Legacy

by James Kerr

You either adapt, or you lose; and sustainable competitive advantage is achieved by the development of a continuously self-adjusting culture. Adaption is not a reaction, but continual action, so plan to respond.

That is, by developing the individual players and giving them the tools, skills and character that they needed to contribute beyond the rugby field, they would also, in theory, develop the tools, skills and character to contribute more effectively on it.

This ‘Kiwi kaizan’ was a focus on personal development, both as human beings and as professional sportsmen, so that they had the character, composure, and people skills to be leaders, both on and off the field.

‘We all bought into an idea of trying to create our own culture,’ says Smith, ‘and to do that we used storytelling.

really wanted the campaign to be vision driven and values based.’

Smith says, ‘Whether it’s family, whether it’s legacy, whether it’s enhancing the jersey, whatever, you need to identify what it is [that gives the players purpose] so that you remain driven.’ He adds, ‘It’s about purpose and personal meaning . . . Those are the two big things.’

This connection of personal meaning to public purpose is something the All Blacks focus on, almost obsessively: ‘It’s about what you bring today,’ says Enoka, ‘and how you’re going to fill that jersey.’

If our values and beliefs are aligned with the values and beliefs of the organization, then we will work harder towards its success.

In this space, business strategy, vision, values and purpose conjoin with corporate identity, design, advertising and communications to deliver powerful shifts of mindset and behaviours within teams and organizations. It begins from the inside out.

Pink argues that ‘purpose maximization’ is taking its place alongside profit maximization as an aspiration and a guiding principle for businesses around the world. His work reflects the ‘Hawthorne Effect’, the idea that emotional reward is more important than material compensation. That intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation rules the world.

‘What man actually needs,’ argues Frankl, ‘is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.’

‘the work fifty people are doing here is going to send a ripple right through the universe.’ He later said, ‘The goal was never to beat the competition or to make a lot of money. It was to do the greatest thing possible, or even a little greater.’

inspired leaders and organizations, regardless of their size and industry, all think, act and communicate from the ‘inside out.’

Ubuntu does not mean that people should not have self-interest, said Nelson Mandela in interview with journalist Tim Modesi. But ‘are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve? These are the important things in life.’

To add to the legacy. ‘There’s a rich tradition of players who have had that stewardship,’ says Wayne Smith, ‘to enhance the jersey and pass it on in a better state than what it was when you got it.’ As former All Black Ali Williams puts it, ‘you have to leave the jersey in a better place’.

The players gained a great understanding and respect for each other as they developed. They grew to understand they had similar challenges as international rugby players and these challenges were better handled collectively than individually. This brought togetherness – they were ‘one’. They . . . went to ‘war’ for each other.

leaders create a sense of inclusion, connectedness and unity – a truly collective, collaborative mindset.

creating an overall sense of purpose and personal connection. It is the beginning of the being of team.

concept called ‘Pass the Ball’, defined as ‘enabling and empowering the individual by entrusting them with responsibility for the success of the team’.

they had to transfer the leadership from senior management members to the players . . . they play the game and they have to do the leading on the field. The traditional “you and them” became “us”.’

Leaders create leaders by passing on responsibility, creating ownership, accountability and trust.

management model: the Sunday evening review meetings are facilitated by the coaches, though significant input comes from the on-field leadership. Then over the course of the week, you see a gradual handing over of responsibility and decision-making. By Thursday, the priorities, intensity levels and other aspects are all ‘owned’ by the players. By the time they play on Saturday the players have taken over the asylum.

‘the time before they run out on the field, is their time. It has to be their time. They’ve got to set their own minds right and settled and on the job.’ He says that enabling his players to take charge of their own environment is, of all his achievements in rugby, the thing of which he is most proud.

‘We had to grow more collaborative, so that together we grow,’ says Gilbert Enoka, ‘together we advance.’

Both gave examples of situations when, under pressure, one or more of their team had ‘stepped up’ and taken responsibility for a crucial part of a project.

Language is pivotal to winning, language sets the mental and the physical frame for victory . . . A team of ‘followers’ is immediately on the back foot. A team of leaders steps up and finds a way to win.

‘Instill in your team members a sense of great self-worth – that each, at any given time, can be the most important on the battlefield.’

When Henry explains that ‘the traditional way no longer works’, he is referring to the old-school, centralized command structure that seeks to micromanage, from above, every detail of a project.

The competitive advantage is nullified when you try to run decisions up and down the chain of command. All platoons and tank crews have real-time information on what is going on around them, the location of the enemy, and the nature and targeting of the enemy’s weapons system. Once the commander’s intent is understood, decisions must be devolved to the lowest possible level to allow these front line soldiers to exploit the opportunities that develop.

Leaders must empower individual initiative by providing clear, concise, and complete mission orders in a climate of mutual trust and understanding.

Develop autonomous, critical thinkers able to Observe, Orient, Decide and Act, and adjust their actions on the run. ° Facilitate an adaptive environment, enabling good decision making under pressure. ° Create flexible leadership groups – developing individuals who can step in with clarity, certainty and autonomy. ° Create a sense of ‘ownership’ within the team; building trust and a common understanding. ° Create a decision framework; marking out roles, responsibilities and response so decision-making is intuitive, instantaneous and delivers on intention.

Made an active decision to change and formed a powerful sense of purpose for the team. ° Devolved leadership to senior players by forming a Leadership Group, entrusting its members with key decisions and authority to enforce standards and behaviours. ° Developed individual operating units, in which each player had a specific portfolio of responsibility and leadership. ° Structured their weeks so that responsibility for decision making gradually evolved from management towards players; by Saturday the team was entirely in the hands of the players. ° Created a ‘Train to Win’ system – preparing the team under pressure using randomized problem-solving techniques, active questioning and high-intensity training to prepare them for the heat of competition. ° Focused on an understanding of how the brain reacts to stress to provide the tools to help players stay present, connected, clear and accurate in order to make better decisions under pressure. ° Created a ‘learning environment’ dedicated to developing the individual in a tailored, self-managed programme of self-improvement. ° Developed techniques, rituals and language that connected players to the core; using storytelling in all its forms to create a sense of purpose and intention. Pass the ball.

Pass the Ball Enlightened leaders deliberately hand over responsibility in order to create engaged team-players able to adapt their approach to suit the conditions. ‘Command & Control’ in a VUCA world is unwieldy and increasingly uncompetitive. By creating a devolved management structure, leaders create ownership, autonomy and initiative. Arming their people with intent, they visualize the end-state, outline the plan, provide the right resources and trust their people to deliver. The result is a team of individuals prepared and able to stand up when it counts – leaders in the field.

Success, he says, is ‘modest improvement, consistently done’. For him, it is about an unrelenting focus on the big goals – winning and leaving a legacy – but also constant attention to the details of practice and preparation.

Excellence is a process of evolution, of cumulative learning, of incremental improvement.

‘structure follows strategy’. That is, new organizational forms are the result of strategic imperatives. It follows that you can have all the will in the world but without the right structure in place, your strategy won’t be successful.

Enlightened leadership promotes a structured system for the development of the team, combined with a tailored map for the development of the individual.

Few companies really interrogate the connection between strategy and structure, between an overall vision and the actions that take place over a working week; but with the transparency, metrics and human connectivity that are now available through technology, there are many more opportunities to do this.

The system is engineered towards optimum performance at the right time on both a team and individual basis: knowing when to introduce new players, when to rest others; the introduction and repetition of skills; and bringing the team to its physical and psychological peak at just the right time.

‘Although there’s a set routine, a set ritual of preparation . . . little things come in to add a bit of icing to that – a little bit of edge to that.’ This ‘edge’ includes the psychological incentive to beat this team on this particular day, because the opposition is Australia or England, or because a player is winning his fiftieth cap.

It becomes about the sporting buzz-phrase du jour – ‘the aggregation of marginal gains’ or ‘the drive to perfect every controllable detail in search of optimal performance’.

‘Races are won by a fraction of a second,’ wrote John Wooden. ‘National Championship games by a single point. That fraction of a second or a single point is the result of relevant details performed along the way.’

‘that success can be attributed to how a team worked together under pressure, how they understood the importance of team work and loyalty, and how they were willing to do a hundred things just 1% better’.

‘We talked about a learning environment,’ says Graham Henry, ‘and everyone getting better and everyone getting bigger every day, so if each player improves by 5 per cent minimum, 10 per cent, 15 per cent, the team’s going to improve. If you put these collective percentages together you’ve got something special.’

‘You are a product of your environment,’ says author W. Clement Stone, ‘so choose the environment that will best develop you towards your objective. Analyze your life in terms of your environment. Are the things around you helping you towards success – or are they holding you back?’ After all, ‘It’s not the mountains ahead that wear you out,’ said Muhammad Ali, ‘it’s the pebble in your shoe.’

‘what we’ve actually done . . . is to strip things out . . . What hasn’t changed are the “go-tos” that drive the legacy . . . the art is knowing what to spit out.’

In the England set-up under Woodward, Humphrey Walters likened it to taking all the furniture out of a house – all the chairs and tables and fixtures and fittings, and the mysterious stuff that accumulates in drawers – and only putting back what is useful.

This is as much about controlling the psychological environment as it is the physical. Computer programmers have a phrase: Garbage In/Garbage Out. If we apply the analogy, this means: ° the verbal, visual and gestural language that we allow to take up residence in our heads; ° the toxins like alcohol, drugs or sugar that we allow to take up residence in our bodies (and minds); ° the people we allow to take up space in our lives.

We have to be careful what furniture we reintroduce to our metaphorical house. Key to a high-performing learning environment is the quality of the material that is allowed to enter – to permeate our ‘bound system’ and become the stimulus for our response.

‘Get up every day and be the best you can be,’ he said. ‘Be the best in the world. . . . give your all for every second of every minute of the seven games you’ll play. You can do no more than that. Guys, never let the music die in you.’