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A. I was truly attracted to craftsmanship. Watching things being made by hand fascinated me, in any métier. I love a beautiful table setting as much as a great meal. Acting on pure instinct, I accepted a position in Cartier's tabletop division, which covered tableware, silverware, crystal and china. No one really wanted a job in a luxury brand back then. Most business school graduates applied to large companies like Procter & Gamble, rarely to luxury brands.
Q. What did you do during your five years at Cartier?
A. I started as a product manager in charge of developing new tabletop products. I visited factories and worked directly with the craftsmen. The job confirmed my passion for beautiful objects well made. It wasn't a great big adventure -- we were just running a business - but I loved it. The business was growing, and every year was different from the previous. It is great when your life changes every year.

Three years later, I joined the team of Alain Dominique Perrin, Cartier's president, as a staff member in business development. Cartier was part of the Richemont Group (then, Vendôme), which had acquired Piaget, which in turn owned the watchmaker Baume et Mercier. I was asked to help reposition Baume and develop key markets.

My wife is Swiss, and we were happy to relocate to Geneva. We spent six years there, and I focused exclusively on Baume, working closely with watchmakers. That is how I acquired my watchmaking culture and developed a true passion for watches.

Q. In 2002 you left the Richemont Group and joined Chanel. Why leave?
A. At the end of 2001, I was appointed managing director of Richemont France, a new organization covering France and Benelux, and returned to Paris in part because I was fed up with life in Geneva. I was given responsibility over all the Richemont watch brands except Cartier. By then, I was beginning to feel focusing exclusively on watches was too restrictive for me. I needed some fresh air. When the call came from Chanel, I knew very little about this "ladies' brand," and, apart from my wife wearing Chanel No. 5 perfume, I had never stepped into a Chanel boutique and had no experience of the brand. Still, I felt that Chanel would be an escape route, an opportunity to explore wider avenues in luxury that included fashion, perfumes and beauty.
Q. How do you manage cross-cultural teams at Chanel?
A. Fourteen years ago, when I joined Chanel as international director of watches, we were a small team, and I knew nearly everyone by name in all of Chanel's divisions. Today, I manage teams internationally, and the company has grown exponentially. With very fast growth, a business takes on an entrepreneurial aspect. As a manager, you must evolve rapidly, work on intuition and depend heavily on the quality of the people you recruit.

Because I have been traveling nearly every month for the past 30 years, I have gotten to know different cultures well. For management purposes, it helps to communicate and not impose your views in a multicultural environment. I always consider the opinions of those outside my own culture.
Q. How do you ensure that multinational teams understand the identity of Chanel?
A. Given our rapid growth, we realized that it was important to pass on the culture of Chanel to everyone in the company. In 2009, we created Imagine Chanel, which is a team that runs an in-house training program for new managers on the culture of Chanel. The goal is to help them to understand who Gabrielle Chanel was, who we are as a company and what we do. With so many newcomers into the company, there was a real risk that we all have a different vision of that culture. Even veteran managers participate to better understand their own divisions. It makes the job of a manager across cultures much easier.
Q. What is your style of leadership?
A. I work mostly on trust. I am not a controlling leader. In our division, we have a timetable, and as long as deadlines are met, I trust my teams to manage their own work. I have come to believe that respect and trust can be found in people who appreciate the chance they have been given.

I accept mistakes but not dishonesty. I have difficulty dealing with someone who is untruthful.
Q. What has been the greatest influence on your leadership style?
A. My grandfather was a big influence. He had founded an electrical engineering firm in Normandy at the end of World War II, and hired only people with just a high school diploma. They had to be good at their job, and it was immaterial that they had no secondary degree. He became successful by trusting his employees.

The other influences on my style were Perrin, the charismatic president of Cartier, who was always willing to give me a chance, and also Alain Wertheimer and his brother Gérard (controlling shareholders of Chanel) because of their trust in the teams and their long-term vision.
Q. What is the best advice you have ever received?
A. I am very serious and am often told to smile more. But I am a shy person and must work on being more engaging.
Q. What is the difference between a good leader and great leader?
A. A great leader has the vision and ability to anticipate changes.
Q. What advice would you give a young person starting out?
A. Go around the world three times before starting to work. That is what I tell my two sons, who are 21 and 15. I spent the first few years of my professional life living abroad. It is greatly enriching and even more important today.

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Relying on Trust, Not Control, of Employees

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A. I was truly attracted to craftsmanship. Watching things being made by hand fascinated me, in any métier. I love a beautiful table setting as much as a great meal. Acting on pure instinct, I accepted a position in Cartier's tabletop division, which covered tableware, silverware, crystal and china.

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Learn About Organizational Management. Source : http://1to101.com

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Foundation: Tony Hsieh On Building A Great Company Culture

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Kevin rose sits down with Zappos founder Tony Hsieh about entrepreneurship, fostering corporate culture, and his latest project to fuel a thriving tech community in Las Vegas. Tony opens up about starting his first company, LinkExchange, an early take on Web advertising which was acquired by Microsoft for $265 million.

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The Impact of Employee Satisfaction on Customer Satisfaction

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Brian Turner, HR Director of Goodmans Interior Structures, discusses the impact of employee satisfaction on customer satisfaction. At Goodmans, the top drivers of employee engagement are corporate social responsibility and transparency. The latter involves an employee 360 performance review for the CEO that both employees and customers can openly participate in and/or review.

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What is LEAN and what is Six Sigma. How to combine both to solve 80% of the problems. Lean Six Sigma is now made quick and easy to help you improve your work.

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The key differences are: Manage communications is communicating with Stakeholders with an intent to share information ........ as you are so doing, sharing information you are implicitly satisfying needs that may have been identified in the stakeholder management plan.

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Employees first, customers second | Vineet Nayar | TEDxAix

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At 24, I applied to Christie's and was hired as a porter. Back then, you started at the bottom in the auction business. Christie's was a crusty, old organization in which a porter was a porter. As a rugby player, I was strong and ideally suited for moving furniture, so I was allocated to the warehouse.
Q. How did you enjoy that first job?
A. I loved that business from the start. Most of my friends had gone into accounting or advertising, which seemed fine, but nothing seemed to me as rich as the auction environment, an extraordinary marketplace with almost no transparency where mysterious things happened between collectors, dealers and connoisseurs.

After a year, I was allowed to work as a junior specialist in the furniture department, where I spent 10 years and eventually became an auctioneer.
Q. Why did you leave art expertise to move into business management?
A. Over time, I had become interested in the dynamics of running a business. I took a management course at the Institute of Directors in London. In 1996, Christie's asked me to run the Amsterdam office. It was my first time managing a team of 75, and outside the U.K.
Q. What lessons did you learn from that experience?
A. At the core, while people have similar reactions to most things, there are significant nuances in the way people communicate, in what they expect in the workplace and how they balance work and private life. My Dutch colleagues gave greater importance to family life; they had a different sense of fairness in an egalitarian society and were more direct in their communication. In England, family life often took a secondary position and the English are notoriously difficult communicators. The Dutch found dealing with the English frustrating, and the English viewed Dutch directness as extremely rude.

After that experience, I became highly attuned to cultural differences in the workplace.
Q. What prompted your move to New York?
A. In 1998, when François Pinault acquired Christie's, changes needed to be made in the North American operations where Christie's was not a success story. I moved my family to New York and became managing director of Christie's for the Americas.

Shortly thereafter, all hell broke loose. My direct boss, Christopher Davidge, resigned as chief executive after becoming embroiled in an antitrust scandal that impacted both Christie's and Sotheby's. I stepped in as chief executive and had to steer the company through a particularly difficult inquiry by the U.S. Justice Department. It was a steep learning curve, but it also became a platform for me to implement changes so the company could be run in a more professional way from top to bottom.
Q. What subsequent challenges did you face?
A. Several developments transformed our business within a few years. The first was the rise of contemporary art as a dominant auction category. People forget that that was not the case at all in the 1990s. We had to realign the company's activities to move away from 18th-century expertise and the material associated with the grandeur of the past to fully embrace this modernism.

The extraordinary explosion of wealth and art collecting in Russia and the Far East brought a rapid expansion of our client base in areas that had not been, until then, significant. Suddenly, Russian oligarchs were dominating the auctions, and an incredible wealth creation in China brought in new clients.

Finally, the internet offered fantastic new possibilities in terms of communication, auction participation and the databases that made art prices readily available.

It was very exciting for me to be leading the organization through these changes.
Q. In 27 years, you rose from porter to chairman of Christie's.
A. Not many who started out as porter went on to have a long career at Christie's. I was C.E.O. for 11 years. It was a good run, but I felt then that the company needed a fresh perspective. With Mr. Pinault, we agreed that I would become chairman, and we looked for a new C.E.O.

I stayed on as chairman for 18 months through 2011. Business-getting, advising and representing the company were all fine activities, but I wanted a position where I could really influence things.
Q. After Christie's, you spent three years in Qatar. Why did you choose to return to the auction business?
A. After Christie's, I was incredibly privileged to work alongside Sheikha Mayassa of Qatar on the arts project set up by her father, building curatorial teams for museums, looking at collections, working with artists, which I found very enriching. But it was complicated to balance a family life with traveling to the Middle East. I was ready for something new. I thought Phillips was ideally suited to be molded and shaped to face today's market challenges, given that it was less of an institution and more of a business.
Q. How do you manage teams across cultures?
A. My style is communicative. I spend a lot of time telling our teams what we want to achieve and what success looks like. I paint a broad picture and lay down the standards of behavior we expect and those we don't. I believe in a flexible organization where people can take risks, challenge the status quo, express themselves and be motivated. I am much happier to see people make mistakes than not make decisions.
Q. Who was the biggest influence in your life?
A. My mother, who was fiercely feminist, both tough and compassionate, taught me big lessons. She never accepted the rigors of a rigid society and did not believe in the status quo. She instilled in me an independent way of thinking and the desire to challenge the status quo despite criticism by those who cling to it.
Q. What makes a great leader?
A. Great leaders inspire a different level of belief and support by their teams. Fundamentally, people need to be trusted and believe that they can achieve things. Extraordinary charisma and interpersonal skills are partly natural but also learned. They don't happen by accident.
Q. What would you tell a young person starting out?
A. Always look for the path less traveled. Have the confidence to take the path others may not view as the right one. That is what disrupters do: deliberately look to do things differently.

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Learning to Allow for Cultural Differences in the Workplace

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At 24, I applied to Christie's and was hired as a porter. Back then, you started at the bottom in the auction business. Christie's was a crusty, old organization in which a porter was a porter. As a rugby player, I was strong and ideally suited for moving furniture, so I was allocated to the warehouse.

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How and Why We Avoid Discussing Our Flatlining Business

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The real problem at eBay: corporate governance

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Carl Icahn's issue with the online retailer isn't PayPal, but rather the capability and interests of its leadership and board of directors.

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Motivating your team can be more art than science, but here are my simple techniques that will increase your chances of finding the right fuel. Leaders must understand that in today's new workplace, there does not exist a single recipe to encourage employees to perform better.

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Top 10 Differences Between Managers and Leaders

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This short video from @ScottWilliams provides 10 clear distinctives to help understand the difference between a manager and a leader. Thanks to Samson Varughese for bringing the video to life. Find Scott: Twitter - @ScottWilliams Facebook - ScottWilliams.tv Blog - BigIsTheNewSmall.com Company - NxtLevelSolutions.com

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Introduction to a course in Interntional Management for the Prestigious CHIC MBA program.

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In my last post, I talked about Corporate Image and how it forms the foundation of your brand. In this one, I add Positioning, which drives demand for each of your products and gives you control over the price you can charge. Because it gives you control over Price, it also gives you greater control over Distribution. Together, Positioning and Corporate Image form your branding platform.
Brief History
The concept of branding goes back to ancient times when people in positions of power, ownership and commerce labeled their possessions, products and documents to identify them and let others know that they owned or created them.

To show ownership and origination, a symbol, or logo, was created. This was fashioned into a design on a stamp, seal, branding iron, or ring that was used to make an impression on cattle, goods, and documents to signify ownership, membership, or origination.

Fast-forward to the present day, organizations use Positioning and Corporate Image to fashion powerful brands that increase demand for your company and products and give you more control over Price - the building block that governs revenue and profits.
Works in the brain
Good marketers are non-invasive brain surgeons. They know that the human brain is busy and wired to forget and protect us from harm. Creating a more effective brand can help buyers...

Find their way through the busy clutter and noise;

Remember your products;

Give them good, uniquely beneficial (not harmful) reasons to buy yours over others.

First step in the branding process
After doing a SWOT analysis that matches your company's strengths with opportunities in the marketplace, you define the market for your company and each of your products. If you are operating at the company level, you are employing Corporate Image strategies. At the product level, you are using Positioning.
Identifying your company's Target Audience
Next, you identify the market segment with needs your organization can fill better than your competitors. I call this segment your target audience, or lock - using a lock and key metaphor.
Creating a corporate level key
Once you identify and understand the companywide lock, you can fashion a company-level key that fits your lock better than your competitors. The key at the corporate level is the image you create for your company. A good first-step in creating this key, is to develop a mission statement for your organization that does the following:

Identifies the most promising target audience your strengths enable you to pursue.

Makes it clear to that audience what your company does as concisely as possible (so others can remember and repeat.)

Communicates clearly what is unique about your company and why your target audience should do business with you and only you (if possible).

Creating corporate identity tools
The tools typically used to implement corporate identity strategies include: name, logo, slogan, colors, type fonts, mascots or spokespeople, and jingles. You then employ these tools on your letterhead, business cards, websites and all other communications vehicles. Once you have the Corporate Image platform, you are ready to create a Positioning platform for each of your products.
Identifying the product locks
Similar to the building of your Corporate Image platform, you start by identifying the target market segments with unfilled needs (locks) that each of your products can satisfy better than competitors.
Include or exclude Corporate Image in the key component of Positioning
A critical decision marketers need to make is whether or not to combine the image of the company with the image of each product.

Case for inclusion. If the company has a good reputation for the type of product being introduced, it should probably include a company reference in the product brand since that will help to sell the product. Some examples include Diet Coke, Microsoft Office and Apple iPhone.

Case for exclusion, or separation. You should separate the image of each product under the following conditions:

1. One image might hurt the sales of the other. The product is risky, the company image is fragile, or either one has a bad image (Example: Disney uses its corporate brand only on content that is deems wholesome for kids. It uses other corporate brands, such as Touchstone, Hollywood, or Miramax, on content that has sexual, violent, or other potentially objectionable material).

2. Very strong identification with one type of product. IBM is known as the computer company, and in the 1970s it made an excellent copy machine that many thought was better than competitors, but it did not sell because people associate IBM with computers and not copiers. Xerox developed a good computer in the 1980s, but it did not sell because Xerox is known as a copier company. Both might have been successful, if they launched these products under a separate brand identity. Clorox is closely identified with bleach. The company owns Hidden Valley salad dressings. Would anyone buy the salad dressing if it contained the Clorox name?

3. Lock and key mismatch. Target audiences change as their needs change over time. If the company wants to get into new product areas that are in conflict with established market segments, they need to create new brand identities for these products. For example, in the 1970's, Japanese automakers - Toyota, Honda and Nissan - had images of being small, ugly, affordable and fuel efficient. That worked well for college students of that era, but as those students aged and became more affluent, many wanted luxury cars. The Japanese automakers knew they had to create new product images (keys) so they created Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti for these evolved segments (locks).

Creating product keys
Once you decide to include or exclude Corporate Image, you can create the key component to properly Position each of your products. The greater uniqueness you build into each key, the stronger and more effective your Positioning is likely to be. Why? Uniqueness minimizes competition and gives buyers important reasons to buy your products over other alternatives. This gives you greater control over the price you can charge - enabling your company to set the price at the level you need to achieve a healthy profit and market plan goals.
Avoiding cannibalization
By establishing unique keys for each of your products, you also avoid product image overlaps, which marketers call cannibalization. Cannibalization causes confusion. Either (1) confused buyers don't buy your products, or (2) they buy the wrong product and are unhappy with the result. In either case, you lose business and drive your customers into the arms of competitors that confuse them less.

Alka Seltzer confused its audience by introducing a new cold medicine they called Alka Seltzer Plus. Alka Seltzer was known as a stomach medicine, but most thought Alka Seltzer Plus was just a better-working version of the original. This caused sales of Alka Seltzer to drop at the same time the new product, Alka Seltzer Plus, was unable to achieve its sales potential because it was for colds - not upset stomachs.
Creating positioning tools
The tools typically used to implement Positioning strategies include: names, logos, slogans, mascots, jingles, colors, and type fonts. Slogan examples formerly used by Coca-Cola include: It's the real thing, which reminded cola drinkers that Coca-Cola Classic is the original; and Just for the taste of it was created to counteract the notion that the artificial sweetener used in Diet Coke compromises the taste of the beverage (a problem that its predecessor Tab had). When introduced, these slogans were used on all product labels and in all other communications. Coca cola red is also a trademarked color that has been ubiquitous since the 1890s.
Promoting the brand
Once keys are created for the locks, it is time to execute the Positioning strategies in all marketing communications. The company should employ someone (inside or outside the company) that understands the branding process well enough to direct those who will be implementing communications strategies.

Measuring and analyzing results and taking corrective action

Once implemented, marketers should employ a Marketing Information System to analyze results, determine what's working and what's not, and take corrective action.

By properly executing the above steps of your Positioning and Corporate Image strategies, marketers can build better brands and improve their success in the marketplace. I hope you find that these ideas work for you.

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Branding: The Secret Sauce for Driving Demand and Controlling Price

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In my last post, I talked about Corporate Image and how it forms the foundation of your brand. In this one, I add Positioning, which drives demand for each of your products and gives you control over the price you can charge. Because it gives you control over Price, it also gives you greater control over Distribution.

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Texting is killing real business communication

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Whether it's a business or personal interaction, multiple studies show that as much as 50-65% of the communication is nonverbal. That means that people who...

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business colleagues image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com

Effective communication at work is about knowing your employees and choosing the right message and channel for transmission. It may be necessary to develop a communications plan to outline strategies. The company's culture is reflected in the nature of office communications, and business can hinge on effective communication.

Know Audience

Understanding your employee's roles and how they fit into your company's hierarchy is essential to creating effective communications. This information will help you tailor communications and better connect with your audience. According to a University of Wisconsin School of Business article titled "Why good communication is Good Business," when employees respect the management, it allows for more direct and better communication. According to the article, conveying the idea that everyone is on common ground when communicating with employees drives respect.

Communication Channels

Choosing the right channel is a vital component to effective communication. According an article in Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business Report, you should consider the advantages and limitations of communication channels when sending a message. Then match the interaction with the desired level of involvement. For example, most detailed information should be written down, while more succinct information can be spoken. Further, email is an excellent tool in certain applications, but doesn't work well with time sensitive, confidential materials or interactive communications. Sometimes using multiple channels is the best approach.

Communication Plan

To clearly define communication methods, it may be a good idea to make a communications plan. A well-designed communications plan should reinforce your company culture. According to an article in Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business Report, creating a "big-picture" communications strategy and a mission statement will help clearly define objectives. It will also identify communications methods, define the desired results and account for future adjustments. In addition, it may also be necessary to create a feedback system to measure the success of communication tactics.

Effective Messages

Using the appropriate language in a message is important to its clarity. According to the Norebusiness.com article entitled "Internal Communication Strategies for your Business," communications should be as succinct as possible, direct, honest and memorable. It also helps to make sure employees realize they are stakeholders in the company's interactions. Using common terminology helps, as it shows employees that management understands their job function.

Considerations

Catering to employees that struggle with communication methods is not advisable, according an article in Pepperdine University's Graziadio Business Report. Instead challenge them to adopt company methods.

About the Author

Kenny Brown has been a freelance writer for six years. Also a former news reporter, his works have appeared in the Bellingham Business Journal, New Britain Herald, Paddler Magazine, Paddle Dealer Magazine and Portland Magazine. Additionally, he has developed promotional copy for Web and print. He holds a bachelor's degree in communications and a master's degree in journalism.

Photo Credits

business colleagues image by Vladimir Melnik from Fotolia.com

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Effective communication at work is about knowing your employees and choosing the right message and channel for transmission. It may be necessary to develop a communications plan to outline strategies. The company's culture is reflected in the nature of office communications, and business can hinge on effective ...

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(CNN) -- Outgoing personality traits are often associated with top corporate roles, but new research suggests businesses miss out when they fail to find and promote executives with more understated styles.

Harvard Business School researcher Francesca Gino has found that introverts can play a crucial role in leading teams.

Many of the strengths that people associate with leaders, for instance being dominant or being good at giving directives, are often the same traits that characterize someone who is an extrovert, Gino told CNN.

But in a forthcoming paper, she argues that when it comes to day-to-day teamwork in the workplace, less obvious leadership qualities can become more important.

She and her collaborators asked bosses to rate how extroverted they considered themselves and then studied how their teams worked.

They found that extroverts were more dominant, drove conversations and were less receptive to new ideas. Introverts, on the other hand, listened to ideas, internalized them and were able to improve team performance.

Gino said that introverts demonstrate superior performance when they are leading a team of proactive workers.

"If you're working in a team that has lots of knowledge, where people are proactive [and] suggesting ideas for improvement, you would do better for the team if you took a backseat position and took the approach of an introvert, who is very careful in listening to suggestions."

Gino and her collaborators, Adam Grant from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and David Hofmann at University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, are publishing their research next year in the Academy of Management Journal.

Gino hopes the findings will help businesses realize the leadership potential of introverts.

"In reality the quality of being more quiet and being more receptive to different ideas is something that should be valued," she said.

It seems it's easier for extroverts to climb the corporate ladder, she noted. A 2009 study conducted by researchers from the University of Minnesota and Baruch College found that 60 percent of top level executives displayed high levels of extroversion.

But introverts clearly have something to offer, Gino said, citing examples of successful introverted leaders, such as Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.

"What we hope HR departments are going to ask about, or any executive board, is the value that an introverted person can bring to the table," she said.

"We do need people who are able to listen to different suggestions and opinions and are able to value them."

Extroverts feel more energized by social interactions whereas introverts are more energized by solitude -- but this isn't necessarily linked to how shy or good at, say, public speaking, someone is, says Nancy Ancowitz, a business communication coach and author of "Self-promotion for Introverts: The Quiet Guide to Getting Ahead."

Introverts can use simple cues to make sure their value is not overlooked, Ancowitz said. "Sometimes it's raising a finger, leaning forward, saying someone's name -- any of those cues can work.

"The important part is you need to be heard, you need to make your contributions known, otherwise you can get passed up for the raises and other people get the credit for your hard work."

Some leadership traits might come a little bit more naturally to extroverts, according to Jennifer Kahnweiler, an executive coach and author of "The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength."

"It's more in their nature to build rapport, stop and have a conversation with somebody," she said. To them, doing that "is like getting out of bed and brushing their teeth."

Kahnweiler, who defines introverts as low-key thinkers who are energized by solitude and prefer in-depth conversation to casual chatter, interviewed introverted executives who successfully climbed the corporate ranks.

These leaders, she says, had learned to put careful thought into their social presentation at work and to manage expectations so that bosses and co-workers could see the up-side of their personal work style.

"How we're perceived in organizations matters," she told CNN. The executives she studied had a hyperawareness about how they were viewed and managed it to their benefit.

According to Gino of Harvard Business School, one of the key takeaways from her research is that anyone can learn to practice effective leadership.

In her study, she found that regardless of their personality type, when pushed to try different styles, people were able to learn the positive leadership characteristics of both introverts and extroverts.

"What the [findings] suggest is that no matter who you are and what your disposition is, you can push yourself," Gino said. "Some people may just need to push themselves a little harder and use an attitude that sets the situation."

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(CNN) -- Outgoing personality traits are often associated with top corporate roles, but new research suggests businesses miss out when they fail to find and promote executives with more understated styles.

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.
It's been almost 10 years since Google famously told the world in its filing for an initial public offering that "don't be evil" was a guiding principle for the company.

But Google is about to issue new shares to existing investors which have absolutely no voting rights. Isn't that sorta evil?

If you owned Google (GOOG) as of March 27, you will wind up with twice as many shares at half the price when the markets open on April 3. The old Google Class A shares will trade under the new ticker symbol of GOOGL. That comes with the right to a vote at the annual shareholder meeting.

The new Class C Google shares will trade under the old ticker symbol of GOOG. They have no vote. So while the value of your investment will not change, your say over how Google runs the company will.
Related: As Gmail turns 10, a look back at how Google came to dominate e-mail
Why is Google doing this? To further consolidate power among the Google leadership triumvirate of CEO Larry Page, chairman Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin.

Keep in mind those three already control more than 61% of the voting power for Google because they are the largest owners of Class B shares. Those shares are not listed publicly ... and they have 10 votes per share compared to one vote for the Class A shares.

Cue the Imperial Death March theme from the original Star Wars trilogy. (I'm pretending Episodes 1 through 3 don't exist.)

Even before this stock split, Google was viewed by some as the New York Yankees of tech stocks: the proverbial Evil Empire. This move is the equivalent of making the Death Star fully operational. (Watch out, Alderaan!)

As the company explained/spun when they first announced the proposal for the split nearly two years ago, the new share structure was "designed to preserve the corporate structure that has allowed Google to remain focused on the long term."

Translation: Nobody else really matters when it comes to decision making. We might as well be a private company.

Unsurprisingly, some shareholders were not pleased with the proposal. The fact that it has taken this long for the split to go into effect is because some shareholders sued to block it.

Google settled with that group last June. Google agreed to stricter board reviews of some acquisitions using company stock and also agreed to compensate shareholders if the new C shares begin to trade at a discount to the A shares with voting rights. And I think that is exactly what should and will happen. But more about that in a bit.
Related: Google and Facebook are in a tech cold war
Google is not the only company to play this game. Many media firms, particularly family-run ones, also have two shares of stock. That's the case for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- (NWS), (NWSA) -- and Twenty-First Century Fox -- (FOX), (FOXA). Ditto for Sumner Redstone's CBS -- (CBS), (CBSA) and Viacom -- (VIA), (VIAB).

And cable giant Comcast has three classes of shares like Google. Two trade publicly: (CMCSA) and (CMCSK). The shares with a symbol ending in A have a vote. The ones with the not-so-special K do not. Comcast's Class B shares are held by a company controlled by CEO Brian Roberts -- whose father, Ralph, founded Comcast.

So why am I making such a fuss of this? Google is supposed to be different than the rest of the tech sector. This is a firm that started as a plucky David going up against the Goliath of Microsoft (MSFT). Google now is worth more than Microsoft. It's no longer fighting "The Man." It is "The Man."

The point of owning a stock is that you don't just profit from the company's success. You also have a say -- albeit small -- in how it is run. Google is throwing that out the window. Ironically, the company that owns YouTube is saying that "You" don't matter.

The notion that Google shareholders have any real rights is a Woody Allen-esque travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. The company wants you to blindly put its faith in Page, Brin and Schmidt and hope for the best.

To be fair, Google shareholders have been rewarded handsomely by that trio so far. Google's stock is up more than 40% in the past year and has surged 220% in the past five years.

And if you were lucky enough to own Google since it went public, you might want to name your sons (or daughters, I'm not judging) after Larry, Sergey or Eric. Google's stock is up an astonishing 1,235% from its IPO price of $85.

Still, isn't it reckless for an investor to throw caution completely to the wind and trust that Page, Brin and Schmidt will never make a mistake? The tech sector is full of companies that were once leaders who failed to adapt to changing times.

Luckily, Google has not made any notable blunders -- well, none that had a lasting impact on the stock. It is a forward-looking company that doesn't worry as much about what Wall Street and short-term oriented traders think about the company.

So while I wouldn't necessarily advise investors to drop Google -- it is, after all, a phenomenal company -- no investor in their right mind should ever buy the new class C shares.

In fact, if I were an existing Google investor, I'd sell the Class C shares I receive in order to buy more A shares. That way, my vote would still count as much in the future.

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corporate governance - The Buzz - Investment and Stock Market News

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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul R. La Monica. Other than Time Warner, the parent of CNNMoney, Abbott Laboratories and AbbVie, La Monica does not own positions in any individual stocks.

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How often have you heard somebody - a new CEO, a journalist, a management consultant, a leadership guru, a fellow employee - talk about the urgent need to change the culture? They want to make it world-class. To dispense with all the nonsense and negativity that annoys employees and stops good intentions from growing into progress. To bring about an entirely different approach, starting immediately.

These culture critiques are as common as complaints about the weather - and about as effective. How frequently have you seen high-minded aspirations to "change the culture" actually manage to modify the way that people behave and the way in which they work? And how often have you seen noticeable long-term improvements?

What Is Corporate Culture?

At its worst, culture can be a drag on productivity. At its best, it is an emotional energizer. Here's how companies can use it to gain a competitive advantage.

If the answer to these last two questions is "rarely," it wouldn't surprise us. We don't believe that swift, wholesale culture change is possible - or even desirable. After all, a company's culture is its basic personality, the essence of how its people interact and work. However, it is an elusively complex entity that survives and evolves mostly through gradual shifts in leadership, strategy, and other circumstances. We find the most useful definition is also the simplest: Culture is the self-sustaining pattern of behavior that determines how things are done.

Made of instinctive, repetitive habits and emotional responses, culture can't be copied or easily pinned down. Corporate cultures are constantly self-renewing and slowly evolving: What people feel, think, and believe is reflected and shaped by the way they go about their business. Formal efforts to change a culture (to replace it with something entirely new and different) seldom manage to get to the heart of what motivates people, what makes them tick. Strongly worded memos from on high are deleted within hours. You can plaster the walls with large banners proclaiming new values, but people will go about their days, right beneath those signs, continuing with the habits that are familiar and comfortable.

But this inherent complexity shouldn't deter leaders from trying to use culture as a lever. If you cannot simply replace the entire machine, work on realigning some of the more useful cogs. The name of the game is making use of what you cannot change by using some of the emotional forces within your current culture differently.

Three dimensions of corporate culture affect its alignment: symbolic reminders (artifacts that are entirely visible), keystone behaviors (recurring acts that trigger other behaviors and that are both visible and invisible), and mind-sets (attitudes and beliefs that are widely shared but exclusively invisible). Of these, behaviors are the most powerful determinant of real change. What people actually do matters more than what they say or believe. And so to obtain more positive influences from your cultural situation, you should start working on changing the most critical behaviors - the mind-sets will follow. Over time, altered behavior patterns and habits can produce better results.

You may be asking: If it is so hard to change culture, why should we even bother to try? Because an organization's current culture contains several reservoirs of emotional energy and influence. Executives who work with them can greatly accelerate strategic and operating imperatives. When positive culture forces and strategic priorities are in sync, companies can draw energy from the way people feel. This accelerates a company's movement to gain competitive advantage, or regain advantages that have been lost.

Research shows that companies that use a few specific cultural catalysts - that is to say, those that use informal emotional approaches to influencing behavior - are significantly more likely to experience change that lasts. Of the companies that reported consciously using elements of their culture in Strategy&'s 2013 Global Culture & Change Management Survey, 70 percent said their firms achieved sustainable improvement in organizational pride and emotional commitment. That compares with 35 percent for firms that didn't use culture as a lever. Although there is no magic formula, no brilliant algorithm, no numerical equation that will guarantee results, we have gleaned some valuable insights through decades of research and observation at dozens of enterprises, including some of the most successful companies in the world. By adopting the following principles, your organization can learn to deploy and improve its culture in a manner that will increase the odds of financial and operational success.

1. Work with and within your current cultural situations. Deeply embedded cultures cannot be replaced with simple upgrades, or even with major overhaul efforts. Nor can your culture be swapped out for a new one as though it were an operating system or a CPU. To a degree, your current cultural situation just is what it is - and it contains components that provide natural advantages to companies as well as components that may act as brakes. We've never seen a culture that is all bad, or one that is all good. To work with your culture effectively, therefore, you must understand it, recognize which traits are preeminent and consistent, and discern under what types of conditions these traits are likely to be a help or a hindrance. Put another way, there's both a yin and a yang to cultural traits.

For example, a European pharmaceutical company with a solid product development pipeline had a tendency to be inward-looking. It had great execution capabilities and an excellent record of compliance with regulators around the world. However, when new products were ready to be launched, the company had a hard time marketing them to physicians and healthcare providers. Rather than bemoaning the company's ingrained insularity - for example, its collective tendency to value the opinions of internal colleagues more than those of outside experts - the leaders decided to use this feature of its culture to its advantage. They set up a program through which employees were acknowledged and rewarded by colleagues for "going the extra mile" to support customers. By recognizing a new kind of internal authoritativeness, the company tapped a powerful emotional trigger already in place, and engendered a new (and strategically important) behavior in its sales force.

2. Change behaviors, and mind-sets will follow. It is a commonly held view that behavioral change follows mental shifts, as surely as night follows day. This is why organizations often try to change mind-sets (and ultimately behavior) by communicating values and putting them in glossy brochures. This technique didn't work well for Enron, where accounting fraud and scandal were part of everyday practice, even as the company's espoused values of excellence, respect, integrity, and communication were carved into the marble floor of the atrium of its global headquarters in Houston. In reality, culture is much more a matter of doing than of saying. Trying to change a culture purely through top-down messaging, training and development programs, and identifiable cues seldom changes people's beliefs or behaviors. In fact, neuroscience research suggests that people act their way into believing rather than thinking their way into acting. Changes to key behaviors - changes that are tangible, actionable, repeatable, observable, and measurable - are thus a good place to start. Some good examples of behavior change, which we've observed at a number of companies, relate to empowerment (reducing the number of approvals needed for decisions), collaboration (setting up easy ways to convene joint projects), and interpersonal relations (devising mutually respectful practices for raising contentious issues or grievances).

Neuroscience research suggests that people act their way into believing rather than thinking their way into acting.

A telecommunications company was seeking to improve its customer service. Rather than trying to influence mind-sets by, for example, posting signs urging employees to be polite to disgruntled customers, or having employees undergo empathy training, the company focused on what psychologists call a "precursor behavior" - a seemingly innocuous behavior that reliably precedes the occurrence of problem behavior. Leaders had noticed that poor teaming led to poor customer service, so the company rolled out a plan to encourage better and more effective teaming within call centers. To accomplish this, they set up regular design sessions for improving practices. When employees felt they were part of a happy team, and sensed a greater level of support from colleagues, they began treating their customers better.

In another example, a resources company in the Middle East was seeking to make its workplace safer. Rather than erect placards threatening workers with consequences, the company focused on a relatively basic precursor behavior: housekeeping. It organized a litter drive. Picking up trash as a team helped employees take greater pride in the workplace, which engendered a greater sense of care for fellow employees and made them more likely to speak up when they noticed an unsafe situation. Changed behavior, changed mind-set.

3. Focus on a critical few behaviors. Conventional wisdom advocates a comprehensive approach - everybody should change everything that's not perfect! But companies must be rigorously selective when it comes to picking behaviors. The key is to focus on what we call "the critical few," a small number of important behaviors that would have great impact if put into practice by a significant number of people. Discern a few things people do throughout the company that positively affect business performance - for example, ways of starting meetings or talking with customers. Make sure those are aligned with the company's overall strategy. Also check that people feel good about doing these things, so that you tap into emotional commitment. Then codify them: Translate those critical behaviors into simple, practical steps that people can take every day. Next, select groups of employees who are primed for these few behaviors, those who will respond strongly to the new behaviors and who are likely to implement and spread them.

At an Asian banking company, rapid inorganic growth had led to diverse ways of working across different units and geographies. To focus on improving teaming, customer outcomes, and the ability to realize synergies, the CEO and leadership embarked on a culture-led evolution program. They targeted just three critical behaviors: taking extra steps to delight customers, valuing performance over seniority, and backing up and supporting one another. They then converted these three general behaviors into specifics for each part of the company. Delighting customers, for instance, was translated into frontline staff collaborating with other colleagues to solve client problems and prioritizing the implementation of process improvements that affected customer outcomes. For all three behaviors, leadership recognized and celebrated examples in which people made an extraordinary effort. Senior leaders acted as role models, explicitly modeling these three new behaviors. The company also identified influential frontline, client-facing employees who could demonstrate these new behaviors in action.

4. Deploy your authentic informal leaders. Authority, which is conferred by a formal position, should not be confused with leadership. Leadership is a natural attribute, exercised and displayed informally without regard to title or position in the organizational chart. Because authentic informal leaders, who are found in every organization, are often not recognized as such, they are frequently overlooked and underused when it comes to driving culture. It is possible to identify such leaders through interviews, surveys, and tools such as organizational network analysis, which allow companies to construct maps of complex internal social relations by analyzing email statistics and meeting records. Once identified, these leaders can become powerful allies who can influence behavior through "showing by doing." In fact, when companies map out their organizations, they can identify leaders who exhibit different core leadership strengths (see "Four Types of Authentic Informal Leaders").

Four Types of Authentic Informal Leaders

Every organization has people who influence and energize others without relying on their title or formal position in the hierarchy to do so. We call them "authentic informal leaders." They are a powerful resource in spreading a critical few behaviors from the bottom up. Among the many types of informal leaders present in organizations, the following are seen most frequently.

Pride builders are master motivators of other people, and catalysts for improvement around them. Often found in the role of line manager, they understand the motivations of those with whom they work. They know how to foster a sense of excellence among others. They can be found at every level of a hierarchy; some of the most effective pride builders are close to the front line, where they can interact directly with customers as well as employees. Pride builders often have powerful insights about the culture and about what behaviors are likely to lead to improvement.

Exemplars are role models. They bring vital behaviors or skills to life, and others pay attention to them. They are well respected and are effective peer influencers in the middle and senior management cohorts.

Networkers are hubs of personal communication within the organization. They know many people, and communicate freely and openly with them. They serve as links among people who might not otherwise share information or ideas. If you want to see an idea travel virally through an enterprise, enlist your networkers.

Early adopters enthusiastically latch onto and experiment with new technologies, processes, and ways of working. Involve them in your performance pilots, or whenever you are trying to demonstrate impact quickly.

At one major oil company, an informal leader named Osama became known as the "turbo-collaborator." His role gave him very little formal influence. But when he began working at the refinery, he walked the plant with the engineers, maintenance technicians, and operators, and took copious notes. As a result, he knew everyone and developed relationships across disciplines. Whenever somebody wanted to know how the place really worked, they would speak to Osama - who would either have the answer in his notebook or know precisely the right person to ask. When the company formed a buddy program between operations and maintenance aimed at using greater collaboration to improve plant reliability, it knew it needed Osama at the heart of it. He connected people, defined templates to encourage collaboration, and captured success stories. Identifying, engaging, and nurturing such informal leaders allows companies to harness their talents and further the company's transformation efforts.

5. Don't let your formal leaders off the hook. Most organizations tend to shunt culture into the silo of human resources professionals. But leaders in all parts of the company are critical in safeguarding and championing desired behaviors, energizing personal feelings, and reinforcing cultural alignment. The signaling of emotional commitment sets the tone for others to follow. If staff members see a disconnect between the culture an organization promulgates and the one its formal leadership follows, they'll disengage quickly from the advertised culture and simply mimic their seniors' behavior. The people at the top have to demonstrate the change they want to see. Here, too, the critical few come into play. A handful of the right kind of leaders have to be on board to start the process.

When Jim Rogers was CEO of GE Motors in Fort Wayne, Ind., he became frustrated because his senior leadership group of more than 15 leaders seldom functioned together as a "real team." As described by Jon Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith in The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization (Harvard Business School Press, 1993), a real team is one with a high level of emotional commitment; the leadership role shifts easily among the members depending on their skills and experience and the challenges of the moment, rather than on any hierarchical positions. Team members hold one another accountable for the quality of their collective work. Interestingly, at GE Motors the senior leadership group members often demonstrated real team capabilities in running their individual business units and functions. So Rogers decided to find ways to break them into subteams of three or four members to address specific cross-organizational issues facing the larger group. Over time, he mixed the subgroupings to match emerging issues. By working in different subgroup settings, the executives developed camaraderie, which in turn improved the effectiveness of the group as a whole.

6. Link behaviors to business objectives. When people talk about feelings, motivations, and values - all of which are vital elements of strong cultures - the conversation can often veer into abstractions. It may then range far afield of what it takes to succeed in the market. Too many employees walk away from culture-focused town halls or values discussions wondering how the advice on how to be a better person actually translates into the work they do. To avoid this disconnect, offer tangible, well-defined examples of how cultural interventions lead to improved performance and financial outcomes. Select behaviors that are aimed specifically at improving business performance and can be measured over time.

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An oil company's drive to reduce maintenance costs at an industrial installation highlights the importance of such an approach. The critical few behaviors included empowerment and good decision making. One of the company's exemplars (employees who lead by example) decided it would be a smart move to make costs visible to workers. So he placed price tags on various pieces of machinery. These cues inspired behavioral changes related to decisions about whether to repair or replace equipment. Workers and managers began to recommend fixing expensive equipment rather than replacing it. The company celebrated and publicized cost savings identified by employees. The behaviors led to a change in focus and mind-set. When an employee noticed that fans were cooling the machinery during the winter, he felt empowered to call it out, and ask whether it was necessary to do so. It turned out that it wasn't - and the company saved US$750,000 annually in power costs as a result.

7. Demonstrate impact quickly. We live in an age of notoriously short attention spans. That applies as much to organizational culture as it does to people's media consumption habits. When people hear about new high-profile initiatives and efforts, and then don't see any activity related to them for several months, they'll disengage and grow cynical. That's why it is extremely important to showcase the impact of cultural efforts on business results as quickly as possible. One effective method of doing so is to stage performance pilots - that is, high-profile demonstration projects. Pilots are relatively low-risk efforts that introduce specific behaviors that can then be evaluated and assessed. They often rely on a dashboard that defines desired impacts, the tactics used, and the specific metrics to be employed.

When Bell Canada first explored using new behaviors at the front line to improve its customer service and profitability, there were many more skeptics than believers within the leadership ranks. There simply wasn't any numerical proof that the tactics would work. So CEO Michael Sabia decided to set up a pilot test in a sales unit near Toronto. The sponsors of the test blocked out a tight time frame of eight months, and developed realistic ways of measuring behavior change, customer reactions, and actual sales and margin performance. Armed with positive results in these areas - a 29 percent increase in customer satisfaction in retail stores, a 31 percent increase in revenue per call at call centers - the company went on to accelerate the expansion of these efforts across the front line in different geographies, functions, and businesses.

8. Use cross-organizational methods to go viral. Ideas can spread virally across organizational departments and functions, as well as from the top down and from the bottom up. One powerful way to spread ideas is through social media: blogs, Facebook or LinkedIn posts, and tweets - not from senior management, but from some of the authentic informal leaders mentioned in Principle 4.

By now it is well established that social media can be more effective at spreading information, news, and music than traditional modes of distribution. The same holds with critical behaviors. People are often more receptive to changes in "the way we do things around here" when those changes are recommended or shared by friends, colleagues, and other associates. This kind of credible social proof is more compelling than similar testimonials from someone whose job it is to sell something.

Just as there is an art to making content go viral, there's a craft to making behavior go viral. For example, in a model that we have tested successfully in several situations, a company starts with a few carefully chosen groups of 12 to 15 informal leaders in three or four different parts of the business. After several weeks, an additional 10 to 15 groups of informal leaders are set up in every business unit. After about three months, the existing groups are encouraged to expand and bring in new people. After another three to six months have passed, the groups become more autonomous, allowed to control their own expansion. Meanwhile, the company facilitates connections among groups to share learning and insights. As behavior spreads, company leaders see increased performance as well as peer and leadership recognition.

9. Align programmatic efforts with behaviors. We've emphasized the role that informal leaders can play in helping ideas go viral. But it's also important to match the new cultural direction with existing ways of doing business. Informal mechanisms and cultural interventions must complement and integrate with the more common formal organization components, not work at cross-purposes. By providing the structure in which people work - through disciplines such as organization design, analytics, human resources, and lean process improvement - the formal organization provides a rational motivation for employee actions, while the informal organization enables the emotional commitment that characterizes peak performance.

The U.S. Marine Corps provides a classic example of integrating formal and informal leadership efforts. The "rule of three" dictates how the Marines design their organizations and projects and how they execute in a hierarchy. (Three squads form into one of three divisions, which form one of three battalions.) The formal leaders of those units are expected to know the intent of the officer two levels above them - and to call out any order or situation they perceive to be incoherent or in conflict with that intent. But there are also informal leaders: Each of the four members of a frontline rifle team is prepared (and expected) to take the lead whenever the formal leader is disabled or loses the high-ground position. This means that the informal leaders also need to know the intent of that officer two levels above. Integrating informal norms with the formal structures helps enable the timely battlefield adjustments that have served the Marine Corps well for more than 200 years.

10. Actively manage your cultural situation over time. Companies that have had great success working with culture - we call them "culture superstars" - actively monitor, manage, care for, and update their cultural forces. Why? As we noted at the outset, when aligned with strategic and operating priorities, culture can provide hidden sources of energy and motivation that can accelerate changes faster than formal processes and programs. Even if you have a highly effective culture today, it may not be good enough for tomorrow.

Southwest Airlines stands as an example of a battle-tested company in which culture has been managed over time. Famous for its long-term success in an industry where even the largest players routinely fail, Southwest for 40 years has been energized by a deep sense of pride among all employees. Southwest has found that constructing an environment that puts its employees first - above customers and owners - fosters a sense of emotional commitment and pride that delivers excellent customer service. But at Southwest, the work on culture is never completed. Just as the airline's strategy, tactics, and technologies have evolved to cope with a changing external environment, specific HR practices, including informal behaviors, have shifted over time.

Living in Your Culture

Although challenging, multidimensional, and often difficult to deal with, a company's cultural situation constitutes a powerful set of emotional resources. As is the case with other resources - human, technological, financial - it is incumbent upon leaders to strive to get the most value out of it.

To a degree, culture can be compared to natural forces such as winds and tides. These elements are there in the background, sometimes unnoticed, sometimes obvious. Endowed with immense power, they can waylay plans and inhibit progress. They can't really be tamed or fundamentally altered. But if you respect them and understand how to make the most of them, if you work with them and tap into their hidden power, they can become a source of energy and provide powerful assistance.

The best way to start is to ask yourself a series of questions. What are the most important emotional forces that determine what your people do? What few behavior changes would matter most in meeting strategic and operational imperatives? Who are the authentic informal leaders you can enlist? And what can you and your fellow senior leaders do differently to signal and reinforce those critical behaviors?

Of course, you shouldn't plan for dramatic results overnight. Expect an evolution, not a revolution. One of the challenges of working with culture is that, as we've noted, it changes gradually - often too slowly for leaders facing fast-moving competitors. That's the bad news. The good news? If you approach culture with respect and intelligence, as a milieu in which you and your enterprise live, you can use it to accelerate your competitive momentum. There's no better time than the present to start.

Reprint No. 16105

Author Profiles:

Jon Katzenbach is an acclaimed advisor to executives for Strategy&, PwC's strategy consulting group. He is a managing director with PwC US, based in New York, and founder of the Katzenbach Center, Strategy&'s global institute on organizational culture and leadership. He is a best-selling author on organizational culture, leadership, and teaming; his books include The Wisdom of Teams (with Douglas K. Smith; Harvard Business School Press, 1993) and Leading Outside the Lines (with Zia Khan; Jossey-Bass, 2010).

Carolin Oelschlegel is a director of the Katzenbach Center for Strategy&. She leads the global operations of the center and advises clients around the world on culture and leadership topics. Based in San Francisco, she is a director with PwC US.

James Thomas is a thought leader in organizational culture with Strategy&. He is the Middle East lead of the Katzenbach Center and an expert in culture and organizational topics. Based in Dubai, he is a partner with PwC Middle East.

Also contributing to this article were Strategy& specialists Varya Davidson (partner with PwC Australia), Kenji Mitsui (partner with PwC Japan), Henning Hagen and Rutger von Post (principals with PwC US), and Shona Especkerman (senior manager with PwC Malaysia).

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Jon Katzenbach, Carolin Oelschlegel, and James Thomas

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How often have you heard somebody - a new CEO, a journalist, a management consultant, a leadership guru, a fellow employee - talk about the urgent need to change the culture? They want to make it world-class. To dispense with all the nonsense and negativity that annoys employees and stops good intentions from growing into progress.

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Leadership is a choice. Pure and simple.

When you assume a position of authority, either formally as a manager or informally as a team leader, you make the choice to lead. Management is the discipline of getting things done right. Leadership is the art of doing what is right for good of the organization. In other words, management is execution; leadership is inspiration.

Inspiration emerges from purpose, knowing what you do and why you do it. Organizational purpose emerges from the vision, mission and values of an organization.

Apple is fine example of a purposeful organization. Its leadership under Steve Jobs at the helm was focused on producing well-designed products, easy to use as tools of productivity or means of entertainment. Everyone in Apple has been focused on this mission. You could say much the same about the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain. Everyone from top to bottom, and that includes maids and wait staff, knows how to deliver a superior guest experience.

Among the ways leaders instill purpose in an organization, according to research conducted my book, Lead With Purpose, Giving Your Organization a Reason to Believe in Itself, is through communicating the vision, tying customer benefits to employee contributions, and linking work to results.

Creating a purposeful organization is not easy. It takes the commitment of senior leaders who hold themselves accountable for delivering on the corporate mission. A fine example of this is Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a global IT services company headquartered in Delhi.

As Nayar wrote in his book, Employees First, Customers Second, "The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel, help them discover their own wisdom, engage themselves entirely in their work, and accept responsibility for making change." Toward that end, Nayar regards himself as a servant of his organization one who holds himself accountable for putting individuals and teams into positions where they can excel.

Purpose is especially necessary in tough times. As Roger Webb, President of the University of Central Oklahoma, told me an in an interview: "If people don't feel the purpose, and don't feel the goal and [know] that they are accomplishing things and moving forward, then depressing news can really bring people down."

While purpose is the spark that sets up the vision -- where an organization is headed -- and defines its mission, it becomes inert if not practiced. So a leader must "connect the dots" between what an employee does and why it matters to the organization.

A key example of this is Ford Motor Company. Under the leadership of CEO Alan Mulally the organization has transformed itself from a struggling company to one that has become the most admired automaker. Key to this has been the One Ford plan, which is the relentless focus on creating cars and trucks that complement the Ford brand globally. The beauty of this imperative is not the words; it's the action steps.

Employees throughout Ford understand the responsibility they have to deliver on One Ford. If you work in manufacturing you understand that decisions and actions you make complement Ford's ability to build world-class products. Or if you work in marketing, you know how your marketing plan for the Focus complement the strategic imperative. Put in other way, purpose becomes personal.

Specificity is critical to purpose. I have developed two questions that managers can ask themselves to ensure that they are using purpose as a lever to effect positive results. The first, is asking oneself if you are teaching your staff about a purpose. Secondly, ask if you are ensuring your staff follow through on the shared purpose.

Answers to these questions will enable the leader to provide his team with a goals. Ways to deliver on this will include briefings from senior management but it will more importantly involve having conversations about what the team is doing and why it matters. Stories about what is working or what is not can greatly contribute to a greater understanding of purpose.

Leadership is a choice for individuals to make, but the leader must provide his or her team with clear direction founded on purpose and understanding.

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learning from steve jobs: how to lead with purpose
 - cnn

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Learning from Steve Jobs: How to lead with purpose

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Leadership is a choice. Pure and simple. When you assume a position of authority, either formally as a manager or informally as a team leader, you make the choice to lead. Management is the discipline of getting things done right. Leadership is the art of doing what is right for good of the organization.

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A theory suggesting that the type of leadership (or coaching style) appropriate for a given situation depends on the maturity of the athlete being coached. The need for coaching behaviour consistent with initiating structure, for example, tends to decrease with age. The need for coaching styles consistent with consideration tends to be low for very mature and immature athletes, and high for those with moderate levels of maturity.

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Life-cycle theory of leadership - Oxford Reference

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A theory suggesting that the type of leadership (or coaching style) appropriate for a given situation depends on the maturity of the athlete being coached. The need for coaching behaviour consistent with initiating structure, for example, tends to decrease with age.

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Great Leadership Requires Great Listening | Communication Skills | Leadership Speaker

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http://www.vanhooser.com/topics/ Great leadership requires great listening -- watch as Phillip Van Hooser, leadership speaker, shares the negative impact poor listening has on leadership success. If you're a multi-tasker, you'll want to watch this.

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Center for Innovation in Legal Education

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Video1 made by KIMEP student during the course "Independent Studies in Communication" Instructor: Ken Harvey

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Video details the four management functions

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Leadership and Management | Part 3 of 4:The Four Functions of Management

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Across all industries and organizations, the functions and objectives of management are the same. These core elements, known as the Four Functions of Management, are: Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling. The role of management is to ensure that each organization has an objective and direction, enrich the decision-making process, provide support, motivation and inspiration for their workers and implement mechanisms so the organization achieves its objectives.

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Article list the different types of management and when is the best time to use them.

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Think back on your career and the managers you have had. I am sure that you have had good managers and others who were maybe not so great. When I ask people to list what made the good managers "good," most of the examples they give me are to do with behavior, or style.

One of the interesting things about style is that managers with the most flexibility in style get the best outcomes from their people. Leadership style is not about good/bad, right/wrong: leadership style depends on the task, people and situation to be managed.

According to Hay-McBer there are six key leadership or management styles.

The DIRECTIVE (Coercive) style has the primary objective of immediate compliance from employees:

Effective when:

There is a crisis

When deviations are risky

Ineffective when:

Employees are underdeveloped -- little learning happens with this style

Employees are highly skilled -- they become frustrated and resentful at the micromanaging.

The AUTHORITATIVE (Visionary) style has the primary objective of providing long-term direction and vision for employees:

Effective when:

Clear directions and standards needed

The leader is credible

Ineffective when:

Employees are underdeveloped -- they need guidance on what to do

The leader is not credible -- people won't follow your vision if they don't believe in it

The AFFILIATIVE style has the primary objective of creating harmony among employees and between manager and employees:

Effective when:

Used with other styles

Tasks routine, performance adequate

Counseling, helping

Managing conflict

Least effective when:

Performance is inadequate - affiliation does not emphasise performance

There are crisis situations needing direction

The PARTICIPATIVE (Democratic) style has the primary objective of building commitment and consensus among employees:

Effective when:

Least effective when:

The PACESETTING style has the primary objective of accomplishing tasks to a high standard of excellence:

Effective when:

Least effective when:

When workload requires assistance from others

When development, coaching & coordination required

The COACHING style has the primary objective of long-term professional development of employees:

Effective when:

Skill needs to be developed

Employees are motivated and wanting development

Ineffective when:

When I run a program on the six styles, I like to use an activity to demonstrate the styles in action. The group is divided into six teams and a volunteer leader comes in to lead each team using just one of the styles. I set them a task that takes 30-40 minutes and then we debrief how it felt and what outcomes were achieved. The task is easy, so people are skilled. This is what happens:

The DIRECTIVE leader orders the team around, sets high standards and disciplines those who don't meet the standard. I brief the leader beforehand to change his / her mind several times during the activity and also to take a phone call and leave the room. When the leader is out of the room, the team usually stops work -- concerned about the consequences of continuing without the micromanagement. After the activity the team reports that they are frustrated, angry and disengaged. It is interesting how quickly the team loses enthusiasm and initiative under the directive leader. The leader reports that the style is "high maintenance -- I felt like I had to be everywhere, watching everyone, it was exhausting"!

The AUTHORITATIVE (Visionary) leader sets the vision for the team, clearly and compellingly, then steps back and allows the team to work. The leader steps in from time to time to reiterate the vision if required, but that is all he / she does. The leader reports that the style was "easy -- I didn't have to do much and I could see how the style would free me up to operate strategically". The team report enjoying the activity, and feel enormously proud of the work they have done, often getting out their smart phones to take pictures posing with their creation.

The AFFILIATIVE leader takes time helping the team to bond. They often sit down for a cup of tea and a round table sharing of stories. Often the activity is not even commenced as the team gets caught up in getting to know each other. More task focused team members often look around and get anxious when they can see other teams working. Sometimes one of those people will leap in and take control, effectively "sacking" the leader. The team reports that they enjoyed the sharing and relaxed atmosphere, but that they started to wonder when they would start work. The leader often reports that it was "challenging keeping the focus on team bonding -- they started to get sick of me after a while"

The PARTICIPATIVE (Democratic) leader starts by asking all the team members what they would like to do, then voting on the options. They start in the car park, and I have on occasion seen the team vote to get a coffee and disappear. They are then startled to find when they return that there was an activity to do that they missed! Even when the team votes to come inside and do the activity the progress is slow as everything has to be agreed before action happens. Team members report that they enjoyed being consulted and having a voice in the decision making, but got anxious when they could see lack of progress compared with other teams. The leader reports that "it was easy -- I didn't have to make any decisions".

The PACESETTING leader sets a cracking pace from the beginning. The team operates with high energy, engagement and motivation. The leader sets members tasks, but then takes the task off them if they are "not performing" and gives it to someone else. Despite this, the team members remain engaged, seeing this as a consequence of the high standards set by the leader. At the end of the task the team reports that they enjoyed the experience, are proud of what they achieved, but are exhausted. The leader is often exhausted too, saying "it was fantastic, but really challenging to maintain the pace and focus. I am glad we only had to do it for 40 minutes"!

The COACHING leader focusses on the learning experience. When a team member proves to be particularly good at an aspect of the task, the leader has them demonstrate and teach the others. The team gets absorbed in the learning and people are often surprised to hear that the time is up. They are engaged with and proud of their achievements, even though they often don't fully complete the task. The leader often reports that they "really enjoyed working with the team and I'd love to have had more time so we could finish because we were doing a great job".

It is a fascinating exercise that demonstrates clearly that there is no best style. The most appropriate style will depend on the people (their experience, values, motives) and the situation (stable/changing, new/seasonal team, short/long term focus). The key to being an effective leader is to have a broad repertoire of styles and to use them appropriately.
Rosalind Cardinal is The Leadership Alchemist and Principal Consultant of Shaping Change, an Australian consultancy specializing in improving business outcomes by developing individuals, teams and organizations. You can interact with Ros, learn more about leadership and management, and download a complimentary copy of her e-guide on leading change at her website.

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6 Management Styles and When to Use Them

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Think back on your career and the managers you have had. I am sure that you have had good managers and others who were maybe not so great. When I ask people to list what made the good managers "good," most of the examples they give me are to do with behavior, or style.