Rising to the top of a company requires ambition and sacrifice

Dinesh WEERAKKODY

Professor Dave Ulrich Professor of Business at the Ross School of Business, Michigan University says a solid education helps managers learn the key skills to succeed as business leaders. Therefore selecting the right program and the right Business School is key for building knowledge that “sticks” and for performing effectively on the job.

Excerpts of the Interview

Q: When people talk or write about why more women aren’t don’t hold top positions in business, there are common themes that emerge. Even though there are enough ambitious women to run tons of companies many women still find it difficult to rise to the top. Why?

A: Sometimes there is implicit or explicit prejudice and people like to promote those who think, look, and act like themselves. This may preclude women from traditional corridors of power. Other times, for legitimate reasons, women may chose to step aside from their career to raise children or pursue other activities. Rising to the top of an organization requires enormous ambition and sacrifice. Sometimes this may not fully exist. However, as more women gain advanced business degrees, more will be available for the top jobs.?

Q: Why do most women earn less then men? Is it rampant gender discrimination? Or is it the choices men and women make in their careers?

A: Obviously different pay has multiple reasons. A woman with the same background, experience, tenure, and title should receive the same pay as a man. Sometimes the public difference in salary by gender reflect more about women’s choices to not pursue careers at the expense of families than about salary discrimination.

Q: Moving on, what are the key competencies that need to be demonstrated by HR professionals in developing organizational capabilities?

A: We found in our research six competencies those HR professionals must master to help their organizations succeed:Credible activist: the ability to build a relationship of trust and to have a point of view about business results;

Business acumen: the ability to know how the company makes money and creates value Strategy architect: the ability to help a company define and deliver its strategies Operational executor: the ability of a company to execute flawlessly its HR systems Talent manager and organization designer: the ability to innovate, align, and integrate HR practices around people and organization Change agent and cultural steward: the ability to make change happen and to change a culture.

In some ways these are similar competencies to any functional leader, except that the “talent manager and organization designer” competence would have to be tweaked for the function.

These competencies are based on research in 2007 on over 10,000 individuals from around the world.

Q: You mentioned organization culture. How do you create a culture unique to your organization?

A: Most define culture from the inside out or the values, norms, Expectations and behaviours that individuals have. We define a unique culture from the outside/in. Identify key current and future customers and answer: what do we want to be known for by our best customers? This customer identity becomes a brand in the marketplace with those customers and a culture inside to the employees. This was culture inside clearly creates value for the organization.

Q: How do you design a Reward System aimed at attracting, motivating, developing and retaining the right talent?

A: Reward systems have four steps that need to be clarified: Strategy: What are we trying to accomplish? This means getting clear about goals, purposes or vision statements.

Measurement: how will we know if we accomplish it? This means getting clear on standards and expectations Consequences: what happens if we hit or miss the goals? This means getting clear about financial and non-financial rewards, both positive and negative.

Feedback: how do we know how we are doing? This means helping employees to discover how they are doing against standards in a regular and a predictable way.When all four steps are in place, performance management or total rewards works to drive business results.

Q: Let us move on to education. The objective of pursuing a good MBA program from a good B-school is to make sure that it gets the best out of you. Can pursuing a MBA course increase managerial effectiveness?

A: There is no guaranteed path for business leaders. But to be a successful business leader you need to know the basics of business, finance, human resources, marketing, technology and sales. The MBA degree helps managers learn these skills so they can succeed as leaders. In addition, good business schools attract very good students who become long-term professional colleagues. A good MBA programme should incorporate real-life experiences, such as real-impact projects with companies, rather than having them as standalone courses (or worse, electives).

Curriculum should include many such experiences, structured to cover a spectrum of company sizes, stages, industries, and economic and cultural contexts.

Students should be taught to compare and contrast different work experiences, enabling them to develop the ability to read situations and draw from a repertoire of responses. A real MBA should present ‘on-the-job leadership training.”

Q: Now that B-Schools are churning out MBAs like factories, what criteria should an MBA aspirant focus on when narrowing down the list of possible B schools?

A: In general, I advise prospective MBA students to get into the best school they can given their record. More importantly, consider the institute’s history, brand name, faculty, accreditation, infrastructure, industry and international affiliations, and other such indications of its true standing. One can get insight by interacting with the institute’s alumni, current students, faculty and administration.

There is a lot of information on websites and online forums as well, although not all of it is verifiable or can be authenticated. In addition, if an aspirant is interested in living in a particular region, then attending a second tier school in that region may be as useful to a more respected school outside that region.

Q: Do MBA aspirants with work experience have a psychological edge over the MBA aspirants with no work experience?

A: Some of this edge is psychological, some pragmatic in that work experience helps the applicant firstly to get accepted, and the work experience can help the student to connect the principles and concepts learned during the MBA programme with his day-to-day work. Without experience, the student may not grasp the relevance of the ideas being taught.

Q: Finally, how would technology like cloud computing and social media help organizations to become more effective?

A: Technology has two benefits. First, it allows work to be done better, faster and cheaper. This comes from simplifying processes and having common platforms. This use of technology is about operational efficiency. Second, technology allows connections to occur through social networking. This allows relationships both inside and outside the company to be improved. Traditionally technology focused on efficiency; now it is moving more to the relationship realm with faster and easier access systems.