Interview: Professor Andrew Kakabadse
Working in Organisations
SM
Hello, this is Steve Macaulay. What I am doing today is interviewing
Andrew Kakabadse about his book that he co-wrote Working in
Organisations. Now Andrew, the first question would be from the
first sentence of the book where you say “managers must
understand how to lead and why people at work behave the way
they do”. How do you think the book addresses that?
AK
The philosophy behind the book was one of contextualism in that
there is no overall prescription on how to lead and there is no overall
prescription on how to manage, and in today’s competitive markets
what you do in your organisation, with your team, in your job, in your
unit makes all the difference.
So what the book tries to do is two things: it tries to help people
understand why they are in the situation they are; and why their
situation is actually quite different to other people’s. And then it
also tries to provide certain tools, levers, skills to handle the
circumstances that individual or team is in, so that they can make a
difference and actually make themselves more unique – stand apart
and stand out so they can gain competitive advantage.
The book goes against many of the philosophies of management
and leadership that have really predominated the market since the
1950s, which is there are particular approaches to management that
are best practice, there are particular approaches to leadership that
are best practice, and all our research and all our insights say that is
not the case. They are just guides. The essence of today is to
make yourself different and better. So you can’t do that unless you
understand what makes you tick in the first place.
SM
Way back, when you wrote the book, you identified five challenges,
challenges which managers in organisations need to face. Now are
they relevant today: business ethics, globalisation, managing
downsizing, employee diversity, new technology?
AK
Diversity, globalisation – those are the critical issues as well as
diversity in today’s circumstances where you are really having to
make a difference. You are having to deal with problems that you
have never dealt with before. You are having to motivate a
workforce that is feeling vulnerable, a management that doesn’t
quite know what is going to happen to it – those issues are going to
stand out more than ever before.
Ironically in these markets, where making a difference whilst you are
reducing costs and helping people perform better than they did
before, governance is going to emerge because people are going to
Professor Andrew Kakabadse
introduce additional governance protocols, principles, approaches –
some of which, to be honest with you, will get in the way of doing
your work, largely because they are worried where their money is
going to go. As you will have seen, people’s investments have
disappeared, people’s pensions unfortunately have gone south, so
there is going to be a concern that the way we have managed our
corporations may have been fine in the short term, but we never
paid attention to the governance of the enterprise so that whatever
the enterprise does, it is sustainable.
So, yes, those bits more than ever before are going to stand out.
Ironically business ethics probably won’t because what will happen
in today’s markets as globalisation becomes more and more a way
of life, we will come across very different ethical principles. What
we would call corruption in the UK and America is actually pocket
money in China. It’s called grey money, and in fact in China we
estimated that there were 480 million people involved in transacting
grey money weekly. In fact we also identified that probably every
corporation in China, particularly a Western one, by Western
standards, bribes twice a week just to stay in the market let alone to
make a profit.
So on that basis there is a major issue of business ethics. The
issue is cultural difference however. So I don’t think business
ethics is going to become such a concern, but the diversity that you
need to engender in your corporation on a sustainable basis, with
sound governance that gives trust to both the consumer – the
citizen – and the shareholder, that is what is going to make the
difference.
SM
One of the areas in the book is about communication – everybody
says that communication is important and so on: nobody seems to
do it. Have you any thoughts on communication?
AK
Yes. First of all communication is important, has been and will
continue to be. And number two, the accusation is that nobody
does it – my experience is that they do it well. It’s the exact
opposite.
The problem with communication is the diversity of interests and
agendas that exist in every organisation that you simply cannot
satisfy as a chairman, chief executive, senior director, as a middle
manager. So the accusation is that you have not communicated.
In fact what we find is that on every manager’s mind is how to
communicate better. And that is the secret to communication, it’s a
process.
You will never achieve splendid communication, but you always
work towards it. And because life is so dynamic, and things
change, and preferences change, and market circumstances
change, and the portfolio of your company, and why we have these
businesses in the portfolio, is that rethinking may change within six
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months. You can see that there are going to be a number of
people that are fundamentally going to be upset. And they will
accuse the manager of not having communicated with them – and
probably on that one event that is true. But in terms of a practice of
communication, most managers do it has been my experience, most
try hard at it, most are criticised for it and rarely thanked for it. So
it’s going to be a never ending consultant’s dream.
SM
One of the things that you have hinted at is the whole issue of
politics and power. There is a section in the book on that. It’s
almost a forbidden topic, so I am pleased that you raised it. How
do you think managers should address that? It clearly exists in the
issue of communication, it was coming out then.
AK
They should just talk about it -and it’s been a forbidden topic from
about the 1980s onwards to today. If you go back into the
literatures of the 50s, 60s and 70s it was anything but a forbidden
topic. It actually was taught in business schools. And if you go to
the human resource management organisations and societies of the
United States it was one of their foremost topics at their annual
conferences from about the mid 1970s onwards.
There actually was in the United States an organisation called the
OD Institute – The Organisation Development Institute – and that
was a ten year topic for discussion, helping managers become far
better in politics.
Why did it become an uncomfortable issue? It became an
uncomfortable issue because there was a view that team work was
all important and we in fact, unfortunately, went from good team
working, to team working becoming a tool to ensure that the
dissenting voice did not emerge and didn’t make any senior
managers feel uncomfortable.
So you have to raise the question what is politics? And politics
simply is a form of communication. When we all fundamentally
agree and like each other, what we say to each other could be
harsh or it could be fun, but because we are all on the same
wavelength we tend to call that communication, good leadership,
motivation, sound management. But what if we are not on the same
wavelength? What if half of the team does not believe that the
vision that is being pursued is right? What if the chief executive
cannot cope with challenge and basically rules by fear? So politics
is a way of trying to communicate when dissent is difficult and a
debate is sensitive.
So what unfortunately happens with politics is instead of the
communication being up front and in your face, it is behind the
scenes and implicit. And in that sense I do not know of any period
in history where there has not been political manoeuvre. So politics
and power are the result of business diversity, strategic complexity.
I only wish life were simple. And the same applies to a small unit
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called a family, as to a major corporation.
Why it became politically inappropriate to talk about politics and
power is an interesting question and certainly on the programmes
that I have run with companies, you only press people a little bit –
you just nudge them – and out come all the power and politics
frustrations that they face and what you notice is that they don’t
have the skills to handle them. And often that skill is just courage.
The courage to speak up in such a way that something political can
now be better discussed.
So power and politics under circumstances of economic diversity,
downsizing, cost concerns – the situation that we are now in – is
probably going to increase because the debate will be ‘what is the
shape of our business, and what should it be? What part of our
business should we keep and should we not? Who should we
develop and who should we not develop?’ Even in universities,
there is a university not more than twenty miles from here, which
actually sent a memo round to all faculty saying that all government
regulation concerning pay should now be ignored and it is alright for
professors to be made redundant and for faculty to be exclusively
hired from Eastern Europe because they are cheaper. Now there is
nothing wrong with professors being made redundant, but to go out
and get a faculty because they are cheaper in a high cost economy
and basically bring in people into a policy situation, and nobody dare
say anything about that, that I would have said is one of the most
political circumstances, and nobody knows how to handle it.
SM
We mentioned politics – that it is almost a forbidden territory – team
work on the other hand, which you mentioned, is talked about
endlessly in businesses and I know there is chapter in the book on
that. Have you any thoughts about what people should do, what
attitude they should take to team work?
AK
Really there are two forms of team work. There is in the
Manchester United, or soccer sense of team work, there is the team
that you see playing on a Saturday who have a transactional
challenge, which is to get the ball in a net and score more goals
than the other team, or prevent the other team from scoring at all.
There is another form of team work which is the team work in the
boardroom. And that teamwork is about taking an asset, known as
Manchester United, and making some interesting decisions as to
whether this is a football club, a retail outlet, an outlet for services as
well as products and football is simply an aspect of marketing all
those different services.
So you have transactional operational team work, and strategic
boardroom team work. The transactional operational teamwork is
genuinely about having good functional skills, speaking openly and
cooperating because if you don’t the ball goes astray and you give it
to somebody else. In the boardroom if you applied those skills you
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would be called naïve because in the boardroom you are trying to
influence different agendas which may not be the same as your
colleagues hold. So there we have a team work which is around
articulation. Can I convince you more than anyone else that the
strategic alternative that I have in my mind is better than the
strategic alternative that you have in your mind?
Now, I may be great at finance in terms of functional skills, I may
have been a great footballer in terms of functional skills – what
value is that in the boardroom? It’s how you put that strategic
argument together, supported by a case and your personal skills of
influence.
So what we tend to have as our image of team work is the
operational skills one. If only we could be nice to each other, if only
we could cooperate, if only we would pass the ball to each other,
then everything is fine – in the boardroom, it’s not.
SM
Andrew, they are some interesting insights into some of the
challenges and opportunities of working in organisations. Thank
you.
AK
Pleasure.
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