Popular wisdom holds that CEOs ascend to the executive mountain top with a combination of management and leadership assets. This combination of knowledge, experience, perspective and relationship capital serves as the foundation of judgment.

From sound judgment, better CEOs create real strategic and economic value for their stakeholders – employees, investors, customers and suppliers. From sound judgment, they shape their company’s strategic agenda for growth, performance and change. And, according to a recent expose by Business Week, they engage in practices tied to:

-     Innovation

-     Customer Focus

-     Productivity

-     Risk Management

-     Organization

A sense of urgency, smart execution, competitive savvy, resilience, strong resolve, collaboration, thoughtful readiness, cultural respect, diligence, insight and communication help. Bringing up executive talent is a critical imperative that deserves serious and specific sound engagement, and in companies large and small, the evolution of C-suite benchstrength has to be a strategic priority.

The CEO of the Future

Building executive-level competence is all about experience in specific management and leadership assets. The CEO of the future will not emerge from a simple formula of skillsets, but rather a dynamic formula of unfolding competencies and evolutionary thought. The capacity for relationships, the credibility of influence and the confidence of personal leadership are all part of the equation.

Three decades ago, Peter Drucker outlined a series of thoughts about strategy in his book Managing in Turbulent Times.  The principles he advanced are quite applicable today, with some interesting reflections on the circa 1980 era of uncertainty:

• The need for adaptive strategies for dynamic settings.
• The relevance of technical, social and economic forces.
• The structural realities of socio-economic progress.

In strategy leadership and governance, circa 2009, we have what seems to be a perfect storm of uncertainty.  The storm links a torrent of economic, social, political, market and technical factors into the practice of business planning and decision making.  Given this context, what should executives, program managers, board members and partners consider as they direct, integrate and execute their strategic agenda?  The standard answers to this question include a duet of contemporary management themes.  The first theme focuses on framing foresight, insight and adaptive capacity.  This is a matter of getting ready for change… and being flexible as it occurs.   The second theme relates to increasing the resolve to develop capacity that will be needed to absorb the challenges that arise. 

We address these themes in Prepared and Resolved, 2007.  And, Donald Sull defines these concerns through his forthcoming book, The Upside of Turbulence.  The common themes are readiness and resolve, the capacity to evolve.

And the simple truths remain - the turbulent times we are facing are part of an always-unfolding set of realities, a context of VUCA, or volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.  Better companies will survive, prosper and sustain in a turbulent world, with the readiness and resolve to press-on regardless.

One of the great leadership issues of this era reflects on how we get our organizations prepared and resolved for change.  Leadership expert John Kotter explores the growing relevance of readiness behavior in his 2008 book, A Sense of Urgency.  In a business world shaped by technical, market and economic uncertainty, Kotter strongly suggests that complacency and/or “false urgency” can wreck an organization.

• Complacency is “…a feeling of contentment of self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger …”
• False Urgency is “…built on a platform of anxiety and anger, and behaviors that are energy-consuming but not at all productive.”

In contrast, a true sense of urgency is characterized by people moving on critical challenges in a manner that delivers results now.  Kotter suggests that a true sense of urgency is shaped by a set of feelings and a set of thoughts; the feelings are essential.  Engaging people in the challenges of the enterprise is a cultural practice.  And so the formula goes, give them the facts and win their hearts and minds.

The “urgency prescription” Kotter provides is comprised of four leadership elements:

1. Bring Outside Reality into Focus…

        - Engage people in the real challenges and concerns

2. Behave in Ways that Match the Challenge…

        - Demonstrate a balanced sense of true urgency

3. Frame the Upside Opportunities and Prospects…

        - Move on the problems and discover the possibilities

4. Tackle the Problem of Skeptics and NoNos…

        - Remove or neutralize the barriers to urgency

Better, Smarter, Faster

Kotter points to the cultural sense of urgency that drives sustainable business evolution.  He suggests that the true sense of urgency separates high performance companies from those with strategic disabilities.  This is the same general argument we make in Chapter 08 of Prepared and Resolved.  The resolute leadership of an organization builds a cultural sense of urgency into the temperament and capacity of groups and individuals.  Further, a clear mindset of readiness and some forward-focused behavior helps power the organization to build and rebuild strategic and economic value for the stakeholders.

Five of Five Stars

The 07/29/08 ABC Primetime portrayal of the life of Randy Pausch was potent in many ways. Building on the cultural platform of his widely-acclaimed book, The Last Lecture, the current and hopefully lasting impact of the Pausch Effect expands on a couple of important life lessons:

1. The value of thoughtfulness that inspires people
2. The value of relationships that help engage people

Beyond all the media hype and clatter is a simple and profound story of life experience that connects the dots between what people could do, and what they should do. We deal with this question in Prepared and Resolved, in business terms, and the Pausch Effect pushes these matters to another level, a personal and professional level of principle and insight.

There are ethical and spiritual constructs woven into the message of the last lecture. People of faith will sense the story behind the story immediately, not at the end. And people whose charge it is to engage other people in the work of their lives will find a certain call to readiness, persistence, courage and optimism. The Pausch Effect is powerful, and it should provoke every reader.

In our work on business strategy, we have the opportunity to interact with different organizational cultures and structures. The functions of strategy leadership and management vary widely, and the relative engagement of employees is one indicator of the impact. The details of this are addressed in my article on Strategy Engagement, December 2007, Strategic Planning Society.

The leadership behaviors that support enterprise strategy are broadly defined in Studer’s 2008 book, Results That Last. His leadership lessons connect the dots between effective relationships, professional development, employee interaction and communication practice. Studer suggests a series of review and practice methods that reinforce the performance objectives of individuals and groups. And he gathers the principles of consistent quality in communication to drive leadership behaviors at every level of the organization. This book assumes that strategy foundations are in place and that a relatively stable environment exists. However, is tackles the “everyday leadership thought and behavior” that drives performance. We all want “results that last” and that poses a number of broader sustainability issues in contemporary business.