Corporate Success and Leadership

The link between corporate success and leadership

CAs promote strategic planning, internal controls, accountability and the like, but let's face it, leadership is the primary success factor in any journey ?in business or elsewhere. The reason is simple: a leader has the ability to bring together the right people, to clearly define their roles and to convince them to take on the required tasks no matter how thankless and unglamorous some of them might be. The leader will define how the various players will work with each other, describe their responsibilities and encourage their progress. The leader's job is to chart direction, communicate it to all involved and ensure progress is being made as planned. Without these elements, there is no team and no success.

Furthermore, leadership is essential for dissipating the otherwise omnipresent fear of corporate governance. Leadership gives people the ability to move forward with confidence and accept risk without paying undue regard to protecting themselves. A leader ensures employees feel proud about their contributions and will be supported in all efforts contributing to the objective.

Think about it. Managers will avoid sensitive issues for fear of being caught making a stand if there is no strong leader supporting them. You then end up with situation similar to a hockey game where the centre ice trap is the strategy of choice for both teams. Don't make a mistake and you might win.

In book Good to Great, Richard Collins identifies 11 of the best-performing companies over the past 20-odd years. Originally, he had no intention of focusing on leaders, but on successful organizations. But his research prompted him to look at the leaders of these great organizations, and he was surprised to find that they almost always shared the same characteristics. Level 5 leaders, as he calls them, generally exhibit the following traits:

?A paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.

?Ambitious for the organization's success, not their own.

?Set up successors for even greater success.

?Fanatically driven to produce sustained results.

?Compelling modesty.

?More plough horse than show horse.

?Take