While some of my blogs have been quite critical of the quality of modern leadership in corporate and other walks of life, my general view is that leadership is a generally improving skill. In other words, people are largely as well if not better led now than they have ever been.

That said, my confidence still gets dented from time to time… and most recently by the new Chief Executive of Yahoo, Marissa Mayer.

Now Ms. Mayer is a former Google Executive… so let’s start with Google and a quote from their Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette. Mr Pichette has said that the answer to anyone asking how many Google staff telecommute (telework, remote work, work from home, call it what you will) was ‘as few as possible’. He went on to say that, “There is something magical about spending the time together, about noodling on ideas, about asking at the computer ‘What do you think of this?’”.

Now that’s got to be one for the sick-bucket… but back to Marissa Mayer. She has issued a memo banning Yahoo staff from working from home. An extract from the memo reads, “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.” Another says… “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”

Given all that I have said on the subject of modern life’s pressure on working people and the effect this has on families and society, I am disappointed by these attitudes. I am particularly disappointed that they are present in ‘Tech’ companies given theirs is an industry that has shouted the advantages of modern technology from the rooftops… ease of communication, virtual office environments, more efficient use of time, lower carbon emissions and so on.

People don’t need to be permanently together to be a team. Nor does your team need to be together and visible to be led.

Unless you’re lacking in leadership confidence, that is.

Tags: advantages of modern technology attitudes cafeteria carbon emissions chief executive chief financial officer confidence efficient use google hallway marissa mayer noodling office environments patrick pichette rooftops team meetings use of time virtual office walks of life working from home
 

Sorry… I can’t quite get off my soapbox yet regarding the poor impact of modern corporate and working life culture on health and quality of life.

I say this having just read online in a UK newspaper that UK workers now take just 29 minutes for lunch on average. This is four minutes less than it was 12 months ago.

60% of workers don’t even have a break for lunch but eat it at their desks.

When asked why they were doing this two thirds said they had too much work to do to leave their work stations and 14% (I thought it would be more) said they did it to impress their boss.

The survey has drawn both medical and political comment.

Ron Cutler, a micro-biologist at Queen Mary University of London, is concerned about the crumbs left on desks and keyboards. Diarrhea and vomiting causing bacteria find these crumbs a great place to breed and do so readily at the 20°C temperature maintained in most offices.

And Health Minister Anna Soubry says workers should take a proper lunch break and enjoy their food. She says that workers eating lunch at their desk is disgusting.

These comments are fair enough. But I wonder whether Dr Cutler or Minister Soubry have ever been inadvertently impressed by the commitment of their short-lunch break staff over and above those who take a whole hour.

I say that because I believe few leaders fail to fall into the trap of preferring staff who ‘work through’ or work late over those who stick to their hours.

There’s a deeply embedded cultural issue at play here. It will take a lot to shift it.

Tags: 12 months bacteria biologist boss break crumbs desk desks diarrhea four minutes health minister keyboards life culture proper lunch quality of life queen mary university queen mary university of london ron cutler soapbox two thirds work
 

As David Beckham departs LA Galaxy, might he be thinking ahead to a career in soccer management back in the UK?

Well, if I were David, I wouldn’t. That’s where angels fear to tread!

Let me explain.

By 16 May 2012, 37 of the 92 clubs in the four English football (soccer) leagues had seen a manager depart.

Not in the previous ten years.

Nor in the previous five.

No… in the 2011 – 2012 season!

And we’re not talking about the smaller lower league clubs. Nottingham Forest, Sunderland, Queens Park Rangers, Leeds, Wolves, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Liverpool all said goodbye to
Steve, Steve, Neil, Simon, Mick, Andre, Alex and Kenny respectively.

I mention this because the obviously precarious nature of the role of English football club manager resonates with some of my views on the difficulties facing modern corporate leadership (new appointees in particular). That is to say:

• there are often not particularly visible owners and bosses in the background who don’t know much about the game (a bit like business owners/shareholders who neither understand the business nor the market in which it operates)
• the stench of short-termism is so all-pervading that your appointment as manager is pretty much a license to fail (business leader honeymoon periods are increasingly short – and tolerance of early struggles is in short supply notwithstanding difficult trading conditions)
• if your face simply does not fit, then you’ve no hope and the fans will be tireless in their opprobrium (for fans read major investors)
• the team assembled around you is not up to scratch but the owners like them (a bit like—as a new appointee—you inherit an inferior management team that will be a ball and chain around your feet for your all too brief time with the company)

.

So my plea is, give new leaders a bit more of a fighting chance.

Tags: appointee appointees aston villa business leader corporate leadership david beckham english football club fighting chance football soccer league clubs neil simon new leaders opprobrium precarious nature queens park queens park rangers soccer leagues soccer management stench
 

What characterizes the macho leadership style so often adopted in today’s corporate, political and social worlds?

Well, first up is the leader’s ‘I am right, you are wrong’ approach. Here the leader bends facts to suit his argument, regards knowledge as power and so shares this only with allies… and dismisses even the most well-constructed arguments for his own approach.

Secondly, there’s the ‘you’re like me so I like you’ approach. The leader gives preference to people with similar traits while maintaining an intolerance to different personality types.

‘Do as I say, not as I do’ is our third characteristic. The leader demands all shoulders to the wheel while frequently taking his cronies and customers or clients he likes to the golf course. And he will happily burst in uninvited to your meeting but heaven help you if you do that to his.

‘Self-rewarding at the expense of others’ is our fourth trait. The bonus pot gets weighted towards the leader and his closest associates and not to the staff who made any success happen.

Number five? Macho leaders will not want to reverse a decision they have taken no matter how cogent the arguments are for selection of reverse gear.

And of course, there’s the macho leader’s general behavior. He will have perfected talking over you, drowning a discussion in corporate speak and preferring the view of consultants to those more home grown. He’ll jump the queue in the canteen, chase you hard for the response to an email (and yet be curiously unresponsive to yours). And he will berate you for a perceived misdemeanor in front of your peers rather than taking you to one side.

‘His’, ‘he’… yes the above has a masculine bias given the traditional meaning of macho. And yet the macho school of leadership is not the sole province of men. Remember the ‘iron lady’ who ‘was not for turning’? ^* See characteristic number 5 above.

Oh—and in case you’re still wondering…
macho leadership is not my recommended style.

^*Former UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Tags: allies bias canteen characteristic number closest associates corporate speak cronies different personality types email golf course iron lady leadership style margaret thatcher misdemeanor peers preference prime minister queue shoulders sole province
 

Kiwi fruit.

Milk.

Apple.

Walnut.

No I haven’t confused this blog entry with a shopping list.

But I have been thinking about sleep.

An earlier blog on this website referred to the near undoing of Antonio Horta-Osorio, CEO of British-based Lloyds Bank, as he succumbed to serious fatigue and insomnia.

My bet is that Mr Horta-Osorio is not unique. Leadership is a high-pressured and often lonely business that can pave the way to sleepless nights.

Napoleon, Winston Churchill, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher… all of these famous leaders struggled at one time or another to get the refreshing night’s sleep they required.

And leaders really do need their sleep! There is a well-known relationship between too little sleep and serious impairment of a leader’s performance and his or her ability to make decisions.

So—back to my shopping list:

• kiwi fruits can help to stabilize over-arousal of the nervous centralis which can lie behind sleep disorders
• milk contains tryptophan which helps brain cells to secrete serotonin, a kind of neurotransmitter that can make people sleepy
• the aromatic components in apples have a strong sedative effect on human nerves so they help people to fall asleep quickly
• walnuts contain sleep promoting ingredients like melatonin.

See you in the grocery store!

Tags: abraham lincoln apples benjamin franklin brain cells fatigue grocery store horta-osorio insomnia margaret thatcher melatonin milk napoleon nervous centralis neurotransmitter performance serotonin shopping list sleep sleep disorders sleepless nights stabilize over-arousal theodore roosevelt tryptophan walnuts winston churchill
 

I have seen the word ‘leadership’ associated with the word ‘creative’ twice in the last two days.

I have noted the association because in my experience, many leaders often seem to regard a key element of their roles as suppressing creativity because it seems to them a by-word for subversion.

This is compounded by compliance. Meeting legislative demands and abiding by guidelines is becoming more and more a top corporate priority—one that creative people might compromise (because, by nature, they push against compliance confines).

Another problem is that creativity tends to get pigeon-holed. Ask your sales, finance, IT or HR people where they think creativity should ‘reside’ and they will probably point you in the direction of the marketing department. Yet effective creativity needs pan-functionality to work though, something rigid corporate structures (and the silo mentality they engender) do not lend themselves to.

Creativity also requires confidence. People say to me from time to time that they aren’t creative. And I reply that they haven’t been allowed to be. In other words, most people, at some time or another, have been conditioned to believe that they aren’t capable of original thought and new concepts.

Most of all, though, creativity requires freedom and encouragement. Being original, imaginative, innovative and inspired doesn’t happen if people don’t have the time. And it does not happen if people in leadership positions throw a bucket of cold water at every idea that comes along.

So, my challenge to you is to foster creativity in your organization. How? Well, you’re going to have to get creative on that one.

Tags: abiding by guidelines association bucket of cold water compounded by compliance confidence corporate priority corporate structures creative creativity effective creativity encouragement experience foster creativity freedom imaginative innovative inspired key element leaders marketing department meeting legislative new concepts original original thought pigeon-holed silo mentality subversion suppressing
 

I have a strong piece of advice for anyone in a management or leadership position—or someone who hopes to be.

Watch your mouth!

Take former Massachusetts governor and now Republican Party presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent visit to London. On the day he arrived he said of the London event that ‘There are a few things that were disconcerting’. This put something of a cloud over his meeting with UK Prime Minister David Cameron later that day. And another cloud threatened when he seemed to forget the UK Opposition party leader’s (Ed Milliband) name, calling him ‘Mr Leader’.

In the interest of political balance, President Barack Obama recently offended America’s self-made by saying, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” He meant that there’s a network of folk—from parents through to teachers through to staff who contribute to an individual’s success… but many did not interpret the remarks that way.

Some leadership gaffes become so notorious that the protagonists name becomes a by-word for verbal faux-pas. Take Gerald Ratner—former Chief Executive of the major British jewelry company, Ratners Group.

Gerald achieved fame (or shall we say, infamy) when he jokingly put down his own company’s products. During a speech he said:

“People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?”. I say, “because it’s total crap.”

The value of the Ratner Group fell by £0.5bn after Gerald uttered those last four words. And the phrase ‘Doing a Ratner’ now covers any corporate manager’s negative and self-damaging outpourings about his company’s brand and image.

Want more? Google ‘leadership gaffes’ and have hours of entertainment.

And while you’re doing that make a private mental note to always pass comment in an informed and considered way—so that outcomes are always positive.

Tags: barack Obama chief executive david cameron gerald ratner google infamy jewelry company leadership position london event massachusetts governor minister david mitt romney opposition party leader piece of advice political balance president barack obama presidential candidate prime minister ratners republican party so notorious
 

You will not be surprised from previous Kanu blogging that this headline caught my eye:

‘Forget 9-to-5: The average office staff now works from 7.17 to 19.02′

This headline introduced an article which looked at some research conducted by technology company Mozy.

Rather than rely on the newspaper’s interpretation of the research I went straight to a primary source - Mozy’s website. You can too (http://mozy.co.uk/9-5 )—and see if you agree with what I am about to say.

Mozy’s headline is:

Cloud and mobile apps free us from the 9-5.

Mozy’s spin on the research findings is that technology—particularly mobile technology—is making employers more relaxed with the hours employees keep and with them mixing their personal lives up with their working lives (which is called blended working).

Now Mozy is an IT company. So increasingly reliance on and use of mobile technology is in the company’s interests. Bear that in mind.

Let’s in particular have a look at the response to this question ‘What is the latest time you would feel comfortable to call your employee about a work issue?’

• 80% of the employers interviewed thought it was acceptable to call employees in the evening
• nearly half of all British bosses are happy to call after 19.00
• 1.4% of bosses were even happy to call after midnight

So—according to Mozy, this is all to the good.

Well, sorry—but no, it’s not. Not at all.

However blended the working, people are effectively in work mode now for 12 hours a day. That’s not efficient, not good for morale, not good for family life, not good for giving children the undivided time and attention they need, not good for us spiritually, not good for our health.

This is a misuse of mobile technology that makes 9 - 5 the freedom option and 12 hours a day corporate enslavement.

German unions in the late 50’s, early 60’s used the slogan: On Saturdays dad is mine! to promote the 40 hour work week.
My dad used to work on Saturdays and we had school on Saturdays!

So—switch your phones and other devices off and spend some time thinking about what life should really be about.

Tags: blogging dad freedom health mobile technology mozy office staff personal lives primary source reliance research findings saturday technology technology company