When I retired from my company , where I worked 37 years and the last 15 years as business leader of the European Branch, I received from my employees and workers the most magnificent gift I could dream off: 150 people wrote their opinions about me.
Reading them , the tears were flowing because they were nothing else than congratulations,words of thanks and putting me as an example of their ideal boss: a people manager.
And so it is , managing and leading a company is leading people.....Leading the company as a social system.It's not easily, because still today company's are seen as dynamic organism, but where the dynamic is done by machines , rules, procedures and policies.
Because of internally and externally pressures, corporate leaders became aware of the need to take into account the concerns , interests and objectives of :
- first the people directly part of the system: workers, employees, customers, suppliers, subcontractors
- second the larger systems that contain them:society, legal systems, family's...
- third ,the purposes of the different systems
For me , all members of the whole system were my customers which I respected by listening to them, sharing my experience , helping them to give solutions , helping by giving the resources for development. The corporate "shareholder", was fast replaced in my mind by the "Stakeholder"
We are living in a complex world, with a overflow of communication, fast changes and globalisation in all aspects. I want to give you some critical points, I've used to manage my organisation. I think there are also the critical skills of each businessleader today:
