CHANGING A BUSINESS CULTURE

Modern business has to become more agile if it is to survive in the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment that is the modern business world it exists within in. The problem is that most businesses are not agile enough to drive and maintain the necessary change from within. It takes real discipline to constantly initiate and drive change before the environment enforces change upon an organisation. Such motivation rarely exists in established organisations that are comfortable within their own skin. Like dieting, change is much desired but rarely voluntarily undertaken and sustained without outside intervention. Why?

Most organisations see themselves as unique; hence most can deny the strongest argument for change.  For such organisations change is appropriate to many others but not to them. Rather like individuals, organisations are highly critical of others but very forgiving of themselves. It is only the hungry young organisations that sustain the necessary agility to match their environment. Hence it is far more “the quick that eat the slow" rather than "the big that eat the small" in today's information driven world.

To change requires a dissatisfaction with current performance and hence an ambition to improve. The change process undertaken needs to unfreeze the organisation from itself and its established culture in order to learn the new ways and doctrine before refreezing itself to ensure the new doctrines are sustained appropriately. Change needs enthusiasm. Change needs energy and change needs ambition that is why it is far easier to sustain in young dynamic organisations.

So how can an organisation generate and sustain organisational agility?  It needs to regularly objectively examine itself and analyse where its tangible success originates from. Replicate the origins of that successful environment and the causes of that success and turn them into common processes and doctrine.  In simple terms it is unfreezing the status quo, prior to creating the new culture and doctrine amongst change agents and disciples before implementing the changes across the organisation by driving the change to a self-fulfilling tipping point. Then refreezing the new doctrine to sustain the change and ensure it is enduring.

The best way of ensuring buy in and render the unique argument superfluous is to use the evidence gleaned from within the organisation to define the new doctrine. By transmitting the evidence  regularly to all and then empowering change agents at every level to drive the required change and preach the necessary messages to those sceptics who exist in every organisation the change becomes unstoppable. With the tipping point reached those in denial will either come round to the new doctrine or leave.

If change is proving difficult it may well be useful to involve an outside agent who has less baggage with them than those who have lived within an organisation! Often it is easier to identify the change from without and drive the cultural change as those within have inevitably been imbued with the current culture.

TO CONTROL OR EMPOWER AS A LEADER

Where did you learn your most valuable lesson? Was it when being successful or when failing? When did you last really feel empowered by your leader? Leaders in the modern world have a constant dichotomy to deal with: whether to control a situation or to empower people and let nature run its course. If a leader controls a situation it offers their team members little opportunity for learning, to experience ownership or individual potential to be maximised. So allowing nature to take its course can be immensely valuable to the development of teams in an organisation. On the other hand such freedom offers the opportunity for a calamitous failure. Well leaders, get used to it. Life and leadership is like that. That is why leaders get paid more than followers because the scale of the success achieved is dependent upon the scale of risk the leader is able to endure.

Control and you may inhibit genius but remain safe and you may prevent it from ever emerging. The proximity between success and failure is all too evident and today’s leaders must instinctively know when to let go and truly empower their people without letting them succumb to a catastrophic failure! The word catastrophic is used quite deliberately here, because a great leader must demand failure from their teams.  For not too fail is not too try and if you are not trying you will never reach your full potential. However it is that leader’s responsibility to support their teams through such small failures to make sure they are not catastrophic in their effect and that the team can keep on going and keep on failing until they succeed. A leader must also make sure that the team learn from each of the failures whilst not giving up. On the other hand good leaders must also know when to impose control for it is that control that will prevent the catastrophic failure.

It is a leader’s role to facilitate performance through motivation and influence. In so doing a leader affords answers to the question why? It is the manager who will provide the answers to the how and police and drive the performance with metrics and targets. The leader empowers and inspires whilst the manager alleviates disaster and controls. Both are key and both roles may originate from the same individual or they may be roles undertaken by two quite different individuals. If they are being undertaken by two different individuals those individuals need to have an analogous relationship and understand their working relationship and each other instinctively.

You can't manage exceptional performance you have to lead it and you can't control innovation and genius you have to inspire them.  But it is in their ability to control and limit the effect of failure, in order to allow valuable lessons to be learned whilst preventing a catastrophe, that a great leader and manager’s value to an organisation are truly felt!

In conclusion leadership is all about situational awareness. It is a leader’s duty to facilitate both empowerment and control but both must be done to match the demands of the circumstances that each leader finds themselves in. A great leader will empower far more than they control!

STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE OR TRYING TO THRIVE?

The question is posed in the context of our economic situation and your business’ approach to ‘dealing’ with this. If your answer is “survive” I would suggest you are likely to be undermining your chances of success by adopting a limiting perspective and attitude. It is possible your thinking will be constraining your business options by the inflexibility of your view of the current situation. Success is achieving what you set out to do and avoiding failure is something very different. An approach Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, articulated well in his quote, “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward…”

Beware of the power of ‘spin’ and guard against it! It was widely reported the UK achieved a third quarter growth of 0.5%; furthermore, the global economy grew by about 4.5% during the same period. Yet our economic news was still dominated by a ‘doom and gloom’ perspective. The reality is growth is neither recession nor regression and ‘good news’ does not make good news copy. As an aside, I understand one CEO of a regional chamber of commerce was unable to get his good news publically aired at the time of announcing this third quarter data. Given these growth figures and that we enjoy unprecedented access (and support) to the global market place, areas of opportunity must exist to explore and exploit.

Challenge conventional thinking! ‘Niche’ is not always nice and can be a barrier to flexibility. The business ‘We Only Press Green Shirts’ is going to suffer if there are insufficient people who want their green shirts pressing. The skills, assets and resources required to press green shirts are the same as those required to press shirts of all colours, not mention a vast array of other garments. Overly simple perhaps but my point is clear; if your client base or market share is reducing what is it you do which can be applied in another way to make a profit?

Perception really matters when assessing the future of a business; challenge your perception of your business. If the diminishing client base of “We Only Press Green Shirts” is seen as being due to the real terms reduction in disposable income available for a discretionary spend service, this thinking may lead to assuming the business is destined to fail. However, if we consider the client base from a different perspective it may be possible to see an opportunity. For example, those who are working in the UK are tending to continue to work long hours and most working families are reported to be struggling to allocate the time needed for domestic work. Perspective influences branding, marketing and sales; remember perspective is not necessarily reality.

So, are you struggling to survive or trying to thrive? Do you possess the flexibility of perspective to recognise opportunity where others see only threat? Do you have the strength of mind and determination to succeed? What is your strategy for succeeding in the current economic situation and will it be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of a dynamic market place?

An Opportunity for Command

Further to my blog ‘Which Leadership Model Now?’ I invite consideration and challenge perceptions of the concept of Command as a values and behaviours based leadership model fit for the present day. I believe the concept of Command, parodied and mocked in various forms of comic entertainment and blamed for atrocities and spectacular failures in history, as a leadership style has been over simplified and is insufficiently understood. As a result, it is too widely presumed to mean a dictatorial, non-inclusive approach to leadership and associated with a communication style almost exclusively authoritative, impersonal and direct; holistically lacking in emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. When delivering Leadership Development Training I most frequently experience delegates initially confining the appropriate use of Command as a leadership style to dealing with emergency situations. If any or all of the above resonate then you may find the following somewhat surprising and possibly challenging.

British military doctrine defines command as; the authority vested in an individual for the direction, coordination and control of military forces. It is concerned primarily with leadership, responsibility and decision making. Clearly written in a military context but very easily contextualised in a civilian perspective by replacing; military forces with assets and resources; leadership with influence and motivation; responsibility with accountability and ownership; and decision making with judgement. Based on this, I suggest Command as a leadership style is the exercise of the authority vested in a leader for the direction, coordination and control of assets and resources. It is concerned primarily with influencing and motivating people, accountability for and ownership of actions and decisions based on judgement.

I offer the following definition of Command as a leadership style for consideration:

“The application of the authority held by an individual to direct, coordinate and control assets and resources; primarily by influencing and motivating others, whilst accepting accountability for and ownership of outcomes from decisions and behaviours based on their judgement.”

I ask the following questions in relation to this definition:

As followers, is this a definition of the type of leadership we want to see and subject ourselves to?

As leaders and managers, is this a definition of behaviours and values we feel worthy of aspiring to?

Is this an appropriate leadership style for today?

THE BIG STRATEGIC GAP BETWEEN THINK AND DO AND DO AND DON'T THINK

The biggest issue in new under resourced businesses is the large gap between "think and do" and that goes both ways to "do and don't think" as well. People who spend their valuable time doing "don't think" about their business, and people who think about their businesses, don't have the time or resource to implement that thinking. The problem is "I know what to do but I don't know when I am going to do it" the most common cry in any young business and the biggest reason for them failing in the first three years. In any business there are things that have to be done, things that need to be done, things to do, things it would be good to do and things that don't need to be done. The problem is most people focus on the wrong things, whilst those that have to be done, are done, those that need to be done aren't because we are doing things that don't need to be done. How do we focus on the right things in the haze of our business environment?

In the Royal Marines a colour sergeant said to me "Sir, you are not clever enough to think of more than ten things, so just make sure they are the right ten things" extremely wise counsel that has held me in good stead ever since. The solution is simple its called STRATEGY, by planning and identifying what all our issues are and where we want to get to, we can identify our big issues and focusing on the top ten of them  as we develop disciplines and processes that keep our businesses on track.

Strategy for me starts with identifying the purpose of the business, why does the business exist. Then the destination needs to be identified and shared. It is the head mark showing where the business needs to get to through the identification of a vision. The vision becomes reality through dividing it into missions, from which plans are drawn up, to achieve each mission milestone. Risks need to be identified and contingencies prepared for before the allocation of resources are considered, both in terms of the talent required and the priority of allocation.

Strategy has to be simple and effective and need not be an over complicated difficult and challenging process. Strategy needs to be empathic with a business and not prescriptive. It is a matter of the simpler the better but it also provides a guide to getting to where you want to be and not a fixed route to the destination. To be effective strategy has to adapt to circumstances and the environment in an organic way. It is far more like a sat nav than it is a printed route map description to a destination.

LEADERSHIP AND THE NHS

I find it interesting that the Keogh Report found failures in care at 14 hospitals, 11 of which have been put into special measures. We now know none of the 14 has been given a clean bill of health and that then raises the possibility that there are other failing hospitals out there. The 14 investigated in this review were a snapshot of poor performers chosen because they had the worst death rates for the past two years.

The key question for me being how was this allowed to happen given the role of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and the leadership within each of the hospitals and their associated trusts? For me there is a fundamental dilemma between care and business. Basically the NHS will spend as much as it is given on caring if it were allowed to do so. However it is seen as a bottomless pit by the Treasury and those responsible for funding it. The clash of the two cultures, care and frugality, needs to be addressed by strong and decisive leadership to maintain the necessary and somewhat precarious balance in an affordable and efficient way. The issue being exposed in the media at the present is the current lack of balance with either one of the two cultures gaining supremacy. If the care side wins Trusts go broke if the business side does people die unnecessarily.

The real leadership dilemma is how does the government maintain standards at an affordable level? It has tried to do this from without using the CQC to maintain the standards and this has now been proven to be a flawed process although the government will maintain and enhance that philosophy with the appointment of Sir Michael Richards and his army of inspectors.

The real problem is not going to be changed from without, the problem is a cultural one and the clash of cultures within the NHS and culture can only be transformed through strong leadership throughout an organisation and a clear and unambiguous strategy that is understood and bought into by those who work within it. This cultural change has to be driven internally by great leaders. Cultural change cannot be driven from without the organisation. I believe the government should be investing in the leadership within the NHS rather than repeating its previous error of unsuccessfully imposing change from outside an organisation. Culture is after all "how people do things round here when no one is looking" and during inspections someone is looking.

The challenge now for the NHS and those in charge of monitoring it - the regulators, NHS England and the government - is to identify exactly how widespread poor performance is and how they can then deliver the necessary cultural balance to drive the required improvement in standards in an affordable way through strong and effective internal leadership.

THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING ON LEADERSHIP

I love Henry Ford’s quote "Whether you think you can or whether you think you can't, you're right" and the problem is most of us learn during our formative years that failure is something to shy away from hence “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.” Sven Goran Eriksson. It is key that we become more positive in our outlook and start believing “I can if,” and not “I can’t because,” when faced with struggles or doubt. Many average businesses fear failure whilst the great ones I know pursue success.
However, sometimes it isn’t enough to be the only one who believes in you – positive people make positive things happen they inspire each other to greatness. Collective positive thinking produces a self generating power that lifts group performance way beyond the expectation of any individual involved. Attitude is infectious and attitude drives behaviour “The success of a journey often depends more on who you are with than where you are going.” feel the power by surrounding yourself with “I can if” people rather than I can't because people .
Key to this is how an organisation deals with failure, if a blame culture exists and failure is stigmatised real lessons are never learned and real progress never made. Failure is always a pre-cursor to success. Just think of the great inventions and the number of false dawns that are learned from.
Powerful groups have always existed the book of Ecclesiastis states, “Though one person may be overpowered by another, two people can resist one opponent. A triple-braided rope is not easily broken.” and the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”
Some of the most successful organisations I work with recruit solely on attitude or happiness, they employ just positive people and inspire each other to greatness. Timpsons is one example of such an organisation that in its recruiting truly looks just at attitude because skills can be taught and learned; a positive disposition cannot be induced in any college. Your attitude is your own, make sure you take advantage of its power. “Every relationship in your organization will affect you one way or another. Those who do not increase you will inevitably decrease you?” John Maxwell
Successful modern leaders need to be positive in their outlook to influence and inspire those they lead.

GETTING THE BEST OUT OF YOUR PEOPLE

For businesses in and around Exeter, Newcastle and indeed elsewhere motivating your people is an essential skill for great leaders. The Key question being how do I get my team to perform at a superb level for a sustained period? Financial inducements have always been seen as essential inducement but are they really?

The Candle Problem undertaken by Carl Dunker in 1945, where a candle and tacks were placed in a box with some matches on a table and those taking part were asked "how do you attach the candle to the wall, light it and prevent the drips from falling on the table". It was reused by Sam Glaxberg who proved that the pressure induced by financial incentives made teams less efficient by 31/2 minutes. So money can work as an incentive for mechanical and automated tasks but not for tasks requiring creative and cognitive skill here the pressure builds with the size of the reward and the degree of complexity related proportionally to the paucity of the performance. So money is not the answer. Extrinsic rewards were very much part of the management of workers last century. Today’s team members prefer far more intrinsic rewards once they have met their extrinsic needs.

So what other inducements has a leader got to enhance his team’s performance?

Today's employees unlike their predecessors like a degree of autonomy. They like to know where they fit within an organisation and where the organisation is going. They like to understand and fit the culture and the values of the organisation as they consider choice to be an essential part of modern life. But they like to feel they have some say and some control of what they do.

They like to feel that they are developing personally in their chosen occupation or role. There is a desire to be seen and recognised as an expert. So they need to see that they are progressing and expanding their knowledge and experience. They also need to recognise that there are opportunities to do this in the future.

The idea that money is king is balanced by a sense of purpose and this is the dichotomy the world is wrestling with now. How do you as an individual or unit survive comfortably and yet maintain a purpose and a contribution to the wider good in a very capitalist and media driven selling environment.

People need cash enough to survive in their chosen environment at their chosen status but they need much more from their employment if they are to be motivated within their employment they need purpose and control in their lives and that is part of modern freedom delivered when humans no longer need to be in a herd continuously to survive.

Sampson Hall are running a series of events in the South West in Exeter and the North East in Newcastle which cover topics such as this. Further information is available at http://www.sampsonhall.co.uk/services/course-dates-and-descriptions.html

ALLOWING AID TO FUNCTION THROUGH EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

The philanthropic nature of our modern western society is based within our capitalist conscience and therefore neither focused nor truly effective in its output. For most benefactors charity ends at the delivery of the sponsorship or donation as a conscience or desire to do some good is personally or organisationally is met. "The West has spent over £ 11/2  trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get cheap medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West has still had not managed to get £3 mosquito bed nets to poor families. How can our concerted global efforts at combating such a clearly defatigable issue be so inept. If a business was run in the same way with such a niche aim it would soon be bankrupt. It's such a tragedy that so much well-meaning and genuine compassion does not deliver effective results to the  unlucky and  powerless people who reside in such naturally challenging regions.

Where is the vision? Where is the coordination? Where is the leadership?

The director of the United Nations Mil­lennium Project Jeffrey Sachs offered a Big Plan to end world poverty, with solutions ranging from nitrogen-fixing leguminous trees to re­plenish soil fertility, to antiretroviral therapy for AIDS, to specially pro­grammed cell phones to provide real-time data to health planners, to rainwater harvesting, to battery-charging stations, to cheap medicines for children with malaria -- for a total of 449 interventions. Professor Sachs has played an important role in calling upon the West to do more for the Rest, but the implementation strategy is less constructive.

So the vision is there and the planning that naturally follows it is there. Where is the leadership? Where is the coordination?

According to Pro­fessor Sachs and the Millennium Project, the UN  Secretary-General should run the plan, coordinating the actions of officials in six UN agencies, the UN country teams, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and a couple of dozen rich-country aid agencies. This Plan is the latest in a long string of Western plans to end poverty.

Unfortu­nately, the West has a bad track record when it comes to meeting its goals. A UN summit in 1990 set as a goal for the year 2000 universal primary-school enrolment. (That is now planned for 2015.) A previous summit, in 1977, set 1990 as the deadline for realizing the goal of universal access to water and sanitation. (Under the Millennium Development Goals, that target is now 2015.) Nobody was ever held accountable for these missed goals nations hide behind national agendas and leaders shirk their duties.

So perhaps the leadership is not there but what about the coordination?

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2005, Sharon Stone raised a million dollars on the spot for more bed nets in Tanzania. Insecticide-treated bed nets can protect people from being bit­ten by malarial mosquitoes while they sleep, which significantly lowers malaria infections and deaths. But if such nets are such an effective cure, why hadn't Planners already got them to the poor? Unfortunately, neither celebrities nor aid administrators have many ideas for how to get bed nets to the poor. Such nets are often diverted to the black market, become out of stock in health clinics, or wind up being used as fishing nets or wedding veils.

The non profit organization Population Services International (PSI), gets rewarded for doing things that work. PSI stumbled across a way to get insecticide-treated bed nets to the poor in Malawi, with initial funding and logistical support from official aid agencies. PSI sells bed nets for fifty cents to mothers through antenatal clinics in the countryside, which means it gets the nets to those who both value them and need them. (Pregnant women and chil­dren under five are the principal risk group for malaria.) The nurse who dis­tributes the nets gets nine cents per net to keep for herself, so the nets are always in stock. PSI also sells nets to richer urban Malawians through private-sector channels for five dollars a net. The profits from this are used to pay for the subsidized nets sold at the clinics, so the program pays for itself. PSI's bed net program increased the nationwide average of children under five sleeping under nets from 8 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004, with a similar in­crease for pregnant women. A follow-up survey found nearly universal use of the nets by those who paid for them. By contrast, a study of a program to hand out free nets in Zambia to people, whether they wanted them or not (the favoured approach of Planners), found that 70 percent of the recipients didn't use the nets. The 'Malawi model' is now spreading to other African countries.

The local PSI office in Malawi (which is staffed mostly by Malawians who have been with the program for years) was looking for a way to make progress on malaria when it discovered the solution. They decided that bed nets would do the job, and then hit upon the antenatal clinic and the two-channel sales idea. This scheme is not a magical panacea to make aid work under all circumstances; it is just one creative response to a particular problem.

So the co-ordination can be there through innovation and entrepreneurialism!

What is the real problem? Well it’s down to leadership and in the business world leaders make or break an organisation yet in the philanthropic world of humanitarian aid leaders seem unable to operate effectively and deliver to laudable well constructed goals. They lack the tool sets to deliver, they lack the ability to make a difference and yet the Western world sits back happily resting on its laurels having donated over 11/2 Trillion £ to help those poor people who suffer so much in the harsh environs of the third world.

Let’s get cleverer at delivering aid by employing top leaders, empowering them to deliver and rewarding them when they do so innovatively and with an entrepreneurial flair. Let’s give them the tools to deliver aid far more effectively and close that leadership gap.

LEADING A CHARITY

Having worked with several charities I have found that the leadership, team cohesion and motivation and the leadership challenges are very different from those we have experienced when working within the corporate sector. Charities are businesses in their own rights but they work under a different and more challenging set of rules and circumstances.

Where a leader in the corporate sector just has the conundrum of balancing stakeholder profit with customer value and societal/brand expectation. A leader in a charity has to balance trustee requirements, fundraising requirements, employees and volunteers, societal expectations and the end user service/value.

Let's start by looking at the trustee dimension within a charity, as it is the most complex of the issues. Trustees are generally very well meaning and highly motivated people who work genuinely hard for a heartfelt cause. However, they may not all come with the same motivation and agenda. Hence, they may value different aspects of a charities work in different ways. They need to be marshalled to be truly cohesive in their approach and yet they need to be independent in their judgement, in order, to ensure the charity adheres to the requirements of the law and the Charity Commission as it moves forward.

Fund raising has many tenets from investment, the basic retail of products, to the winning of funding and grants from public and charitable bodies, to the support of individuals as they raise money. These aspects combined need to provide the working funds for the charity to function and develop. The charitable  financial world is complex and fraught with risk during these frugal times, accountability and transparency has never been more valued and demanded by the customer and the regulator.

The employment environment of a charity is also complicated when it comes to motivating, leading and managing those involved. A charity will normally have paid employees who work in normal employee circumstances alongside those who volunteer their services. The paid employees, whilst viewing their employment as a job, may be intrinsically motivated to choose to work within the sector. However, it is the volunteers that bring other challenges in terms of motivation and expectation. How do you plan an event when you don't know how many people you will have there organising it?

When it comes to providing value for your customers, identifying who they are and how their expectations can be met is critical. Each customer will have a very different perspective of the charity and it's work. Derived from the reasons for their association with that charitable organisation. Contributors to the charity will expect their money to be spent wisely. Those who benefit from the work of the charity may have real issues and problems in their lives that have driven them to seek help. Some will be so desperate that any assistance will do and others will be far more choosy. Circumstances will be incredibly varied depending upon the focus of that particular charity.

The intrinsic rewards of charitable work far outweigh the financial reward and yet the challenges of leading such organisations in the highly competitive charitable sector can lead to a stressful and lonely existence. Best practice needs to be shared more effectively and proven solutions to common issues need to be more available to all those involved, in the leadership of these wonderful organisations, who afford our society so much.

Sampson Hall are now working with Charity Leaders as part of the Charity Forums UK. To help them work together, share best practice and support each other.

PUTTING A VALUE ON VALUE

We all joke about singing from the same hymn sheet or indeed even being in the same church.  But there’s a serious lesson here that some organisations have failed to learn to their cost.  And the key word here is ‘values’.

Humans are individuals with their own sets of values and beliefs. Businesses too, have organisational values and goals.  People join organisations because they like what they see.  They stay because their personal values match those of the organisation.   And they move on if they don’t.

Aligning these human and organisational values is the key to success in the modern business world where speed is vital and trust its key catalyst.

The simple truth is "me" becomes "we" and when an individual feels strongly that they are part of an organisation that affords them great benefit.  They become disempowered as individuals and much more empowered as a team. They feel stronger within and are therefore loathe to stand up for themselves against their peers.

We are taught in modern education to conform, to be right, to go with the majority. But right is often merely a matter of current opinion. Think back to when the world was flat, women could not vote, capital punishment was an acceptable result of serious criminality, tobacco was good for you, drink driving acceptable. All are now considered unacceptable behaviours within most modern Western societies.

The images of a South African taxi driver being dragged behind a police vehicle for illegal parking and news of his subsequent death in custody has shocked the world. Here we see an appalling example of a state organisation with a poor organisational culture that has become unacceptable to most South Africans.

Last October saw the killing of 44 people at a Marikana mine, the deadliest police action since the end of apartheid. More recently the police officer responsible for the prosecution evidence against Oscar Pistorious was publicly removed from the case as a result of his own pending murder charges. The question is: what type of culture exists within the South African police force. Why do good individuals who join an organisation to uphold the law, then behave this way?

The answer comes from the top.  Poor leadership allows values to slip and behaviour changes in groups to shift. Good leadership upholds values and deals with unacceptable behaviour by stopping it in its tracks.

Visualize a fire-fighter rushing into a building, or a Royal Naval ship venturing into dangerous seas. These acts of extreme bravery are an agreed-upon condition of an individual’s employment at the time of their joining. These are the same acts of commitment as our valiant soldiers undertake in fighting and risking life and limb in foreign wars. They each serve with pride, commitment and passion; their agreed-upon commitment. The power of this commitment becomes a personal promise to do the very best job possible.  What these brave souls deserve are good leaders.

Napoleon once stated "There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers" and I believe he was absolutely right. Individual incidents and mistakes will always happen but when organisations go seriously wrong it’s because of the leadership culture that exists within the organisation.  Invariably when an organisation is in trouble, things are going wrong in several areas.  It’s rarely a one-off incident.

Sampson Hall say:  know and publish your organisational values and you will recruit individuals that match them.   it is then up to the leadership to ensure that the behaviour within the organisation matches those values, however complex and difficult that may be.

BANKING AND THE MORAL MAZE

The Royal Bank of Scotland’s five billion pre tax loss – the fifth annual loss on the trot – is hard enough to swallow.  So how does the bank’s head Stephen Hester sell the idea of paying £215M to its investment bankers?

Not very well is the answer.  With public hostility to the banks showing no sign of abating, when are the banks going to start living by the morals and ethics that most of us in our business and private lives abide by?

Not any time soon, by the sound of it.  Even more interesting, unless RBS faces any further punitive charges, it will return to the same high operating profit of £3.5 billion that it made this year.  Unless more procedural failings emerge.  Lets not hold our breath on that one.   Nor any suggestion of a change in the culture of the banking hall.

In our modern world when does an organisation really need to stand up for the values it expounds? Acknowledging that truth comes before trust; how can the leaders who were the exponents of much of the wrongdoing now inflict a different less profit oriented culture on those who follow them? Particularly if they are still using their obscene, outdated and questionable reward system that does not fit the value sets of current social corporate practice

Why should the tax payer continue to support a self perpetuating antiquated money oriented system that is not fit for purpose? It is as close in terms of risk and reward to drug dealing although the associated rich rewards come without the personal risk. Is this sustainable whilst those within that society struggle to make ends meet.

Is it not time for a serious look at what banking is and what it stands for? What does it deliver to society and how does its current culture, values and ethics really match those of the society it serves.

The imbalance in the Banking, corporate conundrum made up of shareholder profit, customer value and societal expectations that exists is down to poor, unethical leadership. Leaders need to be far cleverer in balancing their delivery appropriately in each of the contributory areas. Those leaders will also need to live by the values they expound. The Banking industry is at a crossroad it is up to its leaders to rise to the considerable challenge of changing the culture and leading it into a new age.

SampsonHall

Good Leaders, Great Decisions

Sampsonhall.co.uk

LEADERS BEHAVING BADLY

What do Lord Rennard, former Barclays boss Bob Diamond and General Petraeus, former head of the CIA all have in common?

Answer – they all left their positions as a result of inappropriate behaviour.

All three were extremely clever and competent, able leaders, yet they all misbehaved in a way that cost them or at least contributed to their losing their leadership position.

It is interesting that moral courage, self discipline and trust are becoming more and more important in life as societal values change.  The common denominator in the News of the World phone hacking, the BBC and Jimmy Savill, the horse meat scandal, the Banks, the South African Police brutality stories is the same:  leaders are not being morally courageous in their behaviours and certainly not when it comes to exposing misbehaviour around them.

If leaders do not have the moral courage to do what is right organisational values mutate. Leaders need to have principles and stick to them they need to have the courage to do the right thing however unpalatable it may be. For to let one piece of misbehaviour go unchallenged is to lower their personal and organisational standards. And results, just judging by the cases above, have been typically disastrous.

A moral compass is essential at the top of an organisation as its leaders, once truly embedded in the organisation will control and influence what happens within the organisation. Once accepted a leader can take an organisation wherever they want with little challenge from within.  Whether they influence by word or deed they will be the ones who must be held responsible for their own behaviour and for the behaviour of those leaders around them.

When Lord Acton, expressed this opinion in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." he was absolutely right.  But now we have an insatiable media and the technology to match. Never more have society’s leaders needed that moral compass as the likelihood of being exposed for wrongdoing is so much greater.

In other words in today’s world, you’ve got far more chance of being found out.

SampsonHall

Good Leaders, Great Decisions

Sampsonhall.co.uk

RESPECT AND POWER IS THE FAIR LEADER RETURNING?

One of the key requisites of a modern day leader is fairness. However as humans we all have our favourites and generally they look, behave and think like us!  All very well until you remember that diversity is a great asset to any modern team. So leaders how do we get the best out of a diverse teams if diversity is such a strength in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world?

As Coach Boone said in that film Remember the Titans:  ”If we don’t come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were. I don’t care if you like each other of not, but you will respect each other. And maybe… I don’t know, maybe we’ll learn to play this game like men.”  Respect is the key catalyst that brings with it a fairness that glues individuals and teams together.

Respect is key in any cohesive group for without it trust will dissipate and teams will become a collection of individuals who function only for self gratification. Without respect the intrinsic bond that is so key to super success will never be found as team leaders and members focus on extrinsic reward. Look at those organisations that have tried to buy their way to success and failed.

Power used to be a key tenet to successful leadership but I am now of the opinion that today’s world is more about win win collaboration rather than the zero sum conclusion. Collaboration and mutual benefit are symptoms of maturing societies rather than the historical imposition of power and authority. As leaders become more ethical in their words and deeds societies judge them on their ability to balance profit for their shareholders, value for their customers with their brand’s expectations from society.

Ethical leadership is not about power and authority it is more about influence and motivation hence it is about fairness and diversity, compromise rather than power and destruction.

WHICH LEADERSHIP MODEL NOW?

Given what I do for a living I found John Adair’s comments published in a recent ILM publication of particular interest. “The immense industry which has grown up around leadership is now estimated to be worth $50bn per year but has not actually produced many better leaders.” The truths of this statement are apparent in the various leadership scandals and failures currently dogging just about every part of our society and almost ever present in our daily news stories. Another day another leadership scandal or failure or, at least, an example of bad leadership and the consequences we have to bear as a result – dying to meet a target? So what kind of leadership or leadership model should we be investing in as we move forward?

Ethical leadership and authentic leadership are interesting to consider in context of the current spate of leadership debacles, though not as leadership styles because they are more than concepts of style. Being ethical is about being guided by moral principles and ethical leaders embody, exhibit and live their beliefs and values. Being authentic is about being real or true and authentic leadership is about being sincere, directing with integrity and taking full responsibility by being true. Doing things right is not the same as doing the right thing and reward for being good is not the same as being good for reward. Ethical and authentic leadership are about being good and doing the right thing to be good and true to self and others whilst accepting responsibility for actions and decisions.

My personal view of leadership, generally and specifically, is the most difficult element of leadership to deal with is behaviour; your own behaviour as a leader and that of those you lead. I believe it is the behavioural aspect of leadership which yields the greatest returns and yet most often breaks leaders and destroys leadership. With this in mind and considering the Ethical and Authentic leadership models are founded on values and behaviours, I suspect the appetite to be led by ethical and authentic leaders will be greater than the appetite of leaders to become such. Considering how to develop future leaders in the ethical and authentic ‘mould’ is a particular challenge given the apparent shortage of appropriate role models available to them and the obvious limitations of traditional training. How do we incentivise and give primacy to adopting good behaviour over achieving rewards? How much does knowing about behaviour inform behaviour and decision making? How does legislation affect leaders and leadership? Thinking of these questions called the following quote by Plato to mind.

“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly while bad people will find a way around the laws”

I cannot help but wonder how more stringent banking legislation or stronger whistle blowing laws will have any sustainable effect in addressing bad leadership?

MODERN ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

Not very long ago, only the good guys did ethical leadership. All very well but it didn’t make much difference to the bottom line apparently.  Well life and times in the UK are proving otherwise -  get the culture wrong and you could be facing the wall.

How the BBC, NHS, most high street banks and now some food producers must rue the day they decided it was all about profit, targets and bonuses.  Ignore the culture in your organization and you ignore it at your peril.

And all the retail brands who ignored their customer needs must regret doing some simple market research.

Lack of checks or possibly blatant disregard will be bringing down a number of food producers in the next couple of weeks.  The culture of not checking deliveries properly came from a culture of tacit acceptance, lack of communication and probably management bullying.  The culprits will undoubtedly be facing irreparable damage to their reputation and possibly a date in court.

Barclays announced today it’s closing its tax avoidance unit ‘in a bid to repair its battered reputation’.    How life could have been so different if they had thought about their brand and their customer first, rather than focus solely on profit.

Everyone knows that the Mid Staffs hospital scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg.  Stories such as we heard last week can be replicated in many other hospitals around the country.  We’ve all heard or experienced shocking levels of care – or rather lack of it.

The common denominator here is poor leadership.  Of course, business leaders have to make a profit.  But they need to value and give value to their customers  - and that includes listening to them.  And finally they need to think about their brand and their culture.  Get it right within the organization and you are someway down the road to getting it right for your customers.

So Sampson Hall say you should answer four simple questions about every business decision any leader makes.

Is it honest?

Is it fair?

Is it right for our brand?

Does it provide value for all involved?

If some of the above had addressed these issues, the current headlines would be very different

WHY THE WORLD AND ORGANISATIONS NEED MORE ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

The Evidence

You only have to open a newspaper or switch your television on these days to see another example of a failure in leadership, banks are repeatedly the culprits with LIBOR and IRSAs, newspapers with phone tapping were and now its supermarkets and horsemeat. Even leaders of large retail outlets such as Jessops, Blockbuster and Comet have been susceptible. So why do I blame it all on leadership? Surely some of it is down to the environmental and societal changes?

Absolutely right to a degree, but it is the leader’s duty to ensure that the organisation at least keeps up with the environment that sustains it. Leaders must always be in touch with what is going on around them.

The Problem

The modern business leader has to balance three conflicting issues: the first is the requirement to generate profit for the organisation and its stakeholders; the next is the requirement to give value to customers so that they become advocates of and indeed return to the organisation whenever possible; the third aspect is what I call brand and culture this concerns the public and indeed self image of the organisation. It is how we do things round here when no one is looking. It involves values and ethics that need to be maintained and sustained. I am not advocating rigid traditions here but a set of clearly understood values and standards that are regularly reviewed for their relevance.

The Need

Modern Business Leadership is a difficult balance between organisational needs- profit, customers’ needs- value and societal needs- trust if we look at all the recent issues in business they have arisen where one of these issues has dominated the leaders thinking too much and the balance has been lost. Mostly its profit with the banks and the Horse meat, sometimes its value with Jessops and Comet and then its trust which is the one that is most difficult to rectify for before trust must come the truth! As society moves on our values have changed and matured. No more is it a zero sum game, today's world is about win win for it is only then that an organisation has true longevity. A modern organisation has to balance its brand with its profit and its customer value.

Here are some questions a modern leader should always challenge a decision with prior to promulgating it.

Is it honest? Is it fair? Is it right for our brand? Does it provide value for all involved?

FOCUS ON SHAREHOLDER RETURNS IS NOT THE ONLY WAY

Recently as high street names fall the short term focus on profitability has been brought sharply into the fore ground. How do stores like Jessops and HMV survive in the modern world when price is king and overheads are seen as an albatross to retail survival? However how often does cheap last?

Commercial history tells us that the most successful organisations, over the long term, consistently focus on “enabling” people things (leadership, purpose, employee motivation) whose immediate benefits aren’t always clear in the short term. These robust organisations are internally aligned around a clear and cohesive vision and strategy; can execute to a high quality thanks to strong capabilities, management processes, and employee motivation; and renew themselves in an ever more demanding environment more effectively than their rivals do. In short, healthy processes today drive improved performance tomorrow.

The issue in the majority of the larger organisations is the short term requirements placed upon them by their shareholders. Many Chief Executives and Senior Vice Presidents instinctively understand the paradox of performance and health, though few have expressed or acted upon it better than John Mackey, founder and CEO of Whole Foods. “We have not achieved our tremendous increase in shareholder value,” he once observed, “by making shareholder value the only purpose of our business.” No most certainly not and yet the increase in value has been long term it has been as a result of healthy strategic processes and disciplines. Outstanding strategy, effective communication and the evolution of people processes to free up mangers and leaders to focus on the future rather than immerse themselves in the problems of today. Don't forget that people run businesses and people are the interface between a business and its customer base if they feel empowered, understand what they have to do and the route they have to take to get there, then they can create extraordinary value and longevity!