Will ‘women in leadership’ ever be just ‘leadership’?

Female leadership enjoyed significant progress over the past decade. Surprisingly, despite more women currently occupying places on the boards of Australia’s largest companies, they remain woefully underrepresented. More than 100 ASX 300 companies still lack female board representation. Overall, less than 30% of board directors for ASX 200 companies are female.

At the C-suite level, the story is much the same. Consider: only 16% of CEOs in Australian companies are female and 70% of organisations have exclusively male senior management teams.

While the needle has moved, a lot must change before we see a 50-50 gender split at the top levels of leadership.

 

The cost of falling behind

Although the case for female leadership is so compelling, change is slow. One possible reason is that many women in leadership roles don’t hold roles that allow them to progress directly to the CEO position. Even though females are moving up the ladder, they climb a professional path that merely leads to higher ranking support roles.

The disadvantage of slow progress? Businesses miss out on the benefits of female leadership. For instance, Gallup research found that female managers outperform their male counterparts in engaging their employees. Additionally, companies with leadership teams in the top quartile of gender diversity had a 21% likelihood of enjoying above-average profitability.

Plus, a gender diverse leadership team can deliver results beyond revenue:

  • Be an employer of choice. In WGEA’s Business Case for Gender Equality, they reported that employers with policies and practices that support gender equality are better at attracting top talent. It also found employees are more likely to remain with employers who are proactive when it comes to diversity.
  • Create a stronger brand. Promoting gender diversity in leadership creates an inclusive, positive and engaging workplace. Without being weighed down by internal issues that ultimately affect productivity and performance, brands become strong.
  • Foster an innovation culture. Women representation in senior management also improves a company’s innovation efforts.

It begs the question, when will organisations realise the real cost of falling behind? More importantly, what can we do to create a business environment where female leadership is the norm?

 

Programs with purpose

If the solution rests on better development programs, then these must set high-potential women on a clear path towards top-level positions. Women will fare better amid gender-bias by developing their expertise and skills to make a practical difference in the workplace. They also need confidence in their development program of choice.

As the only professional development program of its kind in the region, Chartered Manager (CMgr) provides a pathway to leadership excellence. It gives aspiring female leaders the skills to stand out. It also helps current leaders to become better managers – equipped to respond to the changing business landscape.

 

Time for a perspective change

To shift the gender bias in leadership takes more than development. It requires a perspective change. To what extent? And does it rest solely on the cooperation of male leaders? That’s up for debate on March 8th at IML’s annual International Women’s Day event. We’ll explore if ‘her aspiration needs his cooperation’.

Purchase tickets now at managersandleaders.com.au/iwd or contact events@managersandleaders.com.au.

Sources:

AICD: Board diversity statistics

Gallup: ‘Female Bosses Are More Engaging Than Male Bosses’

WGEA: The Business Case for Gender Equality

The hidden value in developing older workers

There’s an increase in the rate of employment for older workers in developed nations. With workers staying employed for longer and workplace technology, thinking and practices ever-changing, is it time to invest in the professional development of your older workforce?

A recent study of OECD countries found that the employment rate for workers aged between 55-64 increased by 6% in Australia and 4% in New Zealand in less than a decade. Across the board, OECD countries are seeing more older workers remaining employed well past their 50s and 60s.

Given the shift we are experiencing in Australia and New Zealand, what are the benefits of addressing the development gap experienced by older workers?

 

Increased employee retention

When technology giant AT&T decided to upgrade company systems to keep up with the digital age, they took an inclusive approach. Instead of hiring new people who were familiar with new technologies, they provided training for all 280,000 employees. The result? They retained their loyal employees whose average tenure lasts up to 12 years.

Despite the common belief, older workers can and are willing to learn new skills. The key is to provide targeted training.

When you help your workforce to adapt to new technologies, you give them a good incentive to stay on the job. Not only does this mean retaining them, but also the knowledge, skills and understanding older employees have about your organisation.

 

Enriched work roles

In the context of our ageing society, older workers make significant contributions. Their active participation in the workplace means they share valuable benefits including:

  • Loyalty to the business
  • Commitment to organisational purpose
  • Well-established network of contacts

Supporting the development of older workers opens other avenues for them within the workforce. If they are enabled to move, not just upwards but also laterally, it creates employees with richer experiences.

Leaders should also explore whether developing older workers enables them to hold multi-faceted roles. It’s important not to restrict them to tasks that they have already mastered but not shock them into a completely different job.

 

Decreased economic pressure

The Australian Human Rights Commission reports that just a 3% increase in workforce participation for workers aged over 55 would boost GDP by up to $33 billion. The reduced pressure on the government to support our ageing population is vital for economic stability.

At an organisational level, developing older workers with the aim of keeping them active in the workforce, also adds up financially. Higher retention means less hiring costs and maintaining highly productive, and committed employees all positively impact the bottom line.

Why leaders need to develop mindfulness

A less obvious threat within organisations is the that of a psychologically unhealthy workplace. When colleagues, or worse managers, add mental and emotional fatigue to an employee’s work day, it’s enough to drive down productivity if not drive out workers.

It’s not an isolated case either. In Australia alone, the government pays approximately $543 million in workers’ compensation for work-related mental health conditions.

While it’s true that managing processes matters in leadership, managing people is even more crucial. Likewise, creating a mentally-safe workplace starts with having strong policies and processes in place, but ultimately it is defined by the behaviours of the people within.

That’s where mindfulness can play a crucial role.

 

Mindful leadership

Mindful leadership based on being attentive to the present moment and recognising personal feelings and emotions while keeping them under control, particularly during stressful times. It requires an individual’s awareness and understanding its impact on others.

Researchers identified the benefits of mindful leadership and summed it up into three meta-capacities:

  • Metacognition. This is the ability to observe what you are thinking, feeling, and sensing during critical times. It is like removing yourself from an intense situation to actually see what’s going on. It’s an effective means of escaping the dangers of operating on autopilot.
  • Allowing. This refers to the ability to let situations be. It isn’t about weakness or passiveness. Rather, it’s about dealing with experiences with openness and kindness to yourself and others. It links firmly with not letting our criticism of ourselves and others crush our ability to observe what is really happening.
  • Curiosity. This means taking an interest in what occurs within our inner and outer environments. It drives a strong impetus for bringing our awareness into the present moment and staying with it.

 

Emotional intelligence and mindfulness

There are three parts to emotional intelligence according to the man who coined the term back in 1995, Daniel Goleman. The first involves self-awareness, and this is where mindfulness fits in. By monitoring what’s happening within your mind, you can handle it better. This leads to the second part of emotional intelligence, self-management which in turn allows you to manage stressful situations and display a positive attitude despite upsets. The third part is the presence of others and how the other two components combine to determine the quality of our relationships with those around us.

 

Developing mindfulness

A note of caution: this is not a quick fix. Attending one mindfulness session doesn’t make a mindful leader. The key to developing this ability is practice. Take just a few minutes each day to focus on your thoughts and gradually integrate it into your daily tasks.

Essential elements of successful leadership development

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, it’s essential for leaders to keep the pace. There’s now a need for new skills and knowledge to assist leaders in navigating the ever-changing landscape. So, are leadership development programs the key to staying relevant?

The obvious answer might be ‘yes’. However, according to Deloitte’s latest Global Human Capital Trends survey, current learning and development programs are struggling when it comes to equipping today’s professionals with skills for the future.

It’s vital then that forward-thinking managers and leaders carefully inspect the components of a program before investing their time and efforts. After all, the modern business environment is all about agility – wasting time on the wrong program can be costly.

If you’re looking for the right development program, here are three essential ingredients:

Development to lead yourself

Before any progress can happen, leaders must first be prepared to accept that they need it. In an environment of fast-paced change, leaders can’t afford to get trapped in what is called ‘functional stupidity’ or the compliance with the established norms without questioning if it is still the right thing to do.

Good leadership development programs must challenge a leader to shift their thinking, venture out of their comfort zone and learn to improve themselves before they can help others.

Development to lead others

Part of the shift leaders experience in today’s business environment is the focus on soft-skills. As workers in this digital age become accustomed to receiving information instantly and dynamically, they start to form the same expectation when it comes to workplace communications.

Leading others is now much more than merely handing out instructions, it’s about inspiring action. Gaining the skills to inspire, motivate communicate and collaborate is critical for a good leadership development program.

Development to lead the organisation

Finally, development must address an organisational goal to be effective. The downfall of many programs is that they rest heavily on theories and lack practical application.

The best leadership development programs are ones that equip participants to respond to situations already in progress in the workplace. This helps the learnings really stick, as the results will also build trust in the development received.

Furthermore, programs customised to organisational needs, lead to a good pay off in your leadership development investment. That’s because it builds loyalty and reduces the risk that you have developed a leader who leaves the company straight away.

Are we too busy to innovate?

Managers and Leaders can make or break an organisation’s efforts to generate fresh ideas and evolve.

Innovation and creative thinking are common management buzz words that managers and leaders hear every day. To some, these words are frightening – the fear of the unknown – and yet to others these same words are embraced as opportunity. Innovation is defined as the ‘successful exploitation of ideas’ as opposed to creative thinking which is usually required at the front end of the innovation process.

Research from organisations around the world has shown that the single most important factor in the success of innovation and developing creative initiatives is having a leader and a team with the ability and passion to turn ideas into business reality.  Additionally, a leader must provide focus and ensure their people have a clear understanding of exactly what kind of innovation the business requires.

All too often innovation is viewed as ground breaking technological advances such as robots being responsible for putting half the Australian workforce out of a job – and of course these types of statements dominate media headlines. This kind of innovation scares people – as many commentators identified during the 2016 federal election campaign when former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull kept reminding the voters about innovation and economic change (to his detriment).

Rather, innovation should be focused on small, incremental changes to products, processes, services and customer experiences that assist organisations to become more efficient, productive and competitive. Creative thinking is helpful during this process to identify new ideas.

Surprisingly, among today’s managers and leaders the most common competency area of weakness resides in the development of creative and innovative thinking.  This ‘blind spot’ area has been identified by the IML 360 assessment
tool and is diagnosed in hundreds of
IML Corporate Member organisations around Australia.

Managers play a crucial role in sparking and encouraging innovation and creative thinking and their support and openness to ideas is vitally important. Research from NESTA in the UK found that 40 per cent of organisational innovation comes from the role of leaders in ‘modelling behaviours that encourage innovation’. Another 30 per cent is delivered by setting up the right team and having a talent pool motivated by innovation and incentivised to improve business operations.

It’s a well-known fact that the development of the iPod was a team effort; inspired and spearheaded by Apple CEO Steve Jobs and created and assembled by a team of engineers and designers – through hundreds of iterations and modifications. All good ideas are born flawed.

Barriers to innovation can usually be characterised into three distinct categories – risk aversion and fear of failure by leaders, hierarchical structure across staff levels, and lack of time to reflect on business processes. Notably, public sector managers highlight the first two categories as their biggest barriers to overcome (62%) while private sector managers suggest the third category is the biggest factor for reducing innovative outcomes (52%).

Of course, there’s always a lot of talk from government, CEOs and executive teams about the need for creative thinking and the requirement to cultivate a culture of innovation – but more often than not it simply doesn’t translate into action on the ground. Creating a culture where people feel safe to experiment with new concepts, are willing to share opinions and are empowered to frame new ideas is wonderful to preach from the ivory tower, but it must be followed up with action to eliminate barriers.

Further assessment results from IML’s small-to-medium sized Corporate Members suggest that insufficient or ‘distracted’ talent remains a major challenge to cultivate such cultures. This was confirmed by an interesting observation made from one organisation. A senior leader noted that employees in her organisation no longer have or make the time to reflect on improving business processes. Constant distractions such as social media, a 24-hour news cycle, access to everything on our phones and PCs and other ‘lifestyle’ commitments mean that all too often we no longer have the time to reflect and truly think about how processes can be improved. In other words, life is simply too busy to think creatively and innovate.

So, what are we to do as managers and leaders? For a team to innovate, a manager needs to ensure they have a number of team members who are innovators.

To identify the innovators inside a team, managers and leaders should look to identify people with three key characteristics:

  1. People who are open to ideas;
  2. Those who show problem-solving skills; and
  3. Employees who are highly motivated and use initiative.

Some of these skills can be taught through training, professional development and experience. Much of it is also achieved by the organisation’s leadership capacity and culture.

Research suggests leaders should adopt a transformational leadership style that is more inspiring and collaborative to generate a shared vision among employees. In a practical sense, many of the barriers to innovation and creative thinking are expressed through the limitations of a hierarchical organisation structure.

By Sam Bell FIML

IML’s general manager – corporate services and research

The Info: Must read

Derek Parker reviews the latest essential reading for Managers and Leaders 

Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness

By Rick Hanson

(Penguin, $33)

A critical area of study that has emerged in the past few years is the intersection of thinking – how you experience things and make sense of them – with neuroscience – the study of the brain as a physical organ. Rick Hanson, an American psychologist, was one of the first to examine this subject with his 2013 bestseller, Hardwiring Happiness. In Resilient he takes the theme further, looking at how feelings of wellbeing can be enhanced and strengthened as a buttress against adversity.

He points to scans of brain activity that show there is a natural ‘negativity bias’. This is an evolutionary hangover from the time when awareness of threats and danger were necessary survival tools but these days the effect is to create undue sensitivity to the stresses of everyday life: rushing about, being continually interrupted, having to jump between tasks, feeling pressured and being overloaded by information. The culture of the 21st century is continually trying to grab our attention with one thing or another, forcing us to move on from positive experiences before they can make their way into our consciousness. The result is anxiety, uncertainty, the sense that nothing is really within our control.

The counter to this, says Hanson, is to grow resilient resources within ourselves, by learning methods to profit from our positive experiences. This can change the physical structure of the brain, in the same way that a muscle is strengthened by conscious training. There are particular chemical responses in the brain that flag an experience as an important one, and new neural pathways to support it are formed.

The crucial step is to become acutely aware of positive experiences. Stretch out the good feeling, Hanson suggests, even if it is only by 20 seconds. This embeds it in our memory. Also, focus on why it feels good and how it connects with other experiences. Try to see what makes it unusual, meaningful, and personally relevant.

He emphasises that there is no definitive ‘good’ experience. It might be walking in a field, or enjoying a game of football, or playing with your children. It might be accomplishing some small task that leaves you quietly satisfied. It is likely to be different for everyone: the point is to understand it, focus on it, and draw upon it. With a conscious effort, moments that would otherwise slip away can become part of a stock of wellbeing, and help to build mindfulness. Over time, the hardware of our minds becomes more resilient and more capable of dealing with challenges, whether personal or professional.

From his neuroscience research and his work as a therapist, Hanson draws up a list of 12 “fundamental inner strengths” that can help to deal with problems and setbacks. Each of these – compassion, mindfulness, learning, grit, gratitude, confidence, calm, motivation, intimacy, courage, aspiration and generosity – is carefully unpacked by Hanson, but he also notes that various individuals might look to other qualities. The principle of training the brain – the technical term is positive neuroplasticity – remains the same.

The point is not to ignore negative experiences and emotions but to avoid being overwhelmed by them. A core of inner strength has the benefit of placing things in context. This means that small stresses and aggravations do not accumulate into large ones. Equally, it is a means to move past old grievances. Of course, in any life there will be serious problems – a major illness, the loss of a close family member – but a sense of resilience can help to deal with them in an appropriate way.

Hanson does not claim to have invented this way of thinking, only to have taken existing methods and organised them into a therapeutic program as well as a set of tools for everyday life. It is not easy, he says, as it means putting aside old patterns of thought and deliberately creating new ones. The good news is that it gets easier as you go along, and eventually becomes nearly automatic.

The benefits to both mental and physical health are significant. Essentially, this sort of resilience makes it easier to survive and thrive in our troubled, difficult times. It is a lesson we could all use.

The Future for Our Kids

By Phil Ruthven

(Wilkinson, $40)

As founder of the business information firm, IBISWorld Phil Ruthven has access to a huge amount of data, and he uses it to extrapolate existing trends to provide a picture of Australia’s future. He is generally upbeat, preferring to focus on opportunities rather than problems, and it is hard to not be caught up in his enthusiasm.

Interestingly, he sees outsourcing – often thought to be a destroyer of jobs – as the single biggest driver of job creation. Already, he says, many young people see themselves as entrepreneurial freelancers, moving from one project to another and being paid for outputs rather than inputs. Ruthven predicts this will increase as the pace of technology creates a truly global marketplace. At the same time, he says, the average working week will be around 20 hours by the end of this century, with a greater focus on fulfilment. Ruthven calculates that Australia is creating many more jobs than the number being lost, and will continue to do so.

At the other end of the demographic scale, longer lifespans will mean longer careers, with older people working well past the traditional retirement age. Older people will also be more likely to return to the education system, either to gain more qualifications or simply to keep their minds fresh.

Ruthven sees Australia as well-placed to take advantage of the continuing shift of economic momentum to Asia, and says Australia’s population mix will become even more diverse. The agriculture sector is likely to expand, both for domestic demand driven by a rising population and for export markets, although the real boom will be in the service sector, especially hospitality, tourism and aged care.

Along the way, Ruthven laments that governments have been slow to introduce ultra-fast broadband technology and to push for a higher GDP growth rate. Nevertheless, we are headed in a positive direction, he says, and the best is yet to come.

Give Back Lead Forward: why every leader should have a mentor and be a mentor

By Julian Carle

(Major Street Publishing, $30)

Julian Carle, the head of leadership training firm Synergen Group, believes that mentoring is the ingredient that turns good managers into great leaders, and in this book he provides a practical framework for getting the most out of the relationship, from both sides of the equation.

He makes clear that mentoring is not about getting together occasionally for a chat. Both mentor and mentee must be chosen carefully, both for their personal and professional attributes. Carle suggests that the two should not come from the same company, and perhaps not even the same industry, but a set of common experiences is important. Mentoring is not about teaching technical information but rather the soft skills of empathy and judgement. The mentor does not provide solutions but helps the mentee find their own answers.

For the mentee the benefit is the opportunity to draw upon the experience of the mentor; for the mentor the benefit is about the self-reflection that comes with understanding another person. The relationship is a balance of the personal and the professional, and there must be enough trust for discussion to be honest and forthright.

Meetings should be regular – Carle suggests every three weeks – with a firm schedule and agenda, as well as milestones to be discussed in quarterly reviews. Being a mentor is not easy: it requires skills to both inspire and motivate. An essential part is to show the mentee how to keep going in the face of setbacks. This can mean, for the mentor, revealing the mistakes they have made along the way – and, crucially, what they learned from them. For the mentee, it means making hard decisions about what sort of person they want to be. Often, says Carle, mentors find that their mentees inspire them.

Carle has mentored many mentees himself and is the host of ‘Mentoring Effectively’, a recorded IML webinar that explores the elements of good coaching practices and mentoring tips to promote personal development. The webinar is available online, here.

Leading people through a restructure

A reorganisation within a business can be undertaken for a range of reasons — but understanding how to manage the human element is critical,
no matter why the project has been undertaken.

By Derek Parker  //  Illustrations by Dane Mark

once upon a time, a good manager was seen as one who kept things flowing smoothly and kept everything in its right place. But that era is past. Now the key role of managers – and of leaders – is to initiate, deal with, and consolidate change, in response to rapid movements in the market, disruptive technologies, and intense global competition. Every manager is likely, in the course of his or her career, to go through at least one major corporate reorganisation; most will go through several of them.
The irony is that despite the importance of reorganisations, they are often undertaken without the forethought, care, and deep thinking that they require.

As a result, many reorganisations fail to fully achieve their objectives, according to a recent book, ReOrg: How To Get It Right. The authors, Stephen Heidari-Robinson and Suzanne Heywood, former senior analysts with the respected consulting firm McKinsey, amassed a huge amount of survey data and empirical information as part of their examination, and the picture it presented was not pretty.

“According to our global data, only 16 per cent of corporate reorganisations provided the results they were supposed to, in the time they were supposed to,” Heidari-Robinson told Leadership Matters. “70 per cent delivered some value. In nine per cent of cases, the reorganisation actually damaged the company in the long run.

“Stop for a moment to consider this: Imagine that you learned that less than one-fifth of your product launches, projects, or initiatives had delivered their full objectives, that a significant number had hurt your business, and that the mass in the middle had limited or uncertain value. You would probably conclude that there is a significant scope for improvement – very significant scope.”

Rationale explained

In fact, Heidari-Robinson believes that many company-wide reorganisations are not needed; the problems that need to be addressed could be solved with changes at division or business-unit level. Interestingly, reorganisations implemented by a freshly-appointed leader who brings in organisational change as part of the ‘new order’ of their leadership are very likely to fail. To have a decent chance of success the reorganisation needs to have a clear rationale, measurable benefits, and purposeful strategy.

The most common motive for reorganising is to enable revenue growth (27 per cent), followed by cutting costs (12 per cent), moving to a best-practice model (12 per cent), and bringing change into an organisation that has become too static (10 per cent).

“Across almost all business sectors, the most serious issue is employees’ active resistance to the changes,” says Heidari-Robinson. “Until staff know what the reorg means for them they have no ears for the exciting future of the reorg. They still assume the reorg is about job losses. The leader’s enthusiasm for this change feels discordant and uncaring to them. Leaders should realise that most employees hate these kinds of changes. But they hate secrecy and uncertainty more.”

Most Australian reorgs fail to lift performance

In Australia, according to the annual Salary Guide produced by recruitment firm Hays, about half of companies are currently undergoing or considering some level of restructuring.

“There are countless economic, political and regulatory factors impacting industries, organisations and workforces, as well as the new technologies of the fourth industrial revolution,” says Nick Deligiannis, Managing Director of Hays in Australia & New Zealand. He points to a study by management consulting firm Bain & Company that suggests that fewer than one-third of restructures lead to improved performance.

“We expect the current level of restructuring activity to continue but we also expect that many reorganisations will fail,” he says. “There are many reasons, including an organisation’s leaders not being clear on what they are trying to achieve, failing to plan appropriately, not achieving the buy-in of their staff and not ensuring that change is reflected in the firm’s culture.”

Deligiannis believes that Australian companies perform fairly well when it comes to identifying the people and skillsets that will be needed in the rebuilt organisation, and recruitment of new talent usually starts at an early stage. In fact, a reorganisation can even be an advantage in the war for talent, as it means there are new opportunities and possibilities.

But company leaders are often less adept at working with their existing workforces to provide a rationale and roadmap for change.

“It is very important to align a workforce in response to organisational change, while also ensuring that staff understand why change is occurring, are engaged with the new way of operating, and receive upskilling if required,” Deligiannis notes. “Otherwise, they will fall back into the same old work patterns.”

Thought needs to be given to cultural change as well. This is particularly the case when a reorganisation comes about due to a merger or acquisition, so there is not one common culture but two that need to be integrated. Ignoring issues of culture in a reorganisation is a recipe for failure.

“In all this, the executive team has to lead from the front, embodying the changes they expect to see in others and creating an environment where all employees feel they can share ideas and talk openly about the changes occurring around them,” says Deligiannis.

“Whether the result of a merger and acquisition, the growth of a department or even the establishment of a new team, any new job profiles need to be designed to align with the organisation’s goals so that they help achieve success from the beginning of the process. Without accuracy on this point, the right candidates with the right skills and background will not be identified and an organisation will not be able to improve business results.”

Looking for solutions

There is good evidence that the high level of reorganisation currently taking place in Australia is underpinned by a capacity to identify problems early and address them before they grow into crises. According to KPMG’s 2017 Evolving Deals Landscape survey, nearly half of Australia’s large companies are looking to improve operations, especially in their use of working capital, including management of receivables, payables and inventory.

Matthew Woods, KPMG’s Head of Restructuring Services, is not surprised. “For many CFOs and treasurers in today’s environment, cash management is high on their radar,” he says. “It is what you would expect to find in an economy which has been strong but is coming under stress. Businesses need to reset their cost base and restructure to ensure they are resilient going forward. They need to extract every dollar from their operations in response to increasing economic and financial pressures.

“There is a flow-on effect. If you are not actively improving working capital performance right now, then standing still is very much moving backwards. Whether you notice or not, there is a high chance that your suppliers and customers are optimising their working capital at your expense.”

Public sector lessons

“When it comes to reorganisations, the public sector and the private sector handle the processes very differently,” says Jacqueline Hiddlestone FIML, who has been involved in a range of restructures. She currently heads Jackal Oz, a consulting firm that offers advice on strategic development and operational delivery.

“[Public sector reorgs are different] mainly due to the level of union involvement, policies in place and greater willingness to discuss what is happening. Private sector companies usually pay minimal redundancy payments whereas public sector agencies usually have procedures such as moving people into a pool of available staff for a period of time, additional assistance in seeking alternate employment, and larger redundancy payments.”

There is often a difference in the support mechanisms too, such as dedicated HR or other staff. This leads to a more structured approach. If the reorganisation involves redundancies then transition options are available, and where redundancies are not involved there are re-training options.

Hiddlestone believes that reorganisations are more common in the public sector than the private sector, often due to changes in the statement of corporate intent provided to the government. In fact, this sense of continual reorganisation can become very disruptive. Change fatigue may drive talented staff to move on. Other employees can switch to ‘cruise’ because they believe that the work environment will change again shortly. This allows some to stay under the radar in terms of delivering agreed outcomes.

“I have found that a combination of communications channels works best,” she says. “Face-to-face sessions allow everyone to hear the same message about the direction, the target and the journey. This might be followed by a Q&A and written communication. An anonymous email avenue also allows concerns and questions to be raised without staff feeling they will be penalised for raising them. An open-door policy that allows staff to have private discussions provides an additional assurance that they are being heard and the organisation values them.

“Where redundancies may arise, the manager should do whatever is possible to explore options with individuals. Where do they see themselves in a year, or in five years? This can also help decide on who is impacted where there are equal capabilities against
fewer positions.”

Planning needed

The issue of planning – or, rather, failing to plan appropriately – looms large in any discussion as to why so many reorganisations do not achieve their goals. In many cases, the problem starts at the top. Some boards do not fully grasp the difficulties of a reorganisation, seeing it as either a matter of redrawing lines and boxes or seeing it only in financial terms. Many reorganisation projects are under-funded, considering
the problems they are
trying to solve.

Any presentation by senior management to the board must be able to explain and demonstrate the issues. For this reason, there should be a series of board meetings dedicated to the reorganisation, as well as regular updates while the process is in train. Sign-off of the plan must be clear and explicit, and there needs to be adequate resourcing for the project.

From this point the company leaders need to have a well-developed strategy for communicating the plan, including a means for making it available to all staff, whether or not they are directly affected. Any communications vacuum will be filled by gossip and speculation, which might then take a long time to correct.

Managerial accountability can only take place with transparency. Any attempt to keep the project secret is essentially counter-productive; more likely to alienate employees than win them over.

In the operational plan it is easy for the planners to place too much focus on the company’s weaknesses. But existing strengths must also be acknowledged and, if possible, developed. This goes back to the reason for a reorganisation: it must not be about change for the sake of change, but change for a specific, clearly articulated purpose.

“It is very important that staff hear their leaders, from the CEO to team leaders, talking regularly about the reorg, through internet sessions and ‘town halls’,” Heidari-Robinson says. “You should continually communicate the one big thought of the reorg – for example, moving from print to digital, or making local managers accountable for P&L outcomes – and the three to five biggest organisational changes that will make this happen.”

Managing employees who have received redundancy notices is an extremely difficult challenge, even with a good communications strategy, maximum sympathy from managers, and a generous payout. Their motivation can drop to zero and they might even look for ways to inflict symbolic – or real – damage on the company. External recruitment consultants and transition support providers can be very valuable at this point, helping the people affected look to future opportunities and possibilities.

Heidari-Robinson believes that the best way to handle this stage is to move as quickly as possible, offering thanks to departing employees and moving to re-focus continuing employees on their new roles.

“A slower process just drags out the water torture,” he says. “Good planning and speed are of the essence when it comes to reorgs.”

While having a clear plan is crucial it is also important to check progress along the way, through mechanisms such as employee surveys or metrics analysis. There might be a need to make changes in implementation if significant problems emerge.

Even when the reorganisation is complete there is still a great deal more work to be done.

“Plan for your reorg project team to return to conduct a review, one or two reporting cycles after implementation,” suggests Heidari-Robinson. “Do not declare victory for your reorg until it delivers the business results you wanted, which is sure to be some time after the actual implementation.”

Above all, accept that any large-scale reorganisation is going to be difficult. It affects the lives of employees – people who deserve to be treated with respect and consideration. Done poorly, a reorganisation can create a reservoir of dissatisfaction within the workplace. Done well, with effective communication and solid leadership, it can create new opportunities, transform operational efficiencies, and improve the organisation’s ability to deal with market changes and competitive pressures.

“Our advice is that you should only do a reorganisation if you have the rationale clear and you completely understand the likely cost of the change,” Heidari-Robinson emphasises. “If this has not happened, stop and think again.”

The Conversation: Awake to the call of leadership

Dr Daniel Jolley IMLa is no stranger to the fine art of decision making. As a consultant anaesthetist, he is called upon to demonstrate leadership and make life-saving decisions in an environment where split second timing can be critical.

Story by Nicola Field  //  Photography Peter Whyte

Dynamic decision making is the name of the game in an operating theatre. As Dr Daniel Jolley explains, “You try to be proactive rather than reactive.” Like all good skills, this comes with training. Anaesthesia requires a minimum five-year training period, often spent working alongside senior anaesthetists. Nonetheless, Dr Jolley observes that these days, the safety factor of surgery often hinges more on the decisions made by an anaesthetist rather than drugs, technology,
or equipment.

To learn more about how Dr Jolley rises to the leadership challenge – and why as a medico, he opted to undertake management and leadership training – IML CEO David Pich FIML met him in Hobart.

David Pich:   In leadership we tend to think somebody is in charge, and others follow instructions. But it doesn’t sound like that’s the case in an operating theatre.

Dr Jolley:   Australia is quite unique in that the position of the surgeon and the anaesthetist are on more of an equal footing. Coupled with the Australian willingness to challenge authority, members of the theatre team are less likely to be totally subservient to the perceived leader in the room. It’s interesting from a safety point of view – and this is something that’s been heavily studied inside the airline industry. There is a reasonably strong theory, for example, that Qantas continues to be the safest airline in the world both because of the exceptional training the airline invests in its pilots, but also because of the cultural tendency, in Australia, to challenge authority.

It’s the same in a theatre. It’s not uncommon for my aesthetic nurses to very carefully say, “Are you sure you want to do that?” So there’s a shared leadership role in the theatre environment.

DP:   Before you walk into the operating theatre, is there a briefing session?

DJ:   There’s been a big push over the past five years for a team meeting at the start. We have a brief discussion of every patient on the operating list so that the surgeon, anaesthetist and nursing staff can raise any concerns about potential problems and ensure everybody’s on the same page. You’re basically preparing for the unexpected, so that when the unexpected happens, it can be handled in a safe and effective way.

DP:   That’s interesting because a major focus for IML, at the moment, is the concept of intentional leadership. In order to end what we call ‘the chaos of accidental management’, you have to intend to lead. Are you saying intentional leadership is alive and well in our hospitals, and it cuts down the opportunity for accidents to happen?

DJ:   The surgeon is largely the default leader. But that leadership role can change very quickly in emergency situations, and when that happens, it occurs smoothly and without any real tension.

Where there’s say, a cardiac arrest, that’s an area that the anaesthetist is appropriately trained and expert in managing. The surgeon will look to the anaesthetist for direction on what to do next.

When I was a young trainee, I had a patient with a very nasty traumatic injury to the eye. The eye needed to be enucleated – that is, removed – because it had exploded from trauma. Pulling on the eye during the surgery can cause the heart rate to slow precipitously and even stop, which was what happened. It was the middle of the night, when not a lot of people were around, I did what I needed to do with the anaesthetic machine, gave appropriate drugs and then started CPR. We had a good outcome, and the gentlemen recovered well.

However, the feedback I received from my mentor – a very senior anaesthetist – was that I shouldn’t have been the one doing the CPR. I should have directed somebody else to do that. It was totally appropriate criticism because all medical staff are trained for CPR, and I needed to take a step back and direct them. Once I was on the chest I was very blinkered, and much more likely to be fixated on a smaller part of the problem rather than taking the big picture view.

DP:   At IML, we believe that reflection is often ignored in leadership. Leaders make huge decisions that impact lots of people, and then they typically don’t reflect on them. But that doesn’t seem to be standard practice in hospitals?

DJ:   It’s certainly something people are very cognisant of now. We’ve always had a focus on looking at why adverse events happen, and what we’ve done leading up to them. Then having a non-judgmental discussion about how it could be avoided in the future.

DP:   How do you stop yourself feeling vulnerable in those situations because, essentially, your performance is being judged?

DJ:   It’s a challenge. Anaesthetists have the potential to be self-critical. But there is a dominant culture among Australian anaesthetists of being a very social and supportive fraternity. So there’s always a lot of interaction and a supportive view.

DP:   You mentioned your mentor earlier. There’s an interesting statistic that only 21 per cent of CEOs of ASX 200 companies have a mentor. Whereas it seems in your occupation and your brand of leadership, mentoring plays a fundamental part.

DJ:   One of the challenges with the whole concept of mentorship is that sometimes we try to artificially force it on a situation. I suspect a true mentor is someone who finds you rather than you find him or her. That can be a challenge during medical training. You often spend only short periods in any one hospital or department, maybe six to 12 months at most, so it can be difficult to find a true mentor. However, most large departments encourage the development of mentor/mentee relationships to guide you through growth in non-clinical areas like leadership and decision making – things that are often forgotten in the midst of other professional growth.

DP:   One might expect that hospitals are full of accidental managers – people who, because of their technical skills, have ended up in management and leadership positions. What is the real situation in the medical profession?

DJ:   One of the challenges hospitals face is that there are lots of bureaucratic and organisational problems, which have largely been solved in the business world. There is a greater effort now to train, particularly medical staff, in both leadership and managerial roles so that they’re much less accidental and organic.

DP:   You decided to complete an MBA, and develop your skills in management and leadership. Why did you do that?

DJ:   When you reach mid-level seniority as a medical specialist, you often find yourself on various hospital committees, and making accidental managerial or leadership contributions in different areas. It’s very easy to be resistant to ‘management speak’. But I could see there was some real theory behind it, and I was doing myself, the hospital and my patients a disservice if I wasn’t open to learning more about that.

DP:   So, you went off to do an MBA at Deakin University, which is one of our accredited MBAs at IML. What did you learn?

DJ:   The Deakin MBA was very satisfying. It confirmed some of the things I suspected – that the organisational challenges, business challenges, finance and human resource challenges that impact day-to-day hospital life are far from unique. We have a responsibility to properly understand
these so that we can improve the way hospitals work.

DP:   What are some of the stand-out things  that you’ve taken from your MBA?

DJ:   Among the three things I’ve found most immediately relevant, Business Process Management taught me to look at the flow of information, staff, patients and associates, and how we create value. It blew my mind how complex all the processes are that our staff are undertaking on a daily basis. That means there are lots of areas for improvement and efficiency improvement.

The second area I thought was very interesting was Organisational Management and Human Resources. After completing the unit, you see that there is a huge amount of theory, both from the psychological point of view and behavioural theory, and I found that really useful.

The third area I found useful was Change Management. It’s all well and good to identify where there are problems, and then say, ‘Well, these are the solutions’, but implementing the solution is where everything falls down.

DP:   So would you recommend professional development in management and leadership for specialist medical staff?

DJ:   Definitely. The very nature of your specialist role means you have a position of leadership and you need to manage others. You might be lucky and do those well, but a lot of us don’t, and it’s our responsibility to learn to do them better.

In my line of work, where critical things are happening, you get the best performance out of your team when you’re calm and considerate in what you do. Internally, you may not be so calm, but projecting control and confidence is really important to have everyone else respond in a measured way in what could be a life-threatening event.

Leadership in 60 seconds

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat?

Twitter.

Phone, email or face-to-face?

Email.

Name a leader that you admire and why?

Michelle and Barack Obama together, as a team, because of the integrity
they have in the way they approach things. Obama was always referred
to as ‘no drama Obama’. That sort of quiet, confident, competence,
I really admire.

Your personal view on leadership?

One of the important roles of leadership is being able to communicate to the team the destination, what we’re trying to do, and the reason why we’re trying to get there.

Which three guests would you invite to dinner to discuss leadership?

Steve Jobs is number one. Not because I see him as a great leader, but I think he’d be a great dinner guest. Another person would be Julia Gillard to discuss her experience as Labor leader. I find the gender issues in leadership in Australia really fascinating. Mahatma Gandhi would be my third guest, to provide a different historical context on leadership and where it is now.

Advice for somebody just starting out in any career?

Don’t be too worried about getting the direction and the decisions right for where you’re going.  Focus a little more on decisions in a shorter horizon. You don’t know how your interests and skills are going to change.

What’s your personal resilience plan?

I really love running, trail running in particular, and also a bit of mountain biking – all of which are great here in Tassie.

Ann Messenger: From Student Member to Chair of IML

 

Ann Messenger has enjoyed a varied and eventful career in a variety of influential positions. In this interview she reflects upon the toughest challenges facing managers and leaders today, and shares some of the lessons she has learnt. 

By Jade Collins and Alanna Bastin-Byrne

 

Ann Messenger FIML is the Chair of the Board of the Institute of Managers and Leaders (IML). She is a chartered accountant and has enjoyed a varied global career, including six years working in Latin America as an equities analyst covering emerging markets.

Messenger worked in corporate finance and middle market advisory roles with professional services firms KPMG and HLB Mann Judd and later secured in-house roles such as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer with a variety of organisations including the Sydney Chamber of Commerce. Messenger has a strong interest in not-for-profits. During 2009 and 2010, she was the General Manager of St John’s College (within the University of Sydney) and in 2011 was appointed to Mosman Council’s Development Assessment Panel.

Messenger led the strategic rebrand of the Australian Institute of Management Group (AIM) to the Institute of Managers and Leaders to refocus the organisation’s purpose on setting and promoting the national standard of management and leadership competence. As part of this change, IML is the only assessing body outside of the UK offering the internationally recognised Chartered Manager (CMgr) qualification.

You are the first national Chair of the Institute of Managers and Leaders and originally joined as a student member of AIM in the 1980`s. Tell us about your long association with the organisation and how it has influenced and supported your leadership journey.

When I joined in the 1980s, management was a relatively new discipline and AIM was at the forefront of what was at that time the burgeoning field of management education and training. Since then, management education and training has become ubiquitous and IML has morphed into what it is today, the go-to professional body for managers and leaders.

IML has always had a sense of fraternity and as a young management professional there was a great sense of support in meeting others who were effectively in the same boat, not to mention a veritable gold mine of mentors who were always incredibly generous with their time and eager to help. Because IML has always been a completely independent non-aligned not-for-profit organisation, it occupies a unique position in being able to provide a nurturing forum for the profession.

What do you believe are the most pressing challenges leaders and managers face today?

The need for leaders and managers to constantly learn, adapt and change has never been greater. Nothing is static and with information at everybody’s fingertips there’s a constant expectation that we must keep up or be left behind. This is incredibly challenging and exciting but, of course, our reliance on non-curated and unverified data presents risks (and sometimes even fake news!). Seriously, though, this is where professional bodies like IML come into their own in providing sounding boards and support networks of like-minded people with whom we’re not in direct competition in a workplace.

IML has long advocated gender equality and diversity in leadership. What can organisations do to accelerate achieving leadership diversity and a culture of inclusion?

As leaders we can try to understand and appreciate that we are employing the “whole person”, not just the “professional part”. The good news is that by adopting a more holistic view of the individuals who make up our workforce – a culture of acceptance and inclusion follows. Leaders of organisations that do that are inherently promoting diversity and inclusion and, by the way, achieving much higher returns on their human resource investment.

Leaders can also dispel the myth that employees are somehow almost robotic, one dimensional units of production and accept that work is a means to an end for all but the saddest of the workaholics among us. In doing so, we bring some humanity, acceptance and inclusion into our workplaces.

As an experienced director, what would you recommend as the best preparation to those who are considering pursuing board roles?

There are a million and one sage and sobering accounts of boardroom activities, the most colourful of which unfortunately exist in court reports. Gaining an understanding of corporate governance is absolutely critical. Although experience within the boardroom via executive roles provides valuable insights, a director’s perspective is and must be entirely different. Governance is key.

What has been your greatest challenge?

There have been so many challenges. One that’s front of mind for me right now is accepting that sometimes things just have to play out and, as a leader, there are times when you just have to allow that to happen. The learnings and evolution that result for all concerned sometimes just have to come from the actual experience.

What are you most proud of?

In my role as Chair of IML, it’s got to be the rebrand and reinvention of the organisation. That is, of course, still happening. It’s been incredibly rewarding to watch the reaction to this fresh new brand.

What’s your one piece of advice for future female leaders?

I’m going to steal from Eleanor Roosevelt here. She once said something along the lines of: “Do what you know in your heart is the right thing to do because you’ll be criticised anyway!”

I guess that’s another way of saying believe in yourself and see it through – but I’d caveat that by saying, always…always listen to those who you know have your best interests at heart…and then do what you think is right!

As leaders we can try to understand and appreciate that we are employing the “whole person”, not just the “professional part”.