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Content Warning: Profanities and Aggressive Themes Before diving into the content of this blog, I want to give you a heads-up: This may contain language that includes profanity or discussions of intense, aggressive, or violent scenarios. I believe in being as accurate as possible, but I also understand that this type of content isn't for everyone. My goal is to foster open dialogue and reflection, but I also want readers to feel comfortable and informed before proceeding. If you are sensitive to such topics, I recommend approaching this blog with caution or skipping it altogether. Feel free to explore, but take care of your own boundaries—reader discretion is advised.   She was a rising star of the corporate world and, I admit, she impressed me greatly when I first met her. She was by then already the regional executive director for our parent company in an important emerging economy. I was the regional manager overseeing our recent financial services investment – one that was proving itself to be an incredibly valuable asset for our organisation. There was no direct reporting line but like many large conglomerates I knew it was important to keep people, especially those of influence, informed and ‘on side’. I spent time to nurture a good relationship. It seemed to work. Not long after meeting her she called and asked me if I could give a speech at her forthcoming team meeting. She had heard that I could give an entertaining speech. ‘’Of course’’ I replied. ‘’What do you want me to say?’’ ‘’Oh, anything really…just so long as it is entertaining and motivating. I have heard you are pretty good at that’’. ‘’My pleasure’’. And with that I had made my commitment. I was delighted to help. It represented another opportunity to help out and cement a good working relationship. What I hadn’t appreciated was the physical commitment that it would require. My diary was full as always but with careful planning I could get the plane over (4 hours one way) with another hour or more if I was lucky, travelling at each end. I was used to it, no problem. What was a problem was the flight turning around after we had taken off and then returning immediately to Heathrow airport. Bird strike. The plane was grounded, and flight cancelled. My speech was due at 9am in the morning. What to do? Oh, sure I could cancel. It would be reasonable after all. But I really really hate letting people down. So, I waited and finally a new flight was laid on, travelling overnight to arrive 6.30am. With a bit of luck, I could just make it on time. And so, it proved to be. Exhausted and slightly stressed I got to the country HQ. No time for hotel. I dived into the men’s toilet. Wash, shave, fresh shirt. I tried to regain composure, With ten minutes spare I made my way to the conference room. The whole team, maybe 30 people were already assembled. Before long Ingrid (name changed) the CFO introduced me. I went on stage. Made my speech. Honest. Self-depreciating. Suitably funny at the right moments. Poignant. With a rallying call for our higher purpose. Stage exit left. Applause. Much applause. I was happy. More to the point, Ingrid pronounced ‘’that is exactly what I wanted Andy, thanks so much!’’ I was happy. My work done, I left. Only to fly to another country straight away for yet another urgent meeting. No need to tell Ingrid about my own drama and effort in getting there to fulfil my promise. Why make her feel guilty? Why spoil the moment? There was no need to invite pity in my moment of triumph. I was happy that I had fulfilled my commitment. Roll forward then some months later. Ingrid was on the up. She was now promoted to the an even bigger role - in the division I worked in! I wasn’t surprised. She was hard working. Dedicated. And smart. And I thanked myself even more strongly for making sure that my effort to support her was resolute and successful. So, what happened next wasn’t exactly according to the expected script in my head. I hadn’t had the chance to congratulate Ingrid on her promotion. But the opportunity arose. We were both attending a division dinner – a hundred people or so. I spotted her walking towards the dining room. Here was my chance. ‘’Hello Ingrid, I just wanted to take the opportunity to congratulate you on your new appointment and to welcome you into our team’’. It was a heartfelt statement. I was genuinely please that she was now part of our group and felt that with her talent and connections it could only be a good thing for us all. And I was pleased that we had a sound working relationship as a start. She looked at me, hesitated and then I noticed, as if in slow motion her demeanour. A few seconds, what seemed like an age elapsed. Her mouth tilted upwards on one side as if in a slight snarl, ‘’Fuck off’’. I looked at her aghast and, frankly shocked. ‘’Er…pardon?’’ ‘’I said you can fuck off’’. At this point, without waiting for a response, Ingrid launched into an angry diatribe about how her life was sacrificed on the altar of corporate service, as if somehow it was my fault. ‘’You have no idea….I have sacrificed my entire life for this company. I have moved countless times to terrible places without a thought or care from the board and here I am again, moved from here and there without any care in the world about what I want or my family needs….’’ Still shocked, and trying to take it in, I replied ‘’Oh I’m sorry, yes I can imagine it must be very tough’’. She responded again, ‘’so you can just fuck off’’. So, with that, I congratulated her again, a little less enthusiastically it must be said, and turned tail. Mental note: don’t go and see her again in a hurry. To be fair, it wasn’t always like that. There were other times subsequently where I found her charming, pleasant, and her insight wise and helpful. But I wasn’t the only one to see that here was a Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde character. ‘’Best know beforehand what mood she is in’’, one of my senior colleagues from the USA told me. ‘’We call her Ingrid Gump….she is like a box of chocolates…you never know what you are going to get’’. I also remember my bosses’ words the first time he met her. ‘’Yeah, she’s smart but I wouldn’t trust her’’. If you think that behaviour is bad, un-called for, and poor in a Leader that should know better then you would be right. But it becomes insignificant in the context of the next experience. Again, the preamble. He was also a new 'C' level appointment in our Leadership Team. My boss had already told me, with some irony it turns out, that if this person was the wrong choice, then he (our business unit CEO) was ‘’screwed’’. They turned out to be prophetic words. I realized very quickly that one or other of us would indeed be ‘’screwed’’ at my very first introduction with him. I shall call him Simon, although simple he certainly wasn’t. We were having one of our regular leadership meetings, limited to the business unit leaders and regional execs and regular guests from HQ, say around a dozen people in total. We were introduced to Simon and soon had the chance for a one-to-one meeting to get to know each other. It was then, at that first meeting, I knew we had trouble on our hands. This, in Simon's world, wasn’t a build relationships meeting at all. It was a ‘’are you with me or against me’’ kind of meeting. He asked all the questions you might expect of someone sizing up the competition. I felt distinctly uneasy and my feeling was not enhanced when some weeks later he invited me to dinner and suggested, blatantly, that ‘’if we stick together we could do so much here and show the others we mean business’’. I diplomatically declined to take things further. He left. Without picking up the tab. But the real shock came some time later. At another leadership meeting. This time following an on site visit to one of our sister companies. It was part of our desire to get closer to companies we supported by financing their product sales. The visit went well. So did the meeting discussions. At least from my perspective. As always, I told the truth and wasn’t afraid to tell things how they really were and what needed to be done. It was clear from all the body language that Simon didn’t like it. The room was quiet as the last few people filtered out of the meeting. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, casting a sterile glow over the table. A bit like an episode of Twin peaks but with more foreboding. I had a sudden distinct eery feeling, as if I was suddenly transported to a dark and spooky graveyard. I gathered my notes, ready to leave, when I felt a presence behind me.    "Hey, can we talk?" Simon stood there with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. I hesitated, already sensing something was off, but nodded. "Sure, what’s up?" Simon motioned to the chair beside me and sat down, far too close for comfort. He had felt the pressure lately—upper management was pushing hard and he wanted to make sure that if blame was doled out it wouldn’t be directed at him. Everyone knew it. Still, I didn’t expect what was coming next. "Listen," he started, leaning in slightly, "I’ve been thinking. You’ve got some influence around here; people respect your opinion." His tone was casual, but there was an edge to it. "I guess," I replied cautiously, unsure of where this was going. Simon’s smile faded, and his voice lowered. "I need you to be on my side from now on. You’ve got to show support for me, even if things get a little… complicated. It’s important." There was a pause. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "I don’t know if I can promise anything without knowing more details," I said. That’s when his expression changed. The warmth drained from his face, and something darker took its place. He leaned in even closer, his breath hot against my cheek. "Unpleasant people can do things to you, you know," Simon whispered, the words slow and deliberate. "If you don’t play along." I froze. It was as if the temperature in the room had dropped ten degrees.  "Excuse me?" I managed, my voice barely above a whisper. He smiled again, but this time it was cold, calculated. "I’m just saying… not everyone in this company plays nice. If you’re not careful, things can get difficult for you. Very difficult." I stood up, my chair scraping loudly against the floor. My heart pounded in my chest, but I forced myself to remain calm. "Are you threatening me?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. Simon’s grin widened. "Of course not. I’m just looking out for you. We’re a team, right?" I noticed his right hand had clenched by his side into a fist. I didn’t respond. I grabbed my things and walked out of the room without another word, my mind racing. There was no doubt now—I had just seen a side of Simon that I could never unsee. And I knew one thing for certain: I wasn’t going to let him coerce me, no matter what he or his "unpleasant people" tried. But what to do? I contemplated speaking with my boss but immediately discounted this…he had enough issues going on in his life…so serious that I didn’t think he could take any more. Tell HR, a HR ‘hotline’  or even the police? It wasn’t so simple. I was also a senior manager….and where were my witnesses? Simon was clever enough to make sure that nobody was within earshot. It was my word against his. For me the decision was clear. It was time to move on. I had always said that you know immediately when it's time to try something new. And I had found the moment. It was bad enough trying to manage the politics – being the umbrella to avoid all the negativity and ridiculous decisions reaching my brilliant team. I had enjoyed many years of building teams and participating in the success. But this, potentially physical threats against me, was a whole new ball game. And one that I had no desire to play in or even watch from the touchline. If this was the new world then time to jump off! But my situation and my reaction to these things is one thing. I have thought a lot about these events over subsequent years, and it is important to say that these kinds of things are not acceptable – even less so today than they were some years ago. Bullying or threats in the workplace have no place in any professional environment. These behaviours create toxic atmospheres, undermine teamwork, and damage morale, leading to decreased productivity and higher staff turnover. Whether it's verbal harassment, intimidation, or manipulative behaviour, such actions can have lasting emotional and mental health impacts on employees. If you experience total disrespect, outright rudeness, bullying or threats at work, it's crucial to take action. Don't accept it. Document the incidents : Keep detailed records of what happened, including dates, times, and witnesses. Speak up : If you feel safe, address the issue directly with the person involved. Often, bullies back down when confronted. Report it : Share your concerns with HR or management. Most companies have protocols in place these days to handle such complaints confidentially. Seek support : Whether from colleagues, friends, or professional counselling services, getting emotional support can help you navigate the situation. A healthy workplace is built on respect, and addressing these issues head-on helps protect everyone’s well-being. No one should feel unsafe or disrespected at work. There’s a common misconception that being a “nice” leader is a sign of weakness or softness. Kindness and empathy in leadership are powerful tools that can make all the difference in building a successful team. When leaders show genuine care for their team members, it fosters trust and open communication. People are more likely to give their best when they feel valued, respected, and supported. A leader who listens and responds with understanding encourages collaboration, innovation, and loyalty—traits that drive long-term success. Being nice doesn’t mean avoiding difficult conversations or letting poor performance slide. It means addressing issues with respect, offering constructive feedback, and helping your team grow. In the end, teams led with kindness and empathy are more motivated, cohesive, and productive. Remember, leadership is about lifting others up—not ruling with an iron fist. Or bullying Or being downright rude. © 2024 Andreas Swadlo --- Are you concerned about workplace culture. Have you experienced unacceptable behaviour? Not sure how to respond personally or how to change a toxic atmosphere? With years of experience in senior international leadership roles, there is hardly a situation I haven't seen or been exposed to. Save time. Talk with me. Let’s work together to create a workplace where positivity rules and where individuals are respected and valued, whatever their title, position, or contribution. Contact me today to get started on transforming your corporate incentive strategies.

The Corporate Confidential Call

In 1985 "New Coke" was launched by the Coca Cola company. It promised a reformulated drink that would appeal to the Pepsi generation and thus increase market share and profits. Unfortunately, it didn't. It did the exact opposite. Existing consumers were outraged, boycotts were commonplace, and the media frenzy that followed amplified marketing confusion. Within 79 days of the launch of New Coke, Coca-Cola reintroduced the original formula, branded as Coca-Cola Classic. Let’s be real: corporate incentives are a bit like that. Not only do they rarely work as intended. They often do the exact opposite. Sadly, the 'incentives formula' was invented long before1985. It has been around for years destroying shareholder value. Research has shown that incentive plans often fail completely, as highlighted by Alfie Kohn in his seminal Harvard Business Review article, "Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work" (1993). If I had a dollar for every time one of my clients told me that their incentive scheme is there to encourage sales of this, profits of that, or simply to retain their ‘top talent’….. If I had two dollars for every time someone told me that the incentive scheme didn’t produce what was expected – or rather – produced outcomes that were not desired or planned for at all…. then I wouldn’t be writing this at all. I would be on my sailboat in the Canaries. Perhaps then a key question is ‘what is the purpose of an incentive scheme at all?' I will come back to that. For now, let’s dive into why traditional corporate incentives are about as useful as a screen door on a submarine and what we can do, if anything, to make them work better. Grab some popcorn, folks, because this is going to be a fun ride! Pitfalls of Corporate Incentives 1. Misalignment with Long-Term Goals: The Short-Sighted Seagull Approach Picture this: you're at the beach, trying to enjoy your picnic, and here comes a seagull, eyeing your sandwich. That seagull is the incentivised sales team, laser-focused on your ham and cheese (quarterly sales targets). Sure, the seagull gets the sandwich, but now you’re left hungry, and the seagull is off pooping on someone else's picnic. Research shows that an excessive focus on short-term goals can indeed compromise long-term outcomes and organizational health (2). Take Siemens, for instance. They were so focused on hitting sales targets that they ended up embroiled in one of the biggest bribery scandals in corporate history. Their incentive programs led to a culture where the end justified the means, and the means often involved suitcases full of cash (3). 2. Encouraging Unethical Behaviour: The Shady Used-Car Salesman Syndrome Ever met a used-car salesman who insists that the 1998 rust bucket is a “classic” and a “steal at this price”? That’s what happens when employees are driven by misguided incentives. They'll say anything to close the deal, even if it means selling your grandma’s dentures as a Bluetooth earpiece. The Wells Fargo scandal, where employees opened fake accounts faster than you can say “fraud,” is a case in point (4). We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that performance-based incentives can lead to unethical behaviour as employees can and do bend the rules to achieve targets (5). General Electric (GE) faced similar issues when their aggressive incentive structures led to dubious accounting practices. GE was so busy trying to make their quarterly earnings shine that they ended up in hot water with the SEC for misleading investors (6). Before you think that is the benefit of hindsight, I was there before all that came to light. I can confirm that nobody was under any illusion that the culture would lead to such an outcome. Nobody was surprised, except perhaps the GE Board. If only they had asked? On a personal level when working for a UK Bank , I was incentivized to sell insurance alongside a loan to a company that was on shaky financial grounds. The problem? If I agreed the loan, then my equipment insurance sale would land a hefty pay cheque into my bank account. But I also knew, the company was not good for the loan. Ethically it was more than murky—it felt like setting up dominoes knowing full well they would topple. I asked my manager what to do. ‘Your choice’ was his reply. What he meant, clearly, was you make the loan because I will earn on your insurance bonus too! So, I turned down the loan application and deliberately forfeited my incentive. Sure, my wallet felt lighter, but my conscience remained intact. The company took out a loan elsewhere….and went into receivership 3 months later. My employer was saved a loss, even if it cost me my incentive commission.This experience taught me the true cost of misaligned incentives—not every dollar earned is worth the compromise of one’s own values. 3. Demotivation and Job Dissatisfaction: The Office Space Conundrum Remember the movie ‘Office Space’? It’s a perfect example of how incentives can backfire. Imagine getting up every day, knowing that your boss is going to ask about those TPS reports, again. When your job becomes all about hitting arbitrary numbers, you might start feeling like Peter Gibbons, waiting for the day you can smash a printer with a baseball bat. Research in behavioural economics has shown that excessive reliance on extrinsic rewards can undermine intrinsic motivation and lead to job dissatisfaction (7). Barclays Bank experienced a similar backlash when their aggressive bonus culture led to widespread dissatisfaction and a toxic work environment. Employees were more focused on meeting their targets than on the actual quality of their work, leading to high turnover and low morale (8). Another glaring example is AIG during the 2008 financial crisis. Despite the company’s role in the economic collapse and its need for a $182 billion bailout, AIG executives received $165 million in bonuses. Employees became demoralised employees, public outrage sparked and trust in the company was eroded (9). Well. Who would have thought eh? 4. Fostering Internal Competition: The Hunger Games Workplace Welcome to the office, where it’s every man, woman, and photocopier for themselves! Incentives that reward individual performance turn your workplace into a real-life Hunger Games. Instead of collaborating, your colleagues are hiding their best ideas like squirrels hoarding nuts for winter. Sure, it’s entertaining, but it’s not exactly productive. Psychological studies indicate that while some competition can be healthy, too much can harm collaboration and overall productivity (10). And don’t think for one moment that this is the game played by your junior employees, all vying for a share of the very limited financial incentive pot. It exists with your board members too. Some years ago I was dragged along by my divisional CEO to support him in front of the global board of a major publicly listed company valued at well over €100 billion. I was to say the least, both nervous and excited. I genuinely looked forward to meeting people I had only every heard of or seen on a glossy shareholder prospectus. What I didn’t expect was the utter madness of a circus act. A circus act that felt as though it was held in a tent with no heating on a cold midwinter frosty night. Which was apt since it was a snowy frosty mid-winter at the time. In a boardroom as frigid as the Arctic, the directors, without exception all grey old men, assembled to dismantle our investment proposal with the precision of an engineering team - which is exactly what they were of course. Lifelong engineers who had climbed the greasy corporate ladder and found themselves centimetres away from the egotistical orgasm of becoming the head of the greatest global engineering conglomerates in the world. We walked into the Board room. They were silent. Unwelcoming. I looked at them.  Their eyes gleaming with the cold ambition of bonus-hungry wolves. One director, with a face like a frozen glacier, flatly stated that my idea was "unrealistisch," implying that even considering it would be a colossal waste of their valuable time—a ploy to ensure he remained the star in the eyes of the CEO. At least that, I suspected, was his calculation. Another, his expression as cold and rigid as a Berlin winter, quietly but firmly declared my proposal as "nicht machbar," while proceeding to extract just enough information that looked suspiciously as though he intended to somehow repurpose some of my basic concepts to inflate his own bonus while sabotaging that of his colleagues. Then there was the CEO, an Austrian with a perpetual look of mild confusion, who stumbled over his words, trying to dismiss my innovation as "überflüssig" but ended up saying "überfliessig," earning a few hidden smirks from the directors. As he continued to mumble something about strategy, clearly not grasping the finer points, he also wanted to know more, as if mentally noting to steal the idea later anyway, though how he planned to execute it was anyone’s guess. I suspect he was just confused. It was a scene of frosty sabotage and shameless self-interest, where each director was more focused on their secretive plots and personal bonuses than on the collective good. The boardroom felt more like a battlefield of ice-cold egos and cutthroat ambition, each director eager to outdo the others at any cost, even if it meant torching the potential of my proposal. And before you think that’s just not happening on your watch. Think again my friend. Think again.   Making Incentives Work (Without the Shenanigans) Given these laughable pitfalls, it’s clear we need a new approach. Here’s how to make incentives more effective: 1. Align Incentives with Core Values and Mission: The Zen Approach Instead of dangling shiny objects in front of your employees like they’re cats chasing laser pointers, align incentives with the company’s mission. Think long-term: customer satisfaction, innovation, and making the world a better place. It’s like yoga for your business – calming and way less likely to result in claw marks. 2. Promote Intrinsic Motivation: The Feel-Good Factor Imagine a world where people come to work because they love what they do. Crazy, right? Give employees meaningful projects, chances to grow, and some good ol’ fashioned recognition. It’s like finding out your favourite pizza place delivers for free – everyone’s happier, and no one’s fighting over the last slice. Studies by Deci and Ryan on Self-Determination Theory emphasize that intrinsic motivation is key for employee satisfaction and productivity (11). At Semco, “corporate democracy” involves rotating job roles and allowing employees to choose their own work hours. This flexibility and sense of ownership has consistently boosted intrinsic motivation, as employees feel more connected to their work and valued for their contributions (12). 3. Encourage Collaboration and Team Success: The Avengers Approach Why be Iron Man when you can be the Avengers? Team-based incentives encourage collaboration and make everyone feel like a superhero. Your office transforms from a cutthroat battlefield to a harmonious ensemble cast where everyone’s powers complement each other. No capes required. Research supports that team-based incentives can enhance collaboration and improve overall performance (13). Afterall, do you really think that your star performer did everything on his/her own? I don’t think so. Even the lone ranger wouldn’t have been much good without Tonto and his horse, Silver. If all the rewards go to The Lone Ranger, how long before Tonto finds a new partner to support. And Silver disappears for pastures new. Beware the person who abuses loyalty. 4. Implement Fair and Transparent Metrics: The Crystal Ball Approach Use fair, transparent metrics that don’t require a Ph.D. in rocket science to understand. Measure a range of factors and adjust them regularly. It’s like reading the future in a crystal ball but more accurate (and less likely to involve Tarot cards). Transparency in performance metrics has been shown to increase trust and clarity among employees, leading to better engagement (14). Of course, companies do know that so, with the aid of Human resource departments, have produced all sorts of clever ways of including team-based metrics that attempt to avoid arbitrary and unfair allocation of performance awards. With the result that they so often produce arbitrary and unfair awards. The problem isn’t the intention. The problem is that humans get in the way. And if humans don’t get in the way the the issue remains that they invented the metrics in the first place. Metrics that patiently and by definition cannot capture the essence of real added value performance. In one organisation I worked for we used to have the annual Round Table exercise. It was meant to be an annual meeting in a collaborative discussion format where stakeholders, team members, and experts come together to review, analyse, and discuss performance data. Wonderful. It became my most dreaded meeting of the year. A cast of thousands would be invited to discuss everyone in the company (bottom down I hasten to add, never bottom up) What was meant to be an objective discussion around performance data ended up within five minutes, a total bun fight, each manager presenting his or her departmental employees generally in the best possible light often against a backdrop of the most awful financial results known to mankind. In my first ever meeting, armed with reams of performance metrics, I quickly discovered my preparation was superfluous. One of my colleagues, Johannes, patiently listened to my reasoned data driven arguments and when I had finished said to all of what seemd to be an army of managers and myself ….’I find this employee to be rather rude.’ ‘How so?’ I asked. ‘She is abrupt’. ‘In what way?’ Johannes launched into a tirade about Sarah's supposed rudeness, citing an incident where she allegedly gave him a withering look when he asked her to pass the stapler. His evidence was dubious at best, hinging on the assumption that Sarah's facial expression could only mean disdain, completely disregarding the possibility that she might have simply been concentrating on her work. He rambled on, referencing Sarah's choice of coffee as a clear indicator of her hostility, suggesting that anyone who drinks black coffee must harbour a dark, bitter soul. When questioned further, Johannes only doubled down, pointing to Sarah's efficient email responses as "curt" and "too professional," a clear sign, in his view, of her inherent impoliteness. The entire discourse was peppered with his subjective interpretations and wild leaps in logic, painting a picture of Sarah that seemed more like a caricature than reality. Needless to say, she had her performance rating drastically cut down. I refrained from informing her that she should drink white coffee in future. But Johannes was right about one thing. I discovered later that he too drank dark coffee. These occurrences became the norm, much to the frustration of my HR manager. My boss at the time decided it was all too much so with a few taps of a keyboard he pronounced that in future we would adhere rigidly to detailed performance metrics, no discussion allowed. ‘Totally objective’. You can probably guess what happened at the following Round Table. Everyone came armed with reams of data all proving without a shadow of doubt that their employees had outperformed their metrics and were all stars deserving of big bonuses. Data manipulation and presentation became an industry, absorbing thousands of organisational man hours into proving statistical over-performance. Strangely the summation of all individual performances didn’t add up to reflect the overall performance of the organisation. Not by a long shot. Funny that. Within one year we had reverted to the good old tried and tested fact-less talking shop. ‘Good eggs’ were well rewarded. ‘Bad eggs’ left behind like a bad smell. 5. Emphasize Ethical Behaviour and Integrity: The Golden Rule Reward employees not just for what they achieve, but how they achieve it. It’s like teaching your kids to share their toys – everyone gets to play, and no one ends up with a Barbie shoe up their nose. Plus, it builds a culture of trust and honesty. Win-win! Studies suggest that recognising and rewarding ethical behaviour can significantly enhance organizational culture and employee morale (15). Conclusion The simple truth is that incentives address the wrong emotions. Sure, give people a bonus for selling more ice cream and, likely as not, they might just sell more ice cream. Or they might not. You see, by and large, people don’t work harder or less hard with a bonus dangling over their heads. At least not consistently. I have yet to meet a single person who worked harder with a bonus contract in their filing cabinet than one that didn’t. Certainly, I never worked harder because of a piece of paper promising x if I did y. Indeed I, like many others, would have found it deeply insulting. I took the bonus of course. I’m not totally daft. But I was proud to achieve things that were good for the company and happy if I was rewarded for it. It wasn’t the other way around. Does that mean I would have happily given up my bonus so that I could work hard without the encumbrance of worrying about an end of year pay packet hike? Of course not! But that’s a whole different issue. If your purpose of an incentive scheme is employee retention, then…well…. pay them what you think they are worth. If the employee thinks they are worth more then they will leave (all other things being equal). And if they need incentivising to work, are they really the employees you want to retain anyway? Traditional corporate incentives might look good on paper, but in practice, they often flop harder than a soufflé during an earthquake. By focusing on long-term goals, fostering intrinsic motivation, promoting teamwork, using fair metrics, and emphasizing ethics, companies can create incentives that work, at least to some extent. So let’s ditch the seagull tactics and shady sales pitches and build workplaces where everyone’s working towards the same awesome goal – without the drama. “The best way to align incentives with company goals is to ensure they reflect not just the outcomes we seek, but the values we uphold.” Andy Swadlo, Corporate Conference April  2018 Now, who’s ready to smash some printers? © 2024 Andreas Swadlo --- If you’re looking for expert advice on creating effective incentive structures that truly motivate employees and drive long-term success, look no further. With years of experience in senior international leadership roles, I can help businesses design and implement innovative incentive programs that align with your core business values and goals. Let’s work together to create a workplace where everyone thrives. Contact me today to get started on transforming your corporate incentive strategies. --- References: 1. Kohn, A. (1993). Why Incentive Plans Cannot Work. Harvard Business Review . Retrieved from [Harvard Business Review]( https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work ). 2. Brickley, J. A., & Zimmerman, J. L. (2010). Short-term incentives and long-term performance. Journal of Business, 67(4), 564-592. 3. Eichenwald, K. (2008). The Bribery Aisle: How Wal-Mart Used Payoffs to Get Its Way in Mexico. The New York Times . 4. Egan, M. (2016). Wells Fargo fined $185 million for fake accounts; 5,300 were fired. CNN Money. 5. Schweitzer, M. E., Ordóñez, L., & Douma, B. (2004). Goal setting as a motivator of unethical behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 422-432. 6. Tayan, B. (2018). The Wells Fargo Cross-Selling Scandal. Stanford Closer Look Series. 7. Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668. 8. Story, L., & Dash, E. (2008). Barclays Settles With New York in Inquiry on Mutual Funds. The New York Times . 9. Sorkin, A. R. (2009). AIG Planning $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout. The New York Times . 10. Beersma, B., & De Dreu, C. K. (2005). Conflict’s consequences: Effects of social motives on post negotiation creative and convergent group functioning and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(3), 358-374. 11. Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. 12. Semler, R. (2004). The Seven-Day Weekend: Changing the Way Work Works . Portfolio. 13. Kozlowski, S. W., & Bell, B. S. (2003). Work groups and teams in organizations. Handbook of Psychology, 12(3), 333-375. 14. O'Neill, T. A., McLarnon, M. J., Hoffart, G. C., Woodley, H. J., & Allen, N. J. (2018). The impact of transparency on trust in leader decision-making. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 39(2), 318-337. 15. Treviño, L. K., Weaver, G. R., & Reynolds, S. J. (2006). Behavioral ethics in organizations: A review. Journal of Management, 32(6), 951-990.

In this blog I cover the fascinating and significant challenge of leading a global team of diverse people with vastly diverse backgrounds, languages, and cultures. Don't get me wrong. Leadership is a privilege, effective leadership wonderful to behold. The attempt at global leadership is not only the challenge of magnifying the skills necessary to be successful but trying to avoid all the mistakes one makes at home. At first your promotion to the business lounge of international airports seems exciting, luxurious, and glamorous. Once the initial drug of that gold faced plastic card is overcome, one begins to wonder why we ever do it. And yet, we are all aware of the saying 'Travel Broadens the mind'. Once you have done it, and understood it, you will truly feel you have had the privilege of your life. Taken away from the settled . fixed . sedentary . unmoving . life you had before you are now thrust into a strange world of words you don't understand, looks that you can't comprehend, and, in most cases, incomprehensible languages and customs. But first you need to be aware that you don't know what you don't know. Global Leadership and how to avoid Global pitfalls I have been privileged to lead global teams. And witnessed the most amazing naivety in global leadership. It's not complicated to understand why. Global Leadership meetings don't have to be like this https://youtu.be/YnNSnJbjdws   The first global leadership meetings I attended were far worse.  I could write chapters of anecdotes on this topic but for the sake of brevity I will mention only four. 1. Differences in meaning 2. Differences in culture 3. Differences in Leadership style 4. We are all the same As always, all the following anecdotes are real, true, and experienced directly by me. Meaning 'It sucks'. The words of a USA Global CEO speaking to the leadership team about the local UK business. What were we to assume from this statement, given that we had heard from a reliable source that the same CEO had partaken in some very personal local entertainment found in the bar of the hotel we had booked him into the night before. Yes, language matters. And the worst assumption one can make is that an English-speaking person can communicate with anyone else that speaks English. Take for example USA and UK. If I go to a post office and ask for a rubber in the USA, I am likely to be escorted out of the building. If you do it in the UK, then the post office will happily provide an eraser to correct my mistake. If the American compliments my pants, then I might just walk deftly backwards out of sight before running to the nearest police station. The definition of trousers in one country is fraught with problems when it means underwear in another. It’s not the kind of comment that a reserved Englishman might expect on the first date. Italian maybe. But not an Englishman. But its more than that. It's also about the way  you communicate. I have sat in countless meetings with American bosses who seem to think it's perfectly reasonable to say things like ‘If you don’t deliver you will be out on your ass’’ or, alternatively, during a performance review, ‘’we think your performance is ok’' The former might be true albeit it has nothing to do with my bottom thank you. But the latter can really be translated into English English as ‘’we think your performance is utterly brilliant’’. More of this later. The same is true for other countries who think they speak the same language. English and Irish for example. Or Scotland. Few people from the soft underbelly of the English shires would understand the phrase ‘’Yer a bampot’’. Its English language (Scottish version). But do you know what that means? How should you react? (for the record, it means ‘’you are an idiot’’). The same kind of issue is true of Germany and Austria. Two countries divided by a common language. And a remarkably different culture and outlook on life. If we find trouble in countries with similar if not the same language imagine what it's like for people whose mother tongue is not  the same as yours. I remember squirming as the global business unit CEO explained in front of several hundred or so employees flown in from across the globe that leading them ''is like herding sheep'' and that, furthermore, ''we should not beat around the bush''. Undaunted he continued despite increasingly bewildered faces, ''talking straight from the horse's mouth we must let sleeping dogs lie because it's n o use crying over spilt milk. The fact is it takes two to tango and when we recognise this, we can understand that we will have found the best thing since sliced bread'' . Ok, so I paraphrased a little. But I really did loose count of the colloquialisms, idioms, and proverbs after around twenty. I looked around the conference hall at my young Russian colleagues, as yet naively untainted by west European corporate bullshit and gobbledygook. After what seemed an eternity, someone asked me a question. ''What did he say?'' I tried to explain. We all went for a drink. Or two. Later the CEO approached me. ‘’I think that hit the nail on the head’’ he said to me fishing for compliments. I replied in the only way I thought he might understand, ''Well, it takes more than a single swallow to make a summer'' I replied. ''What do you mean?'' I tried to give him some advice. ''Next time you must be clearer if you want to hit the nail on the head. '' I don’t understand he said. ''well, put it this way, if the leopard can’t change its spots, then it’s going to appear as daft as a brush''. He walked away none the wiser. Which is of course exactly the point. Culture Italians are corrupt, Romanians are immoral, Russians are drunk, and Germans only ever obey / give orders [just ask my German washing machine] . French have far too much sex, according to every other jealous country, and Americans are simply...well...simple. Austrians are dim, despite their elaborate titles [proof if ever there needed to be] as are the Irish. Unless you are Irish of course in which case anyone who speaks of 'Southern Ireland' [including those residing in Belfast] might as well be a representative of the devil. Unless of course you happen to reside in Belfast. maybe. oh yes...did I forget to mention it all gets quite complicated? The trouble with generic generalisations is that they rarely apply to the actual people. All English are lager drinking drunks spending all their spare time in the Costa del Sol in English bars during the day, English nightclubs during the evening, venereal disease clinics the following day, and back to the English pub for an English breakfast at lunchtime. Except of course that isn’t true. Yes, there are a minority that succeed in winning the stereotype award, but most people don’t actually conform.....not always anyway. Assuming that all individuals are the same is a huge leadership mistake.   Why English is hard to understand. Frequently my German colleagues would often ask me for a translation of what the English-speaking person was saying. Inevitably I would then ask, “what was the context”, to which my German colleague would be immediately confused. “What difference does context make?” “Everything!” I would reply, and then try to explain that English was so vague it always depended on context. I don’t think many of my German colleagues really understood it - not totally. But for an explanation here goes: In English, if I talk about a trunk then it could mean a luggage carrier, an electricity cable covering, the centre of a tree, a person’s body part, an animal's body part, or the back of a car (really an imported American word – we in England prefer to use the word ‘boot’ !). In German it means an elephant trunk. Why? because it's an Elefantenrüssel. You see in Germany they tend to use exceptionally large words. Why? Because the country has a fine history and culture of precision. England, by and large, doesn’t. We love vagueness. You see vagueness is a beautiful thing (for Brits). It allows you to be diplomatic but rude all at the same time. An essential skill developed during the Empire years. Complimentary but derogatory in the same breath. Wonderful. Most Germans profess to hate it. That is if they are aware of it. We Brits exploit it. To understand it is an art. How does this effect your approach to global leadership? You must understand the meaning of words - or rather - the various possibilities. And to do that you need to really understand the person…get into their shoes. The following is an example I gave to my team in Russia in so they could better understand me. It helped.    To recognise culture across boundaries is to recognise that people react in ways according to their own frame. A frame that has been shaped by their own lens of upbringing, experience, comprehension, and bias. This doesn't apply to only some people. It applies to all of us. Even, though I hate to admit it, me. No better example can be demonstrated as my own experience in Bucharest, with my dear French friend and colleague. Raphael and I were on a business trip to evaluate the Romanian finance market. He was a person, as you would expect, quite different from me. He was studious, detailed, highly intelligent and, having lived in Germany all his life, very process orientated. I valued and admired his contribution to the team. I could talk a lot and decide, but I knew Louis would always add a valuable new perspective. At the end of a long day of meetings and interviews we found ourselves back at our hotel where we made quick plans for meeting up for dinner. Now if ever there was a valuable tip for a Brit it is this - if you are with a Frenchman then take their advice for dinner! And so, it was. We agreed to meet in the centre of town where we would find the recommended restaurant. A taxi ride later and we found ourselves downtown. It was hardly encouraging. Glum looking locals dressed mostly in 1970s style cheap nylon shell suits were going about their business. The street was full of rubbish and the overhead telegraph poles weighed down by a tangled mesh of wires and half completed electrical connections. It looked like the end of the world not the begging of a new dawn for the country. We of course in our sharp dark suits and colourful ties stood out like a working electricity socket in a Bucharest office. I turned to look at Raphael, ''So, where are we eating tonight? ''Just a minute'' he replied as he unfolded his vast street map acquired from the hotel. ''Let me see...it must be just near here....'' He started to do what he does best. He studied each element of the map with immense focus and concentration. Suddenly, a remarkably well-endowed female approached me. Slim, dark haired, with vibrant red lipstick and a short skirt verging on a bathing costume she announced, crudely, ''you want woman for the night?'' I was shocked. Not because of the situation; more because of the brazen communication. I looked at Raphael. His nose was buried in the map. No help there I thought.  I looked back at my new local acquaintance. ''No thank you''. I replied. ''But thanks very much for asking''. At this point I instantly and nervously looked back at Raphael. Without averting his concentrated gaze at the map, he simple replied, in his wonderful French tinged accent, ''Good God no, I have not even had my dinner!'' And with that the 'woman of the night' looked at us as if we were mad, turned and disappeared into the throng of shell suits. Like I say, the 'diplomatic' if unclear Englishman and the culinary connoisseur Frenchman. Cultural differences. They do exist. Leadership style Much has been written about various leadership styles and indeed there is plenty of research papers on the effect of different styles across the globe. One such example is The 6 Types of Leadership Styles And How They Vary Around The World | World Economic Forum ( weforum.org ) What I want to focus on is the fundamentals of leadership and how such principles can only be considered even more important in a global context. Critical to any leadership position is building of trust. Nowhere is this more important than the new global leader visiting his or her teams in foreign lands. And to develop trust it is vital to ask questions. Questions about their views, hopes, aspirations, fears, and dreams. Above all about their dreams. Getting to know people, to really understand them is not a quick fix...it takes time and patience....for people need to get to know you too. To trust you too. How do you gain trust? By being honest yourself. Open. Clear. And by sharing your own views, hopes, aspirations, fears, and dreams. Above all you have to be brave enough to display your own vulnerabilities. Empathy is about sharing. And to share you have to listen and try hard to learn. It's a two-way conversation, asking meaningful and genuine questions and demonstrating your own willingness to open yourself up. If you think it's still a competition, you cannot achieve empathy. Success is a kind of magic...a magic best described by the wonderful Brene Brown: ”Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone’” It doesn't matter that you have a fancy title or a fancy background. It doesn't matter if you were taught in an expensive school or a prestigious university. Or drive a luxury car or a cheap rust bucket. Empathy is the most basic skill in leadership. Without that you shouldn't be a leader, locally or globally. “It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we do not know at all that it is the same with others.” Sheldon Vanauken Atticus Finch may have been a fictional character, in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' but the power of the story lies in the most basic display of emphatic leadership. He was willing to put his whole career and reputation on the line in pursuit of his defence of a black man. Someone innocently caught up in the racial prejudice of a small country townsfolk. Yet at the same time he was destined to regain the towns respect. Not for what he did but for how he did it. By practicing the ethic of sympathy and understanding and by recognising that people have both good and bad qualities. By being determined to admire the good while understanding and forgiving the bad. In so doing he wins the ultimate leadership outcome for himself and for his son.  “Before Jem looks at anyone else, he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him” Leadership means taking people somewhere new. How else can you do that unless you can genuinely trust each other? We are all the same “The same blood runs in every human on the earth. You just have to see past the variations in skin and culture.” Sejal Badani Sadly, the world is becoming, it seems, increasingly divided. Brexit or Remain, Left or Right, for freedom of movement or against, believing in the future or succumbing to despair. Increasing wars. Rising poverty and division. At least it seems that way. This is not the post to analyse and speculate on the reasons why. But what I can say, is that what we read, absorb, and see through vast and diverse types of media is quite different sometimes to the reality of human interactions that we experience with our own personal contact and exploration. There is poverty, war, and division. But are peoples dreams so very different? If there is one thing, I have learnt through travel and leading people throughout the world it is this: in the end we are all the same. Most people want to live a better life, in peace and prosperity. We want the world to be a better place, safer, cleaner, and more secure. We want to do the best for our families and give our children the best chance in life. We might have different views on how to achieve these things, but the goals are pretty much the same. It doesn't matter if you are white, black, brown, or yellow. It doesn't matter if you are straight, gay, rich, or poor, we still bleed when we are cut and cry when our loved ones die. Many years ago, a family member strongly challenged me on my views - ''how would you react if your children's school classroom was full of people wearing turbans or hijabs'' she said forcefully and in a negative angry tone. I replied ''well, I would hope and believe that my children would seek to get to know the character of the person, not focus what they are wearing on their head''. The challenge for the world is this: can we acknowledge and respect our differences, our cultures, and experiences while at the same time accepting that ultimately, we really are the same in so many ways? And are leaders out there in the world able to rise to this challenge? I don't know. But I do know that individually you can do it for your own global teams. The privilege of global leadership is precisely that you can make your own part of the world a better place. Less divisive, more appreciative of our different experiences and a far bigger understanding of our common goals and dreams. In the end isn't that the greatest dream a business leader can have? Is it not the highest motivation, to be able to look back on your career and to say that you truly facilitated greater understanding between peoples, helped raise the living standards across nations, and built teams that cared for each other and supported each other, laughed and cried with each other but who never thought one group of people was superior or somehow better than another. World peace may not be in my gift. But surely my business family and team is? In this world we too often fall into the trap of thinking that the world's problems are the responsibility of someone else. That we are helpless in the changing tectonic plates of world challenges. But surely this is false thinking. Why focus on what we can't do? Why not focus on what we can? We as global leaders can make the changes we want to see in the world. And the very first starting place is to put ourselves in the shoes of other people. © 2024 Andreas Swadlo Further material: The Attributes of an Effective Global Leader ( hbr.org ) Looking for more hints and tips for global leadership? Starting a bigger role and would like some help and guidance? Or simply want to have another perspective, informal, private and with no pressure? If you do, I can help. I or my associates can support you with a fresh approach to leadership issues, we can give you the power to de - stress and we can give you to the confidence to make a global difference. Whether you want to totally transform your business, start a new one or simply refine a winning team then let me know. I truly believe that leadership matters....and that great leadership can make a great difference.

– first published some years ago and now updated, it clearly demonstrates how Leaders need to be on their guard...for every eventuality! As always, everything you will read is true. It’s a beautiful city, St Petersburg. No doubt about it. Full of historical significance, architectural beauty, and not forgetting the incomparable ‘White Nights’ in the deep summer months. I visited many times on business but one occasion stands out - for all the wrong reasons. I am rather happy not to repeat the experience...I hope my young leadership followers will heed the following warning of my own personal and very real nightmare. It all started when I attended a business conference as a guest speaker. The scene was set. We were meeting at the splendid St Petersburg Kempinsky Hotel, my speech was well rehearsed and the moderator was generous in his introduction to my session. My words flowed easily, no notes required. My prose interspersed with relevant and emotional video clips captured my audience . If I may say so myself, I was a triumph! My presentation was one of the best I have ever made, even receiving an exclamation of ‘wow!” from a member of the audience at the end of my speech. It blended into a rapturous warm applause from the esteemed assembled guests. It couldn’t get much better and during the following coffee break I was immediately surrounded by interested enthusiastic people asking me questions and wanting to establish business contacts. One thing followed another and before you could say “Pushkin” it was already time for dinner. Very quickly my new found ‘friend’, a CEO of a Finance company from Belarus, had invited a small group of us to a “traditional Russian dinner”. Who am I to refuse my newfound buddies? Off we went, and a few walked streets later l found myself in a “typical old fashioned Russian restaurant” according to our host. Frankly speaking I wasn’t really sure of his credentials, after all he was a ‘foreigner’ to St Pete but he seemed confident, knowledgeable, and very charming. Clearly St Petersburg held no secrets to this man. Without waiting for an answer, he pronounced “it is customary in Russia to drink Vodka during the meal…as well as wine”. And so my evening began. Now I have to admit I am not such a huge fan of Vodka. Personally, when it comes to ‘short’ drinks, I am more of a traditional British Gin &Tonic type of chap. Plymouth Gin of course. On the other hand, I do like socialising and there is a saying in England as indeed many countries, ‘When in Rome…do as the Romans do'. So what the heck! I joined in with gusto and you know what…the quality was good…very good. Im talking of course about the socialising.....and the drink. With a silky smooth flow the Vodka seemed to slide down effortlessly. Maybe I am really converted afterall? That Beluga is fine stuff indeed. And thanks to the generosity and enthusiasm of our friendly host from Belarus the quantity was in good supply too. I started to lose count of the bottles of various drinks (yes, soon we were mixing) and, frankly speaking, started to lose count of just about everything else. Well I know my limits of course – age does that to you. Not only that but as a leader one always need to be conscious that you are representing your organisation and team. Best not overdo it. Definitely leave before embarrassment ensues. So soon it was time to depart. Strangely our host felt a little unwell (no stamina these Eastern Europeans I decided) and, feeling remarkably intact, I headed off with a few remaining but tough financing experts back to the hotel. Unfortunately included in the mix were a couple of guys from Asset Management and if there is one thing well known in the financial industry its that asset managers are good at drinking. Very good as it happens. Well of course, one or two drinks ‘for the road’ later and I too finally decided it was time to go to bed. It wasn’t an early start. Conference call at 9am in the hotel then pick up by the St Pete office driver at 10am. Easy! Even time for breakfast. Or so I thought…… I felt in remarkably good condition as I prepared for bed. Of course I was determined not to be late in the morning – it was a late start – the last thing I wanted was to be embarrassed by being even later! And of course I had enjoyed a ‘few’ drinks, so, just as a precaution I set my alarm for 7.30am. Normally I never need an alarm clock. And then……off to a peaceful sleep….. It was with hesitation that I slowly started to wake up. The curtains were drawn but I could just make out the light trying to pierce its way through a gap. I slowly leaned across to the bedside table and looked at my alarm on my smart phone…wait a minute….what? Oh no!!! It can’t be!! Was it really already 11am!!!! WHAT!!!! All kinds of things rushed through my mind. What happened to my alarm? Oh my goodness, is the driver still waiting? Why had nobody tried to call me? I had to find out what was happening. I just could not understand it. I had no headache, thank goodness, but my embarrassment more than made up for that. I rushed to the window, opened the curtains and streaming sunny light flooded the room. Clearly it was far later than 7.30 am!!! Then came my next big shock. IT WAS NOT MY ROOM! “What the…….???” I couldn’t believe it! What had happened? It was truly crazy. But wait, all my things ARE in the room. So what on earth happened last night? Thankfully I was alone (I did double check the bathroom – in case it was the ultimate horror) but I was truly in a state of rising panic and complete confusion. Well what can I do? I will have to go to reception and kind of try and find out what happened? I hope I didn’t do anything terrible! Did I really have so much to drink? I just couldn’t understand it at all. That damned Vodka! But worse was to come. As I threw some clothes on and headed, dishevelled, out of my room I suddenly realised I was in an even worse situation. Not only was I not in the room I checked into, I was not even in the correct hotel! I had no idea where I was. Oh no, this is terrible and getting worse by the second. I don’t even know where I am! What to do? I had no option, I had to go outside and get my bearings. I could hardly go to reception and ask how I got to this hotel…let alone what hotel it was! No, I had to go outside and find out where in the city I was. Well, thankfully, it was obvious that I was still in St Pete. That, at least was something. But all the while I felt really in a state of panic. I just couldn’t understand how I had got to this situation. I had an awful premonition that I had done something terrible and had been shipped off to the first hotel someone could find. But I still had no idea where in the city I was. I decided to ask a passer by. I have learnt in Russia it is a waste of time speaking to strangers of my generation in English – invariably they don’t speak my language and my command of eastern european languages was about as good as effective as chocolate kettle. But if I pick a younger person there was a good chance. Especially in St Petersburg. So I found a young student type and asked him: “I’m sorry to trouble you but can you tell me where the Kempinsky hotel is please?” Luckily he answered in good English and with obvious knowledge of the city. “Yes, of course, its across the square over there”..and then I could see the Navisky Prospect, the Hermitage in the distance and I knew at least where I was and where I had started this awful journey. I turned back to my new guide to thank him. Just at that moment, I watched in horror, in a kind of slo-motion action film, as he opened his mouth and breathed a shaft of fire which headed towards me about to engulf me in flames! Yes, it was indeed at that precise moment that I woke up with a start! I quickly checked my alarm. 7.30am. I was in my own room. In my own hotel. You could not meet a happier more relieved person than me at that precise point of time. The whole thing, the whole extraordinary and vivid experience was a complete dream. A nightmare in fact. I was so relieved! And nobody had to tell me the significance of that shaft of flame from that person’s mouth – it represented the copious quantity of Vodka I had drunk the night before. Needless to say, I am very cautious now about Vodka. I have learnt that weak Westerners at least must handle it with respect! I never really enjoyed that drink anyway. After that experience I like it even less. G&T, for me at least, does not seem to have the same effect. I consider it a warning and one that I will always remember. ….and no, I did not have a headache. © 2023 Andreas Swadlo Need a refresh of your leadership style? Feeling stressed and with nobody to turn to? Want to turn things around or help other people do the same? Or maybe you just want to make the best speech of your life?....without complications! Or Vodka. If you do I can help. I or my associates can support you with a fresh approach to leadership issues, we can give you the power to de - stress and we can help you to make your communications memorable, meaningful and truly motivational. Whether you want to totally transform your business, start a new one or simply refine a winning team then let me know. I truly believe that leadership matters....and that great leadership can make a great difference.

Leadership jargon debunked. “It's time we make a paradigm shift going forward so that we can truly reach out and touch base with our customers, leveraging our core competencies to empower our people in achieving scalable best practice by thinking out of the box. Going forward.” Sounds familiar? I'm not surprised. because we have all heard so called leaders consistently use this kind of jargon. No company kick off event would be complete without it. I can't say that the audience enjoys this nonsense. Unless that is we are all have our discrete sheets of Bull **** Bingo at the ready. Unfortunately these days it doesn't take long for someone to get a winning line. Ever wondered why meetings are so pointless? Here is you answer. Its because they are filled with pointless words and phrases. In other words corporate jargon. Another example, this time a genuine publicly quoted CEO piece of jargon triumph: "Drilling down one more click on services, we actually think of multiple swim lanes of opportunity around business." Genius! Masterful use of the English language in the pursuit of corporate mystery. Top Corporate Swinger Club Jargon stuff. Once I witnessed our Global CEO give a 30 minute speech at one such event. I swear there was hardly a sentence in the whole 30 minutes that did not end with the words, “going forward”. No word of an exaggeration, at about minute 28 it even dawned on him that he was using the words “going forward” far too frequently. He paused, clearly trying to think of something more imaginative to end the sentence with. But the task was too taxing. So he finished the sentence anyway, with the immortal words…”going forward”. I kid you not. Afterwards I asked one of my colleagues what they thought of the speech. “We are clearly going forward” she replied. Just as well I thought, since a Time Machine hadn’t yet been invented to move us backward. Pity that. It would certainly allow us to to avoid listening to all this drivel in the first place. Corporate jargon is everywhere, delivered with passionate embrace by countless senior managers. The question is why? Why say all this nonsense? Does it actually have any purpose at all? The answer is, surprisingly perhaps, 'YES'. I would love to know the origin of corporate gobbledygook but sadly it is buried in the mists of time. My “research” must therefore be limited by the not inconsiderable experience I have of listening to such pointless words and phrases and, indeed, using a fair few of them in my own speeches. It's contagious you see. Become a manager and it is an expectation. To become a senior leader it is a key card to your promotion to the leadership team. I therefore think I'm in a good position to judge and to give an insight as to why these things are inflicted on ordinary mortals. At the outset I have to point out there is a scale of reasons why such daft jargon is used. The scale starts with ‘its easier than meanigful thinking’ all the way to ‘its my badge of membership to the elite club’. In between there are various steps including ‘pretending I’m clever’ , ‘committing to nothing at all’ and ‘I’m not even aware that I am under this poisoned spell of daft pretentious phrases’. The latter step is often substituted for the last one. Some leaders are so stupid that ignorance is substituted at the very first. It never progresses beyond that. “Jargon masks real meaning,” says Jennifer Chatman, management professor at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. “People use it as a substitute for thinking hard and clearly about their goals and the direction that they want to give others.” The overall effect is even more pernicious. It keeps ‘normal’ people out of the club; like some heavily unionised closed shop - the jargon will sort out who is ‘in’, keep them ‘in’ and keep the rest of you plebs ‘out’. The trouble is that there are so many of these words - a whole unique language of nothingness if you will - designed for people with nothing between their ears in the first place. To keep my blog within reasonable tolerance of readability - if indeed my blogs ever do - I will address only a few. Maybe I will do future blogs on the same topic. It could keep me busy for decades. Let's start with the most obvious nonsense. ‘We’ Yes its just two letters. Incredibly simple. And Royal. ‘We need to move forward’. ‘We need to change the culture’, ‘we need to do this’, ‘we need to do that’ etc etc You know what I'm going to say. ‘We’ means nothing of the sort. It means you. When you hear ‘we’ get ready for an increased workload. [We] have been told ‘Corporate Values’ Oh dear. Whenever a senior manager starts talking about 'corporate values' you know there is going to be trouble…going forward….of course. Companies don't have values. They cant. They are legal constructs without feelings, beliefs, worries, hopes, or passions. Those things belong to you…the company employee and the leadership. The values of people who make up the company reflect the values of the leadership. If the leaders are sharks then it won't be long before everyone else becomes a shark too…or leaves. Leaders talking about ‘corporate values’ makes everyone feel as though they have just eaten something rotten….and they spend most of the ensuing lecture trying to avoid throwing up at the absurdity of it all. It's good for the leaders of course…they can absolve themselves of any moral values whatsoever while simultaneously passing the buck to you. Mr “going forward” was fired sometime later…for his inappropriate relationship with an employee in his team. I rest my case. 'Reach out' Oh my goodness. I hardly know where to start with this one. Lets try this. Why not actually say what you mean? Like , 'How about you contact this person’. Or ‘set up a meeting’. Or ‘apologise to him/her for being a complete tool’, or for that matter 'apologise to him/her for talking complete corporate jargon rubbish' Reaching out is such a wishy washy non phrase created for use by utterly wishy washy people. It's like the driver of a vehicle flashing their headlights at an oncoming car. What do those headlights actually mean? Its obvious isn’t it? That’s right, choose one of the following possibilities and make your move: 1. ‘I'm moving aside so you can come through’ 2. 'I'm coming through so you had better move aside' 3. 'You stupid ****** *****' 4. 'Hello David, its me Sally, reaching out' 5. 'Sorry, its not my day' 6. 'I have just switched on the heating but nothing is happening' 7. 'I'm going forward’ Good luck. And if, by chance, you really are reaching out to another employee I strongly suggest you don't - unless you want to end up being fired like Mr Going Forward. Best keep your hands to yourself. 'Low Hanging Fruit' A particular pet hate of mine. “We need to focus on low hanging fruit” or some such nonsense. I can translate for you: “I haven’t got the brains to figure out how to build the business / increase profits / achieve this or that objective and in any case I don't have the patience to wait for anything remotely realistic because my boss is on my back and he/she is even more stupid than I am so I'm just going to tell you to go and do something that has already been done 357 times before” By the way, the tree has has long since died of over exploitation. Good luck. 'Pain Point' Utterly meaningless except for the guarantee that you are about to receive an awful lot of pain while your esteemed leader enjoys a fine romantic 3 star Michelin Dinner with an attractive and highly ambitious young handpicked employee he/she 'reached out' to while on the latest business trip. 'Blue sky thinking' Extensively used by people who can neither think, have no imagination and frequently spend time in exotic locations with plenty of blue sky while their employees toil in the dark in sweatshop conditions trying to figure out how the hell to get out of this mess. Guess who will be blamed? 'Peel the Onion' Ostensibly means something along the lines of “We need to look at this in more detail to find out who to blame”. Inevitably this means that layers of management will look for a scapegoat, penetrating deeper down layer by layer into the organisation until the most junior member of the team is found and blamed for the fact that the 'low hanging fruit' has disappeared. As in peeling a real onion, it's the Commis Chef that will end up the one doing the crying. 'Leverage' Just a minute. Excuse me…I urgently need the bathroom. [PAUSE] Phew, that's better. I still feel sick but at least I know my keyboard is safe from ‘spillage’. The word Leverage can mean one of two things. It can mean, in financial terms, borrowing money to make an investment. Your leader most probably doesn't mean that. Chances are they don't understand anything as technical as financial terminology. That’s why they hire accountants. What they typically mean by this awful word is some kind of implied advantage that you can gain by doing something as in “We need to leverage our core competencies” or ”We need to leverage our client connections” or some such utter nonsense. What it really means of course is that you need to go and find ways to find even more sales/profit or reduce costs etc and to do so without the slightest help or idea of how. Maybe try some 'low hanging fruit'? It really is sickening. So much so that…sorry….I need to rush to the bathroom again! 'Singing from the same hymn sheet' Hopefully by now you are getting the hang of this. Obviously this implies something about trying to get a kind of agreement. You already know that whoever is saying it has absolutely no idea how to achieve that. “We all need to sing from the same hymn sheet” means, actually “You need to agree with everything I say” or alternatively “You need to get everyone else to agree with everything I say”. Going forward that is. 'Turn the tide' Oh come on! Really? And just how do you expect me to do that? Unless of course you think I have biblical powers. Which is, being frank, about the only way we are ever going to achieve the absurd target you just gave us just before you fly off to your next one to one coaching session at your hotel with that attractive young employee you were talking with extensively at the post conference bar last night. If only these things were simply funny. Unfortunately they often far more sinister. The point about all these ridiculous catchphrases is that they are always used to justify and reinforce the claim to seniority by belittling the recipient. Even worse, as Steven Poole, who has written a book on ‘unbearable office jargon’ told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme, office jargon can sometimes have sinister undertones. “It’s all about obscuring the violence of what the bosses are actually doing to people so they can carry on with a clear conscience.” So true. So utterly cowardly. There is just one defence. It not a great defence mind you, at least not in the meaning of Perry Mason, but at least an understandable one. Corporate jargon is also infectious. You might not even be aware you are using it. In fact I can guarantee that you do use it. Just like I did. You see it's a kind of language. A language of the Gods. If you can’t speak it then you simply cannot participate in Godly leadership meetings. It would be like going in and talking English while everyone else is speaking Arabic. Actually it's worse because with English there is at least a sporting chance that other people might understand you. For them you are speaking Double Dutch. Or Hungarian. Or Martian. Quickly you find you have to speak in Corporate Jargon…if that is you are to become ‘accepted’ in this boss 'freemasonry club'. It's not really a language of the Gods of course. It's actually a language of the Devil. Which you must embrace. We have been warned. Going forward. It is also contagious. Even the very best of us are all just one step away from the brutal metaphor or dangerous cliche. What sounded like a harmless bit of club fun turns out to have the inevitable result of the club orgy; a kind of verbal corporate leadership syphilis ….to be ‘enjoyed’ by those infected around you and future generations. You might well be asking yourself what you should do faced with all this. My advice? I'm not going to give that to you because I can't. It depends entirely on your circumstances and your propensity for courage. What I can tell you is that you have 2.5 alternative options. Option 1 Call them out. Use what I call the JOB technique. JOB stands for James O’Brien. For those of you who have never heard him in action you need to in order to fully understand the technique of getting to the core of BS statements. Its actually a really simple process and once you have tried it a few times it will allow you to ‘win’ any argument with any fraud. The process is straightforward. Just keep asking for precise clarification. Do not, under any circumstances, stop until a clear precise definition is given. Which of course it will not be. Because the basis is gobbledygook or something even more sinister. Here is an example of JOB in practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKHNYC2BpAI The advantage of this is that you can truly hold your head up high. You have exposed the frauds and charlatans for what they are. The downside is that you need to be brave. Very very brave. It's one thing having a JOB conversation with a subordinate. Probably also wise to be treated with some caution. You aim is not to destroy your employees - on the contrary it is to build them and help them to get better and better. Imagine then having the JOB conversation with your boss. Your boss should be able to take it but I have given this technique a very appropriate name…..because the chances are you will soon be looking for another job. Option 2 Play the same game and use all these weasel words and meaningless phrases. The more obscure and cringeworthy the better. You will be embraced as ‘one of us’. It has the charm that, all other things being equal, that you will still have a pay cheque next month. What are all those things that need to be equal? Things like corporate politics, political manoeuvrings to take over your job, lies and double dealing from the other Leadership team members to name but a few. Unfortunately it does have a disadvantage of course. Namely that you have become one of them. Without morals or soul, you will be condemned by ordinary mortals around you and ultimately be fired when the woeful business results catch up with you all. You will also have to hang your head in shame. Assuming that is if you feel any shame at all. Option 2.5 It's really a combination of the above two. What you are doing is striking a balance depending on situation and circumstance. You avoid trying to sail directly into the wind, tacking to obtain maximum advantage while still moving forward broadly in a noble direction. The advantage is you can still claim to be on the side of good and reason plus you can do so in the knowledge that you skilfully avoid getting fired. You are still in the game. As many a political party has found out, abandoning the middle might sound nice to promote some underlying extreme dogma but doing so and never winning the power to implement anything gets a little tedious after several elections. The downside is that it still needs a lot of courage PLUS it needs a fair bit of intelligence too. Getting the balance right is a key skill all of its own. A PhD in it is probably not sufficient. I will leave it to you to decide. One useful tip though is this - using humour can, if used well, be an effective cruise missile in the corporate world of politics. Again be careful. Cruise missiles are very explosive. I choose this analogy carefully. Yep...you understand...you need a PhD in using humour too. If there are only 2.5 options open to you when you attend someone else's [more senior] meetings then what about your own? When it comes to your own meetings…now there I can give you some clear guidance. When it's your meeting…then there is your golden opportunity to lead with aplomb. And shame on you if you don't take it. Stop these lazy weasel phrases. Be clear. Be Precise. Talk from your heart. Honestly. Openly. And Listen. Cut out the jargon completely and utterly. Yes it takes effort, preparation and thinking. Lots of it. But it's your chance to become the Leader you wish you had. And watch something remarkable happen. Watch and listen as people leave the meeting enthused. Motivated. And uttering the words, “Wow, that was the most useful and productive meeting I ever attended. Wow. Just wow!” Failing that there is one more alternative. Work for a leader that does care. That shares your values. That genuinely puts the organisation first. Someone who is a great leader. They are easy to spot. They are the quiet ones who encourage their crew to spread their wings, to take the glory and the accolades, yet step into the forefront when the storm clouds appear. Reassuring. Calm. Determined. Support those kinds of Leaders. Help them. It can be lonely up there on the helm and this Skipper will be happy to have someone they can truly trust and rely on and share council with. Success requires leadership to be a team sport. Indeed great leadership both nurtures and in turn depends on that very team spirit. Great Skippers do exist. Find them and you too will have found yourself. No jargon required. Do it. Going Forward….of course. © 2023 Andreas Swadlo Are you tired of attending pointless meetings? Do you want to improve the quality of your communications? Or maybe make the best speech or presentation of your life? If you do I can help. I or my associates can support you with a fresh approach to internal communications, making meetings, discussions and communications more meaningful, productive and truly motivational. Whether you want to totally transform your business, start a new one or simply refine a winning team then let me know. I truly believe that leadership matters....and that great leadership can make a great difference.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a “Caper” is either a pickled sour bud or a dangerous activity. Corporate Compliance must be one of the few topics that fits BOTH definitions. Never has the corporate world been so much audited by the internal Compliance Department. Mention Compliance Rules to any corporate manager and they start to itch and sweat. Mention that they are going to be audited by internal Compliance Department and they will have heart palpitations. The honest managers that is. The dishonest ones will sleep easily. Because they know what boxes need to be ticked. You would think that after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed in 2002, bringing personal liability to boards of directors for the misdemeanours of companies, that there would be no more financial scandals like Enron or WorldCom. Yet here we are in 2023 with countless frequent examples of huge financial scandals, corporate theft, fraud and wrongdoing. In 2021 alone, after almost 20 years of SOX, we had ABN Amro slapped with a €480 million fine for money laundering. NatWest Bank received a fine of £264 million again for money laundering. In this example the case resolved around a specific customer - Fowler Oldfield - who deposited £365 million with NatWest of which £264 million was in cash. Staff reported their suspicions to senior management who, of course, took no further action. And of course, 2021 couldn't be escaped by Deutsche bank - always a reliable source of some dreadful jucy scandal. It was fined $120 million for engaging foreign officials, their relatives and their associates as third-party intermediaries, business development consultants and finders to obtain and retain global business. The SEC stated that approximately $7m was paid by Deutsche Bank in bribe payments or payments for unknown, unauthorised or undocumented services. You couldn't make it up. *See at the very end of this blog release for latest newsflash I could go on. The list is seemingly endless. So what in the name of good ethical and legal practice has gone wrong? Certainly I did my own double take some years ago. One of my businesses received notice of an internal audit by the Compliance Department - apparently a routine occurrence albeit in the case of this particular business - an occurrence that seemed to come up with remarkably greater frequency than any other country in the global concern. Perhaps it was the delicious food the country was renowned for. Or the delightful scenery. We seemed to be audited every other week. Or so it felt anyway. But that's just being cynical and as you know I am never ever cynical. Nevertheless - as the Compliance Team like to say, they are from Head Office and they are here to help. Here to make sure we are doing things both correctly and efficiently not just legally, morally and up to ‘compliance standards’. Why object to that? Well it all started innocently enough. The local lead of the compliance team - a young up and coming chap possessing I was told a “high intelligence”. Personally I found him a bit arrogant and just a tad too headstrong - you know what I mean - revelling in upsetting ordinary members of staff. These days we call it bullying. But so be it. Arrogance at least still seems to be part of the job description for compliance these days. Apart from the occasional employee running away in tears - a frequent occurrence during these 'helpful' HQ visits - everything was trundling along with usual pace and expectation. That is until one morning. The individual arrived from his hotel. Deposited his team in the data room. And immediately sought a meeting with my local CEO. Turns out this young buck needed our help. A very specific type of medical help as it happens. Urgently. To help with a problem “down there”. My genuinely helpful colleague, ever the gentleman, naturally made a few phone calls and then discretely passed him a piece of paper with a suitable doctor's contact details. Transport was kindly arranged. Within 24 hours the problem was solved, much to the relief of the head of this internal audit. Seems he was quite busy in the evenings. The thing about this and the problem for me was the implication this had - or might have had. I just couldn’t judge if the subsequent swift resolution of the internal audit with an 'exemplary’ rating was - well - accurate or not. I hoped so, and believed so, knowing my team, that it most probably was. But hoping so is not quite the same as seeing it proven beyond reasonable doubt. Could I fully have confidence in the internal audit? Or not? Now I will be the first to argue that what an individual does in his or her private time is a matter for them - not the corporation. However, this wasn’t entirely that clear cut. He was in our country staying at an upmarket business hotel at company expense. And since he explicitly sought help from one of my most senior team members it wasn’t exactly without potential implication or conflict of interest. And I am not talking about the difficult area of corporate image and an employees responsibility towards upholding it. Also by the way a subject ‘regulated’ by our Compliance rules. But this wasn’t the end of it. At least for me. What to do in this situation? My colleague had told me in confidence about this development. I wrestled with the conflict - private activity - whether I personally approve of the morals of it was really irrelevant. What was not irrelevant was not just a potential conflict of interest but the obvious potential for bringing our company into disrepute should any of this get into the public domain. In an age of social media that wasn't so unlikely. What to do? I decided to pick up the phone - to my opposite number in the parent company Compliance Department - in effect his boss. Better to make a phone call, explain the situation and discretely request that he gives some personal guidance to the enthusiastic purveyor of night time activities. Away on business implies certain rules. Compromising those raises doubts about the work completed. It's a simple message I think. The conversation turned out to be far more difficult than I imagined. I didn't want a formal disciplinary communication. I wanted some guidance for the employee. Give him another chance and to learn from his mistake. The discussion was curt. Even antagonistic. “Why are you telling me this?” ”What are you trying to say?” ”Why are you criticising my Department.” “Do you perhaps have something to hide?” Talk about a 180 degree turnaround. I felt I had offered an olive branch and received in return the nozzle of a Colt 45 up my nose. What happened next was truly startling. It was 2 or 3 weeks later that I received a call from a relatively junior accountant in my “home” country. The Group Compliance Department had started an investigation. “Into your expenses Andy”. “Pardon?” I replied. “Yes, they have asked for detailed submissions of your last 5 years expense claims”. “Er…ok…fine” I replied. “Thanks for letting me know. Of course you should give them all the information they ask for” I replied. As it turned out after about 4 weeks of investigation, apparently by three people specially flown in, nothing was found. Not really surprising when you read some of my previous blogs on sales. I have no idea if the two things - my contacting Compliance and the rapid investigation of my expenses were linked. I have no evidence either way. I will leave that to the reader to decide. Coincidence it was - quite remarkable too. And therein lies one of the big problems with Compliance departments in major corporations. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who audits the Compliance Department....for Compliance and Ethical behaviour? And, who, in turn, audits the auditors of the auditors? It's an age old problem not just for Roman Emperors. Particularly when those departmental leaders obtain and depend on their position and favour on the directors of the top level business. Are those directors liable to the same rules? Um...well... Some years ago I had a regular review dinner with one of my sister company colleagues - the country CEO in one of my country jurisdictions. A kind of local ambassador for all the global subsidiaries in the country. He was a damned fine chap if I say so myself. Of German origin he had been in the service of the company for his whole working life, had spent most of it living and working around the globe outside of Germany. He had a long and varied career history, a sharp mind, and an even sharper wit. I liked him. He also had a certain disdain, built over a lifetime of experience, of the global board directors. Not all. Most. I liked him even more. I shall call him Kurt. As I sat down with him for a very enjoyable - as always - dinner he told me about his current activities. “Oh my god…Andy..you can’t believe how much time I am having to take regarding the forthcoming visit of the [global conglomerate] board of directors!” I quickly replied “But surely you have people who can take care of that for you…I mean…it’s just hotels and logistics….isn’t it?” “Oh my God, Andy. Don't be so naive” he replied. “Mr X [name withheld] won't travel from the airport with Mr Y, Mr A won't share a hotel with Mr B. Mr F wants to know the square metre size of his room to ensure it is bigger than that of Mr J”. After 5 iterations of this discussion I lost the thread to be honest. But I was both shocked and fascinated `at the same time. A bit like watching an episode of 'Love is Blind'. “My goodness” I said, “I had no idea. That’s crazy”. “It gets worse” Kurt replied. My business unit has to pay their local expenses. After the last experience I had to inform every one of them the ground rules“. My ears pricked up even more. “What do you mean?” I said. Kurt replied “I had to tell them, quite formally, not to include expenses on their hotel bills for items such as drugs, condoms and prostitutes” “WHAT?” I replied, aghast. I didn't mean to sound like a famous retired American tennis player turned tennis pundit but I think I really did sound like him....“You CAN NOT be serious!” “I’m absolutely 100% serious” Kurt replied. “And it appears more than one doesn't bother with condoms!” I have no idea to this day if that last comment was meant in jest or not. But I can assure you that everything else was said with seriousness and with genuine distraught disgust. Frankly, like most people would be, I was disgusted too. And I was right to be. Recently in the UK we have had the premier corporate lobbying organisation - the UK based Confederation of British Industry - facing a compliance issue all of its own. And fascinating reading it makes too. Its CEO, Tony Danker, was fired. Sex, drugs and rock and roll would be mild according the press reports of the things that went on. Sexual misconduct occurred frequently if reports are to believed. Worse still, even rape. To be fair to Mr Danker he was quick to point out that such things occurred before his tenure and that he wasn't aware of them. Unfortunately, when you are the leader of a business, it's never really a great defence to claim you have no idea what is going on in it. Especially it seems when one of the complaints of inappropriate behaviour is directly levelled at you. We will have to wait and see how the facts unfold. Mr Danker was quick to publish a list of the items for which he was, allegedly sacked; For organising a secret and private karaoke party for 15 people, for viewing the Instagram accounts of CBI staff, for sending non-work related messages to staff and for inviting junior staff to breakfasts, lunches or one-to-one meetings. While Mr Danker acknowledged he had made some staff feel 'very uncomfortable' and he apologised for that, he insisted he had 'never used sexually suggestive language with people' at the company. Now on the face of it, taking the above list at face value, none of the items strike me as justifying contract termination even if one or other seem a bit odd. But here is where the 'Fog of War' starts to creep in. Dinners with young members of the corporation are actually perfectly ok in my opinion, indeed I would argue a very positive use of a leaders time. So long as one essential element is adhered to - a dinner with a sizeable number of colleagues - ie more than one! Not some romantic one to one dinner by candle light. This is supposed to be Leadership, not Tinder. Note I am not suggesting for one moment that Mr Danker did the latter. I have no information on that. My point is the wider point. That getting a group of colleagues for a motivational breakfast, lunch or dinner is a wonderful thing to do. Taking an individual out to a romantic restaurant one evening would be beyond rash. The former is motivational, educational and benefits everyone, including the senior who might learn something about the hopes and aspirations of up and coming employees and perhaps also a little of the real world. The latter is an absurd, naive and frankly daft action. Unfortunately I have seen the latter so many times. Not least with my bosses. Romance is a fine thing it seems…in the case of senior management, even better when it is paid for by the shareholder apparently. It's not good enough. And I'm not talking about the quality of the wine list. But it gets worse. Also mentioned in the CBI reporting was that Mr Danker made some employees “feel uncomfortable” to which he has publicly apologised. Now I have now idea in his case what that meant in practice. What I can say is that I myself have felt more than uncomfortable on many an occasion with my seniors' actions. A couple of examples just to wet your appetite. I was once on a plane together with my the boss of my boss on the way to a business review of my part of his global empire - yeah, a very senior person, especially considering I wasn’t exactly the office junior myself. After demonstrating a total and embarrassing lack of knowledge of my business' performance he quickly and skillfully changed the subject. Or it would have been skillful had the new subject matter been in the slightest bit appropriate. It wasn’t. He started telling me about what he would like to do with the Stewardess serving us on the plane. I honestly cannot quote him - it’s inappropriate even for this blog let alone discussing this with your employee. Suffice it to say he went on to describe in excruciating detail the sexual wonders of the female foot and calf and what he would like to do with the same if “offered” to him. Offer isn’t really the word he used. But you get the drift. It's hard to respond adequately in this situation - not least because it rather takes you aback. What do you do? Do you start talking about other parts of the female anatomy on the lines of an ex US President captured for posterity on audio tape? Or do you tell him that “I'm really rather tired and would you mind if I take a quick power nap.“ I chose the latter route, much to my randy senior's chagrin. Another black mark on my career. I'm anti social don't you you know. It was the same person who once, visiting my leadership team and I in the most successful business in the group, he openly and oddly proclaimed to all of us how fascinating it was to observe in the bar the previous night, “ Eastern European hookers chasing middle aged businessmen around all evening.“ “Er..... OooKaaay” was my silent shocked thought…but I had no time to come up with any appropriate words. He continued, “Andy, where can I find a cash machine?” I told him. He went. He came back. Opened up his wallet in front of us all, bristled the wad of notes like a fresh pack of cards, and proclaimed “that should do the trick”. Once again I was at a loss for words. My team could barely hide their sniggers, shock, and disbelief. On reflection I was quick to realise that this morally bankrupt senior leader was an imposter. He was totally unsuitable for the role. Like King Charles II {note II NOT III !} , he always gave the impression that running the organisation was an unwanted distraction that got in the way of chasing women. He’d much rather have devoted all his time and energy to satisfying his sexual appetite - and frequently would ask me to find him a nightclub for that very purpose. I never did. Discretion wasn't an issue for him. He was shameless, openly flaunting his affairs and passions and fetishes. He had no particular talent worthy of any leader and only demonstrated the utter absurdity for the way leaders are appointed. But leadership appointments and how to avoid making a mess of it is another blog for another day. Suffice it to say that this person reminded everyone of a dim womanising commodity trader straight out of the 1980's. Which was hardly surprising. Because that is exactly what he was. A bartender in a seedy nightclub would have been a role more suited to his talents; were it not for the fact that he was also an alcoholic. I'll leave for another blog the story of how I once had to carry him to his room after he got totally drunk. A sadly all too common occurrence. The truth is he needed mental help not employment. As far as 'Leaders' go he was one of the better ones. Now I am not suggesting for one moment that all people in leadership roles are like this example. I have met many who are excellent dedicated individuals....and I like to think I have helped a few along the way in my own career. But the fact remains that too many totally unsuitable people are in senior leadership roles. Chosen not on the basis of talent but on the basis of being willing to overlook the peccadillos or more serious misdemeanours of their own boss....themselves in that position for exactly the same reason. It's a bit like a Tinder version of the secretive Freemasons. You know, the ones with a funny handshake and that look in their eye. And I met a few of those in leadership positions too and yes, before you ask, they were equally unsuitable. This has to stop. The simple truth is that senior management fails frequently. And it often fails big. Especially in the ethics stakes. Sometimes it is because they have simply not kept pace with the world. Acceptance of ’a bit on the side’ a’ la Nelson’s Lady Hamilton is not acceptable today in any organisation - especially when that 'bit on the side' is an employee within the same company. Neither are comedy programmes that were funny in the 1970s or even 1980s. Clue: it's why they are now longer shown on regular TV. But sometimes the basis for leadership indiscretions are even more simple to understand. As one of my mentors - the CEO of a bank leasing company - told me early in my management career, “Andy, I have met too many leaders who ruined a fine career because they just couldn't keep things inside their underpants”. It's great advice. As is my oft quoted statement to my own team members “I don't care what you do in your private life….just don't do it with someone in the company.“ On the face of it I have drifted a long way from the topic of corporate compliance. In fact it is highly relevant. My purpose is to point out that prescriptive rules of behaviour are not only inadequate to stop inappropriate behaviour, it is actually unhelpful because it encourages the assumption that rules are enough. Obey the “rules” and you are fine. That is the fatal assumption that too many businesses still make. It suits the crooked and unethical very very well. Just tick the boxes and all is well. Except of course as we all know it isn't. There would be few people who would argue, at least in public, about the good intentions of the senators driving the SOX legislation. To understand why, in practice, it doesn't seem to have stopped wrongdoing, you need to understand corporate culture and where it originates from. According to Paolo Gallo, Chief Human Resources Officer of the World Economic Forum, “traditional management thinking is based around three fundamental assumptions. First, that organizations need a top-down approach to strategy and objective setting; second, that the role of management and human resources is to measure/control what is being done to achieve objectives and to provide the corresponding incentives for performance or non-performance; and third, that monetary incentives motivate people. Accepting these assumptions, grounded in [an outdated] [my insertion] dogmatic approach, means that CEOs and executives decide on behalf of people, managers control and HR professionals develop complex systems to measure performance, incentives and. consequences. Sounds like the same old story of carrot and stick” https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/02/03/these-3-management-styles-belong-in-the-past/?sh=56bfa4b02a18 It also sounds like the military dogma of old. Which isn't surprising. Because that's exactly where the management models we know and despise originate from. The irony is that in most Western European countries and the USA the military have moved on. Today the emphasis and training of our military is all about “participative leadership” involving upward as well as downward information exchanges, “open communications”, and willingness to encourage ideas. Above all there is a recognition that training itself can I only go so far. "Soldiers learn to be good leaders from good leaders." —Retired USA ninth Sgt. Maj. of the Army Richard A. Kidd Well now. Who would have thought it. I had the privilege to be brought up by my mother - in a single parent household. She gave me everything she could and moulded me into the person I am today. She was my role model, my leadership guru, and my hero. She instilled a sense of moral duty, hard work and sense of service that I have valued and used daily as part of my moral compass. She never wrote down a single “rule”. I learnt right and wrong not from 40 volumes of conflicting prescriptive “compliance rules” but from her own example. I suspect and hope that in one shape or another this experience was not so dissimilar for you with your parents. Once, when I was about 10 years old we shared a Christmas dinner with one of her employees - an older Polish gentleman who had escaped Poland during communist times to settle in the UK leaving his relatives behind. A few days before, she had asked him what he was doing for Christmas. “Nothing” he replied. “It is a difficult time for me - I have no relatives in England and what should be a celebration with family will be a sad occasion for me”. She simply scooped him up, told him that this year would be different. He would join her, me, my uncle and my grandmother for a family Christmas. Just to reiterate. He wasn’t a family friend. He wasn’t a relative. He was an employee in the business my mother led. It's called moral Leadership. It's from the heart. Its real. And this was the example of behaviour shown to me. I thought it was normal. An therein lies the secret of successful leadership that complies with legal, moral and ethical standards of behaviour. It's not enough to rely on words buried in word documents. It's about the leadership example set by the people at the top. I tried as much as possible to avoid reading Compliance rules - no human could possibly do it - there were volumes and volumes of the stuff - often conflicting. And yet I can confirm with total sincerity, I never broke a Compliance rule. Why? Because I knew inherently what was right and what was wrong. My mother taught me that. If any person in any leadership position doesn't understand this point then they shouldn't be in a leadership position. Including the Head of the Corporate Compliance Department. In Germany there is a saying that ‘the fish rots from the head down’. It always has. It always will. It's worth thinking about that when the next ‘compliance failure’ hits the headlines. So simple to fix. It's the head of the fish that makes the difference. © 2023 Andreas Swadlo Would you like some help with issues of corporate ethics? Do you need a leadership coach? Or some help with your business? If the answer is yes then get in touch. I can give you some ideas for for how to energise your business and create an entrepreneurial team that doesn't stop at just ticking boxes. Whether you want to totally transform your business, start a new one or simply refine a winning team then let me know. I truly believe that leadership matters....and that great leadership can make a great difference. *Newsflash: talking of Deutsche Bank, this today: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65630338

Corporate Risk taking….and why large organisations gamble away their future by avoiding risk Are large organisations risk averse? According to Harvard Business Review the answer is an emphatic “YES”; at least as far as middle managers are concerned. Interestingly it points to research that shows most managers in large organizations are significantly more risk-averse than the CEOs of the same, who consider each investment in the context of a greater portfolio. * https://hbr.org/2020/03/your-company-is-too-risk-averse “In current practice……. executives in large corporations are reluctant to propose and advocate for risky projects. They quash new ideas in favour of marginal improvements, cost-cutting, and “safe” investments.”* As we all know, without renewal and new business lines, the corporation will ultimately fail. What can be done? Jack Welch, General Electric, once said “When the rate of change inside an institution becomes slower than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight. The only question is when”. The difficulty faced by so many managers in large organisations isn’t that they are somehow incapable of seeing the “bigger picture”, it’s that they themselves are penalised by not allowing to benefit from that same view. After all, what is the point of being a large strong company if you are personally rewarded entirely on the basis of your own little bit of it? You might as well just work for a small company. If you come up with an idea, are told to go for it and then penalised for its failure then…well…you are hardly likely to be encouraged by the process. And that is, often, exactly what happens. Years ago, I was on the hunt for a company acquisition that I knew was not only the potential saviour of my own part of the big global business but could seriously contribute to the success of the whole wider global company. I am not going to describe here the utter pain of trying to make this happen, pain that took several years and almost, quite literally, almost converted me completely into one burnt out wreck. Suffice it to say I did do the deal and it was a fantastic success. What was interesting about it was how I was treated during the process. As always with an investment there are no guarantees. This was no exception. It would be an understatement to say that I was bullied, harassed, belittled, ignored, and finally threatened throughout the whole effort. The threat here caps my point. The global CEO told me very clearly, “Andy, if this goes wrong I’ll fire you…and I’ll do it when you are on the other side of the world and cancel your return ticket”. “I know” I replied. And I knew he absolutely meant it. At the time I just mentally banked it, along with all the other abuse, and treated it as the inevitable cost of getting something done. I believed the deal would make the organisation I worked for a huge return but I couldn’t be 100% certain. Nothing ever is. But would I share in even a fraction of that return? Of course not - in any financial way. In effect I had to take a personal risk in order to achieve a non-personal ‘reward’. The reward I would gain was that I would be proven right and that I could be happy to have made a valuable contribution to the organisation. I would also be able to keep paying the mortgage. And so would the colleagues in my team. If I failed, I would not have the satisfaction of contribution. Neither would I be able to pay the mortgage. It would have been far better not to bother with starting the process at all. Nobody would have been any the wiser. Except myself. For a missed opportunity. I wonder how many people do exactly that? Choose an easy life.....over a challenging one. I wonder. So what if I didn’t bother at all? What if I didn’t take all the abuse, stress and pressure and simply ignored the opportunity? I would certainly have been frustrated. But, in all probability, I would still have continued to pay the mortgage. At least until the organisation as a whole had to face the inevitable cuts as its market share gradually evaporated for the lack of innovation and risk taking. And therein lies the issue. If the incentive of taking risk is pretty much only downside, then why take a risk? Now I know the reader will be wondering: “but Andy, you still took the risk” and you would be right. Sheer bloody mindedness, determination and perseverance combined with a touch of madness drove me on. I never said my decisions were based on universal logic. One thing did help me. Without it I would have unquestionably failed. I was able to get a small (very small) team around me. In essence we were a team of 3 to 5 people working on this project. They were truly the best motivators - indeed the only motivators - I had. Frankly they were brilliant. Without them I couldn’t have led this project to a successful conclusion. I often think that they saved my health - certainly my mental health. If you want to create an organisation that can actually embrace risk taking then you need to avoid shoving everything on one person’s shoulders. I don’t mean the downside risk. At the time I was completely accepting of the fact that if it failed then I and I alone would be fired. I don’t think that is healthy. What I mean here is that you need a team that can share the frustrations, brainstorm solutions along the road, laugh with and cry with. Without that I just don’t think that you will be successful in creating a culture accepting of failure. Question: who do you have that you can turn to on a bad day? I mean at work. Anybody? Second question: if your employee has nobody to turn to, a shoulder to cry on so to speak, will that make them a better or worse employee? More likely to take a chance – and possibly fail – or less? I'll leave that with you. The concept of being financially killed on the downside but not somehow rewarded on the upside cannot be right. The CEO who gave me my termination ultimatum was totally wrong. Wrong in the sense of it made NO SENSE to isolate the project risk in its entirety to me personally. He had the benefit of the risk being manageable from his portfolio and the reward being a substantive contribution to his future success - as it did indeed prove to be – beyond even our own wildest imagination. To enjoy the upside himself but push the entire downside to me wasn’t right. I vowed there and then never to do the same to anyone in my team. Whatever happened, I would protect them. So should you. It reminds me of the story of a lovely, sadly no longer with us, CEO of old. His name was Sir John Harvey Jones and from 1982 to 1987 he was the Chairman of Imperial Chemical Industries, a UK headquartered global conglomerate,. He found fame and public appreciation for fronting a TV series called “Troubleshooter” where he visited several companies in difficulty and skilfully got them back on track. While at ICI he followed a doctrine of “speed rather than direction", on the assumption that "once travelling a company can veer and tack towards the ultimate objective." You can see he was previously a navy man. He also believed in putting more power in fewer hands "to reduce the number of those who can say 'no' and increase the motivation of those who can say ‘yes' ", maintaining that "there are no bad troops, only bad leaders". Now come on admit it. You are warming to him already aren’t you. His story, as a young manager of a factory in some far flung reaches of the global empire is both revealing and enlightening. He made some fateful decision - I forget now what it was - suffice it to say that his mistake cost the company a substantial sum - probably several million in today's money. He was duly summoned to London for a one to one meeting with the Global Managing Director. In his memoirs he reveals how he thought his time was up with the company. He told his wife what happened. He had to go to London to 'face the music'. Sure enough, when he arrived he was directed to the top floor of the grandiose tower block and told to sit down in the oak panelled boardroom. After what seemed like an hour, but was probably no more than a few minutes, the MD arrived and promptly gave Harvey-Jones a real dressing down. In essence - how could he have been so stupid....does he realise how much this has cost the company etc etc. After he was thoroughly chastised the MD told him that he had better get back and make amends. Harvey Jones was totally taken aback. 'What do you mean, go back?' he said. 'Surely you are firing me'. 'Firing you? Why on earth would I do that?' replied the MD. 'Your mistake has cost a small fortune which is therefore effectively invested in your education. Of course you are not fired. You are going to back to prove how good you really are'. And with that the meeting was over. It was a salutary tale of looking at failure in a completely different way to what was the norm in those days. It wasn't just the mistake that shaped Harvey Jones' future success; it was the enlightened way his boss realised that failure is an essential part of learning and that in turn underpins future success. This event took place some 60 years or more ago. Its a pity that so many companies still dont understand it. When confronted by managers who are strongly incentivised, for the sake of their monthly pay cheque, to always say no then you are simply not going to get the risk taking you need to survive. But it’s not just incentives, it’s also culture. In my career I have had the luck and privilege to have worked for a variety of companies with wildly different corporate cultures. Ranging from the “laissez-faire Wild West” (typically East Coast American) to the rigid, control driven order taking, risk averse business (typically Teutonic). There is a reason why the USA is the home to the world’s leading tech and software companies. There is also a reason why Germany is the home to the best engineered, if uninspiring, metal goods in the world. In fairness, for a few moments, it did look as if Germany gave birth to a successful new-fangled fintech in New World style. But let’s not dwell on Wirecard. My experience of American global organisations was that they were arrogant, culturally ignorant with an incredible ability to pass responsibility on to people. And then to reward them and kill them in equal measure about as quickly as I have typed these words. In one famous organisation I worked for I felt privileged when I survived more than one calendar quarter - for each quarter would carry the inevitable company sole searching of why the organisation hadn’t met its quarterly forecast. Everything else seemingly was irrelevant. Strategy changed every three months - something at the time I found strange if not very frustrating. But when we reached year end and changed the strategy back to the one we had in Q1 I realised the concept was more than fatally floored. After two years I was the longest serving employee in the local business. I have no idea why. But I realised my mental health couldn’t take all this nonsense, so I left and joined a different company. At least with the new one I could stick to a strategy for more than a few weeks. To my surprise it seemed to work better. Certainly, I can characterise the American corp as one that didn’t so much encourage risk as insist upon it on pain of death. Pay was good while it lasted but the threats were far greater. No wonder people left…or were frequently fired. It was a mess. Basically, the philosophy was this – ‘You see that door there? Well, here is a cheque book, just go and run through it.’ If, on opening the door and running out you were to discover a 200 metre drop then so be it - it would be up to you to figure out what to do next. Whilst it was certainly educational, if not rather brutal, I am not sure the near deliberate ignorance of facts in planning for the future was such a good idea. Not at least if one valued life. I don’t recommend this approach. My experience of the Teutonic organisation was at the other extreme. Faced with a closed door the approach was painstakingly different. Here I was required to acquire vast quantities of information, which would then be analysed, cross referenced, discussed and debated with the ultimate conclusion after many months of careful deliberation that what was needed was…. .......more information. This process would then seemingly continue for months if not years by which time the circumstances on the other side of the door, that nobody really understood anyway, would be wildly different so that we would either have to forget the whole thing or start again all over. Sounds familiar? Trust me…I wasted what felt like a lifetime on such futile exercises. My best decisions were the ones where I just told people “Just do it” and kept the information away from the nay sayers in HQ. Yep, that was my risk taking. I just needed to ensure nobody in HQ found out. I don’t really recommend this approach either; albeit it was all that was available to me at the time to get anything done. You might not be surprised to learn that what I am advocating is something a bit more balanced. One where the whole business is both financially and culturally aligned to take a balanced risk. What does 'balanced' mean? It means that opportunities are assessed based on the facts available at the time, the best assessments of the unknown future, within a portfolio approach to risk. Allocating some “fun” money for wild ideas is a great idea if it forms a part of a portfolio of different levels of risk and reward. By “fun” money I don’t mean invitations to a pub crawl in the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. I mean crazy business ideas with a high likelihood of failure. Certainly, a near impossibility to measure the rewards. An inability to quantify the benefits should represent a massive green light to give it a go. If you find those kinds of investment projects, they are priceless. Quite literally in fact. If you don’t see it like that then forget trying to change the culture. Just get back to reading your compliance manual. This needs to be balanced with more traditional investments but also requiring risk, perhaps with a more measurable reward. The closest I ever got to this kind of approach was an initiative from my boss at the time that instituted a new investment methodology - basically people would be invited to put forward ideas, costed with financial benefits identified. The idea had the best of intentions. An ‘ideas’ forum if you will. These would be discussed and, hopefully, some approved, by the Leadership team. Unfortunately, it was doomed to failure from the start when someone proposed the name for this initiative should be the “Innovation Board” The minute someone said “Board” I knew it would fail. We were already hiding behind the board meeting. Let’s be honest, mention a “Board Meeting” and you are l are likely to be….well…bored. Board Meetings simply do not engender the word “risk” in any shape or form. It conjures up an image of a dusty old room with ancient men discussing things about the business that stopped happening three generations ago. This “Innovation Board” proved no different. The answer to the projects submitted was either “no” or “need more information”. The fact that benefits should be identified, quantified and costed immediately prevented the really interesting ideas from ever getting off the ground. It did succeed in one way though. It reinforced the leadership team with a sense of its own self-importance as it “sat” to discuss the latest project status in the “Innovation Board”, projects all neatly categorised in a vast spreadsheet of doomed to rejection ideas. If you want to avoid people being scared of failure, then don’t set up an 'Innovation Board'. When I say the Innovation Board ‘sat’, it certainly did, but it would have been far better if we all had a lie down. We could have had a decent nap. At least that would have been more productive. Vast spreadsheets of accountancy nonsense massaging the egos of overpaid executives that are out of touch with any sense of entrepreneurial spirit isn’t going to cut it. You want the organisation to take more risk? Then get out more. You are not going to get more risk by meeting in “Boards”. You are not going to find opportunities by reciting your latest compliance update. Neither are you going to engender new thinking by complaining about yet another budget gap. Which part of inspiration do leaders not understand? Inspire and you will get ideas. Encourage and you will get people trying. Get people trying and failing and you will be on the right road - all you then have to do is help them get up and encourage them to try again. We live in a world where not even the quarterly result is good enough. Now everything must be instant. Set up a website we need it to have a million hits a day within…well…a day. Start a business and it needs to hit the ground running, yesterday. Want to learn a new language? Well someone out there can sell you the “new system” that will, apparently, get you speaking perfect Japanese within a week. If I had a pound for every time my boss told me it ‘it needs to be profitable within one accounting period’…. The simple truth is that life isn’t like that. We can’t grow potatoes faster than the seasons allow us to. The sun doesn’t rise any quicker if I subscribe to the latest weather app on my smartphone. The result? Young people get disillusioned faster than ever. Take a skating lesson and fall over? Your ambition as a world leading professional skater is over. Or so it seems. It’s simply not reality. JK Rowling was rejected 12 times by publishers before Bloomsbury agreed to publish 500 hardback copies of ‘Harry Potter’. Henry Ford's first two automobile companies failed. Oprah Winfrey was fired from an early job as a television news anchor. Jerry Seinfeld was booed off stage in his first stand-up comedy appearance. Sir James Dyson suffered through 5,126 failed prototypes before he landed on the first working Dyson vacuum. The simple sad reality is that had any of these people been working for a major corporation they would, in all probability, never have succeeded. At best they would have been invited to submit their ideas onto a costed spreadsheet – to be criticised and then rejected – after 43 requests for ‘further information’ of course. Certainly if by some miracle they had actually got to make their idea into an investment and it had failed – as the examples above did at first – they would have been either castigated or fired or probably both. That is the reality of modern corporations - unless leaders take a radical new path. Leading a fancy zoom meeting to talk about more entrepreneurial behaviour in the organisation is like NASA asking its astronauts to leave their oxygen packs behind when going into space - to save weight. Put your money where your mouth is. Give it to people to get on with it. Haven’t got the budget? Then stop talking about this nonsense and carry on with your budget / compliance / forecast. Stop trying to fool everyone because, whilst they won’t tell you, you won’t be fooling anyone. Above all stop fooling yourself that you are serious about change. Accept the fact that you are just too comfortable. Enjoy your monthly pay cheque. While it lasts. But if you are serious then get out there and talk with people. Not your immediate managers. They are most likely already lost “Yes” men / women. Content to take their pay cheque. Unwilling to 'rock' the boat. Happy to attend 'Board meetings'. You need to go to the coal face. Talk to people who do the real work. The miners, the people who make the tea, or patch up the torn clothing. Talk to the person in reception, who talks with customers face to face or on the phone, or with the people who deal with customer complaints. Find out the problems - you know - the ones you never hear about because you are too far away from the coal face. Talk with angry customers - not just the happy ones. And talk with those weird employees. You know. Those that just don’t quite fit in. The ones that are just a bit too difficult to ‘manage’ because they don’t quite conform – to your spreadsheet. They might just have that extraordinary idea. Don’t have any of those people? Oh dear…you had better recruit some fast because your task just got a lot harder. You need a diverse organisation too if you are serious. Above all treat people with respect. Don’t belittle them. Calling an idea in the far east “Russian Roulette” might make for a good laugh amongst self important ignorant people on a 'Board Meeting' telco that have never taken a risk in their life but they are not deserving of being in a so called leadership position. Such attitudes will not create the rewards that the business needs to survive in the future. Talking of people, if an organisation is going to be willing to embrace risk, then it must have diversity. I’m not talking just about the mix of gender although that for sure is part of it. I am talking about a range of ages and above all experiences. Once I was visiting one of my businesses in central / Eastern Europe. It was a regular board meeting - a legality mainly - and accompanying me was the appointed board member representing HQ. He was a charming man - let’s call him Herr Stein, mainly because he had the sense of humour of a stone and the face to go with it. I had the opportunity to chat to him before the board meeting started - small talk if you will - although getting blood out of a stein would have been easier. I asked him how long he had been working for the company. “All my life” he answered “well…..since leaving school at 18 anyway”. It was interesting because he was 60 by this time…and to be fair looked more like 95. Time hadn’t been kind to him. “Wow” I replied, genuinely surprised, “and what jobs have you done in your career?” Without a flicker of regret or wistful reflection of a life that might have been he immediately and proudly proclaimed “book-keeping”. That was it. That was his epitaph. ‘I spend my life book-keeping.' Somehow I didn’t get the impression that this man would have been on the Mayflower had he been alive in 1620. Unfortunately, it got worse. Emboldened now by his obvious pride in his glorious achievements he went on to tell me that his father worked for the same company - ours - all his life too from the age of 17. “Good grief” I said, “that is amazing; what did he do?” “Book-keeping”. By now my enquiry was faltering but he was in his stride. “And his father - my grandfather - also worked all his life for the company” he continued with great pride. I dared not ask him what work his grandfather did. Unfortunately, I inadvertently killed the conversation at that point when I said to him, quite seriously, “what I would do is actually pay you to go and work for our competitor for a year - just to get you out and experience something else - it would surely make you a more useful employee”. I didn’t mean to be rude. I genuinely meant it as a productive tip. As you can imagine it went down like a brick. Or perhaps I should stay like a stein. Surrounding yourself with institutionalised people who would no sooner glance at a barricade let alone join a revolution and you are simply not going to change anything, let alone encourage an entrepreneurial spirit. Yes, they will obey orders. If that’s all you want and need then fine. It has its place. To be fair I suspect Herr Stein’s career peaked in 1939. Personally, I will be going out to sea again in May. I’ll try and figure out, with my fellow crew, how to avoid those rocks, those storms, those foul tides and strong currents and unseen hazards. But I will never have perfect information. Weather forecasts change. Seas sometimes behave differently to what is on shown on the chart or the pilot book. Fishing vessels move. New obstacles float menacingly just below the waterline. The temptation to stay in the harbour is so strong. But I must cast off from the comfy safe pontoon. Eventually I will have to take THAT step. I think I know what I will find when I get outside of the protective harbour wall. But I can’t be 100% sure. But I know I will be with my friends. I will be at the mercy of my limited ability and mighty nature. Risk. Isn’t it also called adventure? There are people who will stand by the shore looking out to sea. They will admire the blue sky and the setting Sun. They will soak in the turquoise waters and the golden sands. They will savour the green lands behind them. And they will be in the moment. Reflecting. Basking. Happy. You need these people. They will be the ones who will keep the moment alive. Who will maintain the status quo and be the rock onto which everything else depends. The friendly faces welcoming you back to a safe harbour. But in your team, you also need some crazy ones. The ones that look across the ocean, at the horizon and wonder what is on the other side. The ones that are not satisfied with the moment. The people who will say I don’t know but I need to find out. People who are curious, determined and mad enough to let go of the safety of the shore and take themselves to new places, new lands and new adventures. Without them there would never have been a Santa Maria let alone a Mayflower. Get that mix of people into your team, encourage them and support them, and you too will become that successful leader supporting failure and leading success. The one that can embrace the satisfaction of the now with the adventure and opportunity of the future. Your New World awaits. © 2023 Andreas Swadlo Would you like some help with Leadership issues? Do you need a leadership coach? Or some help with your business? If the answer is yes then get in touch. I won't be advocating management by spreadsheets or suggesting Russian Roulette but I can give you some ideas for for how to energise your business and create an entrepreneurial team. Whether you want to totally transform your business, start a new one or simply refine a winning team then let me know. I truly believe that leadership matters....and that great leadership can make a great difference.

The corporate world is sick. It is obsessed with measuring everything and in the process understands nothing. I know. Like many so called leaders I have made my contribution to this malaise. Inventing Key Performance Indicators. My work is done. OMD, or Obsessive Measurement Disorder isn’t my term or invention. It was first coined by Andrew Natsios* back in 2010 in an essay describing how aid agencies were seriously suffering from bureaucracy. In particular the emphasis on measurement which he pointed out was at odds with the fact that transformational programs are often the least measurable and involve elements of risk and uncertainty. My contention is that OMD has infected just about every major corporation. What gets measured gets done is the biggest single statement of corporate nonsense in the world. In my experience, what gets measured usually gets fiddled. Now please don't misunderstand me. I am not against KPIs per se. If I am driving my car I find it quite helpful to have an idea of my speed - not just to have a rough idea of when I might arrive at my destination but also to avoid a plethora of speeding tickets. I don’t particularly need a rev counter but its quite nice to look at. Fuel level. Yes please. Oil pressure? Probably not. Water temperature - yes but on the other hand on the rare occasions my radiator has overheated the first sign was inevitably white smoke. Only then did I glance at the temp gauge - as if to confirm what was patently obvious. And that’s the thing. Ultimately I am better to focus on the road ahead and its accompanying hazards than being consumed by a plethora of instruments giving me loads of spurious KPIs. What I am against is this corporate obsession with measuring everything and anything. At this point a bunch of 'pretend' leaders will rise up in horror at the suggestion that a plethora of KPIs is anything but essential. “My decisions are data driven”; “I lead with facts not emotion”; “I am detail oriented”. Oh dear. Corporate KPIs have built within them a number of serious floors. What I call 'Fools Gold', 'Donor Feeding' and 'Don't forget the O rings'. But before I explain what these are, I want to remind you where all this obsession with KPIs comes from in the first place. It's not new. Ever since the Industrial Revolution created significant large markets for cheaper goods produced by larger companies there has been a need for managers to organise the working day of other people. In particular, the production line concept, so famously and successfully introduced by Henry Ford, created a whole new sub industry in the capturing of specific and highly detailed information regarding every minute step of the production process. By specialising labour to the lowest common denominator, the speed of production could be increased exponentially - so long as someone could measure and manage each individual step to optimise production. Image by Steve Brandon from Pixabay The corporation has never looked back. And it hasn’t really developed much either. Still applying the mass production techniques of the factory regardless of the nature of the work or for that matter the output required. Risks? No! Variation? Absolutely NOT! Don't disturb the mass production ethic. Technology has also developed rapidly to meet an insatiable demand for the monitoring, data collection and analysis of (potentially) wayward employees. Just about everything can be captured in our digital age, including it seems our emails, our speech and even our images - all in the name of corporate control of course. Those poor managers trying to exert ‘control’ when Covid hit and people reconfigured to work from home - I almost feel sorry for them. Well…not quite. Even now we still have so many ‘leaders’ saying that people need to work in an office where they can be ‘managed’ and 'controlled'. They are soooo much less productive at home. So it is said. I have no doubt that in some cases that might be true. But not because of a lack of ‘control’; rather a lack of leadership. But that is another blog for another day. Whatever the reasons, data is now everywhere and we are obsessed with it. For good or bad. But in reality, what is all this obsession with KPIs actually leading to? Fools Gold. Image by PollyDot from Pixabay You know the stuff. The things that glitter but are not real. Or even worse, are the opposite of what you think they are. Take sales for example. You need sales? Makes sense to have some sales KPIs right? Of course. But sooner or later the temptation to incentivise those KPIs comes along. Want to increase revenue? Then target and incentivise sales KPIs. Everyone does it. The trouble is that, by definition, a KPI targeting revenue is pretty one dimensional. And the problem there is it might just have consequences somewhere else that you didn’t foresee. In fact it's guaranteed. It always is. You targeted me to sell so I sold. Yeah, but I didn't mean sell like that! In 1992 Hoover did just that. I remember the campaign so well. Hoover UK was under huge pressure from the corporate bosses in the USA, not unreasonably. The problem was that UK sales were struggling badly due to the ongoing financial crisis. People were just not buying vacuum cleaners. Or rather they were, but often from a new upstart. That upstart was called Dyson. So a sales campaign was initiated in the UK with one very simple aim - to sell more Hoovers. Afterall, that is what the bosses desperately wanted. Hoover’s British division partnered with a little-known airline JSI Travel to offer two free round-trip flights to New York for anyone who bought a Hoover product worth £100 or more (about $123 USD). Despite the fact that the free flights were deliberately hard to redeem, the campaign had a magnificent effect on Hoover sales. Sadly it almost bankrupted the company.* Wrong KPIs? So how about some profitability KPIs. They are my favourite. What corporation would not want more profitability? Invent some suitable KPIs for the troops and incentivise people on them and hey presto - you will achieve your KPIs and get a totally unwanted result. I found that out to the cost of my business. It was the global target of reducing the payroll that became the KPI of the year. It didn't matter that we are talking about KPI target that was applied to a global conglomerate with thousands of wildly different businesses, business models, financial circumstances, or stages of business development. Everyone had to achieve their payroll KPI. Even when it meant directly and significantly reducing profitability as a result. It was exactly the circumstance I found my business to be in. We were, until then, in an enviably unique position. We could add employees and almost immediately produce record profits, such was the market position my business unit was in. I tried reason. Nobody was interested, I tried emotion, even less so. Finally, at our annual conference, I made an impassioned speech highlighting the absurd consequences of hitting this KPI by showing exactly the decline in profitability that would ensue. Nobody was interested. The KPI had to be hit. We are employed just to obey orders. A bit like like the Final Solution. To this day I have never met a shareholder who would want to see a payroll target hit at the expense of significant profitability. Or an employee who would want to earn less money for the same reason. But that is what happened. Absurd. But understandable. Because KPIs are primarily around for one reason. To please the bosses. Donor Feeding Trust me….of all the reasons why KPIs are produced, by far the greatest is this one. Feeding the donor. You would think that once a KPI has directly led to failures somewhere else in the system that people would be interested in reducing meaningless or distracting KPIs not increasing them. Sadly though the big corporation has an answer for that too. The ‘Balanced Scorecard”. It’s enough to send a shiver down any managers' spine. Image by Martin Str from Pixabay Years ago I was tasked with producing the infamous ‘Balanced Scorecard’ for our business unit. My boss had become acutely conscious that the parent company was on a mission - to ensure that the `UK had the best possible scorecards in the world. I suppose in the absence of tanks or missiles it's just another form of world domination. Anyway, the task fell to me. And I must say I delivered! I produced the most spectacular colourful set of KPIs all neatly divided into financials, employee metrics, customer data, and operational processes. In turn further arranged into leading and lagging indicators. Oh yeah Baby! I was on one! Never have you seen anything more sophisticated. I made sure it had different graphics, pie charts, bar charts, multi colours and a vast array of direct measurements all fitting into one very large handy printable wall chart albeit with the judicious use of absurdly small fonts where necessary. We soon got feedback from the board meeting from my bosses boss. “We have never seen anything so comprehensive. Its absolutely brilliant!”. Seriously. No joke. If my memory serves me correctly I think we used it twice before consigning it to the ‘forget’ draw. In any case, by then it had served its purpose. It had fed the bosses. Ok so I admit. I am guilty of eating this stuff myself. Some years ago I decided with my leadership team that we needed a set of KPIs that we could use in our business reviews for each country. Standardisation - another corporate ailment - of KPIs would surely be far better than these interminable and ever increasing PowerPoint presentations. Just a small tip here by the way: Please, please, ensure your managers are swept clean of any rope, belts, razor blades or any other self harming devices before you make the announcement: “what we really need now is……a whole new KPI scorecard”. Anyway, with the invaluable help of my able CFO we soon had something up and running. Of course to be developed. Work in progress so to speak. Each month we would get to fully review the latest scorecard. Each month we would refine and tweak the way the KPIs were devised. Until on one meeting my CRO, who tended to say very little but when he did speak have such stunning insights that people would reel back in amazement, said “so what, exactly, are these KPIs actually telling us?” Of course, nobody knew the answer to that humdinger. We had become the very KPI consuming monsters that we regularly complained about. Our employees were wasting their time in feeding us. In our defense, at least we had a collegiate open atmosphere that allowed us to laugh at ourselves, and respectfully admit defeat. After a couple more tries of course. And therein lies another problem. If you want a KPI you had better be crystal clear what exactly you do want, why you want it, and how on earth to get it. It isn’t as easy as it often sounds. Not least because it then requires an army of data analysts to produce the fancy KPIs, invariably in a form that nobody can actually understand anyway. I am not saying that donor feeding is not without merit. Its an absurd merit of course but it does have the advantage that you can feed your boss completely useless data after which you have brief moments where you can get on with real work. Sometimes it can even get you promoted. People often say that people make decisions with emotion and then subsequently justify them with facts. I can't think of any better real example than my own. Once when I was busy getting to grips with my role as operations director I experienced the very real benefit of what everyone in corporate management knows. You have to feed the boss with KPIs. Part of the perk of becoming a director is that it invariably includes a smart office. And with a smart office you get nice walls. Now the schoolboy error is to fill those walls with nice pictures. What you actually need to do is fill them with nice KPIs. Charts, pies, colours , statistics, maths, anything scientific looking that will impress. It doesn't need to actually mean anything at all just so long as it impresses your friends and colleagues. Better still print out something like Einstein's mathematical Theory of Relativity and stick that up. Granted, I tried to make mine a bit more relevant. I had KPIs on resources, capacity utilisation, error rates, staffing, turnaround times. You name it, it was up there with fancy graphics, trends and colours. For all to see. Especially bosses. Now add in a visit from my bosses boss, the Global CEO. I didn’t know he was coming for a review. What I did know was that, by pure chance, on that glorious sunny Monday morning it was a perfect day to drive to work in my delicious 1965 E Type Jaguar Fixed Head Coupe 4.2 Litre, 6 cylinder, triple carburettor, in Gunmetal grey metallic paint. I parked it under the offices in the reserved parking space. It gleamed. It oozed sex appeal. The global CEO arrived. My boss later told me what happened. “Wow”, his boss exclaimed, as he saw my car “that’s beautiful. Who does it belong to?”. “It belongs to our Ops director” my boss answered. ”I must meet him” the global CEO said. The next day I was out visiting some offices somewhere. My office was therefore free and available for the big boss to use. He did, and came face to face with my impressive homage to science on my office walls. Ode to Einstein. Like a bizarre artwork in the Tate Gallery. That was it. He was hooked. My boss called me later. “He wants to meet you…and offer you a new job in HQ. A big promotion” ”What?” I said, rather incredulous. ”Why?” ”He saw your car and then your office. He discussed the role he had in mind and of course I supported his idea. You are the perfect fit.” Basically this is what happened actually happened: he saw the car and wanted to meet the owner. He then saw the wall which, in his mind, justified his choice. People make their decisions based on emotion and then justify them with facts. The lesson learned? Never underestimate emotion in the decision making process. The jaguar E Type was the best investment in my career I ever made. Far better than an honours degree in Economics at a world class University. Don't forget the 'O' rings. If you are not careful then all these KPIs will lead you to exactly the wrong conclusion. The reason is obvious. KPIs by their very nature are simplifying reams of data to make something that is inherently complicated very very simple…..and average…..and standardised. The devil is in the detail. Well Mr/Ms Leader. You are detail oriented? Well get in there then. Good luck! Because somewhere in there might be just what you are looking for. It's just that its been averaged out in the production of your beloved KPI. With a bit of luck you might even find it in the detail before you get fired. Or die of old age. Image by Andreas H. from Pixabay We have all seen the pictures of NASA space control. If ever you want to see an example of a plethora of KPI’s all monitoring and alerting a whole team of expert space engineers and space flight controllers then you cant find anything better. Despite the KPIs at their finger tips and computer screens, tragically, on January 28 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members aboard. The spacecraft disintegrated 46,000 feet (14 km) above the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 11:39 a.m. EST (16:39 UTC). It was the first fatal accident involving an American spacecraft in flight. How can that be? How can the most controlled, data driven, KPI managed, most advanced system in the world end in total catastrophic failure? The answer was as simple as the underlying part failure. The physical parts that failed were the primary and secondary O-ring seals in a joint in the shuttle's right solid rocket booster (SRB). The record-low temperatures of the launch had stiffened the rubber O-rings, reducing their ability to seal the joints leading to a catastrophic explosion of the external propellant tank. The non engineering reasons were far simpler. And far more serious. The potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings had been known from test data since 1977, almost ten years earlier than that fateful day. Yet this information did not come to the attention of the decision making management in space control on January 28 1986. There was no KPI monitoring the O rings. Of course not. You cannot monitor everything. In addition the Rogers Commission, set up by Ronald Reagan to investigate the accident, criticized NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes that had contributed to the accident. NASA managers disregarded engineers' warnings about the dangers of launching in cold temperatures and did not report these technical concerns to their superiors who would ultimately make the launch decision. And therein lies the problem with KPIs. They give the human mind the illusion of a control that the human does not have. For despite every set of KPIs there will always be an O ring hidden away somewhere ready to create another catastrophic failure. And before you say 'Ah but... what about flying on instruments, thats entirely relying on KPIs' - let me remind you of Air France flight 447. This flight, you will remember, crashed into the Atlantic in 2009 at night, in the dark, killing all 228 people on board. Pilots were flying entirely on instruments. The technical issue that started the catastrophic process was the icing of speed sensors. During the next 4 minutes the pilots struggled to control the aircraft as it lost wing lift, the issue only being correctly identified by the Captain as he was belatedly roused from his sleep by the flight crew. Tragically he realised that the two pilots were counteracting each other, one was correctly trying to point the nose down to regain speed and thereby lift but his actions were neutralised by the other pilots attempt to lift the nose. Neither had realised what the other was trying to do. Tragically by the time the Captain was summoned and realised what was happening, they had literally run out of airspace to regain control. Apart from technical improvements recommended by the subsequent enquiry one recommendation was stark in its assessment. That Pilots were increasingly relying on technical capability, instruments and electronic dashboard warnings - KPIs in other words. What they needed, the report stated, was to re engage with real fundamental flying skills. Yes. Given a choice between someone obsessed with KPIs and someone who knows how to really fly a plane I will opt for the latter any day. The same goes for business leadership. At this juncture let me just point out that I am not against data. Indeed its hard not to argue that data is the future. Let's be honest, if a youngster was starting out on a career choice now we could do a lot worse than recommend a career in data analysis. Companies ignore data at their peril. I suspect most of them still haven't even begun to properly harness the opportunities that data mining can bring. My argument is with pointless KPIs and our obsession with measurement for the sake of it. These days we can monitor just about everything. And we usually do. We monitor steps, heart rate, pulse, …..and yet according to Mental Health Today* we are no more happy now than were were over 60 years ago before we could do all these things. When you are checking your smart watch for the upteenth time to review your percentage change in average steps this week compared to last have you ever asked yourself the question - 'do I have OMD?' Maybe you can get a smart watch app to check that for you too. I recommend no more KPIs than a set of bathroom scales. And willpower. Personally I really do not want to know, as I'm sailing across the Irish Sea, that I am 5 minutes and 42 seconds away from my terminal heart attack. I do appreciate that this is a personal choice. There will be people out there who would want to follow that KPI. Maybe to say goodbye to a loved one. Or perhaps to erase their browsing history before their spouse inherits their laptop. But whatever your view on this I really do believe that we, as the human race, put far too much emphasis on all this measurement. Why? Because what I see is that in the process of measuring everything we are loosing touch with judgement. And by forgetting judgement we have become paralysed. We just cannot act. Its called 'Analysis Paralysis.' Surrounding yourself with fancy KPIs and colourful charts and dials might get you promoted. It won't make you into a great leader. For that you need something else. Not least a vision for the future and the ability to inspire others to go for it. You won't find that in the latest computer printout. You won't find the courage to take a risk by looking at your balanced scorecard. And taking a timely decision will not be enhanced by being bombarded with reams of data points. By all means, use some KPIs. They might help you in planning. In setting budgets. Or even in avoiding speeding tickets. But never substitute them for your eyes, ears, and senses. Taking notice of your intuition, your feelings and emotion is not shameful. It is actually using all the data available and coming to your best effort of a conclusion. Above all don't fall into the trap of not seeing the wood for the data trees. You need ideas. And a compelling vision. Albert Einstein once said “I think it's not facts that matter, but ideas.” I for one agree with him. In the end there is one overriding problem with KPIs. It makes you small minded. “I'm a detail person”. Well let me tell you; I don't care. Or rather I do. Because I want you to stop your obsession with detail. Even ‘O’ rings. That’s what you have a team of capable people for. And a leadership style that encourages getting to the real issues. Listen to your team. Encourage their input. Especially the quiet ones, who don't say too much. And you will find those 'O' rings. You won't find them on your scorecard. As your employee what I want from you, the Leader, is the big picture. I want to know the dream. Our destination. Our purpose. If it is a choice between knowing that region x has a sales conversion rate of 2.36 less than region y or, alternatively, feeling a part of your big idea for the future then I know which one I choose. By all means enjoy your KPIs. But don’t confuse that with leadership. To be a real leader you need to convey your picture - your crystal ball - the big and wonderful future world that explains our mutual purpose. Do that and KPIs might just become more meaningful. © 2023 Andreas Swadlo * https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewnatsios/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion * https://www.mentalhealthtoday.co.uk/people-were-happier-in-1957-than-today-according-to-research#:~:text=People%20living%20in%201957%20were,60%20years%2C%20according%20to%20research. Main image by Pexels from Pixabay Would you like some help with Leadership issues? Do you need a leadership coach? Or some help with your business? If the answer is yes then get in touch. I won't be devising fancy colourful KPIs for you but I can give you some ideas for leadership direction and engagement. Whether you want to totally transform your business, start a new one or simply refine a winning team then let me know. I truly believe that leadership matters....and that great leadership can make a great difference.

WARNING If you are a salesperson and have a weak heart look away now When the corporate bible - Harvard Business Review - publishes an article entitled 'The End of Solution Sales' it is likely that a few of the 5.7 million sales people left around the world might sit up and take note. https://hbr.org/2012/07/the-end-of-solution-sales According to Taskdrive this is the number of salespeople left in the world. Don't ask me how they know. On the face of it that sounds like a lot. Until that is you realise that the population of the world is over 8 billion. Ok, so there are quite a few kids in that 8 number - and, as any parent will tell you, kids are the best salespeople in the world! https://taskdrive.com/sales/sales-statistics/#:~:text=There%20are%20about%205.7%20million%20sales%20representatives%20around%20the%20world. The truth is that what I call the gentle art of sales has been dying as a profession for years. It is my proposition that of the 5.7 million less than 1 % really understand professional selling. I believe there are three key reasons why 'selling' is in apparent decline. Typical 'sales training' has long concentrated on sales technique....not sales values....and kills the reputation of the sales profession in the process. Compliance Departments of global corporations are suffocating sales by casting the action of influencing buyers as a corporate crime AI is rapidly making the need for any kind of human interaction between demand and supply redundant. When I left university I eschewed the career paths of my learned friends. Law? How boring! Accountancy? Yuk! No. I wanted to join the police force - why not? With a bit of luck you will never have to see a desk or office - ever. Or so I thought. But in those days you had to be able to see. I mean with your own eyes. In those days there was no such thing as laser surgery and since I had the unaided vision of a garden mole that was the end of my career in law enforcement - before it ever started. So instead I decided to do the next best thing and become a trainee manager in a supermarket. Why not? With a bit of luck I would never have to sit behind a desk or in an office. Unfortunately I soon discovered that this career choice had one major disadvantage. You had to work. And very hard indeed. Realising my error, and still determined to avoid desks, I noticed a few sales reps visiting the store. I got chatting to one of them. “Oh yeah, my job is dead cool“ one of them said. “You get to visit loads of different places, we earn lots of commision and each year we have a sales conference in an exotic location.“ “Blimey“, I retorted, “that must cost quite a bit, travelling around the country“. “No not at all. I get a company car with private petrol paid for.“ That was it. My next career path step was defined! Having just got my promotion at the supermarket , off I went to my new career in FMCG sales (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) complete with company car and an expense account. The company car wasn't quite what I expected. As the junior salesperson I got a retiree's cast off. I remember it well. It was an ancient Austin Metro with about 300,000 miles on the clock. Image by Ben Kerckx from Pixabay Every time I changed gear, huge clouds of black smoke would billow out of the exhaust enveloping anyone within 5 mile radius with a poisonous mushroom cloud. Death by nuclear fallout would probably have been kinder. The car lasted 3 weeks before the cambelt snapped and the engine seized. My boss decided it had to be my fault of course. Ok, so maybe that wasn't the best career move after all. Nine months later and I was still in sales but now with a different company, and one that took things rather seriously. I was elevated to the grand heights of a (brand new) Astra and an intensive sales training programme. Ignition systems are GO! I learned all about prospecting, record keeping, journey planning, negotiation, features, advantages and benefits, handling objections and learned tens if not hundreds of different methods of 'closing the sale' The 'now or never' close, the 'assumptive' close, the 'summary' close, the 'testimonial' close, the 'puppy dog' close, the 'thermometer close', the 'five year old' close, to name just a handful. My favourite was the 'alternative' close. Don't give the customer any option to actually say no. I learnt all about buyer psychology and, in particular, NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming). And the result of all of this? It made me no better as a salesperson. It made me worse. Honestly. When I realised what was happening, I changed my whole philosophy. And my sales took off. You see, all of this so called sales training was based on one simple premise. The premise that 'buyers' exist to be 'sold to' and that means you have to manipulate their thoughts in order to sell stuff to them that they inherently don't want. Is that too harsh? WARNING If you are a NLP Consultant / Trainer and have a weak heart look away now Unbelievably (for me) ,NLP has been around now for 6 decades, yet in all that time it has proven to be nothing more than a pseudo science - no better than a 18th century quack medicine promising a cure for every known ailment known to mankind. Marketed in one easily dispensed glass bottle and a fancy label. Its exactly the same marketing strategy for NLP. In all this time neither the effectiveness of NLP nor the validity of the theories have been demonstrated by any solid research. And this applies just as much to psychological intervention by way of medical help using NLP as its use in selling. Now I know there will be sales trainers, especially those earning a living selling NLP that will be up in arms at my comments. They will point to so called 'studies' and 'independent research' to prove the theory works. Conveniently of course. Since selling NLP is how they earn their living. A 'quack medicine' is actually a kind description. Dr Rob Young puts it extremely well: 'Researchers and qualified psychologists are mostly damning about NLP. In a 2019 paper published in International Coaching Psychology Review, a group of experts wrote that: “there are many critics of NLP who view NLP as variably a pseudoscience, pop psychology or even a cult, with no evidence base for its effectiveness.” Based on their own investigations of 90 articles that they found on the topic of NLP, they concluded: “In summary, there are no empirical studies that offer evidence for the effectiveness of coaching based solely on NLP tools and techniques.” That’s important. They did not find that there were only a few scientific studies supporting NLP. They found no papers – zero, zilch, not one. ' https://www.robyeung.com/why-should-you-be-wary-about-nlp/ Despite all my formal sales training, what I realised is that the only way to succeed in sales over the long term was to put myself in the buyer's shoes. I had to influence them by pointing out to them, hopefully respectfully and diplomatically, why they need my product. Above all I had to be prepared to do what no company would ever employ me to do - that is, walk away if I felt the customer really did not need my product at all. And I had to add value. By demonstrating trust. Studying NLP to 'rewire' a buyers brain to be fooled into buying my product was neither ethical nor did it actually work anyway. I had to demonstrate to the customer that I actually genuinely really cared; about them. If a salesperson is to survive and prosper - without defrauding the customer - then they can only do that by truly adding value to the customer. 'Adding value'. Now there is an awful corporate word if there ever was one. What the heck does it actually mean? Let me give you an example. The Lexus v BMW story At this point my ex colleagues will moan, glance at the sky and go and make a cup of tea. Or drink Vodka. They have heard this story from me a trillion times. But for those of you who have not, here is a an example of what I mean about 'adding value'. When the Lexus car brand was launched in the UK in 1990 it faced an uphill struggle. Despite its undoubted high quality and luxury credentials this was a car that had to compete with emotional well established brands such as BMW and Mercedes in the UK. Always German. 'The ultimate driving machine'; 'Vorsprung durch technik'. My God, so confident are the Germans of their place in the quality car stakes that they don't even bother to translate their ads for the linguistically challenged British. Why would they? You just have to say 'Made in Germany'. That was and still is enough. But made in Japan? By Toyota? The new upstart Lexus had to make its mark. One Lexus salesperson in particular showed the way. He was trying to win a new corporate client. The prospect, a local company director, was changing his car. A longtime BMW driver he was curious to see what the Lexus was actually like. He went through the usual process. Viewing, test drive, sales presentations. The end result? He bought a BMW. In following up the Lexus salesperson was told, “many thanks for all your help which I really did appreciate but you know, in the end, I just love the feel, looks and quality of the BMW brand. You know, its BMW. You just know it's just going to be great. Sorry to disappoint you.“ By this stage the Lexus salesman had already put himself in the top 10% of all sales people in the world - by actually bothering to follow up at all. His next moves would take him into the tiny % stratosphere of the very best salespeople in the world. It explains, by the way, why top salespersons win disproportionately by far the greatest proportion of sales. 99.9% of salespeople would have (and would still do to this day) walk away and move onto the next deal. I know because I see it so often even now. But this salesperson was different. Very different. Shortly after taking delivery of his new BMW the director got a call from the Lexus salesperson. “Just following up. How is your car?“ “Well“,he replied, hiding his slight surprise to hear from him again so soon, “I am really delighted with it. You know it's lovely, well, afterall, its a BMW isn't it. Sorry you didn't get a sale but I made the right decision.“ “OK great“ said the salesperson, “I really am pleased to hear that you are enjoying your new car. So everything is as you expected?“ “Oh yes..... well“, he hesitated, “ok so the ash tray was broken. But you know, its BMW, they will replace it on its service no problem. No questions. No hassle. “ One week later and a small parcel arrives - strictly confidential - to the directors offices. In it is a BMW ashtray - exactly the right type for the model car that he owns. Alongside is a handwritten note from the Lexus salesperson. 'I thought you might appreciate a replacement ashtray, without having to wait for your next car service. Call me when you need another car. With the compliments of lexus, All the best'. The point about this is that the Lexus guy was indeed working on the next deal. But not only with another customer. He was already working on winning the directors business when the time came round again for him to change his vehicle once more. Now THAT is selling. It marks the salesperson out as not only caring about the sale for Lexus but demonstrating that serving the customer was absolutely his top priority. By doing what he did he demonstrated that Lexus was superior. I often wonder what the BMW competitor salesperson would have said about that? Would BMW simply have taken for granted that the customer would always stay loyal to the BMW brand? I will let you answer that. Fighting commodity: 'Your pound is the same as everyone else's' Pardon me, I know it's rude, but I'm going to tell you about a couple of my success stories. Don't worry, there are plenty of failures too. But what follows was a good week or two. I worked in financing for most of my career. Many years ago I had won a new customer who had decided, based on my representations, to lease all their new buses for their (newly) privatised municipal bus company. Having successfully negotiated the very first transaction I was subsequently mortified to find out that the second tranche of financing was given to the competition. In this case the leasing arm of Midland Bank in the UK. I went to see the finance director. He explained that it wasn't personal. It was just that the competitor came up with a cheaper price. “The thing is“ he said, “you are dealing in a commodity. Your pound is the same as everyone else's.“ “No it isnt“, I replied, “My pound is very different to theirs“. The FD was surprised, perhaps even a little irritated, at my challenge to his assumption. “What do you mean?“ “Well, what might seem like a cheaper price is not all that it seems. You see, my pound and their pound depends on the repayment terms and I suspect that my competitor chose not to tell you about the tax clauses in their documentation.“ Now at this juncture I am not going to bore you with technicalities. Suffice it to say I pointed out how possible future changes to taxation WOULD have very different consequences compared to my documentation. “Talk about printing your own money! You see, my pound might be the same when I purchase the buses but it turns out to be very different when you pay it back.“ The FD wasn't going to be so easily persuaded. “I can't believe it would make such a difference. Surely they will be fair. "Well “, I said, “put it like this. Let's not try and double guess. Why don't you talk with them. Ask them to retrospectively change the clause to match my far more favourable documentation - or even exclude it altogether. If it is not material then surely they will be happy to oblige. If they don't you know they have been selective with their proposal“. The FD didn't just call them. He called the local branch manager in to discuss. They refused to retrospectively change the document tax clause. I knew that is what would happen. The FD called me. He told me they would never deal with that competitor ever again. I was able, in a polite but assertive way, to educate the customer regarding a topic he hadn't understood. From that moment he always placed business with me. Adding value. Imagine that. And no NLP anywhere in sight. Another example, but this one rather annoying for me. I sold something to a salesperson when he was trying to sell to me! I was in the market for a washing machine. Now the thing is I love Miele. I mean, not in a romantic way. I just think they are fantastic quality products and I always buy them for that reason. (German again, of course). I walked into a white goods retail store - a well known nationwide chain in the UK. I looked at the selection of washing machines lined up - about 20 or so - from various manufacturers and price points. A salesperson approached. “Ah“..he said....“can I help you? ““Well yes, I want to buy a washing machine.“ “Great “he said, “this one is the cheapest. It's a xyz (brand name withheld).“ “It's not the cheapest I replied.“ “Yes it is he said“ and quoted all the different list prices - looking at me as if I was mad. “You are talking about ticket price. I am talking about lifetime price“. “What do you mean?“ he asked. “Look, that machine is going to last no more than 5 years tops. The Miele has minimum life of 20 years. My neighbour has one that is 40 years old.“ He still didn't get it. “Yeah but the Miele is twice as expensive.“ “It is actually half the price of your recommendation.“ I replied. “By the time I am ready to replace the Miele you will be on your 4th or 5th washing machine.“ The salesman was undeterred. “Well ok but I can't afford the expense, I mean initial outlay.“ “Really?“I said, “I thought you offer finance plans as well. I would have to check the cost of that but I wouldn't be surprised if its still much cheaper, even with finance. Why spend so much to have an inferior product?“ After a bit of discussion he finally understood my point. “Wow, you are right“ he said. “I never thought of it like that. I'm going to need a washing machine myself soon, I think ill follow your advice and get a Miele.“ In the end I walked out of the store without buying anything. I just couldn't bring myself to buy from someone who simply didn't have a clue what he was talking about. I'm still waiting for my commision cheque. Dear so called 'salesperson', if you happen to read this blog please ask your company to forward my commision cheque. But it's not just in understanding you and your competitor's product where you can add value. Sometimes it's about helping the customer simply to refine the choice. Customers are NOT always right. Now few people hold estate agents in enormous esteem. It's hardly surprising. Most are absolutely awful. I know. From bitter experience. My current house is the third in my life that I have bought. On each occasion of purchase and sale I have been bitterly disappointed at the lack of professionalism. Only boat brokers are worse. But that's another story for another day. My bitter experiences at the hands of estate agents are therefore all the more remarkable given that I came across one estate agent who was probably the best salesperson I have ever met in my life. In the late 1980s there was a significant housing crash in the UK. Many people found themselves in negative equity - they owed more to the bank for their mortgage than their house was worth. Economic recession was hitting hard. Estate agents were going bankrupt as people stopped buying houses and also tried to avoid selling in a declining market. You would have thought therefore that a young professional on the up with a good income working for a bank that had guaranteed a mortgage and purchased his house for cash to facilitate a promotion and sponsored move would be a hot marketing opportunity. That person was me. I thought the same. How wrong I was. I went to the first estate agent. “What is your budget? We will put you on our mailing list.“ The second agent, “What's your budget? We will put you on the list.“ The third the same. In most cases they seemed extraordinarily busy. Nobody wanted to spend time with me - instead they were busy looking into their computer screens doing something, heaven knows what. I simply didn't exist. I assume they must have been looking for alternative jobs. Maybe in retail white goods. After about 8 of these responses I soon learnt not to waste my time. They had trained me well. Like a young dog going to puppy classes. I went into each estate agents office and, not wasting any time, simply told them straight away - “I have x to spend please put me on your mailing list.“ I had been trained not to expect anything more. Until that is one rainy, miserable day. I had been visiting one of the many houses I had been sent details of. It was awful. The fact that there was a pile of cow manure in the garden didn't help. Really. I was close to despair. Definitely at the point of telling my employer that I couldn't possibly move after all - I just could not find anything even remotely adequate for my family. I remember the occasion well. I was wet, cold and fed up. I saw an estate agent office on a high street. Reluctantly I walked in. “Hello“, I hissed, “I am looking for a house to buy. Please take my details and put me on your mailing list.“ A voice piped up from the back. “Oh, hello, I'm David, the manager here, welcome, do you have a minute? Coffee pot is always hot!“ I was taken aback. Had I done something wrong? Involuntarily I turned around to check behind me, just to confirm David was actually talking to me - the hitherto uninteresting one. “I would love to know a little more so that we can try and help.“ I can honestly say that in all the interactions with estate agents I had never ever got as far as this. I was shocked. But not as much as by what followed. The manager wasn't the slightest bit interested in what I could afford. He simply asked me questions about everything else. And I mean everything else. “Tell me about yourself please. Who do you work for. What do you do. Oh interesting, Do you get a company car with that role? Do they pay your private fuel? What about your hobbies? That of you wife? How old are your children? What are you looking to do in the future? and on and on and on. I admit, that after 40 minutes of this I was becoming a little tired. Why can't this guy just put me on his bloody mailing list! And then, suddenly, just as I had reached my limit, he suddenly said, “well I think, I have exactly the house you are looking for.“ Now I was truly amazed. “No mailing list?“ I asked. “No no he said, I don't need to mail you anything. I have the house right here. I will show you the details.“ And out of a filing cabinet he produced the details of the most beautiful, amazing, stunning house I had ever seen. Of for that matter my wife had ever seen. I say 'house'. Of course it was nothing of the sort. It was an absolute oligarch's mansion. It was enormous. With room to set up a school if I wanted to. Or an army barracks. Complete with garaging for a tank division. Swimming pool of course. Land for my wife's horses plus a couple of hundred acres to spare. I swear the damned thing had a helipad. Sold! To my wife that is. I asked how much it was. He told me. I almost fainted. “But...but...I can't afford anything like that I said. It's crazy.“ My wife was disappointed, not for the first time, in her life choice of failed husband. And then David said something that I have never forgotten. “No problem at all“ he said. I have many houses for sale. And I know that I will find your dream home. It's here now. On my books. We just need to figure out where you are willing to compromise. Let's go through this logically, together, with your wife. Obviously land is the biggest factor. I have beautiful family homes but by removing land for horses from the equation then the price comes down dramatically. But you don't have to compromise too much. You see I know where you can rent land for a reasonable price. If we can find your something in that kind of area then maybe that would be of interest? So how about moving to this area - he pointed to a map - its further out than you were thinking but you already told me that you have a company car with fuel paid and the land is very reasonable to rent here. I'm sure we can find something to fit your needs. And so the process of funnelling and refining my and my wife's wishes started. He skillfully funnelled my wishes and needs to a point where something realistic began to form. We discussed, and discussed, gradually narrowing down the choices, making the needs finally fit with the economic reality. Good local schools, transport, environment, fresh air, big house but not too big, room to grow but not crazy. Over the process of the next hour David was no longer an estate agent but our trusted partner. He was on our side, determined to find the best house we could have ever imagined, albeit right at the top of our budget! Finally he pulled out a house brochure. It was even slightly higher than my budget. It was further away than I had envisaged. But it was wonderful. It felt right. We fell in love with it. I am still living in this house today...after 30 years. David never did ask what my budget was. This person was an education to me. Forget formal sales training and quack sales medicines. He finally brought home to me what I had felt and believed in for years - the professional value add sale - but was too blind to realise myself what I was trying to aim for. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Finding out about the customer. Working to the real needs of the customer not your own. Of course he had his list of houses. Of course he wanted to sell me one of his. But he took time. He took time to understand me and my family. He knew his product - lifestyle - in fine detail. The geographic area like the back of his hand. And the result was he sold me a beautiful home. He didn't need to spend his time on his computer looking for a new career in white goods. He was doing a great job right there. Much later I talked to him and thanked him for his approach. I told him about my mailing list experiences. He said, “you know, if a salesperson says I'll put you on our mailing list, it's just an excuse to avoid work.“ He was so right. Death by Compliance Image by Anna from Pixabay Don't get me wrong. The world needs Compliance. More than ever it seems. Rogue directors and employees (but mostly directors) seem to spend huge amounts of time and energy (when not looking for alternative jobs in the white goods sector) in devising schemes to defraud people out of hard earned cash. If they can't do that they train so called 'sales people' to do the defrauding for them. The difficulty is how Compliance is executed. And 'executed' is the appropriate word. I'm not going into the whole topic of Compliance here - come back to my blogs another day for that. For now, I will just talk about the effect of modern Compliance on the gentle art of selling. Ever since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the world has gone down a prescriptive rules driven approach to Compliance. This has one significant advantage. It keeps an industry of consultants and bureaucrats gainfully employed in producing reams of paper driven rules and regulations that not even Einstein could keep on top of. The major disadvantage is that rules are descriptive based, not a morals based approach. One quick look at tax law shows the effect of that. Tax law is constantly trying to keep up with the latest tax avoidance scheme that is always one or two steps ahead of the legislators busy trying to keep the tax revenues flowing. It's just a game. Even a President of the strongest nation in the world claims it makes him clever to avoid paying tax. Morals don't come into it. It's much the same in the corporate world. As long as you follow the prescriptive rules then, by definition, you must be following the correct moral path. I was brought up by a single parent mum. She never had to furnish me with a 20 volume set of prescriptive rules. Yet somehow she manage to instill in me a sense of right and wrong. Strange that. I wonder if she had tried the Sarbane-Oxley methodology if it would have been better or worse for my moral compass? I don't wonder. I know the answer. So do most people. Unfortunately prescriptive rules are the name of the game in the corporate world of Compliance. And sales is just one of the many areas that suffers, sometimes to the point of extinction. Start a Compliance department and you can guarantee one thing. That department will do everything in its power to grow. It is the law of centralisation. Don't trust anyone out there in the provinces. Only trust in HQ. That's compulsory. And sales, by definition, is almost always out there. I have seen the change. And it has become utterly absurd. In the pursuit to eradicate corruption - something that incidentally almost always seems to be the area frequented most by the most senior of management not the foot soldiers - foot soldiers must abide by a set of rules devised by senior management that are often so absurd and strangulating that it makes the acclaimed 'Death of a Salesman' by Arthur Miller look like a comedy as opposed to a tragedy. This is how absurd it can get. As a senior person responsible for a significant business within a large conglomerate, compliance policy required that I was to gain permission for any gift - including lunch, to a customer that was worth over 15 euros. Just to make the situation even more ridiculous I would need to seek permission, in advance, in the UK even though my actual business was abroad , in one case the other side of the world. Consequence? I would avoid at all costs any situation in which a customer would invite me for lunch. God forbid I would be embarrassed enough to have to avoid even splitting the bill. I tried telling people that our strict compliance rules prevented me from accepting or offering anything at all - bar a coffee. I soon realised that in certain parts of the world even that wasn't an option. Coffee and a chocolate muffin could get me over the limit and the dreaded compliance electric shock cattle prod will be on me. I certainly gave up trying to explain the situation to bewildered customers when I saw the offence that was implied. Too often they would see it as some kind of reference to their own attempt at dirty corruption - offering me a lunch that would cost more than 15 euros or vice versa. By the way, regarding gaining permission. I really know for a fact that the beaurocrat granting that permission in the centralised UK HQ Compliance Team had never sold anything in his life. Let alone in far off countries with different cultures and traditions. It wouldn't actually surprise me if he started his career in white goods retail. At least I would have the comfort of knowing that the Miele he was persuaded to buy all those years ago is still functioning very well today. I realised very quickly that compliance rules would be problematic for sales when I was told, by the Compliance team, that under no circumstances was the role of sales to influence the customer in their buying decision. This they confidently espoused would be tantamount to undue influence. What then am I actually supposed to do in a customer visit, I asked. Well, if you have to do a sales call then you should restrict yourself to no more than a generic presentation of the company's products regardless of what the customer actually needs. Otherwise the customer might claim that you tried to persuade him/her to buy. I was dumbfounded. Truly speechless. I went back to my office. And immediately received a call from my boss asking why our sales seemed to be diverging from budget. I kid you not. It's impossible to make stuff like this up even if you were to write a comedy show. The divergence of Compliance departments demands and the reality of doing business in emerging markets - or any markets for that matter - couldn't be more extreme. I am not talking about bribery which is prevalent in many if not all emerging markets (and arguably even more in well developed ones too). I am talking about culture. Our businesses did not need a compliance department to tell us what business we should avoid. Indeed they would not have a clue themselves. For example, we knew from experience NOT to touch public business under any circumstances, despite, ironically, frequent pressure from senior management to do precisely those kinds of sales. Public business in our areas of specialisation was ripe with corrupt practices. We had a zero tolerance policy. Just don't deal with public business at all. Ever. But what should I say to the company directors of a SME who want to spend half a day with me to make sure I am someone who is not corrupt and can be trusted? Our customers were no different to us. They also wanted to know that the people they were dealing with were good people. This was the cultural reality where I was operating. It was what I was confronted with from my own customers on just about every sales call I ever made in our emerging markets. I arrive, the boardroom table is laden with sweet treats, coffee, tea, I am made to feel incredibly welcome and the discussions begin. About anything but business. Family, background, experience, values. Only when it is deemed that I am ok to deal with, that my word is my bond, do we get to discuss business. It takes half a day. Sometimes a whole day. Despite the customers generosity during this process, tea, coffee, chocolate, sweets, under no circumstances can I take them to lunch. Or a sandwich. This is compliance in the REAL world. A set of rules dreamt up by bureaucrats in a department far far away in some corporate HQ by people who believe that a flimsy mediocre washing machine is cheaper than Meile. The result is a catastrophe for sales teams. They are put into an impossible choice. Leaving the customer in a perplexed state dubious about the strange credentials of a neurotic business or alternatively breaking these absurd rules. Rules that when broken in no way compromise the principles of fairness, a level playing field, honesty and commercial responsibility and a moral compass. It's called upbringing. If the people you employ dont have it then you are employing the wrong people. It is indeed a mad mad world. The Robot wars. The automation of sales via AI Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay In the end there are only two possible reasons why sales can add value. One is that sales can educate. The other is that they can create trust. The former will increasingly be overtaken by AI. The latter will be killed by 'Compliance'. AI is still in its infancy. Talk of AI and we think of self driving cars, Alexa or Siri, delivery robots, or computerised chess games. Google is also a form of AI. So too are the purchase recommendations you receive on Amazon. But we are just at the beginning. Imagine those purchase recommendations - but applying to complex business decisions based on the perfect knowledge of everything. You think that's impossible? I'm not so sure. And then what of the salesperson? What will be the point? When Adam Smith invented the 'science' of economics we understand today he set out the rules required for a truly free and perfect market. One of them was perfect information. Needless to say in the real world that doesn't exist. Not by a long shot. Yet. AI is changing that proposition. Rapidly. When I started out in sales in 1983, Google didn't exist. Neither did the internet. Not in my world anyway. If I needed information on anything I had three options. Speak to an expert. Write to an expert. Or visit the local library. Today I just Google. It's hard to overstate the impact of this form of AI. If I want to buy a car I don't need to speak to a salesperson. In fact, I would be well advised not to. Most of them haven't got a clue. I can Google to my heart's content to narrow down features, study reviews, find out about issues, reliability, and other peoples experiences. And when I have narrowed everything down to my perfect choice I can get the best possible deal online without ever talking to anyone. It might still be a way off from the perfect information assumption of Adam Smith but if he were alive today he might be excused for thinking that by the standards of his day we had got pretty close. And it's going to get a whole lot more sophisticated. The day will arrive when AI will save all the searching for us - we just put in our requirements and out pops the perfect deal at the best possible price all delivered to your door. And before you say, 'ah but, how do you know what you want' AI will figure that out too. Just input the answers to 'Mr amazing estate agent automated salesperson' and hey presto. AI will educate you. You didn't really want that. What you really wanted is this. Soon you won't even need to input data. AI will have it anyway. It will know everything about you. More than you do. Why? because it created how you think. Sounds amazing and alarming all at the same time. Now I know how the Luddites felt. I guarantee this is a real possibility. Whether we really want that is another question. So where does that leave the noble art of sales? Well, in fact, all is not lost. You see for perfect information you need perfect transparency. And the world is trying hard - very hard - to stop that. More and more legislation comes out on an almost daily basis about the protection and restriction of data. And if data is restricted then AI is too. There is a real fight going on - between governments wanting to know everything about us, and us not wanting governments to know anything at all. Between businesses knowing everything that there is to know about us and our dreams and us not wanting business to stick its ugly nose into any part of our private stuff let alone our dreams. Businesses too want to know everything about other businesses and they of course want the opposite. You get the point. Its a data war out there. But there is another aspect that we ignore at our peril. It's an area we barely hear anything about but deeply serious and highly political and far reaching. In the process of democratising information we ignore the the algorithms that decide what information you see in the first place. And by doing that AI is influencing your and my behaviour, thoughts and actions. We don't even realise it is happening. If the top of the search page says ' Paid Ad' it seems reasonably obvious what is going on. But are you aware of how the algorithm works when it comes to 'free' information? It's not just Google. Every social media site, every website is capturing information, in one way or another, about you and your actions. Most of us realise that there is no such thing as unbiased opinion. We are all biased by our own lens. But are we truly aware about how our behaviour and choices are being manipulated by search engines, social media, and the internet generally? And before we think it can't have too much effect just look around at the world - while you still have a free mind that is - the evidence is there in front of us - when organisations - public or private - hold the power over what you see it's utterly amazing how quickly and how completely they can control your behavior. This is the perfect propaganda and mind control packaged in the ultimate odorless, invisible form of AI. Add in to the mix stealth AI. That is the AI that aims to combat other AI. How many pages that appear on Google are there because of the AI generated on a page of a website that takes advantage of weaknesses in the algorithms in Google? If Google doesn't seem quite as effective as it once was there is a good reason for that. Google itself if fighting an AI war - against other AI manipulating its search results. Yes, it really is a war out there. I have no idea who or what might win. What I do know is that the war is on and this means that there will be a place for salespeople to play the role of educators for some time to come. For how long I don't know. My guess is that if you are in your 50s you don't need to worry about it. If you are in your 40s I would not lose too much sleep over it either. In your 20s? I suspect things are going to look very very different in your sales career when you get to my age. There is no doubt in my mind that the internet and AI has revolutionised the obtaining of information to an extraordinary level. You only have to look at fantastic organisations like Bellingcat to see the immense public good that can be achieved through open source research - something that simply wouldn't have been possible even a few years ago. But to assume that it will all end up in a perfect information world - where whatever you want to know is at your fingertips, is I think very premature. Probably it's far from desirable.There is still a role to play for human beings, warts and all, to add value to the biased information overload we now experience. To make sense of it all. And to be the guards that guard the AI guards. Just so long as AI doesn't take over our brains. For sales what this all means is that the only thing left that can add value is trust. But what is trust? To trust means to rely on another person because you feel safe with them and have confidence that they will not hurt or violate you. In an uncertain world, where everyone tries to know everything about everything and is even more guarded therefore about revealing things to anyone this might well be the defining characteristic of the great salesperson in the future. Actually, put it like that, I think that always was the key. Trust was always the ultimate sales differentiator. And I believe it always will be. Image by Sven Lachmann from Pixabay Please let me know if you enjoyed this blog. I welcome comments. If you have any stories relevant to corporate leadership that you would like to share - confidentially of course - then please do get in touch. Nothing will be published without your permission. Would you like some help with your sales approach? Are you are dissatisfied with your sales or the way your business goes about it? Do you feel your organisation needs help to formulate a different approach to selling then get in touch. I may be able to help. And if I can't I will be honest enough to tell you that too.

Absolutely anyone can become a salesperson. It requires no skills whatsoever. No qualifications. No Knowledge. Apparently. Gone are the days when global corporations would be led by someone who had cut their teeth on a long career in sales and marketing, perhaps complimented with spells in various other departments. Never finance of course. Today it is exactly the opposite way round. Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay It is now the CFO that becomes the CEO. Never ever the sales professional. Of course not. Anyone can be a salesperson. Right? The biggest problem (and opportunity) with Sales is that it has such a low barrier to entry. As long as you can talk you can sell. Or so it seems. Certainly my whole career has been blessed with countless non sale people in management having strident views on what should or should not happen in sales. Frankly speaking, if I listen to them, I can be forgiven for thinking they must have had centuries of long hard nosed sales experience . If I, on the other hand, were to suggest that the Finance and Controlling Department should adopt a different strategy then I would, most likely, be looked at with disdain - possibly even restrained until an ambulance turned up with a couple of specialists in white coats ready to take me away. I am well aware of this phenomenon of course since I am guilty of it myself. You see, I am a sofa activist. I sit on my sofa, “listen” to various politicians on television while simultaneously shouting things back, as if they could hear me. Or even want to. At these moments, sitting on my sofa, I really do have all the answers because I happen to be the brightest person in the world - well - my world anyway. Now remove the sofa, go to yet another 'review' meeting with senior management, and everyone that has never sold a thing in their lives is suddenly an expert in the subject of sales strategy. They are not even sitting on their sofa. The funny thing is I have also experienced an ex CFO newly promoted to CEO coming to me and saying “Andy, I realise that selling is my big weakness, can you give me some advice?” I'm joking. I have never remotely heard anything like that question in my life. Of course they wouldn't ask that (see my last blog on ego and humility). What I have experienced in that situation is the newly appointed CEO (from CFO) telling me “Obviously I need to brush up on selling“ and then, striding away, proceed to immediately define the new sales strategy in the new corporate plan - requiring of course a new organisation structure - especially for sales. Another reorg project (see again my previous post 'Never throw your notes away') Here we go again. That is NOT to say that all CFOs have no chance of ever becoming a successful CEO. I have known quite a few CFOs and have no doubt that some would have made the transition brilliantly - with a bit of help and guidance. Not least a spell in sales - not a day or two but let's say a year. It would honestly be a fantastic grounding. Naturally I have never heard of anything like that happening. Pity. Most CFOs would never do it (take a year in sales) anyway because it would be like an island hermit suddenly being forced to take part, virtually naked, in a version of the TV reality show 'Love Island'. Lets face it, 'CFOing' is, frankly, a pretty dull and introverted activity. The CFO will spend hour after hour staring into a computer screen trying to make various things balance. At least I think that’s what they are doing. Perhaps they are secretly streaming the latest episode of “love Island” dreaming that their puny or flabby body would, with a little help from the sales team, one day look like one of those rippling sun kissed ones on the show. More likely they are, after hours of arithmetic, finding adjustments to make the damned accounts balance. In my varied career I once spent quite a bit of time analysing balance sheets. You would be quite amazed at what I often found. That in fact the balance sheets DIDN'T balance. I am talking about completed and signed off accounts. Signed by the directors and the auditors. I once called an auditor (with permission of the customer who couldn’t answer my question). “Hello, thanks for your time. I just wanted to ask, what is that item on line 14, that is labelled ‘FF’?” “Oh that”, replied the Auditor, “no need to worry, that stands for ‘Fiddle Factor’, so that we could make the accounts balance”. I promise I am not making that up. It really happened. In that specific case it represented about 20% of the value of the company. I came across many similar examples over the years, though, I admit, never quite so blatant as 'FF'. Often the numbers were simply not the sum of the parts. Another reason for the latest recruitment ground for CEOs now being the finance function is that the sales and marketing function has, lets face it, developed a bad press of its own. In the corporate world - any world for that matter - the image of a salesperson is one of a gregarious extrovert, persuasive, eloquent and probably totally dishonest. Ask the salesperson however and their image of the finance function conjures up the image of the introvert, the bookish loner studiously getting on with the job of adding things up and trying to find ways of sucking the blood out of their next sales leader victims. It is usually done by the rigorous prevention of sales expenses. Of course these are massive over generalisations. I have certainly known such people on both sides. I have known sales directors whose approach to sales expenses could be summed up as something like this: Submitted expenses: Taxi $250 Conference Room and equipment hire for one week $1000 Food and sustenance for sales team during conference $500 Miscellaneous expenses $60 Economy Return Flight to Madrid for sales meeting with potential new client (no sale) $500 Paper and ink for home office $30 Total $2340. Image by Circe Denyer from Pixabay True expenses: Taxi $50 Champagne for clients $500 Nightclub entry for clients $300 cash Dancing girls (or boys) $1000 Hush money for ensuing scuffle between Global CEO and police $400 Chiropody expenses to repair finger nails of dancing girl (or boy) $50 Headache tablets $10 Paper and ink for production of fake receipts $20 FF $10 Total: $2340 The former maybe a bit short on legitimate receipts but then this is how sales operates….isn’t it? Well, it is according to the CFO who will dedicate the rest of his or her life proving it. This of course is after the CFO has spent many hours trying to produce meaningless management reports for the board that are based on made up data by people who have long since lost touch with reality. Key to the task will be to show the global board what they want to hear: that the problem is sales, especially the cost of sales, and that you, as the CFO have the answer if only you could become the new CEO and restructure the sales organisation. Other than that they are trying to hide fiddle factors. It is not just about sales of course. An effective CEO needs a broad base of knowledge and experience. They also need that pesky thing that you can't define but you can see and feel. Charisma. Lets face it. It's not a word we tend to associate with the CFO. A lettuce leaf will normally have more. We should not be surprised at that. Adding numbers all day long and devising cunning ways to hide fiddle factors isn’t really going to train someone to be like Denzel Washington. But again, it's not impossible. Indeed there are a fair few examples. Nobody would describe Mick Jagger as dull. Did you know that he trained at the London School of Economics as an accountant? (before you ask, no I didn't meet him there) Nobody would know if he would have made a great CFO. I suspect he would have made an impact as a CEO. At least the sales conferences would have been fun. Heard of Janet Jackson? Of course you have; yes, she too studied accountancy. Her skills as a show person extraordinaire would have been a good grounding to lead a corporation. And let's face it, John D Rockefeller didn't do so bad either, starting out as a bookkeeper at the tender age of 16. To understand what is happening is to understand what qualities are really needed to do both jobs well. Get a grasp of that and you get a grasp of whether the change in roles will work or not. Lets face it, if you are a scheming, manipulative and lying bully as a CFO then that is not going to change when you become a CEO. A great CFO is a great Leader of people and this is obviously a prerequisite in any senior role. But there are two additional things that you really do need as a CEO. Both of them don't fit so easily with the finance function. The ability to Act and the ability to act. Let me explain. The first one is Acting as in theatre or film acting. The second one is to act - as in making a firm decision. To make a decision as a CEO means that you have to be able to take a risk. Acting The CEO needs to be capable of winning an Oscar. They must live and breath the new positive vision, they must act with exemplary dignity, they must be hugely encouraging in the farce of adversity and completely humble in success. It is the kind of acting where you write the script, act the lead, and produce an incredible amazing film. You have to be the film that you create and see in your mind. But that sounds, again like the gregarious extrovert. Does that mean that the introvert has no chance? If you Google the phrase 'introverted actors' up pops seemingly never ending lists. Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Jack Lemmon, Bill Macy, Steve Martin, Noah Wiley, to name just a few amazing actors that openly admit to be introverted. What people forget is that the best actors have often been the introverted. I told my closest trusted colleagues that I was an introvert. They didn’t believe me of course. But I can honestly say that I was. I find groups uncomfortable. Groups of one included. Speeches in front of large audiences a nightmare. For sure I am on the spectrum. And that is precisely why I was able to elevate myself into a new character. The great actor. Some might unkindly say, more like the Great Gatsby. Seriously though it wasn’t me in front of the crowd. It was my alter ego. To be put away in its briefcase when I finally got home after the invariable flight and hours drive. It kept me sane and my feet harboured in reality. If you want to find someone who might have the potential to be a great CEO then you can do worse than check if they have performed in amateur dramatics. You just need to make sure that they also have that essential quality of incredible actors. That they act with total integrity. When they are acting, they really do become that person. Because at that moment they really are that person. Introverts are often great listeners and observers, highly empathetic and sensitive to others as well as deep, creative thinkers. These qualities are fantastic for an actor to have, and just as fantastic for a CEO. So if you are an introvert, please do not limit your ambition because of it. You will be depriving society of your talent. To act as in taking a decision A decision that is, without all the information. Taking a risk. It doesn't sit very well with a corporate CFO. In fact in most large corporations the CFO role is as much to prevent risk taking than encouraging it. And of course, by definition, risk taking is …well….risky. I remember some years ago, when the group CEO was retiring, he told me “Andy, we need people like you because you are a real entrepreneur”. I took the complement of course. It was only polite to do so...he was, afterall, retiring. But as I reflected on his comment I realised it simply wasn’t true. If I was a real entrepreneur I wouldn't be working for a large bureaucratic organisation. I would have left years ago - willing to bet everything on my ideas - leaving behind the comfort of a regular pay cheque and a nice pension at the end. This then is the point. Being a CEO within a large organisation is moving the dial towards risk. It is not yet betting your house on your idea. The beauty of the CEO role in a company you do not own is that you can bet other people's money - and that's much more fun than betting your own. But be under no illusions. Nobody wants to lose money. Get stuff wrong and your time is up. In fact, get stuff right and your time will be up as well - since someone will be plotting to overthrow you. Et tu, Brute. The reality of the CEO in the corporate world. If you look at any truly great leaders - the “CEOs” of their day - whether in business, politics or the military, you see it. Image by Gerson Martinez from Pixabay Those great leaders ALL had their battle scars. Some of them died as a consequence. Mandela spent over 27 years in prison before leading with huge dignity, integrity and courage a South African nation to a peaceful democratic country and the most industrialized, technologically advanced, and diversified economy on the African continent. Churchill fought off huge professional mistakes as well as personal mental health issues - “the black dog” depressions as he called them, to lead a country with inspiration and determination through its worst moments to victory. Nelson, arguably the most successful naval commander in history, died in the heat of his greatest victory by a sniper's bullet. By then he had already, as a result of his own risks, lost and arm and an eye. The thing is, they were not paralysed, as so many big organisations are, by the fear of taking a decision. The fear of the risk. “Paralysis by analysis” its called. Unfortunately the C suite in the large corporation including CFOs are often the worst culprits. With no courage to move away from a regular pay cheque they see no advantage in making a decision that requires risk. Better say no than say yes. I remember once being presented a business idea by one of my business units. The team had clearly put in a huge effort into what they felt was a market opportunity. The argued their case with passion. Even the local CFO was on side willing to put his future on the line (a potential CEO right there). Interestingly, working as we all did for a hopelessly bureaucratic and hierarchical organisation, their question wasn’t - “can we go ahead and do this?“ It was “who in HQ do we need to ask to get approval?” “What?” I said. “Don't be daft. If you ask for approval in HQ you will still be asking in 10 years time. Forget that. I’m giving you approval. Here and now. Let's do it! Just don't screw it up…..please!” And so they did it. And were hugely successful, ultimately generating the bulk of their units profits. By then, HQ had noticed this success. But , it being a success, someone would have had to decide to STOP this successful business. Nobody was willing to take that responsibility. Better not make any decision at all. Just claim the idea as your own. Sad isn't it. As an interesting aside, some years later the same successful team came up with another idea. This time the wheels of corporate compliance had tightened again such that the proposal could not avoid the 'decision' of management several layers higher. Of course they never gave an answer….what they needed was more information. And more. And more. To my knowledge as you read this, senior management still need more information. Unfortunate since the proposal was put to them in 1893. Ok, maybe not quite that long ago. But it might as well be. Nobody has the courage to make a decision anymore. Becuase real leaders are few and far between. I often think of Nelson when I think of great corporate leaders and CEOs. They are willing to take a metaphorical bullet. That’s the nature of the role. The only difference in the corporate world is that the bullet is just as likely to come from your own side in the form of your bosses or so called “colleagues” as the competition. So to sum up. To all CFO’s. If you love to bungee jump, or Kitesurf, or cave dive or just love to dance to rock like a person possessed then is perfectly possible for you, or for that matter anyone with sufficient experience, knowledge, and leadership capability to take on the CEO role. You will need to be able to take decisions with very limited information…which means taking a risk…..which means being brave. You will need to move mountains with skill, passion, energy and integrity…creating your own amazing film…with you in the lead acting role, ignoring the sofa critics. And when the film is awarded Oscars, you will thankfully, as an introvert, move into the shadows, applauding and showcasing your team members for their success, not your own. Despite you dodging bullets from all directions, your war wounds, your pain, it is your team who ultimately made it happen. If you can't take the heat then don't go into the kitchen in the first place. When you understand that and you can wholeheartedly embrace your eventual demise then go for it! While it lasts. I promise you this, you will be privileged to have the best job in the world.