Leaders influence, inspire and motivate organisations and teams to a place or situation that may have previously appeared impossible to those team members involved. Leaders are futuristic in their perspective and that is why they stand out from managers. Whilst management was invented to control and optimise production lines and other process oriented ways of working during the industrial revolution, leadership has been around for a good deal longer. Management is about process and metrics, using targets and means of measurement as its tools. Leadership is much more intrinsic in its properties; more about vision and emotion it is much more the art of inspiration rather than the science of measurement. Leadership needs flexibility to match the human instincts it inspires, it needs vision to create and make real the desired end state, it needs trust to create the cohesion and judgement to mange and mitigate the risks and prioritise the available resources.

Strategy is about all this, it consists of four key tenets Vision, Risk Mitigation, Talent Management and the prioritisation of resources. The tenets are interdependent and require an overall strategy to hold them together and keep them synchronised. Strategy is not about two years it’s about 5- 10 years. Strategy is about inspiration and vision in a changing environment, it affords an opportunity to select a course and change a course, dependent upon the situational requirement to map out a route that matches the circumstances and yet still delivers the required end state. Strategy is synonymous with great leadership and it informs and inspires those managers and those teams that work for great leaders. Leaders need to understand and use strategy.

Does your organisation or business need to change? If it is not producing the required profit, productivity and or other performance outcomes required of it then the answer is most likely yes. If change is required, specifically what needs to change and why? If planning change be mindful the easiest change to implement will not necessarily be the best change, especially when considering the desired effect alongside longevity and sustainability. If you are going to implement some form of organisational change, do so cognitively in a considered and reasoned way. Know and understand your organisation or business culture within the complexities of the situation and environment, mitigate associated risks and prioritise actions and resources required to effect change.

Culture, by definition, is the collective of ideas, customs and behaviours of a group; organisational culture can be defined as the basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of the organisation. The challenge in understanding and dealing with organisational and business culture is the reality and difficulty of changing the shared behaviours and beliefs of a group of people. When considering organisational change, culture is ‘king’ and will prevail irrespective of structural and functional developments if not addressed specifically. A leader, whether established or newly appointed, can implement structural and functional change within an organisation with relative ease (not necessarily easily). An externally appointed leader, initially at least, will not be readily accepted by the culture of an organisation and will need to work hard to achieve the required level of trust which engenders followers. Combine both factors to a change management or organisational change initiative and the associated problems are likely to be exacerbated. (If you doubt this consider how many external CEO and MD appointments are terminated within 12 to 24 months).

Strategic development and the change it necessitates can arise, develop and evolve accidentally and deliberately in different ways. Significant change within or of an organisation or business is most often a result of executive level, strategic decision making aimed at achieving some defined effect(s). Understanding and knowing the development process of a strategy and the different perspectives of strategic development is important in implementing effective change. The leadership view will most usually differ to that of the organisation’s cultural view and if an organisation is subject to political pressure or pressure from significant interest groups then the process of strategic development becomes more complex again. These processes and perspectives are not mutually exclusive and coexist to some extent in all businesses and organisations.

If organisational change is to be effected and implemented successfully the following key issues need to be considered:

Developing strategy and implementing change in a complex, dynamic environment, especially where innovation and flexibility are required, is very difficult and traditional practices, structures and models may not apply or be the most appropriate.

What is the leadership and management knowledge and experience within a complex, political and cultural organisational context? If an organisation or business wants to acquire the capability to change and adapt in order to succeed, it needs to consider how best to develop and grow its leaders from within.

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers it costs a year’s wages to recruit a member of staff and train them to the level of their predecessor and yet executives are still too busy to get it. Executives don’t pay enough attention to engagement – US statistics variously state that 66% of employees feel disengaged or that 60% are actively looking for new work and yet retention of talent is still underplayed in many boardrooms.

Let’s not just think about the cost of replacement but how much they cost when they are employed. A disengaged employer is far less effective in their role than an engaged employer, Keith Ayres notes that while a disengaged employee may be giving only 50% effort, we still pay them 100% of their salary. This means that a significant portion of payroll costs are valueless to the organisation as there is no effect. How much of your wage bill is frittered away without contributing to your bottom line? 

If the average salary of an employee in a 500 person organization is £25,000 then the annual cost of disengagement is over £4 million and £17, 200 a day. I think that deserves a CEOs and Board’s attention.

Instead of dwelling on the doom and gloom, consider another cost: opportunity. What would your world look like if instead of just studying your employees through your annual survey, you spent time actually engaging them in conversation about what they care about? What if you involved them in decisions that affect their life at work and the welfare of the company at large? What if you empowered them to do, to connect with each other, recognize one another for great work and truly collaborate? What could those sorts of employees do for your success?

Well this is the sort of opportunity that would be identified with Sampson Hall’s Gordian Model. Boards would be able to exploit this and many other opportunities which would be identified in the process as they drive their organisations to success. http://www.sampsonhall.co.uk/services/our-metrics/the-gordian-model.html

Can leadership prevail in a profit first organisation? Understanding the fundamental differences between leadership and management goes some way to explaining the nature of what I call the Leadership Profit Conundrum.

Though relatively simple the following succinct definitions and broad principles assist in illustrating the conundrum. Firstly, leadership is fundamentally about inspiration, motivation and direction and manifest more in terms of influence and guidance. Secondly, management is fundamentally about control, co-ordination and organisation and manifest more in terms of functional regulation. I believe it is unwise to interchange the meaning and use of the words leadership and management.

In business, leadership is inextricable from organisational performance; by which I mean increasing the bottom line and looking after the shareholders interests first. This is well enough for those at the most senior levels in a business who benefit from performance related bonuses. However, company profit generally does not motivate and influence staff engagement and performance throughout an organisation. In fact, growth linked to actualisation of profit and proportion of profit distributed to workers wages is disproportionate see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17033039 In essence, profit growth has become detached from wages with shareholder dividends and the highest echelons’ bonuses increasing whilst wages have stagnated and regressed in real terms. Those who are producing growth and ergo profit are receiving a decreasing share. This cannot be very motivating for the majority of individuals who are tasked with improving performance.

By definition, management restricts performance by setting limits, controls and regulation; furthermore, you cannot manage the way to achieving exceptional performance above and beyond expectation. On the other hand, good leaders influence and motivate others to perform successfully and achieve exceptional performance. Three questions come to mind here; is business leadership as we have come to know it really just business management? What is the place of customer service in businesses placing priority on profit return to shareholders? Which approach, leadership or management, is most likely to deal best with the challenges of an ever changing and demanding business environment?

The Leadership Profit Conundrum is management will continue prevail whilst profit is ‘king’ even though the enduring economic climate requires good leadership to prevail in order to succeed. Try this exercise to illustrate my point. Draw three columns on a sheet of paper and in the middle column write a list of words and phrases describing the current economic environment. In the left hand column write a list of words and phrases from definitions of management and in the right hand column do the same for leadership. In order to succeed and thrive in the environment of your middle column you can choose only to go left or right – which path would you choose and why?

Anyone who watched the television last night will understand how each of us is programmed to ignore the evidence of failure and proceed in a positive way. That’s why we often harm ourselves through smoking, alcohol and unprotected sex even though we are fully aware of the consequences. So in our lives we always assume it will never happen to us and yet when it does in business we rarely see failure as a positive.  In life we are programmed to see a positive outcome otherwise we would not take risks and we would not develop and learn as a race. What we have to do is take the positives out of failure and use them in business as well.

When we plan to succeed there are automatic built in components of overcome failure because nothing worthwhile in life comes easy we are all more robust if we have and maintain a vision of eventual success.  Failure is not our enemy; but it is our friend. As a race we don’t always like adversity because it hurts. However, think of what adversity has delivered to our society in terms of a hunger and drive for success. It is not adversity that kills businesses. What kills businesses is a lack of understanding and education as to how things such as adversity and failure are actually assets, and not liabilities.  Every organisation if it is to exploit its opportunities should look for the positive in each situation. I like the old Chinese saying “I complained because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no legs” makes real sense. Often it is only our lack of perspective that allows the fear of failure to control our thinking.  If we maintain perspective in terms of our real situation we can learn as much from failure as we can success.

Failure is not something to be avoided but something to be encouraged, all creative ventures yield to the maximum when failure is embraced rather than shunned.  Failure is often seen perceived as a weakness and yet we all have weaknesses as we are all flawed as humans that is in our nature! It is the strong man that knows his weaknesses. It is only when the limits of anything are known through it breaking or failing that we are we able to understand its flaws and  develop something new, it is only then that we have a  real need to change. That is as Donald Rumsfeld would say when an “unknown unknown” is possible because an “unknown known” has become a “known known”. Failure brings us knowledge and development and should always be viewed positively as long as it is not repeated too often because that only exposes an inability to learn the lessons of failure. If you keep on doing the same things you will always get the same results. As Albert Einstein said “the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and expecting a different result”.

I most usually start leadership development training by asking delegates “what is leadership?” or “define leadership” and I record their responses on a flipchart. My aims being to obtain some understanding of delegates’ pre training perspective whilst getting them to begin thinking about the subject matter. The recorded responses become integral to the training as they are referred to at different stages. If you have time and are so inclined try the exercise yourself; recording your responses on a blank piece of paper. On completion of recording the responses I invite delegates to note their responses fall into three broad categories; namely, behaviours, personal attributes and job related skills / knowledge. I then record ‘b’, ‘a’ or ‘s’ beside each response, as appropriate, and often these are not mutually exclusive, especially behaviours and attributes. Without exception to date the majority responses are behaviours with some attributes and an occasional skill or knowledge related response. Similar results are obtained by asking delegates to describe ‘a good leader’. So how does such a list correlate to any text book definitions of leadership? Try the exercise and find out for yourself.

We define leadership simply as the ability to influence and motivate others to perform successfully. ‘Measured’ against this definition the significance and importance of behaviour and personal attributes is immediately apparent, especially when considering leadership at all levels, including peer group and self leadership. This is also a definition of leadership which makes no presumption of authority to lead and acknowledges people are not necessarily motivated best by the application of authority. To understand this more fully I ask you to think about the best leader you have personal experience of in getting the most from you in terms of fulfilling your potential. Then reflect on how he or she achieved this. My guess is it was achieved by more ‘carrot’ less ‘stick’ and a good deal of ‘lead by example’ than anything to do with application of authority. Should you choose to do so, it is likely you will find the converse to be true; that is, your worst leadership experience was most likely very authoritarian and fraught with poor behaviour and bad examples.

Leadership without authority – the ability to influence and motivate others to perform successfully is dependent upon balancing behaviour underpinned by personal attributes with some skills and knowledge. Interestingly, skills and knowledge are rarely raised as significant when considering leadership. The leadership conundrum being we as a society tend to promote our leaders on the basis of having proven their skills and knowledge but their relative success will depend upon their behaviour and attributes. The leadership challenge is the difficulty of dealing with and changing behaviour and behaviour related issues; especially ones own.

One final ‘exercise’ to demonstrate my point. Consider all the high profile ‘bad leadership’ stories in the media at present; what are the common denominators, behaviours, personal attributes or professional skills and knowledge?

A key skill for today’s leader is knowing what to remember and what to forget. Sometimes it is good to forget sometimes it is essential to remember this article assesses the importance of forgetting to leadership

Modern Leaders must be able to make clear decisions drawn from myriad bits of information; their decisions need to reflect a big picture understanding. With information becoming so abundant in this modern age, it is very easy to become overloaded and therefore not to comprehend the big picture. Total recall has often been associated with a high level of intelligence and hence achievement but this is not always so. When in a positions of leadership the opposite is more the case. Those with total recall often have difficulty differentiating the information and hence making strategic decisions. They more readily miss-understand the overall point or concept because they get so enmeshed in the detail. Detail is for managers and not leaders as forgetting, it turns out, has enormous value for leaders and big picture thinkers; forgetting and forgiving are both key attributes to good leadership. But timing is essential.

General Sir John Hackett as a commander in the 8th Kings Royal Irish Hussars employed a driver who had failed in battle as his own tank driver so showing compassion and leadership as he knew that the man would give anything not to repeat the experience of such failure and yet Hackett’s humanity and compassion would serve his reputation as a leader as they were quickly evident to the rest of his men! General Hackett had chosen to forget and forgive and General Hackett was an outstanding leader.

The other reason for forgetting detail is to enable strategic clarity. One of the greatest exponents of total recall was Solomon Shereshevsky who could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later.  However, the issue was forgetting them and when Solomon was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group; he could not see the big picture and tripped up as he was so entwined in irrelevant details. .   “Human memory is pretty good,” says cognitive neuro-scientist Benjamin J. Levy of Stanford University. “The problem with our memories is not that nothing comes to mind-but that irrelevant stuff comes to mind.”

“The act of forgetting crafts and hones data in the brain as if carving a statue from a block of marble. It enables us to make sense of the world by clearing a path to the thoughts that are truly valuable. It also aids emotional recovery after a traumatic incident. ‘You want to forget embarrassing things,’ says cognitive neuroscientist Zara Bergstrom of the University of Cambridge. ‘Or if you argue with your partner, you want to move on.’ In recent years researchers have amassed evidence for our ability to wilfully forget. They have sketched out a neural circuit underlying this skill analogous to the one that inhibits impulsive actions”.  Wilful forgetfulness aids self confidence and enables forgiveness of others.

Leaders need to learn when to remember and when to forget. Given that the best learning is experiential then the experience of failure must be built upon rather than being dwelt upon. Leaders must learn to accept failure as part of an individual and teams development however, they must also remember failures if they are repeated too often. They must also remember lessons from previous failures in order to prevent themselves from becoming involved in systemic failure. As Albert Einstein said ”the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and expecting a different result”.

Leaders benefit from selective forgetfulness of their own failings and others failings as well as forgetting detail to enable strategic clarity as detail is the domain of managers. For leaders there’s a time to remember and a time to forget!

The problem with the modern world is the speed of change. When one compares the speed an individual changes and the speed with which an environment can change and compare both with the speed of organisational change you can instantly identify the mismatch. So why is this obvious phenomenon such a challenge for the modern leader? Quite simply it’s because different issues and different problems require different characteristics and styles of leadership and leaders need to be more style savvy. The world now moves so fast with its new technologies that leaders who are autocrats struggle to keep up. Sometimes control needs to be exercised from on high sometimes influence comes from a lot further down the secret is exercising the right level of influence and control at the appropriate level at the appropriate time. Successful leadership is as much about the right environment as it is about the leader’s characteristics and a rapidly changing environment will challenge any leader however proficient.

Let’s just take three types of problem and assess the characteristics a leader may need to possess to be effective in delivering progress or a solution to each problem type. Keith Grint in Problems Problems Problems defines three categories of problem. The first is a Critical problem one that needs a solution now; they are problems that require a rapid solution to prevent further escalation. Here a leader needs to be both decisive and considerate in their actions; decisive to prevent the problem from running out of control instantly and yet considerate to all those involved with a view to a longer term solution. The London Riots are a fine example of a critical problem escalating. A wicked problem is more ambiguous in its boundaries or very complex where time may not be a consideration. Here a leader needs to understand and recognise the root causes of the issue and manage all those parties and agendas involved in the problem. Patience, intellect, emotional intelligence and understanding are key attributes required of a leader as they try to construct a collaborative solution. An example of a wicked problem is teenage pregnancy.  Now the third type of problem is the tame problem where the issue can be quickly and easily resolved although time may not be a consideration. In an efficient organisation these are dealt with relatively simply through process and operating procedures. They are the province of management and only become significant when they are raised at too high a level where they can quickly become disruptive. A leader needs courage and confidence to enable the organisation to deal with tame problems whilst maintaining them at the correct level. Courage to trust and teach followers, confidence to delegate and empower followers. Leaders need to establish organisations that understand of each member’s responsibilities, allocated boundaries and expectations. They therefore instil an ethos of ownership and responsibility that ensures problems are resolved quickly and effectively.

Control is the conundrum that confuses many in leadership roles, who has it, when should it be relinquished or delegated and how is it perceived? A leader is generally in a pre-ordained position of control at the start of a critical problem but has to work hard to maintain that control to engineer and sustain the long term solution. With a wicked problem the work begins in earnest straight away as the potential leader wrestles with the problem in order to generate the required understanding and environment to enable them to become a permissive leader. The third tame problem requires an ethos and culture of understanding and empowerment to exist so that responsibility is easily shouldered at the appropriate level. This requires a hierarchy enabling the delegation of control and trust from the leader downwards to the appropriate level. This is where the true potential of servant leadership shines through as the leader becomes the enabler rather than the controller or owner of the issue or the enforcer of a solution.

The skill sets and attributes required of the various leaders for each of the problems are different. This is why a leader needs the right circumstances and environment to become a lauded leader. A great leader’s skill sets and personal attributes have to match the moment. The old English proverb still rings true “opportunity makes the man”

The modern world where life is fast, communication is fast and technological advantage short lived, amplifies the requirement for flexibility and creates the need for an extended range of attributes from a leader. This can be achieved either by a group of leaders or a chameleon like flexible leader who has the innate qualities to lead and influence for an extended period of time. The current business environment is not the time for autocracy, and it is not the time for ponderous committees- the modern leader must be equipped with a toolbox of varied attributes that are suited to different environs and situations, but like anything in life it is the ability to recognise and understand the issue and produce the right tool to influence and lead at the right time that will make a leader stand out. Leaders need to comprehend the challenge that the modern pace of life imposes on their own leadership longevity and hence their utility as leaders. Leaders need to comprehend every situation in terms of scale and risk and they need to constantly be aware of both in order to apply the right style or model to the situation. Historically continuity and stability has helped leaders to prosper and yet modern life is about change. The one continuum in modern life is change itself – it is just quicker than it has ever been!

A leader enables followers to follow and but followers make leaders. Both Churchill and Hitler were adored by their followers and loathed by each other’s followers. There is no single set of attributes which make one individual a greater leader than another, just great leadership opportunities to match a leader’s characteristics to a particular situation or environment. Both Hitler and Churchill served a tough apprenticeship of failure until the right opportunities arose. Both were extremely successful for just a relatively short period of time. How many leaders are truly successful for an extended period of time? What apprenticeship did they serve and how did they lead? Questions that are worthy of pondering as the answers are key to the argument that leaders in today’s world need to be far more flexible and adaptable than their predecessors. They cannot just be selected they have to be developed so that they have the full range of qualities and attributes to meet their particular environment. Leadership is as much about learning as it is about knowing and a leader has to be flexible to provide the appropriate response.

The Harvard Business Review (HBR) published an interesting article in 2009 entitled ‘Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis’ which, in my opinion, remains a worthwhile read and is particularly interesting on two counts.

Firstly, it was published over a year after the time generally acknowledged as the start of our prevailing economic situation. I use the word prevailing rather than current because as we draw to the end of 2011 the current forecasts for 2012 offer little optimism or hope of change for the better. The HBR article refers to ‘the current crisis’ in 2009 and forecasts economic crisis as the future norm existing beyond the recovery from recession. For me, as we enter the fifth consecutive year of ‘current crisis’, this poses the question ‘double dip’ or new economic environment?

Secondly, specialising in leadership, strategy and cohesion; the prevailing economic environment provides opportunities which simply do not exist in a benign situation. As much as regularity, dependability and certainty instil confidence they are the arena of the manager; whereas, irregularity, challenge and uncertainty provide opportunities not otherwise available to a leader. No amount of tweaking of financial mechanisms, directives or policy changes are likely to impact sufficiently on global competition, political instability, energy concerns and climate issues to remove risk and uncertainty.

So what should we do? ‘Batten down the hatches’ and rely on the same old measures and techniques that got us where we are today whilst hoping someone will ‘fix’ something somewhere to make all things good again? Or realise leadership and organisational adaptability are required to overcome the relentless challenges of our ‘new economic environment’? The problem is this, as difficult as the former may be it is undoubtedly a much easier option than the behavioural and organisational change required by the latter. Either way, the outcome is not guaranteed success though one course of action is more likely to succeed than the other.

The message in the HBR article referred to does not appear to have been popular at the time and I doubt it will be today. Perhaps because there is no ‘spoonful of sugar’ offered with the medicinal advice therein. This said, it remains worth reading all the same on http://hbr.org/2009/07/leadership-in-a-permanent-crisis/ar/1

Europe’s dead, the world is going into a double dip recession, businesses are going into receivership, and banks aren’t lending money; how come this nation’s businesses function at all. If you believed all you read in the newspapers or hear on the radio or TV you would be feeling pretty depressed as you enter a brave new year. How would those negative feelings assist you in challenging business times, how would they boost your confidence, how would they inspire those you lead to greater feats and happiness?

The natural inclination to focus on the negative underpinned by a natural instinct designed to assist self preservation also comes with a severe negative influence that is extremely unhealthy as the world of capitalism mutates into something new and unknown. Positivity is the only way forward but positivity requires perspective,

Key attributes that are needed in organisations to allow businesses to survive and develop in this new economic climate are vision, flexibility, courage, determination, teamwork and a positive disposition. None of them are new, few of them are developed and sustained deliberately in times of plenty and yet they are the ones most needed when times become more difficult.  What is missing in the short term approach to business is perspective. Its missing when things are healthy as it is not required but the evidence of its absence is stark when things get tougher. Perspective is vital within business leadership. Perspective is a view or prospect; it is also a particular way of regarding something. However for me the best description in a business context is an understanding of the relative importance of things.

The most important consideration in today’s business perspective is that the world has changed and it will not return to the heady days of 2008 prior to the banking crisis. But disaster is not as imminent as the media would have us believe.  Business is changing form as pace, risk, economics and environment impact upon it. It is only those business that have true perspective and apply themselves in a positive way using vision, flexibility, courage, determination that will endure whilst those without perspective who hanker after days gone by will soon become a part of history as they are the ones that lack the necessary qualities.