What’s your philosophy of leadership? Hands off? Micro-management? Numbers-based (just deliver the results)? People-based (keep employees happy)? Some combination of the above?
When asked that question in a recent New York Times “Corner Office” column, the CEO and chairman of Saks, Stephen Sadove, had this to say:
I greatly appreciate Mr. Sadove’s philosophy, summarized as:
Leadership --> Culture --> Strategic Objectives --> People --> Results
When you focus first on your leadership, what kind of culture they are passively allowing or actively encouraging to develop, the strategic objectives you’ve identified for your organization, the people executing on those objectives within that culture, THEN you will get the results you need – and perhaps more. But if you focus first and most intently on the results, as Wall Street tends to, you may achieve a short-term objective but lose any sustainability to continue those trends in the long-term.
I wrote a couple of years ago about a finding from the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement 85% of a company’s assets are in “intangibles.” If, as is standard, Wall Street firms are valuing companies based only on tangibles, then much of the picture is being ignored.
What’s your philosophy?