All the actors in this pantomime seem to be turning on
another. I believe we are at a turning point and witnessing the demise of the
20th century’s arrogant, alpha male press baron. Maxwell died before
he could be arrested, Conrad Black was banged up for fraud and the dynastic
ambitions of Rupert the Murdoch have all but been destroyed. It strikes me it’s
partially our fault, as consumers, we allowed the press to be mismanaged for
decades on the pretext it was all a bit of a laugh and the likes of Max Moseley
were asking for it...perhaps it was more serious than that.
I worked as a client of News Corporation for many years. The
newspaper side was, without doubt, an arrogant and secretive business that
encouraged combative relationships with its’ business partners. The advertising
sales people who ‘repped’ agencies were frequently moved on, so they didn’t
develop too close personal relationships with individual buyers, but I think
this was also partly because of the primeval way that newspapers used to operate.
They were tyrannical, self obsessed entities that created the atmosphere where
the kind of behaviour being exposed at Leveson would have been acceptable and
tolerated. The editor was king (or queen) and sometimes seemed more powerful
than the proprietor, and certainly than the commercial management of the paper.
The television side of
Murdoch’s empire is a far more professional, open and smart business. However, I saw James Murdoch, then CEO, speak
at an event with almost messianic like appropriam for the BBC, describing it (I
paraphrase) as a parasite that distorts the natural market mechanism. Given
Murdoch Jnr had spent most of his working life working abroad, I think his
views must have been influenced by listening to other people, like his father,
rather through his own experience.
Inherited belief systems like this are dangerous and in the
long term harm organisations, whether they are businesses or political parties.
Institutions that don’t encourage original thought, self criticism and allow
for totems and ideas to be challenged are signing their own death warrants. It’s
not just families that behave like this; I’ve worked with a couple of the UK’s
biggest and high profile retailers in my time. They behaved in a very similar
way, both had dogmatic and charismatic CEO’s who were responsible for the
personality of the business and, unwittingly perhaps, created fear cultures.
Once you have a personality culture like this it means that
the only people who progress are the ones who buy into the personality cult of
the CEO and, more dangerously, almost no one recruited externally could succeed.
I witnessed many senior, successful ex pats from other retailers turn up and
leave within six months, because they didn’t fit or weren’t liked. It was
effectively institutionalised bullying.
It creates a very toxic culture that won’t survive in the
long term. The talented people with differing experience or point of view will leave
the business meaning only one persons’ opinion actually matters. It didn’t
matter that both the businesses were PLC’s, they were run effectively as personal
fiefdoms. In periods of economic success it becomes self justifying; people
become complacent and start to believe the myth of the organisation and
propagate it externally. However, the real talent slowly leaves the business
and there is no legacy once the messianic CEO departs.
I’ve seen both organisations fall from grace, one almost
went bust because it borrowed excessively to expand immediately prior to the
downturn, the other operates in a cut throat retail sector and suffered because
of poor and unimaginative marketing in a key period when all its competitors
were innovating. However, I think both businesses failed because one
overpowerful individual snuffed out talent, didn’t listen to new ideas and had
an intransigent and outdated view of the world.
One of the most difficult issues for any leader is when to
leave and how to pass on the baton. Whatever one might think of Margaret
Thatcher, her inability to plan for succession management destroyed the Tory
Party for ten years, Tony Blair created similar carnage in the Labour Party,
even though he publicly talked of his legacy. A lot of alpha leaders believe their
legacy is important, but they probably don’t have the self analytical tools to
ensure a successful handover is achieved. Enoch Powell is often misquoted “All political lives...end in failure, because
that is the nature of politics and of human affairs."It’s
equally true in business.
I don’t think it’s in the DNA of many leaders to realise when their
time is up. People believe they are indispensible and that an organisation will
fail without them. This is almost always untrue. However, what is true is that
leaders often plan poorly for their succession and then handle it badly. The
sudden loss of power and status is difficult to contemplate, so it’s delayed
until absolutely necessary. This lack of planning is the single most likely issue
to cause a legacy to be destroyed.
The size of the business is irrelevant, the small business can have
bigger leadership issues that of a PLC. The leader is often the owner, it’s not
in the public eye and the impact of the boss is greater (because the business
is smaller.)
As ever, there are some simple steps:
v Plan
the business. I don’t mean have a business plan (although you should.) I mean
have a three year vision. What are your personal ambitions? Do you want to stay
fully involved or move on? I’m not a great fan of partial involvement or
consultancy. Businesses change very quickly and a departing senior executive
hanging around soon becomes irrelevant. Decide what you want to do and work towards
it.v Get decent external advice. One of the biggest issues as a senior manager is how you evaluate your own performance. You get measured against hard numbers such as turnover or profit growth, but often the soft stuff gets ignored. If you were going to get a non-exec involved (and I’m not always a great fan in small businesses,) one task would be to get them to evaluate, motivate and mentor the senior team.
v Are you still learning? It’s very easy at the top of the business to get caught up in management issues and forget to improve your craft skill. Go out and see what’s going on. I don’t mean networking events with other CEO’s, I mean actually seeing what’s happening just around the corner; things like Consumer Entertainment Show in Las Vegas.
v Try to get objective advice. Look broadly, not just amongst a favoured few. It’s easy to have favourites; often they will tell you what they think you want to hear. You need to understand the full range of opinion. My suggestion is to do it formally; staff surveys by an external research business and a formal review process, but also make sure you spread your time amongst all staff.
