We’ve all looked around our workplace and asked ourselves, “why are things things like this?” The answer almost always comes down to money and / or leadership. Sometimes we are constrained by budget, but why should we be limited by leadership? Why do strategic business leaders such as CEOs and General Managers accept poor leaders to run their business? Perhaps they simply accept the bell curve where only 10%-20% of their management will be good, 60-%-80% not harmful and 10%-20% awful.
How much of a competitive advantage would these businesses have if they reduced their quotient of awful to 5% or less and increased their number of good / great leaders to 50%? How much would it cost to recruit, hire, and develop these leaders? I’m convinced a business can get a return of several times its leadership investment through reduced operating costs, customer retention, and increased market share. Each of these profit drivers is directly dependent on the operations leadership, so why not invest in them?
Why don’t more businesses realize this? I don’t think reason is money. I do think it is leadership.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
To my knowledge…this is exactly what Infosys did and the strategy many companies are trying to adopt. May probably a long term strategy but works best.
I’d love to hear about companies that are taking this approach and how it is working for them. I firmly believe that leadership is a competitive advantage that any businesses can develop – if they want to.