The Definition Of Insanity

"Denial....it's not a river in Egypt" Robin Williams.

My uncle Kenneth taught me to drive. He was a wonderfully patient and caring guy. On my first day of learning he told me about the stages I was about to go through in my driving life.

Stage one was unconscious incompetence. I was happily sat in the drivers seat completely unaware of how much I had to learn. After a while I would move on to stage two, I would become consciously incompetent. I would be stalling on my hill starts and be making a complete hash of parallel parking but I would be starting to understand the difficult road ahead. Over time I would move to stage three, conscious competence. I would be a competent driver but still having to really think about things when I got behind the wheel. After a few years and lots of miles I would become unconsciously competent. I would be driving well without really having to think about it.

He went on to explain that there really were no short cuts, but actually the most important move to make was from stage one to stage two. It was absolutely vital to know what you didn't know and to feel the pain of gaining knowledge and experience.

I had a brilliant catch up with a CEO mentor this week. We haven't spoken for a while for different reasons but I was intrigued to see that he had a 4 box model eerily similar to the one my Uncle Kenneth told me of thirty years ago on the wall behind him:

Unconsciously incompetent - in a mess but not aware.

Consciously incompetent - in a mess but realised.

Consciously competent - in a good place but having to work hard at it.

Unconsciously competent - just the way things are done around here.

I was complementing him on a social media post that I had seen from him earlier in the week. He was busy doing several jobs in his business that would be described as "entry level" jobs (I hate the term, but you get the point). We got into a good discussion about the importance of spending at least a day every week working alongside people doing the job.

It turned into a discussion about his efforts to try and make sure that he was never a leader in the "unconscious incompetence" box above. His theory was that if you are as close as you could be to the people at the sharp end, you were very unlikely to be unaware of issues and problems. You were very unlikely to be in denial.

He stressed something that I was already pretty aware of. The more senior you become the less likely people are to tell you the full truth. You have to really work at generating a culture of openness. One big step you can take is to keep your feet on the ground and work alongside those doing the real work.

In his excellent book on the collapse of Lehman Brothers, A colossal failure of common sense, Lawrence Mcdonald describes the world that the Lehman CEO Richard Fuld lived in:

Henry VIII, Ethelred The Unready and the rest would have been right at home up on the 31st floor. If someone could have constructed a decent moat and portcullis around 50th Street and Seventh Avenue they would probably have sent for their crowns and ermine and never gone home. Because Fuld had taken several leaves out of their royal playbook, ruling with absolute authority. There were a tiny group of courtiers who were allowed to speak but they all understood it was best to go heavy on respect or they could easily be on borrowed time.

Even Fuld's daily journey from home to the 31st floor was designed to keep him isolated:

He arrived by limousine every morning at a VIP entrance at the back of the building. His driver called ahead alerting the front desk to his arrival. The front desk attendant then hit a button programming one of the elevators in the rear bank to go straight to the 31st floor. A security guard would then hold the elevator until Fuld's arrival. This was Fuld's private transport to the heavens".

Now, the reasons for Lehman's collapse were many and complex, but to my mind there is little doubt that isolated leadership played a part. Leaders out of touch with the people on the ground that were running the bank was a huge part of the problem.

These days there is often a chasm between the leaders of an organisation and those that are doing the key every day jobs. Leaders have to work really hard to make sure they can relate to those that work for them. Covid has only made this challenge worse. Leaders that cannot relate will, as a minimum, always struggle to make an impact but more likely they will be seen as out of touch.

Thirty years ago my journey from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence lasted less than an hour. I stalled four times at a traffic light during my first lesson. In under an hour I knew how much I had to learn. To this day I keep a picture of my first car in my wallet to remind me of that first lesson.