The Morality of Looting and Leadership

In a recent book I explored how leadership can be viewed using three very simple layers;

·      Level 1 is Lead Yourself

·      Level 2 is Lead Others

·      Level 3 is Lead Leaders

My idea is simple – that it can be difficult and possibly damaging to seek to lead others when we have not first learnt to lead ourselves. Seeking to lead from a level 2 or 3 layer when level 1 has not been resolved is quite simply a bad choice  and one that generally creates more problems than it resolves.

My argument has been that over the past 20 years – organisations have tended to take the easy option of rolling out plastic leadership programmes. Managers are repeatedly sent on high profile development programmes that offer the plastic tools of leadership but don’t address the deep ethical and moral aspects of the art and practice of leading others. The net result has been a class of manager and leader that might be deemed as plastic. Very pretty and well presented on the outside but lacking substance within. They often know the company values, the corporate speak and the ideal PowerPoint font to use. Deep down the people they lead are following them because of their job title and not their core personal leadership capability.

This concept came to mind vividly last night when watching the unfolding riots sweeping across the UK. I sat with friends collectively going through the whole mix of anger, fear and frustration as we watched a society we loved being torn apart. I too joined in the rapid cry of ‘lets prosecute, watergun, shoot and then finally castrate them’ as I struggled to understand how we could solve such a terrible problem.

But in the cold light of day I started to reflect on the deeper issue that we all face. I wondered just what could drive a teenager to be so callous and destructive to their neighbor. Although we heard many people talk about the need for more ‘robust policing’. I wonder if we need to call for more ‘robust leadership’.

All the evidence is that locking these people up will not fix the problem. We may deprive them of their liberty – but that does not mean they will change their underlying belief that it was OK for them to steal. That is their belief and they will choose to maintain that morality for as long as they choose. Their moral map operates on the assumption that it is ok to take a few bags of crisps as they only costs pennies, to steal large amounts of money as it will be someone else’s problem and that it is ok to threaten someone who is weaker than yourself.

My argument is that we can only change how people behave by changing how they think and feel. So after we have rightly punished the guilty in the short term we then need to ask the deeper and more difficult question of how do we change the long term moral maps being used by the youth of today?

But before we look at changing them – lets think about where they got the maps from in the first place.  Clearly we must look in the first instance at the parental role. But in this note I want to step round that and instead consider the role of the social leader as often these people impact greatly on the values of the citizens in society. We look to our parents for home based moral maps – but the social leader will often set the tone of how we should behave as a collective. In the same way that violence on the football pitch will trigger violence on way home in the streets – what role do society’s leaders have on the moral maps of the youth?

Lets consider just who are the social leaders who planted the moral maps in their heads. Just who are the leaders who nudged the appropriate behaviors to the teenagers who were running wild last night?

Four groups that come to mind are the politicians, police, press and the priests (church). These are the groups who offered a solution to our problems last night on TV. And they are the legal guardians whose maps have been given as correct to our youth. These are the people whose moral maps have been used to steer, guide and nudge the youth over the past twenty years and help them make the key choices in their life. A nice example of this is that David Cameron said just now on the TV that we need a “clearer code of values and standards that people have to live by.”

But lets explore this. What actual moral maps have these supposedly ethical guardians offered our young over the past few years?

·      What moral map do politicians offer when they believe it is acceptable to steal from the public by the use of fraudulent expense claims?

·      What moral map is offered by a press who believe it is acceptable to hack into people’s personal phone calls?

·      What moral map is offered by a police force who feel it is acceptable to take ‘gifts’ from powerful figures in exchange for favors?

·      What moral map is offered by a church that believes it is acceptable to hide the abuse of children in its care?

Maybe the question is what moral right do these plastic leaders have to “Lead Others” when they have not demonstrated the deep capacity to ‘Lead Themselves’. Maybe we need to ask what damage leaders do who set themselves up to guide the maps of others when they have not developed robust and ethical maps of their own. Just maybe we need to have an open debate about the long-term damage being done by short-term leaders!

I look forward to the day when society’s leaders are able and willing to lead others from a platform of personal rather than plastic leadership. I hope to see a day when a politician, policeman, priest or press officer says – “yes I screwed up”. I hope to be alive in a time when making a leadership mistake can be deemed to be a point to learn from and not hide or run from. Until we truly can operate from a personal rather than plastic perspective our leaders will command little real respect from those people who we need to work with before our society becomes really broken.  If all we do as a result of the recent riots is punish the guilty few with some show trials – then the immoral many will continue to maintain their corrupt mental maps. They will behave according to these and what is worse pass these maps onto their children. And so the battered society continues to be broken.

But it gets worse! At the end of the day – what right do I have to rant and curse at the rioters on TV unless I am prepared to “fess up” my sins. Maybe when I can be sure that how I lead others comes from a personal rather than plastic leadership perspective then I have the right to judge others. Until then maybe I need to sit back and reflect on the moral maps that drive my life.

Without this reflection how can I be sure that I am not just another plastic leader?  

Mick Cope

Lead Yourself - Before Leading Others

Chubby Cat rasied an interesting point in a previous blog regarding the role and value of the "Back Office".I think you have touched on a significant and topical point with this. 

"I was talking to an organisation the other day that had split their internal finance team between front-facing 'business partners' and a back-office shared service centre. Result? The back office folk are all demotivated because the business partners are getting all the glory. Perhaps showing the back-office people their true role as the 'Hidden Persuaders' would help them come to terms with their new (and vital) role?

Alan F  "

At the moment the standard government response to a fiscal crisis to “lets slash and burn the back office”. After spending many years working with and for large organizations I can see how waste can grow like Japanese Knotweed as an invasive force that sweeps across the corporate hierarchy.

But in the same way that the knotweed will no be fussy where it invades – corporate waste isn’t just confined to the ‘back office’. Low value people, processes and systems can permeate front, back and middle office functions. I have consulted with may back office functions that are a hotbed of low value operations. But I have also worked with many front line operations that are full of people and processes that should have been confined the waste bin many years ago.  

The standard response to ‘cut the back office’ really cuts no ice if we are serious about improving the operating value of the organization. It is like deciding to improve a football team by halving the number of defenders, by saving the cost of running the Rolling Stones with sacking Charlie Watts, or an F1 team cutting the race costs by only having one engineers in the pit stop to change the wheels. I would go so far as to argue that is often a lazy response motivated by political expediency and has little to do with making a real commercial or operational difference.

If a senior team is serious about improving efficiency within an organization – then it should seek to address the process with professional rigor. To this end a number of pertinent questions need to be answered:

1.     Before looking at the levels of waste within the system – what caused the waste to develop in the first place. What people, processes and policies existed to allow the problem to develop – because if not resolved the old problems will reappear.

2.     Can the team be sure that the process will be driven by an ethical and robust review process and not just turn into a witch-hunt. I have seen too many change programmes where the regular downsizing process is seen as pay-back time.. A chance to get rid of the people who have crossed the path of members in the senior team. In the short term it may clear out the dead wood – but in doing this no matter how the change is sold to the people – they will see it for what it really is and will fight back in subtle and covert ways.

3.     In too many optimization programmes I have seen local downsizing choices made that ignore the consequential impact on the overall systemic model in the organization. One manager may view the paper pushing exercises undertaken by the lifer in the team as a redundant activity that is no longer needed. But it may well be that the apparent low value of the effort is needed on rare occasions when client groups need to quality assure the internal systems before awarding large contracts. Activity costing must be undertaken against end value and not just team or unit value.

4.     Maybe get rid of the phrase ‘Back Office’. It sucks. Everyone should have clear line of sight to how their daily activities contribute towards customer satisfaction and the profitability of the business. The Front and Back office title create an arbitrary, false and tribal based split within a group of people who must be dedicated on delivering customer service. Otherwise we could have upstairs and downsides people, brown eyed and blue eyed people. What’s the point? If anyone cannot explain with clarify and focus how they add directly towards customer satisfaction and group profitability – then maybe that is the place to start asking questions about the value of the work they are performing.

The problem is that the simple act of naming something sets it apart from the context in which it sits. A bowl of apples is a bowl of apples. The moment I highlight that there are five Coxes and one Granny Smiths then I have created an arbitrary form of separation. Note it is my separation not the apples! Applied in am organizational setting the simple act of making one group the front off and the other the back office has immediately set a wall of separation in place that can be hard to overcome?

As an indication of how the tribal separation can lead to tension consider how rock bands manage their income. Royalties from a hit song can feed the writer for the rest of their life. But if the songs are written in the rehearsal studio, over late nights and drinks - how do you decide who has written what? In the early days of Take That there was one songwriter - that's Gary Barlow - who took sole credit. In the newly reformed Take That they decided to operate a collective system where the writing credits will be shared four ways. With Coldplay royalties are evenly split among the members of Coldplay. Chris Martin writes the songs and shoulders the fame, but shares all royalties with his three mates from university.

The next time you hear some grand pronouncement from a big knob official saying they will cut the “Back Office”. Try to look beyond the bland statement and inquire just how the critical choices will be made and determine if they are really trying to create a more efficient operation or is it yet another political game.

True business efficiently gains are achieved by separating the people and process that add value from those that don’t. Arbitrary naming conventions serve little real purpose in this exercise.