HOW NOT TO LEAD -- HOW TO FAIL ON A GLOBAL SCALE

I recently came across a book title that I just loved: "Bad Leadership." This got me thinking about how NOT to lead, as I've seen so many heart-breaking instances of this, played out globally. Clearly each of these warnings converts handily into a list of constructive, generative breakthrough actions that we SHOULD pursue with all the zeal and imagination we've got. Here we go! I'll do as many as I sanely can in this edition of the newsletter, and follow up with part 2 in a few weeks.

FIDDLE WITH STRUCTURES ENDLESSLY

When lacking a strategy or the will to execute, there is nothing better than to keep redrawing the organisational chart. This is the height of what I call 'the technical fallacy'. All transformation is reduced to a series of technical acts. Literally we 'fiddle' while organisational promise 'burns' all around us.

So, companies will reallocate territories, create matrices (bizarre and often overlapping reporting structures), create new job titles, centralize or decentralize (depending on what the preference to date has been on that front), etc.

This is okay...if it FOLLOWS from and FLOWS from a strategy everyone understands and is genuinely excited about. However what often happens is that the structural change is the headline news, and then post-hoc 'rationalisations' are supplied as to how this will be the magic wand, the panacea, the abracadabra, the philosopher's stone, et cetera and ad nauseum.

Territories often do need to be reallocated of course. Matrices can create richer relationships and forge necessary synergistic interrelationships. Jobs do need to evolve, and decision making has to move to where it makes the best sense. That's all fine, if this emerges from a robust, enterprise-wide debate, with real mutual listening, and active EXTERNAL learning (not just internal navel-gazing) and benchmarking (as a stimulus, not as a default). However when a cabal of people at head-office, fortified by their favourite acolytes arrives at this in some corporate retreat possessed with an evangelism that seeks to match the road to Damascus, watch out!

Often the technical changes are abritrary, poorly thought out, missing key reflection, and certainly absent the emotional buy-in necessary for success. Moreover done this way, people don't really buy the WHY, the purpose. They just get irritated by all the tinkering and wonder when the next 'adjustment' is due

BUY YOUR OWN PR

Because companies know they have to aim at the value high-ground, or at least purport to, a common evasive maneuver from genuine adaptive change is to NOT actually re-imagine much less reinvent your identity or brand promise or cultural reality. Instead we just find a new slogan -- 'innovation', 'quality', 'service', 'people', 'partnering with customers', or what have you. We then find a jingle, spend months redesigning the logo, and launch this new 'aspiration' (which is all it is at present) through a PR campaign and usually through a series of internal workshops which blitz people with the prototypical slide show that almost inevitably accompanies the new gospel.

You might be reading this and wondering, 'So? Isn't this natural, normal and good?' The answer? As with so much else, it depends.

If this is ALL that happens, it's a technical teddy bear at best. This will no more change reality than my dressing differently, changing my name, and memorizing a few quips will revolutionise my marriage and family life. Adaptive change, as ever, is called for.

Of course logos can embody and embellish who we are, and that image can powerfully communicate our core essence at all kinds of levels. Clearly a new tag line can resonate globally and rally people internally. And very evidently, we have to inform our people.

However, the identity the logo is broadcasting has to be REAL, or at least in process of being aspirationally targeted and tangibly LIVED INTO. The image has to become a true philosophy that guides ALL our decisions, our hiring, our priorities, our strategies. Hence it has to actually DERIVE from them. It has to be the 'epiphany' not the 'camouflage'. Finally, our people have to understand how this reality will be brought to life, and what part they will play, and why that should be exciting to them. This is about more than a data-dump or a monologue from senior VP's brushing up their Toastmasters skills.

And we have to look to the very people we're communicating this to, to tell us, no punches pulled, what the current blocking factors and demotivators are that have to be tackled forcefully and decisively. That's the only way credibility for this new reality will be built.

THINK OF CHANGE AS PRIMARILY A CEREBRAL ACTIVITY

This is a companion piece to the two above. Underlying a lot of the errors 'embedded' in the two above approaches is the assumption that all you have to do is explain a change to people, or tell them about a strategy, or 'sell' (ram down their throat in this case) the latest organisational juggling act, and all will be well.

But we are not a primarily rational species. We resort to rationality as a last-resort and often have to get past a batallion of emotional and psychological defenses first. To illustrate, is there ANYONE out there who would INTELLECTUALLY disagree with any of the following statements:

• Quality has to be job one.

• Our customers have to be our first priority.

• Our people have to be coached and supported to achieve their full potential.

• We have to challenge each activity to ensure it's value-adding as opposed to wasteful.

And so on...it's like being run over by a parade of favourite homilies. We ALL agree. No one would say, 'I don't believe in quality, I support mediocrity.' Or, 'Customers aren't our first priority, my personal vanity is.' Or, 'Our people need to be told what to do, and they will love it, or else had better act as if they do.' Or, 'Rubbish! Let's maximise waste and bureaucracy.'

Absurd as these statements sound however, they are often more true IN PRACTISE than the homilies! That is not because of how intellectually seductive they are. It is because the alternatives are emotionally, psychologically, paradigmatically, adaptively CHALLENGING. That's where we have to learn to engage, interact and catalyse.

The personal blocking factors and/or turn-ons are where change and progress live and die, not between the ears, and not through largely self-evident sound-bites.

HAVE NO CLARITY ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU NEED (CONFUSE THEM UTTERLY ABOUT WHAT'S VALUED AT THE SAME TIME)

If we have a transformational platform, if we have a burning vision, if we have a breakthrough strategy, this implies PEOPLE to buy into it, understand it, extend and enhance it, and most critically, to EXECUTE it.

It should then follow, that leaders should be utter talent-fanatics. One of the primary bits of clarity they have to have is about the kind of people they need. This has to do with talent first, behaviours second, skills third, and experience fourth. This is because you can endow the last (experience), build the penultimate (skills), coach and encourage the second (behaviours), and must deal with and leverage the first (talent).

Bad leaders first have no clarity about the people they need. Worse yet they trumpet one profile of winning leadership, and then don't personally embody it, and promote people who are walking billboards for the alternative. When these 'leaders' walk by, people duck for cover under their desk, rather than heading out enthusiastically to interact, learn and co-create.

So we say we want 'passion', and our leaders lead funeral wakes every time they speak to the organisation. We say we want 'coaching', and the CEO represents the 'dark side of the Force' when it comes to liberating vitality in anyone -- he seems to be a world-class energy vampire instead.

Even if there IS clarity, and a desire for congruence between the stated people profile and hiring and promotion choices, we often use the wrong strategies. We try to train talent (futile!), just demand behaviours (highly challenging), intellectually pontificate about skills (rather than mentor them...absurd as explained above) and put up with whatever experience comes that person's way rather than having a real career or contribution track.

The people issue is the quintessential one. Those who become leaders build other leaders or build other 'burons' (the mating of a bureaucrat with a moron). They either get more out of people than people could have gotten out of themselves individually, or they dampen potential and crucify initiative. They either endow our strategy and embolden our vision, or they neuter and undermine them.

Such lack of clarity and confusion on this front is definitely the fast-track to wide-scale failure and burnout.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTIONS THAT FLOW FROM THE ABOVE:

Find a vision that makes SENSE based on your organisational passions and abilities and based on today's and tomorrow's customer needs AND wants. Work on structures second. Let all this happen through wide scale dialogue, interaction, and external stimulus.

Understand your current identity en route to aspiring for a fresh one, and create a transformation path with real milestones and 'quick wins' along the way. Ensure that your communication and PR partners participate with you fully on this and include DEEP LISTENING as part of their brief. Ensure that 'moments of truth' are identified for this new identity from the external and internal customer viewpoint, and make this a living, vital non-negotiable dashboard, as important as any financial review.

Find the emotional fears, apprehensions, worries, dreams, hopes, passions, of your people. Recruit some 'influentials' and let them tell you where and why the cynicism breeds. Check out the talented, the 'on fire', the disgruntled, the customers, the suppliers, all those who interact with and experience your organizational reality. Make sure your processes and systems and priorities broadcast the same things you're preaching. Make coaching, personal engagement and reinforcement a way of life.

Get the people equation straight, decide what your 'employee value proposition' will be (why the best should want to work with you), be absolutely consistent relative to hiring, recognition and promotion. Understand the difference between talent, behaviour, skills and experience, and provide appropriate support, monitoring and development opportunities at each of these epicenters. Ensure your leaders absolutely, unequivocally 'model the way'.

We'll pick up next time with the next four ways to inhibit your own success and the best ways to leapfrog beyond them.

For now, take a look at these first four and look for instances within your own organisation. If you're like the rest of us, you won't have far to look. Don't be depressed, that's a goldmine of evolution and vitality before you. Let's go to work!

Happy leadership!

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