Leadership - Getting the Basics Right

Leadership – Getting the Basics Right

It was this meeting that I attended as a final year engineering student where I heard my dad pull out a quote from one of the great management gurus and spoke about the importance of people in any organisation. The quote was “It is important for leaders across organisations to be sensitive to the fact that people are the most important assets for the organisation and they can’t be assumed to be replaceable spare parts”. My dad was then the CEO of Fenner India Ltd, a UK based multinational and he was speaking to his senior management on Leadership roles. This has left a lasting impact on me to understand the fact that there is a huge vacuum in having the right leadership across industry. I have now been an executive for over 18 years and I realise there has been no significant change from what I heard many years back.

Undisputedly, the existence of business enterprises / organisations depends on the quality of people associated with the enterprise / organisation. Most often, competing organisations have similar operating conditions, processes, facilities and policies and are broadly governed by same or similar statutory regulations. Given this, the only differentiator for a successful organisation would be Individual as well as Collective contribution of the associates / employees of the organisation.

With people in the organisation as the most important assets for any organisation, I am sure Leaders of today would not find it obscure to decipher the words of Lee Iacocca, where he categorically emphasised that of the three things important for any organisation – Products , Profits and People, it is the last one which is paramount.

It is not inappropriate to recall the 4Ps of Dr. Sumatra Goshal, former Dean of London Business School – Products, Processes, Profits and People also highlight the fact that the Leader has to be sensitive to the fact that each employee is an Individual Enterprise within the enterprise and the individual performance depends on his or her own set of Goals.

While I aggressively believe that Leaders are not born but clairvoyant and passionate individuals graduate to a leadership role more on the past track record of consistent performance which is more often dependent on the metrics. Leadership position is not in the absolute terms of numbers and profits (Revenue) which is often the myth across large organisations globally and seems to be a accepted benchmark today. However, few organisations have realised that Leadership is more than numbers and revenues and have ventured to look inwards within the organisation to build the Talent pool and no better mention than Google, where every employee is an Individual Business Enterprise who can actually implement his or her idea. With the irony today that most competing organisations poach people from competition and yet expect to be the best when they actually have picked up people who would actually do what they have been doing for many years now.

Leader would necessarily have to sow the seed, nurture the growth with the right ingredients to see it develop to sapling and finally a tree which means every business in the organisation has to be in a leadership position to build the organisation to be a leader in its segment. I wouldn’t agree less with Kevin Cashman’s keynote address at International Coach Federation where he brings out the importance of Leadership role in having the right people to build and develop an organisation. As Kevin says…

- Crisis is seldom what it appears to be. The immediate example of this principle, we are not in a financial crisis right now. We are in a character crisis.
- Leaders go beyond what is while managers improve what is. The point here is not that management is bad or leadership is good. They are both needed often with in the same person

It is time the leadership roles are redefined to understand the fact that HR is the face of any organisation and the Leader should not only have the right processes and people but also the right pedagogy to build the culture.