To Take A Stand
By Rafael M. Alunan III
What Shakespeare can tell CEOs about leadership in disruptive times
I found this article that’s worth sharing, authored by David G. Pumphrey, a partner emeritus of Heidrick & Struggles’ CEO & Board Practice and a life member of Bell Shakespeare, the Australian performing-arts company. Because of its length, I whittled it down to its core.
“What we learn from Elizabethan England and Shakespeare’s plays is that it is impossible to resist the forces of change. Change must be welcomed with an open mind and a willing heart. New leadership styles must be developed that can accommodate and facilitate the new ideas upon which progress depends.
Shakespeare shows us how different leadership styles favor different times, situations, and cultures. He leaves us with the challenge to make a judgment call on which leadership style best suits us, and the environment in which we’re operating.
THE FAULT IS NOT IN OUR TIMES, BUT IN OURSELVES
Autocratic leaders may have a place at a time of crisis to stabilize the situation, but this style unravels when the way forward becomes murkier. Ramming down what they want from sheer gut instinct and what worked for them in the past without empirical evidence usually fails.
In times of doubt, the solution is to slow down, listen more, consult widely, and create management structures that allow new ideas to flourish. What’s needed is true diversity of thinking to find new pathways to growth. The key is objectivity as leaders allow the facts to emerge that can be adopted by all.
DIVINE RIGHT: THE LAST REFUGE OF THE POWERLESS
Richard II believed he was the anointed king who was entitled to rule, even if he had little sense of direction and was prone to lose touch with reality. His impulsive and injudicious behavior quickly led to him alienating his subjects and losing his authority.
We see the downside of “divine right” — or a sense of entitlement and hubris — in the issues that bedevil family-business dynasties, conglomerates and political fraternities today, where leaders tap a favored insider on the shoulder and pass the baton with little or no objective scrutiny.
Hubris was nearly IBM’s undoing in the 1980s. But Big Blue learned to renew itself by abandoning its “divine right” to lead the computer industry. What prevented it from “sleepwalking off the edge of a cliff,” as its new CEO said when he arrived to start the turnaround, was a shift to an evidence-based culture.
By consulting its stakeholders, IBM developed an awareness of big changes in its industry and identified new opportunities for growth. By sheer necessity, IBM adopted a new leadership approach and shaped a new culture.
AUTOCRATS BLINDED BY THEIR OWN RHETORIC
King Henry IV was autocratic in his manner. He seized power from Richard, and his style was authoritarian, which created conflict rather than healing after the tensions of Richard’s reign. Autocratic leaders drive strategy through the force of their personalities. It’s mainly based on intuition and experience.
This could be said to describe the leaders who brought down the Royal Bank of Scotland in the biggest bank bailout in British business history, as well as those who led the failed takeover by HP of the computer giant Compaq in the United States. These leaders disregarded evidence-based strategies and instead relied on their own judgment of “perceived value.”
THE PEOPLE’S HERO: OPEN TO LEARNING
King Henry V’s progress to hero king required considerable leadership and personal development. He faced oblivion as he led an exhausted army of 6,000 foot soldiers against a fresh, armored force of 30,000 horsemen. How did he master his complex and volatile environment?
• He relied on evidence, gathering information about his army’s mood by walking in disguise the night before the battle.
• He focused on building a strong team, bringing together an unlikely group of misfits, and molding them into a disciplined force. People who didn’t accept his values were dealt with accordingly.
• He inspired and motivated to build inclusivity and direction, and aimed to shape his motley group into a tightly knit team able to face any challenge.
• He innovated, adopting the latest technology: the longbow, which cut down many of the opposing French early in the battle; and sharpened pikes, which impaled their horses at the first charge.
• He strategized and had luck on his side — a vital quality in battle, as in business.
• He aligned and engaged his troops before revealing his strategy. He first built trust, then alignment and engagement, then discipline, and then, and only then, flawless execution of the plan.
Diversity of thinking is a critical component as ideas are gathered and “the troops” in the organization are consulted. Once they’re engaged and united in common purpose, the strategy can be executed with power and passion.
HOW TO EMBRACE AND NOT FEAR THE UNKNOWN
How do leaders prepare for disruptions they cannot see and seize opportunities not yet obvious?
More than 150 global chief executives from 2015 World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, broadly agreed that traditional approaches to strategy no longer apply. Several spoke of implementing regular, 100-day exercises and abandoning the standard three-to-five-year planning cycle.
Recognizing that chasing certainty is futile, leaders are catalyzing “not knowing” into a force for innovation. A certain level of professional doubt should be the quality of any good leader. Doubt sharpens the senses, makes leaders more alert, and provides the clarity to spot apparently innocent and unrelated trends.
The executives interviewed in Davos identified a quality called “ripple intelligence” found in many successful leaders. These leaders have a keen sense of how one unexpected splash or activity within their business, or outside of their industry sector, could create a huge impact as the effects (or ripples) spread outward.
In uncertain times, perhaps the only certainty is that we all need to develop a mind-set of openness and a willingness to look beyond the obvious. In the words of Shakespeare’s Henry V: “All things are ready, if our minds be so.”
Rafael M. Alunan III served as DoT and DILG Secretary; and currently chairs the National Security Committee of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations.
