Michael Useem is Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Leadership and Change at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
I saw this video at @Google Talks and thought it would be of interest to the insurance leadership community here at “The Insurance Experience”. Useem talks about decision-making under pressure in this hour-long piece. It’s a good one to watch and listen to while having lunch or as background chatter while completing or approving expense reports.
The intensifying competition and demand for high performance are pressing organizations to become more flexible, more results-focused, and more fast-acting. Companies are finding that such initiatives require effective leadership and a supportive culture, and this has become all the more critical in an era of greater uncertainty and change. The challenge is to build effective leaders and well-led teams throughout the organization, and that requires a capacity to think strategically and act decisively. Drawing on challenging moments when difficult decisions were faced by company managers, corporate leaders and even mountaineers on Everest and firefighters in the wilderness Michael Useem identifies what it takes for making timely calls when leadership matters most.
“ It is apparent that, no matter what company you are from or what sector you are in, your Customer Management project is more likely to fail than succeed. A stunning 60-92% of Customer Management projects are seen to fail by the sponsor. As stunning as the failure statistics are, the damage they do to senior management and employee confidence in Customer Management is even more serious. It leads to thinking such as “We’ve tried it – it doesn’t work”. This in turn leads to tactical spending on Customer Management projects, rather than the full strategic review and careful implementation which is what is required.”
