hi I'm Dave Ulrich I'm one of the three co-authors of the book leadership code we appreciate

your time and listening to these ideas and hope they're as helpful to you as they have been to us
we begin the discussion of leadership code with a very simple question what makes an effective
leader what a great question we have to confess we're not the first person to ask that question fact
when we got on Google and we googled the term leader and leadership we got twenty to thirty
million hits were way down the line and asking that question so we decided to do something a
little different instead of coming up with a whole new theory of leadership we wanted to look at
what was out there and find out are there some major common themes that we can synthesize
and integrate that describes and answers the question what makes an effective leader so we used
a methodology that was really really simple we went to about 15 or 20 people who were we think
the thought leaders in leadership these are folks who've written four or five books each they've
done leadership 360s for 15 to 20 years they're people you would probably know I won't list
them all for the embarrassment of missing some that we went to but these are the best we know
we asked them how many 360s they've done in their careers the some of that was over two
million then we asked them two questions question one what percent of successful leadership in
your experience is basically the same stuff all leaders everywhere top-to-bottom big companies
small companies publicly traded privately held global domestic what come what are the central
core things that every leader everywhere must be able to know and do when we ask the percent
of what that should be what we found was a fascinating response it ranged from fifty to eighty
five percent some said fifty percent is unique some said fifteen percent is unique some said fifty
percent is the same some said eighty five percent is the same our take is 60 to 70 percent 60 to 70
percent of what any leader anywhere has to know and do is the same basic stuff question two
what is it and these time our thought leader colleagues recommended their books so we looked at
their books looked at competency models from other firms we combed the literature and we tried
to say what makes an effective leader what is that core common set of stuff that every leader
everywhere has got to do we called that the leadership code the code is the basics the codebook
the absolute core of what leadership is about as we did that research we found there were five
things if you think four corners of a sheet of paper and then a middle circle one corner of the
sheet of paper is a leader has to be a strategist if you want to be an effective leader you have to
have a point of view about where your unit is going at the top of the company that's the whole
enterprise in a functional unit it's your function and a team and an organization it's your team but
you have to have a position about where you want your organization to go as you go forward
second is you have to be an executor you have to be somebody who's able to get work done who
has accountability discipline and the ability to execute and make sure that things are done and
done well on the other corner of the sheet of paper is you have to be a talent manager leaders by
definition work with people they engage them they connect with them they work with them they
communicate with them and they help people feel like they're part of a good team at the top
corner of the circle the fourth piece is you have to be a human capital developer you have to be
somebody who builds a next generation in the organization you have to be able to map the
workforce create a firm brand and figure out what the talent is that needs to be there in the future
for roles of leadership strategist where are we going executor how do we get there talent manager
who goes with us and human capital capital developer who stays when we're gone what we
discovered is most leaders are predisposed to one of those four most leaders kind of have a
natural act I like being a strategist and figuring out the future I like being a talent manager and
working with other people I like being an executor and getting things done but then what we
discovered in the middle is that there's a core back Derr that every leader has to master we call
that personal proficiency it's not a role it's a set of personal competencies that allow you to be
trusted by those you lead personal proficiency deals with insights about yourself with your
ability to know yourself to learn to have integrity to have emotional intelligence to exercise good
judgment that's it we think there's a codebook of leadership a strategist an executor a talent
manager a human capital developer and personal proficiency that allows you to connect with
others that's this book it's actually a very simple book if you want to be an effective leader here's
what you must know and what you must do and you look at where your strengths are and so as
we drafted this book and we looked at this massive leadership work we begin to identify four or
five or six things in each of those areas that will help you be a more effective leader now one of
the things that we think is always helpful is looking at the leadership mirror how do I rank how
do I rate so we've got a survey online on that survey you can score yourself and do a self-
assessment and even better you can begin to get data from others how do others see me as a
strategist an executor a human capital developer or talent manager and based on that information
I can begin to make changes and improve my leadership the purpose of this book is very simple
if you want to be a more effective leader this is what it takes by the way this is the basics it's not
the whole game but it's the basics that you must do to lead effectively and we will help you make
that happen
you've just looked at how strategists are unique and one of the key differentiators of a great
strategist is that they have a point of view well there's two conditions that strategists need to have
a point of view about the first is the future looks similar to the present in that case the point of
view needed is one about how to build greater technical and organization capabilities than
competitors so that we can delight customers in better ways than then that our competitors are
able to the other condition is when the future looks very different than the present in that case the
strategist needs to have a point of view and address two questions the first question is what's our
customer value proposition and the second question is what's the direction of growth this
business is going to take in the future well let's look at customer value propositions all a
customer value proposition is is that it answers why do our customers buy from us we see five
typical customer value proposition options that lower price higher quality and performance better
service more innovation and faster and sometimes you see a value proposition that's a
combination of cost with one of the others in a way that could be a value proposition at any rate
we're looking for in both the direction of growth and in the customer value proposition we can't
be all things to all people so our point of view as a strategist needs to be about how do we be at
industry parody in in all but one of them in which case we're a world-class let's look at the
second issue second issue is about what's our direction of growth let's look at we did five
customer value proposition plus one which is one of the five divided by price which gives us a
value let's look at five different potential directions of growth first option is we could be like
BMW motorcycles and when BMW motorcycles looks to the future and looks at both products
and customers you could have does the direction of growth need to be if we think about our
existing products and services and our existing customers similar products and services and
similar customers and then new products and services a new customer so that matrix gives us our
direction of growth if you look at a company like BMW motorcycles it's a product or a service
direction of growth so what they're looking for is for similar and new customers who are going to
buy the product a very different direction of growth would be somebody like American Express
they are organized around the idea of a customer or a market segment so their market segment or
customer is business travelers so in that direction of growth they're looking for similar and new
products to bring to their existing customer set that they know more about than anybody else the
third option is technology let's think about a company like Google that has this search engine
technology at the heart of everything that it does so in a technology strategy the direction of
growth from similar existing in new customers and similar existing and new products is diagonal
they're like a solution looking for a problem they're looking to drive that technology concept into
both similar and new customers as well as similar and new products and services the fourth
option is a distribution strategy so think southland corporation which owns 7-eleven again their
direction of growth is diagonal they're looking to fill the distribution channel with products and
services that are the most profitable for any similar and new customers that might come into a
store the fifth option is production capacity virgin airlines would it be an example of a
production capacity company which is trying to keep an Asset full and running at optimal
capacity so they've got all these airplanes that go whether they've got passengers on them or not
so what virgin needs to do is to keep those planes full and running so again another diagonal
direction of growth anyway to summarize strategists face two conditions one is the future looks
like the present the other is the future looks very different from the present in either case the
issue is about building both technical and organization capabilities that are consistent with where
we're going that's the point of the view of the strategist well it's time to apply this idea to your
own organization and again what you need is a point of view and then you're going to apply this
matrix to see what it means for you so again we go back to the first question does the future of
your organization look more like the present or is it somehow different in some major ways the
exercise here with the matrix the the five by five if your organization is look similar today as it
does in the future is to draw an X in terms of the customer value proposition in the direction of
growth so you'll be in one of 25 cells put an X in the cell that you think you are today then think
about who is our toughest competitor put a y in that cell now that could be the same cell that
you're in or it could be one of the other 24 cells if it's a different cell than you're in and the
question is how can we begin to anticipate what these competitors might do in the future based
on their direction of growth and their customer value proposition where do we overlap with this
competitor where we where we very different where do we expect to compete with them and
what might we do about that the second case is where the future looks very different from the
present in that case draw an X in the matrix about where you see yourself today what's our
current customer value proposition what's our current direction of growth then look to the future
how do I think the future will be different than the present which cell are we in in that future how
big is the gap in terms of the current customer value proposition in the current direction of
growth from the future once I understand that the next question is as I think about the technical
and the organization capabilities it will take to win and be successful in our industry what is it
that we really need to acquire or develop in terms of technical and organization capabilities
which are the technical and organization capabilities which will continue that we've that we've
already developed in our current strategy and which are the ones that we should stop doing that
are no longer relevant given this new direction you