Leadership Lessons From A Fast Growing Organisation
13 May 16
Inzpire
13 May 16
Inzpire
In this blog I would like to share some of what I have learned along the way.
I certainly do not claim any special expertise or skill in the leadership field. The world is full of people claiming to be "inspirational leaders", "brilliant communicators" and "outstanding strategists" etc. I do not claim to be any of these things. Far from it. At Inzpire, our success belongs to us all and if I, as the leader, have achieved something worthwhile it is only because, to paraphrase Issac Newton, I have “stood on the shoulders of giants”.
What follows is an entirely personal view of what I have learned over the Inzpire years.
Leadership is about the human condition. It is not a technical skill. It has little to do with spreadsheets, emails, Gantt charts, financial accounts, budgets and all the other paraphernalia that consumes organisations. These things are important tools for managing a business but leading a business is all about connecting with its people at a very human level.
It seems to me that, to lead an organisation well, you have to be genuinely interested in the people in it. This means you need to interact with them as much as possible: a cup of coffee here, a surprise visit there, an unexpected telephone call or note. As a leader you need to be present in people’s work lives because, like policing, leadership happens by consent. Unless employees consent to accept you as their leader you cannot possibly lead them. To give their consent they need to know who you are and what you stand for, which they can only do if you interact with them. In a company like Inzpire, which is distributed over many different sites, this need to “be present and visible” to all areas has been one of my biggest challenges.
The job of a leader is not to create followers; it is to create other leaders. The best leaders, in my opinion, understand that steering the ship does not necessarily mean that you have to have your own hands on the wheel the whole time; sometimes you are better off relinquishing control so that others can steer. This can be difficult to do but I have found that many people at Inzpire have turned out to be better at steering than me! I believe that leaders should not be scared to empower others to lead, because a leader’s desire should not be to create followers but to create other leaders. “Strange as it sounds, good leaders gain authority by giving it away” (Admiral Stockdale, USN).
Leadership is about creating a shared vision. A truly imaginative shared vision, jointly owned by CEO, employees and shareholders, has tremendous transformative power. Leaders should lay out a compelling vision of the future and then align everyone’s interests along the long road to getting there. At Inzpire, our shared vision is to become the most respected and admired defence company on the planet. These are ambitious and powerful words but we are making considerable progress in UK because we are aligning people with this shared vision through real and generous initiatives such as Employee Share Options and Profit Related Pay. These ensure that, when the shared vision is achieved, all employees will benefit.
Leadership starts with a single question: Why? I believe that organisational leaders should focus on the really big things first - like why does the organisation they are leading exist in the first place? What is its overriding purpose, other than making money? What does it actually do for the world and society? Why should those who work for it care about it?
At Inzpire, our employees know that the purpose of our business is to “create a revolution of honour, integrity and trust in the defence-industrial environment”. We are engaged in a collective mission to give birth to a new sort of defence company that looks, feels, smells and acts entirely differently to what has gone before. This is a powerful unifying purpose and it frames and drives everything that we do.
True leadership is authentic. People are very intuitive; they can sniff out a fraud a mile away. Therefore, leaders should just be themselves and not try to imitate anyone else (however impressive that other person is). I have found that what people want most is authenticity. People will accept you for what you really are so long as you are not trying to be someone that you are not. So my advice to leaders is this: don’t be scared to be different, people like a little kookiness. And, actually, they are far more concerned with knowing what you stand for and where True North points on your moral compass.
Leaders should try to make themselves irrelevant. This seems a very counter-intuitive thing to say but it is absolutely true. Genuine leaders want to not be missed after they are gone. If the organisation fails once they have left then this is not an indication of how good they were in comparison to their unfortunate successor; it is an indication that they have not done their job properly - because leadership is not about the leader looking good, it is about everyone else and their collective long-term futures. It is the leader’s job to ensure that the organisation can survive and prosper without them. And that means they should try and get to a situation where the organisation can function just fine without them.
Leaders use simple clear language. It is important for leaders to communicate clearly and simply and to be able to reduce complex ideas to simple concepts that people can actually understand. Communication is definitely one of the key skills of leadership. Einstein agreed with this philosophy when he said, “everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler”. Coco Chanel referred to “simplicity being the ultimate sophistication”. And General Colin Powell noted that, “Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers”. My rule of thumb is now: simplify, simplify, simplify.
Image courtesy of Margaret Molloy
Leaders build teams. Enlightened leaders understand that you cannot grow a business on your own, no matter how brilliant you think you are. What actually happens is that you grow and build a team of people and they grow the business for you. Therefore, it is very important as a leader to surround yourself with great people, believe in them, support them and get the hell out of their way so they can get on with their jobs. It is also very important to encourage constructive dissent because no one, especially a CEO, should be above challenge. A questioning attitude over blind obedience is a very healthy thing. Within Inzpire, we welcome it.
Leaders give people autonomy, mastery and control in their work. People desperately want these three things at work; they free the human spirit. Good leaders provide them in spadefuls and abhor the permission seeking behaviour so prevalent in many organisations. They push decisions to the lowest possible level and resist the very human temptation to meddle - because they understand that, if everyone is constantly waiting for permission to act, or waiting to be told what to do, then nothing ever gets done. Leaders should make their overall intent clear then allow others the space and freedom to act, within certain mutually agreed parameters, to deliver that intent. The Military calls this Mission Command. I call it common sense.
Leaders are prepared to act with incomplete information. None of us will ever have all the information we would like when making decisions. And making decisions when you don’t have all the facts is hard and sometimes scary. But that is the job of a leader: to be prepared to act with incomplete information. It is why you are in charge! Constantly seeking more data can lead to that old cliché: paralysis by analysis. We have a saying at Inzpire: we don’t need to see the whole staircase, we just need to decide to climb the first steps.
Leaders are prepared to take risks. There is a wise saying: a ship is safe in harbour but that is not what ships are for. Being a leader of a growing business is a bit like that – you often need to expose yourself and your organisation to unforeseen storms. This can be a good thing because whenever did a smooth sea make a skilled sailor?
At Inzpire we believe that organisations that risk nothing, risk everything. What is the point of being in business if you don’t try to achieve something remarkable? History shows that remarkable things are rarely achieved without taking risks. This is what leaders are paid for: taking calculated risks for the benefit of everyone and, if things go wrong, carrying the can themselves. Of course, if things go right, a good leader will always find a way of giving the credit to others.
Leaders make time to learn and grow. Often the best teachers are those who are still learning themselves. So it is with leadership. I read literally dozens of leadership books a year and from each one I learn something new. I also learn constantly from everyone I encounter in day-to-day business both within Inzpire and our customer base. I have learned something useful from every boss I have ever worked for. This culture of learning should also apply to leader’s teams; in fact the development of others is the highest calling of leadership, according to Harvey S Firestone, the American tyre billionaire.
Leaders are enthusiastic and optimistic. I am sometimes accused of being too enthusiastic but my view is that you can’t light a fire with a wet match! If you don’t sound enthusiastic, what chance is there that people will follow you? Don’t be afraid to show your passion, emotion or excitement, if you truly believe it, because, more than anything, a leader is a dealer in hope.
So those are my thoughts, well some of them anyway. It is a very incomplete (and very personal) list and there is lots more I could have written, but time and space are against me. There is also lots more others could write too. Every day I meet amazing leaders, both within Inzpire and the military, who will all have their own views on what I have said here. Some will agree, some will disagree; that is fine. This is a personal view from one person with one set of experiences.
Whatever your views on this article, one thing is certain, people know leadership when they encounter it; you can see and smell it a mile off.
23.04.24
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Stephen Atkinson joins us as a junior cyber security consultant, a career change following over 15 years in the Royal Air Force.
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