This reminded me of the important role that Leadership (and ethics) play in government, business, industries, and other sectors.

A country club manager is defined in the dictionary as a person’s management style that pays a lot of attention to subordinates’ security, well-being, and harmony. This implies that one is more people-orientated and less task orientated. Not necessarily a wrong style – the ideal is to be strong on people and tasks – but success depends on the context or situation. 

There are a host of books and ideas about Leadership – what it is and what it is not. The spectrum of leadership styles ranges from the abrasive, no excuses, and dictatorial style of Jack Welch who during his 40-year career led General Electric to year after year success around the globe in multiple markets to the servant leadership style of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.

What every student of leadership agrees on is that there is no right leadership style. As mentioned previously, it depends on the context and the situation – called situational Leadership. Jim Collins in his book ‘’Good to Great’’ calls embracing the “genius of the AND’’ rather than the ‘’tyranny of the OR’’.

Achieving a balance between tasks and people is a skill that can be learned. The Blake and Mouton managerial grid is a useful tool to reference.

Jim Collins has identified 5 key traits of good Leadership:

1. A personal sense of humility
2. A deep personal understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses
3. A laser-like focus on the organisations purpose
4. A passionate commitment to continuous learning
5. A relentless determination to do what is right, not what is easy

These were published on 16^th October 2001, but I believe it stands the test of time in these heady and turbulent times, especially number 5.

There are many negative things happening in our country and business leaders are understandably downbeat – from load-shedding, political uncertainty, poor economic growth, and the collapse of many state-owned enterprises to name a few. Many of these problems were caused by poor or lack of Leadership.

 However, I would like to quote Colin Powell from his book ‘’In Life and Leadership’’.  In the book he mentions 13 rules that he lived by. I quote Rule 13.

“Rule 13: Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. Perpetual optimism, believing in yourself, believing you will prevail, and demonstrating passion and confidence is a force multiplier. If you believe and have prepared your followers, the followers will believe’’.

Author: Gerald McKinnon: Chairman of the ODI Board

Resources:

• Andre de Ruyter – Truth to Power

• Jack Welch and Suzy Welch – Winning

• Ken Blanchard – The Servant Leader

• Jim Collins- Good to Great

• Colin Powell – In Life and Leadership

The post Leadership in these turbulent times appeared first on ODI.

In 1959 John F Kennedy, the American president, (then still a senator) explained it in a speech.

Kennedy said when written in Chinese (and Japanese), the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters – one represents danger (Ki and Wei) and one represents opportunity (Ki and ji).

Albert Einstein was also quoted as saying that in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.

In South Africa, we have the triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality. In addition to these, we have the challenges of power shortages, water scarcity, a health crisis, transport crisis, recent increase in interest rates and rising cost of living driven by the cost of electricity, transport and the war in Ukraine. This has affected not only the most vulnerable in our society, but also organisations, industries and municipalities. It has caused great anxiety and trauma in society with strikes from SARS and increased threats of strikes from NUMSA and other trade unions looming. In 1996 electricity per unit, was less than 10 cents per unit and in 2021 it was R1.10 per unit, fueling the rising of business and household expenses and trauma in society.

There has been no respite in crime and violence, with gun wielding thugs and hijacking – an increasing risk, with criminals taking full advantage of the perilous situation.

So, where are the opportunities that are represented by the characters Ki and ji in these crisis’s?

I don’t have the answers but there are a few encouraging signs. 

The slow move to a low carbon economy has been recognised and government approval for now allowing municipalities to source energy from private energy producers. The establishment in 2021 of a presidential climate commission comprising all relevant stakeholders is a step in the right direction. A more secure and cheaper energy source for South Africa will have far reaching socio -economic benefits. During Covid, some companies retrenched staff and are now struggling to meet demand as business starts to pick up again. For example in the travelling and tourism industries, we have seen the effect of this with some airlines going bust and the congestion at international airports as travel demands pick up.

Companies should use the opportunity to focus on training, developing and energising their staff – especially first-line managers and supervisors. They have the ability to motivate workers and enable staff to be more efficient and productive during these difficult times and to capitalize to be more profitable when going through boom times again and power supply becomes more secure. 

True Leadership is essential during these times to plot a pathway through the crisis. Opportunities will become available and need to be exploited for a sustainable future.  These are the companies that will succeed and be ahead of the curve.

Author: Gerald McKinnon : Chairman of ODI

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• Published my first (and just about only) article in my third study year (1972) on “Bonuses”
• Implemented my first real working bonus system in 1988 at Glamosa Glass factory – it is still in use 30 years later
• Implemented a full system at Wispeco in 1998 – complex operation – still in use 20 years later
• Implemented various others during this time; consulting companies etc.

Successful Bonus systems are powerful management tools, and operate optimal if the environment is receptive, thus:

• management attitude,
• worker attitudes,
• level of goal alignment from top to worker-level,
• ‘flatness’ of the organisational structure,
• open communication, etc.

If implemented in an environment which is not fully ready, bonuses can still work, but can also fail easily and sometimes fail negatively by doing harm to the relations in the organisation.

Successful bonus systems at least do require open and open-minded support from the top level in the organisation. If this exists, early corrections to areas where implementation is wobbly, for whatever reason, can still be done. (This is in any case how I stumbled to workable solutions over time).

Both Bonus Legs, and especially the Profit Bonus Leg only work successfully if there is integrity in the system. Integrity comes from the top!

Author: Roland Röhrs – Chairman

To read more about why sustainable improvement is the pathway to the future, click here.

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Everyone has problems in life. For the most part, we are able to quickly solve them without much trouble but major hurdles are disheartening, and they’re often unavoidable. The way you engage with and think about problems directly influences your ability to solve them.

Problems become more difficult when there is no obvious solution and strategies that you have tried in the past don’t work. These types of problems cause a great deal of stress and anxiety and require new and different strategies.

This made me think about my own problem-solving strategies and I thought of sharing Roland’s Triangle Guide with you. It is a model for handling complex situations.

The triangle guide is formed by three words:

1. Integrity
2. Optimising
3. Patterns

It forms the basis of my approach to life and solving complex issues. I will typically approach complex problems inside this triangle. You can use the model as a triangle or as a cascade.

Let me put the three words in context:

1 Integrity

I use integrity in the strong, long-term human context. Other words are Love or Honesty or Caring or Doing the right thing, etc. There is always a strong human side.

2 Optimising

Trade-off is another word for Optimising. You just about always have to optimise – we live within restrictions – of money or behavioural norms and very seldomnly have enough resources, opportunities or leeway to not to have to choose between options. The optimisation can be a mathematical process (which industrial engineers and others love) or just weighing and balancing softer issues against each other.

3 Patterns / Pattern Recognition

What Patterns are at play? These can be trends or graphs or behaviours or data points. Even when you fall in love, you first notice a new pattern in your and / or the other persons behaviour. Do your homework – find the patterns – then analyse these.

The Roland triangle model was developed over many years as I was confronted by complex situations, and I (had to) develop small urgent tools to survive specific situations. As time passed, I realised these always tended to have aspects of the same elements in them – there was a pattern. In the last 15 years I moulded these into a bigger model – the one shown in here.

The next few slides show some of these early tools and how they form part of the bigger model.

Eventually you have to find a solution in total context of

• Where the patterns lead you,
• Where the optimised answer lies,
• Where you can live with integrity

I used the model (or early versions) throughout my career, and do easily pass it on to others to apply in their businesses and ventures in talks to young entrepreneurs.

I used it when confronted and I had to think deeply when considering doing certain (sometimes) difficult things (e.g. Retrenchments / Growing)

To accomplish tasks you have to learn to operate at three levels:

• Repetitive tasks happen best in ‘silo’ tasks – inside the organisation structure
• To optimise tasks you have to work along the horizontal process level – the x-axis
• To maintain sustainability you have to always fully allow for the people angle

If there always are only three ways to improve anything (another subject for another day), how does that fit into the model?

• Technical / Technological improvements
• Process improvements
• Attitude improvements

A tempting question for me: Could the model also stand the ‘test of time’ and the test of more conceptual ‘models’?

Author: Roland Rohrs: Chairman of the ODI Board

To read more about ODI’s Continuous Operations Improvement System, click here.

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I want to add to that and say that Sustainable Improvement is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth.

Improvements in general and sustainable improvements in particular are problematic areas and in Business, improvements come only from one (or any combination) of the following three aspects:

1. Technical improvements – such as new technology or automation.

2. Process improvements – covering aspects such as quick change-overs, modapts/work study, waste elimination and many more techniques.

3. Attitude improvements – such as motivational leadership and teamwork.

Finding the optimal combination of these three aspects lies at the heart of any improvement program. One can seldomly concentrate on only one (or even only two) of the three approaches.

The ODI programmes by design concentrate on the skills and mechanisms to implement process and attitude improvements and are some of the best in their class as confirmed over 20 years in many successful implementations.

The pillars of the 20 Keys Wheel acknowledge and emphasize these three legs of improvements:

Key 20 – Brings in Technological Improvements as a pillar key.

Key 1 – Cleaning and Organising is the platform from which most of the Process Improvement Keys (Key 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; etc) are to be launched.

Keys 2 and 3 – Goal Alignment and Small Group Activities are pillar keys to ensure a solid Attitude Improvement approach – at top management level through to the work floor level.

As we approach the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, businesses will have to focus more to implement all three improvement legs – perhaps simultaneously or staged in phases. Without bringing in the next level of Technical Improvements, even the best work done on Process and Attitude Improvements will be sub-
optimal. Management has a duty to ensure a synchronised approach on all three improvement  legs for the next decade of sustainable operation.

Author: Roland Röhrs : Chairman of ODI Board

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