Phil's Leadership Blog

Richard Branson - A 'to do' list instead of strategy

2008-10-13T09:10:00.001+01:00

I like this, from smith+co's Customer Experience blog (declaration of interest: I work with Shaun Smith and his team quite regularly):

"Richard Branson has a new book out – Business Stripped Bare, Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur.

A while ago. Branson was asked about strategy and said that he didn't run his businesses by strategies. Instead, he keeps a 'to do' list, that he writes at the beginning of each day. Working his way through his 'to do' lists, cumulatively, pushes Virgin as a group in the direction he instinctively feels it should be taking.

If you open the hardback version of his book, there's one of his to do lists, in his handwriting, photocopied into the inside cover of the book. It goes like this:

Things To Do

1. Ring Steve Fossett*
2. Letter for Airline Staff
3. Letter for Retail Staff
4. Book – Autobiog – see photos
5. Pictures from Zambia – show mum
6. Ring S. Africa re. Lottery
7. Job swaps. Unpaid leave. Do more for staff.
8. Rail and others. Write letters.
9. Rail. On-time figures last month. Get adverts prepared.
10. Virgin America – Ring David

And so it goes on, 22 items in all.

I love the way showing his mum his holiday pictures and ringing South Africa to see if he can run a national Lottery for them nestle next to each other.

Of his top three things to do that day, two were to do with communicating with his staff. The remains of Steve Fossett's crashed airplane were found a week or so ago, so Branson's number 1 to do for that day is poignant."

Branson has taken steps to define a strategy for the Virgin Group in recent years - Branded Venture Capitalism was what his strategy advisor called it, and when Branson talked to us at Leaders in London from his island home on Necker, that's the phrase that was being used to describe Virgin strategy.

But, old habits die hard. And I wouldn't be surprised if those daily 'to do' lists and Branson's gut feel are what is driving Virgin strategy, such as it is. That's not a criticism - those words 'such as it is'. Heretical as it may sound, I think strategy, as practised by most large organizations, that is, is over-rated. Branson became a billionaire and his companies became icons over the course of more than a decade during which, when asked "What's your strategy?" he happily replied, "I don't have one." Good for him.

How to re-invent management and leadership

2008-10-08T13:29:00.000+01:00

Five steps to re-invent management and leadership

We once home swapped with some people who live in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco. The small town goes by the proud title of "Pumpkin-Growing Capital of The World", which means they must be doing good business in the run up to Hallowe'en right now. So, we ate a lot of pumpkin and wandered around their seven bedroom mansion, while they (the people we homeswapped with) were squashed into our two-bedroom flat in Chiswick, West London. We got the use of their talking Chrysler Le Baron ("Your seatbelt is still undone"). They got the use of our Nissan Micra. I think we won.

So, when Gary Hamel, whom the Wall Street journal rates as "The Number One Most Influential Business Thinker In The World" convened a big think tank in Half Moon Bay a week or two ago, I snapped to attention, as it seemed such a sleepy location for such a powerful think tank. It wasn't just pumpkin soup on the menu (delicious, I recall) - It was the future of management (and leadership!).

I'd love to have been there, as Hamel brought together CK Prahalad, his former tutor and collaborator, Peter Senge (author of the Fifth Discipline, and pioneer of 'the learning organization' and systems thinking), Henry Mintzberg (the strategy guru who spoke to us at a previous Leaders in London), Ed Lawler, Chris Argyris, Jeffrey Pfeffer and other enormous management brains.

The event was called "Inventing The Future of Management". For those of us who couldn't be there to eavesdrop on their findings, Gary Hamel himself is coming to Leaders in London 2008 and I'm sure we can prevail on him to share some of the outcomes with us there.

The two days of debate concluded that we need to re-invent management using the following five principles:

1. Reconstruct the philosophical foundations of management

2. Orient individual and collective effort around a higher and broader purpose

3. Increase trust, reduce fear (My note: Boy, is that important right now in the turbulence facing all of us)

4. Substantially reduce the gravitational pull of the past

5. Reinvent the work of executive leadership

Powerful stuff. The gurus reported after the event, according to the FT, that "natural hierarchies require natural leaders, individuals who are able to mobilise their fellow human beings despite having no 'positional authority'.

"A 21st century management model demands a 21st century leadership model - where leaders are no longer seen as grand visionaries, all-wise decision makers and heroic deal-makers, but are viewed instead as 'social architects', 'constitution writers' and 'entrepreneurs of meaning'."

I love that 'Entrepreneurs of meaning'. Leaders make meaning. More to come from Gary Hamel when he presents his findings to us at Leaders in London 2008

"There is no magic formula for leadership

2008-10-07T11:18:00.001+01:00

Our Leaders in London 2007 speaker, Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, the marketing, advertising and media group, is profiled in the new book by our 2008 Leaders in London speaker Steve Tappin, author of The Secrets of CEOs, which was reviewed in the FT last week.

Martin Sorrell told Tappin and his co-author Andrew Cave:

"No-one has any magic formula" for leadership.

"Everyone obfuscates and makes it too sophisticated. Having a clear purpose, vison and strategy, having the right team and having them aligned to what's important," is the closest you can get to a formula for a successful leader, particularly a successful CEO, says Sorrell.

Richard Donkin of the FT says that although Sorrell says there is no magic formula, his (Sorrell's) own formula for corporate leadership is still important. Sorrell likens himself "to a referee, a sort of consolidator or co-operator" who can bring all the parts of the company to work together," says Donkin.

Tappin argues that the "idea of the solitary figure who tries to think through everything is no longer appropriate for complex international business." Absolutely.

I also like this, from Steve Tappin's book, where he quotes Archie Norman who, along with Allan Leighton and a close knit leadership team, turned around ASDA's fortunes to move up from the bottom of the big four supermarkets in the UK to replace Sainsbury's in coming (at the time - Sainsbury's have since fought back, with the help of CEO Justin King, who was part of Norman's ASDA leadership team) as second in the UK supermarket league table:

"I like businesses where people feel able

to shout at each other, in a professional way, of course."

- Archie Norman

If your relationships with other leaders and the rest of the organization are strong enough to have 'fierce conversations' (see the book of the same name), based on passion for the business (not on ego and trying to get your own way) then you have a robust, healthy corporate climate that's well-placed to make the right decisions in the current tough trading environment.

See a few posts ago for more on Steve Tappin and his core idea of the need to 'build a fellowship' of leaders. And you can learn from Steve direct at Leaders in London 2008.

How to make better decisions

2008-09-25T09:09:00.002+01:00

Over at Slacker Manager, Phil Gerbyshak has been blogging about how to improve decision-making. As we are in a less forgiving economic environment, it's all the more important that your decisions as a leader are mostly right. So, here are a few quick 'sources of power' on making better decisions:

1. Don't assume the best decisions come from you. 'The leader as decision-maker' who answers everyone's questions and makes the final decision at the end of every meeting, is old hat and based on the outdated notion of the infallibility of leaders.

2. Gary Klein's book Sources of Power, despite its title, isn't about power, but is actually about decision-making. It's a powerful analysis of decision-making by people in life or death situations - firefighters, soldiers, doctors - and the techniques (often sub-conscious) they use. Klein experimented with getting a bunch of marines to work in a trading pit, applying the military's decision-making system for battlefield situations. The trader who were also part of the experiment trounced them. No surprise there. However, when he took the same traders and the same marines and put them in a war game exercise...the traders trounced the marines again. Their use of 80% information plus instinct in a fast-moving situation beat the military's need (at the time: they've learnt since) for 100% information before making a decision.

3. Take your time when you can. Yes, I chose the 'trader' example in 2., on purpose. The turmoil in the financial markets shows that what looks like great, fast decision-making - if you've been in the bearpit of a trading floor, you'll know how fast and furious it is - can, when scaled up and cumulatively, be disastrous for overall strategy. It can even de-stabilize the structure. So, our third and last thought on this subject comes from Rudy Giuliani, the former Mayor of New York, who is coming to share his leadership insights with us at Leaders in London in a couple of months (naked plug: book by tomorrow - Friday 26th - to save up to £500).

Giuliani advises us not to make decisions until you have to. The ability to reflect and ponder outcomes before acting is a sign of strength, not weakness, he stresses:

“One of the trickiest elements of decision-making is working out not what, but when. Regardless of how much time exists before a decision must be made, I never make up my mind until I have to. Faced with any important decision, I always envision how each alternative will play out before I make it. During this process, I’m not afraid to change my mind a few times. Many are tempted to decide an issue simply to end the discomfort of indecision. However, the longer you have to make a decision, the more mature and well-reasoned that decision should be.”

Two vital questions to ask in job interviews

2008-09-24T11:05:00.002+01:00

What are the first and last questions you ask in any job interview?

What do you like to do?
What do you hate to do?

From an interview with John Catsimatidis on Forbes.com .

Recruiting the right people is a vital part of a leader's job. And yet recruitment is treated, says the Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Semler, in a superficial fashion in most organizations. The applicants fill in a form, come and answer questions once or maybe twice. Then you appoint them. Or not.

That's like getting married after meeting someone twice from an online dating site, says Semler. He's right, of course. No wonder if you ask executives what their biggest regrets are, somewhere in the list will be a number of people they appointed who turned out to be not what the exec. hoped they'd be.

The knock-on effect to your plans of mis-appointing is huge and longterm. We all know people we've had to work around because they wouldn't or couldn't leave. The waste in terms of cost is enormous. The waste in terms of opportunity cost - if you had the right person in post - is even bigger.

The two questions, above, sparked off a big debate over in The Leadership Hub, where one person thought they were a joke, but a number of people say that these are vital questions, and have added a few questions of their own. The link, above, takes you to their comments.

What do you think of these questions?
What questions do you ask that help reveal the 'real' person beneath the outer shell that is an interviewee?

Bono on what makes a great leader

2008-09-23T09:15:00.003+01:00

Interesting how celebrity and leadership connect today, isn't it. I mean, for example, Bob Geldof going from pop...not 'star', since his had waned till he took up the mantle of leader of a world movement against poverty...'pop figure', I guess, to a kind of world leader.

His Irish glimmer twin (that's a Rolling Stones reference for you old enough to get it) Bono has become his co-leader. Equally articulate and passionate (what is it about the Irish and a beautiful turn of phrase: I'm a quarter Irish and I resent the fact that I don't have a quarter of Geldof or Bono's eloquence), he is blogging from the Millennium Development Goals summit at the moment in New York. In his latest blog he describes a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and throws in this description:

"Both the first lady and the president change the molecular structure of any room they are in - he speeds them up, she calms them down. A great team. "

'Change the molecular structure of the room they are in'...what a great phrase for describing what leaders do.

Bono also says of the diminutive Sarkozy: "Sarko is a real physical presence in a room. He might even be taller than me… animated, funny one minute; annoyed the next. I admire his energy and vision."

And he describes how Sarkozy reaches across and grabs his arm at one point, and how Carla Bruni, his wife, uses storytelling to capture the imagination.

So, if you want to read Bono's posts there is a scattering of leadership learning jewels in there, such as:

1. How great leaders connect on a personal, intimate basis;

2. The power of leadership partnerships of contrasting styles (Sarko and Bruni sound like Hewlett and Packard - leadership partnerships haven't been studied enough, and we focus as a result too much on leadership as being about individuals, whereas leadership is really something that happens between people, not something one person does to lots of others);

3. The importance of a leader as a generator or releaser of energy - in a meeting, in their daily work - and so on.

There's also a powerful reminder of the point Al Gore and Kofi Annan made at Leaders in London last year - how the rest of the world needs a strong Africa that is not mired in poverty if the rest of the world is to be strong and prosperous, and that this is one of the biggest issues for world leadership today.

Bono's blog, which dissects Sarkozy's leadership style based on his meeting with him, is here

2008-09-22T12:43:00.001+01:00

This just popped into my in-box from David Taylor. It's his weekly email newsletter. A link to his site if you want to subscribe is at the bottom of this post:

Dear Phil

Read Time: Ten Seconds

The Three Most Frequent Questions I am asked at events…

2 – What is your personal definition of a great leader?

Mine?

My acid test of leadership?

If you were stripped of your title – the power to punish and reward your people – your traits of office and power…

Would you still get results out of them?

Would you?

Would they still “follow” you?

Would they?

If the answer is “yes” then you are a great leader.

With love and best wishes

David x
David Taylor's Naked Leader Site so you can sign up for his weekly newsletter: www.thenakedleader.com

Viral leadership: pirates take off, hunger doesn't

2008-09-21T10:43:00.002+01:00

The Net enables a new form of leadership - changing people's behaviour/behavior through the viral spread of an idea or a 'meme' as Richard Dawkins and others have called it, at an accelerated pace compared with pre-Net days. The connectedness provided by the Net provides a kind of souped up medium or accelerator for leading changes in how people behave.

So, I'll repeat a question I asked this time last year. 'Talk like a pirate day' took off from a spontaneous drunken conversation in a bar between two friends, who then put the idea on the Net, and claimed last year to have several million people involved. Net claims of 'several million' usually have to be trimmed back by 90% or so, but that still leaves a vast number of people who spent last Friday, September 19th, talking like a pirate.

Then there's flashmobbing and other examples of de-centralized leadership, usually co-ordinated initially by one person, but quickly taken over by the collective, so there seems to be an act of 'common mind' going on: a group of people thinking and acting as one.

And here's the 'but'. So, if Talk Like A Pirate Day gets millions of people involved each year, how come The Hunger Site, where you click to provide food for hungry people at no cost, seems to have plateaued at around 150,000 clicks a day for the past few years?

What is it about talking like a pirate for a day that's more compelling than clicking for a couple of seconds to stop someone being hungry? That's not an outraged, self-righteous criticism of everyone who talked like a pirate. It's just bafflement. When The Hunger Site first appeared, I was emailed about it by people from all over the world. And I did my share of excited "Hey have you seen this? The Net could change the world here?!" emailing myself.

But, millions of people don't click each day. Curious.

And just to be a killjoy: The only reason pirates, in every film ever made since Robert Newton played the archetypal pirate Long John Silver in Treasure Island, speak with an 'Ooohhh' and an 'Arrrrr' and the word 'matey' and all those other piratical cliches the cast of Pirates of The Caribean adopted with zeal, and millions of people were using last Friday, is not because pirates really talked like that. It's because Robert Newton chose to give his pirate an exaggerated Cornish (West of England) accent in the old black and white movie. And every actor who had to play a pirate in a movie after just copied Newton.

But, what kind of leadership do we need?

2008-09-17T17:09:00.002+01:00

Hmmm, 'It's a time for leaders' I pompously posted below. I believe it is. But, what is the best kind of leadership for the current turbulence? In the UK, the leadership at the bank Lloyds TSB was, over the past few years, characterized as boring and unadventurous. That's how other financial institutions viewed its reluctance to gorge on the new financial instruments that have emerged in recent years, making fat short-term profits from repackaging and selling on loans, for example.

The media joined in and contributed to this version of Lloyds TSB - that it was too cautious, not a place to invest in if you want big returns fast, that it was somehow getting left behind by the more adventurous financial institutions at a time when money (credit) was virtually free.

Well-run, safe but boring. That was the general consensus. So, yesterday, Lloyds TSB turns out to be the only bank in a sound enough position to say 'yes' to the UK government's attempt to broker a takeover of HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland), the UK's largest mortgage lender, to head off the possible need for yet another government bailout akin to Fanny & Freddie in the US, and Northern Rock (in the UK).

Sir Brian Pitman's tenure leading Lloyds TSB helped start off the 'safe but boring' cliche, because his sound, unflamboyant leadership set the tone for the bank. Eric Daniels, Lloyds TSB's chief executive of five years, is similarly known, says the FT today

"as the Quiet American because of his low profile and cautious approach...Under his stewardship Lloyds TSB has been cautious about expanding into more exotic business such as credit products rooted in subprime mortgages".

Both Brian Pitman and Eric Daniels strike me as what Jim Collins calls Level Five leaders - longterm thinkers who are guided by an inner conviction rather than following the current trend, who are usually ego-lite and happy to stay out of the limelight, and who have a clear view on the horizon as well as the short-term. Unflappable, sometimes mild-mannered, but with the courage of their convictions.

Rene Carayol, the Leaders in London chairman, has said in the past that what characterizes great leadership is a mix of two apparent contradictions: great courage and great humility. That sounds close to Collins' characterization of 'the quiet leader', the Level Five leader.

There's some research that shows charismatic leaders who make big bold swooping decisions and adopt high risk strategies win bigger than Level 5 leaders when they are winning, but (obviously) lose bigger too. I'll dig it out and post it here when I find it.

That research, and the contrast between those two types of leader, seem to me to be reflected in the choice of leadership we have before us now. And it seems as if the market is making the decisions for us. In a game of 'last man standing', or at least, of consolidation in which the genuinely strong players take over and consolidate the ones that appeared strong but turned out not to be, my suspicion is we'll see a lot more 'quiet leaders' running things once the smoke clears.

Is that what we need? What kind of leadership do you want to see in your organization at the moment? And are you getting it? How about your own leadership? Where do you fall between the two ends of the spectrum mentioned above - the quiet leader at one end and the charismatic risk-taker at the other? Yes, it's a time for leaders. But, what kind of leadership do we need?

This is a time for leaders

2008-09-17T17:09:00.001+01:00

As we are in the middle of turbulent times - getting more turbulent by the minute judging by Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Alitalia, Lloyds TSB/HBOS...the list goes on - more than ever we need to be clear on what leadership actually is. Because it's leadership that'll haul us out of the current situation, sooner or later.

Your leadership of your organization, or business unit or whatever you lead, is part of this. Cumulatively, the decisions we all make help set a direction, shape the climate. So, listen up on how to lead through turbulent times, to help us make the right decisions. First up, Rene Carayol:

Management vs Leadership

In predictable times, management is often enough, Rene tells us. But, turbulent times are when you need to push leadership to the fore. What's the difference?

“If management is what we do, leadership is how we feel.”

“Managers talk strategy. Leaders tell stories.”

- Rene Carayol, Leaders in London Chairman

Next up, Ben Zander, who reminds us that leadership comes down to three things:

"1. Realize it’s all invented. Don’t follow the rules.
2. Radiate possibilities
3. Take the work seriously, but not yourself.”

- Orchestra conductor Ben Zander, speaking at last year's Leaders in London

Lastly, Al Gore, also from Leaders in London 2008, with perhaps the most important lesson for leaders in the current situation:

“Leadership means inspiring us to manage through our fears.”

Up until the past year or so, most of us have been leading our organizations through optimistic times. Up until the past year, even a muppet of a CEO could return double digit annual growth in some sectors. That was then, this is now. That was easy, this is...something new.

It's a time for real leadership. People are scared. You may have to deliver bad news, deal with situations you've never faced before, reassure and inspire people who are unused to such uncertainty and need steadying. You can't manage your way through this one. Take that management hat off. Time for you to step up. This is a time for leaders.

Related Post
How to lead in a downturn: the most important lesson of all

How to lead innovation

2008-09-15T10:59:00.002+01:00

Harvard Management Review have a short video clip from Vijay Govindarajan of Tuck Business School, who is currently seconded as GE's chief innovation guru, and who is coming to Leaders in London later this year to tell us how to lead innovation. The former boss of his current workplace, Jack Welch, will also be sharing leadership lessons with us, live by satellite.

You can find the short clip on the link at the end of this post, where you'll also find a link to Daniel Goleman's latest work on social intelligence and leadership. Goleman is leading a workshop for us on this very subject at Leaders in London. Once you click the link below, scroll down to find the video clip.

Vijay Govindarajan, over at Harvard Business Online, on how to lead for innovation

Leadership lessons from Formula One, McLaren and Ron Dennis

2008-09-11T11:56:00.002+01:00

This is today's post from the Leaders in London blog I write. Thought you might find it interesting:

So, just one cut corner robbed Lewis Hamilton of another victory for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One team over the weekend. I used to work for McLaren, interviewing their designers and engineers and then piecing together what it is that makes them such a formidable team, and writing it up.

In the post, below, on the Hadron colider, we talk about 'conscious companies', in which people at all levels are always thinking, always communicating, always assessing what works and what could be improved, always restless, never satisfied. That's what I found at McLaren. They seemed to read each other's minds.

I'd talk with the head of a production department and the head of a design division together and, whereas in other manufacturing organizations I went into and analyzed, where there was a thinly-disguised resentment between design and manufacturing ("Those guys always design stuff it's impossible to make!" vs "We design a winning design and they always push back and say it can't be done!"), at McLaren, the equivalent heads of department were so in tune with each other they'd finish each other's sentences.

What I noticed as a characteristic of how McLaren operates is absolute trust and respect, lack of turf wars, unity behind a common purpose (winning the next race), which combined to destroy the old truth in manufacturing - that quality and speed were two great irreconcilables; that the faster you designed and made something, the lower its quality would be. Maybe everywhere else in manufacturing, I discovered, but not at McLaren.

It takes Ford two years to design, prove and build a new suspension system. When I was interviewing a McLaren designer once, he was designing a new suspension system on his Computer Aided Design system. It was needed in two weeks for the next race, as Ron Dennis and the rest of the team were unhappy with the performance of the current system in the race just finished.

Within two weeks, McLaren had designed, proved and manufactured a new suspension system, flown it out to whatever part of the world the cars were in on the global Grands Prix circuit, fitted it to the cars, tested it, tuned it, and were racing it. Two weeks where it takes Ford two years. They really are an extraordinary group of people.

And at their head is Ron Dennis, an extraordinary, quietly-spoken leader who has made McLaren the most successful British Formula One team of all time. Until Ferrari's resurgence with Michael Schumacher, McLaren were the most successful F1 team of all time, full stop. With Lewis Hamilton driving for them, whom Dennis himself nurtured and mentored, they aim to reclaim that position and are heading that way.

When I asked McLaren if Ron Dennis would share his approach to leadership at Leaders in London later this year, and talk about how that organization is led in a way that produces extraordinary results, I'm delighted to report he said yes.

Also on the Leaders in London blog today: Lessons in leadership from Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, courtesy of Richard from the RSPB.

No Big Bang, but a wakeup call in how to generate energy

2008-09-10T10:20:00.002+01:00

So, to state the obvious, we're still here, then. But, it did generate a wave of human energy, didn't it, all the media coverage about what might happen when the particle accelerator at CERN was turned on this morning (European time). Did you notice how much more 'alive' and animated people were/are when talking about it? There was a thrill attached to the minutely possible (or, as most scientists were saying, vanishingly impossible) chance that the mundane would suddenly .

(That's a writer's conceit - using the . as a sudden 'stop' for impact. First used in the book 1066 And All That, which ends with the words "...and history came to a complete . ")

Apparently the first high speed clashes between particles won't happen till October 25th or something, so we'll go through it all again then. But, what interests me from our leadership perspective here is...What can you, as a leader, do to generate that frisson of energy about your organization; that sense of 'buzz', sense of aliveness? Leaders tap into, generate and channel energy in people; that's your main job description.

There's a line of thinking that says we sleepwalk through most of what we do; that the 'highs' people seek are a seeking after a sense of aliveness and alertness that the Hadron collider inadvertently generated today. Most organizations are like this, according to some organizational behaviourists. The routine, the process, the familiarity of the working day, dull our senses and our sense of the possibility.

What's the alternative? The 'conscious company' is the phrase that has emerged in recent years to describe organizations with a sense of buzz, purpose, nimbleness, aliveness about them. So, let the Hadron collider human energy emission that took place this morning (European time) be a 'wake up call' for your leadership: what can you do as a leader to help generate the alertness, agility and buzz of energy that will turn your organization into a conscious company?

You could Google 'conscious company' for starters. 'Cos. here's a clue: the world may not have ended today; but in an overcrowded world marketplace, with far too many suppliers, and tough trading conditions for the next year or more, organizations that haven't woken up and injected some energy and 'aliveness' about them - become 'conscious companies' - won't be around anyway.

How to make a great leadership speech

2008-09-09T10:25:00.003+01:00

In leadership, the Obama experience seems to remind us, the speech is the thing. There is something about a great leadership speech - from Kennedy in Berlin way back to Lincoln and the Gettysburg address - that can define a moment, inspire a generation.

On a more mundane level, the leadership speech is a powerful mechanism, if you are any good at it, for reaching all of the people you need to reach - from employees to stockholders - and connecting with them, influencing them. The problem is most leaders are not very good at it. Most leaders are excruciatingly bad at it; yes, even you, who have been through all that expensive presentation training.

Most leaders are bad at it because they use speeches to pronounce, not to speak intimately about themselves and the people they are talking to. A stage or a camera are seen as a cue to speak 'publicly' rather than intimately. But, it's the intimate, the personal, the real, that connects with people. The best leadership speeches tell a personal story about yourself that resonates with the people in the audience - It's not about ego, about 'me' stories; it's about stories that touch people and illuminate something about shared values and shared purpose.

OK, that means nothing without an example, so the Leaders in London Chairman and Facilitator Rene Carayol has a stunning one over on his website, from Steve Jobs of Apple. You need to earmark at least five minutes to read it. It seems to be a 'me' speech, but it actually speaks perfectly to his audience; about their situation as they look ahead to their future and look out to the rest of the world and find their place in it.

Quick extract to give you a flavour/flavor:

"Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

My second story is about love and loss.

My third story is about death."

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech to Stanford Students, on Rene Carayol's website

The core skill of a leader is...

2008-09-08T11:35:00.001+01:00

..social intelligence.

Q: What’s the shortest distance between two people?
A: Laughter

What’s that got to do with leadership?

Empathy – understanding how others tick and being able to connect with them - is at the core of Emotional Intelligence, or ‘EQ’, as the psychologist Daniel Goleman calls it.

Goleman uses laughter as an example of a powerful connection (flowing directly from your limbic system to the other person) that by-passes the brain and creates an instant sense of shared experience.

We now know, from Goleman’s books such as Primal Leadership, that being highly competent won’t make you an effective leader unless you have Emotional Intelligence; the ability to connect with people emotionally and create that sense of shared experience. EQ triumphs over IQ, his research shows.

Goleman’s latest work, published in the Harvard Business Review this month, goes further and explains how and why followers actually ‘mirror’ how their leaders behave.

Now, in tough trading conditions, when you need to keep people engaged and their performance high in the face of uncertainty, you need Social Intelligence more than ever as a core part of your leadership. 'Social Intelligence', says Goleman in a new article in the Harvard Business Review this month, is the outward-facing aspects of EQ; a sub-set of Emotional Intelligence if you will. It's how you relate to others. Social Intelligence includes these seven leadership skills, says Goldman:

1. Empathy
2. Attunement
3. Organizational awareness
4. Influence
5. Developing others
6. Inspiration
7. Teamwork

Action: Goleman’s new paper in the HBR 'Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership' says you can ‘train your brain’ to develop Social Intelligence – the ability to connect with others positively to develop a high performance, highly co-operative team. Even if you feel you are not a natural at making emotional connections, his research suggests you can rewire your own brain by consciously working at it. His workshop at Leaders in London later this year will explain how to do it.

Click here to:
watch a short video interview with Goldman
link to a summary of the article
read the article itself if you have time (about 20 minutes), and
view a table that shows the seven leadership skills and explains them, so you can pick out which ones you are strong at and which ones need work.

The Great Leader is...

2008-09-03T10:00:00.003+01:00

(This is an extract from September's Taking The Lead, the monthly email newsletter I write for Leaders in London, published today).

Carly Fiorina led the merger of HP and Compaq before being given the order of the golden boot, but has since had her reputation re-built by results: Thanks to her HP strategy, Hewlett-Packard overtook IBM last year as the world’s largest technology company. Tom Peters, the business guru and a past Leaders in London speaker, now refers to her as his "CEO Hero". Fiorina likes to quote Lao Tsu:

“A good leader is he whom people revere.
An evil leader is he whom people despise.
A great leader is he of whom the people say
‘We did it ourselves’ “

(Or she, of course). Yes, we’ve used that before here, as it’s my favourite leadership quote.

Fiorina is talking about embedding leadership within the system. At the moment, a lot of companies are dealing with the downturn by pulling leadership – as in decision-making about the future of others – back behind closed doors. Those outside the doors wait to learn their fate; who will be cut, who will stay.

The lesson of every downturn is lost on subsequent managers going through this same process; the approach destroys morale and lowers performance, the very attributes that will get you through the downturn. Smart leaders have open conversations with the workforce and enroll them in helping to find efficiency savings, cut costs, abandon inefficient old ways of working and move to new ones.

(If you found that extract useful, you can subscribe to Taking The Lead here

How to lead in a downturn. The most important lesson of all

2008-08-27T11:12:00.002+01:00

It occurs to me a lot of us are leading through a downturn - tough trading conditions, whatever you want to call it - for the first time. So, Douglas Adams' advice from The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, is the best of all. It's on the button below.

Those of us who are old enough to have been through previous downturns are still here. You will be too. And so will your organization if you lead it right (no pressure, then). Hint: part of your leadership job now is helping others not to panic, too. People panic when they feel things are out of their control. You help fix that by clearly setting out what's happening, consulting with them on how the organization should respond to emerging trading conditions, and doing what you say. 'Consulting' doesn't mean a long drawn-out consultation process. It means using the rapport and open communications channels you have established with individuals and people en masse to let people know where things are going, and involve them in adjusting to get there: you need their agreement and buy-in, as always, and then they'll help you get there.

Courage and Leadership: More from Alper Utku

2008-08-26T12:38:00.002+01:00

More from Alper Utku's Open Heart Leadership blog. He and I have a weekly dialog/ue where I challenge Alper's ideas and the ones that survive being hit with a hammer go through to form Alper's blog posts. Please feel free to comment on them yourself to help Alper sharpen his definition of a form of leadership fit for the 21st century. He's posting on Courage this week and next. Here's an excerpt from his second post:

I was talking with a friend, Stuart Turnbull, who is particularly interested in love in organizations, and we realized that the word ‘courage’ has its root in ‘heart’. ‘Cour’ = ‘coeur’ (’heart’ in French). That explains why Courage seems to sit at the core of Open Heart Leadership, as it is about acting from the heart.

In Turkish, we have the same connection as the Latin root: being courageous almost translates directly to being ‘heartful’. That brings us to the word ‘encouraging’, which also has ‘heart’ at its core, and is about nurturing courage in others to do the right thing - an essential part of leadership.

If we follow this ‘heart’ link, it is a vital topic in different philosophies. In Sufi-ism, the heart is the ‘house of the divine’ and you are promised a state of no fears, no worries if you connect completely with the heart.

Manfred Clynes, the psychologist (see the MindMap jpeg in the post below) has a basic construct of emotional rhythms he calls ‘Sentic States’. He says they are universal, shared across cultures by all humanity. The seven Sentic States have been linked to the seven chakras of the body by Peter Hawkins of the Bath Consultancy Group, who has used the model in training.

The seven Sentic States are:

Post continues here (August 26th)

Four ways to lead with urgency

2008-08-26T12:17:00.001+01:00

More on John Kotter's new book

Over in Leadership Now's Leading Blog, Michael McKinney summarizes the four essential things you need to do to inject urgency into the organization, according to Professor John Kotter's new book, which we previewed below. Michael says:

1. Bring The Outside In
"Kotter offers four tactics to establish a sense of urgency in any environment:

First, bring the outside in. A “we know best” culture reduces urgency. “When people do not see external opportunities or hazards, complacency grows…. With an insufficient sense of urgency, people don’t tend to look hard enough or can’t seem to find the time to look hard enough. Or they look and do not believe their eyes, or do not wish to believe their eyes. Even if seen correctly, and in time, external change demands internal change.”

2. Model it every day
The second tactic is to behave with urgency every day. “Increasingly changing environments create a need for alertness and agility, which demands a sense of urgency that must be modeled by the boss all the time.” A few of the behaviors he details: purge and delegate, speak with passion, walk the talk.

3. Find opportunity in crisis
Third, find opportunity in crises. A problem with a damage control mind-set is often eliminates an opportunity. A properly leveraged crisis can be a valuable tool to break through complacency.

4. Deal with the 'NoNos'
And fourth, deal with the NoNos – those people that are “always ready with ten reasons why the current situation is fine, why the problems and challenges others see don’t exist, or why you need more data before acting.”

I think 4. is the same as 1. and can be summarized as 'Challenge denial'. What's the most powerful force in the Universe? I once heard James Taylor say (no, not THAT James Taylor. This one's the former CEO of Gateway and co-author, with Watts Wacker of the Five Hundred Year Delta).

Love? Hate? Gravity? Compound interest, as Einstein is supposed to have said? Nope. The most powerful force in the Universe is denial. When I say that in workshops I always expect someone at the back to stick their hand up and say "Oh no, it's not..." (Think about it).

Courage and Leadership

2008-08-25T10:02:00.005+01:00

I'm working with Alper Utku to help him define a kind of leadership that matches what we need as individuals and organizations in the 21st Century. Alper dubs it Open Heart Leadership and has started a blog to try and define it in theory and in practice.

Here's his first post on the subject, which I worked with him to create:

Courage and Open Heart Leadership

"OK, so we’ll use these posts to chip away at the definition of Open Heart Leadership, like a sculptor, by working through some critical elements - Courage, Realness, Intimacy and so on.

Let’s start with a few posts on Courage. Below is link to a MindMap on the Open Heart Leadership blog that I created to help me think this through. If you want to take a look, click on the jpeg of the MindMap a couple of times to get your ‘magnifier’ to work, so you can read it. Or, download the jpeg and use your viewer to magnify it so you can read it.

I’ll then blog further this week on some of the elements in the MindMap to pull together how Courage is part of Open Heart Leadership.

Here's the link (It's posted on August 25th): The Open Heart Leadership Blog: Courage; The MindMap

Book Recommendation: EPIC Change

2008-08-20T08:35:00.004+01:00

Tim Clark sent me his book on change,

EPIC CHANGE: HOW TO LEAD CHANGE IN THE GLOBAL AGE BY TIMOTHY R. CLARK.

Two particular points are at the core of his book and I find them compelling. They are:

1. The leaders' ability to draw out people's discretionary efforts is more important in success than strategy or other issues that are usually assumed to be primary success factors.

2. The leader's role is largely one of energy management within an organization; generating, releasing and channeling people's energy:

From the flyleaf
"The EPIC (Evaluate, Prepare, Implement and Consolidate) approach for change management draws on the research-based “power curve of change.” As Clark explains, change fails less often for poor strategy or technical difficulty. Rather, it is a leader’s inability to draw out the discretionary efforts of people that usually signals failure. The EPIC approach teaches leaders the critical points of leverage for energy management within an organization and offers a comprehensive guide to change leadership – arguably the most critical competency of the twenty-first century".

Leadership lessons from Bruce Springsteen

2008-08-18T09:00:00.000+01:00

Remember the Four Ps of Marketing? As part of his 100 Ways To Succeed series of occasional posts, past Leaders in London speakerTom Peters lists The Boss's 6 Ps as:

Passion!
Persistence!
Partners!
Performance!
Painstaking!
Presence!

The actual Boss he is talking about, from whom he suggests all bosses should learn, is Bruce Springsteen, whom Peters had just seen in concert, which is what inspired him to pull together his Six Ps.

Can you lead with kindness in a downturn?

2008-08-14T14:50:00.002+01:00

Leadership is a hard-nosed thing, right? Especially in a downturn. If you're too soft, people will take advantage, won't strive to hit their targets (aka to please you, in these days of evaporating bonuses) and you won't be a strong leader, right? Well, it's not really as simple as that, is it.

Being a 'hard but fair' leader, a disciplinarian who keeps on top of people to ensure they do what they are supposed to do, and that they constantly report back to you for a pat on the head and try hard to avoid your temper if they did wrong...It's all a bit old-fashioned and uninspiring, isn't it; both for you and the people you lead. Yes, you need some of the elements of a 'hard but fair leader' - setting expectations for yourselves and others and ensuring you and others strive for high performance - but all the baggage that goes with it is increasingly outmoded.

If you're anything like me, you want people to perform to a high level and do the right thing regardless of whether you are there or not, whether you will know about it or not, whether you will shout about it or not. You want them to do it because they are inspired to do it, not because they are afraid of the boss if they don't do it.

Over on his Leadership Now blog, Michael McKinney re-visits this whole 'tough leader or kind leader' thing and says it's not a case of opposites, not a case of hard or soft leadership. Michael looks at the book LEading With Kindness, to ask if it's possible and to break the idea that tough/hard/demanding leadership is the opposite of kind/soft/undemanding leadership. Michael says:

Bill Baker and Michael O’Malley have done a service with their book, Leading With Kindness. As awkward as that title might seem at first blush, the authors aren’t suggesting that kind leaders have a soft personality, or are sissies, or are well liked at all times. (“You can be hard-nosed and kind.”) Leading with kindness is not a hot-tub leadership where the participants pass the torch singing Kumbaya. In fact they write, “They muddle through life much like the rest of us, mostly unnoticed except by those around them who are keenly aware that they are in the presence of someone special.”

(That last sentence reminds me that great leaders are not great because they are super-human. Instead, they are ordinary but growth-oriented people with character that have chosen to make a commitment to a bold course of action that is in the best interest of those they serve despite the odds.)

Gets my vote. Click on the blog link, above, to read more. Just because trading conditions get hard, doesn't mean your leadership style has to.

Paris Hilton: "I'm, like, totally ready to lead"

2008-08-11T08:15:00.002+01:00

Paris Hilton for President

I've wondered about the connection between celebrity and leadership for some time. People increasingly 'follow' the lives of celebrities - 'follow' as in read about them, watch news items about them, live their own life vicariously through the life of the celebrity. There is something of the 'uber-you' about celebrity culture (projecting your own life onto the more glamorous life of someone else) which mirrors some less desirable elements of 'followership' in leadership theory - the tendency to give up on 'self' and instead follow the will of the leader.

So, when John McCain's people created an attack ad last week claiming Barrack Obama's whole persona was more celebrity than leader - likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears - they opened a whole can of worms. Here's Paris Hilton taking up the challenge by saying to "that white haired dude" that she is, like, totally ready to lead, and that she is busy looking for a vice-presidential running mate. Worryingly, her energy policy (towards the end of the clip) sounds like it's worth a second listen.

Warren Bennis on Leadership, Emotions and Good Judgement

2008-08-07T09:12:00.003+01:00

Emotional Intelligence and Leadership

'The Dean of Leadership', according to the FT, Warren Bennis, on emotions, leadership and good judgement. In this two minute clip Bennis references Carly Fiorina, who is coming to talk to Leaders in London. Daniel Goleman will also be helping us become better at this critical area of leadership with his one day optional workshop on Emotional Intelligence for Leaders. Click on the small triangle bottom left if clicking on the big 'play' triangle in the middle does nothing.