Profiles in Leadership: A Case Study Jasmine Champenois, University of Geneva Richard S. Voss, Troy University December 2011 ABSTRACT Will, Gaston, Mort, and Kumi served successively as CEO of BNFD. They exhibited radically different leadership styles. Harry, a researcher interested in leadership styles in the international private sector, recently arranged to interview each of them to build a leadership profile for each of them. He prepared a structured-interview questionnaire after conducting a literature review of leadership theories. He then asked each former CEO a set of ten questions. This is a compilation of his interview notes. INTRODUCTION Note. These interviews never took place. They are purely fictional. Nevertheless, the character profiles come from actual executives in a multinational company. These portrayals claim no factual accuracy. In some cases, the authors have deliberately exaggerated them to draw out specific points. However, they do represent the authors’ interpretations of core differences in leadership styles. INTERVIEW WITH WILL Harry What was your background before joining BNFD? Will I was a very successful venture capitalist in California, but developing countries were new to me. Most recently, I headed the Export-Import Bank here in the US. I find the prospect of unleashing individual talent throughout the world to be a fascinating challenge. Harry When were you in charge at BNFD, and how did you perceive the external environment? Will I joined in 1986 and left in 1993. It was an exciting time. Globalization was in full force. The private sector was coming of age. It was the end of the Cold War, and vast new markets were opening up. BNFD’s core resources were in good shape. It was a time of opportunity. Harry What was your core vision when you walked through the front doors of BNFD? Will My core vision was to be a spark plug. Find opportunities to create value. Harry What was your proudest achievement? Will I am proud of some concrete things that we launched. The market development reports. We created the market development unit as a key internal resource in the marketing PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 2 department. We initiated programs for partnerships with the public sector and nonprofit organizations. We promoted the role of women in market development. I am particularly proud of a new entry-level program, which enabled us to recruit the smartest MBAs into the organization and have them take on development challenges. Harry What was your first priority when you took over? Will To identify some real opportunities, where we could make our mark. Harry What was your guiding management principle? Will Pick winners. Harry What was the greatest quality you brought to BNFD? Will Risk taking. Many of our overseas subsidiaries were completely risk-averse. How do you change anything if you have no stomach for taking risks? We needed to create space to take those risks. That is what makes it interesting! Harry When you were recruiting your senior staff, what qualities did you look for? Will I was looking for brains, heart, and courage. The meaning of brains is obvious. Without heart, without passion for what you are doing, I do not think you are going to make much of a difference. Without courage, you will fall at the first hurdle. Harry Were there any corporate functions for which you felt a need to exercise close oversight? Will Human resources. I elevated the position of Vice President for Human Resources to CHRO and made it part of the corporate strategic-management team. My most important decisions involved appointing people. I wanted no bureaucratic or political interference in what I considered the company’s most important resource. Harry If we were to remember you with one word, what would that be? Will Catalyst. INTERVIEW WITH GASTON Harry What was your background before joining BNFD? Gaston I was the founder of one of the most innovative new startups in the industry. From there, a board of directors recruited me, asking me to turn a large, failing domestic firm around, to make it profitable again. Harry When were you in charge at BNFD, and how did you perceive the external environment? Gaston My tenure at BNFD lasted from 1993 to 1999. It was a difficult time for the industry. Deregulation in many countries challenged the status quo. It was harder than expected to enter the formerly centralized economies. The competitive environment was chaotic. We finally found new options in the rising global interest in sustainable development. PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 3 Harry What was your core vision when you walked through the front doors of BNFD? Gaston My vision was for BNFD to become world leader in the articulation of a new industry paradigm. Harry What was your proudest achievement? Gaston It was to articulate the concept of sustainable human development as part of BNFD’s core mission, and to build this mission into the everyday work of the organization. Harry What was your first priority when you took over? Gaston My first priority was to reach out and bring together a team from both the inside and the outside to help develop and articulate a new industry paradigm. Harry What was your guiding management principle? Gaston I introduced the concept of strategic compacts with each of my senior managers. The idea was to develop accountability and transparency around the goals and results expected of each of my managers. Harry What was the greatest quality you brought to BNFD? Gaston I think I brought intellectual leadership to BNFD. We confronted policy issues touching on sustainable human development. This intellectual leadership was a welcome change for organizational stakeholders. Harry When you were recruiting your senior staff, what qualities did you look for? Gaston I was looking for policy and intellectual credibility. I wanted a management team that was intellectually vibrant. Harry Were there any corporate functions for which you felt a need to exercise close oversight? Gaston I wanted to avoid micromanaging line operations. I needed to strengthen the capacity of the strategy team, especially in the area of sustainable development, and I needed more research capacity in my own office. Harry If we were to remember you with one word, what would that be? Gaston Three words actually—Sustainable Human Development. INTERVIEW WITH MORT Harry What was your background before joining BNFD? Mort I started my career as a business consultant. I then joined a major bank as Vice President for Financial Operations. I worked closely with strategic partners on the transformation of the institution under the sweeping regulatory changes that affected the industry at the time. PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 4 Harry When were you in charge at BNFD, and how did you perceive the external environment? Mort I was in charge from 1999 to 2005, after serving in operations for a time. The external environment was awful. Resources were in free fall. I did a lot of checking around, and the organization had lost a lot of its credibility. It was out of alignment with the emerging interest in sustainable development and the increasing demands in the market for greater transparency. BNFD was in desperate need for a radical political strategy that would give it the space to reinvent itself. Harry What was your core vision when you walked through the front doors of BNFD? Mort My core vision was to reinvent BNFD as the foremost example of a transparent, ethically sound company within the industry. I wanted to build deep trust in our markets, especially in the developing countries. The vision was of an upstream organization that would be relevant to the concerns of a great many developing countries, which were grappling for the first time with globalization. Harry What was your proudest achievement? Mort The implementation of this vision, with demonstrable success, together with the reestablishment of the company’s financial base. BNFD’s leadership in establishing high industry expectations was a direct product of this vision. Harry What was your first priority when you took over? Mort To launch a major transition team, which included outsiders and insiders, to get a consensus on a radical new vision for the organization. Within the first year, I wanted to test this by convening a major meeting with several strategic partners, to minimize potential policy misunderstandings while operating in global markets. By the end of the first year, I had replaced half of the senior management team. Harry What was your guiding management principle? Mort My core management principle was to work with a group of energetic leaders within the organization and outside, to implement change. Harry What was the greatest quality you brought to BNFD? Mort I am a networker. The company can only excel if it is deeply extrovert in its outlook and its way of doing business. I think this quality is critical to the prospects for change in the company. Harry When you were recruiting your senior staff, what qualities did you look for? Mort The first thing I looked for was credibility and respect from the outside. If my senior managers were not taken seriously outside the organization, they did not belong in the team. They needed to be taken seriously, not only within their own professional areas, but also by all BNFD’s major stakeholders. PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 5 Harry Were there any corporate functions for which you felt a need to exercise close oversight? Mort Yes, I brought the public-relations office directly into my jurisdiction. Communications must come from the top and are critical to securing strategic alignment. I also upgraded two other functional areas, with which I worked closely. One was the strategic-partnership function, which was to be the vehicle for strengthening our global strategic alliances. The other was the office of safety management, which was to give BNFD a new capacity to become a real player in sustainable manufacturing operations in developing countries. Harry If we were to remember you with one word, what would that be? Mort I would choose two words—Connected and Relevant. INTERVIEW WITH KUMI Harry What was your background before joining BNFD? Kumi I am a professional economist and have spent some 20 years at a major financial institution, most recently as the CFO. I was a finance minister in my country, where I contributed to leading my country out of severe crisis. Harry When were you in charge at BNFD, and how did you perceive the external environment? Kumi I was in charge at BNFD from 2005 to 2009. The organization had a good reputation, and I believed it was in good shape. The board of directors told me that my job was to provide policy leadership to our global network of subsidiaries. I wanted to delegate the management of the organization to my COO and focus on this wider mandate. I discovered pretty quickly that some serious issues required my attention, and that our global network of subsidiaries did not particularly want to be led by anyone! Harry What was your core vision when you walked through the front doors of BNFD? Kumi I do not think I really had a core vision for BNFD. My vision was for our global network of subsidiaries as a whole, and that was to reestablish the company as a significant force in the global industry, especially in developing countries. BNFD was in a good position to do that. Harry What was your proudest achievement? Kumi Perhaps the intervention with the greatest policy impact was the improved alignment that I built in several key global regions. We also worked hard to try to bring greater coherence to country-specific operations in our sustainability efforts. Harry What was your first priority when you took over? Kumi My first priority was to identify the space in which our company could exercise real leadership in the industry and in sustainable development. PROFILES IN LEADERSHIP 6 Harry What was your guiding management principle? Kumi My guiding principle was that the organization should be managed through clearly established delegations of authority and that senior managers should exercise their responsibilities with complete professionalism. Harry What was the greatest quality you brought to BNFD? Kumi Policy credibility. As an ex-finance minister who had dealt with a full-blown financial crisis, I had access to “the world of finance ministers,” which generally has not been open to leaders in this industry. This played its role in securing government support in key markets. Harry When you were recruiting your senior staff, what qualities did you look for? Kumi I was looking for colleagues who were professionally competent and who could contribute to the policy agenda. They needed to have either an operational or an academic track record. They needed to have integrity and professional independence. I wanted to be able to have complete trust in my senior managers. Harry Were there any corporate functions for which you felt a need to exercise close oversight? Kumi Yes. There was an office called the Office for Sustainable Development, which was at loose ends. It consisted of staff economists engaged in independent research, but the linkages to other functional areas in the company were weak. I reorganized the office and integrated the sustainability function more tightly with our strategic-partnership group. Harry If we were to remember you with one word, what would that be? Kumi Policy Credibility. Student Instructions: Prepare a case study addressing the following elements: 1. Consider a successful prospector type of multinational firm. Which leader would you select for this kind of organization? Explain your reasoning. 2. Now consider a defender type of multinational firm that used to be a prospector but has recently recovered from a difficult period. It therefore wants to transition back to prospector mode. Which leader would you select? Explain. 3. Consider a generally successful differentiator type of multinational firm. Which leader would you select, especially for operations in developing countries? Explain. 4. Now consider a multinational firm that functions successfully as a cost leader in the United States. Consider the need to market in emerging economies. Which leader would you select? Explain your reasoning.