People Mean Business: Now Prove It
News Article -- August 10, 2011
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Premium, CSC's business magazine | Summer 2011 | No. 16
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Within your organisation, the biggest long-term success factor is the money made and saved by your leaders, with their ability to ensure that people deliver the financial results that you really need. This is true if you are a private or public company, or a charity, in a society where profit (surplus cash) is too often expressed as “evil”, and losses are almost always expressed as “terminal”.
Bringing these two paragraphs together, it is time for leadership to get real – to turn soft skills into hard results. But then you already know all of that!
As a successful executive, you really want to lead your organisation to make such lasting change, fast, and to prove it in real financial terms. So, why is it not happening?
Because we have not taken on board the key lessons from the past, from the “change agenda,” the “knowledge economy” and about the behaviour of our people.
Now I have nothing against change programs. The fact is that people will only do something to the best of their abilities for one reason alone, and that is if they want to – if they personally choose to. However, this focus on choice not change does not help us, in itself, because there are simply too many choices. Which brings us to the “knowledge economy”: We have access to too much information, data and knowledge, and that volume grows every day.
Also, so what if your leaders and people know something – what are they going to do about it? Which brings us to behaviour: As a leader, what you know is clearly important, what you say even more so, however these are but blades of grass compared to what you do each and every day. Everything else is just noise.
OK – what indeed do you have to do to deliver the results you have long wanted? Based on 25 years of real company research, these are, I believe, the first critical actions to take. However, before I share them with you, I need you to do me a favour. Please, don’t believe a single word you read. Just do it, see the results and trust your own experience.
The present economic crisis has shown we need strong, ambitious leaders to do something different:
1. Set your people free within clearly defined boundaries
Put in place a Company Way that makes clear what people are free to do, within what boundaries. Otherwise they will, at one extreme, do far less than they are able, or at the other, whatever they so choose! Either of these leads to under performance, increased costs and lower morale.
Your Company Way is best described with a football analogy, where principles – length of game, off-side etc., – are coupled with the way each team chooses to play the game – formations, style, etc. It is these freedoms on how a manager chooses to play and what the team do week on week that make them win, or lose.
2. Your leaders must be role models
People follow (and copy) leaders who are consistent in what they say and do. Your leaders must be role models for the language and behaviour they seek in others. Focus this on Openness, Communication and Culture:
- Openness – Your leaders must bring truth in the room, and encourage everyone to do so. Get to the point, and save a fortune in time, meetings and money.
- Communication – Ensure that everyone is free to find out what they need to know, without fear or favour, even if top down communication will continue by itself.
- Culture – Your culture equals you. When your leaders talk about culture they have to realise they are talking about themselves, every time.
3.Unlock the skills and talent that you already have
Identify, by asking them, each person’s biggest strength, and ensure they have a chance/choice to use that strength on a day to day basis. In short, give your people permission to be the very best that they already are. They will respond. In overall terms, the future of leadership must be very different from the past. In organisational terms, it is time for your leaders to stand up and be counted. In personal terms, what are you going to do about it, and when?.
About the Author
David Taylor is a global practitioner on leadership and fast-track, lasting change, working with leading companies worldwide. Author of The Naked Leader series of books, he is founder of The Naked Leader Organisation, has keynoted in 40 countries and featured in three TV series. He is Honorary Professor of Leadership at Warwick University Business School, Business Ambassador for The Princes Trust, and a former Chairman of Woking Football Club in England.
www.nakedleader.com