Reader discretion advised: The author is a generalist and this blog note is entirely biased ….
McKinsey sent me an email today with a copy of one of their “classic” articles from 2015 suggesting that 4 types of behaviours account for 89% of leadership effectiveness. The link is here, and a good read it is too. To save you the trouble, they are i) effective problem solving ii) results orientation iii) being supportive and iv) seeking different perspectives. I like this list because it reinforces my self image as a leader, when I’ve had that opportunity.
Currently however, I’m a consultant, brought in for a specific task, working with the client staff for a limited time, and outside of the leadership team. My sector is development, and within that equipment and solar energy financing. I can be very specific, becuase the development sector is very siloed.
The quality of “seeking different perspectives” got me thinking. Personaly I like to hear different perspectives, and discuss them, even when this is considered a little impolite. Better to just let people express themselves and leave it at that. Professionally as a consultant. you are hired becauase you already match the profile that has been developed, so you do not tend to find different perspectives. When you first engage with a client in energy for instance, you quietly try to establish what the established positions are on on grid versus off grid; stand alone systems vs minigrids; government vs. private sector. You are welcome and indeed expected to push boundaries on technical aspects such as artificial intelligence, underwriting techniques and payment mechanisms, but it is not your role to challenge the orthodoxy.
My univited feedback on the energy sector is that it is almost fossilised in its silos. In addtion to the ones already mentioned we have geographical silos with little or no exchange between LAC and SSA. Teams align with the big language blocks, of course. The biggest barriers are between development and the private sector. Leasing for example is a huge global finance sector, accumulatling knowledge and applying technolgy since the 1970’s, and yet the solar sector is discovering the financing of income generating equipment (ie leasing) as if for the first time.
I worked for a decade for General Electic. At one point it was the company with the longest continuous presence on the DOW Industrial Average. At its peak it employed more than 200,000 people. Its scale and depth of support from the markets allowed it to invest time in creating managers for the long term. It did this by moving them around its divisions based on their skill set and potential, rather than their technical knowledge about where they were going. This approach was possible by having a strong grid of technical functional leadership to support the commercial leadership. The benefit was corss fertilization – the sharing of different perspectives. In my time there I worked in Power Systems, Internal Audit, and GE Capital. Each experience enhanced my skills, and based on my progress seemed to generate payback for the company.
I urge the development sector to be braver on this. Lets hire from other places, in development and outside. Lets mix geographies and cultures. Lets continue to balance our gender and diversity. There are great challenges ahead. Artificial intelligence is not something where we can draw from an existing pool of experts. We need to learn how to harness it, so lets have the best, most diverse teams of people sitting around the table. For climate finance it is a different challenge, where the skills do exist, but are scattered in different places. We are moving the pieces to achieve a different outcome so lets indeed assemble the teams from whereever we can find those skills.
Different perspectives are good. Lets be purposeful in getting them
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