader. When employees trust their CEO, they are far more likely to embrace the organization’s mission and contribute beyond the requirements of their jobs. Conversely, when CEO trust is breached, employees become less engaged and less inclined to go the extra mile.
Employees have a certain level of discretionary energy that they either choose to apply to their roles at work or to their outside interests. Research has shown that organizations which can tap into employees’ discretionary energy on a sustained basis generate higher levels of performance which creates a powerful competitive advantage.
Discretionary energy cannot be demanded, bought, or guaranteed. While organizations have often structured financial incentives for certain initiatives and/or goals, engagement over the long term is much more dependent on trust than simply pay alone.
Over the past month, I have talked with several successful CEO’s who believe that a relationship of trust and shared accountability with their employees is one of their distinct competitive advantages. IN addition, their organizations have consistently outpaced their industry competitors in profitability and growth over several years. The companies have been marked by low turnover, more impactful innovation and higher productivity.
Witness Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Immediately after becoming CEO in 2014, she faced a crisis when it was discovered that managers at GM allegedly concealed faulty ignition switches that caused multiple deaths and injuries. Barra responded very differently than how GM had previously handled events like this in the past. She apologized and set up a compensation fund for victims and their families prior to liability being established. Moreover, Barra used the event to transform GM’s culture to become more customer-focused and to ignite a change in strategic direction.
When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft, the company was known for a combative culture and intense corporate infighting. He urged his direct reports to read the book, Nonviolent Communication, which extols the power of empathy, self-awareness, and authenticity, an action which clearly indicated that Nadella planned to transform Microsoft into a more collaborative workplace. Since then, Microsoft has generated more than $250 billion in market value, surprising many analysts who thought the company’s best days were behind it.
We have observed consistently that when a CEO is trusted to put the interests of customers and employees first – as opposed to their personal gain – it unleashes a surge of energy that impacts culture, innovation, collaboration, and day-to-day decisions throughout the organization.
Conversely, there should be no surprise that performance suffers when organizations abuse the trust of customers or consumers. Witness the challenges that have faced companies in the news such as Uber, Wells Fargo, and even Equifax. Broadly speaking, when CEOs operate with their own set of rules, behave badly or ask their team to do more with less while earning more themselves, is it any wonder that engagement and morale declines, profits suffer, innovation stalls, and voluntary turnover rises?
With the challenges posed by unrelenting technological and marketplace change, those CEO’s who inspire trust in their employees and can tap into the discretionary energy in a meaningful and honest fashion will clearly separate themselves from the competition.
And what can you do to raise it? (*crisis quotient)
By Nels Olson, Vice Chairman and Co-Leader of Korn Ferry’s Board & CEO Services Practice
Much the way the current, unprecedentedly severe storm season of floods and hurricanes reminds us of our communities’ vulnerabilities and the need to be prepared, corporate crises have a way of stress-testing organizations for weak spots that may need shoring up.
President Roosevelt was the quintessential crisis leader: A wartime president, he was renowned for his communication skills evident in his “fireside chats.” He was able to both reassure and mobilize a frightened nation into a highly successful war effort, gaining crucial cooperation toward a common goal. Not every leader can be an FDR, but all can build greater awareness of what their organizations need from them – and what shareholders deserve – during trying periods.
Ask yourself these four questions to learn how capable you are of leading your organization through a crisis and, if you fall short, what you can do to raise your CQ:
1. Am I communicating what I need to, and how, throughout the organization? Inherent in the shift from merely focusing on shareholders to the broader stakeholder group is the recognition that employees also have critical needs that must be met if the organization is to continue to function effectively and meet its strategic goals. When a crisis strikes that will likely negatively affect some, or all, employees – such as a merger or downsizing that will result in layoffs – make sure you have a plan to communicate what will be happening, when, how, and to whom. CEOs that wait too long to communicate these details for fear of disrupting operations ironically ensure just the opposite effect. Amid uncertainty about the organization’s future and their own, employees have difficulty focusing on their work. Productivity and morale can plummet as the rumor mill runs amok and people seek higher, safer ground – perhaps at another organization.
2. Am I a good role model? The CEO is the role-model-in-chief and has to carefully monitor not only what he or she overtly communicates, but the inadvertent use of symbols and even gestures. During tough times, employees want to be reassured that leaders are down in the trenches alongside them, shouldering their share of the burden. Does the CEO say one thing and do another? Tough talk, for instance, about belt-tightening measures that will impact all while being seen leaving on a private jet for a weekend getaway will not go down well. Yes, people will take notice and, no, it will not have a positive impact. If the cozy sweater or the baseball cap adopted by so many political and corporate leaders during crises seems like over-playing your hand, do what is comfortable and authentic for you. Strive to convey informal confidence and reassurance.
3. Am I inspiring confidence and loyalty? If layoffs become a necessity, for example, how are those who will be let go treated? And what about the “survivors?” Again, employees will take note, and the results may accrue to the organization’s benefit if done right. Are those who must leave treated with respect and empathy or like criminals and pariahs? Acknowledging how people are feeling, whether they are leaving or remaining, and why certain measures are necessary, will go a long way toward building credibility and loyalty. And in a world where disgruntled current and former employees have ample public opportunities to share ill feelings, this approach will keep that static to a minimum.
4. Am I painting a picture of a more hopeful future? It’s easier for leaders to see what lies ahead than for those working further down in the organization with a more limited perspective. People want to know the truth, what the future holds and how their individual lives will be impacted. Regular communications that update people on organizational and personal status, and how that is likely to change, help to allay fears and anxiety that block individual and team performance. If you can see beyond the current crisis, be certain to share a view of a more positive future.
Smart leaders don’t wait for a crisis to strike, but prepare well ahead in anticipation of a variety of bumps and detours, big and small, on their strategic journey, to ensure a tight, closely aligned organization. For those to whom the softer side of leadership doesn’t come naturally, there are remedies, including personal coaching, that can help to build these essential skills. Leaders should work on bolstering their own deficits and consciously building a resilient organization: one that performs well when the sun is shining, and can also weather the storm on rougher seas.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
Culture and culture change are hot topics these days, whether related to countries or corporations. We need look no further than the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, or corporate difficulties at Wells Fargo and Uber for examples of what dysfunctional cultures look like, but how is culture created? It’s certainly not by accident. Whether the culture is one that yields positive or negative results, it is but the manifestation of the values and behaviors that have created it over time with consistent reinforcement.
If we really aspire to create a national culture in which respect can thrive and diversity is valued and celebrated, we need to take a step back and seriously consider what patterns of behavior will make this a reality. The same is true for any company culture, and is exactly why the saying “culture eats strategy for lunch,” is so important and apt.
This topic has been very much on our minds of late because of current events, and it was powerfully underscored in a recent meeting with a client. During the meeting with the CEO and key members of the executive team, we were led through the company’s strategy and key strategic imperatives. One of the key pillars of the future strategy was “cultural transformation.” As we discussed precisely what they meant by “cultural transformation,” one of the executives made a comment, simple yet profound, that I kept thinking about long after the meeting ended.
“I’m puzzled,” he said, “when cultural transformation is discussed as a strategic objective. Culture is an outcome, not a strategy” He continued by observing, “behaviors are more accurately the drivers or strategic priorities. Culture reflects the outcome of those behaviors.” While this executive’s comments may seem obvious, the way in which culture is created isn’t always apparent, and an understanding of it is crucially important for effective culture change. Culture may be the desired end state, but we must recognize it is the specific, desired behaviors that the culture comprises that will drive the desired end results. This executive was rightly suggesting that the area of strategic focus should not be on the surface effect, but on the levers required for cultural transformation. Thus, the place to start is by elucidating the behaviors that will define your organization (or country), and then planning methodically to ensure that they are nurtured to attain the desired cultural outcome.
Because an effective culture – the basis for great leadership, innovation, and other key, positive attributes – forms the essential foundation for any successful organization, it’s worth thinking about how those desired behaviors can be pinpointed and shaped. Every day we work with clients to identify the behaviors and characteristics – some hard-wired and some malleable – that will be required for future leaders to successfully achieve strategic objectives. Increasingly we are finding that many of the essential attributes that correlate with success for a particular company need to be identified and nurtured, even used to rule out future leaders who are determined not to have the “right stuff.”
All of this innovative research and work with promising talent is for naught, however, if top leaders themselves don’t exemplify and model the positive behaviors that will constitute the building blocks for a desired culture. We see evidence all around us that “do as I say, not as I do” is not a formula for success as a corporate leader.
“Cultural transformation,” is a crucial, stated objective for many companies and their boards now as they recognize the competitive edge an effective culture can make in the marketplace and competing for talent. Leaders committed to cultural transformation must make a conscious effort to steer things in the right direction. That means speaking up loudly and clearly to share their core values, and making sure they not only live those values, but drive awareness of the rewards and penalties attached to how well or not well others adhere to them. Messages, direct and indirect, about desired culture have to be unequivocal and sincere, because people will ultimately sniff out the truth, separating fact from fiction and distinguishing mere lip service and what is actually tolerated from what should be emulated. For their part, boards need to ask CEOs and their teams what behaviors are helping to drive the strategy and how those are being reinforced if they hope to execute on strategic objectives.
The sum of all these messages, patterns, and behaviors is the resulting culture, and, for better or worse, nations and organizations ultimately get the cultures they reward and deserve. But given an understanding of cultural transformation, and the necessary steps to make it happen, any organization should be able to identify the behaviors that will create the culture to best serve its strategy. Because when it comes right down to it, culture eats strategy for lunch every time.
By Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services
Last week saw the passing of a great man and an exceptional leader, Ara Parseghian. Journalists will write about Parseghian as the legendary Notre Dame football coach who led the team to a period of grid-iron dominance after a period of “underperformance”. In fact, it was his earlier coaching success at Northwestern University that led him to South Bend in the mid 1960’s. All of this is true; Parseghian’s performance record and innovative approach to coaching ,on and off the field, speaks for itself.
As a leader, Ara embraced the need to deliver. His performance was on public display every Saturday from the months of September through December for years. He was critiqued and or celebrated weekly and sometimes daily, by his direct superiors as well as thousands of game day fans, or “evaluators.” He owned and embraced the accountability of his position with passion and intensity.
But Parseghian was more than simply a leader who “hit his numbers”. He was a man who instilled a sense of purpose not only among his players, but to the broader community well beyond the field of play. He felt strongly that a key part of his role was to inspire his players to see “what they can become versus what they are”. One former colleague suggested that Ara was not just a coach, but a leader and a mentor who “invented desire “. He viewed his role as that of ambassador who served the alumni and sports community at large by his actions , passion and commitment. This progressive leadership style established his legacy even before he retired from Notre Dame and continued with his work for Niemann- Pick Foundation.
In contrast to many CEO’s in the news these days, Parseghian represented the type of executive leader who understood that to achieve the performance expected, he needed to create a team that believed in the overall mission and their capabilities, but equally important, they believed in each other. He demanded excellence in execution, but he also spent the time to know his players personally and what it took to motivate them individually. He commented that his role as the leader of these young adults to create a sense of “harmonized unity” that optimized their collective performance. Parseghian embodied a level of emotional intelligence long before we knew it was a key differentiating characteristic of the most successful leaders, yet his record stands on its own.
At a time where the humanity of leadership appears to be in short supply, we celebrate the man who left a legacy that inspired the lives of many across generations and circumstances.
Few founders stay with their companies for the duration. According to research conducted by Harvard business professor Noam Wasserman, 50% of founders lasted less than four years and fewer than 25% of founders led their companies’ initial public offerings.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
As Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of online retailer Stitch Fix, becomes the only female leader of a tech IPO in 2017, her history points to lessons for other female leaders – the importance of both a STEM background and a driving sense of purpose.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
You know the feeling…you’re faced with a difficult issue, and examine it exhaustively without arriving at a solution. Finally, you adopt a fresh perspective and – voilà – a resolution starts coming into focus. Sound familiar? We experienced this epiphany at Korn Ferry during our work to create a roadmap for developing more women CEOs in the Fortune 500. Supported by a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, our just-completed research is part of the Foundation’s 100×25 initiative, which aims for at least 100 Fortune 500 women CEOs by 2015.
By Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services
Over the past year, there have been numerous and increasing examples of egregious lapses in ethical judgement on the part of leaders across industry and government. These lapses, and the leaders who made them, have harmed customers, employees, and other stakeholders. The actions they took also eroded the trust we have in leaders and severally damaged the reputations of the executives involved and the organizations they work for, resulting in loss of shareholder value and the emergence of a rallying cry for sincere Leadership Trust.
By Nels Olson, Vice Chairman and Co-Leader of Korn Ferry’s Board & CEO Services Practice
The recently announced 2017 Nobel Prize winners demonstrate a variety of abilities – some of which are fascinating to examine against the qualities required to successfully lead an innovative and sustainable organization.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
None of us have a solution to fix our world so that we’ll never witness another tragedy like what we saw this week in Las Vegas. What’s particularly troubling is that horrific events are happening with greater frequency and our society is becoming increasingly divided and insecure. While we may not have answers, as leaders, we need to think about our response.
By Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services
Inspiring trust is arguably the most important attribute of a great leader. When employees trust their CEO, they are far more likely to embrace the organization’s mission and contribute beyond the requirements of their jobs. Conversely, when CEO trust is breached, employees become less engaged and less inclined to go the extra mile.
By Nels Olson, Vice Chairman and Co-Leader of Korn Ferry’s Board & CEO Services Practice
And what can you do to raise it? (*crisis quotient)
Much the way the current, unprecedentedly severe storm season of floods and hurricanes reminds us of our communities’ vulnerabilities and the need to be prepared, corporate crises have a way of stress-testing organizations for weak spots that may need shoring up.
By Jane Edison Stevenson, Vice Chairman, Board & CEO Services
Culture and culture change are hot topics these days, whether related to countries or corporations. We need look no further than the recent tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia, or corporate difficulties at Wells Fargo and Uber for examples of what dysfunctional cultures look like, but how is culture created?
By Tierney Remick, Vice Chairman, Board and CEO Services
Last week saw the passing of a great man and an exceptional leader, Ara Parseghian. Journalists will write about Parseghian as the legendary Notre Dame football coach who led the team to a period of grid-iron dominance after a period of “underperformance”. In fact, it was his earlier coaching success at Northwestern University that led him to South Bend in the mid 1960’s. All of this is true; Parseghian’s performance record and innovative approach to coaching ,on and off the field, speaks for itself.
