Excerpts from The Times,
19th April 2012, Second Leader
Trouble In Store
But the Tesco story tells us much
more about leadership than about rival ownership models.
Tesco
is not the first company to stumble shortly after the departure of a highly
successful leader. BP’s problems after Lord Browne of Madingley stepped down is
one of many examples. Such powerful figures can often time their exits to go
out on a high. Some analysts suggest Sir Terry was reluctant to recognise the
need to change tack in the UK, which might tarnish his record, and that the
board was too weak to force him to act or move on.
It
is of course tempting to stick with a highly successful leader. But other
boards and shareholders should see Tesco as a lesson in the dangers of allowing
chief executives to go on too long.
"The
risk of successful chief executives going on too long" is a symptom, not a
cause. These (widespread) speculations on Tesco are just the latest example of the generally poor understanding of successful management cultures. Jim Collins in his
book "Good to Great" documented many other examples of the effects of
individual leaders.
The easy, and lazy, way has been to view leadership through cult of personality spectacles - "Find the right person and leadership happens". It is a self-fulfilling path to hazard because it licences whatever behaviour the "personality" then exhibits and enforces - Fred Goodwin and Gordon Brown should give us all cause to think.
On the other hand there are very successful organisations whose leaderships are consciously aware of, and manage, their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs together to achieve outstanding comparative competitive strength. They exhibit both individually and collectively high levels of changeability
The easy, and lazy, way has been to view leadership through cult of personality spectacles - "Find the right person and leadership happens". It is a self-fulfilling path to hazard because it licences whatever behaviour the "personality" then exhibits and enforces - Fred Goodwin and Gordon Brown should give us all cause to think.
On the other hand there are very successful organisations whose leaderships are consciously aware of, and manage, their behaviours, attitudes and beliefs together to achieve outstanding comparative competitive strength. They exhibit both individually and collectively high levels of changeability
The fact is that leadership is about people and collective behaviours, not about the person and individual attributes. There are far too many organisations in which leaders have recruited their management in their own image with two effects - built in under-performance and, sooner or later, a dangerous loss of innovative capacity; for a really dramatic example, the protracted and tragic demise of GEC under Lord Weinstock; for another? Let's all watch to see what happens at Apple.
It doesn't have to be like this. Changeability is an attribute that can be developed both at the individual and collective level and that, supported by the appropriate behavioural skills and discipliner, can transform the performance of any size of organisation.
The Cost of Behaviour is brought to you by Steve Goodman, Tony Ericson, Terry Murphy and Barbara Craven, the founding partners of Achievement Coaching International where we help businesses to learn different thinking to enable different actions that deliver the different resultsthat Make the Big Differences that Transform Results.
The Cost of Behaviour is brought to you by Steve Goodman, Tony Ericson, Terry Murphy and Barbara Craven, the founding partners of Achievement Coaching International where we help businesses to learn different thinking to enable different actions that deliver the different resultsthat Make the Big Differences that Transform Results.
This series looks at the corrosive and far reaching effects for business profitability, and even survival, of failures in behaviour. It challenges all those that believe in “don’t rock the boat”.
You might also be interested in our "Excellence Quartet" of blogs promoting the cause of Excellence as the key to prosperity. We publish regular articles using a recent business/financial topic to highlight different perspectives and conclusions to those obtained by conventional thinking and techniques. You can read the other four blogs at our web site link page.
