Many people rate Roosevelt the greatest leader of the 20th Century. What made him so great. There are many answers to this questions but let me tell you about just one of them.

In Michael Fullilove’s great book, Rendezvous With Destiny, he tells the story how Roosevelt thought out of the box in order to gain the quality of knowledge he required to take the best decisions.

In 1940 with the fall of France, Roosevelt knew that the survival of Western Civilization was at stake. He needed to know first hand the true situation of Britain left as they were, to fight the Axis powers alone. Could they survive? What was the leadership like? What did they need? What could Roosevelt do.

Public opinion in United States was still against entering the war, so Roosevelt had to find a way to help Britain and to edge the United States slowly towards direct involvement in the war.

An unorthodox approach

Roosevelt didn’t trust his ambassadors or the State Department to get him the information he needed, so he took the very unorthodox route of sending personal envoys in order to get a first hand picture of the situation and to build the relationship with Churchill. He used a personal friend, a businessman, a first world war hero and a political rival to do the job. This drove the State Department and his ambassadors crazy, but Roosevelt did what he had to do to get the results he needed. These envoys never had official titles, and the press never knew the exact nature of their mission, but they got the information Roosevelt needed, helped him build a trusting relationship with Churchill and assisted in getting the Lend Lease legislation through Congress and manage the logistics of getting the material to the British and indeed later on to the Russians. The Germans may never have been turned back without this assistance.

The number one problem of today’s business leaders

I have worked with many CEO’s and hundreds of members of Senior Management Teams. Their main problem is that they never get feedback on their own behaviour, are often not capable of communicating their thoughts to the rank and file and often don’t really know what is really happening in the day to day management of their companies. They are also often unaware of what their people think.

These senior managers often depend on Human Resources to help them learn all of the above, but the problem is that Human Resources, just like Roosevelt’s State Department back in 1940, have their own agenda and their own problems and therefore are not always the best channel for getting the senior managers the information they need.

Think like Roosevelt to get the information you need.

You need to think out of the box, look for other ways of getting the information, here are some ideas:

Understand what you don’t know.
Be clear about what you need to know.
Find out what your people think about you and about your company.
Identify people who you could use to get information and give information.
Think of every possible source for finding your envoys, friends, retired managers, clients, consultants, suppliers, union representatives and popular opinion leaders.
Give your envoys direct access to you.
Empower them to get to the people they need to talk with.
Control the communication channels between them and you.
Be cautious with who you tell about what you are doing.
Leaders need to know what’s going on, they need to build the relationships that will help them get their business strategy executed and, they need to be creative in the way they do this.

Roosevelt and his envoys helped save western civilization. What could you achieve with the right information?

The recent terrorist attacks in Brussels and Paris and the disturbances on New Year’s Eve in Cologne show that there are real problems in Europe around the integration of their immigrants. Many Europeans have a romantic view of their past in which they long for a time in which everyone in their countries lived together in peace and harmony in a perfectly integrated Utopia. However serious historians know that this perfect past never really existed. As Kenan Malik points out, if we look just at France, at the time of the French revolution only half the population actually spoke French and only 12% spoke it correctly. No doubt the ruling classes looked at that 88% who did not have the same level of “Frenchness” as them with disdain and wished they would not cause problems or perhaps even go away, much the same way as the people who support the National Front today look at France’s Muslim minority today.

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At the moment I am reading Antony Beevor’s great book about the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. One of the things I like about Beevor’s books is that not only does he research official government and army records
but also uses letters from the front line soldiers so that the reader experiences what the average foot soldier lived in the day to day of this horrific war.

As I was reading the account of the last ditch offensive from the Germans on the Western front, I was particularly struck by the behaviour of two American generals. Firstly, General J.C. Lee who was head of supplies for the U.S. army in Western Europe and who Beevor describes as pompous and megalomaniac (even Eisenhower compared him to Oliver Cromwell and playing on the first two initials of his name, referred him as Jesus Christ). On arriving in Paris Lee took over almost the entire George V Hotel as his personal residence and commandeered another 315 prestigious Parisian hotels to accommodate his senior offices. This became known by the U.S. troops fighting quite heroically to push back the German offensive in bellow freezing conditions in the Ardennes without winter uniforms, thanks to the incompetence of Lee and his staff.

Another senior officer, General Courtney Hodges, only weeks before the Arden’s offensive, decided to push through to the Rhine using the shortest route even though this meant fighting the campaign in the Hürtgen Forest. This dense and eerily dark pine forest were crisscrossed diagonally by deep ravines and made up of hundreds of steep slopes impossible for tanks to operate on and exhausting for heavily laden troops. Conversely they were perfect for the defending Wehrmacht to lay booby traps, set ambushes and gave their highly skilled snippers plenty of cover to conceal themselves.

Instead of listening to his staff advising him to go around the woods so that he could take advantage of the Americans’ vast superiority in artillery, tanks and their near total control of the air, insisted of forcing his troops to advance through these eerily deadly woods. This decision led to 33,000 American casualties out of 120,000 troops deployed and a further 8,000 cases of physiological collapse.

What really amazed me is that neither of these generals were sanctioned in any real way and continued in their positions representing a low ebb in the otherwise good leadership of General Eisenhower. When one thinks of the impact of the behaviour of these two prima donnas on the common soldiers who were making incredible sacrifices every day you question what type of messages the high command thought that their soldiers were receiving.

In companies today I have also seen CEOs indulge megalomaniac behaviour from some of their senior executives. Although these executives often achieve their objectives, the messages that the employees receive as they observe the behaviour of these executives almost always undermine the values that these companies claim to hold dear.

Ideas for controlling prima donnas

Be aware how your senior executives are behaving in the day to day.

Ask yourself what message does this send to your employees and how does it impact on them.

Ask yourself what is the cost of tolerating this type of behaviour.

Take action.

The actions of Lee and Hodges sixty years ago in the last year of the war not only left a terrible mark on the lives of countless American soldiers, it badly impacted on Franco / American relations for many years to come. It didn’t have to be that way.

Do you have some examples of this type of behaviour in your organisations? What impact has it produced?

A few days ago I went to visit my favourite café in Madrid where I had lived for twenty-five years. I returned to live in Sydney three years ago but I still miss those great “tostadas” and “Cafés con leche”. As I approached the café I was surprised to see that it was all dark inside, I felt a terrible tension rise in my stomach as I got closer until I got to the door and my worst fears were confirmed, Café Río Frío, a virtual institution in Madrid, had closed its doors forever.

I had brought my iPad with me to show three of the waiters a short video of my five-year old twin girls. I knew it would bring them joy. I met these guys when I first arrived in Madrid and they had been my companions throughout the different stages of my life there, witnesses to the highs and the lows of my Spanish life from the loneliness of the early years, to my attempts to get local girlfriends, to the creation of a group of true friends, to the beginnings of my company and to the different stages it went through, to visits from my family and international friends, to my first tentative outings with my future wife and the blossoming of our love and finally to the miracle that was the birth of our two little girls and their first visits to Río Frío where they caused much havoc. It was the disappointment of not being able to share the latest news of my life with these waiters who had become my friends and the realization that I would never see them again that left me absolutely gutted as I stood outside the closed doors on that cold Saturday morning.

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The federal government in Australia has been unable to get their budget passed. Opposition in the Senate, ridicule from the opposition and general dismay by the Australian people has meant that there has not been the necessary support to execute the changes that the budget tried to achieve.

Carrying out true reform is never easy; people in all countries resist change especially when then change means making sacrifices. In this case the government said there was a problem but never really explained it, then they designed a budget that did seem to hit the less fortunate more than the well off and therefore it was very easy for those who opposed it to see it as unfair.

In Australia, the problem is real enough, the forecast for the next three decades show budget deficits year after year which basically means that we are spending every year more than we are making and the ones who are going to have to pay the bill are our children.

The same thing happens in business

I see similar problems in business. So many organisations that I have worked with require profound change in order to survive. Changing markets, globalisation and more sophisticated clients mean that the old organisational culture, the old management style, the old way of doing things just won’t work any more. Things have to change, but, change means sacrifice and the first thing people think about is what they are going to lose.

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I just finished reading Antony Beevor’s excellent global account of the Second World War. Unlike his other books this one gives you a global picture of the whole war giving you a real feeling of the breadth and depth of the human suffering caused by the ambitions of a handful of all too human men. It should be compulsory reading for anyone who exercises power.

One of the things that stuck me most about the book was how the out of control egos of a few generals, American, British, Russian, but surprisingly not German, worked against achieving the common goal or executing the agreed strategy. It was nearly always about them, rarely about doing what was needed to defeat the enemy, and often at great cost to others.

The clearest example comes from the American General Mark Clark who, during the Italian campaign, was determined to be crowned conqueror of Rome.  In May 1944 he disobeyed General Alexander’s direct order to attack North East to Valmontone where his divisions could have cut off the whole German 10th army thereby shortening the Italian campaign by months and saving thousands of lives. Instead he turned his army North West towards Rome purely for the purpose of being remembered as the general who liberated Rome.

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I couldn’t help being a little taken aback with the crowds booing of Rafael Nadal during the final of the Australian Tennis Open in Melbourne. It is true that a lot of people were a little annoyed with Nadal during the semi-final with Federer because of his continuous infringement on the time allowed to take to serve and because of this time absent from the court. Even the temperate Federer complained.

Being that as it may, it does not explain the rather extreme act of booing a player who is actually pretty popular in Australia. Clearly what happened was that certain members of the crowd, with limited information, made a rather harsh judgement, gave way to negative feelings that come from that judgment and allowed themselves to get carried away by those feelings, to the point of booing. Later when the extent of the injury suffered by Nadal became clear those people who had booed must have felt pretty sheepish, I even bet they would have loved to have taken it back, but unfortunately, it was too late. Once it is out there, it is out there.

It is true that part of the blame must be assigned to the match referee who did not share the information either with Nadal’s opponent nor with the spectators. That however doesn’t change much, for it was clear that nobody besides the referee and the people in Nadal’s change room had the information and people still made a judgement knowing that they didn’t really know what was going on.

Managers who make quick value judgements often pay the consequences

This happens every day in business, managers with limited information jump to conclusions, allow these judgements to create negative feelings and then act on them. Sometimes it is in regard to what senior management is doing, or the performance of a collaborator or the reaction of a client, in almost all cases those managers later regret what that consequently did or said.

Leaders have the responsibility to get the information

Anyone who exercises leadership cannot afford themselves the luxury of making these quick types of judgments. Here are some things that you can do to avoid judging and reacting too quickly:

Recognize that you don’t have all the information.
Invest energy and time in finding out more.
Generate some alternative interpretations and look for data to support those.
If you do have to say something, start by recognising that you don’t have all the facts.
Actively try to distinguish between verifiable facts and interpretations of those facts.
Think of the consequences of saying or doing something and then finding out later that you completely misread the situation.

It is human to judge

I remember back in 1980 getting sucked in by the police, rushing to get a quick conviction and by the press, experts of condemning without the facts, whipping up public sentiment against Lindy Chamberlain whose baby was taken by a dingo.

I remember celebrating along with most other Australians Lindy Chamberlain’s murder conviction. Thirty-two years later the Northern territory Coroner Elizabeth Morris found that the baby Azaria had actually been taken by a dingo and that Chamberlain’s conviction was based on faulty forensic work. Years before, in 1988, Lindy Chamberlain was released from jail as it was clear that she had not murdered her daughter. When that happened I, along with many others felt ashamed of the lack of rigor and generosity of spirit in making such a quick and harsh judgment. I said to myself that I will never let that happen again. To this day I have tried to honour that decision, but it is not easy for it is human to judge.

If you want to avoid feeling that, think twice, get the information and use one of the most important qualities in leadership, generosity.

Last weekend I attended our 4Oth year class reunion. Having been away from Sydney these last thirty years it was for me an especially pleasant occasion as I had not seen the great majority of my old school mates in over three decades.

Sitting with one of my best friends towards the end of the evening after having mingled energetically to catch up with as many of my old classmates as I could, we commented on what a great group of people they were. The great majority had enjoyed loving relationships with their wives, had seemed to have been committed and warm fathers, had worked hard and above all were open and friendly people. My friend and I commented that the Jesuits who educated us would have been pleased with their work for here was a group of men who they could be proud of, a group of men who shared a solid set of values and who had made a contribution to the societies they had lived in. These men knew who they were and what they believed in.

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A week ago today my two little girls had their first day at school. It was not their first time in an educational setting having attended day care two days a week since they were two. Now however at the age of only three and a half they have a new beginning full of challenges. It’s school, not day care, they have to go five days a week and it is nearly all in French. My wife has always spoken French to them so they understand everything, but now they have to function in that language too. When I saw them sitting at that little table I must admit to feeling a little guilty throwing them into such a challenge at their age. And yet, a week on, they seem to be thriving, just as my wife told me they would.

I too am experiencing a new beginning. After having lived in Europe for thirty years and having built up a very successful business in Spain, a year and a half ago I returned to my native Sydney to start again. I don’t regret our decision to move to Australia and yet I must recognize that it is full of challenges and rather daunting. I think that in this modern world in which the old paradigm of lifelong employment with one company is a thing of the past, many people have to face new beginnings. So, what have I learnt from mine?

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