Cambridge Judge Business School Discussions on Leadership: Recent Episodes
Cambridge University
Cutting-edge expert commentary, analysis and business insights on the leadership issues of the day from Cambridge Judge Business School's global faculty, associates and guest speakers.
According to Urs Rohner, Chairman of the Credit Suisse Group, problem-solving is the day job in leadership. Although designing the right strategy is an essential element, the execution side of leadership is about solving problems which will arise in every field, at every level and juncture.
He listed six key principles for his Cambridge Leadership Series audience of MBAs. Problem-solving was joined by good communication; listening to opinions; acting quickly if change is necessary; refusing to tolerate disloyalty but reacting to bona fide criticism; and finally, inherently liking people.
Among Edward Chaplin's messages to his Cambridge Leadership Seminar audience of MBAs was the importance of celebrating success and good teamwork.
A British diplomat for 37 years, with a career that included ambassadorial postings to Iraq and Italy, Chaplin feels an important part of leadership is peer group acclamation of success. Conversely, failure to deliver should not be tolerated. It is not fair to the rest of the team.
A leading banker has defended business schools in the wake of criticism emerging from the financial crisis. The schools were accused of producing managers who were too focused on the technical aspects of finance and who all thought in the same way.
António Horta-Osório, Chief Executive of Lloyds Banking Group, believes that business schools have an important role to play in fostering development in terms of leadership, vision and strategy and that they offer a unique learning experience and opportunity to think and reflect deeply that is unavailable in the day-to-day working experience.
In just under two decades Chitra Ramkrishna, MD & Chief Executive Officer of India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE), and her leadership team have transformed India’s securities markets and stock exchanges into a world-leading operation as the National Stock Exchange.
Director General of the GSMA Anne Bouverot stressed the importance of 'transparency' in dealing with staff involved in merged companies when she addressed MBA students in her Cambridge Leadership Seminar.
"I think transparency is paramount especially when you're going through change, through difficult and painful change. People will always think, am I being treated fairly? Am I getting all the information? Is somebody hiding something from me?"
Women are at the heart of consumer giant Procter & Gamble's drive to build business and organisations for sustainable growth in emerging markets like sub-Saharan Africa says Laurent L. Philippe, Group President of P&G's Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa division.
In five years Peter Löscher led industrial giant Siemens out of a worldwide bribery scandal back to leadership of global sustainability and winning back public trust.
Löscher was the first outsider to become the company’s CEO. In his Cambridge Leadership Seminar, "How to lead: emerging stronger, smarter and more sustainable after a crisis", he told his audience of MBAs how he used the scandal to drive change.
Kindness and gratitude are two key qualities required to be successful in business leadership, according to Pinky Lilani, Founder and Chief Executive of Spice Magic, and one of the UK's leading women entrepreneurs. She told her Cambridge Leadership Series audience of MBAs that people development is at the heart of her professional philosophy, and that her success has been underpinned by a belief in the importance of food, culture, hospitality, collaboration and relationship-building.
Former UK government education adviser Sir Michael Barber talks about the challenges to be faced if the potential of this, the 21st century, is to be realised.
The challenges to be resolved revolve around environment, wealth, poverty as well as catastrophic conflict with the Pacific region emerging as the focus of global leadership. Sir Michael says that an education revolution will be required to unleash the leadership capacity the next 50 years will demand.
Co-Founder Peter Harris explains the continued success of Hotel Chocolat, a company that is maintaining its steady growth rate despite the recession. Innovation, authenticity and ethics were keystones of his message to his Cambridge Leadership Seminars audience of MBAs. Paramount was the importance of listening and understanding what customers are saying.
Hotel Chocolat is a privately owned company and is one of the world's few chocolate makers to grow cocoa. It launched the world's first Chocolate Bond in 2010, with the 'interest' paid in monthly chocolate, raising £4m to help fund initiatives in the UK, United States and Saint Lucia.
As network-based organisations evolve, the role of leadership is focused less on performance and more on change, believes Dr Jonathan Trevor. 'Transformational leadership' is a move away from traditional forms of organising and traditional forms of work that are largely centred around performance and performance-in-role.
Knowledge will dictate the future of organisational hierarchy as bureaucratic structures are replaced and where leaders will emerge rather than be elected, say Kate Tojeiro and Dr Jonathan Trevor.
The power of middle managers will gradually disappear as organisations journey through a 'monumental' evolutionary process driven by the now paramount transparency of information. It will apply mostly to knowledge intensive organisations, but all sectors whether manufacturing, services or banking will have to embrace parts of this approach.
One of the world’s leading coffee producers has been talking about the driving forces behind his family-owned business, which was created from a dream to offer the best coffee possible.
The dream was that of the grandfather of Andrea Illy, Chairman and CEO of Trieste-based illycaffè.
In an interview for Cambridge Judge Business School’s website, he summarised illycaffè’s achievement of that dream, in 1933, which created a philosophy of mission, passion and obsession.
Leaders of established and successful organisations must recognise and react positively to the deep-seated changes taking place in an operating environment where complexity is leading to uncertainty. The alternative - to exercise greater control and improve the existing model in order to survive - has a limited shelf-life.
Leadership plays a huge part in the transformation and visioning of the future organisation but cynicism is a major barrier in that process; and, as the operating environment becomes increasingly uncertain, vision is becoming more important than planning.
Dr Jonathan Trevor and Kate Tojeiro argue the traditional, bureaucratic organisation - based on execution and efficiency - is being replaced by network-based, informal structures as the industrial age disappears. Organisations need to cultivate a model of empowerment, development and liberation of talent within an organisation, to go beyond just merely seeking to exploit efficiencies, but to do something fundamentally different without reference necessarily to those above. The key to this empowerment, however, is trust!
Social media needs to be seen in the context of what we're seeing as the emergence of distributed leadership, where organisations are becoming flatter, leaner, more empowered, more democratic and more knowledge intensive. According to Kate Tojeiro and Dr Jonathan Trevor, people are no longer waiting for permission from on high to engage with each other and to make something new and exciting. We're seeing a leadership change being driven by social media.
Levels of satisfaction, loyalty and engagement are at an all-time low but there other measures which indicate that, given the difficult environment, some leaders are managing people very well. So, which leaders are cutting the mustard and how are they doing it, ask Dr Jonathan Trevor and Kate Tojeiro.
The former Director of the Cambridge MBA takes a global view of MBA programmes to identify a check-list for a 'world-class' MBA. The natural starting point is three key enabling factors - reputation, resource and research.
If we are all born with leadership potential, how do some people develop this into an ability to inspire others to follow?
'Kill or capture' maybe a military slogan but the conditions of war have lessons for business too. Lieutenant General Andrew Graham, latterly Director General, Defence Academy of the UK, explains how adopting a military Command Leadership role can help you succeed in business.
The surprising conclusion, having stripped away the mystique around charisma, is that it's not a 'vision' thing as in the Bush presidency but a much more mundane process, says Kilduff. It's about soliciting advice from people, boning up and becoming an expert, being able to give people advice, treating them with consideration, being available and socially integrating with people at a work level.
Rory Sutherland, Executive Creative Director and Vice-Chairman of OgilvyOne, says we need place an emphasis on studying what leads people to adopt new behaviours or continue existing ones.
Richard Baker of Virgin Active explains why the power of principles, such as value for money, efficiency, freedom, responsibility and mutuality, are necessary for successful leaders and sustainable businesses.
Itay Talgam has conducted most of the orchestras in Europe, now he conducts boardrooms!
Taking over the second largest bank in Africa led to death threats but now it's a business success story. Hakeem Belo-Osagie, former Chairman of the United Bank of Africa and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Emerging Markets Telecommunication Ltd, explains his belief in setting sights high and seizing every opportunity.
Sir Stuart Rose, Chairman of Marks & Spencer, and Ms Miranda Curtis, President of Liberty Global Japan, give their top business tips on learning from mistakes, why you need to take some risk in order to be successful, stamina and re-inventing oneself throughout one's career. Nice people, they explain, can get to the top - but you need to be tough!
Simon Murray, adventurer, entrepreneur and leading businessman, reflects on a life filled with travel and encounters with the unexpected. 80% of the world are followers, the other 20% are leaders. Leaders, he says, need to have the self-confidence to set their own paths.
Sir Paul Judge explains why managers need to be agile and able to lead in today's complex business environments
Current and recent world leaders are either economists or lawyers but who governs best? Dr Philip Wood QC (Hon) gives his views.
A new British government facing a new global crisis in the financial systems has turned the spotlight on the need to focus on the success of small and medium sized enterprises in the economy. Business Secretary Vince Cable used his first speech to warn that the economic recovery was still "fragile" and that the crisis in the Eurozone was likely to hold back growth. He spoke of the need to cut Britain's "massive" debt, and of the "dysfunctional banking system".
A new British government facing a new global crisis in the financial systems has turned the spotlight on the need to focus on the success of small and medium sized enterprises in the economy. Business Secretary Vince Cable used his first speech to warn that the economic recovery was still "fragile" and that the crisis in the Eurozone was likely to hold back growth. He spoke of the need to cut Britain's "massive" debt, and of the "dysfunctional banking system".
The recent election of Barack Obama raises the question: can a single individual make a difference to how a large group such as a nation thinks and acts in the long term? Or, in the more modest context of business: can a CEO drive the employees of a firm to become more innovative and perform better over time? If it is agreed that corporate culture plays a preeminent role in making firms more innovative, then a natural question to pose is: how is such a culture created and maintained? Specifically: does the individual at the head of the firm have a role to play in all this?
Lord Dennis Stevenson is Chairman of HBOS, the UK's largest mortgage and savings provider, and until recently was Chairman of Pearson, the world's largest educational publisher and owner of The Financial Times. He is a member of the Judge Business School Advisory Board and is also Chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. As part of the Cambridge Leadership Seminars, he told MBA students how he got started on his high flying career, why he thought Britain was pulling out of the recession, and urged them to consider jobs both in enterprise and in the public sector.
The recession is being felt by business schools around the globe. The future will be tough, good business schools will survive and transform themselves, but others will rationalise. What we need is a new model; what we need is "a school for business", Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Director of Cambridge Judge Business School, explains.
Knowledge workers of the future may not respond to traditional management models of 'command and control', says Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Director of Cambridge Judge Business School. Instead, they need to be seduced! His 'Collaborative Leadership' model supports the use of 'communities' of people 'co-acting' without hierarchy to successfully solve the complex and interconnected problems the world faces.
Profit, says Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, and MD of Riverstone Holdings, is best created by "responding to the needs of society". His new book "Beyond Business" radiates new ideas and draws lessons for future leaders, he explains some here. Lord Browne is also Chairman of the Advisory Board at Cambridge Judge Business School.