I recently went to Belfast to see the Titanic Exhibition. It’s the 2nd most popular tourist attraction in the whole of Ireland (1st is the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin – also worth visiting if in Dublin). I have always been fascinated with the Titanic disaster since I was a child, the exhibition gave me a great insight into the tragedy and having gone through the experience I saw a lot of connections with business today.
The first problem was the belief that the Titanic was unsinkable, folly of course but hindsight is a great thing. But how many Senior leaders think their business are infallible today, any yet the many icebergs of business, the threat from competition, is mostly ignored.
Why does this happen well it can be for a number of reasons but from my experience it can sometimes be due to the middle management team. Their approach is don’t tell the senior managers when things are going wrong or we might be blamed – what ice bergs?
Sometimes it can be the arrogance of senior managers. A common but dangerous perspective is to think and actually believe that their organization is infallible, unfortunately all businesses have the potential to fail, the seabed of business is littered with them. You may recognize some of the following, some have sunk and other are about to sink sadly, Blockbuster video rental company, Eastman Kodak, Sun Microsystems, Borders Bookshops, Sears Retail Company, Pan American Airlines (Pan Am), The Hummer Jeep, Blackberry mobile phones, Abercrombie & Fitch.
What they all share is a belief they were infallible and a reluctance to innovate but as the ship is sinking and the band plays “we told you so” the staff go down with the ship and the bosses all wonder where it all went wrong.
I know of an organization that when the President went to visit the organization the management team made sure that the best staff were on duty, the operation was spick and span and everything worked perfectly. The outcome was the President believed he had the best organization in the world but the reality was there were many problems that impacted the customers who didn’t get his VIP treatment. So when issues were raised at board meeting he didn’t believe there were problems – big icebergs ahead!
So what can we learn from this? Firstly, don’t believe everything you hear check it out yourself, drop in unexpectedly! Talk to your customers they will tell you what the problems are or ask their secretary who deal with the organization. Don’t ignore the feedback there is probably a lot of truth in it.
Encourage your management team to be more open and to feel comfortable tabling issues. Give them the opportunity to discuss challenges and they will help you find solutions. Don’t become the Captain of the Titanic. Show effective leadership, be a good communicator and a good listener. And keep watching for icebergs!