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Corporate Charisma: Key to business competitiveness in the new Asia
25th May, 1998
Back to News Menu |  The rules for corporate success in Asia are changing fast. The Asian crisis and globalization has exposed a significant number of previously successful companies as "paper tigers" who based their success on privileged associations with policy makers, easy investment funding from Western financiers who had nowhere else to invest 10 years ago, and false optimism on Asia as a place where an increasingly wealthy middle class ensured market success.In the rush, companies lost, or indeed never saw the need, for a serious "identity". In South East Asia, local companies took on European names as a coward's way out to establish an identity, in an increasingly brand conscious market. It was a time when, as we have outlined before, both Asian governments and companies lost their soul to a foreign culture. That self managed sell out was far more substantive and damaging than any perceived external international financing shenanigans that have been blamed for current share market and currency devaluations. What Asian companies could you say today have a "soul" or identity, rather than just being money generating mechanisms? What Asian companies would you be proud to work for, share a mission with, and internalise corporate values and beliefs? Perhaps this is one reason, while there are undoubtedly many others just as valid, for our massive staff turnover rates. Invariably when I run workshops on Strategy for leading Asian companies I ask the assembled throng to write down in 20 words or less what their company mission is. Then I go around the table and ask each participant to read it out. Apart from very few companies which I know now are Asia's finest and appear regularly in surveys of Asia's most admired companies, the only uniformity in answers is in their divergence. How can a company expect to firstly engender loyalty and inspiration in their employees if even the top managers do not know, off by heart, the shared objectives, values and beliefs in a mission statement. Heaven help the middle managers and assembly workers.. let alone the poor customer... What Asian brand names are you proud to have in your home, apart from the knowledge that it was made by a "successful company"? If we buy a Volvo we are making a statement about safety and security, if we buy a Mercedes we are making a statement of our financial standing and status, if we buy from Ikea we buy modernity. Asian companies with powerful image evoking brands are few. Singapore Airlines certainly, Sanyo, Creative Technologies maybe.... Those with brands that reflect the dynamism and pride in which we hold our own part of the world are even fewer... Hey.. most of the products we buy are making statements about how "Western" we are.. ..So much for "Asian values".... So along comes a book co-authored by our own Asia Pacific Management Forum editorial board member Dr Paul Temporal, based in Malaysia for many years and before that Singapore, who is talking about "Corporate Charisma".. Another "buzzword" you say, shaking your head with having to learn yet another bit of new-age management jargon.. ..But there is substance behind the publishing hype... We all know what charisma is when we talk about leadership.. Lee Kuan Yew had it, Dr Mahathir has it, maybe Estrada has a manufactured celluloid type, Gough Whitlam had it, and still has, Cory Aquino had it for a while and lost it... Nelson Mandela has still got it. What of corporate leaders? Lee Iaccoca from Chrysler had it, James Espey from IDVC had it; to some, even Ronald Mc Donald has got it... (he's not a CEO is he... or is he...?)... Temporal and Alder, in Corporate Charisma: How to achieve world-class recognition by maximising your company's image, brands and culture, say not only individuals but also corporates can have it.. and if you do, you can transform your organization that just exists to make money, to one which can make even more by empowering employees, making customers feel great by buying your goods and services, and establishing a value image in the market place. ....Think what that could do for your competitiveness... Corporate success through Corporate Charisma, according to the authors, is achieved by the following..
In the final chapter addressed to CEO's are the author's tips on strengthening corporate personality.. (with the Rat's comments in parenthesis)
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The views expressed here may not necessarily reflect those of Orient Pacific Century or partners of the Asia Pacific Management Forum
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