20
Views from the front line
For this chapter I have gathered the views of some of the many manaagers I have met and worked with over the years. I asked them to share their ‘Management Cheat Sheet’, consisting of three things:
- Top tip Your Practical Pearl of wisdom to help others achieve it.
- Top pitfall The trap that you see yourself and others falling into time after time that just doesn’t work.
- Top takeaway Your headline thought on what great management and leadership looks like.
I can think of no better way to end this book. Remember:
‘In times of drastic change it is the learners who survive. The learned find themselves fully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.’
(Author unknown – submitted by Joan Zimmerman)
Steve Axe: General Manager, Belgium, Mars
Top tip
Great leadership is about being able to work on three levels – to develop yourself, to develop your people, and to deliver outstanding business results. Each requires true listening and the ability to ask great questions.
Top pitfall
Believing that as the leader you need to have the answers and be ‘right’. You need to have questions, and have the courage to make mistakes, admit them, and move on.
Top takeaway
Leadership means going first, and in doing so creating the environment for your people to be the best they can be.
Peter Ayliffe: President and CEO of Visa Europe, CMI President
Top tip
The most important quality of leadership is integrity – people must believe in you and trust you. The decisions you take as a leader impact the reputation of your business, the reputation of your colleagues and your personal reputation. Nothing is more important than integrity.
Top pitfall
Not listening to the views of others: when leaders have all the answers and don’t listen to the views of their subject-matter experts they will invariably fail. As a leader, yes, you have to make decisions, but ensure they are informed decisions.
Top takeaway
Communicate your vision with a passion. Leadership is about creaating a compelling vision, developing the long-term goals and plans to deliver that vision and then communicating the vision and plans. However, what determines great leaders is their ability to communicate their vision with passion; they are able to inspire and motivate people to excel.
Lena Benjamin: Founder of Ones Company Ltd
Top tip
Taking personal responsibility by taking action no matter how small you think it is. Join a group either online or offline because the humanity and humility comes from sharing and working towards a collective goal that will sustain civilisation for the next generation.
Top pitfall
Letting fear take over. The reason why most people, particularly women, do not take responsibility and take action is because they fear they are not good enough, not smart enough, not rich enough or not pretty enough.
Top takeaway
It’s about truly embracing humanity and humility in order to sustain civilisation – socially, economically and politically.
It is responsible and ethical behaviour that actually enables and inspires customers and employees to collaborate and co-create. The new era of twenty-first century management and leadership is not sustainable without embracing diverse opinions. Management and leadership is no longer a dictatorship, it is a democracy that truly embraces the values and purpose of the organisation.
Louise Bevan: Director of Customer Insight, BSI
Top tip
Don’t be scared of talented people, embrace them and put their skills to good use. Should you be lucky enough to have high achievers in your team, even for a short time, then help them achieve their aspirations whilst learning something yourself. It’s like ‘Pay it Forward’.
Top pitfall
Fruitlessly managing weaknesses instead of focusing on strengths is a costly and destructive pitfall that can negatively impact the individual and the business. Managing strengths will raise the bar that people aspire to reach and can even help someone who is not achieving choose a different path.
Top takeaway
I have always looked to be inspired by exceptional leadership. I find inspiration in leaders who are always prepared to be measured by the success of those they are responsible for, and earn respect through the decisions and actions they take every day.
Dame Carol Black, Chair, Nuffield Trust
Top tip
A high-minded mission statement is empty rhetoric unless reflected in attitudes, behaviours, working relationships and organisational arrangeaments. Fulfilling its promise depends on employees who are valued and feel valued, and are enabled and supported to do their best.
Top pitfall
Seeing too readily that failings are someone else’s problem; or – worse – shutting your eyes and hoping the problem will go away; and – worse still – denying there is a problem.
Top takeaway
Excellence in leadership and management shines out in every encounter. It is declared in the bearing, demeanour and conduct of employees at all levels. There is a tangible sense of organisational well-being, with employee commitment to values and goals that are honestly shared; there is engagement.
Britta Bomhard: General Manager, Europe, Church & Dwight
Top tip
Seeing is believing! There is nothing that beats seeing yourself in action as a leader or manager for receiving honest feedback. So, if you have the chance to video yourself – be it giving a presentation to the full team or conducting smaller meetings, go for it! You will see how you come across and what reactions you produce in other people. And no one else will ever give you such honest feedback. Of course, you can also use this technique for leadership development of your team or managers.
Top pitfall
Being soft on people! As much as you can understand the personal circumstances of a manager, if they don’t live up to the task of leading others, you need to address this immediately.
Top takeaway
Great leadership is one that adapts itself to the circumstances and people involved. There is not one leadership style that always fits the bill. Great leaders, therefore, need to have first of all the ability to judge any situation quickly in order to know the best management style right now. The second important ingredient is self-awareness and knowing what is authentic behaviour for you. And after that it is practise, practise and practise. Great management behaviour can be learnt.
Stefan Bomhard: Regional President, Europe, Bacardi
Top tip
Your strategy and key action on a page: lay out your strategy on one page in a simple and easy-to-understand way so that everybody throughout the organisation can understand it. This allows you and your team to know every day what is important and what ‘moves the needle’ in the business. Personally follow up if things fall behind, as it also sends the signal that you care.
Top pitfall
Communication: You always think that once you have communicated things that are important to you the organisation has understood it. You learn over and over again that you need to use every opportunity to communicate the things that are important to you using all kinds of different methods as often as possible.
Top takeaway
Define the future and then motivate and lead the team to achieve it. Help everybody understand what their role is and how they can make a difference.
Helen Brand: CEO, ACCA
Top tip
Always communicate in an open and transparent way in order to build trust and confidence.
Top pitfall
Conducting important conversations by email or in writing.
Leading and managing through rules rather than values and principles.
Top takeaway
People with integrity and authentic passion for their business, who inspire others to deliver.
Sir David Brown: Chairman, BSI
Top tip
It is impossible to innovate alone. So don’t try to. Engage your team and anyone else who can contribute.
Top pitfall
Don’t ever believe that you know best. Nobody has a monopoly on wisdom, yourself included.
Top takeaway
Great management is the feeling of confidence a team gets from knowing that it is controlling what it can control, understanding what it cannot control and mitigating the risks to the very best of its ability, and still having enough bandwidth to innovate freely. Great leadership is exploiting that bandwidth to the full, each and every day, habitually.
Alex Cheatle: CEO and Founder, TEN
Top tip
Keep talking a lot to enough of the people who do the critical roles in your business. In my business, I try to keep a personal connection with the lifestyle managers. If I ran a newspaper I hope I’d be in touch daily with the journalists. This connection allows you to short-cut middle management and have your own pulse to sense check the data and reports that you get as you scale.
Top pitfall
Don’t rush the big messages. Many of your team won’t get what you mean the first time you say it. You may need to say what you mean in many different ways and repeatedly before everyone ‘gets it’. I certainly used to think that something communicated once, well, should do the trick. It doesn’t.
Top takeaway
Think about focusing on communicating and leading through values and vision far more than profit and cash. The meaning you create in the lives of your customers, employees and even shareholders is rarely best explained in financial metrics.
Peter Cheese: CEO, CIPD
Top tip
Begins with self-awareness, understanding your own strengths and weaknesses and leadership style, courage to build the right team around you, ability to listen and openness to take on other ideas, taking time to understand the strategic context of your role and your teams, setting clear and broad objectives and empowering your team to deliver.
Top pitfall
Thinking you are empowering, but actually not delegating and trusting others to do their job. Not providing continual and clear feedback and guidance, including the tough messages which then need to be acted on – courage to move people on when necessary. Listening as well as talking – when you hear your team express your ideas as theirs and take them forwards, you know you have progressed.
Top takeaway
In today’s world with so much change we need great management and leadership to be inspiring, able to understand the bigger picture and set context, to be empowering and facilitative with an emphasis on stewaardship and growing others, authentic and open, which are critical to building trust and integrity.
Lori Collins: Strategic Advisor, Emerging Ventures
Top tip
To keep that constant perspective on what’s most important, one of my favourite maxims is Dr Stephen Covey’s theory of ‘big rocks’ – know what’s most important in your life, and let all the ‘little rocks’ fill in around the boulders. How easily we can get distracted by other people’s priorities!
Top pitfall
Ah, get that monkey off my back! Originally discussed in the Harvard Business Review in 1974, the politics of responsibility and delegation are still a trap, as I see myself and others take on responsibilities that ‘are not my/our job’ and get on the slippery slope of being stuck with the ugly monkey.
Top takeaway
Clear vision is just another term for focus – the key to both long-and short-term success. For leaders in organisations both large and small, focus can be a constant challenge. Entrepreneurs who chase today’s shiniest star, or corporations who creep into far-afield busianess lines, rarely have a winning strategy, just a constant temptation. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, addresses focus in his ‘hedgehog’ concept and quantifies the impact on business results.
Neil Constable: CEO Shakespeare’s Globe
Top tip
Within the arts sector, it is always important to remember that an artistic decision is also a business decision and vice versa. Without both being in the mind’s eye, it is impossible for the business to enable and serve the art and in turn support risk-taking and innovation.
And remember sometimes ‘good enough’ is good enough – don’t waste energy worrying about the past!
Top pitfall
Not owning an issue or a problem and then wondering why no one else has. If you don’t want to deal with it, who will? And occasionally stay long enough in an organisation to see if the management changes you plan and implement actually work in the longer term.
Top takeaway
Great management and leadership in any organisation is demonstrated by a strong and dynamic synergy between the board, executive and staff, with a proper shared understanding of vision and goals, an open preparedness to question and challenge and a leadership style that does not take either its staff or customers/users for granted. It is a many-headed animal and in my world the satisfaction that all is good is taken once the curtain has gone up!
John Curtiss: President (ret.) of North America, Mars Pet Food
Top tip
Spend the time up front on your strategy and be ruthless about mission and objectives.
Top pitfall
Being unclear about strategic mission and objectives or changing them along the way or not even having a written and agreed-to strategy. The more time you spend up front the less confusion downstream. I believe this is critical. All the best product innovation and advertising camapaigns I have ever been involved with began with simple and singularly focused strategies.
Top takeaway
Great management is inspiring and focused. Great accomplishments begin with clarity of mission and aligned resources. Everyone on the same page.
Patrick Dunne: Chairman, LEAP and CMI Board of Companions
Top tip
Try and listen to what people think as well as what they say and treat everyone with integrity, respect and decency, especially those who make you cringe. Decent ‘thought-bubble’ thinkers have a natural advantage over manipulators, who usually get found out and become mistrusted.
Top pitfall
A humility bypass can prove fatal for even the most gifted of leaders. Arrogance undermines judgement, ****** people off and puts a great big muffler on your antennae.
Top takeaway
To lead you need:
- A galvanising purpose there’s only any point if you want to achieve something,
- Great judgement one of the most under-used words in business,
- Superb interpersonal skills to bring those judgements to bear,
- Positive energy and empathy to inspire people and overcome the inevitable challenges, and finally
- Finely tuned antennae to ensure that your judgements are well informed.
Francesca Ecsery: Non-Executive Director
Top tip
No matter how qualified and good at your job you are, office politics can have a perverse impact on your success and on how much you enjoy your time at work. But it does not necessarily have to be so. Start by identifying the key influencers within your firm and their different agendas and priorities.
You will then have the awareness to understand which ones you can do something about in your role and help influence your professional destiny. Think of it as part of your job description, albeit unwritten.
Top pitfall
It would be a mistake to think that corporate politics are only created by others. We all have our own weaknesses, habits and behaviours which can generate issues for others as well. Being aware of this will help to manage difficult situations.
Top takeaway
Recognise ‘office politics’ as unavoidable and make them work for you.
Richard Ellis: Director of CSR, Alliance Boots
Top tip
You don’t know what you don’t know.
Top pitfall
Doing the same things time and time again and expecting a different result.
Top takeaway
Management is about following the rules and procedures properly; leadership is how you behave when you are faced with a situation not covered by these. You follow the company’s values and do what you know is the right thing.
Susan Farr: Director of Chime PLC
Top tip
Surround yourself with brilliant people and success will surely follow.
Top pitfall
If something needs sorting, sort it quickly, decisively and fairly. Don’t give problems the time to take root.
Top takeaway
A great leader has a clear vision, well expressed and easily understood. He or she sets the course and empowers a well-motivated and collegiate team to achieve their goals.
Ian Filby: CEO DFS
Top tip
Listen to EVERYONE inside and outside of the organisation for a long time. Then co-create an exciting future vision with your top team.
Top pitfall
Dropping down into the detail, i.e. moving from leader to the sucacessful manager/operator you once were!
Top takeaway
Think like Sir Alex Ferguson! Put together a great team of compleamenting skills and characters. Treat them all individually according to their nature. Set clear high goals. Then walk the talk.
Paul Geddes: CEO Direct Line Group
Top tip
Focus on the important; leave enough time and energy to think.
Top pitfall
Don’t confuse good luck with talent or ability – for yourself or your team. In other words – don’t believe your own hype!
Top takeaway
Great leadership is seeing the future and pulling your organisation towards it fast. Great management is building an ecosystem that grows talent and lets that talent deliver results.
Werner Geissler: Vice Chairman, P&G
Top tip
Keep things simple. If you want to align an entire organisation and especially a big one, you have to be understood by everyone. If you are too theoretical or too abstract nobody will understand you, nobody will follow you, and the organisation will move in too many different directions, i.e. nowhere.
Top pitfall
That we begin to believe in our own propaganda and don’t renew ouraselves, our teams, and game plans before it is too late.
Top takeaway
First, there is no difference between great management and leadership. Leadership without managerial skills to penetrate issues and organisaations is a ‘walk in the park’. Management without leadership sounds like a short-lived one-man (or one-woman) show. Both are needed to be able to deliver winning results consistently over time and across business units.
Mike Harrison: Global Brand Director, Timberland
Top tip
Be authentically and transparently YOU. Know what you stand for and will fight for (values and principles), knowwhat drives your inherent biases and preferences (personality type, past successes and failures) and make sure your team knows this too. Build your leadership style on who you are, rather than trying to adopt someone else’s leadership model. But make sure you compensate for your blind spots – for example, by hiring people who complement your strengths and weaknesses.
Top pitfall
Staying too long with ‘what worked in the past’, or, worse still, staying with a vastly over-simplified, over-sanitized view of ‘what worked in the past’. Leaders need to be conscious of the evolving external environament and challenging their teams to explore new approaches or ideas.
Top takeaway
Great leadership starts when an individual has a powerful long-term ambition, and the ability to assemble and inspire a strong team to share that ambition. Then the ‘nuts and bolts’ of leadership kick in – being articulate and consistent about strategy, priorities, accountabilities and so on, and having the right culture and systems to objectively review progress and make necessary adjustments.
Tamara Ingram: President and CEO of Team P&G, WPP
Top tip
Listen to all your stakeholders – your people, your clients, your cusatomers and your influencers.
Top pitfall
When you have decided what to do, make the changes fast.
Top takeaway
Leadership is about understanding the power of VISION. The ability to define a vision, shape it, share it and keep a relentless focus on it – and most importantly take your people with you towards that vision. A vision on its own is not enough. You need attention to the detail because only through the execution does the vision come to life. And finally, great leaders have great people around them.
Debbie Klein: Chief Executive of Engine and Chairman of WCRS
Top tip
Whatever you do, and wherever your career path takes you, always be true to yourself. In my career I have seen people who haven’t been really clear on what their values are, what they stand for and where they will and won’t draw a line in the sand. As opposed to those who have always been clear on their beliefs and values and lived by them no matter what. The latter are the people I have been most inspired by, and learnt the most from. As someone famous once said, be the best you that you can be, because you’ll be a lousy somebody else.
Top pitfall
Not trusting your instinct. If your gut instinct is that something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t right. We all have a little voice in our heads that tells us which path to follow in many situations – listen to it and learn to trust it. It will not let you down.
Top takeaway
The best leaders embody three qualities – cool head, firm hand, warm heart.
Austin Lally: President, Braun, P&G
Top tip
The answers we need are usually within reach: with customers, distribuators, consumers, in-store consultants. The important behaviour is to travel, to make sure this direct insight from the marketplace reaches you candidly and unfiltered.
Top pitfall
Don’t keep pursuing an ineffective approach with more urgency and determination. It is wheel spinning. Change the approach.
Top takeaway
Figure out what is really needed to win. Distinguish carefully between what is needed and what people say is possible. As a leader, refuse to settle for today’s possible – you have a responsibility to mobilise everyaone to create what’s needed.
Derek Mapp: Chairman, Informa
Top tip
Never speak first at the meeting: ‘Confucius says “He who speaks last is the most clever”.’
Saying thank you is the cheapest but the most effective and under-used management tool in British industry today.
Top pitfall
Believing your own bulls**t and detaching yourself from your cusatomers. Customers do make pay days possible – cherish them and ensure everyone else does.
Top takeaway
You can tell if a company is well managed and reflecting the imporatance of its people. Are there director car parking places? (I am more important than you – yuk!) Are people proud of how their business looks externally? Are people happy? Leadership is not necessarily a pyramid of command; it should be allowed to shape itself as ability is more important than status.
Steve Marshall: Chairman, Balfour Beatty
Top tip
Be authentic and be yourself. You are trying to mobilise emotional, selfish but largely well-meaning human beings. If the person you are trying to be at work is different from the one you are at home, you will not be at ease and you will be found out anyway!
Top pitfall
Failing to filter out the clutter. All executive teams massively underrate the serious damage that diluting their personal and collective focus causes. This is partly because they tend to massively overrate their ability to intervene in areas where in practice they add no value. A great Chairman is a great de-clutterer.
Top takeaway
Great management is knowing how to get things done through people and through organisations. It is a vital skill, but is a lesser skill than leadership. Great leadership is determining what you collectively need to achieve as a group, and having the conviction and capacity to express it, then convince and mobilise your colleagues to want to achieve it as much as you do.
Deanna Oppenheimer: Founder and CEO, Camelotworks
Top tip
PAPS! Passion – Inspiration transfers energy from the leader to the led so they are enthused by passion to achieve the impossible. Appreciation – A handwritten thank-you note from the boss will be saved for a lifetime. Presence – Develop social skills in a social media world. Service – Model authenticity by showing true vulnerability.
Top pitfall
Becoming myopic in any one direction within a large company. I finally learned this when I listened twice as much as I spoke, reflecting my mother’s saying: ‘You’ve got two ears and one mouth for a reason!’
Top takeaway
Top leaders speak humbly: everyone already knows they are the boss; decide consistently and break down silos by bringing diagonal groups of teams together. By leading with teams created from cross divisions and a variety of employee grades, the leader can forge his/her culture, break the paradigms of the past and innovate.
Dimitri Panayopotopoulos, Vice Chairman, P&G
Top tip
Focus on results and the rest will come. Too often, we get drawn into non-value-added work. Every time this happens it’s a distraction from a leader’s core deliverable: results.
Top pitfall
The biggest pitfall I have seen is a leader’s ability to say ‘no’. We have to be the ones to make priority calls and be masters of stopping work to enable our organisations to focus on the most significant choices that will truly drive the business.
Top takeaway
Strong leadership is in touch with the external environment and deeply connected with what is happening internally. Great leaders know their operations inside and out and the people who are getting the work done. They spend more time outside of their offices connecting with the business, employees and key stakeholders, and making critical conanections to simplify, drive action, and produce strong, sustained results.
Gavin Patterson, CEO, BT
Top tip
Use all parts of your brain when making decisions. Develop your intuiation and learn to complement the rational side of your decision making with the intuitive side. Learn how you interpret people because you often have to make a decision based on whether you can rely on the individual. And if someone seems uncertain, always probe deeper to help you to manage any risk.
Top pitfall
Be modest and don’t believe your own PR. There will be moments when you think you can walk on water, but as soon as you begin to believe your own publicity you’ll find it’s the beginning of the end. So don’t be complacent, get carried away with your own success or be capricious. Always acknowledge your weaknesses and build a team that compleaments your skills and experience.
Top takeaway
Great leadership is about anticipating the need to change, making change happen and about tailoring your style to the situation. In moments of crisis you need more authoritative leadership and when the business is thriving, a more consultative and supporting style encourages people to achieve more and to change the way they think or act. It’s also about using influence not power.
John E. Pepper Jr., former CEO & Chairman of P&G and Chairman of Walt Disney Company
Top tip
Make everyone know they count: by listening to them; getting the benefit of their ideas without ever losing the compass of your own values, judgement and experience. Remember: trust is the greatest gift we give to another. Expecting the best in others empowers others.
Top pitfall
Failing to address misalignment in an organisation and in relationships with others in a timely and decisive manner.
Let me add one other: failure to listen carefully to my spouse when it comes to judging other people.
Top takeaway
Establishing an empowering vision, sound strategies, maniacal commitament to outstanding execution; enrolling a great team, growing people (they relish having worked for/with you) and never stopping learning on how to do better.
Empowered by a special combination of competence, character, caring and commitment.
Tony Pidgely: Chairman, The Berkeley Group Holdings
Top tip
Whenever I get more than 200 people in one division I tend to create a separate unit so that they can work better together as a team.
If you involve people in projects and give them ownership you always get better results. We employ the single mothers on our estates to look after the gardens. You’d better not mess with their gardens.
When I was first a director I used to stand up in front of the Board and deliver the bad news. I’d always start with the bad news. I got fired for it, and that’s how Berkeley got started. But I still operate that way today.
Top pitfall
That’s easy. One word. Greed.
Top takeaway
Good management is all about common sense, decency, collaboraation and treating others with respect. You also need to give people autonomy. And have a vision for the long term.
Richard Pinder, Founder and CEO, The House
Top tip
As the military leader of Gulf War I, General Norman Schwarzkopf said: ‘When put in charge, take charge.’ Too many people on being appointed to a leadership role they have so badly wanted, then fail to actually lead. And his second top tip which I also live by: ‘When in doubt, do what’s right.’ These are the best two top tips I have ever heard and I use them daily.
Top pitfall
Forgetting that real leadership is not to do the fishing yourself but to inspire others to do the fishing themselves. Ego, distrust, time . . . all conspire to stop us from remembering this simple but crucially imporatant pitfall and time and again we will step right back into it.
Top takeaway
I believe inspirational leadership is the best way to describe and enact the role of manager or leader in any organisation. The act of inspiring others to achieve what they thought impossible while at the same time encouraging them to co-create the goals and approaches themselves.
Then using your own skills and judgement to sort the good ideas from the bad and not being afraid of explaining clearly to the team why you did what you did. That’s inspiring and it’s clearly leadership.
Paul Plant: Mentor, Wayra
Top tip
Never be afraid to recruit people who are better and more talented than yourself.
Top pitfall
In today’s ultra-competitive, disruptive, digitally influenced commeracial environment, success is dependent much less on having the right strategy, but far more on how well you execute the strategy you decide to run with. Great companies, and therefore great leaders, are all about impeccable strategic execution – think Amazon, think Apple, think GE, think Google, think Virgin.
Too many leaders fall into the trap of spending disproportionate time developing their strategy, and then do not apply anywhere near enough rigour or focus on ensuring that their strategy is properly executed.
Top takeaway
Great leaders align the objectives of their people and their teams with those of the broader business – and almost always, customer excellence is right there in the mix.
Paul Polman: CEO, Unilever
Top tip
Ask yourself what you can do to become part of the solution. An African proverb says, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.’
How can you make sustainable and equitable growth part of your busianess model? How can you make it a force for good? Less bad is simply not enough any more. More than ever, we need leadership and the courage that comes with it where the interest of the common good is put ahead of someone’s own interest.
Top pitfall
Avoid being on a journey without passengers. Spend a lot of time on forming the needed coalitions and bring others along. And don’t get sidetracked by the cynics who unfortunately still get too high a share of voice. Remember simply that it’s the easiest form of abdicating responsibility.
Top takeaway
Capitalism and globalisation has lifted many out of poverty over the past few decades. Yet we have not yet figured out how to grow without over-consumption, enormous levels of public and private debt and frankly leaving too many people behind. A long-term prosperous future now and for generations to come also means a more equitable and susatainable growth model. We have the means and knowledge to eradicate poverty once and for all and make future growth inclusive. The cost of inaction increasingly outweighs the cost of action, be it around food security, nutrition, climate change, youth unemployment or some of the other major challenges. In this journey, business has to be an active participant and can no longer be a bystander in a system that gives it life in the first place.
Shafi Saxena: CMO, Microsoft India
Top tip
Be curious. Be engaged. Be brave.
Top pitfall
Being over-protective of today at the expense of tomorrow. Fear of cannibalising existing business can paralyse companies and is one of the most common leadership failures. If you don’t self-cannibalise in a virtuous cycle of continual innovation, others will chomp away at your business for you. Trying to withstand the winds of market change instead of learning quickly to ride with them is never a successful busianess strategy.
Top takeaway
Great management is different from great leadership. Great leadership is prescient, able to envision the future as clearly as it can see the past, to shape the current to galvanise for continued leaps of growth. Great management is all about the here and now, with a laser-like focus on the current to ensure optimum operational efficiency. Leadership inspires with vision. Management inspires with behaviour.
Martin Schlatter: VP, Global CMO, Wrigley, Mars
Top tip
It is as important to win the hearts of the associates as it is to win their minds. In order to do this, it is key for a leader to provide associates with a higher-order purpose that makes a difference to consumers’ lives. This will give them a sense of belonging and significantly drives engagement.
Top pitfall
Micro-managing versus setting an overall aspirational direction and enabling associates to take initiative, be creative and self-actualise.
Top takeaway
Great leaders create an environment for associates to be fully engaged and able to do their best every day.
Cilla Snowball: Group CEO and Group Chairman, AMV BBDO
Top tip
Obsess about customer satisfaction. Delighting customers is key to growth and reputation in every organisation.
Top pitfall
The mark of outstanding leadership is not just how good a leader you are but how many leaders you develop. Overlook succession planning at your peril. The best organisations prioritise it.
Top takeaway
Leadership is about delivering great results by motivating people and growing organisations in all senses – culturally, commercially, operaationally and, in our case, creatively.
Andrew Summers, Chairman, Companies House
Top tip
Always be strategic and focus on what’s really important – but always be grounded in the reality of what’s achievable.
Top pitfall
The pitfall is talking the talk and thinking that is enough to inspire people. It’s not – you have to act it out and make things happen.
Top takeaway
Great management and leadership is about inspiring others and inspiring yourself. You always need to lift people’s vision above the day-to-day and give confidence that something better can be achieved.
To do this you need always to be inspiring yourself to achieve more than you think you can.
Rebecca Taylor: Dean, Open University Business School
Top tip
Personal reflection and self-awareness – make time for it. It can be a difficult journey to reconcile differences between how we perceive ouraselves and how others see us, but really knowing yourself has to be the starting point for leading others effectively.
Top pitfall
Effective communication isn’t simply a matter of passing on informaation. It’s about making a personal connection with people. So make sure you’ve created enough space in your diary to regularly meet with your staff. If you don’t you’ll miss out on all their great ideas as well as miss opportunities to recognise effort and success – expressing your appreciation is essential in making people feel valued.
Top takeaway
Great leadership is about knowing yourself and what you stand for – understanding your own values and those of your organisation. If you are confident in your role, the chances are that both sets of values will be aligned, which I believe is essential to leading your team successfully. If you are clear about what you and the organisation believe, making complex decisions is much easier.
Jan Von Bon: President, European Petcare, Mars
Top tip
Bring positive ENERGY to your organisation and relentlessly attract and coach top talent.
Top pitfall
Avoid unnecessary change in vision and strategies: repeat, repeat and value consistency!
Top takeaway
Providing direction (vision), developing and implementing clear strateagies (steer the HOW) and putting an efficient and effective infrastructure in place to make it happen.
Chris Warmoth, former Executive Vice President, HJ Heinz
Top tip
Building on strengths almost always delivers more return than fixing weaknesses. This is true of brands, businesses and people. Of course, one has to work on weaknesses to neutralise them. But too often we put in more effort against weaknesses than strengths – a big mistake.
Top pitfall
Play the cards you have, and don’t spend time regretting the cards you don’t have. Most ‘hands’ have sufficient strengths in them to leverage.
Beware the ‘law of unintended consequences’. An action we take has implications we never thought about – often in a place or way we didn’t even consider. This is the cause of nearly all major mistakes.
Top takeaway
We should always be as externally focused as possible – looking to conasumers, customers and competition. Our customer is not World HQ or regional management or ourselves. Do have a clear strategy, what you want to achieve and then communicate it relentlessly and often. It really does make a difference.
Mick Yates: Head of International, Dunn Humby
Top tip
Building on strengths almost always delivers more return than fixing weaknesses. This is true of brands, businesses and people. Of course, one has to work on weaknesses to neutralise them. But too often we put in more effort against weaknesses than strengths – a big mistake.
Leadership is a process not a position. Anyone can have a vision and bring lots of energy to a task – but the really critical thing is to turn it into a plan that your team can execute. This is the ‘enabling’ step in all leadership processes and is usually the difference between success and failure.
Top pitfall
Trying to do too much too quickly is, if anything, even more deadly than not doing enough. Getting the balance and speed of change right is the biggest difference between great leaders and the rest of us!
Top takeaway
Great leaders have values congruent with their teams, create a strong vision and action plan to make change happen, ensure everyone has the right training, and then personally energise their organizations by consistently ‘walking the talk’.
Joan Zimmerman: Founder and CEO, Southern Shows
Top tip
Building on strengths almost always delivers more return than fixing weaknesses. This is true of brands, businesses and people. Of course, one has to work on weaknesses to neutralise them. But too often we put in more effort against weaknesses than strengths – a big mistake.
Surround yourself with people who understand and appreciate your vision, and then learn to listen – to what is being said, and what is not being said. Learn how to communicate – one to one, one to many, in writing and in person. Never stop reading and learning.
Top pitfall
Cutting corners on salaries, quality and service. Never hire an indiavidual or company because they will work for less – good people and talent pay for themselves many times over.
Top takeaway
Management and leadership are different – but the skills can be comabined in one person. Great management, and leadership, appears relaxed, confident, open and current. It is diversified by age, ethnicity and gender. When the manager–visionary is the same person, companies are more likely to be results-oriented, financially savvy, future-focused, brand conscious and customer-centric.