Corner Office: Xerox's Anne Mulchay On Leadership

Here's a great interview from the New York Times with Xerox CEO Anne Mulchay on leadership and business. She started in sales, did a career change and ran HR, and then became the CEO. The interviewer asked what she learned while running HR and I especially enjoyed her answer because it mirrors my perspective (and post) on how to narrowly focus your talent management efforts and funds.

Q. What did you learn from running human resources?

A. One was that you discover quickly how little honest feedback people get in companies, and how important it is for people to have a sense of candid assessment. It became very much a mantra for me, to kind of influence a culture that assessed people accurately and really dealt with people fairly.

The other piece is the importance of talent development. Not everybody is created equal, and it’s important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently, accelerate their development and pay them more. That process is so incredibly important to developing first-class leadership in a company.

I think sometimes companies get confused with egalitarian processes that they think are the fairest, and that is not what companies need. Companies need to be very selective about identifying talent and investing in those leaders of the future.