Quickthink

Dan Coyle offers some interesting ideas on how positioning oneself with respect to information flow is an effective leadership training method. Here is the link to his post where he asks why so many people who worked in the mail room became top executives. But this quote from the post really caught my eye

… Hindustan Unilever, a hugely successful Indian company, is widely regarded as a talent hotbed –largely because its senior managers spend 30 to 40 percent of their time mentoring young leaders.

Nearly half! I was reminded of comments by Peter Drucker about Al Sloan at GM in the old days. Sloan thought the most important thing he did as CEO of GM was to pick and groom top management. Not enough time for that? Consider “Lord Root of the Matter” — the name that Winston Churchill gave to Harry Hopkins. Hopkins was a top adviser to FDR and spent some time in London working with Churchill on war policy — among other things. But Hopkins was not well, and could only work for a few hours a day. So just how did he get more done in that time than most people accomplish in a week? Good question. Must have had something to do with his ability to focus on the right agenda. To eliminate distraction.  What do you think?

Tags: Leadership

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 9:29 am and is filed under Professional Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.