Fortunes change

Oscar Wendel.

The question when any high-profile CEO steps down is to what extent he is responsible for the company’s performance.

How much influence can one person wield over a massive organisation to come up with products that offer a greater appeal than its competitors? More importantly, if he is no longer the best-suited individual to lead the company, to what extent is it possible to expect a new CEO to change the company’s fortunes, and why?

A challenge faced by many large corporations today is the allure of fostering a leadership cult whereby the CEO is seen as an infallible individual.

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The company he leads and the people around seem to be there primarily to further enforce the image of amazing qualities and to give heed to his insight.

In the last couple of weeks we have seen major news from the corporate heavyweights in technology. The CEOs of both RIM, the company behind the BlackBerry, as well as Sony, have stepped down following years of disappointing performance, which they are now broadly seen as taking the blame for.

The last weeks have also included the filing of Facebook’s IPO, with founder Mark Zuckerberg hailed due to his godlike abilities to make countless billions magically appear with his genius.

Is it not peculiar that we, as social creatures, tend to massively apportion credit or blame for corporations’ overall performance to individuals?

This is in stark contrast to actually trying to understand the overall context and the complex roles of people and coincidences that explain success or failure. It is rare that there is ever a single individual who determines the fate of a company, much less the course of history.

Appealing as it may be to want a simple narrative that includes a leading character seen as responsible for either success or failure, it makes it difficult for us to learn from both success stories as well as failures.

When you look at Facebook, this was not a unique idea, and largely a variation of established portals at the time. The same goes for Blackberry. But nonetheless, both companies offered products that were more appealing to the market than what their competitors managed.

For the most part, individuals who we perceive as successful leaders and innovators, both in business and politics, have usually been exceptionally gifted with the skill of surrounding themselves with the best people available.

It is often forgotten that the success of an individual and an organisation is usually inextricable from the group of people that joined forces around an idea whose time has come at last.

This is not least seen in the largely unknown but instrumental partners such as Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple, or Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft. A common denominator between Gates and Jobs was in their confidence, which allowed them to circumscribe their lacks and weaknesses through others.

Secondly, as with most things in life, outcomes rarely have much to do with any proactive initiative.

Most will be determined by your action or non-action to events and trends that are entirely beyond any one person’s control. This particularly goes for managing a project or an organisation.

Having an accurate awareness of the potential of available resources and the subsequent ability to maximise these is effectively what management is about. As such, the role of a leader involves using this awareness to orchestrate the ideal circumstances where complementing strengths of individual team members result in the sum being greater than its parts.

The unmistakable sign of a strong leader is revealed in just that: the ability to assemble a team where he goes beyond trying to serve an image cult of being the best and the brightest.

As seen throughout history, and increasingly often this past year, with the many cautionary examples of leaders toppled in the Arab Spring, despotic and self-gratifying leaders tend to have a limited shelf life at the end of the day.

Oscar Wendel is the conference manager for Construction Week.