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    The Responsible Manager

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    C.K. Prahalad argues that managers must hold themselves to a higher standard and strive for success with responsibility. For over 30 years, he has advised MBA and executive students on how to become responsible managers. His message emphasizes developing humility, avoiding ego, investing in others, relating to less fortunate groups, ensuring fair processes, and balancing achievement with compassion. Prahalad believes this guidance on responsible leadership is even more relevant today.

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    The Responsible Manager

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    C.K. Prahalad argues that managers must hold themselves to a higher standard and strive for success with responsibility. For over 30 years, he has advised MBA and executive students on how to become responsible managers. His message emphasizes developing humility, avoiding ego, investing in others, relating to less fortunate groups, ensuring fair processes, and balancing achievement with compassion. Prahalad believes this guidance on responsible leadership is even more relevant today.

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    C.K. Prahalad argues that managers must hold themselves to a higher standard and strive for success with responsibility. For over 30 years, he has advised MBA and executive students on how to become responsible managers. His message emphasizes developing humility, avoiding ego, investing in others, relating to less fortunate groups, ensuring fair processes, and balancing achievement with compassion. Prahalad believes this guidance on responsible leadership is even more relevant today.

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    39 views2 pages

    The Responsible Manager

    Uploaded by

    krishnammd
    C.K. Prahalad argues that managers must hold themselves to a higher standard and strive for success with responsibility. For over 30 years, he has advised MBA and executive students on how to become responsible managers. His message emphasizes developing humility, avoiding ego, investing in others, relating to less fortunate groups, ensuring fair processes, and balancing achievement with compassion. Prahalad believes this guidance on responsible leadership is even more relevant today.

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    Column: The Responsible Manager

    by C.K. Prahalad

    Source: Harvard Business Review, January 2010.

    The global financial crisis of the past two years has triggered an unprecedented debate
    about managers’ roles. While discussions about managerial performance, CEO pay,
    and the role of boards have been fierce, scant attention has been paid to managers’
    responsibilities.

    For the past 33 years, I have ended all my MBA and executive education courses by
    sharing with participants my perspective on how they can become responsible
    managers. I acknowledge that they will be successful in terms of income, social status,
    and influence, but caution that managers must remember that they are the custodians
    of society’s most powerful institutions. They must therefore hold themselves to a higher
    standard. Managers must strive to achieve success with responsibility.

    My remarks are intended to serve as a spur for people to reexamine their values before
    they plunge into their daily work routines.

    Take a minute to study them:

    • Understand the importance of nonconformity. Leadership is about change, hope,


    and the future. Leaders have to venture into uncharted territory, so they must be able to
    handle intellectual solitude and ambiguity.

    • Display a commitment to learning and developing yourself. Leaders must invest in


    themselves. If you aren’t educated, you can’t help the uneducated; if you are sick, you
    can’t minister to the sick; if you are poor, you can’t help the poor.

    • Develop the ability to put personal performance in perspective. Over a long career,
    you will experience both success and failure. Humility in success and courage in failure
    are hallmarks of a good leader.

    • Be ready to invest in developing other people. Be unstinting in helping your


    colleagues realize their full potential.

    • Learn to relate to those who are less fortunate. Good leaders are inclusive, even
    though that isn’t easy. Most societies have dealt with differences by avoiding or
    eliminating them; few assimilate those who aren’t like them.

    • Be concerned about due process. People seek fairness—not favors. They want to
    be heard. They often don’t even mind if decisions don’t go their way as long as the
    process is fair and transparent.
    • Realize the importance of loyalty to organization, profession, community, society,
    and, above all, family. Most of our achievements would be impossible without our
    families’ support.

    • Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you
    work with. How you achieve results will shape the kind of person you become.

    • Remember that you are part of a very privileged few. That’s your strength, but it’s
    also a cross you carry. Balance achievement with compassion and learning with
    understanding.

    • Expect to be judged by what you do and how well you do it—not by what you say
    you want to do. However, the bias toward action must be balanced by empathy and
    caring for other people.

    • Be conscious of the part you play. Be concerned about the problems of the poor and
    the disabled, accept human weaknesses, laugh at yourself—and avoid the temptation to
    play God. Leadership is about self-awareness, recognizing your failings, and developing
    modesty, humility, and humanity.

    Every year, I revisit my notes about the responsible manager, which I first jotted down in
    1977. The world has changed a lot since then, but I haven’t found it necessary to
    change a word of my lecture. Indeed, the message is more relevant today than ever.

    C.K. Prahalad (ckp@bus.umich.edu) is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished


    University Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of
    Business.

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