The John Adair Lexicon of Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Leadership Skills and Knowledge

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The John Adair Lexicon of Leadership

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The John Adair Lexicon of Leadership John Adair

KoganPage

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Publisher’s note Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publishers and authors cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or the authors.

First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2011 by Kogan Page Limited Previously published as separate titles: Not Bosses but Leaders The Inspirational Leader How to Grow Leaders Leadership and Motivation Leadership for Innovation The Art of Creative Thinking Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned addresses: 120 Pentonville Road London N1 9JN United Kingdom www.koganpage.com

1518 Walnut Street, Suite 1100 Philadelphia PA 19102 USA India

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© John Adair, 2011 The right of John Adair to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN 978 0 7494 6306 9 E-ISBN 978 0 7494 6309 0 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Adair, John Eric, 1934– The John Adair lexicon of leadership : the definitive guide to leadership skills and knowledge / John Adair. p. cm. Summary: “From the world renowned leadership expert John Adair, comes this unique volume of all his classic works, including How to Grow Leaders, The Inspirational Leader, Leadership and Motivation, Not Bosses but Leaders, Strategic Leadership and the international best-seller Leadership of Muhammad. With his distinctive insight into how leadership is learned, John Adair presents six business books that cross boundaries into culture, history, strategy and motivation. Leadership Lexicon is an essential volume and an exclusive opportunity to own all of Adair’s ground-breaking works that will help you transform your understanding of how leadership works and learn the skills to transform you into a leader” – Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-0-7494-6306-9 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-7494-6309-0 (ebk.)  1.  Leadership.  2.  Motivation (Psychology)  3.  Management.  4.  Leadership.  I.  Title.  II.  Title: Lexicon of leadership. HD57.7.A2752 2011 658.4′092–dc22 2011001865 Typeset by Graphicraft Ltd, Hong Kong Production managed by Jellyfish Printed in the UK by CPI Antony Rowe

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Contents

Introduction  1 Pa r t o n e   Not Bosses but Leaders 

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Qualities of leadership  5 Situational leadership  7 Functional leadership  8 Motivation  10 Keypoints  13

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The circles interact  14 Leadership functions  17 Sharing decisions  19 Styles of leadership  23 Keypoints  25

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Leaders or managers?  26 Leadership and change  27 Hallmarks of leadership  28 Managing and management  29 The manager as leader  30 The roots of management  30 Both leaders and managers  32 Keypoints  33

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High-performance teams  35 Wearing three hats  35 Levels of leadership  37 Keypoints  39

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The purpose of industry  40 Strategic leadership  42 Involving others in strategy  45 Keypoints  46

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Moving from plans to action  48 Agreeing objectives  49 Relating the parts to the whole  50 Respecting the line  51 Line and staff  52 Two-way communication  53 The roots of morale  54 Keypoints  54

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Sharing and caring  56 The case of the injured worker  58 The role of trade union leadership  59 Coping with redundancy  60 Growing organizations  61 True authority  62 Keypoints  64

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Leadership and power  65 Humility  66 Gaining respect  67 Giving respect  68 Leadership and hierarchy  70 Keypoints  70

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Leadership from within  71 The leader as conductor  72 Keypoints  75



Conclusion  76



Notes and References  77

Pa r t t wo   The Inspirational Leader  79 10

The three basic approaches  81 Leadership characteristics  83 On enthusiasm  86 Keypoints  89

Contents

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The authority of knowing  90 Key leadership functions  92 Designated leaders  93 Sharing decisions  95 Keypoints  96

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Levels of leadership  98 Practical wisdom  100 Leaders and managers  103 The challenge of change  105 People need leaders  106 Keypoints  108

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Giving and receiving  109 The importance of being fair  110 The implicit contract  112 Triangular relations  113 What transforms people  115 Keypoints  117

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Beyond the call of duty  118 On human nature  119 Spirit within  120 The uses of spirit  122 Keypoints  123

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The common task  124 Service to others  125 Three great values  126 A sense of purpose  129 On vision  129 The need for challenge  132 Moral authority  133 Keypoints  134

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Pulling the threads together  136 The parable of flight  137 Inner greatness  138

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The effects of trust  141 Keypoints  143

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The why question  144 The key of morale  146 What motivates individuals  146 The inspired moment  148 Keypoints  148

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The test of leadership  150 Dealers in hope  150 A faith for leaders  152 Keypoints  153



Towards excellence  154



Notes and references  155

Pa r t t h r e e   How to Grow Leaders  157

Exploring Leadership – A Personal Odyssey  160

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The qualities approach  161 Can leadership qualities be developed?  163

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The group or functional approach  166 What is the group or functional approach?  167 Applying the group or functional approach to training  170

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Leaders or managers?  173 Discovering the generic role of leader  174 Revisiting the Qualities Approach  176 The manager as leader  178

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The Situational Approach  179 What is the Situational Approach?  179 The origins of the Situational Approach  180 The Socratic tradition: can leadership be learnt?  184

Contents

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Levels of leadership  186 The application of the Three Circles to organizations  188 The role of the strategic leader  188 Is it possible to transfer as a strategic leader from one organization to another?  189 On practical wisdom  191



How to grow leaders — the seven principles  193 Principle One: Training for leadership  195 The most common error  195 Key outcomes  200 The second most common error  201 Training team leaders  204 You do not teach the paths of the forest to an old gorilla  205 Do ‘sheep dips’ work?  207 How to manage leadership training  209 Keypoints  210 Principle Two: Selection  212 How do people become leaders?  212 The principle of election  216 Applying the Group or Functional Approach to first-line leadership selection  217 Selection – the wider framework  220 Keypoints  225 Principle Three: Line managers as leadership mentors  226 What is a mentor?  226 The apprenticeship method  227 At least you can say ‘goodbye’  230 Keypoints  232 Principle Four: The chance to lead  233 The military analogy  233 What can organizations do?  234 What constitutes a challenge?  234 Fortune favours the prepared mind  236 Keypoints  239 Principle Five: Education for leadership  240 Thinking outside the box  240 Schools for leadership  243

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Growing university leaders  248 New opportunities for ‘education for leadership’?  250 Keypoints  253 Principle Six: A strategy for leadership development  254 Reviewing the strategy  255 Getting the structures right  256 What surrounds and infuses a successful strategy is culture  258 Keypoints  259 Principle Seven: The chief executive  261 Learning to be a top strategic leader  261 What does a strategic leader have to do?  264 Make your presence felt in training for leadership  266 Keypoints  269



Conclusion  270 Pa r t fo u r   Leadership and Motivation  273

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Functional Leadership  275 The background  275 The theory of group personality and group needs  276 Individual needs and motivation  276 The needs interact  277 Leadership functions  278 Sharing decisions  280 Conclusion  281 Keypoints  282

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Action-Centred Leadership  283 The wider ACL framework  284 The Qualities Approach  284 The Situational Approach  286 Individual needs  288 Leadership and management functions  290 The decision-making continuum  291 The levels of leadership  292 Keypoints  292

Contents

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The Fifty-Fifty Rule  294 Keypoints  297

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs  299 The physiological needs  300 The safety needs  301 The social needs  302 The esteem needs  303 The need for self-actualization  303 The desires to know and understand  304 The aesthetic needs  304 Coping and expressive behaviour  305 Keypoints  305

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The application of Maslow’s ideas in industry  306 Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y  307 The wider dissemination of Maslow’s ideas  308 The moral issue  309 Keypoints  310

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Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory  312 Basic characteristics of the research project  312 The categories  314 Experimental results  316 Herzberg and Maslow  319 Critics of Herzberg’s Theory  321 Conclusion  322 Keypoints  322

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How to motivate others: the eight principles of motivation  324 1.  Be motivated yourself  324 2.  Select people who are highly motivated  325 3.  Treat each person as an individual  326 4.  Set realistic and challenging targets  327 5.  Remember that progress motivates  327 6.  Create a motivating environment  328 7.  Provide fair rewards  329 8.  Give recognition  329 Summary: How to motivate others  330 Keypoints  331

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Parting reflections – towards a new theory of motivation  333 Notes and references  335 Further reading  338

Pa r t f i v e   Leadership for Innovation  341 32

What is innovation?  343 Invention and innovation  343 Innovation as incremental change  344 The management of change  345 Innovation is positive  346 All can participate  347 Keypoints  348

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The conditions for successful innovation  349 Management commitment  349 Positive strategic thinking  350 A long-term perspective  351 Responsiveness to change  352 Acceptance of risk  353 The right internal environment  354 Keypoints  355

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Organizing for team creativity  356 Order and freedom  356 Integrating creativity into industry  357 Getting the balance right  358 Leadership for innovation  359 Keypoints  360

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Case Study: The DNA Laboratory  361 No class or hierarchical differences  361 Leading by example  362 The optimum use of resources  363 The human resource  364 Creeping bureaucracy  364 Bureaucracy versus innovation  365 Keypoints  367

Contents

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Case Study: Soichiro Honda – Leader for innovation  369 The forge of a creative mind  369 A creative thinker in action  370 A partnership of complementary abilities  371 Not problems but opportunities  371 Passing on the torch  372 Keypoints  373

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Real commitment from the top  375 The leader as teambuilder  375 Giving direction  376 Keypoints  378

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How to motivate the creative individual  379 Selecting creative people  379 Characteristics of innovators  380 Expectations of creative people  382 Creative leadership  384 Keypoints  385

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Team creativity  387 Building on ideas  387 Brainstorming  389 Team creativity in action  390 Team creativity and organization  391 How to criticize other people’s ideas  392 Keypoints  394

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Harvesting ideas  395 Suggestion schemes  395 Quality Circles  397 Success factors for Quality Circles  397 Towards team creativity  399 The importance of training and education  399 Keypoints  400

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Overcoming resistance to change  402 The human need for continuity and change  402 Understanding the forces of resistance  404 Principle one: plough up the ground  404 Principle two: market your ideas  406 Principle three: have a practice run  407 Principle four: make change incremental  408 Principle five: leadership is essential  408 Keypoints  409



Conclusion: Leadership for Innovation  410 Keypoints  412

Pa r t s i x   The Art of Creative Thinking  42

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On human creativity  415 Keypoints  416

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Use the stepping stones of analogy  417 Keypoints  420

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Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange   421 Keypoints  422

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Widen your span of relevance  424 Keypoints  425

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Practise serendipity  427 Keypoints  428

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Chance favours only the prepared mind  429 Keypoints  430

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Curiosity  432 Keypoints  434

Contents

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Keep your eyes open  435 Keypoints  437

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Listen for ideas  438 Keypoints  439

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Reading to generate ideas  441 Keypoints  443

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Keep a notebook  444 Keypoints  445

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Test your assumptions  447 Keypoints  449

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Make better use of your Depth Mind  450 A framework of effective thinking  451 Emotion  451 Depth Mind  452 Keypoints  454

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Do not wait for inspiration  456 Keypoints  458

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Sharpen your analytical skills  459 Keypoints  461

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Suspend judgement  463 Keypoints  464

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Learn to tolerate ambiguity  465 Keypoints  466

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Drift, wait and obey  468 Keypoints  469

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Sleep on the problem  471 Keypoints  472

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Working it out  474 Keypoints  476

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Think creatively about your life  478 Keypoints  479



Appendix A  Checklist: Have you analysed the problem?  480 Appendix B  Checklist: Are you using your Depth Mind?  482 Appendix C  Answers to quiz questions and exercise on pages 417–18 and 448  483 Index  485

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Introduction

W

elcome to this collection of my books published by Kogan Page. I hope that you will enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them. You will certainly find plenty of encouragement in these pages to put into practice the lessons that you will learn. For what I shall be sharing with you is the practical know-how of leadership. I shan’t be wasting your time with all the dead-end theories, opinions and speculations that fill hundreds of newly published books – some of them regrettably student textbooks – on this subject every year. Leadership holds centre stage in this book and at the heart of leadership is the greatest discovery of our times, namely the generic role of leader. That came about as the consequence of the prior breakthrough, which established that the Three Circles – the three overlapping areas of need: task, team and individual – are universally present in all working groups. Important as leadership is – both as generic role and as an ability or skill – it is only one of the Big Three topics in what has been called the ‘Human Side of Enter­ prise’. I was fortunate to identify these major players very early in my career as a teacher in this field and I have not found any reason for changing my mind on this score. The Big Three are: ●● ●●

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Leadership (including motivation, teambuilding and delegation). Decision-making, problem-solving and creative thinking (including innovation). Communication (the four basic skills of speaking, listening, writing and reading; meetings; interviews; and communication in organizations).

At all three levels of leadership – team, operational and strategic – these three sets of skills are vitally important for one who aspires to excellence as a leader. Think of them as being three houses inhabited and in a row. If you want to master any one of the concepts you have to get to know its two neighbours. What is the point of being a leader, for example, if you make the wrong decisions and take people over the brink of disaster? Then you will be not a leader but a misleader, and arguably the world is over-supplied with that commodity. As another instance, think of any good leader who never communicates? In this collection of my books these three sets of themes and skills are interwoven to make up a rich tapestry of practical wisdom on the art of leadership in a business context. It is not, however, a picture to hang on your wall, but a practical blueprint

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Introduction

for developing your own abilities as a leader–manager. Here are foundations you can build on for life. Thanks mainly to the discovery of the generic role of leader, leadership is relatively simple and easy to understand. But search these pages as you may, you will never find me saying that it is easy to do. Not that it would be much fun, I suppose, if it was – for we all need a challenge don’t we? And I trust that you do see it as a challenge for you personally. If you respond to it in the right spirit you will find soon find yourself on your own journey of discovery. I can only guide you on the early stages of that journey – the inner part. On the remainder of that lifelong journey – including the all-important business of making it happen – you will be on your own. Well, not quite on your own, for I hope that from time to time you will hear me whispering a word or two of encouragement and support in your innermost ear!

John Adair

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Part One Not Bosses but Leaders S

everal months ago a young manager visited me with an unusual request. He told me that he wanted some guidelines that would enable him to lead a company with confidence. Some weeks before, on behalf of the large multinational that employed him, the young manager had approached a medium-sized company in the field in order to acquire it. But the family-owned firm decided to stay independent. Impressed by the young manager’s calibre, the chairman offered him the job of chief executive. After some reflection – for the company was almost on the rocks – the young manager said yes. ‘I want some kind of checklist of simple points to remind myself,’ he told me. ‘I know that I must lead and manage in my own way, but I want to avoid making the obvious mistakes. A few key principles – or even some rules of thumb – would be of immense help.’ Intrigued by the challenge, I suggested that we should meet four or five times and go over the ground of strategic leadership – the kind of leadership expected from someone operating at the level of a chief executive. He could then make notes on the keypoints arising from our conversations; they would serve him as the aide-mémoire he was seeking. Some weeks after our meetings he telephoned to thank me for my help. He said that he had found it a help to clarify and crystallize his ideas. He mentioned the keypoints as being especially valuable. ‘They are enabling me to lead more and manage less. I don’t feel now that I have to try to be the boss all the time.’ After a pause he added: ‘It’s amazing how everyone in the company has come to life. We are beginning to surge forwards in the right direction. They are a great bunch of people.’ In short, he was beginning to lead the way to success.

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Not Bosses but Leaders

Sceptical that so much could have come from a series of information conversations I visited the company and met a cross-section of those who worked there. The young chief executive had not been exaggerating: the new spirit of the company was very evident and the results of that fresh sense of purpose were impressive. What I have done here is to write in a slightly paraphrased form the substance of our conversations. I hope that you will find this book equally useful. Its message is both simple and important. Leadership matters – it matters to you. It matters at every level. Leadership at the top makes the difference. As you will see, nothing we discussed was really peculiar or specific to industry or to the private sector. Leadership is, after all, largely an issue of people and their ability to communicate effectively with one another. It is equally important in the public sector, where senior civil or public servants may not be as concerned with profits or returns for shareholders, but where they certainly do need somehow to inspire their people to ever higher standards of service delivery through strategies for continuous improvement. There is no one who cannot greatly improve their leadership through a little extra thought and practice, as the young manager in this book has proved. Moreover, it is such good leaders – and leaders for good – that society is now seeking. It was an outstanding General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress in Britain, Vic Feather, who gave me the title of this book when he said to me prophetically: What industry needs now is not bosses but leaders

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Chapter One Qualities of leadership

‘T

ell me about leadership,’ began the young manager. ‘What actually is it? I have recently read two books on the subject and I am none the wiser.’ ‘Forget about the books,’ I replied. ‘Look back upon your own experience. You have been both a leader and led by others. What do you think makes a person a leader?’ The young manager looked out of the window and thought for a few minutes. ‘I suppose that it’s the ability to influence others to achieve a common goal.’ ‘That’s not a bad definition, but what constitutes this uncommon ability you have just identified? Why does one person emerge as the leader in a group rather than another?’ The young manager had some ideas about that. He mentioned several qualities that he felt were significant, such as courage and perseverance. He stressed the importance of knowledge. After listening to him I suggested that it might be interesting for us both to look at the research relating to the subject of leadership. ‘Not that it will tell you much that is new,’ I added, ‘but it may help you to put into better order what you know already – so that you can make more use of it in your own career as a manager, and – perhaps – to develop leadership in others more effectively.’ ‘That seems like a good idea. Where do we begin?’ ‘As the King of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland said, let’s begin at the beginning and go on until we come to the end, and then stop. Consider first the most widespread assumption about leaders, namely that leaders possess certain qualities that will make them leaders in any circumstances, such as initiative, determination, patience, and so on. Not long after research into leadership had got under way some 40 years ago, some researchers had the idea of looking at the various lists of leadership qualities that were beginning to appear in the studies. They found that there was apparently little or no agreement on what the qualities of a leader are. ‘When I was Adviser in Leadership Training at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, for example, I reviewed all the lists of leadership qualities being taught in schools for young officer cadets throughout the Western world – the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy, France, Germany, the US Army and the US Marine Corps among them. The only quality that appeared on all the lists was courage.’

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Not Bosses but Leaders

‘But surely that doesn’t help much,’ interjected the young manager. ‘I imagine that all soldiers need the quality of physical courage, not just the officers.’ ‘I agree. Physical courage is really a military virtue, not a specific leadership quality. That leads us to the second drawback of the qualities approach, as I call it.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘Even if a list of leadership qualities could be identified, the qualities approach does not form the best starting point for leadership training. It is often associated with the view that leaders are born and not made. You may have heard the story of the business executive who read in his annual report “Smith is not a born leader yet.” What do you suggest he should do about it?’ The young manager laughed. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘But does that mean the qualities idea has nothing more to offer? I noticed that a few moments ago you said there was only an apparent lack of agreement about leadership qualities. What did you mean?’ ‘Well, I believe that we do know some things about the qualities of leaders. In the first instance, leaders should possess and exemplify the qualities expected or required in that particular working group. Physical courage, for example, may not make you into a military leader, but you cannot be one without it. You could apply the same principle to all working groups – engineers, accountants, academics, nurses, ministers, politicians…’ ‘And managers?’ ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘If you want to be leader of managers – a managing director or chief executive – you should personify the qualities that are expected or required in all managers. We should have to return to the question of what they might be. But leadership is more than possessing the qualities that are required and respected in your walk of life. There are certain qualities that are the hallmarks of good leaders. Let me write down some headings on the flip chart: ●●

Integrity

Integrity has been defined as the quality that makes people trust you. And trust is of central importance in all personal relationships. Integrity means literally personal wholeness. It also conveys the sense of adherence to standards or values outside yourself – especially the truth. Trust and truth are first cousins.

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Enthusiasm

I cannot think of any leaders I know who lack enthusiasm, can you? It seems to be a general characteristic of leaders.

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Warmth

A ‘cold fish’ does not usually make a good leader. A warm personality is infectious.

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Calmness

An important characteristic, recognized long ago by the Roman historian Tacitus when he wrote: ‘Reason and calm judgement, the qualities especially belonging to a leader.’

Qualities of Leadership ●●

Tough but fair

The combination of toughness – or demandingness – and fairness has emerged in industry during the past 10 years as a desirable quality.

‘From the last point you can see that it’s the juxtaposition of qualities – that pattern of qualities – that matters most. Just as oxygen combined with hydrogen is somewhat dif­ ferent from oxygen when it links up with carbon, so – for example – a sense of humour takes on a different nature if allied to one set of qualities rather than another.’ ‘And so it’s still worth thinking about qualities. But can you develop them. How about a sense of humour?’ suggested the young manager. ‘Yes, all leadership qualities can be developed – some more than others – by practice and experience. Part of that process, which takes place over a lifetime, is contemplating the qualities of other leaders. ‘Each new leader you meet, or perhaps an attribute that you have never quite seen before. It’s like contemplating the different facets of a diamond. However, valuable though it is – especially in the longer term – the qualities approach is not the best starting point for leadership development. Research changed direction.’

Situational leadership ‘A second main approach to the study of leadership has emphasized the importance of the situation in determining who should become – and remain – the leader of a group. For, according to the early situationalists, there is no such thing as a born leader; it all depends on the situation. Put a person in one situation and he or she may emerge as a leader; put him or her in another one and he or she will not. Churchill was undoubtedly a great leader in wartime, but was he so successful in peace? ‘In fact in the very year in which Churchill became Prime Minister – 1940 – an American professor called W O Jenkins made a study of leadership and concluded with a classic definition of the situational approach: Leadership is specific to the particular situation under investigation. Who becomes the leader of a particular group engaging in a particular activity and what the leadership characteristics are in the given case are a function of the specific situation… There are wide variations in the characteristics of individuals who become leaders in similar situations and even greater divergence in leadership behaviour in different situations… The only common factor appears to be that leaders in a particular field need and tend to possess superior general or technical competence or knowledge in that area. General intelligence does not seem to be the answer.

‘Note that point about “superior general or technical competence or knowledge” in the particular field. There are perhaps three kinds of authority in leadership. There is the authority of position or rank, the authority of knowledge, and the authority of

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Not Bosses but Leaders

personality. The situational approach emphasizes that second kind of authority. As one manager put it: Authority flows from the one who knows ‘Hold on!’ exclaimed the young manager. ‘Hold on!’ He began to tell me about people who had plenty of professional or technical qualifications – engineers, accountants and draughtsmen – who had worked in his company for many years. ‘But no one – I repeat no one,’ he said, ‘regarded them as leaders. That theory must be wrong!’ ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Surely there is a more general leadership ability?’ He thought for a moment and then added: ‘I suppose that is what the “leadership qualities” people were seeking.’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘The situational approach also seemed to lend some weight to the idea that you need not have an appointed or elected leader in a group – just let the situation decide who should be the leader! That sounded more democratic than leadership vested in one person.’ ‘You mean that they wanted to abolish leaders. Leadership becomes a sort of cake to be shared or a football to be passed from one player to another?’ asked the young manager incredulously. ‘You’re right,’ I answered, ‘but perhaps we should not go into the way that culture and climate has influenced research into leadership at this point. As an alternative to what may seem like democratic turn-taking in leadership responsibility, we can now see that what works better is a flexibility on the part of the designated leader. Initially people may require and welcome a considerable degree of direction. Later they may simply need coaching or support. When the team is performing really well and clearly achieving its task, people may prefer to be allowed to get on with it without inter­ ference. If they encounter problems it may, once again, be appropriate for the leader to offer support or even perhaps direction if superior knowledge or experience of similar situations is helpful and the advice is therefore effective.’

Functional leadership ‘There are three ingredients or variables when people are working together: the leader himself or herself – personality and character – the situation in which it’s all happening, and the group, the followers or subordinates,’ I continued. ‘The next approach to leadership stemmed from studies on the third ingredient – the group. All working groups are different from each other. Providing it has been together for some time a working group develops a group personality, as a British 1 Prime Minister writing about Cabinets called it. Because of this factor, within the same organization what works in one group may not work in another. In this respect groups resemble individual persons, for we are all unique individuals with our own

Qualities of Leadership

distinctive personalities, characters and appearances. But, you and I have needs in common – we shall both be tired at midnight and hungry at breakfast time. In the same way, working groups also share certain needs in common. There are three main areas of need present in working groups:

The need to achieve the common TASK

The need to be held together as a working TEAM

The needs that each INDIVIDUAL has by virtue of being human

‘I have seen your three rings somewhere before,’ reflected the young manager. ‘But to be quite frank I have never quite understood them. I can see that a working group has a task to do, but why do you introduce this word need. That sounds like a bit of jargon to me.’ ‘Yes, I suppose that “task need” is a jargon phrase. But it is useful. It describes an important perception about groups, namely that there is a collective energy within them to accomplish what they are there to do. “The lust to finish”, as John Wesley once called it.’ ‘And if the group is prevented from completing its task,’ commented the young manager ‘that drive will be frustrated. I can certainly think of some examples at work where that has happened. But what about the team circle?’ ‘The diagram is rather like an iceberg with most of the needs submerged below the water level,’ I explained. ‘The first need – the task need – is obvious to anyone. If a visitor came to your place of work, he could observe it at once. But below the surface there are these other two areas of need which are less obvious. For every group and organization exhibits potential fractures: social cracks that can widen under pressure. At Sandhurst we called it the team-maintenance need, because everyone knew what a team was and it sounded less like jargon than “maintaining group cohesives”. Leaders have to ensure that the forces making for unity are stronger than those making for division or disintegration. If they are, then the whole will be greater

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Not Bosses but Leaders

than the sum of the parts. There will be some added value – or extra synergy – in the outcome of the cohesion.’

Motivation ‘Tell me about the individual needs circle,’ asked the young manager. ‘Doesn’t that somehow tie in with how you motivate people?’ ‘Yes indeed it does,’ I said. ‘Or rather I should say that it helps us to understand how people are motivated from within.’ ‘What do you mean?’ queried the young manager. ‘Well, we often think of motivating others as something we do to them externally to make them do what we want them to do…’ ‘Sticks and carrots?’ suggested the young manager. ‘Yes, but it is sometimes more subtle that threats of the sack…’ ‘But surely there’s nothing wrong with fear as a motivator – a bit of insecurity, the fear that you might lose your job if you do not perform well, does that do any harm?’ demanded the young manager quickly and firmly. ‘The point I was going to make was that these external pressures on others could become manipulative, that is, when the other person is not fully aware of the pro­ cesses of influence that are being deployed.’ ‘But don’t all politicians and advertisers manipulate us?’ asked the young manager, clearly thinking that I was being naive about this subject. ‘What’s the antidote to manipulation?’ ‘Apart from a basic respect for persons – a matter I want to discuss later – the remedy lies in an understanding of how people motivate themselves. It’s a question of working with the grain of nature rather than against it. Let me explain one approach to individual needs. ‘An American psychologist called Abraham Maslow came up with the simple 2 theory that basic human needs are arranged in a hierarchy. These are sometimes shown in a pyramid form, as set out on page 11. Let me expound the model briefly. Maslow suggested that there is a pattern in our individual needs. Why do people work in the first place? They work because they are hungry, they are thirsty and they need somewhere to sleep. Even today, when we use money as a means of exchange, most of our salary goes in satisfying those basic physiological needs for ourselves and our families. ‘But a satisfied need ceases to motivate. Once you have enough food and drink, once you have somewhere to sleep, other needs rise up in the human heart. You become interested in a pension, job security and safety at work. If those security needs are satisfied by good company policy and through social welfare, people do not then turn round and say “Thank you, we are now fully satisfied”. Instead they discover

Qualities of Leadership

other areas of need welling up within them: the social needs, the quality of relationships in working life; respect from others and self-respect; and then the need for self-actualization, a fulfilment of personal potential by growth. The needs at the bottom of the pyramid are stronger and more basic; if they are threatened, then we jump back and defend them,’ I concluded. ‘The needs towards the top of the pyramid are less fundamental and less “common” in a sense. Indeed, many people in poverty never have the luxury of considering their relevance, although they can be seen as more distinctively human.’ ‘That’s certainly interesting,’ said the young manager, studying the diagram carefully. ‘I can see what you mean now about individuals being largely self-motivating. But what you say – or rather Maslow says – does raise some questions in my mind.’ ‘What are they?’ I asked. ‘First – I must be honest here – I have come across the needs pyramid before somewhere, although again I don’t think I really understood it until now. But isn’t it rather “old hat”? Hasn’t anyone produced a later and better theory?’

Self-actualization Growth Personal development Accomplishment Self-esteem Self-respect Status Recognition Growth Belonging Social activities Love Safety Security Protection from danger Physiological Hunger Thirst Sleep

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‘Not to my knowledge,’ I replied. ‘There have been other theories. Some have attracted a following for a time in the business schools but they do not add up to much. Anyway, do not fall for the “newer-is-truer” fallacy. Just because ideas have been around for some time does not mean they have lost their currency. This shouldn’t be a fashion industry, although many “gurus” and their ideas have come and gone with such frequency over the past 30 years that it often seems like one!’ ‘But do you think Maslow is true?’ persisted the young manager. ‘No, not entirely. I look upon it as a useful sketch map of individual needs, useful not least because in my field “a picture is worth a thousand words”. But it is no more than about 60 per cent true,’ I said. ‘Where, then, isn’t it true?’ asked the young manager. ‘Well, first I suggest that there is no necessary progression from the “lower” to the “higher” end of the scale, as Maslow implied. It was the fond hope of the permissive society that by allowing people to meet all their needs they would progress to the “higher” end of the scale. But it is not an automatic progress. One thing doesn’t invariably lead to another in this way. Not all lottery winners, for example, are as happy or fulfilled as one might assume, despite theoretically having all the means at their disposal to transport themselves to the higher strata of Maslow’s model.’ ‘And secondly?’ prompted the young manager. ‘Secondly, I do not find that Maslow’s liberal humanist assumptions about human nature are completely satisfying. There is surely more to life than self-actualization, as he called it. That leaves out the spirit of man, which includes the power we have to transcend ourselves. Buddhism, for example, would certainly question the basic concept that concentration on material enrichment will automatically lead to selfesteem and self-actualization.’ ‘And so you would discard Maslow?’ asked the young manager. ‘By no means,’ I replied. ‘The hierarchy of needs is a good introduction, but as I said, it’s no more than a sketch map. Treat it as a stimulus to thought and as a guide that can take you on the first part of your journey into understanding people and it will not let you down. Shall we move on?’ ‘Before we do so,’ said the young manager, glancing through the notes that he had taken, ‘may I just check with you that I have identified the right keypoints. Some of them will be more thoughts or actions that have occurred to me as you have been talking rather than things you have said. Is that alright?’ ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘That was the original purpose of our discussions.’ The young manager then stood up and wrote with conviction on the flip chart this checklist:

Qualities of Leadership

Keypoints ●●

●●

●●

●●

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●●

Leaders should exemplify the qualities that are expected or required in their working groups. There is plenty of diversity in the characters and personalities of leaders, but leaders tend to be enthusiastic, energetic, calm in crises, warm, and tough but fair – to name but a few of the desirable leadership qualities. Knowledge – technical and professional knowledge – is an important strand in authority but it is not the whole story. Authority flows from the one who knows. A leader’s knowledge includes how to adapt leadership style to the situation in which the group finds itself, and to its stage of development as a potential high-performance team. There is another approach to leadership, based upon an analysis of the needs present in working groups. These are: – to achieve the task – to be held together as a working unity – to respond to the individual needs of people. Individual needs help us to understand how people largely motivate themselves. The art of leadership is to work with this natural process and not against it. Self-actualization is not the end of the journey. The human spirit gives us the power to transcend ourselves. At its best leadership touches and releases this spirit in us.

Leadership is action not position

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Chapter Two The circles interact

‘T

he three circles influence each other for good or ill in some interesting ways. If you achieve the common task, for example, that will tend to create a sense of unity and give individuals a sense of achievement. If you have a good team, you are more likely to achieve the task and the social needs of individuals will be met at a deeper level. Success will confirm and reinforce the willingness of the “followers” or team members to play their part, and to be led.’ ‘And if you fail in the task area?’ asked the young manager. ‘You can best see the effects by eclipsing the task with a shaded disc to symbolize complete failure in that area, like this:

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

‘You see that a large segment is at once removed from both the team circle – that group will tend to fall apart – and the individual circle,’ I replied. ‘What happens if things are adrift in the team circle?’ asked the young manager.

The Circles Interact

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

‘If, for example, you have a group of individualists rather than a team, then that will obviously affect the task. And such a group will not do much to meet the individual needs of its members.’ Then I added as an afterthought, ‘If it’s a group of individualists in conflict, your problems are compounded.’ ‘But that’s exactly what happened at Lexton Engineering, the first company I worked for,’ interjected the young manager. ‘I was only there about six months before they went bankrupt, but it was an absolute nightmare. For years the senior managers spent all their time in internal politics, defending and building their own empires like feudal barons. The managing director and the finance director weren’t on speaking terms – they communicated when necessary through their secretaries! The office staff looked down upon the shop-floor employees. It was like a cold war going on all the time, with occasional eruptions as frustrated people blew their top!’ ‘And what were the results in the other two articles?’ I asked. ‘The results were disastrous,’ the young manager replied. ‘They were so busy fighting, arguing, complaining, criticizing and politicking that they failed to notice significant changes in the market, nor did they think ahead and keep abreast with technological change. Eventually the ship sank.’ ‘I imagine the captain was the last to leave,’ I said, trying to cheer up the young manager, who was clearly depressed by recalling the dying agonies of Lexton Engineering. ‘On the contrary,’ he said. ‘He negotiated a large golden handshake for himself from the Board – which he had staffed with his friends as non-executive directors – just before the company went bankrupt.’ ‘Not a born leader yet,’ I suggested. ‘Still, let’s look at the third set of interactions. Imagine a shaded disc over the individual circle, like this: ‘What do you think the consequences on the other two areas would be?’ ‘In a way,’ reflected the young manager, ‘there isn’t just one individual needs circle, is there? There is one circle for each individual in the group or organization. It’s more like a bag of marbles or a pack of playing cards…’

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Not Bosses but Leaders

TASK

TEAM

‘With some Jokers?’ I suggested. ‘I have met some of them,’ smiled the young manager. ‘But I have met even more individuals who obviously feel frustrated and underused. I notice that they tend to withdraw from the common task and also from the group.’ ‘You mean they retire?’ ‘No, no. Most people don’t have that option. I mean that it’s as if they psychologically retire on you – they take the money and wait for proper retirement.’ ‘An incompetent or undermotivated individual will diminish results in the task area. Such a person often contributes little to the common life of the team or organization.’ The young manager did not appear to be listening to this last point. Or at least I did not think he was. He had been jotting down some notes and then he looked out of the window. ‘I like the idea of a group as being like a pack of playing cards,’ he suddenly said. ‘You certainly need some Aces in the team, though they can be difficult cards if they are prima donnas. Kings and Queens could be heads of sections or departments, or perhaps just powerful personalities in the group. The Joker is sometimes the Court Jester. Good Jokers, however, are usually catalysts for change. A Joker is a creative person in the team. Jacks are tomorrow’s leaders learning their trade. Tens and Nines, even Eights are essential, but what about those Twos, Threes, Fours and Fives?’ ‘Well, I suppose the simple answer is that regardless of their apparent position in the hierarchy, there would be less of a team, and less coherence without them,’ I said. ‘The real question is, do they feel valued as essential members of the team, and as individuals? Do they add value, and is this recognized in ways that help to sustain their motivation to continue to be willing followers?’ We discussed the playing cards analogy for a few minutes until – like all analogies – it began to break down and ceased to be useful or stimulating. It was time to return to the main theme.

The Circles Interact

Leadership functions ‘In order to achieve the task and to hold the group together certain key functions have to be performed. A function is what you do, as opposed to quality, which is what you are. Let me list the main functions and comment upon them briefly: Setting objectives

Defining or identifying the purpose, aims and objectives of an organization or group. It sounds simple but in many situations it’s not easy. Objectives may need to be “agreed” rather than simply “set” by any one individual.

Planning

Making sure that there is a plan – agreed if possible – for achieving the objectives. You know how you are going to get from where you are now to where you want to be, and how you will know whether you are making satisfactory and timely progress.

Communicating

Explaining clearly the objectives and the plan. As a leader you should be able to answer the question “Why are we doing it this way rather than any other?”

Organizing

Briefing, delegating, coaching, supporting, supervising and monitoring all refer to work in progress. The energy of the group should be making things happen, not fizzing off into space like steam from an inefficient steam engine.

Monitoring and evaluating

If you don’t review or evaluate performance, you have no material for giving either the group or the individual accurate and helpful feedback. The aim of evaluation is to do better next time. This implies the use of measures, performance indi­cators and targets. As someone once famously said, ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’

The young manager jotted down the functions and we talked about their applications in all three circles. He then asked if there were any functions that were specifically related to team-building. ‘There are some functions – such as setting and maintaining group standards or norms – that do serve to hold together a group,’ I said. ‘Group standards?’ said the young manager. ‘That’s another piece of jargon, isn’t it?’ ‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘But jargon is occasionally useful. Group standards is shorthand for the invisible rules and conventions that bind a group together. A more old-fashioned word that comes close to it is discipline, which of course is best if it is self-discipline – the proper subordination of an individual to the common rules, written or unwritten, of the enterprise.’

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‘Isn’t there a danger here that groups, because they are so powerful, will enforce conformity on group members. Tremendous pressures can build up against an individual who steps out of line, can’t they?’ asked the young manager. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You probably know the Japanese proverb that says “If a nail stands out, it will be hit on the head”. Not much good if the “nail” in question is a nonconformist but essentially creative individual.’ ‘But the individual has to conform to some extent?’ suggested the young manager. ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘But there should be a proper natural balance struck between the interests of the group and the interests of each individual person or, if you like, between order and anarchy. Sometimes as a leader you will have to use your greater positional power or personal influence to protect a particular individual against the pressures exerted by the group or organization. Groups can attack those they perceive to be unlike themselves, those who appear to threaten them in some way. But remember Henry Thoreau’s famous words: If a man does not keep pace with his companions Perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer Let him step to the music he hears 4 However measured or far away The young manager stood up and walked around to the list of functions on the flip chart which I had taken off the pad and stuck up on the wall. ‘Are you suggesting that a leader should perform all these functions all the time?’ he asked. ‘By no means,’ I replied. ‘Leadership is the art of knowing which of them is required and doing each function well. I discern three stages of development in that art: Awareness

Becoming aware of the three areas of need in a group or organization; sensing their interactions.

Understanding

Knowing which function is required at a given moment or in a particular situation.

Skill

Being able to perform the function with economy and effectiveness.’

‘But where do leadership qualities – you know, the qualities approach – tie in with this functional scheme of things?’ demanded the young manager. ‘Perhaps you can tell me,’ I suggested. ‘The three circles and the functions must come first,’ he began slowly, feeling his way, ‘because that is a kind of core job description of leadership – the respon­ sibilities for which the leader is paid more than the team members. Qualities? Yes, EUREKA!’ he shouted, ‘I’ve got it. Qualities determine how you carry out functions. They colour what would otherwise be a useful but unremarkable set of

The Circles Interact

“inter­personal skills”. You can brief the team warmly and enthusiastically, in a cold manner in a lacklustre voice, or worse still with the impersonal one-way communication of written directives or memos. You can plan with courage and judgement or without imagination. You can direct firmly, calmly and with sensitivity or you can do it unintelligently’. ‘That certainly takes us a long way down the road,’ I said.

Sharing decisions ‘One thing really puzzles me,’ said the young manager. ‘Can’t some of these functions – perhaps all of them – be done by any team member, not necessarily the leader? If the team members clubbed together and did them all, would a leader even be needed?’ ‘I suppose you will say,’ he continued, beginning to answer his own questions, ‘that in the real world, with accountability in mind – someone has to be in charge – and that someone is a leader, whatever name he or she is called by. So let me put the question differently: How far should the appointed or elected leader share the leader­ ship functions with other members of the group?’ ‘It’s a help here, I think, to go back to the three circles. Obviously when it comes to building up and maintaining the team or meeting individual needs everyone should pitch in – there is just too much to be done for any one person to do it all himself or herself. That is also true, of course, in all the task circle. But there is one general function or activity that stands out and needs to be looked at closely – decision-making. How far should the leader make or take the decisions himself or herself? Would you accept that as the key issue?’ ‘Indeed I would,’ answered the young manager. ‘For it links up with something else that has also been troubling me – where does democracy fit in with leadership? Can a team ever really be what some people have called “self-managing”?’ ‘Imagine a decision that can be shared in varying degrees between the leader and team members like this: ‘You can see that at the bottom of the picture the leader has the largest slice of the decision, but his share gradually decreases as you go higher up the continuum.’ ‘And the control,’ interjected the young manager. ‘Yes, the more freedom you give people in a decision, the less you are in direct control of the outcome. That’s why managers sometimes find it very hard to delegate when they should be doing so. But there’s much to be said for making decisions as high up the continuum as possible. For the more that the team – or an individual colleague, if you are working on a one-to-one basis – shares in a decision, the greater will be their motivation to implement it.’

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Leader defines limits, asks team to make decision

Area of authority for team members5

Leader suggests problem, gets suggestions, makes decision

Leader presents tentative decision subject to change

Leader presents ideas and invites questions

Leader ‘sells’ decision

Use of authority by the leader

Leader makes decision and announces it

‘Can’t that be rather manipulative?’ asked the young manager. ‘I know some managers who make up their minds first and then pretend they haven’t done so. I have been to some meetings where the manager in the chair was playing a charade.’ ‘The actual process itself – providing you are honest and open about it – is not manipulative. It’s just plain common sense. I know all about it and you know all about it, and yet it’s true for us that if your leaders take the time and make the effort to involve us in the decision-making process, we are far more likely to feel committed and give our best when it comes to making it happen. ‘Desirable though it is to involve people as fully as possible in decisions that affect their working life,’ I continued, ‘there are some limits. Or, putting it more positively, there are four factors that play a part in judging where you should take a decision on the continuum:

The Circles Interact

The Situation

Yes, this is where the situational approach to leadership reappears in the story. Some working groups habitually operate in crises – where time is very short and where life-and-death is involved. Here the leader is expected to make decisions quickly and the team trained to respond promptly to them. Hospital operating teams, civil airline crews and the police are three examples.’

‘But these groups are not always in crisis situations,’ interjected the young manager. ‘I read somewhere that firemen only spend about one-tenth of their time actually putting out fires.’ ‘True. That means that leaders of such groups can achieve more participation in decision-making in such matters as duty rosters and training activities. But they must never do so in such a way that will prevent them from swinging back to issuing direct orders and getting prompt compliance. In other words, they should not unwittingly breed a false expectation that all decisions or all problems will be decided or solved by group processes.’ ‘That’s a difficult tightrope to walk,’ commented the young manager. ‘I have heard the phrase “crisis management” – what does it mean?’ ‘Some managers lack foresight and they are lazy or incompetent in thinking and planning forwards. Such a manager has no longer-term aims and objectives, or middle-term ones either, and so he or she lurches from one crisis to another like a drunken man. “Don’t worry”, he or she says, “I promise it will be different next time. I must make the decision now, because we have run over the deadline, but next time it will be different. Next time I will consult you in advance. Promise.” But you know what happens to “next time” – it never comes.’ ‘But surely you cannot plan for every eventuality – things will go wrong or the unexpected will happen,’ said the young manager. ‘Forward thinking should include using your imagination – trying to visualize all the things that could go wrong. You should certainly have some contingency plans, or at least a strategic reserve – even if it’s only a reserve of your uncommitted time. Crises should be the exceptions rather than the rule. If that is the case, and you have prepared yourself in a general way to meet them, you can radiate calmness and confidence. You may even find time to consult people, if that is appropriate. ‘Empowerment or delegation may no longer be appropriate in a crisis where the group is unsettled or uncomfortable to the point where results are severely jeopardized,’ I continued. ‘Support, coaching, or even significant direction and control may be appropriate. It will probably be welcomed as such by the team at such times, and it may enable them more quickly to regain their confidence, their composure, and their ability to find innovative or adaptive solutions to problems.

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The Team members

The second factor is the relative knowledge, experience and motivation – the “maturity” – of the group. Clearly if your team are all recent recruits to the industry, you’ll have to tell them what to do; they will expect and welcome it. If they are more knowledgeable and more experienced than you, it may be wiser – time allowing – to present them with the problem and hear their ideas before deciding yourself, or agreeing a decision with them.

‘Again you have to be careful here when managers object. I remember one manager who said to me “You should see my subordinates. They are not interested in sharing decisions. They just want me to tell them what to do.” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that one! “What have you done to them – or rather not done – that they are in that unnatural state?” I asked. It transpired that the subordinates in question had received little or no training. There had been no attempt to communicate the firm’s objectives. They were kept in the dark about the financial position. Because no one ever delegated anything to them they acquired no new experience. In fact they were thoroughly “switched off”. ‘And so the first rule is to have a realistic perception of the people who work with you, they are always better than you think they are – under a better leader than you or me they would really go places. Secondly, train, equip and encourage them to take their proper share in the decisions that affect their working life. That takes us on to the third and fourth factors: The Organization

Organizations have different purposes, different values and different cultures. Where organizations place a high value on people they will tend to seek ways of involving people in decisions to ensure that these decisions are effective and implementable.

The Leader

Some leaders always make decisions at the same point on the continuum, like a needle stuck on a gramophone record. They assume that being decisive means making quick decisions by themselves, whereas it means making decisions at the right time and in the right way.’

‘But I have known managers who can never bring themselves to make decisions,’ said the young manager. ‘They were always referring things back for further discussion or setting up yet another working party. It was very frustrating working for them. I remember coming out of one manager’s office and saying, “But he has all the information – well, not all, no one has that, but sufficient – to take the decision, BUT HE WON’T DO IT”. And then, of course, we started to drift and the consequences

The Circles Interact

of indecision piled in upon us. Our main competitor began to beat us to the draw every time. But going back to your chart – the decision-making continuum – is there any one point on it where decisions should normally be made?’ ‘It obviously depends on the urgency and criticality of any given set of circumstances,’ I ventured, ‘but as a general rule, seeking people’s ideas and encouraging them to feel involved and valued must be preferable. It is certainly, and rightly, more acceptable nowadays.’ Never tell people how to do things Tell them what to do 6 And they will surprise you with their ingenuity

Styles of leadership ‘One of the many sources of confusion about leadership was the introduction of the simplistic idea of so-called “styles”: autocratic or authoritarian, democratic or laissezfaire (or do-as-you-please) leadership. The implication, of course, was that the first was “bad” in the moral sense and the second “good”. They were value judgements. Now these terms – autocratic and democratic – are political in origin. They have limited currency in the world of work. You recall our example of crisis situations. If a fire officer were rescuing your family from a blazing house, and shouting at his men to move faster, you would not say “Excuse me, I think you are being a bit authoritarian!” Research into groups at road accidents and forest fires suggests that people look for and need firm guidance from one person on what to do – they will not argue with your instructions if you seem to know what you are doing. ‘In other words,’ I continued, ‘it is probably unhelpful – if not simply dangerous – to suggest that one style is more “correct” (fundamentally or politically), or is appropriate for all situations, simply because there has been a general shift over the past 50 years from control and direction to the idea that modern or new leaders should be coach, mentor, teacher, and “steward of the vision”. The required skill is more one of being able to use behaviour appropriate to the urgency, technical complexity or difficulty of the prevailing situation.’ The young manager didn’t look entirely convinced. He had already picked up the notion of “styles of leadership” and he wasn’t going to drop it easily. He pressed me with more questions about it. Finally I was happy to concede that because of this general shift in style over the past 50 years or so, there is now virtually no place for the authoritarian type of personality, who likes lording it over others (and being lorded over by others in turn – a hierarchical sort of person). That type, now much rarer, is less acceptable by subordinates and colleagues than they would have been even 25 years ago. In that sense a more democratic style of

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leadership – relatively uncommon even then – has become commonplace. Style is certainly linked to decision-making but it’s more a matter of personality, temperament, attitudes and values. I concluded by saying that I preferred to keep style to describe the personal way in which anyone leads. It’s like your style of handwriting. Although there are recognizable styles – copperplate or italic, for example – most of us develop our own style of writing. The issue is really whether it is effective or not. A famous leader once said: Leadership is the most personal thing in the world 7 For the simple reason that it is just plain you ‘There is no one right point or “style” on the decision-making style,’ I said. ‘If you follow a good leader around all day, you find that he or she is making decisions at different points on the scale. Consciously or subconsciously, such a leader balances the four factors that I mentioned and comes up with the correct process decision – the right way to make this particular decision – 9 times out of 10. None of us gets it right every time. But the ineffective leader strikes the wrong note 5 times out of 10.’ ‘Or more,’ added the young manager, thinking of one especially inept marketing director for whom he had once worked. ‘You are putting across quite a high standard, aren’t you?’ ‘Yes, because in order to be an effective leader you have to achieve a difficult “double”. You have to be consistent, for people cannot abide not knowing where they are with you. That’s a matter of personality and character – especially integrity and moral courage. But, when it comes to the decision-making continuum, you have to be extremely flexible.’ ‘That’s not too difficult, surely?’ asked the young manager. ‘Not in this room as you are talking with a cup of coffee in your hand, not in theory if you like. But it’s not so easy in practice. As Clausewitz, the most famous thinker on strategy, once remarked: “In war it’s very difficult to do simple things”. So it is with leadership.’ ‘It will help me if at least I can take away a summary of the keypoints we have covered as an aide-mémoire, the young manager said.’

The Circles Interact

Keypoints ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

The three circles are interactive. If anything significant happens in one circle, it will have effects for good or ill in the other two areas. A leader can use the model to diagnose what needs to be done. In order to achieve the task and to build the team certain key functions have to be performed such as setting objectives, planning, briefing, controlling, and evaluating. All members of a group or organization should have a sense of responsibility for the Task, Team and Individual circles. But not all are accountable. That is the leader’s burden and that is why he or she is usually paid more. The functions are not always needed at the same time. You should develop awareness, understanding and skill so that the right function is performed in the right way at the right time, always bearing in mind the fact that actions in one area may have knock-on effects, if not equal and opposite reactions, in another. Decision-making can and should be shared in varying degrees by the leader with a subordinate or the group as a whole, not least because participation tends to produce commitment. In deciding the extent to which it is appropriate to involve others in decision-making on the continuum of options you should take into account four factors: the time available, the knowledge or experience of the group, the organizational culture and your own preferences or bias. There is no one right style. Style depends partly upon the situation, partly upon the individuals with whom you are dealing, and partly upon your personality. A wide range of styles can be equally effective. Style is just you. When it comes to decision-making, combine consistency of character with flexibility of method. Be prepared to revert from discussion to direction if necessary, if the group or team is struggling with setbacks or becoming demoralized. This will almost certainly help to maintain momentum and the cohesion of the team, restoring confidence.

Do not tell me how hard you work Tell me how much you get done

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Chapter Three Leaders or managers?

‘A

big question has been forming in the back of my mind as you have been talking,’ began the young manager. ‘What is the difference between a leader and a manager – or are they the same?’ ‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘I suppose a manager is accountable for all resources –  money, machinery and men – and leadership is the part that deals with the human resource,’ he answered. ‘And so leadership is a chapter heading in the book of management?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you could put it like that.’ ‘That’s certainly the established answer – the one taught in the business schools and on management courses. It’s what philosophers call a part/whole answer: leader­ ship is part of management.’ ‘Or management is part of leadership?’ ‘Yes, although that is suggested far less often. But you may be aware that within the past 20 years a revolution has been going on in management thinking: the part/ whole answer has been called into question. Some extremists, in the throes of a reaction against management, have suggested that leadership and management are quite distinct concepts, as different from each other as chalk and cheese. You are either a manager or a leader.’ ‘You don’t believe that, do you?’ asked the young manager. ‘No, it is equally wrong,’ I replied. ‘The truth is that leadership and management are different concepts but they overlap very considerably.’ ‘Watch out!’ cried the young manager, ‘I know what’s coming. More circles! All right, let me do it for you.’ He stood up and drew two circles on the flip chart, which looked like this: ‘I wasn’t too sure how large I should have made the overlap,’ he said. ‘I suppose both leadership and management are about achieving objectives, getting results, through other people. I see you are nodding in agreement.’

Leaders or Managers?

Leader

Manager

‘Yes, I was also reflecting that so great is the common ground between leadership and management today – for the circles have moved even more towards total eclipse in the past two or three decades – I think I would have drawn the circles even closer together.’ ‘What about the areas that are not covered? What is distinctive or peculiar about leadership?’ asked the young manager.

Leadership and change ‘Despite overlapping so considerably,’ I began, ‘the concepts of leadership and management have different origins and histories, which give them a set of distinctive undertones. Even though we are not conscious of doing so, we “hear” these undertones when the words are used.’ ‘Surely some people don’t,’ said the young manager. ‘I mean those who see the words as totally synonymous.’ ‘It is truly said that there are no synonyms in the English language,’ I replied. ‘Every word has its “luggage” – those associations, hidden meanings, colours and usages that always accompany it. Sometimes, in order to understand a concept – always bigger than any word – we need to unpack the luggage of several words that signpost its meaning. ‘But words change their meanings, don’t they?’ protested the young manager. ‘Yes, some words, like coins, are slowly altered by constant usage. They can be deliberately debased, too, but that’s another matter.’ ‘Or enriched,’ said the young manager. ‘But I am still not sure that the pure gold of leadership will mix with the iron of management,’ he added with a smile. ‘That’s an interesting metaphor,’ I said. ‘Building on it, perhaps for the fusion to occur, the furnace of change has to be very hot. Leadership and change are linked. You could say that change throws up the need for leaders, and leaders tend to create change. As a friend once wrote to Thomas Jefferson: These are hard times in which a genius would wish to live 8 Great necessities call forth great leaders

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Not Bosses but Leaders

‘Although a natural leader instinctively tries to change and improve things, his or her efforts will not bear much fruit unless external and internal change is effecting the organization – technological, social, economic, political and cultural change.’ ‘But we have seen massive changes in the past 20 years or so,’ said the young manager. ‘And there is no end to it in sight. The pace of change is accelerating on virtually every front. Everything is changing.’ ‘Not everything,’ I said. ‘There are constants or continuities as well as change. Change is the warp and continuity the weft in the many-coloured tapestry of history we see being woven before our eyes. But I do agree with you. Industry and commerce, and for that matter public services too, must now operate in a climate of almost constant change, stronger international competition and higher uncertainty. All that explains why the concept of leadership has once again come to the fore. Leaders like change, it’s their chosen element. Managers, by contrast, have traditionally preferred to run organizations as machines. They are happiest in a “steady state” environment where nothing is rocking the boat.’ ‘Not much hope of that today,’ commented the young manager. ‘Perhaps we need to encourage all managers to accept change as a “given”, and to recognize what they can do on a day-to-day basis to facilitate it in ways that everyone agrees will contribute most to the optimum benefit of the company or organization.’

Hallmarks of leadership ‘I like that picture,’ I replied, ‘but given the more usual background of change and continuity fighting it out like the Lion and the Unicorn, let me now spotlight some of the distinctive features in the concept of leadership: Direction

A leader will find a way forwards. He or she will generate a sense of direction. That may involve identifying new objectives, new products or services, and new markets.

Inspiration

Leadership is linked to inspiration. The words and example of a leader kindle the motivation – the moving energy – already present in the organization, team and individual.

Building Teams

A leader tends to think naturally in terms of teams. Groups of individuals are transformed into teams. Equally, teams tend to look for leaders rather than bosses.

Example

Leadership is example. A leader will have his or her own output or direct contribution to the common task, thereby ‘leading from the front’.

Leaders or Managers?

Acceptance

You can be appointed a manager, but you are not really a leader until your appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of those who work with you.

‘Management has the overtone of carrying out objectives laid down by someone else. Moreover, there is nothing in the concept of management which implies inspiration, creating teamwork when it isn’t there, or setting an example. When it is the case that inspiration and teamwork exist, you may well have managers who are in effect leaders, especially if they are the source of the inspiration. But it is, I believe, unfortunately more often the case that management does not ring bells when it comes to people.’

Managing and management ‘Managing comes from the Latin words for a hand, and it originally meant handling something – a horse, a sword, a ship, a supply of money or a machine. Notice that these are all things. Now it is very easy to transfer the “thing mentality”, as I’ll call it, across the line to people. In other words, you slip easily into the habit of regarding people as things that can be “managed” like machines or money.’ ‘Labelled “human resources” more often than not,’ said the young manager. ‘Precisely,’ I replied. ‘But didn’t the British Army introduce the concept of “Man Management” at some stage or other?’ ‘Yes. I once asked Field-Marshal Lord Slim if he liked the phrase, and he almost exploded with wrath. He explained that at the turn of the 18th century the Indian Army had produced a pamphlet entitled MULE MANAGEMENT. Not to be outdone some genius in the War Office then wrote a booklet called MAN management. Later he gave me a copy of a lecture he had given to the Australian Institute of Management in Adelaide, in which he had underlined for me the following words: Leadership is of the spirit Compounded of personality And vision Its practice is an art Management is of the mind More a matter of accurate calculation Of statistics of methods Timetables and routines Its practice is a science Managers are necessary Leaders are essential

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Not Bosses but Leaders

The manager as leader ‘I notice that you often use military examples or allusions when you talk about leader­ ship,’ said the young manager. ‘Weren’t you in the Army for some time yourself?’ ‘No, I was only a National Serviceman for two years. After university I was a senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, for seven years, but as a civil servant.’ ‘Where you met Slim?’ ‘No, I actually met him later while I was Director of Studies at St George’s House in Windsor Castle in 1968. He was then Governor of Windsor Castle. Why do you ask?’ ‘It’s just that I can’t get out of my head that leadership is somehow a military concept. Isn’t it something that’s really appropriate to the military field? You were perhaps the first to try to sell it to us in industry and commerce, and many others have developed the theme since.’ ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘As I see it, it seems to me that management is the right word in industry or commerce for all that we have been talking about, while leadership is the military word for it.’ ‘Not quite,’ I said. ‘Leadership is the “raw material”: the basic functional response to the three areas of need – the three circles – in any working group or organization. But the shape it takes varies according to the field. In the military, for example, the form it assumes is called command; in industry and commerce, it’s known as manage­ ment; and, in the church, it’s proper name is ministry. But the essence, the inner core, is always the three circles.’ ‘If that is true,’ commented the young manager, ‘it is a remarkable discovery.’ ‘It has certainly proved to be one of great practical value,’ I replied.

The roots of management ‘But I still think that leadership has military undertones,’ persisted the young manager. ‘Can you say some more about that?’ ‘Let me begin by stating what I believe is happening. In every age, it has been suggested, there is a dominant institution which exerts influence – not least by exporting its vocabulary – to other institutions in society. In the Middle Ages the dominant institution in Europe was the Church: hence such words as “hierarchy” (which literally means “the order of priests”) and “dean”. (“Dean” had actually been borrowed in turn from a previous dominant institution – the Roman Army. It derives from decanus, the leader of 10 soldiers – a corporal.)

Leaders or Managers?

‘The dominant institution in the 19th century, the century that saw the birth of management as we know it, was once again the military. It was an age of great armies. In Prussia, for example, the military influenced everything, even ladies’ fashions. ‘Nineteenth-century thinkers about management, like the French coal-mining engineer Henri Fayol, therefore talked much about command as a central activity of managing. You don’t find command being taught in the business schools today! ‘Now the dominant institutions of our times are Industry and Commerce. Therefore their vocabulary – words such as “manager” and “chief executive” – tend to get exported and taken on board by less dominant institutions, such as universities and schools, the churches and local government. That process was resisted in the armed forces. The battle is still being fought in the universities and schools. It has been nearly lost in central and local government and in the health service, I am afraid, where all the administrators and even some of the clinical professionals are rapidly changing their job titles to managers.’ ‘But you haven’t yet answered my question,’ protested the young manager. ‘The reason why leadership has military undertones is that there has been a long tradition of military commanders seeing the essence of their job as leading men. By contrast, managers in industry and commerce have come to hold that belief – or some of them have – only in my lifetime. That was mainly due to the influence of the Second World War, where a whole generation of officers learnt their trade under some great military leaders, such as Slim, Montgomery, Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur, and were then able to put their leadership skills to good effect in civilian life after the war. ‘Actually “leader” is a general word, well over 1,000 years old, and it is found in most of the North European languages in a more-or-less identical form. It comes from the word for a path, road or the course of a ship at sea. The leader is one who accompanies you and guides you on a journey. It is not specifically a military word. Paradoxically it is “management” that is the military term. Even today the term that is used internationally for a riding school practice arena, or dressage area, is a “manège”.’ ‘Good heavens, I didn’t know that,’ said the young manager with some surprise. ‘So it’s management that is the military term, not leadership.’ ‘Yes. That is so. The fact that industry recruited most of its early managers from the ranks of engineers and accountants has given managing some of its abiding undertones, notably the strong connection with systems, machines and numbers, and also that regrettable tendency I mentioned earlier for management to see people as things, or “human resources”, and not as persons – free and equal, intelligent, motiv­ ated and immensely capable.’ ‘You are implying that all the instinctive undertones of leadership are good ones and all the undertones of management are bad ones. Surely that is not so?’ ‘Of course not. Management implies good administration, the efficient and effective use of all resources, especially money. A manager is a steward. If that implication

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is in the concept of leadership, it is a comparatively weak signal. A less-than-good leader can be inefficient in administrative terms.’ ‘What else?’ asked the young manager. ‘The belief in system and systems,’ I said. ‘The concept of management as we know it today, unlike the much older concept of leadership, was born and grew to maturity in the Age of Science. Although it is going too far to say that management is a science – how could it be when its core is a response to human needs – managers should have attributes drawn from engineering science and accountancy science: an ability to install and maintain systems and an ability to administer and control finance. Neither of these distinctive undertones of management is to be found in the concept of leadership. They are essential in industry and commerce, as long as you remember that systems are only half the answer; the other half is the people – their quality, training and powers of leadership – who operate the system.’ ‘Back to leadership,’ said the young manager. ‘But surely the most famous generals in British history, like the Duke of Marlborough, Wellington and Montgomery, were also great administrators?’

Both leaders and managers ‘Yes, certainly,’ I replied. ‘And so, in the language of today, they were leader-managers?’ ‘Yes, good ones.’ ‘Can’t the “captains of industry” be both leaders and managers also?’ he demanded. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘It may be helpful to distinguish from each other the concepts of leader and manager, and to tease out their undertones of meaning, but I have suggested all along that they overlap very considerably. It is more a question of emphasis than anything else.’ ‘No, you’ve said more than that,’ said the young manager. ‘You said a little earlier that the role of leadership – the responsibility for providing the functions necessary to achieve the task, build the team and develop the individual – is the essence or core of management, command, ministry or what-have-you. The “shapes”, as you called them, depend on the field in which leadership is applied. Doesn’t good administration, which you seem to be saying is a positive undertone of management, really come under leadership? It implies planning – according to you a key leadership function – and organizing so that the needs of the task, team and individual will be met. Making sure that your soldiers are clothed, fed and well cared for is administration, isn’t it? Can you imagine a good leader who is not an administrator – or manager, if you like – even though he or she may delegate much of the administration to his or her chief-of-staff and immediate subordinates?’

Leaders or Managers?

‘I cannot,’ I admitted. ‘You lead me to conclude that good managers are invariably leaders, and good leaders are also managers.’ ‘I am happy with that,’ said the young manager. ‘I can see now that I am having to forge a new concept for myself out of these old words and images – it’s a leadermanager concept. I want to be both. Not always at the same time, mind you. But I can see that some situations are going to call more for leadership than others – especially where change is needed. More routine activities – running an organization – require the more managerial parts of my make-up and experience.’ That conclusion struck me as true, but I could not resist pointing out that the routine option – merely keeping the show running – was becoming less common. Indeed, I can think of no organizations today that can afford to stand still. If they try to do so, they invariably find they are going backwards. Even in organizations that are not growing or moving forwards, such key functions of leadership as teambuilding, setting an example and developing each individual are still necessary. The young manager agreed, and continued: ‘Yes, I can now begin to formulate my own concept of the leader-manager or manager-leader. But one thing troubles me. Wasn’t Hitler a good leader in your definition?’ ‘A good leader in many respects,’ I agreed. ‘He was certainly inspirational and had a sense of direction. But he was not a leader for good. He was leading in the wrong direction, towards evil ends. He was a misleader. Moral values cannot be left out of leader–follower relations.’ ‘Let me attempt another summary,’ said the young manager, standing up and going to the flip chart. ‘I think these are the keypoints I shall take away:

Keypoints ●●

●●

●●

●●

Leadership and management are not the same. In industry and commerce they should go together. In government we often think of political leadership and public service management, but the latter also requires high-quality leadership. Leadership is about giving direction, building teams and inspiring others by example and word. You can be appointed a manager but you are not a leader until your personality and character, your knowledge and your skill in performing the functions of leadership are recognized and accepted by the others involved. This is a very fundamental difference. Leadership and change go together. Managing in the form of running an organization is more appropriate where there is not much change going on. When change is endemic, as it often is nowadays, managers must learn how to ‘lead’ it.

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Not Bosses but Leaders

●●

●●

Managing entails the proper and efficient use of resources – good administration. Good leaders care about administration, the less good ones don’t. Management that ignores or resists change will never inspire others.

Above all else, I would like to stress our unity as a party. This was undoubtedly the biggest single factor in the final result, for the ascent of Everest, perhaps more than most human ventures, demanded a very high degree of selfless co-operation; no amount of equipment or food would have compensated for any weakness in this respect. From The Ascent of Everest by John Hunt

35

Chapter Four High-performance teams

‘E

ffective leadership has an end-product – the high-performance team. If you invited me to assess your leadership in a year or two, I should start by looking at your team and seeing if it has the following hallmarks: ●●

Clear realistic objectives

●●

Shared sense of purpose

●●

Best use of resources

●●

Atmosphere of openness

●●

Reviews progress

●●

Builds on experience

●●

Rides out storms

‘Can you add to that list?’ I asked. The young manager shook his head. ‘Not at the moment,’ he replied. ‘I was just mentally checking to see how far they described a project team that I have worked with recently.’ ‘Do they?’ I asked.

Wearing three hats ‘Not really,’ answered the young manager. ‘But there’s not much I can do about it – you see, I am not the leader.’ ‘Hold on!’ I said. ‘Let’s not go overboard on leadership. I have been wedded to leadership for a long time. One of the hazards of using the concept is that it implies that we are only interested in you if you are occupying a leadership role. In fact you are in three roles at work at the same time: leader, colleague and subordinate or follower (just as in private life one may be father or mother, brother or sister, husband or wife, and son or daughter).

36

Not Bosses but Leaders

‘But surely an established leader is going to find it very difficult to work for someone else?’ ‘Some leaders certainly do. Montgomery, for example, scores 9 out of 10 marks as leader of the Eighth Army, but as a subordinate to Eisenhower and as a colleague to Patton – well, shall we say 5 out of 10? The ideal for any manager is that he or she should achieve 10 out of 10 in all three roles.’ ‘That’s a tall order! I am beginning to see what it means to be a good team member or colleague. But supposing I am working for a manager who is not a very competent leader. Do you expect me to help him or her out?’ ‘Never expect any one person to supply all the leadership the group or organization needs. There is too much leadership required for any one person to do it all. Anyway, a leader or manager has only 50 per cent of the cards in his or her hands; the other 50 per cent are in the hands of the subordinates. Call it the Fifty-Fifty Rule.’ ‘But how does that tie up with something you said earlier – or perhaps I heard it elsewhere – that “there are no bad soldiers only bad officers”.’ ‘That proverb is fairly common. Literally, it isn’t true, is it? There are bad soldiers. But it’s a very good maxim for officers to hold and act upon.’ ‘If there are bad followers – contrary to what the proverb says – that would make you select your soldiers with greater care, wouldn’t it?’ asked the young manager. He added: ‘To quote another old saying, “Who can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?”.’ ‘Agreed – up to a point. Part of your leadership-by-example is paradoxically being a good colleague and subordinate. You should show a positive attitude to whoever is the tenant of the leadership role above you, as part of your loyalty to the organization. It means being the kind of subordinate you would hope to find if you were in his or her job. You may, for example, be able to complement his or her abilities or gifts. Watch out especially for any bias in the three circles – and then lean the other way.’ ‘It’s strange that in these conversations about leadership you are suggesting to me how to be a good follower,’ mused the young manager. ‘And a good colleague,’ I added. ‘That is, when you are on an equal footing with someone else and are working together in the context of a common purpose.’ ‘I hadn’t thought of these roles – subordinate and colleague – in such a positive way. Frankly, I regarded myself as marking time, waiting for my chance to lead.’ ‘You can lead now,’ I replied. ‘Most leadership is done from marginal positions. It is unpaid and unrecognized.’ ‘But it’s not fair that the credit should go to some of the incompetent leaders who are supposed to be running industry,’ said the young manager with some feeling. ‘Who says life is fair? Someone once said you can achieve anything in life if you are willing to see the credit go to others. As they will probably take it anyway, why not give it to them?’

High-performance Teams

‘And what will that do for my career prospects?’ demanded the young manager. ‘He who gives credit, gains credit. Whatever you give, you will receive back with interest. Besides, whether or not you deserve to get to the top depends on many other factors. Some people are competent to lead to one level, but at the next level up they may prove to be incompetent.’ ‘Levels of leadership,’ said the young manager. ‘Tell me more about them.’

Levels of leadership ‘The first-line or front-line leader is in charge of a small group or team. They are making the product or providing the service.’ ‘A chargehand or supervisor, you mean,’ said the young manager. ‘The names vary from industry to industry. In German and Japanese such job titles tend to have the word leader built into them. Supervisor is a Latin-based word meaning “overseer” (our word “episcopal” comes from the Greek for overseer). I wish we could find another word for it.’ ‘Section leader?’ suggested the young manager. ‘Possibly. But whatever he or she is called, the leader of the primary group has to have a high level of professional or technical knowledge and experience. Also, he or she should be a team leader, having an output of their own. When some alterations were done to our house recently I noticed that the foreman bricklayer laid bricks himself and yet found time to coordinate and direct the work of three or four other people.’ ‘Team-building, communicating, problem-solving and developing individuals,’ added the young manager. ‘Yes, all the basic responsibilities of a leader, including discipline if necessary. The leader has to take charge and be seen to be in control in a friendly but firm way.’ ‘Doesn’t that require training?’ ‘Of course. I believe that no one should be appointed to a supervisor’s or chargehand’s job – or their equivalents – without some form of training. It’s unfair to him or her, and it’s unfair to the people who work for such a leader. Would you entrust your children to a bus driver who had had no training in how to drive a bus?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said the young manager. ‘Then why entrust work people to the management of those who have not been trained to be managers and leaders?’ ‘The middle-level of leadership is an exceptionally wide band. The essential charac­ teristic, of course, is that the middle-level leader or manager has several leaders and teams under his or her wing. They report directly to him or her. These leaders in turn form the middle-level leaders’ inner leadership team – not a bad definition of senior management, incidentally. At the more senior levels of middle management are

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divisional directors, for example, and all those other people who are responsible for the operations of a company.’ ‘How does a middle-level leader exercise leadership? Isn’t he or she squeezed rather uncomfortably into a sandwich between the face-to-face leaders at the sharp end and leaders at the top, including the chief executive?’ ‘He or she can be so squeezed; you are quite right. One way of avoiding that happening is to take out unnecessary levels of management. Middle-level leaders can only lead if you give them the space and freedom to succeed or fail, to lead or to manage.’ ‘What can they do?’ asked the young manager. ‘Being closer to the top than the supervisor and chargehands, they have an important part to play in the formulation of aims and objectives. Then they are responsible for implementing or executing those aims and objectives. They may not do it themselves, but they create a climate in which work groups under them can operate effectively. They make it all happen.’ ‘Business executives,’ said the young manager. ‘Yes, that’s an alternative term for manager. But it takes considerable powers of leadership today to be a business executive. That takes us to another important job title – the chief executive officer, CEO or chief executive for short.’ ‘How does that title tie in with those other more traditional terms – managing director and chairman?’ ‘It is becoming a rough synonym for managing director, but it carries an undertone of having rather more power than a managing director. Those who combined the offices of managing director and chairman in their own person – not a practice I recommend – were among the first to use it outside the United States.’ ‘Why don’t you recommend that merger?’ asked the young manager. ‘Well, it’s the equivalent to a country appointing a dictator in time of war. It concentrates almost all the power in the hands of one person. That might be necessary for a limited time – during an emergency – but democracy has always been rightly suspicious of such concentrations of power. Remember, from your schooldays, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely”. The office of a chairman in a public company allows the executive leadership to be monitored on behalf of the owners, the stakeholders. Given a clear concept of the two roles, and an appropriate and effective form of leadership in both, it’s an excellent system.’ ‘But you don’t object to the title chief executive?’ ‘Not at all, providing it is merely a symbol of the enlarged leadership role that the managing director is now expected to play, with a wise chairman or president standing further in the background and allowing him or her to get on with it – unless things are in a mess.’ ‘Before we go further into chief executive’s role as a leader,’ said the young manager, ‘can I just pin down the keypoints that we have covered so far.’

High-performance Teams

Keypoints ●● ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

Any good leader has a product – a high-performance team. A high-performance team has the following characteristics: clear realistic objectives, shared sense of purpose, best use of resources, atmosphere of openness, reviews progress, builds on experience and rides out storms. We can help to build these characteristics in the teams in which we work as team members. Effectiveness in the three roles of leader, subordinate and colleague – or team member – is the goal. Fifty per cent of the results depend on you the leader; 50 per cent depend on the quality, training and morale of those who work with you. Leadership exists on different levels. Because you are a good leader on one level doesn’t necessarily mean that you will lead well at the next. According to the ‘Peter Principle’, employees in hierarchies tend to rise to the level of their incompetence. The chief executive is today expected to be a leader. But many chief executives receive little or no formal training in leadership. It is the key role in any organization.

9

A conductor is only as good as his orchestra

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40

Chapter Five The purpose of industry

‘W

e have come now to the highest level of leadership in corporate enterprise. Some people call it strategic leadership,’ I said. ‘Why strategic?’ asked the young manager. ‘The word “strategy” comes from two Greek words meaning respectively an army and a leader. In other words, it’s the thinking and planning appropriate to a military general or, by analogy, to the leader of any large organization.’ ‘Are there any principles of strategy?’ ‘There are some principles of military strategy. It’s up to you to see how they apply – if at all – to business. Take the chief principle – Selection and Maintenance of the Aim – for example. How do you think that applies?’ ‘You must know first why you are in business,’ replied the young manager. ‘Why are you in business?’ I asked. The young manager thought for several minutes. Then he got up and wrote on the flip chart: WEALTH CREATION. ‘Isn’t wealth something that the wealthy have?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘It’s the wealth of nations: the money that builds the hospitals, schools and colleges. It’s the money drawn from industry through taxes.’ ‘So industry exists to pay taxes?’ ‘Of course not,’ said the young manager. ‘Industry is there to make money. It’s as simple as that.’ ‘Is it?’ I asked. ‘I know a brewery firm that could make a lot more money if it sold off all its land in the city centres to property developers. I know a farmer whose 400 acres are worth a fortune. If he sold them to a golf club he would become a multimillionaire and could retire.’ ‘Why doesn’t he?’ ‘Because he wants to make his living as a farmer. And the brewery firm I mentioned wants to make its money through producing and selling beer, or at least drink in its various forms, which they have been doing for about 200 years. I think the purpose or ultimate aim of business is to produce goods or services and market them at a profit. Do you agree with that?’ The young manager nodded and then asked:

The Purpose of Industry

‘Which comes first, then, the goods and services or the profit?’ ‘What a conundrum! It depends upon your perspective. Investors might stress profits. The public would probably put goods and services first. There is an analogy here with light. Scientists entertain two different theories about light: wave theory and particle theory. Both are necessary to understand light but they are also mutually exclusive. For light cannot be two different things at the same time. The best explanation seems to be that they are not actually properties of light – they are properties of our interaction with light. Depending on what you are looking for and how you look at it, light will reveal to you either particle-type properties or wave-type properties.’ ‘I see the point,’ said the young manager. ‘But as a practical leader it would greatly simplify things if I could have a single purpose in mind, especially as I have to communicate that to others. Which comes first – the egg or the chicken?’ ‘If you press me,’ I replied ‘I have to say that your key aim should be to produce the goods and services that society wants. A reasonable profit in the market should be the measure of your success. But don’t make maximum profit your aim, with the goods or services secondary to that. That may work in the short term, but in the long term it leads to shoddy goods and poor service. ‘There is some evidence to suggest that the most successful companies concentrate upon the quality of their products and services. They aim to create and keep a satisfied customer. There is considerable pride in the company in what they are doing. At the same time, they know they must be profitable. For working at a loss is like piping the fresh water from the spring down a drain. But, paradoxically, the more you give to the customer, the more you will receive from him or her. Therefore to some extent you can price according to the quality of the goods or services you are providing. ‘We are now on the threshold of strategy proper,’ I continued. ‘You are soon going to take over as the chief executive of a small- to medium-sized company. You will be making and selling products or supplying services in a commercial way. You now have the ultimate purpose of industry fixed clearly in your mind. What will you do first?’ ‘I shall try to see the present position clearly and realistically. That means asking myself: “What are we actually doing now? What do we do well? What are our strengths and weaknesses?” It may not be easy to find the answers to these questions, but they strike me as essential.’ ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘The first rule in navigation is to take some bearings in order to fix your present position exactly.’ ‘Then I should begin the process of determining where the company ought to be within a reasonable timescale – for my company that would probably be three or four years,’ continued the young manager. ‘Then I must make sure that I can answer the question “How are we going to get there?” There need to be objectives and plans set and agreed for bridging the gap between the present position and the desired future.’

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Not Bosses but Leaders

‘Yes, that is the essence of strategic thinking,’ I said. ‘It’s a matter of answering satisfactorily these questions: ●●

What business are we in – and what business should we be in?

●●

What advantages do we have compared with our leading competitors?

●●

What are our major opportunities for growth and increased profitability?

●●

What are the threats to our continued survival and development?

Strategic leadership ‘Let me add one important rider. What you have described – the process of strategic thinking – has to be done with others. I have noticed that top-down plans do not work. There does have to be a top-down element. As chief executive, with your leader­ ship team of executive directors, you do have to work out a broad strategy, a set of strategic guidelines. Meanwhile, the bottom-up process of asking divisions, com­ panies or departments to work out their own strategies within the broad framework is under way. Bottom-up and top-down strategic thinking are then merged together. That sounds rather sedate. It’s more like a great river meeting the sea: an untidy but orderly process of reaching consensus.’ ‘What do you mean by consensus?’ ‘Here is a useful definition: When the feasible courses of action have been debated thoroughly by the group and everyone is prepared to accept that in the circumstances one particular solution is the best way forward, even though it might not be every person’s preferred solution.

‘The most important test of a true consensus is that everyone is prepared to act as though the accepted solution was their preferred course of action. ‘The outcome or product of this dynamic, interactive process I have described is not THE PLAN. Many senior managers have fallen into the trap of fixing their sights upon a neat watertight plan for the next, say, 10 years. That sort of blueprint type of plan is out of date as soon as it’s written. Remember that planning is a leadership function; it’s a continuing activity of selecting objectives, identifying alternative courses of action and choosing the right way forward within the policy framework laid down by the board of directors or their equivalents. ‘It’s worth reflecting on the mental qualities you require to be a strategic thinker today. I don’t think you have to be intellectually brilliant or what is sometimes called clever, in order to be an effective managing director. You certainly have to be no fool, and it helps if you are bright. But brilliance is not required, thank heavens. Indeed, it may be a positive disadvantage. Napoleon once wrote to his brother Jerome: “Your

The Purpose of Industry

letter is too brilliant. Brilliancy is not needed in war, but only accuracy, character and simplicity.” And so it is in business. Strategic thinking in business is largely a matter of common sense, some knowledge, training and considerable experience.’ “Common sense sounds rather downmarket,’ laughed the young manager. ‘Perhaps I should have said transcendent common sense! Common sense is the rare power of seeing things as they are, combined with the ability to draw conclusions and take the correct action. Common sense added to knowledge and experience is the basis for good judgement.’ ‘I see,’ said the young manager, ‘that by common sense you obviously don’t mean the bundle of unreflective opinions of ordinary men and women that passes for common sense. It’s much more that natural capacity to reach intelligent conclusions without any sophisticated or special knowledge.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And judgement is simply common sense tempered and refined by experience, training and maturity?’ ‘You have put it well,’ I replied. ‘How about wisdom? What is that?’ he asked. ‘Wisdom suggests sense and judgement far above average. I conceive wisdom to be a blend of goodness, intelligence and experience.’ ‘And intuition?’ asked the young manager. ‘Intuition is a feeling that some situation exists or is likely to exist when you have insufficient evidence for drawing that conclusion by logical reasoning. It is a valuable gift, but always remember this rule. The sooner an intuition comes to you when you are trying to make a decision or solve a problem, the longer you should take to check it out. If an intuition arrives after some time, you should be prepared to give it more immediate weight.’ ‘I often find that my decisions seem to make themselves,’ said the young manager. ‘I wake up one morning and I know what I want to do. Does that happen to others?’ ‘Yes. What happens is that your subconscious mind takes over and continues to work on the problem for you. In the subterranean recesses of your mind an orderly process of thought continues. Your subconscious mind digests the problem, analysing it further into parts and offering you some new synthesis of the parts. It can also evaluate for you, which is why the subconscious mind is the seat of your conscience, as your ability to discern good and bad in your own conduct is called.’ ‘It sounds almost like a computer,’ said the young manager. ‘I hadn’t been aware of it in quite that way. Anyway, can we go back to strategy. Are you saying that strategic thinking is largely a matter of common sense?’ ‘Yes, I think so. In the first instance transcendent common sense is required to see the realities of your situation. Secondly, you need some knowledge of the available strategic ideas in your field.’ ‘Strategic ideas?’

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‘Strategic ideas are the simple ready-made formulas usually derived from studying outstanding performers. For example, the greatest military strategist was Clausewitz, who formulated most of his ideas from studying Napoleon, that natural genius in the art of war.’ ‘But didn’t Napoleon study anyone?’ ‘Yes, Frederick the Great among others. All generals have some simple strategic ideas in their heads, derived from the tradition of their profession. Some of these ideas are incompatible with each other, for what works in one situation may not work in another. The best generals always think in clear and simple terms. Mont­ gomery once asked me what I thought was the first rule of strategy. Needless to say I put the question back to him and he replied: The commander-in-chief must be sure that what is strategically desirable is technically possible with the resources at his disposal.

‘Yes, yes,’ said the young manager. ‘You have to be sure that what you want to achieve is commensurate with your resources. It’s no good taking over a company if you haven’t got the management knowledge in that field. That’s a recipe for disaster.’ ‘It’s surprising how many companies have cooked themselves meals based on that recipe,’ I commented. ‘I can think of several giant corporations that were forced to spew out acquisitions because they hadn’t the managers to run them or sufficient capital to develop them. “Sticking to your last” or keeping to your core businesses is a good strategic adage…’ ‘Unless you are a financial conglomerate,’ said the young manager. ‘If you are, then another set of strategic principles comes into play. For there tend to be trends and fashions for acquisitions and mergers which, before long, are often followed by reversion to the “small is beautiful” or “stick to the knitting” idea. ‘As chief executive you should be the grand chef,’ I said. ‘It is your job to set the menu and get everyone else in the kitchen working in the same direction to produce the meal. If you are sensible, you will not try to do it all yourself.’ ‘But shouldn’t a chief executive be a man or woman of vision?’ asked the young manager. ‘Vision is certainly a valuable leadership quality. It means literally the power to see. What the leader should see clearly is where the organization is going, or rather – since success is a journey and not a destination – in what direction it should be moving. The leader may have that vision him- or herself, or may borrow it from someone else, or the senior management team may develop and agree it through a process of consensus. But it’s difficult to lead without it.’ ‘Impossible, I should have thought,’ agreed the young manager. ‘But I sense that you are not too keen on the idea of vision?’ ‘That’s true. Vision has undertones of poetic and prophetic inspiration. Nine times out of 10 I really do not think that it is necessary. Common sense, transcendent

The Purpose of Industry

common sense, is what you require and that is within your grasp. Of course you need to think creatively about the future, and that may give you ideas. The seeds of the future lie in the present. But don’t dress up a good commercial idea in the language of vision…’ ‘I must write that phrase down before I forget it,’ interrupted the young manager: The seeds of the future lie in the present

Involving others in strategy ‘Strategic decisions are no different from other decisions, and they can be made or taken at different points on the decision-making scale. What is important is that they arise out of a proper debate over the pros and cons of the various courses of action.’ ‘Who should participate in the debate?’ asked the young manager. ‘Obviously the directors of the company. The core of them will be the executive directors – chosen from the senior managers of the company. There should also be some non-executive directors as well. The very title “director” implies a primary concern with the strategic direction of the company.’ ‘But most boards of directors that I know about have only the most superficial debates about strategy,’ said the young manager. ‘I’m not sure what the board of directors in my last firm spent its time on, but it had absolutely no impact on what direction we were going in.’ ‘Some have too much impact,’ I added. ‘They try to run the company on a day-today basis, abrogating the responsibilities of the managers. That leads to the latter being frustrated and the board of directors not having time to think.’ ‘It’s not just a question of time,’ said the young manager. ‘It’s also a matter of having the will and the ability to step back occasionally to get the overview.’ ‘Absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘That is also an important skill. Each person at the round table has to be both a good speaker and a good listener. You have to be able to make your points clearly, simply and concisely, with a touch of humour or vividness if possible, while at the same time listening to, not just hearing, what the others are saying.’ ‘What’s the difference between listening and hearing?’ asked the young manager. ‘Listening implies that you are genuinely open to conviction. You want to hear what the other person has to say and you will help him or her to articulate it. You will ask questions, for example, to elicit the meaning. It is a rare power, but an essential one for leaders. We need a listening leadership today.’ ‘The trouble is that directors want to be listened to, but they don’t in turn listen to others.’

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‘Yes, I have worked several times as a consultant in organizations where groups of senior managers – those just below main board level – felt themselves disenfranchised from the strategic debate. No one listened to their views. No one seemed interested in what they had to say.’ ‘But they are the “engine room” of the ship, the people who have to carry out any agreed strategy!’ exclaimed the young manager. ‘Of course, that is why the corporate planning process I outline above makes such sense. Achieving a bottom-up base to strategic thinking and corporate planning gives everyone a chance to contribute to the debate. As a chief executive it’s your job to conduct that debate and lead it to a successful conclusion. The great impediment of action is in our opinion not discussion but the want of knowledge which is gained prior to action. For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

‘Those words were said by Pericles, the most famous leader of Athens, when he was speaking about the reasons why Athens was pre-eminent among the cities of ancient Greece. Should they not apply to any corporate enterprise that seeks excellence?’ ‘Yes, a real debate about feasible strategic options, culminating in real decisions, is absolutely essential. It has been wisely said that there is usually far too much strategic planning, far too little strategic thinking, and rarely if ever enough strategic action! As the proverb says, An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise. In a moment I want to ask you about the problems of implementing strategy in an organization. But first let me try to sum up strategic thinking and planning.’

Keypoints ●●

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As the strategic leader of the enterprise, a chief executive must make sure that the following questions get asked and answered: – Where have we come from? – Where are we now? – Where do we want to get to? – How are we going to get there? The starting point is to be clear why you are in business. Remember Cromwell’s words: ‘Give me the plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for and loves what he knows.’ The outcome of corporate strategic thinking should notbe ‘the plan’ but a concept of the organization’s business that provides a unifying theme and stimulus for all its activities. It guides the choice of products and markets, for example, and the types of business a company enters.

The Purpose of Industry

●●

●●

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Strategic leadership requires mental abilities of a high order these days. Hence the programmes of graduate recruitment. But academic cleverness or mercurial brilliance are not the kind of brightness needed. It’s more a question of transcendent common sense, plus knowledge and experience. Don’t let planning become a substitute for action. It is a leadership responsibility to oversee the process of moving from one achievement to the next. Wisdom is the combination of intelligence, experience and goodness. A wise chief executive will involve as many managers as possible in the debate that should always precede strategic decisions. The art of listening is as important as the skills of speaking in the boardroom and in the wider councils of the enterprise. Otherwise the seeds of creative ideas will be missed.

Leadership means to me The understanding and Sharing of a common purpose – Without that there can be No effective leadership The shortest and surest way To live with honour In the world Is to be in reality 10 What we appear to be

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Chapter Six Moving from plans to action

‘P

aralysis by analysis is a decision-maker’s nightmare,’ I said. ‘I have known com­panies with large planning departments where thinking and planning ahead has become an end in itself.’ ‘They produce plans, not actions,’ said the young manager. ‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘What do you think it is that makes desirable, chartered and agreed changes actually happen?’ ‘The fact that they are agreed must help a great deal,’ replied the young manager. ‘I wrote down as one of the first principles of leadership that the more an individual or group shares in making a decision that affects their working lives, the more motivated they will be.’ ‘Right, let us assume that your company is now agreed upon the core purpose and its key aims. Some companies, incidentally, find it useful to write them down.’ ‘Is it a good idea to do that?’ ‘The people who benefit most from such mission statements, as they are sometimes called, are those involved in drafting them. If they are written on high and sent down the line, managers tend to file them away in their bottom drawers.’ ‘The aims of each section of your business now need firming up and breaking down into specific objectives for each phase of the campaign.’ ‘But isn’t that the work of operational leaders – middle-level managers – rather than the strategic leader?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘But you should listen to their objectives and be skilled in working on them until you are satisfied with them. The first step is to ask your senior man­ agers to write down their key objectives for the coming year and to fix a time when they can meet you in order to agree them.’ ‘In terms of the decision-making chart,’ said the young manager, ‘I shall be working towards the top end of the scale in this matter, won’t I?’ ‘In effect you will have set certain limits. You are asking the manager to decide upon his objectives within those limits. There is plenty of time. You are dealing with

Moving from Plans to Action

a very good manager. There should be no difficulty. It helps if both of you know what are the criteria of an objective, as opposed to a general purpose, an aim or a longterm goal. The hallmarks of an objective are:

Tick box if your objective meets the criterion Is your objective: CLEAR



REALISTIC

SPECIFIC



CHALLENGING

MEASURABLE



AGREED

ATTAINABLE



CONSISTENT

WRITTEN



WORTHWHILE

TIME-BOUNDED



PARTICIPATIVE

Agreeing objectives ‘You can see that I have put boxes for you to tick beside each hallmark, like a checklist. When you receive each set of objectives, and are looking through them prior to your meetings, it’s a good idea to check them against the list.’ ‘What are the kind of things that can go wrong?’ asked the young manager. ‘Most objectives are too vague, too open-ended. They are really aims in thin disguise. Sometimes they are no more than intentions. Objective is another of those words borrowed from the military. It means objective point – the ground you plan to occupy after a certain time in an attack. An objective must have a time reference and be fairly concrete in nature.’ ‘Granted that,’ said the young manager. ‘What else can I expect?’ ‘You will find that some managers are over-ambitious. They set themselves and their departments too many objectives for the time and resources at their disposal.’ ‘Or too few?’ ‘Not too few, but sometimes insufficiently demanding or challenging. That brings me to you. Don’t be afraid to ratchet-up these low-performance targets. In those meetings you must come across as knowledgeable, tough and fair. That will win you respect.’ ‘But supposing the manager involved disagrees with my suggested revision and I cannot persuade him or her?’ ‘Adjourn the meeting for a week. Ask the manager to go back and think about it. Let him or her sleep on it. He or she will then talk to colleagues in the division or department. His or her mind may change before you meet again.’ ‘You make it sound a bit like negotiation,’ said the young manager, dubiously.

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‘It is a form of negotiation. After all, a considerable amount of the resources of the company are entrusted to that manager. You are trying to achieve the best bargain for the whole enterprise.’ ‘And what is he or she after?’ asked the young manager.

Relating the parts to the whole ‘The senior executive manager – who may well be an executive director – is wearing three hats at the same time. As the head of part of the business, he or she must represent the interests and concerns of that part. And as your subordinate and as a member of the leadership team of the company as a whole, he or she should put first the interests and concerns of the whole enterprise.’ ‘That sounds mutually exclusive,’ said the young manager. ‘So it is. Just as the wave theory and the particle theory of light theoretically exclude each other and yet remain equally essential for understanding light.’ ‘You would have to have exceptional leaders,’ reflected the young manager. ‘They would have to be able to go back to their departments or divisions and present the consensus of the leadership team as if it was their own —’ ‘It would be their own,’ I interrupted. ‘Even though its consequences were dire for their people?’ ‘Not their people,’ I said. ‘Remember that these people work for the whole enterprise as well. As rational, intelligent and well-motivated people they are quite capable of seeing where the interests of the whole enterprise lie.’ ‘Yes, but their loyalty is bound up with their smaller group,’ responded the young manager. ‘You have repeatedly stressed the power of groups, and obviously the smaller the better. It’s not as easy as you think to get people to accept radical change that affects their patch. I know because I have tried it!’ ‘Alfred Sloan, the former President of General Motors, once said that the fundamental issue in any organization is the relation of the parts to the whole. It seems to me that the linchpins in that interactive relation are the heads of the “parts”.’ ‘As we have noted, you will find that fashions change in organizational thinking. Once it was thought essential to be very big in size, in order to achieve economies of scale. Then the “small is beautiful” movement gathered momentum. At one time, centralization of decision-making was all the rage. Now decentralization is the order of the day, and this applies as much, if not more so, to the public sector as to the private.’ ‘Have you any advice to offer?’ asked the young manager. ‘What seems to work best is as much decentralization as possible, with some highquality control and direction from the centre. Computers and financial management information systems allow you to know what is happening in the “parts” and if the

Moving from Plans to Action

figures demand it, you can intervene. More particularly, strategic or corporate planning in the way we have explored enables you to provide strategic direction. Finally, you have a watching brief over the process of setting objectives in the six or seven (or whatever) major parts of the business. But no more! Once the heads have received your blessing on their set of objectives they must be free to carry them out without interference from you. If they come to you for help or support, you must give it to them. They are the ones who are going to make things happen, not you.’ ‘I see,’ said the young manager. ‘But how will I know if they want support?’ ‘Won’t they ask?’ ‘Some will. But others will be reluctant to ask for help. They may think it will be interpreted as a sign of weakness.’ ‘Well, get out of your office and visit them. Find out at first hand how things are going. A British managing director once remarked to the President of Toyota that he seemed to spend a great deal of his time out of his office. “We do not make Toyota cars in my office”, replied the President with a smile.’ ‘Having agreed objectives, shouldn’t I leave the operational leaders to get on with it? Won’t it look as if I am not trusting them if I then visit their factories or offices?’ ‘If you don’t,’ I answered, ‘it may appear that you lack interest. It’s an option of difficulties. One safeguard of trust is to observe the principle of respect the line, as the military used to call it.’ ‘What’s that?’ asked the young manager.

Respecting the line ‘The concept of line-of-command, or chain-of-command, is yet another military invention. It links the commander-in-chief with the corporal. The principle of respecting the line means that a colonel does not tell a soldier what to do, he tells the major, who tells the platoon commander, who briefs the non-commissioned officers, who tells the men!’ ‘What happens if the colonel is walking around the unit or watching it on battle manoeuvres and he sees something he doesn’t like?’ ‘He may be accompanied by the company or platoon commander. He will then turn to him and request that the thing is done differently.’ ‘Request?’ ‘A suggestion or request in this context is taken as an order by any sensible and well-trained subordinate.’ ‘And if the colonel is alone?’ ‘He may tell the soldier to ask his non-commissioned officer or platoon commander how it should be done; he may go back to the appropriate point in the line-ofcommand and reprimand someone for not passing down his orders or maintaining

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commonly accepted standards of excellence. Only rarely, usually where safety is at risk, will the commander-in-chief intervene himself with a direct order.’

Line and staff ‘I don’t want to divert you from the subject, but I have heard that in the military a distinction is made between officers who are in the line-of-command and those who are on the staff. What does it mean?’ ‘That again is part of the military metaphor. In addition to line-of-command – the leaders of units ranging from sections of about 10 men to army groups of many thousands – there are staff officers responsible for performing the specialist functions in the army that are – or should be – complementary to the line. Staff officers exist at different levels. In the battalion, for example, the commander’s principal staff officer is his adjutant. The intelligence officer, doctor and padre are all staff appointments.’ ‘No personnel officer?’ asked the young manager. ‘Leadership, which includes looking after the soldier’s, sailor’s and airman’s individual needs, is quite rightly a line responsibility in units of the armed forces,’ I replied. ‘But there are some staff officers specializing in personnel on the general staff.’ ‘With two kinds of manager – sorry, officer – isn’t there a danger of what you called a tension, if not downright conflict, within the team?’ asked the young manager. ‘That certainly happened in the British Army at the time of the Crimean War. Two reforms were introduced. Firstly, staff officers were recruited from the line, and returned to the line when their tour of duty was completed. So the staff understood the problems of the line. For example, the major in the Parachute Regiment, much decorated in the Korean War, who instructed me at the officer training unit I attended during my conscript service (I take training to be a staff function) returned to command his battalion.’ ‘He must have been an impressive teacher,’ said the young manager. ‘Yes, he was. Management and leadership are practical subjects. They are well taught by those who do them. They are better taught by those who have both the experience and the power to teach well.’ ‘What was the second reform?’ ‘In order to train line commanders for staff duties, a staff college was established. As only the brighter officers were chosen for staff duties (entry was conditional upon passing an examination), it also came to be seen as the school for higher command. It became increasingly difficult for an officer to rise to command anything more than a battalion if he had not “passed staff college”. The next step was invariably a staff appointment. Command came later, after experience of being a staff officer.’

Moving from Plans to Action

‘You can see how a good commander-in-chief would have developed an instinc­ tive understanding of the needs and feelings of both his line commanders and his staff officers.’ ‘He can hold the team together,’ suggested the young manager. ‘Yes, there is a common vision of the army as a body with different members, each having its distinctive function and contribution to the whole. Perhaps the most important role of a military staff college is to form that vision in every officer’s mind and to equip him with the knowledge necessary for him to carry out his immediate part of the drama with complete effectiveness. Perhaps postgraduate business courses such as MBA programmes try to achieve the same ends.’ ‘It is rather like a drama,’ commented the young manager. ‘All players have to stay in role and perform their parts according to the script —’ ‘Which, like a film script, is partly prepared in advance and partly written as the film proceeds,’ I said. ‘Or, to keep the analogy within that industry, people trained in specific roles – such as cameraman, sound mixer, or producer – can easily transfer to other films and quickly become members of a team. Everyone knows what to expect from them. It’s much easier to lead a team if you have well-trained subordinates.’ ‘In what ways?’ asked the young manager.

Two-way communication ‘Take communication in organizations, a key area for the strategic leader. From the centre to the periphery it has tended to be broadly instructional in nature, whereas from the periphery to the centre it tends to be informational. Communicating effectively in both directions requires training and discipline. The length and detail of the instructions, for example, will vary with the situation and the degree of training of the participants.’ ‘Can you give me an example of how it works in practice?’ asked the young manager. ‘The secret of the relative military success of the German Army in Russia during the Second World War was due to what they called “directive control”. A veteran of that army, now a lieutenant-general, once explained it to me. “Fast forces need short orders”, he said. The Russian military leaders (as their civilian counterparts do today) issued far too detailed blueprint plans. They tried to plan too far in advance. “Think ahead, don’t order ahead”, said the German general.’ ‘It sounds to me a bit like “management by objectives”,’ said the young manager. ‘Yes, “directive control” is probably the source of what came to be called management by objectives,’ I said. ‘In 1944, of course, it broke down on the Russian front because Hitler began to issue detailed orders down to divisional level.’

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The roots of morale ‘I have often wondered how the German officers maintained morale on the Russian front,’ mused the young manager. ‘It sounds as if good leadership was the key.’ ‘Without good leadership, the German veteran told me, the German Army could hardly have sustained five-and-a-half years of war. As he said: “Any attempt to arouse enthusiasm for the war would have been totally misguided and no one tried this in the field. In the East the soldiers were convinced that the Soviets had to be kept a long way from German soil. There was no mutiny and few desertions. A good spirit was maintained to the bitter end. How was it done?” The German general answered his own question thus: “It was because those in authority shared all exertions and deprivations with their men, and were exposed to every danger that might threaten. Food and accommodation were the same for all ranks.” “I have already mentioned, too, the confidence that every soldier had in the competence of his superiors and comrades. With them he felt he was in good hands and none of them would leave him in the lurch. A very important factor was this sense of security he got from being a member of his section, his platoon, his company. In the abnormal times of war, human nature gives a man a special urge to surround himself with reliable fellows and to put his trust in a leadership that will see him through danger. This was the root of the soldier’s loyalty and steadfastness.” “In sum, leadership rested on mutual trust and on leaders looking after those in their charge. Caring for soldiers, in the fullest sense of that phrase, cut more ice than going by the book”.’

Keypoints ●●

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Strategic leadership is not simply about strategic planning – that’s the easy part. The difficult part is making things happen, converting vision into action. If your subordinates are fully involved in the decisions that affect their work, they will be committed to carrying them out. You cannot lead without winning their commitment. Help those that report directly to you to break down aims into clear and specific objectives. Remember to review progress at agreed intervals. If you will not accept anything but the best, you will be surprised at how often you get it. Tell them how it has to be. Try to delegate as much as possible. You will never have so much authority as when you begin to give it away.

Moving from Plans to Action

●●

●●

●●

Get out of your office and ‘walk the job’. But remember not to intervene directly. Information may come directly to you this way but instructions should flow down the line. That way you will not lose the trust of your managers. Part of strategic leadership is building a sense of teamwork in which line managers and staff specialists, white-collar workers and shop-floor workers all feel equally valued – by you and by each other. In order to lead you have to show that you are willing to live on a level with people – eating the same food, wearing the same clothes, sharing the same hardships.

It is better to light a few candles than to complain about the dark

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Chapter Seven Sharing and caring

‘W

hat that German general said to you about the importance of commanders caring for their men and sharing all exertions, deprivations and dangers… could we talk about that?’ asked the young manager. ‘Certainly,’ I agreed. ‘Can you tell me if that is universally true? I mean, does it work in all armies at all times?’ ‘I can give you plenty of examples of all those things. Take sharing in danger. You remember that I said that commanders should personify the qualities expected or required in their men. Physical courage, the ability to manage fear when life is in danger, is one of those qualities. Soldiers would be contemptuous of any commander who chose not to share in the danger they experienced.’ ‘Does that apply to the commander-in-chief?’ asked the young manger. ‘Of course. His HQ should be within the zone of danger. But it should be far enough from the operational front to give him a perspective of the battle or campaign.’ ‘What about sharing in all exertions and deprivations?’ asked the young manager. ‘Surely that isn’t necessary? Shouldn’t it be a reward for being an officer that you have a more comfortable bed at night, better food and drink, and exemption from all fatigues, like digging trenches?’ ‘On campaign the good military leader has always deliberately shared in the deprivations and exertions of his men and encouraged or commanded his officers to do the same. Hannibal, for example, used to wrap himself in a soldier’s red cloak and sleep on the ground among his men. One of Napoleon’s veteran grenadiers, no stranger to the Russian winter, wrote in his memoirs: “We suffered but were proud of our sufferings, because our officers with their packs on their backs, shared our meagre rations”. Wellington was furious when he found some officers in the Peninsular War not eating the same rations as their men. Slim was equally angry when in Burma he came across some officers sitting down to a meal before their men had been looked after. He also insisted on his headquarters staff having the same scanty rations as the front-line soldiers. I could go on, but I think that the point is clear.’

Sharing and Caring

‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ he replied. ‘But isn’t it the responsibility of the commander-in-chief to see that there are enough rations and stores?’ ‘Certainly. I remember reading the diary of a soldier in the Crimean War during the 1850s who commented on the muddles of administration – one ship arrived with 3,000 left-foot boots – by accusing the higher ranks of lack of management – one of the early uses of that word in the English language. Good commanders-in-chief have always been both leaders and managers. But through no lack of planning or administrative foresight there are times when the “sinews of war” are in short supply. Then leaders should seek no exemption from the hardship experienced by their men.’ ‘You are painting a high ideal,’ commented the young manager, reflectively. ‘Not at all,’ I replied. ‘I am interested in what works.’ ‘But does it work in industry and commerce, in universities, hospitals and schools?’ ‘I don’t see why not,’ I replied. ‘Human nature is the same, isn’t it?’ ‘Yes, but the situation is totally different.’ ‘Totally?’ ‘You know what I mean.’ ‘Of course it’s different. But the basic requirement to attend to the needs of individuals – the individual circle – remains constant. That means first making sure that the people who work for you get paid on time and paid a fair wage for their work. They should also have a share in any “booty” or “prize money” that‘s won by their corporate efforts.’ ‘We have just introduced a profit-sharing scheme – our equivalent to those ancient military and naval incentives,’ laughed the young manager. ‘I suppose you are also going to advocate single-status eating arrangements and no reserved parking lots for senior managers – all on the strength of your military analogy!’ ‘Not especially,’ I replied. ‘But I should point out that where Japanese companies have introduced these practices into America and Europe there seems to have been a positive response. Perhaps the blue-collar workers sensed some leadership at last. I know one Japanese factory in Wales where the Japanese managing director sometimes arrives even earlier than normal to help sweep the shop floor.’ ‘Aren’t these just gimmicks?’ asked the young manager. ‘Not for the Japanese,’ I replied. ‘Let me take another example. If you work for a Japanese company and you are in hospital, you will be visited by your manager or supervisor as a matter of course, just like officers in the armed forces.’ ‘Isn’t that the universal practice in industry and commerce?’ ‘No, far from it.’ ‘Isn’t that because it would be seen as paternalistic?’ ‘Paternalism – or maternalism – means applying the principle of acting like a father – or mother – towards your children. It’s a bad analogy for leaders if they assume that those who work for them are merely like young children whose conduct must

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be regulated and whose every need must be supplied by those in authority. It’s a good analogy if it means that leaders should love the people that work with them as parents love their children.’ ‘Love?’ asked the young manager incredulously. ‘Love is not necessarily the same as liking, I hasten to say. Love is taking everyone’s interests seriously. Love is believing in people, even if they no longer believe in themselves, and caring about what happens to them. Love is feeling warm about people, and being willing to show it.’ ‘Someone told me that if I looked after individuals in this way, they would all work harder,’ said the young manager thoughtfully. ‘To use your phrase – it works.’ ‘Yes, if you give to others, you will receive. But it’s fatal to love people with any such ulterior motive in mind. You should do it because it is the right thing to do, regardless of consequences.’

The case of the injured worker ‘Not so long ago I visited a factory in England. Management had hit upon the novel idea of running leadership courses based upon the three circles for all the work force – some 800 managers, supervisors, office staff and blue-collar workers – everyone who worked there. I attended one of the courses. Over lunch one of the machine operators, who had worked for the company for 12 years, told me that he had been accidentally knocked off his motorbike outside the factory gates by one of the firm’s lorries and spent nearly four months in hospital. “No one from work came to see me”, he said. “There was a supervisor in the next ward having treatment but he didn’t speak to me until his last day there, when he poked his head round the door to say he was going home. If I had worked in the office, the management would have checked to see if my wife had transport so she could come and see me. But no one did that for me”.’ The young manager sat in silence for a minute or two, and then he said: ‘I could understand it if that person had become cynical about the company and switched off at work. I had no idea that the “us” and “them” divide still existed in industry. What a lack of team spirit! Surely such class divisions into managers, staff and shop floor should be a thing of the past! Of course there must be different rates of pay, but when it comes to ensuring that a wife can visit her husband in hospital… well!’ ‘You don’t think that would be paternalism?’ I asked. ‘No, that’s just humanity.’ ‘I agree entirely,’ I said. ‘As the philosopher and theologian Baron Von Hügel wrote to his niece: Caring is the greatest thing, caring matters most

11

Sharing and Caring

The role of trade union leadership ‘Can I ask you where the trade unions fit into the picture?’ asked the young manager. ‘Isn’t it their job to care for the individual too?’ ‘Yes, in much of modern industry they have an important role to play. Referring back to the three circles, the trade unions exist to promote and protect the interests of the individual in relation to the interests or needs of the common task and the organization.’ ‘You mean that managers can’t be trusted?’ ‘Precisely. Managers are under constant pressure to improve results. They have a tendency to think only of the task. It’s a kind of bias in their make-up.’ ‘But sometimes that emphasis on the task is essential for the survival of the group.’ ‘Yes, you can see how the task and team maintenance circles get bigger and the individual circle smaller. In the manager’s unconscious mind the three circles begin to look like a penny-farthing bicycle:

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

‘That should be a temporary imbalance. Yes, everyone will accept that. But if you write cheques on your bank you must put more money into your account. Re-invest in the team and individual circles. A taut rope needs to be slackened from time to time if it is not to become liable to snap.’ ‘One essential point that I learnt in my last company,’ said the young manager, ‘is that the supervisor – the first-line manager – should be the one who communicates about the task. He or she should brief the team. To do that effectively the supervisor needs to understand the purpose, aims and objectives of the company. That’s the framework that makes sense of the day-to-day instructions he or she communicates and thereby enables the team to achieve its tasks.’ ‘That’s right. He or she who communicates is he or she who leads,’ I said. ‘It is quite wrong to allow trade unions to abrogate that leadership function. But in a leadership vacuum responsibility will always go to those who are prepared to seize and shoulder it.’

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‘What you have been saying is that leaders in industry – directors and managers, supervisors and foremen – should also see themselves as responsible for the individual needs circle. A leader will have a relation with each individual in his or her team as well as to the team as a whole. It’s bound to be different because each individual is unique. But common to them all is a caring attitude, expressed by concern over working conditions and a willingness to listen to problems – including personal ones – and to help people to get help. Is that so?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Won’t that overlap with the role of the shop steward or trade union official?’ ‘Yes, but it’s a healthy overlap between the responsibilities of the appointed leader and those of an elected leader. Supervisor and shop steward should see themselves as partners. Tension there must be in their relationship, but not necessarily conflict. It’s also a plus for most leaders that they do not have to worry about rates of pay. Over the past 20 years the trade unions have become more like agents, negotiating pay with employers and keeping a watching brief on safety and conditions of work.’ ‘How about redundancies?’

Coping with redundancy ‘No one can be guaranteed a job for life in a rapidly changing society. No leader can promise that. Leaders are not themselves exempt from that law. Industry and commerce – or much of it – is essentially about taking risk. Everyone in the company – employed and shareholders – should share in the rewards of success and in the consequences of failure. There will be casualties. At least the casualties are money and jobs lost, not life and limbs.’ ‘But it’s successful companies that sometimes declare redundancies. New techno­ logy spells fewer jobs.’ ‘Technological progress cannot be resisted and it’s no use blaming anyone. The Luddites, who smashed machinery in the early Industrial Revolution, were expressing an understandable frustration, but we all know – even the trade unions – that they were wasting their energy.’ The young manager looked back through his notes. ‘That reminds me of what you said earlier about the strong link between the concept of managing and things – especially machines. Perhaps management will triumph over leadership: the factory of tomorrow will consist of nothing but robots – man-like machines running other machines, presided over by a manager with a few engineers to oil the works and some accountants to count the money! But coming back to redundancies, if they are necessary, I suppose what matters is how they are done.’ ‘Apart from generous financial terms, which I take for granted, the redundancies should be made in a sensitive and humane way. That means taking time and trouble

Sharing and Caring

over them. If you can offer help to the person in his or her quest for another job beyond offering to write a reference – or enable him or her to retrain – so much the better. If you do those things, you can turn what might be a disaster area for leadership into something approaching a victory. I have seen it done.’

Growing organizations ‘Doubtless automation is a major factor in the decline of jobs in the manufactur­ ing sector of the economy. We all know that. But then managers are essentially rationalizers.’ ‘What do you mean by rationalization?’ asked the young manager. ‘The testbook defines it as “the scientific organization of industry to ensure the minimum waste of labour, the standardization of production, and the consequent maintenance of prices at a constant level relative to inflation”, I said. ‘Not very elegant language, but there you are.’ ‘So jobs will get fewer and fewer?’ ‘Without better leadership at the top in industry and commerce that is undoubtedly the case,’ I replied. ‘Why does leadership make such a difference?’ ‘That’s simple. As an American company president said: Managers manage change but leaders manage growth ‘Leaders manage growth,’ mused the young manager. ‘What does that mean?’ ‘It means that much of our unemployment is due to lack of creative thinking and entrepreneurial spirit at the top of our corporations,’ I explained. ‘Jobs do not grow on trees. They are the result of new products and new services.’ ‘How does that tie in with leadership?’ ‘Authority comes from “author”, which in turn derives from the Latin word augere, to grow. An author is an originator, inventor, father or mother, one who grows things. In industry and commerce leadership is often associated more with the owner of a business – the person who created it and fostered its early growth – rather than with the manager who is brought in – I almost said bought in – to run it profitably.’ ‘Entrepreneurs aren’t usually very good at running a business,’ said the young manager. ‘And their sons, grandsons and great-grandsons are often even worse. But the nexus between leadership and originating or creating something is a strong one and it can work both ways.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Just as creators or entrepreneurs tend to be leaders, so leaders tend to want to grow things. They want change. If they have to cut and prune an organization

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down to its core businesses, they do it as a prelude to growth, to make growth possible.’ ‘Does that mean getting bigger?’ asked the young manager. ‘How does it apply, for example, to leaders in public service organizations?’

True authority ‘Not necessarily bigger. Think of growth in terms of quality as well as quantity. You can grow in excellence. Indeed, without growth in managerial excellence, sheer size will only expose you to the diseases of corporate obesity: poor communication, bureaucratic procedures and slowness on your feet.’ ‘Recipes for disaster,’ said the young manager. ‘It’s curious how sometimes success breeds failure. Of course, growth cannot usually be divorced from growing bigger. This is especially so where the well-known economies of scale operate. A large hamburger chain can buy its raw materials in bulk, which reduces a key cost. A pharmaceutical company has to be big in order to fund research. And so on.’ ‘But – coming back to the point – you believe that if managers are leaders they will grow their business and create more jobs?’ asked the young manager. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Not necessarily in the early stages. Remember that I do not see a dichotomy between leading and managing. A good leader may well have to rationalize and make people redundant. But he or she is not doing it as an end in itself. The ultimate aim remains growth. The leader will generate creative thinking among colleagues in the organization – at all levels – which will lead to expansion, new and/or improved products and services, and eventually new jobs. Therefore the leader can face difficult tactical decisions with strategic hopefulness. Furthermore, going back to your question about the public sector, it is a fact that continuous improvement of services and, what is more, benchmarking or measuring this, has become the norm in most developed countries.’ ‘That’s a remarkably positive view,’ commented the young manager. ‘You can see why I always look for one key quality in a potential chief executive,’ I said. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Authority. It relates to and stems from the capacity to grow an organization in adverse conditions.’ ‘And to grow leaders and managers?’ asked the young manager. ‘Leadership is self-generating. Leaders spark off other leaders – the leadership latent in us all.’ ‘All?’ ‘Yes, all of us.’

Sharing and Caring

Again the young manager fell silent for a minute or two, deep in thought. Then he turned back several pages in the notes he had been taking as if he was looking for something. ‘What you have just said answers something that was bothering me,‘ he began. ‘You have stressed the importance of caring for those who work for you —’ ‘With you,’ I interrupted. ‘All right, with you. But I couldn’t get out of my mind the image of paternalism, with the manager meeting the work people’s needs and regulating their behaviour as if they were children. Your idea that people largely motivate themselves – they respond to their own needs as they well up within them – helps to get away from that picture. All that anyone else can do is to provide opportunity. Is that so?’ ‘Yes, opportunity and encouragement,’ I replied. ‘You see the organization as a fellowship of leaders, don’t you?’ ‘Yes. Each person is both a leader and a colleague or team member. That goes for you, too, as the chief executive. All should have a mutual concern or care for each other. It’s not a one-way traffic – that would be paternalism.’ ‘But how do you create that spirit if it isn’t there?’ ‘By example. We all want to be loved. And it is easy to love those who love you. The challenge is to make the first move. Do it without expecting a response. In another time and place, possibly when you are no longer around, there will be a response.’ ‘I wish I could believe you,’ said the young manager. ‘Don’t wait to believe. Act first, and then you will believe. If you don’t make experiments in leadership you will learn nothing.’ ‘I have had my fingers burnt before trying to care for people,’ said the young manager. ‘Once I did go and visit one of my subordinates in hospital after a road accident. I arrived at the hospital within hours of it. His wife was there. As I sat with them a message arrived to say that their only daughter had been killed in another road accident in Spain. I felt like an intruder on their grief. I have never made that mistake again.’ ‘By never visiting anyone in hospital?’ ‘That‘s correct.’ ‘Timing and sensitivity are essential ingredients in caring,’ I said. ‘But we only learn by making mistakes. You may have had your fingers burnt, but these are honourable scars.’ ‘Let me record some of these points,’ said the young manager.

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Keypoints ●●

●●

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●● ●●

●●

Leaders identify with their groups or organizations, but not at the expense of their commitment to the common task. Caring for the individual should be essentially practical: it means taking seriously his or her needs and interests. Class divisions and status symbols have nothing to do with true leadership. Leaders are most needed when free and equal people come together to achieve great results. Leadership is a form of service. In order to lead, a leader should be willing to meet the needs of the individuals in the team. Leaders may be tough and demanding but they are never ruthless or merciless – except with themselves. Showing humanity is a sign of strength. Caring matters most in human relations – caring and trust. A wise leader will know that he or she needs correcting on occasions. Elected representatives, such as trade union leaders, can play a positive role in promoting and protecting the interests of the individual with the three circles. Leadership in the boardroom is vital if new products and services, together with new jobs, are to be generated. Together with continuous improvement in existing products, services and processes, they are the outputs of the kind of effective leadership that really grows the business.

Your position does not give you the right to command. It only imposes upon you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your directions 12 without being humiliated

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Chapter Eight Leadership and power

‘U

ntil three or four decades ago organizations tended to be run either by dictators –  usually benevolent – or by committee,’ I commented. ‘The emergence of a small executive group at the top is a relatively new development in the history of most organizations. That implies a chief executive now who is neither a dictator nor a committee chairman.’ ‘A new style of leadership,’ said the young manager. ‘Not really – it just takes good leadership. For the chief executive is now primarily a team leader.’ ‘It’s a team composed of leaders,’ he reflected. ‘That could create problems.’ ‘Without repeating myself here you recall that I said how much depends upon people being 100 per cent effective in two or three roles. That is especially true of executive directors. They have leadership responsibility in their particular profit centre or function. But they are team members in the chief executive’s team. And as such they are responsible with him or her for realizing the three circles in the whole organization: Achieving the Task, Building the Team, and Developing the Individual.’ ‘It’s your idea of management as the company’s leadership team,’ said the young manager. ‘Are the members of that senior team all equal? Haven’t you left power out of the story?’ ‘I take it to be true that power is spread more widely now: each of us has some power,’ I suggested. ‘Symbolized by the one man–one vote principle in democracy,’ added the young manager. ‘Therefore we are caught in a dilemma over leadership. We need leaders in order to get things done, but we don’t necessarily like having them.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because we have to entrust to them – or they acquire by fair means or foul – more power per head, so to speak, than other members of the group.’ ‘More than the group as a whole?’ ‘Groups can be very powerful, especially in relation to deviant individual members. In this respect the leader’s great personal power can be a useful counterpoise.’

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‘You mean he or she protects an individual against the group.’ ‘Sometimes. As I have said before, often the discordant or non-conforming individual is also the more creative one.’ ‘And so you are not against power?’ ‘By no means. It all depends on how power is acquired and the ends to which it’s directed. As Sir Gordon Brunton, a former chief executive of Thomson International, said to me: Leadership is the intelligent and sensitive use of power

Humility ‘Many managers still think in a too hierarchical way; the chief executive stands on the apex of the pyramid above others. It has obviously been too much to ask you to invert the pyramid model and to see yourself as inferior to those around you (although in some respect or other you are inferior to everyone who works with you). I regret that I have failed to persuade you about that because it debars you from seeing leadership as a form of service, with humility as its hidden badge.’ ‘How did you know you hadn’t convinced me?’ asked the young manager curiously. ‘I saw it in your eyes,’ I said. ‘For me the word humility has the wrong undertones. It conjures up an image of cringing self-abasement that’s nothing to do with leadership.’ ‘I agree with you there, but look again at the word. Humility comes from humus, the earth. Humility means being on ground level with others. You may not see yourself as inferior to others but surely I can persuade you that you are among equals.’ ‘As long as I would be more equal than the others,’ laughed the young manager. ‘I’ll accept that,’ I said. ‘As chief executive you should be the first among equals.’ ‘As long as I don’t have to pretend to be a worm,’ added the young manager. ‘A worm lives in the earth. Therefore it is taken to symbolize humility. When a friend told Winston Churchill to remember he was a worm he replied: “Quite so, quite so, but I do believe I am a glow worm!”.’ ‘At least you have persuaded me that as chief executive it would be fatal to boss about my team of executive directors. How should I conduct myself?’ ‘Pass them the ball. Make them look good. Let them score the goals.’ ‘And get the credit?’ ‘Why not? You can achieve anything as a chief executive if you are willing to give the credit away.’

Leadership and Power

Gaining respect ‘Shouldn’t a leader keep some distance between himself and the team?’ asked the young manager. ‘He or she doesn’t have to create it,’ I replied. ‘It’s there already. The very fact that you are the tenant of the role of appointed or elected leader – ultimately accountable for the group or organization’s results – means that you will be perceived as different. That spells a degree of psychological distance. As a leader you are never wholly part of the group: you are half in it and half not.’ ‘That sounds a difficult position to maintain,’ said the young manager dubiously. ‘Whoever said that leadership would be easy?’ I said. ‘Leadership is not about being popular. It is natural to want to be liked and loved, and it would be totally unnatural not to enjoy the affection of your colleagues or followers if it is there for you. But leadership is not about that. From my experience it’s more to do with respect. A leader who isn’t respected is hardly worth the name. Respect stems from a recognition of the leader’s worth; that his or her position as leader is justly due. Respect often becomes esteem, which implies a greater warmth of feeling accom­ panying high evaluation.’ ‘Not admiration?’ ‘Admiring someone connotes enthusiastic, often uncritical appreciation. It’s the uncritical part of that equation you should watch. You have to run the gauntlet of the group’s silent appraisal of you: your personality and character, your knowledge and experience, your professional and social skills.’ ‘That almost answers another question I had in mind,’ said the young manager. ‘What was that?’ ‘You are stressing the importance of a leader placing himself or herself on the same level as the team. Isn’t there a danger of familiarity?’ ‘You have almost answered that question, but not quite. You don’t have to be what P G Wodehouse called a “matey” person – most leaders are not – but you cannot lead people for long without constantly talking and listening to them. On a visit to North Africa during the Second World War Churchill asked Auchinleck why he did not get out of his office and visit the troops, explaining his plan to them. “Familiarity breeds contempt”, replied the general. Churchill chuckled, “I find that without familiarity I cannot breed anything!”.’ The young manager laughed. ‘But aren’t you assuming considerable self-confidence on the part of the leader?’ ‘That is certainly half the story. If you have what it takes to be a leader, you don’t have to rely upon outward symbols – badges of rank and the like – or special privileges, such as separate dining rooms or toilets or sleeping quarters, to give you status. You already have it because of who you are and what you do. You will note that these things create distance between you and those you lead. Salary differences, incidentally, don’t

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usually have that affect, although now the differentials are widening and becoming more public that could alter.’ ‘Thank heavens you are not actually against chief executives being paid more than other members of the organization,’ laughed the young manager. ‘No, salaries are also a principal means of recognition of the responsibilities a person bears. There has to be a proper reward for the work one is doing.’

Giving respect ‘You said that the leader’s self-confidence was only half the story. What is the other half?’ ‘What do you think?’ I asked. ‘I suppose it must be the quality of the subordinates or group or whatever you like to call them. They must be the sort of people who don’t take liberties.’ ‘Yes, in a word they should be respectful. That involves a deferential regard or esteem for you as a leader, shown in courteous attention. Other actions expressive of respect, such as politeness and the small courtesies that vary according to culture, are important. They are due to your office or role, so don’t take them or their absence too personally. Remember that you are the tenant of the role. Nor should you expect them if you do not show a proper courtesy to others.’ ‘And if the subordinates are not respectful?’ ‘Then you must either distance yourself from them or find out why. Ask yourself first if you have done or said anything that is not respectable.’ ‘What you say is very illuminating. When I was in Japan recently I noticed in the factory, where everyone dressed the same and ate in the same place, no one was in any doubt about their place in the social order.’ ‘You can see how leadership becomes easier if the other people involved are natural respecters of their leaders. It is a strong theme in the Eastern tradition of leadership. There is a proverb in Vietnam which says: To be without leaders To obey no one Is unworthy of man It is to behave like the animals ‘I can see that a good subordinate or follower will be deferential in the sense of having a courteous regard for the appointed or elected leader, as to someone to whom respect is due. But that word deferential sticks in my gullet. Why is that?’ ‘In our supposedly egalitarian society it’s not exactly a popular idea. But it’s the reality that counts, not the word. Even in gangs of youths you will find that there is a social order, and that one person is deferred to more than others. The danger in most groups is too much deference, not too little, and that takes us back to the boardroom.’

Leadership and Power

‘What do you mean?’ ‘The proper respect that we have discerned can degenerate into ingratiating behaviour of one kind or another. Some people will try to get themselves into favour with you or to render themselves agreeable by deferring to everything you say.’ ‘How do I stop that happening?’ asked the young manager. ‘What do you think would be the best way?’ ‘I suppose I have to make it clear that agreeing with whatever I say is not the way to gain my favour. Nor must I mistake disagreement for disloyalty,’ he replied. ‘I cannot put it better than that. In discussions before decisions it’s the truth that must lead, not you. People should submit to the better argument, not to your pronouncements. It still remains your role to persuade, to pull things together, to articulate con­ sensus or even to decide where consensus is lacking. But you need people around you who will argue the case, disagree with you, courteously oppose you. Avoid yes-men.’ ‘In other words, I have to respect the knowledge, experience, skill and integrity of the executive directors and senior managers in the company’s leadership team?’ said the young manager. ‘Respect has to be given. If you do not respect people, all people, as persons, they will soon sense it and pay you back in kind. It is essential to respect each person’s freedom and to acknowledge the power that’s in them. If you give people liberty, they will not take liberties. And you will never have so much authority as when you have given it to others.’ The young manager reflected for a minute or two. Once more he stood up and walked about the room. Then he sat down again. ‘I am beginning to put some sort of picture – almost a vision – together in my mind,’ he said. ‘I can see that there is tremendous power or energy in the organization if only I can locate, release, harness and direct it. Really high-performance teams need a special kind of almost invisible leadership. I read somewhere that a good leader makes the team feel that they have achieved it all themselves.’ ‘You are thinking of some lines by a Chinese stateman and sage of the 6th century BCE called Lao-Tzu. He wrote: A leader is best When people barely know that He exists Not so good when People obey and acclaim him. Worst when they despise him. Fail to honour people and They fail to honour you But of a good leader who talks little When his work is done His aim fulfilled They will all say ‘We did this ourselves’

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Leadership and hierarchy ‘The position you hold is rather paradoxical. On the one hand you believe in some form of hierarchy in human affairs. You use words like “subordinates”. You even expect them to be deferential! Yet on the other hand you seem to be advocating the opposite – a leadership that seeks no special status, no privileges, no favours. How do you square this self-effacing sort of leadership with hierarchy?’ ‘I can’t square it with hierarchy in one sense, namely that power and wisdom are given by divine right to the person at the top of the pyramid and then pass from him – it’s a very male idea – downwards to those he appoints or lays his hands upon. But hierarchy as a graded series of people presents no problems. Indeed any form of leadership would be impossible without it. But it’s irrelevant to the core question: how do you get free and equal people to cooperate together in a common will. I believe that “command from above” is ineffective. What is needed is “leadership from within”.’ ‘Before we talk about that,’ said the young manager, ‘let me again write down the keypoints that have emerged.’

Keypoints ●●

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Organizations today are usually led by a small leadership team. The chief executive’s job is to be the leader of that leadership team. Being under-powered is as bad as being over-powered. The leader should take and use the power given to him or her in a responsible way. He or she should also empower others to act and to fulfil their potential. Humility is becoming a key leadership quality. It means openness, the willingness to admit mistakes or errors, and the total lack of arrogance. It does not mean the absence of a proper self-confidence. As a manager you should expect people to respect you as the tenant of that office. But you will never gain respect unless you show respect – to your superior, your subordinates and your colleagues. The test of your leadership is whether or not the task is achieved. If it is, expect them all to say “we did it ourselves”.

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Chapter Nine Leadership from within

‘Leadership from within,’ said the young manager. ‘What did you mean by that?’ ‘Let’s use the light analogy again. Like light, leadership can be refracted into both qualities and functions: what you are and what you do. Like the wave and particle theories of light, these two approaches may look incompatible but they are both aspects of truth. You aren’t listening?’ ‘No, it’s not that,’ said the young manager. ‘I do agree with you that a leader needs skills and that some of the well-known qualities – confidence, enthusiasm, moral courage – are essential. But I was trying to think more deeply about myself – whether or not I have that “leadership from within” as you called it. It’s a holistic phrase, isn’t it? It pulls together the threads.’ ‘Yes, it does.’ ‘Before we met I had thought my job as a chief executive would be “leadership from above”. Now I am beginning to see that “leadership from within” means not separating oneself from people.’ ‘Spatial metaphors – above, within, in front or behind – must always be balanced against each other. The real antithesis is between being a boss and being a leader. Boss comes from the Afrikaans word baas, a master. Another paradox for you: if you wish to lead others you must first learn to lead yourself. As Lao-Tzu wrote: He who overcomes others is powerful He who overcomes himself is strong ‘Obviously “leadership from within” does require considerable self-leadership. You must be able to control the messages that are coming out of you all the time – notably through your eyes and your tongue. Your non-verbal behaviour is often more telling because it is harder to control.’ ‘I have a tendency to lose my temper,’ admitted the young manager. ‘Controlled anger is much more effective. It’s not a bad thing to have in your armoury what Josephus called “the glare of a general”. Napoleon’s veterans were said to be more frightened by the look in the Emperor’s eye than the glinting bayonets of the enemy.’

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‘Back to your favourite military analogies,’ said the young manager with a smile. ‘Let us explore your favourite analogy for leadership, then – the conductor of an orchestra. Sir Thomas Beecham used the hall of my school to rehearse the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and I used to watch him at work. Jack Brymer, the clarinettist, recently recalled that “for Beecham conducting was a silent, choreographic art. When he turned his eye on you, you knew exactly how it had to be. Most of his magic was in his eye – it wasn’t in his beat”.’ ‘“The magic was in his eye”,’ repeated the young manager. ‘What a marvellous phrase!’ ‘Something else Jack Brymer said about Sir Thomas Beecham sticks in my mind: “His gestures also conveyed to the audience how it had to be. A great conductor must take the audience into a performance”.’

The leader as conductor ‘That was the trouble when his successor took over. He was a fine conductor from in front but he radiated absolutely nothing behind him and everybody missed that. Of course it was impossible to follow Tommy. If you substitute “organization” for “audience”, I think you get a good picture of what a great chief executive does.’ ‘Is the management team the orchestra and the organization the audience?’ queried the young manager. ‘Taken literally that’s nonsense. It’s more a question of concentric circles. A much wider circle than the senior executive team should pick up the tempo, balance and spirit of the music from the chief executive. What you say, however, has triggered another idea in my mind: the conductor stands on the boundary between the producers – the musicians – and the paying customers – the audience. He has to create a harmony between them.’ ‘Soon you’ll persuade me that the financial press are really the music critics,’ laughed the young manager. ‘Another famous conductor, Sir Henry Wood, was a larger-than-life character. He had colossal energy. Someone who played under him said that he had “the kind of personality you could feel if he came into a room”. That’s “presence”. In his case it was coupled with a flamboyant nature. Once, when the London Symphony Orchestra had become almost mutinous, he invited them all to dinner at the Langham Hotel. The trouble subsided after that. ‘According to another player, Sir Henry Wood never demanded, he requested. There was never anything offensive about him. Sir John Barbirolli was always publicly critical to sections of the orchestra, such as the strings or the cellists, never to an individual. “That would be victimizing”, he said. All the best conductors adopt the same manner. They are authoritative without being authoritarian.’

Leadership from Within

‘You keep quoting what the musicians say about the conductors,’ said the young manager. ‘Yes, you may recall a point I made earlier: you can be appointed a manager – or conductor – but you are not a leader until your appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of those who work with you. Therefore, in assessing a person’s leadership why not listen to those who work under his or her baton? Usually people are very perceptive. An experienced orchestra can appraise a conductor new to it within minutes. Let’s look at another conductor, Sir Adrian Boult. Musically he was a purist. He looked very strict and was rather irritable. Indeed he could be very angry, especially at lateness.’ ‘Were they frightened of him?’ ‘One of the violinists was asked that question and replied: “I can’t say I was frightened of him – more in awe”. Another member of his orchestra added: “There was never a moment when we didn’t know where we were going”.’ ‘That rings bells. Didn’t we say that leadership was about giving people – a group, organization, institution, even a nation – a sense of direction?’ ‘We did indeed. Sir Adrian Boult also said some good things about leadership: Our people like to be led rather than driven We conductors all talk too much. We needn’t be afraid of trusting the orchestra The longer I live the more strongly I respect the players with whom I am privileged to make music ‘If a great conductor is also a leader, I can see that a special relationship develops between him and the orchestra,’ said the young manager. ‘Perhaps being a leader is part of his greatness,’ I suggested. ‘But I do agree with you about the relationship. It’s a matter of mutual recognition, not unlike falling in love. “I operate in terms of love”, said the American conductor Leonard Bernstein. “If it’s not there – forget it – I can’t make it happen. They (the musicians) are there for the love of the music”. ‘Perhaps the more great you are, the more this corporate love of what you are doing is there. It becomes almost like a tangible presence’, I added. ‘Bernstein thought that the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra was the greatest in the world. “They do it totally out of love”, he said. “In fact they divide all fees and receipts from public concerts equally between them: the second fiddle gets the same as the concert master”.’ ‘I can see that it’s important for a chief executive to stay for some time with an organization if that “special relationship” is going to develop.’ ‘That’s another significant point, one that we have hardly touched upon. Some chief executives are like mercenaries – a few are even hired gunmen! But there is no such thing as instant leadership. It’s a plant that grows.’

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‘What’s your guidance on how long I should stay in the job?’ ‘Not less than 5 and not more than 10 years, with 7 years as a target,’ I replied. ‘It’s not long to be a leader at the top.’ ‘You might have a second or third term in office in another organization. But the point I want to make is that you should stay long enough in an organization to see if your strategic conception works. Bernstein talks about the conductor as someone with one conception of the piece who is guiding the whole trust. That conception is not dictatorial: it stems from a knowledge of how music actually works.’ ‘And that knowledge is gained from study, experience as a conductor, and from the conductor’s ability to hear the score and imagine the composer’s intention,’ said the young manager. ‘Yes, notice the importance of that creative imagination or vision. In this con­ text it’s putting yourself in the place of the composer and hearing the music as he heard it.’ ‘For a manager it could be standing in the shoes of the founders, seeing the business as they saw it and translating it into modern terms,’ said the young manager. ‘I wouldn’t press the analogy too far. In most organizations you do not have a dramatic script or musical score to re-create and re-transfer. If you wanted to develop the metaphor further in that direction you would have to switch from a symphony orchestra to a jazz band. There they make the music up as they go along.’ ‘Improvising! That doesn’t sound like good management to me. You need some sort of score. Isn’t the corporate plan in some sense the score of the chief executive?’ asked the young manager. ‘It’s more your vision which arises from studying the score, or, if you prefer it, your conception of how it has to be. There are usually two routes to discovering that: by creative flair or insight on the one hand and by the application of common sense to the environment on the other.’ ‘Back to transcendent common sense,’ commented the young manager. ‘The next step outlined by Leonard Bernstein sounds equally simple. “Your task is to get the orchestra you are working with to deliver that music in your head. It’s a three-stage operation: hear inwardly, get it over to the orchestra, and get them to give it to the audience”.’ ‘Vision, communication and creating a satisfied customer.’ ‘Precisely. But you can see why the modern breed of conductor, jetting around the world, doesn’t have time for contemplation.’ ‘Contemplation? Not many senior managers I know have time for that either. They are too busy. I don’t intend to make that mistake, for I can see that contemplation is necessary. Let me write down the keypoints for some later reflection.’

Leadership from Within

Keypoints ●●

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‘Leadership from within’ is more valuable than ‘leadership from above’. That kind of leadership is an essential characteristic of the really effective chief executive. Self-leadership comes before leading others. That means setting aims and objectives for yourself as well as high standards of conduct and communication. A chief executive is like the conductor of a large orchestra. One key test of his leadership is that the orchestra should know where it’s going and play together. Like a conductor, a chief executive needs ‘presence’, not least because he or she stands on the boundary between the organization and its environment. Don’t talk too much. Don’t be afraid of trusting the orchestra. People prefer to be led rather than driven. Look upon leadership of the people who work with you as a privilege. Bring to mind what they give to you as well as what you give to them.

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Conclusion

‘I

s there anything else I can say that would be useful?’ I asked, conscious that time was passing. ‘I don’t think so,’ said the young manager. ‘I have to go and do the job now. At least I know now what pitfalls to avoid.’ ‘You cannot avoid mistakes. Leadership is learnt by experience; it’s a practical art. Let your colleagues and subordinates teach you.’ ‘But talking to you has helped. You have made me think for myself. I have profited from other people’s experience. I know I still have to start at the bottom of the learning curve, but you have given me a framework and some principles that will help me on the way.’ ‘You aren’t put off by the difficulties of leadership?’ ‘On the contrary, I now see them as challenges. I am much encouraged by these words of John Buchan about people. If I can see people – and leadership – in that light, I know that I can lead the way to success: The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity 13 but to elicit it for the greatness is already there

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Notes and references   1 Clement Attlee, ‘In the Driver’s Seat’, The Observer, 18 October 1964   2 A H Maslow, Motivation and Personality, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1954. See also The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, Pelican edition, 1971   3 Dag Hammarskjöld writing to himself while Secretary-General of the United Nations, later published Markings   4 Henry Thoreau   5 R Tannenbaum and W H Schmidt, ‘How to Choose a Leadership Pattern’, Harvard Business Review, March– April 1958   6 General George S Patton, Jnr   7 Field-Marshal Viscount Slim, in an address to officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, 1952   8 Abigail Adams, 1790, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson. Quoted in Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders, Harper & Row, 1985   9 André Previn, the conductor 10 Socrates 11 Letters from Baron Friedrich Von Hügel to a Niece, ed G Greene, J M Dent, London, 1928 12 Dag Hammarskjöld 13 John Buchan, ‘Montrose and Leadership’, a lecture given at the University of St Andrews, 27 January 1930

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Part Two The Inspirational Leader ‘W

hat can I do to help?’ I asked the young chief executive. Over a cup of coffee he explained to me that he had read some books on leadership, and attended some courses, and that he had found them both valuable and useful in his path to becoming a leader. But now he felt that he had come up against a roadblock which prevented him from meeting the real challenges in his present role as a strategic leader. ‘I feel that I lack the competence and confidence to be an inspiring leader,’ he said. ‘Can you help me to develop the charisma I need?’ ‘To be honest, I don’t know if I can or not,’ I replied. ‘Certainly I know there is no such thing as instant inspirational leadership. There are no magic bullets. All I can suggest is that we explore together the nature and practice of leadership, and see what, if anything, we may discover that will help you in your quest to realize the potential within you. I can promise you no results, but plenty of hard thinking. Would that appeal to you?’ ‘That would be great,’ he replied. ‘When can we start?’ Over the following weeks and months our discussions, as you will see, ranged widely – from the principles of leadership in general to particular problems the young chief executive had encountered as a leader, some of the issues he faced today at work, and his hopes and fears for the future. In editing our conversations for publication, doing my best to preserve their flavour, I found our meetings both instructive and enjoyable. When I had finished the written draft I asked him to check it, and he made a number of useful suggestions from his perspective. So here you have the essence of our discussions. What prompted me most to publish these conversations was seeing the change that had occurred in the young chief executive. ‘As a result of talking with you,’ he

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said, ‘I now feel a lot more confident that I won’t let people down if I am their leader, that I’ll really be able to encourage and inspire them. And,’ he added, ‘I have a lot more faith and confidence in myself and the future.’ He also said that he had immensely valued the opportunity to explore ideas about leadership; it had been great fun, and he had learnt a lot. At various points in our discussions, when either the young chief executive or I suggested it, we paused to capture on a flip chart some of the key points that had emerged. Afterwards he mentioned these as being especially helpful as an aide-mémoire. Apparently he kept them on his laptop and referred back to them whenever he had a few spare moments in the week. I hope that they will be equally useful as a means of refreshing your memory if you choose also to follow the ‘steep and thorny path’ signposted below to becoming an inspiring leader. As you make your way forwards, however, slow your steps, remember that: There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no insurmountable barrier except our own inherent weakness of purpose.

Not Geniuses, But Average Men And Women Require Profound Stimulation, Incentive Towards Creative Effort, 1 And The Nurture of Great Hopes

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Chapter Ten The three basic approaches

T

he young chief executive began with a question. ‘I have been thinking about your point,’ he said, ‘that there are no short cuts, no easy solutions to becoming an inspiring leader. Are you trying to tell me in a gentle way that it is quite impossible – if you are not a born leader it is too late?’ ‘Not impossible,’ I countered, ‘but it is not easy. Otherwise I suppose a lot more managers today would be good leaders. Perhaps we all inspire others once or twice in our careers. But inspiring others is a bit like getting a hole-in-one at golf: doing it once is just a lucky fluke, and many players pull it off once in their golfing career, but to come near to doing it all the time suggests that you have mastered the art of golf.’ ‘Are you saying that learning to inspire others can be compared to learning to excel at the game of golf?’ asked the young chief executive, in some surprise. ‘It’s only a very rough analogy,’ I replied. ‘Yet golf and leadership have in common the fact that there are basic principles underlying both arts. The picture of white golf balls flying high and true onto the green and trickling down the hole reminds me of a better analogy for leadership.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘What do you think it is that makes flight possible?’ ‘Being an engineer by background I ought to know the answer to your question,’ said the young chief executive with a smile. ‘It is, of course, the Laws of Aerodynamics.’ He paused while I waited, and then continued. ‘You are not going to ask me what they are, are you? If so, I shall really have to dredge down deep into my memory of what we studied in applied mechanics at university.’ ‘It may be worth your while,’ I said. ‘For possibly there are equivalents to the Laws of Aerodynamics in the leadership field. If so, understanding them may enable you, as the chief pilot, to get the jumbo jet of a large organization airborne. Incidentally, pilot comes from the Greek word for a steering oar: the person qualified to steer the craft – the leader.’ ‘But everyone knows that leadership is an art, and by talking about possible equivalents to the Laws of Aerodynamics you are beginning to make it sound like a

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science,’ protested the young chief executive. ‘For a subject to be a science you do indeed need well-established laws or principles, together with theories tested by properly conducted experiments. ‘When I was doing an MBA we had a module on Leadership,’ he continued. ‘I vaguely remember numerous so-called theories about leadership – Fiedler’s Contingency Theory, Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership, Blake’s Grid, Emotional Intelligence, to name the ones I remember. “Leadership is the most studied subject in the world and the least understood”, one lecturer quoted at us. We were told that none of these theories was proven or conclusive, just ideas. Some claimed to be based on empirical experiments, but the samples were so small and culture bound that it was impossible to take them seriously. As there was no agreement, the lecturer said that he would teach all the theories and let us make what we could of them.’ ‘How did you find that?’ ‘Extremely confusing.’ ‘So would I have done,’ I said, ‘but I think the confusion was needless. For over the past 50 years I think we have made real strides in establishing a knowledge base in leadership – what ought to be taught on, say, an MBA programme even if, owing to a shortfall in the knowledge of the staff, it isn’t actually taught. ‘The starting point is what I regard as the basic question in the leadership field: Why is it that one person emerges and is accepted as a leader in a group rather than anyone else?

‘At least to my satisfaction,’ I continued, ‘it has now been clearly established that there are three broad ways of answering that core question. They can be compared to paths or approaches that snake their way up a mountain from different directions. The summit of the mountain – the pure essence of leadership – is, as it were, shrouded in mist. For leadership, like all other forms of personal relations, will always have about it a dimension of mystery.’ ‘What do you mean by leadership being mysterious? I hadn’t thought about it that way before.’ ‘Simply that it contains elements that arouse one’s wonder, stimulate one’s curio­ sity, and baffle one’s efforts to explain it.’ ‘Sounds rather like the Universe,’ he said. ‘But that’s just a challenge to us to find and follow clues and to interpret evidence in order to find a satisfying explanation.’ ‘True, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We should be willing to stand on the shoulders of those who have studied the subject before us. The three paths I mentioned are well-trodden, clearly visible and from an aerial viewpoint you will see that they converge as they near the cloud-topped summit. In other words, they are complementary. The three signposts are:

The Three Basic Approaches ●●

QUALITIES – what you are;

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SITUATIONAL – what you know;

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FUNCTIONAL – what you do.’

‘That all rings bells,’ said the young chief executive, ‘I am sure I have come across those three approaches before. What is the latest thinking about them?’

Leadership characteristics ‘Let’s take first the Qualities Approach – what you are. You may recall that when the first academic attempts were made to identify the necessary and desirable qualities of leadership it produced considerable confusion: lots of lists of leadership qualities were produced and there was apparently very little agreement between them. We have about 17,000 words in the English language to describe personality or character traits and so there is a considerable choice! Therefore those who were trying to study leadership on an empirical or “behavioural” science basis in America after the Second World War tended to dismiss the Qualities Approach as a busted flush on the grounds that no one had discovered the qualities that make a born leader.’ ‘Surely they were right?’ interjected the young chief executive. ‘Not really. The error they made was that they were looking for the appearance of the same word in the different lists, such as courage or initiative. What they should have done was to cluster words into concepts, or, if you like, sets of synonyms around a core idea. So that, for example, there is a set of words that revolve like satellites around the nucleus concept of a bold and determined attitude that is undaunted by difficulties and fearless in the face of danger: backbone, courage, fortitude, grit, guts, resolution, spirit or tenacity.’ The chief executive looked puzzled. ‘But didn’t I read somewhere that there are no synonyms in the English language?’ he queried. I Cannot Hear What You Say 2 Because What You Are Thunders At Me ‘No exact synonyms,’ I agreed, ‘but nearly the same meaning in some or all senses. For words gather moss over time – overtones or nuances that cling to them. All the above words, for instance, when used loosely indicate the same core concept. Used more precisely, however, there is a distinction between, say, courage – the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty – and tenacity. The latter has overtones of firm determination to achieve one’s ends, with hints of stubborn persistence and unwillingness to admit defeat. ‘In a similar way there is a distinction between character and personality, though both point to a bundle of traits, innate and learnt, that distinguish one person from another.

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Character often points to an aggregate of moral qualities by which a person is judged apart from his or her intelligence, competence, temperament or special talents. Per­ sonality suggests more the whole indefinable impression received of a specific person.’ ‘To me character spells moral forcefulness, personality emotional appeal,’ said the young chief executive. After some moments of reflection he continued: ‘It’s rather like colours. At home we are redecorating the kitchen at present and the paint catalogues offer an amazing range of different whites or yellows. It’s as if courage and tenacity are two shades of yellow.’ ‘Not the greatest choice of colour!’ I laughed. ‘The next step I made was to distinguish between typical and generic leadership characteristics.’ The young chief executive asked me to explain the differences. I said that in my view leaders tend to exemplify or personify the qualities or attributes that are typical of the group to which they belong. For example, physical courage is a typical quality in the armed services, because all soldiers, sailors and airmen, whatever their rank, leaders or not, need a degree of physical courage. In other words, it’s a military virtue. What effective military leaders do is to exemplify the key typical qualities expected in their milieu. And we can apply the same principle, I argued, to nurses, accountants, salesmen, doctors, academics, and so on. In every field of human endeavour you can specify – or its practitioners can – five or six key qualities required in a good nurse, teacher, engineer, etc. These ‘local’ qualities are what I call the typical ones, and together they form – or at least a ‘critical mass’ of them form – a necessary condition for leadership. It is easy to find them: all you have to do is get a few focus groups of wise professionals in any field to list them. You can grade the responses roughly into three categories according to the strength of agreement as follows:

COULD SHOULD

MUST

MUST – the essential attributes; SHOULD – highly desirable ones; COULD – characteristics that enhance but are not vital. Nothing Great In This World Was 3 Achieved Without Enthusiasm

The Three Basic Approaches

‘But you are not saying, are you,’ protested the young chief executive, ‘that having the typical military qualities or virtues such as courage makes you a military leader, or that having the five or six characteristics of, say, a good research scientist makes you the leader of a laboratory? I play in an amateur orchestra and I can think of lots of musicians who have all the qualities of musicality, but they don’t become conductors. It doesn’t quite add up.’ ‘It’s possible that you are confusing two ideas that should be kept distinct, namely necessary and sufficient conditions,’ I replied. ‘In science, these terms drawn from logic are useful for untangling intuitions about cause-and-effect relationships. For example, it is a necessary condition for certain chemical reactions that they take place in solution. But the fact of these chemicals being in solution does not guarantee that they will react with each other. Therefore, being in solution is not a sufficient condition that these chemicals will react. In general, as I understand it, scientists find it useful to agree on necessary conditions before they feel in a position to discuss sufficient conditions.’ ‘That sounds a most useful distinction and it’s easy to grasp,’ said the young chief executive. The young chief executive glanced back through his notes and then continued: ‘Using this tool, can we not now identify the necessary conditions that lead people to accept someone as a leader? I suggest that what you called the set of contextual or typical qualities forms one necessary condition. The potential followers have to see that the leader is like them in all important respects but unlike them – different or ‘better’ if you like – in other key respects. Moreover, I suggest that the more generic qualities of leadership belong here too. For a person is a whole. It would be artificial to divide their personality or character up into typical and generic qualities. Anyway, we have yet to identify these universal hallmarks of all good leaders – the generic ones I mean.’ ‘Why don’t you help me to identify them? What would you place at the top of the list?’ Our discussions on the various contenders for universal leadership virtues ranged far and wide. Eventually, however, we homed in on the following characteristics: ●●

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Enthusiasm – a state of extreme readiness and interest in some prospective action or subject, together with a willingness to be involved in it. It leads to activity undertaken with gusto, verve and exuberance. Integrity – moral soundness or excellence: the undeviating adherence to truth and a code of values. Integrity implies trustworthiness and incorruptibility to a degree that one is incapable of being false to a trust, responsibility or pledge. It’s the quality that inspires trust in others. Warmth – a positive emotion, indicating sincere interest in or affection for others. It is allied to humanity – showing basic human attributes such as kindness and consideration.

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Courage – firmness of mind and spirit in the face of danger or extreme difficulty; the capacity to be a risk-taker. Judgement – the mental processes that lead to sound decision-making and problem-solving and estimates of people. Tough but fair – being without softness, especially to oneself, realistic and unsentimental; being strong or firm, but flexible; and being even-handed in all one’s dealings with the team, ie not having favourites.

On enthusiasm The young chief executive and I agreed that this list of generic qualities was open-ended. How about calmness, or high energy, or resilience, or humour, or compassion? Each true leader revealed these and other qualities, like facets of a revolving diamond. ‘So enthusiasm comes to the top of the list,’ reflected the young chief executive. ‘I have certainly never encountered anyone whom I would call a leader who lacked it, have you?’ ‘I cannot think of one,’ I replied. ‘Enthusiasm comes from the Greek verb that means to be inspired, literally en (within) and theos (god). The primitive idea, of course, was that exalted states of mind or passions were caused by the temporary or permanent possession of a person by some spirit or god. Panic, for example, comes from the Greek god Pan.’ ‘It’s amazing what you can learn from words,’ reflected the young chief executive. ‘When you unpeel them like a chestnut you get to a shiny and often quite tangible core of meaning. Is passion the same as enthusiasm?’ ‘It’s often used as a synonym, and in this context it means an object or feeling of desire or deep interest. I prefer enthusiasm – a lively or eager interest in a cause or activity, plus an energetic and unflagging pursuit of it.’ ‘And it inspires enthusiasm in others too. It’s contagious,’ said the young chief executive. ‘Yes, as a general principle like inspires like. For example, love inspires love, trust inspires trust. So if you want to inspire people for the work in hand, be inspired about it yourself.’ ‘That could hardly be more simple,’ he said. ‘In my National Service I served in the Arab Legion in Jordan as adjutant of a Bedouin regiment. One evening out in the desert, sitting and waiting for the brass coffee pots to sigh on the hot coals, a tribesman quoted a Bedouin proverb that has lived with me ever since: What comes from your heart is greater than what comes from your hand only. People will always respond to what they hear or see is in your heart.

The Three Basic Approaches

‘The effect of a change of leader – an enthusiastic one in place of one lacking any powers of inspiring others – can seem quite magical, even where the work in question is drudgery or toil,’ I continued. ‘Can you give me an example or two of this principle in action?’ the young chief executive asked. ‘Will you settle for a couple of examples from classical times? Xenophon, a Greek general who had in his early twenties explored in the company of the world’s first and greatest teacher of the subject, Socrates, gives us two examples. The first comes from his observations of life aboard the Greek war galleys known as triremes, with three tiers of rowers drawn from the lowest class in Athens. Xenophon often sailed in the triremes, though he excelled as a commander of cavalry. To get the best out of these oarsmen – freemen not slaves – called for the kind of uplifting yet demanding leadership that produces enthusiastic teamwork, resulting in a great performance. Xenophon writes of the rowing-masters who could do it as if they were conductors of a winning chorus in the national competition: On a warship, when the ship is on the high seas and the rowers must toil all day to reach port, some rowing-masters can say and do the right thing to sharpen the men’s spirits and make them work with a will. Other rowing-masters are so lacking in intelligence that it takes them more than twice the time to finish the same voyage. Here they land bathed in sweat, with mutual congratulations, rowing-master and oarsmen. There they arrive with dry skin; they hate their master and he hates them.

‘Xenophon achieved lasting military fame when, age 26, he became the leading general of a Greek mercenary force known as the Ten Thousand, who made an epic 800-mile march to freedom from the heart of the Persian empire when their employer was defeated and killed in battle. Xenophon proved to be an inspiring military leader himself, but he was equally renowned in the ancient world as a prolific author. He wrote the world’s first books on leadership in the form of Socratic dialogues. In addition, while living on his estates in the shadow of Mount Olympus, Xenophon added another ‘first’ to his list, the world’s first book on management – in those days it was, of course, management of large estates rather than of industrial or commercial organizations. The Greek title of the book is the same as our word economy, which literally means household management. ‘The interesting thing is that Xenophon saw little or no essential difference between leading soldiers in battle, so they were willing and enthusiastic about the work in hand, and leading civilian workers on an estate. In other words, for the first time in history he conceived of leadership as a transferable principle. What he saw clearly is that human nature is the same, be it encountered in an armed Greek warrior, a sweating, toiling oarsman, a farm worker in the fields or a man with the lowest social status of all, a slave:

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The Inspirational Leader It is no less necessary for a farmer to encourage his labourers often, than for a general to encourage his men. And slaves need the stimulus of good hopes no less, no even more than freemen, to make them eager and steadfast.’

In my enthusiasm and intensity I will very often push people to the limits of their capabilities – and that must entail a certain degree of risk. The great thing is that the risk pays off when that person suddenly finds something in themselves they didn’t know was there. Sir Georg Solti, orchestral conductor ‘I haven’t heard of Xenophon before,’ said the young chief executive, ‘but he certainly understood a thing or two about leadership. He must have been the first person in the world to have understood so clearly the importance of the combination of enthusiasm, bravery and skill in a military leader.’ ‘Yes, you are right. Xenophon had seen soldiers under such a leader, as he said “working cheerfully, each man and all together, when it is necessary to work. Just as love of work may spring up in the mind of an individual soldier here and there, so a whole army under the influence of a good leader is inspired by love of work”. Consequently for Xenophon this kind of enthusiastic leadership is quite simply “the greatest thing in any operation that makes any demand on the labour of men”.’ ‘And how necessary it is today,’ mused the young chief executive. ‘I wonder why we have undervalued good leadership so much…’ ‘Probably because we thought it was something inborn, some gift that you either have or you don’t have.’ ‘Some chief executives assume that they must have it by virtue of the fact that they have risen to the top.’ ‘An unwarranted assumption in all too many cases,’ I commented. ‘Socrates and Xenophon pioneered the belief that leadership could be developed. They even identified some of the principles of leadership development that still apply today. Yet they were aware that some people are more gifted with leadership ability than others, especially when it comes to inspiring others.’ The young chief executive paused to reflect, and then continued: ‘I can now see very clearly why enthusiasm belongs to our first necessary condition – the qualities in a leader. In a TV documentary on the life of Rommel they quoted the reason Hitler gave for appointing Rommel to command the Afrika Korps in 1941. Hitler had said: I picked out Rommel because he knows how to inspire his troops. This is absolutely essential for the commander of a force that has to fight under particularly arduous climatic conditions like North Africa.

‘Rommel certainly proved to be an inspiring commander,’ I continued. ‘But this story illustrates that just having a leader of his calibre – a general with enthusiasm, boldness and skill – is not enough. To be able to inspire soldiers with confidence, love of work and desire for victory is of no avail if one is lacking the other necessary conditions

The Three Basic Approaches

for success, such as organization, weapons, ammunition, repair facilities and air superiority. Moreover, Winston Churchill found in General Montgomery a leader capable of inspiring the Eighth Army with new confidence in itself and a certainty that Rommel and the Afrika Korps were not invincible – they could and would be beaten. Enthusiasm is the base of the quickening, animating and inspiring power of a true leader.’ ‘But surely there is more to it than that?’ said the young chief executive. ‘There is indeed,’ I replied. ‘But do you think that enthusiasm is within your grasp?’ ‘Of that I have no doubt,’ he replied. ‘It’s a mystery to me, but my enthusiasm is like a fountain within me.’ ‘Then you are not far from being an inspirational leader.’

Keypoints ●●

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There are three broad and converging approaches to the understanding of leadership: Qualities (what you are), Situational (what you know) and Functional (what you do). All are important and should blend together. A leader should exemplify the typical qualities or attributes of a good performer in his or her field. If, for example, you wish to lead a firm of lawyers, you should possess the five or six characteristics of a good lawyer. There are also more generic qualities associated with leadership, such as enthusiasm, integrity, moral courage, the combination of toughness and fairness, warmth, and humility. Both typical and generic qualities are a necessary condition for someone to be recognized as a leader, but not a sufficient condition. An enthusiastic person tends to inspire enthusiasm in others, so enthusiasm stands first on the list of generic leadership qualities. Enthusiasm is extremely common and it is within your grasp. At times we all need encouragement. ‘There is a point with me,’ wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘in matters of any size when I must absolutely have encouragement as much as crops need rain: afterwards I am independent.’

‘He Has A Look Upon His Face That I Would Fain Call Master.’ ‘What Is That?’ 4 ‘Authority’ Your Position Never Gives You The Right To Command. It Only Imposes On You The Duty Of So Living Your Life That Others 5 May Receive Your Directions Without Being Humiliated

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Chapter Eleven The authority of knowing

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he young chief executive sat silently for a minute or two as he studied his notes. ‘Necessary conditions,’ he said. ‘So far we have explored the Qualities of Leader­ ship and identified them as being necessary but not in themselves sufficient. Is that going to be true of the second path up the mountain that you mentioned – the Situational Approach?’ ‘In essence this approach answers our key question “Why does one person become accepted as leader?” by declaring that it is not so much on account of any inherent qualities of personality or character, but because of a person’s appropriateness to the given situation. It is memorably expressed in a well-known play by J M Barrie called The Admirable Crichton [1902], where a polymath manservant emerges as the leader of a party that includes his employers in London, shipwrecked on a desert island. In other words, put a person in one situation and they will be accepted as leader; change the situation and they won’t.’ ‘What made Crichton so admirable among the castaways?’ the young chief executive asked. ‘Doubtless some qualities such as being cool, calm and collected. But essentially it was because he revealed an encyclopaedic knowledge – he knew what to do when his employers were out of their depth and at a loss. So the critical factor here, as Socrates was the first to identify, is knowledge. There are basically three forms of authority in human affairs, in no order of importance: ●●

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positional – when you hold a superior position in a social or organizational hierarchy and have authority within defined limits over what others do; personality – an inner subjective kind of authority that some individuals possess, which in modern times has been labelled charisma; knowledge – the authority that stems from technical or professional knowledge, possessed for example by a doctor or an engineer.

The last is best summed up in the saying: Authority flows to the one who knows.’ ‘Didn’t you mention Socrates, in connection with Xenophon, as a teacher of leader­ ship?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘Did he discover the Situational Approach?’

The Authority of Knowing

‘Difficult to say, as he wrote no books. But two of his young disciples – Plato and Xenophon – did write books in the form of dialogues between Socrates and various individuals. How far these later-published dialogues represent actual remembered conversation is a matter for scholarly speculation, but we can be sure that Socrates was the first to teach the Situational Approach, for both Plato and Xenophon teach it and both use the same example of the ship’s captain, who has authority over sailors because he has mastered the skill of navigation, so it must go back to the lips of Socrates.’ ‘It must have been quite a revolutionary idea in those days. I suppose he saw democracy as the mechanism that allowed citizens to elect to the various offices those whom they judged to be the best or most knowledgeable candidates?’ ‘Absolutely. The corollary is, of course, that you needed an intelligent and discerning electorate as well as well-qualified candidates. Hence the emphasis upon the need to educate for leadership, a philosophy to which one lasting memorial is Plato’s Republic. ‘Socrates’ concept of the knowledge appropriate to a leader – at least through the lens of Xenophon’s mind – is a wide one. It potentially includes, as we have seen, knowledge or understanding of human nature, and knowing how to encourage and enthuse or inspire others with a love of work. But the models Socrates had in mind were the artists and craftsmen of Athens, especially those known for their technical or professional mastery.’ ‘I can see the importance of the latter,’ said the young chief executive. ‘But it’s clearly more a necessary condition than a sufficient one, for we all know people who have it in abundance and yet they are not accepted as leaders. It is necessary as a leader to have it, though we could debate how far it has to be specialist or generalist knowledge in the field. Would you agree?’ ‘Yes, indeed. The degree of technical or professional knowledge a leader needs depends on the field and their level of responsibility. It is not necessary, for example, for an orchestral conductor to have achieved excellence as a solo instrumentalist, though many have done so.’ ‘I am surprised you haven’t told me the origin of the word authority,’ smiled the young chief executive. He reached out and took another slice of gingerbread. ‘A temporary reprieve! My own profession as an author is the clue. An author is someone who begins, begets, originates or creates something. It comes from the Latin verb augere, to grow or to increase. I like the idea that the Roman imperial title Augustus originated from this verb and acquired other meanings later on, so that it was given to the leader who showed that he could grow the empire. But I wouldn’t put money on that piece of etymology.’ ‘I can see the link with knowledge. An author or creator has a unique knowledge of the product, how it grew from the seed of an idea to the mature end-result. A conductor has authority, sure, but the true authority on a Mozart symphony must be

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Mozart. Likewise, a mother is always the chief authority on her child, or as far as any human being can be on another.’ ‘You can see, too, why an entrepreneur who builds up a large organization over years, growing it out of the seed of an idea, has a unique authority in that business. Of course that doesn’t make him or her infallible, but that is another matter.’ ‘That’s been useful,’ said the young chief executive. ‘Where next? I suppose we have now reached the third approach – Functional Leadership.’

Key leadership functions The Functional Approach focuses, as you know, on the general theory that while all working groups and organizations are unique, each evolving its own distinctive group personality, yet all of them share in common a set of three overlapping and interacting areas of need: ●●

the need to achieve the common task;

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the need to be held together as a working unit (or team);

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the needs that individuals bring with them into the group, by virtue of being human beings.

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

In order that the three areas of need should be met, or as it were satisfied, certain functions need to be performed. A function, as we have said, is roughly what you do as contrasted with what you are or what you know. In the context of a small working group, for example, here are the key functions: ●●

Planning –– seeking all available relevant information; –– defining the group task, goal or objective; –– making a workable plan (in the right decision-making framework).

The Authority of Knowing

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Initiating –– briefing group on aim/objectives and plan; –– explaining why as well as what, how, when, where and who; –– allocating subtasks and setting performance standards.

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Controlling –– ensuring that all actions contribute to objectives; –– influencing tempo; –– maintaining group standards.

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Supporting –– expressing acceptance of persons and their contributions; –– developing the potential of individual team members; –– encouraging group/individuals; –– disciplining group/individuals; –– creating team spirit; –– relieving tension with humour; –– reconciling disagreements or getting others to explore them.

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Informing –– clarifying task and plan; –– giving new information to the group, keeping them ‘in the picture’; –– receiving information from the group; –– summarizing discussion coherently.

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Evaluating –– checking feasibility of an idea; –– testing the consequences of a proposed solution; –– evaluating team performance; –– helping group/individuals to evaluate own performance against standards.

Designated leaders ‘You say that these are necessary functions, not needed all together – every section of the orchestra playing at the same time – but as and when they are required. But I notice you did not say that they are leadership functions in that only the designated leader can perform them.’

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‘Some groups – jazz bands, string quartets – don’t have a designated leader,’ I replied. ‘Theoretically any member can perform any function. I can think of a small company making pure fruit juices that is run by a triumvirate of its three young founders, who are the directors of finance, production and marketing, respectively – there is no chief executive. Early American theorists used to say that whoever contributed something that could be classified under one of these broad functions was the leader for the moment.’ ‘So groups no longer needed designated leaders?’ ‘Yes, that was their position, reinforced by what they perceived to be the failure of the traits theorists used to establish the existence of such a thing as leadership qualities. The talk was of leaderless groups being the thing of the future, the new democratic (good) model as opposed to the old authoritarian (bad) one associated with having a designated leader.’ ‘How did that work out in practice?’ ‘Not very well. In the “group laboratories” (as they were called) that gave rise to the new dogma, the groups studied had no real task to do, their mission being entirely one of group-introspection. Even there, however, there were leaders, though they were called “trainers” or “facilitators”. Outside, in the real world, the doctrinaire abandonment of designated leaders proved to be counterproductive. A Russian symphony orchestra, for example, did away with its conductor and played sitting facing each other in order to try and keep together. They eventually decided to get another conductor. In Britain the National Health Service also experimented with the same dogma and experienced a similar disappointing result. More often than not, working groups do need a designated leader.’ ‘What about that small company you mentioned?’ ‘As they grow larger in size and the complexity increases, they will be compelled to select a leader, a “first among equals”. It’s the difference between being a string trio and becoming an orchestra.’ ‘How do people get selected as leaders?’ ‘Basically in two ways: you can be either elected or appointed. As a broad generalization, where groups throw up their own tasks they tend to elect their own leaders who are accountable to the electors. Trade unions and sports clubs are good examples of this practice. By contrast, where tasks are given to groups from on high, as it were, leaders tend to be appointed. Such leaders are primarily accountable to the authority that entrusted them with both the task and the group.’ ‘Quite a big difference,’ commented the young chief executive. ‘Ideally both elected and appointed leaders should be chosen from those who would have emerged naturally in that field or situation – the “admirable Crichtons” if you like.’ ‘And all three approaches – Qualities, Situational and Functional – would be needed to explain why one person rather than another emerged as the leader.’

The Authority of Knowing

‘That’s it. The British Prime Minister begins life as an emergent leader; he or she is then elected by his or her party and the voters; finally they are appointed by the Crown.’ ‘Does that mean that all the functions you listed are now to be regarded as the preserve of the designated leader?’ ‘He or she is accountable for them. Moreover, basic leadership training should develop the awareness and understanding needed to know when each is required, together with the skills to provide them. But any group of more than five people needs more functions than any one individual can supply. Therefore a wise leader will encourage others to share the work of meeting the task, team and individual needs.’ ‘How does that principle apply to decision-making? There is a strong belief still around that leaders should be the decision-takers. Isn’t decisiveness a generic leadership quality?’

Sharing decisions ‘Decisive, yes, but that means the ability to take decisions at the right time and in the right way. A decision can be visualized as a cake that can be shared in different proportions between those concerned. The leader can have all the cake, make the decision and announce it. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, the leader can seek as much consensus as possible. Obviously factors like the time available and the relative knowledge or experience of the parties – leader and others – come into the equation. There is no one right point on the scale: the optimum solution depends on the appraisal (which should become instinctive in time) of contingent factors in the situation.’ ‘Are there no enduring principles, no “laws of aerodynamics”, involved here?’ ‘One obvious principle is that in most exercises of judgement – the mental activity behind decision-making – as the proverb says, Two heads are better than one. When time is short even to the point of crisis a wise leader with skill may consult, listen and weigh the input of other people. Generally the consulting process, providing it is not done in a ritualistic, perfunctory or indifferent way, results in a better quality of decision. That is why, for example, companies have boards of directors or generals hold councils of war before taking big decisions. ‘A second important principle is that the more a person or group shares a decision that affects their working life, the more they are motivated to carry it out. It’s common sense really. If you are told to do something by someone in authority over you, you may do it. But if they want your heart and mind to be involved, if they want you to have a sense of responsibility, they will involve you in the decision as far as it is realistically feasible to do so.’ ‘You are doing no more here than stating the cornerstone of democracy,’ observed the young chief executive. ‘People will tend to obey laws that they or their elected representatives have had a hand in casting. “No taxation without representation”.’

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‘By sharing leadership in this way, especially by consulting and listening before making decisions, a good leader helps to create the right context in which people can give their best. They feel free, respected and valued. In this climate the creativity that is so often latent within us can find expression. In a literary sense, context is those parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light upon its meaning. The context I have just described doesn’t directly inspire people – other factors are necessary for that – but it contributes to the right environment.’ ‘Just as the quality and nature of the soil – nutrients, earthworms, moisture – will engage the attention of the wise gardener who wants to win gold cups for his flowers or vegetables,’ said the young chief executive. ‘It’s becoming clear to me that a lot of factors are needed to build a climate where inspiration becomes possible. I thought that it was just a question of standing up like King Henry V before Agincourt and giving people a rousing pep talk. It’s more complicated than that. I am not there yet, but at least I feel that we are on the right track. Let me write down some keypoints.’

Keypoints ●●

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The Situational Approach emphasizes the importance of knowledge in leadership. Yet there are people who have outstanding technical or professional proficiency, but who are not seen as leaders by those who work for them. At best it is another necessary condition. Groups or organizations are always unique but they share the three overlapping areas of need: task, team and individual. There is a pattern of functions that together meet these needs: Planning, Initiating, Controlling, Supporting, Informing and Evaluating. Although in principle anyone could provide one or more of these functions, most groups have designated leaders who are accountable for them. They may be either elected or appointed – or both. Being decisive does not mean ‘shooting from the hip’ and invariably making snap decisions. It means taking decisions in the right way and at the right time. The more that groups or individuals share decisions that affect their working life, the more motivated they are to carry them out. Factors such as time and levels of knowledge affect how far decisions can be shared, but a wise leader presses for as much involvement as possible.

The Authority of Knowing

The summits of the various kinds of business are, like the tops of mountains, much more alike than the parts below – the bare principles are much the same; it is only the rich variegated details of the lower strata that so contrast with one another. But it needs travelling to know that the summits are the same. Those who live on one mountain believe that their mountain is wholly unlike all others. Walter Bagehot

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Chapter Twelve Levels of leadership

‘L

eadership in all organizations, institutions or society as a whole exists on different levels,’ I began suggesting. ‘At the first level the leader is responsible for a small team of about 10 people – team leadership. The operational leader is responsible for a significant part of the whole, and has more than one team reporting either directly or indirectly to them. The strategic leader is in charge of the whole, be it a working organization or a political community. That familiar word strategy is in fact an amalgamation of two separate Greek words: stratos (large body of people) and egy (leader).’ ‘That’s interesting, this idea of levels of leadership,’ said the young chief executive. ‘The corollary must be that it’s no good just having a great leader at the strategic level if your organization is useless at the team and operational levels.’ ‘Exactly. Apart from having effective leaders in office at all levels, you also need excellent communication and good team-working between them. It sounds simple, but it’s a truth that evades many organizations today. As Clauswitz once said, “In war what matters is doing simple things, but it is very difficult to do them”. ‘And in peace too,’ added the young chief executive, with a sigh. ‘And, knowing you, you would argue that all leaders need training for these roles, wouldn’t you?’ he asked. ‘Of course, I take that to be a basic principle. We know how to train team leaders, but we still have a lot to learn about how to develop leadership at operational and, still more, at strategic leadership levels.’ ‘And does the Three-Circle Model apply only to training team leaders?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘By no means. In Effective Strategic Leadership [2002] I proposed that all groups and organizations are unique – each has a distinctive group personality or culture of its own – but all share in common the generic structure of the three overlapping areas of need.’ ‘That’s clear, or at least it is to me. I suppose one becomes a strategic leader after being a team and operational leader…’ ‘That is what could be called the natural progression,’ I agreed. ‘And one doesn’t cease to be a team and operational leader when one becomes a strategic leader. For

Levels of Leadership

instance, you have to create teamwork in the top group, which will include the senior operational leaders, so that it spreads out and infuses the whole organization. ‘Moreover, strategic leadership includes overall accountability for the operation of the organization – delivering the right goods or services, whatever they may be, at the right time and at the right price. For, as the proverb says, An acre of performance is worth a world of promise. With the three meta-functions – Achieving the Task, Building the Team and Developing the Individual – in mind, then, there seem to me to be seven generic functions of strategic leadership: ●●

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Providing direction for the organization as a whole – knowing where the organization is going; having a vision of what it ought to be like in, say, three to five years’ time; understanding clearly its end – the larger purpose it serves. Getting strategy and policy right – strategy is the route to the longer-term destinations; it is concerned with what is important in the context of that longer-term state towards which the organization should be aiming. Strategy here encompasses both strategic thinking and strategic planning. Policies are general decisions that help others lower down to save time in decision-making. Making it happen – the operational or executive function of strategic leadership, which includes getting out of the office to inspect what is happening, monitoring progress and reviewing performance against agreed targets in the strategic plan. Organizing and reorganizing as necessary – ensuring that the relation of the whole to the parts of the organization is optimum for the task in hand. Releasing the corporate spirit – encouraging and enthusing people at every level and, where possible, releasing the latent spiritual energy in people. The symptom of success here is high morale at every level and in every branch. Relating the organization to other organizations and to society as a whole – finding allies or partners among other organizations, sometimes by mergers and takeovers, and creating a spirit of cooperative teamwork with them; promoting excellent relations between the organization and the local, regional, national and/or international communities. Choosing today’s and developing tomorrow’s leaders – choosing the best operational and team leaders is a critically important function. The strategic leader should also “own” the strategic plan (evolved with the head of human resources and the top leadership team) for improving leadership capability throughout the organization. Have a passion for developing leaders!’

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Practical wisdom After the young chief executive had considered the list carefully he asked: ‘The role of strategic leader calls for a higher intellectual capability, doesn’t it?’ Yes, but it’s not exactly ‘brainy leadership’ (as T E Lawrence once called it) that’s needed. More what the ancient Greeks called phronesis, which was translated into Latin as prudentia and thus into English as prudence, a word that has acquired certain overtones not present in the Greek original. A better and more commonly used equivalent to phronesis is the phrase practical wisdom. ‘Wisdom actually comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word for a leader, one who knows the way. Put at its simplest, wisdom is a blend of intelligence, experience and goodness. All those elements are required in one who is at the helm of an organization, especially in the turbulent seas of change. For, as the Roman poet Lucanus said, “Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm”. ‘The Athenians held up several of their great leaders as exemplars of practical wisdom, notably Pericles, who led them in the long Peloponnesian War against Sparta, “like the helmsman of a ship who,” writes Plutarch, “when a storm sweeps down upon it in the open sea, makes everything fast, takes in sail and relies on his own skill and takes no notice of the tears and entreaties of the seasick and terrified passengers.” ‘As for Thermistocles, he too had the power to reach the right conclusions when there wasn’t much time for debate and he possessed foresight. He was particularly remarkable at looking into the future, Thucydides tells us, and seeing there the hidden possibilities for good or evil. To sum him up in a few words, it may be said that through force of natural genius and by rapidity of action this man was supreme at doing precisely the right thing at precisely the right moment.’ Transcendent Common Sense Is The Rare Power of Seeing Things As They Are Which Signifies Genius. It Is The Ability To Draw Right 6 Conclusions And To Take Correct Action ‘I can understand why intelligence and experience are constituent elements, but why have you included goodness?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘Could we ever apply the term “wise” to someone who is not good? Greek philo­ sophers in the school of Socrates saw conduct – personal or corporate – as a matter of choice. For them, choice necessarily involves not only intellect and thought but a certain moral state or character. It’s the combination of the two that spelt phronesis, practical wisdom, which is why Aristotle numbers it among the four cardinal virtues, along with justice, temperance and fortitude.’ ‘But what’s the connection with leadership?’ he persisted. ‘I can grasp phronesis as knowledge (intelligence and experience) applied to practical affairs, by which a person might know what to do or what not to do. I can see too that a quality of mind and temper is also implied: self-control, a lack of rashness as well as the ability to focus

Levels of Leadership

the mind on a problem before acting. Acumen, foresight, resourcefulness, circumspection, diligence in execution – being “on the ball” – yes, I can see that they are all necessary for right thinking and right action. I suppose you can break down what we call decision-making into three phrases: ●●

Deliberation – courses open; probable and possible outcomes.

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Decision – making the choice.

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Action – acting on what is decided.

‘In the deliberation phase I can see that a degree of phronesis is absolutely essential, and that a chief executive should be expected to possess it. But I still don’t see where goodness comes into the equation. Integrity, yes, but why goodness?’ ‘Aristotle instances Pericles and others like him as demonstrating the nature of practical wisdom because they can envisage what is good for themselves and for people in general. He adds that this quality belongs to those who understand the management of estates – forerunners of our modern industries and businesses – as well as political states.’ ‘So if a leader is not a moral person, his or her vision of what constitutes the good of his or her state or organization will lack a moral component?’ ‘Yes, Socrates taught that all leaders needed a vision of leaving their organization or city in a better state than that in which they found it. He questioned Xenophon, for example, to establish that he had a clear idea as to how he could improve the Athenian cavalry – better horses, more training, improved leadership and so on. Good in this context is clearly a holistic term, as are its related words better and excellent. But alongside the technical and material elements there is also a moral ingredient. Admittedly the Greeks had two different words for good – kalos (technical, proficient skills) and agathos (morally good) – but they tended to see them as two sides of the same coin.’ ‘So phronesis is a moral virtue for the Greeks because it enables you to identify what is the true good for yourself and others. In modern organizational terms, it means – well, let me put it personally – if my aim is to see my company in a better state than it is now when I move on in, say, four or five years time, I need to have a holistic idea of what better means. Customer service, high standards of integrity and fair dealing, quality of products and services, finance and administration, the corporate spirit or morale of the company – all these may be ingredients of the vision.’ ‘Yes, so goodness isn’t a separate entity: it’s the wholeness of the whole, as invisible but as real as health.’ ‘You certainly know about health when you lose it,’ reflected the young chief executive. ‘I suppose that often it is only when a community or an organization loses its moral sense that it heads for disaster. By then it may be too late. The ship may be on the rocks and beginning to disintegrate.’

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‘True, and prevention is better than cure. The wise helmsman does not endanger his ship by ignoring the guiding moral stars in the firmament. It might be useful to think of three or four wise people you know. What are their characteristics?’ The young chief executive mentioned two or three names of people he considered wise, and began to talk about their characteristics. Old habits die hard and so I stood up and began to capture some of the qualities he mentioned on the flip charts, adding some more of my own as I, too, considered those whom I thought to be wise: ●●

exceptional understanding;

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seeing things from a larger perspective;

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understanding himself or herself;

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thinking for himself or herself;

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seeing the essence of a situation;

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grasping how various aspects of reality are related;

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sound, executable judgement;

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experience-based pragmatic knowledge;

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a clear idea of where the obstacles are;

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ability to assume contradictory points of view;

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width, height and depth;

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having a rich life experience;

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bringing clarity and form to experience;

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helping others in time of trouble;

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working with a person’s natural focus of attention;

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being a good, sensitive counsellor;

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thoughtful, fair, not afraid to admit mistakes;

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acting within the limits of his or her knowledge;

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being comfortable with ambiguity;

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willing to profit and learn from experience;

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seeking the ultimate consequences of events;

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having moral and spiritual integrity;

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having an excellent character;

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searching for a way of life;

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reading between the lines;

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having an authoritative presence.

Levels of Leadership

‘Those 26 attributes – by no means exhaustive – of the people we consider to be wise in effect map the concept of wisdom or, more broadly, what we think a wise person ought to be. All I can add is to suggest tentatively that those attributes fall roughly into the categories that I have called intelligence, experience and goodness. It’s always easier to remember three things than a long list.’ ‘It’s more than just a memory aid, isn’t it?’ said the young chief executive. ‘It’s about trying to reduce complex things to their simple parts, teaching oneself to look for the essentials in a situation, the elements hidden under appearance. Isn’t that necessary if I am going to be any good as a strategic thinker?’ ‘You are beginning to sound like a Greek philosopher,’ I laughed. ‘The concept of an element is a Greek discovery. Aristotle defined it as that which cannot be resolved into anything simpler, such as the irreducibly simple part of a compound or complex whole. The Greeks believed the physical universe was composed of only four elements: air, water, fire and earth. It took us about 2,500 years to establish that there are in fact more than 100 fundamental substances or elements to which matter can be resolved.’ ‘That begins to sound quite complex,’ commented the young chief executive. ‘It certainly does to me as a non-chemist, but in the late 19th century a brilliant chemist developed what we call the Periodic System. Classifying the elements according to their atomic weight, he was able to group them into four clusters or families. It’s another good example of the power of the human mind to reduce complexity into a simpler form.’

Leaders and managers ‘Talking of scientists,’ said the young chief executive, ‘we borrowed their distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions. So if all the necessary conditions we have identified – contingent and generic qualities, professional knowledge and understanding of people, and functional “three-circle” capabilities – are present in a person, will he or she be perceived as a leader? In other words, do the three approaches added together – the whole that is more than the sum of its parts – constitute the elusive sufficient condition we have been searching for?’ ‘We must be very close to it,’ I replied. ‘It has been said that you can be appointed a manager, but you are not a leader until your appointment has been ratified in the hearts and minds of those involved. It’s when people start using the word leader about you that you, as it were, become a leader. That is why I always think of being called a leader as receiving an accolade, an indirect mark of acknowledgement.’ ‘I imagine that if people do not ratify your appointment in this way, you remain merely a manager. Is this how leaders differ from managers?’ ‘Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that it explains how managers who are leaders differ from those who are not. A manager in this context simply

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means someone who is responsible for managing a business or public service, or a part of one. It has replaced the much older job name of administrator. Your MBA – Master of Business Administration – is a relic of those days.’ ‘Can you be a good manager without being a leader?’ ‘Yes, I think you can be a good manager – but not one of the best. If we speak of someone as being a good administrator or manager that implies that he or she has the typical qualities or attributes we expect in a manager…’ ‘They are reliable, responsible, trustworthy, hard-working, thrifty with scarce resources, plan ahead, keep to agreed procedures or systems, are prompt in business, open-minded to change, knowledgeable in their specialities, meticulous over detail, cheerful, fair and courteous in their dealings with staff and colleagues, keep in control of things, are loyal to the organization, achieve their targets, are good time managers – I could go on,’ offered the young chief executive. ‘No need,’ I said, ‘for you have just sketched in roughly what makes a person a good manager. You will notice that the list doesn’t contain some of the attributes we associate with leadership, such as providing direction, creating teamwork, leading by example and inspiring others. These are not alternatives: they are the extras, if you like, the added value, that leadership brings to management. If the managerial attributes are there, it is comparatively easy to move from merely being a good manager or supervisor to being on the path that leads to becoming a business leader at the level appropriate to the person – team, operational or strategic.’ ‘So you don’t stop being a manager at a certain stage and become a leader?’ ‘Did you cease to be a son when you became a husband, or give up being a husband when you became a father? There is no such thing as a leader in the abstract. You will never walk down the street and see a leader. You will see a politician who is a leader, an accountant who is a leader, a doctor or nurse who is a leader, a teacher who is a leader, a military commander who is a leader, a police officer…’ ‘Alright, alright, I’ve got the message,’ laughed the young chief executive. ‘Well, I am glad that you reminded me that leadership is an abstraction, a kind of mental periodic table for arranging in clusters all the elements we see in leaders in various fields.’ ‘There is, however, a very useful broad distinction to be made between managing and leading, always bearing in mind that it is not either/or but both and…’ ‘A spectrum of some kind?’ ‘Precisely. And I think we can now identify fairly clearly the situations that call for something more at the managing end of the spectrum and those that activate the leadership cells towards the other pole. Any guesses?’ He Showed Himself Such An Example Of Kindly Wisdom, Such A Combination Of Serious Purpose, Humanity And Courtesy, That The Others Had No Thought In Their Minds Save To Labour 7 With One Common Will For The Success Of All

Levels of Leadership

The challenge of change ‘That’s fairly easy,’ said the young chief executive, ‘in a nutshell it is change. People with the typical managerial characteristics we have just identified could run an organization that doesn’t have to face change. Of course now, with almost no exceptions, all organizations are having to respond to massive, continuing change. There’s a much higher level of anxiety, people lose their sense of direction. In fact it’s not unlike what happens when the flat surface of the sea changes to mountainous white-topped waves, the wind howls, darkness falls – then everyone senses the need for a good helmsman, that experienced leader that Plutarch talked about.’ ‘Having been a deckhand on an Arctic trawler in a great storm, when we battled against the black ice that was encrusting the superstructure and tilting us over, I can confirm what you say from first-hand experience,’ I agreed. ‘So the critical factor is change. Change throws up the need for leaders; leaders bring about change. The bird carries the wings, but the wings carry the bird.’ ‘What would happen if a leader tried to bring about change in an organization that was in a situation totally resistant to change, one that perceived no need to change?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘That’s a theoretical question but an interesting one. My hypothesis would be that the organization would ignore him as an irrelevance, and if he persisted they would metaphorically crucify him. A rejected heart transplant might make a better metaphor these days. He would try to change things, but if there wasn’t enough change in the environment it would be a fruitless task.’ ‘It’s almost as if change is the fuel or power source of leadership,’ mused the young chief executive. ‘Certainly a true leader will never complain about change – for that is what makes leadership both necessary and possible. It’s the raison d’être. If you go back to the original metaphors of a journey: all journeys are changes in location that take place over time. This morning you are here. By this evening you will be somewhere else. If you stay where you are, then time will elapse but no change of location will take place.’ ‘But there are journeys and journeys,’ said the young chief executive. ‘Going on a guided tour to Provence for your holiday is one thing, but exploring unknown territory is another. Guides can be hired for the first kind of journey, but leadership of a different order is required for an expedition into new, unfamiliar, unmapped territory. And the future begins to look more like that every day!’ ‘Most journeys, of course, are metaphorical. A school or hospital will tend to remain at the same location, but over time it may change from one state to another, it may become a worse institution or a better one – that’s a journey too.’ ‘Becoming a worse institution suggests a lack of good leadership to me,’ he said. ‘Nowadays I don’t think any organization can stand still. If it isn’t getting better, it

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is almost certainly going to get worse. Doesn’t it simply mean, however, that all managers need to be managers of change?’ ‘How do you manage change?’ ‘Don’t you know? There are lots of business books written about it, and plenty of conferences or seminars. Some “gurus” have specialized in change management…’ and here he broke off to mention their names and some of the most recent books on the subject. Then he asked me to share with him what I knew about managing change.

People need leaders ‘My difficulty with the phrase managing change may sound a bit academic to you,’ I began, ‘but let me share it with you anyway. Managing, as you probably know, comes from the Latin word manus, a hand. The main branch of derivation comes from the Italian word for handling war horses – the fine mastery we now call dressage. (Another contributing source is the French word for a household, hence the work of running one.) So controlling actual or potentially unruly things – horses, ships, swords, pens and (in Jane Austen’s novels) young children – is the main sense.’ ‘We have added another thing to that list,’ said the young chief executive, ‘namely funds, finance, money. Stocks and shares can be pretty unruly! And material resources – like machines or power.’ ‘And by extension it makes sense to talk about managing time too. For though time is invisible and mysterious, it is undoubtedly a precious resource, one that should be husbanded carefully. As the old English proverb says, An inch of time is worth a yard of gold.’ ‘I can see what you are getting at. Change is not a thing, not a commodity, not a resource. So, strictly speaking, it can’t be managed.’ ‘That is the case. For the same reason we cannot manage love or manage religion or manage happiness.’ ‘Where does that leaves us?’ ‘It is simple. We agree that all change is a journey, physical or metaphorical. It may be a welcome journey or an unwelcome one. It may start out with a known destination in mind, and turn out to be an adventure…’ ‘Can you give me an example of what you mean?’ interrupted the young chief executive. ‘Take a well-known British company called Whitbread. When I worked for them as a consultant over 20 years ago they were one of the leading breweries. Beer was their only product and their “destination” was to increase market share. But the journey took an unexpected route. Whitbread stopped brewing beer years ago, and it has just sold its last 3,000 pubs to the private arm of Deutsche Bank for £1.6 billion. “Future”

Levels of Leadership

Whitbread will now consist of hotel, restaurant and leisure brands such as Beefeater, Pizza Hut and David Lloyd Leisure – at least until the next turn in the road.’ ‘It sounds to me as if they are making the road up as they go along.’ ‘Or reinventing themselves. One agent of change was strategic thinking. Here the key was to see their product and service in the context of the “bigger picture”. Whitbread, historically (since the 18th century) a brewer and owner of pubs, began to see itself in a more conceptual or abstract way as belonging to the leisure industry. Thinking generically like that led them to see their essential business as leisure, not brewing beers, and opened up a whole set of new choices.’ ‘A new journey,’ he said. ‘But the top leadership still had to take their managers and workforce with them. With closures and redundancies it couldn’t have been easy.’ ‘So managing change can only mean identifying new and positive directions, making a strategic plan, communicating truthfully and fully to all who must effect the changes – as well as be affected by them – and, above all, creating a positive and hopeful climate, one that makes people eager to embrace the challenging new oppor­ tunities ahead.’ ‘But isn’t all this leadership?’ ‘If you are right – and I believe you are – “managing change” was just a piece of business-school jargon, a bolt-on to the concept of management in the years before the importance of leadership came to be recognized. We manage things but people need to be led.’ ‘Hold on,’ cried the young chief executive. ‘How about man-management or human resource management?’ ‘We should dismiss the term “man-management” as belonging to a vanished era. Field Marshal Lord Slim told me that it was introduced into military jargon not long after the Indian Army produced a training manual entitled Mule Management! Sometimes I have heard wives talking about managing their husbands – presumably unruly ones – but the word used in relation to people usually carries, as here, overtones of manipulation.’ ‘And managing human resources?’ ‘Not a phrase that stirs my heart. It can imply that people are things – resources – on a par with money or machines. It has now replaced personnel, a word from the French military vocabulary used in contrast to materiel – the material weapons, equipment and logistic elements of an army. We don’t have a good name for what used to be called the personnel function, so “human resource management” survives for want of better. Perhaps later we can return to the phrase, however, as the inner meaning of “human resource” is worth exploring.’ The young chief executive mentioned that he was going to New York in a few days on business. While there he planned to attend a seminar on Transformational Leadership, a title that intrigued him. I said that I would look forward to sharing what he learnt, and we concluded as usual by identifying some keypoints.

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Leadership exists on different levels. A team leader is in charge of the primary group. An operational leader is responsible for a significant part of the organization. A strategic leader leads the whole and is, in Ovid’s phrase ‘a leader of leaders’. In order to discharge their seven generic functions, strategic leaders need to develop ‘practical wisdom’, a blend of goodness, intelligence and experience. Being a manager is not the same as being a leader. But to say that someone is a good manager implies that they have some leadership within them, just as being a good leader implies administrative ability. Some situations call for managers and others for business leaders (using business in the widest sense of where people are busy). The critical factor is change. Change throws up the need for leaders; leaders bring about change. Only things can be managed – money, business, affairs, machines. You cannot manage people – they can only be led.

We Awaken In Others The Same Attitude 8 Of Mind We Hold Towards Them

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Chapter Thirteen Giving and receiving

W

e began by discussing the three-day-seminar in New York. The young chief executive explained to me what had happened. ‘The speaker outlined in his opening talk the difference between transactional leadership and transformational leadership. He referred to J MacGregor Burns as the author of this landmark in leadership theory, in his book Leadership [1978]. You must have read it?’ ‘I have certainly glanced through it. It’s a large book mainly about American poli­ tical history, I seem to recall. I believe Burns was a professor at an American university in the field of politics or government. The phrase he actually used was transforming leadership. Later someone altered the phrase to transformational leadership, thereby subtly altering its meaning. Anyway, before we get onto that issue, what did the speaker have to say about transactional leadership?’ ‘Very little,’ the young chief executive recollected, and checking through his notes he confirmed that had been the case. ‘Beyond the brief reference to it in the opening talk we heard nothing more about it over the next three days.’ ‘Sounds rather as if it was no more than a straw man put up just in order to be quickly knocked down,’ I commented. ‘But the speaker must at least have told you what it was?’ ‘Yes he did. Transactional leadership merely implies that some exchange of value in order to get things done, arrived at by a bargaining process, has taken place. Beyond this transaction there is no sense of mutual commitment to a continuing higher purpose. To me it sounded more like a description of management rather than of leadership. What do you think?’ ‘It sounds as if the speaker was talking about a contractual relation where money is exchanged for labour. That entails a transaction – or a series of transactions – but it cannot be defined as leadership for it meets none of the necessary criteria we have been busy identifying. It appears to be a straightforward misuse of a term.’ ‘So should we dismiss it as worthless?’ ‘No, for most ideas have some value in them. It may be that the mistake was to con­ trast in a black-or-white, either/or way, the transactional element in human relations

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with the transforming or transformational element – whatever we discover this to be. In my view the transactional is the foundation on which the house rests. Did the speaker say anything about that?’ ‘No, he was silent on that subject.’ ‘Well, in that case it may be worth our while to explore this aspect of leadership for a moment. As I see it, reciprocity is a fairly fundamental principle in all human relations. To generalize, all human relations involve some form of give and take, a degree of mutual exchange. Reciprocity also implies the notion of an equal return or counteraction by each of two sides in relation to the other. If it’s mutual, then the same thing is given and taken on both sides. Mutual respect is a good example. A has respect for B, and B in return has respect in equal measure for A.’ The young chief executive reflected about some of the relations he had experienced, and how in some of them the balance between giving and receiving changed over time, so one person was giving more and the other person conversely was receiving more than they gave. ‘I notice you used the adjective equal, is that something we are born with or do we have to learn it?’ he asked. ‘Equivalence – the equal value of giving and taking – seems to be a guiding norm in human relations, which isn’t to say that it’s always the case. As you have just observed, few human relations have perfect symmetry in this respect; they may have it for a time, but time and change have a way of altering the balance. There is certainly a case for saying that our instinct for equivalent reciprocity is a matter of nature and nurture. I find it fascinating that in the first six months of a human baby’s life its mother hands objects to it and it takes them. Gradually the baby is encouraged to hand them back. By the time the baby is about 12 months’ old these exchanges involving giving and receiving have become more or less equal. The exchange of smiles probably follows the same pattern. Gorilla mothers and their babies do not follow this instinctive path.’ ‘This must be the basis for bartering – the exchange of one commodity for another,’ observed the young chief executive. We Cannot Live Only For Ourselves. A Thousand Fibres Connect Us With Our Fellow Human Beings; And Among These Fibres, As Sympathetic Threads, Our Actions Run As Causes, 9 And They Come Back To Us As Effects

The importance of being fair ‘Yes, and of course barter was eventually replaced – or largely so – by the introduction of money as the principal means of exchange. But barter or its monetary equivalent is merely the commercial expression of that underlying principle of reciprocity,

Giving and Receiving

a part of that much bigger web of interchange that links all of us as humans together. There is an expectation of giving and taking – usually in all human relations, and leadership is no exception,’ I said. ‘Are you suggesting that there is such a thing as transactional leadership?’ ‘Well, there is a transactional element in it. Often, where employment is concerned, it involves the exchange of money for time, skill and energy. I think it is vitally important that true leaders should be vigilant to ensure that the basic contract of exchange is honoured in a fair way – in the spirit as well as the letter of the contract. For example, people should get paid on time and receive all that is due to them. For satisfying that background, impersonal mutual obligation is a necessary condition for a fully personal relation.’ ‘Isn’t that a matter of acting with integrity and fairness – qualities you mentioned in the beginning?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘Yes, but it’s more a form of justice really – one of the cardinal virtues that the ancient Greeks and Romans expected in their leaders. The Roman lawyer Justinian expressed it in a nutshell: Justice is the constant and unceasing will to give everyone their right or due. A distinguished British Lord Chief Justice, Lord Denning, described justice as a spiritual thing with no satisfactory definition, though as a working definition he proposed that “it was what right-thinking men and women believe to be fair”. Denning’s use of the word “spiritual” reminds me of a saying that lingers in my mind: Justice is love in impersonal relations.’ ‘So in your view transactional leadership could be interpreted positively as honouring the spirit as well as the letter of the “contract” that exists between leader and followers. I hadn’t realized that there is a spiritual aspect to it. Food for thought.’ ‘Notice, too, that there are two broad types of contracts: spoken or written contracts, and unspoken or unwritten contracts. The former are explicit agreements, sometimes exactly spelt out in all their details, so that there is no room for ambiguity or reason for difficulty in interpretation. Work for lawyers here! An implicit “contract” by contrast is left largely unexpressed.’ ‘So in an implicit contract how do the parties know what are the elements or “clauses” of the binding agreement if nothing is written down and no one talks about it?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘The extent – sometimes the existence – of these implicit “contracts” is revealed by situations that arise. As a general principle, the more impersonal the relation, the more we tend to make the contract explicit. The more personal the relation, the more we rely upon unspoken mutual understanding and trust.’ ‘Obviously explicit contracts are involved in all forms of employment – at least nowadays – but is there an underlying implicit contract in leadership? After all, the leader–follower relation can be an intensely personal one.’

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The implicit contract ‘Yes, I think there is an implicit or “psychological” contract underlying all leadership. Expressed in its simplest form it reads something like this: If you lead, we will come with you. or If you will accompany me, I will lead the way.

‘As I say, this implicit understanding is seldom put into words; it is sensed and accepted by both parties. It usually develops over a period of time – it grows – and it invariably reflects a degree of mutual respect and even a deeper mutual feeling which may be called love,’ I added. ‘Soldiers who experience such respect and affection for their leader, for example, may prefer to die themselves rather than desert him in battle. For his part, the leader will sometimes lay down his life for his men. Anyway, by leading soldiers into battle from in front the leader is placing himself at greater risk than his men.’ ‘You are talking about loyalty, aren’t you?’ enquired the young chief executive. ‘Such a leader creates loyalty so that people – in industry or on the battlefield – are loyal to him and would follow him anywhere. Surely this is the essence of good leadership?’ ‘Loyalty – personal loyalty of the kind you mention – is a double-edged sword. In other words, there is a downside as well as an upside. So perhaps we should pause for a moment to dissect the concept. Originally loyalty meant to be faithful in allegiance to one’s lawful government. Later this meaning was extended to faithfulness to a private person, such as a leader – one to whom fidelity is held to be due. In that sense it would be possible, I suppose, to express the leadership “contract” I outlined as a kind of two-way or reciprocal loyalty.’ ‘You definitely don’t sound too keen on the word loyalty,’ said the young chief executive, with a smile. ‘My difficulty partly lies with the notion of being a follower of a particular leader. Apart from the fact that being a follower sounds rather passive – like sheep following a shepherd – my objection is that it emphasizes too much devotion or loyalty to the person of the leader rather than the cause at stake. It gets really pernicious when the leader invites or persuades his “followers” to follow him in some path that is inimical to the cause. ‘Please don’t misunderstand me,’ I continued, ‘for I am not saying that it is wrong for a personal bond to develop between a leader and those who accompany him or her on the journey. As I have said, initial ignorance or even fear may turn into mutual respect and trust. That in turn is the breeding ground of mutual affection and may even develop into a love that is willing to make considerable sacrifices. That’s the way we are. Yet both wise leadership (and wise “followership”) rests on the principle

Giving and Receiving

that an implicit “contract” is not an unlimited liability on both sides. There are conditions, which may be implicit at first but frequently need to be made explicit as circumstances reveal them.’

Triangular relations The young chief executive and I discussed friendship and marriage as possible examples of personal relations that – at least in their higher forms – come close to having a character of ‘unlimited liability’. Even with marriage or being a parent, however, we found that more often than not there was some limit, some unspoken condition, even if it never came into operation. The slogan My country right or wrong struck us both as an unsatisfactory statement. ‘It’s as if there is a hierarchy of loyalties,’ he continued. ‘A leader who orders his followers to commit a crime or something that is immoral should not be obeyed because a higher loyalty comes into play, namely a loyalty to what is good or true. It’s a matter of values.’ ‘Yes, when someone gives you an order, there is a fraction of a second when your brain computes whether or not to obey it. Even the most strenuous attempts to “brainwash” humans so that they act under command like robots – efficient, insensitive, brutalized – can seldom totally eradicate the moral reflexes of the soul, at least where the brain of the person concerned is not vitiated by mental disease.’ ‘Then it is as if values are a third element, as it were distinct from the two parties. It reminds me of the idea that integrity means adhering to values outside oneself, especially truth. Isn’t this a fundamental principle about human relations, that they are always triangular – there is always a reference point?’ ‘Whether or not it’s a fundamental principle, it’s true that it makes a difference whether you regard relations as essentially dual – consisting only of persons or parties relating to each other – when it is as if the two are looking together at, say, a landscape or a road ahead. ‘The classic example of the dual relation must be the first stages of romantic love, when two lovers are absorbed by each other to the exclusion of anything or anyone else. Shakespeare is full of such pairs of lovesick lovers.’ ‘In real life, a few couples spin a cocoon of an egoism à deux for themselves. But most discover a third focus of interest…’ ‘The arrival of children does it, if nothing else,’ interjected the young chief executive. ‘A crying baby in the middle of the night is definitely “triangular” – I speak from recent experience! Your three-circle model – I notice you always put the TASK on the top – suggests that what each INDIVIDUAL (which includes the designated leader or leaders) and the TEAM triangulate on is the TASK. Therefore, by definition, it is common, or at least capable of becoming so.’

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‘Yes, but I am not arguing here that it necessarily feels common. It’s just a fact. There is a job to be done that one person cannot do on his or her own. However the situation has been reached, it is a common task for this pair of individuals or group of people. Therefore all relations involving leadership are triangular. Talk about leaders and followers can obscure that fundamental fact.’ ‘Has that always been the case?’ ‘It probably goes back to our prehistoric past as hunter-gatherers, when men were companions in the endless chase. Evolution conditioned us to work together in pursuit of an elusive quarry. Writing in The Four Loves [1966], C S Lewis sees the origins of male companionship and friendship in “early communities where the cooper­ ation of the males as hunters and fighters was no less necessary than the begetting and rearing of children. And to like doing what must be done is a characteristic that has survival value. We not only had to do the things, we had to talk about them. We had to plan the hunt and the battle. When they were over we had to hold a post mortem and draw conclusions for the future. We like this even better…”.’ ‘In terms of the three-circles, then,’ commented the young chief executive, ‘the com­ mon TASK is the hunt, and the needs of INDIVIDUALS are met by sharing out the meat. As for the functions, Lewis has mentioned two already – planning and reviewing.’ ‘Yes, but he isn’t looking at it through the lens of the three-circles model as such. What Lewis highlights is the “pleasure in co-operation, in talking shop, in the mutual respect and understanding of men who daily see one another tested, that underlies the whole process”.’ ‘Rather sexist, isn’t he?’ ‘Well, he was a man of his time,’ I replied. ‘Lewis saw this necessary companionship of hunters in order to survive as the matrix of friendship. Here is what he has to say: Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste that the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden)… Companionship was between people who were doing something together – hunting, studying, painting or what you will. The Friends will still be looking together, but at something inward, less widely shared and less easily defined; still hunters, but of some immaterial quarry; still collaborating, but in some work the world does not, or not yet take account of; still travelling companions, but on a different kind of journey. Hence we picture lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead.

‘I should add that Lewis does not undervalue companionship. “We do not disparage silver by distinguishing it from gold,” he says.’ ‘Both companionship and friendship then are – in your phrase – triangular relations,’ said the young chief executive. ‘I suppose the corollary is that people who want to do nothing or who lack any interests can hardly find companions or friends. If you are not going anywhere, how can you find yourself among fellow-travellers?’

Giving and Receiving

Life Has Taught Us That Love Does Not Consist In Gazing At Each Other But In Looking Outward Together 10 In The Same Direction ‘That is what Lewis is suggesting. Notice his use of the journey motif, both in the literal and metaphorical senses. The shared journey or quest, if you like, is the third point of the triangle.’ ‘So it can be an actual journey, like the hunt, or a more abstract one like the search for a scientific truth…’ ‘Yes, all military operations are examples of actual journeys by land, sea or air – journeys made especially hazardous by being made into the face of an enemy. As you say, many other journeys we make are non-physical in nature, but nonetheless real. They involve colleagues and usually a leader – the first companion. Banesh Hoffman wrote of his experience as a colleague of Albert Einstein: If you worked with him he made you aware of a common enemy – the problem. But you became his partner in battle.’ ‘Partner in battle,’ said the young chief executive, ‘I like that phrase. Just to summarize where we are. There is a transactional dimension in all relations. Where it is explicit a leader should ensure that contracts are fairly, fully and honourably met. There is also an implicit or “psychological” contract, which has to be honoured in spirit, but it’s not a blank cheque. A third force, such as values, may set limits or conditions on the leader–follower relation. In fact there is always a third element – in any leader­ ship equation – namely the common TASK. Could you now help me to see where transformational leadership that I heard about in New York fits into this picture?’

What transforms people ‘We agreed, I believe, that there can be no such thing as transactional leadership, for merely honouring mutual agreements meets none of the necessary conditions we identified for explaining why the term leader can be used for anyone. Let’s assume it’s a way of talking about old-style management. So we are left not with a genuine choice between two alternative forms of leadership, but with only old-style management or transformational leadership. Have I got that right?’ ‘So far so good. The transformational leader is one who transforms or changes those working for him or her into high performers.’ ‘Did the speaker tell you how this transformation was to be achieved?’ ‘He used lots of buzz-words like vision, empowerment and charisma, and told some vivid stories of companies that had been transformed. I have hard copies of his PowerPoint slides here…’ We looked through them, laughing at the cartoons, but we could find no very clear answers to how you changed people. It was mainly an exhortation to be charismatic.’

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‘Charisma may work in some situations, not in others. Could the speaker offer you any guidelines as to when his remedies would work and when they would not?’ ‘He was silent on that point.’ ‘Well, you should ask for your money back,’ I said with a smile. ‘It sounds as if transformational leadership assumes a dual model of relation, where A “transforms” or changes B so that B becomes a peak performer.’ ‘You mentioned that J McGregor Burns used a different form of the word – was it transforming leadership? What did he have in mind?’ ‘Burns’ idea of transforming leadership was more interesting in that in his concept both followers and leaders are changed, and also the change is expressed as being for the better in a moral way. Followers are changed into leaders, and leaders become moral agents in enabling others to grow as persons.’ ‘It still sounds essentially a dual model,’ said the young chief executive, ‘but at least there is reciprocity: each is changing the other. Does Burns have much to say about how this positive interaction, leading to moral improvement and high levels of motivation, comes about?’ ‘Not much, I’m afraid. It happens, he says, when people engage with each other in a certain way. Burns tells us that the best modern example of a transforming leader is Gandhi, who, he says, aroused and elevated the hopes and demands of millions of Indians and whose life and personality, he believes, were enhanced in the process.’ ‘Yes, there is something noble about Gandhi,’ mused the young chief executive. ‘But surely it was a triangular relation? Gandhi gave spiritual leadership to the Indian people – the most spiritually minded on earth – on the long journey towards political freedom from British rule. He attempted to lead them, too, on the even more uphill road to social equality for all people in India, including the poorest and lowest castes. If you had put Gandhi in charge of car production at Ford and told him to transform the workers so that they had higher motivation levels and greater productivity, would he have succeeded?’ I laughed at the thought of a barefooted Gandhi in his white robes trying to transform the assembly-line workers in Detroit. Charisma isn’t transferable. Nor is personal charisma enough. There has to be a set of factors or forces at work in a situation that creates the phenomenon that Burns was attempting to describe. ‘That dimension of nobility – that factor that changes both leader and followers for the better – must be limited to your TASK circle,’ said the young chief executive, who had also been thinking quietly to himself. ‘If the common purpose isn’t a noble one, then there is a vital dimension missing. ‘Putting it another way, your three-circle model is incomplete,’ he continued. ‘Although it is perfectly legitimate to talk about the interrelation of the needs of task, team and individual, the model now should be extended to encompass the interactions between the values in the task or common purpose, the team or organization, and the individual person. My hunch is that it is some chain reaction of values in this

Giving and Receiving

triangle that leads to the phenomenon of transformation of character and trans­ cendence of motivation. Perhaps we should take each of the three elements – the PURPOSE, the PEOPLE and the LEADER – in turn and explore how the values in them contribute to inspiration. What do you think?’ ‘It’s worth exploring. But first let’s write down the keypoints so far.’

Keypoints ●●

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Reciprocity – the equivalence of giving and taking – is as fundamental a law in the sphere of human relations as the law of gravity is in physics. Consequently, in all personal relations there is a transactional ‘impersonal’ basis. It is important that leaders honour these explicit or implicit contracts in letter and spirit. It creates and maintains trust. There is a ‘psychological contract’ in leadership: If you lead, we will follow; if you follow, I will lead. Not everyone grasps that underlying implicit obligation. A French revolutionary leader one day sat in a café and exclaimed: ‘There goes the mob… I am their leader – I must follow them.’ Human relations have a triangular dimension. In working relations the area designated by the TASK circle is what we have in common. It is as if we are not looking into each other’s eyes but looking outwards in the same direction. A good leader sees others not as personal followers but as companies and partners on a common journey. Needs is only one side of the coin, the other is values. The values inherent in the task, team and individual circles take us more fully into the realm of leadership.

The art of the conductor is to be able to communicate with the musicians and, beyond that, coax from them an inspiring performance. I’ve seen enough in this business to know that the difference between a good conductor and a great conductor is that the great conductor can 11 make them perform as he wants and throw that inspiration over the audience… I believe, particularly with great musicians that I’m able to collaborate with, that the sky should be the limit. And therefore as I am prepared to take the risks and shoot for the limit, then why shouldn’t they follow? Sir Georg Solti, orchestral conductor

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Chapter Fourteen Beyond the call of duty

‘R

eflecting on our last discussion,’ began the young chief executive, ‘I wonder if inspirational leadership is not so much a property that someone has – a set of charismatic qualities – as the product of interactions between the three factors we mentioned: people, purpose and leader. You see, I am following the idea that all human relations are triangular in form – a triangle with dynamos at each angle.’ ‘May I try to express it slightly differently? There is a well-known phenomenon of people working far beyond “the call of duty”, often with far greater enjoyment or satisfaction, and sometimes with at least feeling that they have grown in stature as a result of their engagement. We could call this transcendent work, for want of a better phrase.’ ‘By transcendent, then, you mean activity that exceeds usual limits in quality and quantity, not something that is incomprehensible and lies beyond ordinary human experience?’ ‘Precisely. We know, too, that transcendent work can occur in a field as if by magic. For “control groups” working under the same conditions do not exhibit it. Indeed, they may turn in performances that are well below “the call of duty”. So the question arises: what is the explanation for this phenomenon?’ ‘The example you gave from Xenophon’s writings – the two sets of Greek trireme rowers (p87) – well illustrates the point you are making. Xenophon sees the difference as lying in the personalities of the rowing-masters. One is obviously an inspirational leader and the other is not.’ ‘Yes, but to develop our hypothesis, for the phenomenon of transcendent work to appear there have to be three necessary conditions present – people, purpose and leader – which together add up to the sufficient condition. It’s like a rainbow: the interactions have to be just right. A rainbow is the product of light interacting with droplets of water suspended in the air. Get the angle right and – given our knowledge of the nature of light and the function of prisms – we can explain a rainbow. We can admire and see it in many forms, enjoy it when present, notice it fading and regret its passing. It cannot be touched, stored, measured or bought – still less managed. It’s not an object, like water in a tap, that can be turned on and off at will.’

Beyond the Call of Duty

‘In those respects it’s rather like a lot of other things, such as joy or happiness,’ mused the young chief executive, ‘which are highly valued, enjoyed when present and as deeply missed when absent. They, too, are the outcome of interactions. You can’t hang onto them, as they seem to come and go as if they had a mind of their own.’ He Who Binds To Himself A Joy Doth The Winged Life Destroy But He Who Kisses A Joy As It Flies 12 Lives In Eternity’s Sunrise

On human nature ‘Doubtless there are necessary conditions for joy or happiness if one searched them out, but when it comes to our particular rainbow – transcendent work – we at least have a head start in that we know we need to look at three factors. So shall we begin by exploring what all groups and all individuals have in common, namely human nature?’ ‘Globally? Surely the fact that people live in different cultures and have lived at different periods in history will alter the picture?’ ‘Yes, hence the distinctiveness and variety of mankind – none of us is the same. But let us assume for the moment that underlying all these individual and social variations there is a common human nature, something we all share. What would you pick out as its salient feature?’ ‘Obviously we all have bodies and therefore a set of needs: for food and drink, for shelter, for safety and self-preservation, for health. We are all born, grow up – or the fortunate do – grow old and die. We have minds as well as bodies.’ ‘We share too a double nature as being both social beings – our tribal legacy – and yet individuals. The word person best expresses our dual citizenship, for we only become persons in relation to each other. The word derives from persona, the mask that Greek actors wore in a drama and hence the role or character they played. It came to be used in Roman law for those who were recognized in the courts as having legal entity and thus being the subject of rights and duties. So we all have personality – the quality or state of being a person. ‘That must – or I should say ought – to transcend the differences of race, colour, gender, disability, wealth and age,’ I continued. ‘All individual human beings are persons and, however much they act to forfeit their birthright by doing despicable or evil things, they remain entitled to be treated with respect as they have the dignity of being persons.’ ‘That is the case, though it is sometimes terribly hard for the parents of a child murdered by a violent paedophile to abide by this principle when their feelings or emotions are taking them in the opposite direction,’ said the young chief executive.

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‘Human emotions can be so immensely strong. I suppose human nature is a compound of body, mind and heart, physical needs or instincts, reason and emotions. The speaker in New York told us, I remember now, that management is about the mind, while leadership deals with the emotions.’

Spirit within ‘I hope you are sceptical about that statement. At best it is a half-truth. For emotions are often confused with spirit.’ ‘So you would make a distinction between the two?’ ‘In this context, yes. It gives us a four-fold description of human nature as PHYSICAL, MENTAL, EMOTIONAL and SPIRITUAL. We are like aircraft that fly on four engines.’ ‘So you see them as sources of power or energy?’ ‘Physical energy is obvious, isn’t it? Mental power is also something we talk about. Emotion and motivation are close – the mot in each of the two words comes from the same Latin verb “to move”. It is not so clear that there is such a thing as spiritual energy, as my aircraft analogy posits, but maybe there is.’ ‘Sounds more like windpower to me,’ smiled the young chief executive, shaking his sceptical head. ‘You may not be far off the mark. Spirit comes from the Latin word for air or breath. As dead people do not breathe, the primitive mind supposed that life was in the breath. So in Genesis, for example, God breathes into man (Adam is the Hebrew word for man), whose shape he previously shaped from the clay, and man comes alive. God literally inspires or inspirits him, with life.’ ‘Like the kiss of life,’ reflected the young chief executive. ‘Of course the creation myth at the beginning of Genesis, with this anthropo­ morphic picture of God making man, is not to be taken literally. The concept of spirit as we know it took shape over centuries, as it acquired meanings or overtones above the original notion that it was life in the vital or biological sense. The following five developed senses of the word give us an idea of the present scope or range of the word: ●● ●●

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the active or essential power operating in persons; a particular character, disposition or temper which exists in or pervades or animates a person or a group of persons; the disposition, feeling or frame of mind with which something is considered, viewed or done; a person, group or organization considered in relation to its character or disposition;

Beyond the Call of Duty ●●

the essential nature or qualities of someone or some group, which constitutes its pervading or tempering principle.’

‘There is quite a strong sense that spirit is the active or essential power of the inner self,’ commented the young chief executive. ‘In that respect how does spirit differ from soul?’ No Man Really Knows About Other Human Beings. 13 The Best He Can Do Is To Suppose That They Are Like Himself ‘Both refer to the indefinable immaterial essence, the animating or activating prin­ ciple of an individual person. So neither can be located by the senses. That doesn’t mean to say that they are not real, of course, for there are lots of things (like electricity) that we cannot see yet we know to be real. The word soul is used more when we think of something akin to the essential person, with functions, responsibilities, aspects or a destiny, or when its connection with the body is in view. Perhaps the nearest we can get to it is when we sense a more or less unchanging inner self within us – that which constitutes me.’ ‘And spirit?’ ‘That sometimes stresses an opposition or antagonism to the material or corporeal, as for example when we speak of spiritual values in contrast to material values. But it is the preferred word when the stress is on the quality, movement or activity of that essence or entity. Soul sounds a bit static, but spirit is always dynamic.’ ‘Yes, it’s a much more dynamic word,’ agreed the young chief executive. ‘If someone is described as spirited, it suggests to me a person with a high degree of energy and vitality, mixed with a touch of daring. But it can also suggest an extraordinary buoyancy or resilience, a calmness or other worldliness, a refusal to go under or to give up. Maybe spirit is the energy of the soul,’ he added, after some moments of reflection. ‘To use again that earlier distinction, spirit is implicit, it is innate in us. Usually it is only circumstances that reveal its presence and nature.’ ‘There is another possible characteristic of spirit that is relevant here: the idea that it is something common, something we share – that it is not, as it were, private property.’ ‘Rather like the air we breathe.’ ‘And therefore it is possible – if that assumption is right – to communicate: to make common to all what one presently possesses.’ ‘Transactions of the spirit,’ murmured the young chief executive. ‘It reminds me of our discussion about reciprocity, especially where a mutual relation springs up where trust or respect is given and the same is received back in return.’ ‘Yes, I think those are examples of the wider communication I have in mind. If someone trusts another and that evokes a response in kind, could we not say that he or she had inspired trust?’

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The young chief executive accepted that it would be normal to use the word in that context. It was a neutral term, he observed, since one can inspire mistrust, lack of respect, fear or hatred in others. ‘It’s very hard to separate the things of the spirit from the emotional and mental domains, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Some people can inspire emotions in others, such as love and fear. Others can arouse mental energies in others, such as interest and curiosity.’ ‘Impossible, for we are wholes and not sums of parts. Body, heart, mind and spirit appear to us to be an indivisible unity, though many hope that ultimately the soul survives. What is especially important in this context is that spirit is associated with the human capability for transcendence, for surpassing usual limits or the high-tide watermarkers of past experience.’ I Am A Little World Made Cunningly of Elements, 14 And An Angelic Sprite To Solve A Problem Which Has Long Resisted The Skill And Persistence Of Others Is An Irresistible Magnet In Every Sphere Of Human Activity. There Is No Height, No Depths, 15 That The Spirit Of Man Guided By A Higher Spirit Cannot Attain

The uses of spirit ‘You said a few moments ago that the word spirit is used when movement or activity is implied. Could it be that the spirit in us is naturally drawn to journeys – journeys of significance?’ ‘What an interesting thought!’ I replied. ‘I wonder if you might be right. Maybe even challenging physical journeys have some deeper resonance in our essential being. Have you noticed that all the world’s fairy stories involve journeys set within the context of the eternal struggle between good and evil? ‘Maybe it depends upon the journey, but some can become epics of the human spirit. Captain Scott’s journey to the South Pole ended in failure and disaster, yet when we read his last letters we sense that other inner journey of the indomitable human spirit. ‘One of the most experienced and best qualified of all the American astronauts, Storey Musgrave, was asked what motivated them to make the great journey into space not once but many times, in spite of the attendant dangers. “Depends on who you are,” he replied, “but for me its 99.9% spiritually driven – a direct revelation of the cosmos, God if you will.” Not since the 1960s, he added, have we had a vision that space travel is about people, what it means to be a human being.’

Beyond the Call of Duty

‘That begins to suggest to me,’ said the young chief executive, ‘that there is indeed a spiritual energy implicit in us, a potential source of high-octane fuel. Given the oxygen of inspiration and a lighted match it can burst into life and generate new energy. Let me pause and write down a few keypoints.’

Keypoints ●●

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Sometimes work is done in such a way that amazes observers in terms of its quality – it far exceeds what people thought they could do. Forces present in the task, in the people themselves, and the leader, interact to produce this result. Human beings are like four-engined aircraft. The engines are body, mind, heart and spirit. Spirit is difficult to define, but it relates to the essence of an individual person – what traditionally is called the soul. Spirit is dynamic rather than static. It suggests movement, energy and resilience. In some way we don’t understand spirit is also a common property. We have it but we also share it. It is that which makes possible the phenomenon of inspiration. It leaves us open, too, to the idea that there is a higher power or spirit that may also inspire us in creative ways, guide us and strengthen us. Our sense of being on an inner journey is a fruit of our spiritual nature.

A Vision Without A Task Is A Dream 16 A Task Without A Vision Is Mere Drudgery

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Chapter Fifteen The common task

‘P

eople, then, are spiritual human beings. Because we have a spirit we are capable of being inspired. We look for meaning and purpose. Our spirit is active or dynamic, so change, forward movement and journeys attract us at a deep level. What I suggest we explore next is the kind of task that is capable of evoking our full range of energies.’ ‘That surely must be a matter of values,’ said the young chief executive. ‘But before we come to that may I ask why the top circle – the apex of the triangular relation – is labelled TASK and not, more fashionably, MISSION or VISION. Quite frankly, TASK has an old-fashioned ring about it.’ ‘You may be right, but it’s a question of choosing the right word, the one that must work at all three levels of leadership – team, operational and strategic. So it is general, and it implies little more than something that needs to be done. There’s an element of must about it, an obligation of some kind – imposed from outside or within – to complete it. It is a psychological sense or feeling in groups, the lust to finish as John Wesley once called it. That is why it is appropriate to call it a group need.’ ‘The strength of that internal group need to achieve the task must vary quite considerably,’ observed the young chief executive. ‘Doesn’t that take us immediately to the value the group attaches to accomplishing the task?’ ‘What do you think are the factors that come into play here?’ ‘To state the obvious, if the group itself or its individual members are to receive large financial pay increases or bonuses, then they will be more eager to achieve the task.’ ‘Yes, but these rewards are extrinsic – they are distinctly outside the task in question and are not derived from its essential nature. To complete the picture, we would have to sketch in the more negative penalties of not accomplishing the common task. For fear is a strong motivator. Soldiers, for example, who do not win a battle are liable to be killed in the rout or to spend a long period in captivity.’ ‘True,’ he said, ‘but these positive and negative consequences – the traditional sticks and carrots – are by their very nature completely unlike the given task. What are

The Common Task

the intrinsic elements in a task – those that belong to its essential nature – that excite the enthusiasm and commitment of people, that make it potentially inspiring?’ ‘What does your experience suggest?’ I asked. The young chief executive considered the question and then suggested we look at actual cases. So we then discussed what constitutes the TASK circle in a wide range of organizations – those like his own producing goods or services for profit, government departments, public services like health or the police, schools and universities, sporting bodies, voluntary bodies, charities and churches. He mentioned, too, some of the tasks that he had found inspiring. Then he offered a tentative conclusion. ‘The common element in the tasks that inspire – or are capable of inspiring – people seems to be that they contribute directly or indirectly to some wider purpose for good.’ ‘What is your concept of good in this context?’ I asked. ‘It could be social good – producing the goods and services that society needs – or doing good for needy or unfortunate individuals, as charities do. Public services are also, as the name implies, serving the good of the public…’

Service to others ‘There is an important distinction there,’ I said. ‘If I can use a personal example, after school my generation had to do two years of military conscription which in Britain was called National Service (originally a wartime phrase coined by Winston Churchill for civilians enlisted in the armed forces and applied by him to the post-war compulsory period). I experienced a strong sense of lack of purpose or meaning in those days filled with drill, cleaning equipment, training exercises, guard duties. History reveals, moreover, that my months guarding the Canal Zone, apparently to protect Britain’s oil supplies, was a complete waste of time. I was not making anything, nor was I meeting the needs of individuals who needed help, like my girlfriend at the time who worked as a nurse for the Save The Children Fund in Jordan’s refugee camps. Deeper reflection on Churchill’s phrase, however, led me to see that one can serve a nation or a society, not just a needy individual neighbour. Moreover, in Milton’s words: They also serve who only stand and wait. In the context of the Cold War and the circumstances of the day – including the levels of knowledge then available – my unchosen profession as a soldier had dignity.’ The young chief executive had been listening intently. ‘One difficulty in the discovery you made while doing National Service goes back to the issue of reciprocity. If the Samaritan whom we call “The Good Samaritan” (the word good doesn’t actually appear in the story) helps the mugged guy out of the ditch and gets him back on his feet, at least he gets thanked. There is a face-to-face, two-way personal relation of giving and receiving…’

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‘As Shakespeare wrote: Thanksgiving – the exchequer of the poor.’ ‘Yes, but my point is that society or the nation cannot reciprocate in that way. If you drive a train of commuters into London every day, you may be meeting one of society’s needs, but there is no reciprocity from the passengers. It becomes a monetary transaction – you drive the train in return for your wages, while passengers pay the company to be transported in safety and on time from A to B. There is no personal relation, no personal reciprocity, to speak of.’ ‘That has to be the case. But, in my analogy of the soldier, the intrinsic fundamental of service is still there, though it is a more impersonal service to the commonwealth, not the personal service to an individual we normally associate with the word. Some soldiers do their work solely for wages – we call them mercenaries – but others are inspired by ideals such as serving the good of their nation or the international community, and prove themselves willing to sacrifice their lives in those causes. Train drivers are no different: a few are mercenaries, but most want to have a sense of making a valued contribution to the needs of society.’ ‘One of the fundamentals that underlies the larger design of the TASK, then, is an inherent value of good,’ said the young chief executive. ‘When that sense of higher purpose is lost or absent is when cynicism, apathy or hostility takes over. Mind you, that implicit quality of good may take some teasing out. But if it is not innately there, imprinted within the DNA of the TASK, we are left only with extrinsic goods.’ ‘And they are not to be underestimated. To reuse C S Lewis’s metaphor, we should not think less of silver because it is not gold. If there is a necessity for toil – that is, work without mental, emotional or spiritual value – then rewarding or compensating the labourers with extrinsic goods such as money or other material rewards, together with appreciation for undertaking what no one else would voluntarily choose to do, makes their labour palatable and even satisfying. But unless they can see a purpose in it, some good the task necessarily serves, it will be as soul-deadening as turning an endless treadmill in a 19th century prison. For that is the way we are made.’ ‘Is good the only value that we should look for?’ the young chief executive enquired. The Value You Add Comes From 17 The Values You Hold

Three great values ‘The value of truth seems to be equally important. You may recall that when we talked about integrity as a leadership quality that makes people trust you, the importance of truth as conceived to be something outside oneself, something to which one owned a primary allegiance, emerged,’ I replied.

The Common Task

‘In what sense can a task have truth? Let us assume that a leader, or anyone else for that matter, should in principle always tell the truth about the task in hand. Is that what you mean?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘Not entirely, though actually seeing clearly the truth about the task – the realities of the situation – is significant and we might return to that later. No, what I had in mind were those tasks that can be interpreted self-evidently or indirectly as pursuits of truth. All forms of education – for truth is the mind’s good – and research in the sciences or arts fall under that banner. (Not, of course, the so-called academic research that is self-serving, banal and lacking a sense of exploration.) Therefore they tend to seem self-evidently meaningful or purposeful to us.’ ‘So, to take our present conversation as an example, it feels meaningful because we seek the truth about leadership?’ ‘Yes, and even if we got nowhere, the attempt, the journey, would I suspect seem worthwhile to both of us. The same can be said, I suggest, for tasks that involve or have the value of beauty implicit in them. A world-famous film producer said recently: “All my life I have a compulsion to make beautiful things. Beauty is for me an ideal that pulls me towards it.” Her words capture the artistic or creative impulse that is encoded in our spiritual DNA, though some obviously have it in greater measure than others.’ ‘Good, truth, beauty – are there any other values that we should look for?’ ‘There is a broad tradition, emanating from the ancient Greek philosophers who were the first to explore this area, that these three are the chief values. Other values are satellite moons circling around these planets. ‘It’s interesting that the values appear to have some relation to each other,’ I continued. ‘Scientists and mathematicians, for example, often comment on the beauty of the truths they discover. The relation between truth and goodness is self-evident. Apart from implying someone who adheres to truth, “goodness” also (literally) means wholeness. It is hard to conceive of a person of integrity or a whole person who is not also good.’ ‘What of the relation of beauty and goodness?’ ‘Here again we tend to link them, at least subjectively. Beauty is the only visible value of the three, and we tend to assume that a beautiful person is morally good…’ ‘And an ugly one bad.’ ‘In a more sophisticated frame of mind we distinguish between an inner beauty as compared to an exterior or merely physical form of beauty. We all know that a lovely smile can transform a plain face, or that technically good looks can lack beauty. The inner kind of beauty seems to be the obverse side of goodness. As Shakespeare wrote in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

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While I spoke the young chief executive had been doodling on some paper. He had drawn another three-overlapping-circles model, which he showed me.

GOOD

x TRUTH

BEAUTY

‘I am curious to know what we might call x, the place where all the three values come together. If these ideals have their own drawing power; then the x energy must have a three-fold intensity.’ ‘We can only speculate about that,’ I replied. ‘If you reverse the image and imagine a task that is on the full overlay of evil, a lie and ugly – the Nazi extermination camps come to mind – the effects on humans, directly or indirectly, are appalling, almost too painful even to contemplate. ‘I am not suggesting that goodness, truth and beauty are there in their pure forms, but we need at least a trace of them – a few drops of the supernatural in the bath of reality – to make our endeavours seem worthwhile, meaningful or purposeful.’ ‘Does x have a name?’ ‘No, it does not. Maybe love is a contender. For love is an energy or force, and it is the only thing we know that integrates the concepts of good, truth and beauty.’ Men think there are circumstances when they may treat their fellow beings without love, but no such circumstances exist. Inanimate objects may be dealt with/without love, but human beings cannot be treated without love. If you feel no love for people, leave them alone. Occupy yourself with things, with your own self, with anything you please, but not with people. Leo Tolstoy

The Common Task

A sense of purpose ‘What is the relation between TASK in your diagram and PURPOSE?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘As I mentioned task is just a general word signifying something that needs to be done. It does, however, usually suggest a limited, particular or non-recurring piece of work, or a circumscribed or short-term undertaking, whether voluntary or not.’ ‘And one that will require a relative amount of effort.’ ‘Yes, even to the point of being hard and unpleasant. What gives tasks their meaning or value is their purpose, or desired end result.’ ‘In that case, how does purpose differ from the other words that we commonly use for the result towards which someone or some organization chooses to direct activity, such as aim, end, goal, object or objective?’ ‘Purpose differs from them in two respects. Firstly, it may suggest either a resolute, deliberate movement towards a result – being filled with a sense of purpose – or the desired result itself. It’s energy plus direction. Secondly, and importantly in the context of our present discussion, the specific overtone of purpose in either use is that of signi­ficance – a key word that encompasses both meaning and importance. An objective (or one of the other terms) can be specified, quantified and measured – it answers the what question. Purpose is not amenable to measurement and answers the why question.’ ‘And purpose refers to those underlying values of good present in some tasks or kinds of work. I can see now why meaning and purpose are so often associated together – they are almost synonymous. Where does vision fit into this framework?’ It Is Provided In The Essence Of Things That From Any Fruition Of Success, No Matter What, Shall Come Forth Something 18 To Make A Greater Struggle Necessary

On vision ‘Vision is a much overused word nowadays, and I tend to avoid it if I can. Even pedestrian goals or objectives – sometimes merely ambitious intentions – are pretentiously presented as visions. Having said that, there is in fact quite a strong link between leadership and vision. Not surprising really, because leading in front on the way ahead implies that you can see – literal vision – the path. Hence the proverb Jesus quoted: If the blind leads the blind, both will fall into the ditch. ‘Vision in the literal sense of the proper functioning of the eyes extends quite readily to the metaphorical idea of sharpness and understanding. In this sense it can

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indicate discernment or foresight – being able to “see over the horizon”. You may remember that Thermistocles was credited with above-average success in inferring or guessing what the future might be, rather than imagining an outcome in accord with either what is hoped or what is feared. In relatively recent times Winston Churchill showed similar acumen in foreseeing the inevitability of war with Hitler and, later, that Communism would replace Fascism as the post-war enemy to freedom. Ordinary reasoning and experience, elements of practical wisdom, are enough to explain how Thermistocles came to his conclusions about the threat of the Persian Empire or how Churchill reached his not dissimilar ones about the overreaching imperial ambition of Adolf Hitler.’ ‘But isn’t there much more to vision than a power to see what is not evident to the average mind or having above-average foresight as to what the future will be like?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘So far what I have said roughly falls within Jonathan Swift’s definition: Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. To see what the world will actually be like in, say, 2025, to select the true scenario from many possible ones, is a form of “seeing things invisible”, at least to others.’ ‘A scenario is an outline or synopsis of a play,’ said the young chief executive. ‘Doesn’t that metaphor assume that the play is already written, and we are trying to predict what the scenes in Act 3 ‘The Future’ will be, going on our knowledge of Act 1 ‘The Past’ and Act 2 ‘The Present’? Perhaps we are the authors, not the audience, so isn’t it us who write the script for the next scene?’ ‘Part-authors maybe, if you believe – as I do – in what Shakespeare called a divinity that shapes our ends rough-hew them how we will. There is some predictability in history, or, to put it slightly differently, some guesses are better than others. The study of history is valuable because it enables us to get to know a lot of people in their Act 2, looking forwards to their Act 3, and we are able to check their powers of foresight or their attempts to create new scenes. Such a study develops a sense of how the river of history flows. We can see some individuals who had a vision in the creative sense.’ ‘Like an artist’s vision?’ ‘Yes, we are talking here not about the power of sight, literal or metaphorical, but about the act or power of imagination. And a vision here applies to what is seen. It may be something seen in a dream or hallucination, it may be illusory, imaginary, ideal or a supernatural appearance that conveys a revelation.’ ‘I can see why to call some plan visionary is a polite way of saying it’s totally imprac­ tical and lacks any capability of realization!’ laughed the young chief executive. ‘What then constitutes a true vision?’ I asked. ‘It must be a blend of imagination – for you are envisioning a state or product that doesn’t exist, no one has actually seen it – with realism. I mean it has to be feasible, given the resources available and the limits imposed by the “river of history”. Henry

The Common Task

Ford’s concept of a car that every American family could afford, or the idea of man walking on the moon are examples of what you called true vision. Stretching, but possible. Also made real by the ability of the leader to work back to the present, thereby creating a path to the future. ‘Bringing things down to earth,’ concluded the young chief executive, ‘it’s the imaginative power to see growth possibilities for the future hidden in the present. The seeds of the future lie in the present. Vision Is Seeing The Potential Purpose Hidden In The Chaos Of The Moment, But Which Could Bring To Birth New Possibilities For A Person, A Company Or A Nation Vision Is Seeing What Life Could Be Like While Dealing With Life As It Is Vision Deals With Those Deeper Human Intangibles That Alone Give Ultimate Purpose To Life In The End, Vision Must Always Deal With Life’s Qualities, 19 Not With Its Quantities Vision Is The Blazing Campfire Around Which People Will Gather. 20 It Provides Light, Energy, Warmth, And Unity ‘A true vision, then, defines the presently unseen result the team or organization is aiming for – that which informs the journey. It transforms change into a way of reaching a desired end.’ ‘Yes, the result is seen in “the eye of the imagination”. Faith may be defined as believing in the reality of things unseen.’ ‘In all but literal physical journeys or voyages, don’t all leaders require a degree of vision? How else can they provide direction on the journey?’ ‘What you say must be true. But, given the amount of contingency that multiplies dramatically beyond the relative probabilities of tomorrow – “chaos theory” – a flexibility over actual destinations is essential. In other words, when it comes to the future no one has 20:20 vision. As the proverb says, In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king. It’s moving in the right direction that matters.’ ‘With purpose?’ ‘There are visions and visions. But for visions to be inspiring, to serve a purpose and to elicit a sense of purpose – the spiritual energy that is released – they have to be touched with the red, blue and green of the good, truth and beauty.’ ‘Why those colours?’ ‘Because light refracts into those three primary colours.’ ‘It sounds to me as if you are elevating PURPOSE above VISION.’ ‘If we are talking about inspiration, yes I am. Hitler had a vision of a Europe without Jews, and the task he gave to his henchmen was to exterminate them in

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death-camps. It was a vision with no purpose or meaning, devoid of the cardinal values, therefore it could never inspire the spirit deep within us. I discount those temporarily taken in by Hitler’s delusions.’ ‘To summarize,’ said the young chief executive, ‘we can discard TASK as being essentially time-limited. What matters is having PURPOSE, in the sense of having both a clear vision of the overall result or end of one’s endeavours and that spirit or feeling of movement towards the desired result, however it is defined, being as it were drawn towards it like a magnet. That covers vision except in the special sense where an act of the imagination is involved, where something is to be first imagined, then shared with others and then created or made real.’ ‘If the vision has values of the kind we have been discussing, we call it a creative vision. The importance of the process you outlined is that it’s the only way that the valuable new things happen in our human odyssey which, like pearls, we string together as progress. ‘But don’t chuck out TASK. For PURPOSE or VISION have to be broken down into tasks however we label them. Otherwise they remain merely an intention or a dream. Unlike purpose or vision, task spells effort, exertion, even struggle. A task can be hard, unpleasant, arduous, demanding.’ ‘But if it was easy,’ he said, ‘I don’t think people would respond. Don’t we find a degree of challenge in the very difficulty of such a task?’

The need for challenge ‘But are they not put off if the task is impossible?’ I counter-questioned. ‘Of course. So there is a fine balance between what is far from easy and what is just plain impossible. Man can get to the moon on a space rocket but we cannot land on the sun.’ ‘That would certainly be an all-consuming experience,’ I said, smiling at the thought. ‘So a potentially inspiring task is one that offers to stretch you, to extend you in one or more dimensions of your ability, perhaps even your being. As Robert Browning put it: Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?’

‘Isn’t that how we grow?’ interjected the young chief executive. ‘Possibly, if we stay stretched, as it were, and do not shrink back into our normal former or habitual selves like snails contracting back into their green-yellow shells. To be stretched is to be exercised beyond one’s ordinary or normal limits. Arguably we all have some stretch – the capacity to be stretched – within us. Perhaps it relates to the spirit within us.’

The Common Task

‘It doesn’t really matter what we call it, I know what you mean,’ said the young chief executive. ‘Personally, I love a challenge.’ ‘A challenge is really just a summons of some kind, a metaphorical form of someone suddenly thrusting a legal writ or demand into your hands, or a sentry challenging a stranger to identify himself or herself, or being called to fight a duel to answer some affront. The variety of challenges we are more likely to face share their characteristics of being often threatening, provocative, stimulating or inciting.’ ‘Did you say inciting or exciting,’ queried the young chief executive. ‘It may be both,’ I answered. ‘Either way a challenge is a call to make a special effort, often at a real personal cost.’ Example Is Not The Main Thing In Influencing Others – 21 It Is The Only Thing

Moral authority ‘To challenge someone – to make a demand as if of right – implies the exercise of authority of an unusual kind,’ mused the young chief executive. ‘If the demand came from a leader, then he or she must have that kind of authority. He or she must be able to ask people not to spare themselves in such a way that they cannot say no.’ ‘How do leaders acquire such moral authority?’ I queried. ‘In the first instance they have to be able to show – if called to do so – that they have not spared themselves. They have to be able to uncover their scars. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, who both endured suffering and imprisonment, have a certain nobility of character. Didn’t their people sense in them what you just called moral authority? It is frequently lacking, alas, in those who rely merely on the authority of their position. ‘Gandhi and Mandela had acquired the right to demand what they have already given. ‘By the same warrant, no board of directors can call for sacrifices from their managers and workforce if they, as the senior executives, have taken up residence in Easy Street,’ added the young chief executive. ‘Or Luxury Square. Of course the chairman of the board can appeal for everyone to tighten their belts and work harder, using all the now familiar rhetoric of leadership – vision, inspiration, challenge, all the old familiar buzzwords – but his words will lack power.’ ‘That reminds me of the Zulu proverb about people not hearing what you say because of the thunder of what you are.’ ‘Yes, it is as if human nature obeys certain laws, and if we understand those laws it helps us to work with the grain of human nature rather than against it. We do not

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respond to leaders who do not share our hardships and dangers. Think back to that tragic day September 11, 2001 when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center in New York. One name went round the world as a byword of leadership – Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Why? Because he shared the dangers and suffering of his people.’ ‘Yet the leader is surely only voicing the challenge: it is there, implicitly or expli­ citly, in the situation.’ ‘That must be so, for there are plenty of challenges in life that come to us without any intermediary.’ ‘Like the challenge facing my son when he had to learn to walk again after a serious motorbike accident, or the target my daughter set herself to do a sponsored walk in the highest region of the Andes to raise money for our local children’s hospice. Both these challenges involved elements of uncertainty and risk – they might not have made it.’ ‘If there was no such risk,’ I replied, ‘we might not interpret it as a challenge at all. If the outcome is absolutely safe and certain, it may not fully engage us.’

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TASK is a general word that signifies no more than something that needs to be done. We have to look behind it to see what PURPOSE the task is serving, for it’s purpose that gives it value – the meaning that our spirit seeks. The purposes that most inspire are those that are intrinsically good; they are often so because they contribute to the common good. Such service takes many forms, but there is a broad distinction between service that meets individual needs – with personal response as its bonus – and service that meets social needs. The value of good is not the only source of inspiration. Truth and beauty – the other members of the trinity of great values – are also forces that draw us to seek them. Where the three overlapping circles intersect may represent the power of love as a spiritual force. Purpose suggests both movement towards a result and the result itself. Of all our words for results – vision, ends, goals, aims, objects, objectives – it alone conveys the idea of significance, of values that confer meaning. Vision is an act of creative imagination – the ability to see what no one else has seen or imagined possible. Apart from having purpose, a task will not stir us unless it stretches us. As the Italian proverb says, ‘By demanding the impossible we obtain the possible’.

The Common Task

Success as a conductor has nothing to do with movement. It has everything to do with the persona, the personality and a person’s ability to communicate with the musicians and convey your ideas. The strength of the performance comes in conveying your involvement in the process, rather than being a god who wields the whip with the capacity to open and close the door. You must be someone who embraces and helps the orchestra. The most effective leadership, to me, is the leadership that doesn’t look like leadership. The moment somebody walks in looking and sounding like a ‘leader’, that’s quite suspicious to me. You must be part of the process – so convinced by what you are doing that everyone else has no choice but to follow you. It’s intuition and personality. You have to encourage people to open up, seduce them, not scare them, to follow you. That’s a great leader! Paavo Järvi, orchestral conductor

22

Trust Men And They Will Be True To You 23 Treat Them Gently And They Will Show Themselves To Be Great

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Chapter Sixteen Pulling the threads together

‘P

erhaps we can begin with a summary of where we are,’ began the young chief executive. ‘First we identified the key question: why is it that one person is accepted as a leader rather than another? The three “paths up the mountain” to answering the question were the: ●●

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QUALITIES Approach – the contingent and generic characteristics of the person concerned. What you are. SITUATIONAL Approach – the emphasis here being possessing technical or professional knowledge appropriate to the situation. What you know. FUNCTIONAL Approach – the Three-Circles model of needs present in working groups and the key functional responses. What you do.

‘We explored, too, the idea that although most groups and organizations have designated leaders – elected or appointed or both – wise leaders do not attempt to perform all the necessary functions themselves: they share the work (if not the burden) of leadership rather than keeping it all to themselves. By involving others as much as possible in decision-making, for example, they generate a sense of responsibility as well as commitment. ‘Then we had a discussion about necessary and sufficient conditions. I think you were saying that if a person scores high in all three approaches it is highly probable – nothing is certain in this life – that he or she will be perceived to be a leader and, where one is needed, accepted as such. ‘Then the principle emerged that leadership exists on different levels,’ he continued, ‘and we identified three: the team leader (a direct descendent of the hunting party leader), the operational leader, who has more than one team reporting to him or her and heads up a significant part of the whole, and the strategic leader, who heads up the whole organization. ‘Then we touched on the much-debated differences between managing and leading. You suggested that the simplest way of resolving the issue was to consider the kinds of situations that call for one rather than the other. Where there is little or no

Pulling the Threads Together

change, where things are governed by rules, where the organization can be conceived as a machine or self-perpetuating system, then it is appropriate to put it in the charge of managers who will plan, control, supervise and administer it on behalf of the owners, be they private, shareholders or the public via the instrument of government. Characteristically they achieve conformity and performance by the fear of people losing their jobs and by the provision of incentives such as monetary rewards or promotional prospects.’

The parable of flight ‘By contrast, leaders are called for where change is dominant, where the climate is dynamic rather than static. Change can always be expressed in the metaphorical language of a journey. You are where you are now; you do not know where you will be tomorrow, but you know it will not be here – if you tread water you will drown. Leaders are those who know the way ahead. They can formulate a desired destination and identify the route that has to be taken, the steps along the way. More than that, they can inspire others to face and overcome the rigours of the journey. What is it about these leaders that makes them inspirational?’ ‘May I suggest a parable? You recollect that I used the analogy of the Laws of Aerodynamics to advance the thesis that there are certain timeless and timely laws or principles in the leadership field? If we explore the parallel further, it turns into a parable. Let me explain what I mean. ‘Our modern concept of the Laws of Aerodynamics goes back to an English engineer, inventor and designer named Frederick Lanchester, who built the first experimental motor car in Britain, in 1895. Turning his attention to aeronautics, he laid the theoretical foundations of aircraft design in his book Aerial Flight [1908]. Most of the Laws of Aerodynamics he identified in it stem from Newton’s Laws of Motion. To them must be added an application of the work of Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernouilli, who pioneered the modern field of hydrodynamics, the one touching on the conservation of energy: the flow of air over the upper wing is constrained by the shape of the wing – it accelerates over the upper surface, therefore pressure goes down and creates a suction on top of the wing. We must add, too, the Law of Continuity of Flow. ‘Yet, amazingly, an acute Frenchman noticed that if one simply totalled up these laws, flight seemed impossible! Hence D’Abernet’s Paradox, wherein he proved that on the basis of known laws flight is impossible, yet at the same time we know that flight is possible – birds do it. ‘The solution to the puzzle lies in an assumption that has to be made about the nature of air. Namely, if you assume that air has low viscosity or adhesiveness, so that it sticks to the wings, then flight becomes intelligible. So among the Laws of

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Aerodynamics we find, of all things, an assumption. The parable is this: true leaders tend to make the assumption that people do have the seeds of greatness in them.’ ‘What do you mean by greatness in this context?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘I wouldn’t like to try to specify or quantify it, but I am thinking again of magnanimity: that degree of spirit that enables one to bear trouble calmly, to disdain meanness and revenge, and to make sacrifices for worthy ends. The generous and courageous spirit, I submit, is not the quality of a few great individuals, but is spread far and wide in humanity. Those who exemplify it are the true nobles among us. Our word noble comes from the Latin verb for “to come to know”. As we come to know people, either directly or through books, we sometimes discover that they are noble, that they do have outstanding qualities which situations – often great adversities – bring to the surface. And some of the noblest among us are children.’ The Task Of Leadership Is Not To Put Greatness Into Humanity But To Elicit It 24 For The Greatness Is Already There

Inner greatness ‘I hasten to add that I regard this as an assumption, no more. You cannot prove it.’ ‘But surely it can be falsified. Just think of all the people who display anything but greatness. If we began to catalogue all the forms of the littleness of human nature we should be here for aeons,’ commented the young chief executive. ‘Yes, it’s a form of D’Abernet’s Paradox again. We are both great and little. It’s a strange mixture. Sometimes the greatness struggles against the other side, our littleness. It’s an assumption – and act of faith – to believe that the greatness is foremost. Without it necessarily being a piece of conscious philosophy, leaders worth the name do believe in people – they trust them, have faith in them – and it is this belief that is the first step to drawing out the hidden greatness in people. ‘The people really barred at the door of leadership are those misanthropists who hold a low opinion of people in general. A cynic, for example, is contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives, and would sneer at any suggestion that such things as sincerity or nobility exist.’ ‘When I took over as a factory manager – my first job as an operational leader – I was pretty sceptical about people,’ said the young chief executive. ‘My policy to others was quite simple: prove to me that you are reliable and trustworthy, then I shall trust you. It was my experiences with Steve Down that changed me.’

Pulling the Threads Together

‘Can you tell me about that?’ I asked. ‘Just before I came into the job my predecessor briefed me about the “Problem”, as he called it. The “Problem” proved to be one Steve Down, a 44-year-old manager who was the classic under-performer and a gloom-merchant as well. Nothing and nobody was ever right for him. “Down by name, Down by nature”, colleagues said of him. ‘Initially, and probably understandably, I was seduced into this paradigm of Steve. For that first few months I would climb all over his back, making sure that he worked the hours that I thought he should work and gave the effort I and the organization thought he should give. Then, having reflected upon the reasons why these attempts at influencing him were failing, I decided as an experiment to change the way I viewed him. It was like taking off one pair of glasses and putting on another that were rose tinted.’ ‘What effect did it have?’ ‘To begin with there was no change. The lesson for me then was to learn to be patient – not my strongpoint. The change in Steve over the next year, however, not only astounded me but amazed all his colleagues – even his wife, as I heard much later. At 44 he seemed to suddenly discover his life and became incredibly ambitious and hugely positive. When I first took over he announced to me that he never wanted to leave Liverpool, where our plant was. Then one day he came to me saying that he and his wife had decided to pursue a career in our Training Department, which was based in Windsor. You can imaging the satisfaction I enjoyed. ‘It taught me that the key foundation stone for all good leaders is to have an enormous belief in their people. Furthermore, I believe that this can be taught. And once this foundation stone is in place, it is possible to teach every other aspect of effective leader­ ship. So the world can produce the leaders it needs – we do not have to rely on an uncertain supply of “born leaders”, and anyway there will never be enough of them.’ ‘I am surprised to hear you say that this foundation stone of enormous belief in people can be taught. I make a distinction between the knowledge that we are taught or learn on the one hand, and the knowledge we acquire. For example, we acquire our mother language. What I think happens is that we catch a glimpse of this greatness or nobility of spirit first in one person, and it alters our view of all other people for we have sensed an underlying pattern and are programmed to look for it. Just for fun, see if you can see a picture in these shapes:

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Source: Open University

‘Don’t worry if you cannot do so – 9 out of 10 people can’t. Here is the answer.’ With that I handed to the young chief executive the solution (see p. 156). ‘The point is this. Whenever you now look at the above collection of shapes – try as you may to prevent it – you will always see the solution-picture. If you don’t believe me, try it out. And if you act towards people as if that solution picture is within them, they may well reciprocate by showing greatness. Isn’t that what you learnt from Steve Down?’ Treat People As If They Were What They Ought To Be And You May Help Them To Become What They Are Capable Of Being The young chief executive was silent for two or three minutes. ‘Doesn’t it stand leadership on its head?’ he asked. ‘If people are great, then they deserve to have great leaders. Up to now I have assumed that it was the leader that makes the people great.’ ‘You are nearer to the mark. What you said reminds me of what the Roman historian Livy wrote at one point in his history: Rome being great deserved great leaders.’ ‘So I have not discovered a new theory of leadership,’ he laughed. ‘If we jump a few centuries, we find Dr Samuel Johnson of dictionary fame commenting on what he called the plebian magnanimity of the English soldier. (The plebs were the common people of Rome.)’ ‘I suppose he meant by that what you said earlier about facing danger calmly and proving always willing to make sacrifices to worthy ends.’ ‘Yes, and the other military virtues too. Among them I would number cheerfulness and a sense of humour. Humour keeps things in proportion and lowers the tensions of the moment – it oils the wheels of daily living. But on occasion it can also express something we value in the human spirit. I like the saying: Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of a man’s superiority to all that befalls him.’

Pulling the Threads Together

‘Did Johnson have anything to say about leadership?’ ‘Indeed Johnson did. The British redcoats, he said, expect their officers to lead them into battle from the front. For their part, he continued, the officers are confident that if they do so, the men will follow…’ ‘That’s a perfect expression of the implicit mutual “contract” we were talking about earlier,’ interjected the young chief executive. ‘Johnson said that this occurs not because British soldiers lack bravery or initiative, almost implying that they could conduct themselves perfectly well without officers. Yet they accept such leaders as I have outlined as “a tribute to their own loyalty and esprit de corps”. A tribute is a gift or service showing respect, gratitude or affection. Leadership as a tribute to those whom one respects and trusts – that reminds me of the great motto of Sandhurst: Serve to Lead. ‘Johnson added that in the case of other European nations (before the French Revolution changed things) the officers do not lead their men into the fight but follow behind to ensure that no one skulks off to the rear when the first shots are fired. ‘It’s worth adding,’ I continued, ‘that one who leads soldiers into battle from the front is far more likely to get killed than anyone in the rank and file. For it’s a natural instinct for soldiers to pick off the leader of the opposing forces, if they can identify them. They know that his death can cause panic, so that men break and run. Jesus quoted a proverb to that effect: Smite the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.

The effects of trust ‘But surely great soldiers would stand their ground or continue to advance, with or without leaders?’ ‘All great soldiers are potential leaders if the call comes to them to lead. If the whole regiment is reduced to two privates, one will lead the other.’ ‘Such an army must be almost invincible.’ ‘No, it will lose battles from time to time, even campaigns and wars, for an enemy’s sheer weight of numbers and materiel, together with superior generalship, can overcome it, but no defeat will be attributed to any shortcomings in team leadership, morale or esprit de corps.’ ‘If you trust people – I mean if you assume they are great like Johnson’s redcoats – don’t you run the risk that you will be let down?’ ‘It is highly probable that on occasion you will be let down. Therefore as a leader you need to work out a clear policy. What is the issue? For me it is encapsulated in a remark made to me by a headmaster: If you trust boys, you will be let down; but if you do not trust them, they will do you down.’ The young chief executive laughed. ‘I know what he means,’ he said. ‘In my case it has been a matter of moving from an implicit policy of not trusting people

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until they have proved trustworthy to an explicit policy – I make it clear to everyone – of treating people as worthy of my full trust until they show themselves to be unreliable.’ ‘And have you been shown to be wrong often?’ ‘No, once or twice only. In one case it was really my fault because I put the person concerned in a position where she was out of her depth and I ignored family difficulties she was trying to cope with. The other person is someone in my senior team at present who just hasn’t responded – yet anyway – and we may have to part company.’ ‘Does that lead you to alter your policy?’ ‘Not at all, for I reason why should I abandon the 96 or 97 people in every hundred who are great for the sake of the two or three who fail to live up to the promise within them. So far we have talked about individuals,’ said the young chief executive, ‘but does the same principle apply to organizations?’ ‘I believe it does. As you know, every organization develops its unique group person­ ality, its culture and its prevailing climate. Often, but not always, this is shaped by the founder’s legacy of a set of enduring values – “the way we do things here”. Hence Emerson’s principle: An institution is the lengthened shadow of one person.’ I Prefer To Have Too Much Confidence, And Thereby Be Deceived, Than To Be Always Mistrustful. For In The First Case, I Suffer For A Moment At Being Deceived, 26 And, In The Second, I Suffer Constantly ‘Where that ethos rests on that key foundation you identified – an enormous belief in people – it can have an almost tangible presence. You may have come across Charles Dickens’ description in David Copperfield of the school where David was so happy: It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system, with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, we soon became warmly attached to it.

‘That would fit any good school today,’ I added. ‘Or business company,’ said the young chief executive. ‘Haven’t we identified a fourth path of understanding up that mountain of leadership which you said was cloud-topped in mystery?’ With that he wrote on the flip chart: What you ARE – Qualities What you KNOW – Situational What you DO – Functional What you BELIEVE – Values.

Pulling the Threads Together

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Leaders tend to make an assumption about human nature: they believe in the greatness that lies dormant within people. If you trust people, you may on occasion be let down, but much more often people will respond in ways that fully justify your confidence. Amazing things happen when you make people feel they are valued as individuals, when you treat them with dignity, when you show your respect for them by allowing them to exercise their own wisdom, judgement and discretion, when you invite them to be creative and to use their initiative. Great people deserve great leaders. Your skilled leadership is a tribute you bring to the greatness of spirit of those you are privileged to serve. The avowed intention to rely upon people having such qualities as humour and good faith unless they prove otherwise works wonders. It brings character and dignity to any organization.

Truth However Disenchanting Is Better 27 Than Falsehood However Comforting Trust Only Those Who Have The Courage To Contradict You With Respect And Who Value Your Character 28 More Than Your Favour 29

An Ideal Is Often But A Flaming Vision Of Reality

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Chapter Seventeen The why question

‘A

lready we have explored a large territory,’ began the young chief executive, ‘and I am aware that I now have to put it all into practice in the next five years. My concern at the moment is whether or not I shall be able to remember it all! I know that I shall have the Keypoints to refresh my memory, but I need something like the Three-Circle Model which I can keep in mind and turn to in times of perplexity.’ He stood up and drawing the model on the flip chart began to contemplate it, almost as if he had never seen it before.

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

‘As the Chinese proverb says, A picture is worth a thousand words,’ I said, inter­ rupting his thoughts. ‘Yet, why should we multiply those few essential pictures or frameworks already in use? Perhaps we may find that the simple model of the Three Circles has enough depth for our purposes. For being simple should not be confused with being simplistic or superficial. Take the TASK circle, how do you see that now?’ ‘My job is clearly to set – or perhaps I should say identify – a series of challenging or demanding tasks. They must not be impossible, but on the other hand they have to stretch the individual, the team or the organization as a whole. And, of course, I have to persuade my operational and team leaders both to think like that and to

The Why Question

have the art or skill to establish specific, time-bounded objectives that meet those criteria.’ ‘Yes, managers tend to focus far too much on the measurability of the task, in the fond belief that what you can measure you can manage or control. Leaders go beyond that basic need for concreteness or tangibility in their skill of pitching the task at the optimum level for engaging the human spirit.’ ‘Interesting,’ commented the young chief executive, ‘that using just the word TASK has already introduced a leadership element into the question. But you have reminded me, too, of another basic difference between managers, bosses or commanders – they tell you what to do, whereas leaders tell you why to do it. At that New York seminar the speaker said that CEOs should be like evangelists, going about the organization imparting their vision and their values. Shout the message loud and long enough and everyone eventually gets it. In that way you become a transformational leader.’ ‘I hope I have saved you from that fate,’ I said. ‘For the behaviour recommended is rather condescending, isn’t it? If you have great people working in your organization, they know those things already. All that they need is an occasional quiet reminder, perhaps indirectly, that you know they know why the work is important or worthwhile. And, as Leonardo da Vinci once said: He Who Truly Knows Has No Occasion To Shout ‘So if they don’t know why the work matters – if, in other words, they lack a sense of purpose – we shouldn’t be employing them?’ ‘That is so. It is a principle that great military leaders have understood since the days of Gideon. Oliver Cromwell expressed it best: Give me the russet-coated captain who knows what he is fighting for and loves what he knows.’ ‘In my business it is essential to create a delighted customer, and we can only do that on the quality, price and delivery of our goods and services.’ ‘And doubtless you employ people who know that. They may disagree with you or each other on how best to do it, but that’s a secondary matter. And because of their calibre you have no doubts either that they will rise to meet both the challenges and the exceptional tasks that present themselves in any field, for business can be very difficult.’ ‘You know them well,’ smiled the young chief executive. ‘Not personally, but I know that they are persons of spirit, that they are on tiptoe to use all the energy, talent and creativity within them. The only issue is whether or not they have great leaders.’ ‘So to be a great leader I have to show a group the PURPOSE behind the tasks, be it the daily tasks or routines, or those special tasks, the steps to change, that lead us to becoming better that you mentioned. That enables me to communicate on a different level with people who already implicitly know that purpose.’

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The key of morale ‘That takes me to the TEAM circle,’ continued the young chief executive. ‘What stands out to me much more clearly is the importance of not just teamwork but also team spirit. The spirit of a group seems to have all the characteristics of an individual’s spirit but writ large.’ ‘Yes, it’s what the French call esprit de corps – that common spirit animating the members of a group and inspiring enthusiasm, devotion and a strong regard for the honour of the group. Another word borrowed from French is morale, which covers the mental, emotional and spiritual attitude of an individual, group or organization to the function or tasks expected of it. Both words suggest that sense of common purpose, that spiritual directed energy, that we touched upon earlier. To that we have to add another essential ingredient: confidence in the future.’ ‘You said that one of the seven generic functions of strategic leadership is to release this corporate spirit into the organization, but how do I go about it?’ ‘First, be aware of that corporate spirit – look at the symptoms or outward signs. For good or bad morale talks to you as a leader in the language of symptoms. Then, like a good doctor, all you have to do is remove the blocks or impediments that are preventing the greatness that is there from making its appearance. If you want glory, clean the windows.’

What motivates individuals ‘The individual circle used to be populated in my mind by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – Physiological, Safety, Social, Self-Esteem and Self-Actualization,’ said the young chief executive. ‘And now?’ ‘I don’t see people anymore as self-centred beings intent on meeting their own needs, be they the “lower” ones or some form of self-fulfilment or self-realization.’ ‘There is certainly quite a lot of self in all those words and concepts,’ I said, with a smile. ‘Like you, I cannot believe that we are quite so self-preoccupied. But aren’t our needs the key to motivation? I know that it is now the dominant way of expressing it, but the more I think about it the less adequate it seems. Once I acted as consultant to an organization in Dubai. Itinerant workers from 15 different countries were engaged upon a major harbour-building project. The chief executive did some research and discovered that the common factor among them was their love for their families – the desire to do what our grandfathers used to call bettering themselves, to give their children better opportunities. It led me to reflect that love is the force that drives us – love of ourselves first…’ ‘But surely self-love is a bad thing?’

The Why Question

‘You may be confusing it with selfishness, the state of being concerned exces­ sively or exclusively with oneself, so that one concentrates on one’s own advantage, pleasure or well-being without regard for others. Grasping greediness is always ugly. But that is quite different from having a sensible regard for one’s own happi­ ness or advantage. Is it also not against the tenet of self-love to aspire to use one’s talents to the full, or to enjoy what recognition comes our way? We are told to love our neighbour as ourselves, which means to seek their good as we naturally do for ourselves. ‘Secondly, love of family is very powerful. The most immediate and natural senses of the word love relate to the attachments of family. For most of us the “nuclear family” is the epicentre of widening concentric rings of attachment. And, as the psychologist C A Mace noted, The radiant warmth of the human heart varies with the sum of the social difference. ‘Another natural love that motivates us stems from our social nature, the love of belonging. The love of the particular group or team, even the organization itself, can be as powerful as the love of family. Sometimes it is not the cause that keeps the soldier from running away but a resolve not to let down comrades who have never let him down. Patriotism, love for one’s country, is a wider form of our capacity to love those social groupings to which we belong, ones that inspire our devotion.’ ‘With the environment under such threat, isn’t there another love motivating us now: a love for the whole human race on earth and for this precious blue planet that is our common home?’ ‘I hope so. The equivalent of national selfishness is still a world problem and will be for years to come, but millions of people are now quietly coming to think of themselves primarily as human beings; members of the human race and – in Socrates’ phrase – citizens of the world. Only secondarily do they see themselves as nationals of this nation or that.’ ‘We are capable of loving ideals, too,’ added the young chief executive. ‘We have this remarkable capacity to love abstract things, such as honour, truth, kindness, goodness, beauty, excellence in all its forms. We love to create new things and to achieve things. So, in place of all those need-based psychological theories, I propose the love principle.’ ‘It may not make your fortune as a management guru,’ I said with a smile, ‘but it’s a very interesting idea. By the way, you mentioned that we have a love to create. Creative thinking takes place in the minds of individuals, but it takes a team to innovate – that is, to develop the individual’s creative idea and eventually to bring it to the marketplace in the form of a new product or service.’

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The inspired moment ‘So the Three-Circle Model still serves, but the level of understanding and engagement has to be deeper?’ ‘That is how I see it. A leader with such a deep understanding – however intuitive – will be able to sense the inspired moment, that window of opportunity that opens up briefly where, if he or she does or says the right thing, the switch is thrown on the electrical circuit and that spiritual energy kicks in that enables people to transcend their previous limits or the ordinary levels of performance in a given field. Speaking from personal experience, those are moments you will remember all your life.’ ‘Do they transform or change you?’ ‘I wouldn’t say that, but they take you a step or two closer to humility. Contrary to popular belief, it is not things that humiliate you – the failures, the insults, the misfortunes, the petty daily lacerations of the spirit that make you humble, though they have a part to play. No it is the sense of greatness in others and the realization that occasionally you have been the catalyst for locating, releasing and channelling that greatness. All have shared in an experience of glory. It may fade, but it leaves a glow behind.’

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Commanders and managers tell people what to do and, if they are wise, leave them as far as possible to decide when, who and where. Leaders also do that, but in addition they answer the why question in a way that satisfies the mind and lifts the spirit. Leaders sometimes use indirect ways to communicate their sense of purpose. The most important thing is to be clear in your own mind as to what is the compelling purpose of the work you are doing. All groups and organizations have a spirit, often only revealed in adversity. The chief expression of that spirit is ‘high morale’ – the determined and infectious attitude the team or organization shows towards accomplishing the common task in the teeth of difficulty. Individuals are not predominantly motivated to meet their own lower or higher needs, as was previously thought. It is true that creating successful teams, achieving ambitious goals and doing good work all meet personal needs at various levels. But what moves us more is love – love of self, love of family, love of social groups who makes us feel that we belong, love of creativity and achievement, love of great and noble causes. The satisfaction of our own higher needs is essentially a by-product.

The Why Question

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A leader can sense ‘the inspired moment’ – that time when the right words or actions can trigger off a chain reaction that leads to sustained inspiration. Remember: Not geniuses, but average men and women require profound stimulation, incentive towards creative effort, and the nurture of great hopes.

A Leader Is Best When People Are Hardly Aware Of His Or Her Existence… Fail to Honour People, And They Will Fail To Honour You. But Of A Good Leader, Who Speaks Little, When The Task Is Accomplished, The Work Done, 30 The People Say, ‘We Did This Ourselves’

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Chapter Eighteen The test of leadership

‘W

ho in your opinion are the greatest leaders?’ asked the young chief executive. ‘Those who undergo the severest tests and still stand their ground.’ ‘Then I am not sure I want to be one,’ he laughed. ‘Seriously, I expected you to name some names. Can you give me an example of what you have in mind?’ ‘Take belief in people. We agreed that good leaders are among those who have a high or positive view of human nature: they believe in the inherent goodness of people. Not as good as we might be. As someone wrote over the mirror in an Arizonan bar: I ain’t what I ought to be, I ain’t what I’m going to be, But I ain’t what I was!

‘Despite seeing the ugly side of human nature, good leaders do not lose faith in the under­ lying goodness within us. In Long Road to Freedom [1994], Nelson Mandela writes: Even in the grimmest times in prison, when my comrades and I were pushed to our limits, I would see a glimmer of humanity in one of the guards, perhaps just for a second, but that was enough to reassure me and keep me going. Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.’

‘How about confidence in the successful achievement of the task?’

Dealers in hope ‘That too can be put to the test. When the expectancy of success suddenly falls or gradually fades – usually because of unpredictable forces coming into play – then it is important for the leader not to succumb to the temptation of despair. For if he or she does, it will spread like a forest fire throughout the organization.’ ‘What’s the difference between expectancy and hope?’ ‘Expectancy implies a high degree of certainty about the positive outcome. Hope, by contrast, suggests little certainty but conveys a confidence or assurance in the

The Test of Leadership

possibility or an assurance that what one desires will happen. The important point is that while hope is still alive you are in with a chance. As Alexander Dubcek, leader of the Czech uprising against the Russians, said: Hope dies last; the person who loses hope also loses the sense of his future.’ ‘So when things are going badly, professionally or personally, are you saying that it is important to maintain a climate of hope; it optimizes your (dwindling) chances of success?’ ‘Precisely. If these are the circumstances, then I would agree with J W Gardner that a prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive. It can be tough, but, as you rightly say, realistic hope does optimize what is left of your chance of winning. One of the advantages of experience is that you discover that even the darkest situations will sometimes change for the better. So leaders can sometimes steady those who confuse a failure or setback in life with total defeat. Charles M Schultz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, expressed it well: There is one thing that I learned a long time ago… If you can hang on for a while longer, there is always something bright around the corner, or the dark clouds will go away and there will be some sunshine again if you are able to hold out. I think you just have to wait it out.

‘It can be a long wait, however, and then the primal function of a leader is to keep hope alive. Once people fall into the clutches of Giant Despair, then morale has a habit of collapsing.’ ‘It must be very difficult to keep hope alive when one faces unbroken defeats or failures, when the dark clouds just get blacker and look more threatening.’ The Only Way To Lead Is To Show People The Future. 31 A Leader Is A Dealer In Hope ‘But we are not talking here about just positive thinking or mere optimism, are we?’ continued the young chief executive. ‘No, optimism isn’t quite the right word. For optimism is a temperamental inclination to look on the bright side and – unchecked by realism – it can be quite misleading. For example, a lifelong heavy smoker who happens to be an optimist, may be over-confident that he or she will avoid all the self-inflicted ills that come in the wake of his or her addiction.’ ‘What happens when even the rational grounds for hope begin to disappear and the future starts to disappear down the plughole?’ ‘It depends on the circumstances, but if a particular hope is extinguished, the more general hope may yet survive. If the cause is a great and noble one, for example, the hope remains that success will come in the long run, perhaps decades or even centuries hence.’ ‘Why do leaders believe that?’ asked the young chief executive.

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The Inspirational Leader

‘Well, all great and good causes are related; they sink or swim together. Eventually, good is destined to triumph, though perhaps not in the way we envisage it. Meanwhile we are like soldiers fully engaged: For the cause that lacks assistance For the wrong that needs resistance For the future in the distance And the good that I can do.’

A faith for leaders ‘That sounds like an act of faith to me,’ commented the young chief executive. ‘It is the faith you will find in a true leader. In Ordway Tead’s The Art of Leadership [1935], a book my father gave me when I was a boy, the author defines a leader’s faith as “an active effort to bring good to pass based on the confirming experience that such activity is and does good.” He continues: Fundamentally, a deeper kind of faith seems also invaluable if not essential. It may be called a spiritual faith. The words are not popular today because they are so often used as a cloak for lazy thinking and as implying an indiscriminately optimistic feeling about life – one which is grounded in no deep experience or justified by no tested convictions. There is, nevertheless, a permissible even if non-rational belief, by whatever name it is called, that the enterprise of living has a meaning and values which are precious, permanent and not at odds with the larger processes of the universe.

‘It is that strategic hopefulness, that faith in the inevitable victory of the good, that gives leaders their confidence in facing the tactical difficulties of their own time and place. ‘Take Dag Hammarskjöld as an example. As Secretary-General of the United Nations, the second to hold that office, he was the leader in the efforts to maintain peace in a world divided into Western and Eastern blocs. As the vision of a higher form of international society after the trauma of the Second World War, a new order of peace, seemed doomed, Hammarskjöld refused to abandon hope: “Sometimes that hope – the hope for that kind of reaction – is frustrated,” he said, “but it is a hope which is undying.” His tragic death in an air-crash, while on his way to ceasefire talks with President Tshombe of Katanga during the Congo crisis in 1961, caused a sense of shock throughout the world.’ ‘Hope that is undying, “hope springs eternal in the human heart”,’ mused the young chief executive. ‘But isn’t it only rational to abandon hope when there are no longer any rational grounds for it?’ ‘No, hopes may dwindle from a torrent to a trickle, even a few drops. But when every hope is gone for you personally, you needn’t give up hope. For hope is part of the human spirit, as essential to it as oxygen is to the body. If there is no one

The Test of Leadership

around you to love, it doesn’t mean that love cannot live within you. Why give up hope because there is nothing to hope for? It is part of the essential you. G K Chesterton once said that anyone can hope when things look really hopeful. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the spiritual virtues, he added, hope is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.’

Keypoints ●●

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All leaders will be tested, by loneliness if by no greater force. The greatest leaders are those who undergo the most severe trials but do not abandon their values or allow affliction to dim their spirits. Leaders are ‘dealers in hope’, but they have to be honest brokers. It is counterproductive to paint unrealistic and rosy pictures about the future, worse to lie about it. A good leader is neither an optimist nor a pessimist, more a realist with an unconquerable hope. Leadership is about creating and maintaining a climate of hope, one that makes success possible. Wise leaders know that fortunes can change, they know how to wait it out. ‘I do accept that I am a worm,’ said Winston Churchill, but, he added with a chuckle, ‘I do believe I am a glow worm.’ Humility is important, not least because we grow by taking on board critical feedback. But each of us has a light for the path, a light to lead by. In that dimly sensed conflict between good and evil the only thing we know intuitively for certain is that good is destined to win. That is why hope is underlying in the human spirit.

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Towards excellence

‘I

suppose that if you are going to grow in wisdom you need the humility to learn from others,’ reflected the young chief executive. ‘Yes, your teachers are all around you, not least at work or in your family. At the right time and place you must be open to what they really think of your leadership. As Francis Crick said, Politeness is the poison of all good collaboration, but most of us are too well mannered to be impolite to one another. In our culture rudeness tends simply to offend. What is needed is not rudeness so much as the more effective giving and receiving of feedback – information about the mutual effect you are having on others and they on you.’ ‘Yes, and in addition to feedback, I need also some opportunities to reflect and talk about leadership and management with others, preferably in other fields as well as business, so that I can build on the wisdom I have, such as it is. I don’t suppose anyone ever improves in a sport, art or business unless they talk about it with their colleagues, do they?’ ‘Not to my knowledge,’ I said. The young chief executive closed his notebook and we had some coffee together. ‘I have greatly enjoyed our conversations,’ he said. ‘What I feel I have been able to do is to put together my own philosophy or framework. Now I shall have to put it to the test. ‘Whether I succeed or not remains to be seen, but I shall do my best. I know that I have a long way to go and it won’t be easy, but I shall strive for excellence in leader­ ship for the rest of my days. For at some point in our conversations a flame ignited within my mind, something I know will always burn bright or rekindle unless I grossly neglect it. I call it the spirit of leadership.’ ‘Well,’ I said to him, as he stood up to go, ‘you have fallen in love with a hard task-master, one who will ever be whispering in your ear Don’t spare yourself. Only those who are demanding of themselves can inspire great things in others. It is a thought captured in a prayer of St Augustine of Hippo, a prayer for all who, like you, aspire to be good leaders and leaders for good: To My God, A Heart Of Flame; To My Fellow Human Beings, A Heart Of Love; To Myself, A Heart Of Steel

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Notes and references   1 John Collier   2 Zulu proverb   3 Ralph Waldo Emerson   4 William Shakespeare in King Lear   5 Dag Hammarskjöld   6 J W Fortescue, writing on Wellington   7 The University of Cambridge orator speaking of General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in the invasion of Europe, on the occasion when he received an honorary degree.   8 Elbert Hubbard   9 Herman Melville 10 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 11 Jan R Jonassen, Leadership: Sharing the passion (Management Pocket Books, Alresford, Hampshire) 12 William Blake 13 John Steinbeck 14 John Donne 15 Lord John Hunt, leader of the first expedition to climb Mount Everest in 1953. 16 Anonymous 17 Anonymous 18 Walt Whitman 19 Written by a Swedish manager and quoted in Richard Oliver, Inspirational Leadership: Henry V and the muse of fire (2001) 20 Bill Newman, The Ten Laws of Leadership (BNC, Brisbane, 1993) 21 Anonymous 22 Jan R Jonassen, Leadership: Sharing the passion (Management Pocket Books, Alresford) 23 Johann Goethe 24 John Buchan in ‘Montrose and Leadership’, a lecture given at the University of St Andrews, 27 January 1930. 25 Emerson 26 Paul Gauguin, quoted by Henri Perruchot in his biography of the artist. 27 Albert Schweitzer

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The Inspirational Leader 28 François de Fenelon 29 Joseph Conrad 30 Lao Tzu 31 Napoleon Bonaparte Solution to puzzle on p. 140

Source: Open University

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Part Three How to Grow Leaders ‘C

an you point us to an organization that is growing leaders?’ they asked me. Silence fell in my room, and I gazed out of the window, reflecting. At the time I was the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies, at the University of Surrey, and so I suppose my two visitors understandably expected me to know the answer. ‘Not the armed forces,’ they added, ‘we have already been to see them.’ After a few minutes… well, I could think of plenty of companies that were training leaders – sending their first-line managers, for example, on action-centred leadership courses – but that was not the question they asked. Who is growing leaders? ‘I cannot think of anyone,’ I replied eventually. ‘Alright then,’ they said, ‘we will do it. Will you help us?’ I agreed to do so, and they told me more about their situation. My visitors, Bill Stead and Edgar Vincent, were the senior group human resources managers in ICI, then known as ‘the bellwether of British industry’. (A ‘bellwether’ is literally the leading sheep of a flock, the practice being to hang a bell around its neck.) This particular bell was already tinkling the death knell of old-style management in the United Kingdom. Not that the rest of the flock had ears to hear it. In 1988, Bill and Edgar told me, the profits of ICI fell by a staggering 48 per cent; the dividend was cut for the first time since the formation of the company in 1926. ICI was too large (over 60,000 employees), too bureaucratic and in the wrong markets. The main board executive directors had decided that ICI’s top priority was to develop managerleaders – the first time, I recall, that I had ever heard that particular phrase. Over the next five years we went about growing leaders in the nine divisions of ICI, but here let me ‘cut to the chase’. After five years ICI was the first British company in history to make a billion pounds profit.

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How to Grow Leaders

I tell you this story as they say ‘up-front’ in order to impress upon you that leadership is not a soft skill, an optional extra for oiling the machinery of industrial relations. It is a key factor in business success – whatever your business and however you define success. The military learnt that lesson long ago. As the Greek poet Euripides, who died in 406 BCE, put it succinctly: Ten good soldiers wisely led, Will beat a hundred without a head.

Success in war or battle tends to go hand-in-hand with good leadership at all levels. Leadership exists on three broad levels, which I named some time ago as strategic, operational and team, and that nomenclature is now beginning to catch on. It is a common fallacy that all an organization needs is a good strategic leader at the helm. The secret of business success is excellence of leadership at all three levels. Organizations may be able to buy-in new strategic business leaders for astronomical salaries, like world-class football clubs changing their managers. But faced with the task of developing excellent leadership at all levels they have no option but to follow that distant bell of ICI in the 1980s and grow their own leaders. In the first part of Part Three, Exploring Leadership, as that title suggests, I invite you to join me on a journey of discovery about the nature of leadership and how it can be taught. My reasons are two-fold. First, unless you are reasonably clear what leadership is, and how it relates to management or command, you will be seriously handicapped when it comes to attempting to develop leadership. If you don’t know what it is, how can you develop it? Then in the second part, How to Grow Leaders – The Seven Principles we can get to work together with your organization in mind. I can outline for you the principles, and clothe them as best I can in flesh and blood, but here you will be doing most of the thinking. For you know your fields of business and your particular organization, and only you know how to apply the principles in your context. What you do with the knowledge you will glean from these pages does depend, of course, on your role. If you happen to be in the role of a principal strategic leader – say as chairman or chief executive – then you ‘own the problem’ of developing leaders. Or, strictly speaking, your organization or institution owns the problem and you need to ensure that it is addressing it in an effective and long-term way. Alternatively, you may have the role in an organization – increasingly common now – that makes you a professional adviser to your colleagues in talent development matters, perhaps as head of personnel or human resources. Or you may be one of the growing number of consultants specializing in helping organizations to develop their leaders – a role that, in the language of theatre, I ‘created’ as Adviser in Leadership Training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the 1960s.

How to Grow Leaders

Before I begin, I should give you a brief historical overview. We are in the midst of a global revolution, moving fairly rapidly from old-style management to the concept of business leadership (using ‘business’ in its widest sense of what one is busy in). Leadership is now coming to be seen as existing on three broad levels: team, operational and strategic. I call this the ‘leadership revolution’. The origin of this revolution was my Training for Leadership (Macdonald & Jane, 1968), the world’s first book on leadership development. In it I sowed the bean that would one day produce the true leadership revolution, namely the seminal idea that being a manager is but one form of being in the generic role of leader. That role I outlined for the first time in the book. Also in its pages I signposted the concept of the three levels of leadership, though only in my later books did I develop the idea. It is not my intention to write here a history of the leadership revolution in the United States, where my work in the 1960s was ignored. Nor to comment upon the leadership industry that has now sprung up with its intellectual roots in the United States, and the laborious way that it is slowly reinventing the various wheels that I discovered in the 1960s. Others have done that, notably in Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Key Trends (Routledge, 2004), edited by John Storey, Professor of Human Resource Management at the Open University Business School. This book is in the nature and style of a personal odyssey. Leadership grows by a natural process. I have sought to understand that natural way, and to advise organ­ izations on how to work with the grain of nature rather than against it. In that journey I have tried to understand and draw upon my own experience of growing as a leader. Hence this book is the most personal and the most reflective of all my writings on the theme of leadership. Yet I write too with a strong sense that my message is highly relevant. The world has moved on its axis. Never before have the climate and conditions been so opportune as they are today for organizations to embrace the practical philosophy and spirit of this book. Plato said once: ‘Those who have torches will hand them on to others.’ In this book I am handing the torch to you. May it light the path forwards for you. May it help you to help others to grow as leaders. May it – if all else fails – be a star on your own personal journey towards excellence as a leader.

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Exploring Leadership – A Personal Odyssey

B

y the end of reading Chapter 22 you will have explored with me into the heart of leadership, following three uphill paths – the Qualities Approach (what a leader has to be), the Situational Approach (what a leader has to know), and the Group or Functional Approach (what a leader has to do). But we have no option to follow these paths separately: think of them as a whole. Not as a chemical mixture but as a compound. Together they constitute nothing less than the generic role of leader. It is a dis­ covery as significant in the social field as either Einstein’s general theory of relativity in physics or Crick and Watson’s double-helix structure of DNA in biology. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Putting that 1960s breakthrough in understanding the generic role of leadership – the integrated or composite theory I developed – to work in selecting and training leaders has proved to be spectacularly successful. Ad fontes, ‘To the fountains’, was the motto of a famous English Renaissance scholar and medical doctor. Together we shall journey back in time to the very roots of modern thinking about leadership and how to grow leaders – Athens in the time of Socrates. Fasten your seatbelt!

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Chapter Nineteen The qualities approach

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It was said that he had all the qualities of leadership which a man of his sort could have.  Xenophon

T

he highest-scoring British fighter ace in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War was Johnny Johnson. In his memoir Wing Leader (Chatto & Windus, 1956), he reveals the impact that the legendary legless Douglas Bader’s leadership made upon him and his fellow young pilots in the early, hazardous days of the Battle of Britain. When Bader was eventually shot down (he became a prisoner of war), Johnson writes: At Tangmere we had simply judged Bader on his ability as a leader and a fighter pilot, and for us the high sky would never be the same again. Gone was the confident, eager, often scornful voice. Exhorting us, sometimes cursing us, but always holding us together in the fight. Gone was the greatest tactician of them all. Today marked the end of an era that was rapidly becoming a legend. The elusive, intangible qualities of leadership can never be taught, for a man either has them or he hasn’t. Bader had them in full measure and on every flight had shown us how to apply them. He had taught us the true meaning of courage, spirit, determination, guts – call it what you will. Now that he was gone, it was our task to follow his signposts which pointed the way ahead.

Johnson was not alone in finding Bader such an inspiring example. In a letter to The Times (12 December 1996), the widow of another celebrated pilot, Hugh Dundas, who flew with Bader in 1940 and 1941, quoted from her husband’s wartime letters to her about his commanding officer: ‘He showed me quite clearly by his example the way in which a man should behave in time of war’ and ‘Here was a man made in the mould of Francis Drake – a man to be followed, a man who would win.’ Her husband, she continued, was aged 20 at the time, had been shot down a month before and viewed the prospect of combat with real inner fear. Bader’s leadership and courage enabled him to continue flying Spitfires in action in Europe, and Bader remained a great and true friend until his death.

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How to Grow Leaders

The long shadow of a true leader In later life Douglas Bader seized every opportunity to visit people, especially the young people who faced the trauma of amputations and the prospect of learning to walk again after leg amputations. In August 2002 a racing car driver criminally knocked 36-year-old fireman Rob Green off his motorbike, killing his wife Lorna. Scarred by bad burns, Rob also lost both legs. As the drugs wore off, he became terribly depressed. ‘I felt so empty,’ he says. ‘I had lost everything; my beloved wife, the active life I had loved, my work – I wish I had died too. I never considered suicide, but I felt dying would have been much easier than living the life I had been left with.’ The final stage of his recovery was at a London hospital, where he spent three months learning to walk using artificial limbs. While learning to walk, Rob drew inspiration from the late Douglas Bader, the famous fighter ace who lost both his legs in a plane crash, but learnt to fly again. ‘I’d seen a film about him before I lost my own legs. While in hospital I read his autobiography and it really helped me. One of his quotes which really spurred me on was “A disabled person who fights back is not disabled; they are inspired.” It gave me courage to keep fighting.’

The sentence of Johnny Johnson’s reminiscence that I have placed in italics above serves to introduce what I call the Qualities Approach to leadership and leadership development. It was virtually universal when I was born, the only horse in the race. Indeed, in that year (1934) Dr Hensley Henson, the Lord Bishop of Durham, gave a lecture on leadership to the University of St Andrews. He informed his audience: It is a fact that some men possess an inbred superiority which gives them a dominating influence over their contemporaries, and marks them out unmistakably for leadership. This phenomenon is as certain as it is mysterious. It is apparent in every association of human beings, in every variety of circumstances and on every plane of culture. In a school among boys, in a college among students, in a factory, shipyard, or a mine among the workmen, as certainly as in the Church and in the Nation, there are those who, with an assured and unquestioned title, take the leading place and shape the general conduct.

The assumption behind the Bishop’s comments is both obvious and simple, an axiom that everyone took for granted. Leaders are born and not made; leadership consists of certain intrinsic traits or qualities that a person either has or has not. The Qualities Approach certainly gave a strong answer to the most basic question in the field of the study of leadership: Why is it that one person becomes the leader in a working group rather than another? But it seemed to shut the door forever on young people like myself – conscious that we were not ‘born leaders’ but still wanting to be leaders.

The Qualities Approach

How, if at all, could these ‘qualities of leadership’ be acquired? ‘Smith is not a born leader yet,’ said one school report. How could Smith be born again?

Can leadership qualities be developed? One overcast, rainy morning in 1897 a 12-year-old boy, Jafar Al-Askari, his brother and a soldier servant boarded a kalak, a native Iraqi river raft made of wood and inflated goatskins, and left Mosul in northern Iraq. As he narrates in A Soldier’s Story (Arabian Publishing, 2003), Jafar and his companions sailed down the Tigris, passed Tikrit – home of a later and more infamous Iraqi leader – until seven days later they reached their destination. ‘I enrolled in the Military School in Baghdad, and then later transferred to the Royal Military College in Constantinople [Istanbul]. There I was to graduate as an officer at the age of 19, when I was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Ottoman Army.’ Later, in the First World War, General Jafar Pasha – having changed sides – fought alongside T E Lawrence against the Turks for Arab independence, and later still he served no less than five times as Prime Minister of the newly created Iraq. On the College syllabus in the days of his youth Jafar comments in his memoirs: ‘Our military education absolutely excluded any training in leadership qualities.’ I doubt that in 1904 any other military academy in the world offered such training either, but it is interesting that Jafar clearly regarded it as an omission.

The secret ingredient In the 1930s a Japanese naval officer cadet on a course at the Royal Britannia Naval College at Dartmouth was found by the orderly officer wandering around the corridors late at night with a notebook in hand. ‘What are you doing?’ he was asked. ‘I am looking for the lectures on leadership,’ replied the Japanese cadet. ‘Obviously you give these lectures in the middle of the night so that we students from foreign countries should not be privileged to attend and learn about this subject which is so important to you.’

The belief that leadership qualities can and should be taught grew as time went by; what was less clear was how it should be done. The obvious approach seemed to be to list the constituent qualities and then to talk about each of them, with illustrations from the lives of great leaders. An early example of the approach is a sixpenny self-help booklet published in 1912 in the United Kingdom entitled How To Be a Leader of Others, which I have on my table in front of me. The author begins:

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How to Grow Leaders There are in our midst today many undeveloped strong men: men who might, with proper training, have been leaders of others. Strong men, yet not quite strong enough to cause themselves to emerge from the crowd, and let their personalities have its full power. What such men as these need is just a little impetus – a fillip to their energies.

In order to arouse or excite this hidden leadership in the reader the anonymous author boldly identifies what he regards as the chief or distinguishing quality of a leader – confidence: It would be difficult to find any group of men or women, or even boys or girls, that did not contain the one dominant spirit to whom it seems natural to assume command. Such a one is always to be found, and such a one will always come to the front in a crisis, and will be ready to take the lead in a forlorn hope, in a game, or in mischief, or in organizing an expedition, a strike or a new movement. What is the gift that makes a person a successful leader of others? It is simply confidence. It means confidence in one’s powers, and if that confidence is great enough and strong enough it will inspire others, and they will believe in the leader as firmly as he believes in himself, perhaps more so.

It is true that a successful leader will possess other characteristics in varying degrees such as ‘pleasant social qualities which make him popular’ or a ‘fine and generous sympathy which enables him to understand human nature’, but confidence is the most important, the one absolutely indispensable qualification. Now that is ‘the whole secret of leadership, yet we often hear the expression “a born leader of men”’. Is it then necessary to be born with the gifts of leadership; can they not be acquired? Alexander the Great, Dr Samuel Johnson, William Wallace, Attila the Hun and Wellington are then pressed into service as the ‘object lessons’ for leadership qualities, such as ambition, courage, determination, energy, dignity, magnetism, coolness and self-discipline. Contemporaries also commended as exemplars include the Prime Minister of the day Herbert Asquith, Joseph Chamberlain, Theodore Roosevelt, Lord Kitchener, Admiral Lord Beresford and (rather oddly to our eyes) Kaiser Wilhelm II – ‘a strong-willed and inspiring leader, able to secure the affection and obedience of his subjects’. My personal encounter with the Qualities Approach came in 1953, when I was conscripted into the British Army to do what was then called National Service. The officer training course had only one period of instruction on leadership. It consisted of a talk on the ‘qualities of leadership’. The summer afternoon was warm and we had been on a patrolling exercise the night before, so I remember nodding off to sleep. But we were issued with a handout or précis, which I still have. It begins by asking, ‘What is leadership?’ and – in military style – tells you the ‘Directing Staff’ answer, so there is no need to do any thinking for yourself:

The Qualities Approach It is the art of influencing a body of people to follow a certain course of action; the art of controlling them, directing them and getting the best out of them. A major part of leadership is Man-Management.

Leadership is then broken down into no less than 17 qualities, each with a sentence or two of explanation: ●●

Ability to make decisions

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Sense of duty

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Energy

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Calmness in crisis

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Humour

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Assurance (confidence)

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Sense of justice

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Ability to accept responsibility

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Determination

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Human element

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Example

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Initiative

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Physically fit

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Resolute courage

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Pride in command

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Enthusiasm

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Loyalty

Quite how – if at all – one could develop these qualities that make a good leader was not indicated. Experience seemed to be the only doorway. ‘Never imagine that you have learnt all about leadership,’ the handout concluded. ‘You will always have something more to learn, so be prepared to profit by experience. Experience helps a great deal. Take every opportunity of gaining experience in leadership.’ As we were all about to become platoon commanders, to many of us like myself in ‘active service’ situations, this last piece of advice might have seemed a bit superfluous! It is difficult to acquire qualities or virtues as if by frontal assault with one’s willpower. Actually the officer cadet in the bed next to me did try to develop the 17 qualities in this way. He took three each day, I recall, as the daily quota. On Wednesdays, for example, he tried to acquire a sense of humour by laughing at the cartoons in Punch – which struck me as a rather serious way of going about it! At the end of the week he either thought he had all of the 17 qualities in abundant measure, which made him pretty well impossible to live with; or he concluded that he was more or less devoid of not only these qualities but others as well. That tended to remove what was left of his self-confidence. He soon abandoned it as a hopeless enterprise. Ten years later the British Army, through my influence, introduced a totally new and revolutionary approach to leadership training. Without abandoning the Qualities Approach – wisely, as time showed – Sandhurst adopted the Group or Functional Approach. But that merits a chapter of its own.

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Chapter Twenty The group or functional approach

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On a journey, the leader of the people is their servant. The Prophet Muhammad

Sandhurst is not the first place most people would think of as a source of ideas on human relations. Indeed, academic prejudice against the Services is strong enough to ensure that the opportunities they offer for the detailed study of individuals and groups in action are underrated, if not ignored, by sociologists and others.

So begins a book review by Donald McLachlan, editor of The Sunday Telegraph, writing in 1968. He continues: Nonetheless John Adair, who lectures on military history and advises on leadership training at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, has written in Training for Leadership the first book known to me which tries to break down the meaning of the word leadership, and to discover ways in which the military business of leading can be taught with modern educational techniques. I say ‘business’ because at its simplest a leader’s task is to get a difficult job done well, quickly and willingly – even enjoyably. There are other aspects depending on the situation in which leadership is called for: courage in defeat, inspiration in apathy, clarity of mind in confusion – but the basic requirement is that the led should understand the task, trust the leader and know how to do what is required. Leadership, therefore, is to an extent not generally admitted, a skill which can be learnt: and Dr Adair has devised ways of showing cadets what is required of a man giving orders to a group, whether a lieutenant with a company or a foreman on a production line. With breezy ruthlessness Dr Adair brushes aside what he calls ‘the qualities approach’ to leadership instruction. You take the characteristics of great commanders and then hope the pupils will follow their examples. How unsatisfactory this is is shown by the lists of leadership qualities compiled in different institutions. Our own Naval College at Dartmouth puts at the top Faith and after it Knowledge; but the RAF college rates Efficiency first and Personality second. (Even allowing for historical differences, the disparity is astonishing.) The US Army puts Bearing first

The Group or Functional Approach and Courage second, whereas the US Marine Corps starts with Integrity and ranks Knowledge second. Field Marshal Slim – a leader if ever there was one – rates Courage highest and after it Willpower. Even more disturbing is the fact that the list of qualities runs to 15 at Dartmouth, seven at Cranwell, 14 in the US Marine Corps – and that only the Canadian Military College includes Humour. Dr Adair understandably finds this state of affairs unacceptable and in his clear, modest and carefully argued book shows the way to a closer analysis. We are left free to continue speculation and rhapsody about the qualities that kept Bomber Command flying to Berlin, gave the Eighth Army its identity, and imparted to the Mediterranean Fleet its dash. But we are also strengthened in our feeling that to distrust the word itself, because it was abused by a Duce and a Fuehrer, and to underrate the quality, is bad for a democratic society.

Donald McLachlan captured in his article the nature of the revolution in thinking about leadership and leadership training that had unfolded at Sandhurst during the 1960s. Even though that revolution triggered off in turn the leadership revolution of today, incidentally the ‘academic prejudice’ that McLachlan mentioned then persists to this day. US academics in this field are completely parochial, and also intellectually at sea; British and European academics have tended to follow them like sheep on their wanderings.

What is the group or functional approach? Not much smaller than the bibliography on leadership is the diversity of views on the topic. Even a cursory review of these investigations shows that leadership means many different things to different people. Far from being a unitary concept or simple dimension, it is probably one of the most complex phenomena social psychology offers.

So wrote the two US authors, J W Thibaut and H H Kelley in The Social Psychology of Groups (McGraw-Hill, 1959). They added that an ‘understanding of leadership must rest on a more basic understanding of the structure and functioning of groups’. By 1959, as I shall describe later, the Group or Functional Approach was already in use in Britain – it was formulated in a rough form and applied successfully in selecting military leaders in the British Army from 1941 onwards, continuously. Not until the 1960s, however, did I formulate the complete theory of that ‘more basic understanding of the structure and functioning of groups’ which Thibaut and Kelley correctly stipulated as the necessary condition for understanding leadership. In a nutshell it is as follows. All working groups, provided they have been together for some time, develop what I call a group personality (a phrase that was originally used by Clement Attlee about Cabinets). Yet the other side of the coin is that they also have present in them

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group needs. These are common or universal, in the sense that all working groups have them. They are: ●●

the need to achieve the common task;

●●

the need to be held together or maintained as a working unity;

●●

the needs which individuals bring into them by virtue of being embodied persons.

The next step is to say that these three areas of need are not separate or static – they are interactive and dynamic. It was the great breakthrough to perceive this interrelation as three overlapping circles (shown in Figure 20.1). A lot of leadership is common sense, but no amount of common sense could have produced this model – it required an inspired or creative moment.

F i g u r e 20.1   The three areas of need

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

My version substituted team for the original group (needs). In the Sandhurst context ‘team’ sounded less like jargon than ‘group needs’. It proved to be a correct decision.

The functions of leadership In order to meet the three areas of need certain functions have to be performed, such as planning or controlling. A function is what you do, as opposed to a quality, which is what you are. From the Latin functio, performance, a function is one of a group of related actions contributing to a larger action – in this instance the meeting of the Three Circles. The key functions required are more or less as follows. I say ‘more or less’ because diligent readers of my books will notice some variations in the lists. I don’t think this really matters – a fixed orthodox list would ossify what should be living material. Here is my original Sandhurst list:

The Group or Functional Approach ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

Planning

Seeking all available information. Defining group task, purpose or goal. Making a workable plan (in right decision-making framework).

Initiating

Briefing group on the aims and the plan. Explaining why aim or plan is necessary. Allocating tasks to group members. Setting group standards.

Controlling

Maintaining group standards. Influencing tempo. Ensuring all actions are taken towards objectives. Prodding group to action/decision.

Supporting Expressing acceptance of persons and their contribution. Encouraging group/individuals. Disciplining group/individuals. Creating team spirit. Reconciling disagreements or getting others to explore them. Informing



Clarifying task and plan. Giving new information to the group, ie keeping them ‘in the picture’. Receiving information from the group. Summarizing suggestions and ideas coherently.

Evaluating

Checking feasibility of an idea. Testing the consequences of a proposed solution. Evaluating group performance. Helping the group to evaluate its own performance.

In the Group or Functional Approach as developed by me these functions are clearly labelled leadership functions. Here function refers to activity demanded by one’s position, profession or the like; the proper or characteristic action of a person in a given role. That doesn’t mean to say that the designated leader should perform all these functions himself or herself. Indeed the theory suggests that it is impossible. In groups of more than three or four people there are just too many actions classifiable under the functions that are required to meet the requirements of task, team and individual for any one person to do them. But the leader is accountable for the three circles. Taken together these functions constitute the generic role of leader. The distinctive hallmarks of the theory are the three-factor Three Circles model, the concepts of a single set of functions meeting the whole, and the clear identification of them as leadership functions in the sense of being the prime responsibility of the designated leader.

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In these respects the Group or Functional Approach was streets ahead of its time in the 1960s. It falls outside the scope of this book to set it against the contemporary US social psychological theories about leadership, or the quite separate path of evolution since 1959. The US carpet-bombing of leadership continued – some 40,000 books (over 10,000 still in print) and over 10,000 research studies – but without removing that underlying confusion which Thibaut and Kelley had noted in 1959. In the long race since 1934 to discover the generic role of leader, it was a British thinker who achieved the breakthrough.

Applying the group or functional approach to training No theory is credible until it is applied to practice – and works. Moreover, it has to work in many different conditions and over a sustained period of time. The first major trial in the 1960s involved using the new philosophy in the training of military leaders at Sandhurst and in the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy – over 5,000, together with a smaller sample of several hundred junior managers in companies like Wates, Wilson Connolly Holdings and Dorothy Perkins. While that work was in progress, however, I became aware that, as mentioned above, a prototype had already been applied during the Second World War to selecting leaders with equal and continuing success. Having identified the role and functions of leadership it now became possible for the first time ever to train people to be team leaders. At Sandhurst this training was kick-started with a concentrated one-and-a-half-day course, which I designed and tested. It then continued in what I called ‘Field Leadership Training’. As its name implies, whenever an officer cadet occupied a leadership role during tactical exercises in the field there was a ‘debriefing’ afterwards which covered both tactical and leadership performance. The latter was conducted on a discussion basis, using the Three Circles model and the set of key functions like a compass. Not least by acting as observers and teachers of their peers in this way – quite apart from what they learnt by having a chance at leading themselves – the officer cadets grew as effective leaders and team members. Training for Leadership (Macdonald & Jane, 1968) was my write-up of this revolution at Sandhurst and elsewhere. On the strength of it another distinguished Spitfire ace of the Second World War, Neil Cameron (later Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Cameron and Chief of the Defence Staff), convened the first conference on leadership training to be held in the United Kingdom, in 1967. One of the con­ tributors, Harold Bridger, a psychologist at the Tavistock Institute who had served as a selector during the war, made a quiet remark that stuck in my mind: The seeds of the future lie in the present.

The Group or Functional Approach

The Group or Functional Approach was an immense step forward. It became the centrepiece of the whole Sandhurst training of military leaders. The Academy’s motto, ‘Serve to Lead’ now became intelligible. It didn’t mean that a young officer had to learn to obey orders himself before he could issue them to others with authority, though philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel had argued that such an experience for any leader is highly desirable: being on the receiving end teaches you a lot of lessons. No, serve meant to meet those three interlocking areas of need, and to do so primarily by example – by leading from the front. A young officer had to acquire the knowledge and the qualities so that – although appointed – he would be accepted as the natural leader by his soldiers. You can be appointed a commander or manager, but you are not a leader until your appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of those who work under you. In order to equip a young officer for the role of military leader, much more than specific training for leadership – such as I have been describing – is required. In Training for Leadership I talked about all those other elements – the ethos and tradition, the example of the staff, both officers and NCOs, the impact of military history, etc. It is a solemn but exciting moment when the newly commissioned officer at the Sovereign’s Parade stands on the threshold of his or her career as a leader. In June 1966 the Queen addressed these words to them: Today, those of you in the Senior Division become officers and it will not be long before those in the other Divisions follow in your steps. The day on which you receive your Commission is one of the most important in your life, because your duties and responsibilities as leaders of men are among the most onerous your country can confer upon you. You have learnt here that an officer must be, above all else, a leader; a person whom men will follow into danger, discomfort and every ordeal which nature, climate or a human enemy can contrive. Remember always that the best and purest form of leadership is example; that ‘Come on’ is a much better command that ‘Go on’. You come of races renowned for courage and I know that as officers you will never fail to be the first in danger. But leadership in the stress and excitement of battle will not be your only responsibility. Your patience, inspiration and attention to detail will also be required in the often equally testing routine duties and in what may seem uneventful and even unimportant periods of service. These times call for leadership of a special kind if you are to keep the morale and efficiency of your men at the pitch required. Leadership demands a dedicated responsibility towards the men under your command. Their lives will be in your hands and they will have the right to expect from you the highest standards of character, professional competence and integrity. If you will always put their interests and welfare before your own, you will not fail them and together you will be able to undertake any enterprise. You will often inspect your men, I suspect that when you are doing so they will be just as keenly inspecting you. Soldiers have always been ambassadors and representatives of their country. This applies with even greater force to officers. Your civilian countrymen will – perhaps

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How to Grow Leaders unconsciously – pay you the compliment of expecting you to show, not only a higher degree of courage and duty than themselves, but, when serving abroad, a standard of behaviour which reflects well upon your country. As you join your Units, you will be stepping into a profession which has played a most important and distinguished part in the evolution of this country. I am confident that you will continue to uphold its tradition as servant and protector of the state. The path on which you are now setting out will often be rough and steep; my trust, my thoughts and my good wishes go with you on it.

In 1962 the Adjutant General was so alarmed at the poor standards of leadership among junior officers that he directed every unit in the British Army to hold a study day on the subject. The revolutionary improvements at Sandhurst changed that dismal picture. In the decades since the Queen gave that speech the Services have been almost constantly on active service – Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and so on. Nothing is perfect, but in military leadership the Services has proved to be second to none. That is a source of pride to me, but there is also a great challenge to keep it that way. Like freedom, the price of good leadership is eternal vigilance.

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Chapter Twenty-one Leaders or managers?

“

We are going to win and the industrial West is going to lose: there is nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, you’re convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business.  Konosuke Matsushita, Tokyo 1979

I

n February 1983 the Harvard Business School announced that Abraham Zaleznik had been appointed to fill the Konosuke Matsushita Professorship of Leadership, the chair to be established ‘to support research and teaching on the development of effective leadership in society’ at Harvard. It was inaugurated in Japan in November 1981, some two years after I had taken up my appointment as the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies in the United Kingdom. Zaleznik had come to notice in 1977 with an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Managers and leaders: are they different?’ (reprinted in 1992). Here a characteristically US dichotomy between ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ was advanced graphically and influentially. ‘It takes neither genius nor heroism to be a manager,’ he wrote, ‘but rather persistence, tough-mindedness, hard work, intel­ ligence, analytical ability and perhaps most important, tolerance and goodwill.’ With that article as a symbolic starting line a huge consultancy industry developed around the notion of not ‘managers’ but ‘leaders’. Maybe, some said, organizations need both leaders and managers. Zaleznik would have none of that: It is easy enough to dismiss the dilemma… by saying that there is a need for people who can be both. But, just as a managerial culture differs from the entrepreneurial culture that develops when leaders appear in organizations, managers and leaders are very

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How to Grow Leaders different kinds of people. They differ in motivation, personal history and in how they think and act. (Zaleznik, A, Harvard Business Review, 1992: 127)

In this black-and-white dichotomy, leaders ‘think about goals, they are active rather than reactive, shaping ideas rather than responding to them’. Managers, by contrast, aim to ‘shift balances of power towards solutions acceptable as compromises, managers act to limit choices, leaders develop fresh approaches’. This controversy about the essential differences between leadership and management would fuel a thousand conferences. In fact it has proved to be a wild goose chase, for it begged the question as to whether or not there is an essential difference between a leader and a manager. It was the failure to think clearly enough about leadership that initially gave rise to the confusion, one from which there are a few signs that the academics are just beginning to emerge. The road has led them back to the general theory or philosophy that I propounded in Training for Leadership (Macdonald & Jane, 1968) and have been developing ever since.

Discovering the generic role of leader Only now, after more than 40 years have elapsed, can we appreciate the breakthrough of discovering the generic role of leader – symbolized by the Three Circles – in the 1960s. I compare it to a scientific discovery. The key passage in my 1968 book was as follows: Essentially leadership lies in the provision of the functions necessary for a group to achieve its task and be held together as a working team. Now this is basic, the raw ‘silver’ called leadership, which to some extent may be separated and analysed in functional terms. But in reality leadership always appears in a particular form or ‘vessel’ which can be distinguished from others. The shape is fashioned above all by the characteristic working situation of the group or its parent organization… In the military milieu the shape which leadership assumes is best called ‘Command’; in the industrial and commercial situation it is known as ‘Management’. Two boughs from the same tree, they can easily – but should not be – confused.

The philosopher Hegel once pointed out that one cannot eat fruit – it is only possible to eat apples, grapes, pears, raspberries, etc. By that analogy, command in the military field, management in various civilian fields, and ministry in the churches, are specific fruits – but leadership is fruit. As the Chinese proverb says, ‘It does not matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.’ The Group or Functional Approach, as I developed it, gave commanders, managers or ministers a clear idea of what they needed to do as occupants of the generic role of leader. Whether it was to be called ‘management’ or ‘leadership’ was, strictly speaking, an issue of semantics and secondary in importance.

Leaders or Managers?

The source of the confusion How, you may wonder, has all this confusion about leadership and management arisen? Oddly enough, there is a very simple explanation and the real culprit is the English language. Take a look at leadership again. The leader part presents no problems, as I was the first to point out that it derives from the old Anglo-Saxon noun laed which means a path, road, way, or course of a ship at sea – it is a journey word. Actually it is that suffix, -ship, which has caused all the problems, for it has two broad senses in English.

Exercise Look at the four senses of -ship in English given below and see if you can reduce them to two general ones: ●●

●● ●●

●●

Official position, status or rank, such as ambassadorship, citizenship, headship, professorship, etc. Collective members of a group, as membership or township. Quality, state or condition, as companionship, friendship, hardship, relationship, etc. Skill or expertise in a certain capacity, as craftsmanship, entrepreneurship, horsemanship.

My solution to the exercise is that there are two general senses, which I liken to the heads and tails of a coin: ●●

●●

Heads – having the position or dignity of leader, as in the leadership of the Trade Union Congress or the Arab world. Tails –

the state or condition of being what is expressed by the substantive, the qualities or character associated with it or the power implied by it, as in ‘he achieved great things by his leadership alone’.

Thus leadership is both role and attribute. The integrated theory or philosophy I developed at Sandhurst is the only one that integrates the heads and tails of leadership. Put simply, the Group or Functional Approach in the complete three-factor or triangular form gives us the role; the Qualities and Situational Approach (see the following chapter) gives us – together with functional skills – the attribute.

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Revisiting the Qualities Approach In his review of Training for Leadership Donald McLachlan commented upon the ‘breezy ruthlessness’ with which I ‘brushed aside’ the Qualities Approach. Certainly for the purposes of the initial training of young leaders that is true, but the Qualities Approach remained in the frame: it was always part of the integrated theory. It does matter what you are as a leader. My early distinction between representative and generic qualities has also stood the test of time:

Representative Leaders tend to exemplify or even personify the qualities required or expected in the working group in question. In the example of Douglas Bader, given in Chapter 19, actually all fighter pilots needed ‘courage, spirit, determination, guts – call it what you will’. For courage is a military virtue, and as such is required in all combatants. What a military leader does is to exemplify it, and make it visible. You can apply this principle to any field: nurses, teachers, lawyers, engineers, accountants, academics or research scientists. A leader should possess and express in his or her working life the four or five qualities that are perceived to be as essential in a good practitioner in that field.

Generic There are some generic – across the board – attributes or qualities of leaders. My list includes: ●●

●●

●●

●●

●●

Enthusiasm. Can you think of any leader who lacks enthusiasm? It is hard to do so. It may be a quiet and slow-burning enthusiasm rather than the heat and fireworks of passion, but it is always there. Integrity – the quality that engenders trust. Why is it so important for leadership? ‘Trust being lost,’ wrote the Roman historian Livy, ‘all the social intercourse of men is brought to naught.’ Toughness or ‘demandingness’, coupled with fairness. Leadership is not a popularity contest. People respect a leader with high standards who will not compromise on them, provided he or she is consistent, fair and does not ask from others what they do not require from themselves first. Humanity. ‘Cold fish’ do not make good leaders. Leaders need to exemplify basic humaneness, an inner kindness or sympathy when occasion calls for it. Confidence. No leader can operate without a quiet confidence. Confidence should not be confused with over-confidence. Indeed, without a level of

Leaders or Managers?

self-confidence none of us could put our talents to work. Therefore leaders are not so unique in this respect. ●●

●●

Humility. The result of having a proper sense of one’s own limitations. Its hallmarks are a readiness to listen and to be taught, a willingness to admit when one is wrong, and a reverence for others. Courage. Whereas not all physically brave individuals have moral courage, all those with moral courage are physically brave as well. Courage of either kind is universally admired, not least in a leader.

In Effective Leadership (Pan, 1983) I demonstrated the functional value or relevance in the context of the Three Circles model. In other words, the natural integration of the Qualities Approach and the Group or Functional Approach had advanced by then, like two paths with very different starting points coming closer together as they draw nearer to a mountain summit. You may notice that I am adamant about enthusiasm and integrity as generic leadership qualities, and then I become less sure as I go down my provisional list, eventually tailing off. There are two reasons. Firstly, it is important to keep leadership open-ended, so that it is fun to think about it and explore it. Cut-and-dried lists of ‘essential qualities’ (these days called ‘leadership competencies’) kill off thought. Moreover, there just isn’t the evidence to sustain more than two, three or four generic qualities. Secondly, the merit of keeping the list as short as possible is that you don’t overburden leaders with false expectations, making them feel secretly guilty all the time that they are not really leaders. Here we need to apply a form of Occam’s Razor to the post-Zaleznik school who expect leaders to be heroic, transformational or inspirational figures. William of Occam, a great medieval Franciscan scholar, held that ‘No more things should be presumed to exist then are absolutely necessary.’ It reminds us that all unnecessary facts or constituents in a subject should be eliminated. In this context, we should eliminate – or rather put on the optional list – all but the essentials of qualities, knowledge or skills. It is a help if a leader has a sense of humour or consummate tact, for example, but it is not essential. But if a leader lacks enthusiasm or integrity he or she is in danger of being merely a tenant of their role, not a natural freeholder. Do you have to be inspirational as a leader? This is a hard question to answer because inspirational is one of the most frequently mentioned overtones of being a (good) leader. The answer is quite complex, but in simple terms inspiration is not a property of personality or character. It is a phenomenon, like a rainbow. There has to be a conjuncture of factors or circumstances to produce that phenomenon and – like the rainbow – it comes and goes. The factors lie in the nature of the task, the greatness of people in the team, and the fire inside the leader. When these planets

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align, then everyone – including the leader – experiences inspiration. (See Part Two.)

The manager as leader In any field it takes a long time for conceptual or scientific breakthroughs to become popular truisms, and – globally – there is a long journey ahead. The false dichotomy between ‘leaders’ and ‘managers’ in the United States is now almost on its last legs. Also on the way out at last is the absurd notion that organizations need ‘leaders’ at the top and a staff of ‘managers’ at all levels below them – a modern form of Plato’s class distinction between kings and philosophers (leaders), guardians (managers) and workers/slaves. It was one earlier form of that – Taylorism – that Matsushita criticized at the head of this chapter. What we now know is that – whether they know it or not – managers are in the generic role of leader. As in the case of DNA, we have a map: it isn’t a double helix, however, but what the mathematicians call a Venn diagram. It is simple, but it is also – again in the language of mathematics – deep. The issue is really whether or not the management of a company are leaders. They are the leadership (role). The issue is whether or not they have leadership (attribute). The first thing you have to check, however, is if they do actually know what the role is. A surprising number of managers are still victims of tunnel vision: they see a narrow range of task functions and no more. Don’t ever criticize a manager for not being a leader if no one has ever told him or her what the role is. Rather criticize the inept organization that appointed them. I hope I am not treading on your toes. It all comes down to the basic question: what are you being paid to do? What we call the answer – leadership or management or something else – doesn’t matter.

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Chapter Twenty-two The Situational Approach

“

There is a small risk a leader will be regarded with contempt by those he leads if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform.  Xenophon

T

he natural sequence is Qualities, Situational and Group or Functional Approaches. Here I am changing the order for a reason. Although the modern form of the Situational (alias Contingency) Approach was known in the 1960s in the writings of psychologists, it was not until long after I had left Sandhurst that I tracked down the true source of it, and thereby accidentally discovered what has proved to be a kind of Tutankhamun’s Tomb. It is the second great discovery in my personal odyssey.

What is the Situational Approach? Recall that basic question in our field: why is it that one person in a group is perceived to be and accepted as the leader? The answer of the Situational Approach is that it all depends on the situation. Stogdill, for example, who studied the evidence for 29 qualities appearing in 124 studies, concluded that although intelligence, scholarliness, dependability, social parti­ cipation and socio-economic status were found to bear some relation to leadership: the evidence suggests that leadership is a relationship that exists between persons in a social situation, and that persons who are leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in other situations. (Ralph Stogdill, Ohio State University Press, 1948)

Another study by W O Jenkins, published a year earlier in 1947, supports this conclusion. After reviewing 74 studies on military leadership the author wrote:

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How to Grow Leaders Leadership is specific to the particular situation under investigation. Who becomes the leader of a particular group engaging in a particular activity and what the leadership characteristics are in the given case are a function of the specific situation. There are wide variations in the characteristics of individuals who become leaders in similar situations and even great divergence in leadership behaviour in different situations. The only common factor appeared to be that leaders in a particular field need and tend to possess superior general or technical competence or knowledge in that area. General intelligence does not seem to be the answer… (W O Jenkins, ‘A review of leadership studies with particular reference to military problems’, Psychological Bulletin, 1947)

To illustrate this theory let us imagine some shipwreck survivors on a tropical island. The soldier in the party might take command if natives attacked them, the builder lead during the work of erecting houses, and the farmer might direct the labour of growing food. In other words, leadership would pass from member to member according to the situation. ‘Situation’ in this context means primarily the task of the group. There are two drawbacks to this approach as far as training leaders is concerned. Firstly, it is unsatisfactory in most organizations for leadership to change hands in this manner. At one time the Royal Air Force veered towards this doctrine by entertaining the idea that if a bomber crashed in a jungle the officer who took command for the survival operation might not be captain of the aircraft but the man most qualified for the job. But role flexibility to this degree tends to create more problems than it solves. Secondly, an explanation was needed for the fact that certain men seemed to possess a general leadership competence that enabled them to exercise an influence over their fellows in a whole range of situations. Of course, the compilers of trait lists had been seeking, without much success, to analyse this general aptitude, and there was no denying its reality. Even so, by seeing leadership not as a quality but as a relationship, and by grasping the importance of the leader possessing the appropriate technical or professional knowledge required in the given situation, the proponents of this approach made a most valuable contribution to our understanding of the subject.

The origins of the Situational Approach The Situational Approach, as I called it, actually dates back to Socrates in 5th-century BCE Athens. You may wonder how I can say that, given the fact that Socrates wrote no books. The answer is that two of his circle did write books: Plato and Xenophon. As they both wrote their various works in the form of Socratic dialogues, that is, between one or more interlocutors and Socrates, it is not easy to determine whether

The Situational Approach

the voice we hear is that of Socrates on the one hand or the voices of Plato and Xenophon on the other. But as the kernel of the Situational Approach to understanding leadership – namely, that in any situation people will tend to follow or obey the man or woman who knows what to do and how to do it – is found in both Plato and Xenophon and attributed to their master, it is a sound surmise that it goes back to Socrates himself. Both use the example of a ship’s captain and his crew. Here is Plato’s version from the Republic: The sailors are quarrelling over the control of the helm… they do not understand that the genuine navigator can only make himself fit to command a ship by studying the seasons of the year, sky, stars and winds, and all that belongs to his craft; and they have no idea that, along with the science of navigation, it is possible for him to gain, by instruction or practice, the skill to keep control of the helm whether some of them like it or not.

The case of the young cavalry commander One day, Xenophon tells us, Socrates engaged in discussion with a newly elected cavalry commander in the Athenian Army. As Xenophon himself was elected to that office at the age of 23 or 24, it is tempting to believe that this is a piece of autobiography and that he is describing here his first encounter with ‘The Thinker’, as the young men called their intellectual mentor and beloved friend. Under questioning from Socrates, the young man agreed that his seeking of the rank of commander could not have been because he wanted to be first in the cavalry charge, for, as Socrates pointed out, the mounted archers usually rode ahead of the commander into battle. Nor could it have been simply in order to get himself known by everyone – even madmen, he conceded under questioning from Socrates, could achieve that. He accepted Socrates’ suggestion that it must have been because he wanted to leave the Athenian cavalry in better condition than when he found it. Xenophon, later both the world’s first authority on horsemanship and the author of a textbook on commanding cavalry, had no difficulty in explaining what needs to be done to achieve that end. The young commander, for example, must improve the quality of the cavalry mounts; he must school new recruits – both horses and men – in equestrian skills and then teach the troopers their cavalry tactics. All these points emerged step by step out of the dialogue: ‘And have you considered how to make the men obey you?’ continued Socrates. ‘Because without that, horses and men, however good and gallant, are of no use.’ ‘True, but what is the best way of encouraging them to obey, Socrates?’ asked the young man. ‘Well, I suppose you know that under all conditions human beings are most willing to obey those whom they believe to be the best. Thus in sickness they most readily obey the doctor, on board ship the pilot, on a farm the farmer, whom they think to be the most skilled in his business.’

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How to Grow Leaders ‘Yes, certainly,’ said his student. ‘Then it is likely that in horsemanship too, one who clearly knows best what ought to be done will most easily gain the obedience of the others.’

Xenophon captures here that very distinct theme in Socrates’ teaching on leadership already identified above. In harmony with the rest of his practical philosophy of life and politics (for, despite his pose of ignorance, Socrates had ideas of his own), it emphasizes the importance of knowledge in leadership. People will obey willingly only those whom they perceive to be better qualified or more knowledgeable than themselves in a particular situation. At the age of 26 years Xenophon accepted an invitation from his friend Proxenus to join him as what we would call a ‘gentleman volunteer’ on a military expedition to Babylon. A claimant to the Persian throne had hired a Greek army of 10,000 mercenaries. Proxenus was one of the six generals, but the senior one was a Spartan called Cleachus. Unfortunately they and their employer lost the critical battle: he lost his life and they were in danger of being made slaves. But under Cleachus’ influence the Greeks decided to march 800 miles through enemy territory to the Black Sea and freedom. Not long after setting out the Persians treacherously murdered the six Greek generals. Xenophon was one of those elected to replace them, and he soon emerged as the commander-in-chief. He later wrote a famous account of the Persian expedition – they got to the sea in the end – in which, for the first time in history, the leadership of commanders is described. And, of course, Xenophon tells us how he put into practice the lessons he had learnt at the feet of Socrates.

Xenophon on leadership At the head of Chapter 19, I quoted Xenophon’s brief description of the Spartan general Cleachus. ‘It was said that he had all the qualities of leadership which a man of his sort could have,’ said Xenophon. It is evidently not a judgement that Xenophon shared, though clearly he held the Spartan (as he did all Spartans) in the highest respect. Yet Cleachus lacked something in his makeup – perhaps as a result of the narrow military upbringing that produced ‘a man of his sort’ – that made him fall short of the ideal of a leader that Xenophon had formed in his discussions with Socrates. Make no mistake, Cleachus was a copybook example of one principal strand of the Socratic theory of leadership. When the army found itself in a crisis his unrivalled professional knowledge and experience stood out like a beacon and attracted men to him. As Xenophon writes: On these occasions, they said that his forbidding look seemed positively cheerful, and his toughness appeared as confidence in the face of the enemy, so that it was no longer toughness to them but something to make them feel safe. On the other hand, when the danger was over and there was a chance of going away to take service under someone

The Situational Approach else, many of them deserted him, since he was invariably tough and savage, so that the relations between his soldiers and him were like those of boys to a schoolmaster.

Xenophon’s last point, that Cleachus treated his soldiers like a pedagogue (literally in Greek a ‘leader of children’) is illuminating. The Greeks prided themselves on the belief that they were the most intelligent people on the face of the earth; they were deeply conscious, too, of their tradition of equality and democracy. Even when serving as mercenary soldiers they did not like being bullied or treated as children. How similar they are to people today – human nature hardly changes, if it does at all. At least the military experience of Cleachus, who was about 50 years old, commanded the respect of his fellow officers and his stern administration of discipline generated the fear as well as the respect of the common soldiers, as Xenophon makes clear. By contrast, his friend Proxenus, an intelligent and wealthy young Boetian aged about 30 but lacking in military experience, was neither respected nor feared by the soldiers. Xenophon gives us this pen-portrait of him: He was a good commander for people of a gentlemanly type, but he was not capable of impressing his soldiers with a feeling of respect or fear for him. Indeed, he showed more diffidence in front of his soldiers than his subordinates showed in front of him, and it was obvious that he was more afraid of being unpopular with his troops than his troops were afraid of disobeying his orders. He imagined that to be a good general, and to gain the name for being one, it was enough to give praise to those who did well and to withhold it from those who did badly. The result was that decent people in his entourage liked him, but unprincipled people undermined his position, since they thought he was easily managed.

Cleachus, at least, had the authority of knowledge and a commanding presence, yet he lacked a quality that Xenophon came to see as the very essence of leadership – the ability to inspire willing obedience in others. What a true leader needs, said Xenophon, is a true knowledge of human nature. If he has that knowledge, then such a leader will be able to get the very best out of people. In the military context that will always give him the competitive edge over an enemy whose commanders lack that knowledge. If leaders are made in the sense that they can acquire the authority of knowledge, are they born as far as the capacity to inspire the willing obedience of others is concerned? It is tempting to conclude that this is the case. The ability to give people the intellectual and moral strength to venture or persevere in the presence of danger, fear or difficulty is not the common endowment of all men and women. Xenophon, however, did believe that at least the basic principles of it could be acquired through education, as he had experienced himself with Socrates.

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The Socratic tradition: can leadership be learnt? In the narrow sense of the Situational Approach, anything that trains or equips a person with skill, technique, theoretical knowledge and practical application within a field is ipso facto training for leadership. Remember the proverb: ‘Authority flows to the one who knows.’ But it is unlikely that it will be seen by most people as such, for knowledge and technical knowledge are more like a necessary condition for leadership, rather than an essential strand of leadership itself. The Socratic tradition, however, sows the seed that there is another kind of know­ ledge that a good leader should have. Can it be taught or is it innate? Xenophon, a religious man, hovers between a belief that this knowledge of inspiring others to work willingly and cheerfully is a divine gift, and a belief that it can be learnt. As I have implied, he must have felt that what he had learnt through the teaching of Socrates had equipped him as a leader, probably in more ways than he would have been able to put his finger upon. ‘Mind you, I do not go as far as to say that this can be learnt at sight or at a single hearing,’ he wrote in the conclusion of Oeconomicus, his treatise on estate management! ‘On the contrary, to acquire these powers a man needs education.’ Natural potential is most important, he continues. But in some men leadership amounts to a gift, something akin to genius, which suggests something more of divine origin than human. This ‘power to win willing obedience’ may seem ultimately as if it is a gift of the gods, writes Xenophon, but it is not capriciously bestowed. The true beneficiaries of it are ‘those who devote themselves to seeking wisdom’. There speaks the voice of Socrates! By theorizing that there is a common or general element that transcends all the particular fields of human enterprise, Xenophon begins to take us away from the narrowest ‘horses for courses’ version of the Situational Approach. For he indicates, without specifying, a wider knowledge that a good leader needs, which is not the same as technical or professional skill, knowledge and experience. It is the know­ ledge of people, a knowledge of how to work with the grain of human nature as opposed to running up against it. Field Marshal Lord Slim, the Second World War general who more than the others of all nations reflected most deeply about leadership, was equally clear on that point. Primarily with the military field in mind (though he had worked in the steel industry before becoming a soldier), this is what he had to say on the subject in an address on ‘Leadership in Management’, given in 1957 in Australia, where he was Governor-General: I said [the leader] must have knowledge. A man has no right to set himself up as a leader – or to be set up as a leader – unless he knows more than those he is to lead. In a small unit, a platoon say – or maybe a workshop gang – the leader should be able to do the job

The Situational Approach of any man in the outfit better than he can. That is a standard that should be required from all junior leaders. As the leader rises higher in the scale, he can no longer, of course, be expected to show such mastery of the detail of all the activities under him. A Divisional Commander need not know how to coax a wireless set, drive a tank, preach a sermon or take out an appendix as well as the people in his division who are trained to do those things. But he has got to know how long these jobs should take, what their difficulties are, what they need in training and equipment and the strain they entail. As the leader moves towards the top of the ladder, he must be able to judge between experts and technicians, and to use their advice although he will not need their knowledge. One kind of knowledge that he must always keep in his own hands – is that of men.

You can see that Slim – who told me when I asked him that he had not read Xenophon – is singing from the same hymn sheet. Knowledge of one’s professional field is vital, but not the ability to do every technical or specialist job. Knowledge of people – human nature – is equally important. How does one acquire that? Thus the Situational Approach completes the picture. It is the third path on the mountain. It also converges with the other two as it approaches the summit of the mountain. To change the metaphor from mountain paths to chemistry, the three elements – Qualities, Group and Situational – at first were like a chemical mixture; they could be separated by physical means, like sand or water. Now they have become a compound, to all intents a whole. Only for the purposes of teaching can we separate by chemical means that compound into its original components. Leader and leadership are abstract terms. To repeat the point, you never see a leader, just as you never eat fruit – only apples or grapes. Cleachus, Proxemus and Xenophon are ‘apples’ – soldiers who are also leaders. Leadership is always embodied. Xenophon’s Greek mind, inspired by Socrates, sought to discover the universal laws that explain why, given that human nature is common, some leaders inspire willing obedience while other commanders or managers fail to do so. Centuries later a famous diplomat, one who would lose his life in a plane crash on a peace mission to Africa, asked himself the same questions. Dag Hammarskjöld, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, kept a journal, later published under the title of Markings (Faber, 1964). One night he wrote an entry in it on the theme of humility and the effect it has on others. He addressed his words to himself but they are relevant to you and me: Your position never gives you the right to command. It only imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others may receive your orders without being humiliated.

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Chapter Twenty-three Levels of leadership

“

The summits of the various kinds of business are, like the tops of mountains, much more alike than the parts below – the bare principles are much the same; it is only the rich variegated details of the lower strata that so contrast with one another. But it needs travelling to know that the summits are the same. Those who live on one mountain believe that their mountain is wholly unlike all others.  WALTER BAGEHOT

L

eadership exists on different levels. Thinking of organizations, there are three broad levels or domains of leadership:

●●

●●

●●

Team

The leader of a team of some 10 to 20 people with clearly specified tasks to achieve.

Operational

The leader of one of the main parts of the organization and more than one team leader are under one’s control. It is already a case of being a leader of leaders.

Strategic

The leader of a whole organization, with a number of operational leaders under one’s personal direction.

A chemical company employs 588 people. The managing director has seven people reporting to her, and each of those has seven responsible to them. At the lowest level there are 12 people in each work group. That means only three levels of leadership, as shown in Figure 23.1. This is the simplest form of organization. If you look at the Rule of St Benedict, for example, you will see clearly the three levels of leadership in the large monas­ teries the Rule envisages. As organizations get larger and more complex, more ranks, grades and levels come into the picture. But you should train your eye to discern the three key levels – they are always there. A simple recipe for organizational success is to have effective leaders occupying these roles and working together in harmony as a team. That is simple enough to say:

Levels of Leadership

I am not implying that it is easy either to achieve or to maintain that state of affairs under the pressures of life today. But what is your alternative? Within each broad level there may be subdivisions. The levels also overlap con­ siderably. But the distinction is still worth making.

F i g u r e 2 3 .1   The three levels of leadership Strategic Leadership

Operational Leadership

Team Leadership

Sometimes, however, these three floor levels of the organizational house are disguised by the elaborate façade of hierarchy. A hierarchy (from Greek hierus, sacred) originally meant a ruling body of priests or clergy organized into orders or ranks each subordinate to the one above. The Greek archos was a generic term for a person who was in authority over others, their leader. It comes from a verb that means both to begin and to take the lead. Hence our English suffix -archy and prefix arch-, which means government or leadership of or by an arch. An archbishop, for example, is the first or leader among bishops, whereas monarchy is rule by one person – a king or emperor. In Greek phalanxes and Roman formations there were archoi of various names among the rank and file. But once battle was joined, formations tended to disintegrate and the natural ‘leaders of 10’ emerged to rally and lead their comrades forward. The foundation is the team leader, a truth that continues to evade many large organizations today. ‘Ten soldiers wisely led will beat one hundred without a head,’ wrote the Greek poet Euripides, as you may recall. A decanus in Greek and Latin was the leader of 10 soldiers. From its use in monastic orders for a monk in charge of 10 others, the word comes down to us in the form of dean – the dean of a cathedral or the dean of a university faculty. Our military equivalent is corporal, which derives, like captain, from Latin caput, head. Chief, coming from chef, the French for a head, has the same meaning. Because as humans we stand erect, we tend to assume that a head is a hierarchical model: the head is on top so it is important. But look at any other animal: the head always goes first – it is the body’s leader.

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The application of the Three Circles to organizations It was an Indian professor of management at a conference in Penang, Malaysia, who first pointed out to me that if the Three Circles model did not apply to organizations it was not a complete theory. Truth is not satisfied until… we are not impelled to strive for another and a better way of holding it all together. Truth is not satisfied, in other words, until it is all-containing and one. (A N Whitehead, Essays on Truth and Reality, 1914)

To be, in Whitehead’s words, ‘all-containing and one’, the theory behind Functional Leadership had to link the microcosm of the small working group and the macrocosm of the working organization. In fact there was no satisfactory general theory of organization, merely lots of more or less incoherent writings on the subject. Could the Three Circle model do its magic at organizational level? So in Effective Leadership (Pan, 1983) I began to explore the organizational possibilities of the Three Circles model. The basic philosophy, you recall, would suggest, at this level, that all organizations are unique (group personality, culture, ethos), but all share in common the three areas of interactive need: task, team and individual. What changes, of course, are the substantives (but not the nature) of the three terms.

The role of the strategic leader The next step was a surprisingly easy one. If the Three Circles model – the Group or Functional Approach – applied to organizations as well as groups, then the model gave us the generic role of a strategic leader. It could be represented as in Figure 23.2. Incidentally, as far as I know I was the first person to introduce the phrase strategic leadership in the early 1970s. Subsequently I discovered that in that phrase the word leadership is actually redundant. For in Greek strategy is made up of two words: stratas, a large body of people, and the egy element which means leadership. Strategy is simply the art of leading an organization. Another way of understanding the functions that compromise the role of a stra­ tegic leader is to see them as covering the following key areas of the organization’s forwards-moving, dynamic life: ●●

purpose/vision;

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strategic thinking and planning;

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operational/administration;

Levels of Leadership

F i g u r e 2 3 .2   The seven functions of a strategic leader STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP FUNCTIONS

ROLE

• • •

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

• • • •

Providing direction for the organization as a whole. Getting strategy and policy right. Making it happen (overall executive responsibility). Organizing or reorganizing (balance of whole and parts). Releasing the corporate spirit. Relating the organization to other organizations and society as a whole. Choosing today’s leaders and developing tomorrow’s leaders.

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organization fitness to situational requirement;

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energy, morale, confidence, esprit de corps;

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allies and partners, stakeholders, political;

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teaching and leading the learning by example.

What fits a person to fulfil this role? It is clearly a demanding and challenging one, even though there are professional staff at hand – sometimes in cohorts to help the strategic leader where the responsibilities are great. Let us assume that the strategic leader has awareness, understanding and skill in the Three Circles model. Assume, too, that he or she knows his or her business. Take for granted as well personal leadership qualities such as enthusiasm, integrity, fairness, toughness, calmness, humanity and resilience.

Is it possible to transfer as a strategic leader from one organization to another? In theory or principle, strategic leaders are more transferable from one field of human enterprise to another, because they do not need the kind of specialized technical or professional knowledge that is required at the lower levels (the Situational Approach). As Walter Bagehot, in words quoted at the head of this chapter, astutely observed, ‘the summits of the various kinds of business… are the same’, even though inhabitants of organizations always believe they are totally unique.

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The idea that leadership is transferable – at a certain level – from one field to another can be found in tradition – another example of how the general philosophy of this book recovers, relates and progresses all the important strands of human thought on the subject. In the following dialogue we see more of Xenophon’s mind at work than Socrates, his original inspiration and mentor.

The case of Antisthenes: business leader turned general Once, on seeing Nicomachides returning from the elections, Socrates asked him, ‘Who have been chosen generals, Nicomachides?’ ‘Isn’t it just like the Athenians?’ Nicomachides replied. ‘They have not chosen me after all the hard work I have done since I was called up, in the command of company or regiment, though I have been so often wounded in action.’ (Here he uncovered and showed his scars.) ‘They have chosen Antisthenes, who has never served in a marching regiment nor distinguished himself in the cavalry and understands nothing but money-making.’ ‘Isn’t that a recommendation,’ said Socrates, ‘supposing he proves capable of supplying the men’s needs?’ ‘Why,’ retorted Nicomachides, ‘merchants also are capable of making money, but that doesn’t make them fit to command an army!’ ‘But,’ replied Socrates, ‘Antisthenes also is eager for victory, and that is a good point in a general. Whenever he has been choirmaster, you know, his choir has always won.’ ‘No doubt,’ conceded Nicomachides, ‘but there is no analogy between the handling of a choir and of an army.’ ‘But you see,’ said Socrates, ‘though Antisthenes knows nothing about music or choir training, he showed himself capable of finding the best experts in these activities. And therefore if he finds out and prefers the best men in warfare as in choir training, it is likely that he will be victorious in that too; and probably he will be more ready to spend money on winning a battle with the whole state than on winning a choral competition with his tribe.’ ‘Do you mean to say, Socrates, that the man who succeeds with a chorus will also succeed with an army?’ ‘I mean that, whatever a man controls, if he knows what he wants and can get it he will be a good controller, whether he controls a chorus, an estate, a city or an army.’ ‘Really, Socrates,’ cried Nicomachides, ‘I should never have thought to hear you say that a good businessman would make a good general!’ By his familiar method of patient cross-examination, Socrates won agreement from Nicomachides that successful businessmen and generals perform much the same functions. Then Socrates proceeded to identify six of these functions or skills: ●●

selecting the right man for the right job;

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punishing the bad and rewarding the good;

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winning the goodwill of those under them;

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attracting allies and helpers;

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keeping what they have gained;

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being strenuous and industrious in their own work.

Levels of Leadership

‘All these are common to both,’ Nicomachides accepted, ‘but fighting is not.’ ‘But surely both are bound to find enemies?’ ‘Oh yes, they are.’ ‘Then is it not important for both to get the better of them?’ ‘Undoubtedly; but you don’t say how business capacity will help when it comes to fighting.’ ‘That is just where it will be most helpful,’ Socrates concluded. ‘For the good businessman, through his knowledge that nothing profits or pays like a victory in the field, and nothing is so utterly unprofitable and entails such heavy loss as a defeat, will be eager to seek and avoid what leads to defeat, will be prompt to engage the enemy if he sees he is strong enough to win, and, above all, will avoid an engagement when he is not ready.’

For the most part, I have argued, this discussion is now only a theoretical or academic one. That is because I am a disciple of Socrates in believing that field-related knowledge and experience are essential strands in leadership. True, someone of above-average intelligence, that is, someone who learns quickly, can acquire know­ ledge of a new field, but experience takes much longer. In times past transfers from being a civilian to becoming a military commander were not uncommon. Oliver Cromwell, for example, was over 40 when he became a soldier and first commanded a troop of cavalry; within a year or two he was a famous general. T E Lawrence was under 30 and had no military experience when he became in effect a strategic military leader. Reading Xenophon, as I mentioned earlier, helped to prepare him for the challenge. Moving in the other direction, the Labour Government in 1946 chose General Sir William Slim, the celebrated commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth Army, to be Chairman of British Rail, for Attlee’s Cabinet was convinced that industry needed the kind of leadership at the top which Slim had showed in Burma. Where else could they get it but from the Army? Slim was well into his apprenticeship as Vice-Chairman when he was whisked away to be Governor-General of Australia.

On practical wisdom As one reaches the top of an organization one has to deal with a greater level of complexity than at team or operational level. Complexity is both intellectually demanding and stressful, and it is not uncommon to discover that some individuals promoted to be chief executives just cannot handle it: they have risen to the level of their incompetence. In particular, they may lack the kind of mind that an effective strategic leader needs. From ancient Athens I have borrowed the Greek word phronesis to describe the mind needed. As Aristotle discussed phronesis in the context of ethics, it is only really

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known today among moral philosophers. Translated into English as ‘prudence’ via the Latin prudentia, it has been robbed of significance, as ‘prudence’ now has the wrong overtones in English. The truest rendering of phronesis in English is by the phrase ‘practical wisdom’. It is a particularly apt phrase because the Greeks saw phronesis as the key attribute of their best leaders, such as Pericles and Themistocles. Yet in English it is almost capable of being simplified into one word: ‘wisdom’, which derives from an old Anglo-Saxon word wisian meaning to show the way, to guide, to lead – wisdom is the thinking appropriate to a leader. So practical wisdom, as opposed to sophia – the wisdom sought by the old philo­ sophers – is the wisdom of leaders relating to practice: what way to go, what to do next, when to do it, how to do it and with whom to do it. These are questions and issues that cannot be solved like mathematical problems or puzzles: they call for the exercise of judgement. What equips a person with good judgement? I suggest that wisdom is a compound of three elements: intelligence, experience and goodness. The inclusion of the latter may cause surprise, but you may notice that we never call bad people wise. We are only on the threshold of the study of phronesis, practical wisdom, in the context of leadership, and so I cannot tell you much more about it. Integrity is simply one aspect of goodness. Humility makes an early entrance on the stage, as does humour and – more surprisingly – a certain lightness of touch. The common idea is that we tend to grow wiser as we grow older. There is a counter-view, however, that the young are wise and that we lose wisdom as we get older – no fool like an old fool. Solomon was a byword for being wise as a young king, but where was wisdom in his later years? Wisdom is a broad term, then, and suggests a rare combination of discretion, maturity, keenness of intellect, broad experience, extensive learning, profound thought and compassionate understanding. In its fullest application, wisdom implies the highest and noblest exercise of the moral nature as well as of the nature. Yet wisdom always tends towards simplicity. It has no need of regular shaving with Occam’s Razor, because it is always simplifying, always mentally spring cleaning, always reducing things to essentials. As Lao Tzu said: In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is acquired; In pursuit of wisdom, every day something is dropped.

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How to grow leaders – The seven principles

W

e now turn to the seven principles that need to be applied if leadership is to be grown. It is not easy to distribute these principles between the individual concerned (the person who wishes to grow as a leader) and the organization that he or she happens to be working for at the time. The best results spring from a kind of partnership or informal contract between the two. Principles are not rules or logical steps in a plan. There is no formula. Principles are general statements that are universally or widely considered to be true and funda­ mental. In the rest of Part Three, then, you have the opportunity to reflect upon the elementary propositions that have to guide or govern any effective organizational or personal programme for growing leaders, even if your client is only yourself. The principles – in no order of importance – are like bricks that you have to build into a wall of your own design.

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The seven principles of leadership development TRAINING SELECTION LINE LEADERS AS MENTORS THE CHANCE TO LEAD EDUCATION FOR LEADERSHIP A STRATEGY FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE

Principle One: Training for Leadership

Principle One: Training for leadership

“

There is nobody who cannot vastly improve his powers of leadership by a little thought and practice.  Lord Slim Where does the story begin? Usually someone at or near the top of an organization – such as the chief executive, director of human resources or a senior divisional director – gets it into their head that leadership is a good thing and we should have more of it here. Today there are plenty of outside pressures – not least in the public sector – to do something about leadership as well. There it comes from the politicians and their top advisers, who at last have come to see that reforms and ‘modernization’ of the public services depend upon effective leadership. Hence between 1999 and 2004 the UK Government spend over £300 million in setting up leadership centres, colleges, foundations and councils. Why is all that effort proving to be so ineffective?

The most common error To act is easy, to think hard. This English proverb signposts the most common error: organizations act – for external or internal political reasons – before sitting down to think first. Managers are often pragmatic doers by nature, and any suggestion of a delay in order to think smacks of the Danish disease – so named by me after Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, who gave this classic description of it: Thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.

The antidote to the Danish disease comes from an outstanding business leader of our times, the Canadian media magnate Roy Thomson, who once owned The Times. Writing in After I Was Sixty (Hamish Hamilton, 1975), he wrote: IBM – one of the world’s great business organizations – have had for many years a single word as their motto. A sign over every executive’s desk spells it out: Think. Let us be honest with ourselves and consider how averse we all are to doing just that. Thinking is work. In the early stages of a man’s career it is very hard work. When a difficult decision or problem arises, how easy it is, after looking at it superficially, to give up thinking about it. It is easy to put it from one’s mind. It is easy to decide that it is insoluble or that

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How to Grow Leaders something will turn up to help us. Sloppy and inconclusive thinking becomes a habit. The more one does it the more one is unfitted to think a problem through to a proper conclusion. If I have any advice to pass on, as a successful man, it is this: if one wants to be successful, one must think; one must think until it really hurts. One must worry a problem in one’s mind until it seems there cannot be another aspect of it that hasn’t been considered. Believe me, that is hard work and, from my close observation, I can say that there are few people who are prepared to perform this arduous and tiring work.

I hope that you and your organization don’t fall into that last category. To grow leaders and leadership does demand clear thinking. But I trust, too, that I shall show in this book that clear thinking about leadership is not really hard work – it is fun. Organizations that rush or slide into ‘leadership’ activities without doing the necessary hard thinking exhibit the following symptoms: ●●

●●

●● ●●

●●

There is no clear concept of what leadership is and how it relates to management. There is no understanding of the different levels of leadership and their different training/educational requirements. Commitment (and sometimes even interest) is lacking at the very top. Ignorance about the history of thinking about leadership and the history of leadership training is prevalent – programmes often reflect the latest US fad or fashion. What is looked for is a ‘quick fix’ – instant leadership – and when it isn’t forthcoming such organizations move on to the next panacea.

Organizations that want to avoid the most common error, however, are faced with a problem. The object of thinking is the truth. But to think out the truth about leader­ ship or leadership development from – as we say – first principles, would take forever. Einstein once said: ‘I think and think, for months, for years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is wrong. The hundredth time I am right.’ Still, as a result, now you and I don’t have to puzzle out the Special Theory of Relativity for ourselves. Nor do designers of aircraft have to work out for themselves the Laws of Aerodynamics. There is a clear path of thought on leadership, but an organization cannot just take it from the expert: it needs to retrace that path and make it its own – hence the earlier material of Part Three of this book. What happens is that organizations don’t think. They don’t ask the right questions and weigh the possible solutions or courses of action. ‘Thinking begins’, wrote John Dewey, ‘in what may fairly enough be called a forked-road situation, a situation that is ambiguous, that presents a dilemma, that proposes alternatives.’ If an organization doesn’t think for itself then it becomes especially vulnerable to people who offer to do its thinking for it – at a price. But this doesn’t really solve the

Principle One: Training for Leadership

problem. Besieged by management consultants, business schools, gurus and books that are all selling ‘answers’ on leadership or leadership development, how does one know which guide to follow? To make matters worse, these self-nominated guides are blind themselves. For the academics, consultants and teachers of leadership have not thought about leadership in the sense that Einstein thought about physics or Frederick Lanchester about aerodynamics. Therefore they are as confused and as muddled as their clients. And, as the proverb says, ‘If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit.’ Consequently, it isn’t easy for an organization today to think for itself about leadership and leadership development – the waters are so muddied. Not easy but by no means impossible. ICI did it in the 1980s, thus breaking a sound barrier in this field. Because virtually no other organization since then has followed suit is not an argument for saying that it is impossible. Far from it. All you need to do is to get your strategic leadership team together for 24 hours and think about the questions that this book addresses.

C a s e s t u dy   ICI in 1983 We must obey the greatest law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.  EDMUND BURKE In September 1981 Bill Stead and Edgar Vincent – the two senior managers responsible for group human resources in ICI – came to see me at the University of Surrey. They gave me some background about the plight of ICI – 1980 had been a disastrous year in which profits fell by 48 per cent and the dividend was cut for the first time since formation in 1926 – and told me that the executive directors had decided that the first priority in human resources strategy should be the development of what they called manager-leaders. They wished me to act as outside consultant. My previous contacts with ICI had been few and far between. In the 1970s I knew it from afar as a company that had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on hiring behavioural scientists, mainly American and some most distinguished, such as Douglas McGregor. Some innovations, for example the work on job enrichment, had had a high profile. It had a reputation for sophistication in its various management systems and management development programmes. Through the agency of the Chemical and Allied Products Industrial Training Board in the 1970s I spent a few days at ICI’s ammonia plant on Teesside as co-trainer on a course for supervisors. That was about the sum of my knowledge. Edgar Vincent asked me if I could suggest other organizations that had used my ideas to grow leaders, except the Army, which he and his colleague had already visited. I remember being stuck for an answer. There were of course many organizations – some 2,000 of them in 1981 – that were sending managers and supervisors on action-centred leadership (ACL) courses, or even putting the whole management through an ACL programme, but that was not the question put to me. I could think of no organizations that were growing leaders in the ways I had been recommending. I suggested that ICI might like to be the first real guinea pig, and the pair of them thought that would

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How to Grow Leaders be an excellent idea. They also suggested that in exchange such a project should prove an extremely valuable opportunity within the context of my own research into leadership and leadership development. After some further discussions with Edgar, now Group Human Resources Manager, we agreed upon a plan to get the ball rolling. Instead of my writing a paper on strategy or the board issuing a set of edicts, it was decided that a major conference would be convened at Warren House, ICI’s conference centre, at which a cross-section of able top managers in ICI’s nine divisions could meet and discuss the matter, hearing from various specialists like me in the course of three days. Then it would be left up to them to identify the right strategy for ICI, and for their own divisions within it, in order to achieve the first of ICI’s key HR policies – the development of management-leaders.

The Warren House conference The Warren House conference took place in January 1982, based upon a programme that Edgar and I had worked out together. As consultant I was present throughout. I also gave one talk about the functional approach to leadership, together with some reminders about the contribution of Maslow and Herzberg, and the importance of understanding the decision-making continuum. Apart from the human resources director and chairman of ICI, the other speakers were Peter Prior (chairman of Bulmers), David Gilbert-Smith (Leadership Trust), and Andrew Stewart (a psychologist and independent management consultant who spoke about methods of selecting or assessing leaders). Since my initial meeting with Edgar and his colleague, ICI had in November appointed a new chairman from among its three deputy chairmen – not the one that had been mentioned to me as the most likely. Edgar evidently regarded his appointment as a considerable bonus to the enterprise of leadership development that we were engaged upon. I met John Harvey-Jones for the first time in the bar at Warren House that evening (27 January) and he spoke to the conference informally after supper. The chairman began by saying that ICI was wrongly positioned in the real growth markets of the Far East and the United States. This picture had implications for management style/leadership pattern. ‘We have first class management,’ he said, ‘but it has become excessively bureaucratic and political. We’ve adopted a value system that is ponderous, negative, unanxious to share risk and not willing to give headroom. ‘What’s the pattern for the next 10 years? Instability and change will characterize it. It will be a repositioning decade, with lots of new patterns and shifts of power. Growth, as we’ve known it, will be greatly reduced. No company can exist without growth, therefore we have to make it by pinching the markets of competitors, outdating his products and developing new ones,’ John Harvey-Jones continued. He talked some more about how he saw the emergence of some giants in the chemical industry in Europe, a pattern like the one in the United States. Technologically we were in for enormous change. ‘What do we need to work in this environment?’ he next asked. ‘A new attitude to risk – we minimize risk, we don’t maximize opportunities. But the biggest risk of all is to take no risk. We have to be flexible, because we won’t read the future right. We need to have an ability to move fast, more market sensitivity, more openness and trust, greater tolerance of differences and more courage in dealings with others. Individuals have the answers, not ICI as a group.’ John Harvey-Jones then turned to his work plans after he formally became chairman in April. He would start at the top with the board. ‘Let’s meet in the middle. We haven’t got time for a slow trickle-down.’ ‘Double-guessing would be cut out by having fewer people – the size of the board would be reduced for a start.’ The discussion that followed was exceptionally frank on all sides. In response to one question the chairman pointed to ‘the catalytic things we can do’ to encourage entrepreneurial enterprise. ‘The present ICI system will kill any business! The dynamic has been

Principle One: Training for Leadership increasingly centralized. One of my jobs at every level has been to hold an umbrella over my chaps’ heads. Senior management is about getting people to own the problem and to do something about it, not passing it up. Our system must be not to have a system.’ A sense of urgency coloured his closing remarks. It is a race against time – we are too late – the world is breaking up – bits to be grabbed now. His vision of an adaptable, open, flexible, fast-moving ICI – ready to move quickly in perceived thrusts or directions. ‘We’ve got to grow this new ICI.’ Asked about the attitude of his fellow directors he said that he couldn’t order them. ‘I have to lead the board to lead. They voted for me. There is no such thing as one leader. What matters most is a common sense of values. Leadership is about getting extraordinary performance out of ordinary people. In ICI we have got extraordinary people to begin with.’ In answer to another question John Harvey-Jones highlighted another strength. ‘ICI exists through its ability to work informal systems. We have got the ability to work together informally. I’m keen on clarity of organizational responsibilities, but we’ve got to keep this informal ability to work together, because we’ll never get the structure right. We start miles ahead of any other European chemical company; we have shown in the last two years that we can be unbelievably fast. We’ve got a lot going for us, such as a good technological basis. In other respects I could wish we were better placed. But we can knock the hell out of the opposition.’ Inspired by those words and determined to end the ‘treacle’, as they called it, which the ICI bureaucratic culture had created, the participants in the conference continued working all next day on their strategic plans for liberating the leadership and enterprise within ICI.

Leadership training in ICI Among the recommendations, each of the nine divisional teams resolved to introduce leadership training based upon the Three Circles approach – task, team and individual – which I had outlined. In keeping with the new emphasis on decentralization, it was left to the divisions to devise their own leadership training programmes, using me as a resource. My contribution varied accordingly. Looking through my diaries I see that I spoke to all the senior managers in one division; spent three days at Warren House with all the finance directors and their teams; advised one division on its leadership course and did some on-the-spot ‘training of the trainers’ after the first one; did some counselling sessions with some divisional directors on an individual basis; advised four managers who had been asked to make recommendations on the key issue of leadership to the board of the Organics Division; reviewed ICI’s methods of selecting graduates; and carried out an evaluation survey of all the external leadership courses currently being used by ICI. But perhaps my most important contribution was to lead a one-day seminar each year for four years with Edgar Vincent for the nine divisional training managers responsible for the functional leadership courses in their various forms.

It is not within my compass here to say more about the radical changes that have taken place during the chairmanship of Sir John Harvey-Jones, which ended in 1987, especially as Sir John himself wrote a book on the subject. As I mentioned earlier, in 1984 ICI was the first British company to break the one billion pound profit barrier (the second, National Westminster Bank, has also made continual use of ACL since its introduction in 1969).

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Of course the success of ICI in the period under review cannot be ascribed entirely to leadership, although I don’t suppose that anyone would deny the importance of leadership as shown by Sir John Harvey-Jones and by many other ICI managerleaders at every level in the divisions. As for leadership development, all that can be safely said is that it has proved to be not incompatible with business success.

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Leadership is about getting extraordinary performance out of ordinary people.  Sir John Harvey-Jones

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In 1981 the board of ICI accepted a key human resources strategy as part of its overall business strategy of repositioning and regenerating ICI. (The HR director is one of the seven or eight directors on the main board.) That overall strategy has been successful: ICI is back among the world leaders in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. ‘Just as we need a business vision for the future we need a people vision too,’ said Harvey-Jones in 1982 to the representatives of ICI’s employees. A good selection procedure ensured that ICI had a good supply of actual and potential manager-leaders. The main thrust of the new programmes in leadership training for managers and supervisors came within the nine divisions. All these programmes used the Three Circles model as the basis of their teaching about good leadership in management. Like all large companies ICI had faced the problem that divisions tended not to release people for career development purposes. However, it made substantial progress in that direction. The importance is stressed of managers knowing their people as individuals, dealing with them face to face and getting their support. A small ‘research and advisory’ team – the Group HR Manager and his divisional counterparts – guided the leadership training programme. Layers of hierarchy and scores of committees were scythed away in the division and at headquarters, where Harvey-Jones dispensed with two deputy chairmen and reduced the size of the main board. One divisional board was reduced from 20 directors to 6. A rigorous policy of decentralizing decision-making authority and central services, such as purchasing and shipping, was followed. Much more emphasis was put on individuals using their own initiative and ‘owning’ their own self-development. In the 1970s ICI suffered from the problems of size. According to a senior ICI man ‘it employed too many high paid people to check and crosscheck other men’s figures. It was an over-educated company. It had a technical bias, was not breeding people with

Principle One: Training for Leadership

entrepreneurial flair.’ A new organizational climate has begun to emerge in which leadership can grow and flourish. The chairman’s role was strengthened into that of chief executive (called ‘principal executive officer’ in ICI). As tenant of it, Sir John Harvey-Jones not only showed leadership by giving the company a sense of direction – ‘I hope I am a leader but I’m not a one-man band’ – but did all in his power to encourage it in others. He talked about it, placing it high in his list of values. He took part in training courses, and in one year met more than 8,000 ICI managers in group discussions.

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How do you know yo have won? When the energy is coming the other way and when your people are visibly growing individually and as a group.  Sir John Harvey-Jones

The second most common error Organizations that don’t think hard adopt the unconscious assumption that leadership development is something that starts and stops with senior management. They spend immense amounts of money on in-house leadership programmes, sending people on ‘designer label’ programmes at prestigious business schools – preferably in the United States – and on providing their top managers with expensive one-on-one mentoring schemes, all in the name of leadership. This unconscious strategy reflects the Zaleznik Error, the making of a false dicho­ tomy between ‘leaders’ and ‘managers’. A consequence was that some organizations concluded that they needed both ‘leaders’ – heroic or charismatic figures – and plodding ‘managers’. So they bet their entire training budget on trying to turn their senior management into ‘transformational leaders’ – and predictably lost their money. This unconscious assumption is also a curious survivor of the British class system. Management, like society, was divided into upper, middle and lower classes: executive directors and other senior executives with director or near-director status, middle managers, and supervisors and foremen (collectively renamed ‘first-line managers’). Leadership was the preserve of the first group. Get that right and all else would follow. This was always outdated thinking. Wise organizations always saw themselves as a hierarchy of three leadership levels: team, operational and strategic. One level is not superior to another in importance – there is no class system. They are different in levels of responsibility but equal in value. Therefore in principle there is no reason why more money should be spent on one level than upon another. Money should flow to the point where it can be used most effectively.

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Where that point – or points – is in any given organization is a matter of judgement. But, as a general principle, it is more likely to be nearer the team leadership end of the spectrum. The reason is that younger people are far more likely to take on board both the generic role of leader and the attributes that naturally associate with it. By ‘take on board’ I mean learn. Of course we all go on learning throughout our lives, but there are ‘windows of opportunity’. For example, if a child (for some very rare and extraordinary reason) misses the window for acquiring a language, it is virtually impossible for him or her to learn to communicate verbally in later life.

The natural starting point – team leaders The basic principle in leadership development is that an organization should never give a team leadership role or position to someone without training. We don’t entrust our children to bus drivers who are not trained; why place any kind of worker under leaders who have no training? Before the pioneering work at Sandhurst that I have described there was a reason for doing just that – it was not possible to train leaders. You could train managers or supervisors to manage or supervise, but leadership remained in the lap of the gods to bestow upon the favoured few. We now know that is not the case. You can train team leaders. The way, as I have suggested, is not to attempt to teach them the attributes of leadership as if by frontal assault, but to go to the heart of the matter and teach the generic role of a team leader, using inevitably the Three Circles model because that is the generic role. You then establish an armature on which participants can build. Let them think for themselves how the role is shaped, applied or exercised in their given context – thus what specific actions they need to take. The second reason for starting at this level is that team leadership is the principal seedbed for the organization’s operational leaders, and they in turn are the seedbed for strategic leaders. So if you lay the right foundation at team leadership level you reap the rewards at the higher levels. You can see this principle most clearly at work in the Services, for they do not (because they cannot) recruit incomers for operational/strategic leadership roles. As they have been following the Adair philosophy in this respect for over a generation, you should expect to find that any general, admiral or air marshal would know the Three Circles as a matter of course. His education as a leader began – though it certainly did not finish – there. Nowadays I am frequently asked to teach leadership at what are in effect operational and strategic levels, and I do so with great pleasure. But due to the present lack of any robust team leadership training outside the Services it is often like trying to teach English literature to those who haven’t first mastered English grammar – basic sentence construction, punctuation, spelling, style, etc.

Principle One: Training for Leadership

A third reason why an organization should look first at the team leadership level – and not last or not at all, as is the present case – is that it has most control at that point. Putting it bluntly, it is easier to require all newly appointed team leaders to attend a course than it is to get all operational or strategic leaders to do so. The reasons (or excuses) the latter offer are varied and often valid. So the whole constituency tends not to take part, and most fish who need St Peter’s fingerprints on their back are going to slip through the leadership net.

Then why not do it at school or university? There is a certain logic to this question. You could argue that the generic Three Circles model is critical for all effective team-working as well as effective leadership – the difference between a leader and team member is not a kilometre but a centimetre. Why not teach it at school – in the Scouts, Guides or Cadet Corps or in the National Curriculum, as a life skill? My experience has included a number of experiments of my own in this area. Setting aside all the pragmatic and political reasons why teaching leadership on a large scale doesn’t and won’t happen in the UK secondary education system, there is an underlying hypothesis that I hold which reconciles me to this state of affairs. It’s back to the ‘window of opportunity’ thesis – there is a too soon as well as a too late. A certain age or maturity, a certain amount of experience in real work groups, and a certain trepidation at impending leadership responsibility: these are the bricks that form together the threshold of the ‘window of opportunity’. Before they are there you are writing on water. I hasten to add that this is a hypothesis. Given proper training methods and professionally trained teachers, it may be proved to be false. Moving it up to uni­ versity or higher education level would remove one objection – the age or maturity level. Moreover, the prevalence of ‘gap years’ introduces some work experience. Again, I have carried out various experiments here, the most successful being at the University of Surrey where all engineering students since 1983 have gone through a leadership course based on the Three Circles, using the Functional Leadership/ ACL model; it is now an integral part of becoming an engineer and has been brilliantly taught by a team of lecturers in the various engineering departments. I have also conducted experiments with more general groups at the University of York and Churchill College, Cambridge, both in association with the university career services. If the ‘window of opportunity’ is age related – namely that we take on board the really big ideas of our lives when we are in the ‘long’ 18–22 years age bracket, it would be logical to do something then. After all, all organizations now look to graduates for their future leaders. Even the Services, which were once an alternative form of higher education to universities, have changed their tune: now 87 per cent

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of officers under training are graduates, compared to nil in the 1960s. Is it already almost too late at 23 or 24? The honest answer is that we do not know. There are, of course, immense practical difficulties in actually teaching leadership at universities, though not quite impossible ones, as the Surrey example shows. But the bigger problem is that students for the most part lack a sense of relevance, they don’t know the context. The world of work remains a distant prospect for those studying for a degree and enjoying life on a university campus. Work experience – a modern gateway to graduate employment – will take up any discretionary time in the career-oriented area. One could introduce a nationally recognized ‘team leadership certificate’ for students, which would undoubtedly be very attractive to employers of graduates, but in the United Kingdom we are 10 years away from doing anything like that, and even then it will probably only attract a small minority of customers. My conclusion, then, is that in the foreseeable future your organization – or your field of enterprise – is going to own the problem of training team leaders and team members. The secondary or tertiary education system is, rightly or wrongly, not about to relieve you of this burden – or, I should say, opportunity.

Training team leaders You should start by taking an inventory of what your organization is at present doing to train team leaders before or shortly after their first appointment. Here are the questions you should ask: ●●

How many team leaders does your organization employ?

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How are they equipped with any extra IT and financial/accountancy know-how? Do they undergo a leadership programme? If so: –– How long is it? –– What is the cost per head? –– Do you do it yourself or outsource it? –– Does it cover the generic role of leader? –– Is it practical? Do people learn by doing?

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Have you read all (or a cross-section) of the final course evaluation sheets, together with action plans?

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Do your post-course evaluations – 6 months and 12 months later – support the thesis that the training is effective? What pre- and post-course e-learning material supports the initial team leadership course? How are team leaders reacting to it?

Given our expertise in this area now, we know that team leadership courses should be short – two days (or three at the most), conducted by a properly qualified trainer, and backed up by an e-learning capability. The hallmarks of such effective training are that it should be simple, practical, relevant, have variety (varied challenge-levels of exercises, case studies, films) and be a dialogue, not a monologue. If your course contains lectures or presentations lasting more than 10 minutes it is already on the wrong track. In large organizations (for instance the NHS, which currently employs 386,400 nurses of whom 35,000 are in team leadership roles) you are looking for a team leadership course that is high volume, high quality and low cost. In large organizations like the NHS, Armed Services, Police Services or Local Government, where the ‘parts’ of the whole enjoy considerable autonomy, including training, it is fatally easy for organizations to lose the economies of size. If everyone has to invent their own wheel, the wheels cost a lot of money – and wheels on one railway branch line then don’t fit a track of different gauge, on another branch line. Nobody wants to see a soulless conformity in training, as everybody slavishly follows some head office prototype. But isn’t it only common sense to pool resources, design and develop a master-course with plenty of options or variations? The sheer cost of developing excellent e-learning resources – something that has yet to be done in the leadership training field – dictates as much. You can begin to see now why applying Principle Six, A Strategy for Leadership Development, starts to look attractive – especially if you happen to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. You can get so far by starting at the beginning and training your team leaders, and if you follow the recipe you will get good results. It really does work. But if you seek excellence you will soon begin to feel disquieted if the rest of the system is not playing its part to improve, support and build upon that initial breakthrough.

You do not teach the paths of the forest to an old gorilla Napoleon and Wellington were agreed on one thing: the greatest military leader of all time was Hannibal. When in exile in Asia Minor, seeking to elude the vengeance of the Rome he had so often humiliated in the field, Hannibal was persuaded reluctantly by his host to attend a seminar on ‘military leadership’ by a visiting academic. ‘What

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did you think of it?’ the king asked, as they left the room with the rest of the audience. Hannibal fixed him with his one remaining bright eye. ‘In my time I have heard many old fools,’ he said, ‘but this one takes the prize.’ This is a cautionary tale against trying to instruct operational and strategic leaders in a subject in which they are better able to instruct you. The African proverb that is the heading of this section says as much. If you apply Principle Two, Selection – the subject of the next chapter – then the major parts of your organization will be led by those who already have the attribute of leadership. What do you intend to teach them? The answer is, not much. All that such nominated operational leaders need before they take up their appointments is the opportunity to recalibrate; that is, to widen the diameter of their thinking about leadership and to relate it to the specific needs of this organization at this juncture of time. The same principles apply; the same generic role serves as a compass card. But the task is more complex, more multistranded and longer term; the team is much bigger, more diverse, probably more spatially separated and it may well include partners or allies who do not actually belong to the organization. The individual is different, too. As Ovid wrote of one leader in Heroides: ‘He is a leader of leaders.’ To lead leaders you have to be really good, for leaders can be quite complex as individuals. There are comparatively few people in any field who can do it. The nearer you get to the top, the harder it is to find the right leader. ‘An army of a thousand is easy to find; but, ah, how difficult to find a general’ (Chinese proverb). You will, of course, have detected that I have been outlining above something like an ideal situation – but, then, that’s my job – to give you a vision. But I am aware, as T S Eliot wrote, that: Between the idea and the reality… Falls the Shadow.

What happens, in brief, is that organizations that don’t grow leaders end up by having to fill slots with those who are poor leaders, if they are leaders at all. There is then an inevitable effect on morale.

But don’t we need new gorillas? In the UK context there is now plenty of available evidence to support the conclusion that organizations are short of good leaders. The Chartered Institute of Management’s Leadership Project (2001) claimed to be a ‘reality check’ of leadership in UK organ­ izations, based on a detailed survey of almost 1,500 practising managers in a broad cross-section of organizations and 30 personal interviews with 10 established leaders, 10 middle managers and 10 young people in the 18–24 years age group. The findings include:

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Overall, the quality of leadership in UK organizations did not receive high ratings. Over a third of all managers, and almost half of junior managers, rate the quality of leadership in their organizations as poor. Public sector leadership received the lowest ratings. Half (51 per cent) of all responding managers thought that their employers gave a low priority to leadership development, while 46 per cent said that there was no specific budget for training and developing potential leaders. Only 25 per cent said that there was a clear and articulated framework for leadership development. The most senior managers and executives are far more likely than junior managers to rate the quality of leadership as high and to think that leadership development is an organizational priority. Many of those interviewed thought leaders often stop learning at a particular point in their careers. Progression through senior positions does not always coincide with continuing professional development. Responding managers rate the quality of leadership more highly if they are working in organizations that have a clear and systematic approach to leadership development.

Unfortunately, this survey only asked managers about how they were being led – not how they were leading. In other words, it reflected the Zaleznik Error that there are leaders at the top and managers in the middle. It was a kind of 360º appraisal – asking the ‘managers’ what they thought of their ‘leaders’. So, for example, 55 per cent of respondents identified inspiration as a characteristic that leaders should ideally possess, but only 11 per cent said that they had experienced it in reality. But they were not asked what they were doing to inspire others. Nobody thought of them as being leaders. The value of the report is further reduced by the bizarre – but all too typical – remark that ‘successful leadership is defined by the goals of each organization or group of people, and not by a set of a priori truths’. It is precisely because organizations are not teaching ‘a set of a priori truths’ that they are in such trouble over leadership development. What is required, of course, is a form of leadership training which, to quote the respondents, ‘emphasizes the links between theory and practice and helps individuals to put their learning in context’.

Do ‘sheep dips’ work? The response of many organizations to the realization that their senior managers are in leadership positions but are not leaders has been to institute a one-off series of

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‘leadership programmes’ or seminars which all managers have to go through. For example, I became a consultant to Exxon Chemicals in the United States in the 1980s, which put their 1,000 top managers worldwide through a leadership programme called ‘Quest’. And I have also been involved personally in similar ‘catch up’ programmes in the former British Rail, in a merchant bank, and in two major clothes suppliers to Marks & Spencer. Such programmes are often dismissively referred to as ‘sheep dips’. Yet such programmes are better than nothing. As the proverb says, ‘It is better to begin in the evening than not at all.’ But their effect is limited. In my experience they are often like the seed in the biblical Parable of the Sower which, falling on shallow ground, shoots up in the early warmth of enthusiasm but lacks roots in the soil and eventually withers away. To change the metaphor, they are flash floods, generating torrents of enthusiasm but, without the turbines of the Three Circles being in place, they do not get turned into purposeful energy. How often do organizations forget that there is no such thing as instant leadership? Growing leaders is like growing fruit trees. Other owners may one day have the benefit of your trees, but maybe you will also benefit from other unknown owners of orchards. The best organizations take pride in the fact that they grow more leaders than they need; they are net exporters of leaders.

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Select good seed or stock.  Choose people with natural potential for the generic role of leader. Look for the telltale signs that the spark of leadership is within them.

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Prepare the soil.  Check out your corporate culture. Does it grow or stunt leadership growth? Plough up your yesterday’s paradigms and mindsets about management. Are the fields the right size? Have you got the structure right?

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Enrich the earth by fertilizing and watering.  Make sure the sun of good values – integrity, honesty, justice, fairness, etc – has an unhindered path; cut out the jungle foliage that obscures the sun and the stars. Invest in people – the better the people, the better the leaders will be.

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Rotate the crops.  Give leaders a variety of challenges and opportunities. Let the fields lie fallow.  Not all trees bear fruit every year. Even the best field needs to lie fallow. Give leaders time to think, to reflect and to catch up with themselves.

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Observe where plants thrive.  A leader who struggles in one field or sector of it may be successful in another. What is the leader’s ecological niche? Where will he or she thrive?

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Prune the dead wood.  Simplify, cut back to the trunk. Abandon the practices and ideas that don’t work. Go back to basics. Let the taproots go deep.  The water of inspiration lies deep underground. The trees that grow and bear fruit year by year have deep taproots.

The psychological contract The agricultural analogy is limited, for we are not plants, trees or farm animals. But the points of comparison are that leaders grow naturally and growth takes time. What wise organizations do is to facilitate this growth as far as they can. Not for purely altruistic reasons: they need to keep the pick of the crop of leaders in order to change in positive and productive ways, to reach towards sustained success. It may be partly true that organizations grow leaders, but it is even more true to say that leaders grow the business. My father worked for the same company, a family business, for over 40 years. He was loyal to the firm; the firm was loyal to him – during his army service in the Second World War, even when he was badly wounded by a bomb, his old job awaited him. As we all know now, that sort of psychological contract is a thing of the past. The new deal is that organizations will ‘add value’ to the employability of a manager, so that when he or she moves on their chances of making a step forward is increased. It is a demanding responsibility, but effective leadership development is one key area where it can be done. It would be an unwise graduate or other entrant of real potential and ambition who joined an organization that offered no training in team leadership. No wise organization that wanted to attract and retain the best of tomorrow’s leaders would fail to establish (or access) a world-class team leadership training programme. Putting it another way, if you meet the individual needs circle of the leader, which include personal growth, he or she will have a lot more to give to the task and the team.

How to manage leadership training Not all organizations by any means are large or wealthy enough to maintain their own training units or specialists. Directors of Human Resources tend to be generalists. My own thinking is that in practice it is the chief executive who owns the problem of training team leaders as part of their inherent responsibility as leaders for growing

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tomorrow’s leaders. They are the Head Gardener. But the executive or managerial part of it has to be delegated. To whom? Again, at the risk of stating the obvious, there has to be someone in the organization who is responsible for leadership development (using it in the role sense, that phrase now encompasses management development). It is important to identify who that person is. If you outsource your team leadership training to training specialists make sure you retain ownership of the content and the process of learning transfer – the action points. It has to reflect your practical philosophy – Principle Six again. The training company needs to be briefed on the whole strategy. Partnerships (outsourcing is a partnership) call for leadership. Make sure you do the leading. Only sign a limited-term contract, and build in regular progress reviews.

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A natural starting point for an organization that wants to grow leaders is training. Not middle or senior managers but team leaders. The cardinal principle in leadership development is never to appoint someone a leader without the appropriate form of training or preparation. Are you applying it? Team leaders are at the base of a natural pyramid. They are the seedbed from which operational leaders come, and they in turn beget strategic leaders. The natural ‘window of opportunity’ for training leaders in the generic role/functions/qualities of leadership is when they are on the threshold of becoming team leaders at work for the first time. Miss that opportunity and you may have missed the boat. The micro-principles and hallmarks of effective team leadership training are well established. With the exception of the Services, however, they are little understood and not practised. Therefore poor leadership is the normal condition in organizations. Middle and senior managers who have had no good formal or informal leadership training when young seldom make up the deficiency. It is too late. Remedial programmes in the form of ‘sheep dips’ have only a very limited value, often not much more than salving the consciences of the HR department or as political tools to keep the government happy. They are seldom rigorously evaluated. The chief error that most organizations – I mean here their top strategic leadership teams – make in this field is that they do not think and think until it really hurts. Lacking any clear thinking about leadership and how it relates to management, they are at the mercy of the winds.

Principle One: Training for Leadership

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Operational and strategic leaders who have been trained and tested at team leadership level do need further training/education-type experiences in leadership as part of their rites of passage: to review, to reflect, to recalibrate the Three Circles, to remind and to kindle again their torch of inspiration. Remember Seneca’s words: ‘Many might have attained to wisdom, had they not thought they had already attained it.’

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There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory. Sir Francis Drake

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Principle Two: Selection

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Measure the cloth seven times, because it can only be cut once.  Russian proverb This book is about growing leaders but it is actually very hard, maybe impossible, for an organization to grow leaders. Therefore – and here is a paradox for you – choose people who are leaders already. But how do you know they are leaders or have the potential to be leaders? Is there any scientific way of assessing or judging leadership? In this chapter we shall explore these vitally important questions. The end result should be that your organization is able to better apply Principle Two – Selection.

How do people become leaders? How does anyone find themselves in the role of leader? There are four possible routes – not mutually exclusive: ●●

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Emergent. The person concerned may simply emerge in a ‘leaderless group’ situation, as the perceived right person to lead the group. A form of election by informal acclamation. Appointment. In a hierarchy (all working organizations are hierarchical) a person may be appointed to a leadership role. This appointment is made by a superior or superiors to whom the leader remains accountable. Elected. The group may be invited – or establish its right – to elect its own leader. In the political context this right is the essential principle of democracy. Here the leader is accountable to his or her electors. Hereditary. A son or daughter may have as a birthright the legacy of leading an organization, community or nation. A duke, for instance, (from the Latin dux, leader) and prince (in Latin literally ‘one who is taken as first’) are medieval examples. Today family firm dynasties as well as remaining monarchies (as in Saudi Arabia) offer plenty of contemporary examples.

Principle Two: Selection

Choosing a new leader Volunteers to man the new Penlee lifeboat, which will replace the one lost with all its crew a week ago, will start rigorous training this week. Twenty-five volunteers have come forward from the Cornish village of Mousehole where the dead crew members were based and will train under Leslie Visponds, of the RNLI. In all, 16 people are believed to have died; eight crew members and the eight people aboard the coaster Union Star which the lifeboat was trying to rescue when it smashed into it. A government inquiry has begun into the disaster. The man most likely to lead the new crew is Mike Sutherland, an experienced local seaman and Trinity House pilot; but the ultimate selection of the coxswain will depend on the training. Visponds said yesterday: ‘As the training proceeds, one man or maybe two will show that they have the right qualities and the right temperament to act as leader under the most difficult conditions, and the best crew members will also emerge. ‘It is up to them to indicate who they would like to lead them, and I am hopeful that I shall be able to ratify their selection and choice.’ (Press report, December 1981)

All these paths to leadership (role) in human society have their pros and cons. History, for example, has plenty to say about the downside of the hereditary method when it comes to nations. But kings and queens did have a potential advantage when leading armies in battle was a principal part of the job description of monarchy, for the hereditary principle could sweep a gifted leader to the top at a very young age. Alexander the Great is the classic example. Although not a king, Hannibal was lucky to inherit when still young the great army his father Hasdrubal had created. But leadership (attribute) is not genetic. Great fathers seldom have great sons. Randolph Churchill may have inherited some of his father’s characteristics, but not those that made Winston Churchill the British nation’s emergent leader in 1940. The emergent situation is obviously the most natural one. Gandhi is the great example of a non-military leader, but he was never appointed or elected to political office in India. You usually need all three approaches – Qualities, Situational and Group or Functional – to explain why someone proves acceptable as a leader. A good test case is T E Lawrence, alias ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, who at the age of 28 emerged as a natural leader among the British military advisers to the Arab Revolt in the First World War, many of them his senior in rank. Colonel W F Stirling served with T E Lawrence in the desert, and recorded his impression of him as a leader in T E Lawrence By His Friends (ed A W Lawrence, Jonathan Cape, 1937), cited below.

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C a s e s t u dy   T E Lawrence Lawrence not only saw the task more clearly than others and how it could be achieved, but also possessed a remarkable intuitive sense of what was happening in the minds of the group. Above all, he led by example. It was my great good fortune to be appointed General Staff Officer to the Arab group. From then throughout the final phase of the Arab revolt on till the capture of Damascus, I worked, travelled, and fought alongside Lawrence. Night after night we lay wrapped in our blankets under the cold stars of the desert. At these times one learns much of a man. Lawrence took the limelight from those of us professional soldiers who were fortunate enough to serve with him, but never once have I heard even a whisper of jealousy. We sensed that we were serving with a man immeasurably our superior. As I see it, his outstanding characteristic was his clarity of vision and his power of shedding all unessentials from his thoughts, added to his uncanny knowledge of what the other man was thinking and doing. Think of it! A young second lieutenant of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force goes down the Arabian coast to where a sporadic revolt of the Western Arabs had broken out against their Turkish masters. Then, with the help of a few British officers, all senior to himself, and professional soldiers, who willingly placed themselves under his general guidance, he galvanizes the Arab revolt into a coherent whole. By his daring courage, his strategy, his novel tactics, he welds the turbulent Arab tribes into a fighting machine of such value that he is able to immobilize two Turkish divisions and provide a flank force for Lord Allenby’s final advance through Palestine and Syria, the value of which that great general acknowledged again and again… What was it that enabled Lawrence to seize and hold the imagination of the Arabs? It is a difficult question to answer. The Arabs were noted individualists, intractable to a degree, and without any sense of discipline. Yet it was sufficient for almost any one of us to say that Lawrence wanted something done, and forthwith it was done. How did he gain this power? The answer may partly be that he represented the heart of the Arab movement for freedom, and the Arabs realized that he had vitalized their cause; that he could do everything and endure everything just a little better than the Arabs themselves; that by his investment with the gold dagger of Mecca he ranked with the Ashraf or the descendants of the Prophet, and the Emir Feisal treated him as a brother and an equal. But chiefly, I think, we must look for the answer in Lawrence’s uncanny ability to sense the feelings of any group of men in whose company he found himself; his power to probe behind their minds and to uncover the well-springs of their actions.

Lawrence clearly had the necessary leadership qualities: the representative qualities admired by the Bedouin, such as courage, endurance and hardiness, and the generic qualities of enthusiasm, integrity and toughness or ‘demandingness’. In terms of the Situational Approach, Lawrence had more knowledge of the Arabs – gathered from working in Iraq as an archaeologist – and he alone among the British officers with Feisal spoke Arabic. He also knew a lot more about the Turkish Army than they did.

Principle Two: Selection

In the Group context, he had a clear vision of the task, together with an intuitive sense of the group and the individual, which enabled him to create a working team out of very disparate elements. No one elected Lawrence as leader. His sole appointment was as Political Adviser to the Emir Feisal. But Lawrence had the necessary conditions for emerging as a strategic leader even in a field dominated by military hierarchy. And he had the sufficient condition – phronesis, practical wisdom, the mind of a strategic leader. Thus nine-tenths of Lawrence’s success as a leader can be explained in terms of my general theory. But, last but not least, Lawrence also had an indefinable charisma, a tenth gene. He himself called it ‘the irrational tenth, like the kingfisher flashing across the pool’. The real innovation – symbolized by Athens in the 5th century BCE – was the principle of free and equal citizens electing their leaders. It was a key ingredient in democracy – literally in Greek, rule by the people, especially a majority, as opposed to autocracy, rule by one person with unlimited power, or oligarchy (a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes). Democracy was in fact an urban form of the much older form of tribal life, where free and equal men had leaders – and families that produced leaders – but not kings who dominated them as masters. The Bedouin tribes of Lawrence’s day and mine still reflected that culture. Whether democracy in Greek cities was the least worst system or not was a matter of much debate – the demagogue made his first appearance in Athens. The word demagogue literally means ‘people leading’, and could range in meaning from a leader championing the cause of the common people (as Julius Caesar cleverly did in Rome) to one who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises to gain power. Hitler was such a demagogue. In 1934 he was democratically elected to power. Hence the importance to Socrates and his companions of thinking through what makes a good leader, so that their intelligent fellow citizens might discern the difference between a persuasive demagogue and a true Pericles or Themistocles. Elected leaders tend to hold themselves accountable to their electorate; appointed leaders are account­ able primarily to those who appointed them to get the task done, and only secondarily, if at all, to their group. As both of these luminaries went off the boil as leaders – power tends to corrupt – democracy provides a system of getting rid of leaders without having to assassinate them. The principle of election implies that the best people to judge a person’s leadership ability – their fitness for the role – are those that know him or her best, namely, in the context of Athens, the person’s fellow citizens, or perhaps in our day those in the same work group. How do you do it?

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The principle of election A familiar form of election is to have a secret ballot or show of hands as a formal vote, as a trade union, political party, club or society might do, the candidates having been either proposed and seconded or self-nominated. How good the resultant designated leader proves to be depends upon two factors: the leadership calibre of the candidates on offer and the judgement or wisdom of the electors. Ideally they need to know the persons concerned as individuals, and also have a clear idea of what they expect of a leader. They should not be like Shakespeare’s ‘distracted multitude’: He’s loved of the distracted multitude, Who like not in their judgement but in their eyes.

You see why at present leadership of political parties, like the Conservatives in the United Kingdom, is such a hit-or-miss affair. First, often all the candidates lack leadership. Each of them is, as Plutarch said of one Gaius Antonius, an elected Roman politician, ‘a man with no aptitude for leadership in any direction, either good or bad’. Can political parties grow leaders? The underlying model of a political party is that it is a collection or assembly of ambitious individuals all vying for Cabinet-level jobs (ambition comes from a Latin verb for going around in order to canvass for votes). One’s colleagues are seen either as competitors for office or – if you are party leader – actual or potential threats. Who would feed the sharks that one day will eat you? A similar mindset is often present in organizations once one gets beyond a certain tree line in one’s upward career. Then politics (with a small ‘p’) rears its ugly head. Political in-fighting is sometimes defended on Darwinian lines as promoting the survival of the fittest. As one manager who made it to the top wrote to me, not without a hint of self-satisfaction: The process of development that takes place in this company is rather like a steeplechase. As you jump over the various obstacles and challenges you build up your experience and stamina. Also the same race weeds out those who are unable to cope effectively.

Maybe. What your organization needs to check, however, is that those who reach the top are not merely the cunning, Machiavellian place-seekers who out-manoeuvre the remaining horses in the race, or apply their whips to a rival’s face. Those who occupy roles of strategic leadership need to be the fittest for the role, not those best at headoffice intrigue. What the ideas in the earlier chapters Part of Three should enable you to do is to ask the right questions in order to determine who deserves to be chosen for a leadership post on merit. Here are some suggestions – all three approaches that constitute the main body of know­ledge about leadership:

Principle Two: Selection ●●

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Does he or she naturally contribute to enabling a group to achieve its task and to maintain it as a cohesive and harmonious working team? What is the evidence or data to support a positive answer? If task-focused, does he or she find time for team-building and for individuals? Relative to the group or team he or she will be leading, does the person have the kind of professional knowledge/technical ability that will command respect? Does he or she have the relevant experience to qualify him or her to lead at this level? Does the person exemplify the qualities required in and admired by those that he or she will be leading? Is there any issue about his or her enthusiasm or commitment, integrity or honesty, toughness or humanity, confidence or fairness? What additional qualities or characteristics have others noted in the person?

It is relatively easy to ask the right questions, much harder to get accurate answers. The clue is to look for patterns of behaviour – patterns that suggest present dispositions. If, for example, someone has shown themselves to have been calm, cool and collected in a series of stressful, dangerous or challenging situations yesterday or today, it is reasonable to deduce that they will probably act that way tomorrow. Not a mechanical certainty, true, but human nature doesn’t allow for that kind of naviga­ tional exactitude. You are looking for probabilities, no more. ‘Probabilities guide the decisions of wise men,’ as Cicero once wisely said.

Applying the Group or Functional Approach to first-line leadership selection The traditional method of selection where you do not know the person concerned is the interview. The natural or best way of selection, of course, is to know and observe the person over a period of time and in a variety of revealing if not testing situations. But when you are selecting someone for a team or operational leadership role from a shortlist of outside candidates you don’t have that sort of knowledge. You can see why wise organizations prefer to grow their own leaders. That is not an argument against outside appointments – all organizations benefit from fresh blood. Leadership potential is just not so hard to assess in those you have summered and wintered with. There are no psychometric questionnaire-type tests that measure leadership. The real breakthrough in this area, as I have already mentioned once or twice, came during the Second World War in Britain. At the outbreak of war in 1939 the British Army numbered about 900,000. Three years later that number had risen to some 3,000,000 men and women in khaki, with

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a further 2 million in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force. The pre-war cadre of professional officers obviously provided the more senior levels of military leadership for these armed forces, but there was a massive demand – especially in the Army – for junior officers to command at platoon and company level. Consequently, 13 Officer Training Units were established to produce the necessary officers, but there was a major problem: at times up to 50 per cent of soldiers sent there for training were being returned to their units as unfit to be officers. The selection system, based implicitly upon the assumption of the Qualities Approach and depending solely on the interview method to identify the elusive traits, was clearly inadequate. Something urgently needed to be done. The solution to the problem was the introduction in 1941 of the War Officer Selection Board (WOSB). So successful was it as a method of identifying leadership potential that it has remained in use, subject to various changes and modifications, in all three British Armed Services to this day. Quite early in its history organizations as diverse as the Home Civil Service and the Church of England adopted and adapted the WOSB approach: it is the founder and grandparent of today’s assessment centres. Having considered and rejected the German Army’s methods of officer selection, the War Office decided to innovate. The WOSB method was the brainchild of a cre­ ative group of senior British Army officers and some civilian psychologists enlisted to help. Apart from introducing various intelligence and aptitude tests the chief contribution of the latter was the Group Functional Approach. In those days that theory was no more than a hypothesis: it lacked the Three Circles and it was not integrated with the other two approaches. Present in all working groups, it suggested, there are two areas of need: task achievement and group cohesiveness. Leaders meet these two areas of need. By putting candidates into ‘leaderless groups’ – small groups without an appointed leader – observers who knew what they were looking for should be able to spot those who were naturally inclined to work in those two areas. The idea, incidentally, that one person could respond to both sets of need – task and group – was actually a step forward, a step taken as a direct outcome of war. Academic social psychologists and psychotherapists were still working on the hypo­ thesis that groups needed two leaders, one for task and one for human relations, not unlike the differentiated roles of mother and father in a large family. By a person’s group effectiveness the psychologists meant: 1 The effective level of his functioning: of his ability to contribute towards the functional aspect of the common task by planning and organizing the available abilities, materials, time, etc. 2 His group-cohesiveness or ability to bind the group in the direction of the common task: to relate its members emotionally to each other and to the task.

Principle Two: Selection

3 His stability or ability to stand up to resistance and frustrations without serious impairment of 1) or 2) and the results of their interplay. This specification was written by Dr Henry Harris in The Group Approach to Leadership Testing (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949). He started work with WOSB in 1943 and saw 6,000 candidates through the system before 1948 when he wrote his book. He added: ‘Stability’ is not a very dynamic term for what is essentially a dynamic concept, ie the active and continuous capacity not only to resist the deteriorating effects of stress, but also to return to normal when these have passed off… Mental stamina might do as a better word.

In short, Harris concluded, in the WOSB technique of officer selection, one observes a man faced with group-task in order to determine his group effectiveness (in a particular field): one selects and tests him in a group for a group. When the British Army eventually stopped employing professional psychologists on the staffs of its WOSBs, the Group or Functional Approach as a conscious theory tended to sink into oblivion. ‘Leaderless groups’ were retained, as well as groups with appointed leaders, and military selectors continued to observe how individuals reacted in a group with a task to perform under time pressure. Indeed, so well designed was WOSB and its successors, that the absence of psychologists on site made little or no difference to its effectiveness as a selection tool. On a personal note, as a candidate for a commission I attended a WOSB in 1953 and I remember being very impressed by it, not least its fairness. Titles, class, public school, family connections with a regiment, none of these counted – only merit. When in the 1960s I introduced the Group or Functional Approach into Sandhurst for training purposes, I was unaware that a prototype of the Three Circles – without the actual model – already lay behind this highly successful and well-established selection process. But this fact is clear in Harris’s reflections on leadership: One may suggest provisionally that leadership is the measure and degree of an individual’s ability to influence – and be influenced by – a group in the implementation of a common task. This circumscribes three important aspects of leadership function: the individual, the group and the task; and indicates leadership as a functional relationship between these three basic variables. [my italics] In respect of the first two, it can only be highly effective if based on a sensitive understanding of the group’s needs and on the ability to be influenced by it. The leader who dominates and drives a group towards an end they do not seek is unlikely to retain his leadership: his domination is brittle and will stand little stress. In so far as he considers the needs and mobilises the initiative of every member in the group; in so far as he helps them towards the goal which will give the group its greatest satisfaction and provide every member of it with the profound gratification of effective participation on his own level, and at his optimum tempo… his leadership is more real, more flexible, more resistant to stress, and incidentally more democratic – in the best sense of the word – than any leadership which is insensitive to the group in which it is exercised.

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As I mentioned, the WOSB approach proved to be the inspiration of all latter-day assessment centres; not, of course, that they retained the original Group or Functional leadership theory behind WOSB. Setting up and running a WOSB-type selection system is a very expensive business, justified in wartime or if you have very large numbers of candidates to deal with (WOSB assessed more than 1,000 a year), especially where the public interest called for a system that was both fair and seen to be fair. Still, large organizations that recruit graduates or equivalents as potential leaders would be wise to include some group effectiveness exercises – many do. In retrospect, the WOSB was a beautiful design, and it reflects credit on the team who created it under the overall direction of the exceptional Adjutant General of the day, Sir Ronald Adam. It was high volume, high quality and low cost.

Selection – the wider framework You may have noticed that as leaders move up the natural team-operational-strategic hierarchy, the quality of the minds – what T E Lawrence called brainy leadership – becomes ever more important. So, too, do their abilities as a communicator and their capacity to manage their time effectively. Some people try to lump all these aspects into the concept of leadership, but I believe that it is clearer to regard them as separate concepts or concept-clusters. Using Douglas McGregor’s phrase, ‘the human side of enterprise’ as the name for the particular part of the universe I wanted to chart, my first three books – Training for Leadership (Macdonald & Jane, 1968), Training for Decisions (Macdonald & Jane, 1969) and Training for Communication (Macdonald & Jane, 1973) – mapped out what was then known about these subjects and how – if at all – they could be best taught to learning leaders. Later I covered the fourth subject with How to Manage Your Time (Talbot Adair, 1987). Thus, when asserting someone’s potential as a leader you should be considering him or her against a set of neighbour-concepts: ●●

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Leadership and teamwork, including qualities of personality and character, such as energy, enthusiasm and initiative. Decision-making; thinking skills in the applied forms of problem-solving, decision-making, and creative or innovative thinking. Communication skills (speaking, listening, writing, and reading; meetings); communicating in organizations. Self-management; the ability to organize oneself; time-management skills; learning skills.

Principle Two: Selection

This simple framework became the germ for others to develop lists of leadership competencies. It became a cottage industry for management consultants. I led the way in 1988 by publishing the results of my research into the lists of qualities/abilities identified by BOC, STC, British Rail, an IBM colloquium of industrialists on ‘Preparing Tomorrow’s Leaders’, a London borough, the Civil Service Selection Board, May & Baker, Shell, and some assessment centres. Bearing in mind my own chart of the celestial heavens, I grouped them under five headings.

1. Leadership and teamwork abilities The ability to get things going – especially the ability to get people working well as a team towards a common goal. Typical behaviours: ●●

Sets direction and initiates action.

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Plans and organizes.

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Delegates responsibility.

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Coordinates and controls.

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Shows sensitivity to needs and feelings of individuals.

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Motivates and encourages others.

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Sets group standards.

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Disciplines where necessary.

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Seeks help and advice.

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Plays positive role as team member.

2. Decision-making abilities The ability to think clearly in order to be able to solve problems and make decisions. Typical behaviours: ●●

Analyses problems.

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Shows reasoning and logical thinking.

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Is ‘swift on the uptake’.

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Thinks imaginatively and creatively.

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Has a sense of reality.

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Has ‘helicopter’ ability to stand back.

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Demonstrates good judgement.

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Has an inquiring mind.

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Generates solutions.

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Is decisive when required.

3. Communication abilities The ability to make points so that others understand them, and to comprehend the points that others make. Typical behaviours: ●●

Speaks audibly and clearly.

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Uses simple and concise language.

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Communicates on paper easily and well.

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Listens to others with perception.

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Reads with speed and comprehension.

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Argues assertively but not aggressively.

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Chairs a meeting well.

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Ensures good group communications, upwards, downwards and sideways.

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Shows awareness of non-verbal communication.

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Gets others enthusiastic about his ideas.

4. Self-management abilities The ability to manage your time effectively and to organize yourself well. Typical behaviours: ●●

A self-motivator – ‘lights his or her own fire’.

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Able to work on own initiative with little supervision.

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Sets and achieves challenging goals.

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Works to deadlines.

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Makes good use of his or her own time.

5. Personal qualities The following qualities (in no order of merit) are mentioned as being of value by employers of graduates: ●●

Enthusiasm.

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Integrity.

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Strong but not dominating personality.

Principle Two: Selection ●●

Personal impact, good appearance, poise.

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Resilience, ability to work under pressure.

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Flexibility and adaptability.

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Energy and vigour.

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Self-confidence or self-assurance.

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Reliability, stability, calmness.

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Breadth of interest.

Some useful support for this wider framework came from the Institute of Manpower Studies in that same year. Wendy Hirsh and Stephen Bevan, in What Makes a Manager? (Institute of Manpower Studies, 1991), surveyed over 40 organizations in all sectors: leadership, intellectual attributes and conceptual skills, and communication (oral and general) came top of the list. They commented, however: Although a ‘national skill language’ appears to exist in terms of some very common expressions in use, we cannot infer that these terms have a common meaning in different organizations. In fact, some of the commonest skill items, such as leadership, are used with the most diverse meanings.

The corporate practice of listing ‘skills’ (later ‘competencies’ took over as the preferred term) was a definite step forward in the right direction. In 1988 Hirsh and Bevan already identified as good practice those organizational lists with the following characteristics: ●● ●●

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relatively short and simple lists of skills are used; skill descriptions are couched, wherever possible, in terms of specific behaviour which can be observed, rather than in more abstract terms; skill languages are made as similar in style and format as possible (‘harmonized’) across groups of managers (functions, levels, etc) and across human resources processes (recruitment, assessment, management training programmes, etc); consistent understanding of skill terminology is further assisted by appraisal and selection training, and experience of group assessment or group discussion (in assessment centres, succession planning committees, etc).

If your organization has produced a set of leadership competencies in living memory, you may like to compare it against that sketch of good practice. How would you rate the current NHS list, shown below?

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A Successful Leader… ●●

Communicates clear vision, direction, and roles.

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Strategically influences and engages others.

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Builds relationships.

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Challenges thinking and encourages flexibility and innovation.

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Develops, enables, and encourages others.

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Drives for results and improvement.

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Practices political astuteness.

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Displays self-awareness.

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Commits with passion to values and mission.

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Demonstrates mastery of management skills.

Lists such as these are intended to be used for selection purposes, both at recruitment and at promotion levels, as well as training and appraising. Don’t, however, take them too seriously. Although they often cost the human resources department a large sum to produce them, their fate is to be put away in the bottom drawer of the manager’s filing cabinet – just as back in 1953 I filed away the British Army’s list of 17 leadership qualities/competencies. Compilers of leadership competencies, of course, have not been working from first principles as I have, nor have they shown any knowledge of the progress in our understanding of leadership which I have outlined above. The notion of management (and leadership) competence seems to have originated with the work of the McBer management consultancy firm for the American Management Association in the late 1970s. A competency was defined as an underlying characteristic of a person that results in effective or superior performance in a job. The method used was to generate a list of competencies from analysis of numerous managers’ jobs in a particular organization or field – an averaging out of multiple individuals. The result is an overpowering list of qualities. The ill-starred Council for Excellence in Management Leadership in 2001 identified 83 management and leader­ ship attributes, condensed from a list of over 2,000! By contrast, my approach is to work from the simple to the complex. All that you do need to know – it is easy to remember – is the generic role of leadership, together with the essentials of the intellectual, communication and timemanagement clusters. Everything else, when judging leaders or would-be leaders, falls under the heading of the fitness of their professional or technical knowledge. At present I cannot make it simpler than that. What have I left out?

Principle Two: Selection

Keypoints ●●

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Growing leaders is not easy. Why not select people for leadership roles who already have a rich potential for leadership within them? Natural selection of leaders needs to be understood. Leaders are emergent, elected or appointed, or some combination of the three. A British Prime Minister emerges in his or her party, is elected by colleagues or party, and is appointed by the Queen. Difficulty arises when electors or selectors lack first-hand knowledge of a candidate for a leadership role. The Qualities, Situational and Group or Functional Approaches taken together provide the necessary criteria. The Group or Functional Approach worked well in leadership selection. The WOSB method solved problems distinctive to the military field, but the underlying principle remains relevant today for assessing leadership potential. Leadership has neighbouring concepts living in the same street: the intellectual, communication and self-management galaxies of skills, qualities and abilities. Eclectic lists of ‘competencies’ drawn from these four constellations have value. But they need to be kept short and simple, which inevitably makes them more generic in nature. If an organization doesn’t understand the key concept of leadership and its associated terms, it should not expect to be wise in its choice of leaders.

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Nobody doubted his capacity to rule until he became Emperor.  Tacitus, writing about Galba

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Principle Three: Line managers as leadership mentors

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One other thing stirs me when I look back at my youthful days, the fact that so many people gave me something or were something to me without knowing it.  Albert Schweitzer

Before we begin I should unpack some of the words above. The military distinction between line and staff is, I believe, both transferable and useful. Over-simplifying it, the line does the work, while the staff performs a supporting function – administration, supplies, logistics, human resources and maybe specialist or technical advice. The line of command – or as we would say, the principal line of communication – runs as a two-way dialogue between strategic, operational and team leaders. Incidentally, that dialogue up and down the line doesn’t always run through the operational leadership level as the channel of communication. A general can talk directly to the soldiers, and vice versa. What is important, however, is that when it comes to the giving of instructions the commander-in-chief obeys the established principle of respecting the line, that is, asking the operational leader to act. Thereby the trust of the operational leaders is not forfeited.

What is a mentor? A mentor is a guide, a wise and trusted counsellor. The word comes from Mentor, a friend of Ulysses entrusted with the education of his son Telemachus. It was his bodily form the goddess Athene, according to the story, assumed when she accompanied Telemachus in his search for his father. Homer probably chose the name because it echoes a Greek root meaning ‘remember, think, counsel’. The principle above, then, suggests that in part – fulfilment of the individual circle needs – line leaders should act as teachers of the apprentice – line leaders who happen to be in their team. And this learning process – the apprentice method – should happen at all levels. Let me show you the principle at work.

Principle Three: Line Managers as Leadership Mentors

On-the-job training General Horrocks recalled one incident that revealed Montgomery’s ability to develop the individual, even at the higher levels of leadership. ‘On the day after the battle [Alam Halfa] I was sitting in my headquarters purring with satisfaction. The battle had been won and I had not been mauled in the process. What could be better? Then in came a liaison officer from 8th Army headquarters bringing me a letter in Monty’s even hand. This is what he said: ‘“Dear Horrocks, ‘“Well done – but you must remember that you are now a corps commander and not a divisional commander…” ‘He went on to list four or five things that I had done wrong, mainly because I had interfered too much with the tasks of my subordinate commanders. The purring stopped abruptly. ‘Perhaps I wasn’t such a heaven-sent general after all. But the more I thought over the battle, the more I realised that Monty was right. So I rang him up and said, “Thank you very much.” ‘I mention this because Montgomery was one of the few commanders who tried to train the people who worked under him. Who else, on the day after his first major victory, which had altered the whole complexion of the war in the Middle East, would have taken the trouble to write a letter like this in his own hand to one of his subordinate commanders?’ Lieutenant General Sir Brian Horrocks, A Full Life (Collins, 1956)

Look back on your own career as a leader. Can you identify anyone that you worked for who found time for you as an individual? Who showed interest in helping you to grow as a leader, and shared their experience with you to that end?

The apprenticeship method Apprenticeship is the traditional method of learning an art, craft or trade. A would-be practitioner articles himself – formally or informally – to a master craftsman, and in return for a very modest wage (and in the Middle Ages bed-and-board) he worked alongside the master. The master’s role was to show by example, but also to instruct, explain or teach as well. A good master, especially if he spied real aptitude in the apprentice, would encourage as well, like any good teacher. Apprentice comes from the Latin apprendere, to learn. If apprenticeship is the natural way of growing leaders, then organizations that want to grow leaders should work with it. Now there is a better vocabulary for conversation between line leaders and their apprentices. Not that intellectual discussions about leadership matters a fig. What matters is seeing it done and having the opportunity to ask questions.

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C a s e s t u dy   The Commando leader The Army was not my career choice – I was conscripted – but I aspired to be a military leader. Joining the Arab Legion in Jerusalem in 1954 opened up a new world to me, for I found myself an apprentice to a master-commander, one who was willing to teach me the trade. Peter Young, Colonel of the Ninth Bedouin Regiment, had won a DSO and three Military Crosses as a Commando leader in the Second World War, becoming a brigadier-general at the age of 26. Peter made me his Adjutant (a captain’s appointment), despite protests from his brigade superior that I was too young (20) for the job. He exemplified excellence as a regimental leader. Leadership is done from in front summed up Peter’s philosophy. A natural teacher, he treated me as an equal, a partner in the common enterprise.

An apprentice, then, is a learner of a craft, bound to serve, and entitled to instruc­ tion from his or her employer for a specified time. I have sketched above my own apprentice-hood. If you look carefully at the careers of outstanding leaders in any field, you usually find that they learnt most about leadership not from courses or books but by serving their apprenticeship with a master-leader. You should not assume that leadership mentors are always senior to you in the hierarchy: it is as if Athene sometimes speaks to you through those who are inferior in rank.

C a s e s t u dy   Lyndal Urwick Urwick was a leading British thinker on the theory of management practice, one of the few to be recognized as a prophet of modern management techniques in the United States. He established one of the earliest firms of management education and training in this country. He virtually founded the Administrative Staff College at Henley (now Henley Management College), and he played a major role in the foundation of the British Institute of Management (now Chartered Management Institute). Urwick served in the First World War, gaining a Military Cross. In a letter to me about Training for Leadership in 1969 he described how just after leaving Oxford he had found himself in August 1914 as a junior subaltern in a line battalion. ‘A year later, owing to casualties, I was its senior Captain commanding a Company at the tip of the Ypres Salient. I blush with shame to look back on what an arbitrary young fool I often was. But I was saved, sustained and – I hope – educated by my Company Sergeant Major. He was a regular of about 12 to 15 years service. He had been a Band Sergeant, so he understood boys. He had also been Orderly Room Sergeant, so he understood about the paper work. I have always counted him one of the best men I ever knew. Alas, he was killed at Thiepval the following summer commanding the selfsame Company as Acting Captain.’

Principle Three: Line Managers as Leadership Mentors

Urwick was never to forget the teaching on how to be a leader that he received from that unnamed CSM. He was one of the first to lecture and write on leadership. The British Institute of Management, formed in 1948, took as its motto Ducere est Servire, To Lead is to Serve. The strap-line of its successor today is ‘Inspiring Leaders’. Being realistic, most line managers do not give any one-to-one mentoring to indivi­ dual members of their team, including their apprentice leaders. But growing leaders need that one-to-one attention. Therefore a growing number of organizations are paying professional mentors to fill the leadership vacuum. Such professional mentors – I act as one to a chief executive myself – often provide a valuable function as a sounding board. A sounding board is a structure above a pulpit, rostrum or platform to give distinctiveness and sonority to the sound uttered from it. Following the metaphor, a modern mentor helps the client by listening to them think something through – to hear their own voice. Leadership as such – conversations with leadership implicitly or explicitly as the subject – is not on the agenda. David Clutterbuck’s Everyone Needs a Mentor: Fostering Talent in Your Organization (CIPD, 4th edn, 2004) has only one brief and passing reference to leadership. The reason is not surprising. The outside professional mentor is unable to observe the client at work as a leader; the mentor, not usually having experience as a leader, is not the sort of person the client could learn leadership from. In other words, the relationship lacks the necessary conditions for it to provide leadership mentoring. If you want that, look inside your organization and persuade team, operational and strategic leaders to start doing the job for which they are being paid. How do you do that? Here are some suggestions: ●●

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Do some detective work and discover one or two operational leaders among those in your team who are a) as busy as any, and b) yet find time to bring on their apprentice leaders. Organize a two-hour meeting before a buffet supper for operational and team leaders, where those chosen can talk for 20 minutes or so about how they go about it. Then open it to general discussion. If you can add a perspective from another organization – one recognized for best practice – so much the better. Always speak briefly yourself, explaining that it is part of your role to ensure that this organization maximizes every bit of leadership potential in it and at every level. Point out the obvious, namely that you cannot do it by yourself, but you are counting on every operational and team leader in the room to play their part.

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At least you can say ‘goodbye’ In all relations there is a bare minimum. In a leadership role if you drop below the bare minimum, then you are… well, just a liability. Setting the task and team circles on one side, in the individual circle – the developing dimension of it – the bare minimum is to see the team member before they go on a leadership course or programme and to see them again after their return. You can do that by going through the motions as a drill, just to keep the system happy, but I don’t advocate that. If you approach it as a leader the picture soon begins to change and to come alive. The apprenticeship model I have been advocating may start out as a teacher–learner one, but as it progresses it becomes more a learner–learner one. The master craftsman is always open to learning, for as G K Chesterton said, ‘only the secure are humble’. The master leader teaches by learning.

C a s e s t u dy   The learning company Bill Henderson, a departmental head in a large pharmaceutical company, told me that two of his eight team leaders have just been on one of my ACL courses. ‘Have the two others who have gone on it benefited?’ I inquired. ‘If so, how?’ ‘I think so,’ he said, ‘I had enthusiastic e-mails from three of them, thanking the human resources department for nominating them.’ ‘So you did not suggest the course to them in person, as part of their leadership development?’ I asked. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘In this company training comes under the director of human resources.’ ‘Didn’t you see each of them before they went on the courses, stressing the importance of good leadership, relating the course objectives to their needs and fixing a date for a debrief afterwards?’ Bill laughed. ‘Come off it, John. Now we are launching GXR3 we are so busy that I don’t have the time for that sort of thing. I did meet them in the corridor about a week ago and told them to enjoy their holiday, as we were going to be flat out for the next three months.’

Bill is a highly knowledgeable biochemist, but he is missing out on a whole circle in the Three Circles model. The lessons are as follows: ●●

Bill, as an operational lower-level leader, owns the problem of developing his eight team leaders; it is not the problem of the human resources training department. They are in a staff relation to him, there to give specialist advice on, for example, what training courses to send them on.

Principle Three: Line Managers as Leadership Mentors ●●

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He should brief the team leaders individually (remember that briefing is a key leadership function, and it applies to individuals as well as to the team). There the intentions and expected benefits should be covered. Above all, he should convey the importance or worthwhileness of becoming a better leader – it is a real opportunity to enthuse if not inspire. After the course there should be a debrief on a one-to-one basis, covering: –– What have you learnt? –– How do you intend you apply it in your team context? –– How can I help you? –– What wider lessons did you learn which might benefit the department or the company? –– What more training do you need?

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Three months later, Bill should check progress and give some further encouragement, for initial enthusiasm after a course can soon fade if no more fuel is put on the fire. Lastly, Bill needs to give the human resources/training specialist some feedback on the value of the team leadership course they recommended.

In fact I knew Bill Henderson quite well, and saw real potential in him as a leader. He telephoned me the day after our conversation, just to say that my comments had made him think hard. We then talked through the points I have listed above. About three months later I met him again by chance while awaiting a flight at Gatwick. He assured me that he had followed my advice with the remaining four team leaders. The difference in their initial motivation and in the post-course results had been spectacular. ‘I can see now that you are really interested in my leadership,’ the youngest and last appointed team leader had told him, ‘and that makes me care about it too.’ After a cup of coffee, Bill added: ‘One other thing, John. I went to one of the chief executive’s “Master-classes in Leadership” as he called them, which he said was based on one of your books. It was about line managers as leadership mentors. Four or five days later the eight team leaders went off to a local hotel for a planning session. We rounded it off with a working supper, and I shared with them what I had learnt at the master-class. We have agreed to meet again just before Christmas to share things that we are learning about leadership, from our own experience or what we see going on. We are also going to e-mail any key points about leading or managing we pick up from books – a kind of poor man’s master-class if you like.’ ‘To Lead is to Serve.’ If you take nothing else away from this book take away that motto, which today I rescued from the dustbin of history for you.

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Part of your service is to help your team grow, both as a group and as individuals; this will not happen if you don’t find time to spend with them individually. As the Japanese proverb has it, ‘If he works for you, you work for him.’ Often you will be ploughing and sowing seeds, but others will reap the harvest. Occasionally, you will have the joy of knowing that something you said or wrote, a half-forgotten meeting years ago, has proved to be decisive in someone else’s inner journey. Athene paid Mentor in the coinage of joy.

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At a crisis in my youth, he taught me the wisdom of choice, to try and fail is at least to learn; to fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been.  Chester Barnard

Keypoints

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A mentor is a wise and trusted guide or counsellor, one who helps a person to grow in his or her role and responsibilities. A good leader begets leaders: they are natural leadership mentors. The natural way of learning leadership is ‘on the job’ – by practice – like an apprenticeship indentured to a master artist, craftsman or practitioner. In this relationship the master is expected – it is part of the role – to give instruction. Why don’t you teach the ‘leaders for tomorrow’ who work with you? ‘Under the banyan tree nothing grows.’ As this Indian proverb suggests, some so-called ‘great leaders’ stunt the growth of those around them. It is only by making others great that a leader becomes great. Line leaders as leadership mentors is a principle, not a system. It is a natural process, as old as mankind, so it doesn’t need to be organized – merely encouraged. If you set an example as chief executive, it will happen as day follows night. Occasionally, your positive influence will have come at a decisive time, and a person anxious about leading will suddenly find a new confidence in themselves and an eagerness to accept the leadership challenge. The best teachers are also learners. As Chaucer wrote of one of his pilgrims: ‘Gladly would he teach and gladly learn.’ There is no point in talking if you don’t listen.

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It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.  Oliver Wendell Holmes

Principle Four: The Chance to Lead

Principle Four: The chance to lead

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The only way in which the growing need for leadership in management can be met is to find the potential leader and then start his training and give him the chance to lead.  Lord Slim As you will by now doubtless have guessed, the title of Part Three, How to Grow Leaders, is something of a misnomer. Organizations cannot grow leaders. It is nature or God that grows leaders. All that organizations do is to provide some of the necessary conditions for growth, and chief among them is the opportunity to lead. Under that principle is gathered not just the initial (team leader) opportunity to lead, but a set of progressive steps or challenges throughout your career that educate – literally in Latin ‘to lead out from you’ – all the leadership that is within you. It is giving people who merit it the chance to lead.

The military analogy You can see the principle clearly at work when nations go to war for protracted periods of time, as in the First and Second World War. Their armies expand – you recollect that the British Army grew from about 300,000 in 1936 to over 3 million in 1944. A set of progressive steps or challenges – opportunities to lead ever larger bodies of men in challenging circumstances – suddenly is there for young military leaders who are ready, willing and able to take these unexpected opportunities. In the last chapter, for example, I mentioned Peter Young, a Commando brigadier (4,000 men) at the age of 26 years. If a war lasts for years, then casualties, accidents and retirements increase the opportunity level. This proliferation of strategic leadership opportunities looks for leaders, but it is also true that they grow the strategic leader. Remove the First World War and there would have been no Lawrence of Arabia. Remove the Second World War and Winston Churchill, Montgomery, Slim, Eisenhower and Rommel would be names unknown to us. It is worth pausing to reflect for a moment on just how dependent leaders are upon the chance to lead. My John Hampden: The Patriot (Thorogood, 2003) is the biography of a country gentleman who was the first commoner to emerge as the national leader of England, but it took the upheaval of the English Civil War to make that possible. Without it his great powers of leadership would have remained latent. I was married in Stoke Poges Church, in whose famous churchyard the poet Thomas Gray wrote his elegy on those unknown ‘forefathers’ who lacked the chance to lead:

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How to Grow Leaders Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village – Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

You can see why it is difficult for peacetime armies with limited experience of active service to grow military leaders. The opportunities just aren’t there. The danger was that when war came, the process of trial and error in finding military leaders who can lead at strategic level could be so protracted that victory could be won by an enemy with fewer resources but better leaders. The North almost lost the American Civil War while Lincoln struggled to find generals who could match the leadership of Robert E Lee and ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.

What can organizations do? Organizations, it follows, that are growing in size and expanding globally have a further competitive advantage in having more leadership opportunities to offer their managers – real challenges for business strategic leaders. Conversely, organizations that are contracting in size and scope, pulling in their horns and retreating into their shells, have far fewer opportunities in their gift, so they will find it correspondingly much more difficult to grow leaders. You notice here the elements of a chicken-and-egg problem. It is business leaders who grow businesses; growing businesses grow leaders. Leaders may downsize or de-layer organizations, or rationalize their products and services, but it is still ‘growth’ if they are pruning or cutting back with growth in mind. They have a vision of what this organization is going to be in five years’ time, and it is that vision which recruits other leaders – younger ones eager to grow or progress with the organization. As you know, leadership is a journey word – no journey, no leader.

What constitutes a challenge? ‘Challenge’ is a somewhat overused word these days, but there is no doubt that true leaders love a challenge. From the organization’s viewpoint, if you can provide a young leader with a challenge and help him or her to meet it, then you have in effect grown a leader. But the challenge level has to be at the optimum level: not too difficult and not too easy. In other words, it has to be stretching.

Principle Four: The Chance to Lead High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. (George Orwell, Collected Essays, Secker & Warburg, 1970)

Optimum response will only be produced by a challenge of optimum severity. Frederick Hooper, an experienced business leader had these wise words to say on the subject in Management Survey (Penguin, 1959): Too severe a challenge will overwhelm; one insufficiently severe will evoke an insufficient response with too little impetus behind it. There is not, and cannot be, any easy interpretation of a golden rule. Moreover we have to recognize that a challenge which may have proved too severe at one point of a man’s development might prove to be the optimum at another and later stage in his career when the man himself may, by attaining to a new internal balance in his qualities, have become to all practical purposes a new man. The continuing development of a career not infrequently follows a series of steps describing what is virtually a half-circle, each step a tangent, setting off at a slight angle form the one that preceded it, and yet dependent upon the latter for its due starting point. Steps are seldom retraced; thus past and present experience offers in such a case little obvious indication of what may prove to be the right step for the future, and any attempt to base prediction upon the evidence of the past may well be actively misleading. Nor can one safely make the assumption, however much assisted by the best of selection systems, that a man can save himself the journey of the circle and somehow cut straight across from A to Z. The weight of evidence is too heavily to the contrary.

Leaders often comment on the thrill of challenge, of accepting a task that may seem a mission impossible. ‘There is no greater joy in life,’ the inventor Barnes Wallis said, ‘than first proving a thing is impossible and then showing how it can be done.’ The leader of the first expedition to conquer Everest, John Hunt, also spoke of that first taste of a challenge: ‘Some of the best moments in life are not when you have achieved something but when the thought first comes to you to have a go.’ A challenge is literally a summons, often threatening, provocative, stimulating or exciting. The old biblical word for a summons was call, hence our words calling and (in its Latin form) vocation. God called you to a piece of work. But, as Genesis has it, the ‘word’ of God is His creative instrument. So, putting it in our language, a true challenge is also a creative one. Moses was presented with a seemingly impossible task. He felt himself not to be up to it. But he said yes and he grew as a leader – it was a creative experience. He did have one asset – humility – which meant that he was willing to listen to good advice.

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C a s e s t u dy   Creating a simple structure Structure, organization, hierarchy and communication are four different ways of saying the same thing. When a group grows too large it has to subdivide, and that creates a hierarchy. Moses in the wilderness at first attempted to lead the 12 tribes of Israel as if he were a team leader. One day his father-in-law Jethro watched him as he sat alone all day from dawn to dusk listening to complaints, resolving disputes and giving counsel. ‘This is not the best way to do it,’ said Jethro. ‘You will only wear yourself out and wear out all the people who are here. The task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it by yourself. Now listen to me…’ Jethro told him that he must remain the people’s representative before God and to instruct them in the principles of how to behave and what to do. ‘But you must yourself search for capable, God-fearing men among all the people, honest and incorruptible men, and appoint them over the people as officers over units of a thousand, of a hundred, of 50 or 10. They shall sit as a permanent court for the people; they must refer difficult cases to you but decide simple cases themselves. In this way your burden will be lightened, and they will share it with you. If you do this, moreover, this whole people will here and now regain peace and harmony.’

Moses, who is described elsewhere as a ‘very meek man’, listened to his father-in-law and did all that he suggested.

Fortune favours the prepared mind As a general principle, the longer that you have to prepare for a challenge the more likely you are to rise to it. If you or I had to run the New York marathon next week we might struggle – me more than you. But give yourself six months and you would do fine. As for me, well, even the snail finally made it to the Ark. We cannot foresee in our careers the specific challenges that (we hope) await us, but it makes sense to look ahead to the type of challenges that will appeal, and for which – in a general way – we can obey the Scout motto and Be Prepared. That means, of course, that you must ‘think and think until it really hurts’ about your vocation. What is your talent? Which direction do you want to take? The basic question to ask yourself is: ‘Am I in the right field?’ This is territory I explore in How to Find Your Vocation (Canterbury Press, 2003). If you have found your vocation – the work you love to do – I would say that you are already quite far down the track of becoming a leader. You will already be developing the qualities or attributes required and admired in your field. That morning star of a generic leadership quality – enthusiasm – is already in the bag. Becoming a leader in your field is a second vocation.

Principle Four: The Chance to Lead

The second question, then, is: ‘Do I want that “second calling” to leadership?’ Maybe you are content to remain an individual contributor in your chosen field. Here it is helpful to bear in mind my model of a leader’s typical course. It looks like an hourglass or egg-timer, as shown in the following diagram.

The hourglass model of career change BUSINESS LEADERSHIP STRATEGIC OPERATIONAL TEAM

NARROW NECK

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SPECIALIZATION

PROFESSIONAL/ TECHNICAL TRAINING

SECONDARY AND HIGHER EDUCATION

As you can see, you move from the general to the particular, and you usually ‘make your name’ as a specialist. You can either stay in the narrow neck of specialization with a career like an inverted funnel, or you can broaden out and become a generalist again. One eye surgeon may want to ‘stick to the last’ and perfect her skill by focusing on practice; another eye surgeon may sense that becoming the chief executive of a NHS Hospital Trust is the path of his vocation. No moral value separates the two paths: both are forms of service. It is principally a matter of interest, aptitude and temperament.

Institute an annual career review Perceptions about careers change. An individual who has been content to be a specialist may discover that he or she is looking for a fresh challenge. Organizations, for their part, need to think about the careers of their employees for a different reason: they have slots to fill in the existing hierarchy and – if the organization is growing and spreading its wings – they are looking for new leaders.

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If you haven’t done so already, set up a system so that at least once a year there is a summit meeting between the individual – specialist, line manager, staff manager, employee – and the organization, or rather its mandated representative. The organization needs to listen to what individuals are saying about what they aspire to do in their careers: ●●

Do you want to be, in the widest sense of business, a business leader?

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If you wish to remain a specialist, what are your goals?

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Are you looking forward to staying with us, or are you thinking of moving elsewhere? Would you be interested in working overseas?

Equally, the individuals have the chance to listen to what the organization has in store for them – if anything. In the succession plan (assuming, of course, there is one – see Principle Six), for what positions is the individual concerned being actively considered? The perfect outcome, of course, is if individual and organization agree on what is the best next step in the person’s career – the win-win situation being best for both parties. Then some agreed steps can be taken to prepare a person for the change ahead. What are the gaps in their professional or technical knowledge? Are there any general leadership programmes that will help to make them promotable? What the organization cannot do, however, is to infringe Principle Two. In other words, the organization, say a large civil engineering company, should not tell you in advance that you will be the next operational leader in charge of building Terminal Five at London Heathrow Airport. The person chosen from the shortlist for that post will be the best construction leader for the job, and may be an outside candidate. What it can and should do is to work with the individual concerned to enable them to get on that particular shortlist – or its successors – by merit alone. If we go back to the Three Circles model, the circles overlap but there is a tension between them. Not a conflict – for then there would be no overlap – but a tension. There is, for example, a tension between the needs of the individual and the needs of the group (or, group writ large, the organization). That tension may become a conflict, in which case the individual is free to withdraw and go elsewhere, just as the organization is free to dispense with the services of any individual, even the chief executive. As the Scottish proverb says, ‘The clan is greater than the chief.’ But it can be a creative tension. If communication between the individual and the organization is good, and there is a high level of mutual respect and trust (see Principle Six), then sometimes a risk can be taken in making a promotion. If it doesn’t work out, both parties are flexible enough to think again.

Principle Four: The Chance to Lead

With the best will in the world, organizations cannot always provide the perfect opportunity that a particular person might need to grow as a leader. The daily business has to be done – the task always has priority. But it remains an ideal to strive for: opportunity and practice are the natural parents of leadership. All that training (or education) does is to prepare us to act.

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Leaders grow by facing and surmounting even more difficult leadership challenges. If organizations want to grow leaders – or at least create the conditions necessary for growth – they can do no better than to give potential leaders the chance to lead. That opportunity should be accomplished by practical help in the form of training and support. Training for leadership dramatically increases the likelihood of success. Learner leaders at any level benefit from having a leader above them who can encourage and support. Individual and organization should put their heads together at least once a year to compare notes on ‘career development’ or promotion. If expectations can be matched and married, then there is harmony between the two sets of needs. We all need challenges in order to grow, not least leaders. ‘By asking the impossible we obtain the best possible’, says the Italian proverb. Stretching is painful, but it is the only way to gain stature. Not all specialists want to become generalists – leaders in their field. Those who do, however, need to think ahead and to prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities. It is an error to think that promotion is the only way to grow as a leader. It is better to achieve excellence as a team leader than to sink to mediocrity at operational level.

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Responsibility is the great developer of men.  Mary Parker Follett

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Principle Five: Education for leadership

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It takes a whole society to raise a leader.  African proverb The theme of this book is how to grow leaders. But, as I have said, leaders are not colleagues or cattle, and organizations are not leader farms. Somehow or other individuals acquire the ability and confidence to lead. Organizations can create some necessary or at least useful conditions for that growth, such as careful selection, train­ ing and, above all, providing chances to lead. But organizations cannot grow leaders. What my work at Sandhurst in the 1960s established beyond doubt is that the intervention of training – a carefully balanced practical two-day course focusing on the generic role of leader and the need to develop skill in its component functions – had a decisive effect on this natural process of growth, provided that the course was properly conducted. If you like, it added an intellectual gene to the young natural leader’s gene-bank, a compass that would guide all subsequent self-learning or selfdevelopment. Much of my career has been spent trying to persuade non-military organizations to provide similar courses at team leadership level. But at Sandhurst I was aware, as I have already written, that education for military leadership was a much wider process than training for leadership. Indeed, the whole ethos of Sandhurst, in addition to its military and academic curriculum, was about becoming a military leader. If you doubt me, look back at the Queen’s speech at Sandhurst in 1966 (see page 171). You will notice, however, that in Training for Leadership (Macdonald & Jane, 1968) I still restricted this wider education for leadership to Sandhurst. Later, I also tried to persuade other organizations or professions that they, too, should have cultures and a strategic focus on the aim of developing leadership that Sandhurst exemplified. Now that it is much clearer that we are talking about the same generic role of leader, it is no longer necessary for me to persuade. The door is no longer locked. As Sophocles said, ‘The truth is always the strongest argument.’ Yet my mind was imprisoned in a mental box called ‘organization’ and I needed to break out of it. Let me explain what I mean.

Thinking outside the box Sandhurst itself was a mental box in the 1960s, a world on its own. The ‘box’ was an exceptionally pleasant one, for the pink-white building of Old College and its neighbours stood in their own extensive grounds, training areas and firing ranges.

Principle Five: Education for Leadership

There was no contact with the civilian world of organizations and management development. Outside, the movement to transform British management education by establishing at great cost business schools on the Harvard model – notably the London Business School and the Manchester Business School – might have been happening on Mars: the British Army was a thing apart. It was sheer chance – the fact that the brother of the Royal Naval officer attached to Sandhurst happened to be both the director of human resources in a large company and also a leading light in The Industrial Society – that led to the discovery by the ‘outside world’ of what I had been up to over a period of five or six years. Chance also played a hand in getting me out of the Sandhurst ‘box’. As I had been adviser on leadership training on an unpaid basis and my contributions had become well received, my request for a sabbatical year to write a book was accepted. I chose to spend it at St George’s House in Windsor Castle, a new conference centre for senior leaders in society that had opened its doors in 1966. During my time there I served as its first Director of Studies. While at Windsor I wrote Training for Decisions (Macdonald & Jane, 1969), the book which explored what was being done – and could be done – to train managers to make better decisions, solve problems and to think creatively. In it I introduced the Nine Dots Exercise which, to my surprise, has given rise to a new phrase in the English language – ‘thinking outside the box’. The exercise invited you to connect a square pattern of nine dots with four consecutive lines. The reason why people couldn’t solve the problem is that they unconsciously impose a framework on the problem, and try to solve it by drawing the lines inside that invisible constraint or ‘box’. It is only by starting the four consecutive lines at a point outside the box that the problem’s simple and elegant solution reveals itself. Hence the phrase ‘thinking outside the box’ gradually caught on, though most people today are unaware of its origins. In fact the equivalent starting point for the zigzagging growth path of a leader always lies outside the organization. That is why leadership development began to look very different to me than the process that was then called ‘management development’.

Leadership or management development? The 1960s and 1970s saw the foundation of a number of management colleges in the United Kingdom, such as the business schools of London and Manchester. The organization that funded them was the Foundation of Management Education (FME). At the invitation of Philip Nind, its Director, I talked to the Council of the FME in 1981. Are the business schools developing business leaders? That question had clearly arisen in the minds of some members of the Council. As a result, the FME Council asked me to design and lead a day-long seminar for the heads of the United Kingdom’s business schools on the subject of leadership development. The seminar took place in October 1982 at the London

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How to Grow Leaders Business School, with about 100 academics and a few managing directors present. Among them was Dick Clayton, who was responsible for management development in GEC. I spoke first on the research into leadership. Then I introduced the hourglass model of career change (see page 237) and the 10 principles of leadership development described in summary form as the seven principles outlined in this book. Sir John Harvey-Jones, then Chairman of ICI, next gave an outstanding talk on leadership in management. Edgar Vincent, Group Personnel Manager of ICI, complemented it by describing how ICI was going about the work of developing ‘manager-leaders’ and changing its organizational culture. The audience was critical and unresponsive. Travelling back to Waterloo station on a bus I sat next to a dean of one of the business schools, a long-standing acquaintance who had been at the seminar. She gave me a clue to the audience’s relative hostility. ‘Your 10 points of leadership development are what we call management development,’ she said. It became suddenly clear to me that many business academics were incapable of seeing any need for change, even when they had just heard and seen leadership both eloquently described and exemplified in Sir John Harvey-Jones.

While we were talking management the paradigm of ‘development’ was simple: an organization chose men or women to be managers. If it trained them in management, it sent them on either in-company programmes or public courses. There they learnt the techniques of modern management: knowledge of finance, marketing, techniques for planning and controlling, how to motivate people using the findings of industrial psychology, together with case studies, organizational theory, etc. Attempts to change the personality of the managers – social engineering – were mercifully rare outside the United States. Experiments there with group techniques to change the personality of managers ironically were the same as those that would be used by the Chinese to ‘brainwash’ US prisoners during the Korean War. In the 1970s it looked as if leadership training (ACL) could be slotted into that model as skills training – wasn’t leadership just managing people? Others saw it as an acceptable introduction to the ‘behavioural sciences’. But the concept of leadership I had discovered embraced far more than skills. I began to see that it takes a whole society – not just its working ‘parts’ or organizations – to grow leaders. Therefore my Chair in Leadership Studies had to be set in a university, not a business school.

Methods by which people learn ●●

Teaching

Applies to any manner of imparting information or skill so that others may learn. It often includes a guided process of assigned work, discipline, directed study and the presentation of examples. It may or may not suggest an academic context.

Principle Five: Education for Leadership ●●

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Training

Means the systematic development of the body or mind for the purpose of acquiring proficiency in some physical or mental pursuit.

Educating

Refers in a more general way to a long-range, wide-scale, usually academic process. Sometimes the word suggests the accomplishing of greater results than teach: schools that teach but simply fail to educate their students. It implies attempting to bring out latent capabilities or qualities.

Instructing

Is mostly restricted to the specific situation of guided training (such as car driving) or the imparting of information or commands. It suggests methodical or formal teaching.

Tutoring

Is guiding or teaching people individually in a specific subject.

Coaching

Comes from the image of a tutor conveying a student through a set of examinations as if in a coach or wheeled vehicle. It can either suggest intensive training and the direction of team strategy, as in the field of sport, or else one-to-one tutoring or training.

Mentoring

Is acting as a trusted counsellor and guide. There may be little or no teaching or learning involved in the conversation.

If we are looking at leadership in the round – what you are and what you believe, as well as the acquisition of skills and technical/professional knowledge – then we are talking education. In its formal sense – schools and universities – that sphere, like every other, has undergone massive change since the 1960s. In that decade, for example, in the United Kingdom about 10 per cent of young people went to university; now the figure is close to 50 per cent. If it is society that grows leaders and not organizations, then an obvious question arises: what are our schools and universities doing – if anything – to educate leaders? What should they be doing?

Schools for leadership The idea that schools are gardens for leadership – the places where seeds are planted and first green shoots spotted, tended and encouraged – is not a new one. We are they who help to make or mar all. They that are the flower of our nation, and those who become leaders of all the rest, are committed to our education and instruction. (John Brinsley, writing to his fellow schoolmasters in A Conclusion for Our Grammar Schools, 1622)

At the root of the great Renaissance schools lay the most characteristic Socratic or Greek concept of leadership, which I could express as: authority to lead in a free

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society goes to the one who knows. By equipping some members of society – ideally chosen solely by aptitude to learn – with the available knowledge and the means to acquire more, schools were in effect teaching their pupils to be leaders. More, by teaching them Latin and (from 1509) Greek, the door was open to a body of writings, such as Xenophon and Plutarch, which was in fact the world’s first literature on leadership. This idea produced fruit in the 19th century, especially among the Renaissance schools that became what the British call public schools – Eton, Harrow, St Paul’s, Westminster, Charterhouse, etc. As Gary McCulloch has shown in his academic study Philosophers and Kings: Education for leadership in modern England (CUP, 1991), the ‘English tradition’ was deeply influenced by Plato’s Republic: Therefore we must elect as ruler and guardian of the city him who as a boy and youth and man has been tested and has come out without strain, and render him honours in life and after death, giving him the highest rewards of public burial and other memorials. The others we must reject.

Plato, you may recall, conceived his ideal society as having three occupational classes – workers and slaves, guardians and philosophers. In this society the king would draw up the plans and the philosophers would carry them out with the aid of the civil service and military officers comprising the guardian class. Notice this early and partly misleading distinction between management and execution. Leaders determine the overall plan and infuse the system with a character and direction, then managers direct the workers and slaves to do the work. To this austere game plan the British added games of their own, such as cricket, soccer and rugby football. These extraordinary social creations were in fact ways of training team leadership and teamwork while making it fun for boys to learn. Because these games took place outdoors – outside the ‘box’ of the classroom – boys could both enjoy themselves and learn the Three Circles philosophy without knowing it. (Mike Brearley, one of England’s most successful cricket captains, referred to the model in his Art of Captaincy, Hodder & Stoughton, 1982.) The Duke of Wellington is once said to have remarked that ‘the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton’. The links between the elite public schools and the principal universities of Oxford and Cambridge, was a close one in this respect. Just as the rapid expansion of the British Army in the Second World War grew leaders as the opportunities for operational and strategic leadership experience expanded, so the march of the British Empire in the Victorian era grew leaders. Much of the world map was coloured red; there were plenty of chances in the imperial colonies of India, Africa, the Near and Far East to not only lead but lead at the level of Plato’s ‘philosopher-king’ – the strategic-level leader with phronesis, or practical wisdom. These ever-expanding opportunities of leadership in the Empire and the new ‘edu­ cation for leadership’ in the elite public and grammar schools produced a flowering

Principle Five: Education for Leadership

of remarkable British leaders across every field of human enterprise – Brunel, Gordon, Kitchener, Churchill, Livingstone, T E Lawrence, Milner, Gladstone, Disraeli, Night­ ingale, etc. One such leader, Cecil Rhodes, left in his will in 1902 provision for the foundation of the Scholarships at Oxford that bear his name today. His Scholars were to be elected against certain criteria, carefully proportioned: in every 10 marks they obtain, literary and scholastic achievements would count as three, athletics as two, a specified list of virtues as three, and moral force of character and capacity for leadership as two. Rhodes was clearly attempting to establish an advanced cadre of Empire leaders at Oxford. In my lifetime the British Empire disintegrated bit by bit, and I was among the last to serve in it as a conscript soldier before the watershed of Suez (1956). In parallel, as McCulloch narrates, the ‘English tradition’ of education for leadership gradually lost its way: it came to espouse and serve the values of ‘competitive individualism’. In 1970, when I was doing research at Oxford, someone sprayed the grey hoardings outside the Sheldonian Theatre with aerosol in white letters a yard high: THE ONLY GOOD LEADER IS A DEAD LEADER. Yet arguably the tradition did not die, it merely changed its form. R H Tawney, whose lectures at the London School of Economics I heard in 1950, pointed the way forwards in Education: The task before us (Workers Educational Association, 1943). ‘Democracy,’ he wrote, ‘needs experts, representatives and leaders; but it needs them as servants not masters’. How could the British secondary and higher educational system be oriented towards growing such servant-leaders?

Growing school leaders The Empire and Platonic vision of leadership education in school and university owed much to a few great educational leaders, such as Thomas Arnold at Rugby and Benjamin Jowett at Balliol College, Oxford. The key to me seemed to be the headteacher. Having taught briefly in a state secondary school myself in 1960, I had been much impressed by the joint headteachers, a man and woman. Emerson’s axiom that ‘an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man’ has a lot going for it when it comes to schools, much less so at college or university level. If the headteacher is a true leader, I reasoned, at least the staff and pupils will be learning leadership by example. In 1970 I had an opportunity to explore this territory and in particular to test the concept of the generic role of leader in this field. As head of the Leadership Department at The Industrial Society that year I organized a day-long seminar on the subject, which more than 100 headteachers from both public and private sectors attended. The response was extremely positive, and we then initiated the first-ever series of leadership courses for headteachers, entitled ‘Leadership in Schools and Colleges’.

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C a s e s t u dy   Headmaster of a Lincolnshire High School I found the two-day course and its one-day follow-up painful, refreshing and inspiring. Painful because it made me realize how haphazard and illogical my previous management style had been; refreshing because it made me re-examine every aspect of my headship; and inspiring because I realized that it was a total philosophy – not something from which one could take ideas in isolation. It has given me a strategy for working instead of my previous hotchpotch of good and bad practice. Firstly, thinking time. I still tend to fill all my time, partly because I am a product of a family background which believed that idleness was synonymous with laziness, but I do deliberately leave my study to walk round the campus, listen to pupils and try to see different aspects of problems. Incidentally, following the ACL practices on delegation seems to have meant that I now get only the difficult problems. I would dearly love to take a lunch break, but that remains a distant prospect in these turbulent times. For thinking time, moments of peace at home have to suffice, but I have come to recognize that thinking time must be found so that I can detach myself for a while and try to take a more distant view of my school. Only then do the really important things emerge and the un-important ones fade into the background. All headteachers need vision: I do not think it attainable without regular thinking time. Secondly, delegation. I have always found delegation and the involvement of all staff in the task rather elusive – not because I feel threatened, nor because I doubt the abilities of those around me, but because of the difficulty of monitoring and possibly having to pick up the pieces afterwards. Yet the values and importance of delegating are not lost upon me. I have instituted all the machinery for delegation: 1) an Academic Board meeting monthly and advising on all curriculum aspects, 2) an Operational Research Unit of six (myself, two deputies and three heads of year), meeting weekly and examining all aspects of the running of the school, and 3) a daily meeting with my deputies to prepare for the assemblies and the day ahead. Departments meet at least once a term: year tutors meet fortnightly; and a weekly bulletin keeps everyone informed of all aspects of school life, yet the one completely democratic forum I keep to a minimum: the staff meeting. I found staff meetings mentally exhausting and looked upon them as a necessary exercise which rarely simplified or brought inspiration to the school’s general aims. We meet as a staff of 50 once a term – more often if necessary – and I now follow ACL advice with care: ●● ●●

I prepare the agenda well in advance and publicize it, having invited contributions from all. I make it clear that what I say initially is policy and that what conclusions the meeting may come to later are advisory. I do this because a discussion involving 50 rarely comes to a conclusion of any kind.

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I arrange seating in a very large circle.

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I provide free tea and buns.

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I take Any Other Business items as being items for the agenda of the next meeting.

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I start on time and specify a finishing time.

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I chair the meeting and insist on apologies in person to myself.

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And after my initial input, I leave my deputies to put the hierarchy line, concentrating on directing the discussion, trying to summarize, and trying to select good points to applaud and adopt.

Principle Five: Education for Leadership The ACL course brought to me a priceless gift: a means of measuring partial success in influencing and motivating staff. When a breach occurred in relationships, I used to feel that I had failed. Now I can see that breach as a faltering and know that it is part of the continuous process of building the team and of developing the individual. A previously nebulous concept of management has taken on form and structure. I now believe that all members of staff can be influenced and led albeit slowly and probably unwillingly along a road towards a definable goal. I believe that the ACL training enables a headteacher to fulfil his or her leadership role with more purpose, more understanding and in a much more structured fashion. It has given me a workable, progressive method of improving my school and I can see that it will continue to stand me in good stead.

In the 1970s these pioneering leadership courses for headteachers touched several hundred in the same way as in the case study above, but there were some 30,000 secondary and primary school headteachers in the United Kingdom. My task was to persuade the UK Government to adopt a strategy for leadership development. No easy one, for one expensive national ‘management development’ unit for schools, established in Bristol and staffed by academics, had proved to be useless and collapsed in ignominy. A report that should have changed that climate and put leadership development for heads on the map was published in 1977 by H M Inspectorate of Schools, entitled Ten Good Schools. Having made a list of 50 schools known to be ‘good’, the Inspectorate selected 10 for diversity and tried to figure out what they had in common. The answer was simple: good schools have good heads. The report characterized them as follows: These schools see themselves as places designed for learning; they take trouble to make their philosophies explicit for themselves and to explain them to parents and pupils; the foundation of their work and corporate life is an acceptance of shared values. Emphasis is laid on consultation, teamwork and participation, but without exception, the most important single factor in the success of these schools is the quality of leadership at the head. Without exception, the heads have qualities of imagination and vision, tempered by realism, which have enabled them to sum up not only their present situation but also attainable future goals. They appreciate the need for specific educational aims, both social and intellectual, and have the capacity to communicate these to staff, pupils and parents, to win their assent and to put their own policies into practice. Their sympathetic understanding of staff and pupils, their acceptability, good humour and sense of proportion and their dedication to their task has won them the respect of parents, teachers and taught. Conscious of the corruption of power and though ready to take final responsibility, they have made power-sharing the keynote of their organization and administration. Such leadership is crucial for success and these schools are what heads and staffs have made them.

‘The implication of Ten Good Schools is simple,’ I wrote in Developing Leaders (Talbot Adair, 1988). The secondary educational system in the United Kingdom –

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like the Services, industry or commerce – needs to grow leaders. But developing leaders, as we have seen, is more than a matter of organizing courses. It requires a strategy. In fact, weight must be given to each of the 10 principles of leadership development. (In this book I have reduced my original 10 principles to 7, leaving out as separate headings: Research and Development Adviser, Getting the Structures Right, and Organizational Climate.) Not for another 10 years after 1988, however, would a partnership between the Teacher Training Agency and myself sit down to devise a strategy for leadership training for some 8,000 headteachers in three years, the largest strategic approach to developing senior leaders the United Kingdom has ever seen. As a result of its outstanding success, the Prime Minister’s Office found £30 million and the Government established a new National College of School Leadership to take on the new programmes and develop the whole field of leadership in schools.

Growing university leaders In 1930, the University of St Andrews inaugurated the first of a long series of lectures on leadership, funded by a local family. John Buchan gave the first one, and some 30 lecturers – including Wavell and Montgomery – followed suit. Montgomery was much taken by the experience, and circulated copies of his lecture ‘Military Leadership’ to all his officers in the British Army on the Rhine. To me, in 1968, he wrote in his even, clear handwriting: Leadership is an immense subject. Nowhere is it more important to teach it than at Sandhurst and in our universities; in fact to youth, since it falls on dead ground with the older generation.

In 1983, the university where I held the chair of leadership invited me to speak to the national conference of university secretaries and registrars – the senior administrators – which was taking place there. During my talk I threw out the idea that the time was now ripe for heads of university departments to be taught leadership. The university asked me to run some pilot courses for its own heads, but I insisted on them being open to all universities in order to have more cross-fertilization. I personally led 10 of these courses at Farnham Castle in the 1980s, and a further five for vice-chancellors and their senior staff. Then I convened a meeting of the Minister for Higher Education, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission and the Chairman of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals in order to agree a strategy for leadership development in universities. But like other summit meetings this one proved to be fruitless. Now, some 15 years later, a Universities Leadership Foundation has come into being, which doubtless will come up with the missing strategy.

Principle Five: Education for Leadership

Still, the team that I had created at Surrey University continued to run leadership programmes based on my work. At one such programme, for heads of colleges and schools, including the large teaching hospitals of the University of London, the ViceChancellor – a former Rector of Imperial College named Lord Flowers – had this to say: Early in his book, Effective Leadership, John Adair quotes a letter that Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery wrote to him in 1968. I won’t attempt the famous intonation, but I’m sure the rhythm of the sentences will come through: ‘Leadership is an immense subject. Nowhere is it more important to teach it than at Sandhurst and in our universities; in fact, to youth, since it falls on dead ground with the older generation.’ I will take that as my text. The more one thinks about Montgomery’s assertion, the more extraordinary it becomes. First, of course, there was almost certainly no overt academic teaching of leadership in British universities in 1968. The new universities, together with a few older centres of commercial relevance such as LSE, had barely begun to exert an influence on the system as a whole by their teaching of what might collectively be termed ‘management studies’. Business schools were in their infancy: London’s was founded in 1965. So the suggestion of teaching leadership ran quite against the academic tide of the late 1960s. It also ran against the tide of general opinion. Consensus was of course the vogue: nowhere more so than in universities. If an organization’s purpose and its future are linked, then it is not only the present leaders who matter. Indeed, training them in leadership may well be a little beside the point: an old dog may learn an odd new trick, but can rarely change his whole act. We have to look to our leaders of the future. By that, I do not necessarily mean identifying bright individuals in their late twenties who may make it to the top of their institutions – if they stick around for long enough. I mean creating a climate in which leadership can flourish, rather than be restrained by precedent and the safety belt of committee decisions… I wish to conclude simply by reminding you of the remark of Montgomery with which I began; that it is most important to teach leadership to youth, since ‘it falls on dead ground with the older generation’. It may be that our most difficult, yet most vital, challenge of leadership is to prepare the next generation to lead. May I finish by saying ‘Thank you’ to John Adair for the extremely important work he is doing for universities in general, and for agreeing to lead this particular study group for our university, which contains many fine leaders, some of whom are in this room tonight, but none who could not learn a little more by contact with their fellows.

To prepare the next generation to lead. If supporting universities – or the vice-­ chancellor and senior leaders – did begin to interest themselves in that challenge, what would it mean in practice? One reason why I more or less created the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in 1996 was to explore that very question, for there is no one single answer, as I suggested in a public lecture at that university: what is needed is some fundamental and creative thinking – just the sort of thinking, in fact, that universities are in business to do.

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New opportunities for ‘education for leadership’? Passionate as I am about the potential contribution of schools and universities to the education of ‘leaders for tomorrow’ – the title of my inaugural lecture at Surrey – I remain convinced that experience is the watershed in my field, at least from the perspective of teaching leadership. Without experience all the concepts and words remain abstract. Leadership education is essentially adult education. The real breakthrough in adult education for leadership – not training – came through my renewed involvement with St George’s House in Windsor Castle. As I mentioned, this small institution was set up with two aims in mind: to be a place where senior people in society could meet to discuss important issues, especially of a moral or ethical nature, and to provide further education for the clergy of the Church of England. My task as Director of Studies was to put some intellectual foundations under this work. What I identified as the key concept was values, a word relatively obscure in 1968. It was values that linked the tradition of Christendom with our secular society, includ­ ing the moral and spiritual values that interwove the very fabric of that society, often beneath the surface, like gold and silver thread. In the context of leadership, values in any field served a different function than vision, purpose or strategy: it is our values that give us the stars by which we navigate ourselves through life. Values, of course, cannot be trained for, like skills. We acquire our values, but education gives us the chance to explore, modify, extend or refresh them. Leadership is a value – it is part of the value system of the Services, for example. Why not explore it? An opportunity came to experiment in this direction. Since moving on from St George’s House I have always stayed in touch, and while Charles Handy was Warden, a programme for younger leaders from every kind of organization was instituted. At the first one in 1979 I spoke on leadership, together with the historian Corelli Barnett. Here is what he said.

A historian looks at leadership Given the course of English history, which I see as a quest for liberty, equality and personal responsibility, there is no hope that we will ever become good technological ants, loyal cogs in the organization. We have to find an English road to salvation. Now earlier in my talk I suggested that in modern industrialized society a leader needed both the raw quality of leadership – personal force and will – and complete technical mastery of the job itself. It would seem that British management is too often lacking in both. But then ‘leadership’ is not much talked about with regard to industry. ‘Management’ is the preferred word. ‘Management studies’ thrive. Is there here another source of trouble?

Principle Five: Education for Leadership Note the entirely different resonances of these two phrases: ‘trade union leaders’; ‘plant managers’. Try switching the epithets and you get even more clearly the difference between the resonances of the words: ‘trade union manager’. How funny it sounds! ‘Plant leader’ – the same. I think this sharply brings out that management and leadership are not at all the same thing. To my mind ‘management’ is concerned with the inanimate – material and financial resources, machinery, products, marketing. ‘Leadership’ is concerned with people; it is a psychological – or if you like, a spiritual – connection between human beings. Therefore, given the historical nature of our industrial population, more emphasis on ‘management’ and ‘management training’ will not cure our problems. To think in terms of ‘managing’ your fellow men is in any case to dehumanize both them and the relationship between you. This is shown by the very jargon of the ‘behavioural sciences’ – even as white rats. We must think, then, in terms of ‘leadership’ – but a form of leadership still new to industry, even though much in the British tradition. The leader not as boss, but as first among equals; seeking to bring out the full potential of those he works with; careful to carry them with him in all he seeks to do. He will lead not through rank or the weight of social position, but by virtue of superior intelligence and strength of personality; by virtue of being best at the job itself. He will devolve and share responsibility and decision as far as he can. He will need insight into his teammates and their strengths and weaknesses. He will welcome ideas and suggestions from those who in a former dispensation might have been regarded as his inferiors. He will build a relationship of mutual trust. However, such a style of leadership implies radical changes in the organizational framework of industrial life. For example, the final abolition of those outward forms that proclaim a distinction between boss and man, white collar and blue collar. It may therefore be that our salvation as an industrial nation, as well as an immense step forward as a society, will lie in the coming at long last to every office and shop floor of that English habit of cabinet government which first evolved in Downing Street 250 years ago… the free collaboration of responsible individuals in a common enterprise. Corelli Barnett

In the mid-1990s these Windsor Meetings, as they were called, were revived and, with my help, refocused on ‘good leadership and leadership for good’. Under the auspices of the Windsor Leadership Trust, six one-week programmes a year are arranged, real opportunities for leadership education. In the 2003 Newsletter of the Windsor Leadership Trust I included these reflections: When my first book Training for Leadership (1968) was published I was living in Windsor Castle as the first Director of Studies at St George’s House. It was the only book coming out that year with ‘Leadership’ in the title: last year there were more than 2,000 such titles, so times have certainly changed. But have the principles of leadership changed? I don’t think so. At the heart of the process is the nuclear reaction of theory or principles on the one hand and practices or experience on the other. It’s a two-way process: learning happens when the sparks jump between the two. Of course it is essential to get the right theory and principles (which is not the latest necessarily, as the newer-is-truer school tends to believe). In my experience far too little

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How to Grow Leaders thought is given to that requirement. I reject the view that it is all subjective: there are some classic and timeless principles of effective leadership at all levels. In a good programme the interaction between theory and practice sets up a chain reaction which is continued as a kind of learning path in the mind of the participant after the course and when faced with the challenges of leading in work. Although the two overlap, often considerably, there is a useful distinction between training and education. The former focuses on the systematic development of skills with a specific role in view. The latter is more to do with the whole person and encompasses such areas as values, attitudes, beliefs and ethics. It is long range and wide scale; it implies some attempt to draw out latent capabilities, and it has no specific outcomes in view. As a general principle, primarily educational programmes like those of the Windsor Leadership Trust should complement leadership training, not replace it. What the Trust can do is to provide the experience of exploring the subject with a broad cross-section of leaders from very different fields, which is an essential ingredient in the educating for leadership process. For it takes people out of their narrow and often uncreative silos and gives them a fresh vision of their field and of themselves. That has been – and is – the Trust’s ‘unique selling point’. Everything else builds on that foundation. Yet is there a place for teaching in the sense of the imparting of information about leadership in a more general sense? My honest answer to that question is that you could run a popular and successful programme without such an input. (Not that if I was paying for the people to go on such a programme I would be entirely happy to foot the bill!) In the WLT context, it is not really a question of what theories, if any, should be taught: that belongs more to the domain of leadership training, where it ought to be an immensely important one. What matters more is that one session on each programme is led by a practitioner, someone who is both well acquainted with the subject and has engaged in some fundamental thinking about it for themselves. They are not parrots of the latest theories or gurus. Such teachers are very hard to come by, and yet without them leadership education at the highest level is scarcely possible. Such a person may indeed introduce their own tentative conclusions at the right time but their real function is to be a catalyst to help others begin to form their own philosophy or framework of principles, values and policies as a leader or leader-to-be. What they do is help you clarify and deepen your own emerging concept of leadership and fall in love with leadership. Here straight lecturing is unlikely to be effective! When teaching is done it should be virtually invisible. As one who aspires to excellence in that form of Socratic teaching, I know just how difficult it is and how many are the pitfalls. Occasionally, however, it comes off. After one programme, for example, a participant came up to me and said: ‘You did not teach us, nor did we learn. But it became part of me, as if it was my own thoughts’. That’s it! Personally I am extremely grateful to the Trust for giving me the opportunity to teach at what I regard as the highest level of my profession. Not that I have attained that level yet. But I press on with Alexander Pope’s words ever before me:

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown propos’d as things forgot.

Principle Five: Education for Leadership

Keypoints ●●

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How to grow leaders transcends organizations, for it is society that grows leaders. But because organizations are the beneficiaries of society in this respect, they should take a strong interest in the educational institutions that begin the growth of leaders. Therefore wise senior leaders of organizations always think outside the box – about education, about community and society, about the shape of the evolving world. Families are one matrix of leadership. Schools and universities are the second nurseries of leaders. They witness the expanding of horizons as young people observe, reflect, practise, experiment, discuss and explore good leadership – and leadership for good. Is there a ‘window of opportunity’ when we acquire our values – the stars by which we steer in life? Maybe the heels of integrity, enthusiasm and compassion, for example, are laid down in those formative years. Schools and universities also equip the potential leader with general knowledge and the means for acquiring technical or professional knowledge later on. Curiosity – the hunger to learn – the ability to think clearly, and the seeds of creativity: such are the legacies of a good education to a leader. A continuing education for leadership in the adult years of working experience is desirable. ‘Once learning solidifies,’ said A N Whitehead, ‘all is over with it.’

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Although our view of the most sublime things is limited and weak, it is a great pleasure to be able to catch even a glimpse of them.  Thomas Aquinas

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Principle Six: A strategy for leadership development

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When it grew too hot for dreamless dozing, I picked up my tangle again, and went on ravelling it out, considering now the whole house of war in its structural aspect, which was strategy, in its arrangements, which were tactics.  T E Lawrence Effective leadership, I believe, is too important for the present and future success of a business to be left to the human resources department, much as you may love it. It is a core activity to grow leaders. In the next chapter I shall talk to you as the chief executive about what I think you should be doing about it in the sense of leading it from the front. Here I want to focus on just one aspect of what an organization eventually needs to get right – a strategy for leadership development. Strategy, a military word by origin, is hard to define. But, as the words quoted from T E Lawrence above suggest, it is about the whole and not the parts. Strategy has three hallmarks: 1 Long term

You have to define what longer term means in your own context, but strategy is seldom about today. If it is very short term it is more likely to be tactical rather than strategic.

2 Importance

In business the urgent always tends to drown the important. A strategic leader’s role is to think ahead, to ensure that your organization knows where it is going. Stay on the bridge; leave the engine room to the engineers.

3 Multi-component There is always more than one element in strategy. It is a whole made up of various complementary components. Of course your organization may not need a strategy for leadership development, for it already has excellent business leaders at all three levels. If that is the case then I shall not detain you by asking you to read these next few pages. You can skip this chapter... no, on second thoughts, wait just a moment. Ask your PA to choose the names of any 12 managers at what I call team leadership level, all of whom are under the age of 30. Choose them as a representative cross-section of your organization. Then send them the following e-mail or memo.

Principle Six: A Strategy for Leadership Development

Leadership development It has been put to me that (Snail Holdings) should have a strategy for developing leaders. Personally I think that is totally unnecessary, as I have every confidence in the senior managers of this company. Still, what often seems as clear as glass to the eagle may seem as clear as mud to the worm. So, dear Worm, without giving your name, could you please reply with answers to the following questions: 1 Your manager – how does he or she rate on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent) as a leader? 2 Now please rate yourself on the same scale. 3 What is your general impression of the quality of leadership in this company? 4 Human Resources tells me that there has been an ‘open’ strategy for leadership development since my predecessor’s time five years ago. Do you know about it? 5 Have you been trained as a team leader? 6 What have you learnt about being a more effective business leader in the last quarter year? If you would prefer to come and talk to me I would welcome that, for I want to get this decision right. If so, fix a time and date with Mary. Thanks and best wishes.

Reviewing the strategy Thanks to the leadership revolution, it is now probable – at least in the United Kingdom – that most organizations will have a plan or strategy labelled ‘leadership development’. I suggest you take a careful look at it in the light of this book. Here are some questions to consider: ●●

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Are there any hidden assumptions? Is the practical philosophy behind it clear? In particular, have the authors a clear idea of what leadership is and how it relates to management? Do they know what it is that we are trying to develop? Does the strategy reflect the principle that no one should be given a leadership role without some form of training, education or preparation for it? A boring point, but what has the strategy cost? What is the overall amount of money being spent on leadership development? Is the cost per person per day of the team leadership training courses specified? I ask these questions because it is possible to waste thousands of pounds on so-called leadership development.

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Is the system of line leaders acting as leadership mentors to their apprentice leaders working effectively? How is the leadership development strategy being evaluated? What are the progress markers? Is too much resource being lavished on too few people at the top? How does the strategy or plan show how we improve our identification of leadership potential in the selection process? What ‘research and development’ is envisaged in the strategy?

What reviewing the published strategy will tell you is how far the authors have been obeying the injunction to think and to think until it really hurts. If you have in your hand a paper that is clear and simple, reasonably short but comprehensive, free of jargon, practically oriented, relevant at every point to your overall business strategy, within budget, intellectually well-founded, and challenging but feasible, then you are a fortunate chief executive. It’s not much fun building a house if the architects cannot produce a plan.

Getting the structures right One of your own key functions as a strategic leader is to balance the whole and the parts (see page 254). There isn’t a formula for doing it; like a helmsman you balance wind and sails in the course, adjusting all the time. But to avoid constant and counter­productive reorganizing, it is worth getting it more or less right. It impinges on your strategy for developing leaders, because if you don’t get the roles right your selection and training/education will be confused. Yokes or harnesses (organizations) are supposed to make work easy for oxen or horses, not to chafe, irritate and slow them down. In political language, the key principle is subsidiary: that the whole should not do what the parts can do perfectly well for themselves. The division between the whole and the parts should not be between the chief executive (king) and the operational leaders (robber barons or ‘over-mighty subjects’). Operational leaders are members of the strategic leadership team, thus they are as responsible (if not as accountable) for the whole as the chief executive. The downsizing and de-layering of the large industrial, commercial and public service bureaucracies of the 1980s, together with some judicious reorganizing, has exposed beneath the fat the bare bones of the structure I discerned in 1983 – the basic team, operational and strategic levels of leadership. For example, take the Metropolitan Police in London: Commissioner (strategic) – 32 Borough Commanders (operational) – Police Sergeant (team).

Principle Six: A Strategy for Leadership Development

C a s e s t u dy   Oxford University Who is in the role of strategic leader in Oxford University? Who are the operational leaders and the team leaders? Read this case study and see if you can identify the answers. Back in the Palaeozoic era when the first tetrapods evolved, natural selection favoured a limb with five digits. This highly successful design was later elaborated by different species in many different ways, including the wonderfully versatile human hand. In 2000, Oxford implemented its decision to organize the academic structure of the University into five subject based divisions. The new structure grew out of the ‘strategic oversight at the centre combined with decisionmaking devolved to the lowest responsible level’. In contrast, the existing system kept most of the decision-making in the hands of central bodies, particularly the General Board of the Faculties. ‘Previously, departments had to relay their thoughts to faculty boards, which relayed them to the General Board,’ says Professor Peter Newell, head of the Life and Environmental Sciences Division and himself a former member of the General Board. ‘They rarely made a decision straight away, because they had to consult other faculty boards. It all took a long time.’ Under the new structure the General Board no longer exists, and there are faculty boards only for the humanities subjects and for the two social science subjects (law and management) that are not based in departments. Instead, each of the five Divisional Boards has responsibility for coordinating decision-making among its own departments or faculties. In their turn, the departments are encouraged to make their own plans as far as their resources allow. The principal remaining central body is the Council, which confines itself to strategic matters affecting the whole University. All the heads of division have a seat on the Council. They are unanimous in their view that the new system provides for better and faster decisionmaking. ‘It’s a great advantage to plan strategically and think coherently about objectives,’ says the head of the Humanities Division. ‘The division has a better understanding than the General Board did of what’s going on in the faculties.’ At the Social Sciences Division, Donald Hay immediately comes up with two examples of projects that have reached fruition during the past year at a speed that would have been unthinkable under the previous system. ‘The MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice was through the system and approved within weeks,’ he says. ‘And the Oxford Internet Institute – that happened with astonishing speed. There is a sense that we don’t have to march off and ask permission for things any more. What we’re saying to departments is that if they’ve got a good reason for doing something and can set it up within the standard structures, they should go ahead and do it.’ If there are differences between divisions, they also have interests in common, and the new structure, far from creating five mini universities, has made it easier for divisions to collaborate. The area where biology and physical sciences meet is one of the hottest in science at the moment, and the science divisions have put a lot of effort into new initiatives such as the interdisciplinary research centre in bio-nanotechnology and new chairs in bio-informatics and chemical biology. ‘It’s now much easier to make people get together,’ says Brian Cantor. ‘There are three heads of science divisions and we meet regularly. Under the old system it just wouldn’t happen – there were lots of missed opportunities because there wasn’t a mechanism.’ (Oxford Today, Hilary Issue 2002)

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You will notice from this case study that structure and leadership are closely related to the speed and quality of decision-making. If you want your business to be fast on its feet, then you need to get the structure right. One of the largest bureaucracies in history evolved in the Spanish Empire in the 16th century and its slowness in decisionmaking became proverbial: ‘If death came from Madrid we should live forever.’

What surrounds and infuses a successful strategy is culture If you are talking leadership, you are talking integrity – the quality that engenders trust. If a leader proves not to have integrity, then the word leader becomes inappropriate. Such a person downgrades himself or herself to being a non-leader or a misleader. It follows that a culture that in practice does not value integrity – whatever it says in its Corporate Values statement – is a hostile environment as far as growing true leaders is concerned. The trouble is that you can spend years building that reputation for integrity, but it can be lost in a week by some mindless managers. Reputation is a most valuable asset. In the 1980s I was asked to advise the chief executive of Hambros Bank and his senior team on developing leadership in merchant banking. My ‘learning curve’ was put to the test, for I knew nothing about merchant banking. I asked for a yardstick of excellence in that field. Two merchant banks were mentioned most frequently as being the best: Warburg’s and Morgan Grenfell. What was their secret? Sir Derek Higgs, a senior adviser to UBS Investment Bank, answers the question about Warburg’s in a review of a book by Sally Bibb and Jeremy Kourdi, called Trust Matters, published in Management Today (May, 2004).

C a s e s t u dy   The Warburg spirit Siegmund Warburg wrote this about the importance of the reputation of a professional services firm. A firm’s reputation, he said, ‘is like a very delicate living organism which can easily be damaged and which has to be taken care of incessantly, being mainly a matter of human behaviour and human standards’. What he was describing was trust, and it matters. I was privileged to spend a quarter of a century working in the firm that carried Warburg’s name, before I took on the challenge of helping to change the culture and business model of a financial institution of the British old school. The contrast between the two in matters of trust could not have been starker. I doubt the term ‘networking’ originated in Warburgs, but it felt like it did. Teamwork, the absence of stars and the sharing of information distinguished the firm in every sense. Trust in colleagues was absolute.

Principle Six: A Strategy for Leadership Development I had never heard the term ‘silo’ before I joined the financial institution. But I soon learnt that its culture was the antithesis of what I had grown up with and learnt to respect at Warburgs. Knowledge kept to oneself was power over others. Baronies, fiefdoms and self-promotion ruled. Doors were, literally and metaphorically, closed, not open… There is nothing fundamentally objectionable or mistaken about this book. Indeed, it’s a worthwhile reminder of bedrock values. But if you want prose that lifts off the page and tells you about the human spirit and its capacity to trust, this is what Siegmund Warburg wrote to George Bolton in 1950 when the latter was knighted. ‘You deserve it above all for your single-minded courage in facing the truth, however hard and unpalatable; in giving due consideration not only to the bigger and self-evident matters, but also to the smaller and intricate things, which so often add up to big issues; in always taking the strenuous road rather than the way of least resistance; and above all in always fighting for the cause you consider right, however hard it may be.’

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What three words would you use to describe the culture of Warburgs?

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Do you think good teamwork makes a difference in merchant banking?

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How did Siegmund Warburg exercise strategic leadership?

In the case of Warburgs, the person who set up the company also established an acceptable set of ground rules – a way of operating that everyone can work with – a way in which they like working. Great companies have a sound in the woodwork that was put in by the founder that sustains them. Strategic thinking, then, about growing and sustaining true leadership, is much more than a paper strategic plan for leadership courses or programmes. Paper plans are easy. What is harder to achieve is a culture change in this context: a liberating and empowering structure – one in which those in leadership roles are free to take decisions, to develop their potential and to work creatively with others. Add to that a climate of hope, confidence and commitment – so that every manager is ready to seize the opportunities on offer – and you are getting closer to the summit of Everest. Keep going.

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There are many ways an organization can help a person grow as a business leader, some of them necessary conditions – such as chances to lead, training and line leaders whom they can respect and learn from – and others that are more ‘optional extras’. The whole is always greater than the parts. If the various parts of leadership development – for example, selection and training or education – work together in

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harmony in a strategic approach, then the end result is going to be that much greater. ‘If you miss them on the swings, you catch them on the roundabouts.’ Look on structure as part of your overall leadership development strategy, giving as much freedom in decision-making to your business leaders as you possibly can within the constraints of your business. Expect them to work creatively together as a team, and in turn to give their team leaders as much discretion as they can. Responsibility grows leaders. We know that moral values are intrinsic to leadership simply because human nature is intrinsically good – not as good as it should or could be, but good. If a chief executive turns his back on truth and slights goodness – in other words, if he abandons integrity – then that organization will stunt leaders rather than grow them. The best leaders have a habit of wanting to work for the best organizations. Why? Because they want to grow. Aim to be the best organization in your field, the employer of first choice.

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Everyone knows at any given moment who is the best company in its field. Not necessarily in terms of size or profits, though it could be. I mean the best in bringing in new products, market sensitivity, presence, range, quality, how we deal with our people, ethical, environmental and safety standards – all of these things. Sir John Harvey-Jones

Principle Seven: The Chief Executive

Principle Seven: The chief executive

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Power is actualized only when word and deed have not parted company.  Hannah Arendt Where the top strategic leader is not involved in or committed to the work of develop­ ing leadership, in my experience, you may as well forget it. Turning that negative experience into a positive principle: Principle Seven: An organization that grows leaders is one where the chief executive leads the process from in front.

You will notice that I have used chief executive, a title of US origin, in that statement. Titles come and go. I am thinking more in terms of roles. You will have to determine who has the top strategic leader role in your organization. It may be the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Prime Minister. Or it may be shared between two people, as in the characteristic British company governance, where the constitution stipulates both a chairman (full-time or part-time) and chief executive /managing director. The textbook example of a chief executive who exemplified Principle Seven is Sir John Harvey-Jones, and if you want a case study of how he did it in ICI during the 1980s you cannot do better than read his own account in Making It Happen (HarperCollins, 1988). Incidentally, he was both the chairman and the chief executive of ICI at the time. There are pros and cons for having a single top strategic leader. It is a strong leadership position, and in times of crisis the right leader can make the right things happen comparatively quickly. That is why democracies elect virtual dictators in times of crisis (and sometimes have difficulty getting rid of them when the crisis has passed). Yet to appoint a non-leader or a misleader to such a strong leadership position is to court disaster – you shouldn’t have much difficulty of thinking of examples, for there is a dearth of leaders at top strategic level in politics, business, public services and churches or faith-communities. As the Hebrew proverb says, ‘When the shepherd is angry with his sheep he sends them a blind guide.’ Woe to your organization if it has created a strong leadership position and installed a morally blind guide in it.

Learning to be a top strategic leader The general hypothesis I work on is that there are no bad strategic leaders, only bad teachers of leadership.

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In other words, most strategic leaders fall short of the generic role’s requirements not out of ill will, nor because they lack the potential, but because they are simply ignorant of their leadership role. No one has ever taught them. You can see that I am back to the old song I sang under Principle One, but I am now applying it to the top strategic leader role. Who might such a teacher of leadership at this level be? In an ideal world it would be someone who has done the job – a Harvey-Jones – and someone who understands leadership theory, for we know that not all good practitioners of an art can teach it. Leonardo da Vinci did not take apprentices, and Mozart had no time in his short life to teach other composers. Thus the paragon of my trade is Xenophon, who graduated from Socrates’ masterclass on leadership at the age of 25, a year later became one of the most famous generals in Greek history, and then through his books taught leadership to Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus, Cicero, Julius Caesar and – in our own age – Lawrence of Arabia.

Some early experiments Without Xenophon’s unique qualifications I found myself in his sandals as the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies. If I did not tackle the problem of training strategic leaders, who else would? The difficulties were formidable. As Montgomery had warned me in his usual blackand-white and no-nonsense way, remember that leadership falls on dead ground with the older generation. The older generation are reared on the milk that leaders are born not made. They confuse the two senses of leadership: because they are in the role of leader – people called them the leaders in their field – they assume that they must have the attribute of leadership. If not, then it can hardly matter. They are already in the job and enjoying its rewards and privileges. Leadership is hardly important, they say, if we got to the top without it. One solution is to catch people before they become the older generation and to give them an opportunity to think about leadership at the strategic level at a point where they have had sufficient experience but before they are committed. The prospect of promotion has to be in sight, say within five years. In 1969, while still Director of Studies at St George’s House, I persuaded the bishops of the Church of England to identify and nominate 20 men in the 35–40 age range who had the potential to be senior leaders. Then I designed and led a four-week course for them (see my The Becoming Church, SPCK, 1976). Two-thirds of the alumni did become bishops, archdeacons or deans. My second experiment was to run a leadership course for people who were already in the role of strategic leader. The story (from Developing Leaders, Talbot Adair, 1988) was as follows:

Principle Seven: The Chief Executive In 1986 two chief executives wrote to me for information about leadership seminars for them. Conscious of the total lack of provision in this area – the core of their role – I tried without success to persuade British institutions, such as the Manpower Services Commission and the National Economic Development Organization, to take up the challenge. For various reasons all declined. Therefore in 1986 I decided to go it alone and lay on such a course myself. (I learnt subsequently that ‘course’ was the wrong word to use. Like ‘training’ it smacked of too low a level. ‘Seminar’ or ‘conference’, I was told, are words – like ‘development’ – that are more acceptable to senior people.) The course was entitled ‘Leadership for Chief Executives’ and it took place at Nuneham Park near Oxford. The brochure defined the aim as follows: ‘The course is for chief executives, especially those within two years of appointment. Those shortly to become chief executives are also eligible for it.’ ‘The aim of the course it is to provide course members with the opportunity to study the nature and practice of good leadership in order to become more effective in their roles as chief executives.’ ‘The seminar is designed for a small number of individuals drawn primarily from industry and commerce. It will be highly participative.’ The course lasted for a day and a quarter. (Earlier that year I had tried to mount a two-and-a-half days programme for chief executives without success.) The participants arrived in time for introductions over dinner, followed by a session working in pairs and in plenary on the question ‘What is the role of a chief executive?’ During the following day we explored the chief executive’s major areas of leadership responsibility, such as strategic thinking and corporate planning, communication in large organizations, encouraging innovation and enterprise, the 10 steps of leadership development [as in Part Three], and effective time management. The course was marketed by sending a letter and brochure to the chairman or managing director of the top 600 companies in The Times list. About 200 companies replied. Of those who expressed interest the relatively short notice (about four months) ruled out some who were evidently keen to come. Some applicants fell more into the category of senior managers and so I had to decline to accept them. Ten chief executives signed up for the course, although in the end two dropped out at the last moment due to business pressures. Those who came were in charge of major industrial and commercial enterprises, such as ICI’s Paints Division and a large City firm of chartered accountants. Beyond the letters I received after the course I have no means of evaluating this programme beyond my own judgement. One must be sceptical about what any seminar lasting little more than a day can achieve in terms of changing attitudes and imparting skills, but the participants clearly found it valuable to compare notes with their peers, with someone like myself acting more as a catalyst than as teacher or instructor.

In fact I did not repeat the Nuneham experiment, partly because I was a freelance at the time and had no secretary. I needed a partner organization. But the CBI and Institute of Directors, when approached, proved to be uninterested. The Civil Service had just launched its own four-week Top Management Programme – the architect of it, John Mayne, consulted me and I tried to persuade him to call it leadership rather than management, but he told me that leadership was an unacceptable word in Whitehall. But in my view, programmes like the TMP are simply too long. Even the

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five-day leadership programme run by the British Institute of Management and some business schools struck me as too long. As I wrote in 1988: The main point is that a five-day course effectively rules out those who are already chief executives. Instead of being programmes designed for the top person, or those soon to be in the top job, these business school-type courses tend to attract senior managers, more at the operational than the strategic level.

In 2002 I proposed to the Windsor Leadership Trust a partnership in order to run together some three-day programmes for newly appointed strategic leaders. As the series at St George’s House develops, it is now clear that the essential ingredients of its success are three-fold: 1 A cross-section of newly appointed strategic leaders from a very wide range of organizations in the public, private and voluntary sectors. This factor induces participants to think generally about leadership, as well as a richer sharing of experience. 2 Three case studies, as I call them: three strategic leaders from different fields talking about their concept of leadership and how they exercise it. 3 One or two sessions with thinkers in the field, including one with me in the generic role of a strategic leader. My Effective Strategic Leadership (Pan, 2001) serves as the intellectual framework for the programme. The Windsor Leadership Trust programmes are experimental by nature – none of the speakers or facilitators is paid – and a capacity of about 40 participants a year isn’t going to change the United Kingdom, let alone the world. But what we have established is both that it can be done and how it should be done. In 20 years’ time it will be inconceivable throughout the world – or much of it – that a person steps up to the level of being a strategic leader without a similar form of specific preparation for the role.

What does a strategic leader have to do? In this section I am concerned with only one generic function – the seventh one – of a strategic leader, the one to do with selecting and developing both today’s leaders and leaders for tomorrow. It is the one that Jack Welch famously spent about 50 per cent of his time doing during the last years of his long tenure as chief executive of General Electric. Fortunately, in order to be the teacher-in-chief of leadership in your organization, you only have to do one simple thing: lead by example. In Shakespeare’s words, it is as if the organization is looking up to you and saying:

Principle Seven: The Chief Executive Do not like some ungracious pastors do, Show us the steep and thorny way to heaven, While he himself the primrose path of dalliance leads, And recks [takes] not his own rede [advice].

It is simple but not easy. If it is any encouragement to you, I find it the hardest part of leadership. It is easy to write books on the subject, especially if you have a ready pen, but very hard to practise what you preach to others. But, as they say in examinations, all candidates must attempt this question. For example, take Principle Three. I expect top strategic leaders to make time to spend with each individual of their senior team. This doesn’t always happen. Cabinet ministers, for instance, in Margaret Thatcher’s Government told me that they seldom, if ever, had one-to-one meetings with the Prime Minister. The content of those meetings will be business. But they create a framework for acting as a leadership mentor, provided there is an openness and willingness to learn – it takes two to tango. But do you want to employ people these days at strategic/ operational level who have closed minds on the subject of leadership? People with closed minds become like ‘green-mantled stagnant pools’. If you have the leadership framework or practical philosophy that I have taught you in this book in mind, you will find yourself becoming aware of what an operational leader is not telling you, or not doing. You may notice, for example, that they are not getting their teams together, not spending time agreeing targets with individuals and reviewing progress, not finding time to think, not avoiding micromanagement by delegating, not getting out of their office more than the token oneday-a-week formula. All teaching at this level is conversational. In such a dialogue, as I have suggested already, the distinction between teaching and learning is blurred. Qui docet discit, Seneca said, ‘Even while they teach men learn.’ Your operational leaders are also your teachers. Find out what they have to teach you, and learn from them. By doing so, if it doesn’t sound too paradoxical, you will be teaching them. Of course, like Socrates, you should be able to ask a few questions in order to help the other person to know what he or she knows and does not know – even if they think they do. That is the first pillar in the seven-pillared house of wisdom. You will start off, for example, not knowing how to be a leadership mentor to your senior operational leaders, or if they will accept you in that function. Do you, you wonder, have that kind of moral or personal authority? You won’t know until you try. If you fail, then you mustn’t expect others to succeed. Say goodbye to your senior operational leaders acting as leadership mentors to their operational/team leaders. If you can’t do it, how can they?

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Exercise Take a list of your senior strategic leaders and draw two columns beside it. In one column put down the leadership lessons that you would dearly like to teach that particular individual. In the second column, write the lessons that this leader has to teach you and his or her colleagues. Remember that if your senior operational leaders – your team – are spending £1,000 a day of the shareholders’ money to go to see a personal leadership mentor, thereby wasting both time and money, it is not their fault but yours – you are not doing the job you are paid to do.

Make your presence felt in training for leadership You delegate training team leaders to others to organize, manage and lead, but Principle One still falls within your responsibility. By visiting courses you endorse with your presence – and perhaps a few words – the value, worth-whileness and importance of the course and of effective leadership for your company. And you encourage the trainers who, oddly enough, are human and – like all of us – need encouragement. These ‘few words’ may get extended to a brief talk on leadership. If it arises naturally – if your own organization invites you to speak on the subject, or on an occasion that allows you to do so – seize it as a rare opportunity to perform your function as teacher-in-chief of leadership. Don’t do it too often, however, so that you have a set speech, for scarcity gives value and weight to your words. Everyone knows that you are being paid to lead, not as a speaker on leadership. It is sometimes much more effective to talk briefly about leadership, purpose and values, when your audience are least expecting it, say when you are outlining to the top team or a large gathering of managers the strategic plan for the next three years. Training courses or leadership education events, however, do provide you with a natural context. On page 171 I quoted the Queen’s address at Sandhurst on leadership. That is a model for you. The Queen is head of the Services. Everything is delegated. To Sandhurst is delegated the task of training military leaders. Yet the Queen has not disappeared from the picture. The annual Sovereign’s Parade symbolizes her ownership of it in the headship role. In 1966 she came in person and taught leadership herself in the address. That is your role in relation to all the team leadership training that is happening – or will be happening – in your organization.

Principle Seven: The Chief Executive

C a s e s t u dy   The Thomson Organization Roy Thomson – Lord Thomson of Fleet – was not only a great business leader but also, as his autobiography After I Was Sixty (Hamish Hamilton, 1975) reveals, a great mentor of business leaders. One of them I interviewed for research purposes – his successor Sir Gordon Brunton. He in turn became one of the first advocates of growing leaders rather than training managers. In 1982 Brunton had this to say to his group’s human resources conference: It is very important that we distinguish between leadership and authority. The acceptance of leadership is almost certainly a voluntary act of those who are led to those who lead. The exercise of authority is outside the realm of persuasion and is concerned with the exercise of power. Leadership has authority and power but authority does not necessarily have leadership. Over many years now I have observed with enormous interest, in fact almost with a sense of fascination – and I have been privileged to do so – those who hold very high positions in government and the trade unions, in business and in industry, and very many of them, indeed I would say the majority, have very great authority but they are not leaders. Let me now come closer to home and talk about Thomson’s. Leadership is the most vital ingredient for our future growth and our future development. We have deliberately chosen a strategy that is based upon leadership and on talent and the success of our policy and, indeed, the very policy itself, depends upon our ability to develop the various levels of leadership. In saying that I think we must recognize the difference between management and leadership. Leadership is obviously concerned with management but there are managers who are not leaders. I think one of the important differences is that a manager, particularly a functional manager, is and will continue to be involved in a specific sector or in a particular discipline, but to the leader there are no boundaries; he cuts straight across them either by sector or by company. This company has grown and has prospered from an entrepreneurial tradition of leadership and of management. Hopefully, that will be as great an asset in the future as it has been in the past, but that is by no means certain. It is to find the leaders and the entrepreneurs of the future that we have set up the Strategic Managers Course and if out of those 15 people who are the top future talent of the organization as we discern it today, we can find one or two or three who can become leaders and entrepreneurs in the terms that I have tried to describe, then I think that our strategy in the years ahead will be in safe hands. If we can’t then what we must do is to settle and develop a different strategy because it is those leaders who will make what we are currently trying to do possible. In terms of strategy 10 years is not a long period of time...

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Although I could pick Gordon Brunton up on one or two points, this talk is a model for what any chief executive might say on such an occasion. Here are the ground rules: ●● ●●

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Keep it simple, clear and concise – don’t ramble. Avoid jargon such as action-centred leadership, functional leadership, situational leadership, transformational leadership, emotional intelligence, distributive leadership, etc. There may be someone in the audience who knows what it actually means! Avoid telling the story of your life, how you feel, or saying what a miserable worm you are as a leader. The audience hasn’t come to hear your war stories. How you are feeling is irrelevant to them, it is what you are doing that matters. They are fully aware that as a leader you are a miserable worm – we all are. ‘Remember you are a worm, Winston,’ Violet Bonham-Carter once said. Churchill looked dejected, then chuckled and said: ‘Yes, I am a worm but at least I am a glow worm.’ This occasion is a chance for you to glow. Speak without notes – you are singing your own song. Relate what you say about effective leadership to the business, and especially to what strategic direction it needs to take. It gives the relevant context to the critical business of releasing the corporate creative energy within people – the true human resource – needed to achieve the vision. End on an inspiring note. In 2004, Roy Gardner of Centrica sounded the right note in these words: There has never been a more challenging time for those of us in business. The challenges will become tougher still, but along with challenge comes opportunity. For those companies that are able and willing to adapt, it’s going to be an exciting time. The world changes quickly and you have to change with it. Sometimes this means thinking about things in a different way. Looking for the opportunity in everything, even when it’s not obvious. I think that’s one thing that distinguishes the leader from the manager.

The important point is that you don’t have to be a great orator. Nor do you have to talk a lot of theory about leadership – leave that to the academics. Keep it simple, speak from the heart, don’t give the impression either of complacency or arrogance, and make it clear that this is about where you intend to take the business. One last personal tip from my own experience. If you are a newly appointed strategic leader and you are asked to speak on leadership for the first time over dinner to your senior colleagues, many of whom will be older, more experienced and longer in service than you, you face a challenge. You may find yourself tempted to fortify your spirits by drinking more than your usual gin and tonic. But bear in mind the disastrous example of Mark Twain...

Principle Seven: The Chief Executive

Mark Twain was once invited, as the guest of honour, to a dinner at which all the great leaders of the American Civil War were present. When it came to the speeches the military leaders made their rather lengthy and somewhat heavy remarks. In due course Mark Twain was called on to speak and he rose – a shade unsteadily – to his feet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Caesar is dead; Hannibal is no longer with us; Napoleon has long since passed away; and Wellington is under the sod. ‘And – to tell you the truth – I am not feeling too good myself.’ And with that he sat down.

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If you are in the top strategic leadership role in an organization, you own the problem of selecting and developing the business leaders it needs, not just for today but also for tomorrow. You can share it with others and delegate certain aspects to others, but you are accountable. The absolute minimum you have to do is to lead from the front, or lead by example. Bad example shouts. People don’t notice good example, for they are expecting it and no special credit attaches to it – it is what your position requires. But it teaches at a subliminal level, unknown to you. ‘Example is the school of mankind,’ said Edmund Burke, ‘and they will learn at no other.’ Exemplify Principle Three – be a leadership guide and counsellor to your top team individually. If you cannot do it, don’t expect them in turn to do it to their leaders. At this level words like teaching, learning, mentoring, coaching or counselling are best forgotten. A discussion is a conversation with a purpose. The generic agenda – the right questions to ask – are: how are we doing on the common task; how can we (this organization) work better as a team; and, how can each individual – including you and me as senior leaders – contribute better to the common good? Under the headings of Principles One and Two, make your presence felt at the training of team leaders level and at any other corporate leadership education event, and participate personally in selecting leaders for senior appointments. Seize any natural opportunities ‘to say a few words’ about leadership in face-to-face contexts. E-mailing or faxing your thoughts doesn’t count, for paper doesn’t communicate. The spirit of leadership that you wish to convey depends upon your presence.

“

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.  Albert Schweitzer

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Conclusion

‘T

he grand aim of all science,’ said Albert Einstein, ‘is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.’ For any thinker this statement of Einstein’s sets a high standard. In Part Three I have shared with you my quest – the personal odyssey – for the truth about leadership. I was lucky enough to discover through the Group or Functional Approach the generic role of leadership, the heart or core of the matter. The other two main theories or approaches – the Qualities and Situational Approaches – simply fell into place. Like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, the whole picture appeared for the first time in human history – a very exciting moment. ‘There is nothing as practical as a good theory,’ said Kurt Lewin. Putting it slightly differently, if a theory or philosophy doesn’t work when applied to such practical purposes as selection or training, its credibility has to be questioned. The integrated concept of leadership outlined in Part Three has been put to work in both those domains and has met all the criteria of success and, moreover, it has done so for over 60 years. If there were any other theories or philosophies about leadership that met

The elements of identity

FUNCTIONS

QUALITIES KNOWLEDGE

Conclusion

these stringent criteria I would have included them in this book, but I have found no other that meets Einstein’s criteria: Truth is what stands the test of experience. The theme of this book is how leaders – those with leadership potential – grow as leaders. What is clear is that, initially at least, a person acquires leadership like a first language. Such people learn most when they seem to learn least, as if by an unconscious taking-in of knowledge. Practical experience is the only path. Here learning is by trial and error. As one young National Theatre director said: In the undergraduate theatre scene you can spend three years in rehearsal, produce truly terrible shows, and nobody ever tells you never to darken the stage again. If you’re smart, you can carry a secret catalogue of your mistakes from show to show, and get a little better at avoiding them. You emerge with confidence to say ‘I’m a director’ and you keep on saying it till someone believes you.

It takes a similar process to be able to say ‘I’m a leader’ in any field. The real issue is whether or not we can work with that natural grain. Can we improve on it? Can we cut down the time it takes to reach that first stance on the climb? The ‘we’ here has to be split into two questions: what can an individual do to grow as a leader? and what can an organization do to grow leaders? But that distinction is still rather artificial. You can’t really become an operational or strategic leader outside the context of an organization. Equally, organizations can’t find individual people to fill these roles who are not on an inner journey of growing as leaders. The wings carry the bird; the bird carries the wings. No individual leader should ever depend upon an organization to school him or her in leadership. With the odd exception of places like Sandhurst, organizations are not set up to be schools of leadership. Therefore it isn’t surprising if they either don’t attempt to develop their leaders or if they do, they do it badly or in an intellectually incoherent way. In fact there is quite a lot that an individual can do outside his or her organization – in spite of it – to grow as a leader: for example, community experience, reading and thinking about the subject, and observing good and not so good leaders. Indeed, it is primarily society that grows leaders, not the organizations within it. They are like customers buying either raw materials or half-finished goods. Consequently, a society gets the leaders it deserves. As the Arabic proverb says, ‘As you are, so will be the rulers that rule you.’ As Tacitus once said: ‘Rome being great, deserved great leaders.’ Yet organizations within that social economy do have their own vital part to play. They need to develop leadership for their own ends, and – if they have their wits about them – they need to do it at all levels. This book is what the Romans called a vade mecum, a handbook carried on a person for organizations on how to do it. As organizations cannot read or think, I have taken the liberty of talking to you directly.

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Leaders don’t grow without inspiration. The path is steep, the load gets heavier, and the slips and falls are more frequent. What may inspire you to go on is having a vision or sense of purpose. Maybe, too, you have a vision of the greatness in your people and what a privilege it is to serve them as their leader. As John Buchan incomparably said, ‘The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.’ Within the story of leadership development in modern times I have woven into it some threads of my own personal odyssey, as I don’t expect to come this way again. I have freely shared with you all that I have learnt. We have shared the story of leadership together and now our paths part. Let me leave you with some words borrowed from a 17th-century German poet: Friend, you have read enough. If you desire still more, then be the odyssey yourself and all that it stands for.

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Part Four Leadership and Motivation W

hat motivates people – what makes them tick – is a subject of perennial fascin­ ation. It is especially important for practical leaders in industry, commerce and the public services – and indeed to anyone who works with other people – to think about this question in some depth. What is motivation? A man or woman is motivated when he or she WANTS to do something. A motive is not quite the same as an incentive. Whereas a person may be inspired or made enthusiastic by an incentive, his or her main motive for wanting to do something may be fear of punishment. Moti­vation covers ALL the reasons which underlie the way in which a person acts. Two US professors of psychology – Abraham Maslow and Frederick Herzberg – have made major contributions to our understanding of motivation. Our common phrase ‘job satisfaction’ arose largely from the work of the latter. Maslow is now the world’s most influential psychologist after Freud and Jung. The time is ripe for a review of their contributions to motivational theory in the light of the needs of today. In my judgement no other comparable studies of motivation to those of Maslow and Herzberg have emerged from other authors. Or, rather, they have emerged but not stayed the course. Maslow and Herzberg have stood the test of time. This fact does not, of course, guarantee them, but it does at least suggest that there is a large element of truth in them. For, as Albert Einstein once said, ‘Truth is that which stands the test of experience.’ This book goes beyond Maslow and Herzberg, however, and it offers a new general theory of motivation. My reflections on Maslow and Herzberg over the years, in the context of developing the Action-Centred Leadership (ACL) model, have led

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me to formulate the Fifty-Fifty Rule. Put simply, it proposes that 50 per cent of our motivation is inner-generated, while 50 per cent comes from outside of us. The real point of the book, of course, is to stimulate your own thinking and ideas on this most interesting of all subjects. It should lead you to see some practical ways in which you can better motivate yourself and others. You will notice as you read that the texture of the writing varies. I should explain that my discussion of the contributions of Maslow and Herzberg is based on part of a thesis that I submitted at Oxford University for a higher research degree. Work of this rigorous kind is very important in leadership studies and I make no apology for it. But in this context you should feel free to skip any pages that seem to be telling you more than you need to know. This book is not designed for an academic purpose. It is written for thoughtful leaders, those who wish to work with the grain of human nature rather than against it. I know that I shall enjoy sharing with you what I have discovered about leadership and management – I hope that you will also enjoy our journey together in these pages.

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Chapter Twenty-four Functional Leadership

“

Leadership is action, not position.  Donald H McGannon

L

eadership and motivation are like brother and sister. It is difficult to think of a leader who does not motivate others. But leadership embraces more than motivation. What is leadership? The Action-Centred Leadership (ACL) approach offers a comprehensive answer to that question. The model encompasses the concept of Individual Needs, which is the area chartered by Maslow and Herzberg. Therefore it provides a natural context for an exploration of their theories in later chapters of Part Four. In this chapter I shall outline the original content of ACL.

The background Functional Leadership training was first developed at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst as part of a programme introducing young officers to the responsibilities of leadership. When transposed into industry and commerce it was renamed ActionCentred Leadership (ACL). Initially, the core content of ACL remained much the same as the original Sandhurst version, though the practical exercises and case studies where changed. In this introductory chapter to Part Four I shall present the framework of that original concept of ACL, and then comment upon its constituent elements in the following chapter. My standard introduction to the ACL model has been to look first at the Qualities Approach and then at the Situational Approach to leadership. Having outlined these approaches or theories, identifying both their drawbacks and their positive contributions to our understanding of leadership, I move on to the third ingredient in the story (apart from the personality and character of the leader and the situation in which it was all happening), namely the people concerned. Having mentioned the

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amount of research done on groups as wholes that are more than the sum of their parts (which led to the establishment of the new sub-discipline of Social Psychology) I explain that I have selected one theory from the mass of research material which I consider to be of most relevance to the practical manager intent upon understanding leadership and motivation – the theory of group needs. To this I add the concept of group personality. This is how I actually explain it.

The theory of group personality and group needs As a starting point I have developed the idea that working groups resemble individuals in that although they are always unique (each develops its own ‘group personality’) yet they share, as do individuals, certain common ‘needs’. There are three areas of need present in such groups. Two of these are the properties of the group as a whole, namely the need to accomplish the common tasks and the need to be maintained as a cohesive social unity (which I have called the ‘team maintenance need’). The third area is constituted by the sum of the individual needs of group members.

Individual needs and motivation This third area of need present in the corporate life inheres in the individual members rather than in the group itself. To the latter they bring a variety of needs – physical, social, intellectual and spiritual – which may or may not be met by participating in the activity of the group. Probably physical needs first drew men together in working groups: the primitive hunter could take away from the slain elephant a hunk of meat and a piece of hide for his own family. Nowadays the means for satisfying these basic needs of food, shelter and protection are received in money rather than in kind, but the principle remains the same. There are, however, other needs less tangible or conscious even to their possessors which the social interaction of working together in groups may or may not fulfil. These tend to merge into one another, and they cannot be isolated with any precision, 1 but Figure 24.1 will indicate their character. Drawn from the work of A H Maslow it also makes the point that needs are organized on a priority basis. As basic needs become relatively satisfied the higher needs come to the fore and become motivating influences. These need spring from the depths of our common life as human beings. They may attract us to, or repel us from, any given group. Underlying them all is the fact that people need one another, not just to survive but to achieve and develop personality. This growth occurs in a whole range of social activity – friendship,

Functional Leadership

marriage, neighbourhood – but in­evitably work groups are extremely important because so many people spend so much of their waking time in them.

F i g u r e 24.1   The priority of needs Selfactualization

Social

Esteem

Growth

Self-respect

Personal development

Safety

Belonging

Status

Physiological

Security

Recognition

Hunger

Protection from danger

Social activities

Thirst

Accomplishment

Love

Sleep

Professor Frederick Herzberg has dichotomized the list by suggesting that the factors which make people experience satisfaction in their work situation are not the reverse of those which make them dissatisfied. The latter is caused by deficiencies in the environment or context of the job; in contrast, job satisfaction rests upon the content of the work and the opportunities it presents for achievement, recognition, 2 professional development, and personal growth.

The needs interact The first major point is that these three areas of need influence one another for better or worse. For example, if a group fails in its task this will intensify the disintegrative tendencies present in the group and produce a diminished satisfaction for its individual members. If there is a lack of unity or harmonious relationships in the group this will affect performance on the job and also individual needs (cf. A H Maslow’s Social Needs). And obviously an individual who feels frustrated and unhappy in a particular work environment will not make his or her maximum contribution to either the common task or to the life of the group. Conversely, achievement in terms of a common aim tends to build a sense of group identity – the ‘we-feeling’, as some have called it. The moment of victory closes the psychological gaps between people: morale rises naturally. Good internal communications and a developed team spirit based upon past successes make a group much more likely to do well in its task area, and incidentally provide a more satisfactory climate for the individual. Lastly, an individual whose needs are recognized and who feels that he or she can make a characteristic and worthwhile contribution both to the task and the group will tend to produce good fruits in both these areas.

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We can illustrate these interrelations with a simple model:

F i g u r e 24.2   Interaction of needs

TASK

TEAM

INDIVIDUAL

If you place a coin over the ‘Task’ circle it will immediately cover segments of the other two circles as well. In other words, lack of task or failure to achieve it will affect both team maintenance, eg increasing disruptive tendencies, and also the area of individual needs, lowering member satisfaction within the group. Move the coin on to the ‘Team’ circle, and again the impact of a near-complete lack of relationships in the group on both task and individual needs may be seen at a glance. Conversely, when a group achieves its task the degree of group cohesiveness and enjoyment or membership should go up. Morale, both corporate and individual, will be higher. And if the members of a group happen to get on extremely well together and find that they can work closely as a team, this will increase their work performance and also meet some important needs which individuals bring with them into the common life. These three interlocking circles therefore illustrate the general point that each area of need exerts an influence upon the other two: they do not form watertight compartments.

Leadership functions In order for the needs in these areas to be met in any group or organization certain functions have to be performed. According to this integrated theory the provision of these necessary functions is the responsibility of leadership, although that does not imply that the leader will perform all of them himself or herself. Indeed, in groups over the size of about five members there are too many functions required for any one person to supply them all himself or herself.

Functional Leadership

Various attempts have been made to list the functions but they suffer from several disadvantages. In the first place, some researchers have produced three separate lists, one for each area. The difference between ‘Task’ and ‘Team Maintenance’ is always in danger of yawning into a dichotomy. The value of the three overlapping circles is that they emphasize the essential unity of leadership: a single action can be multifunctional in that it touches all three areas. The distinction between the circles should not therefore be pressed too far, and separate lists favour that unfortunate tendency. Secondly, many of the lists reflect the ‘group dynamics laboratory’ situation too much. Thirdly, it is rather artificial to categorize the response of leaders to individual needs. It is sufficient to recognize that effective leaders are aware of this dimension, and respond in appropriate ways with understanding. Such action might range from changing the content of an individual’s job or role, along the lines advocated by Professor Herzberg, to a promotion or a word of encouragement. It is perhaps best to work out a single list of leadership functions within the context of a given working situation, so that the subheadings can have the stamp of reality upon them. But there is general agreement upon the essentials, and to illustrate some of these major functions meeting the three interacting areas of need, I give here a list originally worked out at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, which has been the basis for numerous adaptations in industry and other fields: ●●

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Planning Seeking all available information. Defining group task, purpose or goal. Making a workable plan (in right decision-making framework). Initiating eg briefing group on the aims and the plan. Explaining why aim or plan is necessary. Allocating tasks to group members. Setting group standards. Controlling Maintaining group standards. Influencing tempo. Ensuring all actions are taken towards objectives. Keeping discussion relevant. Prodding group to action/decision. Supporting Expressing acceptance of people and their contribution. Encouraging group/individuals. Disciplining group/individuals. Creating team spirit. Relieving tension with humour. Reconciling disagreements or getting others to explore them.

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Informing Clarifying task and plan. Giving new information to the group, ie keeping them ‘in the picture’. Receiving information from group. Summarizing suggestions and ideas coherently. Evaluating Checking feasibility of an idea. Testing the consequences of a proposed solution. Evaluating group performance. Helping the group to evaluate its own performance against standards.

Sharing decisions Without forgetting the broader opportunities open to members for supplementing the work of leadership in all three areas described above, it is especially useful to examine specifically the extent to which the leader should share with others the general function of decision-making, the core of such more definite functions as setting objectives and planning. 3 In an invaluable diagram R Tannenbaum and W H Schmidt plotted the possibilities of participation. The diagram can be compared to a cake: at one end the leader has virtually all of it, and at the other the group has the lion’s share. In terms of a transaction between a leader and an individual follower the continuum also illustrates the degrees of delegation that are possible in the context of a given decision. There is much to be said for moving as far to the right of the continuum as possible, for the more that people share in decisions which directly affect them the more they are motivated to carry them out – provided they trust the integrity of the leader who is inviting them to participate in the decision. Yet factors in the situation (especially the nature of the task and the time available for the decision) and the group (especially the attitudes, knowledge, and experience of members) will naturally limit the extent to which the right-hand edge of the continuum can be approached. Other limiting factors may be present in the personality of the leader or the value system and philosophy of a particular organization, factors which cannot be described as natural or intrinsic in the same way as the situational or group constraints. There are some groups and organizations whose characteristic working situations (as contrasted to the actual ones they may be in for 90 per cent of their time) are essentially crisis ones, where by definition time is short for decisions and the matter of life or death rests upon prompt decisions from one man, eg operating theatre teams, fire brigades, police forces, airline crews and military organizations. Yet such groups are not always in crisis situations, and for training purposes, if for no other

Functional Leadership

F i g u r e 24.3   A continuum of shared decisions Use of authority by the leader Area of freedom for subordinates Leader Leader ‘sells’ makes decision decision and announces it

Leader presents ideas and invites questions

Leader presents tentative decision subject to change

Leader presents problem, gets suggestions, makes decision

Leader defines limits; asks group to make decision

Leader permits subordinates to function within limits defined by superior

reason, they need to explore the decision-making scale. Moreover, although it is not always possible to share decisions over ends (ie goals, objectives, aims or purpose) it is usually possible to involve others more or less fully in means (ie methods, techniques, conditions, and plans). Rather than engaging in the fruitless attempt to establish a particular spot or ‘style’ on the scale which is ‘best’ we should see the continuum as a sliding scale, or 4 as a thermometer marked with boiling and freezing points. Where the latter points fall on the scale will depend upon the characteristic working situation of the group or organization. There will be a difference, for example, between an earth-shifting gang of labourers constructing a motorway and a research group in an electronics or chemical firm.

Conclusion We can now construct a general idea or integrated concept of a leader as a person with certain qualities of personality and character, which are appropriate to the general situation and supported by a degree of relevant technical knowledge and experience, who is able to provide the necessary functions to guide a group towards the further realization of its purpose, while maintaining and building its unity as a team; doing all this in the right ratio or proportion with the contributions of other members of the team. The length of this last sentence clearly precludes it from ever becoming a neat definition, but it is a framework for drawing together the major strands of research into the nature of leadership without exhausting the inherent mystery present in it as in all human relations.

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Working groups and organizations are always unique – each has its own group personality – but all share in common three areas of need: to achieve the common task, to be held together as a working unity, and the needs that individuals bring into the group by virtue of being embodied persons. A want is a need that has become conscious. Conscious or unconscious, our needs are closely linked with our motivation – why we do things. Two US psychologists, Maslow and Herzberg, offer maps of how our individual needs motivate us at work. In my philosophy, however, the Individual Needs circle, so important for motivation, overlaps with the Task and Team circles. It is an interactive model: each of the circles influences its two neighbours, and is in turn influenced by them. Therefore there are factors outside the individual – in the Task and Team – that will influence his or her motivation – for good or ill. We are not self-contained entities. In order for the three areas of need to be met certain key functions have to be performed, such as planning, initiating and controlling. They are the responsibility of the leader, but that doesn’t mean to say the leader does them all. In groups of more than five there are too many functional acts required for one person to do. A wise leader will involve the team in decision-making as far as possible, for the more that people share in decisions that affect their working life the more they are motivated to carry them out.

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Look well into yourself; there is a source which will always spring up if you will search there.  Marcus Aurelis

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Chapter Twenty-five Action-Centred Leadership

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Most of the changes we think we see in life are merely truths going in or out of fashion.  Robert Frost

T

he model at the core of Action-Centred Leadership (ACL) – the three overlapping circles of Task, Team and Individual – has become one of the most widely taught concepts in the world. Its simplicity, coupled with its proven track record as a basis for leadership training courses, commends it to management developers. Many now use it to integrate a number of other concepts, ideas and practices which can be grouped under the heading of ‘the human side of enterprise’. The ACL model is now acknowledged to be the equivalent in this field to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in physics. For it does identify the three main forces at work in working groups and organizations, and it charts (by way of a Venn diagram of the three circles) their main interrelationships with a degree of predictive accuracy. This simplicity, however, is deceptive. True simplicity is different from the simplistic or superficial. Einstein’s words warn us against such a reduction: ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not more simple’ he once said. As this book reveals, the three-circle model contains surprising depths of meaning to those who are willing to think and reflect about it. But it is a great mistake to reduce my original concept of ACL down to just the three circles, however central and pivotal they may be to the whole. Many books which reproduce the three circles, and many organizations that purport to teach ACL, do tend to pick out the three-circles diagram because it is so distinctive. But they then skate over, or leave out altogether, other ingredients in the original ACL complex of ideas which I regard as essential. This can lead to distortion. Indeed the originality of ACL lay not in its parts but in their integration into a whole which is more than their parts and in the application of them to training. By being brought into a new relation with one another those parts have undergone varying degrees of transformation, which is inevitable in any creative work.

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But they have not lost their identity. And it has been my habit to name the parts and discuss them when talking to professional audiences.

The wider ACL framework Let me now list for you the constituent parts of the wider ACL general theory, as a preface to commenting briefly upon some of them: ●●

Qualities Approach to Leadership.

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Situational Approach to Leadership.

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Group or Functional Approach to Leadership.

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Task, Group (or Team) and Individual Needs.

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The Theories of Maslow and Herzberg on motivation (in relation to the Individual Needs circle).

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The Three-Circles Model.

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How the circles – or areas of need – interact.

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Functions of Leadership.

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How far should leadership be shared? In the Task area, for example, how far should the leader share decisions? The Tannenbaum and Schmidt model. Drawing the threads together: the integrated functional (or ACL) concept of leadership. The Levels of Leadership – Team, Operational and Stra­tegic.

Since the inception of ACL that framework has been constant. That is what I have taught, in season and out of season. But in the outside world the parts themselves (which were self-evidently not my own creations) have suffered varying changes. They have fallen from vogue or risen again as fashions change. Let us look at some of those changes as measured against the constant message of ACL.

The Qualities Approach The Qualities Approach, for example, was universally unpopular after the Second World War among management theorists and social psychologists. The idea that leadership might characterize one person rather than another, not least because he or she possessed leadership qualities, was then deeply unfashionable in the United States among social scientists (as they then liked to be called) for cultural reasons. The ACL general theory was virtually unique in those days in retaining it as a contributory source to our understanding of leadership.

Action-Centred Leadership

The false assumptions latent in the US understanding of leadership were indeed challenged by a few individuals, notably William H Whyte in The Organizational Man (1955). A decade later A H Maslow visited several organizations in California and commented: What I smell here is again some of the democratic dogma and piety in which all people are equal and in which the conception of a factually strong person or natural leader or dominant person or superior intellect or superior decisiveness or whatever is bypassed because it makes everybody uncomfortable and because it seems to contradict the 1 democratic philosophy (of course, it does not really contradict it).

It took more than another decade before US behavioural scientists, such as Warren Bennis and Bernard Bass, backtracked to the Qualities Approach. Then a spate of books on leadership poured from the US presses discussing the qualities required in leaders. In a sense this change of heart was market-led. What happened? Reeling under fierce competition from Japanese companies, corporate United States began to look for better leadership from their chief executives. They needed someone with a sense of direction at the helm to guide them through the stormy waters of uncertainty. One or two US writers began to study the qualities of such leaders as Lee Iacocca at Chrysler or Jack Welch of General Electric and suddenly the floodgates were opened and it was permissible once more in the United States to speak about leaders as unusual or gifted individuals. In original ACL theory the first principle about the qualities of leaders suggests that they tend to possess (or should exemplify) the qualities expected or admired in their work groups. Physical courage, for example, does not make you into a military leader, but you cannot be one without it. A large part of the popularity of President Reagan, to give a second example, stemmed from the fact that many Americans saw him as personifying the core US characteristics and values. This point does suggest a powerful link between leadership and given work situations (such as engineering, nursing, or teaching), and may help to explain why the transfer of leadership from one field to another is often so difficult. The British tradition on leadership has always emphasized the moral qualities of a good leader, such as moral courage and integrity. I cannot recollect ever talking about leadership without mentioning the importance of integrity. For, as Lord Slim said, integrity is the quality which makes people trust you. ‘Trust being lost,’ wrote the Roman historian Livy, ‘all the social intercourse of men is brought to naught.’ From the beginning I also suggested that enthusiasm was a leadership quality, simply because I could not think of any leader I had met or read about who lacked it. Again, research over the last 30 years has amply confirmed that intuitive conclusion. What I suggested at the end of the section on the Qualities Approach in my seminars was that you could – and should – go on thinking about the qualities of

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leadership for the rest of your life. There are always more facets of the diamond. Each leader you encounter may exhibit some particular quality or combination of qualities. One particular methodological problem over qualities research has now been solved. The early US researchers compared some of the lists of qualities – such as initiative, perseverance, courage – which emerged from empirical research on leadership in order to see which words appeared on all or most lists. They found little or no agreement. For example, one classic survey of 20 experimental studies revealed that only 5 per cent of the leadership qualities examined were common to four or more studies. High intelligence came top; it appeared in 10 lists, followed by initiative which was mentioned in six of them. As there are some 17,000 words in the English language relating to personality and character there seemed to be plenty of choice and ample margin for error. These researchers were in fact victims of what philosophers have called the word-concept fallacy. Two words – such as perseverance and persistence – may be different, but they belong to the same family of meaning, the same concept. The researchers should have been fishing with wider meshed nets. For they should have been seeking clusters of meanings or concepts. The mention of integrity on ACL courses has often provoked interesting discussions about the values of leadership. Was Hitler a good leader? How about Genghis Khan? What the research which went into my book Great Leaders (1989) has shown is that the English tradition concerning leadership (from whence sprang the US tradition) was fundamentally moral in complexion. Both the Graeco-Roman leadership tradition and the Biblical-Christian leadership tradition carried moral genes with them when grafted onto the existing tribal tradition of the nascent European nations. They held up the ideal of being a good leader and a leader for good. The same can be said for the great Chinese tradition of thought on leadership as exemplified by Confucius and Mencius. It is true that a different message emanated from Machiavelli in the 16th century, but this godless Italian doctrine was never accepted into the mainstream of the Western tradition concerning leadership. The moral qualities approach – based upon Aristotle’s four virtues: justice, prudence, fortitude and temperance – was far too deep-seated. Even in The Path to Leadership (1961) Field-Marshall Lord Montgomery could refer with approval to them. For this reason leaders in the Western culture who pursue immoral ends, or employ cynical, Machiavellian manipulation to achieve their ends, are unlikely to enjoy more than a brief success. Hitler did not last.

The Situational Approach The situational approach, or contingency theory as it is now called, enjoyed a vogue in the 1960s mainly as a result of the work of Professor F E Fiedler of the University

Action-Centred Leadership

of Illinois and his associates. They studied the extent to which leadership veered towards the two poles of ‘task oriented‘ and ‘considerate’ (or ‘human relations’) and tried to predict the circumstances in which one of these leadership ‘styles’ would be more effective than the other. Factors such as group composition, the degree of structuring in the task, and the ‘position power’ of the leader came into play. Fiedler believed that: ‘We can improve the effectiveness of leadership by accurate diagnosis 2 of the group-task situation and by altering the leader’s work environment.’ Like so many ideas and models, despite much revised work on the variables in the situation, Fiedler’s work has not stood the test of time. It is now of little interest, except to specialists in the history of psychological research. But of course the idea that the influence of the situation pervades leadership is by no means out of date. ACL theory has always made four points under the heading of the Situational Approach: ●●

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Situations are partly constant and partly variable. For example, working in a bank has a continuity and a uniqueness compared with, say, working in a hospital. This is true of all fields, for they are all unique. But there has been much change in banking (as in all other fields). So it’s a partly constant, partly changing situation. Leaders personify or exemplify (or should do so) the qualities expected or required in their working groups. This principle clearly links leadership to particular working situations. The Situational Approach highlights the importance of knowledge in leadership. There are three forms of authority in human affairs: the authorities of position, knowledge and personality. The latter in its extreme form is what is correctly called ‘charisma’. Knowledge is especially important. As the proverb says, ‘Authority flows to him who knows.’ As I discovered in writing Great Leaders, it was Socrates who advanced for the first time the theory that knowledge was the key to the door of leadership. Some people, however, who acquire considerable technical or professional knowledge, and are specialists in a particular kind of work, are not perceived by their colleagues or subordinates as leaders. In other words, there is more to leadership than technical knowledge. It is this more general or transferable aspect that the Qualities Approach attempted – with only partial success – to analyse and define.

In summarizing at the end of a talk on leadership I have usually made the point that a leader should possess knowledge, which will be partly technical or specialist and partly general. The more general leadership or management knowledge will include: an understanding of people and what motivates them; some knowledge of the Qualities, Situational and Functional Approaches to leadership; some knowledge

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of the process of effective thinking in its three applied forms – decision-making, problem-solving and creative thinking – so that one can guide a group in the process of making a decision, solving a problem or having new ideas; and, lastly, some knowledge about the principles and practice of good communication at interpersonal, group and organizational levels. Of course I am using ‘knowledge’ here to mean not only ‘knowing about’ in an academic sense of knowing facts, but the knowledge that can only be expressed in what you do and what you are. Where does that leave us over the key issue of transfer? ACL theory suggests that a leader should have some degree of technical or professional knowledge. (That, incidentally, sets it apart from one popular version of the concept of management, which assumes that a manager once trained is equipped to manage in any kind of organization.) It’s a question of level really. At the team leadership level, technical or professional knowledge is clearly very important. Nobody is going to respect a leader who manifestly does not know what he or she is talking about. The ‘leader’ of an orchestra, for example, must be able to play the violin and lead the strings. At the operational and strategic levels of leadership, where the more general kinds of leadership knowledge become more important, the degree of technical or specialist knowledge required is smaller although none the less important. The conductor of an orchestra, to continue that example, does not have to be a good instrumentalist. Transfer within a general field, such as industry or commerce, must be contrasted to transfer between general fields, such as military to politics, or industry to hospitals. Obviously the former is relatively more easy. A chief executive moving from company to company takes with him or her (or should do so) a transferable cluster of leadership skills – including decision-making and communication know-how – and also a transferable cluster of business abilities, notably in finance and marketing. All that remains to be learnt is the particular technology involved in the product or service. What matters now is speed of learning. A good strategic leader will soon acquire all that he or she needs to know. Lack of background knowledge can be turned into an advantage in so far as it keeps you out of the engine room when you should be on the bridge. Getting involved unnecessarily in detail is one of the failings of those who rise to the top in their own fields.

Individual needs As far as I know, Maslow did not himself actually use a diagram to illustrate his hierarchy of needs. The familiar model in the shape of a pyramid must therefore have been a later addition, but it is now commonplace in textbooks on management.

Action-Centred Leadership

F i g u r e 25.1   The pyramid model of human needs

Self-actualization

Esteem

Social

Safety

Physiological

Unfortunately this way of presenting Maslow’s hierarchy makes it look as if our greatest needs are in the lower ranges, and that they narrow in size as you progress up the pyramid. But physiological needs, for example, are limited: you can only eat so many meals a day. In fact there are fewer limitations the further up you go. Therefore, it you persist with the pyramid model, it makes more sense to invert it thus:

F i g u r e 25.2   The inverted pyramid of human needs

Self-actualization

Esteem

Social

Safety

Physiological

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I have left the diagram open-ended at the top in order to suggest that there may be another level of need beyond self-actualization, namely the need to transcend oneself. As we shall see later, Maslow virtually reached that important conclusion himself towards the end of his life. Be that as it may, the visual difficulties of the pyramid in its original form are obviated if the diagram of boxes in ascending size (page 277) is used. It has always seemed to me the better way of representing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

Leadership and management functions The list of leadership functions (see page 279) originated as my synthesis of the task and maintenance functions taught in the US ‘group dynamics laboratories’ in the late 1950s. Apart from being in two lists instead of one the US compilations had the added disadvantage I have mentioned already, namely that they were redolent of the ‘group laboratory’ situation: leaderless groups with no other goal but ‘to become a group’ over a two-week period. As I was using the functional list as a basis for training real leaders in real situations the list had to be made generally applicable. For example, a function such as summarizing assumes importance in leading a discussion group, but it is a relatively minor skill if one is looking at the leadership functions required in a strategic leader. The connection between the list that I produced from these sources and Henri Fayol’s classic list of functions was soon noted. Fayol, who was born in 1841, was a French mining engineer and became the director of a large group of coal pits before retiring in 1918. He published General and Industrial Administra­tion two years earlier, but the first English translation of it did not appear until 1949. In it Fayol divided the activities of an industrial company into six main groups: Technical

–  production, manufacture, adaptation.

Commercial

–  buying, selling, exchange.

Financial

–  search for an optimum use of capital.

Security

–  protection of property and people.

Accounting

–  stocktaking, balance sheet, costs, statistics.

Administration –  forecasting and planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. Fayol defined the function of command as ‘getting the organization going’ and he gives some examples of what it means in practice. A person in command should:

Action-Centred Leadership ●●

Have a thorough knowledge of employees.

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Eliminate the incompetent.

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Be well versed in the agreements binding the business and its employees.

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Set a good example.

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Conduct periodic audits of the organization and use summarized charts to further this review. Bring together his chief assistants by means of conferences at which unity of direction and focusing of effort are provided for. Not become engrossed in detail. Aim at making unity, energy, initiative and loyalty prevail among all employees.

Fayol’s analysis of managing in terms of functions has been subjected to much critical discussion. L F Urwick, an early British exponent of Fayol’s theory, in his The Elements of Administration (1947), substituted the English word ‘leadership’ for Fayol’s ‘command’. The ACL general theory provides a natural framework for Fayol’s pioneering work. In it Fayol’s list of functions could be developed in such a way as to ensure that all three areas of need – task, team or group, and individual – are met. It points out that a classic function such as planning, which may seem to be merely a task function, in fact influences both the other areas of need for good or ill. Moreover, Fayol is brought up to date by the addition of some more general functions in the team-building and team maintenance area, as well as functional responses to the individual needs circle.

The decision-making continuum The Tannenbaum and Schmidt continuum, which first appeared in the Harvard Business Review, was always integral to the ACL general theory. It has a direct link with motivation for the reason given, namely that the more that people share in a decision which affects their working life the more they tend to be motivated to carry it out. This is a fundamental principle in motivation. In the United States after 1960 (the date when I first encountered it there) the Tannenbaum and Schmidt chart slipped gradually into relative obscurity. The authors did produce a revised version of it in the Harvard Business Review, but their second thoughts obscured rather than enhanced the value of the original model. In Britain the Tannenbaum and Schmidt continuum was the subject of academic research which has greatly enhanced its standing. It is now clear that people do

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expect leaders to be consistent in personality and character (for integrity suggests loyalty to standards outside oneself), yet flexible when it comes to decision-making. So that an effective leader, it has been shown, will make decisions on different points of the continuum during a single working day and be right each time. For he or she will be taking into account – consciously or subconsciously – such factors as the knowledge, motivation and experience of the group or individual concerned, the time available, whether or not issues of life-and-death are involved, and the values of the particular organization. No leader or manager gets it right every time, but training can help to cut down dramatically the number of times that inappropriate choices on the decision-making continuum are made.

The levels of leadership Leadership exists on different levels. There is the team level, where the leader is in charge of 10 to 15 people. The operational leader is responsible for a significant part of the business, such as a business unit, division or key functional department. Invariably operational leaders have more than one team leader reporting to them. At the strategic level, the leader, often the CEO, is leading the whole organization. ‘Strategic leadership’, a phrase I coined in 1970, is actually an expansion of the original, for in Greek, ‘strategy’ is made up of two words: ‘stratos’, a large body of people, and the ‘-egy’ ending, which means leadership. Strategy is the art of leading a large body of people. The key to achieving sustainable business success is to have excellence in leadership at all three levels. Strategic, operational and team leaders need to work harmoniously together as the organization’s leadership team. The three-circle model and the principles of leadership apply at all three levels, but obviously complexity increases the higher up you go. For the seven key functions of a strategic leader, see my Effective Strategy in Leadership (2002).

Keypoints ●●

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Although the three-circle model and the linked functions of leadership form the centre of my practical philosophy, there are some important satellites: the Qualities and Situational Approaches, Maslow and Herzberg, the Decision-making Continuum, and the concept of the three levels of leadership. Enthusiasm, integrity, the combination of toughness or demandingness and fairness, humanity and warmth, humility (openness and lack of arrogance): these are some of the generic qualities of a good leader – and a leader for good.

Action-Centred Leadership

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The Situational Approach highlights the influence of the characteristic working situation of a group or organization on who is chosen to occupy the role of leader. Technical or professional knowledge is a major strand in authority. Maslow’s Hierarchy suggests some of the main needs that we have as individual human beings. Many of them are met in full or part by participating in working teams. The concept of leadership functions as set out in ACL is illuminated by comparing it with Henri Fayol’s pioneering attempt at analysing management in functional terms. You can see what a difference it makes to have today’s knowledge of the three circles. Decision-making can be shared by a leader with a team within the limits defined by the situation. This has important implications for motivation. For the more we share in decisions that affect our working life the more we tend to be motivated to implement them. Leadership exists at different levels – team, operational and strategic. The secret of having a highly motivated and top-performing organization is to have excellence in leadership at all levels. What I discovered, it is now generally recognized, is the universal or generic role of leader. That brought with it the immense practical benefit that we can now select and, given that the potential is there, train people to be leaders.

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The lantern carrier should go ahead.  Japanese proverb

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Chapter Twenty-six The Fifty-Fifty Rule

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No man does anything from a single motive.  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Y

ou may probably have come across the Pareto Principle in your study of management. The Pareto Principle, named after an Italian economist, states that the significant items of a given group form a relatively small part of the total. For example, 20 per cent of the sales forces will bring in 80 per cent of the business. As that ratio seems to hold true in many areas, it is often called the 80/20 rule or the concept of ‘the vital few and trivial many’. I came across it in the context of time management: 80 per cent of your really productive and creative work will be done in 20 per cent of your time. It occurred to me that a similar principle is at work in the field of motivation, which could be formulated thus: Fifty per cent of motivation comes from within a person and 50 per cent from his or her environment, especially from the leadership encountered there.

The Fifty-Fifty Rule in motivation does not claim to identify the different proportions in the equation exactly. It is more like a rough-and-ready rule of thumb. In effect is says no more than that a substantial part of motivation lies within a person while a substantial part lies, so to speak, outside and beyond control. A child, for example, might have a potential interest in science and be generally ambitious to do well at school and go to university. But the Fifty-Fifty Rule comes into play. Fifty per cent of the child’s progress will depend upon the academic quality of the school and in particular upon the personality and ability of the science teacher. A great schoolteacher has been defined as ‘one whose actual lessons may be forgotten, 1 but whose living enthusiasm is a quickening, animating and inspiring power’. The Fifty-Fifty Rule does have the benefit of reminding leaders that they have a key part to play – for good or ill – in the motivation of people at work. Fortunately (or unfortunately) not all the cards are in their hands, for they are dealing with people who are self-motivating in various degrees. The art of leadership is to work

The Fifty-Fifty Rule

with the natural grain of the particular wood of humanity which comes to hand. Selection is important, for – in the blunt words of the Spanish proverb – ‘You cannot carve rotten wood.’ I have set out the Fifty-Fifty Rule early in this book because you should bear it in mind when reading the theories of Maslow and Herzberg on motivation. Both of these men were professors of psychology in universities and both subscribed to an exceptionally individualistic philosophy. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that their principle would be that 90 per cent of motivation lies within the individual. Herzberg might have added that the environment and the supervision within it (he never used the word ‘leadership’) has power to demotivate or dissatisfy people, but he accorded managers no power to motivate them. According to the ACL general theory, however, and the Fifty-Fifty Rule, both Maslow and Herzberg were overstating the case. Apart from our individual needs there are other needs emanating from the common task and the group or organization involved which have at least a potential motivational influence upon us. The value, worth-whileness or importance of the work we are doing, in the context of a changing and challenging environment, can enlist our deepest interest and engage our purposive energy. Leaders are often interpreters to us of the hidden values, needs and challenges of our daily work. Contrary to the general tenor of Maslow and Herzberg, then, 50 per cent of our motivation lies without us. That does not, of course, mean that it is pointless to study the work of these two thinkers. Their contribution lies in the two sketchmaps they have given us of the internal needs and motivations that individuals bring with them into the working situation, and which are to some extent or other met by work. Before Maslow and Herzberg it was of course known that individuals have needs which connect with motives. But what these two US thinkers contributed were sketchmaps of how these needs relate to one another. Maslow’s sketchmap is more general and more original. Herzberg’s sketchmap, however, has the merit of applying Maslow’s thought to the industrial situation. Herzberg’s dichotomy of human needs into satisfiers and dissatisfiers, or motivational and hygiene factors, has – as we shall see – some validity. But its chief merit is as a teaching device: if things are presented to us in terms of black-or-white even the most purblind will notice the difference, while a presentation in terms of various shades of grey may make little impact. There is also a valuable teaching element in the Fifty-Fifty Rule. You may recall the old proverb, ‘There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers.’ Now as a statement this is not really true. There are bad soldiers. But it’s a very good maximum to teach young officers, for it puts them on their mettle. It invites them to examine themselves and their own leadership before blaming the troops. Thus it inoculates them against one form of rationalization.

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‘Mutiny, Sir! Mutiny in my ship!’ exclaimed Nelson’s friend Admiral Collingwood when told that the complaints of some men amounted to mutiny. ‘If it can have arrived at that, it must be my fault and the fault of every one of my officers.’ The same maxim applies to young or older managers. If there is an industrial strike how many chief executives and managers would begin like Collingwood by blaming themselves and questioning their collective leadership? ‘If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.’ The Fifty-Fifty Rule is an invitation to get your part in the motivational relationship right. Doubtless, like the Pareto Principle, other applications of the Fifty-Fifty Rule will soon be discovered. As I have already mentioned in Effective Teambuilding (1986), it applies to the relative values of leadership and teamwork: 50 per cent of success depends on the team and 50 per cent on the leader. Again these are not scientific proportions. But they do indicate just how substantial is each contribution, regardless of that made by the other party. Here the Fifty-Fifty Rule challenges the leader (or team or individual team member) to get his or her part right first before criticizing the quality of contribution of the other party. It is the ultimate cure to the ‘Us and Them’ disease of organizations. We could apply the same principle to the Nature versus Nurture debate. About half our destiny depends upon inherited characteristics or tendencies; the other half depends upon what we (or others) make of them. In the second part of that proposition lies the real challenge to parents and teachers. Certainly that applies in the leadership field. The idea that leaders are born and not made is a half truth. The full truth is that they are (about) half born and (more-or-less) half made – by experience and thought, by training and practice. This mixture of self-teaching and teaching by others of course takes a lifetime. For paradoxically it takes a long time to become a natural leader. The Fifty-Fifty Rule ties in well with the meaning of the word ‘motivation’. In fact it is a relatively new word, being introduced from the United States in the 1940s. Like the native English word ‘motive’ it can be used as a neutral explanation of cause: what motivated him to commit the murder? Or it can indicate a conscious desire or inculcate a desire for something or other: students motivated to learn by the encouragement of a good teacher. The main US dictionary defines motivation in this second sense rather inaccurately as ‘to provide with a motive’, for the elements of motive energy can be there already. Motivation is closer in meaning to the older English concept of motivity: the power of initiating or producing movement. All these words – motive, motivation, motivity – come from the Latin verb ‘to move’. What moves us to action may come from within or from without, or – more commonly – from some combination of inner impulse or proclivity on the one hand and outer situations or stimuli on the other.

The Fifty-Fifty Rule

The merit, then, of ‘motivation’ as a word is that it fits perfectly the Fifty-Fifty Rule. For it covers both what happens inside individuals in terms of wanting to do something and also what happens outside them as they are influenced by others or by circumstances. When someone is motivating you, he or she is consciously or unconsciously seeking to change the strength and/or direction of your motive energy. This second aspect of motivation does raise an ethical issue. As I have suggested above, we are actually dependent in varying degrees upon outside stimulation of various kinds in all aspects of our mental life, not least our motivation. But this human dependency on others can be used for our own ends. How does legitimate influence differ from manipulation? To manipulate someone means to control or play upon him or her by artful, unfair or insidious means, especially to one’s own advantage. Therefore there are two aspects of manipulation: the means and the ends. If it is your purpose and not a common purpose that is being served, you are running into the danger of manipulation. If the means you employ to motivate others are hidden from them or seek to bypass their conscious minds, then one is becoming a manipulator rather than a motivator. Motivating others, therefore, should not be confused with manipulatory practices used by strong personalities to dominate weaker ones. Leadership exists in its most natural form among equals. It is not the same as domination or the exercise of power. True leaders respect the integrity of others. Bosses demand respect; leaders give respect. Granted such a relationship, based upon mutual trust and supported by a common sense of justice or fairness, then it is part of the responsibility of leaders to stir up enthusiasm for the common task.

Keypoints ●●

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Maslow and Herzberg, the best-known theorists on motivation in the field of management studies, conceived motivation as an individual’s response to an unfolding pattern of inner needs, ranging from food and safety to achievement and self-fulfilment. ‘A satisfied need ceases to motivate,’ said Maslow. Although there is truth in their theory it is wrong to see individuals in this atomistic way, for we are more like open systems than closed boxes. Both Maslow and Herzberg were driven by a set of humanistic values that made the self-realization of the individual the supreme good in life. They wanted work to serve that end, not frustrate it. They saw only one circle – Individual Needs. ‘Job enrichment’, the restructuring of jobs to allow for the higher needs to be met, was their answer to the problem of motivation. They had no concept of leadership.

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With the discovery of the three circles we now know where Maslow and Herzberg went wrong. The Task and the Team circles create needs as well as the Individual, and they are important ingredients in motivation. From the three circles stems the 50/50 Principle. Fifty per cent of our motivation comes from within us and 50 per cent from without us – from our environment, especially the people around us. (These proportions are indicative rather than mathematical; they may vary from person to person.) Within these critical ‘external’ factors the nature and quality of the leadership present is vitally important; hence the strong links between leadership and motivation.

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When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’  Lao-Tzu

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Chapter Twenty-seven Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

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Motives are generally unknown.  Samuel Johnson

A

braham Maslow died in 1970, having spent most of his long working life as lecturer and professor in psychology at Brandeis University in the State of New York. From an intellectual standpoint, Maslow’s most formative years were those which he had spent in the late 1930s in New York, then, as he later declared, ‘beyond 1 a doubt, the centre of the psychological universe of that time.’ His preceding studies at the University of Wisconsin had included comparative and experimental psych­ ology, biology and neurophysiology. In New York he concentrated upon the study of psycho-analysis under Erich Fromm, and he was himself analysed by Emil Oberholzer, which he judged to be ‘the best learning experience of all’. But discussions with Alfred Adler not only introduced him to some of the shortcomings of the various forms of the Freudian theory, but also gave him a lasting sense that Adler’s own contribution had been insufficiently appreciated by US psy­cholo­gists. Besides the analytical school, Maslow also studied the two other incipient schools in the contemporary psychology of his day, which he named respectively the ‘holistic’ and the ‘cultural’. The word ‘holism’ (from the Greek word for whole) had been first introduced in 1926 by J C Smuts in his seminal book Holism and Evolution to describe ‘the principle which makes for the origin and progress of wholes in the 2 universe’. Maslow learnt the application of the holistic approach to psychology from Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka, both prominent members of the Gestalt school. Later he believed that he had found a bridge between the holistic and analytic schools in the teachings of Kurt Goldstein, whose book The Organism, published in 1939, in particular exerted a profound and lifelong influence on Maslow. Apart from investigating the social and cultural aspects of psychology, primarily with the aid of the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, Maslow also made a short field study of the Northern Blackfoot Indians. In addition, he had numerous conversations with other anthropologists in New York in the 1930s, such as Margaret Mead.

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But a list of his 19 publications in that decade shows that his own academic work was still experimental in orientation, and largely concerned with aspects of the behaviour of monkeys and apes. His interest in social anthropology does not appear to have gone very deep. In 1954, Maslow (by then at Brandeis University) published a volume of articles and papers, of which all but five had been published in the preceding 13 years, under the title Motivation and Personality. Maslow had planned this collection in advance to be a synthesis of the analytical, Gestalt and social anthropological schools, feeling that they were ‘intrinsically related to each other, and that they were subaspects of a single, larger, encompassing whole’. He also hoped that together they would help to make ‘more meaningful’ his earlier work in experimental psychology. ‘Furthermore,’ he added, ‘I felt they would enable me to serve better my humanistic aims.’ ‘A Theory of Motivation’, which appears as Chapter 5 in Maslow’s book and has been quite the most influential paper in the volume so far, was first published as an article in the Psychological Review in 1943, and it has been reprinted many times since then. The major theme of the theory was announced in the preceding chapter, which was also published as a separate article in 1943: Man is a wanting animal and rarely reaches a state of complete satisfaction except for a short time. As one desire is satisfied, another pops up to take its place. When this is satisfied, still another comes into the foreground, etc. It is characteristic of the human being throughout his whole life that he is practically always desiring something. We are faced then with the necessity of studying the relationships of all the motivations to each other and we are concomitantly faced with the necessity of giving up the motivational units in isolation if we are to achieve the broad understanding that we seek for.

In ‘A Theory of Motivation’ which followed, Maslow sought to establish ‘some sort of hierarchy of prepotency’ in the realm of basic human needs, and to comment upon the difference this hierarchy would make to our understanding of motivation. He discussed these basic needs and their relationship to one another under five headings, which are now considered in turn.

The physiological needs The concept of physiological drives has usually been taken as the starting point for motivational theory. Maslow advocated the use of the word ‘need’ as an alternative to ‘drive’, basing his case on the notion of physical homeostasis, the body’s natural effort to maintain a constant normal state of the bloodstream, coupled with the finding that appetites in the sense of preferential choices of good are a fairly efficient indicator of actual deficiencies in the body. Not all physiological needs were homeostatic, for the list could be extended to include sexual desire, sleepiness, sheer activity

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

and maternal behaviour in animals. Indeed, if a growing loss of specificity in description were acceptable, he held that it would be possible to extend the list of physiological needs very considerably. For two reasons Maslow considered the physical needs to be unique rather than typical of the basic human needs. Firstly, they could be regarded as relatively independent of one another and other orders of need. Secondly, in the classic cases of hunger, thirst and sex, there was a localized physical base for the need. Yet this relative uniqueness could be be equated with isolation: the physiological needs might serve as channels for all sorts of other needs as well. The man who thinks he is hungry, for example, may be looking for security rather than carbohydrates or proteins. If a man becomes chronically short of food and water he becomes dominated by the desire to eat and to drink, and his concern for other needs tends to be swept away. Thus the physiological needs are the most prepotent of all needs. What this prepotence means precisely is that the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion will still tend to seek satisfaction for his or her physiological needs rather than any others. Under such temporary dominance a person’s whole attitude to the future may undergo change: ‘For our chronically and extremely hungry man, Utopia can be defined simply as a place where there is plenty of food… Such a man may fairly be said to live by bread alone.’ Supposing, however, a person has plenty of food guaranteed to him or her in the foreseeable future? Then, declared Maslow, another unsatisfied need emerges to dominate the organism. In other words, a satisfied want ceases to motivate. If a person has an endless supply of bread, at once other needs emerge and they supersede the physiological needs in dominating the organism. And when these in turn are satisfied, yet higher needs emerge, and so on. This is what Maslow meant by asserting that the basic human needs are organized into a hierarchy of relative prepotency. Maslow entered an early caveat against a possible misinterpretation of his theory by advancing the hypothesis that individuals in whom a certain need had always been gratified would be the best equipped to tolerate a later frustration in that area. On the other hand, those who had been deprived would respond in a different way to eventual satisfaction than those who had been more fortunate in their younger days.

The safety needs When the physiological needs are relatively well satisfied, a new set of needs emerges centred upon the safety of the organism. Owing to the inhibition by adults of any signs of reaction to threat or danger this aspect of human behaviour is more easily

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observed in children, who react in a total manner to any sudden disturbance, such as being dropped, startled by loud noises, flashing lights, by rough handling, or by inadequate support. Maslow found other indications for the need of safety in a child’s preference for routine or rhythm, for a predictable and orderly world. Injustice, unfairness or lack of consistency in the parents seem to make a child feel anxious and unsafe. ‘This attitude may be not so much because of the injustice per se or any particular pains involved; but rather because this treatment threatens to make the world look unreliable, or unsafe, or unpredictable.’ The consensus of informed opinion held that children thrived best upon a limited permissiveness, for they need an organized or structured world. The sight of strange, unfamiliar or uncontrollable objects, illness or death can elicit fear responses in children. ‘Particularly at such times, the child’s frantic clinging to his parents is eloquent testimony to their role as protectors (quite apart from their roles as food givers and love givers).’ In adults we may observe expressions of the safety needs in the common desire for employment and with security of tenure, pension and insurance schemes, and the improvement of safety conditions at work. Another attempt to seek safety and stability in the world may be seen in the very common preference for familiar rather than unfamiliar things, or for the known rather than the unknown. Maslow added also the common suggestion that the appeal of religions and philosophies, which organize the universe and the people in it into some sort of coherent whole, may in part stem from this universal human need for safety and security. Neurotic individuals may be characterized as adults who have retained their childish attitudes to the world. They perceive the world as hostile, overwhelming and threatening. Their urge towards safety or escape may take the form of a search for some strong all-powerful protector, or become a frantic effort to order the world so that no unexpected or unfamiliar dangers will ever appear. All sorts of ceremonials, rules and formulas might be employed so that every possible contingency is guarded against. Doubtless, however, Maslow would have allowed that rituals and rules could perform quite different functions for healthy or mature people.

The social needs If the physiological and safety needs are met, then the needs for love, affection and belongingness emerge as the dominant centre of motivation. The person concerned will feel keenly the absence of friends, wife or children; he will strive for affectionate relations with people and for ‘a place in his group’. Although Maslow distinguished between love and sex, and he showed an awareness that love needs to involve both giving and receiving love, it is an important

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

characteristic of his psychology that he generally reserved the use of the word ‘love’ for close personal relationships. There is much to be said for following later practice and calling this set the ‘Social Needs’.

The esteem needs This order includes both the need or desire for a high evaluation of self (self-respect or self-esteem) and for the esteem of others. Maslow divided them into two subsidiary sets: ●●

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the desire for strength, achievement, adequacy, mastery, competence, confidence in the face of the world, independence, and freedom; and the desire for reputation, prestige, status, dominance, recognition, attention, importance and appreciation.

From theological discussions of hubris as well as from such sources as the writings of Eric Fromm, Maslow believed that: we have been learning more and more of the dangers of basing self-esteem on the opinions of others rather than on real capacity, competence, and adequacy to the task. The most stable and therefore most healthy self-esteem is based on deserved respect from others rather than on external fame or celebrity and unwarranted adulation.

The need for self-actualization Even if all these needs are satisfied [wrote Maslow] we may still often (if not always) expect that a new discontent and restlessness will soon develop, unless the individual is doing what he is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization. This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein, is being used in this book in a much more specific and limited fashion. It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfilment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming… The clear emergence of these needs usually rests upon prior satisfaction of the 2 physiological, safety, love and esteem needs.

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The desires to know and understand Maslow allowed that there were two other sets of needs which found no place in the above hierarchical order, and he felt it necessary to recognize them while make it clear that at present psychologists had little to say about them. He suggested, however, that the principle of a hierarchy of prepotency might also apply in both cases, albeit in a shadowy form. In contemporary presentations of Maslow’s theory of needs in management education, these two scales are usually and unfortunately omitted altogether. It should be noted also that there is some ambiguity about Maslow’s language at this point. When he wrote about ‘higher needs’ he is sometimes referring to esteem and self-actualization; at other times, however, he has in mind the cognitive and aesthetic needs described below. Maslow began marshalling the evidence for such desires by noting the presence of ‘something like human curiosity’ in monkeys and apes. He continued: Studies of psychologically healthy people indicate that they are, as a defining characteristic, attracted to the mysterious, to the unknown, to the chaotic, unorganized, and unexplained. This seems to be a per se attractiveness; these areas are in themselves and of their own right interesting. The contrasting reaction to the well-known is one of boredom.

The gratification of the cognitive impulses is subjectively satisfying. Moreover, even after we know, we are impelled to know more and more minutely and microscopically on the one hand, and on the other, more and more extensively in the direction of a world philosophy, theology etc. The facts that we acquire, if they are isolated or atomistic, inevitably get theorized about, and either analysed or organized or both. This process has been phrased by some as the search for meaning. We shall then postulate a desire to understand, to systematize, to organize, to analyse, to look for relations and meanings, to construct a system of values.

Maslow concluded with a warning against making a too sharp dichotomy between the cognitive and the conative (or basic needs) hierarchies.

The aesthetic needs Maslow was convinced that: in some individuals there is a truly basic aesthetic need. They get sick (in special ways) from ugliness, and are cured by beautiful surroundings; they crave actively, and their cravings can be satisfied only by beauty. It is seen almost universally in healthy children. Some evidence of such as impulse is found in every culture and in every age as far back as the cavemen.

The conative, cognitive and aesthetic needs overlap so much that it is impossible to separate them sharply.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs The needs for order, for symmetry, for closure, for completion of the art, for system, and for structure may be indiscriminately assigned either to cognitive, conative, or aesthetic, or even to neurotic needs.

Coping and expressive behaviour Lastly, Maslow expounded a useful distinction between coping (functional striving, purposive goal seeking) and expressive behaviour which does not try to do anything: ‘it is simply a reflection of the personality’. As examples of expressive or non-functional behaviour, Maslow listed ‘the random movements of a healthy child, the smile on the face of a happy man even when he is alone, the springiness of the healthy man’s walk, and the erectness of his carriage’. Moreover, the style in which a person behaves may or may not be expressive. Yet even here Maslow warned against a false dichotomy: ‘It is finally necessary to stress that expressiveness of behaviour and goaldirectedness of behaviour are not mutually exclusive categories. Average behaviour is usually both.’

Keypoints ●●

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Maslow’s classification of needs into five categories – Physiological, Safety, Social, Esteem and Self-actualization – is a useful sketchmap for a practical leader. It is an aid to understanding human nature. The more basic needs are stronger, so that when they are threatened we jump back down the ladder and defend. The higher needs are weaker, but they are what make us distinctively human. The ‘higher needs’, according to Maslow, included not only the need to fulfil ourselves but also cognitive and aesthetic needs – the need to know and to understand. We need truth as well as beauty in our lives. Maslow’s distinction between coping and expressive behaviour reflects a seminal insight. An artist is often highly motivated, but as his or her work is a form of selfexpression it doesn’t feel like work. A picture of motivation that sees humans as merely moved to achieve goals in response to external rewards or punishments, like mice in a cage, is a defective one.

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No one really knows about other human beings. The best you can do is to suppose that others are like yourself.  John Steinbeck

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All that we do is done with an eye to something else. 

M

Aristotle

aslow spent his working life as an academic psychologist. The relatively slight impact that his theory of a hierarchy of needs made upon other academic psychologists and psychiatrists can be explained partly by the internal state of those disciplines in the period of Maslow’s lifetime, dominated as they had been by the Freudian and behaviourist orthodoxies. Among those psychologists who have specifically investigated human motivation in work, some have dismissed the theory simply as an unfounded hypothesis, while others have given it a guarded acceptance. There is some measure of agreement that the lower needs (physiological, safety and social) are organized into a hierarchy of prepotence, but less agreement that their satisfaction necessarily leads on to the experience of esteem and self-actualization 1 needs. It is true that Maslow did occasionally make it clear that he did not regard progression up the hierarchy by means of satisfaction as an inevitable or inexorable process, but he did give the general impression that this was his underlying assumption about human nature, all things being equal. Yet it would be extremely hard, for example, to demonstrate any inherent progression from the esteem needs to the need for self-actualization. But apart from these doubts about the connections between lower and higher needs, those academic psychologists and psychiatrists who have read Maslow have received this theory with cautious but unmistakable interest as a stimulating if puzzling contribution to our knowledge of man.

The Application of Maslow’s Ideas in Industry

Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y This very slow growth of interest in the academic world must be contrasted with the rapid dissemination of Maslow’s ideas in industry. The person mainly responsible for this work of popularization was the late Professor Douglas McGregor. Born in Detroit in 1906, the son of a Presbyterian minister, McGregor graduated at Wayne University and worked as a social psychologist at Harvard University before becoming a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a management consultant he worked with Standard Oil of New Jersey, Bell Telephone, Union Carbide and Imperial Chemical Industries (UK). He had a spell of six years as President of Antioch College in Ohio but returned to MIT. He was killed in a car accident in 1962. Two years before his death, McGregor’s most influential book, The Human Side of Enterprise, was published. In the early chapters he demonstrated with considerable clarity that the assumptions which managers make about human behaviour and human nature have a profound effect upon the way they seek to manage. Apart from his readable style, unusually free from jargon, McGregor’s clarity stemmed from the fact that he polarized these assumptions into two clusters of propositions or theses 2 about human nature, which he called Theory X and Theory Y. Leaving out his explanatory glosses, we can set them out as follows: Theory X: The Traditional View of Direction and Control 1 The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he or she can. 2 Because of this human characteristic dislike of work, most people must be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives. 3 The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little ambition, and wants security above all. Theory Y: The Integration of Individual and Organizational Goals 1 The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest. 2 External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort toward organizational objectives. People will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which they are committed. 3 Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.

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4 The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility. 5 The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity and creativity in the solution of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population. 6 Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being are only partially utilized. Now McGregor has drawn heavily upon the work of Maslow: indeed, if one subtracts the Maslow-inspired passages there is not much left of Theory Y. McGregor had swallowed Maslow’s theory of a hierarchy of needs hook, line and sinker, but he digested it into language which industrial and commercial managers could understand. Moreover, he integrated the theory with the more traditional preoccupations of management by suggesting that the needs of the individual and the needs of the organization were not inherently incompatible. Under the third proposition above in the Theory Y cluster, for example, McGregor commented: ‘The most significant of such rewards, eg the satisfaction of ego and self-actualization needs, can be direct products of efforts directed towards organizational needs.’ If Theory Y rested upon optimistic assumptions about people buttressed by the writings of Maslow, Theory X, by contrast, had a darker foundation. In company with many other behavioural scientists before and since McGregor advanced for the justification of Theory X what could be called a modern management myth about the Genesis myth. The deepest roots of Theory X go down to the Garden of Eden. ‘The punishment of Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was to be banished from Eden into a world where they had to work for a living.’ Obviously, McGregor supposed that this myth lay behind the assumption that a person has an inherent tendency to avoid work. Without doubting that pessimistic views of people both exist and exert influence upon human relationships, we may legitimately question how far these can be blamed upon such external sources as the Book of Genesis.

The wider dissemination of Maslow’s ideas McGregor’s writings, still ranked as the most influential of their genre in the world of industry, and his persuasive lectures were not the only means by which Maslow’s views have been propagated to management audiences. His disciples included such prominent behavioural scientists as Rensis Likert and Chris Argyris. Likert, as Director of the Institute for Social Research at Michigan University, studied the effects of different supervisors on the productivity of those who work under them,

The Application of Maslow’s Ideas in Industry

and found a significant correlation between high production and supervision which helped operatives to do the job well for their own satisfaction as much as for the 3 attainment of departmental goals. Argyris, as Professor of Industrial Administration at Yale University, tended to stress the element of conflict between the individual’s and the organization’s respective needs for self-actualization, but he added his powerful voice to the chorus advocating practical steps – such as ‘job enlargement’ and participation in problem solving and decision-making – for reconciling the two 4 sets of goals. Maslow’s theory also attracted the attention of sociologists as well as social psych­ ologists. For example, in a study of the attitudes to work of 229 manual workers in Luton factories (Vauxhall, Skefko Ball Bearings, and Laporte Chemicals) J H Goldthorpe and his colleagues accepted that attempts to specify the range and structure of a hierarchy of human needs along the lines of Maslow might be both legitimate and relevant, but they expressed doubts as to whether or not one could make easy deductions about these general statements to particular cases. There were particular sociological factors behind what they called the Luton workers’ largely ‘instrumental’ attitude to their work – looking upon it as an instrument or means towards relatively high wages: For wants and expectations are culturally determined variables, not psychological constants; and from a sociological standpoint what is in fact of major interest is the variation in the ways in which groups differently located in the social structure actually experience and attempt to meet the needs which at a different level of analysis may be 5 attributed to them all. 6

To social factors we must add such personal variables as parental upbringing. Moreover, where people are in their life cycle has some influence on what needs are dominant in their experience as motivating forces. Goldthorpe’s conclusion matched that of John Mason Brown. Writing in Esquire he said: ‘Most people spend most of their days doing what they do not want to do in order to earn the right, at times, to do what they may desire.’

The moral issue For at least some sociologists the discrepancy between Maslow’s description of human nature and the lack of desire for self-actualization in some working environments has raised a moral issue. What place ought work to occupy in human life, quite apart from the role it may play in such loaded settings as the Luton factories? What changes – if any – in the social and cultural milieu should be encouraged, and why? The British industrial sociologist Alan Fox posed the issue in the following way:

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Leadership and Motivation The broadest division is between those doctrines which seek to persuade us that work ought to be a central integrating principle of man’s individual and social being, offering opportunities of choice, decision, and responsibility, and those who find no ethical 7 difficulty in seeing its major significance in terms of its extrinsic outcome.

Thus the application of Maslow’s theory of a hierarchy of human needs to the task of understanding attitudes and behaviour at work in industry has already raised some fundamental moral questions about the place of work in life. But this is a secondary debate, albeit an important one. For even those who reject the liberal demand that work should now be so arranged as to allow maximum satisfaction possible in all five areas of individual need would accept that work should provide at least the financial means for pursuing the all-important goal of self-actualization outside the factory or the office, namely in leisure activities and family life. Either way the psychology of self-fulfilment as exemplified by Maslow’s theory of needs marches on. In the following chapter I shall consider the theory, researches and assumptions of Frederick Herzberg. There are two main reasons for doing so. The first reason is that Herzberg both offered what purports to be an alternative theory to that of Maslow and also claimed that evidence gathered by empirical methods proves this theory to be true. A second reason is that it keeps us in touch with the practical concerns of industry. For Herzberg was a leading exponent of that school which holds that work should play a central and integral (rather than instrumental) part in the process of healthy self-actualization, not simply for the few but for the many employed in industry, commerce and the public services.

Keypoints ●●

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Maslow’s most influential disciple in the field of management thought was Douglas McGregor. He showed that the assumptions, often unconscious, which managers make about human nature have a deep influence on how they actually treat people. He polarized these assumptions into Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor also expressed confidence that ‘satisfaction of ego and self-actualization needs’ can be reconciled with organizational needs. The three-circle model further clarifies the situation: there is indeed an overlap between task and individual needs, so that meeting one entails meeting the other. But there is also a tension between them. In some circumstances, for example, an individual may choose to sacrifice one or more of his or her own needs in order that the common purpose should be better served.

The Application of Maslow’s Ideas in Industry

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True leaders do hold something like the Theory Y doctrine of human nature. They treat people as if they are great. Occasionally, of course, they will be let down, but they accept that as part of the price of leading. More often than not, people respond positively to trust: they become great. Nobody inspires you more than the person who speaks to the greatness within you.

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The task of leadership is not to put greatness in to people but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.  John Buchan

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Chapter Twenty-nine Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory

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Work is not the curse, but drudgery is.  Henry Ward Beecher

I

n 1959 Frederick Herzberg published his research into job attitudes in a book entitled The Motivation to Work. At the time of writing Herzberg, later Professor of Psychology at Western Reserve University, was Research Director at the Psychological Service of Pittsburgh. His co-authors, Bernard Mausner and Barbara Snyderman, were respectively Research Psychologist and Research Associate at the same institute. With two other psychologists Herzberg and Mausner had carried out an earlier preliminary survey of the existing literature on the factors involved in attitudes to 1 work. Despite differences in content and methods in the 155 books and articles they considered, Herzberg and his colleagues felt able to draw a major conclusion: The one dramatic finding that emerged in our review of this literature was the fact that there was a difference in the primacy of factors, depending upon whether the investigator was looking for things the worker liked about his job or things he disliked. The concept that there were some factors that were ‘satisfiers’ and others that were ‘dissatisfiers’ was suggested by this finding. From it was derived one of the basic hypotheses of our own study.

Basic characteristics of the research project After two pilot schemes, involving respectively 13 labourers, clerical workers, foremen, plant engineers and accountants, and 39 middle-managers (all but 6 of them engineers of one kind or another), the research team launched into a study of the job attitudes of 203 engineers and accountants working in nine factories of plants around Pittsburgh. The description and discussion of this particular research project formed the main content of The Motivation to Work; moreover, the methodology of

Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory

the research served as a model for many replications in the next decade. Consequently it is important to grasp the essential methodological characteristics of the research Herzberg and his colleagues undertook. Owing to the style of the writers this is not always an easy task, but we can distinguish three major characteristics.

1.  Specification of Experience Each of the 203 subjects was asked to identify periods in his own history when his feelings about his job were markedly either higher or lower than usual. The researcher made the assumption that the respondents would be able to recognize the extremes of this continuum of feelings and to select extreme situations to report. They distinguished between short and long-term sequences of events, but in each case the ‘story’ had to be finite in terms of having a beginning, middle and end.

2.  Factors-Attitudes-Effects The research aimed at unravelling the interrelations between objective ‘events’ in the historical accounts, coupled with the feelings which were expressed about them by the subjects, and the effects which resulted. Rather confusingly, the reported events were labelled ‘first-level factors’ and the allied feelings ‘second-level factors’, while the word ‘factor’ was also used about the combination of both together. The word ‘attitude’ means in this context the more settled or habitual mode of regarding aspects of life. ‘Effects’ included job performance (based on the subject’s own reports of quantifiable or qualitative changes), mental health, interpersonal relationships, attitude towards the company and other attitudes allied to the working situation.

3.  Research Methods The researchers employed the technique of the ‘semi-structured’ interview, in which the interviewer asks some pre-arranged questions but has freedom to pursue any lines of inquiry that he judged might be fruitful. ‘The questions were so designed that for each story we were sure to get the factors-attitudes-effects information which we sought.’ Each respondent could choose a story about a time when he felt exceptionally good or exceptionally bad about the job. After this sequence had been thoroughly discussed and analysed, the interviewer asked for a second story, which had to be opposite in terms of good/bad and short/long-range sequence of events from the first one. Some respondents volunteered a third or fourth story. The researchers attempted to set up categories of factors and effects from the material gathered. Carefully cross-checking one another’s judgments, the team broke down the replies into ‘thought units’, which was defined as ‘a statement about

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a single event or condition that led to a feeling, a single characterization of a feeling, or a description of a single effect’, eg the statement ‘The way it was given to me showed the supervisor had confidence in my work.’ A sample of 5,000 ‘thought units’ of the entire (unspecified) total was sorted out into three major categories: first-level factors, second-level factors and effects. Each of these main ones was further subdivided into lesser categories. Once 95 per cent agreement among them on the categories had been achieved, the research team proceeded to analyse 476 stories or ‘sequences of events’.

The categories Under the heading of ‘First-level factors’ the authors listed 14 categories of elements or acts in the situation which the respondents found to be sources of good or bad feelings, with the criteria which they had used to establish them. 1 Recognition. Any act of recognition, be it notice, praise or criticism (‘negative recognition’) served as the main criterion. The subcategories allowed distinction between situations when concrete awards were given along with the acts of recognition and those in which they were not. 2 Achievement. Stories mentioning some specific success (or failure) were placed in this category, eg successful completion of a job, solutions to problems, vindication, and seeing the results of one’s work. 3 Possibility of growth. Respondents mentioned changes in their situations involving objective evidence that the possibilities for professional growth had increased or decreased. Besides new vistas opened up by promotion this category included reports of increased opportunities in the existing situation for learning and practising new skills, or acquiring new professional knowledge. 4 Advancement. ‘This category was used only when there was an actual change in the status or position of the person in the company.’ 5 Salary. ‘This category included all sequences of events in which compensation plays a role. Surprisingly enough, virtually all of these involve wage or salary increases, or unfulfilled expectation of salary increases.’ 6 Interpersonal relations. Under this general heading actual verbalizations about the characteristics of the interaction between the respondent and some other individual were divided into three categories according to the identity of the latter: superior, subordinate and peers. These were interactions which might take place in working hours but were independent of the activities of the job.

Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory

7 Supervision-technical. This category included remarks about the competence or incompetence, fairness or unfairness of the supervisor or superior. Comments upon the superior’s willingness to delegate or teach, on his tendency to nag or perpetually criticize, would be classified under ‘supervision-technical’. 8 Responsibility. This category covered those sequences of events in which the respondent mentioned satisfaction gained from being given (or denied) responsibility.

In cases, however, in which the story revolved around a wide gap between a person’s authority and the authority he needed to carry out his job responsibilities the factor identified was ‘company policy and administration’. The rationale for this was that such a discrepancy between authority and job responsibilities would be considered evidence of poor management.

9 Company policy and administration. This category included descriptions of adequate or inadequate organization and management. Apart from such structural components, remarks about the overall characteristics of the company’s policy (especially its personnel policy) as harmful or beneficial were placed under this heading. 10 Working conditions. Comments about the physical conditions of work, the amount of work, facilities available, ventilation, tools, space and other environmental aspects came into this class of ‘thought units’. 11 Work itself. Mentions of the actual doing of the job, or phases of it, as sources of satisfaction or dissatisfaction found places in this category. 12 Factors in personal life. This factor covered a range of statements about cases in which work impinged upon personal life in such a way that the effect was an ingredient in the respondent’s feelings about his job. Family needs for salary levels or problems stemming from job location would be examples of this type of comment. 13 Status. This term was employed to classify any actual mentions of signs or appurtenances of status as being constituents in reaction to the job, eg a secretary, company car, a certain eating facility. 14 Job security. Objective signs of the presence or absence of job security, such as tenure and company stability or instability, were listed under this factor. Under the heading of ‘Second-level factors’ the researchers analysed the responses of the interviewee to the question, ‘What did these events mean to you?’ Naturally the information at this point was limited by the extent to which the respondents could articulate their feelings and the level of insight which enabled them to report real perceptions rather than stereotyped reactions based on socially accepted ideas. These second-level inferences or generalizations were therefore to be distinguished

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from the statements of feeling in the verbal responses of the first-level factors. The 11 second-level factors or clusters of feelings share for the most part the same names as the first-level ones; for example: recognition, achievement, possible growth, responsibility, belonging and interest. ‘Feelings about salary’ was included to cover those situations in which: the first-level factor was viewed primarily as a source of the things that money can bring. If an answer to the question, ‘Why did this promotion make you feel good?’ was, ‘I like the idea of being able to make more money’, then the second-level factor was coded ‘salary’.

The analysis of effects into categories posed fewer problems, because most respondents were specific and concrete in their replies. 1 Performance effects. This major category included three subcategories. The first consisted of general comments about work being better or worse than usual; the second embraced comments about the rate of work; and in the third were mustered remarks concerning the quality of work. 2 Turnover. At one end of the ‘turnover’ continuum the respondent actually resigned or left his job; at the other his positive feelings about his work and the company had mounted so considerably that he turned down attractive offers to go elsewhere. 3 Mental health effects. Positive statements included a lessening of tension symptoms, gaining weight when underweight, and stopping too much drinking or smoking. The more numerous negative reports, however, mentioned psychomatic effects (skin disorders, ulcers, heart conditions), physiological changes related to tensions (such as severe headaches and loss of appetite), and more diffuse symptoms of anxiety possibly related to temperamental dispositions in the individual. 4 Effects on interpersonal relationships. There were many instances where the job had appeared to influence for better or worse a man’s relationships with his family. 5 Additional effects. Respondents also reported changed attitudes towards themselves, their colleagues, their professions or the companies which employed them.

Experimental results The major question that the research team had posed themselves was whether or not different kinds of factors brought about job satisfaction and job dissatisfaction. A number of minor questions which interested them related to the correlations

Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory

between the variables of long-term and short-term sequences, first-level and secondlevel factors, effects and attitudes, profession, education, job level and experience. Broadly speaking, the team felt convinced that their main hypothesis that there were two distinct sets of factors involved had been justified by the study. The factors that are rarely instrumental in bringing about high job attitudes focus not on the job itself but rather on the characteristics of the context in which the job is done: working conditions, inter-personal relationships, supervision, com­pany policies, administration of these policies, effects on the worker’s personal life, job security, and salary. This is a basic distinction. The satisfiers relate to the actual job. Those factors that do not act as satisfiers describe the job situation.

Heading the list of short-term ‘satisfiers’ in the first-level factors are achievement and recognition, followed by work itself, responsibility, advancement and the possibility of growth. In the second-level area the possibility of growth appeared with great frequency in the ‘high satisfaction’ stories. By reviewing all the variables the team suggested that the complex or cluster of achievement-recognition-responsibilitywork itself-ad­vance­ment are higher interrelated in both the short and long terms. ‘When some or all of the factors are present in the job situation of an individual, the fulfilment of his basic needs is such that he enters a period of exceptionally positive feelings about his job.’ For situational, professional or personal reasons the relative strengths of factors may vary, but the complex as a whole will always characterize job satisfaction. Visually the discontinuity between the ‘satisfiers’ and ‘dissatisfiers’ and their relative longevity can be shown by means of a diagram: As indicated in the legend of this figure, the distance from the neutral area shows the percentage frequency with which each factor occurred in the high job-attitude sequences and in the low job-attitude sequences. The width of the boxes represents the ratio of long-range to short-range attitude effects; the wider the box, the more frequently this factor led to a long-range job attitude change. The factors of recognition and achievement are shaded in this figure to indicate that the width of their boxes portrays a reversal in the long-range ratio. The attitude effects of both of these factors were substantially more short range.

The frequency and duration of work itself, responsibility and advancement suggest that they form the major strands of high job attitudes. They appear much less frequently in stories of times when the respondents felt unhappy with their job. These motivating factors focused on the job itself; the ‘dissatisfiers’ are concerned with the context of environment of the job. Salary has a short-term satisfying effect, but as an influence on job attitudes the research team concluded that it had more potency as a dissatisfier than as a satisfier. In the ‘low’ stories money tended to reflect a perceived unfairness in the wages policy or system of the company; in the ‘high’ stories it accompanied achievement: ‘it meant more than money; it meant a job well done; it meant that the individual was progressing in his work.’

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From their analysis of the ‘second-level’ factors, Herzberg and his colleagues concluded that: a sense of personal growth and of self-actualization is the key to an understanding of positive feelings about the job. We would define the first-level factors of achievement-responsibility-work itself-advancement as a complex of factors leading to this sense of personal growth and self-actualization. In a later discussion we postulate a basic need for these goals as a central phenomenon in understanding job attitudes.

F i g u r e 29.1   Comparison of satisfiers and dissatisfiers (203 Pittsburgh engineers and accountants)

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Percentage frequency Low 30 20 10

Percentage frequency High 10 20 30

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Achievement

Recognition

Work itself

Responsibility

Advancement

Company policy and administration

Supervision – technical

Salary

Interpersonal relations – supervision

Working conditions

Short duration greater than long duration Long duration greater than short duration

Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory

Short-term positive feelings can then be regarded as ‘partial reinforcements’ of these basic needs. For the complex of factors which describe the surrounds of the job and can cause discontent Herzberg recruited the word hygiene from the medical world. Hygiene operates to remove health hazards from the environment of man. It is not a curative; it is, rather, a preventive. Modern garbage disposal, water purification, and 5 air-pollution do not cure diseases, but without them we would have more diseases.

The ‘satisfier’ Herzberg and his associates named motivators. The former they linked with the ‘avoidance needs’, or the human tendency to avoid painful or unpleasant situations; the latter they connected directly with the concept that man’s ‘ultimate goal’ is self-actualization or self-realization. In the work situation this general basic need finds a degree of fulfilment if the job allows some meeting of the related needs for professional growth and for the exercise of creativity. If these possibilities are intrinsically absent from the job, then heavy compensations in terms of hygiene factors would be necessary to adjust the balance. ‘The motivators fit the need for creativity, the hygiene factors satisfy the need for fair treatment, and it is thus that the appropriate incentive must be present to achieve the desired job attitude and job performance.’

Herzberg and Maslow How does Herzberg’s motivator-hygiene theory relate to Maslow’s theory of a hierarchy of needs? Clearly they share in common the concept of self-actualization, derived from the writings of psychologists such as Jung and Adler. Herzberg’s discussion of Maslow’s theory in The Motivation to Work is both brief and unsatisfactory. The aspect of the theory which he seems to have felt unacceptable was the notion that the predominant needs of individuals might change and develop, rather than being seen as relatively fixed and immutable. Yet although Herzberg pressed home his distinction between the ‘motivators’ and ‘hygiene’, he himself allowed for some possibility of a fluctuating ‘need hierarchy’ operating within the two clusters, just as he left open the question as to whether different degrees of potency among the factors in the two sets would reflect different patterns of psychological characteristics in professional groups or individuals. In contrast to the predominantly holistic bias of Maslow’s mind, Herzberg’s approach exhibits a dichotomizing tendency towards either/or and black-or-white thinking. It is possible that the opposite ends or poles of continuums in human behaviour may appear to take on a qualitative difference. By documenting such a phenomenon in relation to work Herzberg indirectly drew attention to the differing characteristics of Maslow’s basic needs. Psychological, safety and social needs, for

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example, might create dissatisfaction if they were not met, but they had little power to afford satisfaction. By contrast, the meeting of esteem and self-actualization needs could lead to a more positive and longer-lasting sense of satisfaction. On the other hand, the absence of a potential for self-actualizing progress might not create conscious dissatisfaction. Thus it could be said that Herzberg was only developing the hint in Maslow that the physiological needs form a poor model for the ‘higher’ needs 2 in the hierarchy. Moreover, Herzberg accepted the possibility, pending further research, that an individual’s internal rating of ‘satisfiers’ and ‘dissatisfiers’ might reflect his or her personality development, ie presumably his or her progress in gratifying the hierarchy of basic needs. It is clear also that some psychologists (like some theologians and philosophers) have a temperamental bias towards dichotomizing, 3 while others have predominantly holistic or synthetic minds. Herzberg belongs to the first group, Maslow to the second. Allowing for the application to the work situation in particular and also the respective intellectual biases of the two psychologists, it may be concluded that the similarities between the approaches of Maslow and 4 Herzberg outweigh their dissimilarities. Herzberg’s general view that ‘supervision’ (he never called it leadership) is a hygiene factor obstinately ignores the fact that in many circumstances human relationships are as much intrinsic to the job as they are extrinsic. His attempt to distinguish between interpersonal relationships and supervision-technical does not alter his under-estimation of the satisfying or motivating influence of good leadership, both for the leader himself or herself and for those working with him or her. Herzberg had a curiously rigid idea about management. The idea that leaders at all levels might be aware and respond to the needs of those working under them does not seem to have occurred to him at all. A stress on the vital importance of good leadership to ensure achievement and recognition, the delegation of responsibility and the provision of challenging tasks, finds no place in his writings, although he did allow that better supervision would be required if jobs were to be made more intrinsically satisfying. In other words, Herzberg may well have reacted so vigorously against the ‘human relations’ approach to management, personified by the growth of ‘group sensitivity training’, that he threw out the baby with the bath water. This thesis may be supported by Herzberg’s cavalier treatment of the two groups of professional women in government service who found some satisfaction in effective interpersonal relationships with their subordinates and fellow employees. In Herzberg’s ‘rational explanation’ these innocent feelings were interpreted as ‘a sickness in motivation… brought about by the insecurity of women competing in a traditionally masculine domain’. These comments illustrate the danger that Herzberg’s dichotomy between ‘satisfaction’ and ‘dissatisfaction’, job content and job context, can become a Procrustean bed upon which all experience, suitably lopped and trimmed, must be made to fit. In fact there is considerable evidence that

Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene Theory

leadership and good human relationships contribute to both work achievement and individual job satisfaction.

Critics of Herzberg’s Theory The hypothesis that there are exclusive sets of ‘satisfiers’ and ‘dissatisfiers’ has been denied by other empirical investigators, apart from those already mentioned. As we have seen, these writers have blurred the sharp edges of the dichotomy by showing that intrinsic factors may act as dissatisfiers and extrinsic (or contextual) factors can 5 serve as satisfiers. Industrial sociologists have confirmed this view, with suitable reservations. Alan Fox has summed up their views with the suggestion that there is a 6 useful distinction between satisfaction in a job and satisfaction with a job. Those who have attempted an impartial review of the literature in the ‘Herzberg controversy’ have concluded that the intrinsic-extrinsic dichotomy does not adequately reflect the sources of positive and negative attitudes to work: in short, they regard it 7 as an over-simplification. Once the flaws in Herzberg’s dichotomy between ‘satisfiers’ and ‘dissatisfiers’ became apparent, it was only a question of time before the unidimensional Maslow 8 hierarchy would be advocated as a theoretical model for research on the shop floor. In a British study of 290 female shop floor and ex-shop floor workers in electrical and electronic engineering firms it was found that 30 per cent expressed general dissatisfaction with their work. The analysis of their multi-choice questionnaires and unstructured interviews revealed the overriding importance of the work itself as a 9 determinant of job satisfaction or dissatisfaction. R Wild and his colleagues, however, found no evidence to support Herzberg’s ‘principle of duality’, although the practical implications were similar. In their study, the shop floor workers perceived their supervisors as being sources of both support and motivation. Wages, supportive supervision and personal relationships were con­ tingent factors relating to lower level needs, and could be compared to Herzberg’s maintenance (hygiene) factors. ‘The distinctive difference between our satisfied and dissatisfied subjects lay in the lack of self-actualization perceived by the latter in relation to their work.’ Those who experienced some degree of self-actualization found their work more interesting, varied, challenging, and allowing more opportunities for achievement and the use of abilities than those who felt frustrated. The fact that 30 per cent in the same job were dissatisfied confirms the thesis that individual attitudes and values inevitably produce different perceptions of work.

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Conclusion In retrospect, the research work of Herzberg and his colleagues, and the studies which his theory has provoked, confirm the view that work in industry and large organizations can be a means for at least the partial satisfaction of people’s higher needs. Some support for Maslow’s theory of prepotence is also afforded by the finding that if work does not provide adequate means for meeting the lower needs, it is experienced as positively dissatisfying, more so than if opportunities for more intrinsic satisfactions are missing. Herzberg’s dualistic framework has a value as a stimulating and introductory visual sketchmap in teaching, but it becomes an oversimplification if taken beyond a certain point. Moreover, his apparent contradic­ tion of Maslow turns out to be more a symptom of differences in casts of mind rather than anything more fundamental in theory. Herzberg’s particular contribution was his passionate concern for people, matched with an evangelistic fervour for the gospel that industrial work, as much as any other form of work, should serve the humanistic purpose of self-actualization. So much so that jobs which do not lend themselves to this end are to be ‘enriched’ until they do, or mechanized out of existence. In cases where mechanization or automation is impossible, ‘hygiene factors’, such as big financial rewards, must clearly be seen to be compensations for being subhuman. With a new faith in man and some professional ingenuity, however, it will be possible to enrich most jobs so that they win more of both intrinsic satisfactions and extrinsic rewards for the worker. In keeping with the behavioural science school as a whole, Herzberg’s public platform was that such job enrichment leads to more motivation, which in turn yields higher company profits.

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It is worth giving close attention to Herzberg’s Motivation – Hygiene theory because there is a lot of truth in it. The factors which satisfy or motivate us at work are not the opposite of the ones that dissatisfy or demotivate us: they are not two sides of the same coin. The factors which make us unhappy are around the job itself. Using a medical metaphor, Herzberg called them the Hygiene factors. Improve these conditions and you will be reducing the level of dissatisfaction. But you won’t make people happy by this route alone. To improve satisfaction (and motivation) in a job, as opposed to mere contentment with a job, you have to tackle another set of factors: achievement, recognition, variety and creativity. These Motivators, as Herzberg called them, are more intrinsic to the

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work itself, whereas the Hygiene factors are extrinsic. A wise manager is mindful of both sets. Financial remuneration is not merely another Hygiene factor: money straddles the divide because it is also often a tangible measure of achievement and symbol of recognition. Herzberg placed ‘supervision’ in the Hygiene camp – he never used the term ‘leadership’. But who makes achievement possible? Who stimulates creativity? Who gives recognition? Good leaders do!

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There is not one whom we employ who does not, like ourselves, desire recognition, praise, gentleness, forbearance, patience.  Henry Ward Beecher

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Chapter Thirty How to motivate others: the eight principles of motivation

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man, woman or child is motivated when he or she wants to do something. Motivation covers all the reasons which cause a person to act, including negative ones like fear along with the more positive motives, such as money, promotion or recognition. From the Fifty-Fifty Rule it follows that the extent to which you can motivate anyone else is limited, for 50 per cent of the cards are, so to speak, in their hands. You can provide motives or incentives in one way or another; you can offer rewards or issue threats; you can attempt to persuade. All these actual or potential influences may have an effect, for remember that 50 per cent of a person’s motivation stems from the environment. If you are a leader, then you are a key factor in the environment of those who work for you. But your power is limited. As the proverb says, ‘You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.’ In this chapter I have summed up what you can do under eight headings – the principles or rules of motivation. How you apply them will clearly depend upon the situation. But they stand as pillars of encouragement, both inviting you to take up your responsibility as a leader for inspiring others and pointing you in the right direction. ‘I never saw a man in our profession who possessed the magic art of infusing the same spirit into others which inspired their own actions. All agree there is but one Nelson.’ So wrote Admiral Lord St Vincent to Nelson in a letter, a glowing tribute from such a superior to his junior. Will the same ever be said about you?

1.  Be motivated yourself The first and golden rule of motivation is that you will never inspire others unless you are inspired yourself. Only a motivated leader motivates others. Example is the great seducer.

How to Motivate Others: The Eight Principles of Motivation

It is so simple and so obvious, isn’t it? But why is it so neglected in management today? Enthusiasm inspires, especially when combined with trust. Its key importance can perhaps best be seen by considering its opposites. What impression would we make as leaders if we were apathetic, stolid, half-hearted, indifferent and uninterested? Enthusiasm is infectious; and enthusiasts are usually competent too, since they believe in and like what they are doing. One of the world’s first philosopher-consultants, Confucius, was once called in by a Chinese feudal king to check the corruption and theft which was rife in his domain. The fact that both the king and his court indulged in these practices, and that others were taking their cue from them, soon became apparent to Confucius, and he simply pointed out to his client the motivating influence – for good or ill – of example. ‘If you did not steal yourself,’ he said, ‘even if you rewarded men with gold to steal they would not do it.’ Before you criticize others for lack of motivation ask yourself if your own enthusiasm for and commitment to the task in hand is sincere, visible and tangible. Have you expressed it in deeds as well as words? Are you setting a good example? For motivation is caught, not taught.

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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.  Emerson

2.  Select people who are highly motivated Since it is hard to motivate people who are not already motivated it makes sense to select those who already are. It is true that in the coldest flint there is hot fire, but you may lack the skill to release such hidden sparks. You need people working for you who, like John Bunyan, ‘could not be content, unless I was found in the exercise of my gift, unto which also I was greatly animated’. Bunyan added that ‘great grace and small gifts are better than great gifts and no grace’, which can be translated here to mean that when you select someone for a job a high motivation and modest talent is to be preferred to considerable talent but little or no evidence of motivation. Given the absence of any reliable psychological tests to measure motivation, managers are thrown back on their judgment. Some useful tips for interviewers are: ●●

Remember that someone at an interview is trying to influence or motivate you to give them the job. Some people find it easy to act as if they are highly motivated or enthusiastic for an hour during an interview. Others, who may be very motivated, may come across as ‘laid back’.

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By their fruits you shall know them. Look for evidence in what they have done. What someone wishes to do he or she will find a way of doing. Has persistence and perseverance – evidences of high motivation – ever been shown? Ask the referees who know him or her well. Describe several work situations that require high motivation and ask the applicant how he or she would react.

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No man will find the best way to do a thing unless he loves to do that thing.  Japanese proverb

3.  Treat each person as an individual Unless you ask a person what motivates them – what they want – you will not know. We are all individuals. What motivates one person in the team may not motivate another. Enter into some sort of dialogue with each individual member of the group. Not that individuals will always be clear about what they want. Our motivation changes with age and circumstance. One of your functions as a leader may be to help individuals to clarify what they are seeking at any given time in their careers. A wise leader in an organization always remembers that a whole bushel of wheat is made up of single grains. By listening to individuals, giving them an opportunity to express their hopes and fears, the leader is also showing true care. The intention, however, must be to help if possible and not to manipulate. ‘You would play upon me… You would seek to know my stops… You would pluck out the heart of my mystery’. That is cynical manipulation, as unmasked in Shakespeare’s words. Leadership stands in sharp contrast to such person-management. Sir John Smythe VC wrote, A good leader is someone whom people will follow through thick and thin, in good times and bad, because they have confidence in him as a person, his ability and his knowledge of the job, and because they know they matter to him.

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As many men, so many minds; everyone in his own way.  Terence

How to Motivate Others: The Eight Principles of Motivation

4.  Set realistic and challenging targets ‘There is no inspiration in the ideals of plenty and stability,’ wrote John Lancaster Spalding. People are capable of transcending self in the pursuit of high and demanding ideals. Most people reveal this capacity in the way they respond better to a challenge. There is a fine balance here. If objectives are totally unrealistic they will demotivate people: if they are too easy to attain, on the other hand, they are also uninspiring. As a leader you have to get the balance right. ‘It is not enough to do our best,’ said Winston Churchill. ‘Sometimes we have to do what is required.’ In 3M, for example, managers are challenged by demanding goals. For instance, says Lewis W Lehr, the former Chairman of 3M, in the field of innovation the targets are set to stretch all concerned: Our divisions shoot for a high target: In any given year, twenty five per cent of sales should come from products introduced within the last five years. Of course, not every division hits its target every year. But our managers are judged not only on their ability to make existing product lines grow but also on their knack for bringing innovative new products to market. So they have a built-in incentive to keep R&D strong.

It is essential to agree targets or objectives with those who have to carry them out. For the principle is true that the more we share decisions which affect our working lives, the more we are motivated to carry them out. If the person accepts that the objective is both realistic and desirable or important, then he or she will start drawing upon their 50 per cent of the motivational equation.

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By asking the impossible we obtain the best possible.  Italian proverb

5.  Remember that progress motivates

As the ACL models suggests, we are motivated not simply by our individual needs but also by needs emanating from the common task. We want to finish what we are doing. The more significant the task, the stronger is the need to complete it satisfactorily. John Wesley called it ‘the lust to finish’. It is a sound principle that progress motivates. If people know that they are moving forwards it leads them to increase their efforts. We invest more in success. Therefore it is important to ensure that people receive proper feedback. Feedback is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as ‘the return to the input of a part of the output of a machine, system or process’. Without feedback people will not know if they are moving in the right direction at the right speed.

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Conversely, feedback on relative lack of progress also motivates. For it concentrates minds on what must be done if success is to be yet achieved. If you confront people with the realities of their situation in this way, then the ‘law of the situation’ will do the work of motivation for you.

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A man grows most tired while standing still.  Chinese proverb

6.  Create a motivating environment Although you have limited power to motivate others you can do a great deal to create an environment which they will find motivating. Most of us have experienced the flip-side of such an environment: one that reduces motivation. A restrictive organ­ izational culture, which over-emphasizes controls and reduces people to passive roles, coupled with an unpredictable and irascible superior who tells off people in public, is hardly likely to bring out the best in human nature. It is important that Herzberg’s ‘hygiene’ factors are properly catered for. The physical and psychological well-being of people has to have a top priority. Only introduce control systems where necessary, for over-controlling does reduce motivation. Double-check that people have a proper input into the decisions that affect their working lives, especially when any substantial change is involved. Keep units or subunits as small as possible, for large organizations tend to become bureaucratic and demotivational if they lack inspired leaders. Lastly, pay attention to job design. Repetitive work can become boring if uninterrupted, so introduce as much variety as possible. Let people work on something they can recognize as their own product, for people find real autonomy motivates them. Ensure that the person doing the job understands its impact on others, so that they see the significance of it. That is vital, especially if you want people to be so involved that they contribute new ideas and help forward the essential process of innovation.

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The creative act thrives in an environment of mutual stimulation, feedback and constructive criticism – in a community of creativity.  William T Brady

How to Motivate Others: The Eight Principles of Motivation

7.  Provide fair rewards A lynx chasing a snow rabbit will only chase it for about 200 metres, then it gives up. For the food gained if the prey was caught will not replace the energy lost in the pursuit. Working on the same unconscious principle, it will chase a deer for longer. All work implies this element of balancing what we give with what we expect to receive. Fairness or justice means that the return should be equivalent in value to the contribution. Performance ought to be linked to rewards, just as promotion should be related to merit. The former – getting financial rewards fair – is easier said than done in many work situations. But the principle is still important and ways of applying it have to be found. Justinian wrote that ‘Justice is the constant and unceasing will to give everyone his right or due.’ That genuine and sustained intention is expected from any leader who has discretion over the distribution of rewards. The principle has to be applied with especial care over monetary remunerations, for if fairness is not perceived there it can breed a lack of motivation and low morale. When remuneration is poor, workers put less effort into their jobs. Money is a key incentive. Therefore proper job evaluation schemes, involving a representative group of work people in the judgments about the financial worth of jobs, are vitally important. There are, of course, other rewards we gain from working, as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs illustrates. Opportunities for professional development and personal growth are especially valuable to good people. But money has a strategic importance for most people, not least as a measure of recognition for the significance of their contributions. As the means of exchange and as a store of wealth, money is probably the most useful material reward you can give.

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He who likes cherries soon learns to climb.  German proverb

8.  Give recognition Despite what I have just written about money I believe that recognition is often an even more powerful motivator. As I hinted, money anyway often means more to people as a tangible symbol of recognition than as the wherewithal to buy more material goods. This thirst for recognition is universal. In gifted people it amounts to a desire for fame or glory. For example, Isambard Brunel could write in his diary: ‘My selfconceit and love of glory, or rather approbation, vie with each other which shall govern me.’

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As a leader you can give recognition and show appreciation in a variety of ways. A sincere ‘well done’ or ‘thank you’ can work wonders for a person’s morale. Sir Richard Branson, chairman of the Virgin Group, said My parents brought me up with lots of praise and little criticism. We all flourish with praise. Flowers do well when they are watered and shrivel up when they are not, and people are exactly the same, whether you are a chief executive or a switchboard operator.

But it is equally important to encourage a climate where each person recognizes the worth or value of the contribution of other members of the team. For it is recognition by our peers – discerning equals or colleagues – that we value even more than the praise of superiors. We are social animals and we thirst for the esteem of others. Without fairly regular payments by others into that deposit account it is hard to maintain the balance of our own self-esteem. Seize every opportunity, then, to give recognition, even if it is only for effort. We cannot always command results. Perceive the worth of what the other person is doing and show your appreciation. You do not have to be a manager to do that, for true leadership can always be exercised from marginal positions.

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Any of us will put out more and better ideas if our efforts are fully appreciated.  Alexander F Osborn

Summary: How to motivate others 1 Be motivated yourself 2 Select people who are highly motivated 3 Treat each person as an individual 4 Set realistic and challenging targets 5 Remember that progress motivates 6 Create a motivating environment 7 Provide fair rewards 8 Give recognition

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We are more easily persuaded, in general, by the reasons we ourselves discover than by those that are given to us by others.  Blaise Pascal

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How to Motivate Others: The Eight Principles of Motivation

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test of leadership.  Elbert Hubbard It is no use saying ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.  Winston S Churchill

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Be motivated yourself As a leader you need to be enthusiastic. You can’t light a fire with a dead match! There is nothing so contagious as enthusiasm. Certainly, great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm. As the Bedouin proverb says: What comes from your heart is greater than what comes from your hand alone. Select people who are highly motivated It is hard to motivate people who are not motivated already. Therefore look for people who have the seeds of high motivation in them already. As Oliver Cromwell once said: ‘Give me the red-coated captain who knows what he is fighting for and loves what he knows.’ Build your team not from those who talk enthusiastically but from those who show eagerness for the business and steady commitment in their actions. Treat each person as an individual Theories and principles apply to the generality of people. You will never know how they apply, even if they apply, to any given individuals unless you observe them and talk to them. You will learn what motivates them, and perhaps also how their pattern of motivation has changed over their lifetime. The Greek dramatist Menander once said, ‘Know thyself,’ which is a good saying, but not in all situations. In many it is better to say, ‘Know others.’ As a leader you should aspire to know others. A good shepherd knows his sheep by name. Set realistic and challenging targets The best people like to be stretched – they welcome feasible but demanding tasks. Don’t make life too easy for them! Fortunately business life provides a series of challenges, enough to keep everyone on their toes. Without toil, trouble, difficulty and struggle there is no sense of achievement. Your skill as a leader is to set and agree goals, objectives or targets that both achieve the task and develop the team and its individual members. Remember that progress motivates We all need positive feedback that we are moving in the right direction, for that encourages us to persevere in the face of difficulties. ‘I will go anywhere, as long as it

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is forwards,’ said David Livingstone. If you as leader can show to your team, and to each individual member, that progress is being made, that in itself will feed the determination to press forwards on the path of success. Create a motivating environment Leadership calls for social creativity every bit as important and demanding as the artistic creativity of a painter, sculptor or composer. You are there to build teamwork, and that is a creative activity. More widely, all leaders in an organization should work together to ensure that it is an interesting, stimulating and challenging place of work. Remember the 50/50 Principle: about half of our motivation comes from outside ourselves, especially the people around us. Their commitment, passion and stimulating creative minds can awaken the sleeping powers within us. Your job as a leader is to foster that learning and motivating environment. Provide fair rewards We have a built-in sense of fairness. It is sometimes not easy to ensure equity in salary and bonuses, but it is important to remember that the perception of unfair rewards does have a demotivating effect on most people – Herzberg was right in that respect. As a general principle, financial (and other) rewards should match the relative value of contribution, according to the market assessment for any particular kind of work. Give recognition At best money is a crude measure of the value of work. Is a pop star really worth a thousand times more than a brain surgeon? A good leader should be swift to show recognition to all members of the team or organization, however indirect their contribution is to the overall task. You should work on the principle of ‘credit where credit is due’. Where the work of people is valued there is always motivation to do it – and to do it well.

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Those who are near will not hide their ability, and those who are distant will not grumble at their toil... That is what is called being a leader and teacher of men.  Hsün Tzu

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Chapter Thirty-one Parting reflections – towards a new theory of motivation

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here are two questions in this field. Why do people work? Why do they work willingly and well? The answer of psychologists such as Maslow, McGregor and Herzberg is not an unreasonable one: we work in order to satisfy our basic and higher needs; ultimately, in the secular humanist tradition, we strive to fulfil ourselves, which in that philosophy is the end or meaning of life. The problem with this general philosophy is that it seems to be very self-centred. We are always chain-reacting to our own set of needs. Yet Maslow had observed the paradox that it is only when people forget about their own happiness in the service of something greater than themselves, such as a worthwhile cause, they experience a measure of ‘self-actualization’. If, by contrast, you do things in order to be ‘selfactualized’, you will miss the boat. Or, as the Bible puts it succinctly, to save your life you must be willing to lose it. To get round this problem of escaping from the gravitational pull of self-centredness we may have to be willing to move away from a need-focused concept of motiva­ tion and think of ourselves more as being primarily motivated, sometimes inspired, by love. Here I am obviously not thinking of love as the familiar strong emotion in a family or sexual context but more as a form of positive energy present in a person that is always active in seeking good. ‘Love is an orientation, a direction of energy,’ Iris Murdoch once said. What could be more motivating than love? A natural and primary object of love in that sense, of course, is one’s self, for all of us seek our own good – and that of our families. To feed, clothe, house, educate and protect ourselves and our ‘nearest and dearest’ is always going to be a chief priority. But work can be more than a means to those important but limited ends. It can, for example, be a means of serving others and, it has been said, ‘service is love in action’. Moreover, all of us want to make a contribution to add value to life. Work that enables us to do so is work that we value and we give ourselves willingly to it.

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Work as a form of service requiring skill, work that calls for creativity in all its rich variety, work that fosters a deep comradeship with our co-workers, is almost by definition work that motivates us to give our best. Or, putting it differently, when, as Kahil Gibran says, ‘Work is the expression of love,’ then motivation will never be our problem. Perhaps the real challenge of leadership today is to locate, release and channel the power of love that flows from deep inner springs within us all.

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Notes and references Chapter 24 1 A. H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1954). 2 F. Herzberg, B. Mausner and B. B. Snyderman, The Motivation to Work (New York, John Wiley, 2nd edn, 1959) and F. Herzberg, Work and the Nature of Man (Cleveland, USA, World Publishing Company, 1966). 3 R. Tannenbaum and W. H. Schmidt, ‘How to Choose a Leadership Pattern’, Harvard Business Review, March–April (1958). 4 For confirmation of this point in particular, and for a discussion of sharing decisions in general, see F. A. Heller, Managerial Decision-making: A Study of Leadership Styles and Power Sharing, (Tavistock Publications, 1971).

Chapter 25 1 A. H. Maslow, Eupsychian Management: A Journal (Richard D. Irwin, 1965). 2 F. E. Fiedler, ‘Leadership – A new model’, Discovery (April 1965) and, A Theory of Leadership Effectiveness (McGraw-Hill, 1967). For an appraisal, see W. Hill, ‘An Empirical Test of Fiedler’s Contingency Model of Leadership Effectiveness in Three Organizations’, The Southern Journal of Business (July 1969). See also, R. Blake and J. Mouton, The Management Grid (Houston, Gulf Publishing, 1964). For further examples of the situationalist approach, see Bavelas, ‘Leadership: Man and Function’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 5 (1960), 491–8, and Bales and Slater, ‘Role Differentiation in Small Decision-Making Groups’, in Talcott Parsons et al., Family, Socialization and Interaction Process, (Glencoe, Free Press, 1955). For the origins of the ‘styles’ preoccupation (in the work of Kurt Lewin), see Lewin and Lippitt, ‘An Experimental Approach to the Study of Autocracy and Democracy: A Preliminary Note’, Sociometry, 1 (1938), 292–300.

Chapter 26 1 N. Rudd, T. E. Page, Bristol Classical Press, 1983.

Chapter 27 1 Motivation and Personality (1954), p. ix. All the Maslow quotations in this chapter are from this book. 2 J. C. Smuts, Holism and Evolution (1926), p. ix.

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Chapter 28 1 C. N. Cofer and M. H. Appley, Motivation: Theory and Practice (1964). 2 The Human Side of Enterprise, Chapters 3 and 4. 3 R. Likert, New Patterns of Management (1961). 4 C. Argyris, Personality and Organization (1957) and Integrating the Individual and the Organization (1964). 5 J. H. Goldthorpe et al., The Affluent Worker (1968), p. 178. 6 M. D. Vernon, Human Motivation (1969), p. 161. 7 A. Fox, A Sociology of Work in Industry (1971), p. 10; cf. Professor J. Morris of Manchester Business School, ‘The Human Meaning of Work’ (unpublished paper, 1971): the important question is whether the instrumental attitude ‘be established as a norm for future action or seen as a tragic sign of failed aspirations’ (reported in The Times, 18 January 1971).

Chapter 29 1 F. Herzberg, B. Mausner, R. Peterson and D. Capwell, Job Attitudes: Review of Research and Opinion (1957). 2 Motivation and Personality, pp. 64–5, 81. Cf. Maslow’s nearest approach to Herzberg’s position: ‘The parallel contrast in the motivational life of a single person is between growth motivation and defence motivation (homeostasis, safety motivation, the reduction of pains and losses, etc.), Eupsychian Management (1964), p. xii. 3 For example, Professor Liam Hudson was aware of his own tendency towards dichotomy: ‘It is evident that I think in binary terms, and of tension between opposing values. This may prove a gross oversimplification… My hope of course is that there is enough in nature and the human mind that is polar to make my approach worth pursuing. If not, I can only throw up my hands – a binary beast – and leave the field to minds more subtle,’ Frames of Mind (1968), p. 93. 4 Others have noted the basic compatibility of the two approaches. For example, in Work and the Nature of Man (1968), pp. 140–1, Herzberg described a doctoral study by one of his students who had applied the motivation – hygiene theory, using a modified form of Maslow’s hierarchy, to 30 rehabilitation patients in a Cleveland hospital. 5 G. Gunn, J. Veroff and S. Feld, Americans View their Mental Health (1959); S. H. Peres, ‘An Exploration of Engineers’ and Scientists’ Motives as Related to Job Performance’, American Psychological Association (1963); H. Rosen, ‘Occupational Motivation of Research Workers and Development Personnel’, Personnel Administration, Vol. 26 (1963); M. R. Malinovsky and J. R. Barry, ‘Determinants of Work Attitudes’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 49 (1965); R. B. Ewen, C. L. Hulin, P. C. Smith and E. A. Locke, ‘An Empirical Test of Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory’, ibid., Vol. 50 (1966); C. A. Lindsay, E. Marks and L. Gorlow, ‘The Herzberg Theory: A Critique and Reformulation’, ibid., Vol. 51 (1967); G. B. Graen, ‘Testing Traditional and Two-Factor Hypotheses Concerning Job Satisfaction’, ibid., Vol. 52 (1968); W. W. Ronan, ‘Relative Importance of Job Characteristics’, and ‘Individual and Situational Variables Relating to Job Satisfaction, ibid., Vol. 54 (1970).

Notes and References 6 A Sociology of Work in Industry (1971), p. 23. 7 R. J. Burke, ‘Are Herzberg’s Motivators and Hygienes Unidimensional?’, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 50 (1966); D. A. Wood and W. K. LeBold, ‘The Multivariate Nature of Professional Job Satisfaction’, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 23 (1970). 8 R. Payne, ‘Factor Analysis of a Maslow-Type Need Satisfaction Questionnaire’, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 25 (1970). 9 R. Wild, A. B. Hill and C. C. Ridgeway, ‘Job Satisfaction and Labour Turnover amongst Women Workers’, The Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 7 (1970).

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Further reading Adler, A, The Science of Living, George Allen & Unwin, 1930 Adler, A, Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind (Translated by J Linton and R Vaughan), Faber & Faber, 1937 Alderfer, A, Existence, Relatedness and Growth: Human Needs in Organizations, New York, Free Press, 1972 Arendt, H, The Human Condition, University of Chicago, 1958 Argyris, C, Personality and Organization: The Conflict between System and the Individual, Harper & Row, 1957 Argyris, C, Integrating the Individual and the Organization, Wiley, 1964 Barnes, M C, Fogg, A H, Stephens, C N and Titman, L G, Company Organization: Theory and Practice, George Allen & Unwin, 1970 Berger, P L (ed), The Human Shape of Work: Studies in the Sociology of Occupations, Macmillan, 1964 Blauner, R, Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and his Industry, University of Chicago, 1964 Blaum, M L and Naylor, J C, Industrial Psychology, New York, Harper & Row, 1968 Borne, E and Henry, F, A Philosophy of Work (Translated by F Jackson), Sheed & Ward, 1938 Bottome, P, Alfred Adler: Apostle of Freedom, Faber and Faber, 3rd edn, 1957 Brown, J A C, The Social Psychology of Industry: Human Relations in the Factory, Penguin, 1954 Burns, T (ed), Industrial Man, Penguin, 1969 Campbell, J P, and others, Managerial Behaviour, Performance and Effectiveness, McGraw-Hill, 1970 Child, J, British Management Thought: A Critical Analysis, George Allen & Unwin, 1969 Cofer, C N and Appley, M H, Motivation: Theory and Practice, Wiley, 1964 Edholm, O G, The Biology of Work, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967 Emmett, D, Function, Purpose and Powers: Some Concepts in the Study of Individuals and Societies, Macmillan, 1958 Ford, R N, Motivation through Work Itself, American Management Association, 1969 Fox, A, A Sociology of Work in Industry, Collier-Macmillan, 1971 Fraser, R (ed) Work: Twenty Personal Accounts, Penguin, 1954 Friedmann, G, The Anatomy of Work: The Implications of Specialization, Heinemann, 1961 Fromm, E, Marx’s Concept of Man, Frederick Ungar, 1961 Furst, L R, Romanticism in Perspective, Macmillan, 1970 Gardner, J W, Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society, Harper & Row, 1963 Gellerman, S W, Motivation and Productivity, American Management Association, 1963 Gellerman, S W, Management by Motivation, American Management Association, 1968 Goldstein, K, The Organism, American Book, 1939

Further Reading Goldstein, K, Human Nature in the Light of Psychopathology, Harvard University Press, 1940 Goldthorpe, J, Lockwood, D, Bechhofer, F and Platt, J, The Affluent Worker: Industrial Attitudes and Behaviour, Cambridge University Press, 1968 Gough, J W, The Rise of the Entrepreneur, Batsford, 1969 Goyder, G, The Responsible Company, Blackwell, 1961 Gunn, G, Veroff, J and Feld, S, Americans View Their Mental Health, Basic Books, 1959 Hahn, C P, Dimensions of Job Satisfaction and Career Motivation, Pittsburg, American Institute of Research, 1959 Herzberg, F, Mausner, B, Peterson, R and Capwel, D, Job Attitudes: Review of Research and Opinion, Psychological Service of Pittsburg, 1957 Ivens, M (ed), Industry and Values: The Objectives and Responsibilities of Business, Harrap, 1970 Jung, C, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1933 Jung, C, The Integration of the Personality, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950 Katz, D and Kahn, R L, The Social Psychology of Organizations, Wiley, (2nd edn, 1978) Klein, L, The Meaning of Work, The Fabian Society, 1963 Lamont, C, The Philosophy of Humanism, Barrie & Rockliff, 5th edn, 1965 Lawler, E E, Motivation in Work Organizations, Brooks–Cole, 1973 Likert, R, New Patterns of Management, McGraw-Hill, 1961 Lubac, H de, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, Sheed & Ward, 1947 Lupton, T, On the Shop Floor, Pergamon, 1963 Lupton, T, Management and the Social Sciences, Hutchinson, 1966 Macmurray, J, The Self as Agent and Persons in Relation, Faber & Faber, 1957 and 1961. Gifford Lectures, 1953–4 Maslow, A H (ed), New Knowledge in Human Values, Harper & Bros, 1959 Maslow, A H, Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, Ohio State University Press, 1964 Maslow, A H, Eupsychian Management: A Journal, Richard D. Irwin and the Dorsey Press, 1965 Maslow, A H, Toward a Psychology of Being, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 2nd edn, 1968 Mayo, E, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, Macmillan, 1933 Mayo, E, The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization, Harvard University Press, 1945 McClelland, D C et al., The Achievement Motive, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953 McClelland, D C, The Achieving Society, Van Nostrand, 1961 O’Brien, R H, Dickinson, A M and Rosow, M P, Industrial Behaviour Modification: A Learning-based Approach to Industrial Organizational Problems, Pergamon, 1982 O’Toole, J, Work in America, MIT Press, 1973 Passmore, J, The Perfectibility of Man, Duckworth, 1970 Paul, W J and Robertson, K B, Job Enrichment and Employee Motivation, Gower Press, 1970 Robertson, I T and Smith, M, Motivation and Job Design: Theory, Research and Practice, Institute of Personnel Management, 1985 Roethlisberger, F J and Dickson, W J, Management and the Worker, Harvard University Press, 1959 Rogers, C, Counselling and Psychotherapy, Houghton Mifflin, 1942 Rogers, C, Client Centred Therapy, Houghton Mifflin, 1951 Rogers, C, On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy, London, Constable, 1961

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Leadership and Motivation Sayles, L R, Behaviour of Industrial Work Groups, John Wiley, 1958 Schacht, R, Alienation, Allen & Unwin, 1971 Schein, E H, Organizational Psychology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1980 Smigel, E O (ed), Work and Leisure: A Contemporary Social Problem, New Haven (Connecticut), College and University Press, 1963 Steers, R M and Porter, L W, Motivation and Work Behavior, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1979 Tannenbaum, A S, Social Psychology of the Work Organization, California, Wadsworth; and London, Tavistock, 1966 Tilgher, A, Work: What it has meant to men through the ages (translated from Italian by D C Fisher), Harraps, 1931 Turner, A N and Lawrence, P, Industrial Jobs and the Worker, Harvard University Press, 1965 Vernon, M D, Human Motivation, Cambridge University Press, 1969 Vroom, V H, Work and Motivation, John Wiley, 1964 Weick, K E, The Social Psychology of Organizing, Addison–Wesley, 1979 Whyte, W F, Money and Motivation, Harper & Bros, 1955 Whyte, W F, Men at Work, Irwin & Dorsey, 1961

The classic books on motivation Herzberg, F, Work and the Nature of Man, London, Stapels Press, 1968 (Published in America in 1966) Herzberg, F, Mausner, B and Snyderman, B B, The Motivation to Work, John Wiley & Sons, 2nd edn, 1959 Maslow, A H, Motivation and Personality, Harper & Row, 1954 McGregor, D, The Human Side of Enterprise, McGraw Hill, 1960

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Part Five Leadership for Innovation I

nnovation is the key to winning – and keeping – leadership in world markets. New ideas and new ways of doing things are the main ingredients in sustained business success. But how is the necessary innovation going to be achieved? By whom? That is the theme of this book. Innovation calls for a special form of creativity, which I call team creativity. Of course, all organizations are teams – or at least they are potentially so. The effective production and marketing of goods or services these days – delivery on time, at the required quality and at a competitive price – call for high-performance teamwork. But to improve those existing products and to develop new products and services, requires a different order of teamwork – team creativity. In brief, those organizations which practise team creativity will survive and prosper; those that do not will probably decline and disappear. The graveyard of business is already littered with companies that could not or would not innovate in the face of inevitable change. Will your organization soon be occupying a place in that graveyard? If you are quite certain that in 10 years’ time your organization will be providing exactly the same products or services to exactly the same customers, then you have no need to read this book. But before you act on that conclusion I suggest you ask six or seven other people in your company – at least four of them under the age of 30 – if they agree with you. They may have some surprises for you. The crew often have a more informed opinion about the seaworthiness of a ship than the captain.

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By the time you have finished reading Part Five you should have: ●● ●●

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a clear understanding of the concepts of innovation and team creativity; some sketchmaps or frameworks of what an innovative organization should look like in terms of its philosophy, strategy, management and structure; a firm grasp of the nature of team creativity and how individuals can build on one another’s ideas; some knowledge of how to provide the leadership necessary if team creativity is to flourish; the inspiration to become both a creative leader and a creative team member.

If you introduce the team creativity approach into your workplace it will greatly enhance everyone’s enjoyment of work. For people get much more out of work if they put their minds fully into it. As Noël Coward said, ‘Work is more fun than fun.’

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Chapter Thirty-two What is innovation?

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He that will not apply new remedies must accept new evils: for time is the greatest innovator.  Francis Bacon

T

o innovate means literally to bring in or introduce something new – some new idea, method or device. The novelty may, of course, be more apparent than real, for newness is a relative term. What is new to me may already be familiar to you. But innovation as a wider concept has certain important facets. In particular it combines two major overlapping processes: having new ideas and implementing them.

Invention and innovation The first part of this equation – having new ideas – is better indicated by such words as ‘creation’ or ‘invention’. It is the subject of Part Six, The Art of Creative Thinking. Because all of us have the mental capacity to synthesize as well as to analyse we can all be taught to be creative at a low level. Rather few people – but still a surprisingly large number – indulge in what might properly be called creative thinking. Yet very few of those will produce ideas, creations or inventions which are hailed as both original and of long-lasting value to society. Not all such new ideas, however potentially useful to society, are actually de­ veloped. For in order for the idea to be realized and put to work the process of innovation has to occur. Creation, invention or discovery focus upon the conception of the idea; innovation covers the whole process whereby the new idea is brought into productive use. At once you can see that innovation takes us into the realms of organization, money, buildings, management and production, and eventually into society at large. Without this extension into the practical world any new idea will remain just a new idea, lodged in some individual’s brain.

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It follows that not all creative individuals are innovators, nor are all innovators invariably creative or inventive as individuals. Inventors, for example, can be notor­ iously impractical and unbusinesslike. They are sometimes robbed of the fruits of their success by unscrupulous entrepreneurs, who take their ideas to market and pay them no proper reward.

C a s e s t u dy   Google – the world’s most powerful internet search engine What made Google the fastest growing company in the history of the world? The story began with two creative-thinking computer nerds at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Together they invented a convincing answer to the question that arises in the mind of every internet user: ‘How can I find, in order of importance, the web pages relevant to my present concern?’ A core ingredient of their solution is a program they developed called PageRank, which signals the importance of any given web page by counting the number of other pages linked to it. But the formula they use to ‘score’ the relevance of a given website blends in other criteria as well: how often key words appear on a given page; whether it appears in the page’s title; and so on. Armed with these insights, the innovative partners founded the company in a garage in 1998 and based 100 the name on a misspelling of the word for the number 10 : the googol. Its stated mission is ‘to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible’. Equally innovative was Google’s business strategy. No money was spent on advertising: being both incredibly useful and free, its promotion took place entirely by word of mouth. Meanwhile, Page and Brin were raking in money through a supremely simple device: the ‘sponsored links’ section on the right of each search page. Every time you click on any of the ‘AdWords’ in that space, you’re taken to the website of the company which has bid for the privilege of ‘owning’ those precise ‘AdWords’; and the company pays Google for each click. The small ads are hugely profitable: in the six months to June 2005 they earned Google some $2.6 billion. Yet the future of Google – like all companies – depends on creativity and innovation. Google’s philosophy is to give its highly paid staff (its payroll features one of the world’s highest concentrations of computer science PhDs) free rein. Employees are urged to devote 20 per cent of their time to their own pet projects. Hence the development of Google News (a global news engine which searches national and regional news pages and has struck fear into conventional news organizations); Froogle (the shopping service); Google Talk (a new way of making free phone calls over the net that terrifies the telecoms industry); and Google Book Search (a scheme to ‘make the full text of the world’s books searchable by anyone’).

Innovation as incremental change Innovation is not dependent solely upon new inventions. Existing products and services, organizations and institutions, should also undergo change intended to

What Is Innovation?

improve them. In this case change is not a quantum leap forward, but a series of steps – some small, some large – in a desired direction. Innovation, as the introduction of change in this sense, has the essential characteristic of being gradual. It is concerned with the smaller modifications or alterations in what already exists. This kind of incremental change tends to be of little interest to the creative thinker or inventor, who is seeking a more radical break with past tradition or what is presently available. From this characteristic flow three important consequences. Firstly, it is much easier to plan for innovation than it is for creation or invention. The latter is highly dependent upon the creative individual, and by its nature cannot be required by a given date or even by any date. That does not mean to say that creativity cannot be encouraged or stimulated by having the right climate or culture in organizations: of course it can. Secondly, innovation is more positive and less threatening than other forms of change. Thirdly, everyone – managers and staff – can be fully involved in innovation. Let us briefly consider each of three significant characteristics in turn.

The management of change ‘Observe always that everything is the result of change,’ wrote the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius. ‘The universe is change.’ From the earliest days of history men and women have been aware of both change and continuity as the key elements in their experience of life. Indeed, if life is like weaving a pattern on the loom of time, then change and continuity are its warp and weft. Wise men have always known that you should not ignore change for you cannot stop it happening. ‘We must obey the greatest law of change,’ said Edmund Burke. ‘It is the most powerful law of nature.’ This act of acceptance is the first step towards exercising control over change. But can you really manage change? Not entirely, it must be admitted. We experience change as something that is happening in the world and as something that is perhaps happening to us personally or to the organization we work for. As creative and innovative individuals, or as members of innovative organizations, we are also sources or agents of change. Waters from our springs or streams feed the sea of change. Change creates change, and so the volume and pace of change – technological, social, political and economic – increases. No wonder some people fear that change will get out of hand. The Latin word for ‘hand’, as I have already pointed out, is manus, and it is the root of our English word ‘manage’. Originally it was applied to handling things in the sense of controlling their movement towards desired ends. Thus a few centuries ago men could talk about managing a warhorse or a ship at sea, or managing a sword in a duel, or managing an army in the field.

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It was then applied to managing institutions and businesses. It makes sense to talk about managing money, for money is a thing. But its application to people – in such phrases as ‘man-management’ or ‘the management of people’ – is more pro­ blematic. For people are not things. People need to be led and motivated, rather than managed. When it comes to managing change in an organization the chief executive and senior management team should be able to sense the drift of change, and make sure that their organization is aligned with it. That requires a sense of direction and also considerable powers of leadership in order to keep people moving together along the same path of change. In some cases, in order to achieve this sense of movement dictated by the tides and winds of change, it is necessary to change people’s attitudes. For it is essential that attitudes are right. If you do not take change by the hand, you can be sure that it will take you by the throat. While innovation is a natural human activity, in the context of organizational life it should be both intentional and planned as far as possible. If you fail to plan you plan to fail. It stems from a universal acceptance of the fact that an organization which does not confront change, or sees no need to innovate, will stagnate, decay and eventually die. Trees begin to die from the top downwards, and so this sorry process usually stems from the chief executive and those around him or her. Hence, in Chapter 37, we will look searchingly at the leadership of the chief executive in changing organizations. All innovations, then, are changes, but not all changes are innovations. An in­ novation is a deliberate and specific introduction of what is new, aimed at accomplishing the goals of the organization more effectively. Innovation of this kind does not happen by accident. It calls for good leadership and management at all levels of the organization.

Innovation is positive Major change may come as a challenge to some people, but it comes as a threat to others. The temper of innovation is less threatening, however, simply because it does not introduce itself in the guise of the dramatically different. Initially it is not a complete transformation of the system. Incremental innovation, it is true, may mount up eventually to something much bigger. Indeed, it may reach the point where the purpose or identity of the organization is called into question. That may lead in turn to radical reform, or it may result in another organization being set up. But the spirit of innovation is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. As the Japanese proverb puts it: ‘I would rather teach one hundred men to take one step forwards than teach one man to take a hundred steps.’

What Is Innovation?

For managing innovation by definition is about making things happen. And if pro­ posed or planned changes arouse too much antagonism, or prove to be unacceptable to a critically large number of people, then they are usually inadvisable. Only unwise leaders try to push change against a sea of determined and sustained opposition. If that happens to you, you have come by the wrong path. But innovation that better satisfies a perceived want, or reduces a source of annoyance or complaint, will soon gather a following and win acceptance.

All can participate Each person at work has approximately 10,000 million brain cells, together with a full range of mental facilities, notably analysing, synthesizing and valuing abilities. In all of us these processes can take place intentionally on a conscious plane of thought and also – less intentionally and less predictably – in our unconscious minds, giving us insights, intuitions, brainwaves, gut feelings, intimations, daydreams and the occasional pearl of a genuinely new idea. As a general principle people with a ‘hands-on’ involvement in any product or service – provided they have a modicum of interest in their work – will tend to have new ideas for doing it better. These will usually, but not always, be quite small or incremental improvements. But they are a vital part of the general process of in­ novation. Given encouragement and a listening leadership, this natural harvest of ideas can be increased dramatically. Any truly innovative organization should have ‘buckets of ideas’ available if it sets up some simple systems for lowering the buckets into the well and drawing them up. Interest leads to ideas. In turn, the recognition of ideas by management leads to more job interest, greater involvement and deeper commitment. Even if – for good reasons that are explained to them – a team member’s proposals are not acceptable, or, if acceptable cannot be implemented, there is no loss of motivation. The important thing from the motivational perspective is the feeling of being really part of the enterprise, with a full share of responsibility in developing the quality of the product or service. Identification matters more than the fate of any particular suggestion.

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KeyPoints ●●

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Innovation is more than having new ideas: it includes the process of successfully introducing them or making things happen in a new way. It turns ideas into useful, practicable and commercial products or services. As nature illustrates, most change happens gradually. Innovation encompasses this gradual improvement of existing ideas and forms, products and services as well as the marketing of new inventions or creations. Like snowballs, these changes soon add up to a programme of continuous innovation. Programmes of useful change call for managerial leaders. Change throws up the need for leaders; leaders tend to bring about change. Although innovation is a natural process it is much more effective if it is properly led. That means that it must be welcomed, planned for, controlled, monitored and, above all, guided towards the ends of the organization. Avoid change for change’s sake, for it rarely pays off. Thoughtless alteration or modification can lead to a loss of core quality in a product or service. ‘Striking to be better,’ wrote Shakespeare, ‘oft we mar what is well.’ Few of us can or should become professional creative thinkers, such as inventors, artists, composers or authors, but we can all participate in the team creativity of innovation. Each part or role in the drama of turning ideas into useful reality calls for creativity, imagination, experience and ingenuity.

“

Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognize surprising and unusual phenomena. Herbert Simon, Nobel laureate for economics

349

Chapter Thirty-three The conditions for successful innovation

“

What’s the secret of entrepreneurial success? It’s knowing how to use OPB (other people’s brains) and OPM (other people’s money).  J B Fuqua, Chairman, Fuqua Industries Inc

D

oes your organization have a strategy for change? In particular, has it given stra­tegic consideration to creating the necessary conditions for innovation? The challenge of improving the quality, reliability and performance of products and services while being competitive on price actually calls for a dual strategy. Firstly, continuous change designed to improve productivity and profitability of existing products has to be planned. Secondly, there has to be a strategy for introducing new or better products. Although no magic formulas exist, there are six necessary climatic conditions which enable innovation to flourish. You may like to give your organization a mark out of 10 for each of these six characteristics as you read this chapter.

Management commitment ‘Change? That’s the last thing we want around here. Things are bad enough already.’ The manager who made that remark certainly lacked any commitment to planned, innovative change. For too many managers are merely reactive to change. They change only when they have to do so. ‘Too little and too late’ is often the epitaph you will read on their monuments in the graveyard of failed companies. Some managers acknowledge the need for change in a general sense, but they don’t accept the practical implications for themselves and their companies. ‘Everyone likes innovation,’ said Walter Wriston, Chairman of First National City Bank, ‘until it affects himself, and then it’s bad.’

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Such managers are like little Napoleons. For Napoleon once declared to his marshals: ‘One must change one’s tactics every 10 years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.’ But he did not follow his own advice. His tactics were so pre­ dictable at Waterloo that he gave Wellington an enormous competitive advantage. It enabled Wellington to end the career of his great adversary. The writing that spells out the importance of managing change before it manages you has been on the wall for some time now in the hard school of experience. ‘An established company which in an age demanding innovation is not capable of innovation is doomed to decline and extinction,’ predicted management sage Peter F Drucker many years ago. ‘And a management which in such a period does not know how to manage innovation is incompetent and unequal to its task. Managing innovation will increasingly become a challenge to management, and especially to top management, and a touchstone of its competence.’ The top leadership team – the chief executive and executive directors – need to show visibly and audibly that they are committed to the dual strategy of positive innovation outlined above. Their weight and influence is necessary to overcome the barriers and resistance to useful change which innovators often encounter. For the process of innovation may become too slow if vested interests are allowed their head. What may seem to you a corporate opportunity may be perceived by others as a departmental threat. It is your job as a leader at any level in the organization to facilitate desirable change and to encourage that attitude throughout the management team.

Positive strategic thinking A corporate strategy should answer the following questions: ●●

What business are we in?

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Where are we now?

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Where do we want to be in three to five years’ time?

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Where might we be in 10 years’ time?

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What are our strengths and weaknesses?

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Have we the resources to implement our strategic plans?

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What might be the main threats from our competitors?

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Have we a capability for dealing with the unexpected or the unknown?

These questions are deceptively simple. For, as Clausewitz pointed out, ‘What needs to be done in war is simple, but in war it is very difficult to do simple things.’ Business is certainly like war in that respect.

The Conditions for Successful Innovation

Getting the right answer to the first question in the above list is especially im­ portant. It is not easy. If you make it too general you run the risk of losing sight of your particular niche of excellence. If you make it too specific, on the other hand, you may eliminate areas for creative development and innovation. The US company, O M Scott, it is reported, spent a year deciding between two core mission statements: ‘to make fertilizers’ or ‘to keep lawns green’. It finally chose the second purpose. It led to investment in facilities to produce a variety of chemicals and implements to keep lawns green. Such product diversification would not have been consistent with its traditional assumption that it was in the business of producing fertilizers.

The last question in the adjacent list is also important in the context of innovation. A wise general keeps a reserve in order to respond to the unforeseen, and so should a chief executive. That contingency may be an unexpected market shift or the sudden emergence of a new technology. Having a corporate strategy should therefore include the provision for an uncommitted reserve, a capability in terms of human and material resources to respond to unpredictable (but not improbable) future opportunities or necessities. Above all, innovation should not be a reactive process but part of a strategy that gives direction. It needs to be fed by the dynamo of a corporate sense of purpose. Such a strategy will balance the present needs of producing and marketing existing goods and services – the commercial priority – with the middle- and long-term requirement of research and development. A balanced and coherent strategy will enable your organization to build on its past successes and create its desired future. It is the only sure pathway to profitable growth.

A long-term perspective The criterion of short-term profit – the bottom line each quarter – is clearly in­ appropriate when it comes to developing and introducing new products and services. ‘No great thing is created suddenly,’ wrote the Roman philosopher Epictetus, ‘any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.’ So it is with any commercially viable new product or service. In comparison with Japan, for example, where banks and corporations take a more long-term view, Western financial institutions and shareholders in such countries as the UK and the United States are notorious for their short-termism. Such purblind thinking and policy-making cannot encourage industry to innovate. Banks in particular in these threatened countries need to recover a larger purpose than mere short-term profit. For they exist in part to provide a service to business and industry, who are the engine-room of their economies. Too often they fail to do so.

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At least they should now adjust their sights to take a more medium-term view – the good old British compromise – when deciding on the investments they should make for the future. British entrepreneur Richard Branson is among those who have brought their public companies back into private ownership. He resented what he sees as too much emphasis on producing short-term profits at the expense of long-term growth. ‘Being private enables us to adopt the Japanese approach of building market share slowly and then waiting for profits,’ says Branson. ‘Most of the year, running a public company, was spent worrying about next year’s profits. Since going private, I haven’t once asked for a profit forecast.’

But risk-averse financial institutions should not be made into scapegoats. Industry’s own commitment of money to research and development must also be examined. Where do you stand in this particular league table in relation to your principal domestic competitors? How does your national average of industrial investment in research and development compare with that of other nations’ industries? It is important to know the answers to these questions. For, as the proverb says, ‘If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.’

Responsiveness to change Some organizations suffer from hardening of the arteries and stiffening of the joints. Some of these victims are still young when this creeping disease of organizational arthritis hits them. They gradually become rigid and inflexible. Addicted to the well-tried formula, they become steadily and unconsciously more averse to the new and unfamiliar. Increasing inflexibility in attitude and practice eventually makes any sort of improvement seem initially too costly. The subsequent lack of positive change that stems from this attitude can usually be rationalized in such excuses as, ‘It’s too expensive’ or, ‘We are successful already – why change?’ It is important to remember that this organizational disease is entirely self-inflicted. Flexibility is the key quality to the truly innovative organization. The flexible person, team or organization is capable of responding or conforming to changing or new situations. That places a high premium on communication. Barriers between staff in different areas need to be minimized. Keep open the communication channels between researchers and production people, between researchers and market people, and between researchers and the customer. In organizational terms that also means flattening the hierarchical pyramid and pushing decision making downwards or outwards to where the organization interacts with its environment. In short, it means to create an entrepreneurial and matrixtype management structure while preserving the efficient monitoring system and disciplines essential in any large organization.

The Conditions for Successful Innovation

In a flexible and open organization adjustments to new developments and changes are quickly made. There is an intense curiosity about everything. Problems are broken into their component parts, relationships among variables are understood and fundamental aspects and critical parts of a problem are grasped. Usually there is more than one feasible solution or way forwards. So that if one solution or course doesn’t work out a different approach is soon developed and implemented. The importance of structures for growth can hardly be stressed enough. They should assure innovators both support and stimulation. The former Chairman and Chief Executive of 3M, Lewis W Lehr, explains how that remarkably innovative company is structured for organic growth: With about 40 product divisions, various projects and departments, and about 50 overseas companies, 3M has close to 100 major profit centres. Yet each one must feel much like a free-standing business. Basically, division managers run their own shops. They make their own decisions, develop their own new products – and take responsibility for the consequences. As teams within a division develop successful new products and businesses, division management is responsible for spinning them off into self-sustaining enterprises. We call this process ‘divide and grow’. Our policy of dividing for growth is based on a discovery made years ago. We found that when a division reaches a certain size, it may spend too much time on established products and markets. It then has less time to spend on new products and business. When we break out a new business, we appoint a new management team. We give people an opportunity to identify with the new business. And we find, almost without exception, that the new unit begins to grow at a faster rate. Take, for example, our tape business. From our original Scotch brand masking tape and transparent tape have come four separate divisions, with countless lines of tape for industrial, commercial and home use. Also out of our tape laboratories came a new surgical tape and surgical drape. These products gave birth to our healthcare business and eventually to our Medical, Surgical and Orthopaedic Products Divisions. And out of these same labs came a line of electrical-grade tapes. These in their turn spawned several divisions specializing in electrical connectors, terminals, insulation and so forth. Our corporate structure is specifically designed to encourage innovators to take an idea and run with it. If they succeed, they may find themselves running their own business under the 3M umbrella.

There are certainly some similarities in 3M’s approach with that of Google.

Acceptance of risk It is virtually impossible to innovate without accepting an element of risk. You can and should calculate risk and adjust your exposure to match your resources. But you cannot eliminate risk and still see yourself or your organization as being creative and innovative: ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ The downsides of risk are mistakes and failure. In any entrepreneurial and in­ novative enterprise there will be such failures. They are, of course, quite different

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from failures that arise from indecision and inaction. Business leaders must accept this downside and pick up the bill bravely. The possibility of failure should not be used as an excuse – it often happens – to pull in the horns of creative thinking and innovation. There should be a post mortem after each failure – in order to learn the lessons, not to award the punishments. Usually you will discover that there were some warning signs of impending failure that were ignored. One important lesson to be learnt from such post mortems is that managers should face the unpleasant task of ending potential failures before they gather too much momentum. ‘There are risks and costs to a programme of action,’ said John F Kennedy. ‘But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.’ In other words, if you take risks you may make mistakes, but if you do not take risks you are doomed to failure. Again, Lewis W Lehr has some wise things to say about the need to accept mistakes – but only if they are first-time ones. The corporate culture of 3M has a clear policy or tradition on the matter: The cost of failure is a major concern for innovators – since that is what will happen to most of them at one time or another. We estimate at 3M that about 60 per cent of our formal new-product programmes never make it. When this happens, the important thing is not to crucify the people involved. They should know that their jobs are not in jeopardy if they fail. Otherwise, too many would-be innovators will give in to the quite natural temptation to play it safe. Few things will choke innovation more quickly than the threat of losing a job if you fail. We have a tradition of accepting honest mistakes and failures without harsh penalties. We see mistakes as a normal part of business and an essential by-product of innovation. But we expect our mistakes to have originality. We can afford almost any mistake once. Those who choose to lead high-risk, new-product programmes know that their employment will not be threatened. This attitude of management eliminates one of the major barriers to innovation in large companies.

As any business grows, it becomes necessary to delegate responsibility and to encour­ age people to use their initiative. That means allowing people to do their own jobs in their own way. If the person is essentially right, the mistakes that he or she makes are not as serious as would be the great mistake of trying to specify in an autocratic way how everything should be done or to insist on all decisions being made at head office. A top management that is destructively critical when mistakes occur will smother initiative and enterprise. When that happens – goodbye profitable growth.

The right internal environment The previous five factors are all contributors to the right culture or climate in which new ideas can be hatched and significant changes implemented.

The Conditions for Successful Innovation

Apart from tending to have a fluid and organic rather than rigid and mechanistic form, innovative organizations encourage participation in decision-making, problemsolving and creative thinking. They have policies or guidelines rather than rules, keeping the latter to the minimum. They have good internal communications, more by word of mouth than by memo or letter. No one expects deferential behaviour, but people do respect their colleagues – including their leaders. ‘Bosses demand respect; leaders earn their respect.’ The difficulty, of course, is to combine these ingredients in the corporate culture which favours new ideas and innovation with the high degree of structure, discipline and routine that is required to manufacture products and deliver a proper customer service. Not all members of the organizational team will be equally capable in both aspects of the business. But then the essential characteristic of a team is that it is composed of people with complementary temperaments, sets of qualities, interests, knowledge and skills.

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‘If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?’ The top management team should seek ways of making their commitment to positive and useful change visible to all concerned. Strategic thinking is an escape from the tyranny of the present. It leads you to think in more general terms about the desired future. Are you a leader for tomorrow as well as today? If an army marches on its stomach then a business marches on its investments. Research and development is the seedcorn for future innovation. It is not a cost but an investment, one with no predictable outcome. Is your organization making that investment? Flexibility is the ability – personal as well as corporate – for modifying, altering and perhaps radically changing what you are doing. Rigid or inflexible structures produce inertia. Risk is the brother of innovation. As the Japanese proverb says: ‘Unless you enter the tiger’s den you cannot take the cubs.’ Relaxed, informal relationships encourage innovation, while routine deadens it. The results of yesterday’s innovations have to be manufactured, marketed and sold. If you do not create a satisfied customer today you can create nothing tomorrow.

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It takes genius and courage to originate, not imitate.  Anon

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Chapter Thirty-four Organizing for team creativity

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The working of great institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self-interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is thought.  George Santayana

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hen you organize anything you impose upon it sequential or spatial form, or both. People or things are put together; they are fitted into their proper place in relation to one another. The end result of the human activity of organizing is often an organization: a complex structure of interdependent and subordinate elements whose relations and properties are largely determined by their function in the whole. The most common metaphor for such man-made organisms is the human body. That analogy gives us such words as member, head and corporate (from the Latin verb ‘to make into a body’).

Order and freedom All organizations are compromises between order and freedom. Our desire to order, and our willingness to accept order, is part of our social nature. Pragmatically we know that unless we cooperate with one another, accept some common procedures and play the part assigned to us, nothing much will get done. Order reduces con­ fusion. It makes the successful accomplishment of some common tasks more likely. By submitting to order, however, we give up some of our personal freedom. It is part of the investment we make in any corporate enterprise. We hope, of course, that the rewards will be ample repayment. Now serious creative thinking demands a great deal of freedom. The less constraints you are under – subjective or objective – the better. Although creative

Organizing for Team Creativity

thinking is much more of a social activity than most people imagine, creative thinkers are often markedly individualistic. They can be rather solitary, more by necessity than temperamental preference. They need fairly long periods of time on their own. Nor can they always predict when they will need to be alone with their thoughts. This is why creative thinkers do not tend to make good organizational men or women. But without such talented or gifted individuals organizations will not develop significantly new ideas. You can see the classic dilemma. Without creative thinking there will be no strategic innovation. But creative thinkers either do not want to belong to organizations or find that when they do join them their creativity is dim­ inished or restricted by the constraints imposed by organizational life.

Integrating creativity into industry Broadly speaking, there are two ways of solving the problem, which are not mutually incompatible. First, research and development – as creative thinking is called in industry – can be hived off into separate organizations. Most major companies, for example, have their research establishments. These can interact with one another and with the powerhouses for new ideas funded by government, such as national research laboratories and universities. Good communication between researchers within a large group of companies is essential, for many creative developments can take place by linking up technologies that others see as separate. The former Chairman and Chief Executive of 3M stresses its importance: A pervasive element of our climate of innovation is communication – a constant flow of good information in our technical community. It is hard to overestimate the value of communication in a multinational company. We are a highly diversified organization, to say the least. We have about 40 separate divisions. We have about 85 technologies. And we have literally tens of thousands of individual products. Because our product divisions are fairly autonomous, it is natural for technical people to stay squirrelled away in their own labs, concentrating only on their division’s technologies. To prevent this kind of isolation, we maintain a massive and continuing effort to promote cross-communication among the various innovators. Through an organization called the Technical Forum, our people are in continuing dialogue with one another. The Technical Forum has more than two dozen chapters and committees. In one year they staged more than 160 events. We try to provide incentives and opportunities for innovators to discuss their ideas with kindred spirits and to reinforce one another.

The second approach is to endeavour to make your whole organization into an innovative one. If you succeed it will be a much less hostile environment for creative thinkers. You can contain and manage creativity within it instead of having to farm

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it out. Though 3M does have its own research laboratories it is clear that it sees them as only spearheads of a general innovative advance across a broad front of the organization’s life. There are pros and cons for both approaches. Creative and non-creative people are like oil and water: they do not always mix well. ‘Managing and innovation do not always fit comfortably together,’ adds Lehr: That’s not surprising. Managers are people who like order. They like forecasts to come out as planned. In fact, managers are often judged on how much order they produce. Innovation, on the other hand, is often a disorderly process. Many times, perhaps most times, innovation does not turn out as planned. As a result, there is tension between managers and innovators.

To separate the functions of creating and developing new products or services from the functions of production, marketing and accounting – in the sense of having them take place in different organizations or sub-organizations within the group – does therefore offer to solve a lot of problems. It still leaves the possibility of the more commercial sides of the organization employing managers and work people who can suggest detailed and more incremental improvements in existing products and services, and actively encouraging them to do so. The specialist research organizations – as we may call them – for their part are relieved of the necessary disciplines and systems required for day-to-day manufacturing, distributing and selling, together with some of the financial controls needed to monitor the efficiency and profitability of a commercial enterprise. But they have their own problems, not merely those that stem from managing their own budgets. If they are to be effective – especially in the fields of science and technology – they have to become large. Sheer size, together with the need for financial accountability for the range of materials and the numbers of people involved, breeds – yes, you have guessed it – organization. And organization is antithetical to creativity. For organization in turn can breed bureaucracy, and bureaucracy kills creativity.

Getting the balance right There is a general trend for research organizations to become more like businesses, while at the same time industrial organizations are beginning to take on a more creative and innovative role. There are, of course, natural limits to both these pro­ cesses which wise leaders will recognize and respect. It is part of their key respon­ sibility to remind their organizations from time to time what they are there for. It is easy to construct a continuum of organizations according to their relative involvement in the conception and development of new ideas, as shown in Figure 34.1. You will notice that the diagonal line does not meet the corner intersection. In other words, no organization today is wholly creative or completely productive.

Organizing for Team Creativity

F i g u r e 34.1   The Creative/Productive Continuum

CREATIVE

PRODUCTIVE

‘Think tanks’

Research and Development Laboratories

Universities

Industrial Commercial Companies

Administrative Offices

The latter cannot be the case; partly because organizations employ people, and people by their nature cannot avoid thinking, and thinking in turn leads to new ideas; and partly because an organization which solely interested itself in reproducing existing goods and services, regardless of technological or market change, would soon – as we have seen – cease to exist. No ‘creative’ organization, on the other hand, can exist without producing something of use or value. It may not employ industrial processes, still less mass production methods, but it is producing outputs. Although it may not be in the business of making profits, it is almost certainly in the business of managing costs. Therefore it has to adopt policies and procedures designed to make the most productive use of the resources at its disposal. That will give it a degree of production orientation.

Leadership for innovation It follows from this analysis that the direction of research or ideas-oriented institutions does call for the distinctive qualities of leadership, coupled with management knowledge and abilities, especially in the areas of management finance and marketing (remembering that you have to market your services within a large group or organization as well as to outside potential clients). Equally, it is plain that to transform a conservative, dull, partially successful (thanks to yesterday’s innovations), rather bureaucratic and inward-looking company, staffed by managers steeped in that culture, into one that is young, dynamic, forward-looking, entrepreneurial and innovative, also calls for a rare combination of leadership and management abilities. When it comes to leadership challenge, that is like attempting

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Mount Everest in mid-winter without oxygen. There are lesser summits, however, in less harsh conditions that await their conquerors. The next two chapters are short case studies. One of the organizations concerned, the Laboratory for Molecular Biology at Cambridge University, is world famous as the laboratory where the secret of DNA was unravelled. It lies towards the left-hand end of the continuum in Figure 34.1. Your challenge will be to see what factors or features of that highly successful organization for team creativity are transferable to your own organization. The second case study focuses on Soichiro Honda. It is an example of a business leader who deliberately and successfully developed an entrepreneurial and innovative philosophy in his organization – one that lives on today.

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Order banishes chaos. Organizing reduces confusion and introduces formality into relationships. But chaos, confusion and informality are the seedbeds of creativity. Organizations can delegate or subcontract the work of innovation, in the form of research and development, to specialist units. They can also seek to transform themselves into innovative organizations. These options are not mutually exclusive. Any organization falls somewhere on the Creative/ Productive continuum. It is important to establish both where you are now and where you want to be on that continuum, for it affects your whole understanding of leadership and management. Innovative organizations do not happen by chance. They are the end products of good leadership and management. The essence lies in getting the balance right between freedom and order, between the anatomy of the parts and the integrity of the whole. Innovative organizations outside your field of work may hold secrets for you. Suspend your natural impulse to discard the experience of others in different walks of life as irrelevant to your purposes. In this context you can learn from other organizations that may have a much higher requirement for creativity than your own. How do they go about organizing themselves?

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All establishments die of dignity. They are too proud to think themselves ill, and to take a little physic.  Sydney Smith

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Chapter Thirty-five Case Study: The DNA Laboratory

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Laboratories are the temples of wealth and of the future. There it is that humanity grows, becomes stronger and better.  Louis Pasteur

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ot long after I became the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies I conducted a series of some 15 programmes on leadership for university heads. ‘If you are interested in leadership you should go and look at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University.’ My informant, a partici­pant in one of these seminars, was in fact a senior staff member of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. He kindly arranged for me to visit the Laboratory and to meet its Director, the Nobel laureate Dr Sydney Brenner. The Laboratory of Molecular Biology occupies a rather undistinguished building five storeys high on the outskirts of Cambridge. Yet this is one of the most successful research centres in the world. A few weeks after my visit one of its members, Dr Cesar Milstein, was awarded a Nobel prize, bringing the number of Nobel laureates nurtured by the Laboratory to seven. The double helix structure of the genetic material DNA was first unravelled at the Laboratory by Jim Watson and Francis Crick. Here the complete structures were worked out for proteins, the other fundamental chemicals of life. The key work on viruses and chromosomes was also done here. For a laboratory founded only in 1947 that is a dazzling record of creative science. ‘What is your secret?’ I asked Dr Brenner. His answers, I believe, point to certain principles which apply to all organizations that want to be creative or innovative.

No class or hierarchical differences After its inception as a two-man operation – Max Perutz and John Kendrew – the unit which later became the Laboratory was first housed in Cambridge University’s

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world-renowned Cavendish Laboratory. When it moved to its own building, Max Perutz, as the new Laboratory’s first chairman, had an opportunity to realize his ideas about how creative work should be organized. ‘One was that there shouldn’t be any class differences,’ Perutz had said. ‘At the Cavendish, scientists and technicians had their tea in different places. I didn’t want any hierarchies or titles.’ Brenner told me that he had preserved that tradition so clearly established by Perutz, the founding architect of the Laboratory. Thus the present canteen on the top floor is used by everybody for tea or coffee breaks as well as for lunch. Here they can exchange ideas across the tables. Random contacts that happen there are regarded as very important, so the canteen remains open all day. In order to be creative, incidentally, such conversations should not be narrowly focused on present-day concerns, or even upon the subject itself. ‘I shared a room with Francis Crick for 20 years,’ Sydney Brenner mentioned to me. ‘At least two hours a day we talked nonsense about anything.’ Individual offices are rare. ‘The great difficulty in laboratories is to get people to collaborate,’ Perutz had said. ‘If people have their own offices which they lock up at night, and their own budgets, they tend not to work together. They worry about whose budget should be contributing most. So we decided on the minimum number of offices, and big labs, and as many shared facilities as possible to throw people together.’ Again, as Dr Brenner told me, he had decided to perpetuate these arrangements. Working side by side, chemists learn from microbiologists how to grow the bacteria and viruses they need for their experiments; biologists find out from chemists how to carry out complicated syntheses. When, for example, Frederick Sanger’s work on the structure of genetic material became so complex that he needed to use computers, another group of scientists made available to him a specialist in computer work from within their own number. In the Laboratory there is an emphasis on informality. The lack of hierarchical structure helped here, for the senior people were no more than ‘first among equals’ as the leaders and managers of their small research teams. All this serves to en­ courage cross-boundary work. There is a minimal amount of paperwork, too, and business as far as possible is transacted by word-of-mouth.

Leading by example Unlike management, the concept of leadership implies that the leader is producing his or her own output as well as coordinating or guiding the work of others. Morale at the Laboratory clearly benefits from the fact that the senior staff are still doing experimental research, not sitting behind desks and managing researchers. ‘In the United States,’ said Brenner, ‘senior people are out of active work by the time they’re 35 and running big groups. We aren’t.’ Brenner, like Perutz his predecessor, believed in being a ‘hands-on’ researcher.

Case Study: The DNA Laboratory

There is a definite benefit here for young scientists, who have the opportunity to work alongside the masters in their field. As Brenner said to me, ‘Science is still like a medieval guild of masters and apprentices.’ The Laboratory does no teach­ ing as such – it is purely for research – but undoubtedly it is a place where a lot of learning occurs. Clearly, considerable powers of leadership are required, however, to balance the very competitive nature of scientists at this level with the need for co-operation. But, as all stores are held in common and not allocated to departments, the small teams of scientists and their leaders have to sell their ideas to win their share of the resources. The structure – or lack of it – does not allow them to operate without winning cooperation from their colleagues. As only people who are willing to impart or teach their technology to others are appointed, that climate is self-perpetuating. Brenner contrasted this approach with what he called ‘chateau science’. (In the First World War, Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig had directed operations well back from the front line from his General Headquarters in a French chateau, rarely if ever visiting the front-line trenches.) Brenner was firmly against the remote control of science by managers. He argued that the director of such an organization as the Laboratory of Molecular Biology should always be first and foremost a leader rather than a manager or administrator.

The optimum use of resources The Laboratory deploys a substantial budget. ‘We’ve been very well and generously funded by the Medical Research Council in a way that makes very long-term projects possible,’ Brenner told me. ‘There are very few administrators here, so the money is almost all available for research.’ Budgetary control was kept to the minimum. ‘If things are difficult,’ the Director continued, ‘I ask people to take it easy. If there is spare money available, I let them know. People really do respond to an appeal to their community sense.’ It is always important, if you are a leader, to show that you trust people. The organizational structure of the Laboratory was designed to facilitate cooper­ ation. There are no departments on the old university model, which so often breeds ‘departmentalism’. The research is done by many groups or ‘loose gangs’, each containing fewer than a dozen people under the leadership of one of the more permanent scientific staff. The groups generate their own research programmes and they collaborate at all levels, ranging from scientific discussion to the sharing of equipment and other technical resources. The groups are associated into divisions, but all major decisions of finance and scientific policy are taken jointly by the Heads of Division and the Director, who is responsible for the Laboratory to the Medical Research Council. There is no committee structure beyond the Executive Committee, nor are decisions made by majority vote. Voting creates factions. So leadership is

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needed to identify or create consensus wherever possible. This structure is not one that eliminates the ‘baronial rights’ mentality altogether – an impossible task – but it certainly militates against it. People can still be defensive over, for example, appointments. No one is guaranteed anything except their own space. ‘The stores will give you anything,’ said Brenner. ‘If you fail, you do so because of yourself, not through any lack of resources. That reduces the if only excuse – “If only I had 20 more pipettes I would have won a Nobel prize”.’ ‘If you break the organization down into entities,’ continued Brenner, ‘no one can get a concept of strategy. Separate units would disintegrate the place. If you want to innovate, give a person a chance. Innovation is gambling. Once you play it safe you are lost.’ It has to be a long-term approach. Nobel prize winner Frederick Sanger, for example, did not publish a research paper for the first eight years while he was at the Laboratory.

The human resource How are people recruited to the Laboratory? Mainly by informal means, such as recommendation. There used to be no fixed number of people: the governing body appointed people to permanent posts and they in turn made the temporary appointments. Complete outsiders rarely entered at a senior level. ‘Most of them came here young,’ said Brenner. ‘They often went away and returned, but there are very few without a long history of connection.’ Success breeds success. Young people acquired the culture of the Laboratory and it became self-propagating. The visiting scientists, who far outnumber the permanent scientific staff, help to prevent in­ tellectual stagnation. Intuition plays a part in selection. ‘I go much by people-feel,’ said Brenner. He added that he tried to interview everyone who came to work at the Laboratory. Incidentally, the part that intuition plays in creative scientific research itself – quite apart from selecting people for it – is now much more widely recognized. ‘Looking back on my own scientific work,’ wrote Lord Adrian, another Cambridge University scientist who won a Nobel prize, ‘I should say that it shows no great originality but a certain amount of business instinct which leads to the selection of profitable line.’

Creeping bureaucracy Dr Brenner identified creeping bureaucracy as a threat to any innovative organ­ ization. In the early days, for example, it was comparatively easy for technicians to be promoted onto the scientific staff on grounds of demonstrated ability, even

Case Study: The DNA Laboratory

if they had no degree. Medical Research Council rules now make this impossible. But creative or innovative people do not always shine academically early in their careers. Another manifestation of incipient bureaucracy is tighter financial control. Of course, some degree of organization and some systems of administration are essential. But do they get in the way of what you are there to do? As Sydney Brenner told me, the Laboratory was run on tradition, not rules. The fact that the Laboratory was originally established to tackle molecular biology was crucially important in determining its ethos. In the face of the brand new subject they were all initially, as it were, amateurs: the subject itself had no rules. There were no distinctive specialists, and so no claims could be stated for specialist departments. As disciplines became more specialized, however, this advantage began to disappear. Moreover, the Laboratory had enjoyed the benefits of constant expansion. But the need for systems – and less people-dependence – eventually became apparent as expansion slowed down. Inevitably such systems tend to breed accountants and administrators, who can, if one is not careful, see their role as telling leaders and teams what they cannot do. The natural response of a leader, Sydney Brenner said, in an innovative organization, is to retort: ‘It’s not your job to tell me what I cannot do. Tell me how I can find a way to bend the rules in order to make it happen.’ Size, together with systems, leads to greater pressure to introduce middle levels of management. At the date of my visit the Laboratory had resisted such a step. The extraordinary culture of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, which has made it one of the best places in the world to do advanced scientific research, is actually very fragile. That is true of the culture in any innovative organization. It can take 10 years to develop it, but only 10 weeks to destroy it.

Bureaucracy versus innovation What kind of organization is outstandingly innovative? It is easier to answer the question by identifying characteristics they do not have. They are not, for example, hierarchical or bureaucratic. As my conversation with Dr Sydney Brenner, Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, has already revealed, leaders of innovative organizations are constantly apprehensive about what they call ‘bureaucracy’. But what is bureaucracy? The German sociologist Max Weber provided us with the first profile of a bureaucratic organization. In his writings bureaucracy simply describes a certain type of organization: the word did not have for him the pejorative sense that it has acquired for us. He summed up the distinctive characteristics of bureaucratic organizations as follows:

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authority is impersonal and formal;

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a rule for every eventuality;

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strong emphasis on hierarchy and status;

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clearly laid down procedures (red tape);

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proliferation of paperwork;

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security of employment and advancement by seniority.

It is evident that an organization with this culture will tend to be rigid rather than flexible when it comes to responding to change. It is unlikely that it will en­ courage innovation; it may indeed actively seek to suppress it. ‘Routine is the god of every social system,’ wrote A N Whitehead. His words certainly apply to a true bureaucracy. The word bureaucracy is a synthesis of the French word ‘burel’ – a russet or coarse woollen cloth – and the Greek ‘kratos’, power. The russet woollen coats in question were worn by French clerks in the Civil Service. Therefore, bureaucracy points to a system of government by officials, responsible only to their chiefs. Like all bad things, the British tended to regard bureaucracy as a foreign invention. In the last century Thomas Carlyle, for example, numbered it among the ‘continental nuisances’. Charles Kingsley wrote of plutocrats and bureaucrats as being ‘the tyrants of the earth’. The French writer Balzac also disliked the new phenomenon: he called it ‘a giant mechanism operated by pygmies’. As some wit put it, bureaucrats defend the status quo long after the quo has lost its status. In mechanistic or machine-like organizations work is broken down into specia­ lisms with somebody higher up being responsible for coordination. The duties, methods and boundaries of each part are prescribed in detail. Interaction is vertical: instructions come down and information flows up. In more innovative organizations – those orientated to change and geared for creativity – there is much less definition of roles and responsibilities. Jobs are constantly being redefined in the light of changed circumstances. Each individual knows the overall purpose of the organization and the situational factors impacting upon it. They grasp the general strategic intentions of the leadership. People in such organ­ izations interact as much laterally as vertically. Structure both reflects and facilitates that necessity by being more like a flat pyramid than a steep and multi-layered one. For top leaders are not approachable only through ‘the appropriate channels’; there is ready access to them. Strategic leaders in turn spend much of their time talking to people at all levels. These two types of organization – the bureaucratic or mechanistic one and the more flexible or organic one – are really two ends of a spectrum. Most organizations are blends of both the bureaucratic and the organic. The former principle stands for

Case Study: The DNA Laboratory

order and continuity; the latter spells freedom and change. Consequently organizations need to be both managed and led. At any one time, as we have already seen, the proper balance has to be struck between these two necessities. There is no doubt that growth in size, together with the passage of years, increases the bureaucratic tendency. Insidiously and imperceptibly its ivy tentacles creep over the structure. Instead of the machine being well oiled by common sense and humming with energy it begins to slow down. More treacle is poured into the works. Paper proliferates. Even minor decisions are referred upwards. Systems regulate people. Systems regulate the systems. The senior managers become more remote and finally invisible. People begin to feel alienated. ‘Things are not what they used to be here,’ goes up the lament.

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Hierarchical organization and overt distinctions of status, especially if they breed deferential attitudes, are inimical to creative or innovative work. Keep structures as flat as possible, and relationships as informal as possible. In organizations towards the creative end of the spectrum it is essential that managers should be directors or leaders, otherwise they will lack credibility. Leadership implies leading by example, which usually means, in this context, having an output of creative work yourself. Water-tight compartments may prevent the ship sinking but they do not encourage intercourse among the ship’s passengers. An innovative organization needs structures that permit – even encourage – cross-fertilization across the various boundaries at work. Because innovative organizations rely more upon shared ethos than adherence to written rules, special care has to be taken over recruitment. Intuition must play a large part in the process, for academic qualifications or work record may not always be accurate predictions of creative potential. You need ‘people-feel’. The ethos or climate of an innovative organization, however long established, is exceptionally vulnerable. Review any proposed changes in the light of what effect they will have upon the culture that has produced results. It is fairly easy to identify the tell-tale symptoms of creeping bureaucracy. Although it is a legitimate and valuable form of organization for administrative purposes, bureaucracy is a hostile environment for new ideas and new ways of doing things. The innovative organization is the reverse image of bureaucracy: flat rather than pyramidical; decentralized decision-making and devolved responsibility; informal instead of formal; emphasis on lateral as well as vertical interaction; rules kept to a minimum; and positive about appropriate and properly calculated risks.

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In innovative organizations managers have to curb their natural instinct to control everything. Control is an important leadership or management function, but it has to be exercised with skill and sensitivity. Thoroughbreds who know the course and enjoy jumping require a loose rein. Let the law of the situation do your controlling for you. When the market changes the innovative organization changes too. Without a leadership team at the top that values product quality, new ideas and innovation, and that constantly struggles to keep organizations moving towards these guiding stars, there will be no sustained and profitable growth.

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What is honoured in a country will be cultivated there.  Plato

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Chapter Thirty-six Case Study: Soichiro Honda – Leader for innovation

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An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.  Emerson

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here could not be a better example of Emerson’s dictum than the Japanese company Honda. Soichiro Honda, its founder, was an outstanding business leader for innovation. Are such leaders born or made – or a combination of both? This case study of Honda’s early career throws some light on that question. It also illuminates the creative and innovative ethos that still animates Honda today, making it a truly world-class company.

Exercise While reading the case study have some paper at hand and jot down what you think the story has to tell us about leadership. There are no right answers; you may notice different lessons to the ones I pick out in my discussion at the end. Still, let’s compare notes. Have a go!

The forge of a creative mind Soichiro Honda was born in 1906 in Yamahigashi, which is located in the centre of the Japanese mainland. The village is now called Tenryu-shi. It was near his home in this village that he first saw an automobile coming down the country road. Honda would remember all his life how he raced after it in his excitement. That encounter determined the course of his future life.

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His father Gihei was a blacksmith by trade. Because of his occupation the ceiling of the house became totally black from smoke. His principal job was to repair farming tools, but he also made swords and repaired the guns used for wild boar and bear hunting. Through this experience, Gihei taught himself to make guns. His work was so good that the local gun shop asked him to do repair work on their merchandise. With a reputation for technical skills and manual dexterity – he even performed dentistry on himself – he was also known throughout the village for his honesty and hard work. From the time he was a small child, Soichiro was always around his father, observing him at work. From his father he learnt how to make his own toys. Gihei’s legacy to his son was a love for all mechanical things. But he was not the only one with a craftsman’s skills. Soichiro’s mother Mika was both an excellent weaver and also mechanically skilful enough to repair her own machines. She even designed a special loom to create a fabric of her own design. It is not surprising that on leaving school Honda became an apprentice mechanic. At 21 years of age he opened his own repair shop. He then moved into manufacture, starting with an initially unsuccessful venture in making piston rings – he lacked the necessary knowledge. Meanwhile he completed a racing car with his brother Benjiro. Both of them drove the car in its first race, which ended abruptly with a crash and some serious injuries. Helped by the practical experience acquired during these years now supplemented by university study of engineering, Honda began to invent and innovate. One of his early patents was for a piston ring polishing machine, revolutionary in design and simple to operate. After three long years of trial and error in making piston rings his persistence had paid off and he produced some excellent ones. ‘Those days were the most difficult times with many hardships,’ he later recalled.

A creative thinker in action With the end of the Second World War the company that Honda had established ceased to be directly involved in pistons. The genesis of a new direction lay in an apparently chance event. One day a friend brought him a 50 cc engine that had been used by the Japanese Army. He wondered if Soichiro could find a use for it. In those austere post-war years the transport system in Japan was very poor. The trains and buses were so crowded with people that they sometimes had to use the windows for exits. When Soichiro looked at the engine he thought to himself, ‘A bicycle with a power source would be great.’ The problem, however, was that everything was in such short supply it would be impossible to obtain fuel tanks. This is when the creative mind of Soichiro took over. What could be used as a fuel tank? He thought of everything

Case Study: Soichiro Honda – Leader for Innovation

and finally came up with the idea of using a hot water bottle. He attached one to the bicycle and began experimenting. This was the beginning of the motorized bike ‘Putt-Putt’, named to mimic the sound it made. In that post-war period it was very difficult to get gasoline, so Honda had to rely on the oil that could be extracted from the roots of pine trees. After repeated trials he finally made a motorized bicycle. Since there were only 500 of the old Japanese engines available, Soichiro’s next step – a decisive one – was to start building his own. The Honda Motor Company was born, with a capital of 1 million yen.

A partnership of complementary abilities At this stage Honda was still thinking more like a creative inventor than an in­ novative business leader. ‘I was just glad to know that my invention was helping people. I didn’t care about profit,’ he later reflected. With the company on the verge of bankruptcy it was sometimes difficult to meet the wage bill. Soichiro realized that he lacked the management ability, especially in finance, to run a large company. After discussing the problem with his friend Hirotoshi Takeshima, Honda was introduced to Takeo Fujisawa, who was then employed as a manager in a small factory in the same town. He was exactly the type of person Honda was looking for to be his Chief Executive. Upon their meeting, Soichiro told him, ‘I am an engineer, so I will never listen to your advice in the field of production.’ To which Fujisawa responded, ‘I am a businessman, but I do not guarantee an immediate profit. I want you to look far into the future.’ They both agreed to each other’s terms and they always stayed within their own field of competence. Moreover, in order to prevent any hint of rivalry between them they made a pact that they would retire from the company on the same day. From that time onwards they were inseparable partners. Two months before Fujisawa joined the company, Soichiro had completed an advanced stroke engine which, unlike its predecessor, became an integral part of the cycle. Thus the first lightweight motorcycle was born. Honda called it ‘The Dream’ because intuitively he felt that through this product path his dreams would come true. He was right.

Not problems but opportunities Within the next few years Honda’s motorcycles were winning the main prizes on the world’s racing circuits, but he never lost sight in his memory of that automobile which had roared through his boyhood village. Using Formula 1 racing as his testing ground he moved into car production for the mass market.

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Even then the environmental problems caused by the emission of gases were becoming an issue. But Honda saw it as an opportunity, not a problem. The man who would become the fourth President of Honda, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, remembered those days: ‘When the Clean Air Act of the United States of America was passed by the US Congress in 1972, Soichiro said that even though Honda was behind General Motors and Toyota in sales and car production experience, we were all equal at the starting line in respect of the development of the low emission engine. Soichiro inspired us to believe that we were equal with GM and the other big automakers.’ In order to respond to the needs of society, Soichiro turned to the ability of his young engineers. He believed in the power and competence of young people. Headed by Tadashi Kume (who later became the third President of Honda), the Honda engineers successfully developed a low emission water-cooled engine, the CVCC. The Civic, equipped with this engine, became a worldwide hit. The United States in particular hailed the Honda engineers’ ingenuity. Satisfied that his spirit of thinking ahead of the competition rather than imitat­ ing others had permeated all of his employees, Soichiro decided to retire from his position as President of the company. Upon his retirement in 1973, he became their top advisor, along with Takeo Fujisawa who also stood down from his position, in keeping with their mutual agreement. They had made another promise to each other, that they would not force their sons to take over the company. Honda’s oldest son, Hirotoshi, acknowledged his wisdom, saying: My father was a very creative person. He was almost like an artist. Artists would never try to make their son or daughter take over their work. What my father did was not some kind of traditional art that has only to be inherited. Like my father, I enjoy doing what I want to do. I have never dreamt of taking over my father’s position. My father never even hinted anything like that to me.

Passing on the torch Honda now spent much of his time visiting the Honda dealers, showrooms and service stations located all over Japan. Not many people were aware of these trips, but he wanted to show his appreciation to everyone who worked for Honda. He said thank you to all those working in the shops and shook hands with the oilcovered repairmen. From his early days as a small repair shop owner to his retirement as president of a world-famous corporation, Honda’s straightforward and honest approach never changed. When his influential partner and best friend Takeo Fujisawa died in 1989, Soichiro openly sobbed. He knew that without the assistance of this talented man, the Honda Motor Company would never have achieved its

Case Study: Soichiro Honda – Leader for Innovation

monumental success, and that he himself could never have pursued and attained his dreams. Kiyoshi Kawashima, the second President of Honda, said: Soichiro did not like to copy what other people did. He used his own ideas and creativity to make things. A man with dreams, who helped his employees fulfil their own dreams. I learnt from him that a company without a dream will lose its place in society.

The fourth Honda President, Nobuhiko Kawamoto, recalled: Soichiro was characterized by his desire for exploration and his spirit to be true to himself. Although he ordered us to stop the Formula 1 project, he continued to be interested in racing until his death. Even a few days before his passing, he became very animated and was very interested in discussing Formula 1 with me.

Even after he accomplished his goal, Soichiro never stopped moving forward. The curiosity and spirit that made the young boy run after that noisy, speeding vehicle on that dusty country road so long ago, never stopped. That oil-spotted track left in the road was always with him. His legacy to all who knew him, and even those who didn’t, is sometimes referred to as ‘Hondaism’, the spirit to praise the dynamic force of youth and encourage young creative minds.

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Honda’s creative mind, partly inherited from his parents, was evident at an early age. He could see connections between apparently unrelated things, such as a hot water bottle and a fuel tank, or the face of the Buddha and the front of the motorcycle he was building. He was a risk-taker, from the time he raced and crashed his first racing car to his later bold decision to enter the world of motorcycle racing when he had yet to develop a bike capable of winning. Honda knew his weaknesses and recruited Fujisawa to complement him. Honda had the creative engineering mind; Fujisawa the organizational and financial skills. Innovation – bringing products to market and building a sustainable company – always calls for teamwork at the top and at every level. Soichiro could show true leadership. His perception, for example, that legislation against harmful gas emissions gave Honda a chance to catch up and overtake its rivals, inspired the company to a great effort at a time when it could have been discouraged. Wise strategic leaders always stay in touch with the young in their organizations, for youth, courage to think new ideas and boldness to take risks tend to go together.

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As Francis Bacon put it: ‘Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon.’ Notice that Soichiro Honda took time to go round Japan thanking all those, however humble their role, who had helped him to build Honda into a world-class company. He saw them as partners. Modesty and humility, expressed here in gratitude, are hallmarks of a leader.

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Man is pre-eminently a creative animal, predestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in engineering – that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads, wherever they may lead.  Dostoevsky

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Chapter Thirty-seven Real commitment from the top

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Without real commitment from the top, real innovation will be defeated again and again by the policies, procedures, and rituals of almost any large organization.  Anon

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he attitudes, personal qualities and skills of leaders in organizations stand out as a group of vitally important ingredients in innovation. Be they supervisors or first-line managers, middle managers or executive directors, the leaders of an enterprise can do a great deal to encourage creativity.

The leader as teambuilder In both the case studies in the previous chapters – the Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge University and the story of Honda – the personality and example of the top leader were seen as key factors in setting the direction and tone of an organization. What is required in a chief executive as a leader? The ability to build teamwork and create synergy comes high on the list. Without exception, all the most effective leaders I have ever known create a sense of esprit de corps, a team spirit that makes even the most arduous or the most humdrum work exciting. The synergy created supports and sustains the individuals in the group. At chief executive level, the successful leader’s team will be a small group of senior operational leaders and key heads of staff functions who can think strategically with him or her, help to change the corporate culture towards greater teamwork, and devise the means of getting extraordinary results from the individuals who make up the workforce. Throughout the world, executives are waking up to the need for this kind of action-centred leadership as a means of realizing their company’s potential.

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The seven key functions of a strategic leader are: 1 providing a clear sense of direction; 2 strategic thinking and strategic planning; 3 making it happen; 4 relating the parts of the organization to the whole, so that it works as a team; 5 relating the organization to allies and partners, and to society as a whole; 6 releasing the corporate energy and creativity within the organization; 7 selecting and developing today’s and tomorrow’s leaders. Aware of this new imperative to lead rather than merely manage, some adventurous chief executives have begun to take inventory of their leadership qualities and skills, and to take steps to ensure that they continue to grow as leaders. In a creative learning organization the chief executive should lead from the front by giving an example of someone who is willing and eager to learn. The age of the autocratic boss, the one-man show, is over. The best organizations today tend to be led by a team. There is simply too much leadership required for any single person to provide it all. Well-managed companies today are guided by a team of leaders. The team itself needs a leader, however, and that is the core responsibility of the chief executive. In responding to the challenge of innovation, both leadership and management skills are important, but the emphasis must fall on leadership. Therefore, leaders and potential leaders need an opportunity early on in their careers to explore the concept of leadership – what it is, and how they can become more effective as a leader. Business and military organizations are fundamentally different in many ways, but this they share: both need leadership and management. So, I might add, do all organizations today that aspire to be innovative: universities, schools, hospitals, government departments, even churches. The highest levels should be occupied by those rare few who have both qualities.

Giving direction Organizations are unlikely to be innovative – to introduce change and make it effective – if they lack a sense of direction. If you are not facing the future and wanting to move forward, why change? But do you as a chief executive – or your chief executive – see the implications for your role? Are you a helmsman or a navigator? A helmsman is a ‘hands-on’ manager, a manager who is guiding the day-to-day activities. A navigator has the capacity to stand back and plot the course of his ship.

Real Commitment from the Top

I would argue that the chief executive must be both helmsman and navigator – as well as being captain. But he or she should not be more. I would not expect to find them in the engine room or peeling potatoes in the galley. The image of a ship under way at sea is especially apt. For the word ‘leader’ comes from laed, which meant in Old Norse the course or path of a ship at sea. The leader was the captain, who in Viking days was usually the steersman and navigator as well. Like a ship, your business is sailing through difficult seas under the lowering skies of a difficult world economy. You have to contend with the forces of tide, wind and current. How good a helmsman are you? The art of helmsmanship, it is worth recalling, demands a subtle and sensitive exploration of how to extract the most power from wind and water. The best helmsmen are those who can find and hold that thin line of balance along which the elements seem to join in driving the boat forward. Is that not true for a business leader as well? A helmsman, however, is only a tactician or an operator. A chief executive has to be a strategist too. That requires a vision of the future and the navigational skill to plot a course that will get your organization where it must be if that vision is to come true. Let me hoist a warning at this point about the kind of corporate planning that flourished in the days when seas were calm and skies were blue. The drawback of these plans is obvious to us now. Senior managers, including the chief executive, often found these paper exercises irrelevant because they were not involved in the decisions and therefore not committed to getting results. One good result of recession has been the closure or the drastic reduction of these mini-bureaucracies of corporate planning. By a corporate plan I do not of course mean a detailed and watertight blue­ print. Planning is good, but plans often are not. What you need is an agreed business philosophy, a comprehensive programme of clear objectives and definite policies. To summarize, the first responsibility of leadership is to achieve the common task. In order to do that at his or her level, the chief executive of any organization should have the following three characteristics: 1 The ability to think deeply. Those who lead organizations in the right direction are going to have to possess practical intellect of high order. These thinking skills, such as analysing, imaginative and holistic thinking, intuition and judgement, are the foundation of a good decision-maker. 2 The ability to communicate. As a chief executive, you should be a person with a message. All organizations tend to bow down to the god of routine. Your message is that we must look ahead and make pre-emptive changes.

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3 The ability to make things happen. This, you recall, is the third of the strategic leadership functions. It calls for a certain firmness of character. Be tough but fair. Toughness comes first, for that is necessary. You have to be tough, but toughness will only be acceptable if it is fair as well. You also need other qualities – humour and infectious enthusiasm especially. If you do not have a sense of direction, how can you lead? If a blind man leads a blind man, they will both fall into the ditch. To be a helmsman and a navigator for your organization you need the capacity to see ahead clearly, to communicate what you see and the qualities to ensure movement in that direction in a flexible way. To summarize: a really good strategic leader will show commitment to creativity and innovation, both by word and example. He or she will demonstrate here, as in all things, what the Greeks called phronesis, practical wisdom. And wisdom is a combination of three things: experience, intelligence and goodness.

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Innovation calls for good leadership throughout an enterprise. Good leadership ought to stem from the chief executive. It is his or her prime responsibility to manage change. As the Roman author Publilius Syrus said, ‘Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.’ To generate ideas and to see them transformed into profitable new products or services, to revitalize existing products and services with incremental improvements, and to satisfy customers, demands high-performance teamwork. Teams look for leaders; leaders build teams. Without systems and proper controls sensibly applied, there can be no organization worthy of the name. It requires leadership and management to achieve productive order without sacrificing freedom and creativity. What matters most in organizations is energetic vision. Purpose is corporate energy, pulling you forwards and overcoming institutional inertia. Leaders are helmsmen and navigators, steering a course forwards through uncertainty and chaos. Strategic thinking and corporate planning both require creative thinking. If there is no innovation in the boardroom why should there be any on the shop floor?

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Changing things is central to leadership. Changing them before anyone else is creativeness.  Anon

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Chapter Thirty-eight How to motivate the creative individual

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The best of men are but men at their best.  English proverb

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s a manager you need to understand how creative or innovative individuals think and what they want. For innovation will not happen unless the men and women who work with you are motivated. They must want to innovate. According to the Fifty-Fifty Rule (see Part Four), 50 per cent of motivation lies within us in the shape of our response to inner needs, drives and values. The other 50 per cent depends on our environment, especially the leadership that we encounter within it. As a corollary of that rule, it is important first to get your selection procedures right. Choose people who have the seeds of the future within them.

Selecting creative people When Dr David Livingstone was working in Africa, a group of friends wrote: ‘We would like to send other men to you. Have you found a good road into your area yet?’ According to a member of his family, Dr Livingstone sent this message in reply: ‘If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.’ The first step in any form of team building is to choose the right people. That is a vital principle to bear in mind if you wish to encourage innovation – and sustain it. Like Dr Livingstone, in his inimitable way, you should develop an eye for the more adventurous and more independently-minded person. As Sam Goldwyn put it, ‘I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell the truth even if it costs them their jobs!’

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When it comes to innovation there has to be a premium on youth. Young people tend to be more future-oriented. After all, most of their life will be spent in the future. Moreover, the fact that young people lack experience (which could almost be defined as the knowledge of what does not work) inclines them to be ready to experiment. They have less mental luggage in the form of preconceptions or assumptions. The older we grow in years the more cautious and the more conservative we tend to become. You can see why Napoleon once mused that the art of government was not to let people grow old in their jobs. Any innovative organization must therefore have a bias towards attracting intelligent and creative young people. Of course intellectual qualities are not enough, for industry needs doers – people who can make things happen – rather than thinkers as such. There are plenty of good ideas around. The real issue is whether or not you have the people in your team or organization who are willing to put new ideas to work, in other words, to innovate. ‘Give me the young man,’ said Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.’ How will you recognize creativity? It is rather like height, weight and strength. We vary considerably in these dimensions, but all of us have some height, some weight and some strength. Thus there is a certain amount of potential for creative thinking in all of us, but some people are clearly more creative than others. Your organization needs its fair share of this creative talent. You can usually identify some general characteristics. Creative people tend to be more open and flexible than their less creative neighbours. They bring a freshness of mind to problems. They have usually exhibited the courage to be different and to think for themselves. They are comparatively more self-motivated and often addicted to their work. Research has both illuminated and added to this brief list.

Characteristics of innovators Creative or innovative people can usually be recognized by having a pattern of characteristics represented in the list below. Such people do not make natural organ­ izational men and women, and so your organization needs a certain psychological maturity to recruit them in the first place. Creative people can make uncomfortable companions, but can you do without them? Here is a list of characteristics to look for in studying references, biographical data or during interviews: ●●

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Superior general intelligence. That includes analytical powers, as well as the ability to store and recall information. A high degree of autonomy, self-sufficiency and self-direction.

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Relatively little talkativeness or gregariousness. Creative thinkers tend to be ambivert: a balance of introvert and extrovert. If anything they tend towards introversion, although they need contacts with stimulating colleagues. Marked independence of judgement. They are resilient in the teeth of group pressures towards conformity in thinking. They see things as others do, but also as they do not. They often express part-truths vividly. It is their way of drawing attention to the unobserved or unrecognized. They may sound unreasonable. But remember George Bernard Shaw’s provocative comment: ‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’ A broad range of interests. A special interest or motivation in the kind of ‘wagering’ which involves pitting oneself against problems or opportunities in which one’s own effort can be the deciding factor. ‘There is no greater joy in life,’ said the inventor Sir Barnes Wallis, ‘than first proving that a thing is impossible and then showing how it can be done.’

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Sustained curiosity and powers of observation. Often they are good listeners.

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Dedication and commitment to hard work.

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A truly creative individual lives closer to his or her purposeful unconscious mind than other people. He or she listens to the truth from within, in the form of intuitions. They inhabit more the world of imagination, reverie and fantasy. They are able to hold many ideas – often apparently contradictory ones – together in creative tension, without reaching for premature resolution of ambiguity. Hence they can sometimes reach a richer synthesis.

From the analysis it follows that if you do recruit or select people with above-­ average creative ability for your team or organization you will find that they tend to be looking for certain compatible characteristics in you and your organization. Selection is – or ought to be – a two-way process. Before you take on creative people you should check whether or not you have the environment (including leadership) in which their talents will flourish. It is not much good hiring people who are only going to become frustrated. What are their expectations?

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Expectations of creative people Research has some clear messages on this score. It has identified the most important environmental factors in stimulating or encouraging creativity. In order of import­ ance they are as follows.

Recognition and appreciation Because the results of creative work are often postponed for a long time (many geniuses in history received no recognition in their lifetimes), creative people stand in special need of encouragement and appreciation. The recognition of the value or worth of their contribution is especially important to them, particularly if it comes from those whose opinions they respect. For example, winning a Nobel prize means a great deal to a research scientist. Scientists in particular are often competitive and achievement-oriented. Recognition matters much more to them than money, though the latter is not insignificant on the scale of reward. Lewis Lehr highlighted the importance in 3M of giving proper recognition: One or two dozen times a year some new 3M project reaches the level of $2 million in profitable sales. You might think that drop wouldn’t get much attention in an $8 billion ocean. But it does. Lights flash, bells ring and cameras are called out to honour the team responsible for such an achievement. We see in these fledgling projects the future of 3M. We also have recognition programmes for international business successes, for purely technical achievements, and for outstanding work in virtually every discipline within the company. These awards rarely take the form of cash bonuses or trips to Hawaii. We have found that, especially for technical people, few things are more important than simply being recognized by one’s peers for good work. Recognition is a powerful incentive for innovation.

Freedom to work in areas of greatest interest While the predominantly analytical person concentrates and focuses down, the creative person wanders in every possible or feasible direction. Freedom to move is the necessary condition of creative work. A creative person tends to be most effective if allowed to choose the area of work, and the problems or opportunities within that area, which arouses deep interest. Clearly within an innovative organization this freedom has to be bounded by its definition of general purpose and by the consequent parameters of its broad strategies. The Laboratory for Molecular Biology at Cambridge, for instance, made it clear to potential research staff that it was not in the business of brain research. But if the mission statement of the organization is properly focused – the horizon between the general, far away and vague on the one hand, and the more specific and more proximate on the other – then there will be a wide area for exploration.

How to Motivate the Creative Individual

Successful innovative companies such as 3M lean over backwards to give in­ dividuals as much freedom as possible. Lewis Lehr again: Advice on rearing creative youngsters states that you don’t provide children with colouring books and then warn them to stay inside the lines of the drawings. For management to expect innovators to stay inside the lines is a paradox. Such inhibiting boundaries may be job descriptions, detailed instructions on how to do something, or any restrictive language. Long ago we learnt that if you place too many fences around people, they can easily become a pasture of sheep. And how many patents are assigned to sheep?

In 3M the top management encourages the technical staff to spend up to 15 per cent of their time on projects of their own choosing. In other words, the company guarantees time for people to work on pet ideas. They can at least start work on something without waiting for management approval. Sensible companies also establish a career path for creative individuals separate from the management ladder, a corporate path that allows them to go on doing what they do best as individual contributors. Some will want to become manager-leaders, but others will prefer the freedom of remaining individual contributors. For the latter, financial remuneration and promotion can be linked directly to successful innovation. Beyond these rewards they receive the prize of earned freedom to work on whatever interests them. Innovative organizations can also, of course, draw upon the contributions of creative thinkers who are not their full-time employees and therefore have a much greater freedom to pursue their own interests.

Contacts with stimulating colleagues ‘Two heads are better than one,’ says the ancient Greek proverb. Creative people need conversation with colleagues in order to think, not merely for social intercourse. In the social sense they may be inclined to be ‘loners’, but they cannot intellectually be ‘loners’ all the time. Organizational structure should facilitate these formal and informal interactions. Buildings, especially the position and character of rooms where people congregate for coffee, tea or meals, play an important part. Random meetings with colleagues and visitors in such meeting places may spark off new ideas or suggest new avenues of thought.

Encouragement to take risks To quote Sydney Brenner’s words again, ‘Innovation is a gamble.’ If you have never worked on the edge of failure, you will not have worked on the edge of real success. Creative people respond well to an organization which encourages them to take calculated risks.

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The above environmental conditions become motivational in conjunction with the inner interests and drives of creative individuals. The ensuing chemistry – the interaction of creative individual and innovative group or organization – produces the new goods and services. The resultant social and economic advances, together with an invisible movement of the human spirit, are what we collectively call progress. There are other less important but still significant factors in the environment which matter to the creative individual, such as its tolerance of a degree of non­ conformity or idiosyncrasy, the opportunity to work alone as opposed to always being a member of a group, and the level of financial reward. But the important lesson for organizations is to look after the major expectations first. The minor ones can be the subject of negotiation.

Creative leadership Apart from being able to provide general direction and to perform the necessary leadership functions – defining objectives, planning, controlling, supporting, reviewing – to meet the three overlapping areas of task, team and individual needs, leaders who encourage creativity have some distinctive characteristics. You may like to consider adopting them if they are not already present in your approach. The useful guidelines include the following.

A willingness to accept risk The potential downside of freedom given to a colleague or team, as we have seen, includes mistakes, failures or financial loss. As delegation should not mean abdication, you as the leader may well have been a party to the risk. You may at least have understood the consequences of things not going as intended or planned. You have to be willing to accept an element of risk, for without freedom there would be no mistakes. But to eliminate freedom is the biggest mistake of all: freedom alone breeds innovation and entrepreneurial success. Mistakes are a by-product of progress. Learn from them, but do not dwell on them.

An ability to work with half-baked ideas Ideas seldom leap into the world fully-formed and ready to go. They are more like new-born babies, struggling and gasping for life. Leaders who facilitate team creativity demonstrate by example the value of listening to half-developed ideas and building upon them if they have merit. They hesitate before dismissing an ill-formed idea or an imperfect proposal, for it may contain the germ of something really useful. It follows that team creativity in groups and organizations calls for listening leaders.

How to Motivate the Creative Individual

A willingness to bend rules Rules and systems have their place, but they can obstruct the process of innovation dreadfully. A leader, as a member of the management team, should respect rules and procedures but he or she should not think like a bureaucrat. Sometimes creative dyslexia – the inability to read rules – is a strength rather than a weakness. Rules can sometimes be stretched where they cannot be broken. Without this you end up by being bogged down in organizational treacle – or, as Charles Dickens said, ‘Skewered through and through with office-pens and bound hand-and-foot with red tape.’ Remember that Nelson once put his telescope to his blind eye. Having a blind eye can be a strength on occasion, not a weakness.

An ability to respond quickly On the new-baby analogy, some new ideas or projects need sustenance quickly if they are going to survive. Leaders who induce creativity should have a flair for spotting potential winners. But that is not enough. The innovative organization must have leaders who are able to commit resources and not have to defer everything to committees or upwards to higher authority. To be able to allocate or obtain small resources now may be far better than being able to summon mighty resources in a year’s time when it is too late. That is why some organizations appoint ‘project sponsors’ – senior managers who are able to secure resources at a high level quickly for promising ideas.

Personal enthusiasm Only leaders who are highly motivated themselves will motivate others. Enthusiasm is contagious. Moreover, enthusiastic leaders and colleagues tend to be intellectually stimulating ones. ‘Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm,’ wrote Vauvenargues. Innovation usually deals in small truths or incremental improvements, but the same principle holds good.

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A house is made up of individual bricks. The quality of an innovative organization depends ultimately and largely upon the quality of the people you employ. Machines do not have new ideas. Computers cannot create. Money alone cannot create a satisfied customer. Look out for the characteristics – or clusters of characteristics – which mark creative people. Ensure that many of those you appoint have some of the characteristics.

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There will always be a tension between the needs of the individual and the needs of the common task and the needs of the group or organization. If you have good leadership this tension should be a creative one. Under bad management, however, it degenerates into conflict. Creative thinkers and innovative doers will not stay with you unless you give them recognition. Recognition and appreciation come top of the list of expectations that creative people bring with them to work. Creative leadership means the kind of leadership that encourages, stimulates and guides the process of innovation from beginning to end. The challenge of innovation is largely the challenge of leading creative people.

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What a man dislikes in his superiors, let him not display in his treatment of his inferiors.  Tsang Sin

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Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up.  Oliver Wendell Holmes

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new idea almost invariably comes from an individual. But it takes a team to turn it into something really useful. From this principle, as stated thus, it would be easy to dichotomize the process. The individual who has the new idea is being creative, you might say, while the group or organization that develops it is being innovative. But this would be an oversimplification. What the individual usually comes up with is a half-formed idea. That is often, incidentally, the result of a preliminary discussion with colleagues. Then that half-baked idea is creatively developed by one or more others working like a team. The whole process is best called team creativity. The Japanese economy has been transformed by the practical application of that concept. As individuals the Japanese are not noted for their creativity. Indeed Japanese culture, especially its educational system, has traditionally played down individuality. ‘If a nail stands up, it will be hammered down,’ declares a Japanese proverb bluntly. That is not a spirit which develops much creativity in individuals. But in groups the Japanese have shown themselves to be remarkably innovative. In the West we may have been over-emphasizing the role of the individual in the context of creativity. If you look closely at creative thinking – even apparently solitary creators like authors, inventors or artists – there is a considerable input from others before and after the emergence of a seminal idea. Being human and anxious for personal recognition, individuals often over-emphasize their own parts. And Western society conspires by recognizing and rewarding individuals rather than teams for creative work.

Building on ideas How can team creativity be promoted in a group or an organization? One solution, which will be discussed in the following chapter, is to introduce a new system of

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F i g u r e 39.1   Group A at work JIM

SALLY

MIKE

JANE

BILL

JACK

groups, like the Japanese-inspired Quality Circles. If I may anticipate the argument, however, such special groups only flourish under a management which is already oriented towards team creativity. The essence of the matter lies in attitudes. It is a question of moving a group or organization away from the position where the natural response to a half-baked idea is a negative or critical one. The expression of a more positive attitude is the observed willingness to build on ideas. Let us visualize two meetings. In Group A a number of suggestions are made or ideas put forward for consideration. These ideas are not picked up or developed by anyone else. They disappear into the pond with a ‘plop’. Some of these plops might, of course, have the seeds of new ideas within them. The meeting of Group A is shown in Figure 39.1. The different lengths of lines represent the extent of contribution. Bill, for example, developed his ideas at some length, whereas Jane made one short contribution which was hardly heard above the hubbub of conversation. The listening skills were low in Group A. Indeed they were confined to waiting until other people had stopped speaking so that each could have his or her turn to talk. More often than not, two or three people were speaking at the same time. You will notice that Group B, shown in Figure 39.2, is composed of the same individuals as Group A, but they are now acting differently. Instead of waiting for their turn to speak they are listening for ideas. When they see an idea they do not shoot it down. If they perceive some merit in it they will build on it. On the left-hand side of

Team Creativity

F i g u r e 39.2   Group B at work JIM

SALLY

MIKE

JANE

BILL

JACK

SALLY JACK

MIKE

JACK SALLY

JACK

SALLY

SALLY

JIM

the diagram Jim, for example, proposes a certain solution. Sally develops the idea further. Jack then works on it. What he says inspires Sally who comes back with some further modifications and the team realizes that it has a workable idea. Further to the right, Jack at first develops an idea of Jane’s in one direction. Then he seeks a link with an idea originated by Bill (which Mike has already made into a better one). Sally and Jim then work on the resultant new idea, bringing it to fruition. The model is not unlike an aerial photograph of a game of football, with ‘touchdown’ being scored at the bottom end. Group A, you recall, scored no touch-downs. By working as a team, however, in their new colours as Group B, they became remarkable successful. The secret is changing attitudes and moving from the negative or critical mode of thinking into the positive or constructive one. As Winston Churchill said at one Cabinet meeting, in some exasperation at his timorous colleagues, ‘Every fool can see what is wrong. See what is good in it!’

Brainstorming One of the great contributions of brainstorming as a technique is that it highlights this importance of building on ideas. Group brainstorming is a fairly well-known technique – certainly I have described it more than once in my previous books – and so I shall not dwell on it here. But there are a few simple ground rules which the

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leader must make sure are understood by all present at a brainstorming session. Besides outlining the problem, he or she should explain at the start: ●● ●●

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Judicial judgement is ruled out. Criticism of ideas will be withheld until later. ‘Wildness’ is welcomed. The crazier the idea the better; it’s easier to tone down than to think up. Quantity is wanted. The more ideas piled up, the more likelihood there is of winners. Combination and improvement are sought. In addition to contributing ideas, participants are invited to suggest how another’s idea can be turned into a better idea; or how two or more ideas can be joined into still another idea.

These are the guidelines. A leader should put them into his or her own words because a brainstorm session should always be kept informal. Here’s how one leader interpreted the first principle to one of his groups: If you try to get hot and cold water out of the same tap at the same time, you will get only tepid water. And if you try to criticize and create at the same time, you can’t turn on either cold enough criticism or hot enough ideas. So let’s stick solely to ideas – let’s cut out all criticism during this session.

A few incurable critics may still ignore the guidelines and belittle what others have suggested. Such transgressions should be gently warned against, and – if persistent – firmly checked. For the spirit of a brainstorm session can make or break it. Selfencouragement and mutual encouragement are both needed. The kind of criticism that cramps imagination, however, breeds discouragement. There are few people who have participated in brainstorming sessions who have not experienced a ‘chain-reaction’: when minds are really warmed up, and a spark from one mind will light up a lot of ideas in others like a string of fire-crackers. Association of ideas comes into play, so that an idea put into words stirs your imagination towards another idea, while at the same time it stimulates associative connections in other people’s minds, often at a subconscious level. Putting ideas into words, however ill-formed, is the vital step in brainstorming.

Team creativity in action The invention of Scotch Tape is a highlight in the story of 3M, the Minnesota corporation that grew from being a maker of mediocre sandpaper into an international conglomerate: The salesmen who visited the auto plants noticed that workers painting new two-toned cars were having trouble keeping the colours from running together. Richard G Drew,

Team Creativity a young 3M lab technician, came up with the answer: masking tape, the company’s first tape. Drew then figured out how to put adhesive on it, and Scotch Tape was born, initially for industrial packaging. It didn’t really begin to roll until another imaginative 3M hero, John Borden, a sales manager, created a dispenser with a built-in blade.

You can see that members of this company had learnt to build on one another’s ideas. The process of innovation is largely incremental. It requires the efforts and contributions of a team if an idea is to be brought successfully to the marketplace. Rarely is an idea marketable as it is conceived in someone’s mind. It generally takes some research, much refining and a lot of hard work – sometimes over years – before it comes into common usage. With hindsight, in the clear light of success or failure, it seems obvious what were the good ideas and what were the less feasible ones. In the early stages, however, the distinction is not too apparent. ‘The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related,’ wrote Thomas Paine, ‘that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.’ The ability to suspend judgement for a time – both as an individual thinker and as a team member – is important. The ability, too, to build on other people’s ideas, improving or combining them, is essential. But these two abilities do not exhaust the repertoire of skills required in a member of a truly innovative organization. The ability to criticize in an acceptable and diplomatic manner – in the right way, at the right time and in the right place – has also to be developed. Here team creativity transcends brainstorming which, by definition, eliminates criticism. It is really no more than a snapshot of one phase of creative teamwork. Analysing and evaluating are equally necessary phases in the shared mental process. Again, as in the case of synthesizing and imagining, when it comes to analysing and evaluating there is a musical relationship between the individual thinker and the group. The ‘solo’ thinker may suggest themes developed by a section of the orchestra; another soloist may take forwards a refrain identified by the players as a whole.

Team creativity and organization Looking at the organization as a whole, the team creativity principle stresses that everyone has a contribution to make to the innovative process. It is as if there is a continual conversation going on within the organization about its products and services, about its structures and about its environment. It ought to be a learning conversation, the principal means by which the organization thinks in the sense of trying to teach itself what it should be and do. In this respect an innovative organization will resemble a true university.

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Team creativity cannot be organized, but there are structures which encourage it, provided you have selected the right participants. The ethos of a group or organization is obviously important. The right climate will encourage people to express ideas, however half-formed. Members are able to discipline themselves in order to suspend judgement. They listen for ideas. They build and improve on one another’s contributions. In other words, the conversation in that organization is positive, confident but realistic, and essentially constructive. Criticism is necessary, too, because it is a vital ingredient in effective thinking. How is it to be done?

How to criticize other people’s ideas ‘A new idea is delicate,’ said Charles Brewer. ‘It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.’ The management of criticism is almost as important as the management of innovation. Criticism has to be done. Expensive mistakes may occur, leading organizations up blind and profitless alleyways, if ideas are not evaluated rigorously at the right time. Henry Ford used to content himself with three questions: ●●

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These questions do have to be pressed home hard in commercial and industrial organizations. But they should not be applied prematurely in the creative process. Sometimes ideas have to evolve quite far before any practical and commercial use becomes apparent. But tested they must be by others at various stages of their life history. The good ones are those that can jump the hurdles of criticism. Testing or criticizing other people’s new ideas – and being on the receiving end of that treatment – is often not a pleasant process. It can be downright demoralizing to the receiver. We have to learn ‘the manners of conversation’. In our context of criticism, that means learning to express our views with tact and diplomacy. Francis Crick, co-discoverer with James Watson of the double helix, describes in his biography, What Mad Pursuit! A personal view of scientific discovery (1988), two valuable lessons about criticism. He had joined the group studying molecular biology in the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, which formed the nucleus later for the independent Laboratory for Molecular Biology. The group was under the general supervision of Sir Lawrence Bragg, a Nobel laureate for his work on X-ray crystallography.

Team Creativity

At this time Crick was over 30, with no research record to speak of. But he told the group that they were all wasting their time for, according to his analyses, almost all the methods they were pursuing had no chance of success. He read them a paper – only his second research paper – entitled ‘What Mad Pursuit!’ – a quotation from Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn. He continues: Bragg was furious. Here was this newcomer telling experienced X-ray crystallographers, including Bragg himself, who had founded the subject and had been in the forefront of it for almost 40 years, that what they were doing was most unlikely to lead to any useful result. The fact that I clearly understood the theory of the subject and indeed was apt to be unduly loquacious about it did not help. A little later I was sitting behind Bragg, just before the start of a lecture, and voicing to my neighbour my usual criticism of the subject in a rather derisive manner. Bragg turned around to speak to me over his shoulder. ‘Crick,’ he said, ‘you’re rocking the boat.’ There was some justification for his annoyance. A group of people engaged in a difficult and somewhat uncertain undertaking are not helped by persistent negative criticism from one of their number. It destroys the mood of confidence necessary to carry through such a hazardous enterprise to a successful conclusion. But equally it is useless to persist in a course of action that is bound to fail, especially if an alternative method exists. As it has turned out, I was completely correct in all my criticisms with one exception. I underestimated the usefulness of studying simple, repeating, artificial peptides (distantly related to proteins), which before long was to give some useful information, but I was quite correct in predicting that only the isomorphous replacement method could give us the detailed structure of a protein. I was still, at this time, a beginning graduate student. By giving my colleagues a very necessary jolt I had deflected their attention in the right direction. In later years few people remembered this or appreciated my contribution except Bernal, who referred to it more than once. Of course in the long run my point of view was bound to emerge. All I did was to help create an atmosphere in which it happened a little sooner. I never wrote up my critique, though my notes for the talk survived for a few years. The main result as far as I was concerned was that Bragg came to regard me as a nuisance who didn’t get on with experiments and talked too much and in too critical a manner. Fortunately he changed his mind later on.

Crick points us here to one aspect of the truth about criticism. Sometimes an indivi­ dual needs to be courageous in challenging accepted views, and to persist in criticism despite group pressures to conform. Such criticism may be voiced in vivid language in order that it may penetrate the thick hides of fixed ideas and win a hearing for itself. It may be consciously rejected, Crick notes, but it is yet to have influence at a subliminal level on the corporate unconscious mind of the group, perhaps even altering its direction of thought. That was not, however, the only lesson about criticism that Crick learnt: I received another lesson when Perutz described his results to a small group of X-ray crystallographers from different parts of Britain assembled in the Cavendish. After his presentation, Bernal rose to comment on it. I regarded Bernal as a genius. For some reason I had acquired the idea that all geniuses behaved badly. I was therefore surprised

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Leadership for Innovation to hear him praise Perutz in the most genial way for his courage in undertaking such a difficult and, at that time, unprecedented task and for his thoroughness and persistence in carrying it through. Only then did Bernal venture to express, in the nicest possible way some reservations he had about the Patterson method and this example of it in particular. I learned that if you have something critical to say about a piece of scientific work, it is better to say it firmly but nicely and to preface it with praise of any good aspects of it. I only wish I had always stuck to this useful rule. Unfortunately I have sometimes been carried away by my impatience and expressed myself too briskly and in too devastating a manner.

Being able to operate effectively in a situation that calls for team creativity does invite you to develop the skill of giving criticism in a constructive way and with good manners. It is obviously easier to accept criticism of one’s ideas or work if it is offered in the same positive spirit and delivered with the same tact and diplomacy. But avoid dismissing criticism that has none of these hallmarks.

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Team creativity points to the fact that more than one person is involved in any significant act of creative thinking. This is even more apparent when it comes to innovation. To develop a product or service from an idea, however mature, selfevidently requires creative teamwork. At the core of team creativity is the capacity to build upon or improve other people’s ideas, and to subject your own ideas to the same process. ‘The typical eye sees the 10 per cent bad of an idea,’ writes Charles F Kettering, ‘and overlooks the 90 per cent good.’ Building on ideas sounds a simple recipe, and so it is. But it presupposes a positive and constructive ethos, mutual encouragement, and the ability listen. Although it may be focused in particular meetings or even in departments, such as research and development, team creativity should embrace the whole organization. It should be a basic theme in the endless conversation of any organization that seeks to be innovative. The brainstorming technique illustrates the benefit of separating imaginative thinking from critical thinking. But ideas do have to be subjected to rigorous evaluation at some stage or other. To be able to give criticism effectively, and to receive it, is an art that has to be learnt.

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Don’t try to get your wild geese to fly in formation. Thomas J Watson, founder of IBM

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Chapter Forty Harvesting ideas

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The creative act thrives in an environment of mutual stimulation, feedback and constructive criticism – in a community of creativity.  William T Brady

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ach person who works with you has about 10,000 million brain cells. Each of those cells can link up with about 10,000 of its neighbours, giving some 1 plus 800 noughts of possible combinations. He or she has more brain cells than there are people on the face of the earth. Your challenge as a leader is to elicit the new ideas and fresh thinking that are potentially there in those who work for you. ‘In the coldest flint there is a hot fire.’ One way of doing so is to introduce what could be called innovative systems, notably Suggestion Schemes and Quality Circles, which are designed to encourage and harvest ideas at work. Managers who are not leaders tend to believe that all problems can be solved by introducing a system. But systems are usually only half the solution. The other half is the people running them and the people participating in them. That spells out the need for leadership at all levels, together with a sound recruitment policy coupled with a comprehensive training programme. There is no such thing as instant innovation.

Suggestion schemes In 1857 the Chance Brothers of Smethwick, surprised when their workers suggested ways of improving production and saving on materials, hit upon the idea of putting a wooden box where such ideas could be posted. The scheme proved to be of immense worth to the firm and to the workers. It was the world’s first Suggestion Scheme.

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‘The enthusiastic support of top-management is essential,’ concluded the US writer Alex Osborn in a survey of Suggestion Schemes. He ridiculed those managers who merely affixed a box for suggestions in the work place and sat back to await a few million-dollar ideas. How do you increase the yield and quality of ideas? Osborn underlined the importance of focus. It is not enough to take a general theme each year, such as customer service or sales. Ask some pointed questions. Give people a fairly specific direction for their thinking. For, as Osborn said, ‘Our imaginations must have bones to gnaw upon.’ A leadership team that is eager for innovation – one which expects ideas and which is determined to generate them – is much more likely to enjoy a successful and profitable Suggestion Scheme. That is the first requirement. The second essential is simplicity. Keep your Suggestion Scheme as simple as possible. The more complicated and bureaucratic it becomes, the less effective it will be. A quick response to new ideas or suggestions is also essential. Knowledge of results is always motivating. Conversely, not knowing what has happened to your bright idea for months on end is extremely demotivating and demoralizing. The system must be such that participants know fairly soon if the organization is saying yes, no or wait. If the answer is no, it is important to explain why in some detail. That requires either a personal letter or, preferably, a short meeting. Research suggests that people are not demotivated if their idea is rejected, provided the reasons for doing so are set out clearly and convincingly. Needless to say, even junior colleagues are in as much need of tact and diplomacy when their ideas are being rejected as scientists, managers or professional people. ‘Pride is really the first thing that matters; the money comes second. To be picked out of a corporation like British Airways is really something.’ So said Michael Rowlerson, winner of a national competition for suggestions in the UK, when asked about the large cash prize he received from British Airways for suggesting how to remove corrosion from the inside of the undercarriage struts. To repeat the point, the general consensus is that money is not the prime motivator when it comes to generating new ideas: recognition and sense of achievement are way ahead of it. But that should not prevent companies from giving more realistic monetary prizes both as signs of recognition and also as incentives to others. Suggestions Schemes, to enjoy success, need to be marketed internally. Special events, publicity, newsletters and local newspaper or radio, together with a lively and compelling promotional booklet, are all ingredients in keeping the system alive and functioning well. Never expect any system to go on working without maintenance, revision and re-inspiration. Granted these ingredients, Suggestion Schemes are a most valuable system for harvesting innovative ideas. At one food manufacturing company, for example, one

Harvesting Ideas

employee, originally a butter packer, moved into design engineering as a result of a suggestion he made to redesign a machine. He was given a week off with a design engineer to put his suggestion into practice, and the redesign saved the company over £500,000 in the next eight years.

Quality Circles The drawback of suggestion schemes is that – as presently constituted – they do not make use of the key principle of team creativity. It is an innovative system that is highly individualistic. By contrast, Quality Circles do employ team creativity. For a Quality Circle is a group of 4 to 12 people coming from the same work area, performing similar work, who voluntarily meet on a regular basis to identify, investigate, analyse and solve their own work-related problems. The Circle presents solutions to management and is usually involved in implementing and later monitoring them. Each Circle has a team leader. Within an organization the groups are supported and coordinated by a facilitator. You can see that Quality Circles are an innovative system superimposed upon the existing structure of the organization. This has pros and cons. It could be argued that existing groups or teams, under supervisors and line managers, do not in practice engage in team creativity. Therefore it is necessary to introduce a new system designed to that end. On the other hand, adding new systems – a mini-hierarchy of Quality Circles and their leaders under facilitators who, in turn, come under coordinators or steering committees – offends against the principle of keeping organizations as simple as possible. Quality Circles have flourished best in Japan. It is traditionally important in Japan to ‘gather the wisdom of the people’. As we have seen, the Japanese are usually much more creative in groups than as individuals. Japanese industry was once notorious for shoddy workmanship and low quality merchandise, yet Japan emerged as one of the strongest economies in the world. There are other factors, such as a policy of long-term investment, in that success story, but the conversion of the Japanese to the gospel of quality comes high on the list. At one time it was estimated that 11 million Japanese workers were organized into Quality Circles, and children were taught in school the problem-solving techniques used by Quality Circles.

Success factors for Quality Circles Experience has shown that the following factors are very important for the success of Quality Circles:

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Top leadership support. As in the case of suggestion schemes, the most senior leader in the division, company or department has to be seen to be committed to the programme, making it clear by word and example that he or she expects all the management team to give their active support. That means committing employee time for regular Circle meetings, attending Circle meetings when invited and helping approved solutions to be implemented. Voluntary participation. Members and leaders are volunteers. Getting anything off the ground is much easier if people are not compelled to take part. Training. Facilitators, leaders and members are properly trained in teamwork, in problem-solving and in presentation skills. At the beginning of a programme, at least the facilitator (and often the first leaders) will have been trained by a consultant or other professionally competent resource. The facilitators often subsequently train leaders and help them in turn to train their Circle members. Shared work background. The first Circles will have been formed by people from the same work area. This shared work knowledge helps a faster development of the essential teamwork and also helps the Circle members to contain problems to those under their direct control. In manufacturing, Circles are usually formed from people doing similar work, but in service areas the members may be engaged in different aspects of a common process such as dealing with orders or paying invoices. Solution-oriented. Circles work in a systematic way on solving problems – not just discussing them – investigating causes, looking for improvements, testing solutions and whenever possible being actively involved in implementation. The management must take care to see that suggested solutions are implemented once they have been accepted. Recognition. Circles are not paid directly for their solutions, but management will arrange for proper recognition, for example by means of visits to special events or by contributions to social functions.

The main reason why Quality Circles fail, it must be emphasized, is the lack of management support. They get off to a good start but rarely continue beyond the honeymoon period. It follows that certain criteria should be present in an organization before Quality Circles can be successfully introduced. The company culture should be an open one, which encourages participation. There must also be a willingness to provide the relevant facts and information to enable employees to make an informed contribution. Industrial relations must be reasonably healthy. There should be a long-term commitment on the part of management at all levels, together with a readiness to provide the necessary training resources.

Harvesting Ideas

Towards team creativity Some companies are already developing the Quality Circles concept towards the total team creativity approach outlined above. One Scottish microelectronics firm, for example, set 18 task teams to work on a production line problem. As a result, the line was closed for more than two weeks and a new air system was built, but the loss of time and production was minimized. ‘In the old days the manager or supervisor would have wandered in and tried to do something,’ said one team member. ‘The whole process would have been greatly prolonged, the loss much greater.’ Suggestion Schemes and Quality Circles are really only stepping-stones leading towards the fully-fledged innovative organization. Such an organization will place a premium on creative thinking from the top downwards. It will ensure that it recruits a significant number of creative thinkers at all levels. All its organized groups – a sales team in a given region, for example – will be capable of working as a team on new ideas and innovations. The board of directors and the executive committee will in this respect lead by example, for strategic thinking calls for team creativity. One implication will be that individuals who show promise as creative or innovative thinkers will spend some of their time outside their departments or divisions contributing as members to intellectual project groups. Set up to solve macro-­ problems or to explore strategic opportunities, these task teams will be inter-­ disciplinary in nature, for diversity breeds creativity. All employees joining such an innovative organization will be fully briefed at recruitment stage as to what will be required of them in relation to innovation, including this possibility of being invited to work in project groups. Outstandingly innovative companies, such as 3M, have led the way in this respect. Lewis Lehr emphasizes the role of teamwork in 3M in bringing a new idea to market: The whole process of commercializing a new development is not like a relay race – in which the scientist completes his or her lap and passes a baton to production people, who in turn run their lap and pass the baton to a sales force for the final leg of the race. Ideally there is communication and consultation among all functions at every step. They often form what we call a business development unit to exploit the new product or business ideas. Such a team may transcend the existing organization structure and be loosely formed as a matrix system.

The importance of training and education No farmer harvests from the soil unless he or she invests in it. To operate an innovative organization with a culture of team creativity does presuppose a trained and educated workforce. Apart from technical training, everyone today needs training

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in the skills and techniques of effective thinking: analysing, imaging (using the brainstorming technique), valuing, and how the mind works – especially the positive part played by the unconscious mind in restructuring problems and providing solutions. A broader education is also to be encouraged, for an innovative organization is by definition also a learning organization. Anything that stirs up, excites or trains the 10,000 million brain cells of each team member is worth supporting. Visits to interesting places – not all directly work-related – can be especially rewarding. Several years ago, while reviewing the King Tutankhamen exhibition in Washington’s National Gallery of Art, one roving employee of Hallmark suddenly pictured the famous gold death mask as a puzzle for children. That idea paid off more than half a million dollars to the company. We must now visualize the innovative organization of tomorrow as a community of creativity. From the directors downwards every group in the organization will come to see itself as a team which is part of a yet wider team. Creative interaction will stimulate individual ideas: individual thought or reflection will in turn feed back into group meetings or into the ongoing conversation of the organization as a whole. Much more use will be made of task teams in the field of innovation. Value will be placed upon training in effective thinking skills and communication skills, upon education of the whole mind, and upon self-development within one’s chosen area of work.

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Systems and structure are important, but they are only half of the matter. The other half is the people who use the systems: their leadership and team membership skills, training in effective thinking and, above all, sustained commitment. Suggestion Schemes should have the merit of being simple. If properly managed, they are a valuable ingredient in promoting or encouraging creative thinking among the workforce. Quality Circles apply the principle of team creativity. As experiments, they have benefited from being voluntary. But innovative organizations should be harvesting ideas from all their staff. Each leader-manager should now be trained to run creative problem-solving meetings of his or her group, or delegate that function to a colleague with a natural aptitude for performing it. Training in skills and technique is necessary, but in creative thinking a wider approach also pays off in the long term. Education that develops the whole person, together with travel to look at other industries or to meet customers, helps to stimulate ideas and keep brains fit for innovative thinking.

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There are always reasons for not becoming an innovative organization, not least the fact that it costs money to go down that path. But can you afford the alternative? Innovation is more likely to come from people when their leader expects it.

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More creativity is the only way to make tomorrow better than today.  Anon

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Chapter Forty-one Overcoming resistance to change

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There is a natural opposition among men to anything they have not thought of themselves.  Sir Barnes Wallis

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o innovate means to introduce or bring in something new. The word itself comes from the Latin novus, new, which appears in other English words such as novice, renovation and novelty. Innovation is a form of change. Change, however, is a much wider concept than innovation. For all changes are not necessarily innovations.

The human need for continuity and change Our need for both continuity and change predisposes us to be considerably am­ bivalent about change. Part of our nature may see the need for it and either welcome it eagerly or accept it with resignation; the other part of our nature may deeply regret its appearance and fight against it in order to preserve the existing order. For we also have a conservative tendency: it leads us to seek to maintain existing views, conditions or institutions. This general truth about human nature, namely that we are all attracted in varying degrees by both newness and oldness, is influenced by individual psychology. Your age, for example, is a factor. People are more inclined to change when they are younger, and they grow more conservative as they grow older. ‘Young men are fitter to invent than to judge,’ wrote Francis Bacon, ‘fitter for execution than counsel, and fitter for new projects than settled business.’ But this generalization is riddled with exceptions. There are young men and women who have old heads on their shoulders. Equally, the fact that you have to grow older does not mean that you have to become old. When it comes to creative thinking and innovation, an old eagle is often better than a young sparrow.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

How we perceive what is new, of course, varies from individual to individual. What is blindingly new to one person may be ‘old hat’ to another. But this difference may be more apparent than real. For the general concept of newness is like a diamond with many facets. Basically new describes things that have recently come into existence or use. It may be equally applied to something that is freshly made and unused (a new loaf of bread), or to something that has not been known before (a new design), or to something not experienced before (a new job). But perhaps its most common meaning refers to being recent or original, such as something just invented, created or developed – a new book, just published, or a new tin-opener, based upon an entirely different mechanical principle. In this latter sense the phrase ‘brand new’ is sometimes used for emphasis. A brand new pair of shoes, for example, is one which has just been bought. Incidentally, new is also used as a synonym for fresh in the sense of unprejudiced, such as, for example, a new (or fresh) approach to controlling pollution of the seas. Novelty is almost the same as newness, but not quite, for it has some overtones. Novelty stresses the quality of newness. So we are inclined to call it novelty when we see or experience something that we perceive to be new, strange and unprecedented. Bearing in mind that we like to maintain some sort of thermostatic balance between continuity and change in our lives, what appears to be novel in the sense of totally unfamiliar and totally without precedent is liable to arouse mistrust and fear. ‘Man has a limited biological capacity for change,’ writes Alvin Toffler. ‘When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock.’ Again individual psy­ chology comes into play here: what some find stimulating others will find shocking. Cultural factors also influence our appetite for the new. Highly sophisticated, wealthy and leisured men and women may not only need new dishes to stir jaded appetites, but also large injections of novelty to stimulate their satiated minds. For many, novelty is indeed like a drug, subject to the law of diminishing returns. They are also prone to the ‘newer-is-truer’ fallacy. ‘The nature of men is greed for novelty,’ wrote the Roman statesman Pliny the Elder. Larger cities and urban cultures breed this mental restlessness. It was evident in ancient Rome in Pliny’s day, and still more so in ancient Athens. A contemporary of Pliny’s, the Christian author of the Acts of the Apostles, commented: ‘Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.’ Much later even the great Mozart fell victim to this greed for novelty. Vienna, the glittering capital of the Austrian empire in the 18th century, was much like Rome or Athens in this respect. After The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, both successes elsewhere, had flopped in Vienna, and after his later symphonies excited little interest, a friend told Mozart: ‘At first one gets acclaim and money. But after a few months the Viennese want something new.’ To summarize: both our welcoming of and our resistance to change have their roots in human nature. Broadly speaking, they stem from our partly unconscious

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need for a homeostatic balance between continuity and change. If we have too much change happening in our lives at any one time we tend to emphasize and preserve continuity. Too much change breeds insecurity and uncertainty: we lose our moorings in the river of time. Too much continuity, however, is equally bad. It stirs up our appetite for change. ‘Such is the state of life,’ wrote Samuel Johnson, ‘that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.’

Understanding the forces of resistance It follows from the above analysis that the response to innovation is going to be very different according to the situation and the people involved. To some extent the perception by individuals of change will be governed by the social culture and corpo­ rate sub-culture in which they live and work. Western and westernized countries are generally predisposed towards change, at least since the 19th century. Tennyson sounded the trumpet call: ‘Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.’ But that does not mean there is no inertia or resistance to change. Because of our homeostatic balancing of continuity and change we may resist change that is sudden, unexpected or very great, especially if it affects us personally. As Samuel Butler wrote, ‘Any very great and sudden change is death.’ We may experience a kind of resurrection after it, but the actual experience of change may be perceived as painful and life-threatening. If the change – proposed or actual – is attended with great dangers and uncertain effects, it is especially likely to arouse anxiety or fear. We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. How do you deal with the potential enemies of change? I suggest that there are five principles that need to be applied according to the needs and characteristics of the particular situation you have in mind. Let us consider each one in turn.

Principle one: plough up the ground No farmer sows seeds into hard, frozen or unyielding ground. You have to prepare the way for change. Unless you can create some dissatisfaction with things as they are, you cannot induce a willingness to change. Complacency is a greater enemy to change than fear. Go out into the highways and byways of your organization and cry out in a loud voice:

Overcoming Resistance to Change A thing is not right because we do it. A method is not good because we use it. Equipment is not the best because we own it.

Your first target must be the assumptions and fixed ideas of the organization: the luggage it brings from its successful past. Organizations and long-established groups are like individuals in that respect. ‘It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers that exists again in us,’ wrote Henrik Ibsen, ‘but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs… They are not actually alive in us; but they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them.’ Therefore innovation often comes when a fresh mind, untrammelled by these dead ideas and assumptions, enters a traditional industry. Sir Henry Bessemer, the British civil engineer who invented the Bessemer Process for converting molten pig-iron into steel, once said: ‘I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem in as much as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right.’ But in his case, as with many ‘outsiders’, ignorance and freedom from established patterns of thought in one field were joined with knowledge and training in other fields.

C a s e s t u dy   Nestlé seeks expert help for chocolate He is best known for such dishes as duck sweetbreads and cream, parmesan foam with raspberry muesli, and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes paella; it is almost impossible to get a table at his restaurant; and now Ferran Adrià, Spain’s most celebrated chef, has turned his attention to the humble chocolate bar. The chef, whose El Bulli restaurant, two hours’ drive from Barcelona, is said by some to be the best in the world, has agreed to improve the flavour of Cailler chocolate bars for Nestlé, which had admitted that its sales of the confectionery were in need of ‘beefing up’ – especially since its own research suggested that people are regaining their taste for premium chocolate. Nevertheless, the coming together of the astonishingly creative chef and the rather more staid Swiss multinational might surprise some. Adrià is renowned for using screwdrivers and blow torches to make some of his dishes and for making mouth-watering foams from just about anything, fish, fowl, fruit, you name it (for Nestlé, he is said to be working on a jasmine-tea-flavoured chocolate bar). Last year Nestlé also signed up the French architect Jean Nouvel, designer of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, to revamp its brands. Luis Cantarell, director of Nestlé in Europe, said: ‘These two personalities will work at the same time to renovate the brand, create a new “universe” and create completely new products.’ Nestlé’s latest collaboration follows a series of such signings by Spanish companies. The wine company Marqués de Riscal commissioned Frank Gehry, architect of the dramatic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, to build a wine museum, while the Bodegas and Bebida group signed Santiago Calatrava, architect of the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, also to build a wine museum.

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Ask plenty of questions. Why are we doing it this way rather than any other? What are the criteria for success? What is the evidence that we are being successful? When did we last review these procedures? Who among our competitors is doing things differently and with what results? Where is the key research and development being done in this area? These questions, repeated often, are like the points of a pneumatic drill digging up the hardened roads of organizational procedures. For you cannot sow seeds of change on tarmac roads. Organizational practices and procedures are rather like roads. ‘When a road is once built,’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, ‘it is a strange thing how it collects traffic, how every year as it goes on, more and more people are found to walk thereon, and others are raised up to repair and perpetuate it, and keep it alive.’

Principle two: market your ideas ‘In the modern world of business,’ says the advertising magnate David M Ogilvy, ‘it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.’ In other words, the onus is on you to persuade others that the proposed change is a good one, bearing in mind Henry Ford’s three questions: ‘Is it useful? Is it practicable? Is it commercial?’ As money is the language of business, you have to be able to show that – at least in the middle term – the new idea or innovation will cut costs, add to profits or serve some other legitimate corporate interest. You sell ideas best by pointing out the benefits it will confer upon the ‘buyer’, be he or she an external customer or an internal member of the same organization as yourself. In the legal sphere you are not allowed to act as judge in your own case. Your own ideas do need to be subjected to critical evaluation by others. ‘New ideas can be good or bad, just the same as the old ones,’ remarked Franklin D Roosevelt. Organizations, like society at large, have to protect themselves against needless innovation, including some of your brainchildren. The ‘newer-is-truer’ assumption is so often found to be a false one. In an innovative organization, with developed team creativity at work, your critics will have open minds. They will perceive the positive element in what you are proposing. They will test your ideas and, if necessary, reject them with tact. Or they may accept them and build upon them, so that the process of innovation gets under way. You can help them to see the value of a proposed change if you present it to individuals and groups with skill. Some creative thinkers are quite adept at finding their way through the political undergrowth of the organization. Others are not so good at presenting their ideas, getting them accepted and securing the necessary resources. That is where introducing

Overcoming Resistance to Change

the system of project sponsors can be such a help. Someone high in the organization is appointed to help the innovator gain access to resources and to protect the project when it falters. It is not an easy assignment, even in such innovative organizations as 3M, as Lewis Lehr writes: Acting as a sponsor for an untried project is no picnic. Most sponsors, I believe, tend to bet on people rather than on products. We have a saying at 3M that, ‘The captains bite their tongues until they bleed.’ This means they have to keep their hands off the project. The first virtue of a sponsor is faith. The second is patience. And the third is understanding the differences between temporary setback and terminal problem. It is at this level – the level of the sponsor – that there is opportunity to plant the seeds of innovation. Make sponsoring an explicit part of the job description for every top manager. When managers come in for appraisals, they should be asked about the new projects under their wings. The economics of projects is not the first issue to raise. Stress, instead, the vision of payoff.

In organizations which rate low in creativity and innovation, and do not appoint sponsors to act as godparents to new ideas, the process is considerably less effective and much more painful for all concerned. William James summed up one typical sequence: ‘First a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.’

Principle three: have a practice run ‘What is conservatism?’ asked Abraham Lincoln. ‘Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?’ Men and women tend not to believe in new things until they have experience of them. Therefore why not suggest an experiment? If something is tried and tested, so that it can be matched against the present state, then it is much more likely to be accepted. Experiment involves only limited commitment. People are usually more comfortable with that. It is only worth conducting, however, if there will be a fair and compre­ hensive review of the results. That does not preclude hard debate, for results are often open to several interpretations and it is important to arrive at the truth of the matter. In the politics of innovation the proposal for a trial run in one sector of the organization is often an acceptable compromise for the conservatives. Its drawback is the extra time it adds on to the bill. Indeed it can be used merely as a delaying tactic by those who have no intention or willingness to change. But it is always wise to assume the best motives in your adversaries. If you trust people, they may let you down; if you don’t trust them, they will do you down. ‘Progress is the mother of problems,’ wrote G K Chesterton. You only have to contemplate the problems posed to us by the advance of science to see the truth of

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his statement. If any change is made there will be manifest and latent consequences. The manifest consequences are the ones that can be foreseen; the latent ones only emerge during or after the innovation has been made. Sometimes hindsight shows that the innovation has not yielded the promised benefits. Perhaps the original product or service had some quality which has been lost in the improvement. In that case, if it is not too late, why not revert to the original? Hence the wisdom, if time permits, of conducting trials or experiments before adopting any innovation wholesale. Who would like to fly in a new aircraft that had not undergone rigorous test flights?

Principle four: make change incremental Inertia is not a detriment in every circumstance. It protects individuals and organizations from an oversensitive response to fluctuations in conditions. Only when change – social, economic and technological – is rapid in the environment does it become a liability. For rapid change calls for a rapid response. Organizations that put their head in the sand and ignore change may find that they have to make sudden and relatively great changes in order to catch up and survive. This form of crisis management should be avoided. It arouses too much anxiety and fear about the personal consequences of change. Gradual or incremental change is much better. As we have seen, innovation should always be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Wearing these clothes it is much less threatening. Therefore innovation should be planned in gradual stages, as part of a continuous process of adaptation to changing circumstances. It should not be a panic response to change that is now taking an organization by the throat because yesterday that same organization failed to take it by the hand. Use the time available carefully to communicate about the need for change, experiment and review. ‘Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly,’ reflected Confucius. With innovation it is usually best to make haste slowly.

Principle five: leadership is essential ‘Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm,’ wrote Emerson. If the top leadership is not committed to and enthusiastic about change, it will not happen. Why? Because there is an element of risk in even the best prepared and planned innovation. Not all the consequences or side-effects can be foretold. There is plenty of room for uncertainty and fear. Leaders of innovation need to show moral courage, commitment and enthusiasm if they are to keep people moving on the path of progress. They should share their courage and conceal their fear.

Overcoming Resistance to Change

One vital leadership skill of the chief executive is winning the commitment of others – especially the top management team – to a sustained strategy of innovation. That means first enfranchising managers to participate in strategic thinking. Then the door of decision-making must be opened at all levels so that everyone participates in how to implement change in so far as it affects their area of responsibility. Without implementation – making it happen – the early stages of creative thinking, research and experimental trial runs will be so much wasted effort. In conclusion, change may be an untidy process, but it need not be carried out in a disorderly way. Innovation may not always turn out as planned, which may create tension. But that is not an argument against all attempts to plan and manage it. Managers who are leaders can do much to create and nurture a climate in which innovation happens. There are too many challenges and problems outside the organ­ ization awaiting attention, without leaders and managers having to expend too much time and energy overcoming negative resistance to change within it.

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People tend to be ambivalent about change. Our needs for continuity and change are homeostatically balanced. We are more likely to respond positively to change if it is gradual and not too unfamiliar or strange. Very great or sudden change tends to alarm us. In overcoming this natural resistance to change it is necessary first to plough up the ground. Create dissatisfaction with the way things are. Remind your organization that a person does not have to be ill in order to get better. Challenge hidden assumptions and fixed ideas. There is always a better way. If you cannot communicate you cannot innovate. Innovation cannot happen without a team effort, and a team or organization will not swing into action unless you and your fellow spirits persuade them to do so. The third principle is to offer those resisting change the possibility of an experiment. That capitalizes on our human preference for making only limited commitments before we see our way forwards clearly. The strength of innovation lies in its incremental nature. Innovation, in contrast to creativity, implies the accumulation of small changes across the board. Therefore, present it as a form of evolution and be content with slow but steady progress. Without good leadership desired change will not happen in time. Leaders need both personal qualities, notably enthusiasm, and professional skills to involve others in decision making and the management of change.

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People support what they help to create.  Anon

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Innovation is our motto. The only trouble is that we do not practise it.  Anon

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t is not easy to keep alive the spirit of enterprise and innovation – which implies an element of risk-taking – in business organizations. As they get bigger and older they tend to become more risk-averse. They cease to be enterprises, marked by boldness and strenuous endeavour, and settled down into a sedentary, comfortable middle-age of bureaucracy. This phenomenon is not new. A worried Roman called Servaeus Africanus wrote to the District Governor of Middle Egypt in AD 288 as follows: It is apparent from the accounts alone that a number of people, wishing to batten on the estates of the Treasury, have invented titles for themselves, such as controller, secretary or superintendent, whereby they procure no advantage to the Treasury but swallow up the profits.

Rationalization in a business, like pruning fruit trees, is relatively easy. It usually produces short-term gains, which add to its attractions. It consists of reducing the headcount, eliminating low-margin or unprofitable product or service activities, and endeavouring to raise productivity. In other words, it focuses on loss elimination. Such benefits will be more difficult to secure in the future. Valuable though such rationalizations are, moreover, they do not address the real question: How do we grow the business? Any answer to that question is bound to include successful innovation coupled with imaginative marketing. That in turn calls for business leaders with a developed entrepreneurial instinct. They alone will have the will to take more calculated business risks. Old-style management – command and control, rationalizing and bureaucratic – is giving way to one demanding real leadership and creativity, supported by good systems-management and administration in depth. The successful companies of the future will be those that have developed excellence in products or services, together with the managerial leadership of sufficient quality and depth to exploit the opportunities of the world marketplace.

Conclusion: Leadership for Innovation

No innovative activity – introducing change, altering old ways of doing things, playing midwife to new ideas – can be risk-free. However carefully planned or closely calculated, there is always something that has to be left to chance. You can rattle the dice for so long, but then you have to throw them. The best chief executives and executive directors are constantly asking what the next step is. They are impatient. They love the quest for new products, new markets, new challenges and opportunities. This restless search for opportunity spurs them on. Too many managers only reach for what is in their grasp. They do not stretch themselves or their colleagues. By hard work and by the exercise of good judgement, however, leaders demonstrate time and time again that challenging but realistic targets can be achieved. However careful or calculating in their approach to risk, they recognize when they have to commit a lot of money or resources on the basis of information that is less than complete. Seldom will it be a one-man or one-woman decision. Many meetings and consultations often take place, but at the end of the day a wise chief executive knows that all depends upon his or her ability to assess a risk in the light of the projected benefits and potential downside, and then to reach a balanced and reasonable decision. As the ancient Greek proverb says, ‘Change fights ever on the side of those with practical wisdom.’ It is essential for business leaders, then, to accept the risk element in decision making, especially when it comes to innovation. Risk means the possibility of loss or injury. But if you never go out on a limb you will not pluck the best fruit. In a world where there is an irreducible element of chance or luck it is inevitable that some projects or enterprises will not succeed. It is no use worrying about these possible failures. The leader is not paid to worry: his or her job is to resolve and decide. Worry prevents you from doing that. As one chief executive said to me: Worry is nothing more than a substitute for action or a failure to recognize that there is no course of action open. It may be a result of failure to think things through, or fear of finding out. If unchecked it would consume my energy, confuse my thinking or force me into something that I shouldn’t do at all.

But an element of concern about the future is unavoidable in life: at least it keeps you awake. The fact that you have learnt to handle worry does not remove it. There are two important principles. Firstly, let the worry precede the decision rather than follow it. As an Arab proverb says, ‘Men sleep well in the Inn of Decision.’ Secondly, no leader is privileged to worry aloud or in public. People are always watching. Undue concern, uneasiness or panic can spread like wildfire. School yourself to act as if nothing is happening. Calm, confident and collected leadership creates a climate that is conducive to success. If failure occurs, how does the organization respond? Organizations that fear failure so much that they establish all sorts of controls to ensure that it does not happen do not have that problem. Unfortunately they do not have many successes either. They have condemned themselves to mediocrity.

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A chief executive of a company was recently summoned to the corporate headquarters of the international group for whom he worked. He had just made a substantial loss on a major project and therefore he was expecting to be dismissed. At the end of his meeting with the president, however, neither the loss nor his imminent departure had been mentioned. As he stood up to leave he said, ‘It’s good to know I have still got a job. I must confess I thought you would fire me today as a result of that substantial loss.’ ‘Fire you?’ replied the president. ‘Hell, no, your education has just cost me $1 million!’ Provided that failure is not the consequence of recklessness or incompetence, innov­ ative organizations will not exact revenge or make scapegoats. It is usually easy to be wise after the event. Although you should endeavour to be wise before the decision, it is no good belabouring yourself for not knowing then what you know now. Put it down to experience in your ledger of successes and failures. As they say, you can’t win them all. Oscar Wilde once defined experience as the name we give to our mistakes. It all comes back to the real commitment and leadership of the chief executive and the top management team. If they are firmly resolved upon profitable growth through team creativity, then the challenge of innovation will be met. Even with a good track record, do not leave anything to chance. Certainly, the best way to lose an innovative edge is to spend too much time admiring a successful past. A good reputation is history, nothing more. Good companies must always search for excellence.

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To innovate is not to reform: it is introducing useful change. Because innovations are new and untried (or only partially tried) they carry risks of various kinds. For humans, as Benjamin Franklin said, ‘The way to be safe is never to be secure.’ The essence of business is trading for profit. Profits are really the wages you are paid for innovating and taking risk within a social capitalist economy. An innovative organization has to learn to live with risk. Risk cannot be justified, however, if no one bothered to weigh or calculate it. To underestimate risk sometimes signals lack of experience or judgement, but to ignore risk altogether is plain foolhardiness. Entrepreneurial business leaders have to be able to assess risk and make decisions in conditions where all the information is not available. That is why they make good innovators. ‘Few moments are more pleasing,’ wrote Samuel Johnson, ‘than those when the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking.’

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He who dares nothing, need hope for nothing.  English Proverb

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Part Six The Art of Creative Thinking

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Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.  William Wordsworth

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he importance of creative thinking today needs no emphasis. In your profession or sphere of work you will have a competitive advantage if you develop your ability to come up with new ideas. In your personal life, too, creative thinking can lead you into new paths of creative activity. It can enrich your life – though not always in the way you expect. There have been many books on creativity and creative thinking. What is distinctive about this one? My new concept is that of the Depth Mind (see Chapter 54). Of course, the reality behind it – the creative activity of the unconscious mind – is not by any means new. My contribution, however, is to present that reality in a fresh way. I have also put it into context within a simple framework of mental activity: the analysing, synthesizing and valuing functions of the mind when it is thinking to some purpose. Oddly enough, no one has done that before. Part Six is not simply about creative thinking. Its aim is to help you in practical ways to become a more creative thinker. Being essentially practical, it does not go

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into the philosophy or psychology of creativity in any depth, except as far as these disciplines have thrown up valuable insights or tips for practical creative thinkers. Nor have I explored here what might be called the organizational dimension of the subject. How do organizations foster or stifle creative thinking? Why are some organizations better than others at introducing changes and implementing them? Part Five, Leadership for Innovation, addresses those questions. For how new ideas are brought to market in the shape of products or services is another subject. My focus here is upon you as an individual creative thinker, regardless of where you are employed. Each chapter has one simple core idea – something fairly tangible or well-attested. Depending on its nature, I then briefly develop and illustrate it. Then I summarize the discussion in some simple keypoints. These are not merely summaries, however, for sometimes new thoughts are introduced in them. It follows that there is really no logical order to this Part. Creative thinking cannot be reduced to a set of sequential steps. Imagine the chapters as being spokes of a wheel or pieces of amber hung on a necklace. So you do not necessarily have to start at the beginning – find a chapter that interests you and work outwards. I hope that you find Part Six stimulating and enjoyable as well as instructive. May it take you forward on your journey as a creative thinker. Among other things, these pages will help you to: ●●

develop your understanding of the creative process;

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enlarge your parameters of vision;

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listen, look and read with a creative attitude;

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make time to think;

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become more confident in yourself as a creative person.

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Chapter Forty-two On human creativity

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To create is always to do something new.  Martin Luther

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magine for a moment that an unknown animal had been discovered deep in the jungles of South America. It is destined to replace the dog and the cat in popularity as a domestic pet during this century. What does it look like? What are its winning characteristics? Take some paper now and draw it, making some notes about your sketch. Your new animal may have short silky fur like a mole. Its face may be borrowed from a koala bear and its round cuddly body from a wombat. It is blue in colour and green in temperament, for it does not foul the pavements or parks. That sounds a bit like a cat. It repels unwanted intruders more effectively than a guard-dog, but is as gentle with children as a white rabbit. What you are tending to do, consciously or subconsciously, is to borrow characteristics from the animals you know. There is nothing wrong with that. For we humans cannot make anything out of nothing. Once, a distinguished visitor to Henry Ford’s auto plants met him after an exhaustive tour of the factory. The visitor was lost in wonder and admiration. ‘It seems almost impossible, Mr Ford,’ he told the industrialist, ‘that a man, starting 25 years ago with practically nothing, could accomplish all this.’ Ford replied, ‘But that’s hardly correct. Every man starts with all there is. Everything is here – the essence and substance of all there is.’ The potential materials – the elements, constituents or substances of which something can be made or composed – are all here in our universe. You may have noticed that we tend to bestow the word creative on products that are very far removed from the original raw materials used. A masterpiece by Rubens was once a collection of blue, red, yellow and green worms of paint on the artist’s palette. Now the physical materials – paints and can­vas for an artist, paper and pen for an author – are entirely secondary. Creation here is more in the mind. Perception, ideas and feelings are combined in a concept or vision. Of course, the artist, writer

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or composer needs skill and technique to form on canvas or paper what is conceived in the mind. The same principle holds good in creative thinking as in creativity in general. Our creative imaginations must have something to work on. We do not form new ideas out of nothing. As Henry Ford said above, the raw materials are all there. The creative mind sees possibilities in them or connections that are invisible to less creative minds. That conclusion brings enormous relief. You do not have to conjure up new ideas from the air. Your task as a creative thinker is to combine ideas or elements that already exist. If the result is an unlikely but valuable combination of ideas or things that hitherto were not thought to be linked, then you will be seen as a creative thinker. You will have added value to the synthesis, for a whole is more than the sum of its parts.

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With creativity we start with what already exists. We recognize creativity where the artist or thinker of genius has transformed the materials at hand into a new creation of enduring value. ‘He is most original who adapts from the most sources’, as the saying goes. You will be creative when you start seeing or making connections between ideas that appear to others to be far apart: the wider the apparent distance the greater the degree of creative thinking involved. Creativity is the faculty of mind and spirit that enables us to bring into existence, ostensibly out of nothing, something of use, order, beauty or significance.

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No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you’re keeping the child in you alive.  Anon

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Chapter Forty-three Use the stepping stones of analogy

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I invent nothing; I rediscover.  Rodin

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ut yourself into the shoes of an inventor. You have become dissatisfied with the solution to some existing problem or daily necessity. You are casting about in your mind for a new idea. Something occurs to you, possibly suggested by reading about other people’s attempts in the files of the patent office. You go home and sketch your invention, and then make a model of it. There are other later stages, of course, but let us stop here. The point is that the model you have reached may well have been suggested by an analogy from nature. Indeed you could look upon nature as a storehouse of models waiting to be used by inventors. In the box below is a quiz, which you might like to attempt to answer now:

Quiz List specific inventions that were (or might have been) suggested to creative thinkers by the following natural phenomena: 1 human arms

2 cats

3 seagulls

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The Art of Creative Thinking   4 a frozen salmon

  5 spiders

  6 earthworms

  7 a flower

  8 the eye of a fly

  9 conical shells

10 animal bone structures

Can you add to that list? Take a piece of paper and see if you can add at least five other inventions that have sprung into the inventor’s mind by using an analogy as a stepping stone. In case you get stuck, here are some more natural phenomena that could have suggested inventions to alert creative thinkers. Can you identify what these inventions might have been? 11 dew drops on leaves

12 human skulls

13 bamboo

14 human foot

15 human lungs

16 larynx

Answers on page 483–84, in Appendix C at the back of the book.

Use the Stepping Stones of Analogy

Remember that what the natural model suggests is usually a principle that nature has evolved or employed to solve a particular problem or necessity in a given situ­ ation. That principle can be extracted like venom from a snake and applied to solve a human problem. Radar, for example, came from studying the uses of reflected sound waves from bats. The way a clam shell opens suggested the design for aircraft cargo doors. The built-in system weakness of the pea pod suggested a way of opening cigarette packages, a method now widely used in the packaging industry. The same fundamental principle – that models for the solution to our problems probably already exist, we do not have to create them from nothing – can be applied to all creative thinking, not just to inventing new products. Take human organization for example. Most of the principles involved can be found in nature: hierarchy (baboons), division of labour (ants, bees), networks (spiders’ webs), and so on. If you are trying to create a new organization you will find plenty of ready-made models in human society, past or present. Remember, however, that these are only analogies. If you copy directly you are heading for trouble. More of that later. Nor are we limited to nature for the kind of metaphors or analogies that trigger creative thinking. Soichiro Honda was an engineer who excelled in creative thinking and innovation. While he was building his first four-cylinder motorcycle he gradually realized that although the engine was fine his designers had made the machine look squat and ugly. He decided to take a week’s break in Kyoto. One day, sitting in an ancient temple, he found himself fascinated by the face of a statue of the Buddha. He felt that he could see a resemblance between the look of Buddha’s face and how he imagined the front of the motorbike would be. Having spent the rest of the week studying other statues of the Buddha in Kyoto he returned and worked with the designers on a harmonious style that reflected something of the beauty he had glimpsed.

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Thinking by analogy, or analogizing, plays a key part in imaginative thinking. This is especially so when it comes to creative thinking. Nature suggests models and principles for the solutions of problems. There are other models or analogies to be found in existing products and organizations. Why reinvent the principle of the wheel when it has already been discovered? Some simple research may save you the bother of thinking it out for yourself. Honda’s story illustrates a principle that we shall explore more fully in Chapter 45. He had a wide span of analogy – who else would have seen an analogy between a Buddha’s smile and the front of a motorcycle?

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Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.  Goethe

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Chapter Forty-four Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange

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Discovery consists of seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.  Anon

W

hen primitive natives in New Guinea saw an aircraft for the first time they called it ‘the big bird’. Birds were familiar to them. Their first step towards comprehending something totally strange or unfamiliar to them was to assume it was an unusual example of something already known to them. We assimilate the strange or unfamiliar by comparing it consciously or unconsciously to what is familiar to us. With further experience the natives doubtless discovered that in some respects aircraft are like birds and in some respects they are not. In other words, following the ‘big bird’ hypothesis, noting the point where it begins to break down, is a useful way of exploring and beginning to understand a new phenomenon. Therefore you should use analogy to explore and understand what seems to be strange. Not so long ago I conducted a seminar on leadership for heads of university departments. Leadership and management – and the difference between them – were quite new concepts for many of the participants. One of them, a professor of chemistry, used the familiar to understand the unfamiliar in this way: In chemistry a reaction between two compounds that can react is often put down in notation as follows: A + B

  AB

Many reactions proceed slowly, if at all, without a catalyst. This to my mind is the role of leadership in getting a job done – to catalyse the process. There are various ways in which the analogy could be amplified but if you consider a rough equation of PROBLEM

  SOLUTION

management will realize a solution in many instances but leadership will usually catalyse it. There is a little magic involved!

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Creative thinking often involves a leap in the dark. You are looking for something new. By definition, if it is really novel, neither you nor anyone else will have had that idea. Often you cannot get there in one jump. If you can hit upon an analogy of what the unknown idea may be like you are halfway there. The reverse process – making the familiar strange – is equally useful to the creative thinker. Familiarity breeds conformity. Because things, ideas or people are familiar we stop thinking about them. As Seneca said, ‘Familiarity reduces the greatness of things.’ Seeing them as strange, odd, problematic, unsatisfactory or only half-known restarts the engines of your minds. Remember the saying that God hides things from us by putting them near to us. As an exercise in warming up your latent powers of creative thinking you can do no better than to apply this principle of making the familiar strange. Take something that you frequently see or experience, or perhaps an everyday occurrence like the sun rising or the rain falling. Set aside half an hour with some paper and a pen or pencil. Reflect or meditate on the object, concentrating on what you do not know about it. A member of your family or a friend makes a good subject for this exercise. When we say we know someone we usually mean that we have a hazy notion of their likes and dislikes, together with a rough idea of their personality or temperament. We believe we can predict more or less accurately how the person will react. We think we know when our relative or friend is deviating from their normal behaviour. But take yourself as an analogy. Does anyone know everything about you? Could you in all honesty say that you fully know yourself? ‘We do not know people – their concerns, their loves and hates, their thoughts’, said the late novelist Iris Murdoch in a television interview. ‘For me the people I see around me every day are more extraordinary than any characters in my books.’ The implication is that below the surface of familiarity there is a wonderful unknown world to be explored.

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The process of understanding anything or anyone unfamiliar, foreign, unnatural, unaccountable – what is not already known, heard or seen – is best begun by relating it by analogy to what we know already. But it should not end there. The reverse process of making the familiar strange is equally important for creative thinking. We do not think about what we know. Here artists can help us to become aware of the new within the old. ‘No man really knows about other human beings,’ wrote John Steinbeck, ‘the best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.’

Make the Strange Familiar and the Familiar Strange

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‘Last night I thought over a thousand plans, but this morning I went my old way’, says the Chinese proverb. Settled habits of thought, over-addiction to the familiar, will smother the dreams and ideas of the night. This morning you made a cup of tea or coffee and had your breakfast – the same as yesterday. But was it? You will never even brush your teeth in precisely the same way as yesterday. Every minute is unique.

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The essence of the creative act is to see the familiar as strange.  Anon

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Chapter Forty-five Widen your span of relevance

“

To perceive things in the germ is intelligence.  Lao-Tzu

F

arming in his native Berkshire in the early 18th century, the British agriculturalist, Jethro Tull, developed a drill enabling seeds to be sown mechanically, and so spaced that cultivation between rows was possible in the growth period. Tull was an organist, and it was the principle of the organ that gave him his new idea. What he was doing, in effect, was to transfer the technical means of achieving a practical purpose from one field to another. The essential ingredients of the story are as follows. Tull was confronted with a problem and dissatisfied with the existing solutions to it. Suddenly a spark jumped between the problem and his knowledge of another technology. He found a model or analogy. Then it was a question of applying the principle and developing the technology to the new task in hand. The less obvious the connection between the two fields the more we are likely to call it creative thinking. Therefore it is not surprising that inventors and other creative thinkers have know­ ledge in more than one field. They may even work in a quite different sphere from the one in which they make their names as discoverers or inventors. Compare the following list of inventions in the box below with the occupations of their inventors: Invention

Inventor’s main occupation

Ballpoint pen

Sculptor

Safety razor

Traveller in corks

Kodachrome films

Musician

Automatic telephone

Undertaker

Parking meter

Journalist

Pneumatic tyre

Veterinary surgeon

Long-playing record

Television engineer

Widen Your Span of Relevance

The lack of expert or specialized knowledge in a given field is no bar to being able to make a creative contribution. Indeed, too much knowledge may be a disadvantage. As Disraeli said, we must ‘learn to unlearn’. Sir Barnes Wallis, the British aeronautical engineer who helped to develop the Concorde supersonic airliner and the swingwing aircraft, failed his London matriculation examination at the age of 16. ‘I knew nothing,’ he said in a television interview, ‘except how to think, how to grapple with a problem and then go on grappling with it until you had solved it.’ When you are grappling with a problem remember to widen your span of relevance. Look at the technologies available in fields other than your own, possibly in those that may appear to others to be so far removed as to be irrelevant. They may give you a clue. ‘Experience has shown,’ wrote Edgar Allan Poe, ‘and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.’ That is a great reason for travelling. For one seeing is worth a hundred hearings. Go and look for yourself. You may discover technologies that are ripe for transfer. It has been said that as individuals the Japanese are not highly rated as creative thinkers, but in groups they are much more creative. The secret of the Japanese economic miracle is that they travelled the world in search of the latest technologies that they could transfer to Japan, there to be endlessly adapted and improved. Quality Circles, for example, was a system for getting work people to think creatively about their products or services, which made its first appearance in the United States after the Second World War. The Japanese transferred that system and developed it with outstanding success into their own industry.

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The transfer of technology from one field to another, usually with some degree of alteration and adaptation, is one way in which you can make a creative contribution. You may be familiar with a body of knowledge or technical capability unknown to others in your field because you have worked in more than one industry. Or it may come about as a result of your travels to other countries. People with a narrow span of relevance are thinking within the tramlines and boundaries of their own industry. Leap over the wall! Develop a wide span of relevance, for there are connections between every other industry in the world and yours – if only you could see them. It comes down to your ‘power to connect the seemingly unconnected’, or at least the things that hitherto have not been brought together in a new and interesting relation.

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“

It is the function of creative people to perceive the relations between thoughts, or things or forms of expression that may seem utterly different, and to combine them into some new forms – the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.  William Plomer

427

Chapter Forty-six Practise serendipity

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The real magic of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.  Marcel Proust

S

erendipity is a happy word. Horace Walpole coined it to denote the faculty of making unexpected and delightful discoveries by accident. In a letter to a friend (28 January 1754) he says that he formed it from the title of a fairy story, The Three Princes of Serendip (an ancient name for Sri Lanka), for the princes ‘were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of’. If serendipity suggests chance – the finding of things of value when we are not actually looking for them – the finder must at least be able to see the creative possibilities of his or her discovery. Edison was seeking something else when he came across the idea of the mimeograph. He had the good sense to realize that he had made a discovery of importance and soon found a use for it. Serendipity goes against the grain of narrow focus thinking, where you concentrate your mind upon an objective or goal to the exclusion of all else. It invites you to have a wide span of attention, wide enough to notice something of significance even though it is apparently irrelevant or useless to you at present. The three princes in the story were travellers. Explorers into the unknown often make unexpected discoveries. As the proverbial schoolboy or girl knows, Christopher Columbus was seeking a new sea route to Asia when he discovered the New World. He thought he had reached India, which is why he called the natives he found there Indians. When you travel you should do so in a serendipitous frame of mind. Expect the unexpected. You may not discover America but you will have some happy and unexpected ‘finds’. ‘Thinking will always give you a reward, though not always what you expected.’ These wise words were spoken by the Canadian entrepreneur and businessman Lord Roy Thomson of Fleet.

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When you are thinking you are travelling mentally, you are on a journey. For genuine thinking is always a process possessing direction. Look out for the un­ expected thoughts, however lightly they stir in your mind. Sometimes an unsuspected path or byway of thought that opens up might be more rewarding than following the fixed route you had set yourself. Christopher Milne once unveiled a bronze statue of Winnie the Pooh, the toy bear that became both the joy and the bane of his life. Milne and his father took the name ‘Pooh’ from a swan that had died and ‘Winnie’ from the child-loving black bear that was the mascot of a Canadian regiment that left her in Regent’s Park when it went to the front in 1914. A A Milne’s literary executives had commissioned the sculpture. ‘There are two ways of doing things,’ said Christopher Milne at the unveiling ceremony. ‘You can decide exactly what you want to do and make a list on a piece of paper and then do it all precisely. This was Rabbit’s way. At the end everyone says, “Well done, Rabbit. Clever Rabbit.” Or you can have a rough idea of what you want, hope to set off in the right direction and probably end up with something quite different. Then you realize it isn’t such a bad thing after all. That was Pooh’s way and that’s how we’ve done this.’ With hindsight it is often easier to see the effects of serendipity in your life. Look­ ing back, can you identify three occasions when you made important discoveries, or met key people in your life’s story, when you were not expecting to do so?

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Serendipity means finding valuable and agreeable ideas or things – or people – when you are not consciously seeking them. You are more likely to be serendipitous if you have a wide span of attention and a broad range of interests. Being over-organized, planning your life down to the last minute like a control freak, is inimical to creativity. For chaos often breeds ideas. As A A Milne said: ‘One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.’ Developing your capacity for creative thinking will bring you rewards, but they may not be the ones you expect now. A creative thinker needs to be adventurous and open-minded like a resourceful explorer. Sometimes in life you never quite know what you are looking for until you find it.

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Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.  William Shakespeare

429

Chapter Forty-seven Chance favours only the prepared mind

“

Where observation is concerned, chance favours only the prepared mind.  Louis Pasteur

B

efore the development of the float process by a research team led by Sir Alastair Pilkington, glass-making was labour-intensive and time-consuming, mainly because of the need for grinding and polishing surfaces to get a brilliant finish. Pilkington’s proprietary process eliminated this final manufacturing stage by floating the glass, after it is cast from a melting furnace, over a bath of molten tin about the size of a tennis court. The idea for ‘rinsing’ glass over a molten tin bath came to Sir Alastair when he stood at his kitchen sink washing dishes. The float process gives a distortion-free glass of uniform quality with bright, fire-polished surfaces. Savings in costs are considerable. A float line needs only half the number of workers to produce three times as much glass as old production methods. Since the introduction of the process, it is estimated to have earned Pilkington over $2 billion in royalties. It is interesting to reflect how many other inventions have been the result of such unexpected or chance occurrences as befell Sir Alastair Pilkington at his kitchen sink. The classic example, of course, is the discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming. The sweetening effect of saccharine, another example, was accidentally discovered by a chemist who happened to eat his lunch in the laboratory without washing his hands after some experiments. Ira W Rufel observed the effects when a feeder failed to place a sheet of paper in a lithograph machine, and the work on the printing surface left its full impression upon the printing cylinder: it led him to invent the offset method of printing. The idea of the mirror galvanometer first occurred to William Thompson when he happened to notice a reflection of light from his monocle. Charles Goodyear discovered the vulcanization of rubber in 1839 by similar obser­ vation of a chance event. He had been experimenting for many years to find a pro­ cess of treating crude or synthetic rubber chemically to give it such useful properties

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as strength and stability, but without success. One day as he was mixing rubber with sulphur he spilt some of the mixture on to the top of a hot stove. The heat vulcanized it at once. Goodyear immediately saw the solution to the problem that had baffled him for years. As Goodyear pointed out, however, chance was by no means the only factor in his useful discovery. He said: I was for many years seeking to accomplish this object, and allowing nothing to escape my notice that related to it. Like the falling apple before Newton’s gaze, it was suggestive of an important fact to one whose mind was previously prepared to draw an inference from any occurrence which might favour the object of his research. While I admit that these discoveries of mine were not the result of scientific chemical investigation, I am not willing to admit that they are the result of what is commonly called accident. I claim them to be the result of the closest application and observation.

I have put some of Goodyear’s words into italics because they highlight the importance of having a wide focus of attention and keen powers of observation. His message is admirably summed up in Pasteur’s famous words: ‘In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind.’ What does it mean for you to have a prepared mind? You have to be purposeful in that you are seeking an answer or solution to some problem. You have become exceptionally sensitive to any occurrence that might be relevant to that search. You have the experience to recognize and interpret a clue when you see or hear one. That entails the ability to remain alert and sensitive for the unexpected while watching for the expected. You will have to be willing to invest a good deal of time in fruitless work, for opportunities in the form of significant clues do not come often. In those long hours, experiment with new procedures. Expose yourself to the maximum extent to the possibility of encountering a fortunate accident.

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Things that happen unpredictably, without discerning human intention or observable cause, can be stitched into the process of creative thinking. Such accidents tend to happen to those who deserve them. Do not wait for them, but learn to watch out for them. To see and recognize a clue in such unexpected events demands sensitivity and observation. To interpret the clue and realize its possible significance requires knowledge without preconceptions, imaginative thinking, the habit of reflecting on unexplained observations – and some original flair.

Chance Favours Only the Prepared Mind

●●

Again, the importance of having an open mind and a degree of curiosity stands out clearly. You have to constantly ask yourself questions about what is happening around you – and be ready for surprising answers.

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I have no exceptional talents, other than a passionate curiosity.  Einstein

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Chapter Forty-eight Curiosity

“

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.  Samuel Johnson

I

f you or I had been in Napoleon’s shoes after his shattering defeat at Waterloo we might well have lapsed into a state of inward-looking depression if not despair. Not so Napoleon. Following his defeat he abdicated with the apparent intention of going into exile in America. At Rochefort, however, he found the harbour blockaded and he decided to surrender himself to the Royal Navy. He was escorted aboard HMS Bellerophon. It was a new experience for him to see the inside of a ship of the Royal Navy, the instrument of France’s defeat at Trafalgar a few years earlier. An English eyewitness on board noticed that ‘he is extremely curious, and never passes anything remarkable in the ship without immediately demanding its use, and inquiring minutely into the manner thereof’. ‘The important thing is not to stop questioning,’ said Einstein. ‘Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.’ Such curiosity is – or should be – the appetite of the intellect. Creative thinkers have it, because they need to be taking in information from many different sources. The novelist, William Trevor, for example, sees his role as an observer of human nature: ‘You’ve got to like human beings, and be very curious,’ he says, otherwise he doesn’t think it is possible to write fiction. Of course, curiosity in this sense must be distinguished from the sort of curiosity that proverbially kills the cat. The latter implies prying into other people’s minds in an objectionable or intrusive way, or meddling in their personal affairs. True curio­ sity is simply the eager desire to learn and know. Such disinterested intellectual curiosity can become habitual. Leonardo da Vinci’s motto was ‘I question’.

Curiosity

‘To be an inventor is an eclectic sort of life,’ says Sir Clive Sinclair. ‘You’ve got to know about a lot of different subjects in different ways, so you have to teach yourself what you want to know. I don’t think university is much of a help if you want to be an inventor – and that’s all I ever wanted.’ One of the prime aims of education, it could be argued, is to develop such an inquisitive mind. ‘The whole art of teaching,’ wrote Anatole France, ‘is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.’ ‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice in Wonderland. Too often it is only something curious, rare or strange that arouses our curiosity. But what excites attention merely because it is strange or odd is often not worth any further investigation. We do have to be selective in our curiosity. There is a story about a young officer of whom it was said: ‘His men will follow him anywhere – out of a sense of curiosity.’ In creative thinking curiosity about what will happen next is an important ingredient in motivation. Ken Rowat makes that point: Creative activity, agonizing though it may be at times, is essentially life enhancing, often joyful, and this can be judged not from the fixed smiles worn by models advertising power tools but by the extent to which the individual is seriously engrossed in his activity. Outside making love, men and women never feel better than when they are totally engaged in exploration or construction, especially when the motivation is simply: ‘I wonder what will happen if I do this?’

In other words, it is not simply a case of being curious in order to gather information, the raw materials of creative thought. Rather, creative thinking is itself a way of learning something new. You are not quite sure where your train of thought will lead you. So there is a connection between thinking and learning or rather trying to teach oneself. ‘Thinking is trying to make up the gap in one’s education,’ wrote the philosopher, Gilbert Ryle, in On Thinking (1979). It is not, of course, a matter of teaching yourself something that you want to know; you cannot teach it because you do not know it. ‘What am I trying to think out for myself is indeed something that the Angel Gabriel conceivably might have known and taught me instead,’ continued Ryle, ‘but it is something that no one in fact did teach me. That is why I have to think. I swim because I am not a passenger on someone else’s ferryboat. I think, as I swim, for myself. No one else could do this for me.’

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‘Curiosity in children is but an appetite for knowledge’, wrote the philosopher John Locke. You should aim to retain throughout your life that eager desire to see, learn or know. Curiosity is the mind on tiptoe. Creative thinkers tend to have a habit of curiosity that leads them to give searching attention to what interests them. Thinking is a way of trying to find out for yourself. If you always blindly accepted what others told you there would be nothing to be curious about. One way to develop your curiosity is to begin to ask more questions, both when you are talking with others and when you are talking in your mind to yourself. Questioning, carefully done, helps you to distinguish between what is known and what is unknown.

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Go round asking a lot of damfool questions and taking chances. Only through curiosity can we discover opportunities, and only by gambling can we take advantage of them.  Clarence Birdseye, American industrialist

435

Chapter Forty-nine Keep your eyes open

“ “

Here is a great observer, and looks Quite through the deeds of men.  William Shakespeare If a man looks sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she is blind yet she is not invisible.  Francis Bacon

‘I

am fascinated by the principle of growth: how people and things evolved,’ said the portrait painter Graham Sutherland in an interview at the age of 73. He aimed to pin down the atmosphere and essence of the people he painted: ‘I have to be as patient and watchful as a cat.’ He could see in the human face the same sort of expression of the process of growth and struggle as he found in rugged surfaces of boulders or the irregular contours of a range of hills. ‘There are so many ideas I want to get off my chest. The days aren’t long enough’, he added. It may seem odd to think of painting a picture as a means of getting an idea off your chest. But for the artist the act of careful analytical observation is only part of the story. Ideas and emotions are fused into the paint in the heat of inspiration. What the artist knows and feels is married to what he or she sees, and the picture is the child of that union. ‘Painting is a blind man’s profession,’ said Picasso. ‘He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.’ That principle holds true not only for the kind of art for which Picasso is famous but also for the more realistic work of painters such as Graham Sutherland. An observation made through the eyes will undergo transformation to varying degrees in the creative mind as it is combined with other elements into a new idea, bubbling away in a cauldron of animated interest. As William Blake put it, ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.’ But the observation itself needs to be clear, accurate and honest. Like a good cook, a creative thinker should work from the best materials. Laurence Olivier was an actor renowned for his ability to build character in a creative way. ‘I am like a scavenger,’ he said, ‘I observe closely, storing

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some details for as long as 18 years in my memory.’ When invited to play the title role in Shakespeare’s King Richard the Third he drew upon his recollection of Jed Harris, a famous Broadway producer of the 1930s under whom he had a bad experience. Harris had a prominent nose, which Olivier borrowed for the role, along with elements of his disagreeable character. But Olivier combined other elements into the new role, such as the shadow of the Big Bad Wolf, which he had seen long ago in Walt Disney’s film Pinocchio. Remembered films often gave him such ideas. The little dance he did while playing Shylock came from Hitler’s jig for joy when France signed its capitulation in 1940, a moment shown on German newsreels. Observation is a skill. ‘You see, but you do not observe,’ comments Sherlock to his assistant Dr Watson in one of their cases. At the lowest level it implies the ability to see what is actually in front of you. As scientists know, this is not as easy as it sounds. It is almost impossible to be totally objective. We tend to see what we know already. That does leave some creative possibilities. For, as Gustave Flaubert wrote, ‘There is an unexplored side to everything, because instead of looking at things with our eyes we look at them with the memory of what others have thought.’ Our minds are programmed to notice certain things rather than others, not least by our particular interests. A botanist, for instance, will be likely to notice plants. If we see things or people repeatedly we hardly observe them at all unless there is some change from the familiar or predictable, some deviation from the norm, which forces itself upon our attention. A good observer will be as objective as possible. Inevitably, he or she will be selective in observation, guided by some idea or principle on what to look for. But, being serendipitous, you should be sensitive to what you have not been told – or told yourself – to look for. One of the best forms of training in observation is drawing or sketching. Take some paper and pencil and look at any object. Now select from what you see the key lines that give you its essential shape. You are now exercising careful analytical attention. One of the great pioneers in the importance of teaching drawing was John Ruskin. As he told his students at the Working Men’s College in the 1850s, ‘I am only trying to teach you to see.’ Seeing, for Ruskin, was the fundamental way in which to acquire knowledge of the world, and it was a talent that few possessed. As he wrote in Modern Painters: the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion – all in one.

Do not worry if you cannot reproduce the object like a trained artist. Your aim is different. You are using sketching as a means of learning to use your eyes, so that you can really see the world around you. Such sketches, however rough and ready, will not only increase your awareness of the world but they will also help you to etch the

Keep Your Eyes Open

scene in memory. In his autobiography, A Millstone Round My Neck (1983), the artist Norman Thelwell makes just that point: It may be that one’s awareness of the world is heightened during the process of recording visual things with pencil, pen or brush. Sketchbooks and paintings, even the slightest notes, can recall not just the day and place but the hour, the moment, the sounds and smells that would have gone forever without them. I have drawings still which I did as a child and I can remember when I come across them what my brother said to me, what my mother was doing at the time, what was on the radio when I was working and how I felt about the world that day.

About 70 per cent of the information we use comes through our eyes. Therefore you should develop your ability to see things and make detailed observations. For they are the materials for future creative thinking.

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The ability to give careful, analytical and honest attention to what you see is essential. If you do not notice and observe you will not think. Observation implies attempting to see a person, object or scene as if you had never seen it before in your life. What really teaches us, it has been said, is not experience, but observation. The act of observation is not complete until you have recorded what you have seen, thereby helping to commit it to memory. Observation capitalizes inspiration. A bystander may sometimes perhaps see more of the game than he who plays it. Watch less, observe more. ‘All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions’, wrote Leonardo da Vinci. Do you see things clearly and accurately? Interested and close attention is the mother of perception. Sir Isaac Newton once told a friend: ‘If I ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.’

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A good spectator also creates.  Swiss proverb

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Chapter Fifty Listen for ideas

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Give us grace to listen well.  John Keble

‘Y

ou hear not what I say to you,’ said the Lord Chief Justice to Shakespeare’s Falstaff. ‘Very well, my Lord, very well,’ replies the irrepressible old rogue. ‘Rather, if you will excuse me, it is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled with.’ Poor listening ability is a common affliction, but creative thinkers do not suffer from it. Although we know very little about Falstaff’s creator we can at least surmise with some confidence that he was a good listener. What constitutes such a rare beast as a good listener? First, a good listener will have curiosity, that all-essential desire to learn. That requires a degree of humility, the key to having an open mind. For if you think you know it all, or at least if you believe you know more than the person to whom you are talking, you are hardly inclined to listen. Hitler was an appallingly bad listener for that very reason. Having an open mind does not guarantee that you will buy the idea, proposition or course of action being put to you. But it does mean that you are genuinely in the marketplace for new ideas. You will buy if the price is right. The next requirement is to control your analytical and critical urges. For your first priority is to grasp fully what the other person is actually saying, especially if it is a new and therefore strange idea to you. Have you a clear picture of it in your mind? A hearer only hears what the other person is saying; a listener discovers the real import of their words. The act of comprehension, then, should come before the process of analysis and evaluation. Until you are clear about what is being said or suggested you are in no position to agree or accept. A good listener is creative in the sense that he or she draws the best out of you. All professional musicians will tell you that the audience plays a vital part in a performance. Referring to a play that had recently failed, Oscar Wilde said: ‘The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.’

Listen for Ideas

One of the most creative listeners I have come across was Lord Roy Thomson of Fleet. In his autobiography, Long After Sixty, he had this to say about his policy of being a listener: In my office I have always made myself accessible; I have always insisted upon this, to the extent often of not allowing my staff, or of not waiting for them, to vet strangers who came to see me before permitting them to come into my office. It is surprising the things that have sprung from this, the surprising things I’ve learned. I am always curious, always hopeful. I still often duck out of an office meeting to see what some visitor looks like and to find out what he wants. Likewise, I take quite a few telephone calls if my secretary happens to be busy or out of the room for the moment; I have told the switchboard that if there is not one of my personal staff to answer a call, to put it straight through to me. I don’t want any information or opportunity to go elsewhere just because no one could take a call. I try to make friends wherever I go and it is my fond belief that I usually succeed. The way I look at it, everyone has an idea and one in a dozen may be a good idea. If you have to talk to a dozen people to get one good idea, that isn’t wasteful work. People are continually passing things on to me, because I have given them to believe that I will be interested, I might even pay for it! Sometimes, usually when it is least expected, something comes up that is touched with gold.

Roy Thomson was full of questions on every subject. His interest was like a perennial spring: it flowed from the hope that the companion of the moment might add information to some current concern, or even reveal some world that Roy had not so far entered. He personified the Turkish proverb: ‘Listening requires more intel­ ligence than speaking.’ That may, however, be overstating the case. The ability to talk well and the ability to listen are, in fact, clearly related. As Peter Ustinov once said to me, ‘There is no point in talking without listening.’ A person who listens because he or she has nothing to say can hardly be source of inspiration. The only listening that counts is that of the talker who alternately absorbs and expresses ideas.

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A childlike curiosity and an open mind, backed up by sharp analytical skills and a sensitive judgement, are the essential prerequisites for being a good listener. Your priority must always be to achieve a grasp of the nature and significance of what is being said to you. Ask questions to elicit the full meaning. Understanding comes before evaluation. Listen for ideas, however incomplete and ambiguous, as well as for potentially relevant facts and information. ‘My greatest strength as a consultant,’ Peter Drucker once told me, ‘is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.’

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Never miss a chance to shut up. The word listen contains the same letters as the word silent. ‘It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the province of wisdom to listen,’ said Oliver Wendell Holmes.

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Give every man your ear, but few your voice. 

William Shakespeare

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Chapter Fifty-one Reading to generate ideas

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The use of reading is to aid us in thinking.  Edward Gibbon

‘I

love to lose myself in other men’s minds,’ wrote Charles Lamb. ‘When I am not walking, I am reading; I cannot sit and think. Books think for me.’ For many people, reading and research is more a device for avoiding thought rather than as an aid to it. But reading for diversion or entertainment, or reading merely for information, is different from reading for idea generation. What kinds of reading will develop your creative imagination? Good fiction may come high on your list. Novelist John Fowles said that the reader of fiction has to take part and do half the work. ‘I like the vagueness of the printed word’, he said. Take a sentence like ‘She walked across the road.’ You have to imagine it, so you have freedom. No two people have ever imagined Tolstoy’s characters in War and Peace in the same way. It makes for richness in reading, for it involves a communion between author and reader. Therefore prose and poetry will never die. The words of Francis Clifford, writer of 15 novels, apply to all books likely to be useful to a creative thinker. ‘A writer’s task,’ he said, ‘is not to spell everything out. It is really to imply and infer and hint, to give the reader the opportunity of total involvement by encouraging him or her to contribute his or her own reflections and imagery.’ Reading without reflecting has been compared to eating without digesting. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, Francis Bacon put it more accurately. One page or even one paragraph properly digested will be more fruitful than a whole volume hurriedly read. Or, as the film mogul, Sam Goldwyn, said to a hopeful author, ‘I have read part of your book all the way though.’ When you come across significant parts – the passages that speak to you – it is worth remembering the counsel of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’

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No good book, any more than helpful words, can do anything decisive if the person concerned is not already prepared through quite invisible influences for a deeper receptivity and absorption. For the only books that really influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our parti­ cular path than we have yet gone ourselves. The power of a good book is in the intimate relationship of author and reader. It is a transaction that takes place in solitude. It invites you to think for yourself about some subject away from the context of other people. The author should be able to lead you to nourishing food or refreshing water, and, though he or she cannot make you drink, he or she should provide you with plenty of encouragement to do so. These almost unique conditions of inner dialogue enable a good book to reach deep into your consciousness. You don’t have to plod through a book from page one to the end. You can skip and skim. Therefore there is little point in taking a speed reading course. ‘I am not a speed reader,’ said space fiction writer Isaac Asimov, ‘I am a speed understander.’ Taste the contents, then select what you wish to chew and swallow. Never swallow first, for if you believe everything you read it is better not to read. The delights of reading in this spirit are legendary. We can travel in time, transcending our own culture and our own day. For, as Descartes wrote, ‘To converse with those of other centuries is almost the same as travelling.’ Remember the points in earlier chapters: you may discover ideas, practices, facts or technologies in these distant times and places that suddenly connect with your present interests and concerns. You may be surprised to discover the unexpected by happy serendipity. Did you know, for example, that: ●●

Solomon’s temple was protected by lightning rods?

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Nero devised a coin-in-the-slot machine?

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The Caesars had three elevators in their palace?

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Hindus used the cowpox virus centuries before Jenner?

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The reaping machine was described as a ‘worn-out French invention’ in the 16th century? A thousand years before Christ, the Chinese extracted digitalis from living toads to treat heart disease, recorded earthquakes undetected by the human senses, and used an instrument that always pointed north?

Reading books, then, can stimulate and develop your powers of creative thinking. If nothing else, a good book can put you into a working mood. If you are resolved to devote as much time and attention on your mental fitness as a thinker as the average person spends on that more wasting asset, the human body, you will be inclined to follow Charles Darwin’s advice:

Reading To Generate Ideas If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Darwin, incidentally, was a remarkably accomplished painter as well as being an extraordinary scientist.

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Nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind, open and eager to learn. Books are storehouses of ideas, thoughts, facts, opinions, descriptions, information and dreams. Some of these, removed from their setting, may connect to your present (or future) interests as a thinker. ‘Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body,’ wrote Sir Richard Steele. Poetry and good prose – fact or fiction – requires the use of your imaginative and recreative powers. Therefore they provide you with an enjoyable way of developing those faculties. The real object of education is to take you to the condition of continuously asking questions. Under the hospitable roof of reading, studying and learning you will also find housed inspiring, kindling and infecting. ‘Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours,’ wrote John Locke.

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Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.   Chinese proverb

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Chapter Fifty-two Keep a notebook

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A commonplace book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field on competent warning.  Thomas Fuller

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he horror of that moment,’ the King went on, ‘I shall never, never forget!’ ‘You will, though,’ the Queen said, ‘If you don’t make a memorandum of it.’ This advice from Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland certainly applies in the field of creative thinking. One practical step you can take now is to buy a new notebook to record possible materials for your present or future use: ideas, a scrap of conversation, something seen or heard on television or radio, a quotation from an article or book, an observation, a proverb. Write it down! You have probably had the experience of waking up in the middle of the night with an idea. It was such a good one that you told yourself to remember it next morning. But, like the memory of your dreams, it fades fast away. ‘Every composer knows,’ Hector Berlioz said, ‘the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one has not had time to write down.’ He spoke from experience, he added. Keep a pencil and pad by your bed. Carry a pocket notebook so that ideas that strike you while waiting for someone or travelling on a train can be recorded. Later you can transfer these jottings to your main notebook. Apart from reinforcing and extending memory, the practice of keeping a commonplace book of notable passages or quotations in particular has one fairly obvious further benefit. The labour of copying them out gives you occasion to reflect deeply on them. For, as you slowly write or type, you have to pay attention to both the exact form and the content of what is being said. The act of writing impresses the words more deeply on your mind. Once a thought is in your own handwriting you have appropriated it personally: it is now numbered among the ideas and influences that matter to you. There are two important principles in keeping a commonplace notebook as a tool for creative thinking. First, put down entries in the order in which they occur to you.

Keep a Notebook

Give a short title to the entry, and perhaps a date. Do not try to be too systematic, by putting everything on cards or loose-leaf paper arranged alphabetically, indexed and cross-indexed. If you are a scientist, for example, that may be the right method. But that is not the best way when it comes to developing your powers as a creative thinker. The second principle is to let your instinct or intuitive sense decide what you think is worth noting down. Include whatever impresses you as stimulating, interesting or memorable. At this stage it doesn’t matter too much if the idea is right or wrong, only that it is interesting. Later – months later – you may need to do some editing, but initially what matters is whether or not the prospective entry gives you a spontaneous reaction of excitement or deep interest. As Shakespeare wrote: ‘No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.’ In this form your commonplace notebook is a very useful tool for creative thinking on a variety of subjects that concern you. For this method brings together very diverse material. When you look through your notebook you will begin to notice various constellations of links and connections. It is this coming together of elements hitherto unrelated – the interaction of unlikely bedfellows – that makes a notebook of this nature a veritable seedbed of new ideas. Here are some practical suggestions. Use hardcover books, but not large or bulky ones. Ledgers are too heavy to carry around. Leave a large margin and plenty of space above and below, so that you can add some notes in pencil later. You may like to write in different coloured inks. The margin can also be used for cross-referencing. Number the pages and then you can add a simple index at the back by subject. Do not look at your entries too often. In my experience, the best time to browse though them creatively (unless, that is, you are hunting for a reference for a specific purpose) is on a train or air journey, waiting in airports, or on holiday when the mind is fresh and unencumbered with daily business.

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Keeping a notebook is more than a useful habit: it is a vitally important tool for all creative thinking purposes. ‘A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket,’ said Francis Bacon, ‘and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable and should be secured, because they seldom return.’ Writing down a quotation or passage, fact or piece of information, is a means of meditating upon it and appropriating it personally so that it grows into part of you. Imagine that your notebook is like a kaleidoscope. At a time when you are feeling in a creative frame of mind, give it a metaphorical shake. You can play with new combinations and interconnections. They may suggest new ideas or lines of thought.

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Don’t forget to add inspirational quotations, stories and examples to your own personal collection. For creative thinking calls for stimulus, encouragement and inspiration. If you build a positive orientation of mind you will become increasingly more creative in your thinking.

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Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up.  Oliver Wendell Holmes

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Chapter Fifty-three Test your assumptions

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If a man begins with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he will end with certainties.  Francis Bacon

E

instein is famous for making one assumption and thinking out its implications. ‘Let me assume,’ he said to himself, ‘that I am riding on the back of a sunbeam, travelling though the universe with the speed of light. How would things look to me?’ The eventual result was the General Theory of Relativity. By it Einstein led us to the knowledge that planets and stars move not because they are influenced by forces coming from other bodies in the universe, but because of the special nature of the world of space and time in the neighbourhood of matter. Light-rays may travel straight, for example, in the vast interstellar spaces, but they are deflected or bent when they come within the field of influence of a star or other massive body. Making conscious assumptions like that one is a key tool in the tool chest of a crea­ tive thinker. You are deliberately and temporarily making a supposition that something is true. It is like making a move in a game of chess but still keeping your hand on the piece, so that you can replace it if you do not like the implications of the halfmade move. ‘No great discovery is made without a bold guess,’ said Isaac Newton. I have emphasized the words above in italics because this kind of exploratory thinking does need to be sharply distinguished from thinking based upon unconscious assumptions or preconceptions. We have all had the experience of taking some­ thing for granted as the basis for opinion or action, and then subsequently finding that we had made an assumption – probably an unconscious one – that was unwarranted. Watch out for these preconceptions! They are like hidden sandbanks outside the harbour mouth. Preconceived ideas are the ones you entertain before actual know­ ledge. The really dangerous ones are those below your level of awareness. For we take on board all sorts of assumptions and preconceptions, often in the form of opinions or commonsense, which on examination turn out to be unproven or debatable. They are the main impediments to having new ideas. Take a look at the exercise below:

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Exercise On a spare piece of paper draw a square of nine dots like this:

Now see if you can connect up the dots with four consecutive straight lines, that is, without taking your pencil off the paper. You have one minute to complete the task. For the answer, see page 484 in Appendix C at the back of the book.

Received opinion on anything should be suspect. Once an idea is generally accepted it is time to consider rejecting it. But it is very difficult for you to do that. For, to borrow Einstein’s language, people in the mass can influence the space around them, deflecting the pure shaft of human thought. ‘Few people,’ said Einstein, ‘are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.’ We are social thinkers. Often great thinkers are rather solitary figures, possibly because they have a need to distance themselves psychologically from the powerful influences of received opinion. When it comes to those dangerous unconscious assumptions, other people can be especially helpful to you. They can sometimes alert you to the fact that you are assum­ ing that something is the case without being aware that you are doing so. ‘Why do you believe that?’ they ask. ‘What is your evidence? Who told you that you could not?’ Assumptive thinking is not the same as guessing. When we conjecture, surmise or guess we are really drawing inferences from slight evidence. Guessing means hitting upon a conclusion either wholly at random or from very uncertain evidence. Making an assumption is more like taking a tentative step. ‘Supposing we did it this way – how would it work? What would the consequences be?’ It is not an answer – even a guessed answer – but it is a step that you can take if you are baffled, which might open up new possibilities. It is more important to appreciate this difference between deliberately preconceived ideas and fixed ideas, often unconsciously held. ‘Preconceived ideas are like

Test Your Assumptions

searchlights which illumine the path of an experimenter and serve him as a guide to interrogate nature,’ said Louis Pasteur. ‘They become a danger only if he transforms them into fixed ideas – that is why I should like to see these profound words inscribed on the threshold of all the temples of science: “The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so.” ’ Getting the balance right between imaginative thinking and critical thinking is essential for all creative thinkers, not least research scientists. Pasteur continued: ‘Imagination is needed to give wings to thought at the beginning of experimental investigation into any given subject. When, however, the time has come to conclude, and to interpret the facts derived from observation, imagination must submit to the factual results of the experiments.’ Consequently, thinking will lead you to break or bend some of the rules that others take to be axiomatic. It is a fairly well-established rule in thinking that you should not base an argument on false premises. For the purposes of creative thinking, however, ‘a false premise’ in the shape of a bold and imaginative assumption may be just what you need in order to shatter your preconception. ‘Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward,’ writes Goethe. ‘They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.’

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The ability to explore possible ways forward by making some deliberate assumptions is important. They are to be made without commitment, like trying on new clothes in a shop before buying (or not buying) them. Develop your awareness of the jungle of tangled misconceptions, preconceptions and unconscious assumptions within you. Welcome others when they challenge or test your assumptions. Opinions are often more precious than true. They change according to such factors as the group organization or society, time and place where you happen to be. Today’s common sense is very different from common sense 50 years ago. What will common sense be like, what kinds of opinion will there be, in 50 years’ time? Think outside the box! Don’t allow yourself to be constrained by the mental limitations or straitjackets that are sometimes imposed on situations without any warrant or truth.

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Imagination is the vision that sees the possibilities of the materials and resources we have.  Anon

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Chapter Fifty-four Make better use of your Depth Mind

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While the fisher sleeps the net takes the fish. Ancient Greek Proverb

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he fact that the unconscious mind plays a part in decision-making, problemsolving and creative thinking has been known for some time. This dimension I have named ‘the Depth Mind’, and it is arguably the most important element in creative thinking. In my previous books I have quoted a number of examples of the Depth Mind at work, and I have dozens more in my files. Doubtless you can add to the list as well. The big question is whether or not we can learn how to make better use of our Depth Mind in order to generate new ideas. First, however, let us clear out of the way the question of the location of creative thinking in the brain, for it is relatively unimportant. Relatively recent discoveries of the brain suggest that there may be two different kinds of intelligence – analytic, conceptual, verbal intelligence, located in the left hemis­phere of the brain, and intuitive, artistic intelligence in the right hemisphere. Hence a spate of books on ‘Right Brain’ thinking. Now this research is a good example of the tendency to dichotomize things being projected onto the evidence. Dividing things sharply into two camps, like black and white, is a good teaching device, but it almost invariably leads to over-simplification of what is in fact very complex. For in creative thinking, for example, analytical and critical faculties of the mind come into play as well as the synthesizing faculty. Both sides of the brain are involved.

Make Better Use of Your Depth Mind

A framework of effective thinking I suggest that when we are thinking, three basic functions are either at work or waiting their turn to come into play: ●●

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Analysing. The taking to pieces; resolving an entity into its constituent elements. The original meaning was literally ‘to dissect’. The application to abstract objects emerged from the 18th century. Synthesizing. From the Greek verb ‘to set free, to loosen’. The building up of a complex whole by the union of elements, especially the process of forming concepts, general ideas, theories, etc. Valuing. The assessing of worth or value, especially as compared with other things. From the Latin verb valere, ‘to be strong’, ‘to be worth’.

You will notice that the first two mental functions are related. Analysing is separating a whole into its component parts. Synthesizing is the reverse process of building up elements into a complex or coherent whole. Valuing, however, comes from a different family. Our capacity to value is innate, but our actual valuing (or ‘values’) is conditioned by our particular cultural situation in life. How far it is true that there are universal ‘values’ – good, truth and beauty for example – is a philosophical question that lies beyond the scope of this book. In my view, for what it is worth, there are. Our valuing faculty, I believe, is rather like a radar that is capable of identifying real values ‘out there’ when they appear on its inner screen. Our ability to recognize the truth of propositions, such as 2 + 2 = 4, strikes me as an obvious example. Valuing is related to creative thinking because the very concept of creative is a value-laden one. Hence we reserve the word for only certain kinds of new wholes, as contrasted to the sea of novelties that crowd in upon us. To call something creative implies that it has real extrinsic or intrinsic value.

Emotion Psychologists (who tend to be analysts by disposition) tend to divide the human mind into cognitive – knowing, perceiving or conceiving – and affective – feeling, emotion or desire – and volitional – the exercise of will. But in practice, thinking and feeling and willing are almost indistinguishable, for we only have one mind housed in one brain. Emotion and motive stem from the same Latin verb ‘to move’. I compare emotion to the electricity that makes a computer work. As we all know, too much emotion – especially the negative emotions of fear, anxiety or panic – can cloud thinking to the extent that it is virtually impossible to think clearly or creatively. On the other hand,

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a positive, mental climate – warm interest, curiosity, confidence – can foster the optimum use of your mind’s resources. An effective thinker is always a wise manager of his or her emotions. Certainly, creative people tend to have a strong emotional investment in their work. The great engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, wrote about the Clifton suspension bridge in his diary as if it were a beloved person: ‘My child, my darling is actually going on – recommenced last week – Glorious!’

Depth mind I use the metaphor of the submarine at sea to illustrate that thinking can sometimes leave the surface and proceed on its voyage many fathoms below in the depth of the sea. Then it can surface again into the conscious mind. Far from being merely chaotic, a repository of suppressed memories and emotions as some of the Freudians taught, the unconscious mind is capable of purposeful work. What is going on down there? The short answer is that nobody knows. My own theory, one that has stood the test of time, is that the Depth Mind has its own capability for analysing, synthesizing and valuing. And when it has done its work it sometimes – not unlike a computer – prints out its findings or solutions into our consciousness. Of course these ‘printouts’ are not always ideas that are imaginative or creative in the sense of being new and valuable ‘wholes’ presenting themselves gift-wrapped to the mind. Most of us have experienced such products of the Depth Mind as intuitions – immediate perceptions of the mind without reasoning – hunches, premonitions and inklings. For creative thinkers, inklings – an intimation of something yet unknown – are especially important, for they may be signals that one is on the right track. It doesn’t require prophetic powers or extra-sensory perception. What happens is that your Depth Mind is at work, interpreting natural signs, picking up hints that invade your senses below the conscious threshold, and piecing together the paucity of information in the shape of guesses, hints or clues. Sometimes, for example, there may be a feeling of pleasure or excitement that precedes discovery but again indicates that one is groping in the right direction. To understand the workings of the Depth Mind – at least for me to convince you that I am not making it up! – let’s look at some case studies of what outstanding artists say about the business of creation – the entire process whereby things that did not exist before are conceived, given form and brought into being.

The case of the great composers Tchaikovsky wrote this description of his Depth Mind at work:

Make Better Use of Your Depth Mind Sometimes I observe with curiosity that uninterrupted activity, which – independent of the subject of any conversation I may be carrying on – continues its course in that department of my brain which is devoted to music. Sometimes it takes a preparatory form – that is, the consideration of all details that concern the elaboration of some projected work; another time it may be an entirely new and independent musical idea.

The case of C S Forester, author of the Hornblower books The creative process is much more like a seed being implanted and fusing with another already present, which then grows by a form of accretion. In his autobio­ graphy Long Before Forty (1967), the novelist had written one of the best introspective descriptions of what he sensed was going on in his Depth Mind. Notice his imaginative use of analogy (see Chapter 43) to take us forward in understanding: There are jellyfish that drift about in the ocean. They do nothing to seek out their daily food; chance carries them hither and thither, and chance brings them nourishment. Small living things come into contact with their tentacles, and are seized, devoured and digested. Think of me as the jellyfish, and the captured victims become the plots, the stories, the outlines, the motifs – use whatever term you may consider best to describe the framework of a novel. In the ocean there are much higher forms of life than jellyfish, and every human being in the ocean of humanity has much the same experience as every other human being, but some human beings are jellyfish and some are sharks. The tiny little food particles, the minute suggestive experiences, are recognized and seized by the jellyfish writer and are employed by him for his own specialized use. We can go on with the analogy; once the captured victim is inside the jellyfish’s stomach the digestive juices start pouring out and the material is transformed into a different protoplasm, without the jellyfish consciously doing anything about it until his existence ends with an abrupt change of analogy. In my own case it happens that, generally speaking, the initial stimulus is recognized for what it is. The casual phrase dropped by a friend in conversation, the paragraph in a book, the incident observed by the roadside, has some special quality, and is accorded a special welcome. But having been welcomed, it is forgotten or at least ignored. It sinks into the horrid depths of my subconscious like a waterlogged timber into the slime at the bottom of a harbour, where it lies alongside others which have preceded it. Then, periodically – but by no means systematically – it is hauled up for examination along with its fellows, and sooner or later, some timber is found with barnacles growing on it. Some morning when I am shaving, some evening when I am wondering whether my dinner calls for white wine or red, the original immature idea reappears in my mind, and it has grown. Nearly always it has something to do with what eventually will be the mid-point of a novel or a short story, and sometimes the growth is towards the end and sometimes towards the beginning. The casualty rate is high – some timbers grow no barnacles at all – but enough of them have progressed to keep me actively employed for more than forty years.

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Perhaps the best commentary on C S Forester’s classic picture of the Depth Mind at work comes from the pen of another eminent writer, E M Forster: ‘In the creative state,’ he writes, ‘a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experience, and out of the mixture he makes a work of art.’ Obviously some vocations – authors, inventors, playwrights, scientists and composers for example – call more for such Depth Mind activity than others. But the ability to make such connections, to grow new ideas or wholes, is present in all of us in varying degrees. The first step is to understand that your mind does have a Depth Mind dimension. With a degree of simple awareness, understanding and skill you can work with its holistic capability of growing ideas as if they were seeds connecting or integrating apparently unrelated materials, creating order out of chaos. Skill? Yes, because there is an art in knowing when to stand back and let your Depth Mind do its work.

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According to an old English proverb, ‘There is a great deal of unmapped country within us.’ In part, creative thinking is about exploring and fathering an unknown hinterland. The functions of the conscious mind – analysing, synthesizing and valuing – can also take place at a deeper level. Your Depth Mind can dissect something for you, just as your stomach juices can break down food into its elements. The Depth Mind, for example, is capable of analysing data that you may not have known you had taken in, and comparing it with what is filed away in your memory bank. The Depth Mind is capable of more than analysis. It is also close to the seat of your memory and the repository of your values. It is also a workshop where creative syntheses can be made by an invisible workmanship. We can, of course, all synthesize consciously. We can put two and two together to make four, or we can assemble bits of leather together to make a shoe. But creative synthesis is likely to be characterized by the combination of unlikely elements, distant from or apparently (to others) unrelated to one another. And/or the raw materials used will have undergone a significant transformation. When this kind of synthesis is required, the Depth Mind comes into its own. An organic analogy for its function is the womb, where after conception a baby is formed and grown from living matter. The word holistic, which applies to nature’s tendency to grow wholes from seeds, aptly applies to the synthesizing processes of the inner brain in the realm of ideas. A baby is always a whole. Hence a new idea, concept or project is sometimes called a ‘brain-child’.

Make Better Use of Your Depth Mind

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You may also have experienced the value thinking of the Depth Mind’s neighbour we call conscience in the form of guilt feelings or even remorse when it has made a moral evaluation or judgement of your own conduct. This unwanted and unasked contribution to your sanity is a reminder that the Depth Mind has a degree of autonomy from you. It is not your slave. Henry Thoreau once boldly suggested that ‘the unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God’.

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There is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.  William Wordsworth

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Chapter Fifty-five Do not wait for inspiration

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Thou, O God, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour.  Leonardo da Vinci

‘I

can call spirits from the vastly deep,’ boasts Owen Glendower in Shakespeare’s Henry IV. Hotspur puts down the fiery Celt by replying: ‘Why so can I, or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?’ Doubtless Shakespeare is writing here from personal experience. The comings and goings of inspiration are unpredictable. In creative work it is unwise to wait for the right mood. Graham Greene once said: Writing has to develop its own routine. When I’m seriously at work on a book, I set to work first thing in the morning, about seven or eight o’clock, before my bath or shave, before I’ve looked at my post or done anything else. If one had to wait for what people call ‘inspiration’, one would never write a word.

The thriller writer Leslie Thomas agreed: People are always asking me, ‘Do you wait for inspiration?’ But any novelist who does that is going to starve. I sit down, usually without an idea in my head, and stare at the proverbial blank paper; once I get going, it just goes.

It can seem impossible, like trying to drive a car with more water in the tank than petrol. But you just have to get out and push. Better to advance by inches than not to advance at all. Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb among many other things, gave a celebrated definition of genius as ‘1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration’. Creative thinking, paradoxically, is for 99 hours out of every 100 not very creative: it is endlessly varied combinations of analysing, synthesizing, imagining and valuing. The raw materials are sifted, judged, adapted, altered and glued together in different ways. When Queen Victoria congratulated the world-renowned pianist

Do Not Wait for Inspiration

Paderewski on being a genius he replied: ‘That may be, Ma’am, but before I was a genius I was a drudge.’ Not all intellectual drudges, however, are geniuses. Something more is needed. That lies beyond the willingness to start work without tarrying for inspiration and to keep at it day in and day out. You also need a peculiar kind of sensitivity, as if you were standing still and waiting, prepared and ready with all your senses alert, for the faintest marching of the wind in the treetops. Your spiritual eye may trace some delicate motion in your deeper mind, some thought that stirs like a leaf in the unseen air. It is not the stillness, nor the breath making the embers glow, nor the half-thought that only stirred, but these three mysteries in one that together constitute the experience of inspiration. The German poet Goethe used a more homely image: The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry ‘Here we are’. But neither do they come unsought. You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows if they would have come?

One incident in the life of James Watt illustrates Goethe’s principle beautifully. Watt found that the condenser for the Newcomen steam engine, which he studied at the University of Glasgow, was very inefficient. Power for each stroke was developed by first filling the cylinder with steam and then cooling it with a jet of water. This cooling action condensed the steam and formed a vacuum behind the piston, which the pressure of the atmosphere then forced to move. Watt calculated that this process of alternately heating and cooling of the cylinder wasted three-quarters of the heat supplied to the engine. Therefore Watt realized that if he could prevent this loss he could reduce the engine’s fuel consumption by more than 50 per cent. He worked for two years on the problem with no solution in sight. Then, one fine Sunday afternoon, he was out walking: I had entered the green and had passed the old washing house. I was thinking of the engine at the time. I had gone as far as the herd’s house when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a connection were made between the cylinder and an exhausting vessel it would rush into it and might then be condensed without cooling the cylinder … I had not walked further than the Golf house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.

‘Like a long-legged fly upon the stream, her mind moves upon silence.’ These evocative words of Robert Frost underline the need for silence and solitude in creative thinking, such as you find on a country walk. It helps, too, if you have a feeling of expectancy or confidence. We have all been given minds capable of creative thinking and there is no going back on that. So we are more than halfway there. We just have to believe that there are words and music in the air, so to speak, if we tune in our

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instruments to the right wavelengths. They will come in their own time and place. Our task is to be ready for them. For inspiration, like chance, favours the prepared mind. By contrast, negative feelings of fear, anxiety or worry, even anxiety that inspiration will never come or never return – are antithetical to this basic attitude of trust. They drive away what they long for. ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’

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The Depth Mind is a rendezvous. It is as if it is sometimes a meeting place between human thought and divine inspiration, issuing in genuinely creative ideas and new creations. That, of course, is only an assumption or, if you prefer it, an unproven hypothesis. Whether true or not, it may be a useful and productive strategy to act as if it were true. Creative thinkers of all kinds – including scientists – tend to retain a spiritual model of inspiration, if only in their awareness of an unfathomable and unanalysable mystery in how true creation or discovery occurs. You and I may have and develop a talent for creative thinking, but others clearly have a gift, which is something of a different quality and degree. Who is the giver? How is the gift given? What is its nature? How is it best preserved? Can it be lost? Do not wait for inspiration or you will wait for ever. Inspiration is a companion that will appear beside you on certain stretches of the road. ‘One sits down first,’ said Jean Cocteau, ‘one thinks afterwards.’ ‘The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery,’ said Einstein. ‘There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.’ Develop an inner sensitivity or awareness, so that your spiritual eyes and ears are open to the slightest movement or suggestion from outside or inside, from above or below, which hints at a way forward. Listen to your inklings! You cannot quite control the process that leads to genuine creative work. But having the right attitude of expectancy, together with a measure of hope and confidence, certainly seems to pay off.

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It is no good trying to shine if you don’t take time to fill your lamp.  Robert Frost

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Chapter Fifty-six Sharpen your analytical skills

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One should never impose one’s views on a problem; one should rather study it, and in time a solution will reveal itself.  Albert Einstein

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ften I feel frustrated when I am thinking about something,’ said the scientist and banker, Lord Rothschild, a Fellow of the Royal Society and first director of the British Government’s ‘Think Tank’. He was, he said, a good analyst but not a truly creative thinker. ‘Synthetic thinking, creative thinking if you like, is a higher order altogether. People who think creatively hear the music of the spheres. I have heard them once or twice.’ Now Rothschild is obviously correct in believing that we all have different profiles of strengths and weaknesses as thinkers. Creative thinkers are clearly stronger in synthesizing and in their imagination. But the best of them are equally strong in their analysing ability and the faculty of valuing or judging. It is this combination of mental strengths, supported by some important personal qualities or characteristics that make for a formidable creative mind. All these abilities – analysing, synthesizing and valuing – are at work when you are attempting to think creatively. In some phases or passages of the mind’s work one will be more dominant than the other two, but they are never wholly absent. That is partly why creative thinking cannot be broken down into a process (as psychological analysts have constantly attempted to do), still less a system. It is not a stately procession from analysis to synthesis, and from synthesis to evaluation. The nearest approach to identifying an underlying process is the one made by Graham Wallas in The Art of Thought (1926). He proposed that the germination of original ideas passes through four phases:

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1 preparation; 2 incubation; 3 illumination; and 4 verification. Now this is over-simplified, for creative thinkers may not follow that sequence, but it is nonetheless a useful framework. The first characteristic of original thinking, according to Wallas, in a wide spectrum of fields, is a period of intense application, of immersion in a particular problem, question or issue. It is followed by a period when conscious attention is switched away from the topic, either by accident or design (the incubation phase). Sometimes there follows a sudden flash of insight or intuition (illumination) followed by a period when the idea is subjected to critical tests and then modified (the verification stage). My own perspective is slightly different. There is a conscious phase when you are aware of predominantly trying to analyse the matter that has engaged your attention. You may play around with some restructuring of it (synthesizing). Some valuing will enter into it – ‘Is it worthwhile spending time on this project?’ Your imagination may also get to work, picturing some of the obvious solutions that occur to you or their consequences. You may also be giving yourself advice or asking yourself questions, such as ‘Remember not to accept the first solution that comes to mind’ or ‘Am I making any unconscious assumptions?’ This phase corresponds to Wallas’s ‘preparation’, but that label is misleading because we may revert quite often to this conscious working of our minds. When we are not so engaged, these activities of analysing, synthesizing and valuing can continue – but they do not do so invariably – at the level of our Depth or ‘unconscious’ Minds. We may then receive the products of such subliminal thinking in a variety of ways. The American poet Amy Lowell, for instance, said, ‘I meet them where they touch consciousness, and that is already a considerable distance along the road to evolution.’ This reception of an idea from the unconscious mind to the consciousness is far from being the end of the story; it is only a halfway stage. During the process of working out, other fresh ideas and developments of a creative kind will still occur. Things are made in the making. The object of analysis is clarity of thought. For clear thinking should precede and accompany creative thinking. What is the focus of your thinking? Is it some necessity, some everyday problem, or a resource that could be exploited in several different ways? If it is a problem, what are the success criteria for any satisfactory solution? Check your definition of the problem (see Appendix A, page 480). Are you rating symptoms rather than the disease? There are often several equally valid (but not

Sharpen Your Analytical Skills

equally obvious) ways of defining any problem. But each definition is a general statement of a potential solution to the problem. So different definitions are worth collecting: they are signposts for different avenues of thought. The definition you settle upon may have a powerful influence in programming your Depth Mind. If it leads nowhere, try another definition. Edward Jenner’s discovery of vaccination illustrates how useful it is to be able to redefine the problem. At the end of the 18th century, Jenner took the first step towards ending the scourge of smallpox when he turned from the question of why people caught the disease to why dairymaids did not: the answer being that they were immunized by exposure to the relatively harmless cowpox. Two men were walking in the African bush when they met a very hungry cheetah who eyed them ferociously. One of the men fished out some running shoes from his knapsack and bent down to put them on. ‘Why are you doing that?’ cried his companion in despair. ‘Don’t you know that cheetahs can run at over 60 miles per hour?’ ‘Yes, yes,’ he replied as he finished tying his laces, ‘but I only have to outrun you.’ The best advice is not to focus too strongly on any aspect of the problem. You should learn to think generally about it, like a scientist scanning a problem area for clues. Let it speak to you. ‘Whatever the ultimate object of his work,’ wrote Hazel Rossotti, in Introducing Chemistry, ‘the experimental chemist’s immediate aim is to ask suitable questions of the sensible bodies he is studying and to let them answer for themselves. It is the chemist’s job to observe and report the answers with minimal distortion; only then can he attempt to interpret them.’ These attitudes, a proper detachment and objectivity, are relevant to creative thinkers in the conscious phases of their work. It is so easy to introduce subjective elements – such as those troublesome unconscious assumptions or constraints – into the problem or matter under review. Patient analysis and restructuring of the parts, taking up different perspective points in your imagination from which to view it: all these will deepen your understanding of the problem if they do not fairly soon release within you, like a cash dispenser, the right solution or at least the right direction in which to advance.

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‘There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labour of thinking,’ said Sir Joshua Reynolds. Are you willing to devote some time and effort to the problems that face you? See them not as problems but opportunities to practise your skills as a thinker. The skill of analysing – taking things to bits in order to discern underlying principles or ideas – is a key implement in the tool chest of a creative thinker.

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There is no standard process or system of creative thinking; there is no system that you can learn. For creative thinking is essentially about freedom. To think freely means to be free from processes, systems and drills. The best creative minds are those that have been subjected to various disciplines when young, and then have reverted back to their natural proclivities. When analysing do not be over-hasty in defining the problem. Play with alternative formulations until one emerges that commands your support.

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In a million people there are a thousand thinkers, in a thousand thinkers there is one self-thinker.  Anon

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Chapter Fifty-seven Suspend judgement

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Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.  Jean-Paul Sartre

The German poet Johann Schiller wrote the following some 200 years ago: In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me it is as if the intellect has withdrawn its guards from the gates; ideas rush in pell mell and only then does it review and examine the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness found in all real creators… Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness – you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.

There are two important points here. Firstly, we tend to post ‘guards’ on our minds. We criticize or evaluate our own ideas – or half ideas – far too soon. Criticism, especially the wholly negative kind, can be like a cold, white frost in spring: it kills off seeds and budding leaves. If we can relax our self-critical guard and let ideas come sauntering in, then we shall become more productive thinkers. Don’t confuse evaluation with idea fluency. Be as prolific as you can with ideas until you find one that satisfies you. Then try to translate it into the form you want. Secondly, beware of critics! Some people are just too critical. There is a Chinese saying to that effect: ‘He could find fault with a bird on the wing.’ Any sensible person should, of course, be open to the criticism of others. It is one of the offices of a friend, if no one else, to offer you constructive criticism about your work and perhaps also about your personal conduct. If we did not have this form of feedback we should never improve. But there is a time and place for everything. The time is not when you are exploring and experimenting with new ideas. This is the reason why professional creative thinkers – authors, inventors and artists, for example – seldom talk about work in progress. Certain environments are notoriously hostile to creative work. Paradoxically, universities are among them. One of the main functions of a university is to extend the frontiers of knowledge. Therefore you would expect a university to be a community of creative scientists, engineers, philosophers, historians, economists, psychologists

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and so on. But academics are selected and promoted mainly on account of their intelligence, even cleverness, as analytical and critical scholars, not as creative thinkers. An over-critical atmosphere can develop. When, as a young historian, G M Trevelyan told his professor that he wanted to write books on history he was at once advised to leave Cambridge University. Iris Murdoch left academic life as a philosopher at Oxford partly for the same reason: writing creative fiction is seldom done well in the critical climate of a university. The same principle applies to schools, colleges, churches, industrial and commercial organizations, even families. Surround yourself with people who are not going to subject your ideas to premature criticism. ‘I can achieve that easily by not talking about them,’ you might reply. Yes, but that cheats you out of the kinds of discussion that are generally valuable to thinkers. These fall under the general principle that ‘two heads are better than one’. It is useful to hear another person’s perspective on the problem. They may have relevant experience or knowledge. They are likely to spot and challenge your unconscious assumptions. They can lead you to question your preconceptions and what you believe are facts. In short, you need other people in order to think – for thinking is a social activity – but you do not need over-critical people, or those who cannot reserve their critical responses in order to fit in with your needs.

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Suspending judgement means erecting a temporary and artificial barrier between the analysing and synthesizing faculties of your mind on the one hand, and the valuing faculty on the other. Premature criticism from others can kill off seeds of creative thinking. Besides managing your own critical faculty you have to turn the critical faculties of others to good account. That entails knowing when and how to avoid criticism as well as when and how to invite it. Some social climates in families, working groups or organizations encourage and stimulate creative thinking, while others stifle or repress it. The latter tend to value analysis and criticism above originality and innovative thinking. Neither praise nor blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe and honestly to be aware – these are the true aims and duties of criticism.

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To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.  Plutarch

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Chapter Fifty-eight Learn to tolerate ambiguity

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Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.  Henry Adams

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egative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ These words of the poet John Keats point to an important attribute. It was, he felt, the supreme gift of William Shakespeare as a creative thinker. It is important, he adds, for all creative thinkers to be able ‘to remain content with half-knowledge’. Keats’s contemporary, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, said much the same. He spoke of ‘that willing suspension of belief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith’. Some people by temperament find any sort of ambiguity uncomfortable and even stressful. They jump to certainties – any certainties – just to escape from the unpleasant state of not knowing. They are like the young man who will not wait to meet the right girl, however long the waiting, but marries, simply in order to escape from the state of being unmarried. Thinking sometimes leads you up to a locked door. You are denied entry, however hard you knock. There seems to be some insurmountable barrier, a refusal to give you what you are seeking. Yet you sense something is there. You feel as if you are in a state of suspended animation; you are wandering around in the dark. All you have are unanswered or half-answered questions, doubts, uncertainties and contradictions. You are like a person who suspects there is something gravely wrong with his or her health and is awaiting the results of medical tests. The temptation to anxiety or fear is overwhelming. Anxiety is diffused fear, for the object of it is not known clearly or visibly. If you are in a jungle and see a tiger coming towards you, you are afraid; if there is no tiger and you still feel afraid, you are suffering from anxiety. In the health analogy what the person needs is courage. Courage does not mean the absence of anxiety or fear – we would be inhuman not to experience them. It means the ability to contain, control or manage anxiety, so that it does not freeze us into inaction.

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More creative thinkers have a higher threshold of tolerance to uncertainty, complexity and apparent disorder than others. For these are conditions that often produce the best results. They do not feel a need to reach out and pluck a premature conclusion or unripe solution. That abstinence requires an intellectual form of courage. For you have to be able to put up with doubt, obscurity and ambiguity for a long time, and these are negative states within the kingdom of the positive. The negative and the positive are always at each other’s throats, so you are condemned to an inner tension. The great American pioneer Daniel Boone, famous for his journeys into the trackless forests of the Western Frontier in the region we now call Kentucky, was once asked if he was ever lost. ‘I can’t say I was ever lost,’ he replied slowly, after some reflection, ‘but I was once sure bewildered for three days.’ As a creative thinker you may never feel quite lost, but you will certainly be bewildered for long stretches of time. ‘Ambiguity’ comes from a Latin verb meaning ‘to wander around’. When your mind does not know where it is going, it has to wander around. Courage and perseverance are cousins. ‘I think and think, for months, for years,’ said Einstein. ‘Ninety nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.’ Creative thinking often – not always – does require an untiring patience. Secrets are not yielded easily. You have to be willing, if necessary, to persist in your particular enterprise of thought, despite counter-influences, opposition or discouragement. When you feel that being persistent is a difficult task, think of the bee. A red clover blossom contains less than one-eighth of a grain of sugar: 7,000 grains are required to make 1 pound of honey. A bee, flitting here and there for sweetness, must visit 56,000 clover heads for 1 pound of honey: and there are about 60 flower tubes to each clover head. When a bee performs that operation 60 times 56,000 or 3,360,000 times, it secures enough sweetness for only 1 pound of honey!

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Negative Capability is your capacity to live with doubt and uncertainty over a sustained period of time. ‘One doesn’t discover new lands,’ said French novelist, André Gide, ‘without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.’ ‘Doubt is not a pleasant mental state,’ said Voltaire, ‘but certainty is a ridiculous one.’ It is part of a wider tolerance of ambiguity that we all need to develop as people. For life ultimately is not clearly understandable. It is riven with mystery. The area of the inexplicable increases as we grow older. ‘A man without patience is a lamp without oil,’ said Andrés Segovia. Creative thinking is a form of active, energetic patience. Wait for order to emerge out of chaos. It needs a midwife when its time has come.

Learn to Tolerate Ambiguity

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‘Take care that the nectar does not remain within you in the same state as when you gathered it,’ wrote Petrarch. ‘Bees would have no credit unless they transformed it into something different and better.’ The last key in the bunch is often the one to open the lock.

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There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.  Sir Francis Drake

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Chapter Fifty-nine Drift, wait and obey

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Day-dreaming is thought’s Sabbath.

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he longer you are in the presence of a difficulty the less likely you are to solve it. Although creative thinking requires sustained attention, sometimes over a period of years, it does not always have to be conscious attention. It is as if you are delegating the question, problem or opportunity to another departure of your mind. Having briefed your Depth Mind, as it were, by conscious mental work, you should then switch off your attention. Wait for your unconscious mind to telephone you: ‘Hey, have you thought of this…’ You should learn to expect your Depth Mind to earn its living. Remember that the testimonies to its capacity for creative work are overwhelming. The writer H E Bates said: My stories and the people in them are almost wholly bred in imagination, that part of the brain of which we really know so little, their genesis over and over again inspired by little things, a face at a window, a chance remark, the disturbing quality of a pair of eyes, the sound of wind on a seashore. From such apparent trivialities, from the merest grain of fertile seed, do books mysteriously grow.

A friendly and positive expectancy is rewarded when your Depth Mind stirs. The important thing then is not to keep your analytical and critical powers switched off. ‘When your daemon is in charge,’ said Rudyard Kipling, ‘do not try to think consciously. Drift, wait and obey.’ George Benjamin is one of the world’s most prominent composers: I hate it when people describe my composing as a ‘gift’. All people have gifts, even if they don’t all realize them. I’m lucky enough to have been encouraged to believe in my abilities. When I’m composing I start slowly. For weeks I don’t really do anything, just walk round in circles, thinking. But that is the composition: the mind subconsciously sorts things out, and later on it comes pouring out – as though the piece were writing itself. An orchestral work can contain several hundred thousand notes, all relating to

Drift, Wait and Obey one another. At the beginning one is trying to determine the laws that will govern those relationships, which is intellectual rather than creative. But none of the hard work is wasted. The mind connects things in unbelievable ways. And at the end, it all pours out.

The mind does indeed connect things in unbelievable ways. For Leonardo da Vinci the worlds of science and art were deeply interconnected. His scientific notebooks were filled with pictures, colours and images; his sketchbook for paintings abounded with geometry, anatomy and perspective. He wrote: To develop a complete mind: Study the science of art; Study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.

Remember those words of Rodin: ‘I invent nothing; I rediscover.’ It may help you to have confidence if you know there are connections: then it becomes a matter of discerning, selecting and combining. You may become aware that your Depth Mind has done some work for you when your body is active but your mind is in neutral. Ideas often come to people when they are walking or driving a car. Both the key connections that led to the development of X-ray crystallography and to the invention of the body scanner occurred to their originators while out walking. Physical relaxation – sitting on a train, having a bath, lying awake in the morning – is another conducive state. The novelist John le Carré is one of the many creative thinkers who find that walking plays a part in the total economy of creative thinking, albeit not a direct one: I have a walking appetite just as I have other appetites, and am quite frustrated if it can’t be answered on demand. Moving gets me unclogged in my head. I almost never make a note when I’m walking and usually forget the great lines I have composed, which is probably just as well. But I come home knowing that life is possible and even, sometimes, beautiful.

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Knowing when to turn away from a problem and leave it for a while is an essential skill in the art of creative thinking. It is easier for you to do that if you are confident that your unconscious mind is taking over the baton. Even when ideas – or hints of ideas – are beginning to surface, resist the temptation to start thinking consciously about them. Let them saunter in at their own time and place. A heightened awareness and detached interest on your part will create the right climate.

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All creative thinking stems from seeing or making connections. Everything is connected with everything else, but our minds cannot always perceive the links. From the myriads of possible combinations, moreover, we have to select according to different criteria according to our field. Is it simple? Is it true? Is it beautiful? Is it useful? Is it practicable? Is it commercial? A person is judged not by his or her answers but by the questions they ask.

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To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.  Einstein

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Chapter Sixty Sleep on the problem

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It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see. Thomas Carlyle

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hen you are relaxed in bed before going to sleep it is good to think about an issue requiring some Depth Mind activity. The value of doing so has long been known. As Leonardo da Vinci wrote: ‘It is no small benefit on finding oneself in bed in the dark to go over again in the imagination the main lines of the forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by ingenious speculation.’ Of course you might actually dream of a solution. Why we dream is still largely a mystery. Dreams are extraordinary creations of our imagining faculty in the inner brain. Sometimes they have messages from the hidden parts of our brain for us, not by telephone this time but coded in an alien language of images. The man who invented the Singer sewing machine reached an impasse when he could not get the thread to run through the needle consistently. When he was at his wit’s end he dreamed one night that he was being chased by natives carrying spears. As they came closer, he noticed that every spear had a hole at the bottom of the blade, and the next morning he made a needle with its eye near the point, instead of at the top. His machine was complete. You may like to try the experiment of jotting down fragments of dreams you can recall when you wake up. See how many suggestions or meanings you can discern in them. Even if they do not solve your problems, dreams may reveal your true feelings and desires, especially if these have been suppressed for too long. As William Golding said, ‘Sleep is when all the unsorted stuff comes flying out from a dustbin upset in a high wind.’ Occasionally you will be rewarded by a real clue in your dreams. Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs narrated one such instance involving Sir Basil Spence, the distinguished architect who designed Coventry Cathedral: In designing a project of such vast size and complexity there were bound to be snags. He told me that at one point, when he was held up by a particular technical difficulty, he had

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The Art of Creative Thinking an abscess on a tooth and went to his dentist, who proposed to remove the molar under a local anaesthetic. As soon as he had the injection, Spence passed out. During the short time he was unconscious he had a very vivid dream of walking through the completed cathedral, with the choir singing and the organ playing, and the sun shining through stained glass windows towards the altar – and that is the way he subsequently planned it. Another inspiration was received when, flipping though the pages of a natural history magazine, he came across an enlargement of the eye of a fly, and that gave him the general lines for the vault.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes kept a notebook at hand. ‘As soon as a thought darts,’ he said, ‘I write it down.’ Follow up an idea promptly. Once, when Newton had a particularly illuminating idea while walking down the steps of his wine cellar to fetch a bottle for some guests, he promptly abandoned his errand. The bemused guests discovered him some time later hard at work in his study! Quite why sleep plays such an important part in helping or enabling the Depth Mind to analyse, synthesize and value is still a mystery. Dreams suggest an inner freedom to make all sorts of random connections between different constellations of brain cells. There may be some sort of shaking up of the kaleidoscope, resulting in new patterns forming in the mine shafts of the mind. We just do not know. This ignorance of how the Depth Mind works does not matter very much. What does matter is that it does work. As the Chinese proverb says, ‘It does not make any difference if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.’ There is an element of mystery about this creative work that can go on in our sleep. Robert Louis Stevenson spoke of ‘those little people, my brownies, who do one half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself’. There are times that do seem conducive to the work of the Depth Mind, times of prolonged solitude, for example, or times when we lie awake in the still of the night, warm and relaxed in bed. ‘When I am completely myself,’ wrote Mozart to his father, ‘entirely alone or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on these occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these come I know not nor can I force them. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successfully, but I hear them at the same time altogether.’

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You most probably have experienced the beneficial effects of sleeping on a problem, and awakening to find that your mind has made itself up. Use that principle by programming your Depth Mind for a few minutes as you lie in the dark and before you go to sleep.

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Your dreams may occasionally be directly relevant. It is much more likely, however, that some indication, clue or idea will occur to you after ‘sleeping on it’. Perhaps during your waking hours, for instance while you are shaving or washing the dishes, the idea will dart into your mind. Do you remember Francis Bacon’s advice? ‘A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought are commonly the most valuable and should be secured, because they seldom return.’ Always keep a pad and pencil by your bedside: when a brief idea comes, write it down. Somebody once asked Anton Bruckner: ‘Master, how, when, where did you think of the divine motif of your Ninth Symphony?’ ‘Well, it was like this,’ Bruckner replied. ‘I walked up the Kahlenberg and when it got hot and I got hungry, I sat down by a little brook and unpacked my Swiss cheese. and just as I open the greasy paper that tune pops into my head!’

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An idea is a feat of association.  Robert Frost

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Chapter Sixty-one Working it out

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There is an old saying ‘Well begun is half done.’ ’Tis a bad one. I would use instead, ‘Not begun at all till half done.’  John Keats

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reative thinking and creativity are not quite the same thing. Creative thinking leads you to the new idea; creativity includes actually bringing it into existence. To give something form – to bring an idea actually into existence – requires a range of skills and knowledge beyond the more cerebral ones we have been considering in this book so far. The artist is an obvious case in point. Leonardo da Vinci may have lain in bed in his darkened chamber going over again in his imagination his observations of the previous day and various ideas ‘conceived by ingenious speculation’. But when he awoke next morning and went into his studio he had the skill to make models, draw and paint with a consummate artisanship acquired over a lifetime. He may not have translated all his original ideas into existence – in the cases of the helicopter and submarine the technology was lacking – but he could certainly express his ideas in detailed drawings. One possible relationship between the two concepts of creative thinking and creativity is suggested by dividing them into two distinct phases: thinking precedes making. But in most instances this separation is entirely arbitrary; it just does not correspond to the facts. There are some cases, indeed, where an idea or concept appears initially in its finished and fully fledged form, but they are the exceptions. What is given is less than that. You have to work it out. In the process of working it out the idea may be developed, adapted or changed, and new ideas or materials will be added to the melting pot. As Sir Hugh Wheldon, the renowned television producer once said in a televised lecture, ‘Programmes are made in the making.’ This approach may sound rather untidy, even chaotic. And so it is. It goes against the grain for those who have been indoctrinated to seek finished ideas before going to work. But it adds greatly to the interest and excitement of work if you do not know what is coming next. ‘I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew’, said Robert Frost. Creative thinking has to be an adventure.

Working It Out

Knowing when to stop thinking and to try working out an idea is an important act of judgement. If you are premature you will waste a lot of time fruitlessly chasing ideas that are not right. But if you have a working clue do not wait too long! John Hunter, the famous British surgeon and physiologist in the 18th century, had con­ siderable influence as a teacher. His most brilliant pupil was Edward Jenner, who had already begun to think that he could prevent smallpox by vaccination. ‘Don’t think,’ Hunter advised, ‘try it! Be patient, be accurate!’ And the pupil spent many years in painstaking observation. In due course, as we all know, Jenner discovered the smallpox vaccine. The fact that you are starting the journey with inadequate instructions, as it were, means that you are bound to feel bewildered, confused, even frustrated at times – often for quite long periods. You will be tempted to give up. But it is encouraging to know that even professional creative thinkers go through this dark night of despair. The author Hammond Innes said that he started work on a novel with little more than a background and a theme, probably an opening scene, perhaps even some idea of the climax: But each book is different, something to be wrestled with, struggled over. And there is always the point, somewhere in the writing of it, when all seems hopeless and I am driven to desperation by the thought that I have lost my touch as a story-teller, will never be able to do it again. Blank despair is matched by excitement, the enormous satisfaction when suddenly it all falls into place, seemingly of its own accord, and the words begin to flow again, the whole thing fascinating, totally absorbing.

As Hammond Innes commented, the process sounds more like a battle – at least 50 per cent of his writing output went in the wastepaper basket – than a recipe for success. ‘Then why not an outline of the story first?’ he was often asked. ‘Surely that would be simpler?’ He replied, ‘Of course it would. But if I did that, then there would be no fun in writing it. And if the writer is bored, then the reader will be even more bored. The story must grow, naturally and of its own volition – a slow, haphazard, infuriating process, but the only one I know.’ Not surprisingly, it took Hammond Innes about four years to produce a book. The novelist John Fowles, author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, was equally slow. He worked on several books at once, constantly reworking and rewriting sections of them, beginning one and then moving aside to another. In 10 years, he once said, ‘I may have started as many as 12 but only finished three.’ Fowles, like Innes, never planned a novel: I begin with an image, a ghost of an idea, nothing more, not knowing where it will lead. After about 10,000 to 15,000 words you can tell if it’s coming alive, you feel waves – radioactive waves – coming from it. Usually I will write the first 20,000 words in sequence – but after that I may jump ahead, write a later scene, and then go back and fill in. Or turn to something else.

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The novels of John Fowles lived with him day in, day out. It is this that perhaps explained his reluctance to publish. ‘That is the death-point,’ he told one interviewer. ‘Once the book is handed over, once it’s set, then you are locked out from your own text. The joy is in the gathering of the invention, when you have the molten metal, the liquid bronze… when your material seems to have a life of its own. When it’s cast…’, he broke off and shrugged. The interviewer concluded that Fowles disliked talking about his past books, and he would never discuss those on which he was still working. The one was dying for him, the other being born. While you are working in this way, ideas arise from within you, you know not where from. Your whole mind is at work, so that you lose consciousness of time and place. The most exciting times are when you are fearful as to what the outcome is going to be: not knowing whether or not it will come off. There is tension. When it stands up and salutes your mind, when it is over and you contemplate it, then there are moments of exaltation. Always there is some sort of excitement. Just being there is exciting. Creative thinking, then, cannot be divorced from the process of working it out. Because it is part of creative thinking this work has to be done by the person concerned: it cannot be delegated. The playwright must write the script; the composer must compose the score; the inventor must build the model; and the designer must do the sketch or plan. Actors, musicians, craftspeople and technicians will have impor­tant roles to play in the total drama of an act of creation. For instance, without a select team of skilled people – typesetter, book designer, printer, binder and bookseller – you would never read the words I am writing now. But such contributions are essentially downstream from the primary activities of having the idea and working it out.

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Working it out – actually trying to make or produce something – is a way of continuing the process of creative thinking. Therefore it is not necessary to have a fully formed picture, or crystal clear idea of where you are going, before you start work. Because so little is given to you by way of initial inspiration you may follow false trails, get lost and feel frustrated, even to the point of despairing. But if you haven’t worked on the edge of failure you haven’t worked on the edge of real success. As implementation is part of creative thinking you have to develop the product yourself, at least up to a certain point. Beyond that point it obviously has to be much more of a team effort, especially if you wish to take the idea into the marketplace. Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what’s wrong with it.

Working It Out

“

The creative act thrives in an environment of mutual stimulation, feedback and constructive criticism in a community of creativity.  Anon

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Chapter Sixty-two Think creatively about your life

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Creativeness and a creative attitude to life as a whole is not man’s right, it is his duty.  Nikolai Berdyaev

M

uch of this book has been about creative thinking in the context of work. On the assumption that we all have some creative ability I have drawn upon examples of authors and artists, inventors and entrepreneurs, scientists and craftspeople, in order to identify some general principles that are relevant to all of us. But creative thinking has a more general application. You may not be an author of books, but you are writing the book of your own life. For your life is not being dictated to you from a prerecorded script. You can make at least some of it up as you go along. ‘When the creative urge seizes one – at least, such is my experience – one becomes creative in all directions at once,’ said Henry Miller. If you decide to take a creative approach to life it does change your perspective. You will seek out first some ‘given’ ideas about yourself. What are your distinctive strengths? These are not easy questions to answer. Self-discovery lasts a lifetime, and even then it may not be completed. Seek to identify what you are born to excel at, and make sure you are working in the right area. Even when some conscious self-analysis and some imaginative thinking, supplemented by intuition, have given you some clues, insights or bold guesses about yourself, you still have to try to work out these ideas in a real life. That involves an element of trial – and error – periods of frustration and despair, and moments of excitement and joy. For gradually, the creative pattern of your life begins to emerge before your eyes on the loom of experience, with change and continuity as its warp and weft. At her 80th birthday celebration the internationally famous weaver Theo Moorman had words to say that apply to our lives as well as our work:

Think Creatively about Your Life Set your sights high, otherwise the whole momentum collapses. Cherish your integrity and judgement. You can’t work with one eye on the market, you have to stand for yourself. When I take my work off the loom, occasionally there’s a comeback feeling in one’s gut that tell one it is good. It’s a feeling to be prized above rubies.

Life should be an adventure. It is a usually interesting, occasionally exciting and sometimes painful journey forwards into an unknown future. As you try to make something of it in a creative way – working things out as you go along – new ideas will come to you. Even in the desert stretches there are wells and springs of inspiration. But they are not to be had in advance. A person who thinks creatively will never look upon life as finished. ‘I have no objection to retirement,’ Mark Twain once said, ‘as long as it doesn’t interrupt my work.’ We can all learn from creative thinkers to see life as essentially a series of beginnings. ‘I love beginnings,’ says novelist Christopher Leach. ‘What I like about life is the potentiality of beginnings.’ Perhaps our lives, like books, should never be finished, only abandoned to a receiver with as much trust as we can muster.

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Even if your work in the narrow sense does not call for imagination, the art of creative thinking is still relevant to you. For our lives are unfinished creations. Shaping and transforming the raw materials of our lives and circumstances is endlessly interesting and often challenging. Almost everything comes from almost nothing. It is not what happens to you in life that matters but how you respond. The creative response is to transform bad things into good, problems into opportunities. Remember the Arab proverb, ‘You should never finish building your house.’ It is beginnings and the unfinished work to be done that excites your creative mind. Endings belong to God. Fortunately for us, they are not our business here on earth. ‘Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans’ ( John Lennon). The freedom you give yourself to make mistakes is the best environment for creativity.

“

If you want to make God smile, tell him your plans.  Spanish proverb

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Appendix A Checklist: Have you analysed the problem? Understanding the problem ●● ●●

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Have you defined the problem or objective in your own words? Are there any other possible definitions of it worth considering? What general solutions do they suggest? Decide what you are trying to do. Where are you now and where do you want to get to? Identify the important facts and factors. Do you need to spend more time on obtaining more information? What are the relevant policies, rules or procedures? Have you reduced the complex problem to its simplest terms without over-simplifying it?

Towards solving the problem ●● ●●

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Have you checked all your main assumptions? Ask yourself and others plenty of questions. What? Why? How? When? Where? Who? List the obstacles that seem to block your path to a solution. Work backwards. Imagine for yourself the end state, and then work from there to where you are now.

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List all the possible solutions, ways forward or courses of action.

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Decide upon the criteria by which they must be evaluated.

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Narrow down the list to the feasible solutions, that is, the ones that are possible given the resources available. Select the optimum one, possibly in combination with parts of others. Work out an implementation programme complete with dates or times for completion.

Appendix A

Evaluating the solution ●●

Be sure that you have used all the important information.

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Check your proposed solution from all angles.

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Ensure that the plan is realistic.

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Review the solution or decision in the light of experience.

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Appendix B Checklist: Are you using your depth mind? ●●

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Do you have a friendly and positive attitude to your Depth Mind? Do you expect it to work for you? Where possible, do you build into your plans time to ‘sleep on it’, so as to give your Depth Mind an opportunity to contribute? Name one idea or intuition that has come to you unexpectedly in the last two weeks. What physical activities – such as walking or gardening or driving a car – do you find especially conducive to receiving the results of Depth Mind thinking? Have you experienced waking up next morning and finding that your unconscious mind has resolved some problem or made some decision for you? Do you see your Depth Mind as being like a computer? Remember the computing acronym RIRO – Rubbish In, Rubbish Out. ‘Few people think more than two or three times a year,’ said George Bernard Shaw. ‘I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.’ How often do you deliberately seek to employ your Depth Mind to help you to analyse a complex matter, synthesize or restructure materials, or reach value judgements? How could knowledge of how the Depth Mind works help you in your relations to other people? Do you keep a notebook or pocket tape recorder at hand to capture fleeting or half-formed ideas? What other clues have you learnt from experience – clues not indicated in this book – on how to get the best out of your unconscious mind?

483

Appendix C Answers to quiz questions and exercise on pages 417–18 and page 448 1 A young English designer named Carwardine approached the firm of Herbert Terry at the beginning of the 1930s with the proposal that they should build a desk light employing the constant-tension jointing principles found in the human arm. The company agreed, and the Anglepoise light was the result. From that time it has been in production, scarcely altered except for details and finishes. 2 Cats eyes in the road. 3 Spitfires. 4 Clarence Birdseye took a vacation in Canada and saw some salmon that had been naturally frozen in ice and then thawed. When they were cooked he noticed how fresh they tasted. He borrowed the idea and the mighty frozen food industry was born. 5 They could have suggested the principle of independent suspension. 6 The burrowing movement of earthworms has suggested a new method of mining, which is now in commercial production. 7 In Edinburgh Botanic Gardens there is a plaque commemorating a flower that inspired the design of the Crystal Palace. 8 Sir Basil Spence, the architect of Coventry Cathedral, was flipping through the pages of a natural history magazine when he came across an enlargement of the eye of a fly, and that gave him the general lines for the vault. 9 Linear motors. 10 Ball-and-socket joints. 11 Magnifying glasses. 12 The arch. Possibly the Eskimos were the first to use the arch in the construction of igloos. 13 Hollow steel cylinders.

484

Appendix C

14 Levers. 15 Bagpipes. 16 Wind instruments.

Exercise on page 448

The reason why you may not have been able to solve the problem is that unconsciously your mind imposed a framework around the nine circles. You have to go beyond that invisible box. From this problem, which I introduced in 1969, comes the phrase ‘Think outside the box!’

485

Index

NB: page numbers in italic indicate drawings or figures

3M  327, 353–54, 357–58, 382–83, 399, 407 and Scotch Tape  390–91 9/11 terrorist attacks  134 action (and)  48–55 agreeing objectives for  49–50 line and staff analogy  52–53 objectives for  48–49 relating parts to the whole  50–51 respecting the line principle  51–52 roots of morale  54 two-way communication /directive control  53 action-centred leadership (and)  283–93, 295 see also Herzberg, F and Maslow, A decision-making continuum  291–92 individual needs  288–90, 289 leadership and management functions  290 levels of leadership  292 qualities approach  284–86 situational approach / contingency theory  286–88 wider framework of  284 Adam, Sir R  220 Adler, A  299, 319 Adrian, Lord  364 Aerial Flight  137 aerodynamics, laws of  81–82, 137, 196 After I Was Sixty  195–96, 267 Al-Askari, J  163 Alexander the Great  164, 213, 262 Alice in Wonderland  444 ambition  130, 164, 209, 216, 307 American Management Association  224 analogy see also creative thinking of playing cards  16–17 analytical skills, sharpening  459–62 by checking /redefining problem  460–61 and clarity of thought  460 answers to quiz questions and exercise  483–84 Argyris, C  308 Aristotle  101, 103, 191, 306 Arnold, T  245

Art of Captaincy  244 Art of Creative Thinking, The  343 Art of Leadership, The  152 Asimov, I  412 Asquith, H  164 assumptions, testing your  447–49 exercise for  448 Athene  226, 232 Attila the Hun  164 Attlee, C  167, 191 Auchinleck, Field Marshal Sir C  67 Austen, J  106 authority  62–64 of knowing  90–97 see also key leadership functionsorigin of word  91 Bacon, F  402, 411, 445 Bader, D  161–62, 176 Bagehot, W  189 Balzac, H  366 Barbirolli, Sir J  72 Barnard, C  232 Barnett, C  250–51 Barrie, J M  90 Bass, B  285 Bates, H E  468 Becoming Church, The  262 Beecham, Sir T  72 belief in people  139–40 Benedict, R  299 Benjamin, G  468–69 Bennis, W  285 Beresford, Admiral Lord  164 Berlioz, H  444 Bernoulli, D  137 Bernstein, L  73–4 Bessemer, Sir H  405 and the Bessemer Process  405 Bevan, S  223 Bibb, S  258 Blake, W  435 Blake’s Grid  82

486

Index Boone, D  466 Boult, Sir A  73 Bragg, Sir L  392 Branson, Sir R  330, 352 Brearley, M  244 Brenner, Dr S  361, 362–65, 383 Brewer, C  392 Bridger, H  170 British Army  29, 52, 217–19, 224, 233, 241, 244, 248 and leadership training  164–65, 167, 172 British Institute of Management  228–29, 264 Brunel, I K  245, 329, 452 Brunton, Sir G  66, 267, 268 Brymer, J  72 Buchan, J  76, 248, 272 bureaucracy  364–67 creeping  364–65 vs innovation  365–67 Burke, E  197 Burns, J M  109 Butler, S  404 Caesar, J  262 calmness  7, 29, 22, 86, 90, 121, 138, 140, 145, 165, 189, 217, 223, 411 Cameron, N  170 caring see paternalism Carlyle, T  366 case studies (on) Corelli Barnett on leadership  250–51 creating a simple structure (Moses)  236 DNA laboratory  361–68 see also main entry Google  344 headmaster of a Lincolnshire High School  246–47 ICI  197–99 leadership training in  199 Warren House Conference  198–99 Lawrence, T E  214–15 mentoring  228, 230 the Commando leader  228 the learning company  230 Lyndal Urwick  228 Nestlé  405 Soichiro Honda – leader for innovation  369–74 see also main entry strategy and culture  257–59 Oxford University  257 the Warburg spirit  258–59 Thomson Organization  267 Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter  249 challenge, need for  132–33 Chamberlain, J  164 chance to lead, the  233–39 and challenge  234–36 see also case studies

military analogy for  233–34 preparation for  236–39, 237 with annual career review  237–39 role of organizations in  234 change, overcoming resistance to  402–12 see also change with incremental change  408 with leadership  408–09 by marketing your ideas  406–07 Nestlé case study for  405 with practice run  407–08 by preparing way for change  404–06 by understanding forces of resistance  404 change  105–06 human need for continuity and  402–04 incremental  344–45 and leadership  27–28 managing  106–07, 345–46 charisma  116 Chartered Institute of Management Leadership Project (2001)  206–07 Chaucer, G  232 checklists (appendices)  480–81, 482 cheerfulness  140 Chesterton, G K  153, 230, 407 chief executive  6, 31, 38, 41–42, 44, 46–47, 65–66, 71–75, 88, 101, 158, 191, 209–10, 256, 258, 261–69, 285, 288, 346, 351 see also leadership programmes; management and strategic leadership ground rules for  268 key quality in  62–63 leadership abilities of  375–78 communication  377 making things happen  378 thinking deeply  377 and learning to be a top strategic leader  261–64 and Thomson Organization case study  267 Churchill, R  213 Churchill, W  7, 66, 67, 89, 126, 130, 213, 233, 245, 327, 331, 389 Cicero, M T  262 circles, the three see three-circle model Clayton, D  242 Clifford, F  411 Clutterbuck, D  229 coaching  8, 17, 22, 243 Coleridge, S T  465 Columbus, C  427 commitment from the top  375–78 by giving direction  376–78 with leader as teambuilder  375–76 confidence  22, 88, 152, 166, 176–77, 182, 189, 217, 259, 271, 303, 452, 457, 469 self-  67–68, 80, 165, 177, 223 Confucius  286, 325, 408

Index contingency theory (Fiedler)  82 contracts explicit  111 implicit  111, 112–13, 115, 141 Council for Excellence in Management Leadership  224 courage  5, 83–86, 161–62, 164–66, 167, 171–72, 176–77, 214 moral  24, 71, 89, 177, 285, 408 physical  6, 56, 285 Coward, N  342 creation myth (Genesis)  120–21 creative people  379–86 see also creative leadership characteristics characteristics of  380–82 expectations of  382–84 contact with stimulating colleagues  383 encouragement to take risks  383–84 freedom to choose area of work  382–83 recognition and appreciation  382 selecting  379–80 creative leadership characteristics  384–85 ability to work with ill-formed ideas /proposals  384 acceptance of risk  384 personal enthusiasm  385 speed of response  385 willingness to bend rules  385 creative thinking (and)  147, 413–84 see also creativity; ideas, harvesting and listening analytical skills, sharpening  459–62 curiosity  432–37 drifting, waiting and obeying  468–70 freedom  356–57 inspiration  456–58 listening for ideas  438–40 notebooks  444–46, 469 quiz for  417–18 reading to generate ideas  441–43 self-discovery  478–79 serendipity  427–31 sleep and dreaming  471–73 suspending judgement  463–64 strangeness and familiarity  421–22 testing assumptions  447–49 see also assumptions tolerating ambiguity  465– unconscious mind see Depth Mind using analogy  417–20 widening your span of relevance  424–26 about your life  478–79 creativity  332, 334, 341, 375, 376, 371, 399–400, 415–16 see also creative thinking; team creativity and team creativity, organizing for Crick, F  154, 361, 392–94

What Mad Pursuit! A personal view of scientific discovery  392 crises  164, 182 and crisis management  21–22, 23, 165, 261, 280, 408 criticism  390–94, 464 constructive  463, 477 Cromwell, O  46, 145, 191, 331 D’Abernet’s Paradox  137, 138 da Vinci, L  145, 262, 432, 469, 471, 474 Darwin, C  216, 442–43 decision-making (and)  19–23, 20, 280 see also crisis management continuum  20, 20–21 deliberation, decision and action  101 forward thinking  21–22 the leader  23 the organization  22 sharing decisions  95–96 team members  22 definition(s) of feedback (Webster’s Dictionary)  327 function of command (Fayol)  290–91 genius (Edison)  446 a leader’s faith  152 mentoring  226 motivation  296 rationalization  61 vision (Swift)  130 Denning, Lord  111 Depth Mind  413, 450–55, 458, 460, 461, 468–69, 471–72, 482 and analysing, synthesizing, valuing  451 of C S Forester  453–54 and emotion  451–52 of Tchaikovsky  452–53 Descartes, R  412 designated leaders  8, 93–95, 113, 136, 169, 216 determination  5, 83, 161, 164, 165, 176 Developing Leaders  247, 262 Dewey, J  196 Dickens, C  142, 385 dignity  125, 143, 164 Disraeli, B  245, 425 distinctions between character and personality 83–84 courage and tenacity  83 typical and generic leadership characteristics  84 DNA laboratory  361–68, 375, 382, 392 and bureaucracy versus innovation  365–67 and creeping bureaucracy  364–65 human resource for  364 leading by example  362–63 with no class or hierarchical differences  361–62 with optimum use of resources  363–64

487

488 Drake, Sir F  467 Dubcek, A  151 Dundas, H  161 Edison, T  427, 456 Education: The task before us (WEA, 1943)  245 education for leadership (and)  240–53 growing school leaders  245–48 see also case studies growing university leaders  248–49 learning methods  242–43 coaching  243 educating  243 instructing  243 mentoring  243 training  243 tutoring  243 new opportunities for  250–52 schools for leadership  243–48 thinking outside the box  240–43 Effective Leadership  177, 188, 249 Effective Strategic Leadership  98, 292 Einstein, A  115, 197, 270, 271, 273, 431, 432, 447–48, 466, 470 and General Theory of Relativity  283, 447 Eisenhower, D  31, 233 Eliot, T S  206 Emerson, R W  142, 408 emotional intelligence  82, 268 energy  28, 72, 86, 111, 129, 132, 145, 164, 165, 189, 208, 220, 223, 268, 333 collective  9, 17 corporate  376, 378 motive  295–97 spiritual  99, 120–21, 123, 131, 146, 148 enthusiasm  6, 71, 85, 86–89, 125, 146, 165, 176–77, 189, 214, 217, 220, 222, 236, 285, 294, 325, 378, 385, 408–09 Euripides  158, 187 Everyone Needs a Mentor: Fostering Talent in Your Organization  229 fairness  7, 89, 111, 176, 189, 208, 217, 297, 315, 329, 332 faith for leaders  152–53 Fayol, H  31, 290–91, 293 and General and Industrial Administration  290 Fiedler, F E  286–87 fifty-fifty rule (Pareto Principle)  294–98, 324, 379 see also Herzberg, F and Maslow, A and motivation  296–97 valuable teaching element in  295 figures or drawings continuum of shared decisions  281 creative / productive continuum  359 elements of identity  270

hourglass model of career change  237 interaction of needs  278 inverted pyramid of human needs  289 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs  10 Nine Dots Exercise  448 priority of needs  277 pyramid model of human needs  289 seven functions of a strategic leader  189 team creativity  388, 389 three areas of need  168 three circles /rings  9 three levels of leadership  187 field leadership training  170 Flaubert, G  436 Fleming, Sir A  429 Flowers, Lord  249 Ford, H  392, 406, 415, 416 Forester, C S  453 Long Before Forty  453 Forster, E M  454 Foundation of Management Education (FME)  241–42 Four Loves, The  114 Fowles, J  441, 475–76 The French Lieutenant’s Woman  475 Fox, A  309, 321 France, A  433 Frederick the Great  44 Fromm, E  299, 303 Frost, R  283, 457, 458, 473, 474 functional approach  83, 92–93, 92, 94, 134, 142, 165, 166–72, 168, 174, 175 see also designated leaders applied to training  170–72 controlling  93, 169 evaluating  93, 169 and group personality  167 informing  93, 169 initiating  93, 169 planning  92, 169 supporting  93, 169 functional leadership (and)  8–10, 83, 92, 275–82 ACL model  203, 275 see also action-centred leadership background to training in  275–76 group personality and group needs theory  276 individual needs and motivation  276–77, 277 interaction of needs  277–78, 278 leadership functions  278–80 see also main entry sharing decisions  280–81, 281 further reading  338–40 Gaius Antonius  216 Gandhi, M  116, 133, 213 Gardner, J W  151

Index Gardner, R  268 Genghis Khan  286 Giuliani, R  134 Gladstone, W  245 Golding, W  471 Goldstein, K  299, 303 Goldwyn, S  379, 411 goodness  43, 47, 100–101, 103, 127–28, 147, 150, 192, 378 Google  344, 353 see also case studies Goodyear, C  429–30 Gordon, General C  245 Gray, T  233 Great Leaders  286, 287 greatness, inner  138–41 Greene, G  456 group approach see functional approach Group Approach to Leadership Testing, The  219 Group Functional Approach  218, 219 group personality  8–9, 92, 98, 142, 167, 188, 276, 282 group standards  17–18, 93, 169, 221, 279 growth of business  410–12 of excellence  62 managing  61–62 and organizations  61–62 Haig, Field Marshall Sir D  363 hallmarks of good leaders: integrity, enthusiasm, warmth, calmness, tough but fair  6–7 Hammarskjöld, D  152, 185 Markings  185 Handy, C  250 Hannibal  56, 205–06, 213 Harris, Dr H  219 Harris, J  436 Harvey-Jones, Sir J  198–200, 201, 261, 262 health  101, 119, 305 hazards  319 mental  313, 316 Hegel, G W F  174 Hensley, Dr H  162 Herzberg, F  (and)  273–75, 277, 279, 284, 292, 295, 310 hygiene factors  328 management  320 The Motivation to Work  312 Hertzberg’s motivation–hygiene theory  312–23 analysis of effects into categories  316 categories of elements /acts  314–16 characteristics of research project  312–14 factors-attitudes-effects  313 research methods  313–14 specification of experience  313

critics of  321 experimental results  316–19, 318 relative to Maslow’s theory  319–21 Higgs, Sir D  258 high-performance teams  35, 39 Hind, P  241 Hirsh, W  223 Hitler, A  33, 53, 88, 130, 131–32, 215, 286, 436, 438 Hobbes, T  472 Hoffman, B  115 Holism and Evolution   299 Holmes, O W  232, 440, 446 Honda  243, 375 see also Soichiro Honda – leader for innovation Hooper, F  235 hope  88, 150–52, 259, 326, 458 and expectancy  150–51 and strategic hopefulness  62 Horrocks, Lieutenant General B  227 How To Be a Leader of Others  163–64 How to Find Your Vocation  236 How to Manage Your Time  220 human nature (and)  119–23 description of  120 personality  119 the spirit  120–22 transcendence  122 humanity  58, 85, 150, 176, 189, 217, 295 humility  66, 89, 148, 154, 177, 185, 192, 235, 292, 374, 438 humour  7, 45, 86, 93, 140, 165, 167, 177, 192, 279, 378 Hunt, J  34, 235 hygiene theory see Hertzberg’s motivation – hygiene theory Iacocca, L  285 Ibsen, H  405 ICI  157–58, 197–99, 261 ideas, harvesting  395–401, 438–43 importance of training and education for  399–400 by listening  438–40 see also listening and quality circles  397–98, 399 see also main entry by reading  441–43 and suggestion schemes  395–97, 399 see also main entry towards team creativity  399 see also team creativity Industrial Society, The  241 Innes, H  475 inspiration  28–29, 96, 117, 123, 177–78, 207, 209, 272, 342, 479 not waiting for  456–58 Inspirational Leader, The  178

489

490

Index inspirational leadership  79–156, 177–78 three basic approaches for  81–83 inspired moment, the  148 innovation, conditions for successful  349–55 acceptance of risk  353–54 long-term perspective  351–52 management commitment  349–51 positive strategic thinking  350 responsiveness to change  352–53 right internal environment  354–55 innovation  147, 343–48 see also case studies (Google) and invention(s) as incremental change  344–45 and invention  343–44 and management of change  345–46 positive  346–47 and team ideas  347 integrity  6, 24, 85, 101, 111, 113, 126, 171, 176, 177, 189, 192, 208, 214, 217, 258, 280, 285–86, 297, 479 invention(s)  343–45, 390–91, 404, 417–18, 424, 429, 442, 469, 476 Jackson, General T J ‘Stonewall’  234 Jefferson, T  27 Jenkins, W O  7, 179–80 Jenner, E  461, 475 and smallpox vaccine  461, 475 John Hampden: The Patriot  233 Johnson, Dr S  140–41, 164, 404 Johnson, J  161, 162 Jowett, B  245 judgement  7, 19, 43, 86, 95, 102, 192, 216, 221, 377, 381, 411, 475–76 suspension of  391–92, 463–64 Jung, C  273, 319 justice  100, 111, 208, 286, 297, 329 and injustice  302 Justinian  111 Keats, J  465 Kelley, H H  167, 170 Kendrew, J  361 key points for art of creative thinking  416, 422–23, 425, 430–31, 434, 437, 439–40, 443, 445–46, 449, 454–55, 461–62, 464, 466–67, 469–70, 476–77, 479 how to grow leaders  200–201, 210–11, 225, 232, 239, 253, 259–60, 269 the inspirational leader  89, 96, 108, 117, 123, 134, 143, 148, 153 leadership by innovation  348, 355, 360, 367–68, 373–74, 378, 384–85, 394, 401–02, 412 leadership and motivation  282, 292–93, 297–98, 305, 310–11, 322–23, 331–32

not bosses but leaders  13, 15, 33–34, 39, 46–47, 54–55, 64, 70, 75 Kingsley, C  366 Kipling, R  468 Kitchener, Lord  164, 245 Kourdi, J  258 Laboratory of Molecular Biology see DNA laboratory Lamb, C  441 Lanchester, F  137, 197 Lao-Tzu  69, 71, 192 Lawrence, T E  100, 163, 191, 213–15, 233, 245, 254, 262 see also case studies law(s) of aerodynamics  137–38 continuity of flow  137 motion  137 le Carré, J  469 Leach, C  479 leader-manager concept  26–27, 27, 30, 32–33 see also management confusion in  175 exercise for  175 leader(s) see also selection of leaders and belief in people  139 choosing  213 generic role of  174–75 and managers  103–04, 136–37, 173–78 need for  106–07 origin of word  31 perception of  103 Leadership  109 leadership see also chance to lead, the; education for leadership; functional leadership; leadership functions; leadership qualities; situational leadership; strategic leadership and strategy for leadership development and change  27–28 competencies  221 and designated leaders  93–95 by example  264–66 hallmarks of  28–29 levels of  37–38, 98–108 see also levels of leadership qualities  5–7 see also qualities approach motivation  10–12, 11 mystery of  82 and power  65–66 styles of  23–25 test of  150–54 and three circles  9, 9 see also three-circle model from within  71–76 leadership functions (and)  17–19 see also functional leadership awareness  18

Index communicating / informing  17, 280 controlling  279 evaluating  280 group standards  17–18 and hierarchy  70 initiating  279 key  92–93, 92 monitoring /evaluating  17 organizing  17 planning  17, 42, 279 setting and maintaining group standards  17–18 setting objectives  17 skill  18 supporting  279 understanding  18 Leadership and Motivation  379 leadership and motivation see action-centred leadership; fifty-fifty rule; functional leadership; Hertzberg’s motivation–hygiene theory; Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; Maslow’s ideas in industry; motivation, eight principles of and motivation, new theory of Leadership for Innovation  414 leadership for innovation see case studies; change, overcoming resistance to; commitment from the top; creative people; ideas, harvesting; innovation, conditions for successful; innovation; team creativity, organizing for and team creativity Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Key Trends  159 ‘Leadership in Schools and Colleges’  245 leadership programmes of British Institute of Management  264 Leadership for Chief Executives (Nuneham Park)  263 Top Management Programme (Civil Service)  263 Windsor Leadership Trust  264 leadership qualities  83–86, 84, 164–6 see also individual subject entries ambition  164 confidence  165–66 coolness  164, 165 courage  83–86, 161–62, 164–66 determination  83, 164, 165 dignity  164 energy  86, 164, 165 enthusiasm  85, 86–89, 165 humanity  85 humility  177 integrity  85 judgement  86 magnetism  164 self-discipline  164

tough but fair  86 see also toughness and fairness warmth  85 Lee, General R E  234 Lehr, L W  327, 353, 354, 357, 358, 382, 383, 399, 407 levels of leadership  37–38, 98–108, 134, 186–92, 187 see also change; practical wisdom; strategic leadership operational  186 strategic  186 team  186 Lewin, K  270 Lewis, C S  114–15, 126 Likert, R  308–09 Lincoln, A  234, 407 line managers as leadership mentors see mentoring listening  45–47, 96, 220, 229, 326, 347, 384, 388 for ideas 438–40 Livingstone, Dr D  379, 345 Livy  285 Locke, J  434 London Business School  241–42 Long Road to Freedom  150 love  333–34 of belonging  147 of family  147 self-  146–47 Lowell, A  460 loyalty  36, 50, 112–13, 141, 165, 291, 292 see also triangular relations hierarchy of  113 MacArthur, General D  31 McCulloch, G  244, 245 Mace, C A  147 McGregor, D (and)  220, 307–08, 310 see also Maslow’s ideas in industry The Human Side of Enterprise  307 Theory X: Traditional View of Direction and Control  307, 308 Theory Y: Integration of Individual and Organizational Goals  307–08 McGregor Burns, J  116 Machiavelli  286 McLachlan, D  166–67, 176 magnetism  164 Making It Happen  261 management  29–32 human resource  107 implications of  31–32 ‘man’-  29, 107 and manager as leader  30, 178 modern concept of  32 roots of  30

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Index Management Survey  235 Management Today  258 ‘Managers and leaders: are they different?’  173 Mandela, N  133, 150 Marcus Aurelius  282, 345 Marlborough, Duke of  32 Maslow, A (and)  11–12, 273–75, 276, 284, 285, 292, 295, 299–311 differing characteristics of basic needs  319–20 Motivation and Personality  300 Social Needs  277 ‘A Theory of Motivation’  300 Maslow’s hierarchy of needs  11–12, 11, 146, 288–90, 289, 293, 299–305 aesthetic  304–05 coping and expressive behaviour  305 desires to know and understand  304 esteem  303 physiological  300–301 safety  301–02 self-actualization  303 social  277, 302–03 Maslow’s ideas in industry  306–11 moral issue with  309–10 and Theory X, Theory Y (McGregor)  307–08 wider dissemination of  308–09 Mausner, B  312 Mead, M  299 Mencius  286 Mentor  226, 232 mentoring (and)  226–32, 243, 256, 265–66 see also case studies apprenticeship method for  227–29 bare minimum of leadership  230 briefing, debriefing and follow-up  231 definition of  226 individual  232 on the job training for  227 schemes  201 Miller, H  478 Milne, C  428 Milner, Lord A  245 Milstein, Dr C  361 Milton, J  126 Montgomery, Field Marshal B  31, 32, 89, 227, 233, 248, 249, 262, 286 and ‘Military Leadership’ lecture  248 Moorman, T  478–79 morale  99, 101, 141, 151, 171, 206, 277, 278, 329–30, 362 key of  146 roots of  54–55 Moses  235, 236 motion, laws of  137 motivation, eight principles of  324–32

be motivated yourself  324–25 create a motivating environment  328 give recognition  329 provide fair rewards  329 remember that progress motivates  327–28 select highly motivated people  325–26 set realistic and challenging targets  327 treat people as individuals  326 motivation  146–47, 291, 296–97 for creative people see creative people and manipulation  297 new theory of  333–34 Mozart  262, 403, 472 Murdoch, I  333, 422, 464 Musgrave, S  122 Napoleon Bonaparte  43, 44, 56, 205, 350, 432 Nelson, Lord  296, 324, 385 Newton, I  137, 430 Nightingale, F  245 notes and references  77, 155, 335–37 Oberholzer, E  299 Ogilvy, D M  406 Olivier, L  435–36 operational leadership  98, 136, 158, 186 Organism, The  299 Organizational Man, The  285 Orwell, G  235 Osborn, A  395 Ovid  206 and Heracles  206 Oxford University  274 see also case studies Paderewski, I J  457 Paine, T  391 Pasha, General J  163 Pasteur, L  430, 449 paternalism  56–64 and role of trade union leadership  59–60, 59 Path to Leadership, The  286 Patton, General G S  31 Pericles  101, 215 Periodic System  103 Perutz, M  361–63 Philosophers and Kings: Education for leadership in modern England  244 Picasso, P  435 Pilkington, Sir A  429 planning  17, 21, 32, 40, 42, 46–47, 57, 92, 168, 169, 218, 242, 279, 280, 291, 384 to action from see action corporate  46, 51, 263, 377–78 and reviewing  114 strategic  99, 276 Plato  159, 178, 180–81, 368 Republic  91, 244

Index Pliny the Elder  403 Plomley, R  471 Plutarch  100, 105, 216, 244, 464 Poe, E A  425 politeness  68, 154 Pope, A  252 power  18, 65–66, 70, 120–21, 174, 324, 366 of groups  50 of imagination  130–31 of leaders / leadership  32, 38, 89, 184, 195, 214–15, 233, 287, 297, 346, 363 practical wisdom (and)  100–103, 191–92, 378 see also goodness; health and prudence characteristics of  102–03 prudence  100, 192, 286 Psychological Review  300 purpose  131–32, 145 sense of  129 qualities approach (and)  83–86, 94, 136, 142, 161–65, 175, 176–78 see also leadership qualities in the British Army  164–65 development of leadership qualities  163–65 generic qualities  176–78 representative qualities  176 quality circles  388, 397–98, 399, 425 success factors for  397–98 rationalization  61, 295, 410 Reagan, R  285 redundancy, coping with  60–61 research (on) creative people  380 leadership  5, 7 qualities /abilities  221, 286 study of female workers on work satisfaction  321 respect  6, 10–11, 49, 67–69, 119, 121–22, 141, 176, 182–83, 217, 288, 297 gaining  67–68 giving  68–70 mutual  110, 112, 114, 238 self-  11, 303 respecting the line  51–52, 226 Rhodes, C  245 risk  60, 86, 112, 134, 198, 383, 410–12 acceptance of  353–54, 384 Rodin, A  469 roles, occupying different  35–37 and the Fifty-Fifty Rule  36 Rommel, Field Marshall E  88–89, 233 Roosevelt, F D  406 Roosevelt, T  164 Rossotti, H  461 Introducing Chemistry  461 Rothschild, Lord  459

Rowat, K  433 Rowlerson, M  396 Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst  5, 9, 30, 141, 158, 165, 166–68, 170–72, 175, 179, 202, 219, 240–41, 266, 275, 279 Rufel, I W  429 Ruskin, J  436  Modern Painters  436 Ryle, G  433 On Thinking  433 St Augustine of Hippo  154 St Vincent, Admiral Lord  324 Sandhurst see Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst Schiller, J  463 Schmidt, W H  280, 284, 291 Schultz, C M  151 Schweitzer, A  226, 269 Scipio Africanus  262 Scott, Captain R F  122 selection of leaders (and)  212–25 see also case studies applying group or functional approach  217–20 and group effectiveness  218–19 communication abilities 222 competencies and good practice  223–24 decision-making abilities  221–22 leadership and teamwork abilities  221 personal qualities  222–23 principle of election  216–17 self-management abilities 222 routes for becoming leaders  212–13 appointment  212 election  212 emergent  212 hereditary  212 wider framework for  221–23 self-discipline  18, 164 selfishness  147 Seneca  265 serendipity  427–31 Servaeus Africanus  410 service National Service  30, 86, 125, 164 to others  125–26 seven principles for growing leaders  193–272, 194 see also individual subject entries training for leadership 195–211 Shakespeare  126, 127, 130, 326, 445, 456, 465 sharing and caring see paternalism Shaw, G B  381 Sinclair, Sir C  433 situational approach / leadership  7–8, 21, 83, 90, 94, 96, 134, 142, 175, 179–85, 189 and Hersey and Blanchard  82

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Index origins of  180–83 and the Socratic tradition  184–85 Slim, Field-Marshal Lord  29, 30, 31, 56–57, 184–85, 191, 195, 233, 285 and ‘Leadership in Management’  184 Sloan, A  50 Smuts, J C  299 Smythe, Sir J  326 Snyderman, B  312 Spalding, J L  327 Spence, Sir B  471–72 Social Psychology of Groups , The  167 Socrates (and) 87, 88, 90, 91, 101, 147, 180–85, 190–91, 262, 287 concept of leadership  243–44 and the Socratic tradition  184–85 Soichiro Honda – leader for innovation  369–74, 419 acquires partner Takeo Fujisawa  371 as creative thinker in action  370–71 early life of  369–70 and exercise re leadership  369 and Honda Motor Company  371–73 Soldier’s Story, A  163 Sophocles  240 spirit  120–23 and journeys  122 uses of  122–23 Stead, B  157 Stevenson, R L  380, 472 Stirling, Colonel W F  213 Stogdill, R  179 strategic leadership (and)  40–47, 98, 136, 158, 186 generic functions of  99 involving others  45–46 leading by example  264–66 learning  261–64 early experiments in  262–63 planning  42 principles of military strategy  40 role of the strategic leader  188–89, 189 strategic ideas  43–44 transfer of  189–91 vision  44–45 strategic thinking  42–44, 259, 350 strategy for leadership development  205, 254–60 and culture  258–59 see also case studies hallmarks of  254 importance  254 long-term  254 multi-component  254 questions on leadership development  255 review of  255–56 and structuring the organization  256–57 strategy  98 origin of word  98

styles of leadership  23–25 authoritarian  24 suggestion schemes  395–97, 399 Sunday Telegraph, The  166–67 Sutherland, G  435 Swift, J  130 Tacitus  271 Tannenbaum, R  280, 284, 291 task, the common (and)  124–35 achieving  377 concept of good  125, 126 see also values need for challenge  132–33 sense of purpose  129 service to others  125–26 vision  129–32 see also main entry task  145 circle  126 see also three-circle model need  9 Tawney, R H  245 Taylorism  178 T E Lawrence by His Friends  213 Tead, O  152 team creativity, organizing for  356–60 by getting balance right  358–59, 359 by integrating creativity into industry  357–58 and leadership for innovation  359–60 with order and freedom  356–57 team creativity (and)  387–94, 399 in action  390–91 brainstorming  389–90 building on ideas  387–89, 388, 389 criticism  392–94 in Japanese economy  387 organization  391–92 team leadership  98, 136, 158, 186 training in  204–05 teams, high-performance  35 Telemachus  226 Ten Good Schools (H M Inspectorate of Schools, 1977)  247 Thatcher, M  265 Thelwell, N  437 A Millstone Round My Neck  437 Theory X: Traditional View of Direction and Control  307, 308, 310 Theory Y: Integration of Individual and Organizational Goals  307–08, 310, 311 Thermistocles  100, 130, 215 Thibaut, J W  167, 170 thinking, right brain  450 see also Depth Mind thinking outside the box  240–43 and Nine Dots Exercise  241, 448 Thomas, L  456 Thompson, W  429 Thomson, Lord R  195–96, 267, 427 Long After Sixty  439

Index Thoreau, H  18, 455 three-circle model  9, 9, 14–17, 14, 15, 16, 58, 59, 59, 92, 98, 113, 116, 126, 128, 128, 144, 144, 148, 168, 168, 169, 174, 177, 188, 189, 202, 203, 208, 219, 230, 238, 279, 284 Thucydides  100 Times, The  195 Tolstoy, L  411 War and Peace  411 toughness and fairness  6–7, 86, 176, 378 trade union leadership  59–60, 59 Training for Communication  220 Training for Decisions  220, 241 Training for Leadership  159, 170, 171, 174, 176, 220, 240, 251 training for leadership (and)  195–211 see also case studies clear thinking, need for  195–96 common errors 195–96, 201–04 established leaders  205–07 growing leaders  208–09 leadership programmes  207–09 managing  209–10 partnerships and outsourcing  210 psychological contract  209 senior management  201 team leaders as natural starting point  202–03 training team leaders  204–05 unconscious assumptions / strategies 201–02 at universities  203–04 transcendent work  118–22 see also human nature and spirit transactional leadership  109–11 transformational leadership  107, 115–17 Trevelyan, G M  464 Trevor, W  432 triangular relations  113–15 trust, effects of  141–42 Trust Matters  258 truth  126–27, 128 see also values Tull, J  424 Twain, M  268–69, 479 Ulysses  226 Universities Leadership Foundation  248 Urwick, L F  228–29, 291 The Elements of Administration  291 Ustinov, P  439 values  126–28, 142 beauty  127, 128 goodness  127, 128 integrity  126

love  128 truth  126–27, 128 Vauvenargues, Marquis de  385 Vincent, E  157 vision  129–32 and leadership  129 true  131 von Clausewitz, C  24, 44, 98, 350 von Goethe, J W  449, 457 Von Hügel, Baron  59 Wallace, W  164 Wallas, G  459, 460  The Art of Thought  459 Wallis, Sir B  235, 425 Walpole, H  427 War Office Selection Board (WOSB)  218–20 Warburg, S  258–59 warmth  6, 85, 89, 147, 292 Watson, J  361, 392 Watt, J  457 Wavell, General Sir A  248 wearing three hats see roles, occupying different Weber, M  365 Welch, J  264, 285 Wellington, Duke of  32, 56, 164, 205, 244, 350 Wesley, J  124, 327 What Makes a Manager?  223 Wheldon, Sir Hugh  474 Whitbread  106–07 Whyte, W H  285 Whitehead, A N  25, 188, 253, 366 Essays on Truth and Reality  188 Wild, R  321 Wilde, O  412, 438 Wilhelm II, Kaiser  164 William of Occam  177 and Occam’s Razor  177, 192 Windsor Castle / Windsor Meetings  250–51 and Windsor Leadership Trust  251–52 Wing Leader  161 Wodehouse, P G  67 Wood, Sir H  72 Wordsworth, W  455 Wriston, W  349 Xenophon  87–88, 90–91, 101, 118, 180–85, 190–91, 244, 262 on leadership  182–83 and Oeconomicus  184 Young, P  233 Zaleznik, A  173–74 Zaleznik Error  201, 207

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