The new CEO of Ford, James P Hackett, demonstrates many of the characteristics and traits of a connected leader, writes Professor Marianne Roux
When James P Hackett was appointed the new CEO of Ford at the end of May, Executive Chairman Bill Ford described him as a “transformational leader” for a “time of unprecedented change”.
Like many leaders today, Hackett is operating in a fast-moving, highly competitive industry. The velocity and volume of issues facing him increases every day.
Our complex world demands a new, more connected style of leadership. It’s simply no longer feasible for one individual, particularly one individual in a vast organisation like Ford, to set direction, make decisions, and manage everyone’s performance. Although this type of ‘hero’ leadership may have delivered results in the past, it is failing in fast changing, disrupted environments. Today’s successful leaders encourage participation and shared commitment throughout the organisation. They are connected leaders. Hackett, who has vowed to foster greater teamwork and faster decision-making across Ford, demonstrates many ‘connected’ characteristics.
Connected leaders are oriented towards shared purpose and collaboration. They develop deep levels of mutual influence and ensure that pivotal conversations happen throughout the organisation. Hackett needs to inspire confidence, optimism, hope, and resilience in all stakeholders, in order to achieve measurable business impact at Ford.
My Cirrus colleague Dr Simon Hayward spent several years developing the Connected Leadership model which found that the world needs leaders who can create purpose and direction to create clarity, be authentic to create trust, devolve decision making by sharing power, create collaborative achievement, and develop agility at all levels.
As Bill Ford said when Hackett was appointed, “If we’re going to win in this new world, we need to break down the hierarchy, and we have to empower the team. We have to move fast, and we have to trust our people to move fast.” He called for Hackett to be a transformational, authentic and visionary leader, driving faster decision making through his renowned straight-talking style.
Let’s consider visionary leadership. American economist Joel Kurtzman believed in the power of common purpose to become the differentiating factor for organisations. We need common values, tools, objectives and hopes that enables people to work together towards shared goals.
Devolved decision-making requires that service-oriented decisions as made as close to the customer as possible. Only key strategic decisions are made centrally, aligned through agreed decision making structures. This brings an ever-increasing spotlight on the leader’s behaviour and ability to create trust. Hackett has talked openly about the need for authenticity.
In his quest to drive faster decision-making, Hackett needs to create leaders who are agile. Agile leaders actively engage diverse stakeholders, influencing and studying them simultaneously. Agile individuals are motivated by expanding their knowledge and questioning the status quo. They actively migrate towards challenges.
Finally, to ensure lacklustre performance is addressed, Hackett will have to ensure that the un-discussables get discussed. He will have to create a culture where it is safe to speak up, where people can work comfortably across silos, where collective problem solving is utilised and all decisions in the organisation connect up.
About the author
Professor Marianne Roux is head of consulting in Cirrus’ Asia-Pacific region. You can read more about her here. Marianne welcomes your views on this article and can be contacted at [email protected].
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