Humility and vulnerability in leadership seems to be the latest badge of virtue for those in positions of power. Sometimes packaged as servant, supportive or vulnerable leadership, humble leadership has been around as an idea since the 1970s. But is humble leadership practical in reality?
We’re all increasingly told that the new digital world turns everything on its head. That the new digital strategy says that we should look at the latest buzzwords and build business cases around why they are appropriate for deployment. History however is littered with cautionary tales of businesses that ‘bet the business’ on a certain strategy or approach, so how do you get digital transformation right?
Leadership development is a $200 billion industry. From coaching existing leaders, to teaching new MBAs, to books and courses, businesses and individuals are spending a huge amount of money in the pursuit of producing or becoming a better leader. But is it working? We invited a dozen Group HRDs to discuss this at a breakfast briefing co-hosted with the Harvard Business Review and chaired by Ron Ashkenas, an Emeritus Partner of US-based Schaffer Consulting.
The job of CEOs (or Chairman) is unique and becoming even more challenging. This was discussed at our latest Boardroom Lunch for Chairmen, CEOs and Investors across the Leisure & Hospitality sector. It’s clear there are great potential upsides to being a CEO, it was also interesting that a high proportion of CEO’s commented that the role differed to what they had perhaps expected…
New research finds that traditional approaches to corporate governance are too often a box-ticking exercise and a distraction from the success of UK PLC. Our research report explains why governance measures are currently failing and what could be done to improve them.
At our dinner events and breakfast briefings, conversations can cover a wide range of leadership related issues. We have collected and collated comments from the Chairmen, NEDs, CEOs and Investors that participated in these events in order to provide some real-world insights and anecdotes from current business leaders. The leadership issues we have selected from the many discussed reflect those mentioned more frequently, and include the importance of selfawareness and self-knowledge, team leadership, decision making, leadership styles, and the value of organisational culture.
The latest of Savannah’s series of Boardroom Lunches for Chairmen, CEOs and Investors across the Leisure & Hospitality sector, centred on the recent conversation Tim Clouting had with a senior exec in a successful, sizable global organisation, discussing the five strong years of consistent profit/share price growth of his organisation and the rightful plaudits coming the way of the CEO.
In this piece, we speak to three of our senior partners about how to launch a successful plural career. Between them, they have more than fifty years’ experience in recruiting senior executives and Board level directors for large listed businesses and PE backed private businesses and have helped many executives follow the path to a plural portfolio career.
Taking a brief from a board on a CIO/CTO/CDO role is rather like picking from a box of chocolates where you’ve lost the little card which tells you what the flavours are; you never know what you’ll get until you taste it. There are certainly some specific flavours which come through depending on the sector and size of the organisation, but as a head hunter, I can tell you that boards are full of surprises.
While digital is having a profound impact on how businesses interact with their customers, it is also having an impact on how businesses think about their internal customers: how to best engage their employees, what the workplace will look like in the future and what the employee experience will be.
The CEO’s role has never been easy, and it doesn’t look like it will be getting easier any time soon. New entrants, digitisation, changing consumer buying patterns, new shareholders and profit warnings, being a CEO in today’s business environment requires high levels of resilience on both a personal level and within the organisation itself. What follows are lessons and insights picked up from some of the most successful players within the leisure and hospitality sectors, explaining how they’re reacting to a fast-changing world, and what their advice would be to other CEOs in a similar position.
Organisations in the UK have work to do if they want to keep up with digital-native competitors. That’s according to early results from the National Digital Benchmark survey, created alongside Management Consultancy PA Consulting Group and award-winning speaker and author Professor Venkat Venkatraman. The interim results from the survey, which several hundred senior executives have responded to so far, suggest that digital transformation is slow within UK organisations, however awareness of a need to evolve and embrace digital is increasing.
The HR tech space is exploding, with over 135 start-ups innovating across the HR value chain. Due to the sheer volume of start-ups and how fragmented the HR Tech space is, it can be difficult for HR leaders to keep abreast of new and emerging technologies and prioritise which technologies are worth exploring. We welcomed a selection of Group HRDs for a presentation and discussion focused on the workplace as a native function, what the trends and emerging technologies are and what the HR function can do to encourage innovation.
With all the new policies, training and compliance that goes along with the GDPR, trying to change people’s working habits alongside their existing responsibilities can become a bit of an unwanted headache. While it might be tempting to moan and complain about all the work that needs to be undertaken, viewed in a positive light, GDPR offers the opportunity for some much needed organisational spring cleaning, and as a company, there are many positives we are experiencing.
Business leaders are under the spotlight from customers and boards to innovate, to adapt to the new norm and equip their organisation with the tools, skills, capabilities and products to survive in a world where competitors can emerge from unlikely places. One of the more significant shifts that we have seen is organisations becoming more open-minded about where their next leader is coming from, no doubt in an effort to remain relevant and ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving business world.
Savannah Group and Leading Edge Forum recently hosted a breakfast briefing at Savannah’s offices in London to discuss “The Future of the IT Organisation”. Bill Murray of LEF presented key findings from a recent LEF research report, with a subsequent roundtable debate with fifteen CIOs/CTOs and CDOs on whether there will be an IT Organisation in the future.
A decade ago, virtually every CIO role focused on one thing: large scale ERP experience. CIOs marshalled small armies of people and large budgets, whilst being perceived by the business as a back office function whose sole purpose was systems optimisation. Skip forward to today and the vast majority of CIO roles are a hybrid of classic and new; dealing with the challenges of a legacy environment and “digitising” the business.
Perhaps most famously, the importance of culture was summed up in Peter Drucker’s famous quote “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, but to what degree is this still true in today’s disrupted age? In a business world awash with private funding, and an insatiable appetite from shareholders of public companies for increasing returns year on year, is culture still seen as a priority by current business leaders?
Savannah Group recently hosted its inaugural Media, Sports and Entertainment dinner for a selection of prominent senior executives, hosted by Tony Simpson. The focus of the dinner was a discussion around how an ever more digital future will impact businesses of all shapes and sizes within the Media, Sport and Entertainment industry.
Against the backdrop of a challenging business environment, where markets are more judgemental and unforgiving, how important is the tone that the CEO sets within an organisation?
The General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) is coming into force in the EU from May 2018.
GDPR is about protecting the privacy of an individual’s personal data. It’s been introduced to bring different rules across EU countries into a single set and to make sure companies respect and take care of the personal data that they hold on their customers and prospects. Andy Warren, CISO at Invenias, explains the five key things that senior leaders need to be aware of.
“Timing is everything” is a phrase we hear all the time. But how do you get the timing right? How do you become better at it, and how do you bring the elusive themes of “timing and luck” more firmly under your control? These questions became the focus of our discussion at a recent Savannah Boardroom lunch for senior executives.
In a rush to bring diverse talent to an organisation, few stop to ask themselves why they are actually doing this. What is it about the sex or race of a particular candidate that makes them the best fit? What does the company hope to gain by seeking out a more diverse group of candidates in general?
Answering those important questions holds the key to unlocking the potential of a diverse organisation, and that requires redefining what diversity is.
Almost all our international clients are on a journey to greater globalisation and collaborative working across global, cultural, functional and hierarchical boundaries. Without exception, they are finding that whilst it sounds like good common sense, making it work is hugely complex and along the way are obstacles (usually man-made) which nobody anticipated.
If you have clicked on this leadership icon, I’m guessing that you have probably read a number of books on leadership – let’s face it there are thousands of them to choose from with more being published every day. One of the reasons for the plethora of authors putting pen to paper is that it is such a critical topic, whether considered in a political, economic, business or indeed personal sense.
Over the years I have been asked many times what makes a great technology leader, however, since the roles themselves have changed so dramatically over the past decade, the landscape is constantly shifting. Whatever list of criteria I put forward, there are always other competencies people want to add, usually drawn from their own personal experience, and the list could potentially be endless.
When meeting boards to discuss their need to hire a CIO/CTO, the first question my colleagues and I always ask is on the need for evolution versus revolution in the technology function and what it delivers. Clients are often reluctant to admit that they are seeking a slower tempo of change since they fear seeming complacent or lacking ambition, but no organisation thrives in constant chaos so the desire for gradual change should not be dismissed as untenable.
We hosted a boardroom lunch at our London Office for Chairmen, NEDs, CEOs and Investors from the Leisure, Hospitality & Travel sector. The topic of discussion was on the advice that this group of esteemed executives would give to a new CEO today.
Every organisation, whether a multinational, conglomerate, SME, privately-held business or public sector institution, is devoting significant resources to leveraging digital capabilities to drive a sustainable future.
Throughout history, economic downturns have had distinct characteristics, and while they are neither rare nor inexplicable in a market economy, they share some routine commonalities in both cause and consequence. The desire to assign blame is a common feature of the aftermath, as is the resultant change for which the most recent recession has acted as a powerful catalyst.
The role of the CIO has evolved at the speed of light compared with those of its peers on the Executive Committee. It certainly needed to. The vast majority of roles within businesses today have at least some level of technology usage and most significant transformation programmes are underpinned by technology.
The strongest candidates will be attracted to a business which has a clear strategy and a board that is united behind it. It should not be the short term goal of the CEO to develop the strategy unless the business is in need of a “turnaround”
Our research has shown that the most important criterion for an organisation to feel well protected is not the size of budget allocated to security or the specific technical platform, but good governance and oversight.
In this new world where Youtube went from startup to sale to Google for $1.4b in 18 months; Instagram went from start up to sale to facebook for $1bn in three years and Uber multiplied its value a tenfold to $17b in two years, the ability to deliver change and disruption to a sector, an industry and to one’s own organisation is arguably the most critical competency a business leader needs to possess.
Having recently moved to executive search with a focus on senior HR roles within Financial Services, I read with interest Savannah’s report on the Rise of the CHRO, which outlined some of the challenges that the CHRO is currently facing including compensation, strategic partnerships, internal perception and title inflation. Many of these resonated with me and I wanted to provide my perspective on the direction I feel the senior HR function needs to take to overcome these hurdles.
Historically, the interim market has moved at a much faster pace than the executive search market. Over the past five to ten years, the client-side interviewing and overall assessment process in the HR interim market has been changing, so that the difference between the executive search process is not as apparent as it once was.
We are often asked to find candidates to assume responsibility for multiple functions, none more so than in the CFO role. It is curious however to see where convergence starts to occur further down the organisational structure and how the trends change from year to year and sector to sector.
We are passionate about helping the CIO function to evolve and have partnered with CIO Development to set up a mentoring scheme to accelerate the professional development of next generation technology leaders.
When meeting boards to discuss their need to hire a CIO or CTO, the first question my colleagues and I always ask is whether they need evolution or revolution within their technology function. Clients are often reluctant to admit they are seeking a slower tempo of change since they fear seeming complacent or lacking ambition, but no organisation thrives in constant chaos so should not feel uncomfortable aiming for a gradual approach to change.
For modern knowledge-based organisations, it is talent and not capital and raw materials that have become the most important asset and the key to competitive advantage. This elevation of the talent agenda means that the personal traits and leadership styles of the best HR Directors are increasingly converging with those of their CEOs.
How can HR get in the Boardroom? HR’s lack of influence at Board-level isn’t anything new; it’s something that has been debated for many years now. So why is the top table so reluctant to give them a seat?
The more inspirational HR leaders take time to listen and learn, conducting rigorous analysis and truly understanding the bigger picture. Only then can they decide which of the tools in their armoury to deploy, drive and integrate within the organisation. Design Thinking in HR, is a solution-based approach, focusing on a set of organisational goals in the context of both present and future parameters.
We see a continuous evolution in the CFO’s remit, which is expanding to become much more about judgement and commercial contribution. Boards will continue to rely on the CFO for risk analysis, but they will also expect them to see the implications through a commercial as well as a financial lens.
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