What All Great Leaders Have

According to leadership expert Justin Menkes, all brilliant leaders share a set of common aptitudes that gives them the business savvy they need to become star leaders. He explains how three categories of management skills - accomplishing tasks, working with and through other people, and judging oneself and adapting one’s behavior accordingly - present the keys to determining how well an executive will perform. He writes that these cognitive skills are where employers must focus to find the right executives to recruit and promote.

According to Menkes, Executive Intelligence is a distinct type of intelligence and critical thinking that is not necessarily attached to an academic pedigree but plays a critical role in business decision-making. Most of the modern "secrets" of management success - including breaking the rules, managing logistics, expressing empathy, instilling values and communicating a vision - do nothing to explain the core drivers of leadership success. He writes that these theories "constitute a costly distraction from identifying what really causes leadership excellence."

In his search for the specific cognitive skills that determine success in the business environment, Menkes has developed a theory of intelligence that counters other methods and theories of management effectiveness "that are gravely inadequate when it comes to differentiating business talent." The intellectual ability to do the job - is one of the primary determinants of whether someone succeeds or fails as a leader. He argues that a 12-minute IQ test can predict job performance almost as well as a two-hour job interview. He sets out to develop a theory of intelligence that is appropriate for the business setting and can accurately measure a manager’s relevant cognitive strengths and weaknesses.

While detailing how a lack of Executive intelligence is a pervasive problem for many companies, he describes CEO Roger Smith’s decision to automate production at General Motors ro address labor-relations and plant-efficiency problems. Instead of improving plant productivity, Smith’s decision lost GM market share and reduced plant productivity. Smith’s decision lost GM market share and reduced plant productivity. Menkes writes that Smith failed to question the unintended consequences of his initiative, which included severely limited flexibility and less ability to change product lines.

As a counterpoint to Smith’s lack of Executive Intelligence, Menkes introduces Thoratec Corp. CEO Keith Grossman, who turned the company around by recognizing the flaws in his industry’s conventional wisdom and identifying unintended consequences surrounding the production of a new cardiac-assist device.

Executive Intelligence is central to leadership performance because it helps executives articulate considerations that move others, in their own interest, to agree with a decision. Guiding and persuading others by articulating sound facts and logical conclusions is how executives skillfully turn thinking into action.

"Executive Intelligence" by J. Menkes

Emerging Regional Economic Development Priorities

Through a combination of grass-roots discussions, surveys and statistical analyses of the economy, some of Northeast Ohio’s priorities are emerging:

• Building an appropriately skilled and educated work force.
• Improving quality and funding equity in primary and secondary education.
• Creating high-growth industries that complement our traditional strengths.
• Enhancing the vibrancy of our core cities.
• Advancing racial inclusion and income equity.

Our strategy for regional competitiveness is in formation and will become clearer with time, but, surely, there is no "silver bullet" solution. Economies are not so simple. Success will require a multitude of cooperative efforts.

Brad Whitehead, program director for the Cleveland Foundation and member of the loaned staff of the Fund for Our Economic Future, a collaboration of 80 philanthropic organizations in Northeast Ohio working to transform the region’s economy.

5/2/06

According to the survey, which included responses from 1,400 CFOs from U.S. companies with 20 or more employees, 22 percent of companies have adopted no strategies to combat the rising costs.

SmartBusiness Cleveland 5/2006

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Our Government at Work

It costs 1.4¢ to mint a penny and 6.4¢ to mint a nickel.

Kiplinger 6/06