Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times — HBS Working Knowledge

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times — HBS Working Knowledge

Uncompromising Leadership in Tough Times
Q&A with:
Michael Beer
Published:
February 9, 2009
Author:
Martha Lagace

Excerpts:

Economic difficulties need not mean that we lower our standards for leadership. If anything, we should raise our sights.

New work by HBS professor Michael Beer and colleagues shows that there is still a place for what they term uncompromising leadership. Due out this summer, the book High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage describes organizations that, Beer says, "are diametrically opposite to the firms we saw fail on Wall Street. The book's perspective also leads to answers to the question of how to manage in tough times in a way that avoids liquidation of human and cultural assets."

The book looks broadly at what it takes to build a high commitment, high performance (HCHP) system inside companies. It asks and answers questions such as: What outcomes must such an organization achieve in order to sustain commitment and performance? What are principled choices its leaders must make if they are serious about building such a firm? What are the means for changing an average company into a HCHP company? What are the key design features of such a firm?

In our email Q&A, Beer reflected on what he is learning from a long-term study of successful CEOs, some of them outlined in the August 2008 Harvard Business Review article, "The Uncompromising Leader," cowritten with Russell A. Eisenstat, Nathaniel Foote, Tobias Fredberg, and Flemming Norrgren. He also offers HBS Working Knowledge readers a preview of the ideas in High Commitment, High Performance: How to Build a Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage. Says Beer, "CEOs of HCHP companies think very differently about their employees. They see them as an asset and care about them as people." As a result they manage downturns differently from the norm, too.

read full article: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6108.html

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This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.