Don’t Tilt the Bar – Raise the Bar

If you are anything like me, you like to be confident that things will turn out for the best, and that you’ll weather hard times with enough skill and insight to get trough just fine.

Some business people I talk to are consumed by their concern about the continuing economic downturn and the potential consequences they might experience. Others are forging ahead with bold plans, whilst remaining mindful of the situation. These two quite polarised responses suggest opposite tendencies towards optimism and pessimism, and as such are an interesting observation about how people respond to uncertainty. But what I want to share with you is possibly less obvious manifestation, but with potentially catastrophic consequences for any business.

I think we have already seen the demise of many businesses that were in poor shape as the recession deepened. Unable to sustain themselves in lean times, they have folded or been consumed by stronger, fitter businesses.

For businesses that remain, but are still wrestling with increases in costs, thin pipelines, and cautious customers, there is still much to do before they gain solid ground again.

In business, as in life generally, when risk goes up, whether it is due to economic pressure or not, it is prudent to manage resources more closely and to ensure that costs are controlled.

But the danger is that our anxiety about what might happen means our response becomes biased towards controlling what is happening. Controlling costs, controlling risk, controlling our fears, controlling workflow…and before we realise it, we have created such a tightly controlled managerial response that we throttle the ability of people to think and act in ways that help the business respond to the challenges, and (if we are not very careful) convey a lack of confidence that the organisation is strong enough to survive.

Raising the emphasis on diligent management in tough times can often result in a corresponding lowering of the emphasis on, and quality of, our leadership response to the challenges presented. At a time when everyone in the business needs to be focused on increasing effectiveness and finding the edge over the competition, as well as taking responsibility for cost control and production efficiency, we manage to do just the opposite!

The brightest and most successful enterprises see the toughest of times as a challenge to raise both their managerial competence AND their leadership effectiveness. Perhaps now is the time to be thinking about raising the bar on your performance as a manager AND leader, not tilting it in a bias towards one or the other. After all, wouldn’t you like some help getting through the tough times!?

As if by magic, the following dropped into my inbox from McKinsey as I finished writing this blog!

“A new survey investigates how individual leaders lead and how that has changed in the past year. Respondents say that during the crisis, they have seen far more leaders focus on monitoring individual performance—even though they see that as one of the least helpful ways of managing the downturn.

Rather, the kinds of leadership behaviour that executives say will most help their companies through the current crisis—such as inspiring others and defining expectations and rewards—are the same ones they say will help their companies thrive in the future”. Read more