Anna Bateson

Diversity is…

Diversity is a state of mind.

The logic goes something like this:

Diverse boards are more likely to recognise and understand the diverse needs of their customers and the communities they operate in.

By structuring boards to be diverse and creating an environment in which alternative insights are expressed and listened to, these boards are more likely to make better strategic decisions.

Better strategic decisions, well executed are more likely to lead to improved business performance and deliver the value which the board is responsible for creating.

Given this compelling argument, why is the reality often different?

Diverse boards means having to listen to people who don’t think like you, which may be exciting but is also challenging and often uncomfortable.

‘Because I say so’ may work for small children but not for those approaching adulthood and certainly not in a boardroom of highly talented individuals.

The goalposts are moving daily. The rapidly changing business environment is shortening strategic planning timescales and requiring business leaders to engage across a complex web of geographical, gender and generational boundaries. The language (vocabulary and idiom) for dialogue is continuously developing and it is easy to be left behind.

What does this mean for boards?

The challenge is to create a board with a shared vision but different perspectives.

Board recruitment and succession planning need to be imaginative, seeking to complement rather than replicate existing knowledge, skills and experience.

Board development needs to recognise the merits of creative tension and create a respect for difference. When evidencing diversity, the use of age and gender are simplifications.

How to crack the toughest leadership challenge of all

Successful leaders agree that while formulating strategy may be difficult, ‘making strategy happen’ is the greatest challenge. Since the 1990s, the author and Dr Laurence Lyons have been collaborating to research and develop approaches to building the leadership capability necessary to address this challenge successfully.

As highly experienced agents of change, LyonsBateson have captured important insights into the development of Situational Intelligence^TM through their work with multiple organisations and their leaders. Based on the premise that for any event, there are a number of potential outcomes and some of these outcomes may be more desirable that others, the leader seeks to judge the most effective way to intervene in order to bring about the most desirable outcome.

By identifying the event as a situation arising from the translation of a policy into action, the leader seeks to define the potentially impacted stakeholders, establish their motivations and engage the stakeholders in building a common agenda. Building capability involves practice with a toolkit of critical questions which enable business leaders to reflect on and make sense of the complexity surrounding them.

Download Lyons-Bateson SIT Summit Paper

Blind process

WARNING – BLIND PROCESS KILLS RELATIONSHIPS

The Board as navigator:

Boards are responsible for creating systemic change and directing the alignment of effort (capability + will) to achieve defined strategies. Boards make choices during the business year and lead the implementation of those choices by creating communities of common interest.

But the World in which Boards navigate their organisations is turbulent and ambiguous; the business models they develop are increasingly complex and involve multiple, ‘non owned’ players in the value chains.

The solution is to build flexible business models, able to respond quickly to the continually shifting business environment and avoid the dissipation of effort and resultant destruction of value. This involves avoiding blind process and encouraging innovation.

Blind process is the result of regulating for every eventuality:

The message is not new. Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) wrote ‘Law is mind without reason.’ In the 1700s Adam Smith writing in The Wealth of Nations warned against the effect of a reductionist approach on worker’s mental capabilities. In the same era, Dr Samuel Johnson warned us that ‘corrupt societies have many laws.’

So if our boundary workers are not allowed to think for themselves, what do they tell our customers? From the telco and utility worlds, examples provided in the last few weeks include “We have a process” – “But your process is broken” – “That’s not my problem.” Or better still “There’s no technical problem so bad or complex that we can’t make it worse.” And finally “Yes, we are broken and no-one wants to fix us, so I’m leaving as soon as I can get out.”

And what do your customers do? Driven by fury and impotence and provided with global and instant connectivity, they tell anyone who is listening that you are broken and they do it on forums which you are not invited to.

Relationships which create innovation:

Wayne Burkan, writing in Wide Angle Vision highlights that the people who will lead organisations to the future are ‘disgruntled customers, off-the-scope competitors, rogue employees and fringe suppliers.’ These are the stakeholders we should be listening to and we may not like what they say.

Being accessible to multiple stakeholders relies on high visibility and the active quest for insights. In the 1980s, we talked about MBWA – managing by wandering about – but the wandering about needs to be in a spirit of positive enquiry rather than policing. Admired leaders have been promoting this approach for decades.

Virtual accessibility requires personal bravery too. Networked leaders construct pathways which allow them to be accessible but manage the noise which this generates. When ‘The Boss’ makes her email available to all stakeholders, it is pleasantly surprising how the efforts of the whole organisation align to the common purpose of listening and responding.

Board effectiveness insight: embed risk thinking

Effective Boards go well beyond annual exercises to create and review risk registers. They actively sponsor and co-ordinate the continuous collection of perceptions and insights from all stakeholder groups in order to exploit upside risk by developing prescience. Instead of viewing risk as a series of discrete events and their consequences, they address aggregated risk in their strategic thinking processes.

The CTTG A⁶ facilitator question set:

Appetite

What categories of risk are you prepared to consider and to what extent?

Anticipate

What events might occur and how can you scan for early warning?

Analyse

How will you qualify risks to identify their potential causes and consequences?

Act

What needs to be done to exploit or mitigate each event and aggregated impacts?

Assess

How will you monitor the impact and consequences of events?

Adapt

How will you capture risk learning to inform future risk decision making?

Are effective leaders ‘proud’?

For decades, we have pursued the search for a simple, universal leadership template against which to measure ourselves, with little success. The ‘Great Man’ and ‘Trait’ theories of leadership, which prevailed in the first half of the 20th century, were followed by the production of business competence and capability frameworks. In many cases, these complex templates tried to define knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour in detail, failing to recognise that effective behaviour was context specific and that words and labels have varied meanings.

Take PRIDE – is it a vice or a virtue for business leaders?

The dictionary definition of ‘Haughty, with an overinflated sense of self importance’ supports the notion that to be PROUD is a vice.

The work of Jim Collins on Level 5 leadership and Daniel Goleman on Emotional Intelligence both support the notion that really effective leaders combine passion with altruism/personal humility.

Yet many entrepreneurs subscribe to the notion that PRIDE is an essential characteristic of the successful business leader, seeking to survive and thrive in the complex and ambiguous 21st century operating environment.

Chartered Director, Kerry Davis suggests “Pride in what one does can also be a virtue. Not being content to say: “That’ll do for this client”, going the extra mile to surprise and delight – this has always stood me in good stead to retain clients and build a reputation as someone who understand the client’s needs and wants and tries his hardest to achieve them.

Successful businesses have highlighted the importance of PRIDE as a corporate value. Philip Williamson, when CEO of Nationwide Building Society, launched a comprehensive strategic change programme branded PRIDE, in which the change champions were called PRIDE PARTNERS.

For Boards and business leaders seeking to define their Corporate Values and evidence them in their own behaviour, the message is simple:

“Words matter – choose them carefully and make sure you all agree what they mean in your context.”

This becomes increaingly critical as we seek to lead multi-locational, multi-functional and multi-cultural teams and develop common purpose.

How to plan strategic change?

The turbulent business environment which most organizations inhabit, has impacted the degree to which it is possible to plan strategic change. The pattern of external factors impacting organisations, has become more complex. A more responsive and adaptive approach is required in order to identify these factors and take early advantage of the opportunites to innovate or mitigate threats.

Planning strategic change is most effective when it recognizes and builds on the operational pulse of the organization.

Creating strategic change is about getting fit for an uncertain future, while also ensuring operational stability. Most analysts agree that strategic change derails as a result of inappropriate timing and lack of engagement.

While there is no blueprint for success, there are some tried and tested guidelines for increasing the likelihood of achieving the desired results.

Deciding when to launch new initiatives relies on the ability of business leaders to think strategically:

– Scanning the wider world, their market places and their operating environment

– Identifying the pattern of external and internal factors driving their strategic change

– Assessing their stakeholders’ attitudes and expectations

High performing organizations are adopting a participative approach to strategic planning, which surfaces all existing and proposed change initiatives and allows them to be evaluated in the light of strategic imperatives.

Change overload and fatigue are common complaints from Directors. At the same time, new initiatives are championed and obsolete ones are seldom ‘killed.’

Mapping all change initiatives against the business planning cycle, highlights conflicts and interdependencies, while providing an holistic view of the agenda the organization is being asked to embrace. Pinch points become apparent and Director time can be focused on steering multiple initiatives concurrently.

A participative approach to planning, ensures that constructive challenge becomes part of an effective process to determine which initiatives are Mission critical and when they should be launched. A common agenda is created and Directors can begin the process of engaging their stakeholders in the journey.

Leaders create their organisational drum beat

Leaders are primarily responsible for creating the culture which they inhabit – The organisational drum beat.

While any organisation will have developed habits based on historical behaviour, it is the words and actions of the current leaders which is primarily responsible for promoting what is acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour.

Where leadership behaviour is concurrent with espoused principles and values and strategic decision making is guided by those same principles and values, trust and respect will grow and enhance business performance.

The author collaborates with Dr Laurence Lyons, editor of Coaching for Leadership, “The single best collection of first rate articles on executive coaching – Warren Bennnis.” Together they research Principled Leadership, a philosophy which explores how the leader creates their organisational drum beat. Principled Leadership is based on the following concepts:

Truth – Principled leaders are authentic and true to themselves, recognising personal purpose, ethics and appropriateness of response. Their reputation for authentic behaviour is earned, respected and valued.

Politics – Principled leaders enable others to lead. They recognise that this is the style of choice for the advanced organisation paradigm, given that power relationships have altered, career paths are mobile and personal branding is essential.

Dialogue – Principled leaders create dialogue, founded on mutual respect and shared expectation of behaviour and outcome. They recognise the importance of both the journey and the destination.

Collective Success – Principled leaders enable collective success by inspiring and being inspired. They engage with others, sharing ideas and building common purpose. Their decisions and actions are informed by their principles.

Audit Questions:

– What are your organisation’s principles and values?

– How is your community encouraged to live those espoused principles and values?

– Are those espoused principles and values promulgated?

– How does your strategic decision making link with those espoused principles and values?

– How is dialogue created and sustained?

– How is the baton of leadership shared beyond those at the apex of the organisation?

– What value is placed on being authentic?

– What inspires your community?

– What role do you play in inspiring those around you?

So, are you a principled leader?