My transition story

McKinsey Q, June 2010

Kevin Johnson left a much bigger position, as president of Microsoft’s platform and services division, where he had been responsible for more than $20 billion in revenue, for one of CEO at Juniper Networks, in September 2008. The sales at Juniper, a provider of IT networking infrastructure, were $3.3 billion during Johnson’s first full year as CEO.

Johnson tried to follow a set of transition principles that he described recently in an interview with McKinsey’s Endre Holen and Allen Webb.

He sought advice from many CEO’s on how to take over from the previous CEO, Scott Kriens.

One of the CEOs he talked with told him the importance of assessing the talent quickly and being clear with them instead of leaving them in doubt, whether they’d be retained or not.

He was also advised to take help from the former CEO but unobtrusively to avoid conflict in mind of employees. He realized he had to make the best use of the previous CEO’s expertise, knowledge, and talent, but also how you can get enough room to establish your own leadership agenda and connection with the team.

Since he was hired to scale up the company and didn’t have a lot of time , one CEO’s advice was that if you haven’t made enough of the changes you need to make in the first 12 to 18 months, it’s going to be too late.

Before even starting on the job, he put together a plan of what he wanted to accomplish in the first 100 days: how he would invest his time and the key people he needed to connect with—the leadership team, employees, key customers, investors, partners, and the board. Even though Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and the global economy changed dramatically he continued to work on the 100-day plan, but in parallel he was trying to digest everything that was happening in the economy. That was probably a very unusual transition, but I’d expect all of them to have some serious issue—internal or external—that wasn’t anticipated.

The first few months he used to to connect with the organization, listen and learn, start testing some ideas, and begin to shape the strategic agenda.

Over the next three months, after one on one sessions with the top 100 or so people in the company and two-hour business reviews with every business group, he wrote a memo. It didn’t state specific solutions or actions but instead focused on his early observations about the company’s business, strategy, people, culture, and competition and shared the memo with the top 100 people in the company.

Four months after he started at Juniper, he had each of his direct reports conduct a people review with him on their organizations, their talent, and an assessment of their direct reports. This review was the basis for a board meeting where he took their directors through an all-up assessment of Juniper’s talent. Three months later, he took the leadership team through a strategy review process in a very structured way, and that fed the next board meeting. These management exercises allowed him to take the organization and the board along on a quest for the right answers—our long-term goals and the strategy that would help them achieve them.

The economic crisis helped in shaping the culture by bringing the team together and helping them to bond.

His new role at Juniper also expanded the scope of his responsibilities to new areas, including investor relations, managing a board, and allocating resources across a company. Strategically, they decided on continuing to fund R&D and customer satisfaction and at a time when many others were laying off huge numbers of workers, they increased investment in R&D and customer satisfaction. They did, however , operational expenditures in every other part of the business.

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Negotiation Excellence: The practical art of cutting deals

Negotiation Excellence: The practical art of cutting deals

Knowledge@SMU, April 04, 2011

It is impossible for everybody to agree on everything – not in our daily lives, and certainly not in the business environment where millions, billions of dollars are potentially at stake, pending outcomes of agreements. Differences remain, yet somehow, conclusions have to be reached.

“The price of failed negotiations is often high – loss of value, missed opportunities, or protracted conflicts,” said Michael Benoliel, a professor of organisational behaviour and human resources at Singapore Management University (SMU). “It is only when negotiators have effective negotiation skills (that) they will be able to negotiate efficiently, create mutually beneficial agreements and resolve disputes constructively. In short, create optimal agreements that create value,” he said.

Benoliel, who teaches negotiation at SMU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business, is also editor of the recently launched book 'Negotiation Excellence: Successful Deal Making', which pulls together the latest insights, findings and cases on the art of resolving differences.

Sure, the price of failed negotiations can be high, but it is especially painful and costly when the failure happens during the process of putting together two companies. “While there are many reasons why mergers and acquisitions fail to unlock value, an analysis of these factors reveals that the most major mistakes are related to the negotiators’ irrational and self-serving behaviour,” wrote Benoliel in the book’s introduction.

“These include: hubris, over optimism; information availability bias; confirmatory bias; escalation of commitment; and ‘deal fever’ – individuals produce many deals because they are evaluated on the basis of the numbers of the deals done and not on the basis of their intrinsic value,” he added.

A critical element in any negotiation, the authors looked at how “trust” can be built, how can to assess trustworthiness, and how it can be repaired after a violation. Thanks to advances made by researchers in this field, there are now empirical answers to these questions, and in their chapter, the authors explained how 'trust' may be effectively diagnosed, built and repaired in practice.

Can the role of genders make a difference in the negotiation process? The short answer is ‘yes’. Beyond simply pointing out how differences can occur, the authors provided practical advice on how to address those specific issues that could arise in negotiations.

Other chapters in the book explored topics like creativity in negotiations, power and influence in negotiations, negotiation strategy and negotiation ethics. There are also essays on the role of communication media in negotiations and negotiation via emails. In all, the “Negotiation Excellence” combines the effort of 39 contributors in 22 chapters.

“Negotiators can learn when to make the first offer and when to let the other side make the first offer. They can learn how to frame effectively situations and arguments. They can learn the value creating strategies by trading off between issues, adding issues to the negotiation mix, or creating contingent contracts,” Benoliel noted. That said; there are indeed certain intuitive abilities that cannot be imparted, for example, a sense of good timing – when to make an offer or a concession, he added.

By its very nature, no negotiation process is a carbon copy of the other. Yet, there are some fundamental principles and methods to define and measure negotiation outcomes beyond just the dollar sign. For one, before a party enters into a negotiation, it is important to first draw up a “negotiation thesis”. They need to ask themselves: why are they doing this and how will the negotiation create value? This helps to clearly define a specific set of objectives.

In a porous and connected world where cross-border deals are more often the norm than the exception, a lot of negotiation, unsurprisingly, takes place across cultures and languages. This is a point well recognised by Benoliel. However, he is quick to point out that there are differences in negotiation styles not just between Asian and Western negotiators, but also between, say, a Japanese negotiator and his Indian counterpart.

Differences will also occur in communication styles and the way a negotiation is framed. “Asian negotiators, in general, tend to be competitive, adopting a win-lose approach to negotiation. For many, the idea that negotiation is not a competitive sport, that it can produce two winners, is foreign and even naïve,” he said.

Negotiation, as an art, and science, is a dynamic one, as practitioners react and adapt to the changing environment. In this vein, the recent financial crisis served to stress the critical importance of several issues related to the negotiation process: the value of reliable information; the critical role of due-diligence and preparation, as well as the role of agents.

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Good Decisions. Bad Outcomes

HBR, Dec 2010

We can’t entirely avoid outcome-based decisions. Still, we can reduce our reliance on stochastic outcomes. Here are four ways companies can create more-sound reward systems.

1. Change the mind-set. Publicly recognize that rewarding outcomes is a bad idea, particularly for companies that deal in complex and unpredictable environments.

2. Document crucial assumptions. Analyze a manager’s assumptions at the time when the decision takes place. If they are valid but circumstances change, don’t punish her, but don’t reward her, either.

3. Create a standard for good decision making. Making sound assumptions and being explicit about them should be the basic condition for getting a reward. Good decisions are forward-looking, take available information into account, consider all available options, and do not create conflicts of interests.

4. Reward good decisions at the time they’re made. Reinforce smart habits by breaking the link between rewards and outcomes.

Our focus on outcomes is understandable. When a company loses money, people demand that heads roll, even if the changes are more about assuaging shareholders than sound management. Moreover, measuring outcomes is relatively easy to do; decision-making–based reward systems will be more complex. But as I’ve I said before, “It’s hard” is a terrible reason not to do something. Especially when that something can help reward and retain the people best able to help you grow your business.

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Why good leaders put substance before style

NY Times, June 25, 2010

This interview with Robert W. Selander, chief executive of MasterCard, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Robert W. Selander, retiring in July as C.E.O. of MasterCard, a job he held for 14 years, says it's important to relate to all of a company's stakeholders.

Selander spent a reasonable amount of time living overseas and recognized that that there is more similarity than difference in fundamental values, wanting to give your children more opportunity or at least as much as you had in life, etc. It’s true in a lot of aspects of business as well. But we tend to focus on differences, and perhaps exaggerate or accentuate those beyond the reality of what we have to worry about.

He realised that someone with great presentation skills isn’t necessarily the greatest manager and vice versa and that veneer shouldn’t distract you from the substance. When interviewing someone for a job he wants to know two or three of their strengths and weaknesses and asks them about those two or three things that they’ve acknowledged are flat sides, and how you think they should work on those, to ensure those don’t become barriers to success. When hiring he looks for leadership and results.

And he is looking for somebody who’s had multinational experience since they do business everywhere in the world. Finally he looks for presence.

If he could only ask 2 questions in an interview it would be, “Share with me two situations, work-related, that you’re proud of — one where there was something achieved as a result of your personal initiative, and the other where the achievement was a result of the team getting something done, which you don’t think they would otherwise have gotten done without your leadership.” He is looking for the feedback on the personal initiative and the leadership.

He has been working hard on listening skills for a few years .

His best career advice for new college grads is that when they come out of undergraduate school, going out and getting some work experience is really very helpful. Getting experience in bigger, broader companies where there are more things that they can learn and do is a good idea, because the likelihood of exactly picking out their career from the get-go is very low. As a first job, he says they should find generally a larger company where there are more things that they can get involved with, where there may be more comprehensive planned training activities to help them with certain skills that they’re going to need.

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Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com

Letter to a newly appointed CEO

McKinsey Q, June 2010

McKinsey’s former managing director Ian Davis offers to new CEOs advice distilled from his experience supporting executives during their transitions into the role.

He jots down the key points with his suggestions focused on making a successful leadership transition—not on the role and attributes of a successful CEO. They are based primarily on personal observation of many CEO transitions, as well as on interviews with a number of leading CEOs and chairmen from around the world.

1. Context is critical. He advices new CEO’s to quickly learn about the history, board structure, governance, and national heritage of the company, as well as its financial performance, morale, and capabilities. Then look at this context through the eyes of other constituencies and stakeholders.

2. In his view, the first 100 days is an arbitrary number to be treated with skepticism. No decisions should be made for strategy or people or core control processes when one is not confident in their knowledge. The key is to be thoughtful and purposeful about your transition time frame and to be very clear on what you believe would constitute a successful leadership transition. Set specific transition goals

3. A critical task early on is to establish priorities. Take time to decide which commitments and meetings you want to attend, bearing in mind the signaling effect your decisions will have.

4. Time will be a big challenge, since truly discretionary time will be limited. Everyone internally and externally wants a piece of you. Be ruthless on the use of your time and on what you will and won’t do.

5. The most important job is to construct your top team and build relationships with key people. You will need to get to know the current team and to understand their motivations, capabilities, attitude to risk, and ways of operating. Be open minded and take time to reassess initial impressions or previous experiences.

6. Do not underestimate the importance of building a professional, respect-based peer relationship quickly with your board and, particularly, with your chairman.

7. The quality and credibility of your direct support team will be key. Your choice of personal assistant and of the support office and technical infrastructure around you will be among your most important (and sometimes most difficult) early decisions.

8. It is advisable to develop—early—a clear transition communications strategy, both for internal and external audiences, recognizing that what appears in the external media has a bigger influence on internal and board perceptions than you might initially think. Consistency of message is key.

9. A perennial challenge for all in positions of authority is how to get objective, balanced feedback and information.

10. Finally regarding personal priorities and ground rules. The CEO role has the structural potential to be all consuming. There are some tips and techniques that might help. It’s important to establish early on how you are prepared to live your CEO life, at least when you are not in those occasional situations that require a 24/7 commitment.

CEO transition checklist

1. Have I reflected on the context of my transition—not just from my own perspective, but from that of all key stakeholders?

2. Have I established in my own mind the time frame and intended outcomes of my leadership transition?

3. Have I established my initial set of priorities with a full understanding of what others expect of me?

4. How will I control my agenda and allocate my time?

5. Have I developed a clear process and time frame for selecting my top team?

6. Have I committed sufficiently to building a relationship with my chairman and board?

7. Do I have a mechanism for building the necessary support office and infrastructure?

8. Have I thought through my communications plan—internal and external?

9. Do I have a mechanism for getting balanced feedback and information?

10. Have I established appropriate personal ground rules?

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Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com

The Power of Small Wins

HBR, May 2011

What could be more important for managers than increasing their teams’ productivity? Yet most managers labor under misconceptions about what motivates employees—particularly knowledge workers—to do their best work.On the basis of more than a decade of research, which included a deep analysis of daily diaries kept by teammates on creative projects, the authors clarify the matter once and for all: What motivates people on a day-to-day basis is the sense that they are making progress.

Managers who take this finding to heart will easily see the corollary: The best thing they can do for their people is provide the catalysts and nourishers that allow projects to move forward while removing the obstacles and toxins that result in setbacks. That is easily said, but for most managers it will require a new perspective and new behaviors. A simple checklist, consulted daily, can help make those habitual.

What is the best way to drive innovative work inside organizations? Important clues hide in the stories of world-renowned creators. It turns out that ordinary scientists, marketers, programmers, and other unsung knowledge workers, whose jobs require creative productivity every day, have more in common with famous innovators than most managers realize. The workday events that ignite their emotions, fuel their motivation, and trigger their perceptions are fundamentally the same.

The power of progress is fundamental to human nature, but few managers understand it or know how to leverage progress to boost motivation. In fact, work motivation has been a subject of long-standing debate. In a survey asking about the keys to motivating workers, we found that some managers ranked recognition for good work as most important, while others put more stock in tangible incentives. Some focused on the value of interpersonal support, while still others thought clear goals were the answer. Interestingly, very few of our surveyed managers ranked progress first.

If you are a manager, the progress principle holds clear implications for where to focus your efforts. It suggests that you have more influence than you may realize over employees’ well-being, motivation, and creative output. Knowing what serves to catalyze and nourish progress—and what does the opposite—turns out to be the key to effectively managing people and their work.

In this article, we share what we have learned about the power of progress and how managers can leverage it.

In a dramatic rebuttal to the commonplace claim that high pressure and fear spur achievement, we found that, at least in the realm of knowledge work, people are more creative and productive when their inner work lives are positive—when they feel happy, are intrinsically motivated by the work itself, and have positive perceptions of their colleagues and the organization. Moreover, in those positive states, people are more committed to the work and more collegial toward those around them. Inner work life, we saw, can fluctuate from one day to the next—sometimes wildly—and performance along with it. A person’s inner work life on a given day fuels his or her performance for the day and can even affect performance the next day.

To become an effective manager, you must learn to set this positive feedback loop in motion. That may require a significant shift. Business schools, business books, and managers themselves usually focus on managing organizations or people. But if you focus on managing progress, the management of people—and even of entire organizations—becomes much more feasible. You won’t have to figure out how to x-ray the inner work lives of subordinates; if you facilitate their steady progress in meaningful work, make that progress salient to them, and treat them well, they will experience the emotions, motivations, and perceptions necessary for great performance. Their superior work will contribute to organizational success. And here’s the beauty of it: They will love their jobs.

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Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com

Gen Y and the 2020 organization

Management-Issues,17 Jan 2011

.In less than a decade from now, the Millennials (or Generation Y - those born between 1980 and 2000) will be firmly entrenched within all management layers of most large corporations around the world. As this begins to happen, it's interesting to ponder what this will mean for big business and what changes Gen Y will bring with them as they begin to take charge and steer the ship.

So, what happens to the enterprise as they assume control?

A New Kind of Organizational Design

Today's organizational designs will likely be deemed obsolete. Millennials will demand a shift away from "command and control" reporting lines to more cooperative-based leadership models that provide greater autonomy and freedom of choice in the way work is performed.

Such a shift will stress and flex the organization in new and challenging ways. Looser, team-based organizational designs will need to be adopted. Gone are the days of multi-layered designs characterized by managers managing managers. Rather, temporary, purpose-based worker groupings emerge and flatter reporting structures are the upshot.

The pyramid management structure that we all grew up in will slowly be replaced with a more fluid and responsive network design. A networked organizational design is the next evolutionary step for today's "matrixed" organization.

In a network structure work is organized into projects, and, in turn, projects are grouped into portfolios (i.e., node in the network) of like kind. Execution of the projects within a portfolio is performed by workers who are assigned to the portfolio, in a "Just-In-Time" fashion.

Key knowledge workers may be permanently assigned to a portfolio (so to allow for needed deep intimacy and understanding of a portfolio's particular subject matter), while others may be temporarily assigned to play a particular project role for a specified duration. This allows an organization to better leverage its subject matter expertise across all of its portfolios.

This new type of organizational design provides work flexibility that Generation Y staff prefers and the scalability that businesses require in order to better manage costs and maintain quality through normal business cycles.

A New Kind of Operating Model

The shifting of the organizational design will, in turn, lead to a new kind of operating model – one that can accommodate a more transient workforce. Generation Y employees are very comfortable with a more integrated professional and personal life as long as working schedules are flexible.

To this end, operating models of the future will need to contemplate and weave the freelance and contract working arrangements preferred by Millenials, into the way work is performed. Indeed, the next generation of workers is willing to trade the routine, predictable and secure (which many find boring when compared to the multitasking, frenetic operating style that many favor) for the freedom to choose where, when and how work is executed.

Businesses will be compelled to offer more "tailorable" and enhanced "lifestyle" benefits to employees. We are already seeing concierge services, childcare and eldercare offerings emerge in benefit packages. This trend will continue as a new generation of workers seeks ways to make their life easier.

Customer participation in business decisions could increase, as well, given the fact that Millennial consumers will continue to call for a "Voice" in the ways products and services are customized and delivered to them.

The 2020 Organization

The Year 2020 organization will be one that is markedly different than what we see today. It will be a world in which the next generation of worker chooses to embrace personal independence at the risk of security, and one in which businesses must work hard to attract this budding talent.

With this, comes a very real leadership challenge whereby organizations will need to think differently about their management structure and the skills, competences and capabilities required to thrive in the new operating models that will result.

Clearly, a greater degree of emotional intelligence will be required by senior leaders so that they can proactively guide organizational transformation while continuing to grow and evolve successful enterprises.

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Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com

Scaling up a transformation

Scaling up a transformation: An interview with Eureko’s Jeroen van Breda Vriesman

McKinsey Q, Mar 2011

A member of the executive board describes how the Dutch insurance group first transformed its health division and then started to roll out the changes across the entire company.

The Quarterly: Why did Achmea launch a transformation of its health division in late 2006?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: Liberalization was a great challenge for all health insurers. Our offensive strategy worked—we gained a lot of market share—but we knew we would face two tough challenges. One was to fix our profit-and-loss numbers and meet our budget in the coming years. The other was to play the role envisioned by the legislators: to improve the health system in terms of better quality and prices. Going from one market system to another is a big shift for a company, but it does create a strong sense of urgency and it can be a driver for organizational changes.

The Quarterly: Where did you start?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: We started with profit and loss, and that meant transforming our operations, including customer care and the front and back offices, which now had to cope with a much larger customer base. Even before liberalization, our operations performed below their potential. They were not meeting cost benchmarks.

The Quarterly: What role did strong leadership and the lean concept play for changing mind-sets and culture?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: Having really good people in all the right places was the prerequisite for the success of the program, which we named “Sens” (Samen Effectief Naar Succes) in our internal communications. In Dutch, that’s an abbreviation for “together effectively toward success.” Starting at the top, we identified existing managers with the right mind-set and put them in positions that were critical for the change effort. We also trained managers who were underperforming or lacked the required mind-set. Occasionally, we hired external staff for certain tasks.

Interestingly, two of the division’s general managers approached the task in different ways. One set out to improve efficiency, focusing on culture and behavior, without the help of lean experts. The other general manager put a lean system in place and this helped him achieve results, including cultural change. Both of these managers met the 25 percent efficiency target. The only problem was that we couldn’t duplicate the improvement achieved by the manager who did it on his own. But we were able to ask the manager who was using lean to help others implement it in the same way. That has proved to be the beauty of lean. It helps you to continuously improve your company in a very systematic way.

The Quarterly: What more does it take to truly change mind-sets and behavior?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: Strong top-down leadership is very important, but it’s not enough. You must also have a vision and a strategy that explains to people why they are working according to lean principles—that it’s not only about meeting a budget, that it’s actually about creating a better company. With a vision—one that employees trust—you can make incredibly big changes in a short time. Without this vision, if you push lean just as something top management wants, it will probably not be around for more than a couple of years.

The Quarterly: How did Achmea create the vision and strategy for its health division?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: More than 400 managers and key players in the division were involved. This process was important because doing it together created a sense of common ownership. This made it easier to communicate across the division why things had to change and in what ways.

The Quarterly: What do you mean by trust?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: We mean that people in our company need to trust themselves, players within teams have to trust each other, and teams also need mutual trust. This is very important for lean because if teams don’t trust each other, they will end up duplicating work.

The Quarterly: How do you measure the impact of the lean program in the health division?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: We measure it in three ways. One is financial impact, which, by the way, is not only costs but also turnover in terms of gross written premiums because you get more of that when you deliver better quality. The second thing we measure quite frequently—every two weeks on teams where we implement lean—is employee satisfaction. Typically, satisfaction drops in the first six to eight weeks because employees need to get used to the new way of working. Satisfaction levels then stabilize and are usually higher one year into the program.

The Quarterly: Turning to the company-wide transformation, what was the case for change?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: Because of the success in the health division, we decided in the summer of 2008 to implement lean across Achmea. Then, the financial crisis hit our industry, which created a sense of urgency and added momentum to the effort. We did something that I’m really proud of: we budgeted only the costs of the implementation. We didn’t put the potential efficiency gains in our budget. Why? Because we wanted continuous improvement to be the main topic of discussion—not just meeting the budget.

The Quarterly: What is the key to getting senior managers really excited and committed to a big transformation like this one?

Jeroen van Breda Vriesman: It’s very important they understand that continuous improvement is not a program with an end point. It’s about coming to work every day with a new mind-set. To understand and really feel that distinction is very important.

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The objective of BLD is to offer strategic insights, how-to articles, thought leadership pieces and other information to help you become more effective at the workplace.

Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com

Cultivating Effective Dialogue

HBR, May 2011

It’s not easy orchestrating a frank and constructive dialogue between a CEO and frontline managers. Some individuals may feel intimidated when they find themselves face-to-face with the CEO. Others may be so determined to stand out that they dominate the conversation. Still others may seize the opportunity to air a litany of long-held grievances. Or the CEO may appear distant or distracted or, alternatively, too fixated on delivering a specific message.

A CEO dialogue should include no fewer than eight and no more than 10 frontline managers. Too few participants tends to inhibit the conversation with the CEO; too many can turn what should be a genuine dialogue into a minilecture. We work with HR and department heads to identify managers who are high performers and recognized thought leaders in their units. Participants receive a personal invitation from the CEO. A facilitator (usually a member of the CEO’s immediate staff) attends each meeting to manage the flow of the conversation and document the discussion.

Make sure that the meeting room is intimate. Ideally, the table should be round or oval, and participants should be seated close to one another. The meeting should be held on the frontline managers’ turf to make the point that the CEO is coming to them. Find out which participants are likely to be less vocal and place them directly opposite the CEO to encourage their engagement.

The dialogue should feel structured but informal. The CEO starts by laying out the goals of the meeting: (1) for managers to hear updates about the company’s progress and priorities and (2) for the CEO to listen and learn. Next, the group proposes topics for discussion. The facilitator clusters them into topic areas and kicks off dialogue.

The CEO should strive to make the participants feel like trusted confidants and ambassadors. The facilitator ensures that everyone has a chance to speak, keeps the conversation focused, and takes detailed notes.

A detailed summary of the meeting and agreed-upon action items should go to each member of the executive team, keeping participants’ comments anonymous. Local management can be briefed when appropriate. The facilitator is responsible for making sure that action items are taken.

The final step is to communicate. Telegraph the importance of frontline managers by showcasing highlights from the meeting in CEO communications and on the intranet. Announce action items that are under way to illustrate that the CEO is listening to, learning from, and acting on frontline insights.

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Information You Can Use. Knowledge You Can Trust

This summary is taken from Business Leaders Digest monthly(www.busleadersdigest.com)

The objective of BLD is to offer strategic insights, how-to articles, thought leadership pieces and other information to help you become more effective at the workplace.

Summaries from global top 100 business & management magazines, newspapers, websites & reports are published monthly in Business Leaders Digest which can be subscribed at a modest annual subscription of Rs1500 for corporates and Rs.900 for individuals in India or US$50 overseas. To subscribe or receive a sample issue, email at busleadersdigest@gmail.com