We are in unchartered waters. Very few leaders in organisations have experienced the huge uncertainty and pressures facing us in these current times and their leadership may well be defined by how they respond.  Staff, clients, stakeholders will judge leaders by the quality of decisions they make in these circumstances. But decisions alone will not deliver success – success will come from the commitment, confidence and belief you generate. Leaders will need to manage communication with great wisdom.

Churchill led the British people in a time of great crisis – one that makes the current economic problems seems very mild in comparison. As the newly appointed premier at a time when the nation was reeling from the fall of France and the traumas of Dunkirk, and before the United States entered the war, he decided not to make peace with Germany – which many people, including senior cabinet members, wanted. He took the difficult message to the British people that “we shall fight them on the beaches …. we shall never surrender”. He persuaded a reluctant audience to carry on – despite the high personal cost.

In using his great communication skills to shape his leadership he followed in the steps of his mentor and friend the famous Welsh orator David Lloyd George who became Prime minister in the middle of World War One and used his great communication capacity to give confidence and hope to a nation that was traumatised by the heavy losses of life on the Western Front.

Sir Ernest Shackleton was a man with a plan – he aimed to cross the Antarctic with his crew supported by the ship Endeavour. The plan needed to be abandoned and re formed when his ship and crew became trapped on the ice floes for almost two years. Remarkably by great leadership and personal courage Shackleton brought everyone home. He describes his approach to communication –

“When crisis strikes, immediately address your staff. Take charge of the situation, offer a plan of action, ask for support, and show absolute confidence in a positive outcome.”

“Give your staff an occasional reality check to keep them on course. After time people will start to treat a crisis situation as business as usual and lose their focus.”

“Ask for advice and information from a variety of sources, but ultimately make decisions based on your best judgement”

You do not need to have the eloquence of Churchill or the driving bravery of a Shackleton to lead in times of crisis – but you do need to be clear, to listen well, to engage everyone who is affected and install confidence. How you do it is down to you. Those who put their heads down and hope the problems, stress and uncertainty will go away give a poor lead. We have seen in the stock market that support goes up and down dependent on confidence in the market. You need to deliberately install confidence in your team – based on realities and clear decisions – when they have that confidence your staff and stakeholders will invest in you.

In some businesses you have to wonder whether leaders are human. Indeed, it could be asked whether the leaders themselves are treated in a humane manner. I am reminded of the now arcane quip by General George C. Marshall when he said:

“Enlisted men may be entitled to morale problems, but officers are not. I expect all officers in this department to take care of their own morale. No one is taking care of my morale”

Not the height of emotional intelligence you might say.  It would appear that people want their leaders to model courage and confidence - with a human face.

In the Second World War a ‘collaborator’ was a negative phrase – it meant someone who was actively working with the occupying forces. As countries were liberated the collaborators faced savage beatings, ostracism and sometimes worse.

Now the message is we need more collaborators. It has always been the case that organisations wanted people to follow their vision and deliver their goals. But there is a deeper demand now – silo mentalities are breaking down and corporate working is becoming increasingly important. We are more dependent on each other for shared information, insights and the effective delivery of outcomes.

So what happens to ‘independent minded people’? There are a lot of them about in all organisations – people who are not team players. They can be likeable people; they can be hard working people; they can bring important perspectives – but in challenging times the questions for leaders has to be,’are they delivering what we need? Are they meeting our expectations?’

Sometimes they are introverted people who find maintaining relationships and exchanging information difficult – they like to be left alone to get on with things. Often it is the departmental maverick who likes to be difficult, questions everything, and is cynical. It can also be some values-driven people who are driving their own agendas – often with good intentions. It can be the aloof person, the technical expert, comfortable in a superior sort of way that they see things differently from the rest of us. They can be competitive, hard working, driven people who are shaping their reputations but put their ego before the need to work with others (who are, after all, the competition!)
The challenge to leaders is ‘what do I do with the non collaborators?’

I’ve been coaching someone recently who is a technically brilliant, capable person leading a specialist department. The individual continually fails to deliver what is asked, some of which is key to the organisations agenda. He is not belligerent or awkward, he is just busy on the agenda he thinks is important. But he is not collaborating with the corporate agenda. It is one of those many times when non collaboration is a significant corporate issue. Another example was a manager in the caring professions who had specialists who were spending hours doing wonderful things that were a long way out from the job’s requirements and not concentrating on what was. They were not collaborating with the main agenda. They thought they knew best – and were emotional in their desire to protect what they were doing – but they were letting the organisation down.

The leadership challenges here are:

• How strong is the level of collaboration in your work group? What are the signs that people are collaborating? What are the signs of lack of collaboration?
• Are we really clear about our purpose and therefore what we expect from each other?
• How can you make the non collaborators more aware of their impact – and help them change
• What are the steps and actions that lead to more collaboration – how do we involve people in this so they become more committed to it?
• Are there some people who cannot change – and are they blocking the organisations ability to succeed?

David Maister in his book ‘Strategy and the Fat Smoker’ writes: “It may be that members of the organisation have insufficient commitment to each other [and the purpose of the organisation] to implement any strategy”. Finding the collaborators can be really vital for success.

The Governments Power of Information Taskforce has created a £20,000 prize fund for people who want to develop new ways to use publicly owned data for public benefit. You submit ideas through the website boldly called showusabetterway. They’ve also made a series of government data sets available for people to work with. This website though is important because its how the government is thinking in fresh ways about collaboration and its relationship with us:

We’re confident that you’ll have more and better ideas than we ever will. You don’t have to have any technical knowledge, nor any money, just a good idea, and 5 minutes spare to enter the competition.Go on, Show Us A Better Way.

The same task force has already looked for ways to make it easier or safer for civil servants to share in the ideas fest which often happens online. Openness generates better ideas. It helps people to innovate faster and work better. Yes it also means people can nick those ideas - but that doesn’t put the thieves ahead of those who habitually collaborate to progress.

(Thanks to Bill Thompson)

This extract on skating over ideas and invest in some deeper thinking comes from a speech to new graduates at The Pacific Northwest College of Art. Susan S Szenasy , editor of the Metropolis Magazine told the students:

As artists and communication designers you can choose to be the
outriders of society. Like the scouts in the old western films, you can
be in the position of surveying the horizon and alerting the rest of us
to the dangers and surprises ahead. But I worry about you. I worry that
while you have evolved the use of your thumbs to work at phenomenal
speeds, you are not as interested in developing the habits you need to
accumulate knowledge, knowledge that can inform your vision as artists.
I mean knowledge of the world—science, literature, and
history—knowledge of the great contributions others are making or have
made to our rich understanding of humanity and the earth which gives us
life.

It is not enough to find information instantly and use it
opportunistically to support your argument. To be able to analyze and
synthesize you need to delve deeply into a subject, build up your
understanding incrementally, and own that knowledge. Own it, so you can
call it up when you need it, without turning to your PDA, and use your
amazing brain-power to interpret what you know when critical analysis
is needed. What I’m asking of you is what I have always asked of
myself: To be endlessly curious about everything, to search for facts
when you need them, but more importantly, to search for ideas and
meaning. Read a book, look at a building or a landscape, drink it all
in—make it your own.

For more read here. Hat tip to Canufluck.

Julian Dobson runs Newstart, a magazine and website which has spent a good few years watching how cities and communities function and flourish, commune or collapse.

From time to time he blogs on the site Living with Rats. Today he writes on the enforced competition which can drive decisions by our city regions and how some are walking away from that approach:

In Newcastle and Gateshead, the two local authorities are already seizing those opportunities by setting aside old rivalries and are working on a combined city development company. They’ve realised there’s more to be won by collaborating than by fighting over resources. What’s impressive is not just that the civic leaders have grasped that vision, but that it’s being pursued at an operational level: instead of competing for business, the councils work together to give investors a consistent message and to provide employment for local people, whichever side of the Tyne they happen to live on.

That kind of leadership involves questioning and challenging familiar ways of working. It means continually asking what is appropriate and being ready to break old habits.

In a world where people are sometimes deliberately set against each other, it takes a twist of determination to turn your back on such a culture. This something I’ve found with the many stories I’ve recorded of active citizens and also is understood by Caret colleagues who work on community leadership. Leaders look for ways to collaborate.

We have watched, shouted, cajoled and advised as arm chair spectators - and at times we will have been incredulous at the antics of Sir Alan Sugar’s latest batch of would-be apprentices. Now we sit back and ask “did he make the right choice?”. 

I thought Lee had blown it; he lied on his CV and he repeated his lie in the interview with that nice (but obviously not dumb) Bordan on the interview panel. It begs the question about how much Sir Alan can trust Lee? And, maybe when things get difficult in his new role, will the new £100,000 apprentice suddenly find he has other memory lapses or moments of high career creativity?

I felt Claire was the one - she was enthusiastic, bright and had good ‘bouncebackability’. There has been some speculation that Sir Alan was intimidated by her direct style and confidence and is more comfortable with ‘blokes’. On reflection though, I think Sir Alan made the right choice (from a not very convincing group of people whose sole qualification for the programme seemed to be a high dose of self delusion). I baulk at the CV lies but what we did see in Lee was a much better leader than we saw in Claire.

There are two key things in Lee’s favour:

1.  What would he be like to work for - will he raise the contribution he gets from his team? He has the ability to get on with all (well, most) of his colleagues, whereas Claire was part of a group that took delight in hacking great chunks out of each other. He demonstrated great energy and enthusiasm and showed he could lead as well as be a hard-working team member. Claire is good on her own, especially in a sales situation, but that does not make a great £100,000 job applicant. Working for her could be like working for a very self-opinionated steam roller… woe betide someone who gets in the way! Working for Lee could be fun, energising and exciting (although you might want to check the veracity of any marketing materials he puts out!).
2. Lee’s second winning driver is who would you like to work for you? If the apprentice is to become a real asset to Sir Alan’s business empire he or she needs to be a strong team player and someone who will listen to and learn from the master. He needs to take instruction and deliver what is needed.  But he also needs to perform at a senior level - and be credible with Sir Alan’s clients.

Lee faced a fierce jury in the past three months - the general public has yet again been caught up with his antics and those of his colleagues. He now faces a smaller but more influential jury within Sir Alan’s organisation. He needs to prove himself worthy of his role in a demanding business. Too many of this years applicants were strutting egos “I am probably the best sales person in Europe”, “I get on with prince and pauper”, “I expect to be a billionaire within the next year” “I am the most accurate cross stitcher in my village” (perhaps I made the last one up). Lee was self assured with a touch of humanity, he supported and encouraged others, he enthused customers and colleagues. He is expected to operate at a senior level - I think the evidence says he is the one that can lead the best, that’s why he was chosen. Yes its back to leadership - as Lee might say, “C’mon, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Dave Snowden has written this strong blog post about coherence, leadership and communications:

Not all great leaders are good communicators, fewer still are, or will ever be gifted story tellers. Ironically some of the worst leaders are only too good at telling stories and excel at communication. What really matters is the degree of coherence and integrity that is evident in the lived life of the leader as perceived by their employees and colleagues.

As a journalist I would sometimes have the argument with colleagues about the line between truth and honesty.

A fact may be strictly true and can be set alongside other strictly true facts, but as we know the whole can be totally dishonest. Naturally enough whenever we fell near that trap the package was all brilliantly communicated, regardless of how much integrity it had. After all that’s what we were trained to do.

The end result though was never satisfying. It lacked integrity and often it was really hard work. Why? Because creating a semblance of coherence from something that is fundamentally flawed is devilishly difficult to do. But doing just that has become a staple technique for half hearted journalism and probably for a similar style of management. Disguising the lie has become a professional skill - acquired over years of experience.

So how do you build in checks and balances to ensure you’re spending time on the stuff that really makes sense? As Dave goes on to argue: “If nothing else leaders generally come as teams, the good ones take people with them over the years who compliment their skills. Training leadership crews rather than leaders may be one way to build more resilience into organisations”.

In my mind one of the core strengths of a great team is to know what is honest and have a reflex action to communicate that. The pleasure of nailing something when you’ve also worked hard to do the right thing is enormous. Of course from time to time managers feel they can’t do that - but the wisest will never buy their own deceit. Make a habit of doing that and you’re most likely to end up being dismissed as, at best, incoherent.

Hat Tip Johnnie Moore. Image thanks to Unhindered by Talent.

The recent MIT Sloan article ‘Does Being Ethical Pay?’ unintentionally highlights one of the major issues in the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) debate: are companies unethically jumping on the ethical bandwagon?
 
The article asks if the billions of dollars spent doing good works pays off by testing consumer responses to ethically and unethically made products. I agree, it is essential to measure and research consumers’ attitudes to ethical products and know the financial implications for your business so that your ethical efforts are sustainable, but not in order to find out how to use the current trend towards ethics for financial gain! “We discovered that companies don’t necessarily need to go all-out with social responsibility to win over consumers. If a company invests in even a small degree of ethical production, buyers will reward it just as much as a company that goes much further in its efforts.”
 
You could argue Trudel and Cotte are simply reflecting consumer attitudes, but I believe by omitting to talk about the bigger picture it’s a point for the cynics’ argument…that companies are moving towards being socially responsible just because it makes them look good and not because it is the right thing to do.
 
Is it naive to think any company is different? Does that actually matter as long as people and the environment gain? It does if you only do as the article implies - just make yourself a little bit ethical and you will get just as much reward! There is danger in this too though; if you state you are ethical then you open yourself up to being scrutinised, and it may well not be long before legislation is passed on ethical standards, or the market changes so much that anything else is unsaleable.
 
The article says the lessons are clear; well yes they are if you only take into account potential profit, “companies should segment their market and make a particular effort to reach out to buyers with high ethical standards, because those are the customers who can deliver the biggest potential profits on ethically produced goods”. The ethical problem with this argument is that by only producing ethical goods for ethical consumers you aren’t considering the social or environmental impact of your company as a whole.
 
Should we not abandon our cynicism just for a moment and applaud companies such as Marks and Spencer for their drive to be more sustainable and kinder to the environment. 

“We’re doing this because it’s what you want us to do. It’s also the right thing to do. We’re calling it Plan A because we believe it’s now the only way to do business. There is no Plan B.”

Following an earlier post about ‘Flip’, here’s an impressive bunch of young ‘flipstars’.

Pupils in South Camden Community School have conducted their own alternative, student-led Ofsted inspection that goes by the name ‘Instead’. The initiative was founded by Edge Learner Forum, an enterprising group of 13 to 21-year-olds, uniting pupils from schools across London - along with 7 other areas around the country - to discuss issues concerning their own education. Samia Meah writes here about the idea and how it came about:

The idea of a ‘Teenage OFSTED‘ surfaced while fellow learner forum member Huda Al Bander and I were brainstorming for our article in VISION. It came from our thought of using young people to solve problems which are about education and an example of this is school and its OFSTED inspections. The idea is simple, to bring young inspectors into a school to interview pupils for their opinions and to find the truth.

Pupil inspectors discuss the results with teachers in face-to-face meetings and submit a report analysing grouped teaching techniques, so no teachers are singled out for attention. Unlike Ofsted, the aim of Edge Instead is “entirely for the good of the school and comes with zero stress” - they work with the school to make things better, rather than merely judging the school’s successes and failures.

How many problems in education could be solved just be giving pupils some control over their own destiny? It puts me in mind of a quote from former Starbucks Executive Howard Behar: “People want to work on ideas that matter to them and make a difference. When they do, they find gold”.

Photo thanks to Qatari Mother.