Leaders must lead with a heart for sustainable success. This is my conclusion after over 35 years in the corporate world. It is very easy for a Leader to stay so ruthlessly focused on numbers that he or she forgets what and who drives the numbers.
It is the budget period; everyone is stressed preparing for the budget sessions. Strategies are written and re-written: there is a buzz on the floor. The budget sessions are starting in two hours, hearts are throbbing so loud almost to the hearing of the colleague sitting next to you. Talk about adrenaline-it shoots up and then by the close of the day, Day 1 is over. Day 2,3,4,5, and the week is over, and the game is done.
Then, everyone breathes a sigh of relief. But I tell you, as quickly as the budget sessions are over, so quickly are the beautiful PowerPoint presentations stored away in the computer drives.
Great presentations, people congratulate one another at the end of the budget sessions. Department Heads go back to the teams to run their shops. The Leaders at the Head office are happy with the Group’s consolidated numbers on paper.
The Board
At the meeting with the Board to get the Board’s approval for the strategy and the budget for the year, the Chief Executive Officer says, we are all excited about our performance for the year ahead. The entire team is highly motivated to deliver on these numbers. We will certainly make the shareholders happy. Then goes the applause and smiles and waves of laughter in the board room.
This board room image in my mind reminds me of the UK parliamentarians (I chuckle with laughter as I write). I believe most people have watched the UK parliament in session. I find their sessions interesting.
So, the Board takes a helicopter view of the presentations of the executive management team. They are extremely happy to hear these optimistic words from the Chief Executive Officer. The Board quickly approves both the strategy and the budget numbers for the year ahead. From this moment, the Board members begin to envision fat dividend checks for the shareholders.
More importantly, the Board also sees their automatic reappointments to by happy shareholders at the next Shareholders General Assembly meeting. After all, the organization’s Chief Executive Officer and the executive team assured the Board of a great year ahead.
Sometimes, I think Board members are gullible and vulnerable. They believe everything the executive management team tells and presents at meetings. The truth is the Board members have no other choice. The Board’s role is an oversight role, so, no deep dives!
On the other hand, the executives do not mean to be dishonest, they also just believe the numbers collated from the different teams down the chain. They deep dive as much as they can to ensure the integrity of the process but ultimately, everything is based on TRUST.
The executives also are limited as to how deep they can dive bearing in mind, also that market conditions can be volatile. From one quarter to the other, the strategy and budget projections can be completely off the mark. No better example of volatile market conditions than lessons the world learned and is still learning from the Coronavirus pandemic situation.
TRUST
A great deal in the corporate business or any other business for that matter (professional or otherwise) is built on TRUST. Where there is a lack of TRUST, there cannot be success in a sustainable manner.
When I look back, I am full of gratitude to God first, then gratitude to the team. I am also full of gratitude to the customers, to all other stakeholders like the regulators, and the service providers to the organization. As soon as all stakeholders feel the executive team is trustworthy, especially from the regulators’ judgment in my industry, the organization gets all the support it requires to succeed. It is a given that when all stakeholders are aligned to support an organization, the chances of success dramatically go up.
The chickens before the Eggs and The Board
Sometimes, the Board and the Executive management get bullish on optimism. While optimism is a necessary factor for leaders to imbibe as the leaders pursue their corporate goals, I daresay and advise instead of optimism ‘cautious optimism’.
The numbers presented to the Board are as reliable as the person presenting the numbers. The Board approves the strategy, approves the budget numbers and in three hours the Board meeting is over.
In between the three-hour Board meeting, endless finest coffees and exotic teas are served with the best snacks from the best patisserie in town. Then Lunch is served.
Finally, the Executive Management Team and the Board members attend a sumptuous dinner in the evening. Sometimes the spouses of the Board members are also invited to the dinner.
The best and most expensive red and white wines are served, the best seafood (the catch of the day as the restaurants sometimes call it to price right), and the best steak straight from the slaughterhouse are served too.
I call this the best life of the Executives of the organization; part of corporate pecks. I mean the sumptuous dinners.
These dinners are great fun and end up with everyone happy. A fabulous evening the people exchange as they wave each other goodnight and bye-bye.
And Then What?
However, the first quarter runs out fast and the numbers must speak. How are we doing? The numbers are missing their targets! Numbers do not lie. So, the next question is, how did we do on execution?
Executive management finds we did not make the numbers. What happened they wonder? Of course, Poor Execution happened.
Now comes the fundamental question. What stakeholder group is responsible for execution?
Ruthless Execution
I call them the Internal stakeholders. The Management and employees are responsible to deliver the numbers through ‘ruthless execution’. During my career at executive levels in different markets in more recent years, the execution word is never called or written execution as a standalone word. The buzz word is ‘Ruthless Execution’ as if by associating ruthless to the word execution, performance is guaranteed.
Management loves to speak of ‘Ruthless Execution’ which almost always never happens. However, I have since discovered that calling it ‘ruthless execution’ does not necessarily deliver the expected results.
More importantly, ruthless execution is not an excuse for a heartless management style. Ruthless execution does not equate to a ‘heartless’ management style. And a heartless management style does not equate to a good performance in the business. On the contrary, leading an organization heartlessly actually leads to poor performance.
The Success Formula
I am sure that leading with a heart is the guaranteed way to good if not great performance in a business. I practiced the heart management style all the time as a leader, and we (the team) won ALL the time.
In my understanding and with the benefit of hindsight, the heart leadership style is what I call the spiritual aspect of leadership in the workplace. I will discuss this topic (Spirituality and the Workplace) in another post.
I prayed through my leadership roles for divine guidance, divine favor, and divine success. I engaged the team often in lots of heart-to-heart conversations and each time I saw the team members change and become more confident. The team always often began to take ownership of the business deliverables.
I found over time that a heart-management-style approach is a ‘win-win’ approach for success in every sphere of leadership. With this approach, the team and I turned unprofitable businesses into profitable businesses in different markets with different people and different cultures. Then, I concluded that for sustainable success leaders must learn to lead with a heart.
Like Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Graduate School of Business stated in his book ‘Dying For A Paycheck’ and I quote him ‘’Possibly the saddest part of the tale: even as organizations of all kinds permit, if not encourage, management practices that sicken and kill their employees, these same employees also suffer because toxic management practices and unhealthy workplaces do not improve organizational profitability or performance’.
Happy Employees=Happy Customers=Sustainable Profits=Happy Shareholders
Research has proven that happy employees create happy customers and happy customers produce profits. So, I wonder why some leaders do not give more importance to the internal customers who serve the external customers that produce profits for the shareholders.
We cannot speak of shareholder value when we have neither spoken of the employee value nor the customer value. For me, this is common sense and a big, missed opportunity for some leaders who do not see this connection.
In my view, there must be fairness and justice in the way all stakeholders are treated in the ecosystem. This is the point where leading with a heart comes in.
Why do some Leaders think that businesses are best managed by breaking the hearts of some of the stakeholders and winning the hearts of others to the detriment of all? For me, this is a zero-sum game. Every stakeholder is important and must be treated fairly.
Breaking Hearts
Over the years, I have seen executive management of organizations break the hearts of shareholders, break the hearts of the clients, break the hearts of employees, break the hearts of the Board members and even break the hearts of regulators.
Sadly, all hearts are Broken sometimes!
The Corporate world needs to have a rethink on how to run businesses profitably without breaking hearts.
In my understanding, this is where spirituality in the workplace becomes a relevant conversation to bring to the front burner in the corporate world. Corporate leaders are still too shy to speak about spirituality in the workplace.
Finally, I close this post by mentioning that I was privileged to meet Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer when I attended the Stanford Lead program. Professor Pfeffer teaches the POWER Course at the Stanford Lead program amongst other courses he teaches at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
I benefited a great deal from Professor Pfeffer’s lectures and the experiences he shared with the class.
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