By : Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM) 
WHY do some organisations consistently win in the marketplace
while others struggle from crisis to crisis? The answer is
leadership.

Winning organisations have good leaders who know how to make
smart decisions and implement them quickly – and they develop
others to be leaders as well.

Below are the views of Dr Noel Tichy, leadership expert in
organisational behaviour and human resource management on
leadership in Asian companies, as expressed in an interview he
gave to Ryp Yong of Asia Inc.

Q: From GE to Accenture, Home Depot to Trilogy Software, you’ve
identified great leaders/teachers in western companies. Are
there great Asian leaders who excel at virtuous teaching cycles
too? Who are they and what did you learn from them?

A: The team of leaders at Infosys in Bangalore, India, along
with WiPro, in Japan, the leaders at Honda, Toyota, Nomura
Securities, Canon and Shiseido – they are organisations I have
worked with over the years.

In Singapore, we did a Cycle of Leadership workshop that
included among others Singapore Airlines, all good examples.
 
Q: What potential challenges exist for an Asian company when
creating a winning teaching organisation?

A: Asian, European, or American companies, it does not matter,
the fundamentals of great leadership are the same: leaders
develop other leaders and they must do it by having a clear
teachable point of view and be able to create virtuous teaching
cycles. GE has more than half of its workforce outside the US
and is able to build virtuous teaching cycles globally.

Q: What are the biggest issues in creating a winning teaching
organisation in any organisation?

A: The top leadership. They must be committed and willing to
role model and to require others to teach, it is non-negotiable.

There is a chapter in the Cycle of Leadership on the paradox of
power, the top leadership must demand teaching. The paradox is
that when leaders require the teaching, they then must do it
with a virtuous teaching cycle, very participative and with
minimal hierarchy.

Q: Today's managers are witnessing rapid hiring and firing
within their companies or industry. How would winning leaders
restore/inject employee confidence here?

A: Very easy, it is by honest and clear expectations about the
psychological contract. I like to use the example of McKinsey,
the elite consulting firm, where I have sent my MBA students
from Columbia University and the University of Michigan for 30
years.

They end up “firing” 90% of these MBAs, yet they are committed,
confident and those who leave rarely criticise McKinsey – they
were honestly evaluated every step of the way and helped out
when it was clear they would not make partner.

The deal is, we make you more valuable, we honestly let you know
how you are doing, and if you will not make partner we get you a
great job elsewhere. GE does the same with young people.

Q: You stress that business leaders must have “heart” and engage
as citizens. Who are the top three most compassionate
capitalists you have encountered to date, globally?

A: Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, A.G. Lafley, CEO of P&G and Roger
Enrico, retired CEO of Pepsico. All three have integrated global
corporate citizenship into the mainstream of being a 21st
century leader.

Roger donated his salary at Pepsico to fund college for the
children of needy employees. Immelt and Lafley engage thousands
of employees and leaders in their companies in volunteer
community activities.

For example, in India, GE is partnering with the Manipal
Hospital System and the University of Michigan to build a school
of public health in Bangalore.

Q: Aside from Jack Welch, which leaders are still learning and
teaching from the retirement deck?

A: Bill George, just retired CEO of Medtronic, Roger Enrico of
Pepsico and Larry Bossidy of Honeywell.

Q: You have worked with CEOs and groomed MBAs. Can you spot a
leader from a mile away? What are the top three to five
leadership traits?

A: 1. Deep commitment to continuous learning and self
development.

2. A transformational leader, always a change agent, looking to
take whatever organisation they are a part of to a better place,
able to creatively destroy and remake it (even when they are
part of a small department or organisation), this trait shows up
early in life.

3. A leader/teacher, always about making others better, being a
developer of other people, again shows up early in a leader’s
career.

4. Thinks and acts systemically, embraces global corporate
citizenship as a leader facing the challenges of the 21st
century both environmentally and human capitalwise.

Q: As an academic and practitioner, how do you perceive the
value of an MBA qualification today, particularly one from a
prestigious business school? Is the MBA losing its shine? Why?

A: The MBA needs to be radically overhauled to fit tomorrow’s
world of global growth leaders. The paradigm has only shifted
slightly since I started as a professor at Columbia University
in 1972.

We need more focus on globalisation, growth, leadership, and the
learning should be much more out of the classroom, action
learning.

At Michigan, we are still the only business school that gets all
of our first-year MBAs into seven weeks of full-time action
learning projects, over 80 each year.

This past year, over 40 projects were global, including working
in Vietnam with an organisation cleaning up land mines. We need
far more of this.

Q: What is your perception of Corporate Asia today? Has it
changed over the years?

A: It is a mixed bag – you have to go country by country. India
is the hottest area now, with China still a big growth story.
Japan is re-awakening. Singapore is struggling and other areas
are a mixture.

Q: What are your after-hour activities? Share with us your
reading preferences – fiction and non-fiction.

A: Running, water-skiing, wind surfing and golf. In fiction, I
read a mix of action and mystery novels. In non-fiction, mostly
political and historical books ranging from Woodward, James
MacGregor Burns – the best of all being his Pulitzer
Prize-winning book Leadership.


Dr Noel M. Tichy, leadership guru and co-author of 'The
Leadership Engine' (A Business Week Book of the Year) will be in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the first time to speak on “The
Leadership Engine: Building Leaders at Every Level” on 3 August
2004 at the Palace of the Golden Horses, Selangor.  Limited
seats available. To register, please call MIM Customer Service
at 03-2164 4611, e-mail enquiries@mim.edu or visit our website
www.mim.edu.