South Wales Business Review Volume 6 Issue 4

Vol 6 Issue 4 2016

Adolygiad Busnes De Cymru

Leading the Way

New ways of thinking about 21st Century Leadership

Toxic Leaders

Why do we follow them?

Leadership Lessons from the Animal Kingdom

EL TH

Swansea Business School Ysgol Fusnes Abertawe

EA IS DER SU S E HIP

Steve Moore on Leading through Tough Times

inside | SOUTH WALES BUSINESS REVIEW

3 Editorial:

LEADING THE WAY New Ways of Thinking about 21st Century Leadership

4 The Big Interview: STEVE MOORE

8 Perspective:

LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

SPRING 2016 Volume 6 Issue 4

12 Point Of View: TECH HEADS Who Really Runs the World?

14 Student Perspective: LEADERSHIP STYLES IN EDUCATION

16 Opinion:

WHY DO WE FOLLOW TOXIC LEADERS?

18 Research Perspective:

A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO MANAGING COMPLEXITY

21 News and Events 23 Book Review: LEADERSHIP LESSONS

FROM THE PAST

24 Next Issue:

ACTIVATING ECONOMIES

10 In Conversation: PERPETUAL MOTION Andy Ling of Perpetual V2G Systems

Alternative formats If you require this document in an alternative format (e.g. Welsh, large print or text file for use with a text reader), please email swbr@uwtsd.ac.uk Fformatau eraill Os hoffech y ddogfen hon mewn fformat arall (e.e. Cymraeg, print mawr neu ffeil tesun i’w ddefnyddio gyda darllenydd tesun), anfonwch e-bost i: swbr@uwtsd.ac.uk ISSN 2049-5544 Disclaimer: The articles in this publication represent the views of the authors, not those of the University. The University does not accept responsibility for the contents of articles by individual authors. Please contact the editor if you have further queries.

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Post:

Lucy Griffiths

South Wales Business Review Adolygiad Busnes De Cymru Swansea Business Campus Campws Busnes Abertawe University of Wales Trinity Saint David Prifysgol Cymru Y Drindod Dewi Sant High Street / Stryd Fawr Swansea / Abertawe SA1 1NE

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PRODUCTION TEAM Editor: Lucy Griffiths Editorial Board: Kathryn Flynn Christopher Thomas Jayne Woodman Steve Griffiths Jamie Tavender

Editorial: Leading the Way New ways of thinking about 21st Century leadership

Design & Print: UWTSD TEL

Selected Contributors:  Dr David Griffiths

David Griffiths is a Learning Design Advisor at Swansea Business School and the founder of the University of Edinburgh consultancy start-up, K3-Cubed Ltd. David is passionate about organisational knowledge and learning, particularly how design-led approaches create value through enhanced problem-solving and decision-making capability.

 Steve Griffiths

Steve Griffiths is Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Business and Management at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

His research interests include business ethics and complexity studies.

 Dr Maggie Inman

Maggie Inman is Head of Swansea Business School at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Her research focus is within the area of leadership and management development and she has a particular interest in the use of life history as a methodology.

Lucy Griffiths Editor

Despite centuries of research and writing on the subject, the question ‘what makes a good leader?’ remains one of the most difficult to answer. Debates around whether leaders are born or made and whether it’s possible to teach leadership may continue, but one thing that does remain constant is context.

The environment in which leaders lead is ever changing, and so in this issue we’re focusing on thinking on leadership in the context in which 21st century leaders must work.

We examine the lived experience of leaders from very different organisational perspectives in our interviews with Steve Moore, Chief Executive of Hywel Dda University Health Board, and Andy Ling of Perpetual V2G Systems. Regular contributor Steve Griffiths defines the ‘toxic leader’ and what toxic leadership might mean for both individuals and organisations, Jayne Woodman and I look to the natural world for examples of leadership in action, and I compare the power held by corporate leaders and national governments in our globalised world. We’re also delighted to have a contribution from a group of UWTSD’s PGCE Business students on leadership styles within education.

I hope you enjoy this issue. Our next edition will focus on culture and sport - please email us at swbr@uwtsd.ac.uk if you are interested in contributing.

Best wishes Lucy

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The Big Interview: Steve Moore on Leading One of Wales’s Largest Organisations The SWBR recently met up with Steve Moore, Chief Executive of Hywel Dda University Health Board, to talk about his approach to leading one of Wales’s largest and most complex organisations through changing times.

SWBR Tell us a bit about your background and what drew you to this post.

SM My training was originally as an accountant, and almost all my career I’ve been in the NHS. My career history I think has been slightly unusual in that I never really intended to be a Chief Executive, I never really thought about it as an end point or a career aspiration really. I spent most of my first 15, maybe 20 years in the NHS very much in technical roles dealing with financial issues and health economics questions. My previous Chief Exec who was in Plymouth had moved to Cornwall and one fateful day she rang me and asked me if I would go down to help to sort out the treatment centre there, and that resulted, through various steps over a couple of months in me being appointed as the Director of Commissioning and Strategic Development, my first director role.

I have to say those were probably the most difficult six months of my career. We had brought together three organisations, two of which had big financial problems; we had an acute trust that was having significant financial problems and a mental health trust that was in special measures for issues of abuse of mental health patients. So, I was really thrown in at the deep end and from January 2007 until the summer it was really sink or swim. There were moments when I thought, ‘I’m not sure I can do this’, but I got through and after six months I think I was a very different person and started to enjoy the role.

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I was made Deputy Chief Executive a few months later. I was a new director and the fact that they’d asked me to step up as the deputy was great. After about two and a half to three years being the deputy and doing strategy and commissioning and learning a huge amount, the Chief Exec moved to Devon and, almost at the same time as we’d been told that as organisations were not likely to exist in three years time, I stepped up into the role of Chief Exec as an interim knowing that the job was probably to close down the organisations.

There were moments of sheer terror – being the Chief Exec you carry the can for everything - but also a huge amount of reward and pay back for that. So I spent my time being the interim for about two years before being appointed fully to the post. We then entered the last phase of primary care trusts as they were then and the Chief Exec who had moved on to Devon moved into another job and I found myself in the completely unforeseen position of running four statutory organisations as Chief Exec for a while.

We were in the process of shutting down organisations which in itself was quite a tough thing to be leading, particularly because I’d always worked in Devon and Cornwall. I lived about 300 metres from where I grew up and my entire career up until that point had been in that local area. So, I knew everybody and in closing down the organisations we were looking to make people redundant and some of those people were my friends, people I’d worked for previously. I think we did a really good job to limit that, but even so we lost people who I think were a terrible loss for the NHS, and I felt it quite deeply.

I realised I had become quite cynical because of the loss of all these good people. So I agreed to stay on for six months beyond the closure of the primary care trust to set up the area team for NHS England for Devon and Cornwall,

really because I had a strong sense of responsibility to settle everybody into their new roles, but it was very clear that I was going to leave at the end of that, because I think If you’re a leader and you feel not entirely wedded to the direction of travel then it’s your responsibility to go.

My intention was always to leave the NHS and not come back. I’d had 26 good years, I wanted to look around the world, I wanted to think about different roles in the private sector. However, I started working in the private sector in Birmingham, so my big adventure was from Plymouth to Birmingham! I was hoping for Bali!

I spent about 10 months working with an organisation that was keen to grow its health consultancy business, but whilst I was working in that role, with almost no stress, 9-5, a good salary, I increasingly keenly missed the NHS and I remember thinking one day that in my personal view the NHS has never been as challenged as it is right now. In its 60 year history we’ve never had more than two years where we’ve had flat cash and we’re year four or five now so, really difficult times.

I remember thinking to myself why am I sat on the side-lines, why have I let this go, because I think it’s one of the most amazing institutions us human beings have ever come up with. This idea that we’ll all pool our resources so that if any of us ever gets ill everybody else helps out. It’s civilising, as an ideal. But I could see it was under threat.

I’m not sure any one of us could save it but I wanted to come back to see what I could do to help. I don’t believe in fate, but whilst I was thinking those things and I’d already resigned from the previous job I got a call to talk about this role. I had a look at it, had a look at the system we’ve got in Wales, and thought yes, this would be a great opportunity to see whether we can make something work in an integrated system that maybe we’d struggled to do in England. And as you

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say, the rest is history, I’m here now. So my journey really is characterised by a set of unfortunate incidents that have led me to this point and maybe some fortunate ones as well.

Continues Overleaf

“I think it’s one of the most amazing institutions us human beings have ever come up with. This idea that we’ll all pool our resources so that if any of us ever gets ill everybody else helps out. It’s civilising, as an ideal.”

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SWBR When you joined this organisation what were your key priorities?

SM There were lots of practical things.

An organisation with a sea of red on its performance report, a huge financial problem and an organisation that had come together a few years ago but hadn’t united around the new board. I think the more subtle challenge was about leadership, it was about how you brought together a team and got the best out of them in a world which is very challenged and who are working flat out to just keep the wheels on.

So coming in the first thing I wanted to do was to meet with the executives and to really get a sense from them of how they felt about things and to look them in the eye and say, ‘this is going to be difficult, are you up for it, because if you’re not then we’ll sort something out, but I need to know that you’re going to be in for this struggle’; and for me that was the first priority. Is there a team here that is really determined in the face of great challenge to come together?

I was really fortunate to find a team here that had been through the ringer on all sorts of things, but was determined to continue with the fight so that was challenge number one, challenge number two for me was looking at the wider organisation, seeing that maybe it didn’t work as effectively as it should do in governance terms. The levers were being pulled but things weren’t happening and people were working very very hard in a complicated system, so I spent a lot of time, with some external support, really rewiring the whole governance structure for the organisation, so that as the board made decisions we could become increasingly confident that those decisions would be implemented in a way that they foresaw, to get that effectiveness back.

Then the third challenge was to deal with those deep-rooted problems that had led to the performance challenges and the money challenges, and we are still on that journey, we’ve got a long way to go with that. But I think you can’t re-orientate the ship in a new direction until you’ve stopped it from sinking, and that’s really what we’ve been doing for the last year.

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SWBR Coming from England into Wales were there big differences that created challenges for you?

SM It’s very different. On the surface it looks the same, just in terms of the overall challenge, but what attracted me to Wales is what we have here is a single integrated system. In England it’s a much more complicated picture with multiple organisations responsible for various elements of the patient pathway. So I think we already start from a completely different position here. The question when I came in was why we haven’t pulled those levers perhaps in the way that we should have done because we have most of the resources under our control, and that’s something we’re working on.

SWBR In the context of Welsh Assembly elections coming up and health being one of the hot topics, how do you approach that as a leader?

SM Well, I think the first thing to say is that it is completely legitimate that health is such a big issue in the election. It is almost 50% of the budget, it is taxpayer funded and therefore politicians have got an absolute right to say this is what we expect from the NHS. There are times when the NHS feels (and this is not a Welsh thing, just generally across the UK) like a political football, but it will always be like that, because that’s the nature of a tax funded system. I think going through the election process we

“the best contribution you can make as a leader is to inspire others to rise above themselves and be better than they thought they could be” I think that where it is very different from England is how close the politics are – both small p and big P- and I think that’s both a benefit and sometimes a bit of a challenge.

It’s great to have the politicians walking alongside you, understanding the issues, and I’ve probably seen more ministers in the first year of this job than I saw in 26 years in England; being in the same room as them, being able to discuss things.

There’s huge benefit to that, but of course there are also, when you’ve got politicians that close, issues of how you handle that to make sure you keep people on track.

That has taken some getting used to and I’m not sure I’m entirely there yet. I see it as something we can use to our advantage in what we’re trying to deliver in Wales because we’re a small country, all the leaders can get in one room together and I think that means you can do much more than maybe you can do in a bigger system like England.

As a general point, I think it is the role of leaders in the NHS to work constructively with our politicians – regardless of their party. The NHS is such an important issue, politicians need to be involved.

need to ensure that first of all we are clear about what the facts are, so if politicians wish to make statements on things that we are able to give them the baseline facts so that everyone has the same information. And of course we need to be completely politically neutral.

I think the only other thing, and we’ve discussed it within the organisation with the whole senior leadership team, is we all need to keep calm. At times of elections there will be a lot of things said by politicians and others, and we just need to make sure we keep level-headed about all of those things, and secondly, that if there are things said that are not true, about our staff or our services that they’re confident that we as a board will put out the true facts of that, because I think we need to protect our staff.

I have to say we’ve had none of that so far – I know we’ve got a bit of a way to go, but our staff knowing that we’re there is probably for me the key part of this. Then the political debate needs to happen, about what the future is and once we know what that future will look like, we’ll get on with it.

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SWBR Do you have a philosophy of leadership?

SM I’m not sure it would be as grand as a philosophy! But I do think there are some characteristics to leadership which I guess I’ve picked up as I’ve gone along.

I’ve known some hugely inspirational leaders in my time and I’ve tried to learn from them, and I think leadership is very different first of all from management, and I think sometimes it can be easy to confuse the two.

Leadership for me is first and foremost how you get the best out of your team.

It isn’t about you – I don’t believe in the cult of leadership, the idea that a single individual can come in and save an organisation. I do believe that you come in to make the team as good as it can be, because you can only do your job if they can all do their jobs effectively.

I think you need to be prepared to stand up to take responsibility when things go wrong. We have 10,000 people in this organisation, it isn’t possible to ever eliminate all risk, and human beings will do things. I need to take responsibility for that, be seen to take responsibility for it, and also to step up and protect the organisation when it needs to be protected.

I think if you summarised all of that the main contribution you can make as a leader is, for me, setting a really clear but simple vision about what we’re trying to achieve. It’s about making it simple and every day communicating that so people are clear; and in doing that communication to constantly be asking the front line, the people who are really doing the business here, ‘how can we make life better for you?’ Because I think that’s our job in the end, it’s fundamentally, how do we make the front line a great place to be? We need to support our staff, train them well, invest in them, because they’re the ones who ultimately create great patient care.

SWBR How do you facilitate that communication when you’ve got 10,000 staff?

SM You never get it right, and you never have to stop trying. Partly it’s about the informal; just being out there as much as you can, and the whole team, me included, we get out regularly, we go and sit in staff rooms we talk to people. It does mean that you have less of a worklife balance than maybe others, but I

think that comes with the territory. You’re out and about, evening meetings, from Aberystwyth down to Llanelli is a big area to cover, but that’s what I enjoy doing.

I think what I would put alongside that is as well as 10,000 staff we’ve got 370,000 people in the population, and we need to be talking to them too. We’ve done a lot of that this year, we’ve been out in town halls, we’ve been talking to people. In a way, when people are less worried, less anxious about us, those things become less successful because people don’t want to come and sit in a cold hall in the evenings and talk to us. So we’ve seen in the last year, that as people have got more confident in us we’re outnumbering them in those discussions.

So now we’re looking at all sorts of new ways of engaging. We’re looking next year to move that on into getting specific groups of people together to walk through some of the challenges we have, to help us think through what that might look like from a patient perspective. I see that engagement, whether that’s with the staff or with the public, as one of the key ways in which we’re going to make progress as an organisation.

Our challenges are large, but the more that we can communicate what they are and ask for help from the public to fix them, the more likely we are to be able to fix them. So, going back to your earlier question about leadership, I don’t think leaders are the ones who come up with all the solutions. I think what you need to be able to do is facilitate people to come up with those solutions within the framework of what you’re trying to deliver.

SWBR You mentioned work life balance – are there steps that you take to achieve that in some way?

SM You have to recognise that, for all of these senior jobs, it is genuinely a marathon not a sprint. If you run a bit too fast you will exhaust yourself, and that won’t be in the long term interests of yourself or the organisation. The only red lines I have, and they’re fuzzy, because I don’t always do it, is I try to get to the gym twice a week after work; but I do feel we’re at a stage as an organisation where the executive team feels and I feel we have to earn our work life balance. We’re trying to fix something at the moment.

“Work with inspirational people and work out what it is that makes them inspirational” make sure we don’t tip ourselves over the edge.

SWBR What would you say is the trajectory for that ‘fixing’? Do you have a sense of when you would perceive the organisation to be in a better place?

SM I think there’s a traditional view and I share it, that once you start a new job, particularly a job which is about trying to help an organisation to get on a different track, you can’t judge it over one year because that’s too short, but over a twoyear period you can make a judgement about where you are. So my trajectory has always been to look at where we are at the end of the second year, assess whether we’ve got as far as we need to, whether we’ve sorted the issues we need to and then set the plan for the next two years.

SWBR What advice would you give to aspiring leaders?

SM I don’t believe in advice really, I think everyone’s journey can be quite different, and there is no one formula. But, if I had to break that I’d say try to work with the best. Work with inspirational people and work out what it is that makes them inspirational, because I think all you can do at leadership level, the best contribution you can make as a leader is to inspire others to rise above themselves and be better than they thought they could be. That’s a set of skills that I think you can’t learn in the classroom, I think it’s something you can only learn from people who are really great at it.

Once we’ve started to get that better I think our working life will get better; but we recognise at the moment it’s a full on job, with a few areas of protection to Vol 6 Issue 4 2016 | 7

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Perspective: Leadership Lessons from the Animal Kingdom Lucy Griffiths and Jayne Woodman Lucy Griffiths and Jayne Woodman consider what we may be able to learn from the ways in which animals work together in groups – and whether we can apply the same principles to leadership situations in our organisations.

Leadership is essentially a social activity. You could say that there is no potential for leadership without someone to lead. In this piece we consider whether the same is the case in the animal kingdom, and whether there is anything we humans can learn from how animals organise themselves in groups.

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There have been some interesting studies in this area – most recently a multi-disciplinary team from the biological and social sciences published a synthesis of the existing research on mammalian societies (Smith et al., 2016) and found both similarities and differences between human and animal group and leadership dynamics.

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So, does the same occur in human organisations? Well, according to Alvarez and Marshall (2014) the average age of CEOs was around 56 years (although in IT and Telecomms the figures were lower, 54 and 52 respectively), suggesting that humans value experience in their leaders too.

Overall, the studies also showed considerable variation among mammalian societies – for example, Hyena and Chimpanzee groups tended to have socially dominant individuals who controlled the majority of resources, whereas Lions where more equitable in their approach to sharing food. This could be compared to the very different approaches human groups take to organising and running businesses and countries – from autocracies to cooperatives, there does not appear to be one ‘best’ path.

Observations by other scientists of group movements in the animal kingdom also provide some interesting insights into leadership and followership, both in the literal sense, and conceptually.

Dumont et al. (2005) observed in cows that the order in which individuals move in some animal groups is fixed and so some individuals who move first and at the front of the group could, with some confidence, be referred to as ‘leading’.

Krause (1994) and Stankowich (2003) note that leading a group comes with both benefits and drawbacks. By being first to arrive at food sites they may be able to access more, and better quality, food – but on the flip side, they may also be at greater risk of being predated.

Clearly, in human society leadership comes with risk and reward too – a better salary perhaps, but also the dubious pleasure of taking the responsibility when things go wrong.

So why do some animals take the lead and others not? Well Kurvers et al. (2009) found, in a study of Barnacle Geese, evidence to suggest that propensity to lead in animals may be down to personality – just as some perceive personality to play a role in likelihood to lead in humans. They measured three personality traits – exploration, activity and boldness –finding that those with some of these traits were more likely to lead, and that this also had an effect on the behaviour of other geese who became their companions.

How does this compare to humans?

Well of course, trait theory, one of the earliest proposed leadership theories suggests that personality traits are linked to propensity to lead. However, trait theory is often challenged as somewhat reductive and limiting, with examples of leaders who may not possess the traits commonly associated with leadership being equally as successful as those that do – Gandhi and the Dalai Lama might be cited as classic examples of this. It is also a theory that suggests that leadership is more down to nature than nurture – something that those who make their living from training and developing leaders might argue against!

Sir Alex Ferguson, former manager of Manchester United, is said to have often used geese as an exemplar for teamwork when working with the teams he has advised – for example stopping a training session to make the team look up to a skein of geese flying overhead in a ‘V’ formation. The geese shared the burden of leadership during their journey, swapping the difficult lead role seamlessly amongst the group. This could be regarded as a form of shared or distributed leadership, where the role of leader is transferred amongst group members at different times allowing those best placed to lead at any point to move to the front. This approach, which, whilst difficult to implement in hierarchical organisations, is often something that appears to happen more naturally in smaller businesses and start-ups where there are small teams or a group of founders with varying skills and a common goal.

Using geese as an example in this way, Ferguson was able to give his players a strong, visual, and easy to understand, example of how he wanted them to behave. He didn’t want them to form a ‘V’ formation on the pitch as the geese did in the air (although apparently he did occasionally field the similar ‘Christmas tree’ formation in matches), but rather he wanted them to understand the value to be gained from shared responsibility rather than reliance on a single leader. In essence, he used the geese to tell a story.

Of course this brings us to the heart of the question. Is it possible for us as humans to effectively study leadership in animals without doing so through our own lens of experiences and the ideas we have about leadership? The teams of scientists referenced above might say yes, but we could also consider an alternative approach and value.

Allegorical stories about animals with didactic motives have long been a feature of human history. These narratives, like the fairy tales and animal stories we find across children’s literature, often anthropomorphise animals, and have been used to make moral points, very successfully in many cases. Perhaps the same can apply here. If we are to do the same in drawing leadership lessons from animals we may be perfectly justified in doing so, but should of course do so consciously, with an awareness that we may be projecting our own ideas and observations on our animal neighbours.

Perhaps therefore, the most important leadership lessons we can learn from the animal kingdom, are actually the stories we ourselves tell about their behaviour.

We may never know the true drivers behind leadership in animal groups, but we may be in a position to learn from our own perceptions of their behaviour and how these become part of the stories we tell each other about what it means to be part of a social group.

Image: ©Mangsaab/shutterstock

In many cases there were power-relations in mammalian groups, with experience (and hence knowledge) playing a key role in determining power levels in some groups (for example Elephants long lived, social animals where older females tended to lead the way). The knowledge and experience of how to access essentials like food and water appeared to play an important role here. So those who knew, through long experience, where to find the best spots to find scarce water in a dry period, were those the whole herd would follow. The ability of those with experience to instil confidence and engender trust in those around them, is perhaps a factor at play here. Why would you follow someone who has never experienced a drought, when someone who has knows what to do?

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In Conversation: Perpetual Motion SWBR interviews Andy Ling, Founder and Managing Director of rapidly growing Lampeter based business Perpetual V2G Systems which has developed a technology that enables energy that would otherwise be wasted to be stored and used. We spoke to Andy about starting and leading a company through rapid growth…

SWBR: Tell us a bit about your company and how it started...

AL Essentially, we provide a unique, clean technology, lithium power supply that will store otherwise wasted energy for auxiliary use, removing the need for vehicles to be kept running to power things, removing the need for expensive and hard to dispose of lead batteries and removing the need for generators.

In terms of how we started, having left the army after being a bomb disposable expert I started working in the renewables industry, mainly on wind farms. This role involved me driving quite frequently from South Wales up to Aberdeen and during these journeys I often looked at the other vehicles on the road and thought of the energy that they were wasting during transit. Being a problem solver I set about finding a solution to harvest and store this wasted energy and so the concept of Perpetual V2G Systems was born.

After 6 months R&D we had a product that met our objectives and we then started to look at where we would market it. Following initial investment, we were making a profit after just 8 months and we are now providing power storage and anti-idle solutions to a range of corporates with new opportunities coming in daily. Our team has now expanded to include a Technical Manager and an Operations and Communications manager as well as our installations team and we are expanding into a variety of vertical markets such as breakdown vehicles and the leisure industry.

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SWBR: How would you describe your approach to leading the company through its start-up phase?

the best out of them, but also, they all love working for me and are here for the long haul.

AL By approaching everything with a fun, flexible and dynamic approach. It is important to me that all members of the team are encouraged and inspired to participate at every given level so that they can grow with the business and so that they feel part of our vision and mission. There were tough and uncertain times in the beginning and I think everyone around me at one point or another was worried and questioned our future. At that point more than any other I knew I needed to be positive and keep people inspired by our mission and what we were working towards.

SWBR: You’ve grown quite rapidly over the past few years how has this changed your role as MD?

SWBR: Would you say you have a particular ‘style’ of leadership?

AL Yes, I believe that I am an innovative leader. Drawing from my experience gained while leading high threat bomb disposal teams in high risk theatres across the world I have discovered a flexible, dynamic and highly motivational approach has proven to work best, not only for the development of our company but also for the development of my staff.

I have a bit of a dream of becoming the next Google and so I try to provide opportunities for staff development, time for them to recharge and time for them to be creative. I don’t believe that innovation is a 9-5 thing and so the staff can come into our workspace at any time day or night to work on a project. That way I get

AL During the high growth period we have experienced, responsibilities within the role have grown dramatically to include key stakeholder management and development of key client accounts, as well as overseeing staff growth and product development. I think perhaps in the early days I hadn’t realised how many things I would need to turn my hand to along the way and there have been times that I have been presenting to a panel of investors in a board room in the morning and then sticking my head under the bonnet of a delivery van in the afternoon. However, with our recruitment strategy now coming into play I am able to delegate a lot of work to my staff and concentrate on higher level thinking and our strategic plan going forward.

SWBR: What are the next milestones for the company?

AL We are currently recruiting for a Business Development Manager. Once this role is filled we will be looking to expand into Europe by Q3 2016 to expand the application into two other vertical markets and then a Series A funding round Q4 2016.

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SWBR: What have you learned during the journey so far?

AL I have learned to not take anything for granted in terms of customers, sales or investment. I learned that not having any competitors is not always a good thing because you are then selling a new product into a new market which is challenging when it comes to explaining to potential customers why they need it. It is massively important to set up a viable business from day one and not rely on grants or subsidies because when those grants disappear you need to be able to guarantee you can make money every month. I have also learnt that there are ways to make the most out of your staff and it is important to give them the freedom to be involved in helping the business grow, giving them access to areas that they never thought they would be able to be involved in so that they feel empowered and are willing to do what it takes to ensure the success of the businesses.

SWBR: If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting a company in 2016, what would it be?

AL Do as much market research as you can. If there isn’t an existing product the same as yours then think about the reasons why and whether your idea is viable enough to break through that barrier. Then do some more market research – this is massively important and never approach a client until you are 100% sure that you can deliver for them and that your product will meet the needs you have promised. First impressions are crucial and if you are underprepared and you blow it then its ten times harder to get a seat in front of the same people a second time.

In addition to that, look after your people.

A business is only as successful as its staff and whilst it’s nice to be the person that pays the wages there are times when you will need them as much as they need you, so appreciate them, make them feel valued and involve them in everything you do.

“I don’t believe that innovation is a 9-5 thing” Vol 6 Issue 4 2016 | 11

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Point of View: Tech Heads – Who Really Runs the World?

Lucy Griffiths

In this piece, SWBR Editor Lucy Griffiths considers whether national governments are still the most powerful organisations in the world, or if the superrich heads of global corporations are becoming the real leaders of the modern world.

In a globalised world, who wields the power? Governments, corporations, or consumers? Well you could argue that all do in one sense, but in this piece I want to explore the possibility that the traditional powerbases of governments are becoming increasingly eroded by those who lead large, globalised corporations.

Now, you can tell me that this is not a new thing – let’s take the industrial revolution as an example. The power held by the wealthy industrialists who built the Western world was significant and no doubt meant that they were able to exert an influence over governments’ decisions, sometimes in public, and sometimes behind the scenes. However, I would argue that today, because corporations have grown to such a huge size, because they span the globe in ways they never could before, and because they control so many of the major channels through which the world is enabled to communicate and trade, the balance of power may actually be shifting in favour of the corporations, and in some cases the tiny number of individuals who sit at the very top of them, in ways that we as a society may want to examine carefully.

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In January 2015 the Huffington Post reported that if Facebook were a country it would be the most populous country on earth with around 1.4Billion regular users, making it bigger than China where it is still blocked by authorities.

What kind of power does that give the company? Well, when you consider that in downloading the Facebook Messenger App and accepting the terms and conditions, you agree to allowing Facebook to use your device’s camera, audio and video recording abilities at any time and to access your phone logs, the power is considerable. Add to this the ability for Facebook to choose what you see in your ‘News Feed’ and you have an enormously powerful tool which could be used for both positive and negative ends.

Google is in a similarly powerful position.

Its millions of Gmail users agree to allow Google to scan their emails, notably to reduce spam and allow for targeted ad-serving, but Google have recently also been able to use this data to identify sharers of images of child abuse and pass this information on to the authorities.

This shows both how powerful tech companies can be in helping to uphold the law, but also that there is potential for the abuse of this power should the same companies choose to use the data in different ways.

Surely the law should prevent them from abusing this power, I hear you ask. Well it could, if it could keep up and it could be enforced effectively. One case that brings the tension between companies and the law into sharp focus is the recent standoff between Apple CEO Tim Cook and America’s FBI. The head of Apple described the company’s refusal to create a way to unlock an iPhone which may have contained information the FBI were interested in in connection with a terrorism case as a civil liberties issue, saying: “This case is about much more than a single phone or a single investigation, so when we received the government’s order we knew we had to speak out. At stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people, and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.”

This case highlights two very important points. Firstly, the sheer power corporations like Apple have because of the data they hold (and the decisions they make about protecting that data), and secondly, that some corporations are prepared to challenge governments (and laws) for the sake of their values, wants or needs.

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So, corporations will do what they can within the law to reduce their tax burden, and there are those who will castigate them for it. And yet, many of those same corporations, either through corporate giving, through the products they create or through the philanthropic gestures of their founders and/or leaders are increasingly tackling the social and economic ‘big issues’ that have previously been the sole preserve of government interventions.

Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, for example is on a one-man mission to tackle the global issue of sustainable energy – whilst also exploring the potential for inter-planetary life! This type of long term, future thinking has, in recent times, only been possible with the support of massive government investments. With some governments

thinking only as far ahead as the next election cycle, risk-laden long term projects are perhaps less palatable to governments today, and so we’re seeing a shift back to the private sector taking on these huge challenges.

Whilst part of Elon Musk’s approach in tackling these issues is surely with a view to making them viable businesses, he is also one of a growing group of private individuals who are seeking to use their personal wealth to support those tackling the world’s most pressing human needs without necessarily seeking a financial return.

The ‘Giving Pledge’ is probably the most famous example of this. Born out of conversations between investor Warren Buffett and Microsoft’s Bill and Melinda Gates, the Giving Pledge describes itself as ‘an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems by inviting the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to commit to giving more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes either during their lifetime or in their will’.

developing foundations or other means of donating their money to relevant causes.

For example, the Foundation founded and led by Microsoft’s Bill and Melinda Gates makes grants to support projects that tackle issues in health, global development and education. As the couple state in their pledge letter ‘We feel very lucky to have the chance to work together in giving back the resources we are stewards of.’

So, the influence of corporations and their celebrity leaders is huge, and can be channelled for good – tackling truly big issues that Governments can’t or won’t address. However, with the choices about which causes to support and which not to at the whim of a few private individuals, there is a significant risk that important areas of need will be overlooked. We are dependent on the good nature of individuals, individuals who have made huge personal gains from their work, and who are not governed by any societal input. And, if our Governments and societies come to rely on their support, what happens if they simply decide to take it away?

More than 100 billionaire families have signed up to the pledge, including Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, Richard and Joan Branson, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, and Bill and Melinda Gates and between them they are all engaged in Vol 6 Issue 4 2016 | 13

Image: ©RetroRocket/Shutterstock.com

On the issue of taxes, we also have some really interesting developments. Whilst multi-national corporations naturally have complex tax affairs across multiple jurisdictions, there has been a great deal of media attention on how much UK tax they are paying. The argument of the corporations is that they are operating within the law whilst maximising shareholder value (which is their obligation), and that it is the responsibility of governments to ensure their tax arrangements are watertight.

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Student Perspective: Leadership Styles in Education

By Rhys Gardiner, Ieuan Hames, Ami Martin, Michael Murtadha, Martyn O’Brien, Catherine Owen, Matthew Richards, Emyr Walters, and Rhian Watts.

As trainee Business Studies teachers, we are interested in the way in which leadership styles differ within the educational context, and have had the opportunity to observe different techniques within our host placements.

In this piece we present an analysis of leadership styles in the context of a range of secondary schools across the South Wales area.

decisions; and laissez-faire leaders being those who adopt a much more ‘laid back’ and ‘hands off’ approach. However, within the educational context it could be argued that one’s personal leadership preferences should take second place to their role within the school, thus the role should define the style.

A multitude of theory can be found in the academic literature regarding specific leadership styles but, is one person ever really just one type of leader? Surely, given the dynamic, and sometimes turbulent nature of a school environment, shouldn’t leadership be more about individuals tailoring their approach to best fit the context in which they find themselves?

When it comes to the concept of what ‘leadership’ represents, there are a few stances one can take. I’m sure we’ve all heard of the phrase ‘a born leader’, whether it is on the sporting field, in business or within the school environment. So we must ask ourselves, is leadership more about nature versus nurture? Are individuals born with the attributes of a leader, or can you in fact learn and enhance the characteristics of skilled and strong leadership over time through development and education?

Traditionally, academic literature has suggested three categories into which leadership styles can fall; autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. Some writers suggest that a leader’s personal traits define what type of style one falls into as each style consists of very distinct and unique characteristics. Many people consider autocratic leaders to be those with a very abrupt, stern style; democratic leaders being those who encourage employee involvement in 14 | Vol 6 Issue 4 2016

What is leadership?

In order to answer the underlying question; ‘Are leadership styles in the educational contexts pre-determined by your job role’ we have looked at some secondary schools across South Wales at senior, middle and junior leadership positions. Here are our findings:

Senior Leadership Senior leadership in schools - is there one ‘right’ way? This is the milliondollar question which we aim to answer by exploring senior leadership roles within two local secondary schools and analysing the styles adopted.

School 1 – The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) displays a clear difference between its approach to leadership of staff and students. An altogether democratic approach to staff - there is a team culture where everyone has a voice and each member is valued. In line with a more traditional view of school leadership, a more autocratic approach was displayed to the students. One might expect this to be the case as standards relating to behaviour management, school uniform and the ages of pupils might dictate this approach.

School 2 – With the current emphasis on ‘pupil voice’ as a growing feature of the school environment, a much more relaxed approach following the key principles of laissez-faire leadership was observed in this placement. A very experienced SLT were seen to empower leaders at all levels in the school to run departments and pastoral teams as they wished, but they would provide interventions when asked. From our observations, the culture here also filtered down to the pupil level, by promoting activities and procedures to get them involved in important decision making (involving pupils in the interviews of staff, feeding Minutes of Pupil Forum meetings into SLT meetings, etc.).

This very limited observational research began to provide some insight into the education system and showed how modern initiatives are impacting on leadership styles. Even though both schools have differing leadership styles they both enjoyed excellent pupil attainment and inclusion levels so there may not be one correct leadership style, but rather the approach adopted and culture fostered in schools should depend on the strengths of staff and needs of the learners contextualised in their own unique environments.

Both schools have one key aspect in common: they are run like a business with all the demands of managing staff, budgets, adhering to legislation and responding to ever changing government initiatives. Many of the students currently on the PGCE Business Studies course have experience of working in industry,

ADOLYGIAD BUSNES DE CYMRU | and we expected to see a complete contrast between the way schools run on public funds and the way traditional businesses are run relying on revenue and sales. However, it was clear to us that schools and all businesses are both subject to rapid change whilst considering all stakeholders and thus education needs strong leadership that understands the agenda in business.

Typically, observations and research into junior leadership showed that they often employed a democratic and diplomatic approach when dealing with their peers and those in higher leadership roles.

Whilst this approach ensures effective communication, it could result in the inability to make decisions effectively through lack of a strong voice, although this is not always the case.

Middle Leadership

Having had discussions with various junior leadership figures it was clear that ‘one size does not fit all’. It became apparent that it was much more to do with a leader’s personality rather than fitting into one particular categorisation of leadership style. Therefore, it could be considered that due to the level of experience and the typically younger age of the lower-level leaders, they needed to operate in a democratic or laissezfaire approach in order to be heard and respected by their peers.

Regarding the pupils, many middle leaders identified that high energy levels, motivating approaches and an appreciation of ‘pupil voice’ were paramount when leading classes and looking after welfare, however academic work was set primarily by the teacher and followed by the pupils, and disciplinary procedures were followed stringently.

This suggests that even though these leaders believe themselves to be democratic and laissez-faire, there are elements of their leadership which are very autocratic. For example, even those who believed themselves to be laissezfaire leaders had to follow and set strict guidelines for pupils; inappropriate behaviour was taken seriously with pupils being given non-negotiable sanctions. Similarly, missed deadlines for homework would result in pupils receiving punishments such as detention.

Therefore, it is clear that although certain aspects of the teaching profession allow for a ‘laidback’, laissez-faire approach, many elements require teachers to express an autocratic leadership style.

Junior Leadership

In conclusion, it seems apparent that ultimately one’s role and level of responsibility within an educational context definitely impacts the style of leadership one may adopt. Although individuals may have their preferred chosen leadership style, research conducted suggests that these styles are tailored to the level of authority an individual holds. Interestingly from our limited research, often senior management figures are viewed to be much more autocratic than they perceive themselves to be. Could this be ultimately down to their higher level role within the school and often remoteness from ordinary teachers?

Finally, our research suggests that effective leaders don’t just possess leadership characteristics of one of the theoretical categories, but ultimately tailor their leadership style to the context in which they find themselves. Leadership, therefore, is crucial within the context of any organisation, and – with initiatives to encourage pupils in schools to participate in activities that can inform strategic direction – we may see tomorrow’s leaders being better equipped to take on roles both in the private and public sectors.

Image: ©Sunny Studio/Shutterstock.com

From discussions and observations with middle management in South Wales schools it became evident that leadership styles vary significantly, and categorisation of styles can be difficult. Middle leaders within the context of secondary schools occupy roles such as Heads of Department or Pastoral Leads. A number of Heads of Department interviewed for this piece believed they had a relaxed leadership style and endeavored to create a charismatic approach when dealing with departmental staff, pupils and parents.

All contributors to this article are currently enrolled on the PGCE Business Studies course at University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Swansea Campus). Further information about this course which trains Business Studies graduates to be teachers within the 11-18 age group can be obtained by contacting Alison Evans, PGCE Business Studies tutor: Alison.evans2@uwtsd.ac.uk

Findings from observing and interviewing junior leadership in schools were thought provoking. Like middle leaders they appeared charismatic and relaxed in their approach with their peers, however it was clear from observation that there was again a mixture of leadership styles.

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Opinion: Why Do We Follow Toxic Leaders?

Steve Griffiths

Steve Griffiths, Assistant Dean at Swansea Business School, explores the reasons why we human beings often choose to follow dangerously toxic leaders and what organisations, and societies, can do about it.

The concept of the toxic leader is well rehearsed; research by LipmanBlumen (2005) evaluated how such leaders emerge and thrive, but also how organisations can identify and neutralise their negative influence – but why do some people identify with and choose to follow these individuals?

At recent seminars and events linked to the Leading Wales Awards 2016 held at Swansea Business School audiences have been invited to nominate their choices of current and historical strong leaders. Many admirable examples pervade, however quite a few still opt for Adolf Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and other notorious dictators “who at least ran the trains on time”. While even this claim may be challenged by historians, toxic leaders, 16 | Vol 6 Issue 4 2016

as their name denotes, tend to exhibit qualities and traits which are destructive to their organisations, actually making them less effective and at the very least worse off, as a result of their activities.

In recent years, the concept has been utilised by several industries and sectors, to explain poor performance and disastrous impacts on organisations and the wider society - this runs from the Enron scandals, to a special concern in public services, and by the military (US Army War College, 2014), to explain the sometimes lethal outcomes of their delivery.

Toxic leaders are the antithesis of more inclusive transformational leadership models or Servant Leadership (Greenleaf,1977). Often characterised by

‘aggressive narcissism’ (Goldman, 2009), toxic leaders are motivated by self-interest to the exclusion of the organisation. They may display superficial charm, but use their cunning to manipulate, deceive, bully and control. Lipman-Blumen does not classify toxicity as simply mismanagement but something more pernicious, dysfunctional and destructive. Yet the intriguing thing is we often value our toxic leaders. As she says, “my toxic leader is your heroic saviour”.

Without loyal followers who tend to stay the course, toxic leaders cannot operate.

Therefore, they seem to appeal to a deep need in many of us to be strongly led. They offer to satisfy many levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, making decisions for us, removing anxiety,

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allowing us to be part of the “chosen group”, safe in an unpredictable world and promising results. Lipman-Blumen’s thesis states that this offering is more a grand illusion than noble vision, since it is usually unattainable, leading to negative outcomes and misdirection from goals set. To establish their place at the top, they often promise impossible targets, just as Jeffrey Skilling announced soaring stock prices right before the Enron collapse.

We followers rationalise our loyalty by buying the myth, obeying the unreasonable demands and fearing the alternatives - ‘lions led by donkeys’ to continue the military application?

The solutions might be organisational, where leaders are offered finite periods

of office, to ensure transition to new influences, more open management and communication styles, peer and subordinate review and audit, and systems to welcome internal criticism.

For the critical follower, doing research on decision making incidents, collaborating with others in the organisation and avoiding individual confrontations may be a way to limit toxicity. More drastically some form of whistleblowing might ultimately have reduced some of the serious consequences in our health, education, military and business scandals. David Sloan Wilson offers an evolutionary perspective where humans may be the only animal to be able to avoid toxic leaders, especially in small organisations and communities, through

collective decision making, however even he admits that in large bureaucracies, the “institutional cancer” of toxic leadership is a feature in our economies. He also analyses the military implications which he believes have resulted in death and serious injury not only to the enemies and civilians in war zones, but also to US military personnel in high suicide and bullying rates. Positively the authors in identifying toxic characteristics, tools of manipulation and solutions, offer hope against this poisonous element of modern organisations.

For references please contact the editor.

Vol 6 Issue 4 2016 | 17

Image: ©CASTADOstudio.com/shutterstock

“They may display superficial charm, but use their cunning to manipulate, deceive, bully and control.”

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Research Perspective: A practical approach to managing complexity and coping with change Dr David Griffiths and Dr Maggie Inman

This article, by Dr David Griffiths and Dr Maggie Inman of Swansea Business School, won Management Article of the Year in the recent CMI Awards and is reproduced here in abridged form with kind permission of the authors.

There has been much discussion about the future of work, where increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) operating environments, often referred to as ‘increasing complexity,’ are challenging the ability of leaders and managers to anticipate, sense and react to change.

This is evidenced in a recent KPMG report with 1,400 executive level respondents (KPMG, 2011): •

•

•

94% agreed that managing complexity is important to their company’s success.

70% agreed that increasing complexity is one of the biggest challenges their company is facing.

62% declared that increasing complexity would require them to develop new products/services.

The aim of this article is therefore to introduce a practical approach to managing complexity and coping with the change brought about by such 18 | Vol 6 Issue 4 2016

environments. This is illustrated through an explanatory case study in a top 400 accounting firm in the United States.

The underlying causality for VUCA conditions, includes increasing connectedness within an organisation’s external environment, usually associated with the proliferation of information technology, and interconnectedness or interdependence: “The intertwining of organisations’ value chains, corporate governance, and financial flows results in exposure to shocks at the periphery that can move to the centre of an organisation in rapid succession” (Seijts et al., 2010).

Juxtapose these conditions against the expectations of the still emerging Millennial workforce, with their desire for collaborative, open, one-size-fits-one, work anywhere, anytime and on any device workplaces (Morgan, 2014), and it is no wonder why business leaders consider managing complexity to be their biggest challenge.

policies and practice sync with such environments. Quite simply, any organisation operating in a dynamic environment must itself be dynamic. This means organisational structures, systems, policy and practice, including methods for making sense of the world, must reflect the demands of such environments.

This creates intense pressure for leaders and managers to ensure that their organisational structures, systems,

These challenges are well-illustrated by ABCPA, a successful top 400 mid-west United States accounting firm, founded

Therefore, responses to a complex, emergent and non-linear world cannot be linear or based on command-and-control.

This requires leaders and managers to see and manage the whole picture, an impossible task for one person in a hierarchical leadership model. Complexity requires leaders and managers to engage and involve their people, in order to rapidly anticipate, sense and respond to ever increasing changes in the organisation’s environment – think of this as decision-making and problemsolving using a distributed human sensory network.

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The lead author of this article was engaged on what became known as the Clarity Project. “We tried several approaches on our own. They haven’t been ill-received, but the buy-in wasn’t there. We were going high on the mountain and coming back with the stone tablets” (ABCPA, Managing Partner).

Twelve months of work began by reframing the problem as a phenomenon (see Madsbjerg and Rasmussen, 2014), asking: “What does a sustainable, high performance working environment mean for the people in this firm?” This led to 100% staff engagement via Change Cafes, design workshops and one-onone interviews, through which several key themes emerged: 1. All but a few described the firm as a ‘family,’ which they did not want to see changed.

2. Almost all staff requested greater transparency in decision-making, especially concerning goals, appraisal, reward, mentoring and career development.

3. Many mentioned ‘trust’ in the context of being more involved in decisions.

4. Staff generally recognised that, to remain relevant in the future, there was a need to innovate; collaborate (inside and outside the firm); and be more flexible in their thinking (working outside their

technical specialisms), which would require a commitment to their own personal development.

Progressing, the research team codeveloped project guidelines with ABCPA partners to support the objective of developing a high performance workplace, drawing upon, for example, various leadership, adult learning, complexity, knowledge management and organisational behaviour theories (e.g.

Snowden 2007; Knowles et al., 2008; Pfeffer 1998): • Create attractors (e.g. processes) that stimulate and optimise self- organisation.

• Stimulate swarming, leveraging a breadth and depth of expertise to anticipate, innovate and problem- solve through collaboration.

• Focus on alignment of people, as opposed to organising them, using the unique personality of the firm, its history and underlying values.

• Craft an environment where learning can be applied under pressure to develop new skills.

• Encourage new ideas and experimentation, quickly dampening failure and amplifying success.

• Disrupt existing norms without negatively impacting day-to-day operations.

• Provide a generalist experience for managing complexity that conveys an understanding of how to cope with change.

• Build trust through openness, commitment, accountability, empathy and a ‘safe to fail’ culture.

• Allow status to be awarded by others and not by title.

Scaffolding Change The primary challenge was to swarm people around the change process.

“One of the basic findings of applied behavioural science research is that people tend to feel committed to a decision activity in direct proportion to their participation in or influence on its planning and decision-making” (Knowles et al. 2008, p. 58). This was addressed through the formation of a ‘Frontier Team,’ comprised of twelve people, that included the Managing Partner and a balanced representation of staff that accounted for technical/managerial roles within the business (e.g. tax and audit), sex, and years of experience. The team had a flat structure, with members taking turns to lead meetings. Members were given permission from the partner group

to revisit the founding principles of the firm and develop systems and processes to create a high performance workplace that would remain relevant in a fastchanging environment, including the firm’s vision, mission, strategy, goals, HR policy and practice.

The role of the Frontier Team was introduced to the rest of the firm via halfday workshops that set out the objectives for the change project. Each member of the team was expected to take on follower/ leadership roles as necessary, and all members were expected to lead an aspect of the project. Nobody had the authority to conscript people to support their tasks; any support had to be freely given and was reliant on the ability of the task leader to persuade others to support them.

The Frontier Team also codeveloped their own Terms of Reference, which was achieved in consultation with all ABCPA staff: •

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Act as an advocate for the interests of all staff within the firm.

Work to represent and uphold the values and standards of the firm.

Shape a firm culture that embraces unity, integration and collaboration.

Actively contribute to the development of firm strategy and operational policy, systems, processes and tools.

Communicate with clarity the team’s aims and objectives to the wider firm.

Ensure that all opinions, both inside and outside the team, are heard and valued.

Actively seek out opportunities to engage with all team members within the firm.

Nurture trust in the Clarity Project through openness.

Bring forward new ideas, encourage innovation and challenge the ‘norm.’

Foster a ‘safe to fail’ environment, where all team members feel that decisions can be taken in an environment where failure can be tolerated.

Work to ensure that new ideas are introduced in such a way that failure can be tolerated.

Champion continuous learning and development.

Inspire and lead for the future (actions define you, not words).

Vol 6 Issue 4 2016 | 19

©goir/shutterstock Image:Image: ©Goldenarts/shutterstock

in 1956, with sixty employees (70% being Millennials), across two locations.

In 2013 the firm’s partner group sensed that their environment was changing, driven by the emergence of new financial reporting frameworks and increasingly complex operating conditions, defined by a growing demand for more personalised service offerings. There was also recognition that the firm was potentially not reacting to change as quickly as it should. “As business owners…. we get so involved in the day-to-day of taking care of clients… you become less effective if you don’t spread the responsibility around” (ABCPA Partner).

The partners were also interested in expansion of the business, as a way to enhance its long term future. Here they realised that there was a lack of current employees on a ‘partner track’, which could impact plans for growth.

“Even though people told us we were a great place to work, they weren’t sticking around for partnership” (ABCPA, Managing Partner). This led the partner group to seek assistance in developing a sustainable, high performance workplace.

| SOUTH WALES BUSINESS REVIEW The Frontier Team received situational and values-based leadership development; training in the use of The Clarity decisionmaking framework.

The Clarity framework was conceived to assist distributed decision-making.

All ABCPA staff were sponsored to take decisions by the partner group on the understanding that they could evidence their engagement with six decision gates: 1. Purpose: does the decision align with the vision, mission and goals of the firm?

(Yes, safe to proceed. No, stop and seek guidance).

2. Values: does the decision align with our values?

3. Standards: does the decision align with our standards, including the code of professional conduct (is it legally compliant)?

4. Credible: is the decision based on credible evidence and how do you know?

5. Coherent: is the decision logical; does it feel like stepping across a stream or jumping the Grand Canyon?

6. Risk balanced: Have you considered risk? What are the short/long term consequences; have you tested your decision?

Establishing Openness and Trust During an early Frontier Team meeting the research team sensed hesitancy from non-partner participants. It was as if change was happening on the surface, but staff were yet to be convinced that they were participating in meaningful change. Within accounting firms one of the least transparent aspects of the business involves what it actually means to become a partner, in terms of financial commitment. A typical response from partner groups being, “it depends and we’ll talk to you about it when the time comes.” A young manager with five years’ experience, during a discussion on existing goals around revenue growth and the development of future partners, felt comfortable enough to challenge the ABCPA Managing Partner on what it actually meant to become a partner. The Managing Partner went to a whiteboard and, for the first time in front of staff, mapped out the financials for partnership, including illustrations of how this had been structured in the past.

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At the end of our engagement many staff noted this to be the moment when they believed that they were participating in meaningful change. Upon reflection, it begs the question, what would have happened if the Managing Partner had not been brave enough to have such a transparent conversation? “The biggest idea driving this project all along was that the partners were trusting us with the firm… Nothing is requiring them to put the future of the firm in our hands… now, what can we do to leverage that to ensure the firm succeeds in the future?”

(Frontier Team member, four years’ experience).

The Outcome At the time of writing, the Frontier Team is coming to the end of its second year.

After year one, half of the members transitioned off the team, as a way to initiate a two-year cycle of participation, where half of the members change on an annual basis; the Managing Partner being the only permanent member. During year one the team identified commonly accepted values, built upon the traditions of the founding partners, which are visible in all the firm’s public and private meeting spaces. They also clarified the firm’s values in the context of its mission: “Our firm is a community where clients and staff feel understood and appreciated.

We are growing our community by providing services that remain true to our core values and respond to evolving needs. This means: We act with integrity.

Our innovative spirit is harnessed to continuously challenge the design, development, and delivery of excellent services. We strive to earn the respect of the communities we serve and our place as a trusted advisor. We ensure our team members apply balance in their lives to sustain our pursuit of excellence.”

The Frontier Team conducts ongoing environmental scanning and is responsible for the development of pathways to achieve the agreed strategy.

The team continuously monitors and adjusts strategy and practice according to feedback, which includes revenue, employee development and client satisfaction indicators. It has also developed a new online employee guide that tells stories of the past and sets out human resource policy, procedure, career guidance and competency based development guidelines.

Conclusion The aim of this article was to introduce practical approaches to managing complexity and coping with the change brought about by such environments. We believe the methods to be transferable outside of the case organisation. This is strengthened where they have been deployed, in part or whole, within five other organisations in the United States and the United Kingdom. More importantly, evidence suggests these methods to be successful: “I appreciate the outcome… When you’re being pushed to the edge it can be frustrating.

Then, looking back on it, seeing what you learned, it’s rewarding – we’ve become more efficient, from how we handle our meetings to how we make decisions” (Frontier Team member, 4 years’ experience). “It’s helped me develop my leadership skills, my critical thinking skills…. it’s definitely affected me in my day-to-day work… where I don’t jump to quick decisions” (Frontier Team member, 5 years’ experience). “What I’ve learnt through this process is a little humility.

I don’t have all the answers and I need to listen to others. I think it’s fascinating to see, when you empower others and say that we want this input from you, what you get in return. It’s going to position us better. It’s going to make our firm stronger.” (ABCPA Managing Partner). Testing of these approaches continues, but, regardless, such practice is necessary if leaders and managers are to sustain the fitness of their organisations with a dynamic, fast changing landscape.

“we’ve become more efficient, from how we handle our meetings to how we make decisions”

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News and Events

Events @ Swansea Business School

For full details and booking for any of the below events please contact: Jamie Tavender (Faculty Marketing Officer) jamie.tavender@uwtsd.ac.uk

1 July 2016

Undergraduate Open Day (Carmarthen)

Open Day for Undergraduate programmes at our Carmarthen Campus. Visit www.uwtsd.ac.uk/visitus to book a place.

2 July 2016

Undergraduate Open Day (Swansea)

Open Day for Undergraduate programmes at Swansea Business School. Visit www.uwtsd.ac.uk/visitus to book a place.

Swansea Business School Academics Win Management Article of the Year An article written by two academics from Swansea Business School has won the first prize in the Chartered Management Institute’s Articles of the Year Competition.

The article, ‘High performance workplaces: a practical approach to managing complexity and coping with change’, was written by Learning Design Advisor Dr David Griffiths and Head of School Dr Margaret Inman. According to the authors, managing complexity and coping with the change it brings are two of the biggest challenges facing

organisations today. The winning article introduces practical high-performance approaches to negotiating real-world challenges, illustrated via a case study of a top 400 United States accounting firm.

Dr Griffiths said: “We are delighted that our article has won the prestigious Chartered Management Institute ‘Management Articles of the Year’ competition. Our article is illustrative of the leading-edge, applied, employmentfocused approach taken within our teaching and research at Swansea Business School. As a leading Business School we want to ensure that our

work fosters a culture of enterprise and works to provide solutions to real-world challenges.”

Dr Inman added “This accolade clearly demonstrates the quality of the professional and academic research output from the Swansea Business School. Every aspect of the School, from our research to our academic and professional development programmes, is underpinned by our collaboration with business and industry. This ensures that we are in a strong position to support the local and national economy.”

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| SOUTH WALES BUSINESS REVIEW

Activists Share Their Experiences with SBS Students

Sian James meets Swansea Business School students after her talk on activism

Peter Tatchell with Head of Swansea Business School Dr Maggie Inman, Assistant Dean Steve Griffiths and Lecturer Jayne Woodman

Students, staff and the local business community were recently privileged to hear two of the country’s most well known human rights activists speak about their experiences and their impact on making change.

Peter Tatchell, founder of the Peter Tatchell Foundation and campaigner for equality gave Swansea Business School’s annual Saint David’s Day Lecture to a packed audience, and former MP Sian James, whose role in the Miners’ Strike was recently highlighted in the film ‘Pride’ spoke about her experiences of activism and the importance of making your voice heard.

Leadership Expert Coaches CIPD Students UWTSD students recently benefitted from the expertise of Allison Holland who visited Swansea Business School to run a workshop on leadership for students on the CIPD programme. Allison is a consultant, facilitator, and executive coach who works collaboratively to design, deliver and sustain personal excellence and organisational change. Her focus is on building capability with individuals, teams and organisations in order to deliver results. This frequently involves working with senior leaders to turn strategy into action.

Workshops, lectures and Q&As with industry experts are a key feature of Swansea Business School programmes, and enable students to engage with a wide range of perspectives and real world experiences to support their studies.

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In Memory of Owen Lewis Everyone at Swansea Business School would like to extend their condolences to the family of Owen Lewis, who sadly passed away recently. Owen was a member of the lecturing staff at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and its predecessor organisations for more than 20 years and will be much missed by his friends, colleagues and former students. In particular, many former MBA students, both in the UK and at our overseas partner institutions will remember the key role Owen played in the MBA team.

Most of all, however, he will be remembered for his kindness, his sense of humour and for the impact he had on those he taught.

ADOLYGIAD BUSNES DE CYMRU |

Book Review: Leadership Lessons from the Past John Adair (2013) Confucius on Leadership, London, Macmillan Reviewed by Steve Griffiths Like some of my students, I bought John Adair’s book to try to save time updating myself on leadership theory and get some insight into the thoughts of Confucius.

Adair, a leading theorist and practitioner on management and leadership, always writes persuasively and accessibly. He conveys complex concepts in a manner which most will find intelligible. This book delivers on my pragmatic hopes, but gives so much more. In fact Adair, the first non-Chinese Professor of Leadership in the People’s Republic of China, offers a tour de force, not only in interpreting ancient and modern leadership concepts and practical outcomes but also offers great cultural insights. He reflects on Confucius’s sometimes opaque symbolic dialogues, referencing leadership theorists most readers would know and utilises illustrations from classical Greece, the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, through to Asian cultural impacts on social and community attitudes. His illustrations are as varied as plays from Euripides to Shakespeare, poetry in the Iranian tradition to Robert Burns, military strategy from Sun Tzu to Von Clausewitz and especially valuable commentaries on Confucius’s interaction with rulers, students and his contemporary problems.

The challenges for China 2,500 years ago seem remarkably prescient to the global society of the C21st. Adair confronts the problems of translation and the discontinuity with western concepts of leaders and leadership, which do not exactly match Confucius’s commentaries on the role, training and ethics of state craft and rulers. The outcomes for leadership models and the stated ideals may seem obvious to those who have studied before, but it is interesting to see them rehearsed here with thought provoking examples. Adair confesses

to an enduring optimism for socially responsible management, as being the likely long term sustainable organisational outcome. However, it is pleasing to see significant areas of ambiguity, interpretation and the need for practical application, in both the original Confucian Analogues and Adair’s application of them.

Adair’s Venn diagram for leaders to understand and serve the needs of the Task, Team and Individual is employed at team, operational and strategic levels. The good leader’s qualities of empathy, care for individuals, moral certainty, courage and vision, are well applied to several Confucian discussions.

The leader’s need for education and training (including learning from bad examples), planning, flexibility, focus, consistency and task finishing, are discussed in several contexts from business to military strategy. The need for unity in organisations, building trust, creating harmony, a family/team environment and developing followers’ capacities and talents, seems a special Confucian contribution which squares with current inclusive transformational leadership models, challenging more aggressive macho styles of the late C20th theoretical canon.

The notion that leaders should be warm, humble, enthusiastic, sharing and supportive, may seem too idealised, however they fit the modern concept of the ‘servant leader’. Adair is also clear that such a leader retains a steely quality, able to make tough decisions in difficult circumstance and should be ‘tough but fair’. As Confucius says “the best leader is easy to serve, but tough to please”.

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Activating Economies How Sport and Culture Contribute to Vibrant Local Economies

Out Autumn 2016

To reserve a copy please visit www.uwtsd.ac.uk/swbr or email your name and address to: swbr@uwtsd.ac.uk

Image: ©archetype/shutterstock­­

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