Gareth Penny advises MBAs to "be yourself, only smarter and better..."
Thom Peunchob, WG'08
Issue date: 4/9/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 1
Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but for more than 100 years, a diamond's best friend has been a secretive South African company, that until 2005 was not even allowed to directly sell diamonds in the US. On March 28th, Wharton welcomed Gareth Penny, Managing Director of De Beers Group.
Established in 1888, De Beers is the largest diamond mining company in the world and for many decades it controlled more than 90% of the world's diamond supply. It achieved this position through its ownership of large diamond mines and its systematic buying of all rough diamonds available on the open market. Since 1999, De Beers has gone through a radical change. It decided to abandon its monopoly of diamond supply and instead started focusing on increasing global demand for diamonds. During his lecture, Mr. Penny focused on the leadership challenges posed by this transformation.
Mr. Penny began his career at Anglo American Corporation in 1988 and ran the Anglo American & De Beers' Small Business Initiative in South Africa. He set up a diamond cutting factory in Botswana, and then spent two years as Personal Assistant to the Chairman of Anglo American & De Beers.
Mr. Penny was appointed Director of Sales & Marketing of the Diamond Trading Company, a De Beers affiliate, in 2001. He joined the De Beers board in 2003 and became Managing Director and Chairman in March 2006. Mr. Penny was the prime architect of the radical shift from supply-side management to demand-driven initiatives. These initiatives have proven successful and have resulted in strong industry growth since 2000. He has reshaped not just the world's largest diamond company, but an entire industry as well.
Mr. Penny began his lecture by laying out the context and history of the diamond industry and De Beers' future within it. He then moved on to discuss four important factors for being successful in business.
First and foremost, it is important for a company fully understand its DNA. Knowing your purpose, vision and value is paramount to drive a successful business. Not only that, you need to be able to communicate your values through out the organization. Running the successful global business, you need to understand your competitive advantage, understand your purpose, vision and value and then get people in your organization to look at those values in the same perspective.
Secondly, you need a strategy and plan to compete. Crucial to developing a good strategy is that you define your business model and your put the right people in charge, all at the same time. We need to understand our human resources capability and define our business model in a way that we will be able to implement it effectively. In reality, strategy will only work if it fits with your organization structure and you have right people to successfully implement it.
Thirdly, the management of people is among the most important things in business. He mentioned that managers spend more than 60% of their time recruiting, managing and motivating people. He challenged us to think about how much time we spend now thinking about how we will manage people in the future.
Finally, leadership is about delegating. Delegating is the art of working effectively with other people. Work place accountability (WPA) was developed at De Beers to ensure that everyone around the world gets things done effectively. WPA involves five steps; 1: make sure you get the right people, 2: give them clear objectives, 3: make sure they understand what they can do and want they can not do, 4: delegate the work to them and 5: monitor the results carefully.
Mr. Penny ended his lecture with a story from London Business School research on commonality between great business leaders. The research found that there is no characteristic common to all great leaders except the fact that each of them is true to themselves. Hence, it is important for each of us to understand our competitive advantage and develop your own unique plan to out compete in the business. Be yourself more positively and with skills.
Established in 1888, De Beers is the largest diamond mining company in the world and for many decades it controlled more than 90% of the world's diamond supply. It achieved this position through its ownership of large diamond mines and its systematic buying of all rough diamonds available on the open market. Since 1999, De Beers has gone through a radical change. It decided to abandon its monopoly of diamond supply and instead started focusing on increasing global demand for diamonds. During his lecture, Mr. Penny focused on the leadership challenges posed by this transformation.
Mr. Penny began his career at Anglo American Corporation in 1988 and ran the Anglo American & De Beers' Small Business Initiative in South Africa. He set up a diamond cutting factory in Botswana, and then spent two years as Personal Assistant to the Chairman of Anglo American & De Beers.
Mr. Penny was appointed Director of Sales & Marketing of the Diamond Trading Company, a De Beers affiliate, in 2001. He joined the De Beers board in 2003 and became Managing Director and Chairman in March 2006. Mr. Penny was the prime architect of the radical shift from supply-side management to demand-driven initiatives. These initiatives have proven successful and have resulted in strong industry growth since 2000. He has reshaped not just the world's largest diamond company, but an entire industry as well.
Mr. Penny began his lecture by laying out the context and history of the diamond industry and De Beers' future within it. He then moved on to discuss four important factors for being successful in business.
First and foremost, it is important for a company fully understand its DNA. Knowing your purpose, vision and value is paramount to drive a successful business. Not only that, you need to be able to communicate your values through out the organization. Running the successful global business, you need to understand your competitive advantage, understand your purpose, vision and value and then get people in your organization to look at those values in the same perspective.
Secondly, you need a strategy and plan to compete. Crucial to developing a good strategy is that you define your business model and your put the right people in charge, all at the same time. We need to understand our human resources capability and define our business model in a way that we will be able to implement it effectively. In reality, strategy will only work if it fits with your organization structure and you have right people to successfully implement it.
Thirdly, the management of people is among the most important things in business. He mentioned that managers spend more than 60% of their time recruiting, managing and motivating people. He challenged us to think about how much time we spend now thinking about how we will manage people in the future.
Finally, leadership is about delegating. Delegating is the art of working effectively with other people. Work place accountability (WPA) was developed at De Beers to ensure that everyone around the world gets things done effectively. WPA involves five steps; 1: make sure you get the right people, 2: give them clear objectives, 3: make sure they understand what they can do and want they can not do, 4: delegate the work to them and 5: monitor the results carefully.
Mr. Penny ended his lecture with a story from London Business School research on commonality between great business leaders. The research found that there is no characteristic common to all great leaders except the fact that each of them is true to themselves. Hence, it is important for each of us to understand our competitive advantage and develop your own unique plan to out compete in the business. Be yourself more positively and with skills.
Be the first to comment on this story