Home > Resources > Published E-Zines > Published in 2005 > Leadership E-Zines > November 2005

Progress! First-Class Leadership - Issue No. 10/ November 2005

Dear Reader,

Mr. Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management thinkers of our time and often labeled the guru of gurus, passed away on November 11, 2005 at the age of 95, just 10 days shy of his 96th birthday.

Peter Drucker, born in Austria and later an immigrant to the United States, was a visionary in many ways. For example, he was the first to assert that workers should be treated as assets, not as liabilities. That was approximately 50 years ago!

What I didn't know until I read the Business Week article "The Man Who Invented Management" is that Peter Drucker actually often acted like a coach to his clients.

"It was never his style to bring CEOs clear, concise answers to their problems but rather to frame the questions that could uncover the larger issues standing in the way of performance. 'My job,' he once told a client, 'is to ask questions. It's your job to provide answers.'" Says Dan Lufkin, a co-founder of the investment banking firm Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Inc., which often consulted with Drucker in the 1960s: "He would never give you an answer. That was frustrating for a while. But while it required a little more brain matter, it was enormously helpful to us."

That's coaching in a pure sense, because it leaves the ownership and responsibility for the insights, decisions and subsequent actions with the coachee.

Apparently, he was a visionary also in this aspect, because while nobody talked about executive coaching in the 1960's, Peter Drucker was already doing it.

Let's keep progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.

Back to Top

Series: The Purpose of Executive Coaching (Part V)

By Charlie Lang

Download this article

Can't open PDF documents? Then download the free Foxit PDF Reader

Changing Corporate Culture - How a Coach Can Support the Leader in this Process

Corporate Culture was defined by Deal and Kennedy, the authors of "Corporate Cultures - The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life" as ...the way we do things around here. This is a very simple yet concise definition of corporate culture.

Corporate culture is influenced on one hand by formal and informal rules, regulations and systems, and on the other hand by the behavior of corporate leaders, particularly the head of an organization.

In this article I will focus more on the leaders' behaviors and how a coach can support the leader in the attempt to achieve a corporate success culture.

Strong Culture = Success Culture?

The daughter company of one of my former clients, a Japanese technology company (system integrator), was founded during the early 1970's. The founding president was a passionate engineer who instilled a strong culture in his organization. One of the core values he promoted was to be technologically skilled.

Being a man of high integrity - an ingredient that helps build a strong culture - he selected mostly employees and executives who were also very 'technological'. Tolerated exceptions were for jobs like bookkeeping, etc. which didn't require any technological skills.

During the 1970s and up to the late 1980s, this strong culture greatly supported the company's goals and development. However, in the early 1990s, the business environment in Japan changed considerably. Cash flow among customers tightened, such that the ideal technical solution wasn't affordable anymore. Customers were seeking a more economically viable solution.

Unfortunately, when I was called in, the company had already suffered over 10 years of decline. It had also been taken over by another organization, which engaged me to help implement a culture change.

It soon became apparent that the current president, only a few years short of retirement and disappointed that he had been forced to sell his company, could not drive the necessary changes. Hence my client (the mother company) agreed to install a new manager to head this technology company.

In order to support the new president, we first made an assessment of the existing corporate culture. This assessment included the listing of all written rules, regulations and systems that influenced the organization's culture at that time. We also conducted interviews to identify informal (unwritten) rules and regulations.

Changing Cultures

As a next step, I helped my client develop an image of an ideal corporate culture that would support the company in making its vision a reality. We discussed which values would need to be promoted, and which beliefs, attitudes and behaviors would best serve the company's goals.

Once we had developed a clear picture of the desired corporate success culture, we worked on a detailed implementation plan. During the development of this plan, I frequently challenged the new president by putting myself into the position of the employees and how they would be likely to respond to the suggested action items. This feedback and feed-forward process helped him develop a very solid vision, strategy and plan for the implementation of the necessary actions.

Since it is key to get the buy-in from the key opinion makers within the executive team, I practiced with the president on how to coach these crucial people to make their buy-in most likely.

Finally we developed a communication strategy to get all employees to understand the new culture and what would be expected of them.

The Role of the Coach

The greatest value a professional executive coach can add to a corporate culture change project is to help the top executives gain a better understanding of the human dynamics associated with change. The coach can help the leaders develop communication competence, coaching ability, and the necessary integrity which is particularly crucial in cultural change projects.

Furthermore, the coach can act as a sparring partner for the leader, i.e. the leader can first 'try out' her/his ideas with the coach before actually implementing them.

After the successful cultural change initiative, which was completely implemented over a period of 12 months, the Japanese technology company turned profitable. This happened towards the end of the change initiative. We made sure that the new culture would be sustainable and supportive of current goals. A periodical review process was installed to ensure that history wouldn't repeat itself.

In Part VI of this series, we'll see how senior executives can benefit from the continuous support of a professional executive coach.

Purpose Statement: The basic purpose of executive coaching is to help the coachee further improve his performance and make better decisions to maximize his success and, subsequently, the success of his organization.

For more information related to Progress-U Leadership Coaching please visit click here.

Back to Top of this Article

Charlie Lang is an Executive Coach and Trainer who founded Progress-U Limited in 2002. His mission is to develop his clients to become First-Class Leaders. He is a passionate and professional Executive Coach, Mentor Coach, Trainer, Public Speaker and Author of articles related to leadership, change management and innovative sales. In 2004, he initiated the Master Coach Alliance in Hong Kong, a network of professional Life, Business and Corporate Coaches. End of 2004, he started authoring a book on First-Class Leadership which is due to be published in mid-2005. Copyright 2002-2005 Progress-U Limited