21st Century Leadership

 21st Century Leadership
What is leadership?
In the 21st century, when social change, international communication, information technology, personality development, and many other challenges and opportunities coming to the social division of labor in front of each participant, Whether or not we are in leadership positions, should be more or less have some leadership.
This is because leadership means we can always analyze the problem macro and the overall situation, when engaged in specific work maintain its stated objectives and mission of the same; leadership also means that we can more easily out of one person, regarding the level, with a holistic and balanced response to the idea of a more complex, changing world; leadership also means We can self-care needs, but also their relationships with others to give more attention and constant communication are always trying to seek a more equal, more honest and more efficient solutions hh
If you have to give a definition of leadership, I prefer to use relatively simple statement to describe leadership:
a relevant forward-looking and planning, communication and coordination, and balance the art of good faith.
Yes 21st century leadership methods and skills not only leadership, but also not just for leaders, it is that everyone should have or practice the art of an elegant and sophisticated.
leadership is a Art
1954, the management of the father of Peter b Drucker (Peter Drucker) is the manager described the basic tasks:
b determines the goal, allocation mm Managers need to decide what objectives should be analyzed to reach target the activities required, decision-making and relationships that will work different categories, and can be divided into management positions, and then organized into these units and positions the appropriate structure, choose the right people to manage these units and needs to be done.
b hierarchical management to develop metrics mm organization managers must ensure that everyone has for the measure, measure not only to focus on the performance of the entire organization, but also concerned about the individual's work performance, and to assist individuals to achieve performance targets . At the same time, managers need to communicate with subordinates and supervisors the significance of these metrics and results.
b assess staff, penalties and rewards mm managers through management, through the relationship with subordinates, through incentives and promotion policies and encourage employees to work hard. Meanwhile, the manager through the management and inspire their potential, strengthen their integrity, training subordinates to the spirit of honest and responsible task.
should be said that Peter Drucker's view is that we b in the management of the last century is very familiar. This universal, broad impact in today's point of view there will be some sort of leadership as a method or skill, the leader of the relationship between the leader and being treated as ordered hierarchy, will lead managers to staff the same as a designer of industrial machines for each gear and screw arrangement hh
we can not say b Peter Drucker's view is wrong, but, if we invariably simple and rigid use of this theory, then we can not and can not adapt to this changing, flat, information-based century. For example say, if every business in every decision of new product development comes from a small number of managers, then the user needs more and more diverse, more and more rapidly changing requirements of today, I am afraid there are a few little businesses can get the user's favor long-term; if every employee in the organization of tight structure and strict evaluation system step by step to complete the work assigned to their own, it will not appear in this world like the iPod, GMail, Wii which is full of innovative products.
new century needs new leadership, new century, we need to use a more equal, balanced, more creative attitude to knowledge, understanding and practice of leadership.
As a manager, I personally have been in the Apple, SGI, Microsoft and Google and three other enthusiasm and creativity of the IT business office. In my time in the leadership, I rarely b according to Peter Drucker's ideas in 1954, with a top-down leadership to every member of my staff Organization of work. Instead, I used to be his equal and employees in a position to see themselves as advocates, coordinators, or bridge, rather than the traditional leader, to urge or command center. < br> I believe that today's managers still need to have a b Peter Drucker said that the relevant decision-making, organization, evaluation, reward and punishment and other tasks of the basic skills, but the 21st century managers put a higher and more comprehensive requirements . In order to from a traditional for all employees to create a passionate and creative environment mm leadership is not a method or skill, but a unique art.
my own experience, leadership, the art generally include a macro decision-making , management practices and personal qualities to the content of these three areas (shown below):
each of these three areas and includes the three most important leadership:
b macroeconomic policy-making: the art of foresight and planning
o Vision is more important than control
o faith is more important than the target
o talent is more important than the strategic management behavior
b: the art of communication and coordination
o the team is more important than individual < br> o authority is more important than command authority
o equality is more important than personal qualities
b: the art of sincere and balanced
o balance is more important than courage
o
reason is more important than passion o faith is more important than decent
Now, I combined my own experience in the management of, respectively, the nine most important to talk about leadership and how they can play an important role in each.
need Note that although these experiences are accumulated from the first class from business, but they do not necessarily apply to all companies or all managers. I emphasize leadership reflects more a trend, it does not contain What profound theories, ordinary people in peacetime or in the campus can accumulate training. It can provide a reference for the modern enterprise managers and learn, we can also provide information on the latest interpretation of the art of leadership.
nine most important leadership
1) vision is more important than the control b
Jim Collins in the famous are exciting and can help employees make important decisions in the risks and challenges in the vine, they are engaged in the business of their own can not have a firm and abiding faith, it is impossible in complex cases, from the overall situation, from the long-term perspective, decisive decision-making, calmly.
Some people wrongly believe that the work of managers is to focus 100% on the organizational structure, operations and personnel management and control. that depends on top-down command, organization and supervision model Although you can sometimes play a certain effect, but it will greatly limit the creativity of employees and businesses, and easy to make the loss of forward business objectives, so that employees of the company's future identity greatly reduced. In contrast, for the companies develop a clear, exciting, achievable vision for a long-term development, its importance is more significant. in the growth and development stages of small businesses may focus more on survival , focus on operations and other aspects, but even so, managers can not neglect the vision and guidelines for the cohesion of the people the importance of the direction; to have development and growth of successful enterprises, it has a good vision to become the enterprises can move from good to excellent top priority.
Good leaders will share its vision with the staff, if possible, will allow employees to participate in the vision planning. If we can fully understand the management of staff long-term development of enterprises by the idea of the direction, so that everyone who works with his efforts to have the same goal, then, a business will have an unlimited source of power.
example, I used to work at Apple when the company had recommendations to the leadership of the company, from the mobilization of different sectors of the elite media and related technologies to form a new team, R & D series have the potential of multimedia products. At that time, the company's senior vice president approved my request and asked my supervisor Vice President, help me to deploy officers to form the team. But the vice president in charge worry about at greater risk of new products, he must ask the relevant expression of the will in person can join my new team, on the other hand I want to caution that the research and development The new products are not a small risk, I hope you choose carefully. According to him, as long as we do a survey, more than 60 technical staff to see how many willing to take risks on it. And then every year in the company Under the pressure of layoffs, if we adopt his methods, the new team's plan may not be realized.
In such circumstances, I decided to use vision to inspire the engineers and scientists. I called it more than 60 technical staff meeting. At the meeting, I described the combination of the future, after the Internet and multimedia, new technologies and new applications related to the huge space for development, and to share my new product on the planning and design, and my department for new products development of vision. Then, I encourage them to split into groups to discuss the feasibility of this vision, and how their potential will be the result of such vision be more fully realized. Finally, I read the American poet to all b Robert Frost's poem Two roads diverged in the woods,
and I chose the one less deserted,
determined from the path of my life.
I said to them: However, for this reason that we should just set foot on this path, creating a better future multimedia network. multimedia sector, and this sector is well-known Apple was the number of networked multimedia products (QuickTime, iTunes, etc.) of the birthplace.
This suggests that the development and sharing of good vision with staff, the staff can fully stimulate sense of participation and enthusiasm, allowing the team to remain passionate and determined the direction of fighting, is an important part of leadership.
2) faith is more important than indicators like everyone
correct values can not be separated the same guidelines, each firm also need to have the right, in line with corporate values. Here is their long-term values, in fact, adhere to, the impact of corporate behavior to determine the fundamental belief in right and wrong. have the right values are the successful companies to maintain Everlasting secret.
every business leader should be to adhere to the correct beliefs, adhere to the values of good faith on all the first, not just one-sided pursuit of some numerical indicators or achievements, or all of the decisions are from the short-term interests, and give up the most basic of business conduct. In contrast, the right belief can bring business opportunities for sustainable development; the other hand, if all the focus on the pursuit of short-term indicators, although there are opportunities to get temporary results, but may lead to deviation of the direction of enterprise development, so that the loss of business continued to develop momentum quickly.
Successful companies always stick to their core values. For example, Google's core values is ;. For the search technology, Google continually through research, development and innovation to achieve long-term development, and to become a pioneer of this technology. Despite a globally recognized, industry-leading search technology company, Google is still absolutely determined adhere to the any one enterprise are all employees of the enterprise by the composition and promoted.
General Electric Company Chairman and CEO Jack Welch b staff evaluation criteria in his discussion of the time that the inspection staff must be its performance Investigation of the values together and focus on the employee's values and see the company's values (in particular to uphold the integrity of the faith) is consistent. of which a total of four possible:
b performance standards, values consistent with the company is very simple mm , the company will not hesitate to provide him with incentives and promotion opportunities.
b performance without standards, values and the company does not agree mm is also very simple and immediately asked him to leave.
b performance not compliance, but the company's values match mm to give him an opportunity to consider the redistribution of his work.
b performance standards, but the values do not coincide with the company the kind of mm which is enough to kill a company's people. the reality shows that many companies are ability to work because they employed well, but poor character, or personal beliefs contrary to the company only people who collapse in the.
Therefore, whether the company or individual, firm belief, correct values at all times indispensable.
3)
talent is more important than the strategy in the 21st century, no matter how exaggerated the importance of talent and even render not be over .21 century is the century of human resources, the mainstream of 21st century economic model is personnel-intensive and intelligence-intensive economy. has an outstanding talent can change a company, a product, a market and even the face of an industry. For example, in Google, the company's top programming expert Jeff Dean has also developed an advanced method, which allows a programmer to be completed in a few minutes to do a few months before the need for a team project. He also invented a magic computer language that allows programmers to the same time tens of thousands of machines in the shortest time to complete the most complex computing tasks. There is no doubt that such is the talent the company has very special meaning.
for the 21st century in terms of business managers, talent and even more important than the business strategy itself. because of outstanding talent, enterprises can make a difference in the market, managers can really have a manager should have value. no support personnel, no matter how magnificent blueprint, no matter how compelling the business strategy, are can not be truly implemented, the ultimate success can not be achieved.
Therefore, managers should be attracted to their side. Typically, a manager If you can not work 10 to 50% of the time to devote to the work of recruitment, then he could not let his team won the lasting power, he is not a qualified manager. Of course, here called good talent.
good managers the importance of staff development, to give maximum room for development talent for the talent to provide adequate training and learning opportunities. For example, I started to create Google in China Microsoft China Research and Engineering Research Institute, the Personnel employed in a large part are just out of school graduates. these graduates are very smart, has good development potential, are from the elite top talent in China. However, they generally lack the work experience. So, I told them to adopt a course, a lesson a lesson for them to explain all the relevant knowledge and experience. and in Google China Engineering Institute, the training hours: includes a variety of courses, to the headquarters of 3 months of training, and even company willing to pay tuition for employees to Stanford University, Master. Of course, the company arranged the training course is not pure, but also require employees to quickly put to work in specific projects. just joined the staff early, good leaders will as far as possible a number of new employees is not assigned to the special emergency project, and allow them to make mistakes in the project, and accumulated experience. After this practice, closely integrated training and learning, nearly every new employee have been made great progress, and soon to adapt to the actual work.
Unfortunately, today many companies are still thinking of talent to maintain the level of the last century, they believe that they just business this labor, not willing to make great efforts to train employees for fear of their training after the Staff select 4) The team is more important than individual
in any successful business, the interests of the team always higher than the individual. enterprise managers at any level should be all the company's interests first, followed by departmental interests personal interests before the final.
this reason that it is well aware of, but into the actual work, not so good grasp. For example, many department managers habitually put themselves and their team as priority of the object, unconsciously ignored the company's overall strategic direction and overall interests. This approach is very wrong, because if the company can not be achieved in the overall strategic direction of the success of any one department within the company, any a team can not be truly successful, and the team can not be successful, the team could not obtain any personal success even if it is a little bit.
good managers good at the company's goals and priorities in order to determine their own the work of his own department goals and objectives of the priority. For example, for departmental interests, the development of a product may not be adequate in the short term market returns, the department managers seem to be decisive to give the product R & D investment Otherwise, the department's performance data for the year (if the market returns to measure only if) there might not be so good. However, from the perspective of the company as a whole, assuming the product is to help the company win the next two to three years, the potential market The key factors, or the promotion of the product for improving the company's corporate image is important to help, then the input for the product is in line with the overall interests of the company, product research and development departments for the setting of objectives and priorities should be consistent the company's overall arrangement.
team interests above individual interests. As a manager, should also be bold and make some choices conducive to the overall interests of the company, even if their department or even a loss of their own is.
For example, I work at Apple, when the actual effect has managed a very bad project. The project manager was the boss of my friends, my boss and this project is also the most optimistic about a project. At that time, I clearly know how bad this project, the project manager is not a good manager, but because my boss great importance to the project, I always have the courage to deal with this issue. Additionally, I also worried that if the dissolution of the project team, for my own work is actually a negative, because I have to manage this team more than a year's time.
Finally one day, I decided to leave the company after a period of time. At that time, I think the company over the years For me good, I should leave the company before, do a good company, but I have been hesitant to do themselves. So I decided to make this project and the project manager of the project cut mm big deal This approach will make my boss unhappy, but it really is good for the company.
when I really cut this project, to my surprise that the vast majority of employees within the company did not express dissatisfaction but tell me how much they approved of this decision, they think I have the courage and resolve. company leaders do not blame me, but I admit that and correct the wrong approach much appreciated mm even my boss also think this is a the right decision.
That is, when corporate interests and departmental interests or personal interests come into conflict, managers should have the courage to make a decision in favor corporate interests, and not worry about the outcome. If your decision is correct, responsible, you will get staff and leaders praise.
In addition, managers should take the initiative to play, the team.
in the work, if they are not actively cooperate with all departments, passing the buck situation, I will give you an example of basketball: basketball team is the same. played basketball guard can not be divorced from the whole team loner, different positions of the players need to follow the tactical closely with and support each other, so as to win the game. In our work, the markets need help products division to find the right product positioning, sales departments with potential for customer information, and managers will assume the role of coach for the team to develop the appropriate tactics. you can imagine, a basketball coach in the layout of tactical one-time only with each player individually discussion? In that case, guard did not know what forward thinking, forward-back assists do not know the strategy, the team does not lose strange! take their role, allow themselves to be the boss and the employee communication, coordination of the bridge, not let themselves and the owners or employees against each other. For example, some managers are easy to get caught on a misunderstanding of their roles, they are either themselves and representative of the interests of both companies, also on behalf of the interests of employees, they should:
b aware of their roles as middlemen, not with the blind and employees, one-sided accusations the company, and do not become arrogant regulators find fault with the staff.
b the company as a whole first, take the initiative to play the role of coordinator, not only to consider the needs of development of the company, but also for the sake of personal needs of employees and resolve conflicts that may exist between the two, so that the efficiency of the company's collaboration with the highest overall point.
b own decision, it has to courage to bear the associated responsibilities to the employees not to blame the boss or the company who.
5) authorized the command is more important than the management needs
21 century more space for employees, the only way to more fully mobilize the enthusiasm of my staff to maximize the potential of their release is a flat .21 century the century, everyone has enough information to everyone with decisions and choices rights. the right to choose, right of action, decision-making power to delegate part or all of their employees, so management will gradually become the mainstream of 21st century business management.
in the 21st century, the decentralization of management will become increasingly close to expectations of staff, is the most intelligent approach to management. because when companies gathered a group of people smart enough after, if only these smart people to use as a gear and let them everything Ting leadership and command, it will result in the following several question:
b employee job satisfaction decreased.
b staff think they are not taken seriously, the fun and meaning of work is not obvious.
b staff work hard to continue to grow.
b individual talent and potential employees are not fully used.
to give employees more space, in order to better explore the potential of individuals, many successful companies have launched initiatives accordingly. For example, Google allows engineers in 20 companies % of the time in your favorite project or technical work, this system, once implemented, they received unexpected good results. because of the 20% to free time, many have good ideas, but no time to put into practice engineers can spend 20% of their time, or two or three colleagues to convince the 20% of the time in to complete an outstanding creative product prototypes, and then distributed to colleagues within the company to use. If this is indeed attractive product ideas, it is likely to become the next Google to the world time created. because of such a management model of 20%, we find:
b 20% of time to complete the product's success rate is high, because employees more involved.
b 20% of management mode allows the company to their employees aware of the trust and delegation of authority, which managed to create a very good atmosphere. in the employee survey, employee satisfaction is always higher than the company I had worked for other companies.
many managers to pursue their own grip on power, they used to command the next, and always will be the efforts of his men in exchange for most of the credit for the results. This approach is likely to result:
b excessive pressure upon managers and staff have asked the leadership of all things, waiting for the command manager.
b team over-reliance on the managers, most of the team's success depends on managers individual can handle all the issues unavoidably mm and usually say, no leader can be everything familiar, there is no one leader can always correct.
b the team capacity to respond to external change and respond to significantly reduce the efficiency of because all the decisions and orders made by the administrator are required, employees perceive the change in the habit of reporting only to the leadership.
Thus, . However, the managers how to do a good authority? The most important of which is the unity of authority and responsibility. that is, authorization to the staff, both defined terms of reference of related work, give them enough information and support, define the scope of its responsibilities, so that authorized employees can also have permission, can be independently responsible and accountable to each other, so that it does not appear management chaos. That is, both the duty of staff is authorized to take the initiative, deal with their own creative work and is responsible for the results of their work, but also an obligation to look at other teams or individuals take the initiative to point out that there is a problem, help each other improve their work.
authorized to do a good job, good job, you can pre-set objectives and framework, but do not do too detailed restrictions, so as not to affect their play. In my previous company, there was a very good vice president of technology, he has done very well in the authorization. For example, he set the target, always worried about subordinates to make mistakes because of inexperience, so he always crossed himself under the manager, go directly to engineers, and then step by step, telling engineers how to do it. even once, an engineer in the The vice president met toilet, even in the bathroom was reading about the vice president more than 20 minutes. Later, the vice president really can not stand under the manager, to president and accurately reflect the situation. After several warnings but still no improvement after , who was sacked a vice president. We can see from this example, the work of leadership is to set goals, not unavoidably control, management, command and command.
in the authorization, set the goal of a certain should be clear and objective method can be used to measure, so that every employee can truly understand what their own responsibilities, they can by their own decision-making, selection and implementation, which does not belong to the scope of their duties, is not at liberty to decision. For goal setting, I recommend the use of well-known SMART principles. The so-called SMART principle is:
b Smm clear (Specific): target range is clear, rather than broad.
b Mmm can Metric (Measurable): setting goals is to make progress, must be abstract, can not be implemented, measurable goals can not be simplified into practical, measurable small goals.
b Amm can be achieved (Attainable): objectives should is achievable, rather than idealized.
b Rmm results-oriented (Result-based): objectives should be based on results, not based on action or process.
b Tmm timeliness (Time-based): objectives should time limit. time-sensitive requirements can let you clear this goal is the short, medium or long-term goals.
together leaders and staff should develop appropriate SMART goals, ways to measure these goals, the target pattern of division of labor, as well as change goals at the right time, but the leadership should not be excessive to tell the staff how to implement specific. If too much control of a leader within the competence of the staff of the Executive, he is in the ; the most basic requirements.
authorization is very important, but not authorized to share all the responsibilities on behalf of, and coordination of the work done by the leadership. authorized more should be:
b organize a team of mutual trust.
b development of team goals, and we all agreed to team goals as the most important goal.
b the team help each other, supervision, we have something to say, see the problem directly.
6) equal ratio authority is more important in the enterprise management process
, although the division is different, but the managers and employees should be on an equal footing, the only way to create a positive, concerted efforts of the working atmosphere.
first requirement of equality is the attention and encourage employee involvement, and staff work together to develop team goals. mentioned here refers to the common development goals, in the process of setting goals, the staff involved as much as possible, allowing them to put forward different views and suggestions , but it will eventually make choices and decisions by the manager.
encourage employees to participate in this practice allows employees of the company's affairs more support and input, management and more trust. although does not mean that every employee views will be adopted, but when they personally participate in the decision-making process, when their ideas are listened to and discussed, then, even if the opinion did not adopt the final, they will have a strong sense of involvement and sense of identity will be respected and have since more responsibility.
years ago, I took over a department, in order to improve efficiency, within a week I set the team goals, and announced a meeting of all my decisions. but I never thought, meeting not very well, and some employees at a loss, some people listless, some people are picking on my plan. I suddenly come to understand: too arbitrary to choose targets and rash. So I said to them: ; Obviously, I was too naive for the future. Now, let us start over, to work out great ...