Leading with intellectual integrity

One skill distinguishes the effective CEO: the ability to make disciplined and integrated choices. By the time people reach the most senior levelsof a company, they are expected to have a degree of personal competence and a strong gut feel for making good executive decisions. Otherwise, they wouldnt be considered for a top job. But how do they attain this acumen? At Procter & Gamble they developed a systematic approach to cultivating that skill among emerging and senior executives. They found that business literature contains a great deal of advice for chief executives about strategy and execution, but much less is written about how to become the kind of person who can bring the right judgment to bear on business decisions, especially when facing a disruptive environment. Thus, many CEOs develop their own form of on-the-job training, quietly honing their own heuristics for strategic thinking. That makes it difficult to tease out and develop the personal attributes that separate successful leaders from less-successful ones.

Leaders would do well to take a more systematic approach to developing their decision-making capabilities ... READ MORE

Released by Strategy & Business - 28 May 2013