Old Leadership Habits Die Hard
In these times of economic turbulence it’s astounding to witness those occupying senior leadership positions following the tried (and flawed) methods of their 20th century counterparts. What has become a default decision in times of recession to divert or cut people development budgets is nothing more than a reaction as opposed to a well-thought out response. It’s more lazy management than leadership.
A re-action is exactly what the word describes, an action that has been undertaken before. There isn’t much qualitative thought required for a reaction, and as always, the universal principle of cause and effect will deliver the implications in results. In the very different dynamics of the modern economy, those implications are likely to be much more severe than in the past.
Back in the industrial age, when manual work was prevalent and talent was predominantly assessed by physical attributes, the employee required for more brawn than brains tended not to need much development in order to achieve what the business required to prosper. In the service-base economy of the 21st century, where differentiation in product and proposition is sustainable for a matter of days at the most, it’s the mind, the creative faculties of human potential and how well they are utlized that decrees the fine line between commercial success and failure. Thought is the new currency.
The strategy that kills the goose that lays the golden egg is the strategy of lazy corporate incompetents. It doesn’t take a genius to know that when you effectively liquidate an organizations primary asset, it’s people, for the purpose of an immediate relief on the balance sheet, the medium to long term implication on performance is likely to be disasterous.
Benjamin Franklin once said that the very definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. At least that accusation can’t be thrown at those modern senior leaders who, in sheep-like fashion, divert people development budgets elsewhere to make their balance sheets look prettier. In todays fast-paced economy with its workplace of predominantly Generation Y talent, the implications of not developing people will most certainly differ in severity from those of previous periods of recession.
There’s only one thing worse than in investing in people and seeing them leave, that’s not investing in them and seeing them stay. Archaic leadership habits die hard, performance, however, is much more obliging.
