24 July 2024
Cherish the basics and the Big Hairy Audacious Goals will be more likely to be achieved...
We live in an increasingly automated and “bigger is better” world.
Let’s take a few examples:
I’m reminded of Nick Faiers, my English master at school, bemoaning (even then) the societal malaise that brought us the Stephen Stills song with the chorus:
“If you can’t be with the one you love, baby
Love the one you’re with.”
The good news, however, is that when you walk down the average High Street you realise that there are some items and services which cannot be automated or super-sized. They speak to the basics of:
We can hop on a bike (it may be electrified but we still pedal), we pause at Gail’s for one of those rather good sausage rolls and we then pass the nail bar next door which is already full of people having their nails sorted.
This line of thought reminded me of Jim Collins’s thesis in Built to Last.
His essential point is that the most successful companies that survive across generations of leaders manage a delicate balance of embracing and nurturing core values and purpose - preserving the core - whilst stimulating progress and change through the pursuit of “Big Hairy Audacious Goals”. They take risks and try lots of stuff, integrating the successful ideas into the core.
Similarly the “core” of bakeries, bikes and nail bars is the ying to the yang of Gen AI, Apple iPhones and e-commerce platforms like Amazon. You need the basics of breakfast and getting around to fuel the teams that have the ideas.
That being the case what, in a changing world, are the core values and behaviours that businesses should be nurturing to underpin the Big Hairy Audacious Goals which they must seek to generate?
Much is written about leadership but it seems to me to be a combination of qualities in the relevant individual(s) which:
As the world gets more complicated and competitive, Boards’ decisions around CEO and other leadership succession become increasingly significant.
We are often told in business that you have only one chance to make a first impression. So the drill of smart turnout, eye contact, smile and firm handshake is important for that critical pitch.
More than that, a colleague reminded me a while ago that you should treat everyone you meet as a potential referee. An important cultural tenet.
The stakes are, moreover, even higher than I thought. I have recently discovered some 2007 research from Janine Wallis and Alexander Todorov which reveals that it only takes one tenth of a second to form and impression of a stranger from their face https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/how-many-seconds-to-a-first-impression.
So, soberingly, there is a hair trigger on your initial impact.
We have recent graphic endorsement of the importance of first impressions. If you are a Prime Minister announcing a General Election don’t do it in the pouring rain without an umbrella. These days, pictures never go away…
In business, as in life generally, we tend to ruminate on mistakes that we have made or things that we could have made said or done effectively. To take a recent example – if only I had checked that the driver’s side wiper blade was secure before driving through torrential rain.
The ability to move on, learn lessons and not look back is precious to creativity and momentum.
Roger Federer expresses this well in his speech to graduating students at Dartmouth College earlier this year. He offers the interesting statistic that he played 1526 singles matches in his career and won 80% of them.
But he only won 54% of the points he played.
So moving past lost points was a big part of his success https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2JR4LHF_2Q. As he says:
“When you play a point it must be the most important thing in the world;
But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you.
This mindset is crucial. It frees you to commit to the next point
and the point after that
With intensity, clarity and focus.”
He goes on to observe that, “negative energy is wasted energy”. Easier said than implemented, but the ability to put the lost point behind you and focus exclusively on this point is powerful.
Fans of the seminal film, Galaxy Quest, will relate to the expression “Never give up, never surrender”. Everything conceivable goes wrong in this Star Wars spoof, but the plucky crew keep going gamely and survive. It’s a joy of a film.
And so it is with the England team. I’m not a great football fan but I did struggle through the recent match against Slovakia. All hope seemed to be lost, but then there was a moment of brilliance from Jude Bellingham 90 seconds from the end and the team was saved - and with it Gareth Southgate’s job.
The learning for business here is that grit and resilience are important bedfellows for brilliance. A good example here is Elon Musk. Love him or hate him, he is an unusual talent. He was, he says, a month away from bankruptcy during Model 3 ramp up between 2017 and 2019 but he kept going and look at Tesla now.
Bakeries and nail bars speak to different human needs and likes. And Boards need variety and must be wary of group think.
Gender and ethnic diversity are very important and progress is being made. But there is more to do. According to Spencer Stuart’s most recent Board index:
Diversity of personality type, background and experience is also important in helping to drive the constructive challenge among NEDs which Boards need. Two thoughts here:
The rise of Electric Vehicles, automatics and cars equipped with paddle changing automated gearboxes has led to a decline in the manual gearbox.
Only 18% of car models currently available in the UK have a manual gearbox.
EVs, automatics and automated gearbox vehicles are certainly easier to drive, especially in town. And yet, there is an old-fashioned charm to a manual box. There is a sense of orderly progression and regression about moving up and down a manual gearbox that requires concentration, engagement and a certain skill.
These themes of the concentrated application of skill, orderly but not linear progression and engagement with the matter in hand seem to me to have application to Boards. Boards should, I hazard, be conducted as well-made and well-engineered manual cars.
The basics of bakeries, bikes and nail bars. Cherish the basics and the Big Hairy Audacious Goals will be more likely to be achieved.
Christopher Saul