Extraordinary Performance from Ordinary People

Keith Ward, Cliff Bowman, Andrew Kakabadse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136404238
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Extraordinary performance from ordinary people is a must read for the high performing manager with the ambition to reach corporate leadership status. The book is as practical as it is exciting. How to succeed and which personal qualities are required from those who display the capability for great responsibility, are the themes that run throughout. The book focuses on both the key value adding activities and disciplines for driving through change and the styles of corporate leaders that attract success Extraordinary performance from ordinary people highlights how the leaders of the company, as a corporate team, can adopt and adapt the four value creating styles. It emphasises how to recognise which leadership framework suits the challenges of particular competitive environments. This insight nurtures a confidence to act decisively adopting an approach to communication which harnesses the energies of the organisation to achieve stretching performance targets. It concentrates on how leaders make a difference by what they do. Diagnostic models that show what really works and under which circumstances are core to this book.

PART 1

Developing a Practical Leadership Model

1

Redefining corporate leadership

VALUE-CREATING CORPORATE LEADERSHIP

Corporate leadership creates value because it can increase the output achieved by any workforce beyond that which can be produced by management alone.

This increased output arises as the workforce willingly increases the efforts that it inputs into the business.

These efforts are in the form of physical and psychological energy, i.e. physical or mental activity. Thus, either more energy is input or existing energy is utilized more efficiently and effectively by leadership.

MOST LEADERS ARE MANAGERS, BUT MANY MANAGERS ARE NOT LEADERS

Introduction

Corporate leadership creates value because it can increase the output achieved by any workforce beyond that which can be achieved by management alone. This increased output value can arise because the workers willingly increase the efforts that they put into the business. These efforts are in terms of physical or mental activity; we describe them as the physical or psychological energy available to the business. Alternatively leadership can enable the existing available energy to be utilized more effectively or efficiently within the business. Let us immediately be very clear that most, but not all, corporate leaders are also managers, but many senior managers in business are not leaders.

Leadership is therefore, in one sense, all about change. Corporate leaders can change a workforce from a disparate group of individuals, who are merely ‘going through the motions’ while at work, into a connected and aligned team that is positively committed to delivering the vision of the business.

In order to do this, leaders, by definition, need one or more followers. One dimension dictating the nature and complexity of leadership is, therefore, the number of followers that any corporate leader needs to be effective. However, true leadership requires ‘willing followers’, where the followers do not display either the ‘forced follower’ behaviour of a bull being led around by a ring through its nose, or the ‘mindless followership’ exhibited by a flock of sheep or herd of cattle. Thus a second dimension of the nature of corporate leadership is the ‘degree of buy-in’, or level of commitment, required from these followers.

These incredibly simple and fundamental dimensions have been used as the basis for our model of corporate leadership. This model, we believe, provides a practical framework for developing the key leadership roles in any size and type of organization. Before introducing this model, it is necessary to explain how we are using the terms leader, leadership and leading as these have become some of the most misunderstood terms in business and management.

A leader can be defined as someone who takes the initiative and sets the direction (i.e. takes the lead) for the organization, and accepts responsibility for this direction. This is exactly the role played by the ‘leader’ in a tree or other plant, an analogy that we like as any organization is itself a living organism. This leadership activity of setting the direction is critical to the concept of willing followers. It is illogical to think of an intelligent adult ‘willingly following’ someone else without any idea of where they are being led. However, there is clearly much more to leaders gaining willing followers than merely setting the direction for the business.

In common with most writers and researchers in this area, we separate leadership from management, but we will try to maintain this separation rigorously throughout this book as it is completely fundamental to the value-creating role of corporate leadership.

Leaders have willing followers, as already stated, while managers have subordinates. In other words, an organization can make someone a manager by giving them authority over others, but only those ‘others’ can make that someone a leader by becoming their ‘willing followers’. This is not a controversial statement but almost all of the vast numbers of books and papers on leadership very rapidly start to refer to ‘leaders and their subordinates’. Like ‘managing change’, this is an oxymoron and undermines the basis of most models of leadership.

However, we also strongly believe in another element of leading, which is that it implies being the best, or at least one of the best, at doing something. Thus leaders should exhibit leading-edge abilities in some relevant activities. In today's highly competitive environment this means, for most companies, that its leaders will need to focus on a limited area of activities. Trying to be the best at ‘everything’ is a recipe for failure, even if you believe that leaders are born, not made. This focus means that the leaders in the organization do not try to be ‘everything to everybody’. They consistently concentrate on what they believe is most important and where their leadership can add most value. This consistent emphasis and focus has the not surprising result of making all their willing followers realize that these ‘elements’ are regarded as the most important and should be treated accordingly. Many leadership models talk about leaders adopting a range of very different leadership styles and associated behaviours depending upon whom they are associating with and the business context. This is not only incredibly difficult for the leaders to do but also, and more importantly, will normally create confusion and a lack of trust as followers perceive these different leadership styles from one leader as inconsistency or, more sinisterly, ‘participative manipulation’. The relationship between any leader and their followers is based on mutual trust and respect. In other words, this view of leadership styles will not generate the true willing followers that are needed for extraordinary performance.

Our definition of leading also indicates that we regard leadership as an activity. In other words, leaders should be judged by what they do, or more appropriately by what they achieve. This explains the title to the book. Organizations that already possess incredibly strong long-term competitive advantages (such as monopoly market positions, unbreakable technology patents, dominant brands, or total control over key channels of distribution) can produce, for a number of years, well above normal levels of shareholder value creation without the need for real corporate leadership. Eventually any such specific competitive advantages will decay, and so will the financial performance of the business, unless the organization has developed a replacement advantage for its changed competitive environment. Such development, involving reinvestment while the company is still successful, will normally require some display of leadership within the company.

Even Great Historic Leaders Focused

Many theories of leadership discuss the concept of the ‘Great Person’ who was born to lead, or the traits that make a great leader. Most of the examples used to exemplify these theories are historic leaders during times of war, e.g. Winston Churchill, Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc. We are in no way seeking to diminish the achievement of these leaders but they were great leaders in only one set of circumstances or context. Our point is that the very specific context of war makes for a very focused leader.

This is particularly highlighted by the reaction of the ‘deeply grateful’ British population at the end of the Second World War, when they voted out of office their successful wartime leader. This leader had, of course, offered them nothing but ‘blood, sweat, tears and toil’ for the previous years of his leadership. Once the context had changed, these previously willing followers looked to change their leader as, presumably, they did not believe that the current one could rapidly change his focus.

However, the most value-adding impact of true leadership is where the whole workforce become really committed ‘willing followers’ of the corporate leaders. This is not least because the organization's consequent reputation as a really exciting, challenging place to work should, over time, attract the very best, most demanding employees. The development of a continuing supply of sustainable competitive advantages will logically follow.

This indicates two more beliefs that underpin the model that is explained and applied in this book. The most valuable, sustainable competitive advantages are developed and exploited by human effort, which therefore could, and arguably should, be represented as an intangible asset of a business. Also there is no incompatibility between the ‘hard’ financial results-based shareholder value-creation perspective and ‘softer’ people-focused leadership view of business. The key role of leadership is to create more long-term value for all the stakeholders involved in the business. This is also the only way to maximize the long-term value creation for shareholders. You cannot build a sustainable shareholder value-creating company by unfairly exploiting your employees, or your customers, suppliers, etc.

These beliefs have been deliberately stated right at the beginning of the book as we do not want to gain readers under false pretences. We have stated them here as beliefs, views, assertions for the achievement of brevity so that we can get into the more interesting aspects of our model of corporate leadership. This does not mean that we do not have very strong theoretical and research backing for these beliefs and these, for those readers who are interested, are set out in Chapter 9.

Cause and Effect

We have developed our model from first principles by building on the key requirements of business leadership. We did this in an attempt to establish a cause and effect link between business leadership and the sustained level of corporate performance. This model has then been validated by being applied to a wide range of different organizations and leaders in many industries and business contexts.

A recent trend in leadership research has been to find a number of highly successful companies (normally expressed in terms of financial performance over a number of years), and then to look for some common characteristics in their management or leadership styles.

Our concern is obviously with the attribution of a cause and effect relationship between the ‘leadership’ in these organizations and their financial outperformance. Clearly the strong financial performance could be caused by a number of alternative factors. These include, but are not limited to, being in an incredibly attractive industry and/or market, having an existing, well-established competitive advantage, having extremely incompetent competitors, having great management as opposed to leadership, and being extremely lucky!

Separating Leadership from Management

As already stated, a key element in this book is the clear separation of leadership from management. Even existing texts that claim to focus exclusively on leadership all rapidly fall into the trap of talking about leaders having subordinates. They do not. Leaders have followers, while managers have subordinates.

All managers can, and ideally should, be leaders as their subordinates become their willing followers, rather than unwillingly acceding to their superiors’ instructions due to their organizationally granted line authority. However, the appointment of someone as a manager does not automatically make them a leader, and the current fad of renaming ‘supervisors’ as ‘team leaders’ does not magically transform their subordinates into willing followers. This trend of reclassifying managers as leaders is accelerating with the move to flatter organizational structures, seemingly because leaders can have more followers than managers can have subordinates, under span of control theories.

Conversely, not all the leaders in an organization have to be managers, as the willing followers of a leader do not need to be subordinates to their leader in organizational hierarchy terms. Individuals with absolutely no subordinates at all can still have a significant leadership role within an organization.

It is therefore important that we are very clear as to what distinguishes a leader from a manager. Managers basically have jobs to do and apply particular skills in order to accomplish goals and tasks that are probably set for them by others. Thus management is primarily about planning, implementing and controlling to achieve pre-set objectives, for which a stable environment and clearly defined, measurable outputs from both employees and business processes are desirable.

SEPARATING LEADERSHIP FROM MANAGEMENT

Management is getting ‘things done’ through the efforts of others, i.e. subordinates

Value-creating leadership is getting ‘extraordinary things done’ with the willing help of others, i.e. followers

Management, without leadership, will normally only get the mandatory output that is specified in the subordinates’ job descriptions or contracts

Leaders can gain discretionary, unspecified output from willing followers

Management is getting ‘things done’ through the efforts of others, i.e. subordinates. Value-creating leadership is getting extraordinary things done with the willing help of others. Management, without leadership, will normally get only the mandatory output that is specified in the subordinates’ job descriptions or contracts. Leaders can gain discretionary, unspecified output from willing followers who may not even report directly to them. This extraordinary level of performance can be achieved by leaders because they think for themselves, exercise judgement, take initiative, and are willing to be held to account even if they were never given clear specific objectives by anyone.

Indeed, we will argue strongly throughout the book that leaders must have discretion; ideally, more than 50 per cent of any leadership role should be dictated by the occupant of that role. This discretion should relate both to what they do and how they do it, in terms of direction, objectives, strategy and tactics. This means that all leaders must have a high degree of freedom if they are truly to lead. Of course, this high level of freedom includes the freedom to fail. Many managers are terrified by any such risk of failure and consequently look for roles with very clearly defined, and hopefully easily attained, expectations from their superiors. Such managers are clearly not leaders.

Focused Sporting Legends

We are great sports fans. One of us, at least, got very excited when England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and was severely deflated when the British Lions got whitewashed in New Zealand less than two years later.

The leaders in the victorious England team were very focused both on their objective and their personal role within the team. No great sportsperson is the best in several sports and most team players focus on specialist roles within the team. Jonny Wilkinson would probably not make a great second row forward and it's unlikely that Martin Johnson would have lifted the World Cup if he had played for England at fly-half. Even the most talented have to work very hard to become and stay the best in their highly competitive fields. In other words, they focus on specialist skills. Also, very few have ever made the transition from excellence in one sport to world-leading performance in another. Why therefore should business leaders be able to do the equivalent?

We have one further comment that reflects a danger of taking sporting analogies too far and explains w...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part 1 Developing a Practical Leadership Model
• Part 2 Identifying the Right Leadership Style
• Part 3 The Leadership Model in Practice and Theory
• References
• Index