Читать книгу Seven Disciplines of A Leader - Wolf Jeff - Страница 15

Unlike Jim, many managers and leaders fail to take responsibility. They are quick to point their fingers at others for failures. Looking in the mirror proves to be too difficult for them, and they are more than happy to abdicate personal responsibility.

This concept was put to the test when J. Tyler Leverty, PhD, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Iowa's Tippie College of Business, studied failed executives, including:

● Lehman Brothers Chairman and CEO Richard S. Fuld Jr., (aka the Gorilla on Wall Street), named one of Portfolio.com's Worst American CEOs of All Time.

● The duo of Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and CEO Jeffrey Skilling, whose illegal business exploits led to indictments, trials, and criminal convictions. According to Dr. Leverty, the pair blamed an angry short seller in Florida for the company's demise, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history when it was filed in 2001.

● A coterie of CEOs at General Motors, who consistently blamed the economy and outside pressures for the automaker's failure and reorganization in 2009.

None of these leaders cited poor management or a corrupt culture as reasons for their companies' downfalls, but as Leverty notes, their highly deficient decision-making skills were to blame. “We found that managers of failed firms are less skilled than their peers, and the consequences of their incompetence are economically significant.” Dr. Leverty and his coauthor studied 12,000 insurance companies to determine how the decisions of their chief executives over a 12-month period affected firm performance. They asked: Were costs minimized? Were revenues maximized? Did the company operate efficiently? Did the company use technology effectively? How did the quality of leadership affect solvency? Ultimately, “inefficiency is a manager's fault,” Leverty notes. Leaders are charged with identifying and remedying every problem area.