“She was in the middle of a magic show, inside a magic box. And then all the lights went out so she struggled to get out of the box.” Or so tells the mother of Rosalyn Rincon, from Blackpool, England. Training and precision are essential for pulling off a good magic trick but this counts for little when something dramatic suddenly occurs like a power cut. Unfortunately this was only the beginning of a nightmare evening for Ms Rincon and her colleagues who were working on the now infamous cruise-liner, Costa Concordia.

The £372m cruise-liner with state-of-the-art navigation equipment, an experienced crew, repeating the same voyage it makes 52 times per year, ran aground just metres off the Italian coastline. The ship capsized so quickly that the lifeboats and safety rafts on the port side became unusable. It meant that many of the ship’s emergency procedures no longer functioned or were invalid. For a time staff tried to help stranded passengers or colleagues without being clear if rescue was possible. 

I think the plight of Costa Concordia’s crew bears some similarities to the challenges facing many leaders today: Leadership is in crisis. The world is now nowhere nearly as predictable as it has been for the last fifty years. Consequently we are unable to rely on what has guided us in the past to steer us safely into the future. We are therefore left with a challenge few leaders have grappled with before: managing the no longer and the not yet. What we relied on no longer exists or is uncertain (e.g. the euro) and a new operating blueprint has not yet emerged. No wonder businesses and governments, let alone cruise-liners, are capsizing!

So what should leaders be doing? Whilst the world around us is uncertain I remain convinced that the principles of leadership have not changed. We still need to, for example:

• Clarify purpose & values
• Articulate a picture of the future that is better than today
• Design and execute a plan to arrive at that future (including the deployment of systems & processes to help keep on track)
• Implement numerous ways to engage customers, staff, shareholders, communities, and other interested parties into that plan

Frameworks, models, principles and even luck will certainly help leaders to become significantly more effective. Yet even these are insufficient.  For me one of the richest qualities of a leader is having the courage to unashamedly lead and not to give up.  I like how Mary Lou Anderson puts it:
 
Leaders are called to stand
in that lonely place
between the no longer and the not yet
and intentionally make decisions
that will bind, forge, move
and create history.

We are not called to be popular,
we are not called to be safe,
we are not called to follow,
we are the ones called to take risks,
we are the ones called to change attitudes;
to risk displeasures,
we are the ones called to gamble our lives,
for a better world.
 
 

Apparently 2012 could be a bit tricky. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel said in her recent TV address “next year [2012] will no doubt be more difficult than 2011.” A BBC poll of leading economists finds them predicting a recession in Europe during the first half of 2012. Leaders everywhere are clearly facing tough conditions and yet they are tasked to press on and pursue a path that successfully takes people somewhere better. It reminds me of the challenges faced by the great explorers and pioneers.
 
Ben Macintyre’s delightful article in the Times on 27th December tells of one of the great pioneer explorers – Dr David Livingstone: “The intrepid explorer was suffering from pneumonia, malaria, foot ulcers and piles so savage he could barely walk. The roasting heat was punctuated by sudden torrential downpours. Many of his porters had run away and he had been forced to pull out most of his rotting teeth. He had been attacked by leeches, slavers and hostile African tribesmen. Lurking in his gut was a blood clot the size of a cricket ball that would shortly kill him.
 
“In his tent, by the light of a candle, Livingstone picked up his pen and, using berry juice because he had run out of ink, he wrote these magnificent words: ‘It is not all pleasure, this exploration.’”
 
There will be so many reasons in 2012 for leaders to stop, give up, and take cover. There will be a number of occasions when you’ll feel you can barely walk and that that the way forward is even harder than the tough route you’ve just travelled. But perseverance is a hallmark of great leaders. General Eisenhower said, “What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” So here are five things to help put fight or grizzle in your dog in 2012:

• Be crystal clear to yourself and others of your specific goals for the year and why they are achievable
• Do one thing every day that moves forward one of these goals
• Be a champion of hope AND brutally honest about your circumstances
• Find someone who thinks you can be better than you actually are. Listen to them for all you are worth
• Never, ever give up!

A very good friend was trained at Sandhurst. He took a patrol out on night manoeuvres through a dense wood - trying to avoid being discovered by the enemy. His team came to a break in the woods and had to cross a road. This was a danger point threatening the patrol with discovery - and defeat - in the exercise. He gathered his men in a ditch by the side of the road, they synchronised watches and agreed that when he signalled them they would move quickly across the road, keeping low and throw themselves in the parallel ditch. The signal came, my friend kept low, crossed the road and flung himself in the ditch, only to find the rest of his patrol were still in place where he had left them. He was a leader without followers. However clear or urgent his instructions had been he was in one place and his team were in another.

Ira Challeff created the term “followership”. As my friend’s story illustrates, it is the actions of followers that determine the success of a leader.  We were fortunate enough to spend some time with Ira recently. He describes follower as a role not a personality type. We decide whether to take that role. As Ira points out people do not like to describe themselves as a follower.  We may be reluctant followers, we may be compliant followers - or we may be courageous followers. Ira points to the well-chronicled failures of followers - failure to pass on important information, failure to challenge wrong decisions, failure to respond to challenges. Followers were ineffective in Enron, Andersons, Lehman Brothers - but of course, the reason for that failure is strongly linked to the leadership culture. Effective leaders engage followers, they encourage and actively enable openness and challenge. they respond positively to the bad news or the reality checks that come from further down the organisation. In turn this leads to empowered followers who have the confidence to make decisions, be proactive, be innovative - and support the success of the organisation. 

In times of challenge and change it is so easy (and tempting) to revert to a command and control style of leadership. This creates compliant followers. The more courageous leader wants to tap into the passion and intelligence of their teams, to find the new and more effective ways of working, to have front line staff who can be powerful ambassadors for the organisation. Ira’s book ‘Courageous Followers’ gives a refreshing insight into the impact of leadership - it is an essential read whether you are on night manoeuvres or have bigger battles to fight in the day to day challenges of enabling organisation change.  

If you were a business leader in New York City in 1886, what to sort of things might you be paying special attention? As it turns out, (as reported by Roy Williams), according to Manufacturer and Builder, the leading monthly journal of innovation and change, the big news in New York was the scandal over the proliferation of overhead electric lines.  And, there’s more. One of the most important discoveries reported in the journal was a new way to colour bricks red!!  But, what else was going on in 1886?  How about this as a starter for ten? 

• Crates containing the Statue of Liberty were being unloaded by dock workers
• Richard Sears was launching a company that would bring catalogue shopping to America
• In Atlanta, John Pemberton was finalising the concoction that would become Coca-Cola
• Gottlieb Daimler was completing the world’s first car - across the pond

As a leader, how might you make sure you are not so fixated on the slightly unusual (overhead electric lines!!) that you are blinded to crucial changes such as the birth of what was to later become the giant company Sears?

These are times of tension and paradox.  I am thinking of the need every organisation has for a clear and compelling picture of the future on the one hand and stubborn unpredictability on the other.  In some cases leadership is frozen into inaction as a result.  Some leaders however, choose instead to play with a range of scenarios of alternative futures. Last week a senior manager told me she was finding it very difficult to plan.  That was understandable given her understanding of planning:  that it is about predicting the future.  Things got a bit easier when she started to build and juggle alternative, supplementary, or contradictory pictures of the future and then begin to tease out resource implications and impact assessment.  How does planning work in your organisation?

How many lives have you got?  SecondLife, a free 3D virtual world, isn’t just for nerds; it’s a lively role - playing blogosphere of the imagination, one where role play is as real as it gets, partly because you choose what/who you want to be and in what kind of life - and feedback isn’t obligatory!

How might it help in ‘real’ life? It provides an opportunity to try things out safely. You have an alter ego where your real identity remains hidden. There’s a lot to be said for experiencing how it feels to be someone entirely different - gender, race, religion, historic time - can provide a huge learning experience. How about designing a spacecraft which looks more like a flying Tudor ship and being able to solve an organisational problem at a stroke? Or climate change? Or design a new hospital? Or local authority office?

Many universities now have second life sites; you can walk into the library, the students’ union, visit a lecture….

One of the most wonderful things is that SecondLife provides opportunities for the severely disabled to have an alternative life, to experience the same world as others in that second life community. Their voices are heard; they feel affirmed; they play.

What might all this teach us in the here and now? That profound things can be said where there is trust and no comeback; that mistakes can be made and learned from; that play is a basic need and one which enables ideas to sparkle; that we can all be innovators…

In the field of management practice and thought, one of my heroes is Bill George, the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, which develops medical technologies to treat chronic diseases. In his latest book, 7 Lessons for Leadership in Crisis he points out the importance of being deliberately systematic in staying positive in a crisis. To help leaders do this, he advocates learning and living by seven lessons:

Face reality, starting with yourself.

Don’t be Atlas; get the world off your shoulders.

Dig deep for the root cause.

Get ready for the long haul.

Never waste a good crisis.

You’re in the spotlight: follow your True North.

Go on offense: focus on winning now.

George also makes this observation about leaders: “Everyone inside and outside the company is watching what they do. It is imperative that they stay focused on their True North as it sets a standard internally for principled business behaviour and will make their companies stronger over time”

Like a skilled surfer gracefully rides the waves, so managers must learn to surf well when it comes to change.

To say that we live in a world of change is to state the blindingly obvious.  But just because rapid and discontinuous change is an inescapable reality does not guarantee we will be good at handling it.  Every day you and I meet with or observe people who are living proof of Alvin Toffler when he said the future would shock us.  But the fact remains that the best way to prepare for the future is to understand change.  This is crucial given that in many cases when managers (or individuals!) plan for the future, we are comforted by assuming present conditions will continue - even when we are claiming things are going to be very different.

So what to do?  Many years ago, Leon Martel suggested the following by way of a strategy for mastering change:

1. Recognise the change is occurring

2. Identify changes likely to affect your business, your profession, and your personal plans

3. Determine type and probable pattern of each change

4. Rank changes by importance of effect and likelihood of occurrence

5. Make use of changes

On this final point of making use of or exploiting change I am reminded of Ralph Teeter.  His change was the fact that he was blinded in a childhood accident.  The person who drove him about turned out to be so erratic this caused Teeter to suffer from motion sickness.  This adverse change was used by Teeter in that he invented cruise control for use in cars and other applications.  What are your personal or observed examples that might illustrate points 1 to 4 of Martel’s suggested strategy for mastering change?

One of the simple truths about becoming a boss is that you were probably selected because you were different. The selectors saw your skills and abilities and decided you were going to make things happen - and felt some of your rivals would not deliver. In our experience working with leaders in a wide range of top organisations, there are clearly a range of “differences” that sort the leader out from the pack. Three types to consider are the visionary, the commander and the innovator.

Visionaries can see ahead - they have a clear picture of the future they want to create. Misunderstood visionaries fail to take the practical implementers with them. I worked with the Principle of a College who was forced to resign because he was envisioning a future that in reality was two to three years ahead but he made it seem like it should happen tomorrow - even though the college had not got the capacity or resources to change that quickly. He was a passionate ambassador for the change, but some saw him as an unrealistic and intimidating force who was not managing the present as well as he was managing the future.

Commanders make things happen; they love deadlines, they thrive on creating the impossible. They work really long hours and have the energy and drive to almost single handedly hit targets, deliver change and rearrange the Universe. I worked on a major change programme with a Commander: he was driving a large structural change that would deliver a £6million saving. As the different project streams moved on it became more and more apparent that there were a number of significant risks but the Director refused to consider them as he felt this would take people’s eyes off the goal and slow delivery. The risks duly materialised and cost the organisation an unnecessary £3million.

Innovators can be addicted to change. They are ambitious and energetic, and every situation gives them the opportunity to develop a new idea. They create a huge range of new initiatives - often one after the other appears even before the previous initiatives have had the opportunity to take root. They are ambitious but can forget to put time into the basics and their organisation can become punch drunk when the initiatives are not scheduled properly or the leaders fail to look at the organisations capacity to implement. One Charity we worked with eventually banned their CEO from producing any more initiatives for six months whilst they played catch up!

In all three scenarios, capable, driven, enthusiastic people - selected for their talent - failed to consider their impact. They were misunderstood; more than that they often infuriated and frustrated people.  Each one needed people alongside them to help shape the implementation of their ideas and challenge them.  Operating on their own without listening to others their strengths became dangers. Having trusted, open and committed colleagues who will argue for the best outcome can help these people become stars. As Elvis might sing of these key friends/advisors  ”they bring me hope and consolation, they give me strength to carry on”.

Making the right decision can be a tricky balance. Speed may be of the essence in these challenging times, but judgement can be severely impaired by haste – in the words of author and mountaineer Jim Collins, “Those who panic die on the mountain.”

So, strike whilst the iron is too hot and you may end up burning your fingers! On the other hand, a protracted delay can be equally damaging. Aside from the risk of missing the boat altogether, a key negative factor in the decision making paradox is too much information.

In a recent presentation, Malcolm Gladwell – celebrated author and story teller extraordinaire – described the work of psychologist Stuart Oskamp, an expert in the field of attitudes research.

Oskamp studied the attitudes of a panel of clinical psychologists and psychology students in their assessment of a 29-year-old subject, Joseph Kidd. Participants were given a brief extract of Kidd’s case study and then asked to complete a questionnaire and estimate the accuracy of their responses. They were then given a second extract and asked to repeat the questionnaire and again estimate their success. This was followed by a third and fourth extract, building a series of actual scores and accuracy estimates. The results were quite illuminating. Despite the accuracy of their answers increasing by only 2% after 3 additional extracts, the panel’s assessment of their judgement had grown by a further 20% - a disturbing level of over-confidence!

With the weight of a fragile economy pressing down on organisations, it is tempting for some decision makers to be seen to act quickly - often at the expense of careful reflection and logical thought. Conversely, as our work with senior leaders often reveals, there is often a level of over-caution that stifles opportunities. Fortunately, poor judgement is a leadership sickness that can be remedied with effective coaching support and intentional strategic reflection.

As Oskamp’s research demonstrates, sometimes it is unwise to agonise. Make your decision and organise!