by Kerr, James
—— Performance = Capability + Behaviour
The way you behave, he argues, will either bring out the best or worst of your capability, and this applies to businesses and teams as well as to individuals. ‘Leaders create the right environment for the right behaviours to occur,’ says Eastwood. ‘That’s their primary role.’
Behaviour exists in two domains, he continues: Public and Private.
‘The Public Domain’ means those areas of a player’s life when he is under team protocol – whether at training, during a game, travelling or on promotional duty. Professionalism, physical application and proficiency are demanded here.
‘The Private Domain’ is the one in which we spend time with ourselves and where our mind-game plays out. This is the biggest game of all, as daily we confront our habits, limitations, temptations and fears.
‘Leaders design and create an environment,’ says Eastwood, ‘which drives the high performance behaviours needed for success. The really clever teams build a culture that drives the behaviours they need.’
‘I think all of those environments,’ says Graham Henry, ‘whether it’s a business environment or sporting environment, are about developing people. So, if you develop your people, your business is going to be more successful. It’s just a matter of creating an environment where that becomes a happening every day.’
Every day? In organizations all around the world, leaders sally forth with inspiring messages of change. Everyone congratulates them on a presentation well delivered, admires the slogan, tucks the brand book into their briefcase, and then goes back to their desks and does nothing.
Alternatively, the leaders feverishly develop and distribute an action plan, calibrated to the finest detail, with no real understanding of the vision, purpose or principles behind it.
This is how Will Hogg describes what he calls the ‘Vision into Action’ paradox. Hogg, who runs Kinetic, a Geneva-based management consultancy that works with the leaders of large organizations to deliver culture change and engagement, likes to use the Japanese proverb:
—— Vision without action is a dream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.
‘The paradox,’ he says, ‘is that, though every organization thinks they have unique problems, many change issues are centred on one thing. The ability – or inability – to convert vision into action. Sometimes it is through a lack of a vision itself. More often through the inability to translate vision into simple, ordinary, everyday actions.’
Actions like senior leaders who sweep the floor.
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‘Talent was irrelevant,’ says Wayne Smith. He is not talking about the All Blacks now, but the Chiefs, the team he went on to after leaving the All Blacks fold, but the principles are the same. ‘We carefully picked the players. We used matrices to back intuition, because there are certain stats in rugby that determine the player’s character and that’s what we were after. So we picked high work rate, strong body movers, guys that were unselfish and had a sacrificial mindset.’
They picked on character.
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Ethos is the Greek word for character. Descended from the same root as the word ethics, it is used to describe the beliefs, principles, values, codes and culture of an organization. It is the ‘way we do things around here’, the unwritten (and sometimes written) rules, the moral character of a particular group of people. It is the place we live, our certitude and rectitude, our base.
Our values decide our character. Our character decides our value.
Values provide the bedrock of belief. Any lasting organization – from churches to states, companies to causes – has enshrined at their heart a fundamental set of principles: ‘Faith, Hope and Charity’; ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’.
A values-based, purpose-driven culture is a foundation of the All Blacks’ approach and sustained success. But, as any business leader knows, value-words like integrity, sacrifice, determination, imagination, innovation, collaboration, persistence, responsibility and so on seem powerful in the abstract, but can be flat and generic on the page. The challenge is always to bring them to life, and into the lives of those you lead. As we shall see, the All Blacks are a world class case study in how to do this. Their management are past-masters at turning vision into everyday action, purpose into practice.
In fact, in answer to the question, ‘What is the All Blacks’ competitive advantage?’, key is the ability to manage their culture and central narrative by attaching the players’ personal meaning to a higher purpose. It is the identity of the team that matters – not so much what the All Blacks do, but who they are, what they stand for, and why they exist.
After all, the All Blacks’ competitive advantage does not come from player numbers: England have more rugby players than the rest of the world combined. Despite the misconception in the UK’s popular press, it’s also not about race: the first Polynesian to play for the All Blacks, Bryan Williams, only did so in 1976 and the All Blacks had already led the world for most of that century. Diversity helps, yes, but it’s not the whole story.
‘What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?’
Buckminster Fuller
It’s not just infrastructure – the ‘rugby stairway’ – though this technical framework, combined with the relentless desire to ‘be an All Black’, certainly helps propel talent through the lower grades and on towards sporting immortality.
The All Blacks’ remarkable success on the field begins with a very particular culture off the field and it is this culture – the glue that holds it all together – that has delivered extrordinary competitive advantage for more than a century.
To become an All Black means becoming a steward of a cultural legacy. Your role is to leave the jersey in a better place. The humility, expectation and responsibility that this brings lifts their game. It makes them the best in the world.
What this means for leaders in other fields is the story of this book.
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The revitalization of the All Blacks culture between 2004 and 2011 began with some fundamental questions: What is the meaning of being an All Black? What does it mean to be a New Zealander? These questions, and an ongoing interrogative process, were central in the re-establishment of a values-driven, purpose-driven culture.
This management technique – which begins with questions – is of the ‘Socratic Method’, so called because Socrates used a type of interrogation to separate his pupils from their prejudices. The goal? To help them find self-knowledge, even if the truth turns out to be uncomfortable.
It is a key technique within the All Blacks leadership and captured in a Māori proverb:
—— Waiho kia pātai ana, he kaha ui te kaha.
Let the questioning continue; the ability of the person is in asking questions.
A culture of asking and re-asking fundamental questions cuts away unhelpful beliefs in order to achieve clarity of execution. Humility allows us to ask a simple question: how can we do this better?
Rather than just instruct outwards, the coaches began to ask questions; first of themselves – how can we do this better? – and then of their players – what do you think? This interrogative culture, in which the individual makes their own judgements, and sets their own internal benchmarks, became increasingly important. The questions the leaders asked of themselves, and of the team, was the beginning of a rugby revolution.
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The word decide comes from ‘to cut away’. The All Blacks’ interrogative culture cuts away unhelpful beliefs in order to achieve clarity.
It is a facilitated style of interpersonal leadership in a learning environment concerned with adaptive problem solving and continuous improvement and in which humility – not knowing all the answers – delivers strength.
‘You can guide,’ says Wayne Smith, ‘but I’m a great believer in that we don’t instruct a lot. If yo
u believe that attitude you’ve got to ask questions – and we try and get descriptive answers so you get self-awareness.’
—— ‘What might happen if...?’
‘In this situation what would you do...?’
‘How might you...?’
‘What about...?’
This questioning is as applicable to business as it is to rugby. No one person has all the answers, but asking questions challenges the status quo, helps connect with core values and beliefs, and is a catalyst for individual improvement.
After all, the better the questions we ask, the better the answers we get.
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Clearly the All Blacks are an exceptional environment. Their elite status, constant scrutiny and the resources at their disposal set them apart from, say, a sales team in Wolverhampton or a marketing business in Duluth. There are different pressures, different rewards, different measures. However, it is possible to extract some useful lessons from this, the world’s most successful team, based on simple shared humanity and the application of common sense. So, although a study of what makes the All Blacks tick might not have all the answers, it does enable us to begin to address some important questions of leadership.
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The Māori carvings with which tourists to New Zealand soon become familiar are called whakairo. These represent the tribal tīpuna, the Ancestors, and have been carved in commemoration of their deeds. They tell stories of love and death and great bravery. Though they are a gallery of heroes there is no vanity in their depiction – deliberately grotesque, their tongues protrude, their features are distorted.
Humility is deeply ingrained in Māori and broader Polynesian culture and, indeed, the word Māori implies ‘normal’ or ‘natural’ to distinguish the people of the land from the gods above. To ‘get above yourself’ is deeply frowned upon in this culture, and more broadly in New Zealand society.
Humility does not mean weakness, but its opposite. Leaders with mana understand the strength of humility. It allows them to connect with their deepest values and the wider world.
It should be our acts that remain after us, the whakairo remind us, not our vainglory. Humility is seen as a vital part of a well-adjusted character. It is essential to mana, the Māori and Polynesian word that captures so many qualities; authority, status, personal power, bearing, charisma and, according to The New Zealand Dictionary, ‘great personal prestige and character’.
For Māori, and within the All Blacks, mana is perhaps the ultimate accolade, the underlying spiritual goal of human existence. Linguists have recognized the relationship between the word and the ‘powerful forces of nature such as thunder and storm winds that were conceived as the expression of an unseen supernatural agency’ (Coddington). Others have argued that it is the universal life force that is the very origin of our ideas of God. Certainly, it describes a person of rare quality; a natural leader possessing strength, leadership, great personal power, gentleness – and humility.
When asked about Chris Ashton, the English winger, and his habit of swan-diving for a try, former All Blacks captain and hooker Anton Oliver says, ‘We’d just die.’
For leaders of all stripes, reconnecting with our values – with our truest, deepest instincts – is an essential building block of character, which is the essence of leadership. And it begins with humility. St Augustine said it best: ‘Lay first the foundation of humility . . . The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.’
So, as these sporting superstars clean up their locker room, looking after themselves so that no one else has to, we might ask ourselves if excellence – true excellence – begins with humility; with a humble willingness to ‘sweep the sheds’.
After all, what else is a legacy if not that which you leave behind after you have gone?
Sweep the Sheds
The great sports coaches of the past such as John Wooden and Vince Lombardi put humility at the core of their teaching. The All Blacks place a similar emphasis on their fundamental and foundational values, going so far as to select on character over talent. The players are taught never to get too big to do the small things that need to be done. ‘Exceptional results demand exceptional circumstances,’ says Wayne Smith. These conditions help shape the culture and therefore the ethos – the character – of the team. Humility begins at the level of interpersonal communication, enabling an interrogative, highly facilitated learning environment in which no one has all the answers. Each individual is invited to contribute solutions to the challenges being posed. This is a key component of building sustainable competitive advantage through cultural cohesion. It leads to innovation, increased self knowledge, and greater character. It leads towards mana.
Sweep the Sheds
Never be too big to do the small things that need to be done.
—— Kāore te kūmara e whāki ana tana reka.
The kūmara (sweet potato) does not need to say how sweet he is.
II
ADAPT
—— Māui – the discoverer of the secret of fire – was spearing birds with his brothers one day. But as his spear had no barbs, their prey escaped them. Māui’s mother told him to use sticks to create barbs for his weapon – which he did. They feasted on kererū (pigeon) that night.
GO FOR THE GAP
When you’re on top of your game, change your game
Somewhere over the Indian Ocean, on a long, disconsolate flight between South Africa and New Zealand, the new All Blacks assistant coach, Wayne Smith, turned to Darren Shand, his team manager, and told him, ‘We have a dysfunctional team – if it’s not fixed, I won’t be back.’
The All Blacks had just lost to South Africa 40-26, finishing last in the annual Tri-Nations tournament. For a team attuned to winning, and with the highest ‘kill rate’ in world sport, it was a disaster. But, as Bob Howitt tells it in Final Word, worse was to follow that night at the team hotel.
A ‘Court Session’, a mock trial fuelled by the forced consumption of alcohol, had left some very famous faces chronically drunk; some so much so that they were worried for their lives. It was later reported that some of the Springbok players, billeted in the same hotel and returning from a meal to celebrate their series victory, had to extract various All Blacks from hallways, bushes and gutters and put them in the recovery position.
Something had to change.
‘The way we were going was not going to cut the mustard in the professional era,’ says Gilbert Enoka, the tall, personable mental skills coach. ‘You can’t work all week and then have Saturday night through to Monday off where you bloody drink and sink.’
Graham Henry, the head coach, had only recently been entrusted with the top job in New Zealand sport. After the debacle, Smith slipped him a note insisting that we ‘fix this thing.’
It was the beginning of a long, painstaking and often painful process that eventually led to Rugby World Cup glory. What these men – Henry, Smith, Hansen, Enoka, Shand, together with the players – achieved is a case study in transformational culture change, its lessons applicable well beyond the rugby field.
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Will Hogg believes that effective organizational change requires four key stages. The absence of any one factor, the management consultant says, will inhibit culture change and often make it impossible:
Four Stages for Organizational Change:
° A Case for Change;
° A Compelling Picture of the Future;
° A Sustained Capability to Change;
° A Credible Plan to Execute.
The Case for Change for the All Blacks was clear. Performance was sub-par, both on and off the field. ‘I wasn’t in the room,’ says former All Blacks captain, Anton Oliver, ‘but it started by Tana [Umaga, the then captain] saying, “I don’t really want to play, I’m scared of playing. I’m not enjoying it.” Everyone had been locked in their own little islands feeling the same thing.’ They had lost, to use Gilbert Enoka’s phrase, ‘the being of team’. There was a
strong case for change.
Next, the team required a Compelling Picture of the Future. In the next chapter we look at the role of purpose and personal meaning, and how a three-day crisis meeting set the framework that would culminate in Rugby World Cup victory. First, though, there needed to be a clear strategy for change. This was articulated by Graham Henry (as reported in Final Word and repeated in interviews) as the creation of ‘an environment . . . that would stimulate the players and make them want to take part in it’. Henry realized that the world was changing and the All Blacks, like any other business – ‘and it is a business’ – were competing on the open market for the best human resources. He reasoned that an active focus on personal development and leadership would create capacity, capability and loyalty.
Third, the team required the right Sustained Capability to Change. This meant eliminating players who were seen as hindering the chance for change and, more importantly, building the capability of those who remained and those who joined. This centred on a ‘dual-management’ model in which responsibility was ‘handed over’ to the players so that they had, in Henry’s phrase, ‘more skin in the game’.
A winning organization is an environment of personal and professional development, in which each individual takes responsibility and shares ownership.
It also involved – and this is where Henry the educator excelled – the creation of a learning environment, which acted as a stepladder of personal and professional development. The creation of a ‘Leadership Group’ as well as ‘Individual Operating Units’ in which players took increasing responsibility for team protocols, principles and culture, gave structure to this strategy. Captain Richie McCaw believes it to be the most important innovation of Henry’s reign.
Leaders create leaders.
