Strategies of Successful Executives
Strategies of Successful Executives
The latest headline from McKinsey dropped into my mailbox this morning and immediately drew my attention:
‘How we do it: Three executives reflect on strategic decision making’.
I am always excited at the prospect of learning from successful people, and it took no more than a moment for me to click, dive in and discover the secrets of Sir Martin Sorrell and others.
Then came my disappointment. They got the headline wrong. The article explained what they do, not how they do it. This is a common mistake of academic journalists getting the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ mixed up. Don’t get me wrong, the ‘what’ does give an insight to Sir Martin’s macro strategy, but this is nothing to do with how he does it.
Over the past 15 years I have had the privilege of modelling the ‘how’ strategies of successful CEO’s, entrepreneurs and sports professionals using Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP). It is one thing to know that Sir Martin Sorrell (to quote the article referred to) …
‘Experiments, is open to intuition, and listens to flashes of inspiration. Also that he is rigorous, runs the analyses, sucks up all the data, and includes some formal processes as well’.
It is quite another however to learn how he does all these things. What cognitive micro-strategy is he running that results in successful decisions? For example, how is he constructing his imagery? What does he say to himself, and in what tone of voice? What values and beliefs are driving this sequence? What meta programmes are behind his strategy? How does his physiology support this process? How does he know when enough analysis is enough? How much data is sucked up, and how does he suck it up? What formal processes are required and how does he evaluate their relevance? What metaphors is he working from?
Last week we modelled some successful strategies of a number of senior executives including a CEO and a Senior Auditor. We regularly model the strategies of business leaders and have some superb examples of lightening fast effective decision-making and strategy formulation. This is a standard part of the Business NLP Practitioner course.
You can read the McKinsey article here.
If you want to acquire the ‘how-to’ you can get it here.
David Molden – FCIPD
Quadrant 1 International
