Executive Excellence - Interview with Nicos and Korallia Timotheou

Executive Excellence - Combine Leadership and Management to Create and Deliver Value 
Interview with Nicos and Koralia Timotheou

​Executive Excellence - Combine Leadership and Management to Create and Deliver Value”© is an impressive publication of nearly 400 pages, meticulously indexed and referenced that serves both as a practical guide and as a treasure trove for executives in organizations.

The authors, Nicos and Koralia Timotheou, father and daughter, presented their book on September 30 at the European University. The book is centered around their conviction that successful organizations are bound to create and deliver value to their stakeholders and they do this by organisational, management and leadership excellence. And the authors emphasize that successful leaders and managers are made, not born, they are self-made.  

We asked them a few questions: 
What would you say are the major milesetones on the road to excellence?

Successful executives continue through their life to expand their knowledge (their competences) and to improve their personal traits (their competencies).
They do not stop once they graduate a university - their first major milestone towards a successful career. They are aware that getting into any organisation, their academic qualifications are inadequate for success. They try to understand what they do not know and to bridge the gaps through study, active listening, networking with the best peers and, where possible, older managers.

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​They recognise that each time they are promoted to a new post or recruited in a new job, they need to learn more new things. They pay special attention to blend into the culture of the organisation they work and to fit into the teams and become members, being as flexible as possible, until they find themselves in a position where they now can influence culture! It is extremely important that they are operating in a “never-stop-learning” mode.

How is coaching and mentoring helpful in this process?

Learning is sheer pleasure for us and there are so many things you can learn, you don’t have to stay confined within the standards or prescriptions of any industry. On the contrary, learning seemingly less relevant skills and enhancing the spirit in any way, has profound results on our professional abilities, our personal interactions, our tolerances, our value sets. Like practicing meditation, which has nothing to do with management or leadership but it is so beneficial to the self that it opens up a highway towards everything else. Never stop learning. Anything!  
  
In what way does your book relate to the innovation imperative of organizations today?
 
We insist that to be successful an executive must exercise organisational, management and leadership excellence. All  these three ‘subprocesses’ of the executive process demand continuous improvement and this can only be realised through innovation.

On an everyday basis, as in kaizen, or a non-regular way via reengineering and in a systematic way through visioning so that the organisation contemporises its business models, its processes, its products and services. It also keeps improving continually the competences and the competencies of its people through training, coaching and mentoring, so that they keep being agile and innovative. By cultivating the right organizational culture, in which it is safe to experiment and try things out – in a controlled and coordinated way – innovation becomes not only possible but probable.

We were wondering, what were the challenges of a father and daughter double-act in producing such a work?

Writing a professional book which demands long study and meta-research, authoring big chapters on diverse subjects and engaging in tedious editing demands a lot of persistence, patience and stamina. The challenge is bigger when the couple is a father and a daughter. It increases further when they are both strong characters - each with a mind of their own.

We were lucky to have worked together for a few years in providing consultancy to various organisations, and we found a good collaborative modus operandi. In writing the book we laid down a couple of important rules: sketch together the subject of the book; divide it into a number of more-or-less semi-autonomous subjects; divide them among ourselves; each one writes the first draft version; the other one reviews; then get together (in person or via telephone) and discuss it until we agree on the necessary changes -additions, deletions, improvements, etc; the original author of each chapter revises it as agreed; the other one reviews it; the process is repeated until we both feel happy. When the whole book finishes, we both review it together, then each one revises the whole manuscript and then we get together to agree the final changes. The biggest challenges we encountered were in agreeing what to leave in the original versions and what to drop out. 

We succeeded because we both recognised that it was a once in-a-life-time project for both of us; each one respected the knowledge and experience of the other; and believed in the authenticity of each other’s comments even when they were very negative. The result was very satisfactory and we truly enjoyed extremely working together. This venture also gave us the opportunity to dive deep into each other’s mind and way of thinking which we probably wouldn’t have done under any other circumstances. This was not only interesting but it gave birth to fresh ideas and new aspects of seemingly outdated knowledge. It was very creative!

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“Executive Excellence – Combine Leadership and Management to Create and Deliver Value” © by Nicos and Koralia Timotheou
(Rethink Press, 2019) 
Available on Amazon in print and Kindle form:  https://cutt.ly/rwnqU8f 

“… all-encompassing, comprehensive yet detailed to the point of being applicable and distinctly practical.
What can one say, other than this is a ‘must-read’ book.
Professor Andrew Kakabadse, Henley Business School
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