I met a senior who has been a business professor for a long time. He was a financial management majo..

I met a senior who has been a business professor for a long time. He was a financial management major. “I was envious of Professor Cho,” he said when asked why. “When I was young, I was comfortable with the head of the finance department in my 40s and the finance director in my 50s because they were the same age, but everyone I met is younger than me because I am over 60 years old. Professor Cho, who majored in strategy, said, “It’s great to see the president or chairman all the time.” I replied with a smile, “I enjoy meeting young people these days,” but I was surprised. It is true that I was able to meet the CEO often thanks to my major in strategic management.

Management professors meet different people in companies depending on their major. Production management mainly meets the factory manager, marketing meets the sales manager, personnel management meets the personnel manager, and financial management meets the finance manager. Strategic management professors naturally deal with CEOs as they deal with long-term strategies and new businesses.

However, an incident occurred that completely changed my thinking about strategic management. According to a survey of 230,000 people in 142 countries conducted by Gallup, a global research firm, 67% of its employees said their bodies are in the company, but their minds are elsewhere. Two out of three employees work formally without being immersed in their work.

The CEO’s role is to achieve goals with strategy. If so, the CEO has two challenges. First, creating a mechanism that binds 67% who were not immersed into one team. Second, having a strategy that makes 33% immersed actually act. You shouldn’t do just one or the other. If you do the former, there is no action, and if you do the latter, you will use only one-third of your organizational capabilities. If you were a true CEO, which of these two would you put more weight on.

“Act by the rules, but run wild,” says Nike founder Phil Knight. “If you really want to be satisfied, you believe that what you do now is the greatest thing. The only way to do something great is to love it.” Apple founder Steve Jobs will follow. “My business model is the four-member band The Beatles. They were not perfect, and each had many weaknesses, but they complemented and balanced each other, and as a result, the sum of the whole was greater than simply adding to each other’s abilities.”

“Listening is not just listening, it’s ‘listening with all ears’,” said Lee Byung-chul, the founder of Samsung Group. Chairman Chung Ju-yung, the founder of Hyundai Group, speaks in a straightforward manner. “Hey, have you tried it? There are times when businessmen work over the abacus.”

The CEOs of the illustrated conglomerates present their visions based on their values. And it focuses on bringing the power of its members together. When members sympathize with the vision, they act voluntarily, where a corporate culture is formed. This culture becomes the mechanism by which managers’ values work. Members follow the mechanism and move to the original team.

Looking back, most of the topics that strategic management scholars have dealt with were strategies at the level of corporate business managers, such as globalization, diversification, and rationalization. The vision that moves the minds of members and the mechanisms that bring immersion from the CEO’s mouth of a global conglomerate were omitted from the research of scholars. When I meet my senior again, I have no choice but to say, “The manager I deal with is not the chairman or the president, but the business manager.”

From now on, we are trying to establish strategic management as a true discipline for CEOs. By bringing the body and mind of corporate members together and developing a mechanism that makes them a one-team team.

[Jo Dong Sung, chair professor at Seoul National University of Science]