On the 12th May the UK had a new government and a new Prime Minister and for the first time in 70 years the UK found itself with a ‘hung parliament’; which broadly means that no single party has a significant majority and instead every policy will have to be negotiated and fought over in ways that a majority government would never have to do. In the UK 9.4m people watched the first televised debate by the three major party leaders – a scale of viewers that is (sadly) only bettered by the series ‘Britain’s Got Talent’!
Ram Charan in his authoritative book on leading and managing ‘The Eight Know How’s’ recognises the importance of leaders being able to ‘connect the dots by pinpointing patterns of external change ahead of others’ and then ‘positioning’ the business to respond. He recognises how a great leader can ‘deal creatively and positively with societal pressures that go beyond the economic value creation activities of the business. This brief article aims to challenge leaders to stand back from recent events and understand and interpret them for the benefit of their organisations and in particular to extract some lessons for leaders from the recent election campaign.
In 2001 the disgraced energy company Enron collapsed and yet it espoused a set of values that would have been quite believable had it not been for their breathtaking corruption:
RESPECT: We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance don't belong here.
INTEGRITY: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, we won't do it.
COMMUNICATION: We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another...and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.
EXCELLENCE: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.
Ever since James Collins and Jerry Porras popularised the importance of defining an organisations vision, mission and values, we have become slaves to what has been classed the ‘corporate culturists’ the idea that we must manage, lead and shape the culture of an organisation in order to engineer success. The problem is that the last decade, culminating in the economic crisis of 2009, has shown that this is probably complete bunkum.
2009 will be recognised as the year when all our excesses caught up with us, when we individually and collectively were found to be living beyond our means with money that was irresponsibly loaned. Ironically it is debatable whether anyone actually broke any ‘rules’. The scandals involving MP’s expense claims included such extravaganzas as having your moat cleaned, your swimming pool maintained at your country residence and purchasing antique rugs. The point is that as well as being uniquely barmy, in a British kind of way, most of the claims were allowed within the ‘rules’ but were objectively beyond that which common sense should allow. So yet again, bizarrely the rules and legislating were not enough.
We know already that in the emerging decade the major issue will be ‘Trust’ . All major institutions, and especially businesses, need to become ‘trusted institutions’ and that the court of public opinion that is increasingly Twitter, Facebook and the full breadth of social media can, and will, damn you quicker than you can write a press release. Witness Tony Hayward’s bumbled attempts to play down the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico (!).
So if we are saying that we have moved beyond ‘mission, vision and values’ and that we increasingly judge our leaders against a higher moral code were does it lead us?
For me the answer is to think about something more encompassing that brings together values, beliefs and purpose in to what I call a ‘campaign ticket’.
The idea of a leadership ‘campaign ticket’, whilst unfortunately borrowed from our least trusted institution – politics - remains a useful construct. In the UK judgements were made in the recent televised debates on each of the leaders’ performances that decided the final election result. We know from research into the US Presidential televised debates that performance on screen is far more important than the content – with radio listeners ranking Nixon the winner, whilst TV viewers ranked Kennedy the winner in the first televised debate in 1960.
How many people do you know who have actually read any of the three main parties’ manifestos? In the UK debates, whilst great effort was put into party manifestos ultimately they were not the key factor in the election success, instead judgements were made about competence to lead, trust and an interpretation of what people ‘stood for’. That is what we mean by ‘campaign ticket’ – having a really good manifesto is a bit like having a great business plan and believing that people will follow you because of it. Now I am not saying that a good business plan is unimportant but rather that more important than that is how people make sense of who you are, your standards and what you are trying to achieve.
Nick Clegg the Leader of the Liberal Democrats was the surprise winner of the first TV debate, largely because people made judgements about his character rather than policies alone. It is the same for leaders in organisations, everyday people in the organisations make judgements about their leaders and their interpretation of their ‘campaign ticket’.
So if you are a leader think carefully about your ‘campaign ticket’; some of the questions to consider are:
• What are my standards that I will make clear to those around me?
• What is my compelling, all consuming set of beliefs about where we are going?
• How will I help people to understand my beliefs about how and where we are going together?
Finally, one of my clients was recently approached by the charity Save the Children to provide support for the victims of Haiti and received a reply ‘as Haiti is not a priority area or an area of operation for the company it would not be something that we can support’. It was not in the business plan or a set of Corporate Social Responsibility Guidelines so was not applicable and yet by any greater morale compass, there is no doubt what ‘right thing to do’ was. As chance would have it the CEO of the organisation, who has a strong campaign ticket about the social responsibility of businesses intervened and common sense prevailed!
