The power of transformation

It is now four years since Paul Stothard became chief executive of UK firm Shoosmiths. Combining his experience with his observations of other firms, he considers the role of leadership in effecting significant and long-term change.

I was sitting at home the other day watching the cricket on TV when the inevitable break for adverts interrupted my viewing. One of the adverts was for the Citroen C4, where, as I am sure many of you know, an apparently standard family saloon transforms itself into an ice-skating robot, which agilely sets off across a circuit of a frozen lake before coming to rest in front of a bunch of technicians. It then reverts to the same standard family saloon.

I know it is only an advert but at the end of the day I was left with the view that while it was highly entertaining and clever, the advert was also pointless in that we started with a silver family saloon and finished up with a silver family saloon!

This set me wondering about transformation and what it really means in the context of a business, and the kind of leadership that is required to effect true transformation. Simply, what does transformational leadership look like? I considered myself and some of the activities in which I am involved. For example, I do a bit of amateur dramatics (no, not just when I am having a debate with partners) and have played a number of roles including the pantomime dame. The dame role requires the creation of new clothes and an increasing amount of make-up to ensure that I am credible in the role and become someone who is, I hope, substantially different to me. When I go on stage, I am transformed…

I am also a keen motorbike rider and frequently don the leathers to go out for a quiet and sedate ride around the roads of Oxfordshire, honestly officer. I am transformed into what Jeremy Clarkson once described as a power ranger with a modified view of speed limits and a pathological desire not to sit behind a Porsche for more than a nanosecond.

However, after a few hours, the costume, make-up or leathers are removed and I become the same wee-specky accountant-come-chief-executive that is all too familiar to friends and family. The point is that all of the above are not what I would call real transformations, and while some individuals think that in real life a change in the way they dress, or a new hair-do or maybe a new car will have a fundamental, transforming impact on both their self-perception and that of their friends and colleagues, the reality is that this only has a short-term impact. Unless there is a fundamental change in the individual, the impact of the new clothes and hair soon fades and you are back to where you started.

If we focus on the business world, there are plenty of examples of where organisations have spent huge sums of money changing the look and feel of their literature, logos and reception areas in an attempt to give the impression of change.

To some extent this is achieved, at least to start with. There is no doubt that any change in look and image will have an initial impact. However, unless there has been a fundamental transformation, then society will very quickly place that organisation back in whatever its original pigeon hole happened to be. The bottom-line is that organisations and individuals can only ‘shape-shift’ for a specific purpose before generally returning to their original state. A transformation is rather more than this.

As I look at the business world, and the energy and time devoted to ‘strategy’, I wonder how much of a firm’s strategy just boils down to a bit of dressing up and extensive make-up? What is it that distinguishes an organisation that is truly transformed from one that has merely been a shape-shifter?

In my view, many strategies have a similar impact on an organisation to that portrayed by the advert mentioned above. They absorb a huge amount of energy and cost, feel very clever and energising at the time, involve expenditure on make-up and a new wardrobe, but in reality leave the organisation, either in absolute or comparative terms, exactly where it started.

It is here that we start to encounter the role of leadership in organisations that are being transformed. And it is a role that involves taking an organisation from the established, incremental, apparently certain and misleadingly safe world of the status quo to a completely new world, with new rules and players.

Since joining Shoosmiths, I have taken a keen interest in leadership as a topic. I have bought many books on the subject, most of which gather dust on my bookshelf having never been opened. In simple terms I suppose we are talking about an organisation being transformed and that there is someone at the top who leads the organisation through this change. Most commentators would agree that change is a constant in the business world and would also accept that standing still is not an option in this world in which we all try to compete.

Many organisations, especially partnerships, tend to be geared towards the reproduction, through quality systems, of what was generated last week/month/year; there is a tremendous amount of inertia built into these organisations. It follows then that if a leader who can see a need for a transformational change relies on the structures, bodies and processes that are a part of the ‘establishment’, then I would suggest that their chances of success are very small indeed.

If you add to this the difficulty in persuading people to move away from the certainty of where the organisation is towards the uncertainty of where you would like the organisation to shift, then the resistance to change, at an organisational level, is huge. Just for good measure, in my experience, lawyers tend to place greater emphasis on the issues surrounding a move from where they are, rather than being inspired by where they could move to.

But does this resistance exist at an individual level? The accepted wisdom is that people are generally resistant to change, but I am not convinced that this is as widespread as one might think. For sure there will be resistance to change associated with uncertainty and ‘what’s in it for me?’ arguments, but this is quite easily handled. As a leader, just ask yourself what percentage of your people are so supremely happy at work that they would not welcome change that offers the opportunity of greater fulfilment? Further, if you could create the environment that increased fulfilment across the board, what impact would that have on the performance of the organisation? It is here, I feel, that we begin to encounter transformation.

Transformational leadership became a fashionable phrase as the rate of change increased, and there was an acceptance that any leadership role had to be focused on managing change and all those good things that went with it, like challenging processes, creating a vision, being a role model, and so on.

I suspect that if I asked a number of partners to describe a transformational leader they would sketch out an individual who is highly charismatic, has boundless energy and enthusiasm, and can clearly articulate and obtain buy-in for a vision of the future. This individual guides and shapes the organisation into achieving its goals and then walks down the stage at the annual conference accompanied by dry ice, a light show and rapturous applause from the acolytes.

I am sure that the majority of people involved in such an organisation would enjoy the ride, feel stretched and challenged along the way, and experience a great sense of achievement upon reaching their destination. But what happens next? I suppose more accomplished leaders than I would quickly set out the next goals for the firm and, provided that it is not a complete reverse of previous strategy, would be able to inspire people to shoulder their share of the burden to take the organisation ‘to infinity and beyond’. Not my idea of fun, but clearly that is what some businesses do and many are pretty successful at it.

My concern is that ambition is inevitably compromised by experience and what is regarded as achievable. This means that many strategies that are carefully based on measurable goals are inevitably a bit start/stop in nature and produce little in the way of necessary and fundamental change.

I feel that, while in the short-term, targets and budgets are very necessary, using such targets as long-term goals to inspire people is overly constraining, in the sense that any target inevitably is a compromise between the desirable and the achievable. We all know about SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-based/timely) objectives and the compromise between the amount of ‘stretch’ and what is achievable. It seems to me that by attempting to transform an organisation by setting SMART goals, one is already placing a limit on what can be achieved.

Also, unless strategy is constantly monitored, refined and communicated, such an approach can be a bit stop/start and use up an awful lot of energy. A bit like driving a car, if you are heavy on brakes and accelerator, the fuel consumption is far greater than if you are smoother. It can also cause discomfort to your passengers as you stop, start and frequently change direction, ultimately resulting in them being car sick and/or getting out.

Finally, possibly my biggest gripe about all this, is that the organisation is still very much how it was before. It may have increased in size, turnover, profits, market penetration, number of markets, and so on, but it remains the same beast that existed before. This may not be a problem for that organisation and may well meet the aspirations of the stakeholders, but please do not start to say that the beast has been transformed.

Transformational leadership for me is about changing the mindset of an organisation. It is getting right into the culture, values and attitudes, and establishing a new approach. What we are talking about is how an organisation is going to operate rather than where it is going.

The question that occurs to me is if an organisation is to truly be transformed does it require the energies and skills of a few transformational leaders, or just one, who can articulate and breathe life into a vision and galvanise an organisation into making fundamental, no-going-back changes? Can a few leaders bring about such a change that the organisation will never be the same again?

The traditional view of leadership portrays someone full of energy, who is a high-profile risk taker, very much at the vanguard of key initiatives. In the business world, we often speak of having clear buy-in and/or sponsorship ‘from the top’. We can all bring to mind passages from history and related films where the leader appears in front of the troops, makes a grand speech to rally them all and then dashes off to lead them into battle. Almost miraculously, the leader avoids being killed and presides over a great victory and the attendant celebrations.

Well, this is not always the case. Occasionally the great leader is cut down, the noise of the battle gradually subsides and the leaderless troops either surrender or beat a hasty and somewhat disorganised retreat back to where they came from. The leader has gone and with that leader departs the sense of missions, direction, motivation, desire. This feeling that the sacrifice was all worthwhile has gone because it was very much encapsulated in the one leader.

I think that for an organisation to be truly transformed, then the leadership must be transformed. Indeed, much of the responsibility and power must be handed over by the leader to others. All that power that the leader will have spent years of hard work and political, sometimes Machiavellian, manoeuvring to obtain should be given away.

This, of course, is an incredibly hard thing to do. To frame it in the old joke, the good news is that you are the new leader with ultimate power; the bad news is that if you are truly to make your mark, you must give it away.

You see, I am a complete and committed optimist in the capacity and capability of human beings. I think that we are all capable of achieving so much more in an organisation than job roles, responsibility statements, terms and conditions, and quality procedures will allow.

There are so many examples of people achieving quite extraordinary things. Take, for example, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the author of one of my favourite books The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. After suffering a massive heart-attack, Bauby should have died instantly but instead he fell into a deep and long coma. He awoke, seven weeks later, to find himself totally paralysed and speechless, with his mind, however, completely intact. He had become an imprisoned soul (butterfly) inside an inert body (the diving bell). He could move the left eyelid, which was to become his only means of communication with the outside world.

His speech therapist at the hospital devised a system with the letters of the alphabet with which Bauby could communicate. It consisted of him blinking at every appropriate letter pronounced and, thus, with infinite patience, a word would be constructed, then a phrase and then a sentence. Letter by letter The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly was written over a period of 16 months.

We recruit energetic, brilliant, intelligent, articulate and ambitious people, and then squeeze them into a bureaucratic straitjacket and feed them on a restricted diet of tradition, quality procedures, business plans etc., with all risk carefully removed. How on earth can an organisation move on when its very lifeblood, its talented people, are so heavily constrained?

The leadership challenge is to ensure that we do not create constraining diving bells for our talented people, restricting their ability to ‘fly’ and realise their potential. In short, we must spend our time releasing the talent, opening their minds to what is possible and removing the inevitable barriers that are erected to try and block their flight. It is then and only then when an organisation will be truly transformed.

Ultimately, it is about giving away the traditional trappings of power, such as authority levels, and taking on responsibility for the environment. Without trying to steal David Cameron’s thunder, perhaps leadership is about becoming an environmentalist rather than chief executive. As with a plant, you would find the right people, place them carefully in the right position, with room to grow and a bit of protection from extremes of climate and pests, monitor and control the climate, create the right culture for nurture and growth, do a bit of hoeing and then sit back and admire. Every now and then you will need to prune, reposition people who are not thriving where you have placed them, and introduce new people to reinvigorate the organisation.

We need to move to being organisational environmentalists though I am not sure that the Sunday Times will ever carry such a job advertisement…

Paul Stothard is chief executive at Shoosmiths. He can be contacted at paul.stothard@shoosmiths.co.uk