Too late to apologise

The great conductor Toscanini was rehearsing his NBC Orchestra in New York. True to his reputation, he harangued various members of the orchestra about the inadequacy of their playing.

Eventually the tuba player could stand it no longer. Up and out.

At the door he turned and shouted: “Nerts.”

“It’s too late to apologise now,” shot back Toscanini.

Ideas about leadership have rather changed since that time.

 

Losing the difficult bastards

Some years ago I was commissioned by a client, a major multinational, to dig into the stories surrounding ten major innovations that had taken place in the company over the past decade.

How had the innovations come about? Who was involved? What sorts of personalities were involved? Who had had the original ideas behind them?

We conducted one-to-one depth interviews with everyone involved and it gradually became clear that the answer to that last question – the originators ‒ was that they had each left the company. Some had been fired. Some had chosen to leave. Several had set up their own businesses.

They were all described by surviving colleagues as highly creative, but difficult. Unable to fit in. Resistant to rules, systems, processes. Difficult.

And the company, which had previously recruited these kinds of people on a regular basis, now effectively excluded them at source.

There emerged consensus from the survivors that the company was better off without them, these mavericks. So much easier for them – and for us ‒ to be elsewhere. What I noticed over succeeding years was that senior managers in the company became highly conscious of the lack of breakthrough innovations now.

No one seemed to be prepared to connect these things together.   

Leading the difficult bastards

The eviction of Kevin Pietersen from England’s cricket team is a failure of leadership. No more, no less.

In any organisation, getting the best out of the average performers is useful, but hardly a major challenge. It’s getting consistent, peak performance out of the brilliant ones that is the real test.

So often that test is compounded by the fact that the really outstanding ones come with considerable baggage. They can be moody, imperious, changeable, demanding, self-centred (and self-important), aggressive…

That’s why leaders are paid lots and take on the responsibility. Turfing out the difficult bastards is only appropriate if they lack talent.

Does Putin have a Fool?

So often leaders, especially strong leaders, surround themselves with yes-men (and yes-women). This can seem helpful to teamwork and a sense of direction.

But it can be extraordinarily valuable for the strong leader to include in the court a Fool. Someone who regularly sees things from completely different perspectives, without illusion, and who is empowered to speak up, saying the unsayable.

Shakespeare has Fools in so many of his plays – Feste in Twelfth Night, Touchstone in As You Like It, Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream among them. But the best model for our modern leader is the Fool in King Lear.

The Fool uses song as well as speech to give the king feedback. He is the only one permitted to challenge head on, to say to the aging Lear that he’s deluded and stupid. And yet Lear treats him as his friend.

There’s a long traditional of Fools in Russian literature, not least in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov.

I wonder if Vladimir Putin has a Fool? Not that he’d last long, one senses.

Letting go

When I first became a “boss”, it used to irritate me that people who reported to me did things slower than I would have done them. And, worse than that, they did things differently.

It was one of the first lessons of leadership that I had to learn. That different people do things differently. And the way they learn to do stuff quickly is to practice, practice, practice.

So jumping in and “showing them how”, except maybe just the first time, is generally counter-productive.

I was discussing this syndrome with a client yesterday, who has a direct report who has never escaped from this trap, always taking over on the basis that if you want a job done well, you do it yourself.

The deeper problem is: if we don’t learn how to trust and delegate, to let go, we don’t grow ourselves. 

Impostor Syndrome

It’s that feeling that you’re going to get found out. That your inadequate skill/experience/knowledge, apparent to you, will shortly become apparent to others.

It can come when you’re promoted, or given a new assignment you haven’t tackled before. It can lead to not applying for a job that you’d be well suited for. It can lead to nervousness and a feeling of helplessness.

That’s Impostor Syndrome.

It seems to afflict all of us at one stage or another. I certainly had it when I became a CEO for the first time.

So what’s to be done?

Recognising that it’s happening is the necessary first step. Then, seeing that others around you have it, or had it, too. Girding yourself up to bluff your way through. That works for me.

Until the bluff finally goes away and turns into confident reality.

Strong leadership

I’ve been thinking about the interviews on the TV news with the newly-appointed interim director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, on the day that he got the job.

What I heard him say was that the BBC needed “strong leadership” and that he was going to provide it.

I have a couple of concerns that arise from this:

Strong leadership is something you do on a day-by-day basis, not something you announce up-front.

If it’s said at all, it’s best said by someone else – ie “He/She will bring strong leadership to the organisation.”

Hope it doesn’t come back and bite him. After all, it is exactly what the BBC needs.

Welcome to our home

As regular readers will know, I am a devoted follower of Professor Hofstede and his researches into cultural difference as it impacts organisations.

One thing is clear. It is a more difficult and complex matter to provide effective leadership in situations where there is low “power distance”.

Where power distance is high, for example in India or Latin America, people by and large will do what they are told to do, and what’s more expect it to be so.

But where power distance is low, for example in Australia, how can a leader expect to get compliance?

When I lived in Sydney in the 1980s, the finest hotel in the city was the Regent. Not only did it have a magnificent position with sweeping views over the harbour. It also had immaculate service.

But Australia is a society that has joyfully escaped from the servant culture. “How do you get your people to be so terrific in dealing with guests?” I asked the General Manager, an American.

“It was a real problem to me for quite a while,” he responded. “But then I got it. It dawned on me that Aussies are both intensely house-proud and extraordinarily hospitable. So we re-positioned the hotel internally as ‘our home’ and the customers as our own guests.”

Simple and brilliant.

Conducting and leadership

In 1925, the composer of Der Rosenkavalier and much else, Richard Strauss, who was also an outstanding conductor, wrote “Ten Golden Rules for Conducting” for a young colleague:

1. Remember that you are making music not to amuse yourself, but to delight your audience.
2. You should not perspire when conducting: only the audience should get warm.
3. Conduct Salome and Elektra as if they were Mendelssohn: Fairy Music.
4. Never look encouragingly at the brass, except with a brief glance to give an important cue.
5. But never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight. If you can hear them at all they are still too strong.
6. If you think that the brass is not blowing hard enough, tone it down another shade or two.
7. It is not enough that you yourself should hear every word the soloist sings. You should know it by heart anyway. The audience must be able to follow without effort. If they do not understand the words they will go to sleep.
8. Always accompany singers in such a way that they can sing without effort.
9. When you think you have reached the limits of prestissimo, double the pace.
10. If you follow these rules carefully you will, with your fine gifts and your great accomplishments, always be the darling of your listeners.

I feel sure that all conductors should know these by heart.

But, at a metaphor level, maybe all leaders in all fields should consider them too.

I think Number 4 is particularly important. How about you?

Leading, directing, conducting?

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment has been advertising its recent concert series as “Look! No conductor”. I caught them at my favourite venue, St George’s in Bristol.

Now in itself doing without a conductor is not a new thing. Neville Marriner “directed” rather than “conducted” the Academy of St Martin in the Fields from the first desk in the early 1960s – and many have followed in his footsteps.

What was special about this OAE gig was that three different soloists directed the orchestra. First Stephen Isserlis (together with his cello) directed Haydn’s scintillating last symphony, No 104 (The London). Then the violinist Isabelle Faust directed and played (meltingly beautifully) Mozart’s third violin concerto. And finally, Isserlis and Faust were joined by the American fortepianist, Robert Levin, in Beethoven’s Triple Concerto (for violin, cello, piano and orchestra).

Who knew that this could be such an exciting work? And who on earth was directing? Well, so far as I could tell, leadership switched constantly between the three soloists, with Levin perhaps doing most.

But when they started the second movement, none of the soloists moved a muscle. It was the OAE’s leader, Kati Debretzeni who discreetly beat them in. I suspect that there were other leaders at work around the orchestra that I didn’t spot.

That’s how orchestral music can be. Completely collaborative. Just like chamber music. And jazz, of course.

Running the country?

It was during the Blair administration in Britain that one heard the expression “running the country” most frequently. Often from his publicist/enforcer, Alastair Campbell, or from Deputy PM. John Prescott. But also from Tony Blair himself.

And I still hear it, a bit less frequently in and around David Cameron’s coalition.

It’s such a gross misunderstanding of the role of leadership in government. People talk about “running a company” (that’s where the phrase has been borrowed from). It’s an unlikely concept, even in the corporate world, filled as it is with self-importance.

I’d much rather hear from politicians (and corporate leaders) reference to service. That’s what they are there for.

Now running a bus. That’s more like it. Or running a bath?

Why are so many leaders so bad at their jobs?

In spite of the massive amount of research into the subject and the plethora of training offerings available to new leaders, still they fail.

In the USA, some 40% of new leaders lose their jobs within 18 months. And there’s scant evidence that the 60% who manage to remain in post are much more competent or successful.

In 1969, Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull published a best-selling book, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong. Maybe it’s time for a new generation of managers to discover it. It’s still in print.

The best-known maxim enunciated by the authors was that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence”.

What appears to happen is that managers who do well in a particular role get promoted and fail miserably in the more senior job, which usually requires a quite different personality, approach and skill-set.

When I worked in the advertising business, the best copywriters and art directors regularly were moved up to be creative directors in charge of lots of very volatile underlings. They almost invariably lacked the people skills that mark out the finest creative directors.

The only person that I ever worked with who really understood this was Charles Saatchi. His best creatives stayed in the jobs where they excelled, applauded and paid tons of money, while others better suited provided the leadership and management.

More recent research* seems to confirm the Peter Principle. Rather extraordinarily, it appears that promoting people who are not good at their jobs has a greater success rate than promoting the ones who are.

But surely the key point is to understand what’s really needed in particular leadership roles ‒ and identify and put in place people who genuinely fit the bill.

*“The Peter Principle Revisited: A Computational Study,” Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo, Physica A, vol. 389, no. 3, February 2010, pp. 467-72.

KPIs OK?

I wonder whether the whole theory and practice of Management By Objectives has had the overall effect of improving performance or containing it? Or even, perish the thought, reducing it?

MBO was popularised by Peter Drucker in his The Practice of Management of 1954. Since that time, it has become ubiquitous, all employees having to have Key Performance Indicators by which they are assessed.

I’m sure that it appeals strongly to leaders who want to have CONTROL. The mantra “What gets measured gets done” is one of those articles of faith that is parroted to generation after generation of managers.

It seems to me that if people are engaged in, even inspired by, their work, then KPIs are often in reality a rather dreary invitation to deliver below their potential.

Mavericks and leadership

I was to discover rather early in life - in my teens - that having maverick tendencies is a serious barrier to being promoted to leadership positions.

I think the basic issue is that bosses can’t predict what you’ll do in any particular circumstances. Mavericks seem to them to carry more risk than reward.

And yet, when an organisation is in trouble and needs new directions, the creativity of mavericks is exactly the place that good solutions are likely to come from.

My own approach to this problem has often been to team myself with more sensible, structured, reliable partners. I think I did this for the first time at Saatchi and Saatchi. It worked well.

Are there other approaches that work?

Are ideas born in start-ups?

Where is it that new ideas are born? In large companies or small?

There seems to be a widespread assumption that creativity flourishes in small organisations – and that big new ideas emerge mainly in entrepreneurial start-ups.

It may well be true that new ideas see the light of day in start-up companies. The question is: were the ideas actually conceived there?

Some years ago I saw a presentation at a conference from Aston University, whose research showed that ideas were often conceived in large organisations, where they had been either suppressed, or rejected, or simply hidden, before being brought to market by breakaway staffers.

This is certainly a syndrome that I’ve observed frequently. What’s more – it has happened to me personally, a wonderful new business being born.

A very successful example is Innocent Drinks. They tell the story on their website.

The learnings?

Here are a couple of them. In large organisations, it behoves leaders to think twice before rejecting or suppressing the ideas of their more creative colleagues. And for governments, it might be good to re-think their assumptions concerning the sources of new ideas.

When the going gets tough

Neville Wran was premier of New South Wales in Australia in the 1980s. A canny old bird. His newly-elected political opponent, the glamorous young Nick Greiner, was doing brilliantly in the polls.

“Let’s see how he does when the blowtorch is applied to the belly.” This was Wran’s acerbic assessment.

That’s the real test of leadership. By comparison, leading when you’re winning is so easy.

Why is it that, when the going gets tough, leaders so often abandon the supportive people-management strategies that served them so well in good times, reverting to fear and blame?

Deep down they must know that, even if it can get results in the short-term, over the long haul it just won’t work.

Rehearsal as a creative activity

I’ve always loved rehearsals. Probably somewhat more than performance or presentation. It’s a time when current ideas cross over with experimentation, so it can be a highly creative process.

In music, the first rehearsal that I remember was at school. It would have been around 1959 and I would have been fifteen.

Walking across the quad one afternoon, I could hear an orchestra playing in the hall, wandered in, and discovered Sir John Barbirolli rehearsing his wonderful Hallé Orchestra from Manchester. Rather shamefully, I don’t remember what the work was. What I do recall vividly was a dynamic sense of collective trial and error. And Barbirolli’s genial cajoling of the players to give of their best. His voice I can hear now – deep, authoritative but warm, the hint of a chuckle.

He struck me as an ideal leader figure. At one moment Barbirolli jumped down from the conductor’s rostrum and took the principal cellist’s instrument from him in order to demonstrate how he wanted a certain passage to go. Cheers and laughter from the players.

Ever since that time, I’ve attended rehearsals whenever I can. In fact for several years now I have an arrangement with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment that, in return for bits of work that I do with them, from time to time I can sit in on their rehearsals. To watch a great conductor working with a brilliant group of musicians is a real thrill for me to this day.

And as our little music festival kicked off this weekend in King’s Sutton, one of the greatest pleasures has been to see and hear Alissa Firsova (above) coaxing our restored 1872 Broadwood into giving voice again.

She played, exploring and polishing, for some four hours before finally giving her brilliant concert – Beethoven’s last sonata opus 111, Scriabin’s Poèmes, Bartok’s rarely performed Elegies and Schumann’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien (Carnival Jest from Vienna) opus 26.

A New Churchill?

Extracts from an outspoken speech, largely unreported, given on 2 June to the House of Commons Defence Committee in London by Vice-Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham:

“We are used to the comforting and rather romantic thought that our forces are world class, and that we are military leaders in Europe. I believe this is no longer the case. As just one piece of evidence the French, now indubitably the leading European military power, have flown three times as many sorties in Libya as the RAF…

“UK governments seem today more ready than ever to use military force…

“The world is a more dangerous place than it has ever been. Not my words but those of Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary in the House of Commons in November 2010… The Prime Minister has said that Defence is the first duty of government…

“The nature of threats changes over time, in geographical, ideological, economic and technological terms, and can change quickly… The fact [is]that we have simply been unable to foresee every conflict in which we have been engaged since WW2…

“We shall by 2015 have a Royal Navy which will be the smallest since Pepys day… a Royal Air Force with less combat aircraft than Sweden, and an Army of about 80,000 soldiers, one of the smallest amongst the top 20 or 30 nations… Incoherence has become the name of the game…

“I should mention people too, our people. Their commitment and courage are what makes it all work. They were seriously overstretched, according to the Liam Fox, who was then in opposition. We are now running them down further and yet we have found them a new war…

“I believe we are in some kind of denial. We are continuing to pretend that we can be a major international player and deploy military force without taking the trouble to invest in it and especially without investing in its future… We want something for which we are not prepared to pay the price…”

Scary stuff. At one point Blackham muses that he may be sounding like “disgusted of Greenwich”. Not that I was around then, but it rather brought to mind, for me, Churchill in the 1930s. The difference is that Churchill was front-page news, while these issues no longer seem to engage either the electorate, or the media.

There are major issues of leadership here. And not only in government. Time for some more plain-speaking.

Leading by backing off

The conductor Sir Simon Rattle was rehearsing Act 2 of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment for a Promenade concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in the summer.

The cellos were playing a particularly prominent passage, but couldn’t quite get it together. Rattle tried several times over, intently focused in their direction, never completely achieving the unanimity he was seeking.

“It’s me,” he said. “I’ll stop conducting.”

So he beat them in, put down his baton, and folded his arms while they played.

“That’s perfect,” he said. “You’ll be fine from now on.”

And they were.

Now that’s leadership.

Harmony or conflict: which is more productive?

Is it better to have harmony or conflict in innovation teams?

A thrilling and very personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory in the early 1950s, James Watson’s The Double Helix makes clear the high levels of interpersonal conflict that existed over the period of trial and error that led up to the eventual breakthrough by Watson and Francis Crick. Both of them had seemingly continuous rows with the brilliant crystallographer, Rosalind Franklin, and her boss at King’s College in London, Maurice Wilkins. And Franklin and Wilkins were themselves barely on speaking terms throughout.

A good part of the enmity stemmed from the fact that they were all racing towards the same goal, each wanting to cross the finishing line first. In the event all the main players except Franklin, who died tragically young, won Nobel prizes for their work.

Would it have helped them to solve the problems more effectively if the boss of the Cavendish at the time, Sir Lawrence Bragg, himself a Nobel laureate, had provided the kind of leadership whereby this group of powerful but polarised intellects might have come to value and respect each other more? Or if Watson and Crick, both mavericks themselves, had had higher levels of personal maturity in dealing with colleagues constructively? Both were relatively young men, Watson only twenty-four years old at the time of the breakthrough.

My sense is that Bragg was not the finest of leaders. In fact, at one stage, unable to deal with the brash noisiness of his two most brilliant scientists, he forbade them to work on DNA and on model-building, a key part of their work. Of course, they carried on regardless - and Bragg himself made the initial public announcement of their success.

Many believe that Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix was the most important advance in biology since Darwin. If you haven’t read it already, I thoroughly recommend The Double Helix - quite the most exciting and spontaneous description of the triumphs and tragedies involved in major scientific discovery, with lots of learning for everyone involved in innovation.