Here are nine fortune cookies to make a difference
It's time to celebrate and make resolutions for the Year of the Rabbit. This past year has turned out to be a good one for businesses, as it did for organisations I work for in Southeast Asia. Also, most businesses expect 2011 to start very well. It almost feels as if the daunting uncertainties of the 2008-2009 financial crisis - and March-May turmoil in Thailand this year - have been forgotten.
A few weeks ago, I asked a group of senior bankers in Singapore: "What has changed in the way your banks have been operating after the latest financial turmoil?" In summary, their answers were: "Nothing much." Should I have been surprised? After all, 80 per cent of heart-attack patients resume their lifestyle and diet as soon as they feel good again. So, why wouldn't companies do the same similar? Yet, the IMF forecast for 2011-2012 is rather alarming, and the situation in Thailand remains fairly unpredictable. So shouldn't we brace our organisations for the next downturn, while the economy is strong?
Let's put-on our "brave hat" on for a moment and consider a pessimistic scenario where the economy gets chaotic again. What would it be like and what should we as leaders do "before" to thrive in that putative next crisis?
To gather "fresh" inspiration, let's imagine we are at sea. Our boat was cruising on a calm ocean, but overnight a typhoon unexpectedly changed route and unleashed its force on our ship. It's pitch-dark. Huge waves are rocking the vessel, spindrifts are blinding the navigation-bridge windows, propellers have lost most of their power, water is leaking inside the storeroom, the crew members are running around frantically.
Whether the ship and crew make it depends a lot on the captain and indeed how you taught them to deal with unexpected turbulence. It's far from just a case of "survival of the fittest". The planned itinerary is useless, usual quick fixes are insufficient, you are as clueless as your crew about how the typhoon would evolve and any decision or uncontrolled risk-taking may cost lives.
Luckily, we make it through the storm and are greeted on the shore with gift-baskets. Inside we find nine fortune cookies with tips to make our "crew" (read teams) more agile and effective in crises. Here's what the tips would read like:
-Let your team go and see how far they can go by themselves: This reminds me of why and how the famous orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan became empowered. He was taking horse-riding lessons and one day his trainer asked him to start practising jumps. Karajan was petrified and recalled: "I had no clue how to lift such a big animal up in the air." Anyway, he aligned the horse toward the obstacle, and the horse ran. Karajan was paralysed with fear, but when the horse jumped smoothly without dropping him, Karajan realised: "It's the same with an orchestra; they want to play beautifully together. All I have to do is let them perform as well as they can, and then help them over the 2-3 per cent gap to perfection!" Doing the same with our teams does not only materialise what a directive leadership style would miss, it also builds confidence among staff so they can go ahead by themselves.
-Nurture the belief that we can win in any circumstance: Heinz Landau, a regular contributor to The Nation and former chairman of Merck Thailand, provided a perfect example of such leadership when he wrote: "I am always telling my colleagues: 'In every economic situation, no matter whether the economy is booming or whether it is shrinking, there are always companies who win market share and companies who lose market share. And we aim to be and will be among the ones that are winning market share'."
-Build genuine trust among your team members: This is a difficult one. My inspection of executive teams usually reveals that trust is low. They either say "we don't know much about each other's personal lives and aren't so comfortable discussing them" and "we hesitate to tell a team-member when his or her performance is not up to level". The superior trust level we need enables team members to be authentic and vulnerable, to ask for help when necessary, to provide unguarded feedback and challenge each other. An easy exercise to increase the trust-level in a team is to invite everyone to disclose - in a team-building setting - information such as:
- Three milestones in my life;
- One of my big failures, and the lessons I have learned;
- My little flaws;
- My strengths and weaknesses as a team-member.
-Build team-players who drop the 'me' for the 'we': To achieve this, one must regularly acknowledge the added value of teamwork. Ask this simple question - what would a great team-player do in this case? - every time a colleague has to make a decision impacting the team.
-Require people to think deeper and differently, after all, we are all paid to think, and doing it better than competitors obviously gives us a formidable advantage. Remember how Steve Jobs revived a moribund Apple in 1997 by demanding fresh thinking? He showcased his belief with a hit advertisement featuring Einstein, Picasso, Mahatma Gandhi, John Lennon and the voice-over "Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the trouble-makers (â?¦) You can disagree with them. Glorify or vilify them. (â?¦) About the only thing you can't do is ignore them, because they change things. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."
-A ship in a harbour is safe, but that is not what ships were built for - value initiative, experiment and courage: This may actually take courage from leaders. Did you hear the story of an IT company's senior executive who was in charge of very expensive software development project? The launch was a catastrophe, and the CEO demanded to meet with him. Shaking with fear, the director immediately asked: "So I am fired?" The CEO replied: "You must be joking! I just invested a fortune in your training, and you think I'd fire you?"
"Here people get killed only for not trying" could make for a worthy, if rather strong, slogan.
-Favour diversity: In 2009, McKinsey found out that "companies with three or more female executives in the executive committee" were doing consistently better than companies without women at the top. Yet, I don't know of many companies that have a significant gender diversity at the executive level. Do you?
-Nurture productive conflict: Discussing sensitive, difficult issues leaves no unhealthy baggage and no lack of clarity in the team. We will have succeeded in this endeavour the day when colleagues rejoice at the occurrence of any disagreement, in the belief that it will yield higher-quality decisions and superior respect of each other.
-Probe business cases ruthlessly: We are all familiar with disappointment when we challenge budget-drafts, market-forecasts or the "worst case scenario" in a business plan, and find out they don't withstand even the first round of our probing questions. To facilitate more robust anticipation, the first step is to step back, to confront reality and see what can go wrong with uncompromising objectivity. This is a "must-have' discipline", which also educates staff about calculated risk-taking.
While these nine tips surely yield more agility in an organisation, putting them all in practice can be a stretch, fraught with ambiguity and even superficial contradictions (eg trust vs diversity). Yet, leading an organisation beyond the tensions of agility-growth - while the economic environment is rather favourable - shall pay back handsomely when the next crisis unleashes its uncertainties and the most agile players seize underlying opportunities. "Pay now, play later; play now, pay later" wrote John C Maxwell. So why not start the journey - even if it's at turtle pace - in the Year of the Rabbit?
Jean-Francois Cousin leads 1-2-WIN Executive Coaching (www.1-2-win.net) and is a former managing director of a Fortune-500 company in Thailand.
--Nine tips
Let your team go, to see how far they can go by themselves
Nurture the belief that we can win in any circumstance
Build genuine trust amongst your team-members
Build team-players who drop the 'me' for the 'we'
Require people to thinkâ?¦ 'DD': deeper and different
Value initiative, experiment and courage
Favour diversity
Nurture productive conflict
Probe business cases ruthlessly
Source: Jean-Francois Cousin
