The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It was an interesting and informative morning at the ITS Oxford event held by Freeths and Bidwells in Abingdon. There was a great panel discussion (Sharon Parker-Lines, Rob Pilkington, Petrina Carmody and Sharon Frost) around Leadership in scale up businesses and how whilst there are many styles of leadership the ones that are people focussed are statistically more likely to be successful, all held together by Adam Pickford.

It certainly got me thinking and especially about the concept of ownership. Not ownership as in shares or employee-owned businesses but more around teams owning what I call the good, the bad and the ugly.

It was clear that the panel felt trust is a key driver in ensuring success in building teams. In the absence of trust between and within teams it is difficult to get traction and build a fit for purpose culture. The challenge only becomes worse as scale increases as culture tends to evolve and morph and if you have started off on the wrong foot, it is an even harder task to get back on track later. A people strategy is therefore really important. I loved the way what are often referred to as soft values, those built around empathy and inclusion which are often seen as fluffy, were suddenly seen as more important when described as core values. They are core because however hard we try to build around logic, humans are emotional and how you make them feel is equally as important as them delivering on the ubiquitous KPIs and OKRs.

I thought about how trust is so important in avoiding the activation chasm which the vast majority of companies fall foul off at some stage. So, what is this ownership that I referred to?

Well, imagine yourself in a field with a stream running through it. The traditional leadership team are one side and the employees, talent, colleagues, or whatever you prefer to refer to them as, are the other side. When you are small it is easy for both sides to cross the stream and interact effortlessly and if you get it right that will stay the same as scale increases. Sadly, many don’t, and the stream turns to a river and bridges must be built which are now crossed only occasionally creating a new divide in the business. Vision, mission, and strategy suddenly sit on one side of the river and difficulty then exists in getting the strategy activated as buy-in is now significantly less. This tends to get worse unless lots of bridges are built, often turning into a deep ravine which in the end no one crosses and whilst the business may still function it has lost the ability to truly thrive.

This is where ownership is so important. If teams are built to truly own their space and expertise, they are more engaged, and conversations become two-way across the stream and equally on the same side of the stream. Each team is empowered, no one person is hung out to dry when mistakes occur and no one person grabs the glory when success is achieved. Leaders then become more like mentors providing the environment to thrive, allowing the strategy to be executed with clear visibility of goals and opportunities throughout the team. Leaders are the support crew who only go to the front in times of real crisis. Think of Covid, that is when good leaders led from the front, in all other times they lead from behind, enabling the stream to stay a stream which is easily crossed with constant and relevant communications.

Let’s call these strategic communications and it applies to all strategies that a business develops. These communications need to start from day one, when the thinking is in its infancy, and they then need to continue throughout the building of the strategy all the way to implementation. Remember you can impose your ideas on others and reap occasional reward or you can build ideas together and reap frequent reward.

The choice is yours but when you are struggling for traction it is because your feet are wet and stuck in the stream that will soon be a river. So, it's best you get out of it as soon as possible.