December 15th, 2010
Stephen Schneider recently contributed one of the collection of sixty articles in the new publication This is How Yoodoo it written by Mike Southon for the Financial Times and Daily Telegraph.
Mike Southon is a serially successful entrepreneur, and co-author with Chris West of several best-selling business books including The Beermat Entrepreneur, The Boardroom Entrepreneur and Sales on a Beermat.
Mike is now one of the world’s top business speakers, appearing at over 100 events per year, all over the world.
This is How Yoodoo it has a wealth of practical advice on a wide variety of topics, including getting started, sales, marketing and communication, team building, mentoring, growing your business, dealing with the recession and social entrepreneurship.
Experts also featured alongside Stephen Schneider include Sir Keith Mills, who led the successful London 2012 Olympics bid, the actor and writer Stephen Fry, Harold Goddijn founder of Tom Tom, Kelvin Mackenzie, former editor of “The Sun”, Sir Philip Trousdell, former Commandant of Sandhurst, Sir Robin Saxby, founder of chip maker ARM, Brent Hoberman, of Lastminute.com All proceeds for this book will go to The Prince’s Trust.
Get your copy here: http://amzn.to/thisishowyoodooit
To whet your appetite, the attached pdf This is How Yoodoo it contains the chapter that we feature in.
November 22nd, 2010
Newly appointed directors have to resist pursuing individual or narrow functional interests. All members of the board have to take equal responsibility for ensuring that the board thinks in terms of collective responsibility, and acts with detached objectivity.
The board is not an operational team. Status counts for nothing. The goal is to reach consensus and make decisions based on reasoned argument.
That’s why a board director needs to persuade by using the skills of advocacy, rational argument and reason in support of ideas or approaches.
October 29th, 2010
Some trends are too hard to ignore – and then we have to see what implications these might have for our areas of interest – in this instance, leadership and governance.
The annual Robert Half FTSE 100 CEO Tracker (March 2010) (www.roberthalf.co.uk) showed that the youngest CEO was 38 (Oleg Novachuk) and the oldest 74 (Jamie Lomelin).
What about politics? We know that many cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers can sit on millionaires’ row. How about their age? Ed Milliband has recently claimed to be leading a ‘new generation’ of politicians. And at 40 he is a whole three years younger than David Cameron and Nick Clegg.
But actually the coalition cabinet has three of the five youngest front benchers (ranging from 38.4 to 40.4 years of age) and only two coalition cabinet members would be eligible for their bus pass against five labour shadow cabinet ministers. Perhaps Ed is referring to the fact that the average age of Labour frontbenchers is 50, against the Coalition’s 51.25.
In fact, it’s reassuring to see that experience has not been completely thrown out of the window by these young Generation Y politicians. There is no doubting the intelligence of many of our cabinet ministers (if you measure intelligence by educational attainment). But this needs to be tempered by the wisdom that can come from experience, and from reflection.
Back to our FTSE 100 CEOs. 51% of this cohort of CEOs of FTSE 100 companies have a strong background in finance. This is a rising trend – as 7 of the 11 new CEOs appointed in the previous 12 months came from a financial role. This could relate to the need for financial prudence in the harsh economic climate of business. Yet just as the young politicians need to take into account the experience of their older colleagues, so too CEOs need to remember that they have to represent the needs of the whole business, not just the balance sheets. So here too they must remember to solicit the experience of and listen to the diverse voices of their boardroom colleagues.
(And a final aside in terms of diversity and reaching out to alternative voices and experiences. Half the new Labour shadow cabinet are women, whereas just 4 out of the 28 Coalition cabinet members are women. As low as this is, it’s still almost 4 times better than the meagre 4 out of 100 CEOs of the FTSE 100.)
July 30th, 2010
As the summer season gets underway, leaders need to take time away from the day job. It’s important to get some proper time out and recuperation – which is shown to protect personal health, as well as the health and wellbeing of family relationships. And it’s a time to lift the head from the desk and the diary for reflection and big picture thinking.
But as well, it’s a chance for followers to have a go at being in control … because followers need to be able to take the lead from time to time, to develop their own awareness and skills, as well as ensuring succession planning / sustainability.
June 21st, 2010
A way to demonstrate good leadership is to be prepared for a crisis. As recent events have shown, when a leader fails to demonstrate that he or she is on top of the issues, trust in the leadership evaporates almost overnight.
While we can put together a list of recent high-profile failures – we are struggling to remember an occasion of excellent leadership in a crisis. Perhaps this is because when leadership demonstrates that it is “in control” we no longer remember it as a crisis?
May 31st, 2010
Along with a lot of our colleagues, we’re watching to see how the leadership of the new coalition government approaches the huge job that faces them.
At the same time, we’re keeping an eye on the slowly unfolding leadership contest in the Labour Party.
It appears that Gordon Brown was more comfortable surrounding himself with people significantly younger. He disposed of the serious hard hitters of his generation who were capable of acting as role models to others underneath.
As a result, the young acolytes he picked to serve him had little exposure to role models of strong and authentic leadership, and are now revealing the gap in their ability, their experience, and their credibility.
They were not given the development that they required – and deserved – and as a leadership cadre it is arguably ill-equipped to take over.
Was Gordon Brown unaware of this part of his responsibility? Or was it that at a conscious or less-conscious level he was afraid to develop them, as he felt too vulnerable in his own self, and saw his own team as competition?
If you don’t give your people the encouragement, help and support to develop their talents, you are in dereliction of your duty and responsibilities as a leader.
As we see, he has left the organisation in a vulnerable state. How long will it take them to recover?
April 27th, 2010
Leadership is a shared task in today’s world. And we should not be be fearful of a hung parliament.
What is important is that leaders leave their egos and political dogmas at the door as they face up to providing the collaborative leadership required to solve the massive problems that face our country.
April 19th, 2010
We can’t see the dust plume from the ground. But it’s serious enough to close down airspace across the airspace of northern Europe. Thousands of aircraft are grounded. Hundreds of thousands of travellers are stranded.
The volcanic dust plume has been caused up a volcanic eruption in Iceland. Volcanic eruption is caused by unstable forces going on deep underground.
All we see is the result – and we have to deal with the consequences.
What’s going on underground that you can’t yet see?
March 1st, 2010
General Election season is upon us – and the pace of revelation, attack and counter-attack is warming up (unlike the weather that continues to shroud us in grey gloom).
Once more the shadow side of politics – and personalities – is coming to the fore. While Labour delights in showing up Cameron as full of hidden shallows; so the latest furore over “Brown the Bully” is pointing to our PM’s explosive depths.
What else can we read into this? As so often, Brown demonstrates both the good and the bad news that our psyche brings to our behaviours. The good news is that this is a man of high intellect, single-mindedness, and someone who desperately wants to achieve. But the bad news is that he also demonstrates a breakdown in our expectations of normal functioning in interpersonal relationships. His high intellect and single-minded need to achieve, can lead to a build up of frustration with himself and others, and leads to high anxiety in those around him. This in turn can lead to fear of giving feedback, in an attempt to avoid creating conflict and outbursts of temper.
It is very hard for everyone when working with those who lack the traditional interpersonal skills of leadership. Well-developed personal skills - even showmanship – in the age of constant public interaction and media coverage are vital for political leadership success.
Brown’s weakest link (or missing link?) seems to be within the interpersonal dimension; his inability to observe or understand what other people are feeling. This is not to say that he does not have feelings of his own. He does – and it’s often his own feelings of frustration that lead to his explosive outbursts. We also know that Brown can show his emotions – for example in his recent interview with Andrew Marr. He is not comfortable with it – but that’s not what is at the heart of this issue.
Brown has not one, but two achilles’ heels. He does not appear to tune into the signals coming to him from others. What he has in intellectual power he lacks in emotional connectivity. And, his inner frustrations build up inside him with no outlet (a pressure cooker without an escape valve) until they overflow in an explosive outpouring of frustration and temper.
Because of this, he does not measure up to our idealised view of what leaders need to be able to do. But are we right to condemn Brown for being different?
Or should we be wondering why such a senior leader does not choose to put in place some psychological support – to enable him to harness more effectively his obvious talents by managing his areas of difficulty?
February 22nd, 2010
An employee outlook survey conducted last year by the CIPD found that 2 out of 3 employees don’t trust their senior managers. This would probably be true of the general population’s trust of political leadership. The current turbulent economic times continues to test our trust in our leadership.
A recent lecture at the RSA by Lord John Browne of Madingley explored the very subject of Trust and Leadership. Building on the work of philosopher and economist Onara O’Neil, Lord Browne explained that there can only be trust when the organisation/the leader / the political body has demonstrated Trustworthiness. And trustworthiness is built on shared and transparent values. The chain can only be as strong as its weakest link.
Being trustworthy is about doing things consistently well. To build trust is about bringing the barriers down, accepting that people can talk to you, and that you’ll do something about their concerns. Onara O’Neil also points out that deception is the enemy of trust.
Shall we see if values, trustworthiness and trust are clarified as the heart of the political campaigning leading up to the General Election?
