A Ridge Too Far

I love my horse racing and I love The Grand National, it has been a tradition in my family to watch the race over many decades. Last Saturday was very sad in that two horses died and many animal welfare groups are calling for it’s cessation as a sporting event. It is all the more tragic for the race in that over many years the British Horseracing Authority and the race course have made significant safety changes, including lowering of fence height and levelling drops etc, all done for safety reasons to seek solutions to improve animal welfare. There is a term used in health and safety called homeostasis. It is an expression of where actions to curb the risk of accident or error actually increase risk rather than limit danger. For example, it could be argued that in the Grand National, the act of lowering fences, making them easier and lowering drops has resulted in jockeys and horses taking liberties with the fences, going faster at them, and ultimately making the act of running in the race more difficult or dangerous. Add to this the fact that horses are today bred for speed rather than strength, even the equine ability to compete in such races is lessened. In the fingerprint and wider forensic field, maybe we can learn from this race and what is happening to it? If we train and recruit through ill thought out methods, if we seek out solutions to problems in our profession that are not appropriately validated and tested, then a homeostatic scenario could arise where through knee jerk reaction to problems identified and through inattention to detail, it may be possible to increase the risk of error and mistake, not reduce it. If we don’t want to fall at the first fence in the race to improve our profession and change culture, then we need to make sure the changes we make can be proven to improve practitioner safety. This can only be done through empirical and scientifically validated research to ensure the changes have the desired impact.

Recent events within the general working environment, public and private sector, have one wondering... what makes a good leader - what makes a good leadership team? What is the criteria by which leaders are chosen and judged and it poses some fundamental questions on the attributes not just of leaders, but of those who identify leaders. Can you teach leadership? The number of leadership courses, exercises and tools available would suggest you can. Organisational investment in leadership, regularly cited as a top priority, appears to fail however as success in this area appears elusive. According to the Kenexa High Performance Institute, in terms of effective leadership, the UK ranks 17 out of 21 countries, in global research of 29,000 employees. Leadership effectiveness preparedness accounts for 10% of an average organisation’s earnings, leading some commentators to question if leadership training is spending money wisely. Anthony Holmes, author of many books in this area, bemoans the 'mumbo-jumbo' on leadership. He claims ‘no-one in HR has ever found a way of identifying leaders in advance of needing them and that organisations have failed to get a handle on the whole issue’. Even more contentiously, he says talent pools are a waste of time, pointing out that the best leaders are those who disrupt and say the things organisations and the business do not want to hear. The issue is that too often leadership is couched in pseudo-academic terminology. The concept of leadership is given a mystique and a cloak of expertise, as if only those who have great experience and reflective powers are capable of leading effectively. These requirements are translated via human resource strategy to promote a culture of recruitment into leadership roles that satisfy the use and execution of the required terminology. If, as Holmes suggests, the best leaders are actually those who disrupt and say and do the things organisations don’t want to hear, then can those people become the organisational leaders of tomorrow? Can such individuals flourish when the core aim of modern leadership thinking is to produce leaders who have all been trained, coached, mentored and measured to behave in a certain pre-determined way? Surely this is counterintuitive to influencing others to change through challenge and individuality and through saying what no one wants to hear? Rather than create leaders, leaders should in fact emerge and evolve within a culture that allows individuality, allows challenge, and allows people to say things that no one wants to hear. This is in the true spirit of ‘doing the right thing’ as some leadership commentators advocate. It seems that the very act of spending huge amounts of time and money sending people on leadership courses and seminars to behave and act in a certain way based on the accepted thinking of the day is not creating true leaders and innovators, rather the act of process that delivers a homogenised and general leadership model lends itself to my preferred description of what organisations are creating today; namely ‘leadersheep’ behaviour rather than genuine ‘leadership’ skills that can be seen by others and inspire and engender a desire to follow. That requires charisma and a good idea, and I don’t think any number of courses can teach that. We should all strive to get feedback on how we interact and perform as leaders and managers, I will always be seeking to improve what I do and how I do it, but is the notion of learning and course attendance in leadership in itself an oxymoron? Once everyone behaves and acts the same way, don't you lose the very thing you have tried to capture?

Every organisation goes through a period of change from time to time. It might be for all sorts of reasons, sometimes operational, sometimes philosophical and cultural, and, just occasionally, it can be a matter of fiscal constraint. When circumstances dictate that such change is required, sometimes that can be difficult for the personnel who might be affected by such change. I have seen this at first hand. While it is easy to concentrate on the staff impacted by such change, of which I am one at this time, it can also be a very difficult time for the leaders and implementers. It can all too easily be forgotten the incredible pressure and stress that can be felt by someone who has to give a difficult message, by the person who has to stand up in front of a sceptical audience and deliver a series of arguments that he or she knows will not be universally popular. It can be easy to be negative and to always see the downside to every eventuality. This makes it harder for difficult decisions to be communicated and can sometimes stifle genuine dialogue that may create a feeling of consensus. This week I have seen great professionalism and sensitivity from two sides of what could have been a great divide between those who had to provide the bad message and those who had to receive it. The difficult situation around the circumstances of change has been made easier because of a desire to seek some form of consensus, a contract if you will between the change instigators and those affected. All through effective and impactive communication. The message may not be any less attractive, but at least the message obtains a degree of buy in so long as all parties are engaged at an early stage. I will certainly be taking this forward as a lesson in future projects I may work on...communication, communication, communication.....that is the key.