CEO’s, Know Thyself!

Catherine New at Columbia Business School recently posted some sagely CEO leadership advice, know thyself!

“It is important to know thyself. Acquiring self-consciousness is the most exquisite transformation that you make in your 30s and 40s,” said Shumeet Banerji, the CEO of Booz & Company. “Learn what you are good and bad at. Especially what you are bad at.” He also suggested that good leaders think in six to eight month campaigns. “Taken together, they are a course of action,” he said.

Shumeet followed that statement with 10 career development tips:

1. Pay attention to human capital and who you are as a human being; consider how you think about and construct problems.
2. Get and feed a network. If you only get in touch with people when you need something, it doesn’t work. Be helpful to others as well, even if it’s difficult to take the time and effort.
3. Find mentors. No one is good enough to sort out his problems on his own. Good mentors are the ones who have influenced you and paid attention to you. They not only advocate for you, but they are critical of you as well.
4. Seek diverse experiences and stretch yourself into areas where you are not naturally comfortable. Diverse experience builds character.
5. Be curious about the world and its issues; despite the pain of the financial crisis, it has been an accelerated learning curve.
6. Be interested or else you can’t be interesting. Nothing is worse than a dull dinner companion — you can be interested in anything.
7. Form an educated and distinctive point of view. It helps you make sense of abstraction. Have a worldview to see what forces are at play.
8. Read. At the minimum read a daily financial paper and a dozen good books a year.
9. Look after yourself. Careers are an endurance game and work happens to you more than any other activity.
10. Make time for people you love and who love you. It’s too early to let these people become a subsidiary early in your career. The thing about time is that it is very unforgiving.

Why the ability to innovate is tied to market leadership

In a recent INSEAD interview with Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel, he articulates why the US needs to improve its innovation capacity to maintain its lead role in the world. “We’re not doing enough to get our own citizens interested in the skills and mindset required to retain a leadership role.”

Emerging economies around the world are focused on the necessity of well educated people required to pull their economy ahead of the pack. Our standard of living and economic standing in the US and Europe can only be maintained with investment in education and R&D. Lately it seems, points out Barrett, the greater the level of poverty in a country, the greater the government focus on high-tech and innovation education. The wealthier the country, such as the US and Canada, the inverse seems to take place.

In Barrett’s words, the best education system needs to be coupled with industry input. The people coming out of education institutions must be competitive in the world’s growing talent pool. Societal attitudes need to make sure the environment is suitable for investment and innovations.

Businesses must also take it as a high priority to educate their own workforce and focus on closing the gap between the unmotivated cog makers and the enthusiastic innovators within their company, not isolating sections of the staff due to organizational cultural misconceptions.

Barrett ties into the idea that in entrepreneurship, intelligent risks are a reality and that failure leads to learning something. South America still has yet to learn this lesson but it is beginning to embrace the idea. A direct result will likely be product and service innovation to meet the growing demand of an increasing South American middle class.

Over 50% of VC investment from Intel is targeted at Asia as it is quickly becoming as competitive as any opportunity in the US. Under closer analysis of graduate numbers, India and China far exceed high-tech graduation numbers than the US and Europe, but the US and Europe still hold the innovation card, for now, with the skills to connect the dots and hold onto the cutting edge utilizing foreign resources for innovative ideas that will continue to define the next paradigm.

Investment in innovation education needs to be made today to see the results in 10 years. Investing in a company’s talent can be the best internal investment a company can make. Talent investment ties into a recent report from  Booz & Company on The Talent Innovation Imperative. In this article, the authors argue “any company that competes on the global stage must, in light of today’s changing workforce, rethink the way it manages the skills of its people.”

The other recent publication on the topic also comes from INSEAD professor Guenter Stahl called Talent management: Building and sustaining a strong talent pipeline. In his paper Gunter recognizes what works for one company may not work for another. He concludes that while there are some effective practices for attracting, developing and retaining talent, these will only be successful if they’re in line with the company’s business strategy and the firm’s value system.

What areas of talent investment should business leaders be looking at? According to Booz: differentiated capabilities, performance acceleration, leadership development, and talent culture are essential to supporting an organization’s business strategy.

An investment in innovative thinking processes and culture can help ensure a brighter future for any company willing to take the chance.