Sunday, November 12, 2006

Leadership gap

A growing number of white hair managers are re-gaining the US Coporate Top seats.

  • Viacom: Sumner Redstone fires his CEO Tom Freston, and 83 years old is now in the driver seat of his company
  • Ford: the heir of Ford dynasty, Bill Ford, leaves his seat to Alan Mulally, 61 years old, after 37 years of employment at Boeing

Reasons:

  1. The juvenilism that was raging in US is in crisis. Where the mandatory law was model "FiFo" (first in first out) that is the annual programmed substitution of 10% of managers over 40s with the worst performances, with younger managers. The model was perhaps good in logistic but tragic in company's management (e.g. the Enron case)
  2. Today is back on the stage the "seniority" understood as capacity, experience, 360° competencies that today's business is requiring. Younger managers are more dynamic and assaulting, but with a specialistic culture, vertical monoculture and lack of a global vision
  3. Crisis of US leadership due to generational gap. According to Forrester Research before 2010 between 50-75% of top managers will retire (ex baby boomers born between 1940-1950, and they will not be replaced by younger managers that are more re cued in number and not trained to command. Young managers "moan lack of space and power, but they do not know to suffer"

The maven's circle author's


Lucio Vollaro (on the left)

Lucio Vollaro has over 35 years of experience in the Information Communication Technology Industry.

Initially with IBM, he spent 10 years in Research and Development in their U.S. Systems Development Division, and later held positions in Marketing, Large Account Management and Branch Offices Management. He was later appointed Country General Manager for Wang in Italy.

Prior to founding CIVI International, he was a Partner in the Milan office at TASA where he led the firm’s Information Communication Technology and Banking practice.

At CIVI International, he conducts pan-European executive search assignments for a wide range of ICT vendors and Financial users and he is trusted advisor to CEOs.

His other consultancy activities include: management appraisal, executive profiling and business positioning. He has placed more than 200 executives into client companies in the following fields: Banking, Information Communication Technology.
Mr. Vollaro holds a degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Rome.

He is married and resides in Milan.
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Roberto Dadda (on the right)

Born in Lodi, Milano Italy, in 1950 graduated as Doctor in Chemical Engineering at the Milano Politecnico. Began is career at Oronzio de Nora Impianti Elettrochimici working on the application of computers to automatic control of chemical processes.

From 1978 to 1983 R&D manager at Bellco, an ENI company, developed several biomedical apparatus, artificial kidneys and life support systems. Founder and director in 1983 of Carlo Gavazzi Factory Automation System division joned ITP Automazione in 1987 as responsible of process automation systems division.

R&D manager at Banco Ambrosiano Veneto from 1994 to 1998 and then at Banca Intesa until 2000 was responsible of the project of the first on Italian on line banking system and of the first SMS portable banking system in Italy.

Since may 2000 holds the position of Director for Research and Development at SIA SpA, Società inerbancaria per la automazione – CED Borsa. SIA manages the Italian stock exchange system, the Italian interbanking network and the SWIFT node and is the root certification authority of the Italian banking system.

Professor for several years of Bioengineering applied to cardiovascular surgery at the Milano school of medicine, of Computer system architecture and of Compiler design at the Milano school of information technology teaches nowadays Web Design.

Non professional Journalist wrote several books on the professional use of personal computers.

roberto@dadda.it
www.dadda.it

Our circle...

Here are some things you may want to know about The Maven Circle – our philosophy about this site:

• Experiences is the bedrock for this blog – our goal is to present our experiences about: Needs from ITC demand-side, Availabilities from ICT supply-side, and Trends of the present and future of ICT adoption that are backed up whenever possible by links. We’ll go ahead and offer experts’ best opinions when it is credible and offers value.

• Sharing others’ insights is a critical ingredient – as an International Executive Search Consultant operating in a large community and as a “guru” like Roberto Dadda, we are fortunate to have daily discussions with many smart people with unique and informed perspectives to share. Our goal on the exchange is to open up many of these discussions and perspectives – from users, vendors, investors, academics and others shaping the industry. Of course, there are some “rules of the road” that we ask you to respect, in order to make the site work:

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Maven


Maven is a word derived from Yiddish, but originated in the United States and stands for “A person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert.”

We do know many Connectors, people we create contact among other people, and most probably a few Mavens: finding a Maven acting as a connector as well is a rare fortune.

Connectors and Mavens are also found in the Internet: in the Microsoft research lab there is an ongoing research project, Netscan, aimed to the identification of behaviors on the Usenet: in the project a few Mavens are identified and defined as people who answer people who do not answer people. They are the central nodes with many uni-directional knowledge ties.