Staying at the Top, Always: Contribution Attributes

EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE OCT.2009

STAYING ON TOP ALWAYS

Staying at the Top, Always: Contribution Attributes

-- Dr. Abhishek Nirjar

9 attributes are of great importance to stay on top, always.

People from all walks of life have always aspired to rise to and occupy a position of Leadership in their workplace. Leadership challenges have been a cause for concern for people and organizations alike. Competitive fields like business, government, sports and the like always face issues pertaining to the sustainment of leadership. This article attempts to illustrate what it takes for a leader to sustain his position in an organization over a long period of time. The attributes discussed herein are not based on any specific research project but are based more on the author's exposure to experiential learning drawn from his interactions with people who have sustained at the top.

Past performance and potential earn a manager a leadership position. Past performance seems to be a sound metric for assessing or extrapolating the potential in an individual. There have been instances when such high performing individuals failed to perform on taking a leadership position. That is probably because of their inability to see the big picture and the trajectories along which the organization should progress.

Organizations operate in a dynamic environment and not in vacuum and thus there are so many issues that impinge upon an individual. Business organi-zations always face issues like uncertainty that surrounds a business, protecting stakeholders' interests, competition from other companies, competition at the individual level, conflict between organizational and individual goals and aspirations etc. The list can be even longer. Issues can surface randomly from nowhere demanding the ability to withstand the pressure/stress caused by them.

The life of a leader of an organization would be spent juggling strategic level matters, organizational development initiatives, external and personal matters. There would be employees, competitors and other stakeholders who would need to be managed. A significant time would go into deciding the future course of action, reviewing and monitoring the progress, and taking decisions in view of the overall strategic objectives of the firm. Measures of performance would be constantly an issue of discussion. People management issues can come up anytime. In case it is a manufacturing setup with a large workforce, union management matters and decisions or approval to implement an action plan would need to be approved. There would be a significant amount of time needed to be part of industry level initiatives, for professional contribution to growth of other organizations, associations, committees and government policy making bodies in addition to the quality time required for spending with the family, although the proportion of time spent on the activities and issues listed above would vary from one organization to the other and from one leader to the other.

Dr. Abhishek Nirjar has more than fourteen years of experience in academics and is currently an Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management at the Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow. He teaches courses on Strategic Management, New Venture Planning and Innovation and Technology Strategy and has conducted various training programs and workshops on themes related to Strategy and Entrepreneurship. Nirjar is actively engaged in executive training and consulting of senior management executives and has been Chairman of Management Development Programs at IIM Lucknow since the last two years. He is the recipient of the `Career Award for Young Teachers' (research) grant instituted by the All India Council for Technical Education, New Delhi. He has written a book and has an invited chapter in the book titled Advances in Information Resources Management Volume 6. His current research interests include: growth strategies of high technology firms, new ventures, innovation, and social responsibility. He is a Science graduate from Bundelkhand University Jhansi, an MBA from Lucknow University and got his Phd from Sheffield University, Sheffield, UK.

Handling such situations would require the standard attributes of time management and multitasking. Some crucial dimensions of performing effectively at the top are:

The competence of a professional is built on the pillars of knowledge, skills and abilities he has. Behavior plays a major role in adding to competence. Longer time spent at work reinforces competence. Competence evolves with time and the variety of tasks that an individual handles. This contributes to a proper under-standing of the underlying fundamental principles of the business one is in. For good performance, it is a prerequisite to have a clear picture of the complete value chain of the organization and the role each part has to play in the overall business of the organization. Earlier the role of the indivi-dual was confined to a part of the organiz-ation and one was more involved in how that part contributed to the overall picture. But now the manager has more responsi-bilities and so learnings of a life-time need to be integrated so as to be in a position to take appropriate decisions.

Decisions taken by business leaders have both an analytical side as well as the gut-feel or hunch part. It is believed that even the gut-feel is dependent on the competence evolution mentioned earlier. Everyone has a tendency to create their own heuristics at work. When your heuristics work in a synchronized manner you tend to get better results. So the competence of the individual professional and the understanding of the fundamental principles of the business are the first set of attributes that can assist in staying at the top.

The decisions taken by the leaders often meet with severe criticism both from within the organization and without. As a result, leaders often resist from taking any decision and prefer to maintain the status quo in terms of the task at hand. This is similar to what Sumantra Ghoshal mentioned in his book Managing Radical Change. In all organizations the eagerness and commitment to work and to adapt to change can be plotted on a normal distribution curve. There may be variations in the level of skewness of the curve, but even then it will remain the normal distribution curve. Therefore there will always be some people who are bound to criticize your actions. The only way to tackle such situations is to believe in one's conviction and conscience and move ahead with what one believes is best in the interest of the stakeholders of the organization. The ability to take tough decisions in adverse and sustained circumstances is another important attribute related to the part of accepting criticism.

The next attribute is connected to the ones already mentioned. Competence helps the leader to better understand the underlying fundamentals of the business and resilience helps him take criticism in his stride. Resilience has two dimensions to it. First dimension of resilience is associated to the psychological resilience of the leader wherein he is able to cope with the stress at work. There is no problem to which a solution cannot be found although the options may be limited and that is what a leader has to do—take decisions such that the organization can accommodate any unforeseen changes and challenges in future. The second dimension would ensure that the resilient leader supports adaptation to change that will go a long way in ensuring that the organization progresses steadily sans any gaps of non-performance as non-adaptive behavior is totally non-existent in the organization.

In all organizations there are several categories of internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. It has been observed that the consciousness about the interests of various stakeholders has an important role to play in the sustenance of both the firm's performance and the probability of the leader to hold on to the top position. There are internal stakeholders who play a critical role in the overall performance of the organization. As already stated, the ability to understand the stakeholders of an organization has an important contribution to the possibility of a leader sustaining his position. A proper understanding of stakeholders' requirements would place the leader in a better position to balance the interests of all, thus improving the confidence they have in him. This in turn will ensure committed, inspired and concerted efforts directed at the overall vision of the organization. The internal stakeholders mainly comprise the employees at different levels of the organization. In other words, the leader should be able to encourage and inspire the workforce by understanding what needs to be done to deliver an excellent performance.

All the attributes listed above would be futile unless the leader has a clear vision about his organization to ensure that it has a definite future, towards which the leader and the organization will work together to facilitate sustained performance of the organization. This will ensure that the confidence in the leader will grow resulting in a circular relationship between sustained leadership and sustained performance. Last but not least, it would be impossible for anyone to stay on top without adhering to a strong value system. The value system should be upheld by all and hence care should be taken so that it percolates down to each and every individual in the organization.

A look at some of the current top business leaders would show that they all score high on these nine attributes. The Essentials for sustaining leadership are shown in the exhibit.

It would be appropriate to see if there are any other attributes that may be critical to the success of a leader and cross check the attributes on a large sample of top level managers. It is worth reiterating that compared to getting to the top position in an organization is even more difficult to continue at that position in an organization.