‘A company’s success starts with the CEO’

Good leaders not only drive an organisation to succeed but instil a great culture for employees too. Companies are not doing a great job of identifying such leaders, says John Mattone, President & CEO of John Mattone Global. A leading authority on talent, leadership and corporate culture, Mattone was recently in India to attend the Society of Human Resource Management’s HR conference and spoke to BusinessLine about leadership and culture dilemmas. Excerpts from the interview:

What are the leadership issues companies face today?

There is so much talent out there and companies need to do a better job of identifying great leaders and investing in them. They need to strengthen their leadership pipeline. The second gap is when you look at managers, leaders who are currently at the C level — there are a lot of bad CEOs. They need help in becoming the best they can be.

What kind of leadership gap exists at mid-level?

In some parts of the world there is a quantitative gap. There is not enough supply in the US, East Asia and Europe. There is not enough of a Gen X population to fill the mid-level roles. So, there is a number gap. In certain parts of the world, on the other hand, like in India, South America and Africa, it’s different. There’s no numbers gap because there is talent. The challenge is who are the people we can invest in to accelerate their development. So, it’s more of a qualitative gap.

How can a company develop a culture to inculcate leaders at all levels within the organisation?

Culture starts with the CEO and the C-level executives. It takes a CEO who understands that a company is a combination of inner core attributes of the people. To bring a culture of leadership, you have to select and promote the right people. If you have people who don’t possess the elements that are needed to drive the business they need to be coached.

For instance, Amazon is one of the most successful companies of the world but they were getting a lot of complaints about the culture. They asked me about the things they can do to change, and I said, we can’t argue with the operative success of Amazon. Jeff Bezos is the CEO of Amazon, and he’s a tough guy, who measures things.

People who were complaining didn’t like the measurement system at Amazon and they just didn’t fit. And those people either had to be forced out or they just said to themselves, I am out of here.

Where do you draw the line, when it’s a tough culture versus a lenient one?

If I get a choice between the likes of Jeff Bezos and Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford Motor Company, from what I know of both people, I would select an Alan Mulally over Jeff Bezos, even though I write a lot about Bezos in my book. Bezos is a great leader but he is not perfect. His people skills are a problem, he is a perfectionist. So, if you come to work in Amazon and you are short of the expected professionalism, he may not like it.

Do you feel a culture that’s highly focussed on getting a job done is short- sighted?

What defines a culture? The Bezos culture in Amazon is an execution culture. It is the core element of Amazon’s culture and is driving operating success. My research, on the other hand, is based on mixing five cultures together.

These are: The culture of ‘Can do’ — people believe they have the skills and competencies required to help the company more forward. Second, is ‘Will do’ — the culture of passion and driving motivation, of being nourished within an organisation. Then there is ‘Must do’ — when people feel aligned to the mission of the organisation.

Those three cultures drive two others: ‘individual performance’ and a ‘team performance’. All the five cultures are critically important; fulfilling just one will not be enough.

Among the best organisations in the world, in terms of culture, are Fedex, Coca-Cola, Infosys, Zappos and Southwest Airlines. These companies cultivate the five cultures and that’s one of the reasons they are doing so well.

What is the next big trend in culture and leadership?

When it comes to culture, organisations that think about what they can recreate, given all the disruption going on in the world, will drive change. The next big thing in leadership is the old thing.

It’s not about spread-sheets or big data, it is more about core strength — having the right values and character, and the right thinking patterns, maturity. More than anything it is about being a servant leader, it’s about being altruistic.