This past week I had the pleasure of attending Dean Dezso Horvath’s welcome and CEO Pane
l at Schulich for the 2009 MBA Launch. The brainpower in the room was electrifying and the overall discusions were very inspiring to say the least. At first, I was expecting to see some no name riff raff CEOs of some small private companies doing their rant about leadership and management. Little did I know they would be bringing in the top guns of Corporate Canada.
To understate it, they brought in some top guns:
1. Collen Johnston (CFO of TD Bank)
2. Robert Leonidas (President and CEO of Nestle Canada)
3. Doug McCuaig (Senior Vice President of CGI)
Key Takeaways:
Colleen Johnston (CFO of TD Bank): summarized 7 key points for success at TD Bank:
1. Work with Impact: Be impactful in what you do. We’re here to make impact.
2. Build for the Future: Make sure that your major decisions are aligned with the future vision in mind.
3. Inspire the will to Win:
4. Work Effectiviely in Teams:
5. Work with Transaparancy:�
6. Excercise Excellent Judgement:
7. Work with Integrity:
Colleen’s major turning point in her career is summarized by the following:
Create a vision of where you want to go to. Execute the plan of where you want to go to.
Robert Lenidas (President of Nestle Canada) identified the following as key skills and capabilities for employees:
1. Communication Skills (Both Written and Verbal)
2. Interpersonal Skills
3. Teamwork Skills
4. Know when to change the strategy if something is not working out
5. Be disciplined / Visible
6. Analytical Skills are key to success – must have them
7. Achieve Results – Be able to tell the boss your name, the date of the result, the result etc.
8. Work with Honesty, Credibility and Humility
9. Work with Leadership Style that Inspires the will to Win
10. Positive “I can” attitude is more important than technical skills
Doug McCuaig (SVP of CGI) had the following brilliant points for success:
1. Analytical Capabilities
2. Attitdude – having the right attitude
3. Leadership – Having the right leadership skills
Doug summarizes Analytical Skills as:
1. Finance Skills – being able to understand and analyze the numbers
2. Multi Disciplinary Skills
3. Communication Skills – having the ability to explain things to an executive team in simple english
Doug summarizes the right attitude as:
1. Show people that you want them to succeed. Don’t just ask them to succeed
Doug summarizes core leadership skills / abilities for people interested in consulting as:
1. You need to be able to motivate / convince people and to make it simple for people / customers
2. You need to love leading people to succeed
3. You need to be willing to travel
4. You need to have clients that love you (and are willing to pay big bucks for you)
The panel summarized some other key points:
1. Leaders need to know how to inspire people
2. Leaders need to be committed
3. If people are interested in how they can help to realize the vision of a leader then they should help to create the future
4. KUBA - Know, Understand, Believe and Act – people need to execute this in order to add value
Let me tell you, the panel was very impressive. I really appreciate the dean for coming up with such a stellar group of presenters.
Photo by macleong
