Leadership and Management Strategies Blog

 from the experts at Corporate Performance Strategies

Creating Effective Talent Management Programs

09 April 2013 Dave Brookmire

Like it or not, the successes and failures of talent management are still placed squarely on HR’s shoulders. As the economy continues its steady improvement and housing prices return to the pre-recession levels, key leadership performers will again become mobile and start leaving their current employers. So any weakness in a company’s talent management program will soon become exacerbated in the new economy.

One fatal flaw in many HR talent management strategies is the failure to link them to the business strategies and requirements. Once the HR team successfully links their strategies for the talent management process to the business and begins to communicate using vision, strategy and leadership, the company’s leaders will better understand how HR actually adds value to the business. When HR doesn’t tie their expense and investment capital to the business, they will continue to suffer from an “expense and cost center” perception and always be resource constrained.

In working with many senior HR leaders over the years, this type of strategic approach and better communications has made a step-change improvement in the perception of the HR leader and their functions. Consider using something like this approach with your key business leaders and you’ll begin to experience the positive impact on your HR department.

 

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Effective Change Management: A Tale of Two Companies

02 April 2013 Dave Brookmire

Recently, we have seen the rise and fall of two great companies and the lessons learned for the change management process and leadership involved were very instructive.

Kodak had been a dominant global brand for over 30 years until the past decade. To put this in perspective, over the past decade their workforce shrunk from 64k employees to 17k. They invented digital technology and seemed to have suppressed it for a number of years due to the threat it would have on their core chemical business that we call photography.

In 1996, they decided to launch a product called Advantix. It used digital technology only as a means to help consumers see what they needed to print, but Kodak still had to print their photos. This turned out to be a $500m flop. So leadership at Kodak missed the fundamental change in their consumers’ needs from chemical to electronic, or at least felt they could not compete.

Their company, headquartered in Rochester, NY, became a bureaucratic monolith that was incapable of moving quickly to meet the market needs. This month amid reporting record Q4 losses, they also announced they were shuttering the digital camera business and focusing on printing. They also announced they would come out of bankruptcy in March 2013. Leadership lacked vision, planning and effective change management. Their stock plummeted from about $17 per share to $0.40 per share in the past five years.

Let’s contrast Kodak’s situation with the rise of Starbucks in the past five years. Howard Schultz, CEO, relinquished that title in 2000 when the company was growing 46% per year. In the mid-2000s, when Starbucks’ growth sputtered and they started losing profitability, Howard reclaimed the CEO title in 2007.

He had a tremendous organizational change management task ahead of him and started by taking several important actions. First, Howard started with the usual cost-cutting measures like closing 600 stores and implementing cost controls and operational improvements. Next, he needed to reinvigorate a workforce with low morale by creating a vision that became known as “the third place”, or the place people go to between work and home.

In 2009, he brought 11,000 managers to a leadership conference in post-Katrina New Orleans where they spent one day rebuilding the city as part of their meeting. Howard developed an organizational change management transformation agenda and ensured that his leadership team adhered to this process all the time. He also replaced several of the top leaders in the organization until he had a team in place who believed in him, his vision and the direction of the company.

During the past five years, Starbucks’ stock increased from about $17 per share to $55 per share. Looking at failure and success brings to light a number of change management lessons for leadership.

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Derailing Behaviors and Leadership Impropriety

20 March 2013 Dave Brookmire

Why do leaders and other celebrities risk everything they have worked so hard to build – fortune, job, reputation, family, and in some cases their freedom – for a reckless action? We now have a group of CEOs embroiled in sex scandals (e.g., Harry Stonechipher, Mark Hurd, Brian Dunn and many more) and illegal activities (e.g., Ken Lay, Dennis Koslowski, and many more). When leaders who appear to have everything decide to risk it all for a poor decision and get caught, it can be quite difficult to understand why they choose to let it happen.

There are habits and derailing behaviors that develop for some leaders which cause them to go into a downhill spin and lose everything. Research has shown that when power is abused, these derailing behaviors take a toll on them. Sydney Finkelstein outlined five poor habits of leaders who derail that include the following: a deep belief they can control the company, believing they have all the answers, and being overly concerned with their image.

In my recent Leadership Excellence article, I discuss why these derailing behaviors happen and what organizations can do to prevent executive failure and these costly behaviors from happening. I hope you find the information key to helping those leaders who might be exhibiting these derailing behaviors in your organization.

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