During my recent trip to Korea my good friend and business partner, Dr. Edward Choi—CEO of CMOE, the most prominent coaching and training company in South Korea—challenged me to take on an Impossible Future of my own: coaching presidents. (See blog @ RobertHargrove.com)

He wasn’t talking about coaching presidents of companies, but of entire countries. He said that presidents need coaches with a big vision and practical know-how drawn from outside their inner circle.

While Dr Edward Choi said I was uniquely qualified to do this work, I decided to reach out to James Macgregor Burns, the renowned presidential scholar and Pulitzer Prize Winner for his work The Lion and the Fox (on FDR) for help.

James Macgregor Burns has written over 24 books on leadership and the presidency, and has been asked by almost every president, since JFK to go to the White House and give advice. I was thrilled when he was gracious enough to agree.

I had read Jim Burns’classic book Leadership (1973) years ago and found it to be an intellectual tour de force. I had adopted in my own book, Masterful Coaching, his brilliant distinction between “transactional” and “transformational” leadership.

FDR used transactional leadership during his First 100 Days, wheeling and dealing with members of Congress to pass relief programs during the Great Depression. He used transformational leadership to arouse the nation’s higher aspirations during what is called his Second 100 Days to enact an Economic Bill of Rights for all Americans.

I had the good fortune to bump into James McGregor Burns at a Renaissance Conference a few years ago at Hilton Head, North Carolina. I was completely inspired by his brilliant talks on presidential leadership, and at the same time, his humble down-to-earth manner.

When I got Jim Burns on the phone, he told me that he was now in his 80’s and “retired without a deadline” He also said he was very familiar with me and my work, and asked me to explain more about what I thought he could bring to the project.

I told him that I thought his participation in this project would be a way to make a distinct contribution, bridging the divide between leadership theory and actual practice, between talking about how leaders shaped history and interacting with leaders in a way that creates our future history.

Jim chuckled and asked me to supply him with a list of questions for him to ponder and to get back to me on. More to come…

I think one of the things that can help new leaders be successful is to take a sincere, honest, novel approach that immediately signals they are cut from a different cloth. The following is according to a NYT article.

Last December, the newly elected Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, facing a huge budget deficit, arrived in Brussels for his first meeting with European leaders.

Papandreou’s game plan? Play for time, cover up the extent to the crisis? Neither. Instead he opted for straight talk and told them everything. “This is a problem. I will tell you what my view is and what I am trying to do.”

According to the article, not only was the Greek deficit two times as high as had been reported, but Greece’s finances were also a disaster. Tax evasion was the norm and corruption everywhere.

To the surprise of many, his strategy worked. Within months, he secured the bailout he needed, still maintaining good partnerships with his fellow European leaders — not an easy achievement.

Mr. Papandreou’s strategy of telling it like it is has worked out for him at home, too. Amidst harsh cutbacks and letting Greeks know that they are largely to blame for their own problems, he remains popular with voters. It was only a few years ago that people questioned whether he had what it takes for the job.

Recent Greek leaders have tended to indulge in luxury, be flamboyant and uncompromising, with a liking for nationalistic rhetoric and a love of perks. Mr. Papandreou, though he grew up in a socialist political clan, has broken the mold. At times, he talks so quietly — whether in the English he speaks with a California twang or in his other three languages — that it is hard to hear him.

He had barely taken office when he gave up his predecessor’s luxury BMW and used a Toyota Prius from the state motor pool as his official car. Then he told his ministers to downsize, too. Some even had to share cars.

“I think they understood it was symbolically important,” Mr. Papandreou said. But he gave them little choice. Such concessions helped persuade Germany, the most reluctant of the big European countries, to back a rescue package for Greece, one of the most fiscally reckless members of European community.

Mr. Papandreou is eager for reform. Though the Papandreou family has the political resonance in Greece of the Kennedys, Mr. Papandreou is American-born and educated. He has stubbornly pursued the prime minister’s office for much of the decade, despite being rejected twice by the Greek voters.

He ran an Obama-like campaign promising change and transparency. He now faces the tasks of dismantling the sprawling Greek welfare system that his father, Andreas, helped erect when he was prime minister in the 1980s. Let's see what he is able to accomplish in his first 100 days.

John Wooden, legendary UCLA basketball coach, with 10 national championships passed away this week. There was an interesting tribute written about him in Businessweek by someone who interviewed him at a big leadership conference in front of a large crowd.

Prior to the speech, the interviewer tried to engage Coach Wooden in a conversation as kind of a warm up, but the then 97-year-old coach hardly said a thing. The interviewer assumed Wooden’s silence was due to his age, and basically went on yapping.

Yet when Wooden and the interviewer were brought to the stage, the interviewer discovered that, when he asked questions, Wooden sat up and gave long, thoughtful, insightful answers.

One of the questions the interviewer asked was about how to step into a new leadership role. Wooden replied that a new leader needs to interact with people in such a way that allows them to “command the respect of his followers.”

Wooden said, “They must know that the leader cares about them. Really cares about them. That he really cares about their families.” Listening to his former players like Bill Walton talk about their relationship with Coach Wooden, it’s obvious that this comes straight from the heart. Walton and other guys on the team had become Wooden’s dear friend.

When Coach was asked why more people weren’t better leaders, he said, “They don’t listen.” Wooden elaborated, “Listening is the best way to learn. You have to listen to those who you are supervising. I learned this from a poem I heard in grade school 90-years ago: ‘A wise old owl sat in an oak. The more he heard, the less he spoke.’”

Wooden said that instead of listening in a conversation, most people are just thinking about the next thing they are going to say. “Gulp,” the interviewer thought. “That’s what I was doing right at that moment! How did he know?”

I like the idea of a new CEO coming into a company and deciding to make his or her mark from day one, being dramatic and aggressive in shaking up management practices, especially when the need for it is “glaringly obvious.”

When Bill McDermott and Jim Hageman Snabe became Co-CEOs of SAP in February, they decided that they were going to use their first 100 days to bring the company closer to the customer at blitzkrieg speed, according to an article in Businessweek, May 21 2010.

First of all, on May 12, McDermott and Snabe killed a big sacred cow—the resistance to make acquisitions—with the $5.8 billion deal for the California -based Sybase, a maker of mobile-computing for Smart Phones and business finance software.

The Co CEOs then began a market-driven business incubator project designed to make SAP an innovator and drive organic growth. “There has not been a shortage of innovation at SAP,” said Chief Technology Officer, Vishal Sikka, who joined the executive board in the February shakeup. “There has been a problem with bringing it to market rapidly.”

Yet to get SAP executives to focus on such things, McDermott and Hageman felt they had to bring about a fundamental shift in mindset—from being internally focused to externally focused.

McDermott, an ex salesman, and Hageman, an engineer, almost instantly killed off a long running project that had many executives in the company focused on the examination of corporate values. “Companies that are too internally focused are sick,” McDermott said.

“There’s nothing healthy about being obsessed with your own internal nonsense. If there was a project that built bureaucracy into the company or required people to think about our internal stuff, we’ve killed those projects.”

McDermott, who used to be head of global sales, has been reducing bureaucracy with a vengeance. In April, he combined SAP’s 9,500-person field sales force with 14,000 consultants who customize its software for clients and a group of several hundred people who handle relationships with partners including IBM and HP. Now account reps can keep an eye on all facets of a sale “without having to navigate through a complex system,” McDermott said.

About two weeks later, he ordered SAP’s 200 top managers to gather with their reports at “coffee corners” where SAP employees at branch offices refuel and explain their agendas in a conversation without using PowerPoint slides.

He’s told managers to stop calling meetings to review data they can look up in the company’s computer systems. “We no longer have an interest in this upward cascade of information,” he said. “Managers who can’t get comfortable with that won’t do very well.”

If you are a new CEO or executive, there ought to be a lot you can learn from the bold moves of Mc Dermott and Hageman in their first 100 days. Take a moment to think about what you could do to bring your company closer to the market or shake up management practices.

I am often asked by executives, “What are the ten things that I should do in
my first hundred days?” Here are some pointers to keep in mind:

1. Get a multi-dimensional view of the business. Look at the business from as many different perspectives as possible: board members, executive team, industry gurus, colleagues, customers, competition, front-line people.

2. Ask: What are the biggest opportunities and challenges? What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses, challenges and opportunities facing your organization as a whole? You need to have a comprehensive understanding of these, whether you are the CEO business unit leader, or marketing guy.

3. Discover: What’s missing from this picture? For example, the past leaders of your business unit may have done okay operationally, but have never thought strategically. Or, your company makes “me too” products, but is not innovative.

4. Set some goals (the Impossible Future kind) that represent making a difference. For example: “We are going to set a goal of making 20% of our revenues each year from innovative new products.”

5. Figure out what you need to do to deliver on your day job. You may have been hired because you are brilliant, but what are the basic nuts and bolts deliverables that everyone expects from your department?

6. Start building a team of ‘A’ players. If you are want to achieve an Impossible Future, you can’t get there with a team of chronic C’s. If you are a CEO, divide your business into 5 or 10 profit centers and make sure you have an A player in each.

7. Never waste a lunch. You won’t be able to achieve your goals if you don’t have a network of commitment, communication, and support. Take lunch in the company cafeteria, not in your office, in order to maximize your ability to build relationships at all levels.

8. Go for some quick “catalytic” wins. You probably already have an idea of some areas where you want to have an impact. My advice is to bypass elaborate planning and preparations and go for some quick “catalytic” wins. What goals could you accomplish in weeks, not months, that could be a spearhead for a larger breakthrough?

9. Manage your time ruthlessly. Ask staff members to set up appointments to see you. It’s good having an open door policy, but too many drive-by meetings can kill you. Give your PA a list of top priority people whose phone calls you will take. If possible, only do email twice a day -- early morning and late afternoon.

10. Don’t forget work/life balance. It’s great to be fanatical about your goals, but you won’t be able to achieve them if you don’t pay attention to health, fitness, and your family. Schedule yourself to do exercise at a certain time every day. Watch the food you eat and make the time to spend quality time with your family.

GEORGE BUCKLEY, 3M CEO, DOES JUST THAT!
When George Buckley became CEO of the notable 3M Company in 2005, he was faced with a dilemma. His predecessor, James McNerney, one of Jack Welch’s gang of three at GE had been the first outsider to lead the company in its 100-year history. McNerney had barely stepped off the corporate jet before he declared he would change the DNA of the place. His game plan was vintage GE. McNerney cut 11 %

of the workforce (8000 people), intensified the talent/ performance-review process, and tightened the purse strings at a company that had become a profligate spender. He also imported GE’s hallowed Six Sigma quality program. Thousands of staffers became trained as Six Sigma “black belts.”

The plan seemed to deliver: McNerney jolted 3M’s moribund stock back up based on cost savings and fat profits. He won praise for bringing discipline to an organization that, despite its reputation of being an innovator, had become unwieldy, erratic, and sluggish. Then, four and a half years after arriving, McNerney abruptly left for a bigger opportunity, the top job at Boeing.

Successors, CEO George Buckley and his team, faced a challenging question in their first 100 days: whether the relentless emphasis on efficiency had made 3M a less creative company. That’s a pivotal issue for a company whose very identity is built on innovation. After all, 3M is the birthplace of Scotch Tape, Thinsulate, and the Post-it Notes. There were lots of signs that creativity was being squelched by process efficiency. There have been few notable innovations in the past five years.

You Can’t Schedule Creativity
In one of his first speeches, CEO Buckley said he was going to manage the yin and yang of imagination and discipline. “Invention is by its very nature a disorderly process,” he said. Then almost immediately he started to roll back many of McNerney’s initiatives. “You can’t put a Six Sigma process into that area and say, ‘Well, I’m getting behind on invention, so I’m going to schedule myself for three good ideas on Wednesday and two on Friday.’ That’s not how creativity works.”

Buckley is just the kind of guy who has traditionally flourished at 3M. It was one of the banners of the “3M Way” that workers could seek out funding from a number of company sources to get their pet projects off the ground. Official company policy encouraged employees to use 15% of their time to pursue independent ideas. The goal is to get back to the place where one third of the products 3M sells didn’t exist five years ago. (Today the number is about a one quarter.)

The dilemma that Buckley is trying to manage between innovation and efficiency is one that’s bedeviling CEOs everywhere. There is no doubt that 6 Sigma quality has been one of the most important business trends of past decade. But as once-bloated U.S. manufacturers have shaped up and become profitable, global competitors, the onus shifts to growth and innovation, especially in today’s idea-based, design-obsessed economy.

One of the things leaders need to do in their first 100 days beside come up with a vision and game plan is to look for openings to make an immediate difference that will help build political capital. It’s one thing if you are someone like FDR who came into office during the Great Depression, or Barack Obama who came into office during a global financial meltdown, or a CEO who takes over a company like GM on the verge of bankruptcy, but what do you do if you are taking over in a relatively healthy political and economic situation? One great example is Angela Merkel, current Chancellor of Germany. Her first 100 days story goes like this. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall opened the door for Angela Merkel to start a ‘second life.’ Being 35 years old, working as a laboratory physicist and living with her partner in Berlin, she decided to become politically active and joined the “Democratic Awakening” in August 1990. When Helmut Kohl appointed the first cabinet of a reunified Germany, he wanted it to represent all parts of Germany. He discovered Merkel, who later became the youngest Federal Minister in German history.

In 2007, Federal Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, was up for re-election. Angela Merkel decided to take him on and won by a wafer-thin majority. She found herself head of a grand coalition in a reform-needy Germany without much ‘political capital’ to bring about change in the country. Merkel looked for openings to make a difference and decided to focus on foreign policy during the first 100 days of her chancellorship.

Almost immediately she began the task of repairing an American-German relationship that had been shattered by Schroeder’s outright opposition to the US invasion of Iraq. Merkel also ended the cozy relationship Schroeder had enjoyed with the then Russian President, Vladimir Putin, by daring to criticize human rights abuses in Russia.

This won her tremendous popularity, which created the opening in her second 100 days to begin carrying out real domestic reforms, which included universal healthcare insurance and appealing to Germany’s ecologically conscious voters to limit carbon emissions. 

President Obama unveiled his healthcare plan during his first hundred days as part of his promise to bring about sweeping change. In my view, he demonstrated both transformational and transactional leadership to get in done.

He recognized that Americas is the only nation in the developed world without a national healthcare system and that 32 million Americans lacked affordable healthcare. He then demonstrated transformational leadership by holding forth a vision and honing a healthcare plan that would address this. At the same time, he provided the transactional leadership—wheeling and dealing with Congress to garner the votes to make it happen.

The personal anger and even hatred directed at the President by Republicans and the insurance industry, and his ability to let it role off him like water off a duck’s back reminded me of a speech FDR made at the 1933 Democratic convention where he spoke about how much big business and Republican members of Congress hated him for promising a new deal. The President, who had been crippled by polio, raised himself by his arms at the lectern and bellowed, “Ladies and gentleman let me assure you, I welcome their hatred.”

Though a titanic battle was fought over the issue of healthcare, the Senate completed its work Thursday night on the broadest social legislation in almost a half-century, as the House capped the year-long legislative saga over health reform by signing off on a package of fixes to the newly minted law.

The only drawback was the bill was passed with a Democrats-only vote to approve the nearly $1 trillion redesign of the healthcare system, and with not a single Republic vote for it. Obama made many attempts to pass a healthcare bill in a bi-partisan way, but in the end, needed to use executive muscle and depend on partisan votes to get it done.

It’s my belief that Obama became a very different President in the whole process of getting the bill passed. After a first year in office that promised consequence but never quite delivered on it, he had done something huge. The comparisons with Jimmy Carter would abruptly come to an end.

He was now a President who didn’t back down, who could herd cats, who was not merely intellectual and idealistic, but also tough enough to force his way. This is bound to change the landscape of American politics. It makes significant progress on other issues – financial reform, immigration, perhaps even the reduced use of carbon fuels – more plausible.

While Republicans leaders like John McCain and Sarah Palin have said it’s time to “retreat and reload” in order to stop healthcare and other reforms in the next election, Obama seems unfazed. Standing tall in his victory, the President has said, “If Republicans want to campaign in November on the basis of taking people’s healthcare away, I am ready for that, bring it on.”

The comment suggests a newly emboldened President who is unafraid to provoke a confrontation with the minority party, even as he insists he still hopes to work in a bipartisan way.