PROF Dr Noel M. Tichy is a professor of Organisational Behaviour
and Human Resource Management at the University of Michigan
Business School, where he is also the director of the Global
Leadership Programme, a consortium of 36 Japanese, European and
North American companies that have partnered to develop senior
executives and conduct action research on globalisation.

Tichy also directs the Global Business Partnership, which links
global companies and research centres in North America, Japan
and Europe.

Between 1985 and 1987, he directed the worldwide development
efforts at General Electric’s Leadership Centre at Crotonville.

Prof Tichy is the author of numerous books, including The Cycle
of Leadership which examines the creation of companies with
strong values, speed and the intelligence to sustain success
decade after decade by developing leaders at all levels.

In this article, he answers some questions posed by Blake
Harris, editor of Government Technology, USA.

Q: Can you give a general overview of your approach to
leadership?

A: First of all, vision without execution equals hallucination.
The role of a leader is to be far more than a visionary. Vision
has to link to execution.

A world-class leader like Martin Luther King Jr clearly had a
dream, but he also was on the bus, organising things in Selma,
making stuff happen.

It is not by accident my former colleague at GE and former CEO
of Honeywell, Larry Bossidy, has a book, Execution, a bestseller
in the business world.

There has been far too much (focus) on strategy and vision, and
not enough on making it happen.

My view on leadership – whether it be military leadership,
business leadership, political leadership, healthcare or
education leadership – is simple.

Leaders lead by being great teachers. One assumption I have
about any institution is that you are successful to the extent
that you have leaders at all levels.

The key is leadership at all levels. The leaders have to take
responsibility for developing the next generation of leaders
rather than rely on consultants or professors. The whole
industry, where we tried to outsource leadership development,
fails every time.

Leadership development has got to be in the fabric of the
institution. None of this is rocket science. The military runs
the Navy SEAL school not with some consultant or professor, but
with someone who has been there.

Q: How do you go about having senior leaders take on the
responsibility for leadership development?

A: If you buy the argument that leaders are developed best by
successful leaders who have been there, then leaders have to
have what I call a teachable point of view.

If I take the top team in an organisation and want to run them
through a workshop, I’ve got to do my homework on what it takes
to be successful. To be a leader teacher, you have to have
ideas, values, emotional energy and edge – and a teachable point
of view on all those.

Take the governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm. To be
successful in Michigan, she needs a set of ideas around the
quality of life and the business support the state is going to
give. There has to be an intellectual framing of that – one that
can be articulated and taught.

Then what are the values – starting with the value system with
which she is going to lead her Cabinet. Then the agencies in the
state – are they articulated? Can they be taught? What is she
going to do to emotionally energise various stakeholder groups
she’s got to work with, including state employees and agencies?
What is the teachable point of view of how you emotionally
energise them? That includes things like HR systems. How do you
appraise them, reward them, celebrate them and get rid of the
bad ones?

The other thing a leader has to have is edge – making the yes/no
decisions, not setting up another committee or task force, or
hiring a consultant. The leaders get paid to make yes/no
decisions. So the ticket of admission to develop other leaders
is to articulate your own teachable point of view, first as an
individual, then as a team.

Let me just lambaste US business. Besides all the problems we’ve
had with some leaders – and I honestly do believe it is anything
but a small minority, but they destroyed trust in business – is
another longer-term, more serious issue that has not been
adequately dealt with. We do a terrible job in business – and I
think even worse in the public sector – of developing the next
generation of leaders.

Just look at the landscape of US blue-chip companies that didn’t
have a successor.

IBM had to go outside when they fired John Akers to bring Lou
Gerstner in. AT&T went out twice, and the company has fallen
apart in the interim. Kodak went outside. HP went outside to get
Carly Fiorina. 3M went outside to get Jim McNerney from GE. Home
Depot went outside.

These are supposedly great companies that failed in what I think
is the CEO’s No. 1 responsibility – to ensure the continuity of
leadership in the institution.

The exceptions are kind of fun and instructive to talk about. I
spent a number of years running GE’s Leadership Center at
Crotonville for Jack Welch in the mid-80s.

In 1985, one of the No. 1 issues we were talking about – Larry
Bossidy, at the time, was vice chairman, and he was part of that
– was who’s going to take over GE in 2000 when Jack retires.
That was 15 years before he was set to retire.

In the 80s, there were 20 candidates. They got into the 90s and
kept paring it down.

As many people know, they got it down to three – Bob Nardelli
who now runs Home Depot, Jim McNerney who now runs 3M, and Jeff
Immelt who runs GE. That did not happen by accident. That’s the
only business I know in the world that had that kind of bench
strength in terms of candidates for CEO.

Q: It is interesting what happened to the other two who weren't
picked for the top GE job. They ended up as CEOs in other major
companies.

A: Well, that was planned. Welch orchestrated that whole process
– not only their development, but also putting a No. 2 person
behind each of the three. He made it clear that the day one was
chosen as CEO of GE, the others were expected to leave.

One of the other leadership principles is that it is almost
impossible, when you have spent your whole life trying to win
the No. 1 spot, to then lose and be a good No. 2 or 3. Sure
enough, because of GE's notoriety, the other two had offers
within 24 hours.

The point is, if I look for any leader who developed other
leaders, their calendar shows it.

I love talking to business CEOs who tell me they are too busy to
do this. I point out that Welch, and now Jeff Immelt, have a
US$300bil market cap company with 300,000 people and 20 major
businesses. How did they find the time to go to (one-week
sessions at the Leadership Centre at) Crotonville? It's not
about time. It's about priorities.

This is not any different in the public sector. The leaders who
really care about developing the next generation – the only
variable I look at is their calendar – are they putting it as a
priority? Don't tell me you've hired consultants or run a
programme. Show me where your time is.


Dr Noel M. Tichy will be in Malaysia for the first time to
speak on “The Leadership Engine: Building Leaders at Every
Level” on Aug 3 at the Palace of the Golden Horses, Selangor.
For details, call MIM Customer Service at 03-2164 4611, e-mail
enquiries@mim.edu or visit our website www.mim.edu