How to kill a great company
By Bernard Chanliau, Monday 04 January, 2010
Look below the surface at your culture in 2010."Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you". Jim Collins.
In his recent book, How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins points out that the starting point for the destruction of a great company is not usually something from the outside, but something inside, a change in attitude - a "hubris" or overconfidence that breeds a culture of denial.
Attitude and culture are the keys to a company's future. We are told to hire for attitude. We could do better to fire for attitude. But hubris is one attitude that very few companies actually check for, in fact more often than not it is often encouraged and sought after, in the salvationist politics of leadership heroism that have grown up in the last decade. And so the disconnection begins, usually eroding gradually and unnoticed under the surface, until when it does become tangible, like Lehman Bros, it collapses so fast it seems to disintegrate in a matter seconds, far too late for corrective action. Dick Fuld, CEO, didn't even apologise and blamed everyone but himself for Lehman's collapse.
Casually dismissing the importance of studying and exploring attitudes and group dynamics of your organisation because you're too busy "doing the business", and not addressing regressive behaviour destroys more companies than anything else. Organisations exist primarily in people's minds, and this we tend to forget.
The study of attitudes and dynamics takes a lot more than an employee engagement survey, a performance development meeting, a teambuilding day, a town hall meeting or even psychometric testing. These things only scratch the surface and that's part of the problem. Companies believe they're addressing behaviour with these interventions, when they're not getting to the root.
There has also been much focus on leadership training of a hubristic nature with an over-focus on developing "inspiration" and "personal brand" and "personal vision". Whilst these things are important, of equal importance is an in-depth understanding of group behaviour. Otherwise, promoting someone to a leadership position without this is like giving a teenager a Formula One car to drive and no advance driving lessons. In my experience, there are many of these on our corporate leadership roads.
To study attitudes in depth and take a cultural imprint, it requires seasoned and highly qualified experts who can objectively engage and study your organisation's behaviour, and also recognise their own projections in the process. Some of these techniques, including the art of dialogue and critical conversations, self regulation, systems thinking and how to make sense of group behaviour, need to be taught and learnt by people within the organisation, and not just at the top, in order to build an internal capacity to self regulate (although external support is always recommended in order to be able to see clearly without bias). Organisations then need to build in self-regulating processes, such as Xenergie Extra-Vision, to continuously explore what is happening.
So this year, if you are considering leadership training, we also advise you to take a deeper look at what you might need. We also suggest that one size will not fit all - that you should engage in a discerning consulting process that assesses and develops the kind of leadership mentoring and advice that your organisation's needs and yours alone. It's too important to risk the entire business by skimming the surface. Also, to challenge where challenge is needed, even if it's at the top. Lehman Bros and their CEO can be held up as a lesson for the world.
Call Lorna McDowell or Bernard Chanliau at Xenergie to see how we can help you.
