developing the next generation of enterprise...

F A L L 2 0 1 5

Douglas A. ReadyM. Ellen Peebles

Developing theNext Generationof EnterpriseLeadersAspiring corporate leaders first learn to build and implementvisions for their individual business units. But as they advancein their careers, executives also must learn how to lead withan enterprise perspective.

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FALL 2015 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 43

ANAT GABRIEL IS managing director and chairman of Unilever Israel, a relatively small oper-

ation that sells the usual array of Unilever products but also has two categories of its own, a breakfast

cereal brand called Telma and a line of snack foods that are unavailable anywhere else. She calls

them “local jewels”; they account for about a third of the Israeli unit’s business.

Unilever, the world’s second-largest consumer goods company, operates in nearly 200 countries and

owns brands including Dove soap and Lipton tea.1 It expects Unilever Israel to promote the company’s

global brands, but the local unit is still expected to make its numbers, which means that Gabriel must

also invest in the local products such

as Telma cereal. Gabriel’s team

doesn’t always understand the trade-

offs she has to make — decisions to

support global brands inevitably

take away from local initiatives. “To

be successful,” she said, “I must work

with my team to align our agenda

locally in Israel with the broader

Unilever enterprise agenda. I need to

help my people see how the pieces of

the puzzle fit together.”

Gabriel is a sterling example of

an “enterprise leader” — an execu-

tive who is as successful at serving

the needs of the enterprise as she is

THE LEADING QUESTIONHow can organizations encourage executives to look beyond their individual units and promote the interests of the broader enterprise?

FINDINGS�Managers are not born with the enterprise mindset; they must learn to develop it.

�Timely constructive feedback can have a powerful motivating effect on aspiring leaders.

�Peer-learning networks allow enterprise leaders to discuss challenges.

D E V E L O P I N G T O M O R R O W ’ S L E A D E R S : E N T E R P R I S E L E A D E R S H I P

Developing the Next Generation of Enterprise LeadersAspiring corporate leaders first learn to build and implement visions for their individual business units. But as they advance in their careers, executives also must learn how to lead with an enterprise perspective.BY DOUGLAS A. READY AND M. ELLEN PEEBLES

44 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW FALL 2015 SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU


at growing the unit she heads — and CEOs want

more leaders like her. A survey we recently con-

ducted of top business executives from major

international organizations found that 79% said it

was extremely important to have leaders who act

on behalf of the entire organization and not just

their units.2 The rest said it was very important.

And nearly 65% of those surveyed said they

expected at least half of their senior and midlevel

managers to behave as enterprise leaders.3

The reasons are obvious. Customers increas-

ingly want integrated solutions instead of

products,4 so different business units need to work

together seamlessly. Companies are also attempting

to share resources more efficiently across func-

tional, geographic, and business unit boundaries.5

The expectation that managers will know what’s

happening elsewhere in the enterprise is rising, in

part because new competitors can appear out of

nowhere. Ironically, few organizations have been

set up to support the development of enterprise

leaders. Some 70% of the top executives in our sur-

vey said they were investing little (25% or less) of

their leadership development budgets and their

managerial time and energy in producing the next

generation of enterprise leaders.6

So how are managers learning to become effec-

tive enterprise leaders, and how can organizations

encourage their development? Our initial research

on the activities of enterprise leaders began almost

a decade ago.7 For this article, we surveyed and

conducted in-depth interviews with scores of exec-

utives from the Americas, Europe, and Asia. (See

“About the Research.”) What we found was that,

regardless of the business or the location, enter-

prise leaders developed their capabilities in similar

ways — through a combination of deliberate per-

sonal development, high-level mentoring, and

opportunities afforded by their work that enabled

strong unit performers to become even more effec-

tive as enterprise leaders.

The Hard Work of Enterprise Leadership The essence of enterprise leadership lies in the need

to combine two often incompatible roles — those

of builder and broker. Aspiring leaders learn early

on in their careers to build visions for their units,

strategies to implement those visions, and teams to

execute the strategies.8 But as they progress in their

careers, they must begin to take on responsibility

for the enterprise as a whole. We heard this time

and again in our interviews. We saw it in the survey

data and discussed it in our teaching sessions. We

are not talking about either-or propositions:

Rather, enterprise leaders must excel at being both

advocacy-oriented builders and integration-

minded brokers. That means they need to build

their unit’s vision and integrate it into the wider

corporate vision, clarifying where the enterprise is

going and how their teams can best contribute,

both within and beyond unit, geographic, and

functional boundaries. They must build unit capa-

bilities and share resources and business know-how

across units to contribute to enterprisewide orga-

nizational capability. They need to reconcile their

team’s passion for fulfilling their unit’s mission

with a sense of responsibility and accountability for

the success of the enterprise as a whole. (See “The

Dual Roles of the Enterprise Leader.”)

Michael Gladstone, regional president and U. S.

country manager for innovative products of Pfizer

Inc., the pharmaceuticals giant headquartered in

New York City, offers a compelling example. When

he learned that Pfizer’s team for marketing its blood

thinner Eliquis in Japan needed additional support

in optimizing the marketing plan and determining

how to focus the team’s talent, Gladstone decided to

shift a star member of his own team to the Japanese

project, even though he had no responsibility for or

direct stake in the Japanese unit’s success. What’s

ABOUT THE RESEARCHAlthough we have been conducting research on enterprise leadership for nearly a decade, in early 2014 we launched a year-long research project aimed at gaining a better understanding of what enterprise leaders do and how they learned to do it. To that end, we surveyed senior executives in global companies on the demand for enterprise leaders and what companies are doing to develop this skill set. The responses confirmed our hunch about the demand for enterprise leaders and underscored the relative lack of attention companies pay to developing them. These insights echo our experience teaching thousands of such leaders from companies around the world in enterprise leadership programs.

Following the survey, we selected three companies that we believe have demonstrated exemplary commitment to enterprise leadership development: Unilever, Pfizer, and Li & Fung. We deliberately selected large, global companies based in different continents to illustrate that the benefits and challenges of enterprise leadership are not unique to any one region. With each company, we conducted in-depth interviews with the CEO, HR leaders, and enterprise leaders around the world — about 35 interviews in all.

SLOANREVIEW.MIT.EDU FALL 2015 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW 45

more, reassigning the employee in question meant

that he had to revisit his plans for another initiative

within his own unit. With this move, he was demon-

strating an enterprise mindset — a willingness to

take a hit on his short-term performance for the

benefit of Pfizer as a whole.

Rod MacKenzie, Pfizer’s group senior vice presi-

dent and head of PharmaTherapeutics research

and development, faced similar challenges. Al-

though he runs three areas of research, he pays

attention to what’s happening across the company,

recognizing that competition for resources is in-

tense. “We want people to fight for funding, to

believe that what they are working on is the most

important thing happening in the company,”

MacKenzie said. “But, at the same time, when it be-

comes clear that it is time to shut down a project in

order to redirect resources to more promising ther-

apies, I need to drive home that under those

circumstances we are Pfizer first and unit second.”

At Li & Fung Limited, a leading consumer goods

design, development, sourcing, and logistics com-

pany headquartered in Hong Kong, Paul Raffin,

CEO and president of The Frye Company and

a group president at Li & Fung, operates in a

similarly nuanced environment. Li & Fung has

approximately 28,000 employees spread across

some 300 offices and distribution centers in more

than 40 markets. Its sourcing network encompasses

more than 11,000 vendors around the world.9

At the enterprise level, Li & Fung creates

efficiencies for its vast network of contract manu-

facturers by taking orders and buying the

components (zippers, for example) from a variety

of vendors.

The Frye Company, an artisanal boot and shoe

manufacturer based in New York, might not seem to

fit neatly into Li & Fung’s global sourcing process.10

But Raffin’s responsibility is to make sure that Frye

can thrive in a competitive market where direct on-

line selling is the norm. “Designers put their heart

and soul into creating beautiful products that are

then subjected to the ‘commercialization’ process,

which, if not properly managed, can significantly

alter the product’s aesthetic,” said Raffin, adding that

rewarding cross-functional teams with performance

bonuses greatly aids in the company’s ability to

promote both the “need to understand” and the

“need to feel understood.”

Balancing the goals of the unit with the broader

interests of the enterprise can be difficult. “Let’s face

it — it’s easier to be a silo leader,” Unilever’s Gabriel

said. “This is a more complex leadership challenge, it

takes more energy, and it is simply harder to do.” For

her, advocacy-oriented building was essentially table

stakes, while the more integrative brokering role be-

came key to her ability to be an effective enterprise

leader. The central challenge was to reconcile a series

of embedded tensions and paradoxes, many of

which seem to be unresolvable.11

And yet when we asked company leaders and

HR professionals about the obstacles to developing

enterprise leaders, they focused not on the chal-

lenges of the job itself but on organizational

barriers. Most often they cited strong organiza-

tional cultures that praised builders and

rainmakers, and reward systems that reinforced a

silo-performance-first mentality and entrenched

habits. Most people came up the ranks in silos,

so they didn’t feel the impetus to change; the

THE DUAL ROLES OF THE ENTERPRISE LEADER As executives progress in their careers, they take on additional responsibility for the enterprise as a whole. They must excel as both advocacy-oriented builders and integration-minded brokers.

BUILDERS AND BROKERS

Build unit vision, strategies, and brands … and create shared meaning among units and groups.

Build enthusiasm for the unit mission … and combine that enthusiasm with a sense of responsibility for the success of the entire enterprise.

Build unit capabilities … and turn the unit know-how into an integrated organizational capability.

Build support for unit values and principles … and meld those statements into an authentic enterprise culture.

Build teams and develop individuals … and broker talent across units and geographies to build organizational agility.

46 MIT SLOAN MANAGEMENT REVIEW FALL 2015


COURTESY OF THE FRYE COMPANY

assumption was that if you hit your numbers you

would be left alone.

What this told us was that organizations were

set up to develop strong building skills — and not

the brokering skills so many of the top leaders we

talked to told us they needed. Despite the fact that

so few resources were devoted to deliberately devel-

oping enterprise leaders, top executives said they

wanted their high-potential leaders to start exhibit-

ing these behaviors early in their careers, even if

they weren’t yet in a position to influence activity

outside of their area. Pfizer’s Gladstone suggested

that the earlier one can plant the seeds of an enter-

prise mindset, the better. “Even if people do not

ultimately become senior leaders, it’s helpful for

them to think broadly,” he noted. “Every colleague

in the organization, no matter how narrowly fo-

cused their role, should be thinking about the

enterprise and how what they are doing is ulti-

mately helping the patients that we serve.”

How, then, did these enterprise leaders actually

learn how to be both builders and brokers? In short,

with difficulty.

The Enterprise Leader’s Mindset“A lot of leaders don’t stick around long enough to

learn how to become artful brokers,” observed Pfiz-

er’s MacKenzie. “They do the building, enhance their

personal brands, and then move on. Brokering takes

more time to learn. It’s a matter of developing a

mindset, really — a way of thinking about the world

around you. You won’t find these lessons in any

training program in a course catalogue.”

All of the leaders we spoke with indicated that

they were already accomplished builders, but mas-

tery of the brokering role is highly dependent on

cultivating a new mindset that’s suited to living

with the tensions inherent in the job. After analyz-

ing the responses from our interviews, we identified

six components of the mindset of the successful en-

terprise leader: a heightened sense of place; a broad

sense of context; a sharp sense of perspective; a pow-

erful sense of community; a deep sense of purpose;

and an abiding sense of resiliency. These leaders

were not born with such a mindset; they learned

how to develop it. (See “Leading With an Enterprise

Perspective.”) We’ll look at each of the six compo-

nents in turn.

The enterprise leaders we talked to told us that a

series of learning opportunities served as enablers

for them to develop what we refer to as the six

senses of the enterprise leader’s mindset.

1. A Heightened Sense of Place Many of the

enterprise leaders we interviewed referred to their

companies as a “special place.” They appreciated

the company’s essential identity — so much so that

they could tell stories about how the identity served

as a source of competitive advantage.12 For Li &

Fung’s Raffin, for instance, that identity meant

understanding and respecting Frye’s deep

history of craftsmanship and what owning a pair of

its boots meant to customers. For Unilever’s

Gabriel, it meant having a deep understanding of

both Unilever’s global reach and what the local

products meant to the company’s competitiveness.

In the minds of enterprise leaders, the things the

company sells are more than products. They are

extensions of what the company is and what it is

trying to accomplish in the world.

The enterprise leaders developed this sense of

place primarily by absorbing the corporate culture.13

Some of this was done explicitly, and it was remark-

able how large a role the top leaders played. In

interviews with us, both Unilever CEO Paul Polman

and Pfizer chairman and CEO Ian Read emphasized

their personal involvement. “Leaders often

As an enterprise leader, Paul Raffin is both CEO

and president of The Frye Company,

manufacturer of the boots shown here, as well as a group

president at Li & Fung.


underestimate the enormous influence they have in

shaping and bringing to life a company’s culture,”

Read told us. For Polman, keeping the focus on the en-

terprise’s fundamental purpose was the key to

transcending a unit viewpoint. “In any important

meeting, I tell my team to envision a consumer from

an emerging market at the center of the table,” he said.

“That consumer might well be a poor woman living

under difficult circumstances. If we can make her life a

little easier, provide affordable, nutritious food to im-

prove the lives of her family — a family that might be

going to bed hungry — maintaining that image

makes silo warfare conflicts seem pretty trivial.”

But it was what the top executives did, even more

than what they said, that established the sense of

place for enterprise leaders. For example, Deepika

Rana, Li & Fung’s executive director for the Indian

subcontinent and sub-Saharan Africa, spoke about

the influence of Li & Fung group chairman William

Fung and former group chairman and honorary

chairman Victor Fung as role models. “They are big

believers in building lean, fast, and agile opera-

tions; yet, at the same time, they are also big believers

in the importance of cultural integration, of knowl-

edge sharing, and of stressing the importance that

Li & Fung’s many local entrepreneurs develop a

passion for contributing their know-how to the

group’s ambitions.” The point here is not just that

the two top executives believe in the dual role; in

observing them, Rana realized: “If they can act this

way, why shouldn’t I?”

Still, authentic tone setting is not easy for CEOs

and executive leadership teams. Most CEOs have to

learn to appreciate the power and value of artful

brokering among their leadership teams.14 For

instance, Leonard Lane, executive director of the

Fung Academy and advisor to the chairman, says

that William and Victor Fung didn’t always cham-

pion building and brokering equally; previously,

they focused on growing builders. “If you wanted

to learn how to become an entrepreneur, you came

to Li & Fung. But the world changed, and our cus-

tomers wanted more integrated solutions. Our

silo-focused entrepreneurs began to recognize the

need to collaborate across boundaries to deliver

what our customers wanted. That’s when we real-

ized we needed to start developing an enterprise

mindset,” he said. William Fung agreed: “We

needed to learn how to broker capabilities across

the businesses in our network. Once we learned

how to do that, the whole network made gains.”

2. A Broad Sense of Context The enterprise leaders

we spoke with demonstrated a comprehensive under-

standing of the business and how the various pieces of

their companies fit together. Their understanding was

informed by a variety of postings spanning boundar-

ies of place, unit, and function. Those experiences also

widened their worldview, again enabling them to

share stories of where and how the companies they

worked for fit onto the broader world stage — and

why their work is important.

Some of our interviewees spoke of these experi-

ences as intense, crucible assignments.15 Gabriel at

Unilever Israel, for example, described a prior

assignment as a country manager with a large,

global pharmaceutical company, where she had

two bosses: one local, the other global. The local

boss was focused on maximizing short-term prof-

its, while the global leader was more interested in

the big picture and long-term performance. The

local manager paid her salary — but the global

manager influenced her performance reviews,

which also affected her rewards. She had to learn

how to balance the inherent tensions — a skill she

says prepared her for her current role at Unilever.

As Gabriel’s experience indicates, the value in

crossing boundaries is not just the acquisition of

LEADING WITH AN ENTERPRISE PERSPECTIVEOur research suggests six components of the mindset of the successful enterprise leader: a heightened sense of place; a broad sense of context; a sharp sense of perspective; a powerful sense of community; a deep sense of purpose; and an abiding sense of resiliency.

Powerful sense of

community

Heightened sense of place

Deep sense of purpose

Broad sense of context

Sharpsense of

perspective

Abiding sense of

resiliency

Integration

Integration



experience in different units, functions, or coun-

tries but also the chance to learn how to balance

competing goals and see how different units, cul-

tures, and ways of thinking fit together and into the

wider corporate whole. It was in this spirit that

Pfizer’s Gladstone sent his star performer to Japan,

expecting that she’d come back with a broader per-

spective that would be more important to her

leadership effectiveness than another position

within her own group would have been. She re-

turned to the United States as a more effective

listener and adaptive leader, with firsthand experi-

ence in how overseas units interact with the “center”

and one another. In Gladstone’s view, this has led to

more of an enterprise mindset, “less focused on ex-

clusively building her business and more attentive

to the workings of the enterprise.”

Unilever pursues a similar philosophy, using

short-term assignments under its ambassador pro-

gram to promote a multifaceted perspective and

encouraging enterprise leaders to apply their new

experiences to old contexts. Osita Abana, an assistant

communications manager from Unilever in Nigeria,

was a global ambassador at Save the Children, work-

ing to address malnutrition in Bangladesh. He spent

a week meeting with health workers and mothers in

villages, during which he taught women how to cor-

rectly position their babies for breastfeeding and

shared ideas for setting up vegetable gardens to grow

food for their families and generate income. Such

cross-boundary experiences have become a com-

mon organizational practice at Unilever.16 As

Polman explained, “We broker talent around the

world, and I believe there is no better way to develop

an enterprise mindset than to see a variety of pieces

of the enterprise from a practical perspective.”

Leaders frequently draw on their sense of context

when they ask their staffs to roll up their sleeves and

make sacrifices. We saw this at Pfizer, where one of

the innovative products group’s drug patents would

soon expire. Liz Barrett, then president of the com-

pany’s innovative pharma division for Europe,

shifted it to the established products unit ahead of

schedule to give them extra time to develop and ex-

ecute a marketing plan. The move cost her team

revenue and forced a reduction in sales staff, but

Barrett concluded that her people’s time was best

spent discovering and marketing new products.

3. A Sharp Sense of Perspective Although a

heightened sense of place and a broader sense of

context are important, outstanding enterprise lead-

ers also have a sharpened sense of perspective. As

Yaw Nsarkoh, managing director of Unilever Nige-

ria, explained, they see the overall picture but they

also appreciate the pixels that make up the picture.

Nsarkoh told us that he takes every opportunity to

learn from bosses, peers, subordinates, and partic-

ularly consumers — which helps him appreciate

different management styles instead of forcing his

own. He says this is especially critical in a multicul-

tural workplace. Moreover, it informs his view of

the company’s role in the market, allowing him to

reconcile seemingly conflicting priorities. If a tal-

ented employee leaves the company to join a

competitor serving the same community, for ex-

ample, he’ll feel the loss, but he also knows that his

former teammate will still be helping Africa.

Most learning takes place through the job

assignment.17 But experience goes only so far in

developing an enterprise leader’s mindset. The key

enablers for gaining perspective are coaching, men-

toring, and observation. “We don’t just throw our

high-potential enterprise leaders into a job and

hope that good things will happen,” said Jonathan

Donner, Unilever’s vice president for global learn-

ing and capability development. “We identify

stretch assignments — then make sure budding

leaders are coached and mentored, and networked

with other enterprise leaders. ”

Certainly, the impact of tone setting, role mod-

eling, and cross-boundary experiences will be

diminished if leaders aren’t rewarded for brokering

as well as building. This should go without saying,

but it can run counter to the prevailing culture —

even in the organizations where enterprise leaders

thrive. Tanya Clemons, senior vice president and

chief talent officer for Pfizer, put it this way: “Our

leaders are naturally inclined to be builders. That’s

how they have been promoted and rewarded up

until now. But we need to begin rewarding them for

demonstrating enterprise perspective as well. Inev-

itably that means rethinking many time-honored

review and reward systems.”

Pfizer is taking a more personalized approach. It

coaches leaders on how to handle aspects of their jobs

that they may have had little experience with. Among


them, Clemons says, is understanding the nuances of

dealing with the media, with Congress, with analysts,

and with community leaders. Constructive and

timely feedback can have a powerful effect on aspir-

ing leaders and can motivate them to be similarly

positive with their own people.18 At Frye, Raffin cred-

its feedback from a former boss with helping him

sharpen his enterprise perspective, which he in turn

attempts to pass on to others: “I used to be a com-

mand and control manager … [and] I used to hoard

knowledge. But now I share it. I share what’s happen-

ing in the group head office at Li & Fung and then try

to align those challenges with ours at Frye. And now

it’s not just me. We have created a culture and a mind-

set where knowledge is brokered for positive action.

Every team member has an accountability to listen, to

translate, and to act.”

It’s important to note that leaders don’t just

benefit from coaching and mentoring from above;

as many note, they have also been students of peers

and subordinates. As Unilever Nigeria’s Nsarkoh

put it: “I have learned from Unilever’s senior execu-

tives, but I have also learned from factory workers. I

have learned from listening to people — in trying

to understand what causes their behavior — then

trying my best to help them do their best.”

4. A Powerful Sense of Community We know

from our prior research on high-potential talent

that people are drawn to peer networks that chal-

lenge and support them.19 The same is true for

senior-level enterprise leaders. And savvy compa-

nies don’t leave those connections to chance.

Rather, they enable the creation of peer-learning

networks where enterprise leaders can discuss key

challenges with others, find kindred spirits, and get

help.20 Even though leaders we spoke to indicated

that they spend a great deal of time cultivating their

personal and professional networks, we also found

examples of company-designed initiatives that

helped senior executives build a powerful sense of

community and distributed leadership. In such in-

stances, the process of learning together was at least

as important as the content components.21

At Pfizer, for example, the Chairman’s Challenge

program enables a select group of senior-level enter-

prise leaders to interact with the chairman and the

executive committee and to be part of an intensive

peer-learning group. Cohort groups of 12 spend a

little more than a year focusing on a particular busi-

ness challenge and working closely with executives

inside and outside the company to develop solutions.

For example, working with a nongovernmental orga-

nization, a recent group studied health care needs in

emerging markets. Although the project entailed a

significant investment of time, one participant called

it “great team building beyond what would have hap-

pened through any other program.”

Facing a different set of challenges, Li & Fung has

oriented its learning program for enterprise leaders

differently. Since many of its leaders are accustomed

to operating opportunistically in emerging markets,

the program provides formalized management and

leadership training along with specific instruction

on topics such as influencing without authority,

managing in a global matrix, the art of persuasion,

communication skills, and mobilizing teams.

5. A Deep Sense of Purpose Enterprise leaders

expressed exceptional passion about their careers

and their companies. Many of the enterprise lead-

ers we interviewed became emotional when talking

about their roles and the impact they were having

on other people’s lives. That’s partly due to the per-

sonal fulfillment these people found in their work

but even more the result of their reflection, intro-

spection, and willingness to change as leaders.

Polman, for instance, is strongly committed to

environmental sustainability while also pursuing a

path of growth. He promotes both themes through

Leaders don’t just benefit from coaching and mentoring from above; as many note, they have also been students of peers and subordinates.



the company’s strategy statements, values, and man-

agement practices. The commitment to both

sustainability and growth can pose challenges for

Unilever’s managers. In procurement, for instance,

factoring sustainability into decisions can drive up

costs even as employees are expected to manage costs.

In the face of conflicts, employees are expected to

elevate decisions to an organizational level where

managers have the authority to consider the trade-

offs of adhering to Unilever’s purpose while remaining

fiscally responsible. “People want to work for a com-

pany with a sense of purpose,” Polman told us.

At Li & Fung, the founders’ sense of purpose serves

to inspire employees in their work. Over the years,

Rana told us, the Fung brothers set an example of

being loyal to their employees and putting people first.

In addition to being results-driven, the brothers also

demonstrate a “softer, more human side” that is inte-

grated into the way Li & Fung functions. In particular,

they show a sincere commitment to family values.

“I have seen many examples of the Fung princi-

ples guiding behaviors,” Rana says. “I would get

personal calls from either of the brothers checking

up on an employee’s wife, child, or parent. They

have set an example of leading from the front and

are building a top-down and bottom-up belief in

the culture and values of the company. [They] have

long stated that their people are their biggest asset,

and they have used this asset to leapfrog into suc-

cess over the last decade.” Rather than influencing

employees through individual speeches or stories,

the everyday connections between the CEO’s sense

of purpose and the corporate vision form indelible

impressions about what’s important.

6. An Abiding Sense of Resiliency Many of the

top leaders we interviewed spoke about the impor-

tance of building a cadre of enterprise leaders who

not only are committed to continuous improve-

ment but demonstrate a remarkably high level of

personal resiliency. “We need to create an organiza-

tion that is fit for the future, and to do that we need

leaders who are fit for the future,” Unilever’s Polman

noted. “We can’t build a next-generation company

with a last-generation leadership mindset.”

One Unilever enterprise leader who exhibits what

Polman was talking about is Laurent Kleitman, the

CEO of Unilever Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

While managing Unilever’s business in Asia, Africa,

the Middle East, and Turkey in 2009, Kleitman was

hired away by another large consumer products

company. However, after three years with the new

company, he returned to Unilever. “What I missed

was how much trust our senior leaders place in

people to do the right thing for our consumers,”

Kleitman explained. “If conditions on the ground

change here — and believe me, they change a lot in

this region — I am empowered to change our pro-

cesses overnight if necessary.”

What we’re describing is distinct from the call for

greater organizational agility, so often heard as an

answer to increased competitive complexity. Agility

is critical, to be sure, but it is an organizational capa-

bility.22 The people we talked to played key roles in

building agile organizations, and in so doing dem-

onstrated their capacity to be resilient. They were

able to pick themselves and others up after stum-

bling and, more importantly, to pivot to the future.

How do Kleitman and other effective enterprise

leaders we studied manage to see the importance of

the micro and the macro simultaneously? By rely-

ing on the mindset and the senses we have

discussed.23 Belief that they are part of purpose-

driven enterprises enables them to focus on the big

picture and resist “sweating the small stuff.”24 Their

exposure to a variety of cultures and different

business conditions helps them to abandon one-

size-fits-all thinking. Their trust in their leaders

and their peers enables them to share successes and

combat difficulties together.25 They learn from

their mistakes, they change, and they grow.

As Bill Carapezzi, Pfizer’s senior vice president for

finance and global operations and one of its enter-

prise leaders, put it: “The way I felt about myself and

the negative relationships I developed working with

people with a territorial approach was no fun. I was

just like everyone else around me — I was a silo leader.

Everybody was watching the borders. As I learned to

work in a new way at Pfizer, I developed better rela-

tionships and learned how to mobilize my team for

the greater good, which enabled me to deliver more

value for the company, and I just felt better.”

Douglas A. Ready is a senior lecturer on organiza-tional effectiveness at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the founder and CEO of the International Consortium for


Executive Development Research (ICEDR), a global talent management network based in Lexington, Massachusetts. M. Ellen Peebles is a senior fellow at ICEDR and a freelance writer. Comment on this arti-cle at http://sloanreview.mit.edu/x/57110, or contact the authors at [email protected].

REFERENCES

1. “About Us,” 2015, www.unilever.com.

2. D.A. Ready and M.E. Peebles, International Consortium for Executive Development Research (ICEDR)-sponsored research on enterprise leaders, June-August 2014.

3. Ibid.

4. D. Midgley, “Understanding Customers in the Solution Economy,” August 24, 2012, http://hbr.org.

5. J.I. Cash, Jr., M.J. Earl, and R. Morison, “Teaming Up to Crack Innovation and Enterprise Integration,” Harvard Business Review 86, no. 11 (November 2008): 90-100.

6. Ready and Peebles, ICEDR-sponsored research.

7. D.A. Ready, “Leading at the Enterprise Level,” MIT Sloan Management Review 45, no. 3 (spring 2004): 87-91.

8. L.A. Hill, “Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership” (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2003).

9. “About Us,” 2015, www.lifung.com.

10. M. Kristal, “Frye: The Boots That Made History — 150 Years of Craftsmanship” (New York: Rizzoli, 2013).

11. D.L. Dotlich, P.C. Cairo, and C. Cowan, “The Unfinished Leader: Balancing Contradictory Answers to Unsolvable Problems” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2014).

12. T.J. Erickson and L. Gratton, “What It Means to Work Here,” Harvard Business Review 85, no. 3 (March 2007): 104-112.

13. E.H. Schein, “Organizational Culture and Leadership” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985).

14. B. George and P. Sims, “True North: Discover Your Au-thentic Leadership” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

15. W.G. Bennis and R.J. Thomas, “Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders” (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

16. W.W. George, K.G. Palepu, C.I. Knoop, and M. Preble, “Unilever’s Paul Polman: Developing Global Leaders,” Harvard Business School case no 413-097 (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2013).

17. M.W. McCall, Jr., M.M. Lombardo, and A.M. Morrison, “The Lessons of Experience: How Successful Executives Develop on the Job” (New York: Free Press, 1988).

18. M. Goldsmith and M. Reiter, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful” (New York: Hyperion, 2007).

19. D.A. Ready, J.A. Conger, and L.A. Hill, “Are You a High Potential?” Harvard Business Review 88, no. 6 (June 2010): 78-84.

20. M.W. McCall, Jr., “High Flyers: Developing the Next

Generation of Leaders” (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 1998).

21. D.A. Ready, “How Storytelling Builds Next-Generation Leaders,” MIT Sloan Management Review 43, no. 4 (summer 2002): 63-69; D. Ancona, T.W. Malone, W.J. Orlikowski, and P.M. Senge, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader,” Harvard Business Review 85, no. 2 (February 2007): 92-100; and J.P. Spillane, “Distributed Leadership” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).

22. R.A. Shafer, L. Dyer, J. Kilty, J. Amos, and G.A. Erick-sen, “Crafting a Human Resource Strategy to Foster Organizational Agility: A Case Study,” working paper 00-08, Cornell University, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Center for Advanced Human Resource Stud-ies, Ithaca, New York, 2000.

23. R.L. Martin, “The Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking” (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2007).

24. J. Kurtzman, “Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010).

25. M.M. Pillutla, D. Malhotra, and J.K. Murnighan, “Attributions of Trust and the Calculus of Reciprocity,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 39, no. 5 (September 2003): 448-455.

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