This week I read an article by Robert Bruce in Financial Director that highlighted the need for some plain speaking honesty from financial directors. It really hit the nail on the head for me when I think how arrogant and self-important ‘closed shop’ speak can be, and how flawed the communications skills of many leaders still are.
The article was published two days before the World Economic Forum buzz (or indeed lack thereof for those that stayed away). It’s also been the week of President Obama’s State of the Union address – kind of a spoken annual review, but with many more hand gestures and a serious campaign to go down in history as one of the world’s greatest orators.
Excuse my cynicism. I’m just a little tired of the puffery.
Robert Bruce has hit upon something. The public – these leaders’ publics – are baffled. And they deserve an explanation.
Like all professions, directors of finance have their language – ‘financese’. Removing the ‘puff’ from it would mean making the story of what they do accessible to others, and there’s a fear that this would devalue what highly paid professionals do. They’re not alone.
The thing is, I don’t believe they think of themselves as leaders – and they are. They’re often seen as the boring number crunchers, not the story tellers.
But this year they have such a key role to play – and an important story to tell. They have an even greater responsibility to rebuild the trust in business. It takes numbers to do this, absolutely, but there’s a story here too. It’s a story that should not be reserved for other finance directors or investors – though the stake in communicating to these people is quite clear, and mutually beneficial. But these leaders need to communicate to other people.
See, the numbers don’t lie – they’re just confusing. But the numbers do provide a clear means of telling an organisation’s story. All you need is an accompanying narrative and a clear and straightforward consideration of who needs to hear it. Surely that’s not beyond the capabilities of a financial director (although they might need the services of translators)? And if it is beyond their capabilities, it shouldn’t be.
This year’s story might not have a happy ending, but if we have learned one thing over the past year it is that leaders need to tell the truth because that is what people yearn for above all else – whether it’s good or bad.
In fact, I don’t think that’s limited to the private sector at all. Finance directors across sectors would be wise to redefine themselves as leaders on this issue if they haven’t already done so.
I say congratulations to ICAS for putting together a guide on ‘Making Corporate Reports Readable’. The next step is that leaders within organisations need to tell the story to their people clearly and honestly. They need to write it. They need to speak it. And they need to ensure that it is understood by all their stakeholders.
Stories that end in shock and awe, or that twist and turn are nice for suspense thrillers. Not when your job or the economic stability of your employer or country is at stake. Your people do deserve a straightforward story. And leaders are responsible – at the very least – for telling it well.
Other places where you can read up on this topic include:
Today at the World Economic Forum there will be a session on ‘Global Industry Outlook: Finance, Services and Media’, and yesterday there was a session on ‘New Corporate Governance in the Post-Crisis World’.
You can view the programme at Davos here, and view the media coverage here - or refer to the Common Purpose blog to see what our teams are reading.
In amongst all the noise from Davos – and I’m only concerned that there is so much to listen to that people will switch off – but it is lovely to hear from a banker in this film who actually did do a great job in 2009.
What comes across when he speaks about the World Economic Forum is his humility and his thoughtfulness – and his hands.
I do think that as we look back on 2009 – when a lot of trust was lost – Stephen Green is there. He isn’t terribly exciting as a speaker, but I would follow him for his humility and success.
There are some other items on trust that I think are helpful and very interesting:
Last week Common Purpose held an event called Leaders’ Questions in the UK. We asked around 40 leaders to discuss with some great speakers what the leadership challenges were in 2009, what they’ve learned, and how they will now face the challenges and the opportunities in 2010.
By the end of the day we were exhausted. Which is fitting – because our concluding discussion revealed a sense of fatigue.
It seems our leaders might be caught in a spiral. They’re over stretched. They’re not dealing with much positive news. They’re stressed. The fatigue is impacting on teams, who are then not ‘speaking out’ on how they can innovate. So how do you break the cycle?
Think about the rest
Leaders are tired – and they have been for a while. They have been making very tough calls all year. Some of these calls have been about other people’s lives – especially if you have had to make a call on redundancies. And at this time, when nothing feels stable or clear, and your colleagues want you to be visible and positive – even if you don’t feel like being so at all.
This whole year has been about facing realities – or ‘naming the beast’, as I pointed out to the Birmingham Post in May last year.
You have probably been having less sleep and leaders are working harder to achieve less. And then you come home, were you may have kids, and they know they’re not going to find jobs easily. Or you might have a partner, and they may be facing the same issues at work. Or you have both.
What are you going to do? Here are some top tips that emerged from our Leaders’ Questions event:
You need to get enough sleep.
Don’t load it all on yourself – it’s the leaders who share some of the burden with their teams who will keep going.
Remember that everyone is frightened – and there’s nothing wrong with being frightened unless it freezes you.
Resist the temptation to share all the load and try to keep positive. You can feel the fear, but if you reveal all the burden, you might just unsettle your colleagues - and that really will load the burden on you.
Take a step away. If you don’t look outwards you won’t see the next thing coming – and you never know, it could be an unbelievable opportunity.
Focus on strengths and shelve the distractions. It’s not ‘getting back to basics’, it is doing what you do best as a priority.
Many also felt that there was a positive change in old boundaries disappearing. Unlikely conversations are taking place – and that’s great. It is also important that leaders ask different people in their organisations for perspective or suggestions on innovations. People you think are leaders and those other people look to as leaders are not necessarily the same people.
This is no time to be timid. But to be brave, you need to sustain your strength.
I shared with our participants at Leaders’ Questions that it had been suggested to me that it would take a cataclysmic event to provide the springboard for positive change and new ways of leading. I’m thinking economic collapse and a complete shift in international relations is a fairly big signpost.
Here’s hoping our 2,500 world leaders at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, which starts today, are brave. As they look to ‘Improve the State of the World: Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild’ – they will need to be.
I read an article in the Guardian last Saturday that I disagreed with. It was an analysis of the recent research conducted by The Work Foundation called ‘Exceeding Expectation: the principles of outstanding leadership’.
The analysis in the Guardian is looking to distinguish and almost set at odds either target-driven or people-focused approaches – when there will always be a mesh of the two and any experienced leader will tell you that.
No one can lead with targets if that’s what they think targets lead to – eliminating a focus on people. Good leaders need to listen to other people so that they know what the targets should be, when they should have been achieved, and when the targets need changing. If you don’t have targets you can’t delegate or work in collaboration, or indeed, strive for achievement at all. So how is it that having targets, or not, is even up for question?
Outstanding leaders focus on people as their top priority – they always have…and they also set them targets. I hardly think this is a blinding insight. One-to-one meetings are when you review targets. If ‘effective leaders should not just delegate… but should stay in touch with staff members afterwards, asking how they got on and talking through any problems’ – isn’t this the basis of a one-to-one? Not only to review tasks and goals and but wider development issues? There is also nothing more rewarding for people than achieving success, being supported to achieve it, and having that recognised.
And of course leadership can be taught – and everyone needs to be developed to realise their leadership potential, whether their job title is going to say they are a leader or not.
Leadership is complex and it is always a balancing act of hard and soft styles – and sometimes that means implementing an ‘iron touch’, which has probably never been more needed than it is now. Knowing which is appropriate is dependent on culture and circumstances, people, time, tasks and various other factors. Getting the balance right is the challenge and discussing this in terms of black and white I believe is highly irresponsible and sends people into a spectrum of extremes rather than giving inspiration on how to achieve a fusion of all these qualities, which is what defines great leaders.
It’s sad when experienced leaders complete their formal career and expect ‘that call’. If it never comes, they retreat to the golf course. But the call doesn’t always happen because they have been so absorbed in the world that they know well that they have not planned or prepared for the next phase. They certainly have not thought of their careers as citizens.
With luck, a career as a citizen has been running in parallel to their formal career all the time, but for many it’s a new thing.
Leaders have a journey as a citizen that outstrips their time at work. But a citizenship career requires as much planning as you put into your formal career. All that educating yourself, getting hired, getting involved in interesting projects, expanding our networks and thinking, putting your skills to the best possible use, and learning to work with new people – it all applies.
There is no retirement age for citizens. But if it’s left as an afterthought of ‘what I’ll do when I leave here’, the danger is that when you do no one much wants you…because you have become only really effective ‘here’.
And even if you don’t revert, or evolve to golf, if you don’t plan things properly you become a volunteer. Now, I know I get in trouble for knocking volunteering, but let me clarify.
Reading with kids in schools or distributing books in a hospital are strong starts as they root you in reality and come with huge individual satisfaction. But to me, if you have been a successful leader all your life, surely these skills need to be used to change things so that reading is – for example – better taught in schools? So after you’re done reading, maybe it’s time to become a school governor? Or to join an NHS board?
We run a course for leaders at this stage – and by this I mean preferably a few years before the end of your formal career – to consider the multitude of options and figure out what has to change in you if you are to avoid the gold banishment.
We also run a campaign called About Time. This is for leaders who want to take on big board opportunities. I speak on both courses every year because it is so exciting opening up new worlds to people who have the time, commitment and potential ability to change things.
I speak on Frontrunner too – our course for university students – so that our future leaders think about their careers as citizens from the start.
As ever, Christmas and the holiday season has crept up – even more so now that I don’t have small children’s nativity plays to go to, which used to get you in the mood. Now, before I know it, I’m panicking about food and presents and wondering where the year went.
This year its not just the end of a year but of the first decade of what was the eagerly anticipated New Millennium. And what a decade it has been – a great anti-climax. All those big aspirations and bold targets just didn’t hold water. The worst of it for me has been the collapse of trust in leadership at a rate that makes climate change look like it’s dawdling.
I am now wondering what leaders will need to think about, the challenges they will face and the triumphs they will celebrate in the coming decade.
So I would like to hear your views. What is your wish list is for our leaders as we welcome 2010. Will they need to be…
I am on the flight to Mumbai, home of Bollywood, celebrity and fame.
The last few days have been about deciding the business plan with the board and my colleagues in India. We have been working through which of the multitude of opportunities here we are going to do first. And there are almost infinite opportunities now that we have shown what can be achieved in Bangalore and Chennai. India, growing at such breakneck speed is demanding so much of its leaders – and particularly that they work together – that Common Purpose is spot on, the right idea at the right time. So we have had to be controlled and serious and determined so that our discussions prioritise cleverly.
And then we get on this plane and my colleagues suddenly start squealing, jumping up and down, flapping their arms. Giggling like little girls. He’s coming, I saw him on the stairs, he’s coming, its him, I can’t believe it, its him. He is the Big B (Amitabh Bachchan…I hear the name!). I shall always be amazed by the unbelievable power of celebrity. Reducing leaders – in moments – to drooling squealing groupies!
And now they are trying to explain to me just what a mega star he is.
I have spoken to him now – we went up into first class through the curtains – he has huge physical presence and says nothing. He blanks questions no doubt in the fear of being quoted. But he is for real, he is a star, and a business man, and a politician and a survivor because he has had huge ups and down in all three worlds.
So our start up in Mumbai will be wonderful now, we have been touched!
I was in Frankfurt on Monday – in the pouring, sheeting, drenching, rain – talking to a big company about leadership. I sat in the airport on my way back and watched all the world leaders doing their talks (in the rain) about the wall coming down on the other side of Germany. They all looked as tired as I felt at the end of a long day in an airport…washed out!
Strange to think that the moment they were celebrating was, despite being so momentous (certainly for my generation), almost a leaderless one, done without those of us who talk about leadership or claim to do it. The Fall of the Wall was a revolution without leaders (at least as I understand it). Many people had had enough; they felt the moment was right and they just did it. Many others simply decided to step out of the way, or couldn’t quite get their act together to get in the way.
I suppose that’s one way to see it.
Maybe the other is that you finally got a big outbreak of leadership in lots and lots of people at the same glorious moment – mass leadership.
It would be good to see more outbreaks happening. I hope the tired leaders would welcome it, or at least not get in the way.
My first boss always said to me “fish go dead from the head”, if you get the leadership right then the rest can follow. Without leadership nothing works even with all the beauty, resources, and passions that Africa has.
It has recently been announced that the Mo Ibrahim Prize for African Leadership will not be awarded this year. This is a totally fabulous prize and I applaud Mo Ibrahim, an entrepreneur and now a philanthropist too, who knows just how important good leadership is.
The challenges in Africa are not necessarily about money and resources (after all they have more resources than almost anyone) but good governance is critical to making these resources work for the majority of Africans not just a few.
The fact that the bar for the prize is being set so high is great. Festus Mogae is an African leader who has husbanded the mineral wealth of his Bostwana to build a country. In fact the bar must have been very, very high that they did not give it to John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor whom I understand has been successful at promoting good governance in Ghana while in office.
This prize recognizes a reality that many African leaders don’t have anywhere to go after they leave office so they stay too long and loose the plot.
It makes us all think about when and how leaders should move on? So many African leaders have been good at the start and then lost it as they held on. But it’s a question for all of us. One thing is certain we will move on and getting the exit and handover right is the greatest indicator of how good we were. We all need to keep in mind that one day we will need to exit and work hard to build the next generation that will take over.
Where do you turn for new insights, or to throw yourself into the unfamiliar? Do you have to take a year out and travel the globe? Or should you simply go out in your own street and see it through another person’s eyes?
I explained the Common Purpose 360 Day (an invitation from Common Purpose to do exactly that, and challenge the way you see the world), to my daughter last week. She started giggling. She said that I had pestered her all her life to “never judge anyone until you had walked a mile in their shoes”. She said that she had discovered the perfect response to my lecturing…you should do it, because then by the time the person you are judging has figured out what you are up to, you are a mile away and have their shoes! I fear that I am not a serious parent.
Her giggling came the day before she threw me, unplanned, way out into unfamiliar territory, because she fell and fractured her skull. It has been a grim and frightening week and her recovery sounds like it will be lengthy. I have spent hours and hours in different levels of serious casualty wards – seriously out of the familiar and challenging the way that I see the world.
So what have I learnt, or re-learnt?
How impatient I am and how much stress that puts on people around me
How easily I slide into the “group speak” of being horrible about the British NHS. At every level it has been top notch for us, all week. I must stop adding my voice to the endlessly critical naysayers and share my pride at how impressive they were.
As I walked down one corridor (for the four hundred and fiftieth time), I looked again at the notice board with the thank you notes pinned to it. I have to get better at taking the time to write letters of praise and thanks.
How lovely it is watching a team do what they really love…and doing it really, really well. That’s what the emergency room was. It took me some time watching them to spot who the leader was (in fact I am not even sure I know now). I suspect it was the person (who looked least like the leader) who came and put in another drip when all the others had failed. She (or he maybe if it wasn’t her) was invisible, but you could feel her everywhere.
Next year, I want more control over my 360 Day experience.
