We want to start this edition of Schaffer Insights by sending our best for the New Year to all. As you will read in the interview below, we see great opportunities amid all the challenges facing the global economy and individual organizations. If 2012 is anything like 2011, it will be more important than ever for leaders to tap into the great potential for much better performance in their companies. We wish you a Rapid Results-filled start to the New Year!
Challenging times are opportunities for leaders and leadership teams to distinguish themselves. But what do they need to do – or do differently – to make the most of these opportunities? Matthew McCreight, managing partner at Schaffer Consulting provides some insights based on the firm’s 50+ years working with leaders around the world.
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Similar to years past, 2012 will offer no room for error. As companies develop their strategies for this next year, their success will be dependent on leaders’ abilities to implement without misstep. To avoid potential pitfalls there are four mistakes leaders must immediately stop making (as written about in Robert Schaffer’s 2010 Harvard Business Review article “Four Mistakes Leaders Keep Making”) that are all too common in the C-Suite:
- Failing to set proper expectations
- Excusing subordinates from pursuit of overall objectives
- Colluding with staff experts and consultants
- Waiting while subordinates prepare, prepare, prepare
Erasing these behaviors from their psyche, leaders will be positioned as the change catalysts they need to be to lead their organizations through tough times. Request a copy of the full article.
Remember old American Western movies where the sheriff with the big white hat rode onto the scene to bring law and order to the frontier town? Today, there aren’t too many big hats around — and it’s not just because 21st Century leaders dress differently.
In many ways, the current financial crisis has been caused, or at least exacerbated, by a lack of leaders with big hats. Instead of thinking about what’s best in the long-term, most politicians have been focusing on how to advance their own parochial agendas. European leaders have been protecting their own currencies, deferring austerity measures, and avoiding some of the deeper structural changes that may ultimately be needed. Similarly, Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. (including the President) have been digging in their heels on their “non-negotiable” positions, seeming to spend more time blaming each other than actually offering solutions.
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Leaders of the past almost always seem more effective than those of today. It’s a perceptual bias: We long for what we don’t have, and mythologize what we used to have. Even still, many of today’s leaders don’t seem to measure up to our expectations. According to a survey conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School last year, 68 percent of Americans believe there is a “leadership crisis” in the country; and leaders in only four out of 13 sectors inspire above average confidence (the military, the Supreme Court, non-profits, and medical institutions). Leaders of the news media, Congress, and Wall Street receive the lowest scores.
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Highlighted within Harvard Business Review’s “10 Must Reads on Leadership,” What Makes a Leader? by Daniel Goleman explores the undeniable characteristics leaders need to create a positive and substantial impact. What many leaders don’t realize is that to be effective they must be more than intelligent, tough, determined, and a visionary. In fact, the overlooked secret to leadership success is emotional intelligence. Possessing these personal qualities, like self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill, along with the core leadership qualities, will differentiate executives from the rest of the pack and catapult them to best in class status. Learn more about Goleman’s work and how to be an emotionally intelligent leader.
As a managing partner and long-time member of Schaffer Consulting, Matthew McCreight has worked with organizations across the spectrum of their challenges including: achieving rapid and sustained financial turnaround, creating successful organic growth, forging effective global enterprises, and building innovative partnerships. He also has worked with many leaders as they move into new roles – on their own success and on how they use the first few months as a time to accelerate successful change and transformation across the organization.
Widely published, Matthew contributed to Schaffer Consulting’s book Rapid Results! How 100-Day Projects Build the Capacity for Large-Scale Change and has co-authored a number of pieces with his colleagues, including “Don’t Waste Time Seeking the Right Change Model, Build Your Own.” In the past year, he authored a blog for The Economist’s “Ideas Economy” website and is launching a new blog for President&CEO magazine.
He earned his MBA from the Yale School of Management and BA in Economics from Wesleyan University. Connect with Matthew.
When it comes to fostering growth and profitability, many companies may be overlooking important opportunities. While prosperity is automatically associated with a presence in today’s leading global economies, it is important for organizations to evaluate how they can do well while also doing good in the often overlooked third-world markets. In this issue of Schaffer Insights, we highlight how organizations can be both competitive and profitable, all while making a world of difference, in today’s highly connected and global business landscape with the right mindset, strategy, and location.
Ethiopia. Ghana. Kenya. Rwanda. Madagascar. Sudan. These are countries where major social problems are the norm, HIV runs rampant, schools have few resources or don’t exist at all, there are serious shortages of medical care, and local infrastructures need significant improvement.
What if we could help solve these problems in a hurry – and make the results last?
We can, and the Rapid Results Institute, founded by Schaffer Consulting, proves how in a just- published, two-part New York Times “Fixes” column. The Institute employs the Schaffer-developed “Rapid Results” strategy, which empowers groups of people to carry out a specific, results-producing project in 100 days. It has proven to be a highly effective method of social change, even in the world’s poorest communities. Read the first piece. The follow-up article describes how the Rapid Results Institute educates people all around the world to use the same method for turbo-charging community development that Schaffer Consulting has used for many years to help business organizations accelerate progress.
Following a decade of significant growth through acquisition, Zurich Financial Services (Zurich) – one of the world’s largest insurance groups and one of the few to operate on a truly global basis – was a complex organization of independently managed subsidiaries each running its own independent systems. To help the organization simplify its ability to establish a monthly hard close of its books in all of its locations around the world, Zurich turned to Schaffer Consulting and the proven WorkOut process. In Patrice Murphy’s case description “Bringing Timely and Accurate Numbers to Management: Using WorkOut to Energize a Global Finance Function,” she describes how the WorkOut process facilitated quick development and implementation of a strategy that resulted in the monthly hard close, as well as bringing the organization’s diverse teams across the globe closer together.
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