Leading with values E-Book

Pedro Nueno

• Herausgeber: Plataforma
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Spanisch

Seitenzahl: 95

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

These days, values seem to be a scarce currency. Instead, behavioral guidelines have been replaced by laws and regulations that often ignore the spirit of a company or its management style. Leading with Values is a book about the importance of values in leadership. People, companies and society must align with a management whose priorities are the common good and doing things correctly and effectively. The better people we are, the more we strive to perform well, the more we develop as persons and professionals and contribute to the progress of society. In this book you will discover how to practice business management with values, the ingredient that many organizations lack to achieve excellence.

Leseprobe

Leading With Values

Pedro Nueno

First edition in this collection: May 2024

© Pedro Nueno, 2023

© of this edition: Plataforma Editorial, 2023

Plataforma Editorial

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ISBN: 978-84-10243-22-4

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Contents

AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. The Value of Humility2. The Value of Diligence3. The Value of Generosity4. The Value of Honesty5. The Value of Congratulating6. The Value of Gratitude7. The Value of Professionalism8. The Value of Optimism9. Practicing Values10. Improving Values11. Values for the Future12. What Can We Do?

Acknowledgements

All values are important to me and, when I completed this book, at one of the moments when we most talked about the topic, I observed that one of the values I had written about happened to be gratitude. How many people should I be grateful to? Responding to that would take longer than the book itself, because in practically every project I have ever done, I can find people without whose help things would probably not have worked out well. And I should not say the projects I have done but the projects I have been involved in.

A Harvard colleague brought me round to the idea of inserting some humorous drawings. The best model I could think of was The New Yorker magazine. I came to an agreement with them to include in my books some of their humorous drawings, most of them published years ago but entirely relevant.

I allude to some teachers who motivated me many years ago to take into account the values that contribute to making things better. But I must also mention the example of many companies with which I have collaborated and whose executives I have seen doing their management job according to a set of values. I must also thank my family, my entrepreneurial children and my wife, Montse, for their support in allowing me to devote a very considerable part of my weekends and holidays to writing my books and studying the subjects I focus on. The final format, and also the inclusion of the humorous drawings, has benefited from the relevant contribution of Denise Clerc, who is well acquainted with the areas in which I work.

Introduction

Philosophically, much has been said and written about values: there are schools and authors who have developed theories and treaties about them, such as Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, Bertrand Russell, even Ortega y Gasset. There are subjectivist, objectivist, relativist, realist positions...

In the particular case of this book, when I talk about values I refer to “good”. Values, in my view, are assets that ready us for action in a certain way (good), perfecting us as persons.

Of course, I do not pretend here to expound upon any theory of values; that is not my area. Rather, my intention is to show how important they are for action in business practice and to exemplify it. Companies are, after all, groups of people who come together for the ultimate purpose of “creating value’”. The better people we are, the more we strive to perform well, the more we develop as human beings and professionals and the better we will contribute to the progress of society.

Values in business management have always been a key issue in my professional career. IESE saw the light in 1958 thanks to the values of its founder, Antonio Valero, the team of professors and administrators with whom he surrounded himself, and the entrepreneurs who considered that the project was good for society and supported it. When years later I joined the institution, which by then had already made great strides, most of the founders were still there, with their respective values. For those professors (Antonio Valero, Félix Huerta, Juan Antonio Pérez López, Carlos Cavallé, Juan Farran, Rafael Termes, Fernando Pereira, Esteban Masifern, José Faus) the priority was to take the institution forward; they aspired to put it among the top ones in the world, and this required them to learn. Many enrolled in a teacher training programme at Harvard, the International Teachers Program, which the university had launched to support the international development of teacher training.

To take the International Teachers Program (the ITP as they called it), they had to move to Boston for the duration of the programme, an academic course of almost one year. Some shared apartments and, given the duration, travelled with their wives, who accompanied them during their time there. Many explained that they had to go to Boston by boat because in those years air travel was neither commonplace nor easy.

Their effort to learn good English and obtain the ITP qualification from Harvard was extraordinary. One of them told me that two married teachers who travelled there with their wives shared an apartment. Every day they ate something for breakfast that they bought at the supermarket, but they hadn’t grasped that it was dog food. The packaging did say “dog food”, but they hadn’t twigged and thought it was like a variant of the cereals they knew many people in America ate for breakfast. They only realised when they properly read and understood the packaging. Ever since then they have always thought that in America they take good care of their pets.

Those professors were not expecting any significant financial compensation from IESE; on the contrary, they handed over twenty-five percent of what they received as directors or business advisors.

In IESE’s culture at its inception, the professors’ idea was that by giving IESE 25% of their income as consultants or directors they would manage to exceed what IESE paid them for their work. Throughout their career, they had to spend 25 % of their time on teaching, another 25% on research, another 25 % on issues related to school management (managing programmes, departments, attracting participants with the right level for the programmes, etc.), and another 25 % on activities outside the school as directors or consultants.

The values of those professors were transmitted to those participating in the school’s programmes, who also helped IESE by hiring its graduates in the master’s programme, sending their managers to other IESE programmes and providing funds to enable the school’s progression, for it needed professors, buildings with classrooms, halls, offices and staff to manage the project.

A professor’s success was measured in several directions:

Their training: they were supported to do a doctorate at some of the best schools in the world such as Harvard, Chicago, Stanford or Wharton, and also to conduct research that would be published in books or in journals of international academic prestige.Their relationship with enterprise: professors who had more business connections provided contacts for the younger lecturers, a relationship that also helped the institution grow. They were also told how the institution could be supported financially (through actions such as attracting participants in the programmes, something that was also excellent for the participants’ own development, for obtaining donations, and for access to national or international projects in educational institutions); they were rotated in managing internal topics to promote a proper understanding of the institution (from acting as an assistant to a professor who had an important responsibility, such as heading the master’s programme, to they themselves attaining those responsibilities years later).

The goal was to make of IESE one of the world’s leading business schools thanks to the dedication of its professors, who did not expect to be financially rewarded for those results. The professors’ contributions were confidential, but everyone knew that some of them contributed much more financially than what the institution paid them. Clearly, what enthused those professors was the institution’s success.

All of these aspects, prompted by values, have helped to put IESE among the top schools in the world today. In this book we will examine values, a subject that is unquestionably of interest to people, businesses and society. It can also be very useful to reflect on it, for in order to practise company management with values we need to have in-depth knowledge of what a good management process should look like.

But I have also been induced to write about this by the perception that values are declining around the world and are being replaced by laws and regulations, although it is not the same thing to want to do things in the best way to satisfy all the people involved than to do them in the easiest and simplest way possible in compliance with laws and regulations. Of course it is necessary to comply with them, but it is merely a filter of our management actions.

1.The Value of Humility

We start with this difficult value. How can a man or woman be humble if they have a university degree, took a master’s degree in one of the world’s best schools, joined the Spanish subsidiary of an American multinational as an assistant to one of the sales managers and fifteen years later, after climbing positions, was assigned the chairmanship of the Spanish subsidiary of a multinational?

The appointment appears in the press because it is also made official when the president of the multinational travels to Spain to visit the company’s new plant, hold a meeting with the management team and give a conference in a function with company executives, customers, suppliers and banks that is also attended by senior government officials. When he or she receives the appointment, the executive takes to the stage, shakes hands with the company’s chairperson and dozens of media photographers start taking snaps because the multinational’s president is a world-renowned personality.

When leaving the stage to applause, even if you don’t want to, the thought comes to you: “I am so important now”. If your brain is trained to stimulate you to be humble, you’ll soon think: “They’re overdoing it, I don’t deserve so much applause, I’m not comfortable. I would like to do things really well but with less applause”.

One of the most important yet humblest people I have ever met was Giovanni Agnelli, president of Fiat (a company founded by his grandfather), considered to be one of Europe’s top fortunes. To my surprise, one day I received a letter addressed to three people: Mr Agnelli, Admiral Turner, who commanded the United States Sixth Fleet (the one that “monitored” the Mediterranean) and who sat on several important boards, and me. We were summoned to Boston, to the Harvard Business School, for a meeting scheduled to start early in the morning, on a specific date, around two months later. It told us that we could arrive the day before in the afternoon and they would arrange for us to sleep there.