On Friday January 19, 2007 China Europe International Business School held the CEO Forum at the Ritz-Carlton Financial Street in Beijing, featuring world renowned management guru Professor David Ulrich. Influential CEOs from Chinese and Multinational companies in China, including Ciba, Johnson and Johnson, Li-Ning Sporting Goods, Kingdee International Software Group, and Shanghai Guangdian Electric Group, participated in this CEO Learning Consortium event. Professor David Ulrich shared with the CEOs on his thoughts of the new business realties and the leadership response required to capitalise on the opportunities that lies within.
During the forum, the CEO participants shared on what they perceive as being the biggest challenge facing them in their business. Many of the CEOs mentioned that talent management is their greatest challenge and the obstacle to their long term growth. Some mentioned their desire to globalize and reach new markets, and in order to capitalize on this market as being their greatest challenge. Others mentioned the increased competitions in the Chinese marketplace from both foreign and domestic players as being their most important challenge.
Dr. Ulrich responded that while these challenges may be unique in terms of magnitude and other factors unique to China, the basic realities are quite universal and experienced by CEOs around the world. The world is changing with the forces of globalization being the critical factor. The leader's rule is to learn to respond to the change and translate the external realities into internal actions. In this process, "The leader's role is to create logic for strategic thinking that focuses on what we want to do and how we will do." The strategy must cascade through the entire organization and be clear for all the employees.
A new and important concept proposed by Dr. Ulrich at the CEO forum is that leadership is a brand and an identity throughout the organization. This follows a gradual evolution in leadership thinking that saw leadership originally as a style and physical attributes, situational leadership, universal competencies, results based leadership to the newly proposed idea of leadership brand. This new innovative concept states that leadership brand is a value perceived from the outside in, applies to all levels of leaders, it is sustainable, unique and has efficacy.
During the afternoon, the participating CEOs had an opportunity to share their experiences as Professor Yeung facilitated panel and small group discussions. The Panel members passionately shared their experience in confronting the challenges they face. Issues of globalization and talent management quickly emerged as the central theme for most of the participants. Globalization and talent management are inextricably linked as one builds the capability to achieve the other.
This regularly scheduled one day CEO forum offers this exclusive group of CEOs a great opportunity to learn and exchange ideas with international calibre gurus and perhaps more importantly, the platform provides a tremendous opportunity to share ideas and challenges with other key business leaders like themselves.
About the CEO Learning Consortium:
The CEO Learning Consortium was established to meet the burgeoning demand of CEOs in China interested in engaging in a well-orchestrated, rigorous, and time-efficient learning consortium that can help them think through some critical issues as their businesses are going through rapid growth in China. The CEO Learning Consortium is a post-graduate programme targeted for CEO participants of the Global CEO Programme, and a very selected group of CEOs from Multinational and Chinese companies.
Built upon the principle of collaborative learning, a very selected group of successful business leaders in China have joined the Consortium working closely with two of the leading business schools in the world, the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in making this the pinnacle of learning programs for top executives in China.
