1st Annual Advances in Leadership Conference in London

Dr Nigel MacLennan

Leadership: the route to recovery?

19 speakers, all of whom have led advances in leadership are gathering together to share their progress at the 1st Annual Advances in Leadership Conference in London, from 18th - 20th April 2012.

By encouraging our leaders to advance their skills and knowledge, recovery can be quick, and probably very engaging.

The more leaders have knowledge of the advances, the faster will be our recovery. If the leaders of UK companies performed just a little better, by say 5%, we could be back to growth in months.

In a time of economic woes - growing unemployment, "of an entire generation of young people out of work" - that has lasted 4 years, so far, there comes a point when it is clear that we need to do more to recover. What? Leadership.

Currently 70% of people who leave their jobs do so because of their boss; bad attitude, poor or non-existent leadership, etc. Of those who stay, 80% report being less than fully engaged at work; again, poor leadership.

Can there be anyone who does not know that we all perform better when we are motivated; when our work has meaning; when we are engaged? How much better do we perform when we are inspired? 10%? 20%? 30%? Whatever the figure, it makes a difference.

What would be the effect on our economies if leaders knew how to better engage their staff; If every organisational leader in the struggling western economies could create the environment for a mere 5% improvement in staff performance? We would be thriving in a matter of months - back to growth.

"Growth is not "magic-ed" out of thin air. Most growth comes from advances in products and services; providing solutions never before available (innovation), or tweaking existing products and services to provide solutions faster, better, or cheaper than before (process innovation). If more leaders knew how to harness the creative and innovate thoughts of their staff the results would be amazing," says Dr Nigel MacLennan, author of 58 publications in the field of leadership, and one of the speakers at the conference.

That's just one of many leadership routes to recovery. Here's another:

We can never hope to cut our way to recovery, particularly when cuts are not based on return on investment (ROI) - you don't cut costs that trigger reductions in valuable revenue, or cause further costs to be incurred. You cut what is producing the least return on investment (in the widest sense of that phrase) and put the savings into what produces the best ROI. Here's a question that might reveal a truth? When have you ever heard a political leader express that point?

We can lead our way to recovery, if and only if, our leaders have the techniques to improve performance. One of the many techniques now available is the ability we have to better judge ROI.

Many more leadership techniques are available, that, if applied could lead us to recovery, and leaders at the cutting-edge are fully aware of them. The problem is, that most leaders don't know the methods, or if they do, they don't know how to implement them. Fortunately we now know more of how to close the knowledge-implementation gap than ever before, opening up, yet another, leadership route to recovery.

When the known techniques are applied, they produce astounding results, often contrary to what normally happens. For instance, you might predict that in our time of economic troubles that crime would be increasing, as, cyclically, it always does. Even against that powerful macro-economic driver, recorded crime on the London underground has been reduced to the lowest in recorded history (by Police using advances in leadership techniques). Source: British Transport Police.