Results-Based Leadership: How Leaders Build the Business and Improve the Bottom Line
Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norman Smallwood
Harvard Business Review Press (1999)

“Vision without execution is hallucination.” Thomas Edison

This book was first published in 1999 and as I recently read it, I was curious to know to what extent its core concepts remain relevant to leadership development and brand management in a global business world that has changed so much since then. My conclusion? If anything, they are even more relevant now than they were almost a decade ago. However, I should note that in the subsequently published Leadership Brand (2007), co-authored by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, a few of the core concepts are developed in much greater depth. (FYI, Ulrich and Smallwood are co-authors of Leadership Brand.) For those who have not read the more recently published book, the co-authors of Results-Based Leadership suggest that it describes “the distinct results that leaders deliver to their firm. Both attributes and results go into a complete leadership brand, and this brand offers significant advantages to a firm. In fact, creating a leadership brand for their organization should become a key challenges for all leaders. Without results, leadership brand becomes generic; with results, leadership brands become specific, distinctive, and add value.”

In Chapter 1, Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Smallwood explain how to connect leadership attributes to results. In this context, I am reminded of what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton have to say about what they characterize as a “knowing-doing gap.” They assert (and I agree) that many executives know what must be done but, for whatever reasons, are unable to achieve the desired results. Hence the importance of the material in the first chapter. Four key points:

1. Effective leaders produce results.
2. One of the most important results is the development of other leaders.

Note: Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, commits at least 20% of his time to mentoring GE’s middle managers.

3. All organizations need a process in place that produces such leaders.
4. Leaders are needed at all levels and within all areas of the given enterprise.

Then in Chapters 2-8, the co-authors respond to questions such as these:

o How to define desired results?
o How to achieve desired employee results by investing in human capital?
o How achieve organization results by creating capabilities?
o How to achieve customer results by building firm equity?
o How to achieve investor results by building shareholder value?
o How to become a results-based leader?
o How do results-based leaders build others who are also results-based?

The sequence of “how to’s” correctly indicates that after Ulrich, Zenger, and Small identify the “what” of results-based leadership, they devote almost all of their attention to its “how.” What they offer is a framework for what can become a comprehensive, cohesive, and cost-effective game plan but it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to build into that plan all of the information, suggestions, and recommendations that the co-authors provide. The core principles of results-based leadership should guide and inform the preparation and implementation of a plan that is most appropriate for each reader’s own organization but not dictate the specifics of that plan.

I especially appreciate their use of various reader-friendly devices that include hundreds of checklists, graphic figures, bold face, and real-world examples. Obviously, these devices focus the reader’s attention on key points but also facilitate, indeed accelerate periodic reviews of those points later. I also commend them on the “Notes” section that includes a number of enlightening annotations that accompany many of the citations.

Just as Edison correctly reminds us that “vision without execution is hallucination,” Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norm Small remind us that that one result – if not the most important result – of great leadership is that it produces other great leaders. Then and only then can desired results involving associates, customers, and investors be achieved and then sustained. Those who read this book learn what they need to know to become a results-driven leader, but it is then up to them to act upon that knowledge, once they decide what the desired results are. Hence the importance of sound judgment to make the right calls. As Peter Drucker expressed it so well in 1963, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” That is especially true when formulating and then implementing a leadership development program.