Leadership in the new age

I like nautical metaphors and I think a ships captain is a good one for leaders in general.

Many government departments, big companies and local healthcare trusts are run by status and money obssessed egoists who inflict huge changes on their organisations without the slightest understanding of the organisation or what it is for.

Now look at a ship's captain, their job is to work out a route and get the ship and crew safely to port - success is a cargo delivered and all the crew safe and well. This requires an intimate understanding of the environment (as in the seas to be traversed, the weather etc.), the crew, the ship and the cargo.

Very often the real job of of an organisation's management is exactly like that; steady as she goes, navigate away from the rocks, keep the ship maintained and the crew happy and well. Manage the journey through the storms keeping everyone safe and not losing the ship or its cargo.

It is very clear that most top managers do not understand the organisation they work for, its people, its purpose and the methods used to achieve its ends. I believe most do not think there is any necessity to find these things out because they believe their mere presence is enough to create success. Since they need to be seen to add value they have to come up with big ideas and since the organisation is "too big to fail" (notice how automotive and defence (contractors that is, not the forces themselves) were protected along with the banks in 2008/9) it really doesn't matter what they come up with - squander millions of public money on an IT system that could never achieve its stated aim - never mind there is always more money to give to incompetent IT contractors to finish the job because to do otherwise would be to admit incompetence and anyone who is paid £250,000 a year (plus £300k in pension contributions) couldn't possibly be incompetent.

A skipper who behaved this way would end up on the rocks (topical eh!) and be out of a job and probably prosecuted to boot.

I believe that we will never have a properly successful economy until the obsession with "superman" bosses is given up.

The saddest part is that the talent to run organisations properly exists but the peole concerned would never be picked because they "lack vision".