What kind of leader does the UK need now?

As the UK faces further uncertainty, we need to rethink political leadership. What attributes does the next prime minister need?

Theresa May has officially handed in her notice and candidates are lining up for the role of Conservative Party leader and UK prime minister. May famously promised ‘“strong and stable leadership” but ultimately expressed deep regret that she had not been able to deliver Brexit.

May will probably be remembered for her resilience and stoicism, continuing to push through her Brexit deal with dogged determination. However, her failure to inspire others with her Brexit vision resulted in low levels of support. Her efforts at collaboration across parliament came too little, too late.  Rather, she relied on a small group of advisors to negotiate a detailed deal with the EU which the majority of parliamentary colleagues – and UK voters – simply didn’t buy into.

While Brexit remains the biggest issue in this leadership election, it is part of a general climate of uncertainty. Recent political upheaval demonstrates that we need to rethink the kind of leadership the UK needs.

Of the candidates who have put themselves forward so far, Boris Johnson is the current favourite. However, his success is by no means guaranteed. With so many candidates to choose from, what are the leadership attributes that the new prime minister most needs to demonstrate?

Vision

In these uncertain times, the prime minister needs to provide clarity of vision and direction for the UK going forward as a nation, with a sense of purpose in the world about our contribution and the type of society we want to be.

Values

With trust in political leaders at an all-time low, the UK needs an authentic leader who will tell the truth and hold others to account for honesty, respect all people as equal before the law, and uphold the universal declaration of human rights.

Empowerment

Rather than adopting a command-and-control stance, the UK needs an empowering leader to build confidence in others to make decisions and support people to assume responsibility as leaders in their communities. To drive the UK forward, an empowering approach can also support our endemic entrepreneurship and drive innovation.

Collaboration

The UK needs a collaborative leader to unite diverse groups of people across society, especially given the deep schisms following the Brexit vote. We need someone who can rebuild shared ways of working across communities, encouraging people to focus on mutual benefit rather than difference. In the face of multiple geopolitical challenges, the UK also needs a prime minister who can work with other nations to help build a more peaceful and sustainable world.

Agility

The new prime minister needs to be agile, keen to listen, to learn (if only May had learned from her initial mistake of not engaging with parliament), and to recognise the value of others’ views. The UK needs a leader who is driven by a desire to serve rather than by an ego - humble, adaptable, and in tune with the needs of others.

What politics can learn from business

In the fast-moving world of modern business, many of the most successful leaders have worked hard to develop the attributes above. Although the world of politics is experiencing seismic change, the style of political leadership in the UK is still firmly rooted in old-fashioned combat rather than modern collaboration. A new prime minister presents us with a new opportunity. Is it an opportunity any of the candidates can seize?

What is the UK’s future vision?

A lack of leadership is resulting in a lack of purpose

MPs are gathering in the UK parliament today to debate and vote on Brexit Plan B. As we watch the lack of leadership in the UK parliament play out in practice, it’s difficult to see the sense of vision or purpose in this ongoing debate.

Where is the sense of why we are a great country, what we are most proud of, how we can play our part in the world in the most effective and responsible way? Where is the vision for a nation that contributes to the 21^st century world by being a hotbed for innovation, improving life for people across the globe?

Reporting from Davos in The Times, Callum Jones wrote that, ‘Angela Merkel has urged world leaders to defy populism and save the established order, calling in nations to “hold together” and halt the fragmentation of the multilateral system’. Merkel added: “A global architecture will only be successful if we’re open to compromise.”

If our political leaders spent time working to understand and articulate the side of the British spirit of which we can be most proud, we could perhaps unite around a vision which others would respect and want to be associated with. Our sense of why we exist as a nation could be based on a new purpose in the world, as we move on from our history of empire, domination and cruelty. We could reinvent ourselves as a nation that other nations want to work with, a nation of collaboration and mutual respect – one that focuses energy and resources on creating better solutions to problems like energy, food, water, and peace.

We need visionary political leadership right now. Leadership that can recreate our sense of purpose in the world. Leadership that builds connections, not partitions.

David Beckham thinks we should live in a connected world – and so do I

Today the UK goes to the polls to vote in the EU referendum. David Beckham joined the debate this week, saying his experience playing across Europe had instilled in him the importance of a “vibrant and connected world”.

I’m all for building connections. I think that whatever the result of the referendum, recent debate has demonstrated we need a fresh vision for the EU. I suggest we need to replace the current commitment to ‘ever closer union’ with one that is more in tune with the realities of the EU in its current state.  There is a need for a re-invention of the purpose and direction of the EU, one which describes why it exists, what it stands for and where it is going in the world.  This requires strong leadership from the countries that make up the EU, from our own prime minister and from other heads of state. 

The UK referendum has brought this to a head, and the lack of a relevant vision for the EU in tune with the wider group of nations has, in my view, led to a melodramatic debate with a lack of persuasive logic on either side.  My sense is that we as a nation don’t buy into the ‘ever closer union’ vision, with its implications for foreign policy and governance. 

If we were to create a new vision it should involve ever closer collaboration, based on the interdependence of nations and the shared economic interests of sovereign states.  It should involve devolved decision making so that only the essential few decisions that can only be made in Brussels are made in Brussels. All other decisions would be made locally, based on shared principles and local execution.  Defence, for example, might mirror the collaborative approach demonstrated by NATO.  The new vision should include emphasis on building a connected Europe, a Europe that has a shared market and a shared set of values, and which supports growth in mutually beneficial areas such as research and innovation in science, technology, and widespread industrial collaboration. 

All of this is premised on the outcome being ‘In’. I believe that would be in the UK’s best interests and in line with what another former England footballer John Barnes described as our national moral responsibility to be an active player in the world, and in Europe.  An ‘Out’ result could leave us disconnected, declaring our independence in a world which is increasingly polarising between isolationist and collaborative approaches.  An ‘In’ vote keeps us part of a flawed union, but one which has the potential to become great if we adopt a fresh vision based on interdependence and collaboration, and reform the EU institutions to reflect that vision. 

I know this is a subject that many people have strong views on. If you’d like to share yours, please email me or tweet @SimonJHayward. 

Breaking down retail silos

There has been a lot written recently about the need for retailers to create a seamless customer experience. Customers are increasingly demanding, and expect consistently high-quality interactions whether they’re shopping in-store, online, or over the phone.

While some retailers have mastered this multichannel approach, others have struggled.  Often organisations are not ‘connected’ enough on the inside to connect effectively to customers on the outside.  They have an inward-looking ‘silo’ mentality where information and resources are not shared across departments. Although many organisations invest significantly in integrating systems and processes, these simply won’t work effectively unless people across the business are integrated and invested in, too.

A recent survey, CEOViewpoint 2016: The Journey to Profitable Omni-Channel Commerce, found that only 18% of CEOs say they have eliminated operational silos and are delivering seamless multichannel shopping experiences for their customers. The survey concludes that silos have a negative impact on profitability and limit the ability to create a seamless shopping experience for customers.  CEOs of organisations which have eliminated silos expressed greater confidence in revenue growth (59% compared with 48% average for all CEOs) and profit growth (63% against 43% for those still siloed).

Talking about this issue with colleagues, we agreed that breaking down internal silos is one of the single most common issues raised by clients across different sectors and geographies. (Becoming more customer-centred is also a goal for pretty much every business we talk to.) Nobody has ever asked us to help them reinforce the divisions between different departments. There is a widespread belief that silos are most definitely not a good thing whereas flatter structures and increased collaboration most definitely are. So why does this problem persist, and what can we do to tackle it?

Most people have a natural desire to be part of a community. This can, however, translate into tribal loyalties and behaviour, with an ‘us and them’ mentality present in functions or business units that have a stronger identification with their own unit than with the wider organisation.  The leader’s role is to tackle this by drawing these local ‘tribes’ into the wider community of the organisation by creating sufficient momentum behind a shared direction, purpose and values – and a shared focus on customers.

A common complaint I hear from leaders of silos is that they and their teams are always tied up in day-to-day activities. They are too busy to find time to step back and consider how different business units can collaborate more effectively in order to meet customer needs. Involvement in cross-functional working is often considered a ‘luxury’ activity.  Overcoming resistance, however, from organisational silos is one of the main barriers to customer-focused collaboration. Abolishing silos requires determined commitment from senior leaders and a unifying sense of purpose to push through resistance. 

Activities I have seen work well include inter-team events to develop closer alignment of process, improved understanding of each other’s priorities and constraints and increased levels of feedback to improve inter-working.  Regular and ongoing inter-team discussions, sometimes including the whole team and sometimes with representatives, can help to maintain and accelerate progress.  Online forums to share and solve issues can make the dialogue very visible to all the people involved.  

When teams are empowered to operate and cooperate with other teams across processes and break through bureaucratic silos, improved customer focus and pronounced performance improvements are common. Built on the foundations of quality dialogue and mutual influence, with senior role models leading the way, teams can produce new answers to old problems and innovative ways to serve the customer even better by adapting quickly to changing circumstances.

By building better connections between teams in, for example, production, distribution, digital, merchandising and customer service, you can see reduced cycle times, less waste, improved product availability and, of course, more satisfied customers.

You can read more about addressing the issue of organisational silos in my book, Connected Leadership: How to develop more agile, customer-drivenorganisations. I’d also be interested to hear about your experiences. Please email me or tweet @CirrusConnect. 

Cars and collaboration

I grew up near Longbridge in Birmingham, where British Leyland, the bastion of the British motor industry, was based.  BL had over 40% of the UK market at its height, and yet in the 1970s we watched it be ripped apart by industrial strife.  In the end it went bust, unable to cope with the corrosion of conflict. 

At around the same time, the UK market was being penetrated by Japanese imports from companies like Nissan and Toyota.  The new cars were cheaper and better equipped.  They were the product of new ways of manufacturing.  For example, the ToyotaProduction System (TPS) was based on respect, improvement and mutual influence.  It drove standards of quality and efficiency up in a way that the incumbent UK car industry could not meet.  Ironically, when these techniques were introduced to new UK plants they were as successful as they had been in Japan. The Nissan plant in NE England is one of the most productive in the world.  The key was in the collaborative approach which underpinned TPS and which today is manifest in lean management.  

Collaboration begins with openness

I do believe we have a choice in this world between open and closed societies.  Do we want the closure that comes from believing we are right and others are wrong, from absolute loyalty to our tribe to the exclusion of all others, from fighting for our version of the truth?  Or do we want the openness of respecting others’ points of view, of believing that we are all human beings deserving of dignity and freedom?  If we over-index on our tribe and what it stands for we risk losing connection with other people who happen to be in another tribe, and this would be a tragedy. 

Collaboration begins with accepting people for what they are, accepting that we will need to make some compromises, knowing that not everyone is going to agree with our particular doctrine of what’s right and wrong.  Collaboration happens when we choose to work with other people without judging them. Judgement belongs in the closed box.  Collaboration in the open box. Through collaboration we can work on solving problems like world hunger and making our workplace a more effective place to operate. It speeds things up, creates shared ways of working, new ideas and better execution of them.  But it all starts with whether we want to be influenced, whether we are open or closed.  If we accept influence from others we have the potential to collaborate, to take part in achieving shared outcomes.  It’s worth the risk.