A prisoner of hope

Nobody won my challenge in last week’s blog asking how I might be able to create a link between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the world of automotive distribution.  I hope in answering that question that I do not offend anyone, as he seems to have been a remarkable man, but also one with a sense of humour.  Despite years of imprisonment and persecution, so many photographs show him with a huge smile, clearly enjoying life.  And that is where we link into automotive distribution.

The Archbishop (or ‘the Arch’) was a world-famous figure who was instrumental in the successful fight against apartheid in his native South Africa and a campaigner for peace and justice in the years that followed, recognised by the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.  He was well known for his unwavering optimism and belief in hope, regardless of the challenges, and described himself as a "prisoner of hope".  It was a reference to this expression in a podcast that I was listening to last week that struck a chord with me.  Challenges in business clearly sit much lower on any sensible scale than those that affect millions of people over generations, but in our own modest way, I think that there are parallels.

As I talked about in my blog last month, the industry faces uncertainty on all fronts.  There is little that we can say with certainty will happen at a particular level of intensity or performance a year or two years from now, other than perhaps the level of uncertainty itself.  To many that creates a sense of despair or extreme caution.  It is certainly leading to many leaders delaying decisions, and in certain situations I absolutely understand that this is the right thing to do.  Why invest money and human capital in something that is truly discretionary, when the return on that investment sits somewhere on a scale from massively negative to massively positive.

However, I see many other situations where uncertainty and doubt is just leading to inaction, or even worse to actions that a mariner would describe as ‘battening down the hatches’ – getting into an entirely protective mode so that you can ride out the storm.  The issue is that the storm might just be a gentle swell, and the precautions were actually excessive.  In the meantime, your boat has drifted way of course, and might even be heading for the rocks.  (I’m sure that my sailing friends would tell me that you would also have deployed a sea anchor to hold position until the storm passes, but even that is not a great outcome if your competitors have sailed on and made good progress whilst you waited for the storm that never came.)

I am by nature and preference an optimist.  I live in a happy place where outcomes will always be positive.  Sometimes I have been disappointed, such as when Russian politics changed and the grand plan to build a global commercial business for GAZ were derailed, or when a senior level hire for ICDP Germany turned out not to be as capable as we hoped, setting back the expansion of the business at significant cost.  But on balance, I have no complaints and that brings with it a certain mindset which infuses my own thinking and how I interact with those around me.

I strongly believe in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  According to Maslow, once you have satisfied the basic physiological needs of life, the next tier is about security.  If you fear for your job, this need cannot be satisfied.  We then look to satisfy social needs including a sense of connection before striving for self-esteem and self-fulfilment – recognition, respect and the ability to meet your full potential.  If management in an organisation try to pursue success by continual cost-cutting, by ‘right-sizing’ the business relentlessly, then you are threatening the two most basic human needs of survival and security.  If the organisation is in continual turmoil with revolving doors for management and peers, how do you build any sense of belonging or connection?  As for the higher-level needs, few get any satisfaction from being a survivor of a restructuring or the architect of such programmes.

Regardless of uncertainties, I argue that we need to be optimistic, we need to dare to hope.  We need to address things that are clearly no longer fit for purpose, but we need to substitute those with growth and innovation in the areas where there is still opportunity.  We need to give people in our own organisations and in the organisations with whom we work a positive reason to come into work in the morning. If they start to see their glasses as half-full rather than half-empty, then they will put in the effort and focus on the job, and optimism will be converted into reality.  From personal experience, there is no more depressing place to work than an organisation which is going through continual restructuring and rounds of redundancy (BL in my early motor industry career).  There is also nowhere more exciting than a business which is experiencing double digit annual growth (much of my time in A.T. Kearney and our hopes and expectations now at Auto West London).

It might be argued that it is foolish to allow yourself to be a prisoner of hope, but if you back up hope with actions and direction as ‘the Arch’ did on a much grander scale, then you might just succeed.

Image source: Wycliffe Global Alliance