It's freezing at Barclays

There will, I assume, be little sympathy in the news that the tough times continue for Barclays, as CEO, Jes Staley announced an “indefinite hiring freeze” this week.

A previous freeze, in place since September, had been due to be reviewed in the New Year, but Staley is adamant that the ban will be in place “for a long time.”

This is great soundbite policy. I am not questioning Mr Staley’s honesty, or his bank’s - the intentions are, undoubtedly, true. However, such grand gestures are invariably, unworkable. How do you police the specific resource demands of a range of departments, some of which will be growing quicker than others? Departments are managed by different people who will exercise a different interpretation of the policy and who will have varying degrees of influence with their HR peers.

Such top-down edicts are prone to inconsistency, which leads to frustration and anger among permanent team members. I have yet to see a business manage this situation effectively.

My main point, however, is less to do with the management of such rulings, but about the messages that underpin these measures. Specifically, employees need to know that such a freeze is worth it – that it’s part of a bigger plan to propel them to a future that is brighter than the current picture. To that end, it’s a leader’s role to visualise that future for their staff.

A vision is needed to maintain morale among existing employees and to ensure the business continues to attract the best in terms of would-be employees. Ultimately, the process of organisational change stands a better chance of succeeding if you can ‘make a compelling case for why?’ and as seasoned corporate watchers know, cost-cutting rarely makes for a compelling case. Now is not the time for the blinkers; the situation calls for confidence and inspiration.

Barclays has been around for long enough to handle such change; it has done it before and is led by some smart people, but they should avoid looking to the past to ensure a more meaningful future for its people.

The value of corporate heresy

International law firm, Slater & Gordon had a particularly painful reminder of the wide-reaching effects of ‘what if’ scenarios last week, when UK Chancellor, George Osborne announced an increase in the small-claims limit and the removal of the ability to claim for general damages from minor whiplash injuries. The firm’s stock price fell 68 percentage points to a low of 69 cents, which is a veritable plunge, from the highs of $8 a share in April this year – that’s $2.5 billion in share market value wiped away.

I can’t go into the details of the case, as I haven’t got them. The episode does, however, highlight the criticality of scenario planning for businesses to best identify and resolve the threats that could damage operations.

Most discerning organisations – and I include Slater & Gordon here – would undoubtedly have a risk register, which tracks the course of such threats, but the register is only as good as the threats that have been identified, which are usually borne of internal perspectives – that is, current employees. This is not wrong, but I would counsel organisations to have a heretic to hand. That’s right, the individual in the room who goes that bit further in terms of identifying nightmare situations. Such bravado is usually found outside of the business, as external advisors aren’t encumbered by the emotional baggage that hangs round the necks of most salaried employees – loyalty being one. Granted, such advisors don’t have the insights in regards to brand heritage or corporate politics, but these are gaps that can be addressed.

Scenario planning sessions are, if done properly, heresy writ large. Threats are duly recognised and tracked to gauge their impact from a range of perspectives – brand, political, financial, community and personal. In fact, it’s vital that the session gets personal as that’s what stakeholders – primarily, the media, are looking for if anything was to go wrong. In short, they need somebody to denounce. So, let us speak the unspeakable and save ourselves from the blame game. 

Managing Barack Obama and other stakeholders

President Obama has, it’s been reported, chided Australian PM, Malcolm Turnbull for not keeping him “in the loop” after learning that a Chinese company had leased the Port of Darwin after reading about it in The New York Times.

“Let us know next time” said the President to the Prime Minister. The episode illustrates the significance of appropriate stakeholder management. Granted, the matter was a relatively minor one in world leadership terms, but the audience – the President – is a hugely influential one. Pardon the plug, but we specialise in handling such relationships effectively at CRP, and as we tell clients, the more important the stakeholder, the more frequent the communication.

Managing stakeholders properly is the mark of a well-intentioned organisation. That is, organisations which are driven solely by profit tend to give this part of corporate relations too little attention (if any at all). More than that, however, engagement with stakeholders is valuable – in terms of strategic impact, the bottom line and team morale. Much has been done on this, but Nadine Hack’s thoughts, which you can find here are particularly good.

Stakeholders need attention; their place in the organisation’s pecking-order will dictate how much to give. These disparate groups take an interest in the organisation, so it’s vital that businesses reciprocate and demonstrate mutual feelings.

Returning to the Port of Darwin, the politics are not lost on me and I appreciate that Mr Turnbull may have been fully aware of Mr Obama’s interest, but chose not to tell and I’m sure we’ll hear more over coming days. However, if that was the game plan, it’s good practice to weigh up the cost of not telling.  

Tiger Woods is Great.

I recently revisited Bill Dorris’ The Arrival of the Fittest: How the Great Become Great in preparation for a tutorial I gave at UNSW. At the risk of woefully condensing the author’s insights to the point of becoming meaningless, Dorris points out that those who attain the label of “greatness” are credited with solving a key generational problem in society, or a field of play or learning; among others, he (rightly) cites the likes of Lincoln and Einstein as great. Now, the vital word in that description is surely, “generational” - quite simply, these men and women are few and far between. Why? Because the obstacles they faced were so few and far between. Essentially, it’s not necessarily about the individual achievements, but the metaphorical mountains they have to climb to get to those achievements.

I bring this up for a number of reasons; primarily, I love words and it is part of what we do in defining stories for clients at CRP, and secondly, it makes for an interesting debate. So, in light of the seemingly universal nature of greatness these days – please, enter, ‘Who is Great’ into Google Images and you get everybody from US soccer player, Oguchi Onyewu, to BB King and Harry Potter – I urge us to return the notion of what it means to be great, back to Dorris’ Himalayan heights. It can, rest assured, only serve us well.

Sport is the lightning rod of greatness, or that’s how media commentators would have us believe it. There is not a week that goes by without us being witness to apparent greatness, whether it’s behind the wheel, or in front of goal. Sportsmen and women are capable of great achievements, but that’s a big difference – it’s not greatness. The challenges they face are rarely insurmountable – the competitors are both familiar and finite; that is, you usually know the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents and there aren’t too many of them.

If there’s one individual that’s polarised the debate recently, that would be Tiger Woods. The golfer’s on-course achievements cannot be contested, but his personal challenges did much in the eyes of many to undermine any claims to the label of great. Greatness can only be earnt both on and off the course it would appear. However, if Woods’ career is to be framed against Dorris’ criteria, has he not already achieved greatness? Specifically, here was a young man of African American descent who opened up one of the most racially exclusive games to a generation of young, non-white players. Anyway, they are my thoughts – what are yours?