What makes a global leader effective? The Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) is a part of the Corporate Executive Board (www.clc.executiveboard.com). A leader with strategic, P&L or operational responsibilities across more than one country is a global leader according to them. I believe it has to do with the mindset. Does the leader think of solutions to business or people issues by considering options outside the familiar geographies. Whether it is regulatory issues, currency fluctuations, changes in market dynamics or supply chain, business results get affected by such factors. Global leaders are not constrained by limits of familiarity. The business challenges could be arising out of people issues. For instance there could be a critical and strategic role to be filled. When a leader is in these situations, how often would they think of people in other geographies who might fit the bill? If you do, you have the mindset of a global leader.By 2030, the percentage of growth expected from the emerging markets is expected to be almost 60% with the developed markets accounting for the rest. Global leaders have to look at a mix of business and talent related activities that addresses the current performance. Annual goals of revenue, profit and market share ill account for the business goals. The annual goals that focus on people would be addressed by annual performance, employee retention and engagement goals.What do they need to do to build the foundation of long term growth? Business goals that focus on the long term would be:
- Improve long term financial health
- Improve market reputation
- Improve long term product vision/ strategy
- Improve organizational processes
A long term view of talent is always taken with an eye for the future. People goals that form the basis of long term growth would be :
- Create a deep bench of talent
- Create a strong organizational culture
- Create strong talent management processes
- Become an employer of choice
Those who are not meeting either short term or long term goals would be Laggards. 33% leaders are Laggards. Those who meet only the short term goals would be called Myopics. They constitute 40% of the leaders. About 9% of the leaders that CLC surveyed to reach these conclusions were the Builders. The Builders manage to meet long term goals but miss the immediate performance metrics. The Great Global Leaders manage both the short term and the long term. Only 18% leaders could be categorized as Great Global Leaders. The percentage of leaders in Asia who could be classified as Great Global Leaders was just 10%. And 6% were Builders among Asian Leaders. 39% and 45% Asian Leaders fell in the Laggards and Myopics category in this study.Notice the long term drivers of business results as well as people results are all fairly qualitative. this would raise considerable challenges for those who believe that if it cannot be measured then we need not worry about it.There are some strong qualitative outcomes for each of these leaders. The Great Global Leaders get 12% more discretionary effort and run a 13% lower than average attrition risk in their teams. The Laggards by contrast get24% lower than average discretionary effort from their teams.Do you know who are the Great Global Leaders in your organization? How do the percentage of such leaders compare to the Global survey which had 11,500 leaders at 35 organizations surveyed along with inputs from more than 200 HR executives. Would you say that this sample is representative? Would love to know.
