The 8 Skills That Separate Performers From Those Who Don't

Book: KNOW-HOW: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform From Those Who Don’t
Author: Ram Charan with Geri Willigan
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 290
Price: Rs.685

Books by Ram Charan are hot sellers among executives as he explains what appears daunting and complex to common souls in a very simple manner. He uses some anecdotes, real life examples to get the message across. While he has written extensively on corporate governance, leadership, execution etc, this latest book details the 8 skills which he thinks as the ones that separate high performers from others and which are essential for a leader in the current context to succeed.

In the introduction, Charan describes the deficiencies in the choice of leadership. He says that very often leaders get chosen on the basis of superficial personal traits and characteristics raw intelligence, commanding presence and great communication skills, a bold vision and natural(born) qualities of leadership. According to Charan, the current need is for leaders who know what they are doing. The environment in which businesses operate are changing in such magnitude, spped and depth which no leader hitherto has experienced in their lifetime. A Google can come from nowhere and grow into a multibillion-dollar business in a very short span of few years, making it one of the world’s most highly valued companies. World-class competition today can emerge from anywhere – like India, China, Brazil or any other emerging nations with the current mobility of talent, capital and knowledge.
Charan says that in view of such dramatic and deep changes happening, the current day leader should have skills which may be different from the conventional skills we used to look for in leaders. He identifies eight essential skills that differentiates a leader who performs from those who don’t in the current context. They are:
 The ability to position and reposition the business to make money. Charan calls this the foundation or the first among 8 equals, because if you don’t get it right, the foundation of the business eventually crumbles. Author gives examples of Wal-Mart, Tesco, Apple the Franklin Quest Company etc to prove the point.
 After having positioned , one has to become effective in the know-how of seeing emerging patterns and continually search for what is new and different. One should look for the patterns that are emerging on the horizon, look for things others miss, seek sources others don’t and weave things in one’e own creative ways. This skill gets better with practice.
 The third skill is to get people around you to commit to and deliver the common goals. Charan calls this managing the social system. Know-how in diagnosing, designing, and leading the social system is how leaders are able to mobilize people to deliver results and transform an organization .This know-how involves the leader in building operating mechanisms at critical intersections where information must be exchanged, conflicts must be surfaced and resolved, and trade-offs and decisions must be made for specific business purposes. The leader needs to enforce the right behaviours in them, and ensure that the output from one operating mechanism become integrated into others.
 The next know-how is the skill of judging, selecting, and developing leaders. The best way to judge this know-how is that the leader tries to leave the organization stronger relative to the competition than it was before the leader took over. Leaders have to actively search for people with leadership potential and create opportunities that leverage their abilities, test them further, and allow them to grow. The job of a leader is to get things done not to do it by himself. The leader’s ability to deliver depends on how well and how consistently you grow other leaders. For this, leaders have to develop and improve their judgments on people, which means spending time and energy on it daily, weekly, monthly, not just once-a-year talent reviews or succession planning sessions.
 Another skill that is essential in today’s leaders the high-energy, high-powered, high-ego people working as a team who synchronize their efforts and propel the business forward. The essential requirement of this know-how is getting one’s team to understand, focus on, and commit to the total business. Usually, talented and ambitious people have a single –minded focus, a little aware of what their colleagues in other silos are doing. Resources and information are usually hoarded, and communication is sporadic and formalistic. The leader has to convert such a team to a powerful competitive advantage. For this the leader has to bring everyone to the same page.
 The skill of setting the right goals. Goals are the destination you want to take the business to. Once stated clearly and communicated to the organization, goals align people’s energy, and when they are linked to rewards, they have a powerful effect on people’s behaviour. The goals have to be of the right type and magnitude to be both achievable as well as motivational. Because pursuit of one goal necessarily affects the others, the individual goals have to be balanced with one another. Charan says that the best way to judge the quality of any leader’s goals is by the quality and rigour of thinking that go into it.
 The seventh skill is in setting laser-sharp dominant priorities. Priorities provide the roadmap that organizes and directs the business toward its goals. We can say that while goals are set at fifty-thousand feet, priorities are set at ground level and must not only be absolutely clear, very specific and doable but must be repeated very often and followed through to make sure that people understand them, buy into them, and act on them so that the organization executes them. Some leaders set too many priorities and thereby dilute the entire effort without determining what are the most important factors in reaching the goal.
 The last and eighth skill is the skill in dealing with societal forces beyond the market. Every business today operates in a complex societal and political scenario that demands more of it than just profits. That business leaders have to be able to deal with market forces has become a routine thing and leaders have learned to live with them. According to Charan, in the twenty-first century, business leaders will be required to deal with issues that go beyond the market. While dealing with external constituencies may not create shareholder value, failure to do so can most certainly destroy it and no leader can shy away from this challege. Societal pressures on business will continue to increase and so will interventions by governments. Leaders of the future have to like it or at least not to resist it and build the know-how to deal with it. Otherwise the organization may be put on the defensive.
While many of the inputs here was already available to practitioners, Charan provides ground-to-earth practical advice in jargon-free, lucid prose, the hallmark of Charan.