| Subcategories |
 |
Business Life |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value
written by Dave Ulrich, Norm Smallwood
Studio : Harvard Business School Press
by Harvard Business School Press
Publisher : Harvard Business School Press
Released : 2007-09-12
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9781422110300
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 12 reviews)
List Price : $29.95
Our Price : $17.44
|
|
| |
|
Product Description |
|
Your company’s brands hold intangible value and differentiate your firm from rivals. So does your leadership brand—a shared identity among your organization’s leaders that differentiates what they can do from what your rivals’ leaders can do. —In Leadership Brand, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood show how branded leadership delivers unique value for firms’ investors, customers, and employees—elevating market value and creating a sharp competitive edge.
The authors present a six-step process for creating leadership brand in your organization. A wealth of tools helps you differentiate your firm’s leaders from those of rivals, craft a unified identity among them, and articulate a unique statement of your brand. Additional chapters and tools show you how to assess and measure your leadership brand, where to invest in the brand, which practices instill the brand, and how to communicate the brand to your many stakeholders.
With its compelling new model and hands-on approach, this book helps you clarify what makes your leaders unique—and use your leadership brand to leave rivals far behind. |
| |
|
| |
|
Building leadership that compliments the way your company is viewed... |
It's easy to pick out what makes a particular brand distinct and valuable... Apple, Costco, Wal-mart all have a definite public perception that drives their operation. In the book Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, the authors contend that each company also has a "leadership brand" that helps drive that public perception and that enables the company and employees deliver on those expectations.
Contents:
Branding Leadership; The Case for Building a Leadership Brand; Creating a Leadership Brand Statement; Assessing Leaders Against the Brand; Investing in Leadership Brand; Measuring Return on Leadership Brand; Building Awareness for Leadership Brand; Preserving Leadership Brand; Implications for Personal Brand; Criteria for a Firm Brand; Firms with Branded Leadership; Notes; Index; About the Authors
Ulrich and Smallwood do a good job in changing the way that an organization's leaders are normally viewed. Using the "brand" concept, building and promoting leaders is based on an underlying element that lends a continuity to how the company performs and delivers in the marketplace. These types of leaders are the ones that allow a company to consistently lead their market niche over a long period of time. It's obviously not a "quick-fix" solution to a company that's failing. You don't just decide "here's our leadership brand, so lead in this way" one Monday morning. Using the measured approach outlined here, it's possible to start to attract and promote the type of person that will complement the core message of your company.
|
| |
|
A must-have if you're interested in leadership development. |
Here's the Quick Review of Leadership Brand: Developing customer-focused leaders to drive performance and build lasting value by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood.
HOW THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT:
Concentrates on leadership as a company endeavor, not as a matter of individual growth.
The authors attempt to get you to analyze your company's leadership from the outside in.
STRENGTHS:
This is truly about leadership development in the company.
The chapter on "Assessing Leaders Against the Brand" is worth the price of the book.
Good research and citations.
WARNINGS:
You may have trouble reading this book from cover to cover.
What's here is far too programmatic to be practical taken whole.
The concept of "Leadership Brand" may get in your way.
BOTTOM LINE:
If you're interested in leadership development, this book should be on your shelf.
Now for the detailed review.
There's not much new about leadership. But every new leadership book attempts to give you something unique, a new way to look at the subject, new things to try, or old things to try in different way. Every book tries to shift your thinking.
Leadership Brand by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood attempts to shift your thinking from studying leaders to studying leadership and toward influencing how leaders connect the company to customers and other "outsiders." They work through the metaphor of a "leadership brand," which they tell us is "the identity of the firm in the mind of the customers made real to employees because of customercentric leadership behaviors."
That quote tells you that this book will stretch your thinking about leadership development in your company. It also tells you that the authors are overanalyzing and, yes, branding the process they describe. Here's a quick chapter outline
Branding Leadership - the authors introduce their concept of Leadership Brand
There are six chapters that lay out the process in step-by-step fashion.
Creating a Leadership Brand Statement
Assessing Leaders Against the Brand - worth reading if you read nothing else
Investing in Leadership Brand
Measuring Return on Leadership Brand
Building Awareness for Leadership Brand
Preserving Leadership Brand
Implications for Personal Brand
There are two Appendices
Criteria for a Firm Brand - worth reading for an overview of things to do
Firms with Branded Leadership
HOW THIS BOOK IS DIFFERENT
Leadership Brand concentrates on leadership as a company endeavor, not as a matter of individual growth. That makes it different from most leadership books, but similar to recent books like The Leadership Pipeline.
The authors also attempt to get you to analyze your company's leadership from the outside in. This is a powerful concept and one you can use in any company.
If you start thinking about leadership development by thinking about the results that need to be produced, you will see things that you won't see with the "competency" or "trait" approach. You will also be able to identify the ways that leadership at your company needs to be different than leadership at other companies.
STRENGTHS
This is truly about leadership development in the company. It will help you develop a leadership development program or modify what you've got.
The chapter on "Assessing Leaders Against the Brand" is worth the price of the book. This chapter is filled with tools and references that will help you assess leadership and leadership development whether you use the authors' program or not.
I love leadership books that are well-researched. Because the authors describe their thinking and support their points with research, you can judge whether you agree. You can also adapt a point or suggestion more effectively to your own situation.
WARNINGS
You may have trouble reading this book from cover to cover. The prose is absolutely tortured at times.
What's here is far too programmatic to be practical taken whole. Like so many programmatic books, this one lays our multiple, detailed steps and makes it seem like you go through them, bang-bang-bang in a linear fashion.
The fact is that the kind of changes the authors are calling for require changes in multiple company systems and in the culture. It's a generational process that will take years, not months.
The concept of "Leadership Brand" may get in your way. It did for me.
I never understood how a "leadership brand" was different than the culture and values of a company. Ultimately I just substituted "culture and values" in my head every time I read "leadership brand." That seemed to work fine.
BOTTOM LINE
If you're interested in leadership development, this book should be on your shelf.
|
| |
|
A pragmatic approach |
|
Legendary organizational theorist James March once called leadership a "bogus concept." His disparaging label definitely applies to the fuzzy material masquerading as leadership on the shelves of most bookstores. In Leadership Brand, Ulrich and Smallwood avoid this trap. Their "brand" metaphor is useful in at least two ways. First, it links leadership development to a business concept most people understand: brand development. This makes the ideas more concrete. Second, it follows logically from Ulrich and Smallwood's recent emphasis on intangibles, the non-financial assets that account for nearly half of a publicly traded company's market capitalization. Powerful brands epitomize intangible value, but leadership is perhaps the king of intangibles, since it drives all other organization capabilities. Linking the two concepts -- leadership and brand -- is a nice touch. Ulrich and Smallwood are developing an impressive stream of related work, of which Leadership Brand is the latest and perhaps best exemplar. |
| |
|
"The journey to leadership brand begins with the self." |
In the Preface, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood make this affirmation: "We believe that leaders matter, but leadership matters more. We have all experienced a gifted leader who engaged all of us -- our hearts, minds, and feet. Dynamic leaders enlist us in a cause, and we willingly follow their counsel. But leadership exists when an organization produces more than one to two individual leaders. Leadership matters more because it is tied not to a person but to the process of building leaders." By no means do Ulrich and Smallwood question the importance of individual leaders. On the contrary, they assert (and I agree) that one of the most important obligations of being a leader is to strengthen or at least sustain a process by which to identify, hire, develop, and then retain high-impact leaders at all levels and in all areas throughout her or his organization.
With regard to this book's title, Ulrich and Smallwood offer another affirmation: "We believe that all organizations have a leadership brand, either explicitly crafted and deployed or implicitly perceived and randomly perpetuated...[Therefore] leadership brand is the identity of the leaders throughout an organization that bridges customer expectations and employee and organizational behavior." I've noticed that in recent years, several of the same companies (e.g. Berkshire Hathaway, FedEx, GE, Johnson & Johnson, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, and Toyota Motor) appear on the annual lists of those Most Valuable as well as those Most Highly Admired. These exemplary companies all have high-impact leadership that consistently produces superior results. I've also noticed that the U.S. military services and their academies are also renowned for the high quality of their leadership development programs. However different these organizations are in most respects, they do share this in common: Each has devised a high-impact leadership program that is appropriate to their specific needs and objectives.
As Ulrich and Smallwood correctly point out, a brand combines an identity with a reputation among various constituencies. "Leadership brand is the identity of the firm in the in the mind of the customers, made real to employees because of customercentric leadership behaviors. In other words, leadership brand occurs when leaders' knowledge, skills, and values focus employee behavior on the factors that target the issues that customers care about." The challenge for any organization (whatever its size or nature) is to formulate a program ensuring that everyone in that organization embraces the values, gains the knowledge, and strengthens the skills needed to drive performance and build lasting value.
After briefly explaining the "what" in Chapters 1 & 2 (i.e. what leadership brand is and why it is important), Ulrich and Smallwood devote the remaining chapters to "how," answering questions such as these:
3. What is a "brand statement"?
3. How to prepare one?
4. How to assess leaders against the brand?
5. How to invest in the leadership brand?
6. How to measure its ROI?
7. How to create and then increase awareness of it?
Note: My own opinion is that creating and then increasing awareness of the leadership brand should precede measuring its ROI. That is, I would reverse the order of what are now Chapters 6 & 7.
8. How to preserve it?
9. What are the implications of a leadership brand for a personal brand?
Then in two appendices, Ulrich and Smallwood review the criteria for a firm brand and include the last of several self-diagnostics, "Diagnosis for leadership brand"). Then in the second appendix, they briefly discuss their research on the top firms for managing quality, suggesting that some function as "feeder firms" because they "feed the demands for next-generation leaders in other firms." For example, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson Controls, and Kraft. Non-profits include the Drucker Foundation, UNICEF, and the U.S. Marine Corps.
With regard to the U.S.M.C., Jon Katzenbach is quoted in a footnote to Appendix B: "Their mantra is simple and compelling and I first heard it articulated by Brig. General John Ryan (ret.) as follows: `We want all of our leaders - at every level -to focus on only two things: First, mission accomplishment; you will accomplish your mission no matter what...Second, and of equal importance, you will take care of each and every one of your Marines - let me repeat that that, you will take care of each and every Marine in your unit.' I have often thought that if all aspiring young leaders focused on these two things they could go a long way down their journey to becoming admirable leaders at whatever level they gravitate to."
I especially appreciate the provision of self-diagnostics as well as various "Tables" that organize key points within the context of a given chapter. They include Figure 3-1, "Creating a leadership brand statement" (Page 53), Figure 4-3, "Collaborative behaviors" (Page 94), Figure 7-1, (Pages 166-167), and Figure 9-1, "Creating a personal brand" (Page 212). Reader-friendly devices such as these facilitate, indeed accelerate frequent review of key points later.
Credit Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood with providing in a single volume just about as much information and counsel as most organizations will need to devise and implement or strengthen a process by which to produce the high-impact leaders it needs. In my opinion, becoming a "leadership brand" is only one result of that process. Moreover, everyone should be involved both as a student and as a mentor. Exemplary companies are proud of their current, hard-earned reputation as a "leadership brand" while keeping in mind that the high quality of their leaders will continue only if they constantly nourish and strengthen the process by which they are developed. For that reason, I strongly recommend that all decision-makers in a given organization read this book, then discuss it with other members of senior management. It would be a serious mistake to try to apply everything that Ulrich and Smallwood recommend but equally irresponsible to have no development process whatsoever. As they suggest when concluding their book, "the journey to leadership brand begins with the self." Bon voyage!
Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out Judgment co-authored by Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis, Ram Charan's Know-How and his more recent Leaders at All Levels, Roger Martin's The Opposable Mind, The New American Workplace co-authored by James O'Toole and Edward Lawler, Henry Chesbrough's Open Business Models, Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect, James Kilts's Doing What Matters, Dean Spitzer's Transforming Performance Measurement, and Enterprise Architecture As Strategy co-authored by Jeanne W. Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson. |
| |
|
Why your leadership brand is as important as your product brand |
|
Customers associate Wal-Mart with wide product selection and low prices, Federal Express with prompt, reliable service, and Apple Computer with innovation and elegant design. These qualities define this trio of companies in the marketplace. They make them special. They are their all-important brands. Similarly, today's companies also should develop special "leadership brands" for their executives. Such brands should embody what makes these companies truly distinctive, and thus mark them - and their style of corporate management - as singular and meritorious. Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood are two of America's most respected experts on business leadership. Here, they explain why a company's leadership brand really matters. We recommend this study of the inherent logic and intrinsic value of acknowledging and promoting your company's particular style of leadership - its leadership brand. |
| |
|
|
|
