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”.

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.

How do people develop as leaders without the benefit of experiential learning? I meet so many coaches who claim to develop leadership within their coachees who have never been in leadership positions themselves. Their experience is based on learning from books and not in practice. I believe that three key attributes of a leader which cannot be developed without experience are developing trust, managing risk and exercising judgement.

An effective team has to trust its leader and trust each other if they are going to be cohesive in their disposition. How does a leader earn the teams trust without developing  that trust through experience. Team members must identify their leader as trustworthy before they will trust them. It is the same with other team members. Trust has to be earned and it has to be earned through experience it cannot appear on order.

Leadership is about recognising risk and mitigating it as far as is possible. But like most things in life managing risk comes from experiencing life and experiencing risks. What risks are worth taking and what are not? Leadership  and the management of risk are about the future they are therefore more of an art than a science as they cannot be prescribed. Risk management is about experience and the gut feel developed through the hard knocks of life.

Risk is exercising judgement and making the right calls comes from learned wisdom which is a combination of classroom and book aided learning and experiential learning and it is this rich combination that informs the great leaders. The combination and the ability to associate current circumstances with knowledge that allows the great leader the wisdom and judgement to effect change within an organisation in the right way at the right time.

Leadership can be learned from a book but it is  a brave leader who reaches judgements based solely on non experiential learning. Most great leaders I have met and come across stretch their leadership through the combination of   non experiential and experiential learning mixed with the ability to hone their leadership through reflection and pre emption of the issues that will challenge their leadership.  You can’t be a leader without feeling it! You can’t be a leader without learning as you experience it!

What is the strategic health of a business? Well it is its ability to learn and adapt to its current circumstances whilst shaping itself and its environment to ensure that it has a sustained competitive advantage.  Strategic health is about  comprehending risk and developing strategy a whilst managing  talent.

Any organisation must be fit for purpose in terms of the present but it must also become fit for purpose in the future and that requires strategic sense and leadership. It must be flexible and able to adapt to the  prevailing market conditions.

An organisation has to be able to grow and develop both intrinsically and extrinsically. For growth does not necessarily require real estate it may be just in influence. An organisation that does not learn does not grow and that requires courage for it is the inevitable failures that generate eventual success. Therefore a healthy organisation must be prepared to fail and learn from that failure. A blame culture restricts learning!

Willpower and the ability to keep going even in the most arduous of times is key to a healthy organisation, providing the will is informed and monitored and the lessons valuable and it is not obsessive.

A healthy organisation needs to have a stretch capability and redundance that allows it to rest and regenerate when it can whilst being able to generate power and surge when it needs to. The margins must not be too large that they become unaffordable yet an over lean organisation is an inflexible, one paced organisation that has little time for learning and initiative.

A healthy organisation is one that looks ahead, one that takes the lessons from the past to inform the future whist recognising the changes in its market environment. Strategically it is not entrapped in the present yet it is garnering, processing relevant information and imagining the future in order to adapt to it and shape it where it can.

Is your organisation strategically healthy?

How important is leadership in relation to success? Some modern academics argue that success can happen without top level leadership. For me one 0f the key ingredients to organisational success is top level leadership. We have all seen successful organisations driven by the philosophy and drive of one key individual fail as that individual is replaced by someone else. We have all seen organisations that seem to carry on in perpetuity  as leaders come and go. So what makes the difference? Richard Branson,   Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Bill Gates  and last but not least Steve Jobs all run or have all run globally important successful organisations in recent times. However  Barclays, McDonalds, Disney and BP are also all successful  global companies that have broken the shackles of  an individual’s leadership style and competence and still preserved their status.  TESCOs after Sir Terry Leahy  and now under Phillip Clarke are still in leadership transition that will bring  many challenges particularly with consolidation after such rapid Global growth. The way that Phillip Clarke takes the organisation forward will be fascinating as we enter challenging  financial times throughout the world apart from Brazil of course.

Organisations are all different and all have leaders who serve them in differing ways  but success and leadership are linked and here are a few leadership aspects that ensure the maintenance of success within an organisation.

Key to any successful organisation is understanding of its current position. How many organisations truly know where there current position vis a vis competition, product life span and commercial risk. Without a leader focused on understanding the bigger picture in terms of risk, succession and positioning an organisation can only have a short lifespan.

All businesses have an ethos/culture  and it is important that if relevant that culture is preserved after all it is what got you there in the first place. Organisations that have a successful and relevant culture need to preserve it through induction procedures for new employees,  succession plans to ensure those who have grown up within the organisation who understand its doctrine are its future leaders as they preserve the continuous inspiration afforded by that ethos/culture.

Every organisation needs a vision and the vision must be owned by all within the organisation. Vision is not the sole province of senior executives they are the custodians but for vision to be effective it must be owned by the people within. If it is it will generate self sustaining pulling power to drive the organisation to the achievement  of its vision.

Within the vision  are objectives which whist being aligned to the overall vision they must also be challenging and rewarding to those who are responsible to achieve them. They must be timely and measurable and they must be clearly understood.

Goals  within  objectives are simply tasks to fulfil and as tasks they also need to be inspiring and achievable. They also need clear boundaries and controls to keep them on track and the desired end state of the task  must be easily recognised.

Now risk and leadership are particularly closely linked particularly in the more frugal times. A leader needs to know what are the true risks the organisation is taking; what are the warning signs and what are the implications should the worst case come to fruition. There are plenty of  recent examples of when this did not happen Zavi, Woolworths, RBS and then lets look at the US banking collapse in 2010 with 20 banks closing in two months with well over 100 closing in the year. Risk has moved up the leadership agenda and needs to be considered and understood at the highest levels.

Leadership is about the art of the possible it is not the science that management is as it is far more futuristic in its doctrine. It is about the use of experiential learning to influence and motivate people for the future and the challenges that brings. Management is a science and therefore based in the present and based on sound evidence. Lets take targets as an example managers set targets to motivate and control performance. Leaders understand where the organisation is and ensure  continuous improvement through effective inspiration, motivation and judgement.  Both are required in an organisation but for me the manager is the policeman for the leader, the person who keeps people on the successful track set by the leader.

Change management is a term all too frequently used in the modern business world. Most humans are averse to change as they naturally fear the unknown and prefer to remain within their comfort blanket. So how do you manage something that requires leadership to inspire and motivate people to move from their current comfortable position.

Change is all about leadership it is about vision and it is about the unknown. Managers deal in the real world of today and not the inspired  and virtual one of tomorrow. Managers deal in targets and targets are difficult to set for an unknown in the future.  Change cannot be managed it has to be led!

As a leader how well do you do? Easy ask your workforce and generally if you, the leader, ask they will tell you the good bits that you do well. But how often do people tell their bosses their weaknesses? It is not generally a career enhancing move and if it does happen it happens because of high emotion or alcohol when it is delivered in its least effective way.

So how can a leader measure their effectiveness? Leadership cannot  be easily quantified as there are so many variables that need to be brought into the equation and as leadership is about motivating and inspiring many of the calls are qualitative rather than quantifiable in their measurement.

As leaders generally have some form of control over those they lead few people are rarely honest about their boss. I think David Ogilvy’s quote on market research is never more true than when asking about someone’s boss.

“The trouble ………….is that people don’t think how they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.”

People seem to develop an allegiance to their leader and this allegiance is often achieved in the early days of a leadership relationship when a group accepts a leader. However, once the leader is established the group begins to follow the leader unquestioningly and that is why so many strong and good intentioned leaders so often inadvertently stray from the path of righteousness.

Leaders need challenge if they are to be at the peak of their game and that challenge has to test their mettle.  The problem is most of us find challenge uncomfortable and we normally rid ourselves of those who challenge us for fear of being usurped.

So leaders have difficulty with challenge from within the team; therefore perhaps self challenge is the answer? Well it is if you are able to keep it up, but we all know from our physical training that we are generally much more effective when we are encouraged and cajoled to greater effort. So perhaps a challenging mentor is the answer, but a mentor can be expensive and some are better than others. They also need to really understand the issues if they are to challenge effectively.

Leaders need to be able to be challenged and the safest challenge is an inanimate challenge that can be achieved through an effective means of measuring leadership efficacy.  A measurement that includes objective and subjective data and one that assesses a leader and their effect.

We at Sampson Hall have developed such a tool that is non-judgemental, a tool that identifies opportunities within an organisation, a tool that measures and tracks progress, a tool that enables the diagnoses of the causes of a situation rather that just treating the symptoms that manifest themselves.

Leadership as we all know comes in different shapes and sizes to suit different environments and situations. Situational leadership is key to good leadership and  a good leader uses their judgement to apply the right style, to the right team, in the right situation at the right time. Now that is all very easy if you are the leader of a small independent team or organisation. But as a middle ranking leader in a large organisation you have to fit in to the organisational culture, unless you have a proven pedigree that is appreciated from on high.

Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules. – J. D. Salinger

Leadership and leaders have to fit an organisation and  hence unfortunately it is very difficult to exercise true change leadership from within. The tempo and the requirement generally come from without either as a new senior leader joins or a set of circumstances force change. It is here that leaders experience real challenge and it is here that true leaders who are original thinkers stand out. Unfortunately conformism is not required when leading change particularly if that change is significant.

In large organisations leaders are in competition with their peers for promotion, monetary rewards and status. Most of those recognised and rewarded for their leadership are identified by superiors who have already conformed to achieve their position and use their own values to select potential followers hence they are looking for ‘mini me’s’.  So how does a large organisation change to preserve its position vis a vis  its competitors without outside influence?- ask Woolworths, ask Zavi ask some of the Government supported  Banks after the Credit Crisis.

For me true empowerment and a drive for continuous improvement are key. Leaders have to learn to be brave, they have to learn to trust their staff and to empower their staff to maintain continuous improvement. After all in the information age it is not so much the big that eat the small as it is the quick that eat the slow. Large autocratic organisations become ponderous as control is exercised from the top with decisions being referred up and decisions promulgated down; where conformism is rewarded as traditions are maintained and change challenged and beaten off as hastily as possible.

Successful organisations allow and empower people to develop and implement their ideas. They allow individuals to grow within the organisation. They encourage diversity and challenge stagnation. They share power and prevent the weed that first entwines then suffocates progress known as bureaucracy from taking root within the organisation. Bureaucracy lives in large autocratic organisations because it has to but when it feeds on itself it destroys the organisation it lives in.

Large organisations need to learn to truly empower if they are going to have longevity as unforeseen targets are very difficult to set.

I often come across Chief Executives and Business Leaders who are prepared to spend great amounts of money to maintain the technological advantage over competitors but do not feel able to commit the same amount to the development of their people. All too often the cry is ” Our people are our greatest asset” and yet everything that happens within an organisation goes against that mantra. Scant rewards, little engagement, no recognition eventually leads to someone moving on with a view to improving their lot. Well that’s a years wages down the pan to recruit train and develop a successor according to Price Waterhouse Coopers. That is without looking at the competitive positives that come with that employee in the new organisation.

Loyalty is a word that springs to mind. Loyal customers are vital and loyal employees bring similar rewards. They don’t require initial training, they spot opportunities, they understand the business, they know how to service customer needs and they know each other and all those benefits come without a bill!

Now should one of them leave and join a competitor what will go with them? Their knowledge of the organisation and the way it works will disappear, their experience and their training even perhaps their customers will all go! The gaining organisation wins hands down by investing in them and their future contemporaries.

Now lets invest some time with employees meeting  and matching their needs, engaging with them, leading them properly, empowering them to greater productivity and rewarding them appropriately with well thought out rewards. Suddenly people will enjoy work. They will strive for future organisational success and  ignore that other offer. With a little bit of investment staff will be content and happy to work with a caring and progressive organisation. When you work for one of those organisations you don’t want to work for anybody else.

All too often today’s leaders hide behind the ambiguity of the term leadership in refusing leadership development. The root cause of the problem is that most leaders have nothing to measure their leadership against, therefore they assume that they are by default successful leaders. But how much more successful could they be as leaders? Is their organisation where it is because of a set of circumstances despite them rather than because of them?

Until an individual leader wants to develop there is no real chance of him or her accepting any form of leadership development. It is only when a leader recognises the need to grow as a leader  that they become interested in  their personal development. Leaders if they are to be effective must be reflective and if they are reflective they will recognise their strengths and their development areas. So instead of hiding behind the ambiguity of the term leadership front up to it and challenge yourself to become a better leader. Who knows how far you and your organisation may go.