The Road to Audacity
AUDACITY Being Adventurous in Life and Work Stephen Carter jeremy Kourdi
* Stephen Carter and jeremy Kourdi 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-1-4309-0617-5 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-51004-7 ISBN 978-0-230-50879-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230508798 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Carter, Stephen. The road to audacity : being adventurous in life and work I by Stephen Carter and jeremy Kourdi. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Organizational behavior. 2. Psychology, Industrial 3. Risk-taking (Psychology) I. Kourdi, jeremy. II. Title. HD58.7.C354 2003 650.1-dc22 2003055267 Editing and origination by Aardvark Editorial, Mendham, Suffolk 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 OS 04 03 Transferred to Digital Printing 20 11
List of Figures and Tables Preface Prelude What is Audacity? Journeys and destinations 2 This happy band 3 Note 5 Chapter I The Road to Audacity 6 Living in a clockwork world? 6 Why risk it? The value of risk-taking and audacity 8 Driven to audacity - the case of Chrysler II The inevitability of risk 12 Handling uncertainty 13 An unreasonable art 18 Travelling the road to audacity 20 Notes 21 Chapter 2 Why? The Audacity Factor 22 Why be audacious? 22 The search for excitement 23 The puzzle of why 24 Born audacious? 26 The promise of inconsistency 28 What uncertainty offers 30 Notes 31 Chapter 3 The Eight Ways of Being 32 Consistently inconsistent how we deal with arousal 33 Experiencing the world 36 Intention: goals versus means 37 Inclusion: fitting in versus falling out 40 Interaction: transactions versus relationships 43 Identification: me versus you 45 Connecting to audacity 48 Notes 50 viii ix v
vi Contents Chapter 4 The Meaning of Mountains 52 The 'real 'dangerous edge 52 Mountains and reversal theory 53 Learning from the journey 54 A motivationally rich promise 56 Note 56 Chapter 5 Walking the Dangerous Edge 57 How can we be audacious? 57 Stepping up to the dangerous edge 57 The confidence frame and the England middle order batting collapse 61 But confidence in what? 62 Switching between states: fracturing the protective frame 65 Establishing protective frames 66 Awareness 70 Are you with me? 72 How organisations can be aware of an uncertain future 73 The audacity factor 75 Notes 76 Chapter 6 Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Employee? 77 Organisations need audacity 77 Employee-phobia 79 Malice, laziness and downright corruption 81 The paradox of audacity and the squandering of talent 83 Can the paradox be resolved? 84 What do you get when you trust people to be audacious? 85 The people you want, want to be audacious 86 The war for talent 87 Audacity delivers 88... and is innovative 90 What does it take for an organisation to be audacious? 92 The very big picture 92 Notes 94 Chapter 7 Leadership Matters 95 The need for leadership 97 Led astray: why traditional leadership ideas are failing 98 Leadership is what matters, not simply leaders 98 Developing audacity through leadership 99 Building microclimates 100 What's it like being around you? The eight microclimate conditions 101 A role model for climate-building? los Mandel a 107 The demon seen 109 Captain Mainwaring and Private Fraser 110 Leadership communities 112
Contents vii Developing a performance climate through a leadership community I 13 The formula 116 Notes 116 Chapter 8 OfWildebeest, Buffalo and Bison 117 About SABMiller 118 About HSBC 119 Interesting and exceptional organisations 119 Notes 12.4 Chapter 9 Dancing with Customers 125 Desperately conforming incorporated 125 Treating customers as real people: the final frontier 130 But love is... the safest thing 133 Notes 136 Chapter 10 Building a New Eden -Audacity at Work 137 About The Eden Project 138 The dream of Eden 139 Creating Eden 141 The motivation to build Eden 145 The importance of Eden 148 Notes ISO Chapter II The Road from Morocco 151 lmlil 152 The Kasbah Du Toukbahl 152 Audacity - dreaming with your eyes open 155 Index 158
Figures 1.1 Management control and market volatility 1.2 Managing the impact of risk 3.1 Hebb's optimal arousal curve 3.2 Arousal-seeking and arousal-avoiding 3.3 The four domains of experience 3.4 Goals and means in the intention domain 3.5 Fitting in and falling out in the inclusion domain 3.6 Transaction and relationship in the interaction domain 3.7 'Me' and 'you' in the identification domain 5.1 The dangerous edge 5.2 Protective frames 5.3 Nideffer's model of attentional focus 5.4 The three pillars of audacity 6.1 Differences in time spent in serious vs. playful motivational states among managers completing the Apter Motivational Style Profile 6.2 Differences in time spent in conforming vs. rebellious motivational states among managers completing the Apter Motivational Style Profile 6.3 Differences in time spent in self-mastery vs. other-mastery motivational states among managers completing the Apter Motivational Style Profile 12 15 33 34 37 38 41 43 46 58 61 71 75 78 79 79 Tables 1.1 3.1 9.1 Areas of organisational risk Summary of motivational states and their implications for audacity Harley-Davidson's financial performance 14 47 128 viii
It all started when the senior manager of a very large business decided he wanted his company to be more audacious and someone thought we might be able to help. My first impulse on seeking to help was to round up the usual suspects - the great and good of corporate life regularly eulogised in print - and then I hesitated. What exactly was audacity and why would the leader of a successful business want more of it? And, short of offering a list of distinguished and not so distinguished role models, exactly how was someone or some corporation to develop it? The more I delved the more it seemed I was asking a question where the answers were not going to come from the standard sources. And so it became a puzzle and, I suppose, a bit of a quest. Trying to answer these questions became an adventure undertaken for itself, although since then all sorts of results and outcomes have been achieved. To search for the road to audacity meant starting in and travelling through some novel places. On this quest some people have provided some very useful signposts and bearings. Foremost among these has been the work and friendship of Michael J. Apter, creator of reversal theory and in my opinion one of the great psychologists of the past few decades. Reversal theory is quite simply the most powerful account of what it is to be human that I have come across and one that particularly talks the spirit of audacity. I have really wanted to capture the insights it has given me and hopefully communicate them to a wider audience. Mike's enthusiasm for this project and his willingness to consider new dimensions to the implications and expansion of the theory are an example of the generosity of a great mind. Spending time over an eighteen-month period working and drinking a few beers occasionally with Steve Venables, the British mountaineer and writer, raised my curiosity about the spark that makes some of us climb out of the valley and pastures and up into the peaks. His ability to articulate and communicate the compulsion of this was an inspiration and led me into areas of human experience of which, as a lesser motal, I had been ix
X Preface ignorant. In this vein the energy and friendship of Barry Roberts has also been superb, together with his rather quixotic attempts to render me fitter and more able to survive in the great outdoors. On the route to a finished book, a travelling companion can be a boon. The last book I had written - Renaissance Management - had taken me over two years to write and I really couldn't conceive of committing to a similar lengthy project. What I needed was a colleague to help keep the speed up and contribute in lots of ways. Jeremy Kourdi I knew would be the perfect foil and so it proved. He is a most generous writing partner, always positive and enthusiastic, supportive of new ideas, patient in dealing with my somewhat erratic typing, grammar and sentence construction, full of good examples, case studies and intelligent insight and he has a great sense of readability. To spare his blushes, most of the anecdotes in the first person singular are mine and were retained as it was felt that they helped to make some of the ideas in the book more immediate. To not spare his blushes, the particular story about being harassed by a penis extension electronic salesman is most definitely his. Many other people have contributed to this book, both directly and indirectly. My colleagues Marie Shelton and Mitzi Desselles are a constant source of criticism, support, challenge, friendship and unbelievable tolerance. My debt to them is great, as it is to Andrew Kerry of the Boots Company. It was his audacious determination that enabled the leadership programme in the Alps, described later in the book, to happen instead of remaining a pipe dream. As a result this meant that we could explore how to make many of the ideas in this book real and practical. In trying to create a new way of looking at the challenge of audacity, Jeremy and I are also grateful to those who helped us go into what was, for us, undiscovered territory. In particular we should mention Phillip Whitehead MEP who always makes time to help and advise, Graham Mackay CEO of SABMiller, Steve Barrow and his colleagues at HSBC and Dr Gene Crozier of the Chartered Management Institute. Richard Davies, also of SABMiller, has been a tremendous support and help, as was his colleague Mandy Roussouw. Without wishing to sound trite, if making this book was a journey, thank you and love to Sharon, Sara, Samantha, Lucy-Jane and Jack, for being at home to come back to. Finally, some of the ideas in this book are not the responsibility of any of the above, even Jeremy. For all that is muddled, wrong-headed or simply mistaken, please blame me. STEVE CARTER
Preface xi The Road to Audacity is the result of the support and encouragement of many people, and their expertise must be acknowledged. First, Steve Carter - this book was his idea and his originality, insight, generosity and good humour made travelling the road to audacity immensely rewarding and great fun. We were very fortunate to work with an excellent editor at Palgrave Macmillan, Stephen Rutt, and his talented team whose patience and energy is much appreciated. I would also like to thank those friends and many colleagues who I have worked with over the years and who have, without doubt, provided the most intelligent, stimulating and innovative opportunities to learn and develop. Finally, my gratitude goes, as always, to my family, Julie, Thomas and Louise, who have not only provided constant encouragement, but also thought-provoking opinions and the inspiration to write. JEREMY KOURDI Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.