Tag: board member

What Is Stakeholder Value?
Posted

"Stakeholder Value" is an idea being given a good deal of positive support by the who's who of business. Following their meeting in August 2019, the Business Roundtable released a new statement on "the purpose of a corporation". Signed by 181 top CEOs, they committed to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders – customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders. That society is demanding a voice in the way businesses are run and is further endorsed by a change in corporate law in the UK in 2019. Companies on the London Stock Exchange must now report on both the "Employee's Voice" and "Corporate Culture."

Expect Boards to be far more involved in organisation culture in the future. Having run sessions on culture for Board members it's interesting to note that they quickly move from interest to enthusiasm once they realise that culture can and should be measured. Meanwhile, businesses that are truly stakeholder-driven have no problem attracting and retaining top talent. Patagonia, for example, receives 9,000 applicants for every internship.

Stakeholder value is also changing how intelligent organisations think about branding. Brand is more than a symbolic representation of the product or service being offered – it's the organisation's story simply told through compelling imagery and rich language. If, in the future, that story doesn't endorse the organisation's social and environmental contribution know that consumers will look to a brand that does.

George Wallace, Chief Executive, MHE Retail, put it this way:

"Brands that can show they are putting people or the environment ahead of sheer profit will be rewarded by consumers and employees and enhance the way they consider the brand."

Expect COVID-19 to transform a soft want into a hard need.

Insights from "Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis".

Coming Down the Mountain: Coming Out Of This Crisis Stronger
Posted

Breakthrough technology, uncertainty and the unprecedented and ever-increasing speed of change demand an organisation that is a fit for the challenges of the 21st century. We are describing not just a better, but a very different kind of way to operate. An organisation built to change; one where disruption, agility and speed of learning dominate the leadership conversation.

Which brings us to the COVID-19 crisis. A crisis has three stages. Stage one: acceptance. Stage two: survival. Stage three: growth. And the winners will be? Those who come out of this crisis stronger.

Amid the veritable avalanche of "me too" advice on how to get through this crisis it is easy to overlook two central questions:

  1. "How will your business come out of this stronger?"
  2. "As a leader, how will you personally come out of this stronger?"

"Part One: Coming Down the Mountain" looks at how to come out of this crisis stronger:

  • The Three Stages of Crisis
  • Letting Go of Our Past
  • Following a Script From a Different Century
  • The New Normal
  • Coming Down the Mountain
  • Why Culture Matters
  • Next Steps
  • Appendix one: 3 X 3: Crisis, Culture and Change
  • Mindset Assessment: Will You come Out of This Crisis Stronger?

Download your complementary copy today »

Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis
Posted

"Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis" is a complementary book series, specifically aimed at enhancing how leaders respond to times of crisis.

The books cover concepts such as how to come out of this crisis stronger, culture, leadership agility and learning, what makes great teams. Also included are essential skills to enable us to start having conversations about moving forward while taking appropriate actions.

Download "Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis" »

Read on for more information about the book series:

Or, Download Now

Coming Down the Mountain

Part One, Coming Down the Mountain, looks at how to come out of this crisis stronger:

  • The Three Stages of Crisis
  • Letting Go of Our Past
  • Following a Script From a Different Century
  • The New Normal
  • Coming Down the Mountain
  • Why Culture Matters
  • Next Steps
  • Appendix one: 3 X 3: Crisis, Culture and Change
  • Mindset Assessment: Will You come Out of This Crisis Stronger?

The Culture Conversation

Recognising, as we move forward, how important organisation culture is, Part Two outlines the Culture Conversation:

  • The Culture Carriers
  • Look, Listen, Learn
  • The Building Blocks
  • Culture Is A System
  • Is the Organisation Managing Its Culture?
  • What Makes the Business Special?
  • One Culture or Many?
  • Measurement
  • Strategy Versus Culture
  • A Team of Teams
  • Without Leadership You Ain't Got Much
  • The Orxestra Change Model
  • Culture Assessment

Leadership, Learning and Agility: The Way Of The Dolphin

Part Three explores the need for leadership agility and what that implies: Leadership Agility and Learning - The Way of the Dolphin:

  • Agility is a Way to Think
  • Bass and the Shark
  • Agility and Speed of Learning
  • The Way of the Dolphin
  • Conclusion
  • Assessment: How Good a Coach Are You?

Great Organisations Are Built Around Great Teams

Drawing on the reality that tomorrow's organisation will be a team of teams, Part Four examines what it means to be an outstanding team - Great Organisations Are Built Around Great Teams:

  • Who We Were is Who We Are
  • It's All About Culture
  • Organisational Lessons from Nature
  • The Organisation of Tomorrow
  • Building a Great Team
  • Team Assessment

When the Trees Get Bigger and the Forest Gets Deeper - It's Time To Sharpen Your Saw

Part Five moves beyond leadership as a philosophy and drills down into essential skills - When the Trees Get Bigger and the Forest Gets Deeper, It's Time to Sharpen Your Saw:

  • Are You The Leader They Need?
  • Assessing Your Organisation's Leadership Balance
  • If Ever There Was a Time to Listen - It’s Now
  • The Listening Tree
  • To Lead Is To Care
  • 50 Ways To Say You Care - In a Covid World
  • If You Are Not Living Your Own Story, You Are Living Someone Else's
  • Resilience Assessment

Download your complementary copy of "Leadership: Moving Beyond The Crisis" from TRANSEARCH Downloads.

The Now, The Next, and The New Normal
aesc.org
Posted

"It's important to take lessons out of this rather quickly. So, what can you learn out of this crisis? What can you do? How can you shape your solution? How can you shape your services? How can you shape the sale of your product? This is pretty much something that every single industry or every single client has to think about." - Ullrich Ackermann, Chair of the Board at TRANSEARCH.

Ullrich shares his views on dealing with the ever-evolving status of organisational life, with the AESC.

Read "The Now, The Next, and The New Normal" leadership insights

Seven Surprises for New CEOs
hbr.org
Posted

Leadership is fickle. As you climb the corporate ladder your role changes. When you lead a department you are expected to give orders. People look for leadership. When you lead a division you are expected to empower middle management. People look for guidance. When you become the CEO of a company you become a servant leader. People look for inspiration. Reaching the pinnacle role of a CEO is every graduate's dream, but when you finally arrive you have too much to do, with too little time and too little information. Moreover, you become a public figure and vulnerable to critique. Not everybody wears the armor to withstand such forces.

The findings of Harvard Business Review published in 2004 still seem relevant in 2020. Here are 7 surprises that new CEOs discovered when entering office:

  1. You can't run the company
  2. Giving orders is very costly
  3. It is hard to know what is really going on
  4. You are always sending a message
  5. You are not the boss
  6. Pleasing shareholders is not the goal
  7. You are still only human

Published by Michael E. Porter, Jay W. Lorsch and Nitin Nohria
From the October 2004 Issue

Summary by Geo Wehry, Senior Partner at TRANSEARCH, originally published on LinkedIn here.

Read "Seven Surprises for New CEOs" leadership insights

The mindsets and practices of excellent CEOs
mckinsey.com
Posted

"With this article, we set out to show which mindsets and practices are proven to make CEOs most effective. It is the fruit of a long-running effort to study performance data on thousands of CEOs, revisit our firsthand experience helping CEOs enhance their leadership approaches, and extract a set of empirical, broadly applicable insights on how excellent CEOs think and act."

Read "The mindsets and practices of excellent CEOs" leadership insights

Attracting a Non-Executive Director | TRANSEARCH International Case Study
transearch.com
Posted

A private company board with a unique mix of personalities wanted to attract a non-executive director with the right chemistry and Audit Committee leadership ability. The following case study shows how our team leveraged a global network of trusted business relationships, our proprietary TRANSEARCH Orxestra® Method, and the Hogan Assessment tool to help attract and select a globally experienced executive with a reputation for being a true collaborative leader with deep finance and board experience.

Read "Attracting a Non-Executive Director | TRANSEARCH International Case Study" leadership insights

How to define your business culture (and why it's important to know how things are really done around here)
transearch.com.au
Posted

Over many years, TRANSEARCH International have developed a unique set of tools that has enabled organisations to clearly articulate what they are looking for when hiring, based on a clear definition of their current culture.

Read "How to define your business culture (and why it's important to know how things are really done around here)" leadership insights

1 2