Executive makeover

A couple of years ago, I came across the words "executive reinvention" in a book published by the Harvard Business School Press. I felt that what I read there was not relevant to me because I had never worked in a business enterprise, except for a few board seats where I always had my late father beside me as my mentor. Between being a professor of International Law at the School of Foreign Service of Assumption College and my first government job as a pioneer in the then Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the phrase was not relevant as I had never felt a desire to reinvent myself. This is me, people – take it or leave it.

The funny thing about this phrase is it has become a needed tool, an extremely valuable means to turn a corporate enterprise around: A new image for the leader, new goals and vision, a new set of priorities, new strategies, new dimensions of interaction, etc.

The success of the endeavor, however, depends on the sincerity and the credibility of the leader and the approach. It has nothing to do with the leader assuming a new corporate hairdo or a softer image; his or her smiling more; that artificial ambience of constant mobility portraying a busy schedule of corporate or government management. What has worked according to contemporary business gurus is the credibility and sincerity of the leader in reinventing himself or herself and the organization. The authors of the paper " The Reinvention Roller Coaster" present a very important postulate – that a leader of an enterprise or government must, at the start, make a serious and honest inquiry into himself as a leader. This is not a psychological process to fix something that’s wrong, but an honest inquiry that reveals the context from which an executive makes decisions.

According to the paper, "People have contexts just as organizations do. Our individual context is our hidden strategy for dealing with life; it determines the choices we make. On the surface, our context is our formula for winning, the source of our success. But on closer examination, this context is the box within which a person operates and determines what is possible and impossible for him or her as a leader, and, by extension, for the organization."

One hideous mistake in this exercise is for a leader to shun contention and criticism, or eradicate that platform of discontent among his or her constituency. I was shocked to witness for instance, several years ago, the chairman of the board say to a stockholder at a general meeting something to this effect: "I hold the majority in this corporation. Your critical views are too emotional to be of any value. Dissent is disallowed here. Strike it out of the records of the proceedings." A year and a half later, the company collapsed. The irony of it all was that this particular chairman had been proposing not only a reinvention of himself but of the company itself.

I was, of course, just as shocked, if not more so, to hear President Gloria Arroyo, who had not too long ago apologized to the people on nationwide television, say before a gathering of Fil-Americans in Malacanang to those who wanted her to resign: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone….they all have dirty hands!"

Was she telling this to "Nanay" Mameng Deunida who always sits patiently at rallies under the heat of the sun in spite of her hypertension? Nanay Mameng is someone I have admired from the first time I met her at the EDSA 2 rallies which led to the current president being installed. Nanay Mameng and the millions she represents have unclean hands – hands that are most of the time empty just like so many of the poverty-stricken whose worsened plight the President religiously espouses.

The authors of the paper point out that if an executive is to reinvent himself or his organization, rule number one is that he must never suppress criticism or dissent, and if he does so in an insulting manner, he is bound to fail.

There is an absolute need to harness contention. A leader must kill his instinct to suppress the voices of criticism and dissent. "Instead, listen, listen, and listen while you still can," that’s what the business gurus say. And above all, do not insult your critics, your dissenting constituency. After all, aren’t you their leader? Many executives cannot stand to be confronted because they assume they should be in charge. But control kills invention, learning, and commitment.

Conflict jump-starts the creative process. There is a need to listen intently during troubled times to dissenters, not to those who sing hallelujahs all the time but secretly indulge in whispers of vile criticism – these are the ones that injure and defile an organization.

It has been said that emotions often accompany creative tension and that these emotions are not altogether pleasant. A former colleague in international telecom recently told me that at the big US telecom giant Intel, conflict is blunt and at times even brutal. Company players often say that "If you’re used to tennis, Intel plays rugby, and you walk away with a lot of bruises. They’ve created a company that takes direct, hard-hitting disagreements as a sign of fitness You put it all behind you in the locker room, and it’s forgotten by the scrimmage the next day, but the opposite views produce a very tangible value."

My friend also recounted the time when, on a field trip to Tokyo to assess Intel’s competitiveness against Japanese quality and service standards, the top management team of 20 got involved in a fierce debate on the company’s approach to the Japanese market. Tempers flared. Voices were raised. Underlying the finger-pointing and the four-letter words which flew back and forth like ping-pong balls in a Beijing master’s tournament were long smoldering resentments on the part of those representing internal Intel customers who could not extract the quality and service they desired from manufacturing.

Intel COO Craig Barrett, who I met in Geneva several years ago, then headed manufacturing and was a combative person in the fracas. But two days later, team members sorted out their differences, and as my friend put it, "put the actions in motion to help Intel match or surpass its Japanese rivals."

Everyone involved in the hard-hitting sessions agreed that this was what they needed to strip their illusions and delusions. Contrary to what a lot of Westerners think about the importance of consensus in Japanese culture, institutionalized conflict is an indispensable and integral part of Japanese management.

Within the Philippine context right now, whether it is a corporate enterprise or the government we are talking about, suppressing rational dissent, dismissing it as ridiculous and emanating from a lesser mind or a polluted source is the fundamental step towards failure.

Executive reinvention "is patient, is humble, is wanting to learn from the other voices…it is never insulting, degrading, or de-humanizing."

This is what Winston Churchill said on his repeated failures, from the disastrous Gallipoli invasion, to defeat in his campaign for a seat in Parliament in the years between World Wars I and II. But this caused a sufficient shift in who he was; it prepared him for the responsibilities of a wartime prime minister.

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