Case Study: High-Speed Executive Development

The Situation

A functional head was identified as the only viable candidate for the Chief Information Officer position for a large pharmaceutical company. The individual was considered to be aboutone year from readiness but the position had suddenly become open. The organization's leadership grappled with whether to promote this individual or go outside to find the new CIO.

The Decision

Given the employment climate at the time, there was concern that finding a suitable candidate might be too difficult and take more time than the company could afford. The decision was made to promote and then rapidly accelerate the executive's growth and development, as well as fully support their success in the first few months of the new assignment. WJM Associates was hired to deliver its High-Impact Executive Coaching process for the new CIO.

The High -Impact Coaching Process

After discussing the challenges with the head of Human Resources and the CEO, WJM set up an initial meeting with the new CIO to discuss his perspective and the High - Impact Coaching process.

Phase One:
The first phase of the coaching work included the following:

• Interviewed key stakeholders to determine criteria for success for the CIO role given current business opportunities and challenges. Gather data on the current culture of the company, current perceptions of the new CIO and those factors that would define a successful start in terms of building credibility, buy-in, and a solid relationship with each of the key stakeholders.
• Planned the Three-Day Offsite designed to rapidly develop the new CIO's skills and abilities in order to successfully move from functional head to the multifunctional, senior role.

It was determined that, historically, the organization's previous CIOs had a hit-or- miss track record with key stakeholders. It was not that systems weren't working adequately, but rather that the style/relationship fit between the CIOs that served in thepast worked with some of the senior team and not with others. This changed only slightly as people with either IT or financial backgrounds occupied the position. One of the goals for the new CIO was to establish strong "business partner" relationships with each member of the senior team. Not surprisingly, the criteria for success varied with the needs and the style of the stakeholder. This is a common challenge for executives who must build cross functional realtionships.

Other goals were specific to the type of visionary leadership that was desired to move the company into cutting edge technology that was practical and affordable. From most of the stakeholders' perspective, the new CIO was technically very competent but there were concerns about his ability to adapt to the varying styles and needs of the stakeholders. Other specific business initiatives were mentioned, some of which would produce internal conflict between functional areas that the CIO would need to mediate.

Phase Two:
The next phase consisted of The Three-Day Offsite with the CIO and two WJM Executive Coaches.

• Conducted an in-depth assessment of the new CIO in terms of both manifest and latent talents and abilities, as well as potential weaknesses and how to avoid falling into them.
• Communicated key findings from the data gathering interviews and created a focused strategy to equip the new CIO to quickly build or modify relationships with the key stakeholders, incorporating their individual styles.

The Three-Day Offsite
The offsite portion of the High Impact Coaching program involved two WJM Executive Coaches and the client in an intensive process which began with an in-depth carrer/life history. It was discovered that the client had come from a typical background in terms of education for an IT professional and had risen through the ranks due to technical excellence and the respect that this talent had garnered from superiors and colleagues alike. The client's inclusion on a high potential list had been supported for the same reasons. One of the challenges that the client faced was the ever increasing need to move away from both the technical work and the desire to stay current with emerging technologies, and to take on the increased challenge of managing the strategy and vision of the organization, developing other leaders and building key relationships.

The assessment process identified both manifest and latent talents, as well as potential weaknesses that the client could fall into. The assessment model used also looked at which talents were most prevalent in each of the following roles:

• individual contributor
• team member
• colleague
• leader
• follower
• decision maker

The assessment further identified strategies to optimize the client's ability to operate in their strengths and to be aware early on if weaknesses were starting to manifest. Beyond this level of awareness, the assessment process also identified other executives' styles that the client would inherently have difficulty with and linked those styles to the functional areas the CIO would need to deal with and with specific individuals based on the interview process.

The next step was to draw from the interview process to identify potential gaps in the CIO's skill sets and to create Role Plays which would give the client an opportunity to rehearse and fine tune several approaches and test them for viability with the styles of key stakeholders. A discussion ensued to further refine the understanding of the stylistic needs of each of the stakeholders and the coaches proposed a list of attributes for each stakeholder to confirm their style and needs.

After completing a sufficient number of Role Plays, the new CIO felt prepared with a strategy for dealing with each of their key stakeholders in a more adaptive style tailored to the needs of the stakeholder.

The last step in the Three-Day Offsite was to create a "return strategy" which covered first contacts with stakeholders including the CIO's team, as well as one- month and three-month goals for building the kind of working relationships that were identified as key goals for the process.

Phase Three (Continuing Coaching):
The third phase of the program consisted of bi-weekly, continuing coaching sessions to fine-tune strategies, address new challenges and to continue to assess progress. The WJM Coach and the new CIO re-reviewed the assessment results and reinforced learnings from the offsite. Past successful and unsuccessful efforts for change were explored and possible responses to new, upcoming events were experimented with and practiced.

Final Result

Both the CIO and the organization agreed that the goal of closing the gap was reached in short order. The new CIO went on to successfully transform the culture of the organization's Information Services Division into a hard-driving, dynamic business culture. Within a year, his team was able to initiate and integrate a new CRM system and a series of application development programs which led to significant efficiency improvements for the company.

(Part 1 of this issue appears in the July/August issue of WJManagment Advisor)

The path to a sustainably prosperous organization is not just about leadership and the culture that the leaders at the top promote. It is also about setting up a structure to enable innovation and prosperity to flourish because contrary to popular press articles, managing for more innovation in organizations is not all about letting go. Instead, as Peter Drucker asserted in 1985: "Most of what happens in successful innovations is not the happy occurrence of a blind flash of insight but, rather, the careful implementation of an unspectacular but systematic management discipline." This discipline comes in two forms: processes and metrics that allow for the proper balance of creativity and control.

Building Block #3:Creative Processes

In innovative organizations, robust systems and processes gather timely and relevant information from markets, competitors, customers, employees, vendors, regulators, industry associations, and advisory boards. They also closely monitor changes and trends in this information. Teams from the top of the organization to its lowest levels reflect a mix of problem solving and thinking styles, demographics, long term and short term perspectives, old and new employees, and a variety of functional backgrounds. Since heterogeneous teams by themselves don't always produce innovative solutions and make outstanding decisions, they rely on decision-making and planning processes that cultivate open debate and constructive conflict and facilitate creative idea generation, filtering, tracking, and selection. To ensure that creative efforts are effectively channeled and innovative results are achieved, such teams follow customer-focused and flexible project management and product development processes that are designed to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, and at the same time monitor progress and problems. Driven by milestones as opposed to traditional phases, these processes support experimentation and exploration within a structure.

In addition, leaders of innovative organizations recognize, as did the former chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly, that "The key to competitiveness is innovation and the key to innovation is people." They therefore place a very high priority on selecting, nurturing, engaging and developing people. They do this by providing opportunities for meaningful and challenging work assignments that involve learning. They align performance management and compensation programs with innovation goals, and they structure the organization to enable creative collaboration and teamwork. And leaders stay committed to these practices despite pressures on short-term profits since they recognize that investments spent developing an organization's people yield twice the productivity improvements as a similar investment in capital.

Building Block #4: Challenging Measures

Finally, an organization where innovation flourishes incorporates appropriate "dashboard-type" metrics. These metrics balance freedom to operate with accountability and focus, facilitate decision-making, and provide early warning signals for both external and internal changes. Measures that foster more innovation typically include a broad array of challenging metrics that focus on increases in productivity, revenues per employee, faster time to market, percentage of new products and services as a set of all products and services, or improvements in customer satisfaction and employee morale. Innovative organizations recognize that different metrics for different businesses in different life cycles are critical. Therefore, such projects are not expected to match the ROI or other metrics used to evaluate ongoing operations, but instead are allowed room and time for the team to test, adapt and learn.

Conclusion

This discussion of the four building blocks of innovation - an encouraging and humble leadership style, a supportive culture, creative processes, and challenging measures -- reveals a basic truth about managing for more innovation. Since the practices that encourage innovation in a company are the enduring principles of good management, they not only drive more innovation. They have also been shown to promote high employee satisfaction and morale and thus well-satisfied, loyal customers and long-term organizational success. Seeing innovation as more than a passing management "fad du jour" or a sexy distraction or a panacea is thus vital to long-term success. Instead, it needs to be embedded in the bones and marrow of the organization so that it is becomes part of the organization's DNA and every employee's responsibility, just like quality and customer service.

Being a leader in today's complex and global world is not easy. There is no single best way, no formula that will ensure a steady stream of innovation from all parts of the organization. External advisors who promise fast solutions with the latest terms, intricate models, new rules and prescriptions can make the challenge even worse. Leaders must take the time to acknowledge and appreciate their own strengths and areas of development and those of their teams, to value and foster strong teamwork and collaboration, and to implement good management practices, processes and metrics as a system as opposed to independent endeavors. Only then will they able to reap significant returns in terms of high levels of employee and customer satisfaction, and in turn a prosperous and innovative company.

We are all inundated with emails. Our In-Boxes are perpetually full. If you rely on people responding quickly to your messages, please remember, we're not all swinging on a hammock waiting around for your internet-clogging MP3 audio file to grace our computer screens! Heed the following.

Keep it short.
We are inundated with information. So make your email fetching and as short as possible. Ideally, make your email pertain to one issue

Include a signature line.
Automatically end with pertinent data about you. Put your name, your phone number(s), your website, and a short description of what you do.

Use a descriptive subject header.
Avoid subject headers like, "Hi", "Memo", or "Volume 3, Edition 1". Make your reader want to open the email by being as detailed and personal as possible.

Postpone angry emails indefinitely.
Emails are permanent records that can be transferred by a simple click. All it takes is one person forwarding your diatribe to the company directory.

Confront in private, praise in public.

Attach documents thoughtfully.
Ask yourself, does this person really need to read all of this? Make sure your email does not get ignored altogether because of including too many appendages.

Copy others only when necessary.
Figure out what your organization's culture and policies are on this issue. While it's important to keep people in the loop, be careful about over zapping others with information they may not need.

Hide the email addresses if you do "Copy" others.
Put your name in the "from" and "to" boxes and put all your recipient's email addresses in the "bcc" box. Otherwise, your email becomes an invasion of email address privacy for all of the people you are writing.

Plus, people observe where they are placed in your lineup of email addresses if you don't hide the names. Inadvertently, the receiver of your email could get insulted depending on where their name appears on your list.

Stop sending jokes, chain letters, and drippy vignettes.
What you do personally is up to you. If you must, send these mind-numbing missives to your friends from your home computer.
While on the job, keep your emails focused on your job.