Last October I was invited to be one of the facilitators at a British Council-sponsored induction workshop for the newly appointed vice-chancellors (VCs) and principals of public universities, and recently I was invited to play a similar role at a leadership training workshop for all the VCs and principals of the public universities. My topic in October was ‘Transformative Leadership and Integrity’, and this time round I was asked to talk about ‘Strategies for Enhancing Organisational Culture’, with Equity Bank’s James Mwangi handling my earlier topic.

The theme of the October workshop was ‘Developing Visionary and Effective University Leaders’, while the more recent one being on ‘Developing Strategic, Focused and Results-Oriented University Leaders’.

On each occasion, for several days the VCs were exposed to facilitators from various sectors. The participants interacted with each other and the facilitators and reflected on how to follow up on what they had learned while together.

Impressively too, there’s a Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, a forum for consultation, coordination and cooperation, and it was this committee that organised the two workshops. It is chaired by Daniel Mugendi, the VC of the University of Embu, and the coordinator of the programme was Peninah Aloo-Obudho, the VC of Maasai Mara University.

Where else do we see such organised collaboration between the CEOs of institutions in a particular domain – whether in the public sector or elsewhere? Kudos to the Vice-Chancellors, and also to the Ministry of Education, its Higher Education and Research department, the British Council and the quartet of sponsoring banks, namely KCB, Equity, Co-Operative Bank and NCBA.

It was bold of them to include my topic of culture strengthening, as many leaders – I might even say most – and in whichever sector, while having an adequate sense of their current culture and being able to put together a statement of their aspirational one, have little or no idea as to how to transition from one to the other.

Indeed, as I spelt out in my presentation (and as was the topic of my last column), they might not even have a proper idea of the actual culture, being overwhelmed by “The Iceberg of Ignorance”.

So my contribution was to give the vice-chancellors some ideas about how to dissolve the iceberg and get their various stakeholders to open up and talk freely about the extent to which they are living their values and what they need to do more of and less of to live them more fully.

Universities are complex institutions, with multiple internal and external stakeholders, each with their own expectations of how to behave and how to interact. So how to bring them together to unify around the visions and values of their university? How to align the council with the senior faculty and other management? How to align the back-office functions with the outward-facing ones? How to make the academic and non-academic trade unions and the student unions partners rather than adversaries? And that’s just internal stakeholders.

I described ways of negotiating win-win outcomes, with each stakeholder willing to indulge in give-and-take dialogue. This requires time and mediation skills to bring everyone closer together so that energy is not wasted in unproductive stalemates and conflicts.

I wish the Vice-Chancellors well as they go back to apply what they had learned in the forums.

Back to my opening thoughts, where I praised this coming together of CEOs. Too often our training institutions stop short of inviting the top leadership to such gatherings, only reaching the upper-middle levels, and not least in the public sector – although the Kenya School of Government is now reaching further upwards.

Read: The must-have tool for modern business leaders

At the top level we know that some actually worry about exposing themselves to colleagues for fear of their shortcomings being revealed. And, the know-it-alls merely look down the organisational pyramid to see whom they should send for training.

But there’s no one too senior to learn, up to and including Cabinet Secretaries and the President. For those at such levels, one-on-one coaching is ideal, complementing group learning. And for the VCs and other CEOs, coaching should also be considered.

We hear a lot about the ‘Iceberg of Ignorance’, where those at the top of the organisational pyramid have little idea about what’s really going on among their staff at the lower levels —about how they feel and how they behave with each other as a result of how engaged they are.

It’s why the programme Undercover Boss was created, where CEOs disguise themselves and pretend to be taking on trainee positions in different parts of their companies so they can get a feel for the real situation on the ground. They then return to their corner offices and fix what otherwise they wouldn’t have known needed fixing.

Among my consulting assignments, I have worked with organisations where the CEOs were indeed aware that there were issues within their icebergs. Recent changes had resulted in staff leaving and new ones arriving, including at the leadership level, and some of what the new leadership had introduced had led to a certain amount of holding back, among at least some of the staff.

So we were brought in to create a safe space within which the staff would feel free to open up and reveal what they would like to see more of and less of while accepting that they too would need to adapt in certain ways.

At this early stage, such thoughtful souls at the peak of organisations who realise their places can do with some opening up may share more with us consultants than with their own people, as they want the change to emerge more naturally, more from the bottom up and not driven by them.

They will hint at what they would like to see but not lay their thoughts out too explicitly, focusing on initiating the retreat at which staff will hopefully interact freely with one another and with them, facilitated by us.

We start such events by getting the participants to feel relaxed, including through enjoyable outdoor activities. For it is this that will see them open up, contributing what they are really feeling rather than just what they think others—not least their superiors—would like to hear. Our challenge as facilitators is to help them now articulate what they had not felt comfortable doing back in the workplace, for fear that it would not be taken positively.

It does not happen instantly, by magic, but gradually, as the zone of psychological safety expands. If it’s a two-day event so much the better, as this offers more time for the melting of timidity. We nudge, we tickle, we nurture, in larger and smaller groups and at the individual level, encouraging the participants to reveal what they had been holding back.

Some relax sooner and more than others, and they then influence their tighter colleagues to also open up.

For us it’s a joy to see the iceberg melting and to feel good for the leadership that what they wanted to have revealed and tackled is emerging. Very importantly, this can only be the launch of a journey, and let no one imagine that at the end of a couple of days of interacting, however effectively, one can put a tick in the culture-change box.

For sure this can only act as the launch of a journey, and before the end of the event the way ahead must be fully defined and owned: the overarching purpose above all, and the who-must-do-what-by-when. Then the momentum must be maintained, which too often it is not. It’s so easy, as people “get busy” on returning to their workplaces, and for whatever impact was made at the retreat to fade.

Certainly at the top, but by no means just at the top, people must hold each other accountable for following through on the consequences of the retreat, celebrating when this happens and drawing attention to when what had been agreed would stop happening re-emerges as the default position.

The progress along the change management journey must be tracked as a standing agenda item at management—and also board—meetings, and after around 90 days there should be a regathering of the participants to review what’s worked well, where challenges still exist and how to tackle them.

I hope I have made you adequately anxious about the iceberg of ignorance, and stimulated you put on your deep diving kit so as to explore what you didn’t know that you didn’t know.

We all have tales about feeling frustrated as unhappy customers, and the question for me is how to go beyond whining and moaning – and then defecting to another vendor – to offering advice to the offending supplier so they can restore our confidence and fix the issue. Hopefully not just on a one-off basis for us, but systemically. Sometimes the issue has to do with the attitude and behaviour of the people, sometimes it’s a policy problem, and just as frequently it’s a systems one.

I’ve written before about good and bad experiences of mine, and here today are some more stories, the first of which I was told about by a friend who, knowing I write on this topic, cried on my shoulder about his miserable experience at a coast hotel. Like me, he also consults on customer-friendliness, and that makes us the more frustrated when we are not treated well, knowing how much better things could be – for the benefit of both parties.

The hotel in question is one where he’d been staying several times a year for over 25 years with his family, from when he was a young child. On the last day of each stay his father would book and pay for their next one, reserving the same rooms. He would always be offered a very generous discount as an appreciation for his long-term loyalty… until this year when the family stayed at the hotel without their father, who had recently passed away. They came to honour his legacy and to bring back the many good memories of their times together here.

This time the attitude of the management had transformed from displaying warm and generous hospitality to being mean and unresponsive. When my friend was offered but a notional discount as he went to pay the bill he asked to see the General Manager (GM), certain that at least some of the earlier generosity would be restored.

But the GM proved to be cold and tense, clearly not interested in the decades-long history of the family’s connection with this hotel, and defensive about the meanness, which he justified thanks to the economic hard times.

Reluctantly he offered a small further discount, but for only some of the days, leaving my friend feeling he’d never want to go there again. Never mind that he’s been sharing his tale of woe with me and so many others since then. As he had been with the top person at the hotel there was no one further to whom to escalate, so that was it – a sad lose-lose ending to the story.

My second tale of woe has to do with DStv, who out of the blue sent me a mail confirming that my password had been successfully changed. I replied, stating I hadn’t sought a change, and another mail came immediately, seeking my personal details so they could deal with my case. I sent these, only to receive yet another one asking for further information, including about the country of registration of my decoder. “Why not with the first mail?” I asked, expressing my frustration. A third mail arrived, informing me that as my decoder is registered in Kenya they can’t deal with it from South Africa, so I must get in touch with Multichoice here, whose contacts they provided.

I called them, and after pressing the right buttons on my phone, to confirm I wanted to speak in English, had “other” queries to pursue etc., a friendly agent listened empathetically to my case. I told her, as I do to such front-line operatives, that I was talking “through” and not “to” her, requesting that she refer my complaints upwards, which she promised to do. Let’s see.

This is the problem with so many automated customer-response systems – like the NTSA one whose portal I accessed to obtain my new car registration number plate, when it informed me that my effort had failed, without explaining why. Again, fortunately when I called them a very friendly agent helped me.

Online banking systems are in my (and others’) experience often the most complex and challenging to manoeuvre through, leading me to wonder if the staff of these – and other – organisations ever go through the experiences we do. It’s why in an earlier article I wrote about coaching the radiologist who was so disconnected from my discomfort while lying on his MRI that he should spend a similar time there understanding why patients find it hard to remain still for so long.

My conclusion is to encourage you to go beyond being the disgruntled customer to becoming the helpful consultant, sharing your bad experience and also suggesting how things could improve – as I did with Multichoice, with NTSA, with my bank and with others. As for my friend’s hotel, you know who you are!

In my life these days the issue of having to say “No” is raising its head in many different contexts. The most recent one came about as I was interacting with the general manager of a company’s service department, where we got talking about how to deal with customers who are so difficult, so unreasonable, that one considers no longer doing business with them. Indeed, on just the previous day he and a colleague were handling just such a case.

The problem was that they were unable to meet the customer’s expectations. But not because of under-performance. Rather because for some strange reason he completely refused to take any advice from them.

As a result, they reckoned the work that would be required to keep that customer happy would by far outweigh the level of business already received or expected, never mind the profitability of such business.

Fortunately, the customer had only acquired a relatively small item and was unlikely to ever become a major buyer. So the risk of losing him was not so great. Sure, he might well never return for future purchases, and also talk ill of this supplier and of the break-up that separated him from them. But the cost of holding on to him seemed likely to far outweigh the downside risks.

The decision of a supplier to part ways with a customer is never easy. Never mind if the customer is a major one and has been with you for a long time. One can live in the hope that the relationship will improve, perhaps that the unreasonable player or players there will give way to more reasonable ones.

One can also justify holding on to unprofitable and unsatisfying clients by considering them as “strategic investments”, prudent to hold on to for other than pure commercial reasons. But sometimes it must come to divorce.

My service manager friend asked me if I had ever had to tell a customer I no longer wanted to do business with them. As I thought about it my mind immediately turned to a different, admittedly much easier to answer, question: what kind of customer would I not wish to do business with in the first place?

Such a question was very important in my days of selling high-end IT solutions. For if the prospect looked like they lacked the competence to see the project through, the blame for its at-best delayed implementation and at worst its failure to take off at all would too easily and most likely be displaced onto us.

Indeed it was this kind of behaviour that led me to coin “Eldon’s Law”, which states: “The more incompetent the user, the more they blame the supplier.”

In my exceptionless experience, however, incompetent or uncommitted the user may be in handling the inevitable disruption that installing transformative IT systems involves, they certainly do not lack the savvy to know how to pass the buck.

As I have shared Eldon’s Law with others who deliver large complex solutions, whether in IT or any other field, no one has ever seen it be disproved.

The question is how to identify such potential clients. One criterion is the way the terms of reference are expressed, and what opportunities exist for supplier and customer to align as responsible partners, each playing their role as they should.

Then, how does the prospect come across in seeking the best value for money as opposed to simply looking for the lowest cost option? No need to spell that one out, right? We also don’t need to delve into the specifics of prospects whose main objective is to benefit personally from any transaction.

Whether one is dealing with an awkward prospect or an existing client, my best advice is that there should be discussions between colleagues in the vendor organisation, as there was in the case I mentioned.

So pessimists can engage with optimists, risk-takers with risk-avoiders, for them together to ultimately toss the coin as to whether to say “No” or not.

Another prudent move is to escalate to higher levels in the organisation, to those with more experience, and more scars from previous wounds, who can look down from their balconies and advise. If appropriate also intervene at higher levels in the prospect or client hierarchy, to nurture a more win-win approach to the relationship.

In conclusion, don’t rush to say “No” prematurely, but accept that sometimes it’s the least bad way forward.

I was in London for a few days in December, and there I came across an article on corruption in the Sunday Times by Matthew Syed—a management consultant like me—about how it works in western liberal democracies. He reckons the cancer of corruption has been growing there for decades, resulting in such consequences as the stagnation in their economies, the rise in inequality, and the collapse of trust in government.

He accepts that some may challenge his diagnosis of the underlying disease, pointing to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) where Western nations continue to score favourably. But while the US, the UK and the EU countries tend not to engage in the kind of “transactional” corruption measured by the TI survey, what is seen in the West is a different kind of decay, subtler and more insidious.

He mentions the significant number of politicians who pass through the revolving door and earn huge sums of money from companies over which they once had oversight; notes how political parties are funded by an even smaller number of mega-donors; and observes that those who chair public committees and tribunals know that their elevation to the peerage is in the gift of those over whom they sit in judgement.

So it’s not about straightforward bribes. Rather “it is a covert edifice of nods, winks and reciprocal obligations that has created a parallel system of political power”. Thinkers over the ages like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek have noted that corporations are not seeking to act in the public interest but “to protect themselves from the cleansing power of open competition by advocating sweetheart regulations, covert subsidies and other barriers to entry from insurgent rivals”.

Syed also quotes Luigi Zingales, who noted that “the best way to make lots of money is not to come up with brilliant ideas but to cultivate a government ally”. The consequence of such activity today is that dominant companies are staying ever longer in the main indices, and start-up rates are dwindling on both sides of the Atlantic.

Syed then quotes Matt Ridley, who saw that of Europe’s 100 most valuable companies, none was formed in the past 40 years. “Free markets have been replaced with rigged markets,” concludes Syed, “capitalism with a cronyish impostor.”

How extraordinary. In among all one reads about the contemporary trend of corporate social responsibility and about how we are becoming much more sensitive to the environment, to social issues and to good governance, here’s a contrary view, a really gloomy one.

As interesting as Syed’s observation of “corruption’s revolving door” are his proposals for how to seal that door before it is too late. His first one is to impose a ban of at least five years on ministers and regulators working for companies over which they had had oversight.

Meanwhile, he would significantly increase the salaries of ministers, which he accepts would be an extremely unpopular move. His logic is that higher-quality candidates would be attracted to such positions, and that they would be happy just serving the public interest rather than using their jobs in the subsequent service of corporate clients from whom the real money would be earned after leaving office.

One more suggestion, hard to imagine how it could work even in the environment Syed was writing about: a voucher system for funding political parties, where each person would have, say, £50 to contribute to the party or the candidate of their choice, encouraging parties to engage much more widely with voters. Alongside this, a cap on private donations. Without such remedies, Syed is convinced, the body politic risks being fatally harmed by the corruption cancer within.

As I read the article, I first wondered how mainstream Syed’s views are, and to what extent his suggested remedies are being considered. But mainly I thought about how what he spelt out relates to what happens here. Our position on Transparency International’s CPI is low, as we are expert at indulging in what Syed describes as “officials asking for bungs; ministers giving jobs to nieces and nephews; politicians siphoning off funds from state coffers to Swiss bank accounts”, the kind of corruption that has eased off in the West.

For sure here, “knowing people” so as to have allies in government is as important as anywhere; and offering soft-landing jobs to former politicians and senior government officials is commonplace.

It’s all relative, isn’t it though? While we are worse off than many, we are still not as bad as plenty of others. The struggle continues, here and elsewhere.

A while ago I read an article about boards and voting by Roger Hitchcock, a senior partner at the Sirdar Global Group which guides boards to become more effective. I met Roger when I was a participant in his Sirdar Applied Directorship Programme some years ago, and as always in this article he was full of common sense, leading me to completely agree with his line of thinking.

While board voting can serve as a mechanism to resolve conflicts and make decisions, he writes, it should be approached cautiously and used as a last resort. This, I may add, applies equally to all kinds of organisations.

The reasons board voting should be the last resort are fairly obvious. By its nature, suggests Roger, it pits directors against each other, potentially leading to divisions within the board.

An “us-and-them” mentality can undermine the overall cohesion and effectiveness of the board, hindering its ability to function as a united entity. Indeed where I am a board chairman I work hard to avoid situations where there are winners and losers — even without that ultimate victory— and defeat outcome that results from voting.

Beyond sustaining cohesiveness among directors, avoiding contentious voting lessens the likelihood of straining relationships between board members, which would create a negative atmosphere within and beyond the boardroom.

This can have long-term implications for collaboration, trust and open dialogue, all crucial for effective board governance.

But it’s not just the soft relationship issues. Avoiding voting improves the quality of decision-making, asserts Roger. When a vote becomes necessary, it signifies a failure to reach a consensus through open dialogue and deliberation.

In such cases, the decision made may not be the result of a thorough exploration of all perspectives and alternatives, comprehensive analyses, and robust debate with the best interests of the company. Yes, voting offers a speedy approach to decision-making, but the lack of these key elements too often leads to sub-optimal outcomes.

So, Roger insists, we can avoid the need for voting by allowing for robust discussion and debate. Encouraging open and constructive discussion among board members is vital, I have seen in my many years as a director and chairman, going back to the late seventies.

By fostering an environment that values diverse perspectives, the board is relaxed and open enough to explore alternative viewpoints, identify common ground, and uncover innovative solutions without having to resort to voting.

This approach involves finding agreement among board members through compromise and negotiation and ensures that decisions that are in the best interests of the organisation are made with support from all board members.

This cannot be accomplished merely within board meetings, I have found. Where I am the chairman I frequently engage with individual directors prior to the formal board meeting to seek the spread of views and build towards consensus. Some may call this manipulation, but given that it is always pursued in the best interests of the organisation I do not hesitate to invest time in such activity.

Boards should establish clear decision-making processes, recommends Roger, like designing appropriate reports and dashboards, or using the normal board committees or temporary task forces to thoroughly analyse and vet proposals and come up with recommendations.

These processes and structures enable boards to engage in deep discussions, gather relevant information, and seek input from subject-matter experts before bringing issues to the boardroom.

Roger identifies a further benefit of boards consistently seeking consensus and making decisions based on that togetherness, which is that it leads to stakeholders gaining confidence in the board’s ability to navigate complex challenges, thereby enhancing the company’s reputation and its stakeholder relationships.

So, seeking consensus fosters a culture of collaboration and teamwork among board members. It promotes shared ownership of decisions, leading to a more cohesive board and stronger boardroom dynamics. Consensus-based decisions tend to be more comprehensive and well-rounded. All those in favour, please vote “Aye”.

This is my last article of the year (my 440th ), so I wish you a happy and relaxing time in the coming days and look forward to re-engaging with you in January.

At the beginning of this month, Strathmore University Business School held its Executive Education graduation ceremony, and I was invited to be their keynote speaker. It was a wonderful occasion, where more than 300 of the nearly 2,500 participants in the executive programmes that had been running this year were receiving their certificates, with many others online.

After an exhilarating rendering of the National Anthem led by the Spellcast group, the School’s Executive Dean Caesar Mwangi addressed the gathering, telling those present that while they were graduating at a time of unprecedented challenges, Strathmore expected that they would find ways to contribute significantly to shaping a sustainable and prosperous Africa.

The theme of the day was “Developing Sustainable Businesses for Africa”, and this was re-emphasised by the next speaker, Vice Chancellor Vincent Ogutu, who talked about the university’s mission of developing ethical and transformational leaders.

He then introduced the Chief Guest, yours truly.

In their remarks, both had referred to how they have known me since they were students at the University of Nairobi when I had engaged with them through my involvement with AIESEC, the international association for students in economics and commerce (now broadened to include other disciplines).

As a result of their informal tone, I felt at ease to open by stating “No protocols observed,” before greeting “Vincent” and “Caesar”. I am a protocolophobic fellow and enjoyed the friendly atmosphere that encouraged me to indulge my preferred relaxed style.

In my talk, I referred to my early life experiences with a variety of cultures that formed me as a citizen of the world and prepared me for my life here in Kenya, where I launched my management career in the late ’70s.

This is when I began nurturing Adult-Adult, I’m OK-You’re OK, Win-Win relationships among my staff and others, and which I have been promoting ever since.

Strathmore’s broader theme for the year is “Caring for our common home”, derived from Pope Francis’s appeal. I shared examples of how this is being applied in Kenya, through such organisations as Kepsa and its member organisations, as it engages with the government to care for Kenya.

Those involved in such initiatives, which include some who are members of the UN’s Global Compact and of The Blue Company, plus others who indulge in personal social responsibility through volunteer clubs like Rotary and Lions, take the longer-term view.

They are up for gratification deferral, in support of sustainable futures.

I also talked about Charles Handy, who was a colleague of my father’s at Shell and later became a global management guru. He founded the Sloan Master’s Programme at the London Business School – from which, as it happens, I graduated in 1974, as part of its sixth cohort.

I later got to know Charles Handy myself, and to learn from him personally, I revealed.

I mentioned that in his 1989 book, The Age of Unreason, he summed up the emerging trend in Western workplaces as: “½ X 2 X 3”, seeing that companies were tending to employ half the number of people they used to and expecting twice the output from them, in exchange for which they were being paid three times as much.

In the ’80s we were already seeing the transformative inter-related effects of globalisation, liberalisation and technology… with its consequences being the need for educated and mobile knowledge workers.

But no one had described the brave new world of “survival of the fittest” as succinctly as Handy, who worried before many that so many people (the other “½”) would be woefully unfit to meet the needs associated with more and more of the world’s modern-day jobs.

I added that in a 2019 article in the London Business School Review, about which I wrote a piece in this column, Handy advocated a form of learning at business schools that was “experience understood in tranquility”, and I assumed it was like this for them.

I urged the graduates to be active in caring for our common home through the kinds of organisations I had mentioned, so as to help build a critical mass of leaders with high values, able to influence the direction in which our country will head.

Speech by Mike Eldon at the Strathmore University Business School Annual Executive Education Programmes Graduation on 1st December 2023

Click here to download the full speach (PDF, new window)

A while ago, I facilitated a session with the board of a major Kenyan organisation, where I had them reflect on what they were proud of as a board and as individuals, and what additional aspects they wished to be proud of later.

The team is undergoing a review of its culture so as to take it to the next level, and as the directors reflected on the initiative they felt they could and should be more involved.

This is very much the norm at the director level. They are typically far more concerned about the numbers, the financials, which is what led the two Harvard professors, Kaplan and Norton, to come up with their Balanced Scorecard.

Through this framework they had company leaders place equal emphasis on the factors that deliver the numbers: the products and customers; the systems and processes; and the people – the element they described as “learning and growth”.

It is of course the people who define and live the culture, perceived through how they behave, which reflects their attitudes, these being a function of their values.

How many directors feel competent, and hence confident and comfortable dealing with such soft issues? Not many. “Leave it to the HR people,” they may well say, as they return to their easy-to-measure revenues, profits and suchlike.

I have written before in this column that few people at any level possess the expertise needed to enhance a culture.

At best they may find ways of defining the existing one, with all its ups and downs, and of sketching out the aspirational one, with the usual words to describe it: trust and openness, innovation and collaboration….

But as for how to migrate to that better world and overcome present challenges, don’t ask them. Indeed some will tell you it’s a waste of time, as most culture-change programmes fail to make a difference.

Then, as I read what others write on this subject – not least at the national level – too often I again see descriptions of how awful the present culture is or how wonderful living Utopian values would be, calling for a transformation to that ideal world but without in any way guiding us on how to travel along the journey towards it.

Yet while it is true that many culture-change initiatives fall way short of what they were intended to achieve, some do deliver both significant and sustained impact. What differentiates the two?

First, it’s investing time in bringing people together for open conversations that generate what I call “purposeful reflection”, where participants discuss and agree on what they will do more of and less of, start doing, stop doing and continue doing.

This requires the presence of a safe space, or as it is now sometimes described, one of “psychological safety” – which, allow me to state, is more readily created by external facilitators skilled in creating such a space and conducting such activities.

Without going into other critical success factors for culture change, let me jump straight to the need for enthusiastic support from the board.

Everyone must know that at the top level, it is accepted that culture does indeed eat strategy for breakfast – or, as I put it, that there must be a culture strategy component within the overall strategy.

The directors must be part of the strategy development and then participate in the conversations about culture, adding value to them and being role models for the desired culture.

They must also appreciate that changing a culture is much more than a one-off event but a continuous journey, one that requires focus and time, plus the relevant specialised skills and experience among those driving it.

And the performance management system must be such that those who embrace the desired culture are recognised and rewarded – which is why “Change Champions” are often identified as part of the process.

These days it is expected that directors undergo training, and this is now indeed the norm. But beyond programmes that relate to governance issues of oversight, compliance and risk management, how many cover the softer areas of leadership, like culture?

Happily, the organisation that invited me to spend time with their board appreciated this need, and I am confident that their directors will now ensure that matters to do with culture remain firmly on their radar.

I was recently invited by professional advisory firm Ronalds East Africa to be one of the keynote speakers at their training event for Chief Finance Officers (CFOs) and other leaders of the finance function. My session was about advising the participants on how to interact effectively at the board level.

There was quite a spectrum in the room, from senior finance folk who regularly attended board and board committee meetings, to younger, more junior ones. Some of the CFOs were executive directors on their boards, with a regular seat at the top table, while others were only invited to contribute on specific items.

I asked them if they held responsibilities beyond financial management, and one lady told me she was the finance and administration manager – a not uncommon combination. (To me “administration” has always sounded rather old-fashioned and bureaucratic, and I suggested they think of a more contemporary term).

Elsewhere I have seen CFOs also oversee functions such as strategy and performance, risk and compliance, investments, mergers and acquisitions, and ICT. For obvious reasons, those whose portfolios are broadest are the ones most likely to climb further up the managerial ladder, I emphasised.

In my session I asked a series of questions, first about their alignment with the CEO. Did they work together as a close team, with mutual trust and respect? And then about management’s relationship with the board – individually and as a team. “Do you look forward to engaging with your directors, or do you dread the interactions?” I posed, before also asking if the directors looked forward to engaging with them.

Not very positive responses here, accompanied by several statements admitting that they only speak if asked to do so.

So, what holds them back? Why do so many CFOs underperform when they appear in the boardroom? My first point was that too many heads of departments, including CFOs, feel intimidated when in the presence of directors, and these feelings are reflected in their behaviour. It’s why they keep their contributions as short as possible, they don’t project their voice, and avoid eye-contact.

Others, however, are over-confident, perhaps being expert at spouting the numbers, despite lacking either the holistic organisational perspective or communication skills. They are inadequately prepared, not having translated their overcrowded spreadsheets into easy-to-absorb graphics; not having been coached in how to communicate for this level of engagement; and not having been through rehearsals to the meetings.

My next slide asked “Are you just Dr No?” Here I had them probe the extent to which the image they felt they should portray had them play too much of a stern-parent role, exception-reporting on the over-spenders and the under-deliverers… while remaining silent when the numbers looked good. Alongside this, many of their tribe enjoy being the most risk-averse in the room, displaying consistent worst-case pessimism and merely focusing on why any new initiative will not succeed, and in any case is unaffordable.

“Are you just book-balancers, number-crunchers, cost-minimisers?” I asked provocatively. “Or do you also see yourselves as advisers, consultants and coaches to your colleagues – including directors?” And how good were they at managing relationships, I inquired, whether internally with other functions, departments and locations, and between levels; or externally with investors, bankers, auditors and others?

To help them here I delved into my favourite topic of emotional intelligence, explaining how those with high EQ interact in ways that result in win-win outcomes, where everyone feels adequately satisfied and so owns the plans and commit to their implementation.

Whether in their technical financial skills or their non-technical skills of 360-degree relationship building, they need not only to be competent, I stated, but to match that with a healthy mix of confidence and humility, making others feel comfortable when interacting with them.

It is by expanding their comfort zone through developing new and broader skills that their circle of influence would expand. Their constructive, helpful voice will be listened to more, and those around them will see their potential for both higher cross-functional and boardroom responsibilities.