Anybody who has anything to do with management – researching it, writing about it or even doing it – will be aware of many disconnects between what happens and what is talked about. One of the most important of these, according to Andrew White, associate dean of executive education at Oxford University’s Said Business School, concerns the nature of the modern leader. The issue is the contrast between all the research indicating that modern chief executives see themselves as recognising the need for collaboration and humility in a complex world and the reluctance of employees, shareholders and – above all – the media to move away from the idea of the leader as super-hero with all the answers.
White is discussing such matters today, when he chairs a panel on professional and leadership development at “Management – Where Next?”, an event called to mark 50 years of management studies at Oxford. (Although the university was relatively late in establishing a business school, it had been teaching and researching management issues long before the arrival of the Said school in 1996.) He argues that the distorted view of what leadership involves will make it more difficult to develop, appoint and maintain the best leaders in the future.
But this problem is only part of the challenge. Like many, White believes that some businesses are facing levels of “enormous change” - or disruption, to use the in-vogue term – far greater than anything that has been experienced hitherto. Industries such as energy and food and drink/retail look especially vulnerable, given the level of disquiet among the public, regulators and politicians about such matters as renewable energy, food additives and obesity, he says. But, in truth, the growing influence of social media, alongside more active regulators and greater willingness of members of the public to question authority, means that all organizations are having to become more transparent. One key result of this is that leaders will no longer be able to resist challenges to their authority in the ways they have in the past. Indeed, examples from fields as diverse as banking and sports administration demonstrate that no leader is untouchable. Moreover, the furore in the UK over the decision by Caffe Nero, a chain of coffee shops, to stop using milk from farms affected by a controversial cull of badgers designed to curb bovine TB because it wanted to prevent its staff being threatened by anti-cull activists shows how events with the potential to cause serious reputational damage can come from out of nowhere.
Another key issue is going to be the relationship between leaders and those they are leading. Another Oxford academic, associate professor in machine learning Michael Osborne, has been at the forefront of research into the effects of automation and artificial intelligence on jobs (see earlier post). In an interview during Said Business School’s Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford event last month, he said that – if anything – the matter had become more serious than was previously thought. Research suggested the threat was “ever growing”, with lower skilled workers increasingly vulnerable. The effect in the service sector – which had been one of the biggest sources of jobs in recent years – was looking profound. Indeed, the researchers had originally believed that jobs like waiting on tables were relatively immune because of the human contact required. But recent pilot programs in US restaurants where diners chose their meals using a tablet device had led to a marked increase in dessert orders.
However, a more optimistic note for the Oxford event is struck by Kathryn Bishop, director of the Said school’s Women Transforming Leadership program, who says that the discussion of the lack of progress made by women in reaching the top of organizations is too narrow. The way ahead is not through quotas or massive structural change, but through education and a quiet revolution from the bottom and middle of businesses and other institutions.
Echoing White, she adds that leadership is necessarily becoming more distributed and more collaborative – an approach that typically suits women’s natural styles. She has observed that, while the old “heroic” model may still prevail right at the top of many companies, leaders a couple of levels down are much more comfortable about seeking opinions from their teams and making consensus-based decisions. “As this style of working becomes more widespread, it will become more accepted. And as the people currently in those positions move upwards, they will take those ways of working with them,” she says.
Big initiatives and inspiring stories from successful women are helpful in keeping these issues at the front of the mind, but real, sustainable change will happen slowly, at a much more granular level, she believes. In what sounds like a recipe for a more general approach to management in an unpredictable world, she argues that organizations should carry out small-scale, low risk experiments – with job shares, for example, or other types of flexible working – evaluating the results, and then doing more of what works while stopping what doesn’t.
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