Poor Leadership; Poor Results

A malaise exists in many organisations which limits their ability to
achieve even modest goals. It is not specific to any industry or any
country. It is not specific to public or private enterprise. It is
specific to leaders who do not want to, or are incapable of,
leading.

The malaise is a tendency amongst leaders to identify a weakness in
their organisation or across their industry and to do very little
about it. The usual expectation is that someone else will fix it.
That someone else is often government or government sponsored or
controlled bodies. Sometimes, however, the solutions are left to
that invisible duo, “them” and “they”.

Leaders of organisations who find a weakness affecting their ability
to reach their goals must practise self help. If they are insightful
enough to determine the problem, then surely they can go to the next
step and devise solutions without the need of government
intervention.

It is fine for organisations to seek help from government or other
parties. But when that help is not forthcoming because of a lack of
resources or other priorities, the treatment for the diagnosed
ailment can only be found in the hands of the “physician” doing the
diagnosis.

Examples of this malaise are all too frequently apparent.

For example, associations that decry the lack of specific
competencies in their industry as a whole, push the problem to
government to “improve” the education system. This is a natural
reaction and probably one of several worthy options to explore.

However, if the curriculum changes required are too expensive, too
elitist or just plain inappropriate for the majority of school
leavers, then the government may well not accede to the request
fully. The answer is not to berate the government for a decade for
taking no action, but to take action within the industry.

When I completed university with a science degree, the clearest
piece of knowledge I had was that I had just learnt to learn and
that my greatest level of knowledge and skill building was ahead of
me. I was not surprised to find that Shell has extensive
supervisory, management and leadership training programmes.

If competency shortfalls are a real problem for an industry then it
is in that industry’s interest to fix it by building industry wide
training, skill building and coaching programmes to address the
shortfall.

The same problem of lack of competency occurs at organisational
level too. For example, organisations often lack project management
skills. Organisations without project management skills tend to run
bad projects; missing milestones, having cost overruns and not
delivering the intended outcomes.

At some stage or other the organisation will review a project,
especially after a poor project and ask the question, “Why do we
always run bad projects”. The answer of course is, “Because we have
few or no people with project management skills”.

The solution is to buy or build the skills. Unfortunately, when the
solution tends to be nobody’s responsibility the building of skills
requirement only gets raised again after the next poor project with
the question, “Why do we……”. This scenario is frighteningly common.

One organisation I know, knew it had a chronic inability to
prioritise the large number of important projects. This inability
was causing frustration and wasted effort in the seven figure
bracket. They set up a project to develop a detailed prioritisation
process that utilised their extensive IT capability for assessment
and communication of priorities.

The project manager was pulled off the project before it was
completed. At subsequent management meetings over the next two
years, the lack of a robust prioritisation process was debated,
discussed and glossed over without any action to fix it.

The malaise identified by these three examples characterises a
leadership style which is shallow, indecisive and seeks to shift the
burden of accountability for setting and achieving bold goals
to “others”.

The malaise occurs even when opportunity beckons. Instead of
identifying a problem, leaders identify an opportunity with
attendant risks. Instead of analysing the risks poor leaders analyse
the opportunity to the point of paralysis. Rather than understanding
the risks in detail and addressing them through detailed contingency
plans, they avoid the risk altogether by taking no action.

Leaders are paid not just to understand problems. They are also paid
to take action. They are paid to provide the leadership of their
teams so they are compelled by example to take well considered
decisions to progress the organisation towards its goals.

Leaders must take it upon themselves to make “it” happen. Shuffling
off responsibility for action to committees, subordinates,
government departments and forever bemoaning the lack of action is
not good enough.

Leaders are in the position of being able to both diagnose the
ailment and treat the ailment of an organisation. If they won’t do
it, who will?