There is no need to mention the importance of business leadership. Leader is the most important person in the organization. Specifically, how many the number of leader who has a clear and compelling vision and an ability to pass on that vision to the next ranking executives, who further translates that vision into implementation strategy. At the same time, top management – CEO or MD – needs to possess another quality or takes on another vital mission statement, who is building the next generation leaders.
Regardless of the size or form of ownership, local or multinational organization, all share one universal objective, business expansion that further provides a basis for internationalization. Achieving that objective is definitely a result of continued effort of its current and next generation leaders through different states of business.
Question is what strategy is available for the current CEO or MD to employ in building the next generation leadership.
- For business to remain competitive or to maintain continual growth, and business needs the next generation of leaders to take on the new higher level of thinking and to determine the way to run around the business.
- In many businesses, it takes about a decade to breed a new generation of leader. Further, who will fuel the business and take some of the world class corporations like GE, FORD, ENRON, these corporations are developing its people internally to assume the future leadership positions.
- Any successful Leadership Development Project requires a direct supervision of its CEO or MD at least 30% of their total time. Moreover, if the project can be combined with actual business strategy, the Knowledge Management Program, and it will be the greater likelihood of success. In any Leadership Development Project, if the current top management truly understand the core principle of leadership development, to what really make up a true leader, there are many paths to take them there.
Here are come of the major characteristics of Leadership Development Project, which depends upon the Knowledge Management philosophy.
- Business must be willing to develop its leader from within. It must develop the key people from core business operations i.e. sales, marketing, or production technology. This is break away from the old management paradigm of business, almost executives often rely on hiring some outside expertise to assume those core business functions. Although hiring from outside is a fast solution, business entails the risk of lacking true knowledge, expertise, and continuation.
- Leadership Development Project under the model of Knowledge Management should be outlined in such a way that training is conducted along the Action-Research and Action-Learning approach.
- Certainly, the trainers of the Leadership Development Project consist of three groups of professionals.
1) CEO or MD will have to coach the leadership trainees closely, with a specificpurpose on transferring vision, organization culture, including serving to inspire and be the pushing force to develop the organization further. A clear expectation is case on those “new leaders”.
2) Existing team or knowledgeable personnel who thoroughly understand all the systems of the organization will teach, coach, and support continual learning of the future leaders.
3) Experience experts or specialists whose expertise line in business an human resource development. They are the people who conduct the program in the form of Action-Research and Action-Learning.
Measurement of effectiveness of the Leadership Development Project can be has assessed with these benchmarks.
- The Project must incorporate the development of Knowledge Warehousing, to be an intelligent source of knowledge of the organization. This warehouse of knowledge is planned ahead for everyone (especially the new leaders) to learn the success of the organization.
- The Program must bring technology in, to support the Knowledge Exchange (KX); technology must serve as a Knowledge Engine, an efficient searching tool which is done through a network or in the e-library format.
- The Project must encourage a formation of a new body of knowledge, and tobe constructive to encourage the learners to see that knowledge in terms of a portfolio, and allows them to be store in the Knowledge Warehouse of the organization.
Many companies has successfully adopted the Knowledge Management paradigm in building the new leaders. There are however many others wishing to employ the Knowledge Management but can’t seem to find the way or suitable format. They may check out the book titled http://www.human/ Resource Management of the 21st century (http://www.การบริหารทรัพยากรบุคคลสู่ศตวรรษที่21/).
Company needs to recruit new generation of personnel employing the testing process that coincides with the company’s future operational direction. For example, some qualifications may be required such a digital knowledge, be a risk taker, posses an entrepreneurial spirit, be a sales-oriented, etc. The company can arrange training course such as Sales Development Project and New Generation Marketer under the environment of Cluster Learning, that I focuses the learning to core business activities, which will plant the new generation leaders with the ‘root’ knowledge of the business.
In the implementation stage, the Leadership Development project will be linked to core business activities through the Action-Learning approach. For instance, the trainee will receive actual on-the-job training. Given a sales or marketing function, the trainee will involve in activities such as objective setting up, sales planning, and sales promotion strategy. In addition, this process of knowledge development should be constructive to (1) an improvement of core business competency or business expertise. (2) facilitate actual implementation and (3) assist in providing the conclusion. Moreover, the responsible party must integrate the Leadership Development project into a knowledge cycle, which is the Knowledge Management program that the organization requires.
The key mission of the CEO or MD is therefore how to create a Leadership Development Strategy that will take the organization beyond the limitation of human resources development, to locate a group of high potential persons who will be the next generation leaders, who are fully equipped with real business knowledge, and fully armed with digital weapons.
Lastly, a big quote for every CEO or MD “There are no world class organizations that always pass on their success story from one generation of leadership to the next by only relying on outside top executives”.
Dr.Danai Thieanphut
Managing Director
DNTConsultants Co.,Ltd.
No comments:
Post a Comment