The greatest failures in war, commerce and community have been caused by failure at the top.
I’ll go a step further:
100% of enterprise failure (whether government, commerce or community) is caused by the senior leadership, whether a large enterprise or a small enterprise, and success is caused by the whole enterprise,
There’s a harsh reality buried in that fact.
It’s this – those leaders of failed enterprises weren’t developed sufficiently.
My mission is to help senior leaders improve themselves.
Here’s the short list of their deficiencies:
- Failure to honour the values or ethics, by their own example.
- Inability to understand the pathway from strategy to execution.
- Loss or lack of people skills, mainly authentic caring.
- Focus on self, not on duty.
- Not aligned with their peers.
- Inability to reflect effectively.
- The attitude of entitlement.
- Belief in their superiority of knowledge and position.
- Fear or denial of vulnerability.
- Inability to listen.
- Inability to effectively question.
- Inability to distinguish between common sense and politics.
- An attitude of not needing to learn.
There’s a limiting belief that senior leaders (board members and C-level executives and leader -owners of smaller outfits) should develop themselves at high profile institutions – known hot beds of dysfunctional culture and selfish academic pursuit.
Here’s an example of an alleged elite Swiss university offering – note the vagueness and language errors – they demand English as the required language! Look at the cost!
I’ve coached senior leaders who have attended high-profile institutions and whilst those clients are grounded, I’ve learned that the primary benefit from attending is their CV and network, with very little benefit going to the enterprise that funded their program.
When I’m considering accepting an engagement by a client, always the senior leader, I ask this question:
“Are you willing to go first?”
Here’s the most common answer:
“I’ve done all that before, they are the ones who need the development.”
My question in response (which determines whether I’ll work with them or not) is this:
“If you know all this, and you’ve been here for (usually) four years, how come you have a toxic culture, loss of talent, under performance and cost over-runs?”
If I get a prolonged silence, I know I’m not going to accept the appointment.
If I get this answer, I’m more inclined to say yes:
“OK, I get it, what do we do now?”
Now we have a chance of making ‘it’ work.
The ‘it’ is where the real value is.
The ‘it’ is to work first with the senior leadership and deal directly with that short list I spoke of earlier.
It will save them more money than sending their people to those high profile ‘clubs’ for the ‘good old boys’ and give them a measurable return on investment.
They’ll be working directly on their enterprise, not some abstract or unrelated scenario.
The downside is that they won’t be able to say they attended ‘X institute’ and they won’t have the network that they could have gained from attending.
What they will have though is a proven track record of making a real difference in their enterprise.
Which is the more valuable?
