The work of the leader

Lieutenant General William G. Pagonis led the 40,000 men and women who ran the theater logistics in the Persian Gulf War during its three phases of operation: Desert Shield (buildup), Desert Storm (ground war), and Desert Farewell (redeployment). By military standards, it was a challenging assignment. By the conventions of any nonmilitary complex organization, it was unheard of. In the Persian Gulf, Pagonis's challenges included feeding, clothing, sheltering, and arming over 550,000 people. All of this in an hostile, desert region with a Muslim community distrustful of the "infidels" sent there to protect them. The lessons of leadership gleaned through Pagonis's experiences in the Gulf cross military boundaries--they apply equally to general management and leadership development in the private, civilian sector. To gain a clear sense of the overall organization in an area the size of the Southwest Asian theater, Pagonis deputized proxies, dubbed "Ghostbusters," to be his eyes and ears throughout the desert. His goal was to build a leadership-supporting environment, combining centralized control with decentralized execution. Pagonis believes vision is defined by the leader, but the subordinates define the objectives that move the organization toward the desired outcome. The roots of leadership, Pagonis claims, are expertise and empathy. A leader's work is not only to apply these traits but also to cultivate them--both on a personal and organizational level. True leaders create organizations that themselves cultivate leadership. This can only be achieved through rigorous and systematic organizational development.     

The uncompromising leader

Managing the tension between performance and people is at the heart of the CEO's job. But CEOs under fierce pressure from capital markets often focus solely on the shareholder, which can lead to employee disenchantment. Others put so much stock in their firms' heritage that they don't notice as their organizations slide into complacency. Some leaders, though, manage to avoid those traps and create high-commitment, high-performance (HCHP) companies. The authors' in-depth research of HCHP CEOs reveals several shared traits: These CEOs earn the trust of their organizations through their openness to the unvarnished truth. They are deeply engaged with their people, and their exchanges are direct and personal. They mobilize employees around a focused agenda, concentrating on only one or two initiatives. And they work to build collective leadership capabilities. These leaders also forge an emotionally resonant shared purpose across their companies. That consists of a three-part promise: The company will help employees build a better world and deliver performance they can be proud of, and will provide an environment in which they can grow. HCHP CEOs approach finding a firm's moral and strategic center in a competitive market as a calling, not an engineering problem. They drive their firms to be strongly market focused while at the same time reinforcing their firms' core values. They are committed to short-term performance while also investing in long-term leadership and organizational capabilities. By refusing to compromise on any of these terms, they build great companies.     

The failure-tolerant leader

"The fastest way to succeed," IBM's Thomas Watson, Sr., once said, "is to double your failure rate." In recent years, more and more executives have embraced Watson's point of view, coming to understand what innovators have always known: Failure is a prerequisite to invention. But while companies may grasp the value of making mistakes at the level of corporate practices, they have a harder time accepting the idea at the personal level. People are afraid to fail, and corporate culture reinforces that fear. In this article, psychologist and former Harvard Business School professor Richard Farson and coauthor Ralph Keyes discuss how companies can reduce the fear of miscues. What's crucial is the presence of failure-tolerant leaders--executives who, through their words and actions, help employees overcome their anxieties about making mistakes and, in the process, create a culture of intelligent risk-taking that leads to sustained innovation. Such leaders don't just accept productive failure, they promote it. Drawing from their research in business, politics, sports, and science, the authors identify common practices among failure-tolerant leaders. These leaders break down the social and bureaucratic barriers that separate them from their followers. They engage at a personal level with the people they lead. They avoid giving either praise or criticism, preferring to take a nonjudgmental, analytical posture as they interact with staff. They openly admit their own mistakes rather than trying to cover them up or shifting the blame. And they try to root out the destructive competitiveness built into most organizations. Above all else, failure-tolerant leaders push people to see beyond traditional definitions of success and failure. They know that as long as a person views failure as the opposite of success, rather than its complement, he or she will never be able to take the risks necessary for innovation.     

The wise leader

In an era of increasing discontinuity, wise leadership has nearly vanished. Many leaders find it difficult to reinvent their corporations rapidly enough to cope with new technologies, demographic shifts, and consumption trends. They can't develop truly global organizations that operate effortlessly across borders. And they find it tough to ensure that their people adhere to values and ethics. The authors assert that leaders must acquire practical wisdom, or what Aristotle called phronesis: experiential knowledge that enables people to make ethically sound judgments. Wise leaders demonstrate six abilities: (i) They make decisions on the basis of what is good for the organization and for society. (2) They quickly grasp the essence of a situation and fathom the nature and meaning of people, things, and events. (3) They provide contexts in which executives and employees can interact to create new meaning. (4) They employ metaphors and stories to convert their experience into tacit knowledge that others can use. (5) They exert political power to bring people together and spur them to act. (6) They use apprenticeship and mentoring to cultivate practical wisdom in orders.     

The leader as lobbyist

Guidant's Ginger Graham argues that senior executives are actually better prepared than most lobbyists to inform and educate members of Congress about the issues that will affect their businesses.     

卓越团队需要卓越的明星领导

韦尔奇之于GE、郭士纳之于IBM、柳传志之于联想、张瑞敏之于海尔……这些明星领导对国际和国内顶尖企业的作用是显而易见的。对内．起到统一企业价值观．引领企业战略发展走向．推动企业变革等巨大作用；对外．以个人的明星效应强化着企业品牌。特别是在企业需要巨大变革的关键时期．更是起着决定性的作用。没有郭士纳的强力推行．IBM向服务型企业的转变会异常艰难，也许会就此走向衰败；没有韦尔奇的大刀阔斧．甚至独断专行．GE如大象般臃肿的机构难以变得如此轻灵。     

In praise of the incomplete leader

Today's top executives are expected to do everything right, from coming up with solutions to unfathomably complex problems to having the charisma and prescience to rally stakeholders around a perfect vision of the future. But no one leader can be all things to all people. It's time to end the myth of the complete leader, say the authors. Those at the top must come to understand their weaknesses as well as their strengths. Only by embracing the ways in which they are incomplete can leaders fill in the gaps in their knowledge with others' skills.The incomplete leader has the confidence and humility to recognize unique talents and perspectives throughout the organization--and to let those qualities shine. The authors' work studying leadership over the past six years has led them to develop a framework of distributed leadership. Within that model, leadership consists of four capabilities: sensemaking, relating, "visioning," and inventing. Sensemaking involves understanding and mapping the context in which a company and its people operate. A leader skilled in this area can quickly identify the complexities of a given situation and explain them to others. The second capability, relating, means being able to build trusting relationships with others through inquiring (listening with intention), advocating (explaining one's own point of view), and connecting (establishing a network of allies who can help a leader accomplish his or her goals). Visioning, the third capability, means coming up with a compelling image of the future. It is a collaborative process that articulates what the members of an organization want to create. Finally, inventing involves developing new ways to bring that vision to life. Rarely will a single person be skilled in all four areas. That's why it's critical that leaders find others who can offset their limitations and complement their strengths. Those who don't will not only bear the burden of leadership alone but will find themselves at the helm of an unbalanced ship.     

Creativity and the role of the leader

In today's innovation-driven economy, understanding how to generate great ideas has become an urgent managerial priority. Suddenly, the spotlight has turned on the academics who've studied creativity for decades. How relevant is their research to the practical challenges leaders face? To connect theory and practice, Harvard Business School professors Amabile and Khaire convened a two-day colloquium of leading creativity scholars and executives from companies such as Google, IDEO, Novartis, Intuit, and E Ink. In this article, the authors present highlights of the research presented and the discussion of its implications. At the event, a new leadership agenda began to take shape, one rooted in the awareness that you can't manage creativity--you can only manage for creativity. A number of themes emerged: The leader's job is not to be the source of ideas but to encourage and champion ideas. Leaders must tap the imagination of employees at all ranks and ask inspiring questions. They also need to help their organizations incorporate diverse perspectives, which spur creative insights, and facilitate creative collaboration by, for instance, harnessing new technologies. The participants shared tactics for enabling discoveries, as well as thoughts on how to bring process to bear on creativity without straitjacketing it. They pointed out that process management isn't appropriate in all stages of creative work; leaders should apply it thoughtfully and manage the handoff from idea generators to commercializers deftly. The discussion also examined the need to clear paths through bureaucracy, weed out weak ideas, and maximize the organization's learning from failure. Though points of view varied, the theories and frameworks explored advance the understanding of creativity in business and offer executives a playbook for increasing innovation.     

从职业特征看会计师事务所内部治理

会计师事务所内部治理是一整套关于事务所组织形式、权力分配与权力监督、内部控制与风险管理、价值取向与利益分配的制度安排。目的是要解决事务所内部利益主体之间的权力制衡与利益分配、事务所组织主体与各相关利益主体之间的信托责任问题。     

Why people follow the leader: the power of transference

We all admire leaders. In trying to understand how leadership works, however, we often lose sight of the fact that followers are a crucial part of the equation. Regrettably, they get short shrift in the management literature, where they are described as merely responding to their leaders' charisma or caring attitudes. What most analyses seem to ignore is that followers have their own motivations and are as powerfully driven to follow as leaders are to lead. In this article, psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and management consultant Michael Maccoby delves into the unconscious recesses of followers' minds. He looks closely at the often irrational tendency to relate to a leader as some important person from the past--a parent, a sibling, a close friend, or even a nanny. Sigmund Freud discovered this dynamic when working with his patients and called it"transference." But as important as it is, the concept remains little understood outside the realm of clinical psychoanalysis. This is unfortunate, because a solid understanding of transference can yield great insight into organizational behavior and endow you with the wisdom and compassion to be a tremendous leader. The author explains the most common types of transference--paternal, maternal, and sibling--and shows how they play out in the workplace. He notes that they have evolved as our family structures have changed. Whether followers perceive a leader as an all-knowing father figure, as an authoritative yet unconditionally loving mother figure, or as a brother or sister who isn't necessarily a model of good behavior, the leader can manage transferential ties by bringing unconscious projections to light. Then debilitating resentment and animosity can give way to mutual understanding and productivity--and a limping organization can start to thrive.     

如何评价银行领导综合素质

银行领导者在结成战略伙伴方面应该技高一筹．他们要认识到整个商业银行系统的所有参与者都是潜在的伙伴。敌对的构思已不合时宜了。现在．那些持有对抗性观点或从事竞争性活动的人们被视为补充而非敌手。这种处置考虑劲了一种完全不同的战略和协商的思想形式。它将过去用于“打击”或“智胜”敌对方的精力解放出来．从而为寻求更富创造性的解决办法提供自由和空间。     

高技术创业环境存在七大问题

在中国高技术领域存在着这样一种现象,“有资源的不创业或难创业,想创业的没有资源;创业的难存活,存活的企业难以迅速做强做大”,这种创业环境的主要问题出在哪儿？     

What your leader expects of you

The success of an executive team depends heavily on the relationships the boss has with his or her direct reports. Yet the leadership literature has had little to say about what is expected in those relationships-on either side. Larry Bossidy, formerly the chairman and CEO of Honeywell, and before that of AlliedSignal, shares what he calls "the CEO compact," detailing the behaviors a leader should look for in subordinates and what they should be able to expect in return. A CEO's best people, he says, know when a situation calls for them to get involved. They generate ideas-remembering that some of the best ones may sound crazy at first. They are willing to collaborate, putting the long-term good of the company above short-term goals of their divisions. They step up to lead initiatives, even if the outcome is uncertain. They develop leaders among their people, especially through direct involvement in performance appraisals. They stay current on world events and anticipate how those events may affect the company and its competition. They drive their own growth by exposing themselves to new people and ideas and by accepting demanding assignments. And they sustain these behaviors in bad times as well as good. On the other side of the compact, the boss should provide clarity of direction; set goals and objectives; give frequent, specific, and immediate feedback; be decisive and timely; demonstrate honesty and candor; and offer an equitable compensation plan. Executives who aren't lucky enough to have such a boss can create a compact with their own subordinates, Bossidy says, and demonstrate by example. The result will be to improve team and company performance and accelerate individual growth.     

大连:人才争夺硝烟先至

自从加入WTO后,大连成为首批对外资银行开放的城市之一.这对于一个就业人口中外贸、金融及其相关行业的人员占比相当高的城市而言,外资银行的进入将带来怎样的影响自不待言,但大连对此的反应看上去却相当平静.从前华俄道胜银行和横滨正金银行老楼所在的大广场(现在的中山广场)如今仍然是这个城市的心脏地带,绕中山广场走一圈,撞到眼帘里最多的仍然是银行的气派门脸.这些门脸背后仍然是一副气定神闲的景象.     

The Financial Accounting Standards Board: Profiles of seven leaders

Since its inception over four decades ago, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been led by seven individuals who have served as Board Chair. This paper includes a biographical sketch of the individuals, their terms of service, standards topics and some points of commonality and difference in their prior experience and Board service. This study provides a synoptic review to assist those interested in learning more about the Board Chairs, and to inform as to the role and style of each individual in contrast to the others. The paper provides a foundation for future research of these individuals, their activities and actions through other historical research such as oral histories, collections of writings and speeches and similar catalogues of activity.     

Follow the leader: Index tracking with factor models

We propose a new methodology to select a subset of assets for (partial) index replication, based on the latest research on factor models of large dimensions. Our method selects a set of leader stocks that fully captures the factor structure of the index to be replicated. Our selection methodology is consistent as the sample size and the number of assets jointly approach infinity. Monte Carlo experiments show that our estimated index replica tracks the underlying index with relatively small tracking errors in finite samples. We show the applicability of the method by tracking the S&P 500 equally weighed index and the MSCI USA Small Cap index with promising out-of-sample performance. Our method can be easily adapted for synthetic index replication, and to incorporate measures of liquidity or transaction cost.     

中关村：低碳产业的弄潮儿

中关村已覆盖低碳经济主要领域2009年经济危机,将＂低碳经济＂推向了无可取代的重要位置。然而,短期内大力发展低碳技术无疑是目前中国向低碳经济转型中面临的最大挑战。此时,中关村积极利用自身优势,大力推进低碳技术创新,继续保持和提升科技应用能力和核心竞争力。一场自上而下的“低碳模式”探索于中关村正在进行时。     

The makings of an information leader: the intraday price discovery process for individual stocks in the DJIA

The main purpose of this paper is to construct an intraday arbitrage price series for each stock in the DJIA using information in the Diamond Trust Fund ETF. We then compute the information shares (Hasbrouck in J Finan 50(4):1175–1199, 1995) for the actual versus the arbitrage prices for each stock. While previous literature documents that ETFs lead stock indices in information origination, we find that some firms are “information leaders” in that the information share that comes from the stock price is larger than that which comes from the ETF-related arbitrage price. Further analysis is conducted to uncover the firm-specific factors that are related to a stock’s role in information generation.