Wharton professor Michael Useem: Data analytics is now the ‘coin of the realm’

When a world-renowned leadership and management expert talks about data, enterprise risk management, and strategic partnerships, I think everyone should listen. 

To discuss these topics, I had the opportunity to sit down with Michael Useem, the William and Jacalyn Egan Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Useem is also the director of the Center for Leadership and Change Management.

“Data analytics has become the ‘coin of the realm’ at the moment, and for good reason,” he told me. “In every field, my personal view is that if you’re not working with your intuition and data analytics, you’re not getting your job done. You need to combine both.” Data analytics is an “enormous development” that has “now has spread through every realm of life,” he says. For example, in the workplace, determining how to compensate senior managers or frontline workers requires good research and data analysis, Useem says. 

However, experienced wisdom and a “profound understanding of the human condition” is still enormously important, he says. This aspect is essential as the war for talent continues. Necessary reflective questions include, “Why do people want to work for you?” he explains. “What about your own personal character helps people say, ‘Yeah, I really want to work for Mary or Fred.’ Or what character shortcomings lead to people at the exit interviews saying, ‘The number one reason I quit is I didn’t like my boss.'”

Once you have a vision for your company, a strategy, and an understanding of talent needs, leaders must be ready “to get people to work really hard in the right direction, and not head off in the wrong direction or quit altogether,” Useem says.

The 10th anniversary edition of Useem’s book, The Leader’s Checklist: 16 Mission-Critical Principles, was released in October. Was the COVID-19 pandemic a redefining moment for leadership?

“For many people, it has been, and will stand as the greatest disruption in their professional lives,” Useem says. “As a chief financial officer, and in the C-suite more generally, you really had to take a gigantic leap forward in appreciating how you’re going to lead when you’ve had to furlough, or maybe lay off a third of your workforce. But it is amazing how shocks to the system concentrate the mind and force learning to go into overdrive.” Skills obtained during the pandemic should complement the foundational skills of leaders—the ability to think strategically, be decisive, and communicate persuasively, he says.  

The pandemic has forced many firms to “kind of take a step back and wonder about their risk forecasting models, their resilience and coming back from an enormous downdraft,” Useem explains. And as a result, “I think it’s going to cause a fundamental reassessment on the part of the CFO of the financial risks that the enterprise has faced now, but also it is likely to face in the future of a magnitude I think we never imagined,” he says.

The role of the CFO has evolved in the past 10 years, and that includes being a strategic partner to the CEO, Useem says. “I happen to think it’s also true of the chief human resources officer (CHRO),” he says. “There’s an argument out there that calls it the G3—the CEO, CFO and CHRO—increasingly becoming a critical team.”

In his book released this past summer, The Edge: How 10 CEOs Learned to Lead—and the Lessons for Us All, Useem examines the decision-making of chief executives at major companies. The experience of Denise Ramos, former CEO and president of ITT, is a good example of strategic partnership, he says. Ramos was the CFO for ITT when the company was breaking into three spin-offs, Useem explains. The board chair asked her to become the chief executive of one of the three, he says. “She responded, ‘Well, I’m the CFO, I’m not a CEO,'” Useem says. The board chair said, ‘But Denise, you’ve been thinking like a CEO.”

I’d wager the same could be said of many of you reading this.

See you tomorrow.

Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com

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Leaderboard

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Overheard

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