Apex Leadership » Leadership

Better leadership skill training – key to combating recession

apex — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:20:52 +0000

There is growing evidence that better leadership skill training is needed and needed urgently. Evidence from a Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) report suggests that up to 75% of UK companies report a leadership skills deficit. We have developed a series of workshops called “Antidotes to Austerity”, to work with SME’s and large firms responding to the recession. The workshops build on current BIS policy in response to the recession. In particular, the idea for a response to austerity brings the findings from three BIS reports together.

They highlight 3 important factors:

It’s compelling – There is a compelling need for leadership and management development
There’s a clear way forward – There are strategies organisation can adapt to combat the recession
It’s timely – There is a growing sense that switching toward growth is a timely response.

Fighting Austerity with Leadership Skill Training

Firstly there is a recognised deficit in leadership and management development both in large and small firms^{^[1]} and the deficit has an important impact on growth.^{^[2]}

There is a compelling argument to fight austerity with better leadership skill training.

The need is evident:

Only a third of SME’s in the UK reported providing managers with some management and leadership training. The figure is no better across all organisations, with only 34% of all employers providing management training.
Good management practices impact on performance
Ineffective management is estimated to be costing UK businesses over £19billion per year in lost working hours.
Nearly three quarters of organisations in England reported a deficit of management and leadership skills in 2012. This deficit is contributing to our productivity gap with countries like the US, Germany and Japan.

Secondly, there are growth strategies relevant to responding to a recession.^{^[3]}

Potential leadership skill training solutions are available. There are good leadership and management practices which are not widely adopted. There are also a range of recession-beating strategies that organisation can adapt.

Some changes are wholly within the power and remit of leaders and managers to make them happen. What’s more they cost little or nothing and despite offering a competitive advantage don’t have a patent or copyright protection preventing their use. Too good to be true – or just uncommon common sense?
There are strategies to tackle a recession, although one answer certainly does not fit all there are a range of possibilities for organisations to assess and adapt to their context.

Thirdly and crucially there is an identified willingness and ambition within SME’s to grow out of the recession.^{^[4]}

A focus on antidotes to Austerity is timely.

There is a willingness particularly amongst the resilient SME sector to find ways to grow out of a recession. More and more SME’s are reporting an ambition to grow out of the recession.

It is however not sufficient for leadership skill training to take place, it must focus on dealing with the reality of the situation every organisation faces. That is why Antidotes to Austerity focuses on leadership skill training to combat the recession.

[1] Small Business Survey, BIS (2010)

[2] Leadership and management in the UK – the key to sustainable growth BIS (2012)

[3] Business strategies and performance during difficult economic conditions Kitching, J. Blackburn, R. Dixon, S. BIS (2009)

[4] Business growth, access to finance, and performance outcomes in the recession Cowling, M. Liu, W BIS (2011)

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Austerity Leadership Qualities

apex — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 10:42:11 +0000

What are the austerity leadership qualities that will help us to weather the recession? No doubt the list could be a long one, here we’ll focus on the importance of getting the balance right. Leadership has always been a balancing act, but perhaps more than ever getting the balance right matters during austerity, for example do you:

plan for growth or prepare for recession
invest in new ideas or cut products or services

To help explore these dilemas we’ll consider austerity leadership qualities associated with balancing maintenance with mission.

Maintenance is about ensuring that what you currently do is done well
Mission is about the future and direction – finding the new, extending and growing.

Austerity Leadership Qualities – 5 P’s

The austerity leadership qualities of pruning and protecting are maintenance activities.

Pruning means cutting back when things grow out of proportion or things are added to what you do without thought of the complexity or effectiveness. Pruning is an activity that should be done periodically, but in a recession it can be particularly helpful to think about where activities need to be cut back. This is not the same as making cuts across the board, which is a frequent course of action. Across-the-board cuts are indiscrimate and hit parts of the business which need support and could be key to helping an organisation grow out of a recession. Pruning is targetted and focuses on areas wher unnessary complexity or reduced effectiveness is apparent.
Protecting is about keeping a close eye on your processes that they do what they are supposed to do. Spotting problems early and protecting the people and processes you manage from their impact. In a recession concentrate on your key value adding processes, the parts of the business that really make a difference for your customers.

Transitioning from maintenance to mission

Preserving represents a transition between maintenance and mission. Preserving is about keeping the essence of what makes you distinctive, you need to preserve this in the current way you work, and you need to preserve it in any changes you plan to make. It is easy to lose what makes you distinctive as an organisation. Cuts to staffing levels, re-organisations and re-structures all carry the very real risk of losing or damaging the engagement of staff and the culture of the organisation. In times of change leaders need to work hard at preserving the distinctiveness of the organisation.

The austerity leadership qualities of planting and pioneering are about mission. There can be a tendency to spend much more time in a recession focusing on maintenance activities. However, to challenge asuterity leaders need to balance the necessary focus on maintenance with mission. Mission can be seem as a luxury during a recession, yet really it is one of the key to challenging austerity.

Planting is the most familiar kind of change and improvement. It is about building and expanding on what you currently do to offer new services/products. Planting is about growing based on your strengths, building your capability.
Pioneering is a more radical view of the future. It is about finding new opportunities that could take the organisation in new directions. There are always opportunities in difficult circumstances. One area to think about more speciifcally in recession is how your business saves your customers money or makes them money.

Think through your response to austerity:

Review your service or processes in the context of the 5P’s.
Then think about how you might plan to build the 5P’s in to the activities in the coming year or next period.
Both maintenance and mission are crucial austerity leadership qualities, but have you got the balance right?
There is tendency to focus on maintenance activities during a recession, so deliberately spend more time thinking about the mission activities.

Join the conversation about antidotes to austerity. What leadership qualities would you put top of your list?

To find out more about challenging austerity see our new workshops designed to help organisations find antidotes to austerity.

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Essential Leadership Skills for a Tough Recession

apex — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 16:09:27 +0000

What are some of the essential leadership skills for coping with a recession? A tough recession can make you question what matters in your business. And that is not a bad question to ask. It also leads to questions about where you focus your energies.

In answer to these questions it is useful to note that what is often required is perseverence, to remind yourself to keep at it!

Leadership Skills to Keep Going

So here are some key leadership skills to help you keep going during tough times:

1 Keep in touch – the simple secret behind good leadership is to regularly spend time with your colleagues. A distant leader too often feels like an absent leader. You should also more than ever think about how you keep in touch with your customers. How can you keep listening and engaged with your customers?

2 Keep it simple – simple takes a lot of effort. Complexity leads to frustration and an unhappy workplace or worse unhappy customers. A recession is a good time to check that you keep what you do simple. Most things in business tend towards complexity if left alone. To keep things simple you need to be vigilant.

3 Keep it real – sometimes a healthy dose of pragmatism is needed in the workplace. Some things can’t easily be changed and, whilst they may cause you angst or some frustration, they don’t seem to go away. In such situations use a sense of pragmatism to help you keep things in perspective.

4 Keep up to date – your knowledge and expertise will always need updating. It needs refreshing, renewing and replacing, as and when new ideas make some of the old obselete. A recession is a good time to think about what areas of your knowedge you need to update. Are there new areas in which you need to develop expertise?

5 Keep it fresh – take a look at how you do business. Do you have the same enthusiasm as when you started? What motivates you at work? Think about what energises you? What things/people are sources of energy for you? Spend time doing more of the things that are sources of energy for you.

6 Keep on track - in a recesssion its easy to lose track of what you are doing. In trying to balance conflicting demands or coping with budgetary and resource cuts, you can easily lose focus. With so much going on, it’s easy to be knocked off course.

So our final “keep” keeps all the others in place!

You can find out more about our our approach to the recession with our service: antidotes to austerity.

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