1: Imagine walking through a forest.
“The diversity of trees you’ll see can be quite dazzling,” write McKinsey consultants Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.
“Douglas fir, white pine, Aspen, red maple, and oak soar toward the sky, each individually competing with the others for sunlight and space.”
Is this true? Actually no.
“Research suggests that beneath the surface of the soil the trees are actually cooperating (not competing) with each other, with different species acting as a team to maximize the growth of the entire forest,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik write.
“Scientists have discovered that trees and fungi form underground partnerships called mycorrhizae that connect the roots of the diverse trees to one another to help share carbon, water, and nutrients such as phosphorous and nitrogen.”
This discovery by scientists helps explain a perplexing phenomenon.
“Why do cleared forests replanted with a single species like Douglas fir—with no competition for sunlight and space from other species—do more poorly than when the same species is grown amid other types of trees?” the authors ask.
Because cooperation among a variety of types of trees fosters sustainable growth.
2: “Similarly,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik write, “in organizational life, a group of high performers only becomes truly high performing if its members are complementary and connected to one another like in old-growth forests, not simple working side by side like replanted Douglas firs.”
The best CEOs do not start with people. Instead, they begin by defining the roles that will move the organization forward.
These CEOs ask: “What knowledge and skills are necessary? What experiences are needed? What attributes and attitudes aren’t negotiable? What about diversity, equity, and inclusion?”
Adidas’s CEO Herbert Hainer likens building the executive team to creating an effective soccer team: “You can’t play with only 11 strikers or 11 goalkeepers. You need an excellent goalkeeper, an excellent striker, and excellent supporting players. One of the most important tasks for a CEO is to build a team around them that they can rely on, where there’s trust and synergy.”
The overall make-up of the leadership team is also essential. Shiseido CEO Masahiko Uotani assembled a management team that included 50% insiders, those who’d been with the company from the beginning, and 50% outsiders, who joined later.
When Feike Sijbesma joined the Dutch multi-national company DSM, the senior leaders were jokingly addressed as “lady and gentlemen.” Feike went to work to ensure his top three hundred leaders were comprised of 30 percent women, and his board and top team were 50 percent female.
KV Kamath, the former CEO of ICICI, India’s largest private bank, worked diligently to balance experienced executives with younger ones in their early thirties.
3: Once the best CEOs have defined the key roles, they find the right people to fill them. When identifying the right people, they look for a combination of character traits.
Sony’s Kazuo Hirai emphasizes the importance of both aptitude and attitude. “What I basically looked for was expertise and proven ability in the area I was going to ask them to manage, whether it was the TV business, digital imaging, the movie business, PlayStation, what have you.”
And the right executive team members must have the right attitude: “I looked for demonstrated ability to push back against their bosses and not be afraid to present their ideas and be bold about it. They had to be able to tell their bosses or the CEO that an idea wasn’t good.”
GM CEO Mary Barra looks for leaders who can think both short and long-term: “I’ve come to the conclusion that for the most senior positions, you have to have a person who can execute and drive the results today, but they also have to be looking over the horizon and planning for the future.”
Dupont’s Ed Breen says, “For me, the number one thing is passion. Passionate people are infectious in a good way, and people want to be around them.”
Many of the best CEOs prioritize executives who are team players. IBD Bank CEO Lilach Asher-Topilsky comments: “The key was to have people who can understand the joint mission and not just think about their own promotion. That was the most important thing.”
JPMC’s Jamie Dimon has a different perspective on teamwork: “Teamwork is often code for ‘get along,’ ” he says, “but teamwork sometimes means standing alone and having the courage to say something. The best team player is the one who puts up their hand and says, ‘I don’t agree, because I don’t think what you’re doing is in the best interest of the client or the company.”
Cadence Design System CEO Lip-Bu Tan emphasizes “transparency, humility, and a learning attitude.” For Esquel CEO Marjorie Yang, “When picking leaders, I look for good quantitative reasoning skills, curiosity, and high emotional intelligence.”
Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai has grown to value empathy. “Eight years ago, I would not have listed it as a top attribute. But to run an organization today at the scale of Google–with its internal and external engagement demands—requires high levels of interpersonal sophistication.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What are the key character traits and virtues I look for when hiring leaders?
Action: Write down my list. Share it with other leaders across the organization and ask for input.
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