The leader, the team and the death of innovation

This burden of responsibility could be to one person at a time or to a multinational corporation but in all instances, it requires being able to take all the available facts and distilling them through the prism of the set strategic goals to arrive at what would be the best possible course of action. The leader however often relies on the members of his or her team to provide this critical ingredient of “available facts” and varying opinions that are the building blocks of a sound decision and strategic direction.

This is therefore obviously predicated on a free flow of that information from the diverse sources of the system through the leadership team to the leader. What happens however when the opinion within an organization does not follow this expected path?

Most discourse on good leadership place the responsibility for building the team and harnessing the best from the unique skills each individual members brings to the team on the leader. Jeff Wolf, founder and president of Wolf Management Consultants in the USA, while writing in his book on Seven Disciplines of A Leader (2014) expresses the opinion that confused employees, stagnating sales and crumbling profits are the consequence of poor leadership.

He therefore places the role of building the team squarely on the plate of the leader who he says must exhibit the six leadership traits of building trust, clearly communicating the vision, providing resources and empowerment, building self-efficacy in the members by having confidence in the ability of each member to complete the task, holding reports accountable, and tracking progress.

Taking this into consideration, it is often argued that it is the responsibility of the leader in any capacity to create an atmosphere of trust and open communication that enables the free flow of innovative ideas to fuel the decision-making process. This task can not be accomplished if the leader does not model for the employees on his or her team the minimum quality of experience to be refracted to the customer.

Nathalie Schooling in her May 2019 essay “Debunking 5 Myths Around CX” (Customer Experience) puts it quite succinctly when she says technology is a useful enabler, a big budget is definitely helpful, performance metrics measurements are necessary however none of these and even the customer are the first issues to consider in putting together and implementing an effective Customer Experience strategy. The customer of course remains the reason for our existence as corporate entities but the most invaluable ingredient in creating the best customer experience are the employees without whom no organization can have meaningful connections and lasting positive impressions with the customer. Employee engagement must therefore be a deliberate part of the organizational culture. The employees must be fully engaged and sold on the idea of consistently delivering an awesome customer experience as part of an established culture if at all the brand is expected to have any resounding impact on the buying public.

The culture of an organization most of us will therefore agree is a major determinant of that organization’s prognosis for sustainability and growth. This is the opinion put forward in a toolkit article on the Society for Human Resource Management website titled Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture which says that “…an ineffective culture can bring down the organization and its leadership. Disengaged employees, high turnover, poor customer relations and lower profits are examples of how the wrong culture can negatively impact the bottom line”.

For most persons in the sphere of leadership, this assertion is a no brainer however the article goes further to state as a matter of fact that on the other hand a strong culture is the bedrock for benefits such as enhanced trust and cooperation, fewer disagreements and more-efficient decision-making. Culture, according to the article, also lays out the unwritten ground rules for an “informal control mechanism” which is manifested in the bond individual employees have with the organizations where they work and dictates the shared comprehension of beliefs and values about “what is important”. 

What is important in an organization therefore may not always be a function of the profit and loss account, rather it is more likely to be whatever the leadership of that organization says it is. Culture consequently cascades from the leadership of an organization and quite contrary to what the textbooks say, it is not what the Human Resources Department has written out in the Staff Manual, it is more often than not the minimum quality of experience the leader has modeled for the leadership team which in turn dovetails to the employees and is in the end refracted to the customer with palpable repercussions on the bottom line.

Jeff Wolf who I have quoted earlier also said in his Seven Disciplines of A Leader (2014) that employees appreciate it when a leader values their opinions and suggestions, and is willing to make changes based on that input to achieve the best outcomes from future team efforts. This sentiment is amplified by Dale Carnegie in his all-time best seller “How to Win Friends and Influence People” where he tells the story of Charles Schwab the renowned business Manager who said his greatest asset was his ability to arouse enthusiasm in his team. According to him “the way to develop the best in a person is by appreciation and encouragement”.

The legacy of Schwab’s leadership approach is founded on the empirical evidence of his managerial prowess at both the United States Steel Company and Bethlehem Steel both of which he made thriving businesses during his stewardship. Ninety-eight years since Schwab took leadership at United States Steel the millennials and so-called Generation Z are taking up more of the labor force and bringing new and often unfamiliar idiosyncrasies to the workplace such that this managerial approach is no longer just an option to be considered but a near must.

Most forward-looking organizations at the top of their industry have therefore almost certainly adopted Charles Schwab’s leadership philosophy and made it a point to distinguish themselves with the title “best place to work”. For such organizations it is a title to be cherished and sustained because they understand that their employees are in fact a massive pool of innovative ideas that if allowed expression can drive the formulation of their strategy and those employees are also executors of whatever strategy may emerge from the leadership tapping into that pool. A very visible example of this is with the Virgin Group and its Founder Richard Branson who has never minced words in expressing this fact. In a recent online post, he said “…the most important thing about a business is its people. When you boil it right down, a business is simply the people who work for it – nothing more, nothing less”.

This was the same sentiment the MD/CEO of Credit Direct Limited Akinwande Ademosu expressed when he presented 6 brand new Toyota Corolla cars to winners of the Company’s 2018 sales challenge. In his characteristic fashion he pointed out that every employee of the Company is a winner because it takes the contribution of each member of staff to keep Credit Direct at the helm of the industry. He went further to reiterate the firm commitment of the Company that the employees who are the greatest assets of Credit Direct Limited will continue to receive the best training, rewards, recognition and appreciation for their outstanding contributions to the growth and continued profitability of the organization.

It bears saying therefore that when the team is silent it is often because the leader has chosen to ignore these time-honored principles and rather decided to keep his own counsel and shut down opinion by his actions or inactions. Whether he or she does so intentionally or not, the consequences remain the same. Often those who make this error put it down to the various contending challenges associated with leadership but that itself a failure of leadership. This unfortunate position if adopted by the person who holds the ruder of the team and is the true custodian of the ethos of the organization very easily becomes a ripple of culture that spreads till the silence becomes deafening.

This culture of silence borne initially out of no mean thought in turn festers with unuttered questions over time to stifle innovation and initiative while spawning seeds of mistrust from which all sorts of malicious dispositions emerge to eat at the very fabric of the organization. This seem to be a very dire circumstance to be in and the actions to reverse the trend may seem far fetched but if there is a deliberate shifting of paradigms then you will find that the antidote actually lies in appealing to that most basic human need for affirmation and in embracing the simplest of character traits to cultivate; the virtue of encouragement and appreciation; the decision to consciously say, “Thank you” and “well done”!!

This is a featured post