Strategic Leadership

John Adair: Yes, I think it's extremely important to know what this particular word means because, as you said in your introduction, it's overused a lot. In fact strategy comes from two Greek works. The first one, stratos, means a large body of people, say an army in camp, and the second part of the word, the egy bit at the end comes from the Greek word for leader or leadership. They pronounced it with an 'h' and the only English word we get from it is hegemony, the leadership of nations. So the real meaning of strategy in Greek is the leadership of a large body of people and it's that misunderstanding which I think has confused many people who are chief executives today; they don't actually see what their role is.

Rachel Salaman: Really? Because I would have thought that most chief executives do think of themselves as leading a large body of people. Is that not the case in your experience?

John Adair: Well I think they tend to think often their key role is to provide strategy in the narrow sense of strategic plans. I think they don't often have a comprehensive view as the ancient Greeks did of what the role of a strategic leader was. The great Greek thinker in this field was a student of Socrates called Xenophon who was also by the age of 26 a very famous general and it was his books setting out the whole range of the role of a strategic leader that were the books read by Alexander The Great and Caesar and Cicero and others. So we do have a tradition that thought about the role of a strategic leader but we've rather lost that in modern times.

Rachel Salaman: So how does thinking about strategy in this way help business leaders to do their job better?

John Adair: Well the great Peter Drucker told me once when I told him I was going to write a book on strategic leadership the first thing to say is ask your readers to answer the question what am I being paid for, what is the role, what's the job and I think we've now made a lot of progress. We've made an enormous breakthrough in the field of leadership in the last 30, 40 years. What we've discovered is the generic role of the leader. What is the expectations of a leader in any organizational field and at any level and it comes down to the famous three overlapping circles, achieving the task, building and maintaining the team and developing and motivating individuals and these are three overlapping interactive areas and leadership really exists on three levels.

There's the team leadership level where you're leading 10 or 12 people, the operational leadership level where you're leading a significant part of the business with more than one team leader reporting to you and the strategic leadership level which is the leadership of the whole organization and the heresy has been all you want is a great person at the top in the strategic leadership role. We've known for many years that's nonsense. What you need to have is strength, excellence, at all three levels of leadership and all three levels need to work together as a team. Now once we had identified that core role of a leader it was easy to develop leadership programs for team leaders but it's only in the last five or six years that we've extended the model, so to speak, to the strategic level and that gives us seven key functions that make up the role of the strategic leader and it is those that people judge our leaders by. They're the kind of criteria for success for a strategic leader.

Rachel Salaman: Your book talks in detail about those seven functions.

John Adair: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about the first one now which is giving direction. Now you say that general direction is governed by purpose, values and vision.

John Adair: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: How do you define purpose here? You have quite a specific definition don't you?

John Adair: Yes, I think purpose is in a way the Cinderella of the three sisters if I could put it like that. There's been an awful lot of verbiage about vision, a lot of it very empty and vacuous, but there is a place in the role for vision and of course the same can be said for values but purpose is the neglected one and purpose really answers the question why. Why are we doing this in this way and sometimes why are we doing it at all. Why is it worthwhile, why does it have value, and I think the natural instinct of true leaders is always explicitly or implicitly to answer the question why. They don't just tell people what to do, they're not commanders or managers in that sense. They also convey to people why, why it's important, why it's worthwhile.

Rachel Salaman: And you say that purpose, the why, leads to aims which then leads to objectives and that those three things sometimes get confused.

John Adair: Yes, well to be honest it's understandable they're confused because the English language isn't strong on making distinctions between these various words so in a way it's only thinkers like me who are imposing a framework on it for the sake of clarity but I think if you're a strategic leader you do need to be able to think up and down the Jacob's ladder from the general almost abstract concepts and ideas at the level of purpose, what you exist for, right down to the concrete definite daily steps and you can do that by breaking the purpose down into aims which are directional but open ended and objectives which are much more specific and limited and definite and then each objective into steps. Coming down the ladder you're answering the question how, how are we going to achieve our purpose, how are we going to achieve our aims, how are we going to achieve our objectives and going up the ladder you're answering the question why. Why are we doing this, in order to do that, why are we doing that, in order to do that, and then linking it up eventually to the overall purpose of the organization.

So that kind of joined up thinking is very rare actually, it's quite difficult to do. I'm making it sound easy but it's not all that easy and one of the things that have gone wrong is that people have just picked out elements of that and made them into techniques like setting targets in the NHS and that sort of thing without the framework surrounding it which gives it meaning and significance and relates it to the whole enterprise and that's failures of leadership.

Rachel Salaman: Well if we can talk briefly about the other two of the sisters as you call them which are included in General Direction, the second one being values. What are your thoughts there especially on a practical level for a leader?

John Adair: Yes, well I think the best description of values is that they're stars that you steer by. They're a constellation or a set of stars that give you direction. You never reach a star but it provides you with direction. I think a particularly important sense of values that we use is in the idea of moral principles and leadership does involve integrity and that does entail being loyal to that constellational set of values which will include some moral values that should be guiding the organization and where you depart company from great values like truth then you lose trust as we've seen over the Iraq war and other things. So therefore leaders have to be extremely careful that they adhere to those core values particularly the great ones of truth and goodness and so on. If you get that wrong you're in trouble as a leader and the reason why you're in trouble is because of the nature of people. We are good and we are truthful and we are rational, if you ignore that you are in danger of running the ship aground as Enron did for example.

Rachel Salaman: Well I suppose the key is you have to believe that people are truthful and good don't you because some people just believe that people are the opposite.

John Adair: Yes, that's true, and I think you've put your finger on one very, very key aspect about leadership and that is that leaders tend to have a high view of human nature. They tend to operate on the principle of trusting people until they're proved to be untrustworthy. They don't operate on the principle of not trusting them until they prove to be trustworthy. So I think the natural assumption of leaders is that people are rational, they are good, they are creative and all that leaders have to do is release that and channel it. Now whether you believe that philosophically or not is another matter but experience shows that that is a pretty productive way of going about. In fact in your organization 97 people out of 100 will respond to you positively if you take that approach, 3 won't, but don't punish the 97 because of the 3.

Rachel Salaman: Well looking at vision now which, as you mentioned earlier, is overused often what's your definition of vision in this context and how does it relate to and help leadership?

John Adair: Well I think in this context it should be used to be a kind of mental picture or concept or construct of what the organization is going to look like in, say, three to five years time. Its being able to create tomorrow's organization in your mind while you're running today's and I think the ability to see not just what's coming next but what's coming next after next and conceiving the kind of changes that need to happen, being able to present that picture which is bound to be quite creative because none of us really know the future is I think part of the role of a strategic leader. It's not always essential that you should do that, in some set ups that's not required. Usually leaders have an element of that kind of creative thinking about them. They want to create a desirable change and not be responsive to the changes which the environment is placing on the organization.

Rachel Salaman: Well all those things are part of giving direction in your seven functions. The second function that you discuss in your book is strategic thinking and planning. What are your key points here?

John Adair: Leadership, really the word "lead" in Anglo Saxon means to go out in front of people on the journey, it's a journey word, and if your organization isn't on a journey don't bother with leadership just settle for management. So the principle idea of direction is absolutely fundamental to leaders, that's what they're there for, to show them a way, to encourage people to go on that journey but also they have to provide a little more than that. They have to come up with some kind of specific directions one should be going in and also a plan. Now the strategic thinking bit is really about

three things. It's about what is urgent, it's about the longer term rather than the short term and strategy always involves more than one element, it's a holistic idea.

There are a number of things that have to work together and that's the prime responsibility of the strategic leader to make sure that kind of thinking is happening. The difference between that and strategic planning is that when you move from that to getting consent and agreement among your top team and buy-in to make it happen you have to use other leadership skills to get that degree of necessary consensus behind your plan and then you've got the next function pretty well fulfilled.

You've got a coherent and clear strategic thinking based on the realities of the situation and the capabilities of the organization and you've also got a plan which your key leaders in your top team are committed to and are going to make happen then we move onto the next function after that.

Rachel Salaman: Yes and the third function is indeed making it happen. What do leaders tend to get wrong in this area from your experience?

John Adair: Well they tend to get wrong very often the fact that they don't have this particular function on their screen at all. They think it's the responsibility of other people who they may call managers further down the organization. They may be confused by the fact that if they make a decision that that means something happens whereas you can make a decision and nothing can happen. They don't grasp the fact that they are chief executives and executives are people that make things happen. So I think the attention and time they take to follow up, to progress checking, to make sure they have systems to know the thing is coming into being as they can see are very often short and of course in political life non existent because politicians move on to the next initiative and they don't really mind whether the money was wasted or not or what happened. They don't have a reviewing or evaluating function which is a key core leadership function at all levels, that you have to evaluate and review, so I think the weakest of the strategic leadership functions is making it happen.

Rachel Salaman: And it's interesting that you talk about the importance for the strategic leader to, as you say, set the drum beat from the top. What are the actions that will actually create that drum beat and motivate the effective executive team?

John Adair: I should explain perhaps that there's been a great deal of debate and confusion about the term "leadership" and oddly enough the confusion has come about not because of the first part of the word, the leader bit, because as I mentioned earlier that's pretty clear what that means. The confusion has come from the last bit, the ship bit at the end, which in English has two meaning. One meaning of it means a role or an office or a position so we talk about the leadership of the trade unions for example and we mean the people who are at the head of it but the second meaning of the word ship is skill or ability or competence and so often people get those two confused as to whether they're talking about people who are occupying a role or people who have the ability or the skill. Now the key message for the world today is that people that occupy roles or positions of leadership should have the ability to do it. They should have the skill otherwise democracy doesn't work and the three elements that give you that ability or capability to fulfill the role and meet the expectations of the people are first and foremost your qualities as a leader which include enthusiasm, integrity, toughness and demandingness and fairness, warmth and humanity and, last but not least, humility. Those are the kind of qualities that work throughout the world for people that occupy leadership roles.

The second level of competence and capability comes from your knowledge, your professional knowledge, your experience in the field and that is what helps to give you authority and thirdly there's your skills and abilities in providing the functions that I've been describing. So it's qualities, knowledge and skill that make up the leader. The ability to give the drum beat, as you mention, comes from those elements which above all is your example at that level. You need to provide an example to people not just of hard work and that kind of thing but in the kind of attitudes and values and spirit that you want to have in your organization. You have to create what Field Marshal Montgomery once told me he used to call the atmosphere in the organization.

Rachel Salaman: Well let's move onto the fourth function that you mention in your book which is relating the parts to the whole.

John Adair: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: So what are your key points here?

John Adair: I think the central issue in all organizations is the relation of the parts to the whole. Do you take the decisions at the center or do you de-centralize to the parts? Do you give more autonomy to the parts or do you keep control in your own hands, the balance between order and freedom, and there isn't a right answer to this. It's a matter of judgment and the circumstances are changing all the time. I think the wise leader is always trying to get that balance right between what should be done by the whole organization and so you get the economies of size and so on and what should be delegated or pushed down so that you get the freedom and the initiative and the creativity of people who are interacting with the customer and so on so that's what that one's all about.

Rachel Salaman: The fifth function of strategic leadership is building partnerships. Now, partnerships with whom and how do you do it?

John Adair: I think partnerships and alliances are essential. It's very, very difficult in today's complex and growing international world to achieve great things without partnerships and we've obviously got a number of cases where partnerships and alliances have been extremely productive but they are tricky things to operate and to run and they do actually require considerable levels of leadership ability which not all strategic leaders have because often it's the ability to form relations of trust with people who are from different countries and technologies even. This calls for time and attention and the three circle model being clear about the common task applies here of course centrally.

You've got to really sit down with your partners and allies with that model in front of you and say what is our common task, what can we do together that we can't do apart, and then you work from that as to how we can work together as a team and then for the third circle how can each individual, each partner, contribute their maximum to the common effort and I think that's the best way to do it. I wouldn't though just narrow that idea of partnerships and alliances down to what you would call business partners. I think a wise strategic leader sees partnerships with political society, with the community, with stakeholders and investors, with banks and with government, it's a wider frame of reference. You see your organization as a fish swimming in the sea and you don't just spend all your life inside the egg, you need to spend 50 percent of your time outside the egg making sure that your organization is swimming in that sea as effectively as it can.

Rachel Salaman: Let's talk about the sixth function of strategic leadership now which is releasing the corporate spirit. Now in your book you talk about "asabiya" which is a concept that you explain in some detail. Can you tell us about that?

John Adair: Yes, in fact I've recently written a book on the leadership of Muhammad and I came across this concept while I was doing that and it was introduced by an Arab scholar in the year 1400 called Ibn Khaldun who was remarkable, one of these great Islamic scholars, and who's really the father of sociology and social psychology because he, instead of focusing exclusively on leadership focused on what he called "asabiya," this idea of group feeling or spirit or will or power present in groups and almost the kind of history of how these powers in groups rise and fall and leadership he thought was very much about releasing and directing that power within groups and that's of course given us our whole notion of social psychology today that groups are more than the sum of their parts.

I think what leaders sense is that present in large bodies of people there are enormous resources of energy, power, creativity, goodness and so on and it's their privilege to release that and to focus it and to make it productive and I think one of the greatest things ever written or said about leadership was actually said by John Buchan when he gave a lecture at St. Andrew's University in 1930 on leadership. He said in that lecture the task of leadership is not to put greatness into people but to illicit for the greatness is there already and I think an effective leader at strategic level is going to seek out that greatness in the organization and release it because we have great people working in the NHS. We have great people in the police, we have great soldiers, the issue always is do they have great leaders.

Rachel Salaman: And that takes us on nicely to the seventh and last function of strategic leadership which is developing today's and tomorrow's leaders. So how does a leader do this?

John Adair: Well of course the first thing that comes to mind is always by example but I think beyond that in the conditions of today's world I think the best strategic leaders will take on a personal responsibility for the selection and development of today's and tomorrow's leaders. If it's a very large organization and they can't do that at team leadership level or even operational leadership level then they're certainly going to be very involved in the selection and development of their top leadership group and they should have a care for seeing that their organization has a strategy for growing and developing its leaders because thanks to the breakthrough I mentioned into our knowledge of the generic role of leadership we are now able to effectively develop people in leadership roles but that knowledge, that body of knowledge, is not really being applied particularly in the United Kingdom and the leadership industry is awash with theories and methods which are more or less complete rubbish which people buy. So I think it's a challenge for a strategic leader to really think out what are the best ways of going about developing their leaders and the best organizations get it more right than the other ones. There is a strong connection between the organizations that have reasonably effective leadership development strategies and their results, there's a strong correlation. Those that don't bother with developing and growing leaders, don't even attempt the question, tend to be the less well performing organizations. I think that underlies the fact that leadership isn't just a soft skill, it's not an optional extra. The Army, Navy and Air Force don't regard leadership development as an optional extra, it's fundamental, because leadership has a critical relevance to their performance in the field and that is true now of every organization. Leadership does matter so getting that strategy for growing and developing leaders in place and working at a reasonably cost effective way I think it should be on the agenda of any self respecting chief executive.

Rachel Salaman: Well all of these ideas could be described as top down leadership, they're mostly relevant to top down leadership.

John Adair: Yes, sure.

Rachel Salaman: How does that approach work with younger workers, what they call Generation Y workers, who are more used to a network based approach to work and life in general?

John Adair: Yes, well, to be honest I've been saying what I've just been saying to you for two or three decades and I can't pretend I can give you any success stories. If you asked me what organizations are really putting into practice what you've said, what chief executives are doing, I would be pushed to answer you beyond the military field and therefore we have to have a Plan B and I think the Plan B now is to approach and talk directly to the young people, the leaders of tomorrow. Half the world's population is 25 or under so there is a problem and that is why both in my work in the United Nations and also as a writer and speaker I now focus almost entirely on addressing directly the young leaders of tomorrow. I've in a sense written off today's chief executives, they're yesterday's leaders, and I think the leaders of tomorrow are very responsive to the kind of things I've been saying in this interview.

Rachel Salaman: Why is that do you think, is it just that it rings true. These things have been working, as you say, in certain organizations like the military going back to ancient times. So when young leaders hear all these ideas put clearly in a convincing order they respond to it on some kind of primeval level almost?

John Adair: Yes, yes, I think it is primeval because the world does now have a body of knowledge about leadership which is drawn from three sources, the western tradition going back to Socrates and Xenophon then there's the eastern tradition which goes back to Confucius, Socrates? contemporary, who was a great teacher of leadership extremely influential still today in China on leadership and the third great tradition is tribal which of course which is nearer to the surface in some areas of the world. We've all been tribal at some stage or other and the tribal expectations of what a good chief or leader should be are in our DNA and that's why there is a kind of universal expectation of what a good leader is and if you can put that into words and communicate it to young people I think it's a very powerful message and there's no doubt that throughout the world young leaders are looking for a better deal. They're looking for a better level of leadership and the wise people today will respond to that but the organizations that live in yesterday are not responsive and they will not attract the best people so I'm tending to think on a global level now that those are the kind of challenges that we have.

Rachel Salaman: John Adair, many thanks for joining us.

John Adair: Thank you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of John's book again is "Strategic Leadership, How To Think And Plan Strategically And Provide Direction." You can find out more about him at his website, www.JohnAdair.co.uk. There's more about his work at www.Adair-International.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.