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What makes a strategist out of a manager? What engineers should know about strategic management
Internationul Elsevier
Journal of Production
297
Econonucs, 30-3 I (1993) 297-307
What makes a strategist out of a manager? What engineers should know about strategic Hans H. Hinterhuber Depurtnmt
of Manugement,
and Wolfgang
Popp
Unisersit_v of Innsbruck,
1. Introduction “Strategy follows people; the right person leads to the right strategy”. J. F. Welch, CEO of General Electric, used to describe his most important management function ~ the selection and development of top managers - with these words. But what makes a strategist out of a manager? There is no precise test you can use to evaluate an individual’s strategic leadership competence, whether economist or engineer, but there are a number of questions whose answers provide an indication of the level of that competence. The questions are explained briefly in this article. The proposed questionnaire at the end of the article, which can be elaborated upon individually, can help to make the process of selecting engineers as responsible leaders at middle and top management level more objective, clearer, and simpler. It can also provide the individual with a practical tool for developing his or her own management personality. 2. The strategy-personality
link
To use Moltke’s words, strategy is the application of common sense and something that cannot be taught. Moltke was thinking of the ability to view all obvious factors in the right perspective. No school can teach this capability, because every school aims essentially at Correspondence to: H.H. Hinterhuber, Department Management, University of Innsbruck, Innram A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
0925-5273/93/$06.00
management
of 52,
Cc 1993 Elsevier Science Publishers
Innruin 52, A-60X
Innsbruck.
Austriu
mediocrity. Just as the monastery schools of the Middle Ages produced merely journeyman, monks and nuns and never saints, our present-day management school never seem to turn out a Moltke or a Bismarck for business. All you can expect from a business school is that it offer prospective managers ways and means of developing themselves, and that it refrain from creating obstacles or leading these people down false paths. The actual educational purpose of the school is to achieve the highest possible average level and to provide students with a cultural basis that enables them to build on their natural talents and capabilities and develop themselves. The differences in real life then result much less from ability than from what the person actually is; much less from knowledge than from the individual’s personality and essential character. Strategy is, indeed, linked indivisibly with the personality and character of entrepreneurs, managers and engineers. Only occasionally have outstanding entrepreneurs and managers had their intellectual origins and found their entrepreneurial impetus in companies’ marketing or financial spheres, Technology, the motor of social change, demands that top corporate management again be manned increasingly by engineers, and all top executives must be encouraged to cultivate and intensify their technological understanding. A study conducted by the Manpower Services Commission concludes that 15% of the overall production growth in the USA and Japan comes from the altered utilization of work, and 25% from capital investment, but both of these figures are overshadowed by the remaining 60%,
B.V. All rights reserved.
which comes from technological change. Furthermore, technology is going to continue to be the driving force in all spheres of life on into the future. In particular, bio-tech, gen-tech and laser-tech will combine to generate new surges of dynamic innovation. Besides providing undoubted and often long-sought progress, biotechnology will also raise new types of problems that could start shaking the ethical foundations of mankind. The use of robots and lasers is going to remold manufacturing industry. The Upjohn Institute for Labor Market Research estimates that the use of robots in the US automotive industry will create as many as 5000 new jobs. At the same time, though, it will eliminate over 50000 traditional jobs. As this example shows, counteracting problems are obviously interlinked. Positive effects are accompanied by negative ones, and are also accompanied by discontinuities and unpredictable surprises. The world of the engineer has changed, just as have the worlds of the entrepreneur, the politician, the education expert, and the physician, and the direction developments will take is uncertain. The only certainties are growing complexity and growing dynamism. As a consequence, what is needed as entrepreneur and manager is not an engineer or technologist per se, but an engineer in the role of strategist. But it is not enough just to be skilled in purely strategic leadership techniques. The other important dimension is the human aspect, namely a solidly anchored sense of responsibility toward society, company, family. and ultimately oneself. To remain with Moltke, strategic leadership competence is determined less by knowledge and more by personality. The strategy-personality link applies no less in the case of an engineer. The list of ten questions is divided into two parts: _ Seven questions refer to the strategic component of leadership (Section 2). They are derived from the phase model of the strategic planning process (see Fig. 1). - The other three questions deal with humaneness and professional efficacy as overriding aspects of strategic leadership (Section 3).
3. Questions relating to the strategic component of leadership
Jobs and Wozniak had a vision about the “democratization of the computer”. The vision of Enrico Mattei, founder of the ENI concern, was making Italy relatively selfsufficient in oil
VISION
+
CORPORATE
PHILOSOPHY
-* . _ b
v STRATEGIES
ORGANIZATION
4 b
a--
.. +
I I
I Fig. 1
ACTION STRATEGIC
PLANS
CONTROLLING
. L
H.H. Hinterhrher,
W. Popp/ Whut makes u strutegist
making its way through the desert, with the landscape continually shifting as a result of sandstorms, looks to the patterns in the sky to stay on course. Though not the destination, the stars provide dependable orientation for the journey to the next oasis, no matter which direction the caravan comes from, how well it is equipped for the trip, or how rough the terrain happens to be. But even though the stars point the way for the caravan, any Bedouin hoping to reach the oasis safely had better (1) “keep his eye on the ground” to avoid encounters with quicksand. and (2) have faith in the caravan leader’s sense of orientation and sense of reality. Like the North Star, therefore, a vision is not a goal, but rather an orientation point that triggers movement in a specific direction; if the vision is borne out by a sense of reality and appeals to both the emotions and intelligence of a company’s employees, it can be a directing force with a powerful integration effect. So every manager claiming to possess strategic leadership competence should be able to state
and natural gas. The vision pursued by the rector of an engineering college in Switzerland is to create conditions enabling a member of his faculty to win the Nobel Prize. According to Professor Seiffert of Volkswagen, visionary engineers are a rare breed. Engineers tend to think in terms of physical laws, such as force = mass x acceleration. Still, Volkswagen pursues an essentially technological vision. By the turn of the millennium, the company wants to achieve the safety standard of the German Federal Railroad. It wants to reduce the number of road accident victims per person-km to the level of the railways, which are at the top of the safety league. Figure 2 provides an impression of just how visionary Japanese scientists and engineers are. These and other examples demonstrate that there is always a vision at the beginning of any entrepreneurial activity, any major company restructuring program, and any new phase in a person’s life. Such visions are comparable with the North Star. A caravan
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300
QUESTKONS
RELATING
TO TEE
COMPONENT
STRATEGIC
1
Do I have
an entrepreneurial
2
Do I have
a corporate
3
Does my company
4
Do my employees
5
Does the organlzatlon
promote
the implementation
6
Are the line managers
Involves
in strategic
7
Is the corporate
QUESTIONS
8
Do 1 point
9
Have I been
10
have competttlve
use their
culture
freedom
advantages?
of action
In the interest
of the cornpa@
of my YISIOII~
plarmtn~
In line with the strategies“
HUYANENESS
ELEMENTS
AND
PROFESSIONAL
EFFICACY
AS
OF LEADERSHIP:
out directions
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phllosophp
CONCERNING
OVERRIDING
OF LEADERSHIP:
and take new approaches’J
in my life so far?
Does my professional
kind of work and leadership
contribute
to the development
of soclet~
Fig. 3
his or her entrepreneurial vision, clearly inspiringly, in just a few sentences.
and
3.2. Do I have a corporate philosoph~~.~ The vision is put into concrete terms in the corporate philosophy. It is the ideological creed of the engineer either as entrepreneur or as a top manager. The corporate philosophy constitutes a set of ironbound principles. Austrian/Canadian Stronach, an Frank entrepreneur with a vision of the “fair economy”, summarizes his corporate philosophy as follows: 10% of profit before tax is paid to the employees in the form of bonuses, 20% of profit before tax is paid out as dividends, 2% of profit before tax goes to social purposes, 7% of profit before tax is spent for research and development, the rest is reinvested.
The principles of this company also dictate that the top management team must be “reformed” if it is incapable of generating profits over any given three-year period. Another example of a set of guiding principles is the one followed by a family-owned company in Austria: - We want to grow, but no faster than we can finance with our own internal resources. - Decisions of the advisory board become binding only if they are unanimous. _ Family members are not allowed to engage in private business activity. _ No cooperation agreements are entered into with other companies. Carlo de Benedetti, whose vision of a “European Holding Company” has yet to prove realistic, takes a completely different tack: his corporate philosophy emphasizes cooperation agreements, joint ventures, alliances and the incorporation of his companies in strategic networks. The corporate philosophies of all of today’s high-tech enterprises recognize the
H.H.
Hinterhuher,
W. Poppi U%at nukes
need for cooperation and joint ventures on a world-wide basis, because lone wolves are usually unable to mobilize the resources required for global competition. For companies, the corporate philosophy is comparable to the individual’s world view, which is the most essential element of a person’s character. Of course, it is important for a landlady sizing up a potential lodger to know something about his income, but it is even more important for her to judge his character and his basic ideology. Similarly, an entrepreneur locked in cutthroat competition with a competitor certainly should learn something about the competitor’s products and resources - but it is even more important for him to know the opponent’s corporate philosophy. When entrepreneurs and managers at top management level lose battles or even wars to competitors, they have probably failed to study the long-term intentions of those competitors sufficiently and may not even know enough about their own. For example, the German automotive industry would do well to take the philosophy of Honda, which is one of the most innovative in the industry and is extraordinarily successful in Formula 1 racing, more seriously than their current design weakchange; our philosophy nesses. ‘Challengers remains the same” is undeniably being lived up to and could enable Honda to become a dominator. So the central question is: “Am I in a position to express my company’s corporate philosophy in a few principles so that all employees will be motivated to pull together vigorously, and to pull in the same direction?”
3.3. Does my company have competitive advantages? According to Moltke, strategy is “the continuous adaptation of one’s original guiding principle to steadily changing conditions”. In business, the guiding idea is to assume a position of uniqueness in the
a strutegisl
out of u mauager“
301
market segment in which the company operates on the basis of permanently maintainable competitive advantages. In other words, one tries to become the number one or number two, or at least to belong to the small group of leading competitors, in this particular market segment. But a leading market position can be captured only if customers are offered a better product or a better problem solution at a price that seems more favorable than competitors’ prices. So the central element of any strategy consists in the creation of permanent competitive advantages that, in the ideal case, impart a virtually monopolistic position in the market. Competitive advantages with which a position of uniqueness can be constructed are the price/performance relationship, design, service, the ability to deliver, the image of the company - in other words, the factors that motivate the buyer to give preference to one product over another comparable product. The common denominator linking all of these factors is called Total Quality Management
(TQW The guiding idea of a German ski manufacturer and former outsider is “the one who builds his skies slowest builds the fastest skis”. Booming sales following gold medals won at the Alpine World Championships at Lake Placid and Vail proved he is on the right track: the customer striving after success wants to use a successful product. Unlike his competitors, this manufacturer produces all of the ski components in-house: the wooden core, edges, and soles. The result of this sort of manufacturing depth: a technically superior product and a leap from 15th place to one of the top positions in the world ski market within ten years. One Austrian manufacturer of cable-car systems believes one of his main competitive advantages, in addition to innovative equipment design, is the service system that enables his company to come to the assistance of users within 24 hours anywhere in the world. Both of these examples demonstrate the sort of strategy that is effective indirectly. Though
material and financial resources are prevalent and the psychological factors and time scale are relatively unimportant in the case of a direct strategy, such as a price war, these factors are reversed when an indirect strategy is adopted. If it is important to convince the buyer about the overall benefits he can acquire by purchasing a product, or to exclude certain competitors with a clever policy of alliances, the psychological factors move to the forefront, the time scale becomes longer, and the material and financial resources fade into the background. In an era in which there are only two constants - the growing acceleration of change and the increasing complexity of all human institutions-we have to learn to apply indirect strategies (as A. Beaufre has pointed out). This type of strategy is usually more effective and a better guarantee of lasting success than a direct strategy. But even indirect strategies require the application of financial and material resources. This is doubly true for the type of indirect strategy in which an enormous competitive advantage can be gained by exploiting the time factor. In an era of shorter demand, technology and product cycles. it becomes necessary to develop, design, and produce faster. Along with benefits to users, time represents a new dimension in the list of ways to compete. Managers who are unable to describe briefly and concisely the fundamental competitive advantages with which the needs of certain customer categories can be satisfied better than with comparable competitive products cannot make any claim to a high level of strategic leadership competence. The decisive question for assessing the level of competence is: “Describe in a few lines the guiding ideas and the competitive advantages with which your company offers customers greater benefits than the competition in the individual market segments and business units”. 3.4. Do my3 enzplojqees use their freedom action
in the interesf
of’
qf the conipan~~.v
The strategically managed a confederation of entrepreneurs.
company is It is organ-
ized in strategic business units - in an electrical manufacturing company, for example, in generators, electric motors, transformers, highvoltage equipment, industrial robots, heating equipment, process equipment, and service _ each with its own management responsibility. These “microenterprises” are centers for integrated action, can count on the backing of the whole corporation’s resources, and are headed by entrepreneurial-minded managers. Corporate management should issue directives to the managers responsible for these strategic business units, but should refrain from giving them detailed instructions. Directives are guidelines for decisions reached autonomously. In the strategically managed corporation. top management has to develop a decision-making framework to serve as this sort of guideline for the decisions to be reached independently by the managers of the business units, functional units, and possibly the regional subsidiaries. Good directives have a stimulating effect. The directive should specify the general landing area, but not the precise runway to be used. Effective directives combine the strategic intention of top management with the initiative and creativity of the individual. For example, a directive issued to the production manager as part of an offensive strategy: higher flexibility within the framework of increased automation, to be achieved within a specified time schedule and cost budget. Applied to everyday management practice, this means that entrepreneurs and managers are familiar with the corporate vision, corpoand strategic intentions rate philosophies, thoroughly enough to be able to act in accordance with them even if the competitive situation and particular circumstances force them to take action differing from that agreed with corporate management. This principle, which one finds both in Moltke and Welch, is arguably the highest level of modern management, and one that clearly promotes the greatest degree of entrepreneurial initiative. From it we derive another question for evaluating the level of strategic leadership competence: “Are all managers capable of expressing (a) the
corporate vision, (b) the corporate philosophy, and (c) the strategic goal of the unit for which they are responsible in just a few words?” If managers are not able to do this, the blame lies less with them than with a lack of strategic leadership competence on the part of their superiors. No manager can be expected to act independently and take initiative in the interest of the company without knowledge of the corporate vision, the corporate philosophy and the directives. Churchill once said it would suffice to ruin the world if everybody just did their duty. Similarly, Duttweiler, the founder of the Swiss supermarket empire Migros, saw voluntary effort as the price of freedom. The success of a company depends essentially on the extent to which managers utilize the freedom of action available to them in the interest of the company.
3.5. Does the organization promote implementation qf’m)? vision?
permit entrepreneurial initiative along the lines of the strategies, both of these questions must be answered negatively and the level of strategic management competence certainly leaves something to be desired. A certain discrepancy always exists between the actual and the formal organizations. Within certain limits, in fact, such a discrepancy is even desirable. Capable entrepreneurs and managers deliberately incorporate elements of elasticity and uncertainty in the organizational system in order to offer outstanding employees the possibility of taking action that is in the interest of the company even though the organization may not have been set up for it. So the level of strategic leadership competence is reflected in whether, and the extent to which, the manager has erected an organization around him or herself that promotes creative behavior on the part of the employees and permits effective implementation of the strategies.
the
Entrepreneurs and top managers who feel they can improve matters by continually meddling at lower levels are usually mistaken. By doing so, they assume functions normally carried out by other people, and forgo the performance of those people to a greater or lesser extent. They frequently multiply their own management duties so much that they can no longer get everything done. These observations, which were already set forth my Moltke, point to two questions useful in assessing strategic management competence: (a) Are all management positions filled with people who think and act entrepreneurially? (b) Are their duties, authority, and responsibility oriented towards formulating and implementing strategies in such a way that autonomous action, with initiative, is possible in the interest of the company? If managers unable to meet the demands of the strategies are not removed from their positions, and/or if the organization does not
3.6. Are the line managers involved in strategic pIanning.v Strategic planning is the job of those line managers who are responsible for its implementation. The key to successful execution of strategies is the early involvement of line managers in the strategic planning process. This raises three questions: How do you turn line managers temporarily into farsighted planners? How do you apply the planning staff effectively? How should the execution of strategies be monitored ? Successful companies solve these problems by (a) familiarizing line managers with the strategic instruments in training courses and making sure they know the strategic intentions of their superiors, and (b) altering the functions of the planning staff. The function of the planning staff is no longer strategic planning, but rather strategic analysis of critical sectors and business areas that are or may become important for the company. Both functions serve to support the line managers. The monitoring of
progress in the execution of strategies is handled jointly by the line managers and planning staff. The decisive question is: “Are the line managers involved in the process of strategic planning?” If they are not, top management can certainly not claim any high level of strategic leadership competence.
Rather than representing the result of organizational accomplishments, outstanding companies tend to be the pro duct of excellent entrepreneurs, managers and engineers who have created a corporate culture in which their vision, their company philosophy, and their strategies can be implemented by employees who are used to thinking independently and taking initiative. The key question that has to be asked to evaluate strategic leadership competence is: “Does the corporate culture, and especially its perceptible and tangible component, corporate identity, match the strategies? Are the employees motivated to become active with a commitment to pull together?” The more strategies and corporate culture are in true harmony, the higher the level of strategic leadership competence. An atmosphere of maximum creativity, for example, can be created only if hierarchical elements are reduced to a minimum. A company can be a management school or a school of life; theoretically it could be both, but in reality this remains the exception. It is a management school if a mentality grounded in the corporate philosophy and strategies is developed at all levels of responsibility according to scientific principles: examples of this are Siemens, IBM. Unilever, Saint Gobin. Montedison, and many other large and medium-size corporations. The company is a school of life if the vision and the charisma of management personalities and the size of the compnay and its units permit management on a “face-to-face” basis. Thus, the company becomes a microcosm of
the world rather than just a goal-oriented, single-purpose organization. This little world is not only a well-organized organism, but also is an institution that teaches living per se, in which tolerance, confidence, culture, esthetics, taste, and humor are all cultivated within the framework of a common corporate philosophy and strategy. Such institutions make the individual’s work meaningful and also reward the fulfillment of expectations that cannot be measured. Employees of companies that are schools of life tend to project the work ethic and the style with which challenges are tackled to the outside world. Companies that are also schools of life are few and far between. Unfortunately, their number will probably decrease in the postindustrial society. in which the individual’s personal development will be divorced from his development on the job.
4. Questions concerning humaneness and professional efficacy as overriding aspects of leadership
If we try to summarize the factors contributing to strategic leadership competence, we reach rather surprising conclusions that contradict our initial expectations. The value of great entrepreneurs, managers or engineers seems to derive more from the very fact that they lived than from what they accomplished. For sooner or later, all great business accomplishments are surpassed. What, therefore, is permanent about competent strategic leadership’? Such things as: _ the directions taken by great entrepreneurs and managers for us to follow, not the limits they set us. - what they initiated and not what they concluded, _ the questions they raised, not the answers they arrived at to those questions, - the paths they took rather than the objectives they attained, and
H.H. Hmterhuher.
_ the employees
W. Poppi What makes a strategist
they selected with the aim of adapting and improving on their visions and central ideas to suit continually changing conditions What is permanent about entrepreneurial capabilities and performance seems to be more in what a person is than in what he can do, more in spontaneity than in education, more in originality and intuition than in learning, more in human superiority and greatness than in specific, specialist capabilities. A little Indian fable may clarify what we mean by what a person is. A man went to a mountain and said: “What a fool you are, oh mountain! You don’t know how big you are, how high you are or how you are shaped. But I know everything about you!” The mountain thought for a while and then replied: “You’re right that I don’t know these things; but I, I am the mountain!” It’s not important what a person knows or has, it is important what he really is, i.e. the level of consciousness, of understanding he has about himself and others as well as about the world. Bismarck once remarked that vanity is a black mark on a character that may otherwise comprise many excellent characteristics. Like other negative emotions, vanity diminishes what a person is to a certain extent. The same can be said about the habit of F. G. Jiinger referred to as the second force of gravity. The decisive question, though, remains: Is the entrepreneur or are managers capable of pointing directions, initiating things, raising questions, choosing paths, and attracting employees in a way that has lasting effects for decades and is capable of bringing about longterm improvement of the company’s growth and profitability prospects? Anyone who can answer this question positively must certainly be credited with a high level of strategic leadership competence. Anything an entrepreneur initiates and launches with a vision can have effects that last for decades. but what he has to offer in terms of solutions to individual problems will frequently pass into oblivion very quickly. The ability we are talking about here also
out c?f a manager?
30.5
includes the ability to inject the vision into the awareness of the employees and the outside world. An important part of a person’s essential character is the ability to be prepared at all times. Moltke is the best example of a man who knew the secret of always being armed with a “system of expedients” for every situation, and who transmitted the ingrained authority of his personality and his character to his underlings. Ultimately, the criterion for the essence of a person is his integrity. According to Keyserling, having integrity means being totally honest with oneself and others, never pretending to be what one is not, and acting in life precisely in accordance with one’s essential personality. 4.2. Have I been lucky in WI_Vl$e so .far:) This statement by Moltke says that the strategist also needs the ability to be lucky. Put another way, strategic leadership competence includes the ability to place oneself in a position that favors being lucky. It helps to realize just how little many successful entrepreneurs and managers actually accomplished on their own to be successful. If numerous other chains of causality do not converge with those that embody the entrepreneur or manager personally, he simply cannot have the luck he needs. This is why Napoleon believed in the power of the “forces des chases”, and why Moltke said, “But only the diligent are usually lucky over the long run.” To tackle tough challenge with good prospects for success. you need either to feel deep down inside that you are up to the task or trust to luck that the Almighty will help you get the job done. When we talk about luck in this connection, we do not mean mere chance, but the frequently observed fact that the difficulties and urgency inherent in every such challenge tend to stimulate and strengthen precisely those human character traits needed to meet such challenges. So it makes sense to ask the question: “Has he or she been lucky in life so far?” If you
assume that the human being forces his destiny by virtue of his essential character, it follows that the luckier the person has been, the higher the level of strategic leadership competence. Conversely, it can be inferred that the level of strategic leadership competence can be rated according to the amount of external setbacks and blows of fate a person has been able to absorb without being deterred by them. rn~- prqfhssional kid oj‘ ,t,ork and leaa’ership contribute to the development of’ societal:’
and accomplished your tasks; if you have left the world a better place than you found it, perhaps in the form of an improved strain of poppy, a perfect poem, or a saved soul; if you always appreciated the beauty of nature and also said so; if you saw the best in other people and always did your best”. The key question is: “What did we do to leave the world a better place than we found it‘?”
4.3. Does
Strategic leadership competence comprises the entire enterprise in its external relationships on a long-range time scale. Entrepreneurs and managers who possess a high level of strategic leadership competence may make individual mistakes. but they do not allow themselves to be deterred from the vision, the principles of their corporate philosophy. or continued development of their guiding idea. They comprehend the “big picture” intuitively, remain above mundane matters and deliberately avoid identifying themselves with them. They experience relationships inside and outside the company as well as strategy formulation and implementation consciously as an entirety. Conversely, too, they are affected more consciously and more directly by the “big picture” than by isolated events. This high level of strategic leadership competence can be achieved only through life-long work on oneself. That is why it is absolutely unthinkable for an entrepreneur or a manager worthy of the name to feel that they have ever reached the final goal, have a perfect solution to a problem, or have spoken the “last word” on a given subject. This “something”, which one should aim at over and above professional fulfillment of one’s managerial duties. can perhaps best be explained most beautifully with the words of R. L. Stevenson: “You’ve had success in life if you have lived decently, laughed frequently, and loved a lot; won the respect of clever men and the love of children; filled out your place
5. Summary and conclusion Napoleon often said that he had to be present personally if his armies were to win; but the battlefields on which they fought became so large that he could not be everywhere at once. Consequently, the strategist in either military or business situations must be not only a student but also a teacher. He or she needs employees who are thoroughly schooled in the organization’s values and strategies; only then will directives be understood and carried out even in situations where the strategist cannot take personal action. In this sense, top strategists are symbols rather than examples, because employees have the right to run their own lives. However, when employees have been trained in strategic thought and action on the job - and management agrees about certain basic values such as the importance of individual initiative and creativity - a company legitimately becomes a confederation of entrepreneurs. In this confederation, economists, technologists and engineers have to be conscious of their entrepreneurial challenges and strategic possibilities. They have to show themselves to be visionaries, admonishers. and rejuvenators. As for their strategic role in society as a whole, they should develop into symbols of long-range conscientiousness vis-a-vis nature and of solidarity with future generations. Knowledge is less important than personality. Prince de Ligne remarked, “Napoleon would be perfect if he had a soul, but all he’s got is genius”.
H.H. Hwterhtrher,
W. Popp/ What makes a strategist
Bibliography [l]
Hinterhuber. H.H., 1992. Strategische Unternehmungsfiihrung, de Gruyter. Berlin, New York. [Z] Hinterhuber, H.H. and Popp. W., 1992. Are you a strategist or just a manager? Harv. Bus. Rev., 105-l 13. [3] Hmterhuber, H.H. and Popp. W.. 1991. Strategic
nut qf a manager?
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leadership competence, the European approach to successful leadership in the 1990s. In: D. E. Hussey (Ed.) International Review of Strategic Management, Vol. 2. No. 1, Wiley, Chichester, pp. 213-228. [4] Schmidheiny, St., 1987. Unternehmer fur die Zukunft. Speech delivered at 17th International Management Conference, St. Gallen Business School.
Journal of Production
297
Econonucs, 30-3 I (1993) 297-307
What makes a strategist out of a manager? What engineers should know about strategic Hans H. Hinterhuber Depurtnmt
of Manugement,
and Wolfgang
Popp
Unisersit_v of Innsbruck,
1. Introduction “Strategy follows people; the right person leads to the right strategy”. J. F. Welch, CEO of General Electric, used to describe his most important management function ~ the selection and development of top managers - with these words. But what makes a strategist out of a manager? There is no precise test you can use to evaluate an individual’s strategic leadership competence, whether economist or engineer, but there are a number of questions whose answers provide an indication of the level of that competence. The questions are explained briefly in this article. The proposed questionnaire at the end of the article, which can be elaborated upon individually, can help to make the process of selecting engineers as responsible leaders at middle and top management level more objective, clearer, and simpler. It can also provide the individual with a practical tool for developing his or her own management personality. 2. The strategy-personality
link
To use Moltke’s words, strategy is the application of common sense and something that cannot be taught. Moltke was thinking of the ability to view all obvious factors in the right perspective. No school can teach this capability, because every school aims essentially at Correspondence to: H.H. Hinterhuber, Department Management, University of Innsbruck, Innram A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria
0925-5273/93/$06.00
management
of 52,
Cc 1993 Elsevier Science Publishers
Innruin 52, A-60X
Innsbruck.
Austriu
mediocrity. Just as the monastery schools of the Middle Ages produced merely journeyman, monks and nuns and never saints, our present-day management school never seem to turn out a Moltke or a Bismarck for business. All you can expect from a business school is that it offer prospective managers ways and means of developing themselves, and that it refrain from creating obstacles or leading these people down false paths. The actual educational purpose of the school is to achieve the highest possible average level and to provide students with a cultural basis that enables them to build on their natural talents and capabilities and develop themselves. The differences in real life then result much less from ability than from what the person actually is; much less from knowledge than from the individual’s personality and essential character. Strategy is, indeed, linked indivisibly with the personality and character of entrepreneurs, managers and engineers. Only occasionally have outstanding entrepreneurs and managers had their intellectual origins and found their entrepreneurial impetus in companies’ marketing or financial spheres, Technology, the motor of social change, demands that top corporate management again be manned increasingly by engineers, and all top executives must be encouraged to cultivate and intensify their technological understanding. A study conducted by the Manpower Services Commission concludes that 15% of the overall production growth in the USA and Japan comes from the altered utilization of work, and 25% from capital investment, but both of these figures are overshadowed by the remaining 60%,
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which comes from technological change. Furthermore, technology is going to continue to be the driving force in all spheres of life on into the future. In particular, bio-tech, gen-tech and laser-tech will combine to generate new surges of dynamic innovation. Besides providing undoubted and often long-sought progress, biotechnology will also raise new types of problems that could start shaking the ethical foundations of mankind. The use of robots and lasers is going to remold manufacturing industry. The Upjohn Institute for Labor Market Research estimates that the use of robots in the US automotive industry will create as many as 5000 new jobs. At the same time, though, it will eliminate over 50000 traditional jobs. As this example shows, counteracting problems are obviously interlinked. Positive effects are accompanied by negative ones, and are also accompanied by discontinuities and unpredictable surprises. The world of the engineer has changed, just as have the worlds of the entrepreneur, the politician, the education expert, and the physician, and the direction developments will take is uncertain. The only certainties are growing complexity and growing dynamism. As a consequence, what is needed as entrepreneur and manager is not an engineer or technologist per se, but an engineer in the role of strategist. But it is not enough just to be skilled in purely strategic leadership techniques. The other important dimension is the human aspect, namely a solidly anchored sense of responsibility toward society, company, family. and ultimately oneself. To remain with Moltke, strategic leadership competence is determined less by knowledge and more by personality. The strategy-personality link applies no less in the case of an engineer. The list of ten questions is divided into two parts: _ Seven questions refer to the strategic component of leadership (Section 2). They are derived from the phase model of the strategic planning process (see Fig. 1). - The other three questions deal with humaneness and professional efficacy as overriding aspects of strategic leadership (Section 3).
3. Questions relating to the strategic component of leadership
Jobs and Wozniak had a vision about the “democratization of the computer”. The vision of Enrico Mattei, founder of the ENI concern, was making Italy relatively selfsufficient in oil
VISION
+
CORPORATE
PHILOSOPHY
-* . _ b
v STRATEGIES
ORGANIZATION
4 b
a--
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I I
I Fig. 1
ACTION STRATEGIC
PLANS
CONTROLLING
. L
H.H. Hinterhrher,
W. Popp/ Whut makes u strutegist
making its way through the desert, with the landscape continually shifting as a result of sandstorms, looks to the patterns in the sky to stay on course. Though not the destination, the stars provide dependable orientation for the journey to the next oasis, no matter which direction the caravan comes from, how well it is equipped for the trip, or how rough the terrain happens to be. But even though the stars point the way for the caravan, any Bedouin hoping to reach the oasis safely had better (1) “keep his eye on the ground” to avoid encounters with quicksand. and (2) have faith in the caravan leader’s sense of orientation and sense of reality. Like the North Star, therefore, a vision is not a goal, but rather an orientation point that triggers movement in a specific direction; if the vision is borne out by a sense of reality and appeals to both the emotions and intelligence of a company’s employees, it can be a directing force with a powerful integration effect. So every manager claiming to possess strategic leadership competence should be able to state
and natural gas. The vision pursued by the rector of an engineering college in Switzerland is to create conditions enabling a member of his faculty to win the Nobel Prize. According to Professor Seiffert of Volkswagen, visionary engineers are a rare breed. Engineers tend to think in terms of physical laws, such as force = mass x acceleration. Still, Volkswagen pursues an essentially technological vision. By the turn of the millennium, the company wants to achieve the safety standard of the German Federal Railroad. It wants to reduce the number of road accident victims per person-km to the level of the railways, which are at the top of the safety league. Figure 2 provides an impression of just how visionary Japanese scientists and engineers are. These and other examples demonstrate that there is always a vision at the beginning of any entrepreneurial activity, any major company restructuring program, and any new phase in a person’s life. Such visions are comparable with the North Star. A caravan
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300
QUESTKONS
RELATING
TO TEE
COMPONENT
STRATEGIC
1
Do I have
an entrepreneurial
2
Do I have
a corporate
3
Does my company
4
Do my employees
5
Does the organlzatlon
promote
the implementation
6
Are the line managers
Involves
in strategic
7
Is the corporate
QUESTIONS
8
Do 1 point
9
Have I been
10
have competttlve
use their
culture
freedom
advantages?
of action
In the interest
of the cornpa@
of my YISIOII~
plarmtn~
In line with the strategies“
HUYANENESS
ELEMENTS
AND
PROFESSIONAL
EFFICACY
AS
OF LEADERSHIP:
out directions
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CONCERNING
OVERRIDING
OF LEADERSHIP:
and take new approaches’J
in my life so far?
Does my professional
kind of work and leadership
contribute
to the development
of soclet~
Fig. 3
his or her entrepreneurial vision, clearly inspiringly, in just a few sentences.
and
3.2. Do I have a corporate philosoph~~.~ The vision is put into concrete terms in the corporate philosophy. It is the ideological creed of the engineer either as entrepreneur or as a top manager. The corporate philosophy constitutes a set of ironbound principles. Austrian/Canadian Stronach, an Frank entrepreneur with a vision of the “fair economy”, summarizes his corporate philosophy as follows: 10% of profit before tax is paid to the employees in the form of bonuses, 20% of profit before tax is paid out as dividends, 2% of profit before tax goes to social purposes, 7% of profit before tax is spent for research and development, the rest is reinvested.
The principles of this company also dictate that the top management team must be “reformed” if it is incapable of generating profits over any given three-year period. Another example of a set of guiding principles is the one followed by a family-owned company in Austria: - We want to grow, but no faster than we can finance with our own internal resources. - Decisions of the advisory board become binding only if they are unanimous. _ Family members are not allowed to engage in private business activity. _ No cooperation agreements are entered into with other companies. Carlo de Benedetti, whose vision of a “European Holding Company” has yet to prove realistic, takes a completely different tack: his corporate philosophy emphasizes cooperation agreements, joint ventures, alliances and the incorporation of his companies in strategic networks. The corporate philosophies of all of today’s high-tech enterprises recognize the
H.H.
Hinterhuher,
W. Poppi U%at nukes
need for cooperation and joint ventures on a world-wide basis, because lone wolves are usually unable to mobilize the resources required for global competition. For companies, the corporate philosophy is comparable to the individual’s world view, which is the most essential element of a person’s character. Of course, it is important for a landlady sizing up a potential lodger to know something about his income, but it is even more important for her to judge his character and his basic ideology. Similarly, an entrepreneur locked in cutthroat competition with a competitor certainly should learn something about the competitor’s products and resources - but it is even more important for him to know the opponent’s corporate philosophy. When entrepreneurs and managers at top management level lose battles or even wars to competitors, they have probably failed to study the long-term intentions of those competitors sufficiently and may not even know enough about their own. For example, the German automotive industry would do well to take the philosophy of Honda, which is one of the most innovative in the industry and is extraordinarily successful in Formula 1 racing, more seriously than their current design weakchange; our philosophy nesses. ‘Challengers remains the same” is undeniably being lived up to and could enable Honda to become a dominator. So the central question is: “Am I in a position to express my company’s corporate philosophy in a few principles so that all employees will be motivated to pull together vigorously, and to pull in the same direction?”
3.3. Does my company have competitive advantages? According to Moltke, strategy is “the continuous adaptation of one’s original guiding principle to steadily changing conditions”. In business, the guiding idea is to assume a position of uniqueness in the
a strutegisl
out of u mauager“
301
market segment in which the company operates on the basis of permanently maintainable competitive advantages. In other words, one tries to become the number one or number two, or at least to belong to the small group of leading competitors, in this particular market segment. But a leading market position can be captured only if customers are offered a better product or a better problem solution at a price that seems more favorable than competitors’ prices. So the central element of any strategy consists in the creation of permanent competitive advantages that, in the ideal case, impart a virtually monopolistic position in the market. Competitive advantages with which a position of uniqueness can be constructed are the price/performance relationship, design, service, the ability to deliver, the image of the company - in other words, the factors that motivate the buyer to give preference to one product over another comparable product. The common denominator linking all of these factors is called Total Quality Management
(TQW The guiding idea of a German ski manufacturer and former outsider is “the one who builds his skies slowest builds the fastest skis”. Booming sales following gold medals won at the Alpine World Championships at Lake Placid and Vail proved he is on the right track: the customer striving after success wants to use a successful product. Unlike his competitors, this manufacturer produces all of the ski components in-house: the wooden core, edges, and soles. The result of this sort of manufacturing depth: a technically superior product and a leap from 15th place to one of the top positions in the world ski market within ten years. One Austrian manufacturer of cable-car systems believes one of his main competitive advantages, in addition to innovative equipment design, is the service system that enables his company to come to the assistance of users within 24 hours anywhere in the world. Both of these examples demonstrate the sort of strategy that is effective indirectly. Though
material and financial resources are prevalent and the psychological factors and time scale are relatively unimportant in the case of a direct strategy, such as a price war, these factors are reversed when an indirect strategy is adopted. If it is important to convince the buyer about the overall benefits he can acquire by purchasing a product, or to exclude certain competitors with a clever policy of alliances, the psychological factors move to the forefront, the time scale becomes longer, and the material and financial resources fade into the background. In an era in which there are only two constants - the growing acceleration of change and the increasing complexity of all human institutions-we have to learn to apply indirect strategies (as A. Beaufre has pointed out). This type of strategy is usually more effective and a better guarantee of lasting success than a direct strategy. But even indirect strategies require the application of financial and material resources. This is doubly true for the type of indirect strategy in which an enormous competitive advantage can be gained by exploiting the time factor. In an era of shorter demand, technology and product cycles. it becomes necessary to develop, design, and produce faster. Along with benefits to users, time represents a new dimension in the list of ways to compete. Managers who are unable to describe briefly and concisely the fundamental competitive advantages with which the needs of certain customer categories can be satisfied better than with comparable competitive products cannot make any claim to a high level of strategic leadership competence. The decisive question for assessing the level of competence is: “Describe in a few lines the guiding ideas and the competitive advantages with which your company offers customers greater benefits than the competition in the individual market segments and business units”. 3.4. Do my3 enzplojqees use their freedom action
in the interesf
of’
qf the conipan~~.v
The strategically managed a confederation of entrepreneurs.
company is It is organ-
ized in strategic business units - in an electrical manufacturing company, for example, in generators, electric motors, transformers, highvoltage equipment, industrial robots, heating equipment, process equipment, and service _ each with its own management responsibility. These “microenterprises” are centers for integrated action, can count on the backing of the whole corporation’s resources, and are headed by entrepreneurial-minded managers. Corporate management should issue directives to the managers responsible for these strategic business units, but should refrain from giving them detailed instructions. Directives are guidelines for decisions reached autonomously. In the strategically managed corporation. top management has to develop a decision-making framework to serve as this sort of guideline for the decisions to be reached independently by the managers of the business units, functional units, and possibly the regional subsidiaries. Good directives have a stimulating effect. The directive should specify the general landing area, but not the precise runway to be used. Effective directives combine the strategic intention of top management with the initiative and creativity of the individual. For example, a directive issued to the production manager as part of an offensive strategy: higher flexibility within the framework of increased automation, to be achieved within a specified time schedule and cost budget. Applied to everyday management practice, this means that entrepreneurs and managers are familiar with the corporate vision, corpoand strategic intentions rate philosophies, thoroughly enough to be able to act in accordance with them even if the competitive situation and particular circumstances force them to take action differing from that agreed with corporate management. This principle, which one finds both in Moltke and Welch, is arguably the highest level of modern management, and one that clearly promotes the greatest degree of entrepreneurial initiative. From it we derive another question for evaluating the level of strategic leadership competence: “Are all managers capable of expressing (a) the
corporate vision, (b) the corporate philosophy, and (c) the strategic goal of the unit for which they are responsible in just a few words?” If managers are not able to do this, the blame lies less with them than with a lack of strategic leadership competence on the part of their superiors. No manager can be expected to act independently and take initiative in the interest of the company without knowledge of the corporate vision, the corporate philosophy and the directives. Churchill once said it would suffice to ruin the world if everybody just did their duty. Similarly, Duttweiler, the founder of the Swiss supermarket empire Migros, saw voluntary effort as the price of freedom. The success of a company depends essentially on the extent to which managers utilize the freedom of action available to them in the interest of the company.
3.5. Does the organization promote implementation qf’m)? vision?
permit entrepreneurial initiative along the lines of the strategies, both of these questions must be answered negatively and the level of strategic management competence certainly leaves something to be desired. A certain discrepancy always exists between the actual and the formal organizations. Within certain limits, in fact, such a discrepancy is even desirable. Capable entrepreneurs and managers deliberately incorporate elements of elasticity and uncertainty in the organizational system in order to offer outstanding employees the possibility of taking action that is in the interest of the company even though the organization may not have been set up for it. So the level of strategic leadership competence is reflected in whether, and the extent to which, the manager has erected an organization around him or herself that promotes creative behavior on the part of the employees and permits effective implementation of the strategies.
the
Entrepreneurs and top managers who feel they can improve matters by continually meddling at lower levels are usually mistaken. By doing so, they assume functions normally carried out by other people, and forgo the performance of those people to a greater or lesser extent. They frequently multiply their own management duties so much that they can no longer get everything done. These observations, which were already set forth my Moltke, point to two questions useful in assessing strategic management competence: (a) Are all management positions filled with people who think and act entrepreneurially? (b) Are their duties, authority, and responsibility oriented towards formulating and implementing strategies in such a way that autonomous action, with initiative, is possible in the interest of the company? If managers unable to meet the demands of the strategies are not removed from their positions, and/or if the organization does not
3.6. Are the line managers involved in strategic pIanning.v Strategic planning is the job of those line managers who are responsible for its implementation. The key to successful execution of strategies is the early involvement of line managers in the strategic planning process. This raises three questions: How do you turn line managers temporarily into farsighted planners? How do you apply the planning staff effectively? How should the execution of strategies be monitored ? Successful companies solve these problems by (a) familiarizing line managers with the strategic instruments in training courses and making sure they know the strategic intentions of their superiors, and (b) altering the functions of the planning staff. The function of the planning staff is no longer strategic planning, but rather strategic analysis of critical sectors and business areas that are or may become important for the company. Both functions serve to support the line managers. The monitoring of
progress in the execution of strategies is handled jointly by the line managers and planning staff. The decisive question is: “Are the line managers involved in the process of strategic planning?” If they are not, top management can certainly not claim any high level of strategic leadership competence.
Rather than representing the result of organizational accomplishments, outstanding companies tend to be the pro duct of excellent entrepreneurs, managers and engineers who have created a corporate culture in which their vision, their company philosophy, and their strategies can be implemented by employees who are used to thinking independently and taking initiative. The key question that has to be asked to evaluate strategic leadership competence is: “Does the corporate culture, and especially its perceptible and tangible component, corporate identity, match the strategies? Are the employees motivated to become active with a commitment to pull together?” The more strategies and corporate culture are in true harmony, the higher the level of strategic leadership competence. An atmosphere of maximum creativity, for example, can be created only if hierarchical elements are reduced to a minimum. A company can be a management school or a school of life; theoretically it could be both, but in reality this remains the exception. It is a management school if a mentality grounded in the corporate philosophy and strategies is developed at all levels of responsibility according to scientific principles: examples of this are Siemens, IBM. Unilever, Saint Gobin. Montedison, and many other large and medium-size corporations. The company is a school of life if the vision and the charisma of management personalities and the size of the compnay and its units permit management on a “face-to-face” basis. Thus, the company becomes a microcosm of
the world rather than just a goal-oriented, single-purpose organization. This little world is not only a well-organized organism, but also is an institution that teaches living per se, in which tolerance, confidence, culture, esthetics, taste, and humor are all cultivated within the framework of a common corporate philosophy and strategy. Such institutions make the individual’s work meaningful and also reward the fulfillment of expectations that cannot be measured. Employees of companies that are schools of life tend to project the work ethic and the style with which challenges are tackled to the outside world. Companies that are also schools of life are few and far between. Unfortunately, their number will probably decrease in the postindustrial society. in which the individual’s personal development will be divorced from his development on the job.
4. Questions concerning humaneness and professional efficacy as overriding aspects of leadership
If we try to summarize the factors contributing to strategic leadership competence, we reach rather surprising conclusions that contradict our initial expectations. The value of great entrepreneurs, managers or engineers seems to derive more from the very fact that they lived than from what they accomplished. For sooner or later, all great business accomplishments are surpassed. What, therefore, is permanent about competent strategic leadership’? Such things as: _ the directions taken by great entrepreneurs and managers for us to follow, not the limits they set us. - what they initiated and not what they concluded, _ the questions they raised, not the answers they arrived at to those questions, - the paths they took rather than the objectives they attained, and
H.H. Hmterhuher.
_ the employees
W. Poppi What makes a strategist
they selected with the aim of adapting and improving on their visions and central ideas to suit continually changing conditions What is permanent about entrepreneurial capabilities and performance seems to be more in what a person is than in what he can do, more in spontaneity than in education, more in originality and intuition than in learning, more in human superiority and greatness than in specific, specialist capabilities. A little Indian fable may clarify what we mean by what a person is. A man went to a mountain and said: “What a fool you are, oh mountain! You don’t know how big you are, how high you are or how you are shaped. But I know everything about you!” The mountain thought for a while and then replied: “You’re right that I don’t know these things; but I, I am the mountain!” It’s not important what a person knows or has, it is important what he really is, i.e. the level of consciousness, of understanding he has about himself and others as well as about the world. Bismarck once remarked that vanity is a black mark on a character that may otherwise comprise many excellent characteristics. Like other negative emotions, vanity diminishes what a person is to a certain extent. The same can be said about the habit of F. G. Jiinger referred to as the second force of gravity. The decisive question, though, remains: Is the entrepreneur or are managers capable of pointing directions, initiating things, raising questions, choosing paths, and attracting employees in a way that has lasting effects for decades and is capable of bringing about longterm improvement of the company’s growth and profitability prospects? Anyone who can answer this question positively must certainly be credited with a high level of strategic leadership competence. Anything an entrepreneur initiates and launches with a vision can have effects that last for decades. but what he has to offer in terms of solutions to individual problems will frequently pass into oblivion very quickly. The ability we are talking about here also
out c?f a manager?
30.5
includes the ability to inject the vision into the awareness of the employees and the outside world. An important part of a person’s essential character is the ability to be prepared at all times. Moltke is the best example of a man who knew the secret of always being armed with a “system of expedients” for every situation, and who transmitted the ingrained authority of his personality and his character to his underlings. Ultimately, the criterion for the essence of a person is his integrity. According to Keyserling, having integrity means being totally honest with oneself and others, never pretending to be what one is not, and acting in life precisely in accordance with one’s essential personality. 4.2. Have I been lucky in WI_Vl$e so .far:) This statement by Moltke says that the strategist also needs the ability to be lucky. Put another way, strategic leadership competence includes the ability to place oneself in a position that favors being lucky. It helps to realize just how little many successful entrepreneurs and managers actually accomplished on their own to be successful. If numerous other chains of causality do not converge with those that embody the entrepreneur or manager personally, he simply cannot have the luck he needs. This is why Napoleon believed in the power of the “forces des chases”, and why Moltke said, “But only the diligent are usually lucky over the long run.” To tackle tough challenge with good prospects for success. you need either to feel deep down inside that you are up to the task or trust to luck that the Almighty will help you get the job done. When we talk about luck in this connection, we do not mean mere chance, but the frequently observed fact that the difficulties and urgency inherent in every such challenge tend to stimulate and strengthen precisely those human character traits needed to meet such challenges. So it makes sense to ask the question: “Has he or she been lucky in life so far?” If you
assume that the human being forces his destiny by virtue of his essential character, it follows that the luckier the person has been, the higher the level of strategic leadership competence. Conversely, it can be inferred that the level of strategic leadership competence can be rated according to the amount of external setbacks and blows of fate a person has been able to absorb without being deterred by them. rn~- prqfhssional kid oj‘ ,t,ork and leaa’ership contribute to the development of’ societal:’
and accomplished your tasks; if you have left the world a better place than you found it, perhaps in the form of an improved strain of poppy, a perfect poem, or a saved soul; if you always appreciated the beauty of nature and also said so; if you saw the best in other people and always did your best”. The key question is: “What did we do to leave the world a better place than we found it‘?”
4.3. Does
Strategic leadership competence comprises the entire enterprise in its external relationships on a long-range time scale. Entrepreneurs and managers who possess a high level of strategic leadership competence may make individual mistakes. but they do not allow themselves to be deterred from the vision, the principles of their corporate philosophy. or continued development of their guiding idea. They comprehend the “big picture” intuitively, remain above mundane matters and deliberately avoid identifying themselves with them. They experience relationships inside and outside the company as well as strategy formulation and implementation consciously as an entirety. Conversely, too, they are affected more consciously and more directly by the “big picture” than by isolated events. This high level of strategic leadership competence can be achieved only through life-long work on oneself. That is why it is absolutely unthinkable for an entrepreneur or a manager worthy of the name to feel that they have ever reached the final goal, have a perfect solution to a problem, or have spoken the “last word” on a given subject. This “something”, which one should aim at over and above professional fulfillment of one’s managerial duties. can perhaps best be explained most beautifully with the words of R. L. Stevenson: “You’ve had success in life if you have lived decently, laughed frequently, and loved a lot; won the respect of clever men and the love of children; filled out your place
5. Summary and conclusion Napoleon often said that he had to be present personally if his armies were to win; but the battlefields on which they fought became so large that he could not be everywhere at once. Consequently, the strategist in either military or business situations must be not only a student but also a teacher. He or she needs employees who are thoroughly schooled in the organization’s values and strategies; only then will directives be understood and carried out even in situations where the strategist cannot take personal action. In this sense, top strategists are symbols rather than examples, because employees have the right to run their own lives. However, when employees have been trained in strategic thought and action on the job - and management agrees about certain basic values such as the importance of individual initiative and creativity - a company legitimately becomes a confederation of entrepreneurs. In this confederation, economists, technologists and engineers have to be conscious of their entrepreneurial challenges and strategic possibilities. They have to show themselves to be visionaries, admonishers. and rejuvenators. As for their strategic role in society as a whole, they should develop into symbols of long-range conscientiousness vis-a-vis nature and of solidarity with future generations. Knowledge is less important than personality. Prince de Ligne remarked, “Napoleon would be perfect if he had a soul, but all he’s got is genius”.
H.H. Hwterhtrher,
W. Popp/ What makes a strategist
Bibliography [l]
Hinterhuber. H.H., 1992. Strategische Unternehmungsfiihrung, de Gruyter. Berlin, New York. [Z] Hinterhuber, H.H. and Popp. W., 1992. Are you a strategist or just a manager? Harv. Bus. Rev., 105-l 13. [3] Hmterhuber, H.H. and Popp. W.. 1991. Strategic
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leadership competence, the European approach to successful leadership in the 1990s. In: D. E. Hussey (Ed.) International Review of Strategic Management, Vol. 2. No. 1, Wiley, Chichester, pp. 213-228. [4] Schmidheiny, St., 1987. Unternehmer fur die Zukunft. Speech delivered at 17th International Management Conference, St. Gallen Business School.