How CEOs & Executives Should Relate to Kamala Harris!

From GW’s Executive Management Workbench….

The last few weeks have seen a plethora of leadership management examples for GenZers as well as CEOs and Executives. Accountability vs. Responsibility, Evaluation vs Appraisal, Metrics vs. Goals, and now, Training vs. Development.

The other night, my wife, Marilyn, and I were discussing the experience required for being president of the United States by Kamala Harris, the Vice President. Her status reflects the situation of every potential executive who has an opportunity to become the CEO. Inevitably, you have some people say, “he’s not ready,” or “she needs more experience on the job.”

Marilyn asks what I thought? Was Kamala ready to be president? To which I initially beg the question by saying, “It depends on how much Biden has developed her, not trained her.” It doesn’t mean she cannot do the job either way, but her subjects will be in for a tough ride in the first term while she develops.

Training and development is often called learning and development, and there is a major difference between the two. While a CEO is ultimately accountable for both within his or her company, it’s the development that is the most important accountability of the CEO, and he can delegate training to anyone he wants to.

Learning is 90% the responsibility of the company and 10% the responsibility of the individual. That’s why learning is a function of coaching, and normally doesn’t have axioms and tenets of management involved.

Development is just the opposite, 90% the responsibility of the individual and 10% the responsibility of the company. Development is more important to a company than learning because it stems heavily from axioms and tenets of management that are used in advanced decision making on important issues. It is always the accountability of the CEO because it’s the CEO who must have a formal development program for potential managers so that there’s strong management depth within the company, in every department.

Whenever I work with CEOs, it’s often around transforming a department because a key manager or CEO has departed, and there are plenty of the current management staff who have been trained or coached by HR consultants, usually on soft skills, but few who have been developed formally by line managers in a formal development program using tenets and axioms of management.

So the telltale sign of whether the CEO has a formal management development program or not, is whether the replacement comes from within, or whether the company must go outside the company to hire a replacement.

The CEO is a fool if he or she promotes someone from within who has NOT been developed on the use of advanced management tenets and axioms, because that person must learn and develop “on the job” while he or she makes awkward decisions in the interim. This often leads to micromanagement by the CEO, keeping the promoted person on a short decision leash.

We haven’t seen much evidence that President Biden has developed Kamala Harris, so if she wins the election, we will see first-hand if she has been developed with tenets and axioms on the important decisions, or trained by a White House coach.

CEOs and executives of companies, especially small business companies, should relate to the Kamala Harris situation similarly, and insure they have formal development management programs within their companies for management depth, along with ongoing development using management tenets and axioms.

Another key management lesson from the political frays this month.

Suivez-Moi!

gw

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