Performance=14% Leaders, 86% Followers

I’d like to share a couple of great pieces on leadership philosophy from 2011 that remain as important and relevant today as they did then.

The first one is a Harvard Business School research study which shows that 14% of a firm’s performance is dependent on its leaders, 86% on the ‘followers’.  This statistic is in an I4CP report about the 5-domains of high performance.  Click here to download the report. It’s an easy read and reinforces a great deal of what our philosophy has been for years — performance comes from the combination of consistent, clearly communicated strategies, leadership that is talent- oriented and committed to the right talent working in an effective, strong culture with a strong market-focus.

Another great piece from McKinsey is about the importance of organizational health on performance. The author’s  central message is that focusing on organizational health -the ability of your organization to align, execute, and renew itself faster than your competitors can -is just as important as focusing on the traditional drivers of business performance. Organizational health is about adapting to the present and shaping the future faster and better than the competition. Healthy organizations don’t merely learn to adjust themselves to their current context or to challenges that lie just ahead; they create a capacity to learn and keep changing over time.  To read the article in its entirety, click here.