Corporate Crap and Leadership

A few months ago, I brought a guest CEO along to an MBA class I was leading.  Don Grover is CEO of the Dymocks Group of Companies, a privately-held, diversified corporation comprising significant holdings in the rural and commercial property sector, in addition to Australia’s oldest and best-known retail book chain.

One of Don’s comments stuck with me.  He stated that ‘leaders who fail are often the ones who start to believe their own bullshit.’  In other words, leaders need to keep their feet fully grounded in reality.  They also need to understand that their feet are made as much of clay as the next person’s.  When power corrupts and pride prevails, however, this is far easier said than done.

One strategy that can help corporate leaders to remain rooted rather than “rooted” is to remain sceptical of the latest buzzwords and jargon.  The old game of “Buzzword Bingo” for non-managers to use during boring, jargon-laded meetings had more than an dollop of truth.  Words and phrases like leverage, core-competence, synergy, and value chain were progressively bent out of all shape, becoming hollow excuses for meaningful communication.  Similarly, picking the low-hanging fruit and stepping up to the plate are still bandied around with joyful abandon.

There is another beauty I’ve extracted from today’s Sun-Herald.  The Premier of NSW receives public sector correspondence on pink paper.  Where the Premier wishes to receive a departmental briefing, a bureaucrat had decided to publish such requests on paper of a lime colour.  Thus,

When pinks are prepared in response to limes, the lime must be clipped in front of the pink.  The pink, with lime, should be submitted as usual…Once approved, the executive officer ODG wil copy and deliver the lime to the appropriate member of the Premier’s office.

Before those of us outside the goverment sector chuckle too loudly at such bureaucrap, consider some of the rubbish being written by HR professionals (recently lambasted by Leo D’Angelo Fisher in Business Review Weekly):

Once attracted, if emplloyees are not transitioned into a seamless, tailored, proactive and evolving retention program, employers will not retain their team members in the long-term…Our approach to employee retention is based on a fluid employer branding strategy, which is open to change and adaptation pending ongoing feedback from our team members.

Why does anybody continue to write such nonsense?  Because it keeps them in a job.  Because information is power.  Because manure-heaps of unclear sentences provide rules and guidelines and policies and procedures that can cover nicely cover one’s arse at the first sign of trouble.  And, in a corporate environment in which odd-balls can take offense or sue or complain at the first sign of conflict, such reasoning contains a certain logic.

That doesn’t excuse it, however.  Whilever corporate crap continues to flow, customers are queueing and our most critical external relationships are flagging.  Inefficiencies are mounting, productivity is plummeting and, as time passes, moving against this indefensible nonsense becomes more risky and less appealing.  As we move into more challenging economic times, it will thus take smart, tough leaders to sort this out.  Fiefdoms will need to be dismantled and those whose work is no longer moving the organisation forward will require redirection, assuming that they can provide future organisational value.  If not, their worth must be questioned.

Do it.  Unless you do, your organisation will drift through the coming recession with less flexibility and resilience than ever.  Challenging periods actually provide the best possible time for the style of leadership that redirects and renews.  The starting point is to cut to the chase and confront the crapsters with brutal directness.  It also demands that we confront ourselves with our own crapster tendencies.  How often do we resort to the inane and the cliched when avoiding the hard work of meaningful communication? 

As always, real change starts with each of us.  Only then can we expect anyone else to take our views seriously.