Leadership concepts and applications

Leadership

The specific attributes that I think will be best for a CEO during this of transition are as follows: Innovation leadership, vision, motivation. The CEO is going to be expected to be a leader, but there are different types of leadership. Transformational leadership is something from which Yellow Company will benefit. There are a few reasons for this. The first is that we have new products and businesses coming on stream, and these need to be integrated with the vision. In addition, we have expanded through mergers and acquisitions of late, and we need to integrate these other organizations into our own, under a common corporate culture and banner. It is important, therefore, that the leader is able to establish a long-term vision that transcends this short-term period of change. Then the leader needs to get the company, including the new acquisitions, to buy into this vision. The vision will feature innovation, since that is a core part of our mission. Thus, the leader needs to be able to create an environment that encourages creativity and innovation rather than stifling it. The combination of innovation leadership, grand vision and ability to motivate is compelling and will be what I look for in a new CEO -- the soft skills to go along with all of the technical constraints.

With respect to the questions, I would actually ask each candidate the same question. It's a two-part question and gets right to the heart of the matter. What's your vision for Yellow Company, and how will you execute this vision? I want a CEO candidate who has done his or her homework and knows this company well enough to have coherent answers to these questions. I'm not interested in a vague answer that any business school undergrad could give -- I want specifics. I am not looking for somebody who is uncertain about their vision, and I certainly don't want to hire a CEO who needs to learn on the job for six months. This company needs leadership and it needs it now.

In this answer, I'm also curious to hear what the candidate says, or doesn't say, about shareholders and share-based financial measures. The reason is simple -- if they start going on about shareholder returns, EPS and that sort of thing I'm not interested. Great vision doesn't start with worrying about pennies per share over last year's quarter. My job is to make the best choice on behalf of the shareholders and I imagine the shareholder to be a long-term shareholder. I don't care about value for day traders and people who aren't invested in the company. For shareholders who believe in this company, I want to deliver to them strong, sustainable long-term growth. That requires real strategy, not a bunch of ad hoc changes in direction to grind out EPS improvements. Our last CEO was great at this -- the strategies of spending on innovation and M&A activity aren't always great in the short run, but repeated over time they are powerful in the long run. The CEO might have a different style than the predecessor, but the long-term, visionary mindset needs to be the same because those are the values around which the company has been built. We're not struggling, so we don't need to re-invent the company. We just need a new voice, and a new source of inspiration.

I would not vote on any candidate until I had heard from them in an interview situation. We have six different people, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. How I see the selection process is this. Anybody who clearly isn't ready is out. After that, anybody who clearly is not a good cultural fit is out. We already know who we are as a company, so we need somebody who can guide us, not reinvent us.

After that, I am looking for the candidate with the best strengths. The reason is simple. Strengths are attributes of value that are difficult to obtain. Finding CEOs is hard because so few people truly possess a compelling combination of strengths needed for the role. That's the person I vote for. As noted, that's the person with vision, the ability to motivate and a focus on innovation leadership.