Volume 17, Number 2 Article by Shilpa Surana and Darshan Parikh June, 2005
Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value : By Bill George, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2003, pp. 240. :
This book advocates the idea of an authentic leader through the author’s personal experiences as CEO of Medtronic, a Medical Technology company in the US, where he played a leading role in achieving high growth. His twelve-year leadership at Medtronic saw the company’s market capitalisation increase sixty-fold, which is a tremendous achievement. Departing from the established leadership models, this book depicts the idea of authentic leadership as the form of leadership for the future. Particularly in the wake of the corporate scandals involving issues of integrity and trust, this is the kind of leadership that will revive people’s trust in organisations. This book caters to all those who are interested in bringing more ethics and integrity into the corporate world.
The first part of the book demonstrates the idea of authentic leaders. The author conveys the idea that authentic leaders are people with high integrity, with a deep sense of purpose and committed to their core values. They build enduring organisations that meet the needs of all stakeholders. Thus, the five dimensions of authentic leaders are purpose, values, heart, relationships and self-discipline.
Through his own example, the author explains that to be an authentic leader, one needs to find congruence between the opportunities presented by life and one’s passions and goals. Further, authenticity needs to be practised as a way of life by inculcating a healthy balance between one’s work and family life. The author’s personal trials and tribulations enabled him to acquire the strength of character that transformed him into an authentic leader. He is affirmative in his stance that only balanced leaders develop healthy and profitable organisations
The second part of the book describes how authentic leaders build enduring organisations. The author defines an authentic organisation as one that embodies integrity, stewardship, consistency, democracy and collaboration. Stock prices are not the real indicator of an organisation’s growth and profitability. The author helped build Medtronic into an authentic organisation based on the foundation of a strong mission that inspired its employees towards a common goal . He states that it is only through the collective efforts of a dedicated and motivated staff that an organisation is able to deliver innovative products and services, thereby establishing a long-term bond with the customer.
The author is emphatic that authentic organisations are those that put the customer first, and then focus on employee needs. They create an environment that aligns employees’ interests with the organisation’s mission, and this ultimately results in increased shareholder wealth and long-term sustainable growth. Another mark of an authentic organisation is combining a thrust on values with passionate commitment to performance so as to achieve a higher order of competitiveness. The author clearly demonstrates that it is the top executive team that builds an authentic organisation. Although the CEO gives a direction and strategic focus to an organisation, it is the core team of people, with their complementary and diverse backgrounds and experiences, that provides organisational breadth and depth and augments decision-making processes.
The third part describes authentic companies’ journeys towards market leadership. In this process, authentic organisations face many obstacles, like ethical dilemmas, regulatory hurdles, entry barriers, and so on. Further, mistakes in internal decision-making can bring about strategic failures. The ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ identified by the author include working without a clear mission, underestimating the core business, depending on a single product line, failing to spot technology and market changes, changing strategy without changing culture, going outside core competencies, and counting on acquisitions for growth. At the same time, the author also demonstrates the focal role of a leader in overcoming these barriers by displaying a burning passion for the mission, tenacity and strategic focus.
The author aptly emphasises the idea that in the 21st century, successful organisations will be those that provide continuous innovation and superior customer service. Further, they will need to make strategic acquisitions with the right company having the right culture, and complement this with organic growth.
The last part of the book describes critical issues in planning for the future of an organisation so as to sustain authenticity. The author states that organisations often fail because the Board fails to keep a check on the power of the CEO. A distinctive feature of authentic organisations is the recognition that good governance is the key to building enduring organisations. Management must be the task of the CEO, and governance must be the task of the Board. Further, the Board needs to be proactive in identifying early warning signals that indicate the need for a change in leadership.
Finally, an authentic leader ensures the sustainability of the organisation by putting in place an appropriate succession IIMB Management Review, June 2005 127 plan. An authentic leader plans for his time in the organisation and sets time-bound goals for himself. He ensures a smooth transition that enhances the confidence of all stakeholders. The author concludes by urging the future leader to find his or her own unique mission and objectives in life so as to make a difference in the world.
In the past, leadership was mainly discussed in terms of leaderfollower dynamics but today the focus has shifted towards the relationship of leaders to the business as well as to larger community issues. Therefore we are today talking of ethical leadership, leadership for non-profit organisations, value leadership, shared leadership and so on. Further, due to increasing importance of corporate governance, issues of public trust and integrity have become paramount. In this context, principle-centered leadership plays a very crucial role in steering the organisation towards pursuing its goals in an ethical manner. The present book thus falls into the genre of recent books that emphasise a principle-centred leadership model, including Stephen Covey’s Principle-centred Leadership (1992), Robert Terry’s Authentic Leadership: Courage in Action, Warren Bennis’s Managing the Dream (2000), and Peter S. Cohan’s Value Leadership (2003). While Covey provides principles of effective leadership to grapple with real life challenges in one’s personal life and in organisations, Cohan draws examples from in-depth studies of eight organisations that have stood for value leadership and proposes a model of seven management principles for sustained corporate growth.
Rather than on purely conceptual knowledge, comes across as distinct in its treatment of the subject. Through a clearly structured and smoothly flowing narrative, the author aptly conveys the idea that enduring organisations are built by a focus on values as well as responsiveness to all stakeholders in the drive towards fulfilment of the organisational mission. The book is also interspersed with examples of successful organisations like GE, American Airlines, IBM, Wal-Mart, PepsiCo, Intel and Johnson & Johnson, lending credibility to the ideas and views expressed.
However, the author could have reduced the use of personal examples, as the book tends to appear more like an autobiography than one contributing to a theme. Further, his personal experiences and those of other successful companies alone should not be taken as representative of the entire theme of authentic leadership . The book clearly explains the concept of authentic leadership and authentic companies but fails to provide a blueprint of how authentic leaders can be identified, groomed and nurtured.
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