Is Your Leader Being Constrained By Legacy Culture?

Does the leader drive the business, or the business drive the leader?

It is not difficult to find stories of the challenges many leaders face starting out in their first leadership role. For most the reality is somewhat different from the expectation. This is largely due to new leaders underestimating how much effort it takes to get buy in to their ideas and the organizational legacy acting as a solid barrier to introducing new ways of working to meet new market demands.

Many industries have undergone quite dramatic transformations over the past ten years. In particular, more conservative incumbents in the utilities, financial and insurance industries have found the pressure to become more agile, with more expansive and innovative product lines, has demanded a complete change in leadership and culture.

It is not uncommon for new leaders to be sourced from the FMCG industry with the hope they will invigorate these traditionally slower moving, and with more conservative enterprises. Yet the very skills the business sought in the leader are shut down through the legacy culture and operational policies that have been entrenched into the business for decades.

In addition, the new leaders performance is often still measured on models more relevant to the old business than the desired future business. This also happens within the enterprise walls, as managers of innovation are measured using the same performance criteria as managers in more traditional functions. It is no secret that ‘what gets measured gets done’. So if you measure a leader using metrics inappropriate to desired future state behaviour, don’t be surprised when that behaviour doesn’t prevail.

One of the great benefits of business intelligence is that it provides total performance transparency throughout the organization and allows for micro-segmentation of performance cultures. This allows each function to find the most appropriate performance culture that allows them to meet their contribution targets. As long as the final outcome meets the strategic objectives, it shouldn’t matter how each functional unit determines how best to meet their goals. As individuals engage with personal productivity dashboards they have a greater sense of ownership and accountability to delivering to both personal and team targets. Managers can no longer protect their patch by holding back super performers and laggers are no longer shielded by team contribution metrics. Whilst this culture typically starts at the bottom of the hierarchy, it soon moves up through the management levels. Unless this performance personalization culture is supported throughout the organization at some point the innovation and energy started at the individual level will hit the concrete ceiling of conservative protectionism. There is no need for all managers, even at senior levels to have their performance measured using identical metrics. This is particularly so with those areas of the business tasked with innovative product development or new market penetration. Whilst this may seem obvious, it is amazing how often outdated performance models are employed. When this happens, the traditional business culture starts leading the business, and prevents the leaders from doing their jobs, no matter what their experience or skill.

Is your leader being supported by the best performance management model to meet your future needs, or are they being constrained behind outmoded legacy barriers?