19 February 2007

Intelligent leadership

It might be an open door, but organizational success doesn’t happen by just implementing an automation tool. Instead it’s excellent leadership that makes the difference. The difference in retaining your key people, the difference in your business' performance, the difference in being a true innovator, the difference in cost of stress related sickness absence.

A month ago I read a posting on the Leadership Blog that poor leadership is costing UK business a whopping £6+ Billion per year. This was based on a study commissioned by Ros Taylor Ltd, a leading firm of Chartered Psychologists. They asked over 1500 people from different sized organisations throughout the UK about leadership in the work place. Their key findings in numbers:

Only 8% of people think their boss is inspirational. On the other hand 89% said their boss lacks innovation and 77% feels that their boss was not interested in them (!). Furthermore, 9 out of 10 people said their boss does nothing about poor performers and 79 percent claim their boss does not set clear objectives.

I particularly liked the following quote: “While companies are spending millions on automation and the new IT architectures they could be spending thousands and saving millions by sharpening up their leadership assets.”

So business leaders apparently fail across the board at setting clear objectives, motivating staff and weeding out poor performers. An excellent book on the topic of motivating staff is First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman. Need a quick refresher on First, Break All the Rules?

Setting clear objectives and weeding out poor performers is were BI can offer assistance with measurable targets, tracking KPI's, etc. OK, there is indeed only so much Operational BI as a tool can do. However Operational Business Intelligence IS able to give some excellent real-time analytical support to the inspirational captains of our industries AND their staff. Also freeing up time for regular 1-on-1’s, creative brainstorm sessions, and of course plain old fun.