1. Ambidextrous executive performance models
The first thing we noticed when we studied companies that have mastered talent management is how precise they are about the concept of transformation and the leadership behaviors associated with it.
CEOs and other senior leaders of these companies routinely recognize that they are faced with two simultaneous transformations. They must fundamentally rethink and transform how the existing business operates in order to ensure sustained growth and profitability. At the same time, they need to transform the company strategy to grow new revenue sources from new products often with new business models.
One group CEO, who leads a 100-year-old bank, put it this way: âAt 9am, I am meeting with bank managers, talking about how to transform our small-medium business customers loan application process to make it more streamlined while reducing our risk for non-performing loans with these customers. At 10am, I am meeting with a digital platform partner to explore how to quickly establish a seamless mobile payments platform, to take advantage of the bankâs large customer base and to displace a competitor who is growing quickly in the mobile payments segment.â
Achieving these goals requires frequently opposing sets of leadership behaviors. Leaders need to be able to switch between improving business as usual, driving transformational change, and then turning it into business as usual. We call this ambidextrous leadership. For example, an ambidextrous Chief Marketing officer can transform the existing business from mass-marketing to 1-to-1 marketing, and then develop procedures that ensure the new method of marketing is executed with excellence. Similarly, an ambidextrous Chief Strategy Officer who developed a new business line will not make it sustainable unless he also builds a solid organization around it.
Such ambidextrous leaders who can both transform an existing business and build a new one from scratch are rare, with most executives being good at one or the other. And yet, they are central to achieving the strategic goals of their organizations.
In fact, the companies that excelled at their talent development strategies recognized this explicitly and created executive performance models that required leaders to master both types of behaviors. As we examined these models in detail, we found that the most comprehensive ones emphasized at least five different core skills: leading strategy, execution, stakeholders, people, and self. And then, on each skill, the models called on leaders to exhibit these radically different behaviors or, in other words, to be ambidextrous. While the details of each model vary, the composite best-in-class ambidextrous performance model usually entails the following behaviors.
To be ambidextrous when it comes to strategy, leaders need to be both transformers creating new businesses, and operators who constantly adjust the strategy in response to short-term market changes. When leading execution, they need to be both experimenters, constantly looking for better ways to deliver value, while at the same time driving operational excellence and profitability using proven systems and processes. When leading stakeholders, it is necessary to know when to use informal power and networks to influence and move things forward, and at the same time know how to use power arising from the formal structure and governance processes of the organization. When leading people, the challenge is to flex between using a coaching and empowering style of management and to know when to apply more formal performance management processes to ensure team and individual contribution and performance. The final scale involves leading yourself. Since a successful corporate leadership career is more like a marathon than a sprint, a daily routine is needed to maintain energy, focus and stamina. It is therefore important that time is invested in clarifying personal values and vision as leaders to promote courage and resilience, while, at the same, taking good care of mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing on a regular basis.