I’ve been fascinated by ghSMART for many years. For a start, the work the company does is interesting. It helps CEOs, boards, and investors move swiftly from strategy to results by building the right leadership teams.
But the company itself is also unique. It regularly takes the top spot in multiple categories of the prestigious Vault Consulting awards, including for level of challenge, selectivity, and interaction with clients. At the same time, it gives employees a level of autonomy that is unheard-of in professional services—including over where they work, whom they work with, what they work on, and even how much they work. I was a McKinsey consultant in a previous life, and many of my colleagues who sat in the rare center of the Venn diagram of “top talent” and “exceptional human being” ended up joining ghSMART later in their careers. Intrigued? A recent case taught at Harvard Business School provides a compelling deep dive on the history and culture of the firm.
So when I decided I wanted to do a post on leadership in sustainability, I knew the person to call. BJ Wright is a partner at ghSMART and the cofounder of its London office. He also coleads the firm’s research on founder CEOs, including publishing recent Harvard Business Review articles on the strengths and weaknesses that set founders apart and how to unlock value in partnerships between founders and investors. We discussed how ghSMART thinks about leadership, common missteps leadership teams make, and why the future chief sustainability officer (CSO) of your company may already be part of your staff—and how to find and nurture them.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Katie Parry: What brought you to ghSMART, and what sort of work do you do?
BJ Wright: I’m a chemist by training but ended up working at McKinsey & Company. In my client work, I found that strategy without leadership was not very effective, so when I heard about the leadership advisory work that ghSMART does, I didn’t hesitate. I joined 11 years ago in the US and moved to London in 2016 to open our first international office.
Katie: Forbes has described ghSMART as “one of the best consulting firms you’ve never heard of.” What makes the firm so special?
BJ: Our methodology, of course, but first and foremost it’s our people. They’re excellent—many are from companies such as Bain, BCG, and McKinsey—but they’re also nice. Furthermore, we hire a significant number of psychologists and try to blend together those two groups: the strategists and the psychologists. Fusing those distinct skill sets, we can understand a company’s strategy and business plan and then match that to the right human beings and sets of behaviors to drive prioritized outcomes.
Katie: I know ghSMART uses a rigorous, tested methodology to measure and assess leadership. But as succinctly as you can, how do you think about good leadership?
BJ: Fundamentally, all leadership is contextual. There’s no such thing as a universally good CFO or head of sales. The question we should always ask is, “Good for what?” The right answer will take into account a huge range of factors, such as the industry, company history, and current situation; the broader geopolitical and economic context; and the other personalities involved.
It’s also really important to remember that there are two strands to good leadership: running the business—which might be 70 to 80 percent of what someone is doing—and changing the business. You need to think about those two modes in different ways because they require different systems and ways of working. For example, a leader might do a weekly stand-up to walk through the sales pipeline and results, but they might do a monthly discussion with a subset of people that is about changing their go-to-market model or figuring out how to enter a new region.
Katie: Do you come across CSOs, or other sustainability leaders, often as part of your job? If so, do you have any observations about what leadership styles end up being most effective?
BJ: I don’t come across CSOs very often in the companies I work with, but the same principles apply as with leadership more broadly: The right person will depend on the context. I will say, though, that the companies I encounter that are making real progress on sustainability tend to be those for which the private equity fund or CEO has painted a clear vision of why these issues are foundational to the delivery of business strategy.
Katie: Something we often hear is that sustainability is still too siloed. What can companies do to build truly effective and cohesive leadership teams?
BJ: We’ve done a lot of research on leadership over the last 20 to 30 years and have found that successful leadership starts with asking some key questions, as laid out in our book Power Score, written by Geoff Smart, Randy Street, and Alan Foster:
- Priorities: Do we have the right priorities?
- Who: Do we have the right people on the team?
- Relationships: Do we have the right relationships that deliver results? Are we having the right conversations in the right ways and at the right times?
We find that truly effective leadership teams can answer yes to all of those questions while others can do so for only one or two of them. The value at stake is significant. Our research suggests that leaders operating at full “PWR” (that is, who are performing well across the priorities, who, and relationships elements) are twice as likely as average leaders—and 20 times more likely than bottom PWR leaders—to achieve their goals.
Most leaders will anchor on one of those things and pay less attention to the others. Former management consultants, for example, might want to make sure that strategy and priorities are really tight, and then they’ll assume the people they have will somehow figure it out. That just doesn’t work. Our data suggests that the “who” is the area in which companies most commonly fall down. Only one in six leaders is strong on that part of the equation; most don’t hold a high-enough bar for individuals.
Katie: Hiring leaders is clearly important, but my instinct is that future sustainability leaders are mostly going to come up through the ranks of their companies, given that a lot of what we’re talking about in sustainability is quite new. Or am I placing too much weight on subject matter knowledge?
BJ: I suspect you’re right.Leadership is pretty fungible, but you do need to build a degree of functional expertise. You ideally want someone who is not only passionate and knowledgeable about the area they’re working in but also excellent across the other broader competencies they need, like adaptability. One of those without the other generally doesn’t get you very far.
Katie: How does ghSMART think about identifying the leaders of the future?
BJ: While we’ve historically been focused on the CEO and perhaps the C-suite, we are seeing that large corporations are increasingly interested in identifying and encouraging next-generation talent. As a result, this area is becoming a larger proportion of our work. Finding and investing in the right leaders is hard and uncertain, but we’ve used our data and experience to come up with a proprietary model that helps to predict a leader’s future potential for more scale or complexity. We think about CQ, EQ, and DQ. CQ, or cognitive quotient, is about how smart, curious, and eager to learn someone is. EQ, or emotional quotient, is about understanding yourself and others. And DQ, or drive quotient, is about drive and resilience in the face of adversity, which turns out to be the most predictive of the three elements in terms of future potential.
Separately, we also look at demonstrated agility, which we sometimes call AQ. Instead of being a psychological measure, this is about having a track record of thriving in diverse contexts with swift, effective transitions. If an individual has been successful across a range of companies, geographies, and sectors—as well as in their education—that’s a pretty good predictor that they’ll perform well if dropped into another new environment.
Katie: That’s a really useful framework. Always our last question: What problems keep you up at night, and do you feel optimistic about humanity’s ability to solve them?
BJ: It seems there is a lot to worry about these days, but lately, I’m worrying about overconsumption and waste after watching the film Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy. It also worries me that so many people care about what’s going on in the world but don’t really know what to do about it. They wonder if they should be running for office or doing something for the environment or society at large, but most end up working in companies. And that’s OK—people can have a broad and positive impact through their work—but those great intentions are best deployed in businesses that both perform well and do good. And that comes back to leadership. ghSMART exists to help leaders amplify their positive impact on the world, which is the reason why I do what I do.
Behind the scenes
This interview is part of LEFF’s Into the Weeds interview series, which amplifies individuals and organizations whose work contributes to building a more sustainable future at every level. We’ll bring you insights from renowned experts, the leaders of global organizations, and innovative local businesses. Katie Parry (she/her) is the vice president of sustainability.
To get in touch with LEFF Sustainability Group, please reach out to Katie Parry.
Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of LEFF or have its endorsement.
