Three Leadership Disciplines for 2010
Professor Andrew Kakabadse
Steve Macaulay
Probably the last twelve months have been a real challenge for many
leaders. The next twelve months and beyond are still going to be a
challenge. Now, to explore this issue, I have got in the studio today
Professor Andrew Kakabadse.
Andrew, you have seen lots of leadership situations, what is your
advice for 2010? I know you have just written a book and you give
three broad headings there: reach, readiness and roll out. Do they
apply in this context?
Andrew Kakabadse
Yes, they do apply.
Reach
At the moment what is very important in terms of your capacity to
reach out to your markets, stakeholders, banks, suppliers – whoever
it happens to be – is it the same as before? Can you actually have
the same business model that you had before the financial
downturn? How much have other organisations learnt? What is
the competitive advantage that you think you have, versus what you
actually have?
Readiness
Once you have had that debate, and that debate needs to be had
both at top team and board level, and what we are finding is that
part of the readiness is preparing your board. Boards today have a
very important function, much more than before. It is not just
governance, it is actually an additional set of brains that can look at
key strategic propositions and then provide their wisdom and
accumulated experience to see if the management are going to go
into an area of error or just a plain mistake.
So getting the board now ready to think about competitive
advantage and challenge you is important. And getting the
organisation now ready for what it means to operate in these new
markets where people are much leaner, they are that much hungrier
and they work very hard to maintain their markets, is stage two.
Roll Out
And then stage three is the accepted ways of operating in the
market, the relationships with suppliers, the relationships with
people who provide access to the market – sales forces. Are they
the same as before? So how will you now roll out this wisdom and
this new learnt level of skill which is that much sharper? Do you
need to start training and developing your middle and lower
managers? Does a lot more team work need to take place? You
Knowledge Interchange Online© Cranfield University
February 2010
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Professor Andrew Kakabadse
may have a tall structure that is disciplining you on costs; is this
structure now still tall and well disciplined but now needs to be
highly flexible at lower levels?
So part of the roll out will be do some of your middle and lower level
managers need to think almost like the CEO and chairman to manage
the budgets and also the investment in communities; and also a
press that is now highly conscious of what it means to be a
responsible organisation.
So yes, I am finding those three headings very important. They are
guides, but they are guides about please don’t make the same
assumptions that you can do business now as you did it before.
Steve Macaulay
© Cranfield University
Good food for thought. Thank you very much Andrew.
February 2010
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