By Lionesses of Africa Operations Department
The pressure on the leadership of the company is already enormous as we navigate Cash Flow, Regulatory issues, Laws, Covid, HR, Supply Chain…. the list is endless. But having built the company that is producing good results, how do you move your company from ‘Good’ to ‘Great’.
We must warn here that those of a nervous disposition should perhaps skip the next page as it questions so many assumptions that we have held dear for many years.
“I want to give you a lobotomy about change. I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned about what it takes to create great results. I want you to realize that nearly all operating prescriptions for creating large-scale corporate change are nothing but myths.” so wrote Jim Collins (about) in his article based on his book, ‘Good to Great’, here.
He continues:
“The Myth of the Change Program: This approach comes with the launch event, the tag line, and the cascading activities.
The Myth of the Burning Platform: This one says that change starts only when there’s a crisis that persuades “unmotivated” employees to accept the need for change.
The Myth of Stock Options: Stock options, high salaries, and bonuses are incentives that grease the wheels of change.
The Myth of Fear-Driven Change: The fear of being left behind, the fear of watching others win, the fear of presiding over monumental failure—all are drivers of change, we’re told.
The Myth of Acquisitions: You can buy your way to growth, so it figures that you can buy your way to greatness.
The Myth of Technology-Driven Change: The breakthrough that you’re looking for can be achieved by using technology to leapfrog the competition.
The Myth of Revolution: Big change has to be wrenching, extreme, painful—one big, discontinuous, shattering break.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Totally wrong!
Here are the facts of life about these and other change myths:
“Companies that make the change from good to great have no name for their transformation—and absolutely no program. They neither rant nor rave about a crisis—and they don't manufacture one where none exists. They don't “motivate” people—their people are self-motivated. There’s no evidence of a connection between money and change mastery. And fear doesn't drive change—but it does perpetuate mediocrity. Nor can acquisitions provide a stimulus for greatness: Two mediocrities never make one great company. Technology is certainly important—but it comes into play only after change has already begun. And as for the final myth, dramatic results do not come from dramatic process—not if you want them to last, anyway. A serious revolution, one that feels like a revolution to those going through it, is highly unlikely to bring about a sustainable leap from being good to being great.”
The secret according to Jim Collins is in what he termed ‘Level 5 Leadership’ as shown in our Title photo (from Harvard Business Review - ‘HBR’ here).
If we look closely at the Levels, we begin to recognize the upward path of some of our employees as they have risen up through the company from ‘Highly Capable Individual’ to ‘Contributing Team Member’, to ‘Competent Manager’, taking on more leadership responsibility, until they get to Level 4, a level we must admit we have always thought as the highest. “Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear a compelling vision;…” sounds like many leaders we know and respect, “…stimulates group to a high performance standards” (ditto!) and to be fair Jim researched 1,435 organizations, and found only 11 leaders who made the Level 5, so we are not perhaps totally wrong in this. As HBR say: “People generally assume that transforming companies from good to great requires larger-than-life leaders—big personalities like Iacocca, Dunlap, Welch, and Gault, who make headlines and become celebrities.”, but no, it was the ones who quietly went about their business, knowing with an almost religious fervour the route to take, yet with incredible humility, that make the cut into Level 5 Leadership, that take companies from ‘Good’ to ‘Great’. This Level 5 Leadership:
“Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will.”
‘Enduring Greatness’. The human mind never fails to surprise when backed into a corner and so we recognize that we can all (if pushed) reach for the stars and become great, as has been shown all too recently in 2020 and sadly still in 2021 across Africa as Covid forces so many to reach into the inner depths of their self to help others, to keep their businesses alive against all odds, to ensure continuous employment for their staff or even to simply survive. But ‘Enduring’? That is something completely different.
‘Enduring’ results in a legacy, as with a muscle memory for great sportswomen, so as such a legacy becomes the norm, one doesn’t have to think each morning how to stay great, it is simply there as we wake and builds upon itself. That is when ‘Level 5 Leadership’ has created the Culture from which everything flows and grows.
This leads us onto ‘personal humility’’. All of the Level 5 Leaders talk of luck. - “We were in the right place at the right time”, “I was lucky to have a great team around me”. They give praise to their team when successful and look in the mirror for blame when something goes wrong without a moment’s hesitation.
‘Professional will’? They have decided where they are going, what the route is and who will be on the ride with them. Indeed the last of those is where they always start.
Their team is always the starting point.
They ruthlessly find the right people. As Jim says: “Unlike the traditional method of building strategies and then looking for the right people to carry them out, they take a different route. It’s about getting the right people on board and then deciding on the destination.” That is not as daft as it seems. Firstly, we are now in a fast changing world, we must have agile people with us. They have to be able to adapt when things change. This is more important now than ever. You also cannot stop to spend time motivating them - the A-Grade people you want with you are self-motivating and more so if they see other A-Grade people on the ride with them. When things go well, they ‘ride the wave’ aggressively and gain serious momentum. When things go wrong they row in the same direction to get the company out of trouble. If however you have the wrong people with you within your Team, nothing will help. As Jim says (here): “Great vision with mediocre people still produces mediocre results.” and indeed when things go wrong or a speed bump is hit, in-fighting often takes the entire company down.
Our Level 5 Leaders also accept the brutal truth of what data, numbers and the issues at hand bring, but always believe that there will be light returning as they force the company through the difficult times. This is called the ‘Stockdale Paradox’ after Admiral James Stockdale, a POW during the Vietnam War who survived by telling himself that “Life couldn’t be worse at the moment, and his life would someday be better than ever.” One can also see this in Voltaire’s classic book ‘Candide’ although to be fair, the hero of the book, Candide (who followed the Stockdale Paradox 200 years before Stockdale was even in Vietnam) turned away from this in the end - clearly not cut out to be a Level 5 Leader!
Level 5’ers do not look for instant and dramatic results, but instead demand consistent efforts towards the end goal. Jim talks of a huge flywheel and how that takes tremendous effort to start the movement, but once momentum gathers, so the efforts required to keep it moving or even to speed it up, drop dramatically. Again - you certainly need the right team behind you for that.
Finally in the top three of factors that ‘make’ a Level 5 Leader - sits the Hedgehog Concept, based on a fragment of a verse by the 7th-century BC Greek poet Archilochus and turned into an essay on Tolstoy by the philosopher Isaiah Berlin (apologies, the HoF has been overdoing the Caffeine a bit!). In the essay, Foxes are characterized as knowing a little about a lot of subjects, whilst Hedgehogs know a lot about a single thing. Collins believes businesses that act like hedgehogs are more likely to achieve greatness. As Lesley University, USA state (here):
“Hedgehog behavior means understanding three things:
What a company is capable of being best at. [So be careful about chasing the latest fad if it is not totally within your area of expertise and be ruthless in cutting out non core businesses.]
How its economics can work most effectively. [inc of course something we constantly go on about, keep your Cash as fit as possible by directing it with pinpoint accuracy (not a scatter-gun approach where any project gets cash if it gets to you first) and ensuring that it ‘turns’ fast.]
What best makes its people passionate.” [through this you will get the best out of your personally chosen A-Team].
By keeping to these three central questions this will allow you to see “the unnecessary and unprofitable” and as we all know ‘There be Dragons!” - avoid at all costs.
Remember, just because you don’t make Level 5, not all Level 4 Leaders have to have a massive ego, these are just the ones we read about, see on the front covers of the Business Magazines and on talk shows (did we mention they have egos?). Ultimately we must do what we must do, not value our efforts on others - (‘Stay True To Ourselves!’ see here). Indeed even if we simply follow the central rule that keeps on shining through - build the Team that you want to be around as you drive the company to the highest level you can, we would suggest that would be a huge success in itself.
However, one interesting result that stood out and cuts back to our letter last week on Succession Planning (‘Keeping It In The Family’ - here) was that successors to Level 4 Leaders often struggle and the company suffers. In fairness, if one has a large ego, what better way to say ‘I am great’ than to see that once you have left, the company falters or fails… Yet successors to Level 5 Leaders, took the company to new heights.
As one Level 5 CEO said, “I want to look from my porch, see the company as one of the great companies in the world someday, and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.”
As Jim says:
“The X factor of truly great leadership is humility; humility combined with a ferocious will for something bigger than yourself, humility in a very special way. I want to be very clear. These people [the 5’ers] are ambitious. They have tremendous energy. They are often exhausting. They never want to stop. They’re utterly relentless. Okay, they have all that, but here’s the difference. See…for a 4, all that energy and ambition and drive is about them. It’s about what they get. It’s about how they look. It’s about what they make. It’s about what accrues to them. It’s about whether they are the center. That’s a 4. 5s, all that same level of energy and drive and ambition is channeled outward into a cause, into a company, into a culture, into a quest, into something that is bigger and more enduring than they are. Level 5s lead in a spirit of service, and they subsume themselves and sacrifice for that.”
You found only 11 5’ers Jim? We have a massive number of incredible and inspirational Lionesses who would fit that description… Let’s talk!
Stay Safe.