Tony Hall - The Leadership Illusion: The Importance of Context and Connections

The Importance of Context and Connections

Tony Hall & Karen Janman 2010

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No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC 1N 8TS.

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The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2010 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

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ISBN 978-0-230-51656-4

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by

CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To
Mum and Dad: who would have guessed?
Tracey and Ethan: who always knew.

To
My parents, Lawrie, Ollie and Maddy;
my past, my present and my future

This book has been a collaborative enterprise.

The contributions of many, many people have shaped the course and content; to them and all those friends and colleagues, who are as numerous as they are valued, we say thank you.

However, there a few individuals that deserve a special mention. Our interviewees have profoundly contributed to the direction of our thinking and the arguments of the book as a whole. Amidst busy careers and hectic lives, they took time-out to answer the questions of two unpublished, unknown writers. Some of these accomplished people were already part of our world; others are new connections who brought fresh ideas and personal stories. Without their combined experience, insight and observations, this book would have remained too abstract, if indeed it would have been finished at all. To all those mentioned below, we owe you more than a small debt of gratitude and hope that the end result justifies the distraction from your commitments.

• Sir Christopher Evans, Chairman of Merlin Biosciences
• Peter Lidstone, European Supply Chain Director, Akzonobel Decorative Paints
• Andrew Kakabadse, Professor of International Management, Cranfield Management School
• Peter Scraton, Group HR Director, e2v
• Howard Bate, MD South Africa, Regional Director Africa, Mott MacDonald
• Eric Thomas, Vice Chancellor, Bristol University
• Kathy Sykes, Chair of Public Understanding of Science, Bristol University
• Clare Chapman, Director General of Workforce for NHS and Social Care, Department of Health, England
• Andrew Hargadon, Professor of Management, UC Davis Centre for Entrepreneurship
• Jez Cartright, CEO of Performance Consultants
• Stewart Milne, Chairman of Stewart Milne Group
• Ieda Gomes, VP New ventures, BP
• Will Hutton, Chairman of The Work Foundation
• Liz Bridge, Head of Learning Services, Cranfield School of Management
• Bruce Cronin, Greenwich Business School
• Ron Burt, Hobart W. Williams Professor of Sociology and Strategy, Chicago Booth School of Business

Aside from our interviewees, there are three people behind the scenes that we would like to thank explicitly:

• Stephen Rutt, our editor and a man who showed more than a little faith in the core idea
• Eleanor Davey Corrigan, our editorial assistant, for patience and good humor in the face of our ever-stretching deadlines
• Ollie Janman, Karens son and our youngest critic, for his invaluable PowerPoint skills and insight when converting the paper scribbles of our various interviewees into the network maps that you see here.

Tony Hall and Karen Janman

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

The 19th century was the century of the factory; whilst the 20th was the century of the office. The 21st century will be all about networks.

(Will Hutton, author of The State Were In)

If theres something almost more interesting than the topic of leadership itself, it is the phenomenon of the endless, timeless torrent of writing about leadership. That constant stream has gushed into the world over thousands of years. From Sun Tzu to Cicero; from John Stuart Mill to Peter Drucker, the tide of opinion and perspectives shows no sign of receding. So we want to start this book by saying this will be the last book you will ever need to read on the topic of leadership. We want to, but we cant. Its not that our publisher has forbidden us from taking a monopolists view of the market. And it isnt because we dont have faith in what weve written. We do. Its just impossible to nail down the secrets of leadership into a few smart remarks and a pocketful of behaviors. But over the years books about leadership have appeared in all shapes and guises, ranging from the accessible and experiential to the academic and the abstruse. They are likely to continue doing so for as long as we need leaders. In 470BC, in the Analects of Confucius, the author opined that leadership is, To govern by virtue, let us compare it to the North Star: it stays in its place, while the myriad stars wait upon it. No doubt the leadership debate, in one form or another, pre-dates these ancient texts, and it has certainly been a constant theme for writers, philosophers and leaders ever since.

In the twenty-first century, the topic remains, well, topical: a universally accepted definition still eluding the academics and the practitioners alike. The Editor of the business arm of this books publisher receives a proposal for the next great thing in leadership every week. Every week! If you are a leader enthusiastically trying to tread the boards of self-development, or an HR professional desperately working on the next phase of leadership development for your top team, where do you start? Try typing the word leadership into the Google search engine. How many results do you see? Millions: a bemusing result for anyone trying to understand what aspects of leadership, both in thinking and practice, might be relevant to contemporary life. What about adopting a more focused approach? Ignore Google; try Amazon. How many results do you get now? Has that helped? Probably not. Even within the constraints of a physical bookshop with a decent reputation, the leadership section is likely to leave you numb. So while wed like to promise you that this is the last thing you will ever need to read about leadership, the bulky weight of history tells us this is unlikely to be the case. What we can promise you is an important argument about why the essence of leadership has been so hard to grasp.