My colleague Randy Ottinger follows CEOs and has an interesting perspective on the dynamics between company leaders. Here he turns his attention to recent news – the story of Angela Ahrendts moving to Apple.
Burberry just lost its top innovator to Apple – CEO Angela Ahrendts. Luckily for Burberry, they aren’t losing a leader of a lesser caliber. (And no, that last sentence does not have a typo.)
The mark of a great leader is the impact they leave behind. And Ahrendts’ revival of the stodgy brand has been impressive. Notwithstanding the hit Burberry stock suffered since the announcement of her departure, she’s turned the company into a rocket ship. A rocket ship that she’s propelled to a value of $3 billion and a stock return of 300%.
But, it's a basic Leadership 101 tenet, great leaders are always working to put themselves out of a job by developing great leadership capacity in their wake. As early as six years ago, Ahrendts may have been considering the day of her departure. She elevated Christopher Bailey to Chief Creative Officer that year and has been touting him in the press ever since. She claimed to be “working in lockstep” with Bailey and broadened the spotlight to share it with him whenever possible.
She has also developed a complex vision for the company; complex only in that it’s a way of thinking, not a business goal. Ahrendts gave a TEDx talk last spring about the positive and transformative power of human energy. Now this may seem a bit on the woo-woo side – and pushing such a “soft” topic is quite a risk for a female CEO – but she’s obviously on to something. On the Burberry website, “Culture” is as prominent as “Brand,” and its summary uses words like “cross-functional collaboration,” “brand vision,” “compassionate teams,” and the core values – “Protect, Explore and Inspire.”
At Burberry, Ahrendts has left a clear pathway for success and an 11,000-strong employee base of inspired, innovative, and engaged workers who can continue to move the company along this meteoric path. I’ll be following closely to see what Bailey does at the head of the Burberry rocket ship in the next year.
Randy Ottinger is an Executive Vice President at Kotter International, a firm that helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in their organizations. Follow Kotter International on Twitter @KotterIntl, on Facebook, or on LinkedIn.
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