resilientfutures.org

Resilient leadership?

On Thursday 28 August 2008 at The City Recital Hall in Sydney, I paid my $35 and went to “hear it from the Boss” – at AFR Boss Magazine’s annual public event – Resilient Leadership. The ad sold me on the idea of joining “the Boss panel of business leaders in a stimulating discussion of what makes a great leader for today’s turbulent times.” Well, this sounded just my thing, so I went along to listen and perhaps line up to ask a question.

And it was an esteemed panel. Breakfast announcer and brain on two legs - Adam Spencer. Commonwealth Bank Director and the former CEO who led the turnaround of AMP – Andrew Mohl. Australian CEO of National Australia Bank - Ahmed Fahour, responsible for some of that organisation’s turnaround. Patrick Grier - Board Member & former CEO of Ramsay Health Care and responsible for their turnaround story. Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, CEO of Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney - responsible for turning that organisation around from the brink. And to give us a feel for what people think about, Ipsos’ Australia Research Director Dr Rebecca Huntley. A very esteemed panel indeed.

And the panel was very generous with sharing their stories, their insights and a lot of wisdom. Indeed it was $35 well spent.

As I listened to the stories of this panel, we heard great stories, stories about leadership and culture, bringing things back from the brink, tenacity, personal determination. Great stuff.

But no event seems complete for me these days unless I’ve tried to spot an elephant in the room. This one’s easy. Have a look at the panel’s bios above and see if you can see anything in common… that’s right, these are all turnaround stories, wonderful, triumphant turnaround stories, rallying around an organisation in crisis.

Here’s a rough transcript of what happened next:

Davies (from the floor): We’ve heard resilience defined tonight a bit like an elastic band, which stretches and bounces back. And all of the case studies we’ve heard tonight have talked about triumphing in the face of adversity, rallying around a cause or burning platform. So the inference I guess is that we need something to rally around. I guess that my question is, what do you do with an event which could cause the elastic to stretch so much that it snaps? And as we face creeping issues like climate change, or oil, or whatever, how do we make sure we don’t snap our elastic, so that we’re truly resilient?
Spencer: So in times of true crisis, when things really go wrong, how do we do it?
Panel: Pregnant Pause
Spencer: [cheekily jeering] Anyone who wants it…
Audience: Burst of laughter
Panel: …

Well it’s the AFR’s event so it would be unfair of me to give the punch line. Narelle and the team at Boss have promised video of the event on their site and I’m sure they’ll do a great job. I’m looking forward to seeing their take on things.

But in a nutshell the response from the panel was that changes in external environment pose real challenges which are difficult. And they are challenges… And they are difficult… Followed by a quick save by Adam asking NAB’s new CEO to share what goes through your head as a leader when an event like 9/11 happens.

At the end of the session a number of people came up to me and said that it was a good question and what a shame it was that no-one answered it, to which I did confess that it was a bit of an unfair question considering the head start that the Resilient Futures team has on the subject.

But perhaps that was being too kind. It is a real question, and one that has been on my mind since the Resilient WA campaign (a Western Australian Resilient Futures Network campaign that focused on water and climate change - two very important subjects for WA - with the purpose of creating catalytic action to expand the network in WA).

When analysing the conditions in addressing the issues related to water security and climate change in WA, someone on my table pointed out a key condition related to the problem. “We have never had level 4 water restrictions here. No one is aware that we’ve got a problem. There’s no urgency. There’s no call to action.”

I thought back to how many people in the risk profession had confidentially told me that they had either been thankful for a “near miss” to get their organisation focused on risk management, or sat frustrated in a complacent organisation, almost hopeful for a near miss to break the organisation out of its current hubris.

So the question is real. If organisations and people only respond well to “near misses” or cleaning up from near disasters, are we being resilient? Or just tenacious? How do we wake people up to emerging conditions that require proactive adaptation? How do we break away from hubris and complacency? Who’s going to create the catalytic action to get things started?

These are questions which we work through every day at the RFN at different levels, and we’re very interested in your thoughts. Please share.

***

Post-script 1: On a lighter note, I asked Adam Spencer after the show whether he had any tips as ‘Australia’s most resilient MC’. He shared with me that his technique is to have enormous amounts of material at your disposal in case your interviewees clam up, but to only fall back on this if required. With the confidence of this fallback position, he is then very comfortable to ad-lib, go with the flow and avoid the predictable script entirely. We joked that “It takes hours of rehearsal to be spontaneous.” But in this small statement, Adam pointed out a number of key attributes of our resilience model – redundancy and fallback, creativity, willingness to jettison redundant material, ebbing and flowing with conditions, and prospering though this process. Adam – thanks for the metaphor and living example!

***

Todd Davies is our theme leader on risk, governance and assurance and aims to provoke and challenge prevailing thinking in these areas. He is a bit obsessed with emerging risk at the moment which means he has an annoying habit of asking difficult questions at public events. Todd’s comments are his own and not necessarily those of the RF Network. For more of his work, please click here.

Related posts

• October 26, 2008 -- AXA, Perpetual, Challenger - As the backloop grows stronger it draws more entities in (4)
• October 14, 2008 -- Real Risks of Business as Usual (0)
• August 23, 2008 -- Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) – Main Event or a Side Show? (7)
• July 9, 2008 -- Action Report Card (0)
• November 6, 2008 -- Election Reaction - The Audacity of Resilience (2)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you pass it on and subscribe to our free RSS feed!