Here’s another legendary example: In the summer of 2000, P&G had lost $85-billion in market capitalization in very short order as its products seemed to encounter potent new competition almost across the board. Newly minted CEO A.G. Lafley landed in the middle of a collapsing sinkhole not unlike Gerstner’s at IBM: Passive and disengaged employees, outside analysts and shareholders vehemently questioning everything, and stuttering market share figures for its major brands.
As Lafley described it nearly a decade later:
[At such times] the CEO’s [role] is to interpret the organization’s values in light of change and competition and to define its standards. This was a top priority in my first year as P&G’s chief executive, after setting goals but ahead of strategy.
How’d he do? Suffice to say that by the end of his tenure a decade later, the number of billion-dollar P&G brands had jumped from 10 to 24 (Gillette, Pampers, Tide, and many more). Lafley “simply” reasserted, reaffirmed, and drove P&G back to its bedrock values, and pushing the organization to understand its customers in newly profound and penetrating ways.
Finally, Larry Bossidy, former CEO at AlliedSignal (which merged with Honeywell and adopted the Honeywell name) had this to say about leadership in times of organizational change:
We need people who are better at persuading than at barking orders, who know how to coach and build consensus. Today, managers add value by brokering with people, not by presiding over empires.
On this last point (Bossidy’s), you may say to yourself, “Yeah, I know all that,” but do you really?
Here, I submit, is precisely where the forces of no-reverse-gear disruption and zero visibility forward in the liminal territory, execution, and vision intersect.
What you need is:
- First of all, to preserve the organization so that it can navigate the liminal zone and emerge intact on the other side;
- To articulate a vision for the future organization that is both true to its essential heritage (“The Toyota Way,” IBM’s “Think”), and that inspires people to believe and re-engages them; and
- To get to work relentlessly communicating why the future is inspiring and worth fighting for.
Welcome to liminal times.
