#217: Leading through Dramatic Change

Dear friends

On 30 June, President Ramaphosa announced South Africa’s new Cabinet. This Wednesday, I posted my Cabinet Reading List.

My coaching practice birthed the idea. A central component of coaching is expanding clients’ possibilities. Carefully curated reading is a powerful tool in that process.

The more you know, the more examples you can access, the more possibilities you can imagine, the better actions you can choose.

Occasionally, my clients ask me to do the same for their executive teams. The request is normally something like this ‘We’re struggling with ABC or we see an opportunity in XYZ, what can you recommend?’

By reading the same material, the executive team develop a shared foundation from which to debate. The act of reading ensures that they arrive more knowledgeable, aware and thoughtful. It makes for a richer, more considered debate.  

They will almost certainly have different interpretations of what they’ve read – why else would you have a team if not to have different viewpoints – but they’re also working from shared concepts and foundations. Without fail, the outcomes are more effective.

This term’s Cabinet is drawn from seven political parties of different histories and ideological persuasions. Many Minsters are new to their roles. Most will inherit senior bureaucrats not appointed by themselves. It seems likely that levels of trust will be low, potential for misunderstanding high.

It all happens in the context of the world’s most unequal society, a recent history of profound corruption, a longer history of the devastation of apartheid and colonialism, operational failure in key service delivery areas and on the tail-end of global recession. It’s a tough ask for any executive team.  

I thought it was an interesting challenge. How would I intentionally work to create effective collaboration? It would require building a common understanding of their context. Then, what tools could they use to be effective?

Although today’s letter is structured around the South African Cabinet, it is about building an effective executive team. It is a process that will build knowledge, connection, possibility and enable action.  The logic I use is applicable to any team. You can swop some of the SA-specific books for ones that reflect your own country’s context.

(I’ve hyperlinked to loads of extra content for those of you who want to design a similar process or know more about the topics).

/Strategy

We would start with Howard French’s Born into Blackness and Justice Malala’s The Plot to Save South Africa. Although I have them as ‘strategy’, French also brings ‘soul’ and Malala ‘self’.

French shows how Africa has been ‘the linchpin of the machine of modernity’, and the widespread ignorance of this fact results from ‘an often deliberate and pervasive neglect and erasure of the role of Africa’. It’s important that our leaders know our importance. Knowing we’re important gives us the courage to dream (Dele Olojede’s FT review is worth reading).

Malala recounts Nelson Mandela and his team’s leadership is the days following the assassination of Chris Hani. It is a powerful exploration of leadership in crisis, of balancing transformative vision and pragmatic action, principle and compromise. This Cabinet will need that. It is also a reminder that brave people died for them to occupy those seats; their work should honour them. (Read more here).

From there, I’d go to Louis Gerstner’s Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? IBM employs about 280,000 people, bigger than many government departments. In the mid-90s, like South Africa today (and then), it was tottering. The pundits said it would fail, like some do of South Africa. Gerstner pulled it off. The subtitle says it all, ‘Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change’. (More on Change Management.)

From there, we go the nuts and bolts of organisational transformation, starting with PWC’s Fit for Growth – an incredible methodology for aligning strategy, expenditure and outcomes.

The South African state operates in a constrained environment, but a still relatively rich one. Billions deployed to the right levers can create transformative results. Fit For Growth shows how to do that. (More here).  For a lighter example, I might ask them to listen to this interview with film-maker Robert Rodriguez who produced the cheapest movie ever released by a Hollywood studio (More here).

As important as financial management is ensuring public sector employees work in an environment that elicits their best. Their energy and commitment are a powerful resource. Also true for every business.

Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson’s The Fearless Organisation guides us how to create organisational trust and cautions what happens if we don’t. She warns, ‘Many managers confuse setting high standards with good management’ – all too easy to do when you’re the ‘new broom’ (More here).

The new Ministers (like any new executive) may be tempted to dictate direction. It will get them nowhere. Trust is a prerequisite for creating engagement, and engagement unlocks excellence. Results come once the team is formed and functioning.

You can understand context, design the best strategy, create the most trust, but if nothing happens or doesn’t happen in the right sequence, well nothing changes.

Surgeon, Atul Gawande has saved thousands of lives by ensuring the implementation of thorough checklists. His book, The Checklist Manifesto, shows how to ‘how to get things right’.

// self

I encourage my clients to ‘visit the future’. Find examples of people or organisations who’ve accomplished versions of what you want to achieve and learn from them.

Both Malala and Gerstner already provide a measure of that – examples of leadership under enormous pressure.

Luli Callinicos’s Beyond the Engeli Mountains and Benjamin Pogrund’s How Can Man Die Better tell the stories of OR Tambo and Robert Sobukwe, leaders of great patience, integrity and humility.

When South Africa’s Ministers feel they may not prevail, Tambo’s example will inspire them to keep going. He did, for nearly thirty years. When hubris or arrogance creeps in, they will remember his gentle firm leadership and correct themselves. When their courage falters, they’ll remember Sobukwe and know they can. He did. Importantly both will remind them South Africa’s freedom, these Ministers positions are a consequence of a Pan-African struggle.

If Tambo and Sobukwe, provide the ‘who we should be’ then Stanford professor Carol Dweck’s Mindset and Jerry Colonna’s Reboot provide the ‘how’.

Dweck rejects the fixed mindsight of right or wrong, showing that excellence results from a growth mindset, of consistently working to improve. She reminds us, “In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.”

The commitment to consistent improvement yields radical results. (More here.)

Jerry Colonna’s Reboot says ‘better humans make better leaders’, which says it all.

///soul

The next five books are to keep our leaders focused on compassion.

It is too easy for leaders to get pulled into technical debate, or to jockey for positional power, forgetting that out there is a ‘customer’ who pays their salary. This is true in all organisations. When debates are going nowhere, the most powerful question is simply to ask, ‘What does this mean for the people we serve?’

Care fuels passion. Passion fuels effort. Effort builds radical results

Ellen Kuzwayo’s Call Me Women and Es’kia Mphahele’s Down Second Avenue remind us what it cost to get here, and where we should never return.  

Olympian Caster Semenya and World Cup winning coach, Rassie Erasmus come from small South African towns. Superficially, they represent different worlds, spiritually, they are kindred spirits, committed to a world in which we create the conditions in which people are their best selves.

Their books, The Race to be Myself and Rassie, remind us that embracing the fullness of this country unlocks incredible power, and that South Africa’s superpower is that we celebrate and protect all our people (and we do the same for the world).

And finally, a wildcard, Still Grazing. Bra Hugh was one the world’s finest jazz musicians, a proud South African, a committed Pan African and a provocateur. Together with Ma Miriam Makeba and countless others, their songs ensured that the world knew South Africa’s plight. They could do so because other countries welcomed them, gave them homes. In times of crisis, there’s a temptation to be insular, but greatness emerges from connection and collaboration. When times are tough, it is easy to forget joy. Bra Hugh reminds us that creativity, beauty, joy are the essence of freedom. A great society loves its artists and welcomes the creators of other countries.

Of course, it is a lot to read thirteen books whilst running a country. To be practical, I’d organise three two-day learning sessions before the end of the year. I’d still ask that reading happen but would provide summaries.

Session One; I’d invite French, Malala, Erasmus and Semenya. Bra Hugh is no longer with us in this dimension, but his sister Barbara Masekela is. I’d include her. In her own right she is a formidable leader, cultural activist and a skilled diplomat. I’d also invite historian, Thula Simpson whose History of South Africa should probably be on my list. The purpose, to set context.  

Session Two; the mechanics of leading change. Still, I’d start the day with Prof Pumla Gobobo-Madikizela, whose work on trauma and violence is an important reminder of context. Then, although Gerstner’s book is great, I’d invite Jim Collins who knows more than anyone else what it takes to build great organisations (and how they fail). With that framework in place, I’d turn to the nuts-and-bolts and have Edmondson, Gawande and add Marcus Buckingham, whose work on strengths-based leadership is truly the best way to unlock performance.

Session Three would be the South Africans who are doing it. This is a long-list and if it were comprehensive, I’d be biased (I’d have to include some of my clients), but I’d definitely include Eskom’s leadership team, and Gift of the Givers founder, Dr. Imtiaz Suliman.

Of course, with all this learning there’s a need for fun and joy. I’d ask Malian kora-player Ballaké Sissoko and South African guitarist Derek Gripper to perform their ‘New African String Theory’ to demonstrate the lived beauty of Pan-Africanism. For the same reason, I’d invite Freshly Ground, Bongo Maffin and Mi Casa. Last, I’d invite William Kentridge, Tyla and Trevor Noah as reminders that South Africans occupy global stages.

I hope you enjoyed this break in format. Please help me by sharing the list. I am curious to know what your companies and communities would add or subtract.

All the best

Karl

PS: You can subscribe to this letter here.