A couple days ago McKinsey put out  fantasic interview with Lenovo’s Mary Ma.  This interview caught my eye because I have, within the past year, become involved with what I consider to be my first true community of practice in Singapore.  The community was started by Norman Munroe of the REACH Group and K.A Chang of SGX (I was the third to arrive after they got the ball rolling).  We gather every other month to discuss leadership issues that face executives in asia. 

Other community members come from a variety of organizatiosn such as GSK, MSIG, Philips, Molex, Invensys, and McKinsey to name just a few.

The overlap I see with the Mary Ma interview is important.  First, Mary is talking about cultural adaptation, in the wake of Lenovo’s IBM acquistion, on multiple levels.  First there is the fit of company cultures and second is the fit of East and West cultures.  Mary goes on to talk about this second point in great detail, and attributes many of the challenges to differences between the education systems and acculturation process.  The effects last into adulthood and now leaders must think about how they can effectively get very different cultures–on multiple levels–to work together effectively.

These points might explicitly be considered part of the traditional leadership turf.  The rest of the article goes on to talk about business leadership.  That is to say, a leadership discussion that is not divorced from the business or operational context.  The interview goes on to get Mary’s views about preparing Chinese companies to compete globally, organic growth versus acquisitions, and negotiating Lenovo’s acquisition of IBM.

I highly recommend the interview.  The folks at McKinsey have given us something to consider as we continue trying to get our arms around the issue of leadership in an Asian context.

If you do not subscribe to the McKinsey reports, my experience is that it is safe to go ahead and register for the email updates.  I have not received a single spam (so far) and the reports are often quite useful. 

These past few weeks I have fallen behind with my readings, but this morning I stumbled across an interesting article while trying to catch up.  In principle, nobody is likely to argue with the proposition that strategy and resources should be aligned.  But such broad statements really do little to help us deal with the day-to-day operational decisions and how each decision can either reinforce or deviate from the larger strategy.

The February, 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review has an interesting article on this very point.  How Managers’ Everyday decisions Create or Destroy Your Company’s Strategyby Bower and Gilbert is a timely read (especially in the wake of the Cairo program I completed a bit over a week ago). 

The article begins with the proposition that, “The cumulative impact of the allocation of resources by managers at any level has more real-world effect on strategy than any plans developed at headquarters.”  Looking past the poor writing style, the idea itself is important.  Without spoiling the article for you, here are a couple of key suggestions our authors make to help you drive strategy further down in the organization.

1.  Know the employee’s track-record before you approve his or her proposal.  In the past, has the person making this proposal demonstrated sound judgment about the future of a business?

2. Make certain your discussion asks two questions.  First, “Should we support this business idea?”  Second, “Is this proposal the right way to go about it?”  Too often we ignore the first question which is the more important one to ask.

3. Use operational managers to get work done across divisions.  This reflects something interesting about change management.  Many times change needs to be driven by people at the top and at the lower levels, while those in the middle (i.e., division managers) can often be points of resistance (due to KPIs, etc).

4. Leaders must connect the dots.  A bottom-up allocation process will not typically produce the same strategy that senior leaders are pushing, so it will be important to step in and connect the dots.

These are just a few of the key ideas.  There are more that I have skipped in the interest of brevity.  You might enjoy looking at the article if you find this overview interesting.  As for me, once again the question about leadership once again presents us with a problem that simultaneously includes the dimensions of communication, people, and execution.  Making our ideas meaningful–on a day-to-day basis for all stakeholders–is one of the major challenges we all face as leaders.  There are no easy answers…it requires a lot of hard work, repetition, motivation, and persistence to succeed.

Safely back in Singapore and in the comforts of my second office (i.e., the cafe), I have a few minutes to reflect on the lessons from the Cairo program.  Once again, this was an amazing opportunity with one of the worlds leading hotel companies.  The energy in the room was overwhelming and the participnts’ desire to build a first-rate organization was impressive.  So what has this great group of HR leaders taught me about leadership?

 1.  Change takes time.  Leading change across a group of geographically dispersed properties, and with a range of equally diverse HR talents, means that moving the HR function from mostly tactical to some balance of strategic and tactical work will take time.  Years.  The leaders of this change program will need to be patient, stay on theme, and continually reinforce the what, why, and how of change for the foreseeable future.

2.  Leaders facilitate learning.  Facilitate is the key word here.  I don’t think a change program of this magnitude will work if you try the top-down approach and tell people what to do.  Leaders must facilitate the process by clearly communicating what the change is, why the change is important, stimulating intrinsic curiosity and motivation to learn, and constantly rewarding the right behaviors.  The leader must help people understand what to learn, and also create a hunger for that learning to actually occur.  Learning belongs to the people who are experiencing the change process.

3.  Leaders must come to appreciate the hard conversations.  We discussed two case studies–Becton Dickinson and Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley (both Harvard Business School cases)–and these tools quickly revealed the challenge of having very difficult conversations.  As a leader, is it better to save a staff member or friend some immediate pain by delaying difficult feedback?  Delaying the hard conversation can often amplify the problem and the pain, and that is no way to treat a friend (even if it does make your life easier in the short term).  Leaders must apprecite the value of direct, timely, and honest feedback.

4. Last, leadership should reach all levels of the organization.  The client rolled out a brilliant campaign that translated the corporate strategy into specific ideal (“winning”) behaviors for all employees.  The campaign is being communicated via many channels, and this will be a sustained effort (not a flavor-of-the-month approach).  The leaders taught me that they know how to make ideas meaningful for all employees.

It was truly an honor to be in Cairo.  I see a brilliant company with a very bright future.  I wish them all the best and give many thanks for including me in this great event.

Today is my last day in Cairo and what an amazing experience this has been.  74 people gathered in a room and talked about how HR can become more than just an under-appreciated administrative function and instead evolve into a valued business partner.  This change will require leadership.  This change will require patience, a lot of educating (both of their own HR teams and the folks on the operational side of the business), and a lot of teamwork.

What I want to highlight is the learning dimension of this business challenge.  If you have a team that is doing 80% or even 90% tactical and administrative work, then moving them into a role where they might be doing 60% strategic and 40% tactical will be a huge change.  In order for HR to become a true business partner, the HR team cannot spend all their time pushing paperwork and taking care of benefits (though this is really important!).  They need to create space within which they can learn about the individual business units, discover the challenges and the road ahead, and ultimately figure out how to best develop the right people so that the business unit has the necessary talent to achieve its goals.

This is a huge paradigm shift, and it cannot happen if learning does not occur on at least two fronts.

First, you need to develop the right team inside HR.  You need people who either know a bit about the operational  side or else are curious enough to learn about the operations.  Second, you also need to think externally.  A strategic mindset essentially will require this talented HR team to become consultants to the business units.  These internal clients will need time and patience to see just how the HR function is changing, and how it can actually serve the best interests of each business unit.  Just like the HR team, time and patience will be needed for the internal clients to learn just how they can be supported.

If learning is taken out of the equation, then my client’s HR team will never get to their destination and their internal clients (the business units) will not benefit from a strategically aligned HR function.  Everyone must learn how to do this.

It will be a tough road ahead, but what an amazing and exciting challenge! I feel fortunate to have been a part  of this regional meeting and to have seen so many people eager to learn how they can lead the way forward. 

Stay tuned…there are so many more exciting angles to this story coming out of Cairo!

Sitting here and looking out over the skyline of Cairo, I am happy to finally have a moment for creating this blog–LeadershipAsia.  I have spent the last few days working with 74 HR leaders from across Africa and the Middle East.  The response from the particpants has been amazing!  The energy in the room, and the give-and-take as we discuss the cases, has been a pleasure to experience and facilitate.  I hope I can capture some of these experiences and share them here…with you.  Leadership can be a challenging thing, and in Asia the challenge can be espcially interesting as this part of the world continues to be the global economic engine. 

Please mark this page, subscribe to the RSS, and become a part of the conversation as we try to get our arms around this subject of leadership. 

 This is just a first entry, but the blog shoud be running full-speed by the end of April, 2007.  I hope to talk with you here!