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What Made Jack Welch Jack Welch: How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Leaders - Hardcover

Baum, Stephen H.; Conti, Dave

 
9780307337207: What Made Jack Welch Jack Welch: How Ordinary People Become Extraordinary Leaders
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307337200 ISBN 13: 9780307337207
Verlag: Crown Pub, 2007

Inhaltsangabe

Looks into the lives of everyday people to identify the characteristics and experiences that transform ordinary individuals into extraordinary leaders, revealing the crucial importance of sharing experiences that mold character and help develop the ability to take on challenges and assume risks without a safety net. 40,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

STEPHEN H. BAUM has been an adviser and coach to CEOs for more than twenty years, first as a partner with Booz Allen Hamilton, now as an independent practitioner and director of the Point Group Network. In addition to his private practice, Mr. Baum chairs a group of New York City CEOs who help one another with sensitive personal and business issues under the aegis of the CEO membership organization Vistage International. He also hosts Inside the CEO, a leadership development series at Baruch College in which he conducts unscripted Q&A sessions with well-known CEOs about life experiences that prepared them to lead. Through Harvard Community Partners of Connecticut, Mr. Baum leads workshops in leadership excellence for executive directors and board chairs of not-for-profits.

DAVE CONTI is a writer and editor specializing in business and self-help topics. Formerly, he was executive editor at HarperCollins Publishers, where he edited and published books by many distinguished authors.

Stephen H. Baum hosts Inside the CEO, a leadership development series at Baruch College.

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1

A Leader Is Like a Cake

How Shaping Experiences Mold Successful Leaders

A leader is like a cake. Sure, you need all the ingredients. But it is shaped uniquely by all the steps and exposures in the recipe, until it is finished.

--Gordon Bethune, Continental Airlines

Florida Power & Light (FPL) was in trouble. Turkey Point, one of its nuclear plants, had for the second time been put on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's watch list of badly performing plants. The reactor had failed inspection, and operational violations were severe enough and numerous enough that the NRC was threatening to shut it down.

The NRC did not make such threats lightly. As the regulatory cop of the nuclear power industry, it is responsible for protecting the public against shoddy plant operations. It would not hesitate to pull the facility's license, forcing a shutdown that could last for as long as three years. Such a move might protect the public against a radiation risk, but it would also impair FPL's ability to satisfy electricity demand, to say nothing of the big hits that its earnings and its reputation would take. It would also be an unwelcome blot on the record of Jim Broadhead, five months into his new position as chairman and CEO of the utility's parent holding company, FPL Group, even though the problem had been festering long before his arrival. The NRC report was so disparaging that Jim believed the regulators would soon shut down the plant. Yet he was getting no information, no warnings, and no calls for help from the executives responsible for the unit.

Jim was an outsider to the energy industry and especially to the insular world of nuclear power. As head of the holding company, he was afforded what amounted to a bird's-eye view of its many diverse subsidiaries, which at the time included insurance and real estate businesses, cable television, and even Florida citrus fruit production. Jim himself had most recently been president of GTE, a telephone communications company.

Jim found himself in the middle of a high-stakes game with very few cards to play. New to the job, an industry outsider, unfamiliar with the ins and outs of nuclear power, he looked for answers but was unable to get satisfactory ones from anyone in the nuclear subsidiary. Intensely loyal to the old guard, some of whose members were still in power, the executives resisted his authority. They were unwilling to cooperate with Jim and unable, he believed, to solve the reactor's problems themselves. With no trustworthy insider providing him with the needed information, Jim could not fully calibrate the actions needed to get off the watch list or assess the probability of a nuclear accident. He began to meet with outside experts and his own attorneys, and he read every related report he could get. He came to believe that both the public and his company were at risk.

Jim decided to take action. As he tells it, "The plant was a potential danger to the public and to my company. We were on the watch list, and the regulators had the authority to shut our nuclear plants down completely. The problem was keeping me up at night. We weren't making any progress solving the problems--the people in charge of the nuclear operation were either unwilling or unable to discuss the situation with me. I didn't know whom to trust. I knew it was make or break for the company. I had to do something. I told the operating guys I was stepping in."

Against the advice of his senior managers, against established industry practice, betting the future of his company's nuclear power program, Jim decided to do what had never been done before. He decided to go to Washington, D.C., meet with the regulators, admit he had a problem, air his own preliminary conclusions, and ask their advice.

Jim had no desire to be seen as a loose cannon by his company, however. In order to be effective in the action he was taking, he knew he needed the support and agreement of his own boss--the company's board of directors. So before taking his drastic step, he explained to them the situation, his concerns, his motives, and the results he was working toward. As Jim puts it, "Because I was new in the job, and because what I was planning to do was so unusual, I alerted the board in a phone call. I revisited the situation with them, the options, and my preferred course of action. It took some explaining, but they supported my plan. I went ahead."

Jim met first with Victor Stello, executive director of the NRC and his staff. Skeptical about why Jim had really come to Washington, Stello began the meeting with a threat: "If you have one more problem, I will shut you down." Jim again did the improbable--instead of protesting, he offered the official a metaphoric olive branch, replying, "You probably expect me to say that we're doing everything possible and will comply. I won't tell you that." Jim went on to explain the actions he was prepared to take and asked for Stello's help and counsel in cleaning up the facility.

Admitting something was wrong in his company--that he had a major problem that could affect the public--was an incredible move on Jim's part, and it could have easily been used against him by the regulators. But Jim's response struck a chord with the NRC official. He even called Jim's attitude "refreshing." Once Stello realized that Jim had not come to him to posture or threaten or to get the NRC to back down, the commissioner relaxed his hard facial expression and rewarded Jim's forthright honesty with sound advice.

Jim's approach even earned him a private meeting with Stello, a highly unusual event in the world of nuclear energy production, where chief executives simply did not meet privately with public officials and ask for their advice in off-the-record sessions.



They discussed the situation at FPL, and Stello provided Jim with some wise counsel about the problems, even suggesting the names of people who could help solve the mess and get the reactor up to standards. He was taking a major risk himself in providing such information and advice to Jim. Any of it could have easily been used against him if things went wrong, but happily nothing did.

Stello suggested that Jim share his plan with the chairman of the NRC (the commissioner's boss), which he did the following week. Jim and the regulators were so joined in spirit and plan that Jim earned some wiggle room in how and when he would implement his plan, something that would have been impossible otherwise.

Jim hired Jerry Goldberg, one of the experts mentioned by the commissioner, fired or eased out several of the uncooperative old guard, and kept a close watch on progress at the plant. In time, the nuclear facility was upgraded, taken off the NRC's watch list, and improved to the point that it became a benchmark for others in the industry.

Throughout this episode, Jim Broadhead exhibited the strength, self-assurance, and determination that define good leaders. He relied on his instincts and seemingly unrelated experiences to create his own solution to a baffling problem. Overruling his nuclear "experts" and their bosses who operated the utility day to day, breaking the established rules of decorum in his industry, meeting alone with an agency normally treated as an adversary, and laying all his cards on the table were unprecedented steps. His actions could have cost him his job and damaged his company, and he knew it.

What prepared Jim for this moment? What would prepare any of us for such a moment?

The foundation of Jim's ability to get the job done and done well is found in his strong, well-developed leadership core--a powerful set of traits common to good leaders. How and why did the traits develop so markedly in Jim? It was experience, long years of shaping experiences...

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Verlag
Crown Pub
Erscheinungsdatum
2007
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307337200
ISBN 13 
9780307337207
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
276
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Verantwortliche Person
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