The Other End of the Telescope: How to increase the metabolic rate and success of your business

By Ian Russell

Are you ready to rise to the challenge of increasing the metabolic rate and success of your business?
The Other End of the Telescope is a high speed gallop through the absurdities and challenges of getting things done in large companies, and the inherent contradictions in leadership and organisational behaviours that prevent businesses from realising their potential and achieving greater success .
In this collection of thought provoking essays, Ian Russell draws on more than 25 years' experience of leading and working in large organisations around the world to distil the key themes and challenges confronting big business today .
The book tackles key topics such as organisational cholesterol, the loneliness of leadership, human capital strategy failures, performance destroying head offices and the myths of talent scarcity and the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution, among others. Each essay pairs a deep understanding of the real world and lessons learned the hard way, with powerful and pragmatic insights on how big business can change the way in which it does things.
Contributions from other notable thought leaders Valter Adão, Richard Mulholland, Happy Ntshingila and Rapelang Rabana add unique voices and insights to Ian's vibrant and straightforward views. Together they are exactly what is needed to jolt businesses and their leaders into doing things more successfully and thoughtfully.
The lightness of Ian's style makes this a highly readable book, but it does not dilute the impact of his incisive observations and insights. Passionate, irreverent and challenging, The Other End of the Telescope will make you think deeply about your business and your career, and your role in both.
You'll never think the same way again.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracey McDonald Publishers
• Release date: Mar 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780639955858

Book preview

A View

from the Top: Leadership

This collection of thoughts and insights examines the curious and challenging world of what it means, and what it takes, to be a leader in today’s fast moving, ultra-competitive world.

The challenges, the loneliness, the pitfalls and the opportunities for successful leadership and collaboration are turned over in a unique, quirky and deeply personal way.

Insights, observations and lessons built upon 25 years of both succeeding and making mistakes in almost every industry and continent that I have worked in are laid out here, with some clear views on how to improve the way we lead, work and pull together to deliver awesome results.

Use it or lose it. Your call.

We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone … PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.

ED COLLIGAN, CEO of Palm, in 2006, after getting the news that Apple was developing a phone ...

The Loneliness

of the Long-Distance CEO

CEOs are often seen as a breed apart. Different, difficult, egocentric, cold, aloof ... and often left alone by their organisations to do what they are paid to do: lead, drive change, deliver results. Get stuff done.

But in truth CEOs are not really that different. Whether they got there through hard work, nepotism, luck or utter brilliance, the reality is that they are still people, and arguably the most valuable asset that a business has.

Why, then, do organisations do so little to create and structure support mechanisms for this key asset, to develop a way of enabling the CEO to be even more successful than they may be if they are left alone?

This essay lays out a clear five-point action plan that all organisations, boards and shareholders should read and consider to enable longer-term sustainable success for the CEO they have appointed.

Read it. Use it. Help the CEO be the asset that your business needs.

A very long time ago I used to run competitively. Middle distance, cross-country running through wet, muddy fields, along poorly surfaced roads and country lanes. Nothing too serious – the usual schoolboy stuff.

I loved the solitude and peace that running gave me. The steady rhythmic pounding of your heart, cold (and usually wet) air in your face and hair, and nothing much else to disturb your thoughts. For some people this is probably purgatory, but for me it was a welcome respite from the classroom and the nonsense of algebra.

Whilst at school, and running, I had to study The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe. It’s a tough old book, but there’s a description in there that has stuck with me over the years:

To run, run, run, without knowing why you were running, but on you went through fields you didn’t understand and into woods that made you afraid, over hills without knowing you’d been up and down, and shooting across streams that would have cut the heart out of you had you fallen into them. And the winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck and fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever.

I had cause to recall these words much more recently.

It was the end of a long old day, with the end of a marathon annual budget-setting meeting finally in sight. At the time I was the CEO of a large technology company, turning over around $2 billion, and my then executive committee team were drifting away. We were all tired and probably more than a tad grumpy. Budget meetings are no one’s favourite sessions and, unsurprisingly, people were eager to get home and have a drink.

I was left sitting by myself at the head of an enormous boardroom table in a room with no natural light, random papers scattered over the table. The fading voices of my team in the corridor tailed away, and then it was just me and the lingering smell of stale, cheap coffee left in the room.

I can vividly recall that absolute sense of loneliness. An empty, tired loneliness. And Sillitoe’s words came back to me. It took a while for me to leave that room. We had taken some critical decisions, made some clear investment calls, tried to ensure a balance between revenue growth and costs. All the usual stuff. Nothing particularly unusual, but as the room emptied the silence was palpable, and the sense of responsibility absolute.

I am not the first, and I will certainly not be the last, to have had those feelings of responsibility, loneliness and isolation. You hope you have helped guide the team to make the right decisions, but not with the level of certainty you outwardly project on the wisdom of those business choices. Choices that CEOs make all day, every day. That’s your job. It’s the essence of the role. Make clear cut, balanced calls which best serve the business. It’s just not always that easy or straightforward to know what they are, so CEOs become adept at making a series of trade-offs and judgement calls, all the time supported, counselled and informed by their leadership teams.

An August 2018 Harvard Business Review article entitled ‘The Leader’s Calendar’ by Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria, actually opened with these words:

In the lexicon of management, the CEO is the epitome of leadership. Yet surprisingly little is known about this unique role. While CEOs are the ultimate power in their companies, they face challenges and constraints that few others recognize.

That’s being written in 2018, not 1818, or 1918. In HBR ...! No sh*t, Sherlock.

CEOs are an odd bunch. They hail from many different backgrounds and quarters, with different reasons for making it to the corner office. Talent, luck, hard work, perseverance, nepotism, intellectual horsepower, charisma ... this list is endless. But whilst there may be many ways, means and reasons for becoming the CEO, there is an awful lot more commonality around how it feels when you are there. Well, I think so, but that’s a guess.

You see, one thing that CEOs rarely do is talk about their feelings.

Talking about feelings can create vulnerability, and showing too much vulnerability as a CEO exposes both the individual and the company to a perceived weakness that potential competitors, shareholders and employees are not likely to forget, and are entirely likely to exploit.

CEOs rarely talk about their feelings publicly, which is why the private circle of trust for a CEO becomes critical. That private circle could and should become a place to have insightful, supportive and open, honest dialogues. Somewhere that the CEO isn’t always given a corporately convenient answer from a subordinate trying to ensure they are in the good books, but rather a place where structured challenge, support and feedback can be given.

Until you have worn the shoes, you have no idea what the walk feels like. And that creates an inherent challenge when it comes to thinking about a supportive network that could scaffold and support a CEO.

Although fewer people become prime ministers or presidents than CEOs, nevertheless there is a similar issue. Unless you have been there, you are unlikely to know how it feels. And if you don’t know how it feels, how do you lean in and help?

Indeed, if you stretch the analogy a tad and stay in the world of politics, how many people in a prime minister’s or president’s cabinet are really there to support the leader’s agenda at all? Cabinet members may be there to appease a party faction, there to appeal to a subset of the voters, included because they won’t challenge you, or included potentially to be a successor ... in fact the list of reasons for inclusion could go on for a long time before you got to some positive supporting elements! Groups of people ostensibly there to support the leader are more likely to be there with a totally different agenda.

Now (I hope) it would be disingenuous to suggest that a corporate body, like an executive committee, would be quite so dysfunctional or non-supportive as a political leadership cabal. A CEO usually has much more latitude and decision-making flexibility around who they appoint to leadership roles, and although sometimes compromises will be made, it is rarely in the same realm as professional politicians.

The fact remains, though, that an executive committee, and other similar leadership groups, may be professionally able to support the execution of a strategy agenda and deliver the business results that an organisation is after, their role in playing a more pastoral support role to the CEO is rarely defined and not often seen in action.

So we have a CEO leading and setting direction, hopefully making the right decisions, getting business input and counsel from a leadership team, driving the business forward.

The board will be giving the CEO input on business direction, making investment decisions and holding the CEO accountable for performance. The board has a clearly defined mandate when it comes to a CEO – they are absolutely there to hire and fire them and to ensure clear accountability for business results. Good boards will certainly create some framework of support for a CEO, but there are limits to that support which by definition they are required to observe.

But who is really looking after the boss? Who is leaning in when the pressures get too intense, who offers advice and coaching when a response from the CEO has been too sharp, an off the cuff remark too cutting, some staff discipline issue taken too softly? Where is the support network that works in and around a CEO to ensure that they deliver sustainable, long-term, positive results?

I have no doubt that some leaders have these informal support networks, and I believe many do not. What I find staggering is that with all the time, energy and investment that go into finding, appointing and remunerating a CEO, shareholders do not take a much more material interest in how the CEO is being given the scaffolding that can create success for the business and the shareholders. The direct cost of a CEO to a business can be material, but the indirect cost of a CEO failing to deliver is monumentally greater and more impactful for an enterprise.

Quoting the obvious again from the Porter/Nohria HBR article:

Being the CEO is a highly challenging role, and it is difficult to do it well. The success of CEOs has enormous consequences – good or bad – for employees, customers, communities, wealth creation, and the trajectory of economies and even societies. Being a CEO has gotten harder as the size and scope of the job continue to grow, organizational complexity rises, technology advances, competition increases, and CEO accountability intensifies.

The average tenure of a CEO is 4,9 years which is pretty short in the business life cycle but perhaps quite remarkable in the face of the scale and size of the challenges that a CEO faces all day, every day. This is not a cry for us all to pity the CEO, but rather a call to arms to investors. Surely there should be a much more structured and hard-nosed investment approach to how shareholders can improve their returns on the CEO running their asset?

So, here is my five step CEO improvement plan for shareholders and asset managers to note and implement with their long-distance CEOs:

1. Define the CEO’s race distance

2. Give the CEO a pacemaker

3. Create an independent coaching panel for the CEO

4. Give the CEO a break from racing

5. Ensure the CEO has a retirement plan

Below I take each of these points in turn and unpack how this might work in real life, based on real experience. Not research or theory, but written by someone who has worn the running shoes.

1. Define the CEO’s race type and distance

There are wartime CEOs, peacetime CEOs, interim CEOs, compromise CEOs ... different people are appointed for different reasons at different times. A great wartime leader, such as Churchill, made a lousy peacetime lawmaker, and the inverse is often true. Asking a marathon runner to be a success in the sprint relay will not work. Companies need certain skills and attributes more at certain times of their development than at others.

The clearer a board can be on the skills needed for this phase of the race, and for how long the company may be in that phase, is essential. Don’t bring in an awesome turnaround leader on a long-term contract if the turnaround needs to done and dusted in 12 months, following which the company needs quieter, more settled leadership. Being a CEO is already tough enough and trying to be all things to all people at all times gets even tougher.

Boards and shareholders need to be much more disciplined, direct and specific about the type of leader they need at the current stage of the business cycle, and for how long they need that energy and focus. This so rarely happens, and it leaves both the CEO and the board in a slight state of never-land. Create focus, clarity and intensity for all concerned as early on as possible, and the CEO can then work more confidently within that framework.

2. Give the CEO a pacemaker

No, not a heart pacemaker, a running pacemaker (although some CEOs may need both). Someone who can help ensure that the pace at which the CEO is running is commensurate with the type and length of the course.

I’ve always been known as a hard-driving, pushy leader. Someone with a high metabolic rate and a fast clock-speed. I think I’m brilliant (you’ll notice this streak of ego in most CEOs ...) and get deeply frustrated and irritated when the people around me do not keep up. Why must I wait so long for that report, for that task to be executed?

As age descends, a tad more wisdom and insight occasionally emerges. In my case, I have begun to recognise that whilst you can drive people for a while at your own pace, it is neither sustainable nor actually necessary for all aspects of business. Sure, some areas of the business require more focus and more pace at times, but one size does not fit all.

CEOs need someone to stand back from the hurly-burly of the day-to-day treadmill, and help them understand where and when to push the pace and, perhaps more importantly, when to stand back out of the contact zone, and let the organisation recover from the changes.

Find that independent, experienced pacemaker who can help manage the pace of the race.

3. Create an independent coaching panel for the CEO

A modern runner needs a strength coach, a distance coach, a sprinting coach, a physiotherapist ... a whole team of supporting actors and players who ensure that the main star of the show is in their racing prime. None of these people seeks to be the runner themselves, but has a clear and necessary part to play in the success of the race.

So a CEO should seek to create a coaching panel for support. Personally, I like the idea of a ‘Personal Board’ for a senior leader. Whilst not a new concept, it is not a widely adopted one either, and it remains a crucial lever to pull. The Personal Board (PB) should be helping you achieve your best race time, your Personal Best. Your PB.

Imagine a group of people to whom you can turn for honest, impartial and unemotional advice and support. A group of individuals with whom you are able to spend enough face time on a one-on-one basis to develop a relationship of trust and respect. Your PB may have only three or four members, or seven or eight. It may never ever meet as a collective, but only on a one-on-one basis, or it may meet as discrete sub-groups.

The formula is up to the CEOs themselves, but there must be genuinely independent and differing voices on the PB that can:

Say they have worn your shoes and speak with the authority of similar experience

Unequivocally ‘have your back’ and be your biggest cheerleader

Be unafraid to hold a mirror up and show the unflattering reflection of your behaviours

Skip a generation up and down – in other words have both the grey hair view and the millennial’s view

There will be other suggestions for members of your PB and dynamics that you need, but to have this trusted group with whom you can discuss the challenges and issues safely, on a repeated and long-term basis, will materially address the loneliness of the long-distance runner, and also ensure that your organisation has a more stable and balanced road ahead.

4. Give the CEO a break from racing

Runners need a break from training for muscles and brains to recover. There are ‘on’ seasons and ‘off’ seasons in all major competitive sports. Yet, according to that same HBR report:

CEOs are always on, and there is always more to be done. The leaders in our study worked 9.7 hours per weekday, on average. They also conducted business on 79% of weekend days, putting in an average of 3.9 hours daily, and on 70% of vacation days, averaging 2.4