The Age of Uncertainty
During the good times, when things are going well, revenues are rolling in, profits are fat and contracts are plentiful, morale tends to be ‘good enough’ across most organisations. This coupled with a decent approach to management is often enough to get by.
After all, everyone is a good sailor in calm waters.
It’s during the tough times that leadership counts, especially when there is uncertainty in the air. We have always believed, and have advised countless times over the past few years, that the classic set-piece interventions used to address uncertainty (such as team ‘away days’ and management conferences) often fall down on this fundamental leadership point.
So often these days are packed with 30-slide PowerPoint decks outlining different strategies; delivered in monotonous fashion by nervous function heads. They miss the point entirely – after all, leadership is about setting the vision and removing uncertainty through compelling communication.
It’s not just about strategy but also about culture and engagement. If strategy is what we do, culture is how we feel about it whilst we do it.
If your people aren’t feeling good about themselves, then taking them away and asking them to run faster, aim higher and ‘do more with less’ is unlikely to make them feel any better. Believe you me, they already KNOW that they have to deliver and also know that they might lose their colleagues, perhaps their bonuses and maybe some of their salary in the process.
It might be time to do things a little differently. If you’re going to take your people away then focus on raising morale, building a common purpose and, most of all, delivering it all in honest and authentic communication.
The best communication is good news, second best is bad news but worst of all is no news.
Uncertainty breeds fear. And fear does not produce positive behaviour or positive results.
It’s time to put leadership back on the agenda.
Five Things To Do
- When work is fun, things get done.
- Communicate in tabloid headlines – replace long, impenetrable emails and documents with short, concise and frequent news that keeps everyone in the picture, all the time.
- An annual opinion survey is usually too late. Make sure everybody knows you’re listening – and practice what you preach.
- Be delightfully indiscreet; 95% of what is discussed in the boardroom is not a secret. Share the conversations and build trust throughout the organisation.
- Stories, stories, stories. Nobody remembers the strategy document, everybody remembers David & Goliath.
Five Things To Avoid
- If you’re going to embrace the ‘BlackBerry effect’ with short one or two word emails then keep them positive and unambiguous. Concise? Yes. Curt? No.
- Letting face to face meetings dwindle. Avoid hiding behind technology to swerve the tough discussions.
- As the business landscape gets ever more relenting, so many find themselves working harder but missing deadlines. It’s a morale sapper ; don’t over-commit and under-deliver on a regular basis.
- Stop shouting. Too much ‘stick’ and not enough ‘carrot’ is unsustainable.
- Being a bad boss can have a negative effect on your people’s health. A 2008 Swedish study that tracked more than 3,000 men over 10 years found that the men who said they were poorly managed at work were 20%-40% more likely to have a heart attack.
In ten years working in advertising sales and marketing for two major household directory names in the UK, (I won’t name them, but you all have a 2 out of 3 chance of guessing which ones), I found the unwelcome approach all too prevalent. Rene mentioned stick and carrot, and didn’t that just hit the nail on the head. Libby Purves writing in The Times (18-8-2008 – the cutting sits underneath my keybaord) said, “We must train people to break the rules”, and one (excellent) manager once told me, “You are a loose cannon, and I like that”.
Since parting company with the second of those, I am advised that that company has managed to dispose of almost a whole team of very good colleagues, aiming “gross misconduct” disciplinary allegations at top notch people as a means of persuading them to step down, and when they didn’t, to sack them. The stress got to me there on more than one occasion. I’m glad I’m out.
So nowadays I work for myself. I returned to doing what I have always loved, photographing beautiful women, and it has quickly paid off, being commissioned to shoot over twenty calendars for the 2012 publication year, including one in support of Help for Heroes.
And all the good things I learned about maintaining good morale and dealing with people fairly I have applied to dealing with the customers I serve and the models I photograph.
It’s a tough life, but someone’s got to do it. Well done Rene for stating what is so obvious to most people, but often passes target driven management by.
Great Blog & excellent points. It’s so easy to become immersed in tasks that he valuing of people can get left behind.
Stories, Stories, Stories; I have been singing that song for years – culture is built upon stories, handed down generation to generation.
I recall a small village in Brazil sharing stories of the animals behaviour to predict a Tsunami, in an area that had not seen a Tsunami for well over 500 years.
Every company has a story to tell, a problem I come across often is that companies are often too close to their own product to be able to tell theirs.
Outside help can help communicate your company culture to your customers. Making the assumption of course that your company wants to air its dirty laundry – but I’d suggest the advent of the web has brought transparency to every company, regardless of participation level.