My plan was to make this week’s article an extension of last week’s take the lead and with a captivating title, what are you giving in 2019? But a call from one of the addicted readers of this column changed the plan and I have no choice than to write for my readers.
Joseph was the successful candidate among ten applicants to lead a company in the fast-moving consumer goods industry into its next phase. Having been in the leadership position for five years, Joseph wants to know the immediate expectation of a new leader, especially in his new role and circumstance. He asked me what is expected of him as a new leader.
My choice of word, ‘new leaders’ does not depict people joining the leadership cadre for the first time. You might have been leading for ages, but the business environment keeps changing, the leadership situation is evolving and since we are at the beginning the year, your company’s financial year is new, or your people want to be different in the new year. New could also mean your resolve to adopt a new leadership style and lead your people better.
Whether yours is a change of baton, a new business objective or just a willingness to be better in leading your people, you are expected to achieve what I termed the four elements of leadership effectiveness. These elements are the foundation for the successful achievement of your business performance indicators and they are: adaptation, innovation, change and growth. Therefore, all new and existing leaders are expected to have an excellent scorecard depicting performance growth, positive change in the workplace culture, innovation within the industry and adaptive mindset to changing business and political environment.
Before I explain these elements, you should understand the need to measure team leads or direct reports using the agreed key performance indicators for their teams or functions. But as a leader, focusing on these elements will provide valuable insight into the sustainability of the progress or success recorded by your teams.
To adapt according to the Cambridge dictionary is to change your ideas or behaviour to make them suitable for a new situation. You must adapt to the leadership demand for your new role. The good news is that you have what it takes to adapt. Your experience is the basis for your personal adaptation. A man with experience cannot be at the mercy of a man with an argument. Your experience counts in managing people, process and the products. In practical terms, you must adapt to the culture of the company if you are a new hire. If your role is a C-level role, you might need to adapt to public speaking, leading strategic meetings and people more. You must be on top of the economic and the technical aspect of your business including the value chain. Adaptation has a price and you must be willing to pay the price. The price could be, for example subscribing to the Businessday newspaper to get the most accurate information on the economy. It’s usually best to complement your experience with others who have “been there and done that.” So, surround yourself with people who have the experience to adapt your business process and products to the reality of the time. Importantly, is having a team who can achieve the objectives of all the stakeholders by working with and leading people efficiently.
For any business entity to maintain its market share and gain competitive advantage, innovation in product delivery and customer service is a must. Gone are the days when being the first to the market is all a company need to be the market leader. Leaders who embrace and measure innovations tend to rule the market and make the first mover advantage a slogan. As a leader, you must, therefore, create an innovative and learning atmosphere supported by a well-equipped research and information team. It is part of innovation to know the changing needs of the customers and develop, modify or align your product offerings to meet the evolving needs of your consumers. Where your team is innovative, it is a matter of time for your elephant (products) to dance and dance well in the market square. An innovative leader will gain speed with losing the agility required for his or her company to be relevant in the market place.
Change is the twin brother of innovation. Innovation and change in business are intertwined. They are the essentials in leading people and selling to people. I recently developed and train some sales professionals on the act of customer-focus selling and the need to change in line with the customers’ preferences even with the most innovative products in the market cannot be over-emphasized. As a leader, you are to change what needed to be changed to move the company forward. Leaders who do not embrace change and do things the way they have been done are managers. Managers manage the process whereas leaders lead all the component of the enterprise through people. Just as the football coaches will never want to change a winning team, leaders must implement change only if it is necessary and the benefits outweigh the cost of changing. Before you approve or implement any change, the new process or products or business structure must be because of positive innovations to the organisation. Unlike in the political sphere where a new administration wants to erase the traces of the preceding one, business change and innovations are not white elephant projects meant to meet the psychological egoism of the leaders, rather they must advance people, process, products, customers and all the stakeholders of the enterprise.
There is no growth without the elements of adaptation, innovation and change. The essence of appointing a leader to lead any organisation or institution is for growth. Growth could be in quantitative terms like growth in sales revenue, market share and penetration, segment productivity or in qualitative terms like customer preference and loyalty, employee engagement and satisfaction and many more. A leader with growth at the end of 2019 will face his shareholders to explain his or her activities in absolute terms. Thus, he or she will say, we increase the profit before tax by N2billion. Where there is no growth, the report is likely to be rendered in a relative terms e.g our loss reduced by 2% instead of by N1.5billion.
Therefore, for both new and old leaders to achieve results, they must focus of how good their teams are adapting to the business and people’s emotional topography, the quantity and level of successful innovative ideas, the agility to change and collective growth recorded in all or most of the key success indicators for the industry.
Whereas the four elements of leadership I have discussed are not a substitute for the job key performance indicators at the operational level, leaders must, however, focus and reward these attributes among their direct reports and teams. The effectiveness of the leaders in achieving his or her agreed deliverable is anchored on the level of adaptability, innovation, change and growth exuded by the team under his or her purview..
Babs Olugbemi
Babs Olugbemi FCCA, the Chief Responsibility Officer at Mentoras Leadership Limited and Founder, the Positive Growth Africa. He can be reached on [email protected] or 08025489396.
