The CEO as a process leader

“Follow me!” T E Lawrence shouted to his Arab troops as he led his army’s charge into battle.

Although the term ‘leadership’ is frequently used to describe successful CEOs, few executives in business today can be considered true leaders. The litmus test for any leader is whether he will be followed as Lawrence of Arabia was followed by an army of people who were not of his race or religion. For followers to allow themselves to be led, they need to have implicit belief in the leader’s ability. Followers want to know where they are being led.

Many books have been written on leadership, but few have been able to describe it in comprehensible terms. Nor have they been able to describe the skills of leadership in any detail except to attribute it to a ‘trait of personality.’ John Kotter in his 1998 book The Leadership Factor explained that leadership can be defined, analysed and learned. He also pointed out that it is not taught in business schools. Unfortunately, he did not articulate in his book how leadership skills can be acquired.

Jack Welch, ex-CEO of General Electric, viewed it this way in a BusinessWeek interview:

‘A leader is someone who can develop a vision of what he or she wants their business, their unit, to do or be. Somebody who is able to articulate to the entire unit what the unit is, and gain through a sharing of the discussion—listening and talking—an acceptance of the vision. And then can relentlessly drive implementation of that vision to a successful conclusion.’

The flip side of this position was summed up by Roger Smith, the former CEO of General Motors, in a Fortune interview. Explaining his failure to turn that company around more quickly, Smith cited the “inability to communicate his vision of General Motors earlier and more frequently” than he did.

Welch’s definition of leadership is probably as close to the mark as any we could conjure up ourselves. However, hidden in this definition is the assumption that the CEO has mastered the skill of strategic thinking, the process used by a CEO to formulate, articulate, communicate and successfully deploy a clear, concise and explicit strategy for the organisation.

Fundamental skills

Many CEOs are good strategic thinkers. The problem is that they practise their skill by osmosis and are not conscious of its various elements and steps. As a result, they do not use the process systematically. They may also have great difficulty transmitting their ability to their subordinates. The reason is simple: whatever cannot be described cannot be transferred.

Our experience suggests that most people who surround a CEO are not good strategic thinkers themselves. Again, the reason is simple. Managers are so engrossed in operational activities, so isolated in their functional silos, that they have not developed the ability to think strategically. A CEO therefore may wish to involve subordinates in a deliberate application of the strategic thinking process strictly for its educational value.

Process leader

There is only one person in any organisation who can drive the strategic thinking process, and that is the chief executive of that organisation. Strategic thinking, then, must start with the CEO. Strategic thinking is definitely a trickle-down process and not a bubble-up one. It is a very interactive process, but the CEO must be its owner. As such, the CEO must show commitment to the process by participating in all its phases and work sessions.

Because the process is highly interactive, it is not for the faint of heart. The process invites discussion, debate and constructive provocation. Everyone, during its various phases, has the opportunity to express his views, have these challenged, and then challenge those of others. As a result, the process is ideal for CEOs who encourage frank, open discussion of issues and challenges.

A CEO has two options available to get a strategy implemented. The first approach is compliance. Here the CEO announces what the strategy is and how he expects it to be implemented. The CEO then assigns different tasks to different individuals. They, in turn, implement the strategy without questioning its rationale. In a world of increasing complexity, this approach has less and less appeal to more and more CEOs.

The second and more effective method is commitment. Here key executives actively participate in developing the rationale behind the strategy and assist the CEO in crafting the strategy itself. In order to ensure widespread commitment to the strategy, most CEOs include the top two levels of management in the process.

Not a process facilitator

A role that the CEO should not attempt to play is that of process facilitator. One cannot have one foot in the process while participating in the debate; this will give everyone the impression that the CEO is trying to manipulate the process to a predetermined conclusion. Therefore, it is wiser to have a third-part facilitator guide the process along.

A facilitator is not a moderator. A moderator is a person who directs the traffic as best as he can during a meeting, but without relying on a specific process. By contrast, a facilitator is a trained professional who comes to each meeting with a structured process together with predesigned instruments that keep the discussion moving forward in a constructive manner towards a specific set of conclusions. The facilitator also keeps the process honest, balanced and objective.

As the CEO of a Fortune 10 company said to me during one of our work sessions, “You know Mike, you are the only one in this room who tells me to sit down and I do. No one else in this room would dare say that to me.”

Excerpt from The Power of Strategic Thinking by Michael Robert. Reproduced with permission. © 2004, Tata McGraw-Hill