The Hillary Symposium

From the programme: Lester Levy is the Chief Executive of The New Zealand Leadership Institute at the University of Auckland and Professor of Leadership at the University of Auckland Business School. A graduate of Medicine and an MBA with his formative management background in multi-nationals 3M and Beecham Research Laboratories, he is best known for leading a number of organisational performance transformations, as Chief Executive, in both the private and public sectors. He has previously been seconded to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as a strategic advisor and has been awarded the King‘s Fund International Fellowship from the King’s Fund in London. Lester is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Management and is the author of the book “Leadership and the Whirlpool Effect”. Over the past 15 years he has been a frequently invited speaker and presenter on the subject of leadership, in New Zealand and overseas.

He teaches leadership, strategy, governance and ethics at the University of Auckland primarily at the executive level, including the MBA and the Masters of Management and his research interests include concepts of leadership, perceptions of leadership and the relationship between leadership and management. His work has been published in Organization, Leadership, European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, International Journal of Learning and Change and The University of Auckland Business Review.

Lester’s not feeling well, so he’s answering questions by phone.

What role does leadership play in the context of the green new deal?

It plays a critical role. We live in a world that is highly managerial, and the paradigm that dominates is the managerial paradigm, which is incredibly unhelpful in the context of society and business. But in the context we’re talking about, leadership is critical. In complex systems like this, by definition people don’t know in advance where we’re headed. We need greater collaboration, not just teams but tapping into the power of people working together.

The way most people look at leadership is the individual perspective — the one-dimensional, great person, heroic leader — but really leadership is about social capital, the power of connectedness. Leadership model is one of influence, engagement, communication that creates meaning.

Authentic leadership — leadership that has a moral and ethical perspective — is very important, and we also know that in a large-scale study we did here in NZ, 2/3 of people see the workforce as inauthentic, filled with people who diminish the hope and optimism of the people around them, and leave people unmotivated and unwilling to speak up. We need a great sense of aspiration, and if we’re dominated by a managerial downward spiral, we don’t have a hope of getting there. One of our last great freedoms is our choice of attitude. If we want to make a difference around the things we’re talking about today, leadership is essential.

Does the current global economic crisis change the role of leadership?

Yes, it’s a good and a bad thing. Leadership matters most when the course is no longer clear. The first thing that happens in a crisis is that there’s some kind of systems failure in part or whole, but what really happens is that the plans that we have are found to be inadequate or no longer useful. Time is compressed, we have a distorted picture, and we see the limits of authority — who actually runs the supra-national financial system? Who runs the supra-national environmental system?

In times of crisis, individual leadership is insufficient. It is imperative that key people in positions of authority or people with influence (and it doesn’t matter if they’re elected or thought leaders or what), it’s critical that they step up, and there also has to be a collective leadership response, and if we’ve created an environment where people are largely disengaged that’s going to be difficult.

Improvisation is critical — if we don’t have people who can work beyond the plan, we have some serious problems. Plans are good, but they’re less useful than most of us realise. There’s a lot of planning and then a lot of slavish adherence to the plan, but leadership is more organic than people realise.

In the acute phase of a crisis, it’s important not to make decisions rapidly; a lot of those decisions can have major ramifications. He sees leaders more as explorers now. All of you are now Vasco de Gama and Magellan and Columbus, and that requires courage. Moving forward, we need people with courage, people who are truly committed. It’s not the absence of fear; it’s the capacity to create environments that are constructive, of hope, of possibility, where people can move beyond the rhetoric and get things done.

What do you see as the key barriers to constructive outcomes?

The first key barrier is complacency. None of us likes to think we’re complacent. It’s more destructive than people realise. It’s invisible to insiders: either we don’t notice it or we deny it. Although no one ever stands up and introduces herself as saying, ‘Hey, guess what, I’m content with the status quo!’, but nobody presents himself as a micromanager either. There’s a huge anxiety about the unknown.

Complacency creates an environment where people pay little or insufficient attention to opportunity. We look around and we see what looks like energetic activity, but really much of it is frantic activity — it’s unhealthy and unhelpful. We need to move more towards some positive force, and it’s interesting in the context of The Hillary Institute. He was fortunate enough to know Sir Ed, and about a year or so before Sir Ed died, Lester discussed leadership with him. Around 40% of the words Sir Ed used in the interview were ‘determination’ or a synonym therof.

Another barrier — apartheid, which is separateness. None of us would vote for this or support it, but it happens routinely in our organisations.

Indifference.

A lot of people have very little intrinsic motivation around solving these issues.

Lack of appreciation of the key values. An ugly, rich vein of complacency.

What are the key issues facing New Zealand and how do you see we can overcome them?

He believes that there’s a real inertia to make significant change, and that’s tied to our limited energy to create momentum.

We’ve got a narcotic effect of quick-fix solutions to complex problems.

We have a resistance to new ideas, caused in part by our struggle with identity.

We have a problem with being truly innovative — we’re timid.

We have a horrible overemphasis on compliance and risk aversion. We worry hugely about the wrong thing.

You can have a fiduciary response or a generative response. Even if you have a fiduciary response, focused on control, we can shift those people from an oversight question — ‘Can we afford it?’ — to an enquiry question — ‘What’s the opportunity cost?’ An oversight question — ‘Does the budget balance?’ — to an enquiry question — ‘Is it in alignment with our values?’

We need to be much more thoughtful, much more generative, much less worreied about the downside. We really need to step up with courage and aspiration and truly make a difference.