Bootstrap Leadership Blog

One can make a pretty compelling case that good judgment is the single greatest competency of a successful leader.  In my years as the head of leadership development at several Fortune 500 companies, I can’t tell you how many times the CEO would base his final assessment of an emerging leader on this single competency.  There might be a lot to like about the executive, but if the CEO didn’t feel in his gut that they had good judgment, they weren’t climbing any higher in the organization.

Now there’s a entire book devoted to this under-rated leadership trait.  In their recent book titled Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls (2007), Warren Bennis and Noel Tichy call judgment the “essence of leadership” and identify three judgment domains that great leader must master – people, strategy, and crisis.  The authors propose that good judgment can be developed (if you have the right foundational qualities like integrity, courage, and listening skills) and that making great calls is a process, not an event.  Bennis and Tichy present a framework for making judgment calls that includes four phases - preparation, judgment, execution, and evaluation.  This is a great book to add to you library if you’re a collector of seminal works on leadership. 

Let’s hope our leaders exercise good judgment this weekend.  While we need a plan that can be executed, and we probably need it quickly, it will all be for naught if it’s not based on sound judgment. 

The great thing about partnering with clients is I’m constantly learning from them.  Last week, I was facilitating a leadership development program when the client introduced a cool web tool for her participants – it’s called GlobeSmart, and it’s a fantastic cultural awareness and global acumen resource.  GlobeSmart, the brainchild of Aperian Global (a cultural training firm), provides global organizations with access to information on conducting business with people from more than 60 countries. GlobeSmart addresses the greatest cause of difficulty in global business interactions - the challenge of relating and communicating successfully with counterparts from other countries, and develops awareness on three levels: individual self awareness, awareness of other cultures, and awareness of global business. 

Users start with a self-assessment of their own cultural tendencies, which can then be plotted against the similar profiles from the 60+ counties in the database.  In addition, you can learn key facts, trends, and cultural nuances on these countries… and as an online and mobile device tool, it is available 24/7, making it possible for employees worldwide to access information they need, anytime they need it.  It also includes practical tips for increasing your skills, and is continuously updated, with firsthand perspectives added by members in the popular FieldNotes section.

Check out GlobalSmart – you’ll win major points for recommending this critical development resource to your organization.

The events this spring and summer across several Middle East nations have been pretty remarkable – a true groundswell of citizens coming together to bring about real change – talk about creating a sense of urgency and forming a guiding coalition (however unorganized).   All of which got me thinking… has this ever happened (or could it even happen) inside a corporation? 

OK, it’s a crazy leap to make – but think about it.   What would it take, and could it even be done?  Organizations are not democracies (far from it).   And yet, there are similarities between companies and governments (citizens are called employees; laws = rules/values; the police/army might be the various compliance programs or even the “boss-direct report relationship”, etc.).   What would an “uprising” by the employees look like?  Would it be completely viral and leaderless?   Would a small group of brave VP’s carry a list of demands to the C-suite?  Would the Board have to be co-opted to “oust” the CEO?   How would that even work? 

I’m sure some form of this has been done – at the senior levels.  Think of a COO who gets the ear of an influential Board member, and starts to plant the seeds of transition (with herself as the logical next choice to be CEO).  Or maybe it would be targeted at getting some rules changed, or some new procedures put in place – I suppose that happens all the time (it’s called leading change – and it is supposed to able to work from any level in the organization).  But a bottoms-up approach to get the CEO fired?  A complete overthrow of the power base in the organization?  Wow, that would be incredible, and would probably change corporate life as we know it forever…

Nah, on second thought, it could never happen… the rebels would just get fired.  Unless…

 
Unless the reach and influence of social media has grown so powerful that the right PR campaign could reach outside the walls of the organization… where analysts and business writers started to really take notice.  Hmm…something to think about!