Styles change. Leadership doesn’t.
From Sun Tzu and the art of war to Jack Welch and his lethal dojo of six sigma blackbelts, good business leaders have always understood the complex drivers of human behaviour and how to use them. Always sought out the management skills they lack and build teams strong in those areas. Always developed themselves and their staff. Never stopped developing and training.
Business leadership is not management: it requires a highly developed and often very different set of leadership management skills and therefore a very different approach to leadership development and training. Managing is that very useful task of keeping things in order. Managing won’t grow your business. Managing won’t inspire people but leadership will, because it creates positive and non-incremental change.
In 2003, when Fred Hassan took over as Chief Executive at Schering-Plough, the company was in freefall and being investigated for accounting irregularities. But he used his exceptional leadership management skills to turn it round and in 2008 he lead it to net profits of over $18.4 billion. In 2009, he successfully oversaw the $41.1 billion mega-merger with Merck.
When Herbert Hainer became CEO of sports colossus Adidas, he understood its need for business leadership: “Our lack of innovation was shining through. My job was to make speedboats out of a big tanker.” Hainer’s understanding of this incredibly complex job – acquiring technologies and companies, divesting others, the sheer scale of staff and materials – all boils down to (and gets filtered through) that vision statement. Does this make us quicker? The result: three years after Hainer took the helm, Adidas revenues hit €10.5 billion – within spitting distance of Nike’s €11.1 billion*.
How they did it – and many more senior business executives like them with similar stories and leadership management skills to share – is the essence of driven, successful, modern business leadership. It is also the essence of the business leadership channel on MeetTheBoss TV.
We hope you enjoy MeetTheBoss TV and find these interviews with business leaders useful for leadership development and training. Please let us know via the comment sections under every video, on twitter (@meetthebosstv), or contact MeetTheBoss Executive TV.
MeetTheBoss, Business TV for leadership development and training.