Prior Posts:
Leadership Intro
Leadership Part 1 – Art Weinbach
Leadership part 2 – Marcus Buckingham
In the Part 3 interview, We’ll look at Wharton’s interview with Todd Thomson (chairman and CEO of Citigroup Inc.’s Global Wealth Management division).
I think it all comes down to leadership. That’s true for any job where you are running a large organization, whether it’s one with 6,000 employees in finance and thousands of technical and other people around the world, or whether it’s moving into a job as CEO of wealth management with 30,000 people and $8.5 billion in revenues. In each case it’s all about providing leadership and direction for people — having them understand the vision of where you want to take that function or business, and getting them motivated to go along with you in that vision.
Coming into a new area I typically start by recognizing that it’s all about dealing with people. [That means] listening. It’s the first thing I always try to do, and I try to do it continually after. But it’s most important, at the beginning, to go in, meet people, talk to them, ask questions and listen to what they have to say. Because in most cases I found that these people do understand the business; they understand the issues, the problems and the opportunities. In most cases, if you listen carefully, you can find all the answers.
By doing that in the beginning, then by clearly setting my expectations for how we want to operate, and then by spending a bit of time developing the strategy, I find that people will follow that kind of direction. ((“Leadership by the Numbers? It’s One Part of Todd Thomson’s Management Strategy at Citigroup” Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved from http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu on January 27, 2006.))
Last week we talked about leading individuals. I think this week’s interview is more about leading a group of people. In order to do this, you really have to have great vision. But this vision isn’t a vision that is created in a vaccuum. Like too many strategies that are so extremely “academic” and have no basis in reality other than a manager read it in WSJ or heard about a trend, visions and strategies that work incorporate the product and the people of business. Buy-in and engagement to the vision is more important than the vision.
