Articles
“I’m like the fire patrol,” says Jacob, a 35-year-old production manager for a mid-sized European food manufacturer. “I run from one corner to the other, to fix things, just to keep producing.” To step up to a bigger leadership role in his organization, Jacob knows he needs to get out from under all the operational details that are keeping him from thinking about important strategic issues his unit faces.
Increasing leadership capacity is an increasingly important part of a company’s business strategy. Unfortunately, formal leadership development efforts often fall short of expectations. At best, managers gain valuable personal insights but fail to learn how they can apply them to create value for their organization.
Some executives believe that if they set aside a few hours each week for uninterrupted thinking, they will have more and better strategic ideas. This is not only wishful thinking, it’s backward thinking.
Many top business schools — Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, Kellogg, to cite a few — have overhauled their MBA curricula in recent years. Among the most popular changes is increasing ‘leadership’ learning. What’s driving this trend?
On a scale of one to five, how important is having a good network to your ability to accomplish your goals? When I ask my executive students this question, most of them answer in the fours and fives. Even the most naive of them agree that, like it or not, relationships hold the key to both their current capacity and future success.
In this age of authentic leadership, originality is at a premium, and people perceive imitation as more fakery than flattery. The thing is, authenticity itself has become a performance — and an exercise in conformity.
Novices emulate favorite bosses and colleagues in an effort to look and talk as if they know what they are doing — even when they have no clue. But this natural — and efficient — learning process tends to break down as people gain experience and stature.
Herminia on Arnaud Montebourg’s business school reinvention and other comebacks.
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