Shoot the Peacock and the Seagulls...

Capitaland CEO Liew Mun leong gave a rousing presentation during the Singapore Human Capital Summit 2008 that just ended yesterday.

He made the point that CEOs are responsible to teach values to the organisation. Mr Liew does this through many forums eg. Office of the President Meeting on Mondays, CEO Council meetings and of course his regular Sunday emails to all Capitaland staff. Reading his book "Building people - Sundays Emails from a CEO", one will really be convinced that when the boss speaks with passion, conviction and consistency, the tone, values and direction is set for the entire organisation.

During the summit, he made 2 memorable points, among others:

(1) "Shoot the Peacocks and the Seagulls" - The peacocks are the individual performers who are "showy" and who are not part of the team. The seagulls on the other hand, flies from one person to another dropping "shit" on others. Leadership needs to act decisively to drive the right values and create the right culture.

(2) "Discriminate boldly between star performers and the rest". Mr Liew said that star performers in capitaland get significantly more bonus than the average performer in order to send the right signal. Promotion, rewards and other benefits for various levels of performance are made transparent to set the performance culture. For example, it is made plain that staff who makes $100 Mil for Capitaland gets to attend the Harvard's Advanced management programme! I know this is true because the Capitaland participant at Harvard AMP 172 told me while we were at the programme together before I heard it from Mr Liew. All these seem commonsense, BUT many organisations do not have the courage to do the same - no wonder many just bumble along with mediocre staff making average impact...

The boss sets the tone and the culture for the entire organisation. We need to lead with clarity, courage and conviction because what we do help to direct the energy of all staff within the organisation either towards success or failure.

Let's load up and fire...