Leading Responsibly In A World Moving Through Crisis

What do an award-winning choreographer, the Chairman of a leading retailer, and a Director of the Football Association (FA) have in common when it comes to advising on leadership? Well, quite a lot actually. That’s why Imperial College Business School invited senior level executives and business professionals across each of these industries to come together and share their perspectives at our recent Annual Conference.

The theme of this year’s conference was “Leading Responsibly in a World Moving Through Crisis”. It’s a topic that could not be more appropriate given the events of the past 15 months as the coronavirus has singlehandedly reshaped everything that makes up our day-to-day lives. And in a world already feeling the effects of climate change and being redefined by civic action movements such as Black Lives Matter. Our conference set the stage to address the common thread that ties each of these issues together: Responsibility. By bringing each of these, and other voices together our conference sought to help redefine how we, as professionals and business leaders, are to positively change the world around us.

And what we witnessed was a remarkable convergence amongst those who occupy the very top seats across a range of organizations and sectors when it comes to thinking about responsibility.

It helps, of course, that the idea of pursuing an ESG agenda is increasingly recognized by many as being good business. For example, during her address at our conference, Dame Vivian Hunt, a Senior Partner at McKinsey noted that in 2020 most funds with an ESG focus outperformed the S&P 500. But the drive to be more socially-conscious in thinking and acting goes beyond profit and performance. Quite simply, it is becoming essential for any organization looking to operate beyond the next ten years to pay greater attention to how their activities might impact the world around them. CEOs, consultants, team leaders, investors, directors, and others holding influence are converging to define what the future of a responsible business needs to be.

Despite each panellist having a wholly different day-to-day experience of what it takes to lead, their values, vision and understanding of what is needed for the future were revealed to be quite convergent.

So, what are these common traits?

Defining short-term and long-term goals

An increasing number of governments and organisations are proudly marking their calendars with far-off dates by which they have pledged to achieve important societal goals, such as a carbon-neutral status, but we need to recognise that such accomplishments will only be possible if we start substantive and sometimes challenging work towards them now.

Learning to work more sustainably and responsibly requires both a short and long-term focus – setting smaller yet more immediate goals alongside far-off targets will help encourage progress. During the conference, Sir Andrew Witty, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group – and an individual who has played a significant role in tackling the coronavirus pandemic as a co-lead for the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 vaccine program – spoke passionately about the importance of pragmatism when looking to achieve something, particularly during times of uncertainty. He made an important point – things change; unforeseen issues arise. So, while it’s crucial that, as leaders, we make ambitious long-term goals, we must also realize the inevitably of flux, which makes defining and achieving short-term goals all the more important.

And in a world that’s ever-changing, when the facts set out on day one are no longer accurate even three months later, ensuring that you have the right information to hand – the facts and figures that’ll guide your decisions – is paramount. Sir Andrew’s co-panellist, Neil Ferguson, a Professor of Mathematical Biology at Imperial College London and an individual that, much like Sir Andrew, has played a pivotal role in shaping the UK’s response to COVID-19, knows the importance of this all too well. In his advisory role to the UK government throughout the pandemic, Professor Ferguson has routinely had to make sense of an overwhelming amount of data. It’s during these moments, he says, that being able to prioritize and filter through the information overload to find “the signal from the noise”, is critical to informing the best decisions. The ability to effectively ascertain what’s critical at the moment in time and what’s not, is the prime measure, he says, of a responsible leader.

The events of the past year have proven to be a key motivator for many in understanding exactly what might be possible when demands for immediate change are heard and acted on. It’s not just the urgency with which the world needed to react in order to counter the spread of the coronavirus, but also the response to the Black Lives Matter movement – both of which in their own ways called for swift and wide-reaching changes into the way we run our societies. They have shown how we need both small and large immediate changes to truly begin making a difference.

And, if we have learned anything from our conference panellists, it’s that change needs to happen now.

Measuring Gaps and ascertaining unknowns

It is all well and good talking about purpose, but it’s pointless if we have no way of measuring whether our actions are having an impact. Our conference revealed that, whilst a common vision for change exists across multiple industries, there is a lot of work to do on the details. In particular, we need to be able to devise company, industry and society-wide metrics that will allow us to learn how effective our efforts have been, assess our progress and, most importantly, record where and how we may be failing. Establishing such measurements must become a key focus for how we move forward.

As Dame Vivian put it during her keynote address, “what gets measured gets managed.” Invoking that age-old saying, McKinsey’s Senior Partner reiterated both the importance and applicability of performance indicators and metrics to goals that go beyond mere financial targets. Naveed Sultan, the Chairman of the Institutional Clients Group at Citi, took a similar view, commenting that, leaders must focus their efforts on targets around themes such as purpose, engagement, fairness and inclusivity, as well as boosting business capabilities.

However, a difficulty remains in the fact that, for many industries, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding exactly how they can implement responsible, sustainable efforts and a lack of understanding of the actual impact they can hope to have by doing so. The problem is not that we don’t know what the end goal is, it’s that we don’t necessarily know how to achieve it.

That means that any effective measurement efforts must start with ascertaining and characterizing such unknowns, including developing taxonomies, ontologies and other tools which will become part of the unflinching steps we take in monitoring our progress and our failings.

Academia as a broker of change

Academia will play a pivotal role here, in several ways. Through research, entrepreneurial efforts and industry projects and partnerships, universities are at the forefront of identifying the gaps and developing solutions to some of society’s thorniest challenges. Imperial is a leading example of such efforts, not only on the response to the pandemic, but in areas as diverse as developing new batteries, inventing environmentally friendly packaging, or creating low-cost health solutions for developing economies.

With such positioning, it is easy to see how academia can also play a key role in developing, testing and reflecting on industry or society-wide metrics. Deciding how these metrics might work and how they must evolve will require an impartial third-party at the helm to review, experiment and reassess with regularity. This is a responsibility that academia is uniquely positioned to take on, with business schools in particular playing a key role.

Business schools, by their very nature, are the institutions in which business practice, society and academia converge. My own institution, Imperial College Business School has defined its position to be at the nexus of such convergence, connecting and leveraging the strengths of a leading technical university with the needs and aspirations of both business and society.

Dedicated research centres such as the Leonardo Centre on Business for Society, the Centre for Climate Finance & Investment, or the Gandhi Centre for Inclusive Innovation, are exploring the many various issues of inclusive and sustainable forms of enterprise, benefiting from the expertise across the academic departments of the school, as well as the strengths of the broader institution.

In the newly launched Centre for Responsible Leadership, academics are specifically charged with researching the ways in which our leadership attitudes must evolve to keep up with the pace of change and provide fresh perspectives for business leaders to consider in their pursuit of more responsible businesses and organizations.

Effective change needs to be effectively critiqued. This is a key role that academia can provide whilst avoiding the self-congratulation that can occur when organisations are responsible to measuring their own successes.

Responsible Leadership is Effective Leadership

Goals, plans and metrics, as well as resources and solutions are key ingredients, but are ineffective unless they are enacted with swift, decisive leadership. As Dame Vivian noted “in an era of flux—which is all the time—leaders must also adapt to change. That sounds painfully obvious. But let’s face it, stating that you want to embrace change and actually making changes are two very different things. COVID has brought more change to the global workplace than any event in my lifetime: how many of us were really ready for it?”

We can find many examples of how ineffective leadership can stifle progress, even with all the ingredients supposedly in in place, in less thorny challenges. A case in point is the fall of Kodak –an industry leader in analogue photography that soon found itself on the back foot when digital technologies were developed. For Kodak, the problem was not that it did not understand the technology or did not possess the skills and knowledge to implement it, the company simply lacked the decisive leadership needed to drive the switchover from traditional photography to digital swiftly enough. As a result, quicker-acting competitors were able to take the lead, pushing Kodak – once an industry leader – into obscurity.

There are two dimensions to effective leadership; a moral role – needed in order to help create a more just society with a sound social contract to help set the tone for the next generation of business leaders to follow, and an actionable role – needed to bring the organization along and successfully implement the change program. In combining both we can ensure that leadership will bring change.

As the heads of Kodak found out, to their disadvantage, leaders must be prepared to take risks and put themselves against the current to enact change. As we set ourselves to revolutionise the way we use and treat the planet and our societies, we need leaders who can be courageous and relentless in the pursuit of change, as well as determined and resourceful to see an impact.

The way we drive change is also evolving. Gone are the days where the leader’s voice dominates an organisation’s way of working. Today’s leaders must take a blended approach, prioritising empathy and engagement over power and status to encourage their staff to work as a collective towards a greater good, rather than barking orders from the top down.

During his keynote speech at the conference, John Allan, Chairman of Tesco and Vice President of the Confederation of British Industry, stressed the importance of responsible leadership, not simply because of the “moral imperative” to do what’s right, but as a necessity if businesses are to continue to attract the best talent, many of whom he noted are more socially aware than ever before.

It’s true, workforces today demand more from their employers in terms of delivering on societal goals, so it’s key that leaders are able to meet these expectations. The same can be said for the responsibility of meeting the demands of the broader community.

Talking about his own experiences as Chairman of one of the UK’s largest supermarkets, Allan noted that amid the first wave of COVID restrictions Tesco changed “more in four weeks than in the previous 10 years.” The supermarket chain dramatically scaled up its online delivery service, doubling capacity to meet soaring demand. Crucially, Tesco also worked with local governments to ensure that those most vulnerable in society were well looked after and able to shop safely. By putting customers and wider community first this decision, as described by Allan, from one of the UK’s major providers of day-to-day goods, offers us a real-life illustration of the kind of responsible, socially aware behaviour that we need to see from all leaders in all industries going forward.

Here too is where business schools can make a vital impact. Such an educational environment builds both the mindset as well as key skills for effective and responsible leadership.

For those who decide to study at these institutions under academically-minded free thinkers, they are gifted the opportunity to broaden their perspectives, collaborate with classmates and discover new approaches to their professional responsibilities. They develop an attitude to be ever curious and never stop questioning the world around them.

If our Annual Conference taught us anything, it’s that we can no longer sit back and wait for others to fix our most challenging problems. Thankfully, the language of business is universal and, perhaps for the first time perhaps in our history, it seems we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet.

This article was authored by Professor Francisco Veloso, Dean of Imperial College Business School.