“Successful companies may suffer a slow demise, as bad decisions are often made long before it shows in the financials. So my question to you is, how many of you are already dead?”

The provocative question was asked by professor and IMD President John Wells who, pacing up and down the floor, spoke before a crowd of 150 top executives from A.P. Moller - Maersk and other large Scandinavian companies at the IMD Business Forum on Responsible Leadership last month.

The Forum was set up as part of the company and the Moller family’s long-standing relationship with the IMD business school based in Switzerland. IMD, (International Institute for Management Development) is a business school founded in 1990 that was set up to provide executive education.

In his speech on responsible leadership, John Wells explained how, even with a solid strategy and efficient execution, companies still fail because they don’t adapt to a changing world.

“Let me give you a nice little psychology example: You put a pigeon in a cage and place two feeders in there, one red, the other green. Then you put feed in the red dispenser, and the pigeon eats happily. This is where the fun starts: Now you put feed in the green dispenser, but what happens? The pigeon keeps pecking away at the red one, because once it’s learnt something, it can’t relearn.”

“That is what many companies do in times of crisis: they keep doing more of the same, but what they’re essentially doing is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic, keeping focus on the inside instead of on the outside world”, said Professor Wells.

He was backed up by co-host Claus V. Hemmingsen, Partner and CEO of Maersk Drilling and Maersk FPSOs. In his introduction, Hemmingsen touched on the importance of staying agile as an organisation, even if it means making some hard decisions:

“Changes in the market require changes in the way we organise our company. We need to be organised in a way     that enables us to move with our customers,” said Claus V. Hemmingsen.

“We have had to take measures to avoid bureaucracy as well as slow decision-making, and empowering our frontline is an important part of this”, he added.

Both speakers agreed on the importance of getting the right results in the right way: “Business is not simply about    maximising shareholder value. It is about delivering superior returns to all stakeholders and always striving to do better. And it is about being fair and honest in everything we do,” Professor Wells rounded off.   

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The Business Forum on Responsible Leadership was co-hosted by IMD and A.P. Moller - Maersk and was held at the A.P. Moller - Maersk headquarters in Copenhagen.
 
A.P. Moller - Maersk is a member of IMD’s Corporate Learning Network and every year enrols top executives in the school’s executive MBA programme along with a number of other open enrolment programmes. IMD also acts as a high-level strategic sparring partner to the group’s top managers, pulling on its academic research and strategic tools.

Read John Well’s article on Responsible Leadership at IMD’s website: Getting the right results the right way