BUS 4993 Grantham University Leadership & Strategy Execution Business Capstone

  

Read the following assigned articles: Minimu 300-400

Delk,
C. W. (2019). Leadership: A Simple Situational Approach: Strategic
Leadership for a practical leadership style. Leadership Excellence,
36(5), 14–16.

Braun, E. (2016). Multiplying Your Results with Culture. Leader to Leader, 2016(79), 6–11.

BLANCHARD, K. (2020). High-Involvement Change Leadership. Chief Learning Officer, 19(4), 15.

After reading these articles, address the following questions:

Discuss how managerial leadership can foster a high-performance culture.

What is the role of managerial leadership in changing a corporate culture that is problematic?

Identify leadership styles and organizational culture that helps with strategy execution.

Discuss how COVID-19 global pandemic poses a challenge for organizations to develop a sound strategy.

LEADERSHIP
High-Involvement Change Leadership
Building commitment to change • BY KEN BLANCHARD
I
t’s an understatement to say that organizational change
creates stress for everyone involved — we’ve all heard
the dismal statistic about how 70 percent of change initiatives fail. So how do you take the reality of change and
make it more likely to be successful — and bearable?
It helps to think about it from the perspective of
people who work in your organization. Having a highinvolvement leadership strategy is the best way to build
people’s commitment to change.
Many change efforts derail when top executives
believe announcing the change is the same as implementing it. People hearing such an announcement can
immediately feel resistance — not so much to the change
itself but to the feeling of being controlled. They need
their concerns and questions to be addressed.
We have found that when learning about an organizational change, people usually experience five predictable,
sequential stages of concern.
Stage 1: information concerns. First, people want
to understand exactly what is being proposed. They don’t
want to be sold on the upcoming change; they want to
be told about it. Common questions include, “What is
the change? What do we hope to accomplish? Why do
we need to do this now? What’s wrong with the way
things are?”
People need to know what the change is about, why
it’s important, what success looks like and whether it will
be worth the effort. Allow them to voice their concerns
and have their questions answered. Why? Because in the
absence of factual communication, people often create
their own reality — and speculation becomes fact.
Stage 2: personal concerns. Once they have been
given basic information about the change, people tend
to turn inward and think about personal concerns. They
may be focused on what they will lose, not what they
will gain. They may be thinking, “How will I be affected
by this change? Will I benefit from it? Will I be able to
learn what I need to know?”
People with personal concerns need to be assured
they will have a voice in planning and decision-making.
Listen to their personal concerns in a way that lets them
know they have been heard. Help them feel inspired
and excited about the future and their role in the change.
Stage 3: implementation concerns. At this stage,
people begin to think about the process of implementing
the change. They are wondering, “How are we going
to do this? Is the plan realistic? How important is this
change compared with other priorities? How will we
measure success?”
People with implementation concerns are focused on
details. They need to know that challenges and obstacles
will be addressed and that they will have the time, support
and resources they need to do their part. Help them
develop confidence in the organization’s ability — and
their own — to successfully implement the change.
Stage 4: impact concerns. When the change goes
live and anxiety has somewhat calmed, impact concerns
arise. Folks want to know, “Is the change working for the
organization? For my team? For me? Is the effort worth
it? How do we get undecided people on board?”
People with impact concerns need to see proof that
the change is reducing the gap between what is and what
could be. They also need to hear and learn from colleagues who are already having success with the change.
At this stage, people sell themselves on the value of the
change and can be a positive influence on those who
are still undecided.
Stage 5: refinement concerns. After most people
are on board and experiencing success with the change,
fine-tuning gets underway. People begin to ask, “How
can we do this better or faster? What have we learned?
Do you trust us to lead this change going forward?”
Ken Blanchard is chief
spiritual officer of The
Ken Blanchard Cos. and
co-author of “Collaboration Begins with You: Be
a Silo Buster.”
In the absence of factual
communication, people often
create their own reality.
People with refinement concerns want to be entrusted
with the process. They need to believe their involvement
in continuous improvement of the change is valued and
that they can be counted on to manage the change in
the future. In fact, people at this stage are often already
formulating the next change.
The more you include people in looking at options
and alternative ideas, the easier it will be to build the
business case for the next round of change. Resolving concerns as change evolves builds trust, surfaces challenges,
gives people opportunities to influence the process and
allows them to refocus energies on the change.
When leading through change, what you are changing is important — but involving people in the change
can be the difference between failure and success. CLO
Chief Learning Officer • May/June 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 15
Copyright of Chief Learning Officer is the property of Human Capital Media and its content
may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright
holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.
H E S S E L B E I N
&
C O M P A N Y
MULTIPLYING
YOUR RESULTS
WITH CULTURE
b y E d u a r d o Br a un
D
uring the course of my career, I have learned powerful lessons from some of the
world’s greatest leaders. I am an industrial engineer by training, and I was deeply
involved in project management. I went on to study finance at the Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania, and after that I worked in management
consulting doing strategy assignments. Over the past fifteen years I have traveled around
the world, interviewing leaders. As a result of those conversations I learned the power of
culture.
In one such conversation ten years ago with former General Electric (GE) chairman
and CEO Jack Welch, I asked him what had been his biggest professional mistake.
He responded without hesitation, “Buying an investment bank.” “Why is that?” I
asked. “Because of the culture,” Jack replied. “I didn’t understand the culture. I did the
numbers but didn’t look at the culture.” So here’s the most admired CEO of the twentieth
century—the man who took GE from a $14 billion market cap to a $400 billion market
cap in the biggest value creation in history, and he felt he had failed because he did not
understand a culture. He was able to manage businesses from jet engines to light bulbs to
medical equipment, but he didn’t understand the culture of an investment bank.
That was for me a Eureka moment. I have worked in hundreds of management consulting
projects. Everything was about strategy and the hard variables, and Jack Welch was telling
me that the soft variables made him fail. But in reality, the soft variables that led to Welch’s
failure with investment bank were the same variables that made him succeed at General
Electric. It was the culture of winning in General Electric that was behind his success.
6
LEADER TO LEADER
The Dual Framework
Many years and thousands of hours of interviews down
the road, I laid out a dual framework to understand and
manage an organization, which is shown graphically in
Figure 1.
In the bottom half of the framework, in a grey area we
call “Business as Usual,” we have strategy, marketing,
operations, finance, logistics, accounting, information
technology, human resources, and so forth—all the
typical business functions. Each one of those functions
has its own framework within which to understand
and analyze it. And in all those frameworks, the human
being is absent. You might have it in a job description
or in a performance evaluation; you might have it as a
“customer” in marketing, but the passion, creativity, and
wholehearted soul of the human being is absent. So that’s
why—in the top half of the framework—we add vision,
people, communications, decision making, and culture,
items We say that these elements make up leadership.
Leadership becomes the soft variables that we take care of
when we have the time, when the real important stuff—
the hard variables—have been taken care of.
Let me break up that leadership half of the framework
into five key roles: Establishing the vision; managing
the people; fostering communications practices;
establishing a decision-making system; and finally,
creating and managing the culture of the organization.
That was for me a Eureka
moment.
If we assume that “culture” is the synthesis of all the
leadership variables—as strategy is for business as
usual—the two pillars to create value in any business
are strategy and culture. They represent the hard and
soft variables respectively.
Culture can multiply results. Whether you are working
for an NGO (nongovernmental organization) and your
metric is the number of members, or you work for a
for-profit company and it is sales and the bottom line,
managing your culture can multiply your results. I
prove this using some research and then the testimony
of great business leaders.
Multiplying Your Results with
Culture
The Great Place to Work® Institute has conducted
research showing that companies that are ranked higher
F I G U R E 1 . TH E DUA L FRA ME W ORK OF TH E ORGA N I ZA TI ON
WINTER 2016
7
in its listing perform two times better than the average
of the industry—they provide double the returns
of other companies, they experience 65 percent less
turnover, and they have happier people. Although
culture is not the same as the best environments or
the best companies to work for, the three are certainly
highly correlated.
An illustrative example is the movement called
Conscious Capitalism. Inspired by businesspeople
like John Mackey, cofounder and CEO of Whole
Foods; Bill George, Harvard Business School professor
and former CEO of Medtronics; Kip Tindell, the
Container Store’s CEO; and Howard Schultz, founder
and CEO of Starbucks, the Conscious Capitalism
movement started more than fifteen years ago. The
four principles of Conscious Capitalism are higher
purpose, conscious leadership, conscious culture, and
stakeholder orientation—all elements that are part of
cultures centered in the employees and the well-being
of all stakeholders—including the planet.
But the financial results of conducting business in such
a manner are impressive: The eighteen publicly traded
companies out of the twenty-eight outperformed the
S&P 500 index by a factor of 10.5 over the years
1996−2011.
In a recent interview, Tindell told me about his
company’s employees-first culture. “We love our
employees,” he told me. “They are all extraordinary
folks. We support the effort of helping them becoming
the best they can be at work . . . and at home!”
Let me add the testimonies of other leaders who created
great organizations. One is Tony Hsieh, founder and
CEO of Zappos.com, the online shoe company. He had
first founded a software company—LinkExchange—
that he wanted to turn into the best software company
in his segment. He had therefore decided to hire the
best engineers and software developers, the best people,
the brightest and most intelligent people. But in our
interview he said, “I woke up one morning and realized
that I didn’t want to go to work to that company; I
had hired the brightest but not the people I wanted to
work with.” He decided to sell the company; Microsoft
bought it for $265 million, and then Hsieh moved on
8
LEADER TO LEADER
to Zappos.com, a small retailer at that point, became
the CEO, and turned the company into one populated
by people he enjoyed working with. He was the first to
say to me, “Culture is more important than strategy.”
This came as a total surprise to me. Culture is more
important than strategy! And through culture he turned
Zappos into a $1 billion-plus organization in sales in
fewer than ten years; it was acquired by Amazon in a
deal valued at $1.2 billion.
Another example is Herb Kelleher’s Southwest Airlines,
one of the most successful companies in the past
forty years. Between 1972 and 2002, Southwest had
the highest return on investment—not only among
airlines, but among the other S&P 500 companies.
That’s an amazing accomplishment. I asked him what
was the secret to such a success. In Kelleher’s own
words:
I always thought that our esprit de corps, the
attitude of our employees, was one of our biggest
competitive advantages. You know, people like to
be treated nice, they like to be treated well and our
people do that from the goodness of their hearts.
And that is our advantage over other carriers.
Short and, simple, esprit de corps and attitude were the
biggest competitive advantages. In my years in graduate
school at Wharton and working for Booz Allen in
management consulting, I never once heard attitude or
esprit de corps as competitive advantages!
“Do you know what is the difference between strategy
and culture?,” Kelleher continued. “Well, when
Napoleon was in Paris in a room with all his generals,
around a table, discussing how to attack Russia, that
is strategy. But what makes 1 million men march to
Moscow? That is culture!”
Culture is the engine, the propeller. What made those
men march to Moscow for their leader? A sense of
pride? Of success? Of duty? All these are emotions—
not reasons. Emotions are a deep component of
culture. By the way, the word emotions comes from
“motion”—what makes you move!
Lou Gerstner, a former management consultant who
rescued IBM from the brink of bankruptcy, came to the
Emotions are a deep
component of culture.
company thinking that analysis and strategy was all that
really mattered, but then he realized that “corporate
culture is not part of the game: it is the game.”
Carlos Brito is the CEO of AB InBev, a Brazilian
company that is today the number-one beer company
in the world. He has purchased many beer companies
around the world, and he says, “The only thing that
can explain differences in performance is culture.”
Jim Collins, in the prologue of Cristiane Correa’s
book Dream Big, which tells the story of Ab InBev
says, “Culture is not part of the strategy, it is the
strategy.”
But how can we define culture?
Defining Culture
Culture is often defined as the “why we work” and
“how we work,” or more colloquially, “This is how we
do things around here.” I agree with this definition, but
I think it can be misleading. If you think that setting
objectives and goals and defining processes and job
descriptions in the “right way” will result in the right
culture, you are totally wrong.
So how can we best define culture? By its impact. A
positive culture is “all those things” that generate the
following emotions in the members of an organization:
sense of purpose, passion, sense of community, hope,
self-confidence, self-esteem, trust, pride, engagement,
happiness, and other positive states of mind. If you
are able to create these effects in your employees, you
are taking advantage of all the human capital that is
nonintellectual or professional.
When you are able to wake up these emotions, these
states of mind, in your employees, you’ll accomplish
amazing things. Individual and group performance
soars.
The Five Key Roles of a
Leader
Leaders have the power—and the responsibility—to
wake up the emotions of their people. There are five
key roles that enable this, and depending on how the
leader performs them, will shape the organization’s
culture. I propose a question for each role.
1. Establishing the vision. What is the dream? Create a sense of purpose. It must be something that
makes us jump out of bed every morning and run
to work—and don’t dare tell me the dream is to
increase sales by 10 percent. The dream must be
challenging but attainable; something that when
accomplished as a group also brings a specific reward to each of the individuals.
2. Managing the people. Do you deeply and genuinely
care about your people? This doesn’t mean defining
tasks, job descriptions, or annual objectives. This
means helping people to grow both personally and
professionally, to identify their talents and develop
them. Define your organization’s values by the
way you treat your employees and behave accordingly. Coordinate the strengths of every person so
that the team’s performance extends well beyond
the sum of individual talent.
3. Fostering communication practices. Do you connect
with your team? Communication is about ideas,
emotions, and actions. You need to share the vision and the dream, and you need to give feedback
and direction continually. But you must also listen
carefully to make sure every person knows his or
her voice counts. And you should go beyond ideas
and information and share emotions: inspiring
your passion, lighting up the fire in people to
achieve their dreams, and being empathic with
your team. And never forget that words without
WINTER 2016
9
actions are empty. Walk your talk! When you foster communication you enable people to connect,
to bond, to build relationships of trust. And that is
tremendously powerful.
4. Establishing a decision-making system. Do you
empower your people? The best leaders delegate,
support their team members in their decisions,
and then facilitate learning from decisions taken—
both good and bad. Learning makes people grow.
Identify the behaviors you want to drive decisions
and make sure they are consistent with your strategy. Go down into the trenches and back up your
people with your presence in tough times, but
above all, empower them.
5. Creating and managing the culture of the organization. Are you proud, engaged, and happy? This
requires creating and managing a culture of the
group of people that work together in an organization through the first four roles.
Cisco’s John Chambers supported those roles when he
said in a World Business Forum keynote speech:
I am supposed to do four things reasonably well.
The first is to determine the vision and strategy
of my company based upon the input from my
customers and my leadership team. The second is
to develop and recruit the leaders to implement
that vision and differentiated strategy. The third—
and I didn’t understand this as a new business
leader—is to develop a culture, and is such
an important part of your success or not as an
organization. And the fourth is to communicate
The dream must be
challenging but attainable.
10
LEADER TO LEADER
Learning makes people
grow.
all of the above. As simple as it sounds, that would
be the score card I would use [to evaluate my
performance].
Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, once said
the same thing regarding culture: “I didn’t know that it
was so important,” and he adds that everything he does
now is a reinforcement of culture.
My suggestion to you is to be the new CEO, and by
CEO I mean chief emotions officer. In sports, you
cannot have a team that is not motivated, that is not
inspired. It is the same in the business world. Emotions,
states of mind, moods, and spirits are very important.
I’m not saying that strategy and the hard variables
are not important. What I am saying is that you are
likely underutilizing the passion and energy of people.
Imagine what you can do if, in addition to managing
the hard variables, you can ignite people’s hearts to
deeply engage with your organization.
In Summary
Culture can multiply results! Culture is about states
of mind, emotions, using all that energy that human
beings have. Use the five key questions to remind
yourself of how to unleash the emotions of your
workforce. You can pin them on your desk and every
day ask one of those five questions. Within six months,
people will ask what happened to you—you are a
different person.
Leadership is a personal journey, never ending, but you
are already well along in your journey. Just keep going!
As the director of the HSM Group—the first
global multimedia management company—
Eduardo Braun has traveled the globe
interviewing world-renowned personalities from
political leaders such as Bill Clinton and Mikhail
Gorbachev to business gurus such as former Disney
CEO Michael Eisner and film producer George
Lucas. An astute businessman himself, he was the
CEO of Intermanagers.com, director of the HSM
Group, and hosts Lideres and HSM Specials,
television shows dedicated to leadership and
management.
WINTER 2016
11
Copyright of Leader to Leader is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may
not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.
FEATURE
Leadership: A Simple
Situational Approach
Strategic Leadership for a
practical leadership style
By Christy Wilson Delk
T
here are probably as many ideas and opinions
about leadership as there are truly great leaders,
which is to say, there are a lot. Frankly, I was not the
kind of owner-operator-girl-boss leader that had much
time for the trendy stuff.
If you are looking for a practical leadership style,
Strategic Leadership may be the one for you.
Strategic Leadership worked very well for me for
fifteen fulfilling years of business ownership. Now,
as a business professor, I continue to believe in
this leadership model for those who are hands-on,
engaged, or overwhelmed and find themselves
wondering if what they are doing is impactful, or
even leadership.
I first contemplated the constructs of Strategic
Leadership during the early years of owning a
franchised Kids ‘R’ Kids Academy. As the business
grew, so did the complications and the demands.
Over time, with trepidation, motivation and a few steps
back, I found that this simple model works.
Two Main Premises
●● You are one person with one great big job.
Being strategic and focused on how you lead
is vital to your success and the success of
your organization.
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com
MAY 2019
14
●● One year at a time. Focus on short-term plans and
opportunities. Don’t ignore long-term goals and
needs of the organization, but concentrate on what
you need, want and must accomplish this year.
Three Situational Categories
Few leadership articles or books talk about when
to use specific leadership strategies. Knowing and
recognizing when to use a strategy situationally
can have a huge impact on how quickly you resolve
a problem and how you move your business or
department forward in a given year. The three
categories are:
1. Unplanned Leadership – What will you do when
the unexpected (and sometimes the unthinkable)
happens?
2. Responsive Leadership – How will you respond
to the opportunities (sometimes disguised as
challenges) that are presented?
3. Planned Leadership – Have an intentional
and deliberate plan for how you will lead key
stakeholder groups.
The objective is to help you identify and properly
lead through each of these strategic categories so
that your customers, staff, superiors and community
recognize you as a strong leader with whom they want
to associate, do business with and refer others to.
Submit Your Articles
Leadership: A Simple Situational Approach
One – Unplanned Leadership
Two – Responsive Leadership
One of the greatest opportunities for you to display
leadership is by what you do when the unexpected
happens. This is your chance to step up—and one you
don’t want to miss, however unnerving it may be.
If Unplanned Leadership is what strong Leaders do
as something happens, Responsive Leadership is
what happens in the aftermath of something that has
happened or in response to an opportunity.
My leadership was tested very early in my ownership
days. Here’s my favorite Unplanned Leadership story.
Here is one example from my personal experience
that almost every manager or owner can relate to.
Who Is Driving the Bus?
Letting Good People Go
It was a Friday afternoon late in the fall of 1998. I
opened my Kids ‘R’ Kids Learning Academy franchise
in August and things were going well. That is, until
Alex walked in. Alex was my guy. My “go-to” employee.
I recruited him several months before I opened, and
he was an integral part of the operation. He drove the
bus, performed maintenance duties, and was a team
leader for the before and after-school program.
Alex had bad news. Really bad news. Friday was his
last day. Today Friday, not “two weeks from now so
I might have time to find his replacement” Friday.
Another (non-franchised) center owner, closer to
home, offered him a job he couldn’t refuse, and he
was to report on Monday. I never saw it coming. Panic
swept through the office. Who was going to drive
the bus on Monday? A driver for any early childhood
program has to be screened and properly documented
to meet Florida regulations. This was not a “Just hire
a bus driver off the internet” type of problem.
The long story is in my book. The short story is
that I learned how and was permitted to drive a
54-passenger bus over the weekend and rolled up
Monday morning at 7 am with a smile on my face to
cheers from the staff, children and parents.
That story became part of our organizational
culture and showed clients and staff my leadership
fortitude. It also showed me the power of Unplanned
Leadership.
Will you be ready when a situation calls for Unplanned
Leadership? Will you recognize it for what it is and
seize the moment? It may come when you least
expect it.
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com
MAY 2019
15
One of my favorite managers, Julie, had proven herself
to be extremely hard-working, bright, and “tough
enough” to manage over 50 employees when she
asked about hiring her sister for a teaching position.
I didn’t have a formal policy to address this and said,
“Sure, let’s interview her” and then, “Sure, let’s hire
her.” The sister also proved herself to be a hard worker
and was well-liked by the children and parents—when
she was there. The problem was, she was missing
a lot of work. I was aware of the reason, and while
empathetic, I was running a business and excessive
absenteeism was well-documented throughout the
center and not permitted.
I was not the only one who had noticed. By the time I
seriously discussed my concern with Julie, the staff
had started rumbling about favoritism towards her
sister. Within months, morale plunged and Julie lost
the respect of the staff. Loss of respect for me was
next. By the time I insisted she terminate her sister,
my inner leader was shouting, “Start looking for Julie’s
replacement!” because of another issue that I was
ready to respond to. I let Julie go and before long the
ship had been righted with high morale intact.
I noticed a distinct added measure of leadership
respect and loyalty from my staff, who knew I’d made
the difficult decision to respond. That’s the power of
Responsive Leadership.
Will you be ready to A-C-T when Responsive Leadership
is needed? If you have work to do in this area, take heart;
you are in the majority. Responsive Leadership is a
skill-set that can be developed, and it is never too late to
start.
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Leadership: A Simple Situational Approach
Three – Planned Leadership
As much as you want to or think you can, you cannot
lead everyone equally and purposefully every year
and expect to see positive outcomes in every area.
It’s simply too big a job, and trying to do that leads to
stress, burnout, and serious health or family issues.
Instead of casting a huge leadership net that likely has
plenty of holes, be the type of leader your staff needs
and craves, and the leader your business requires—
this year. In other words, strategically plan your
leadership.
Design an annual plan that focuses on 3 or 4 major
stakeholders and be specific. For example, as my
young management students learned last evening,
employees and clients are key stakeholders in every
enterprise. However, focusing on all employees or all
clients is not specific enough for your leadership plan.
One question you might ask is who within that
stakeholder group can have the highest impact on
your revenue or another important company goal.
The answer to that question is where you will focus
your Planned Leadership resources and capital for
that stakeholder group. And not just focus—you are
going to Go Big. Going Big is what will make a real
difference because people will notice what you do.
Going Big is how strategic leaders invest and grow
their leadership capital. In other words, it has to count
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com
MAY 2019
16
And it all starts with one question: Who, specifically,
are you going to lead this year?
The first answer to that question should be yourself.
Be sure to include your own professional goal in the
annual plan.
And don’t forget to make it public. That alone will
raise your stock. Then A-C-T!
What was my goal this year? To write more articles of
course! I’d love to hear your comments.
Christy Wilson Delk is a business
professor at Rollins College in Winter
Park, Florida, as well as a contributing
franchise industry writer. With over 15
years of successful franchise ownership,
Christy uses her cumulative business
and franchise experience, as well as
her new book, Adventures in Franchise
Ownership, to consult, lead workshops
and speaking engagements to teach
others how to implement their own
4 Pillars approach to motivate and
lead them to higher performance and
success.
Would you like to comment?
Submit Your Articles
Copyright of Leadership Excellence is the property of HR.com, Inc. and its content may not
be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.
H E S S E L B E I N
&
C O M P A N Y
MULTIPLYING
YOUR RESULTS
WITH CULTURE
b y E d u a r d o Br a un
D
uring the course of my career, I have learned powerful lessons from some of the
world’s greatest leaders. I am an industrial engineer by training, and I was deeply
involved in project management. I went on to study finance at the Wharton
School of the University of Pennsylvania, and after that I worked in management
consulting doing strategy assignments. Over the past fifteen years I have traveled around
the world, interviewing leaders. As a result of those conversations I learned the power of
culture.
In one such conversation ten years ago with former General Electric (GE) chairman
and CEO Jack Welch, I asked him what had been his biggest professional mistake.
He responded without hesitation, “Buying an investment bank.” “Why is that?” I
asked. “Because of the culture,” Jack replied. “I didn’t understand the culture. I did the
numbers but didn’t look at the culture.” So here’s the most admired CEO of the twentieth
century—the man who took GE from a $14 billion market cap to a $400 billion market
cap in the biggest value creation in history, and he felt he had failed because he did not
understand a culture. He was able to manage businesses from jet engines to light bulbs to
medical equipment, but he didn’t understand the culture of an investment bank.
That was for me a Eureka moment. I have worked in hundreds of management consulting
projects. Everything was about strategy and the hard variables, and Jack Welch was telling
me that the soft variables made him fail. But in reality, the soft variables that led to Welch’s
failure with investment bank were the same variables that made him succeed at General
Electric. It was the culture of winning in General Electric that was behind his success.
6
LEADER TO LEADER
The Dual Framework
Many years and thousands of hours of interviews down
the road, I laid out a dual framework to understand and
manage an organization, which is shown graphically in
Figure 1.
In the bottom half of the framework, in a grey area we
call “Business as Usual,” we have strategy, marketing,
operations, finance, logistics, accounting, information
technology, human resources, and so forth—all the
typical business functions. Each one of those functions
has its own framework within which to understand
and analyze it. And in all those frameworks, the human
being is absent. You might have it in a job description
or in a performance evaluation; you might have it as a
“customer” in marketing, but the passion, creativity, and
wholehearted soul of the human being is absent. So that’s
why—in the top half of the framework—we add vision,
people, communications, decision making, and culture,
items We say that these elements make up leadership.
Leadership becomes the soft variables that we take care of
when we have the time, when the real important stuff—
the hard variables—have been taken care of.
Let me break up that leadership half of the framework
into five key roles: Establishing the vision; managing
the people; fostering communications practices;
establishing a decision-making system; and finally,
creating and managing the culture of the organization.
That was for me a Eureka
moment.
If we assume that “culture” is the synthesis of all the
leadership variables—as strategy is for business as
usual—the two pillars to create value in any business
are strategy and culture. They represent the hard and
soft variables respectively.
Culture can multiply results. Whether you are working
for an NGO (nongovernmental organization) and your
metric is the number of members, or you work for a
for-profit company and it is sales and the bottom line,
managing your culture can multiply your results. I
prove this using some research and then the testimony
of great business leaders.
Multiplying Your Results with
Culture
The Great Place to Work® Institute has conducted
research showing that companies that are ranked higher
F I G U R E 1 . TH E DUA L FRA ME W ORK OF TH E ORGA N I ZA TI ON
WINTER 2016
7
in its listing perform two times better than the average
of the industry—they provide double the returns
of other companies, they experience 65 percent less
turnover, and they have happier people. Although
culture is not the same as the best environments or
the best companies to work for, the three are certainly
highly correlated.
An illustrative example is the movement called
Conscious Capitalism. Inspired by businesspeople
like John Mackey, cofounder and CEO of Whole
Foods; Bill George, Harvard Business School professor
and former CEO of Medtronics; Kip Tindell, the
Container Store’s CEO; and Howard Schultz, founder
and CEO of Starbucks, the Conscious Capitalism
movement started more than fifteen years ago. The
four principles of Conscious Capitalism are higher
purpose, conscious leadership, conscious culture, and
stakeholder orientation—all elements that are part of
cultures centered in the employees and the well-being
of all stakeholders—including the planet.
But the financial results of conducting business in such
a manner are impressive: The eighteen publicly traded
companies out of the twenty-eight outperformed the
S&P 500 index by a factor of 10.5 over the years
1996−2011.
In a recent interview, Tindell told me about his
company’s employees-first culture. “We love our
employees,” he told me. “They are all extraordinary
folks. We support the effort of helping them becoming
the best they can be at work . . . and at home!”
Let me add the testimonies of other leaders who created
great organizations. One is Tony Hsieh, founder and
CEO of Zappos.com, the online shoe company. He had
first founded a software company—LinkExchange—
that he wanted to turn into the best software company
in his segment. He had therefore decided to hire the
best engineers and software developers, the best people,
the brightest and most intelligent people. But in our
interview he said, “I woke up one morning and realized
that I didn’t want to go to work to that company; I
had hired the brightest but not the people I wanted to
work with.” He decided to sell the company; Microsoft
bought it for $265 million, and then Hsieh moved on
8
LEADER TO LEADER
to Zappos.com, a small retailer at that point, became
the CEO, and turned the company into one populated
by people he enjoyed working with. He was the first to
say to me, “Culture is more important than strategy.”
This came as a total surprise to me. Culture is more
important than strategy! And through culture he turned
Zappos into a $1 billion-plus organization in sales in
fewer than ten years; it was acquired by Amazon in a
deal valued at $1.2 billion.
Another example is Herb Kelleher’s Southwest Airlines,
one of the most successful companies in the past
forty years. Between 1972 and 2002, Southwest had
the highest return on investment—not only among
airlines, but among the other S&P 500 companies.
That’s an amazing accomplishment. I asked him what
was the secret to such a success. In Kelleher’s own
words:
I always thought that our esprit de corps, the
attitude of our employees, was one of our biggest
competitive advantages. You know, people like to
be treated nice, they like to be treated well and our
people do that from the goodness of their hearts.
And that is our advantage over other carriers.
Short and, simple, esprit de corps and attitude were the
biggest competitive advantages. In my years in graduate
school at Wharton and working for Booz Allen in
management consulting, I never once heard attitude or
esprit de corps as competitive advantages!
“Do you know what is the difference between strategy
and culture?,” Kelleher continued. “Well, when
Napoleon was in Paris in a room with all his generals,
around a table, discussing how to attack Russia, that
is strategy. But what makes 1 million men march to
Moscow? That is culture!”
Culture is the engine, the propeller. What made those
men march to Moscow for their leader? A sense of
pride? Of success? Of duty? All these are emotions—
not reasons. Emotions are a deep component of
culture. By the way, the word emotions comes from
“motion”—what makes you move!
Lou Gerstner, a former management consultant who
rescued IBM from the brink of bankruptcy, came to the
Emotions are a deep
component of culture.
company thinking that analysis and strategy was all that
really mattered, but then he realized that “corporate
culture is not part of the game: it is the game.”
Carlos Brito is the CEO of AB InBev, a Brazilian
company that is today the number-one beer company
in the world. He has purchased many beer companies
around the world, and he says, “The only thing that
can explain differences in performance is culture.”
Jim Collins, in the prologue of Cristiane Correa’s
book Dream Big, which tells the story of Ab InBev
says, “Culture is not part of the strategy, it is the
strategy.”
But how can we define culture?
Defining Culture
Culture is often defined as the “why we work” and
“how we work,” or more colloquially, “This is how we
do things around here.” I agree with this definition, but
I think it can be misleading. If you think that setting
objectives and goals and defining processes and job
descriptions in the “right way” will result in the right
culture, you are totally wrong.
So how can we best define culture? By its impact. A
positive culture is “all those things” that generate the
following emotions in the members of an organization:
sense of purpose, passion, sense of community, hope,
self-confidence, self-esteem, trust, pride, engagement,
happiness, and other positive states of mind. If you
are able to create these effects in your employees, you
are taking advantage of all the human capital that is
nonintellectual or professional.
When you are able to wake up these emotions, these
states of mind, in your employees, you’ll accomplish
amazing things. Individual and group performance
soars.
The Five Key Roles of a
Leader
Leaders have the power—and the responsibility—to
wake up the emotions of their people. There are five
key roles that enable this, and depending on how the
leader performs them, will shape the organization’s
culture. I propose a question for each role.
1. Establishing the vision. What is the dream? Create a sense of purpose. It must be something that
makes us jump out of bed every morning and run
to work—and don’t dare tell me the dream is to
increase sales by 10 percent. The dream must be
challenging but attainable; something that when
accomplished as a group also brings a specific reward to each of the individuals.
2. Managing the people. Do you deeply and genuinely
care about your people? This doesn’t mean defining
tasks, job descriptions, or annual objectives. This
means helping people to grow both personally and
professionally, to identify their talents and develop
them. Define your organization’s values by the
way you treat your employees and behave accordingly. Coordinate the strengths of every person so
that the team’s performance extends well beyond
the sum of individual talent.
3. Fostering communication practices. Do you connect
with your team? Communication is about ideas,
emotions, and actions. You need to share the vision and the dream, and you need to give feedback
and direction continually. But you must also listen
carefully to make sure every person knows his or
her voice counts. And you should go beyond ideas
and information and share emotions: inspiring
your passion, lighting up the fire in people to
achieve their dreams, and being empathic with
your team. And never forget that words without
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9
actions are empty. Walk your talk! When you foster communication you enable people to connect,
to bond, to build relationships of trust. And that is
tremendously powerful.
4. Establishing a decision-making system. Do you
empower your people? The best leaders delegate,
support their team members in their decisions,
and then facilitate learning from decisions taken—
both good and bad. Learning makes people grow.
Identify the behaviors you want to drive decisions
and make sure they are consistent with your strategy. Go down into the trenches and back up your
people with your presence in tough times, but
above all, empower them.
5. Creating and managing the culture of the organization. Are you proud, engaged, and happy? This
requires creating and managing a culture of the
group of people that work together in an organization through the first four roles.
Cisco’s John Chambers supported those roles when he
said in a World Business Forum keynote speech:
I am supposed to do four things reasonably well.
The first is to determine the vision and strategy
of my company based upon the input from my
customers and my leadership team. The second is
to develop and recruit the leaders to implement
that vision and differentiated strategy. The third—
and I didn’t understand this as a new business
leader—is to develop a culture, and is such
an important part of your success or not as an
organization. And the fourth is to communicate
The dream must be
challenging but attainable.
10
LEADER TO LEADER
Learning makes people
grow.
all of the above. As simple as it sounds, that would
be the score card I would use [to evaluate my
performance].
Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, once said
the same thing regarding culture: “I didn’t know that it
was so important,” and he adds that everything he does
now is a reinforcement of culture.
My suggestion to you is to be the new CEO, and by
CEO I mean chief emotions officer. In sports, you
cannot have a team that is not motivated, that is not
inspired. It is the same in the business world. Emotions,
states of mind, moods, and spirits are very important.
I’m not saying that strategy and the hard variables
are not important. What I am saying is that you are
likely underutilizing the passion and energy of people.
Imagine what you can do if, in addition to managing
the hard variables, you can ignite people’s hearts to
deeply engage with your organization.
In Summary
Culture can multiply results! Culture is about states
of mind, emotions, using all that energy that human
beings have. Use the five key questions to remind
yourself of how to unleash the emotions of your
workforce. You can pin them on your desk and every
day ask one of those five questions. Within six months,
people will ask what happened to you—you are a
different person.
Leadership is a personal journey, never ending, but you
are already well along in your journey. Just keep going!
As the director of the HSM Group—the first
global multimedia management company—
Eduardo Braun has traveled the globe
interviewing world-renowned personalities from
political leaders such as Bill Clinton and Mikhail
Gorbachev to business gurus such as former Disney
CEO Michael Eisner and film producer George
Lucas. An astute businessman himself, he was the
CEO of Intermanagers.com, director of the HSM
Group, and hosts Lideres and HSM Specials,
television shows dedicated to leadership and
management.
WINTER 2016
11
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LEADERSHIP
High-Involvement Change Leadership
Building commitment to change • BY KEN BLANCHARD
I
t’s an understatement to say that organizational change
creates stress for everyone involved — we’ve all heard
the dismal statistic about how 70 percent of change initiatives fail. So how do you take the reality of change and
make it more likely to be successful — and bearable?
It helps to think about it from the perspective of
people who work in your organization. Having a highinvolvement leadership strategy is the best way to build
people’s commitment to change.
Many change efforts derail when top executives
believe announcing the change is the same as implementing it. People hearing such an announcement can
immediately feel resistance — not so much to the change
itself but to the feeling of being controlled. They need
their concerns and questions to be addressed.
We have found that when learning about an organizational change, people usually experience five predictable,
sequential stages of concern.
Stage 1: information concerns. First, people want
to understand exactly what is being proposed. They don’t
want to be sold on the upcoming change; they want to
be told about it. Common questions include, “What is
the change? What do we hope to accomplish? Why do
we need to do this now? What’s wrong with the way
things are?”
People need to know what the change is about, why
it’s important, what success looks like and whether it will
be worth the effort. Allow them to voice their concerns
and have their questions answered. Why? Because in the
absence of factual communication, people often create
their own reality — and speculation becomes fact.
Stage 2: personal concerns. Once they have been
given basic information about the change, people tend
to turn inward and think about personal concerns. They
may be focused on what they will lose, not what they
will gain. They may be thinking, “How will I be affected
by this change? Will I benefit from it? Will I be able to
learn what I need to know?”
People with personal concerns need to be assured
they will have a voice in planning and decision-making.
Listen to their personal concerns in a way that lets them
know they have been heard. Help them feel inspired
and excited about the future and their role in the change.
Stage 3: implementation concerns. At this stage,
people begin to think about the process of implementing
the change. They are wondering, “How are we going
to do this? Is the plan realistic? How important is this
change compared with other priorities? How will we
measure success?”
People with implementation concerns are focused on
details. They need to know that challenges and obstacles
will be addressed and that they will have the time, support
and resources they need to do their part. Help them
develop confidence in the organization’s ability — and
their own — to successfully implement the change.
Stage 4: impact concerns. When the change goes
live and anxiety has somewhat calmed, impact concerns
arise. Folks want to know, “Is the change working for the
organization? For my team? For me? Is the effort worth
it? How do we get undecided people on board?”
People with impact concerns need to see proof that
the change is reducing the gap between what is and what
could be. They also need to hear and learn from colleagues who are already having success with the change.
At this stage, people sell themselves on the value of the
change and can be a positive influence on those who
are still undecided.
Stage 5: refinement concerns. After most people
are on board and experiencing success with the change,
fine-tuning gets underway. People begin to ask, “How
can we do this better or faster? What have we learned?
Do you trust us to lead this change going forward?”
Ken Blanchard is chief
spiritual officer of The
Ken Blanchard Cos. and
co-author of “Collaboration Begins with You: Be
a Silo Buster.”
In the absence of factual
communication, people often
create their own reality.
People with refinement concerns want to be entrusted
with the process. They need to believe their involvement
in continuous improvement of the change is valued and
that they can be counted on to manage the change in
the future. In fact, people at this stage are often already
formulating the next change.
The more you include people in looking at options
and alternative ideas, the easier it will be to build the
business case for the next round of change. Resolving concerns as change evolves builds trust, surfaces challenges,
gives people opportunities to influence the process and
allows them to refocus energies on the change.
When leading through change, what you are changing is important — but involving people in the change
can be the difference between failure and success. CLO
Chief Learning Officer • May/June 2020 • ChiefLearningOfficer.com 15
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FEATURE
Leadership: A Simple
Situational Approach
Strategic Leadership for a
practical leadership style
By Christy Wilson Delk
T
here are probably as many ideas and opinions
about leadership as there are truly great leaders,
which is to say, there are a lot. Frankly, I was not the
kind of owner-operator-girl-boss leader that had much
time for the trendy stuff.
If you are looking for a practical leadership style,
Strategic Leadership may be the one for you.
Strategic Leadership worked very well for me for
fifteen fulfilling years of business ownership. Now,
as a business professor, I continue to believe in
this leadership model for those who are hands-on,
engaged, or overwhelmed and find themselves
wondering if what they are doing is impactful, or
even leadership.
I first contemplated the constructs of Strategic
Leadership during the early years of owning a
franchised Kids ‘R’ Kids Academy. As the business
grew, so did the complications and the demands.
Over time, with trepidation, motivation and a few steps
back, I found that this simple model works.
Two Main Premises
●● You are one person with one great big job.
Being strategic and focused on how you lead
is vital to your success and the success of
your organization.
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com
MAY 2019
14
●● One year at a time. Focus on short-term plans and
opportunities. Don’t ignore long-term goals and
needs of the organization, but concentrate on what
you need, want and must accomplish this year.
Three Situational Categories
Few leadership articles or books talk about when
to use specific leadership strategies. Knowing and
recognizing when to use a strategy situationally
can have a huge impact on how quickly you resolve
a problem and how you move your business or
department forward in a given year. The three
categories are:
1. Unplanned Leadership – What will you do when
the unexpected (and sometimes the unthinkable)
happens?
2. Responsive Leadership – How will you respond
to the opportunities (sometimes disguised as
challenges) that are presented?
3. Planned Leadership – Have an intentional
and deliberate plan for how you will lead key
stakeholder groups.
The objective is to help you identify and properly
lead through each of these strategic categories so
that your customers, staff, superiors and community
recognize you as a strong leader with whom they want
to associate, do business with and refer others to.
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Leadership: A Simple Situational Approach
One – Unplanned Leadership
Two – Responsive Leadership
One of the greatest opportunities for you to display
leadership is by what you do when the unexpected
happens. This is your chance to step up—and one you
don’t want to miss, however unnerving it may be.
If Unplanned Leadership is what strong Leaders do
as something happens, Responsive Leadership is
what happens in the aftermath of something that has
happened or in response to an opportunity.
My leadership was tested very early in my ownership
days. Here’s my favorite Unplanned Leadership story.
Here is one example from my personal experience
that almost every manager or owner can relate to.
Who Is Driving the Bus?
Letting Good People Go
It was a Friday afternoon late in the fall of 1998. I
opened my Kids ‘R’ Kids Learning Academy franchise
in August and things were going well. That is, until
Alex walked in. Alex was my guy. My “go-to” employee.
I recruited him several months before I opened, and
he was an integral part of the operation. He drove the
bus, performed maintenance duties, and was a team
leader for the before and after-school program.
Alex had bad news. Really bad news. Friday was his
last day. Today Friday, not “two weeks from now so
I might have time to find his replacement” Friday.
Another (non-franchised) center owner, closer to
home, offered him a job he couldn’t refuse, and he
was to report on Monday. I never saw it coming. Panic
swept through the office. Who was going to drive
the bus on Monday? A driver for any early childhood
program has to be screened and properly documented
to meet Florida regulations. This was not a “Just hire
a bus driver off the internet” type of problem.
The long story is in my book. The short story is
that I learned how and was permitted to drive a
54-passenger bus over the weekend and rolled up
Monday morning at 7 am with a smile on my face to
cheers from the staff, children and parents.
That story became part of our organizational
culture and showed clients and staff my leadership
fortitude. It also showed me the power of Unplanned
Leadership.
Will you be ready when a situation calls for Unplanned
Leadership? Will you recognize it for what it is and
seize the moment? It may come when you least
expect it.
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com
MAY 2019
15
One of my favorite managers, Julie, had proven herself
to be extremely hard-working, bright, and “tough
enough” to manage over 50 employees when she
asked about hiring her sister for a teaching position.
I didn’t have a formal policy to address this and said,
“Sure, let’s interview her” and then, “Sure, let’s hire
her.” The sister also proved herself to be a hard worker
and was well-liked by the children and parents—when
she was there. The problem was, she was missing
a lot of work. I was aware of the reason, and while
empathetic, I was running a business and excessive
absenteeism was well-documented throughout the
center and not permitted.
I was not the only one who had noticed. By the time I
seriously discussed my concern with Julie, the staff
had started rumbling about favoritism towards her
sister. Within months, morale plunged and Julie lost
the respect of the staff. Loss of respect for me was
next. By the time I insisted she terminate her sister,
my inner leader was shouting, “Start looking for Julie’s
replacement!” because of another issue that I was
ready to respond to. I let Julie go and before long the
ship had been righted with high morale intact.
I noticed a distinct added measure of leadership
respect and loyalty from my staff, who knew I’d made
the difficult decision to respond. That’s the power of
Responsive Leadership.
Will you be ready to A-C-T when Responsive Leadership
is needed? If you have work to do in this area, take heart;
you are in the majority. Responsive Leadership is a
skill-set that can be developed, and it is never too late to
start.
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Leadership: A Simple Situational Approach
Three – Planned Leadership
As much as you want to or think you can, you cannot
lead everyone equally and purposefully every year
and expect to see positive outcomes in every area.
It’s simply too big a job, and trying to do that leads to
stress, burnout, and serious health or family issues.
Instead of casting a huge leadership net that likely has
plenty of holes, be the type of leader your staff needs
and craves, and the leader your business requires—
this year. In other words, strategically plan your
leadership.
Design an annual plan that focuses on 3 or 4 major
stakeholders and be specific. For example, as my
young management students learned last evening,
employees and clients are key stakeholders in every
enterprise. However, focusing on all employees or all
clients is not specific enough for your leadership plan.
One question you might ask is who within that
stakeholder group can have the highest impact on
your revenue or another important company goal.
The answer to that question is where you will focus
your Planned Leadership resources and capital for
that stakeholder group. And not just focus—you are
going to Go Big. Going Big is what will make a real
difference because people will notice what you do.
Going Big is how strategic leaders invest and grow
their leadership capital. In other words, it has to count
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com
MAY 2019
16
And it all starts with one question: Who, specifically,
are you going to lead this year?
The first answer to that question should be yourself.
Be sure to include your own professional goal in the
annual plan.
And don’t forget to make it public. That alone will
raise your stock. Then A-C-T!
What was my goal this year? To write more articles of
course! I’d love to hear your comments.
Christy Wilson Delk is a business
professor at Rollins College in Winter
Park, Florida, as well as a contributing
franchise industry writer. With over 15
years of successful franchise ownership,
Christy uses her cumulative business
and franchise experience, as well as
her new book, Adventures in Franchise
Ownership, to consult, lead workshops
and speaking engagements to teach
others how to implement their own
4 Pillars approach to motivate and
lead them to higher performance and
success.
Would you like to comment?
Submit Your Articles
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be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder’s
express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for
individual use.

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