Liberum Management Change
Recommended Reading – Successful leadership – how would you know? London Business School
February 13, 2009Sir Andrew Likierman, Professor of Management Practice and dean of London Business School, put together a fascinating piece of research on how business leaders can effectively measure their success. The research entitled, Successful leadership – how would you know? appears on the London Business School’s website. Professor Likierman writes,For those who want to check on their leadership success, for those who appoint leaders and for outsiders (including analysts and competitors) assessing the quality of leadership, checklists of traits are not enough. Nor are comparisons… … What’s needed is how to overcome the measurement problems. So, a number of preliminary steps are necessary to make sure that measurement is robust.
Preliminary step 1: Agree what we’re measuring … note that this is the beginning, not the end of the story…
Preliminary step 2: Focus on outcomes, not inputs … Success is about results, not characteristics.
Preliminary step 3: Make sure the data is as robust as possible…
Once the preliminary steps are taken the Professor recommends you,
Step 1: Set up the framework…
Step 2: Use judgement to interpret…
Step 3: As far as possible, reconcile the needs of different stakeholders…
He concludes,
Successful leadership is about a successful outcome against stated objectives combined with comparisons against a relevant peer group and the way in which opportunities are handled.
Take the time to read this short article, it’s quite prescient, particularly now during such trying financial times.
