See for yourself

Great leaders understand something that is often lost in today’s world of global connectivity – the critical, insight needed for effective leadership can come only from first-hand contact. The best executives get out of their offices to observe and engage with their frontline employees, competitors, customers, and suppliers on the job.

Most business gurus tout cleverly titled management concepts while ignoring this relatively simple practice. Each concept promotes itself as a silver bullet; most deliver benefits, but rarely to the extent advertised; and few prove sustainable over the long run.

To get the most out of first-hand engagement, consider the following principles:

• Go and see: no company embraces the principle of first-hand observation more than the Toyota Motor Corporation. A philosophy of genchi genbutsu, literally translated as ‘go and see’, permeates the organisation from the manufacturing floor to product development and even corporate staff functions. Toyota’s executive in charge of real estate visited every single property now in Toyota’s vast global portfolio of land and buildings before approving any of the investments
  
• Prepare to learn: in his autobiography, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton commented, “Most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from someone else.” Walton, like other great leaders, was a true student of his industry, always seeking out new learning opportunities. Louis Pasteur’s comment that “fortune favours the prepared mind” leads us further along the path of capturing the full value of direct observation and engagement
  
• Look for problems and solutions: although visits may suggest a focus on solutions, the real power of engagement comes from listening and understanding the problems from multiple sources. Some problems may suggest obvious solutions. Toyota, always seeking the simple but avoiding the simplistic, searches for root causes by applying the ‘Five Whys’ principle: asking several ‘why’ questions in order to determine a problem’s genesis
  
• Helping others: Tom Taylor, former executive vice president of merchandising for The Home Depot stores, demonstrated how frontline visits offer opportunities to learn and to coach by looking for problems from a customer perspective. The Home Depot merchandising group no longer sits at headquarters making decisions far from the action. They now go to the frontlines to see what is happening and think about their decisions from a customer’s perspective
• Making it personal: it’s no wonder that many employees view executives as Dilbert cartoon characters: clueless autocrats anxious to implement the next management fad as a ‘strategic initiative’. Embracing first-hand engagement as an integral part of your personal leadership style and embedding it in a company’s culture can break the fad cycle. It connects everyone to reality and forces a collaborative, problem-solving mind-set that can produce enduring results rather than just temporary improvement

The inner game

Wimbledon. It heralds the start of summer (two weeks of rain) and all that is best about Britain and sport. Just the word conjures up images of strawberries and cream and genteel living – not that there is anything genteel about tennis these days; top players are elite athletes serving at speeds of over 140mps.

So what makes a 'champion' rather than just a great tennis player? Why is it that some players can pick-up their game when they need to? An answer may be found in 'The inner game', a coaching methodology created by Tim Gallwey in the 1970s that looks at the mental side of peak performance and though first devised for tennis players has since been applied to the fields of music, education and the workplace as well as other sports.

Cycling in Slovenia

Saturday.  4.45am.  Alarm clock.  Off to Muscat where it's 47 degrees in the shade, according to BBC Weather. Just back from Slovenia (holiday – not work).  Fabulous country – Ljubljana, the capital, is beautiful.  Full of 17th century buildings and rriverside bars and restaurants, it's like a combination of Bruges and Prague overlooked by a picture-book castle.

Spent a week in the East of Slovenia, cycling a 250 kilometer loop from Maribor (more riverside bars and the world's oldest living vine) through the hills of the wine region and the spectacular flood plains of the Mura and Drava rivers.

The scenery was stunning – the wine-growing area near the Hungarian border is centred on the pretty village of Jeruzalem, one of many gorgeous spots in rolling hills full of vineyards, cypress trees and white hilltop churches. It's like Tuscany without the tourists. My only complaint was the end-of-the-day climb up to our hotel in Jeruzalem itself.

Three of our overnight stops were at thermal spas – there are 15 natural thermal spas in Slovenia. Lounging around in a natural jacuzzi drinking the local wine is a pretty cool way to round off a day on the bike.

In summary, Slovenia is a wonderful holiday option. Even the weather was spot-on (every day sunny and 25 to 30 degrees). I'll be back.

The Apprentice – helpful to business or not?

I’m not a fan of The Apprentice – my children are. For me it’s all got a bit silly. In the office we have a sweepstake as to who will win and the winner walks off with around £100 (last year the winner said thanks, and didn’t buy so much as a box of Maltesers...), so it provides some reason for watching, but even then I would rather watch re-runs of Shaun the Sheep who incidentally, knows more about team building than all the Apprentice candidates put together.

The point is, that for organisations to succeed there needs to be a collective responsibility for  getting work done, and therefore there is a big onus on teamwork. Often this needs to include teams from other organisations because they are integral to the organisation's success.