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| Asunto: | [NewsLeader] December, 1ssue # 4, on leadership at EMBAs; management and business progress; strategic management of Human Resources and entrepreneurship | | Fecha: | Miercoles, 3 de Diciembre, 2003 12:09:14 (-0200) | | Autor: | Alfredo Behrens <abehrens @.........br>
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NewsLeader
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In
this issue you will enjoy reflections on:
- the
role of religion and technology on business progress,
- the
leadership training offered at EMBAs,
- the
dearth of Human Resource management in Brazil and
- a
book review on entrepreneurship.
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NewsLeader
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December,
2003 |
NewsLeader |
Issue # 4 | |
Alfredo Behrens
Editor
This is a
space for quick conversations on management and society. Our
interests gravitate around issues of leadership, management of
workteams, technology, creativity, emotional intelligence and most
issues which should be shared to shape a better world.
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this issue you will enjoy reflections on the role of religion
and technology on business progress, on the leadership
training offered at EMBAs; on the dearth of Human Resource
management in Brazil and a book review on
entrepreneurship.
Many
Brazilians sigh nostalgic when recalling the short-lived
XVIIth century Dutch invasion of Recife. Those Brazilians
frequently argue that the Dutch brought civility to the region
and that Brazil might be “better” off today had the Protestant
Dutch remained longer in Recife, instead of the Catholic
Portuguese.
There
is no doubt that the civil Protestant Dutch were in many ways
a blessing; yet they stayed for three more centuries in
Surinam, without turn it into something much ‘better” than
Brazil.
The
alleged symbiosis between Protestantism and Capitalism lies at
the root of the misleading inferences. They can be trace at
least as far back as Max Weber's genially misleading book
"Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism," first
published in 1904 but widely distributed in the Northern New
World in a 1930 translation by Talcot
Parsons.
During
this coming year publishers and academics will no doubt
celebrate and idict the 100 years of Max Weber’s book and
perhaps autorities will also celebrate the 400th anniversary
of the Prince of Nassau, who managed the short-lived Dutch
colony in Brazil.
Read
more below and forget not that you first heard of this while
reading Newsleader, long before the fireworks.
Leda
Machado - a PhD from University College, London - and
from the height of an unusual carrier combining academics and
Human Resource management, contributes with a spirited
onslaught unto the prevailing HR practices in Brazil, which
preach high strategy and fail to deliver the
basics.
Liesel
Mack Filgueiras, with a Master’s degree in business and a rich
experience in entrepreneurship, contributes with a review of
Eduardo Bom Angelo’s book, in Portuguese: “Empreendedor
Corporativo”.
If
you are interested thinking about the leadership training
business leaders get at EMBA's it cannot do you any harm to
read the Editor's own reflections on the matter.
To
NewsLeader, 2004 begins
next March. Max Weber was not completely wrong, Asceticism
does not prevail in Latin America and NewsLeader will take a prolonged
holiday. Enjoy whatever religious and pagan festivities you
may engage in until then.
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NewsLeader is structuring
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Technology and
entrepreneurial leaders: a match made only in Heaven?
Alfredo Behrens
In 1904 Max Weber offered what would
later be taken for a quick explanation for Latin America’s half-hearted
embracing of Capitalism: Latin America is not predominantly
Protestant.
If conversion to asceticism would do
the trick we might as well relax and wait, for Protestant sects are
growing faster among our poor, who, under an acute proselytizing spell,
might turn into relentless tinkerers, develop profitable technologies and
save more to implement them; ending-up by enhancing the competitiveness of
our XXIst century evangelically-driven Latin-American
corporations.
Yet I am sorry to say it might not
work, as it is unlikely it did even for the USA; where slavery took hold
more firmly mostly in the Protestant states and entrepreneurs founded, in
predominantly Catholic
states, most of
the largest USA corporations alive today!
Truth, as usual, is more complex and it
is not the purpose of this short essay to bore you with details, but to
remind you that there is no development without increased productivity,
which largely stems from technological progress. If you are truly
interested in enhancing your business’ competitiveness, conversion to
Protestantism and a lot praying may help, but you might as well also
invest in developing and deploying technology. The latter is what the
early American entrepreneurs did and leading entrepreneurs still do, even
at the largest corporations.
On the other hand, in Latin America,
most technological research is carried out at public universities and only
some research manages to find its way to industry. When it did it led to a
successful aeronautical industry, to high crop yields and to low-cost
steel. Yet of the current growth in Brazilian scientific research is now
happening in areas
where Brazilian industry is led by multinationals. The latter’s executives
are managed to sell, not to buy, least of all, to buy technology.
Exceptions aside, like those of Motorola, Siemens and Rohdia,
multinationals in Brazil have traditionally been poor adopters of local
technology, which makes them unlikely channels for deployment of future
Brazilian technological innovations.
Why, then, would universities research?
Why would anyone be researching into technology with no clients? Perhaps
for the same reason that led local entrepreneurs to build industries with
no technology of their own: a style of development based on import
substitution under tariff protection. This development led to public
universities divorced from the manufacturing sector of our societies
because local entrepreneurs relied on foreign turn-key projects whose
technology once could be paid through the high short term profitability
assured by tariff protection. The taxing of artificially profitable
business then funded the universities, mostly keeping professors and
students happy in their classrooms and laboratories; away from industry
and the streets.
Now that tariff protection is largely
gone, the vulnerability of Latin American industrial competitiveness has
become seriously exposed: it now relies mostly on labor while it is cheap,
and in environmental advantages while they are significant. Consequently,
universities’ research budgets have shrunk and Brazil’s predominantly
urban manufacturing and service sectors’ competitiveness may stagnate at a
time when over three quarters of the population seek work in
cities.
Well-established Latin American
business leaders do not come from an easy entrepreneurial school, but the
region’s manufacturing future is largely in their hands. Latin American
business leaders may pray that their business remains competitive; but
they should also seek the help of the universities.
There is a matching game to be played;
and while praying may help business to remain afloat, it is largely in the
hands of the business leaders to play the matchmaker between the problems
and their solutions.
Further reading: Max
Weber’s "The
Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism" is a must. It is
knowingly and incisively written, fully worthy of your time; even a
century after its publication. But if you are short of time and can only
afford to read one book try, for a more modern perspective, David Lande’s (1999) “The"Wealth
and Poverty of Nations..."
Lande’s also very interesting (2003) "Unbound
Prometheus..." is focused on Europe’s technological development since
the XVIII century.
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Alfredo Behrens
Training
of business leaders is found lacking
A pilot Fecap
research project pointed out that Human Resource directors
hiring mid-level executives looked for attributes that lied primarily in
the field of Human Sciences rather than in the technical or conceptual
fields favoured by most business schools.
During a September roundtable at
Fecap, top head hunters and HR staff showed their frustration with the
shortage of candidates with team-leadership skills.[1] Head hunters and
recruiting personnel are increasingly screening candidates for skills
which are not taught by Executive MBAs (EMBAs). It appears that EMBAs do
not succeed in preparing top executives for some of the most important
demands that they would face as leaders of companies.
Why is this happening?
Business organizations have become
less pyramidal; requiring more self-driven individuals; more intra-firm
negotiation for resources and targets and more work team efficacy. The
latter requires more individuals with initiative and negotiation and
leadership talents. Yet EMBAs typically devote less than 20% of their
curriculum to developing these skills.
Many of the business school clients
for EMBAs come from an engineering or scientific background and find at
EMBAs a short-cut for the technical and conceptual skills they lack to
further their managerial carriers. This provides a steady income for the
top business schools that see little point in innovating; partly because
of the low barriers to entry and the insidious mimicking that goes on in
the area.
What can be done?
EMBAs fill a need and are here to
stay. The issue is not as much how to start different EMBAs but how to
complement what they already teach well.
Can leadership be taught? Probably
it cannot be taught, but it can be honed; by inducing a process of
increasing self-awareness in order to improve relationship skills is sure
to help.
How is the leadership issue being dealt with?
Much of the current effort in
training for leadership revolves around studying the personalities and
best practices deployed by proven leaders, in the business field or even
elsewhere. This is why the Antarctic explorer Shackleton was dragged into
business: for his teambuilding and leadership know-how. Some companies
choose to involve promising young leaders in sensitive high-level
decision-making environments. Yet many of those companies later regret
seeing their promising trainees go, to deploy their talents
elsewhere.
All these efforts have a role and a
clientele. Some happen to be too slow or expensive and perhaps even only
moderately effective.
Re-mapping the problem
Leaders are most likely the product
of their environment. Born to their roles or not, in business they ushered
up into positions of leadership by a mixture of forces involving their
managers, their collaborators and their followers. The leaders’ capacity
to understand themselves and their environment, including the people they
are called to lead, is most likely the most crucial attribute to be
developed by effective leaders. This requires that leaders both know
themselves and that they develop the ability to communicate effectively;
which also includes the frequently overlooked ability to
listen.
Hot Tip
Leading should come naturally, you mostly need to provide the right
environment to identify who to choose as leaders of
workteams
Focus is adamant, narrowness is not.
Professor Zeldin argues that Western society’s drive towards
specialization is curtailing people’s natural ability to communicate and
learn from one another. Public broadcasting technology has also ensured
that people are being spoken at more than ever before, turning most into
spectators rather than actors. As meaningful conversation looses ground,
society and business are deprived of its natural way of breeding leaders;
partly explaining why a remarkable share of USA political leaders are
drawn from the entertainment industry.
Specialization may help to ensure that some people have more to say
about a topic than others wish to know. To be listened to a person must
have something to say, but the person also needs to know how to say it to
draw attention. The necessary learning involves not only learning skills
from one another, but also learning about oneself and one’s partners.
Focus, so essential to business, need not imply in narrowness.
The tool to redress narrowness.
How
can this be achieved? All self-awareness exercises are all useful, but
portraiture, in the Zeldin sense, involves creating essays about oneself
and one’s own history and desires in a way that is both low-cost and
useful to business.[2]
These portraits, unlike the backward looking CV, are oriented towards the
future, towards what one would like to turn into; and work with. The
experience in creating one’s own portrait and in reading, watching or
collaborating in building others’ portraits is geared towards enhancing
one’s own awareness as well as one’s own communication and listening
skills. These qualities are essential to leadership, for the leader
must:
·
Be aware of his (or her) own
potential
·
Understand his (or
her) team’s expectations and potential
·
Must be able to
galvanize the team into action.
While meeting all the above does not make a leader, honing these
qualities should help. Promoting transparency and developing deep
conversational skills, which can be stimulated through portraiture, is
crucial to the necessary communication that must exist within a company
team to breed effective leadership.
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A poem by Richard Costello
Mistake
after
Cavafy
My
clients may not see it,
but when I think of our kiss
in
that grimy hallway where,
finding ourselves suddenly alone,
with
quiet, unguarded eyes
we offered our mouths?
I
get lost, and may utter a small, desperate sound
they mistake for
acknowledgement.
Richard Costello lives in Greensboro, N.C. (USA), and works as a
physician assistant. Duirng your next visit you will surely give your
dentist another look, for it is now obvious to us all that a heart beats
even in the chest of dentist (d’aprés João Gilberto).
Listen to Richard
Costello reading this poem. Posted Tuesday at www.Slate.com , Nov. 25, 2003, at 8:57 AM
PT
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Resenha: Empreendedor Corporativo
Empreendedor
corporativo: a nova postura de quem faz a diferença, por
Eduardo Bom
Ângelo, na Negócio Editora, Rio de Janeiro, 2003. ISBN 85-7589-001-8. 250
páginas.Com contribuições: Herbert Steinberg; Marco Aurelio Klein; Ricardo
De Marchi; Victor Mirshawka Jr.
Eduardo Bom Ângelo, em seu livro Empreendedor
Corporativo, alcança seus objetivos de diferenciação: exclusividade,
exposição de seus conhecimentos e geração de valor aos leitores. Com
abordagem mais múltipla do que holística, contudo definitivamente
transdisciplinar e transtemporal, o autor consegue nos
mostrar “how deep the rabit hole goes” (Matrix, 1999) no mundo maravilhoso
do empreendedorismo e do intra-empreendedor. Com sua escrita
caleidoscópica – em que cada página apresenta nova configuração, composta
por imagens diversas, referenciais teóricos mistos e ousadas analogias –
Bom Ângelo explora as principais questões ligadas ao empreendedorismo, aos
perfis do empreendedor e do empreendedor corporativo. Perpassando todo o
livro percebe-se a preocupação do autor com a pessoa do empreendedor, sua
atitude: considerando os aspectos cognitivos, afetivos e comportamentais. Para
tanto, o livro se encontra dividido em 3 partes: (i) empreendedorismo
corporativo; (ii) conteúdos correlatos ao tema (criatividade, liderança,
marketing, qualidade pessoal/ estilo de vida) e (iii) perfis de 4
empreendedores corporativos. Na primeira parte, o empreendedorismo e o
empreendedorismo corporativo são contextualizados e conceituados. Também
se explora a ambiência corporativa necessária para o incentivo,
desenvolvimento e atuação de intra-empreendedores. A segunda parte traz a
contribuição de especialistas, articulando aspectos teóricos e práticos
dos conteúdos tratados. Na terceira e última parte, acompanhamos as
carreiras e atitudes de 4 intra-empreendedores que compartilham com o
leitor o aprendizado de suas vidas. Com escrita fluente e linguagem
coloquial, o livro representa uma fonte de informação, entretenimento e
inspiração para empreendedores de todos os tipos.
Liesel Mack Filgueiras
é Mestre
em Administração pelo IAG/ PUC-RIO. Graduada em Psicologia pela PUC-RIO
com estudos realizados na UC-Berkeley. Atualmente é coordenadora
adjunta do Ensino de Empreendedorismo da PUC-RIO e professora das
disciplinas Atitude Empreendedora e Empreendedorismo Social. É consultora
em planejamento estratégico de empresas com e sem fins lucrativos. liesel@alternex.com.br
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What makes or breaks an entrepreneur?
Besides
income, what is the difference between a young entrepreneur and the
young-at-risk of falling into crime? Louise Earnshaw, at the University of
Queensland’s School of Psychology, is working to tell us the difference.
Her preliminary findings indicate that the two groups (entrepreneurs and
kids at risk) share a number of unique similarities but show personality
differences to successful non-entrepreneurial professionals. Her work may
turn out to be most important in shaping social policy and in helping us
understand how to promote entrepreneurship.
To further her
research work Louise needs your help in the way of filling out a
questionnaire. This is your chance to reveal the traits of your
personality which have turned you into a successful entrepreneur or
professional. Help Louise and help us all by filling her questionnaire.
She has promised to share her findings with NewsLeader.
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RECURSOS HUMANOS
ESTRATEGICOS: FICÇÃO OU
REALIDADE?
Leda Machado
Infelizmente o que mais temos
no Brasil são empresas que no discurso falam da necessidade e importância
de um RH estratégico, mas que na realidade possuem uma área operacional
desvinculada do negócio, entendida como apoio para os problemas dos funcionários e nem
sempre respeitada pelas outras áreas da organização e alijada dos
processos decisórios.
O que vemos freqüentemente, é
o RH ser percebido como a seara dos ‘do gooder’, ou seja o departamento
que acolhe e entende como nenhum outro as dificuldades que surgem do
relacionamento entre os profissionais. O RH é o pronto socorro para a
solução das crises.
A questão que tem sido
colocada, é que devido à relevância da área para o desempenho da empresa,
a mesma não deve se restringir a um papel primordialmente operacional mas sim assumir um
posicionamento estratégico. Quantos executivos discordariam desta
afirmação? Provavelmente poucos.
Mas o que acontece na
prática?
Quantas empresas conhecemos
que possuem uma área de
Recursos Humanos realmente estratégica?
Mas o que seria uma área de
Recursos Humanos estratégica? Para ser estratégica precisa entender do
negócio, do mercado, dos clientes. Assim ela poderá fazer parte ativa do desenho e da
implantação da estratégia da
empresa. O RH seria não
mais área de apoio, de solução de problemas criados em outras áreas, mas
sim parte do core.
Mas, será que é possível pensar em
Recursos Humanos estratégico no Brasil?
De acordo com Evans et alli
(1) a área de RH tem três
papeis (ou aspectos) relacionados
ao desempenho das empresas.
São eles: o de ‘builder’, que seria a construção
dos fundamentos, o de ‘change partner’ que seria
contribuir para o realinhamento da organização sempre que houvesse mudança
na estratégia da empresa e finalmente o de ‘navigator’ que seria o de
contribuir para evitar as ameaças que as constantes mudanças trazem.
Ainda hoje, no Brasil nem
todas as empresas têm desenhado e implantado os fundamentos (base) de
RH. Por fundamentos
entenda-se os processos e
todas as políticas de Recrutamento e Seleção, Desenvolvimento e Retenção
dos profissionais, alinhados ao contexto da empresa.
Além dos fundamentos do RH,
quantas empresas tem uma estrutura
de RH que possa contribuir para o realinhamento da organização
sempre que haja uma mudança na estratégia da organização?
Mais, quantas têm condições de
contribuir para evitar ou amenizar as constantes ameaças que as empresas
sofrem?
Poderíamos falar de apenas
algumas empresas nas quais suas áreas de Recursos Humanos desempenham
esses três papeis e portanto são
realmente estratégicos.
Voltando ao começo, temos um
longo caminho a percorrer para que o RH Estratégico, no Brasil, deixe de
ser uma ficção para se tornar uma realidade.
(1) Evans, P. et alli
(2002), “The Global Challenge”, McGraw-Hill, New York
Leda Machado é
PhD pelo University College, London, leciona no EMBA da FAAP, foi Diretora
de RH na OESP Mídia, na Deloitte Consulting e Diretora da área de
Lideranca e Consultoria da Gallup Organization. É consultora na área
de RH para instituicoes com e sem finalidade de lucro. lmachado@terra.com.br
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Provocative insights under 400 words
long will receive our attention more apidly. Larger pieces may be abridged
without consultation with the author. Guest authors may wish to submit
contributions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French or Italian. Please
use Arial 12 font. With each submission please include a statement
indicating the work submited is your own. Please also submit your
affiliations, email address and CV or Oxford Muse like portrait.
Authors will only be notified when their contributions are selected for
publication.
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Copyright 2003: Authors retain
copyright of their work. Alfredo Behrens is entitled to all other rights
concerning NewsLeader, except the template design. You are encouraged to
make use of the views and information provided herein, as long as you
appropriately give credit to the author and quote this Newsleader's issue
number and date.
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Alfredo Behrens
abehrens@terra.com.br
Phone
+55 11 38713363
São Paulo, SP
Brazil
Alfredo Behrens is an
economist. He holds a PhD by the University of Cambridge, has lectured at
Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, at FSU and at PUC-RJ. He has broad
experience in advising high public officials, shareholders and board
members of banks and large corporations on issues such as: governance,
corporate relations with governments, M&As and strategic planning
focused on the internationalization of companies. He has worked in or with
the private and public sector in the Americas, East and Western Europe and
Southern Africa. He was awarded the MacNamara Fellowship by the World
Bank, the Hewlett fellowship by Princeton University and the Jean Monet
Fellowhship by the European University, Fiesole,
Italy.
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