Observation
‘Forget King Canute, It Is Time To Align The Surf Board !’
In the past twenty years or so, I have often found myself encouraging clients to acknowledge reality and get on with it (align the surf board and ride the wave), rather than stand on the shore line and shout, Canute like, at the incoming waves.
Last week I was reminded of this as I caught up with the CEO of a high quality executive search business. Given that search businesses are often lead indicators of what is actually happening, I asked her what she was seeing. As a business they are bouncing back very quickly, resulting in several sectors having record first quarters. The common themes she is hearing are: Brexit, return to the office, D&I and ESG but she also interestingly observed that C-Suite exhaustion, and wellbeing more generally, were also real concerns and potential barriers to acting on the other areas. They recruit across a wide spectrum but the roles that are particularly in high demand are: transformation, digital and sustainability, all to be expected. What I found interesting was the demand for medium size/specialist consultancy roles, rather than the global mega consultancies and also younger NED’s with more relevant experience than the current crop whose awareness is based on 5, 10 or even 20 years ago. It seems there is a real desire and need to freshen things up.
I suspect little of this will come as a surprise, but there again it is not a surprise that waves pound up against the beach. The issue, at least in my mind, is not whether your leadership team sees the incoming trends but whether they have the energy, desire and capability to respond to them. It sounds like many businesses have – has yours?
Current Leadership Challenge
Full Diary : Vitality or Stupidity?
This week a client asked to finish our coaching session 15 minutes early. He was in the office but had back to back meetings all day and therefore, in his words. ‘I have no time to go to the loo, let alone grab a sandwich for lunch!’. He is a very good CEO, he has dug the business out of a serious hole and then doubled the size of an already significant business during the time he has been in charge. Yet a continual theme of our conversation continues to be ‘there must be a smarter way of doing this!’ This is partly about lessening the personal toll on him (energy, family, enjoyment and mind space) but primarily it is about focus.
This is a pattern I see repeatedly, so why is it seemingly so hard to take control? I think it is about:
Complexity : the role of the leader is multi-dimensional and has impact over different timeframes, in different ways with different stakeholder groups in a continually changing context.
Urgency : is a very seductive beast and even the most level headed of us find it difficult to resist the clarion call of making an instant impact
Acceptance : it still surprises me how even the strongest and most experienced leaders are often accepting of others making claims on their time and then tolerating that time being poorly used.
Inadequate Support : there seems to be a natural leadership law that responsibilities and tough decisions will be pushed upwards. To resist this and push them back down, the leader has to have an Exec and support team that they have confidence in.
Little Focus On Developing Capability : except for some very low level input, eg meeting etiquette guides posted on walls, or the occasional Exec Offsite conversation, I see very little investment in terms of helping leaders obsessively shape their agenda and fiercely manage their time.
Of course it is not easy to shape your role and diary. Personally I am very critical of the airport self-help books that suggest if only you were smart enough you could work half as hard and still achieve better results. I have never seen an effective CEO who doesn’t work long hours and has to grind through daily challenges. However I do think for many there is the opportunity to be smarter by focusing on the role and being clear where the real value is created. Given that a post Covid dominated world is forcing many organisations to fundamentally review their ways of working, I suspect a great place to start is with the role of the leader!
Practical Action
Shape Your Agenda Or It Will Shape You!
‘”A designer knows they have achieved perfect not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Poet and Author (Little Prince)
Over the years I have tried many ways of helping leaders shape their agenda – this is the one that has evolved as the most practical.
I encourage leaders to think about their time in terms of:
Must Do’s
Every leader has regular commitments, whether controlled by themselves or others.
The leaders I most admire, have a very clear overview of those commitments, they are in the diary a year ahead and the machinery hums to create high quality conversations, decisions and follow through. When working well, the rhythm is both relentless and impressive.
Double Down
Every leader needs to carve out discretionary time so that they can put their personal weight behind and amplify the significance of actions which will really move the dial for the business.
To do this I encourage my clients to ask ‘what is it that only the leader can do?’ This will vary widely by the role and context, but for the CEO I think it is more likely to be about shaping future strategy, building key relationship and being chief cheerleader than is it is about driving the day to day performance of the business.
Sh** Happens
We all know that this is a reality for every leader and needs to be dealt with.
I think the knack is to create meaningful hurdles before sh** gets to you and that the default setting is for other people to deal with it if possible. However if it does come to you, you want to be able to deal with it quickly and decisively. To do this: your team should present the issues and ideally recommendations as succinctly as possible, where necessary you need to have the space to think it through and talk to the right people and once a course once action is agreed, the execution needs to be effective. All of this requires creativity with your diary, a high quality support team who understand their role and the personal disciple to maintain perspective and resist moving in to rescue mode.
I am often asked ‘what is the right balance between these three areas?’ There is no right answer, it depends entirely on the leader’s role and context. As a very rough guideline I’d aim for 50/40/10 but what I often experience is 60/10/30. I suspect this balance is sometimes what is needed but often it will be because not enough effort has been put in to taking things out rather than adding them in.
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