El futuro del Liderazgo y el rol de las Escuelas de Negocios

La naturaleza del liderazgo está cambiando. Ésa fue la conclusión de la conferencia “The Future of Leadership and the Role of Business Schools”, celebrada en el campus del IESE en Barcelona, dentro del marco del 50 aniversario del IESE. Las jornadas reunieron a directores generales, expertos en dirección de personas, altos directivos y directores de escuelas de dirección, que examinaron el fenómeno desde distintas perspectivas.

El director general del IESE, Jordi Canals, señaló que todos estaban de acuerdo en que, para ser un buen líder, ahora más que nunca, no basta con el conocimiento, sino que también es necesario saber trabajar en equipo y tener un cierto carisma. Uno de los factores clave de este cambio es que los profesionales con talento ya no aceptan el modelo de liderazgo basado en el “ordeno y mando”. Ellen Miller, directora de selección de personal y desarrollo en Europa del banco de inversión Lehman Brothers, apuntó que la generación "Y" exige una mejor forma de trabajar. Quieren experiencias, flexibilidad, movilidad, carreras no lineales y un estilo de vida equilibrado, así como la oportunidad de dar algo a la sociedad. Como resultado, las empresas están revisando su propuesta de valor. Desarrollo de talento Y no sólo las compañías han de replantearse su oferta en profundidad. «Retener el talento es una responsabilidad que han de compartir las escuelas de dirección y todas las organizaciones», aseguró J. Frank Brown, Dean de INSEAD, que también señaló que una de las grandes preocupaciones de los directivos consiste en crear entornos que promuevan la formación continua. Otra de las inquietudes de los futuros líderes es saber si su empresa es responsable, además de rentable. Al mismo tiempo, las escuelas de dirección deben desempeñar un papel importante en cuanto a la formación de directivos que aúnen un trabajo sobresaliente con un comportamiento ético. El profesor Canals reclamó una reflexión conjunta sobre cómo lograrlo. «Cada vez es más frecuente oír decir a la gente "Mi vida me importa"», explicó Julie Fuller, directora de desarrollo de liderazgo global de PepsiCo. «Las personas buscan flexibilidad y cierto equilibrio entre su vida profesional y personal, por lo que debemos ofrecer oportunidades profesionales más personalizadas si queremos retenerlos.» Alejandro Beltrán, socio de McKinsey en su división para España y Portugal, coincidió en que los nuevos candidatos exigen un estilo de vida mejor, y en que, en la guerra global por el talento, los directores de recursos humanos deben crear entornos que permitan a los empleados desarrollar al máximo sus cualidades. Los directivos no desean estancarse en un determinado puesto, por lo que, para retenerlos, la empresa tendrá que ofrecerles la oportunidad de desempeñar otras funciones. A ello se une, según comentó Ángel Cano, miembro del equipo directivo de BBVA, que los nuevos directivos exigen nueva maneras de trabajar que persiguen usar el tiempo de manera más eficaz. Prefieren reunirse menos y mantener un mayor contacto por correo electrónico.

Perfiles multidisciplinares.
En la misma línea, también se ha producido un cambio en el lado de los recursos humanos. Hasta ahora se buscaban personas que dominasen profundamente una disciplina en concreto.
Sin embargo, las empresas valoran cada vez más los perfiles con grandes conocimientos técnicos que dominan además otras disciplinas, como las ciencias sociales.
Esto ha hecho que escuelas de alta dirección como el IESE hayan modificado su programa de MBA ofreciendo programas más integrados para adaptarse al cambio. Del mismo modo, el Dean de Yale School of Management, Joel M. Podolny, explicó que ahora en su escuela todos los cursos son multidisciplinares y los casos analizados siguen la cadena de valor. «Por ejemplo, yo doy clases a tiempo parcial en seis cursos diferentes», explicó Podolny.
Además de un amplio dominio de otras disciplinas, las empresas exigen a los candidatos inteligencia, equilibrio y pasión por la compañía. «No hay duda de que un líder debe sentirse identificado con la compañía y con lo que ésta hace», aseguró Luis Cantarell, vicepresidente ejecutivo y miembro del consejo de Nestlé. También «ha de ser tolerante», algo esencial en un entorno de trabajo en el que conviven «más nacionalidades que en la ONU», añadió.
Para Anna Ruewell, directora del global MBA programme de BP, es vital la integridad de las personas y su espíritu colaborativo. Y Carlos Costa, senior partner de The Boston Consulting Group, añadió dos valores más: la pasión y la energía en el trabajo. Liderar en los cinco continentes Los comentarios de Cantarell sobre la tolerancia señalaron otro de los nuevos retos surgidos desde la creación del IESE, hace ya 50 años: la globalización de la industria. Franklin “Pitch” Johnson, socio fundador del fondo de capital riesgo Asset Management Company, pidió «más sensibilidad hacia las costumbres y posiciones foráneas», porque «en Santiago no se hacen las cosas igual que en Silicon Valley. Aceptemos que un empresario en México, España o Israel se enfrenta a dificultades distintas».
Sin embargo, la adaptación de la formación directiva a esta situación debe ir más allá de reunir a un gran número de personas de nacionalidades distintas en una sala. Tal y como planteó Hans Ulrich Maerki, ex presidente de IBM: por ejemplo,¿hasta qué punto es multicultural una multinacional cuando sus 75.000 empleados indios trabajan en India? ¿O hasta qué punto pueden las principales escuelas de dirección presumir de la diversidad de su MBA cuando prácticamente todos sus estudiantes extranjeros proceden de Europa o Estados Unidos? Para ser “global”, la actitud tiene tanta importancia como la nacionalidad, y los futuros líderes deben aprender a adaptarse a la mentalidad asiática, a la africana o a la de Oriente Medio. Rolf-E. Breuer, antiguo presidente de la junta directiva de Deutsche Bank, afirmó que «la diversidad no se reduce a una cuestión de etnias, sino también a una cuestión de experiencia personal». Según Arnoud De Meyer, director general de la Judge Business School de la Universidad de Cambridge, el reto consiste en hallar la forma de poner en práctica un liderazgo abierto en comunidades con filosofías muy diferentes. El profesor del IESE Pankaj Ghemawat, señaló que ésta no es una tarea sencilla. «Es probable que la diversidad obstaculice el funcionamiento del grupo... Hay que gestionarla de alguna manera.»
Otro de los aspectos clave es cómo enseñar la globalización. Srikant M. Datar, director general adjunto de la Harvard Business School, señaló que un estudio de su escuela ha descubierto que las principales escuelas de dirección utilizan los mismos libros de texto. «Sin embargo, existen diferentes ideas sobre en qué consiste la estrategia global», dijo Datar.


Lecciones de los líderes
¿Qué podemos aprender sobre el liderazgo de los directores generales? Andrea Christenson (MBA '83), directora general y presidenta de Käthe Kruse Puppen, empresa dedicada a las muñecas, los juguetes y la moda infantil, afirmó que un director general debe saber reconocer sus errores, porque representa a la compañía ante sus empleados. Ermenegildo Zegna, director general de la empresa homónima, coincidió con ella. «El liderazgo consiste en asumir los errores y en tener un estilo abierto de gestión.» Nicholas Shreiber, ex director general del gigante del sector de los embalajes Tetra Pak, hizo hincapié en la responsabilidad de los líderes hacia los empleados de su empresa. Afirmó que «los directores generales deben tener en cuenta el bienestar de sus empleados y de las familias de éstos al tomar decisiones, puesto que la creación de empleo crea riqueza en la sociedad».
Alfredo Sáenz, director general del Grupo Santander, subrayó la importancia de ponerse en el lugar del cliente, una perspectiva que los ejecutivos pueden ir perdiendo a medida que ascienden y se alejan de los cargos donde hay más contacto con el público. Por el contrario, según Toyoo Gyohten, presidente del Institute for International Monetary Affairs y ex presidente del Bank of Tokyo, el requisito esencial que debe cumplir un director general es el de «saber hacer frente a una crisis, a lo inesperado».
David Moon, director de gestión del talento en Europa de la farmacéutica Merck, insistió: «En este momento nos enfrentamos a presiones de precios, a una mayor vigilancia de los órganos reguladores, al crecimiento de China e India y a la crisis económica estadounidense. Y escucho expresiones como "cuando volvamos a la normalidad...". La situación actual es la nueva normalidad, y tenemos que enfrentarnos a ella». Todos coincidieron en destacar la importancia de la humildad. «Debemos resistirnos a la tentación de querer buscar siempre más y más, y combatir en todo momento la arrogancia», previno Rafael del Pino, presidente del grupo español de infraestructuras Ferrovial. «La arrogancia lleva a la complacencia, y ésta no tarda en llevarnos a la ruina.»

"Inside Apple": Adam Lashinsky on the Future of America's Most Secretive Company

Published: April 04, 2012 in Knowledge@Wharton

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In the days and weeks before the new iPad was announced, the media was rife with rumors about what Apple fans could expect from the new device. But few might know that Apple employees were among those who waited anxiously to find out what their own company had planned. In Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired -- and Secretive -- Company Really Works, Adam Lashinsky, a senior editor at Fortune magazine, provides a rare glimpse into one of the world's most innovative firms. Knowledge@Wharton recently had an opportunity to talk with Lashinsky about just how far Apple's secrecy extends, how the company will fare without Steve Jobs and what types of changes to expect under Tim Cook's leadership.

An edited transcript of the interview follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: Adam, thanks so much for joining us today. I read in your book that Apple didn't make Steve Jobs, David Cook or any Apple executive or employees available for interviews. You have written Inside Apple, as it were, from outside Apple.

Lashinsky: Yes.

Knowledge@Wharton: How did you manage to do that?

Lashinsky: I interviewed many, many, many people who worked at Apple at some point, their partners and suppliers, and other people who had dealt with them in one way or another. My [focus] for the research on the book was ... the last 15 years. Since I wrote a book about how Apple operates, I wanted to talk to people who were there while they were in their radical, wonderful transformation [dating back to] 1997. I spoke with very senior people and very junior people and everybody in between. My perspective on that is that their perspectives were as valuable to my task as any I would have gotten had I had senior-level interviews with Apple executives.

Knowledge@Wharton: Apple is so closely identified with Steve Jobs. He was such a larger-than-life personality and so closely identified with the company's identity. How has Apple changed since he passed away last year?

Lashinsky: So far, Apple has not changed much at all. Because there is such intense interest in the company, the people who watch Apple are grasping at straws to try to discern a change. There have been little things. Tim Cook, the new CEO, instituted U.S. philanthropic matching grants shortly after he became CEO and before Steve Jobs died. More recently, Apple has announced that it is going to begin paying a dividend for the first time in many years. People want to latch onto these things and say, "Ah, this is the new Apple." I don't believe it for a second. These are changes, sure, but Apple was changing all the time. I think the culture, their ways of doing business, their tone, their behavior, everything is in place for the time being, [exactly] the way it was when Steve Jobs died.

Knowledge@Wharton: Do you think it should change?

Lashinsky: I think Apple will change. It will have to change if for no other reason than because it is so much bigger and so much more complex than it was 15 years ago when Steve Jobs came back to the company that he had co-founded. Should it change? Sure. They will have to adapt to a new reality of being big, of having more scrutiny. For example, their secrecy will become more and more difficult over time, and I suspect they will try an intelligent approach to adapting to that difficulty rather than just trying to hold things off as long as possible.

Knowledge@Wharton: We'll come back in a bit to the issue of secrecy about which I have a few questions. But for now, why don't we talk about Tim Cook and his leadership style? Do you have a sense of how Cook is putting his stamp on Apple and how he should, in some ways, think differently by not emulating Jobs in everything he does?

Lashinsky: One thing that Cook has going for him is that he is not Steve Jobs, and my impression of the man is that he is not confused at all about this. He is extremely different from Jobs in almost every way. He is not an emotional person. He doesn't have a creative or artistic background the way Jobs did. He's passionate about Apple, he's passionate about business, he's passionate about operational excellence. I think eventually he will put his stamp on Apple, in that it will be more professional, it will do more things and it may be more evenhanded and less quirky. But I think he will do these things over time.

Knowledge@Wharton: In what ways is he different from Jobs?

Lashinsky: Cook is different from Jobs in almost every way: educational background, demeanor, the things that they are personally interested in. Cook is a workaholic, as was Jobs, but he is somebody who doesn't have a lot of outside interests. He is interested in fitness and in sports and in not much else. He doesn't seem to be interested in the finer things in life. Jobs led a relatively simple life for a multibillionaire but he did have some expensive habits and tastes. Jobs was a product person, and there is no indication that Cook is.

Knowledge@Wharton: Interesting. Let's come back to the question of secrecy. As we all know, Apple's corporate culture is notoriously and even obsessively secretive. What do you think are the pros and cons for Apple?

Lashinsky: Let's start with the pros of secrecy. Secrecy, taken to its extreme as Apple does, makes Apple an incredibly focused and disciplined company. Its people do not typically multitask; they focus on one thing. They don't get distracted because they are trying to pay attention to somebody else's business. They pay attention to their business and only that. Apple does a very good job of not letting its competitors know what it is working on, and Apple does a very good job of not confusing customers by causing them to anticipate what the next new thing is going to be and then causing those customers not to buy the products that are on the shelves now. There is obviously a negative to this secrecy. Apple is so secretive internally, they keep secrets from each other. At some point, you would assume that this would hurt morale, that it would make people not feel good about working at a place where they are treated like horses fitted with blinders on, not supposed to look right or left [but] just charge forward. Playing for a winning team or having a winning team has covered up what we might otherwise expect to bubble up [as] poor morale up until now.

Knowledge@Wharton: We have heard from some people that Apple has been known to hire people into fake jobs. Did you find any of that in your reporting?

Lashinsky: Yes, I refer to these as "dummy positions." In other words, you are told that you are coming to work at Apple. You may even be told broadly what kind of project you might be working on, but you are not told specifically what you are being hired for. The fact that you have been vetted and that you have been hired to work at Apple should be good enough for you for the time being, and furthermore, even though we have hired you, frankly, we haven't decided if we can trust you yet. And once we figure out that you can be trusted, then you will find out the specifics of your position.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is Cook as obsessive about secrecy as Jobs was?

Lashinsky: There may be reason to believe that Cook is more obsessed with secrecy. We will find out, but as secretive as Jobs was, he would go ahead and spill the beans when he felt like it. He would give press interviews, and he would explain what was going on at Apple. He did this in an orchestrated, calculated way and with great, great effect in terms of publicity and promotion. So far, there is less evidence of Cook behaving that way, but we don't have as much time to look at. It has been an extraordinarily difficult time. In his short tenure as CEO, he has had to deal with, first, the resignation of a founding genius, his boss, and then, that person's death.

Knowledge@Wharton: Right. The details of the iPad 3 were known before the launch. Do you think this was an intentional change in strategy?

Lashinsky: Well, it is interesting you refer to it as the iPad 3 because that was one of the rumors.... Of course, Apple chose not to call it the iPad 3; they chose to call it "the new iPad." It is not unusual in past years for aspects of new products to leak out ahead of time. I think the dribble has become a little bit more of a flow, so no, it wasn't a huge shocker. There were still surprises with this announcement. If we looked at the transition from iPad 1 to iPad 2, we might have assumed that the iPad 2 would be phased out. It is not going to be phased out. Of course, the name also was a surprise, but no, I don't think it is terribly shocking that we knew that they were going to go to a better screen resolution. These things will come out because suppliers can't be kept completely quiet.

Knowledge@Wharton: Apple has an unconventional organizational chart right at the beginning called "Apple's core." Help us understand how you think Apple's hierarchy works? Do their people operate in ways that are independent of the organizational chart, and if so, how?

Lashinsky: Apple is a military-like command-and-control organization where people lower down in the organization manage up. They are constantly preparing their boss who may be preparing their boss and their boss for a presentation to the CEO or to the executive team. People below manage up, and people at the top manage down. Information is held very tightly at the top, and the only information that seeps down is the information that senior management wants to seep down, which includes, by the way, rapid and thorough feedback on product development that is underway. The org chart is such that the CEO does not have to reach far down into the organization to get very good information. I presented the org chart of our design atFortune magazine as a circle. This does not mean necessarily that this is how Apple draws the org chart. They don't draw an org chart because they don't like org charts. They don't want to disclose what it looks like. But the circle enables me to show how close the CEO is to everybody who is doing the work in the organization. You ask, do people operate independently of the org chart? There is an individual contributor culture in Apple, and there is a history of people being pulled off one group and moving to another group. This would not necessarily be the vice presidents in the inner- or outer-ring of senior management. This would typically be talented engineers whose skills would be required elsewhere.

Knowledge@Wharton: Despite having almost $100 billion in cash, Apple doesn't have a history of acquiring other technology firms, unlike companies like Cisco or Oracle. Is this a prudent strategy in the IT world?

Lashinsky: Apple's lack of major acquisitions to date is beyond prudent. I think it is almost a truism that if this is the way the world's most valuable company does it, then it must have been prudent for them.

Knowledge@Wharton: What about the future?

Lashinsky: Well, let's dive into the past for a moment, and then we can look into the future. You are right: Apple has done relatively few acquisitions. They have never done the kind of blockbuster multibillion-dollar mega acquisitions that Google, Cisco, HP, Oracle, Microsoft and others have done. They typically acquire small companies for the people or for the intellectual property, not for the revenues. I think the academic research would bear out that most of these mega acquisitions are disasters, most of them hurt the culture of the company and few of them create the vaunted synergies that they are supposed to create. I will go so far as to say that I do not see Apple doing a mega acquisition for the foreseeable future, and if they do, it will be a sure sign that their culture has changed radically.

Knowledge@Wharton: Will Apple find it easier or harder to hire disciples without the lure of Jobs?

Lashinsky: Apple will find anything that requires a personal touch to be harder without Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, for all of his many qualities, was an incredibly charming and charismatic suitor. He could woo talent like nobody else, and he could paint a very compelling vision about why you want to come to work at Apple. Now, part of the script will remain, and it will be accurate, and it won't necessarily require Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. Tim Cook and others will still be able to look a recruit in the eye and say, "If you want to come do the best work of your career, if you want to come to the only company that created the iPad, the iPhone and the iPod and so on, then come to Apple." But I think I infer from your question that it won't be the same if the message is not delivered by the master. I agree.

Knowledge@Wharton: What do you think is the biggest threat facing Apple today?

Lashinsky: I think Apple's biggest threat today is its size and complexity. This company has thrived on simplicity. It has mastered the art of simplicity for such a big company, but that will not be an easy trick to maintain. There are other risks. They have good competitors who are watching them carefully. Competitors like Google and Samsung, to name two. They have to get the next major shift in the industry correct, as they have done the last few shifts. I'm not smart enough to know what that shift is, but they will need to. They also just have more balls in the air than they have had at any point in the last 15 years, and they are either going to have to figure out how to continue to keep those balls in the air, or they are going to need some radical new thinking about how to compartmentalize the things that they do.

Knowledge@Wharton: Every tech company today wants to be like Apple. Is Apple so much of an outlier that it is almost dangerous for them to try to emulate it? Should they even try?

Lashinsky: I think if companies want to emulate Apple, they need to take a piecemeal approach to it. They need to write down what they perceive to be Apple's attributes as I write them down in the book, and then ask themselves, "Can we do this or can't we do this?" Not every company is going to have the courage to bet the company every three or four years on one major product as Apple has done successfully. I think every company can say to itself, "Are we doing a good enough job of saying 'no' when we evaluate a new project? Or have we said 'yes' too easily?" Because that is a hallmark of Apple. I think every company can say, "Are we being clear enough in our message, and are we being tight enough about how we deliver it?" I think every company can say, "Have we adequately or sufficiently focused our people on their task? Do we care that our people are off doing this and off doing that? Maybe that is a part of our company's culture and we are going to continue, but maybe that is something where we want to be more like Apple." And the list goes on like that.

Knowledge@Wharton: One last question: What was your biggest surprise in writing this book?

Lashinsky: My biggest surprise was my realization about Apple's internal secrecy. I understood external secrecy. I understood already that they want to keep secrets from people like me. What I didn't understand until I researched it was how much they try to keep secrets from each other. It's astounding how little information an Apple employee has. That's why Apple employees go to a company cafeteria to watch major product launches on closed-circuit television. Because they don't know what is being announced in public that day. Even if they worked on the product, they will typically only be familiar with some feature or sub-feature [of it]. People thinking about this will see an obvious downside, that it can't be good for someone's esteem to be so in the dark all the time. On the other hand, I came to have an understanding of how focused Apple employees are because of this internal secrecy, because of this lack of information. I'm not sure that it is a model for other companies to follow, but I think it illustrates Apple's excellence really well.

Knowledge@Wharton: Adam, thanks so much for speaking with us today.

Lashinsky: It has been my pleasure. Thank you.

Copyright Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Learning How to Grow Globally

Faced with the need to educate themselves quickly about a foreign market, companies employ a variety of approaches to learning. New research offers insights into choosing the best approach for your circumstances.

LEARNING MAY BE the single greatest challenge when entering offshore markets. Few, if any, employees have in-depth knowledge of markets other than the one where they live. Faced with the need to learn quickly about a foreign market, many companies employ a variety of approaches, in a variety of sequences.

How does the sequence in which a company applies learning approaches affect performance? To assess this question, we observed nine companies in the high technology industry. To minimize geographic and cultural bias, we selected companies with headquarters in three culturally distinct markets: Finland, the U.S. and Singapore.

Our studies show that most organizational learning results from four direct and two indirect approaches to learning:

Direct Approaches to Learning

Trial and Error: In this approach, companies engage in particular actions and then assess the outcomes to determine whether those actions produced the desired result.

Experimentation: Experimental learning occurs through deliberate small-scale tests in controlled settings to help managers gain understanding. Management takes specific actions while manipulating variables to learn how each affects the outcome.

Improvisation: Many companies learn on the fly by improvising. They devise solutions as problems arise and revise their products, concepts and beliefs to capture unanticipated opportunities.

Deviance error: Unlike trial and error, the deviance-error approach starts with a successful action or product that the company subsequently varies. Executives then discover that as a result, performance declines, so they revert to the prior state. This process helps them understand why their original action or product was better.

Indirect Approaches to Learning

Vicarious: Executives often seek to learn vicariously when they lack appropriate experience of their own yet need to move quickly. They study what other companies have done to enter an offshore market and then apply that learning. If the subject company’s entry is perceived as successful, management tries to replicate their model. But if the subject encountered difficulties, management adjusts its own model in an effort to avoid them.

Advice: In many cases, companies learn from low- or no-cost advisers such as investors, business partners, trade associations and governmental foreign-trade agencies. In addition, retaining international business consultants is one of the fastest ways to learn about foreign markets.

Soloing vs. Seeding

Soloing. When a business begins to learn about a foreign market through a direct-learning approach, such as experimentation, and then continues by relying on direct-learning approaches, such as trial and error, over time, we refer to it as soloing. A relatively new U.S. supplier of enterprise software based in Silicon Valley with annual revenues of $8 million entered the Australian market using experimentation.

As part of the experiment, corporate leaders gave a great deal of autonomy to a seasoned manager who already had experience in Australia. However, the Australian venture became too disconnected from corporate policies. This experimental outcome helped corporate leaders see the need for more oversight of foreign ventures. They then began to switch to trial-and-error learning.

Seeding. Instead of starting with direct learning, many executives begin learning about foreign market entry by observing what others have done. Or they seek advice from experienced outsiders to overcome their own knowledge deficits. These approaches, which we call seeding, initiate learning by introducing critical indirect knowledge upon which the company subsequently builds through direct learning.

In Helsinki, Finland, for example, three inexperienced entrepreneurs in their 20s, who had recently graduated from Helsinki University of Technology, founded a company with the intention of developing software to expedite drug discovery within the pharmaceutical industry. The founders developed technology that allowed patients, research professionals and data managers to quickly capture and report clinical data through PDAs, cell phones and computers during Phase III clinical trials.

The founders observed from Finnish competitors that accumulating clinical trial experience seemed to be key to gaining access to global customers. Moreover, many competitors had accumulated such experience in nearby Sweden. Given their lack of international experience, the founders thought it would be wise to simply copy the seemingly successful practice of their competitors — so they, too, entered Sweden, aiming to accumulate clinical trial experience.

After this initial act of learning through vicarious experience, the trial-and-error learning commenced. During project implementation with a Swedish company, leaders in the Swedish company became frustrated with the entrepreneurs’ poor communication. One cofounder explained, “Our customer got frustrated since we were not actively sharing information on a daily basis.” Simple changes to enhance communication helped the company achieve $150,000 in sales in its first year in Sweden.

A U.S. startup whose goal was to globally distribute semiconductors for wireless devices began with the advice approach. With less than $100,000 in revenues, the company retained a consultant to assist in entering China, the company’s first international market. From the consultant, executives learned that they needed to work with multiple distributors, since the Chinese market is so big and diverse. Heeding the advice, the startup grew its Chinese sales from $10,000 to over $225,000 in one year.

We distinguish between soloing and seeding because our research reveals that a company’s sequence of learning approaches affects its subsequent performance. Companies that learn by soloing, we found, performed better in the short term than those using seeding — but those that learn by seeding perform better in the longer term.

Soloing companies, in the first two new countries they entered, took less time to capture their first sale, took less time to break even and reported higher overall ratings of success than the seeding companies, who started with indirect learning approaches.

Soloing companies appeared to perform better because of the previous international experience of their executive teams. Such experience can decrease the time needed to identify and capture opportunities.

In contrast, companies using seeding sequences had leaders with little international experience so they had less understanding of how to coordinate internal activities such as sales and product adaptations. As a result, they first used indirect learning; they looked to other companies around them for clues about how to perform entry activities. While such indirect learning is efficient, our data suggest that it may be less helpful for early performance, since it tends to yield nonstrategic, surface-level knowledge.

Although companies following the seeding path performed less well at first, they performed better in the longer run — when they entered their third and fourth international markets. Companies that chose soloing used fewer learning approaches overall, perhaps owing to overconfidence in early successes and an eagerness to move quickly. Overconfidence and eagerness, in turn, decreased reflection about causal relationships between actions and outcomes.

For management, the implication of this finding is that the soloing-seeding decision should be based on whether short or long-term results have greater importance given the company’s circumstances at the time of the decision. A company whose senior management has experience in successful foreign market entries might be inclined to use a solo sequence, believing that what worked in one market will work in another. Conversely, if management’s experience was negative, the seeding sequence might be preferred. Indeed, our study revealed that organizations have preferred learning-sequence patterns. The danger in applying those when entering international markets, however, lies in the strong dissimilarities among markets — dissimilarities that often remain undetected, even by leaders with significant experience.

Executives can counteract these troublesome tendencies in two ways. First, they can ensure that the international business experience of their management team is as broad and diverse as possible. When executives have achieved success in just one or two markets, or in a particular geographic region, they may be tempted to think that experience is transferable to other markets. But this view overlooks countless disparities among markets, be they economic, cultural, structural, regulatory, educational or environmental. Recruiting talent with diverse international experience is important, especially for smaller organizations where senior staff is limited.

Second, executives can increase the use of indirect learning. Companies naturally try to rely on internal resources to the extent possible, whether to minimize cost, conceal their intent from rivals or to demonstrate their ability to do things on their own. But as we’ve noted, internationalization is fraught with risk. By learning vicariously and seeking advice from external resources, companies can draw on a much broader and deeper pool of international experience. More broadly, the implication for managers is to rely on a rich combination of direct and indirect approaches to learning rather than a single fine-tuned approach. This will help triangulate data and provide a more expansive and accurate understanding of information.

Can companies improve their odds for success when venturing offshore? Our research suggests they can. And importantly, doing so does not entail major organizational changes or investments. It does, however, require an awareness of the fundamental approaches organizations use to learn and a willingness to apply those approaches in the sequence most consistent with short- and long-term objectives. Leaders can also enhance their chances of success by aiming for a diversity of international market experience when recruiting and by increasing their use of indirect learning.

Christopher Bingham is an associate professor and Phillip Hettleman Fellow of strategy and entrepreneurship at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jason Davis is Theodore T. Miller Career Development Professor in the Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management (TIES) group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Copyright © Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“You can’t change corporate culture.” Yes, you can

By S. Chris Edmonds on March 23rd, 2012

Let's analyze what "to make organizations better" means. “Better” might mean more effective leadership, higher performance, improved customer experiences, greater net profit or a more cooperative, positive work environment.

Organizations come to Consultants because they see missed opportunities in their operations. They might see less-than-inspiring leadership happening each day. They might see less-than-inspired employees every day. They have gaps they want to close...

After a thorough assessment of a client’s current operation and clarification of needs, we are able to present solutions that we’re confident will address their gaps. Some of those solutions involve skills training, some involve personal coaching, and some involve proactive culture refinement — culture change.

Some clients readily embrace our solutions. Some don’t embrace our solutions quite so quickly.

When considering culture change, more than a few of the senior leaders I’ve engaged with say, “You can’t change corporate culture.” I’m not surprised at this belief. Blanchard’s experience indicates that most senior leaders, in their careers, have not lived through successful culture change. Even fewer have led successful culture change.

When I hear this belief, I ask a question: “Can you change how an organization performs?” These leaders say, “Absolutely!” By changing how individuals perform, leaders change how the organization performs.

Leaders change the way individuals perform by:

• Setting clear performance goals.
• Directing, supporting, coaching and delegating where needed.
• Measuring progress and accomplishment.
• Celebrating progress and accomplishment.

These activities, done consistently with a service mindset, often lead to increased performance, higher-quality, happier customers and growing profit.

Changing your organization’s culture is no different from changing how your organization performs. It requires intentional definition of, communication of and accountability for your company’s:

• Purpose: The reason you in business.
• Deliverables: Your promise of high-quality products and services.
• Culture: Values you stand for and live by daily with stakeholders, peers and customers.

Change what you pay attention to

Corporate culture is the most important driver of what happens in organizations, and senior leaders are the most important driver of their organization’s corporate culture.

To change an organization’s culture, all leaders must change how they spend their time and what they communicate and reinforce on a daily basis. Their focus shifts from “great performance” to “great performance WITH great citizenship.”

Just as performance metrics help one understand how well productivity is going, values metrics are created to help one understand how healthy the organization’s culture is.

Leaders can change their organization’s culture by:

• Setting clear values standards, in the form of behaviorally defined values.
• Directing, supporting, coaching and delegating as required.
• Measuring values progress and demonstration.
• Celebrating values progress and demonstration.

Creating clear performance standards enables leaders to proactively manage performance. Creating clear values standards enables leaders to proactively manage their desired culture.

S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, an author and a senior consultant with The Ken Blanchard Cos. He co-authored Blanchard’s book “Leading at a Higher Level,” Blanchard’s award-winning culture-change process and the book “#POSITIVITY AT WORK Tweet.”Edmonds also authored the book “#CORPORATE CULTURE Tweet.” Subscribe to his leadership and culture blog at Driving Results Through Culture.

Copyright © SmartBrief, SmartBlogs - 2011

Compare your corporate culture to best-practice organizations

By S. Chris Edmonds on April 26th, 2012

What “cool companies” catch your attention? Are you drawn to them because of the unique brand, their cutting-edge products, their inspired workforce or possibly their consistently wowed customers? We seek out best-practice organizations based on two primary elements: high performance and values alignment.

Thus, we have identified important practices that are common across the high-performance, values-aligned companies we study. As we review a few of these in this post, consider how well your organization does today on these practices.

• Organization members have clarified their personal purpose and values and have shared them with colleagues. Leaders and employees do not leave their personal “reason for being” (purpose) or “life principles” (values) at the door when they come to work. Who they are as people has been reinforced over time and is embedded in their world view. By formalizing and sharing their personal purpose and values, organization members typically learn they have much in common with their leaders, peers and employees. That foundation builds understanding, cooperation and support.
• Our work environment builds trust in every interaction with leaders, employees and customers. Trust is one of the most critical elements of high-performing, values-aligned organizations. If policies, practices and systems pit people against one another, trust is eroded. If promises made are not kept, integrity goes by the wayside. If leaders, employees or customers feel taken advantage of, the “buzz” in your community or industry will be negative, not inspiring.
• Every member of the organization has a formal performance plan, refined at least annually, and is held accountable to deliver agreed-to performance.Performance accountability starts with clear performance expectations. A disciplined “contribution management” process ensures that expectations are clear. A disciplined culture ensures that performance standards are met or exceeded by every player.
• Every member of the organization has clear values expectations, defined in behavioral terms, and is held accountable for demonstrating those valued behaviors. Values accountability — the creation of great “corporate citizens” — starts with clear values expectations. Behaviorally defined values leaves no room for interpretation. “Integrity” can mean many things to many people. “I do what I say I will do” is not subject to moment-to-moment shifts. A disciplined culture ensures that values demonstration is consistent by every player.
• Organization values are the foundation of every plan, decision and action. In high-performance, values-aligned organizations, there is greater focus on values demonstration than there is on performance demonstration. There are typically many systems in place to gauge productivity, efficiency, market share and the like. Organizations must implement systems to reinforce and gauge values alignment to enjoy values alignment.

How would front-line employees rate your company on these five elements? When every staff member ranks these as demonstrated more than 90% of the time, your company is in the rarefied air of “high performance and values alignment.”

S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, an author and a senior consultant with The Ken Blanchard Cos. He co-authored Blanchard’s book “Leading at a Higher Level,” Blanchard’s award-winning culture-change process and the book “#POSITIVITY AT WORK Tweet.”Edmonds also authored the book “#CORPORATE CULTURE Tweet.” Subscribe to his leadership and culture blog at Driving Results Through Culture.

Copyright © SmartBrief, SmartBlogs - 2011