BMA eBook - Manual / Resource - Page 258
What to Ask the Person in the Mirror
Robert S. Kaplan (rokaplan@hbs
.edu), formerly vice chairman of the
Goldman Sachs Group, is the Thomas S.
Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business
Administration at Harvard Business
School in Boston.
and what you may need to do differently. As
simple as this process sounds, people are often
shocked by their own answers to basic management and leadership questions.
One manager in a large financial services
company who had been passed over for promotion told me he was quite surprised by his
year-end performance review, which highlighted several management issues that had
not been previously brought to his attention.
His boss read several comments from the review that faulted him for poor communication, failure to effectively articulate a strategy
for the business, and a tendency to isolate himself from his team. He believed that the review
was unfair. After 15 years at the company, he
began to feel confused and misunderstood and
wondered whether he still had a future there.
He decided to seek feedback directly from five
of his key contributors and longtime collaborators. In one-on-one meetings, he asked them
for blunt feedback and advice. He was shocked
to hear that they were highly critical of several
of his recent actions, were confused about the
direction he wanted to take the business, and
felt he no longer valued their input. Their feedback helped him see that he had been so immersed in the day-to-day business that he had
failed to step back and think about what he
was doing. This was a serious wake-up call. He
immediately took steps to change his behavior
and address these issues. His review the following year was dramatically better, he was finally
promoted, and his business’s performance improved. The manager was lucky to have received this feedback in time to get his career
back on track, although he regretted that he
had waited for a negative review to ask basic
questions about his leadership activities. He
promised himself he would not make that mistake again.
In this article, I outline seven types of questions that leaders should ask themselves on
some periodic basis. I am not suggesting that
there is a “right” answer to any of them or that
they all will resonate with a given executive at
any point in time. I am suggesting that successful executives can regularly improve their performance and preempt serious business problems by stepping back and taking the time to
ask themselves certain key questions.
Vision and Priorities
harvard business review • january 2007
It’s surprising how often business leaders fail
to ask themselves: How frequently do I communicate a vision and priorities for my business?
Would my employees, if asked, be able to articulate the vision and priorities? Many leaders
have, on paper, a wealth of leadership talents:
interpersonal, strategic, and analytic skills; a
knack for team building; and certainly the ability to develop a vision. Unfortunately, in the
press of day-to-day activities, they often don’t
adequately communicate the vision to the organization, and in particular, they don’t convey it in a way that helps their people understand what they are supposed to be doing to
drive the business. It is very difficult to lead
people if they don’t have a firm grasp of where
they’re heading and what’s expected of them.
This was the problem at a large Fortune 200
company that had decided to invest in its 1,000
top managers by having them attend an intensive, two-day management-training program,
100 at a time. Before each session, the participants went through a 360-degree nonevaluative review in which critical elements of their
individual performance were ranked by ten of
their subordinates. The company’s senior management looked at the results, focusing on the
top five and bottom five traits for each group.
Despite this being an extremely well-managed
firm, the ability to articulate a vision ranked in
the bottom five for almost every group. Managers at that company did articulate a vision,
but the feedback from their subordinates strongly
indicated that they were not communicating it
frequently or clearly enough to meet their people’s tremendous hunger for guidance.
Employees want to know where the business
is going and what they need to focus on. As the
world changes, they want to know how the
business vision and priorities might change
along with it. While managers are taught to actively communicate, many either unintentionally undercommunicate or fail to articulate
specific priorities that would give meaning to
their vision. However often you think you
discuss vision and strategy, you may not be
doing it frequently enough or in sufficient detail to suit the needs of your people. Look at
the CEO of an emerging biotechnology company, who was quite frustrated with what he
saw as a lack of alignment within his top management team. He strongly believed that the
company needed to do a substantial equity financing within the next 18 months, but his senior managers wanted to wait a few years until
page 3
This document is authorized for use only by Michelle Sales (michelle@michellesales.com.au). Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Please contact
customerservice@harvardbusiness.org or 800-988-0886 for additional copies.
