Sir Matthew Pinsent is a very big man, with a big voice, and when he walked up and down the stage at the Marketing Society conference, describing how his crew worked in the Athens Olympics, the whole room listened in awed silence before erupting into rapturous applause. I felt inspired. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure what I’d taken away from it – but we all agreed he was a brilliant speaker and we’d loved it.

There’s a whole industry built on having sporting achievers speak to business people, and the received wisdom is that we can learn from them. Matthew talked about teamwork: when at last they were racing for gold at Athens, it was time to know your job and focus totally on doing that well, and trust that the others in the boat will do theirs. But is that a useful analogy for business? It could just as easily translate as, “Not my job mate”.

I recently heard another Olympian, Steve Williams, describe his odyssey to win gold at Athens, enduring five, or was it six, hours training a day, and doing this six, or was it seven, days a week for four years, preparing for one race. Also on the stage was former Olympic swimmer and Gladiator Sharron Davies, and I asked her what lessons there might be for a business person, since we can’t dedicate ourselves to preparing for one thing like that. Her answer? We all spent all our teenage years as well, so really it’s more like twelve or fifteen years’ dedicated training. Ok, thanks Sharron. So that seems even less relevant to business doesn’t it?

Athletes talk a lot about personal commitment and hard work, especially those in swimming and track events where achievements are individual. That leaves me confused about whether sport as inspiration for business is meant to inspire me, as an individual, to compete and win – against whom? My peers, for personal recognition and advancement? Surely not. Perhaps it means each of us as representatives of our organisation, then, to help our business or enterprise to succeed, to win? But business isn’t a race, or a team competition – it’s an obstacle course on a rollercoaster, with obscure and new rivals arriving all the time, and no finish line.

In swimming, in rowing, in fact in any sport, you all know the rules in advance. You can work hard but you can’t change the rules – and if you try to find some wily wheeze to change the situation to your advantage, you risk disqualification. In business, by contrast, people who accept the status quo are LOSERS! Winners in business change the rules to their own advantage – they spot opportunities that are not yet apparent to others, make things no one else has made, find new suppliers or manufacturing processes to gain cost advantages, lobby for different laws, get creative with tax and domicile, even. It’s the job of a business leader to create change. They definitely, totally, should not seek to conform to the “rules” of the category in which they operate.

So we’re back to personal dedication and commitment? Actually I think there is something more here, beyond the hard work, commitment and belief. It’s not that we are in the presence of genius which might rub off on us. It’s that they had a clear goal, a stated purpose, and they focused on it single-mindedly, and worked extremely hard, enduring setbacks, injuries, moments of self-doubt, but never giving up.

Lucky them, of course. For all the horror of having to get up at six every morning to go rowing in a gale, and then lifting weights in the gym for two hours, followed by whatever the latest training guru has thought up, their job is simple – not like mine or yours, right? It’s so clear what they have to do, whereas business is complicated. Maybe so, but the inspiration I take from Matthew, Steve, Sharron and the rest, is that you first need that clarity of purpose. Why are you at work, and what does success look like?

There’s a personal answer, and there should also be an answer you share with your work colleagues. Like Matthew Pinsent in his crew, we can all focus on our roles, and leave the others to do theirs, if we are all clear on the collective purpose, and we all care enough about achieving it to intervene – constructively, helpfully, and at the right time – so we can all be better together. The ethos of the GB rowing squad reflects this focus on purpose. Their touchstone and mantra is, Will it make the boat go faster? Everyone in the squad can question and challenge everyone else’s actions, if they might not be in the best interests of the team.

Sports team managers like Dave Brailsford, who leads the Sky and GB cycling teams, know there are no short cuts or magic bullets. He appointed a director of marginal gains whose job is to look at every aspect of preparation and training, and find all the tiny tweaks that can be made, which all add up to faster races.

I think the real reason we love hearing from sports people is that we are inspired by personal fulfilment. What we see when Sir Matthew, or Steve Richards, or any one of them speak, is a fulfilled person, someone with a clear purpose on which they have delivered. It is exciting and refreshing to be in the company of someone who has achieved something great, whether climbing a mountain, winning an Olympic medal , starting a charity that changes lives, or growing a successful business. It inspires me to revisit and commit to my purpose with renewed energy. With sports people there’s the added bonus that, compared with their schedules, my day at work is a walk in the park. Lovely.

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The FT describes the book as “a polemic against the dangers of docility and group think in every walk of life.” These are two quite different but equally risky phenomena. We can become docile because of respect for hierarchy, or fear of authority, or a genuine but naïve belief that if the higher-ups think it’s ok then it must be. This is different from group think, where we simply fail to imagine different scenarios, or we are reassured by the conviction of others – a self-fulfilling situation. Remember when everyone in the UK thought house prices could only go up… until they collapsed? This has happened more than once, but still we take comfort from the certainty of everyone else.

Although UK-based, Heffernan is well-connected in the USA, and has collected fascinating first-person accounts that include New Orleans flood prevention efforts, the fiscal acrobatics at Enron, asbestos contamination in a Montana mining town, and crazy working practices in the gaming industry. Heffernan illuminates these situations but not to blame people for falling into the trap of wilful blindness. Instead she lays bare how it happens. She profiles those who dare to see, and to say what they are seeing. She has interviewed whistleblowers in the NHS, for example, and reveals the danger of a rigid hierarchy in which protecting your colleagues is more valued than people’s lives. This theme is also thoroughly explored in Matthew Syed’s book, Black Box Thinking, reviewed here. He contrasts the attitude to error in healthcare with the learning culture of aviation industry. One wonders whether, if surgeons’ lives were on the line as pilots’ are, the world of healthcare might become a bit safer.

There aren’t any easy answers, though understanding how wilful blindness happens – indeed, that it happens – is surely the first step in avoiding it. If you think this all sounds rather depressing, there is hope. The book’s final chapter provides a round-up of ways that organisations can tackle the problem. Ultimately, and perhaps most importantly, organisations are collections of individuals. The stories in this book show how thousands of people can act as if they are powerless, but sometimes just one courageous person can change everything. That is inspiring.

If you have the appetite for more reading on how one person can make a difference, try Inadequate Equilibria by Eliezer Yudkowsky. He’s a US-based academic and at times it’s quite abstruse but for those in business, especially trying to innovate, it’s stimulating and encouraging.

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Right now many businesses are struggling, some fighting for survival. The executive team are fully occupied with operational issues, hunting for revenue, having tough conversations about reducing costs. How can a non-executive director add value? You probably can’t do much to generate revenue. Lecturing the executive team about focus, or cost management, or anything in fact, only irritates people who are already stressed. But you can make a difference.

Take a longer view

In a crisis the focus is short term. Aside from a few sectors with a naturally long term view, like infrastructure, the short term focus can become all-consuming. While the execs operate day to day and week to week, the non-execs can help them look up from today’s urgent issues. The global economic crisis caused by Covid-19 is so volatile that maybe a three month, or perhaps six month, horizon is enough. Everyone’s looking at cashflow, of course. Are they taking enough action now, not just for the next month but for the next year? What might they look back on in the autumn and wish they’d thought to do now? Paying out bonuses is an obvious one. Make sure they’re also thinking about how today’s decisions impact the people and the business in three, six, nine months. Is the pain being shared equitably? Will others in the business see it that way? It’s safest to assume nothing stays a secret, so can they stand by today’s judgement calls, if they become known to all employees?

Provide a counter view

An overly-optimistic CEO needs someone else to posit more pessimistic scenarios. You’ll both probably already know you play this complementary role. Make it explicit: you’re not questioning their expertise or judgement, and they’re closer to the market reality. Instead, you’re exploring other possibilities, in case things change. The business needs to be prepared. Many NEDs have contact with other businesses and sectors, providing a wider view of market activity.

Equally, be the sunshine when their outlook is gloomy. It’s tough on the front line. Market uncertainty cuts both ways, so support cautious action if that’s what’s called for, but explore upbeat options too. Agree what the early indicators might be, for positive or negative action. Check on them regularly.

Notice their feelings

It’s understandable that people are stressed. But stress doesn’t generally lead to better decisions. If the relationship works, have separate one-to-one conversations that focus on the person not the business. It’s not about problem-solving – you can’t solve people’s emotions. Acknowledge how different it is for you, the armchair general, compared to them, having difficult conversations and perhaps sleepless nights. Making the effort to initiate these conversations should make the emotional support more valuable than a few platitudes delivered on a board call.

Stick to your principles

All directors have the same fiduciary responsibilities, under UK law. This is not a time to back off, even though it may feel like non-execs should go easy on the executive team. They’re busy, but you can’t just leave them to get on with it. NEDs have to be careful to ensure that supporting them through a crisis doesn’t mean yielding all control. Testing their decisions against established principles for the business, as well as your own, will lead to better outcomes.

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I once asked a very experienced primary school headteacher how she managed to control the youngsters without ever raising her voice. She told me her basic rule was to “catch them being good”. Her version of feedback was to notice and point out good behaviour, and she did it constantly. No wonder they hung on her every word.

That?s a long way from the standard approach to feedback in the workplace. Whose heart leaps for joy on hearing the words “I’d like to give you some feedback”? It’s been shown that we hear negative feedback amplified, and tend to dismiss the positives. You need a ratio of something like 3:1 good to bad to avoid sending someone away broken.

Formal feedback generally assumes the giver knows what good is, and has observed how the receiver is falling short. That often means only that you did it differently from how they’d have done it. Is that useful feedback? Imagine a football team where players are taught the best way to take a penalty is to place it in the top left corner. In a penalty shoot-out, I’m betting on the other team.

In sport it’s about results not about standardisation. We all know about playing to your strengths. And yet in the workplace the focus is more often on the perceived deviations from standard practice. Yes, the how matters, to avoid bullying or excessive pressure – and that?s true in sport too – but that should not mean requiring everyone to behave the same way.

Top sport coaches help players understand when and how they do things right, as individuals and as a team. In “The Feedback Fallacy” (HBR March/April 2019), the authors cite the successful coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Tom Landry, who turned his failing team around by focusing each player on what they did well. His logic was that while there are countless ways to get things wrong, there are a few things each player does right instinctively and effortlessly. Naturally, the players felt better about themselves, and in sport confidence helps. I imagine they also were always keen to hear what Coach had to say.

Most work is not like sport. We don’t get the rapid feedback of games and results every week. Feedback is occasional and formal, for performance evaluation which leads to pay and prospects. If you really want to learn and improve your effectiveness at work, get feedback from someone who isn’t having to go on record with it. We also have to lose our dread of feedback. To do this, try giving it more often. Look for specific things that struck you, that had a positive impact, on you or someone else. This is the kind of feedback you can give someone spontaneously. How they’ve written a tricky paper, or expressed a concern sensitively in a meeting, or given supportive feedback to someone else. It has to be specific, not general plaudits of the “you did that well” kind, which are too easy, not at all actionable, and we mostly dismiss as insincere anyway. Praise is nice but it is not feedback. Practise giving positive feedback. You will start to enjoy it, and the recipients will too. This alone is constructive.

In this model, anyone can give feedback to anyone, including their boss. We can all be a model for how to give effective feedback. If you want your feedback to land well, you know it can’t wait until review time. And you know it mainly has to reinforce the good. Be a coach. That’s the kind of feedback we can all enjoy.

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The proof is in studies done by Dan Ariely, the behavioural economist. In one, people were asked to assemble Lego Bionicles. For the first fully-assembled robot toy, they would be paid $2, then 1.89 for the next and so on, 11 cents less each time. How long would they keep working, given the diminishing returns? Half the people were allowed to line up their finished toys in front of them, but they knew it was for an academic study, and the Bionicles would be broken up at the end for the next person to assemble. For the other half, each completed toy was handed to a supervisor who broke it up in front of them and put the pieces back in the box. When they finished the next Bionicle, they got that box back, ready to do again. Those people who got to line up the fruits of their labours on the desk made an average of 10.2 toys before stopping. The people who saw them broken up stopped after 7.2. Remember, they were being paid the same, but wages were falling. The sense of achievement in the first group made them work on for less pay. Put another way, the absence of meaning in the second group meant they had to be paid 40% more for the same output.

In another experiment, students were given word searches, and were paid 55c for the first completed sheet and 5c less for each subsequent one. Some students handed each completed sheet to a “supervisor” who “reviewed” it without comment. Others were told in advance their work would be collected but not reviewed. A third group handed in their sheets to a supervisor – who fed them into a shredder immediately. No prizes for guessing that the first group kept going much longer than the other two. They weren’t getting positive feedback, but they were getting acknowledgement of their efforts. We might guess, too, that those expecting to be reviewed did more accurate work.

Having a purpose for the brand or company – worthy or otherwise – gives strategic direction, but for people to feel good, and perform well at work, every day, their colleagues’ and manager’s responses to them are critical. It doesn’t even have to be effusive praise. Simple acknowledgement will do.

Individual managers can give meaning to each person they work with, whether subordinate or colleague or even boss, through recognising their efforts. That’s something we are all in control of. Words are cheap, yes, but don’t underestimate their value. Whether you’re changing the world or just changing the toner in the photocopier, a little recognition goes a long way.

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The obvious way to “flip the switch” is in your immediate response to stimulus, being conscious and controlled in the moment rather than reacting without thought. The aim is “to change our behaviour and in turn alter our future through the consequences of our conscious actions”. There’s also stuff about being reflective and then planful about what makes you happy. There are little exercises to do, like making lists to help understand what is standing between you and greater contentment.

It’s good to be reminded of the fundamental notion that you choose your feelings and your behaviour, but the basic idea is over-stretched even in this short book. It’s fluffed out with folksy observations combined with amateur psychology. At a more mundane level, he says he brings fruitless board room discussions to a standstill with this killer question: “Do you need to make a decision on this right now or can it wait until you have all of the facts?”

I’m sure Rose is inspiring and entertaining as a speaker. Unfortunately his book reads like an overly-extended TED talk. There’s far too much of the author, his beloved Gran and her wisdom (such as, “Learn from your mistakes”). There’s a lot of padding and precious little evidence of an editor, who might have pointed out to Jez there is no “Isle of Mann”. He never stops touting for work, by telling us how extensive and successful his business practice is. For example, “I’ve worked with thousands of individuals and groups of people, all over the world and from all walks of life, from almost every sector of industry, to achieve things they didn’t think were possible.” Pity his editor didn’t think it possible to deliver this book in half the space.

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Companies and brands try hard to have distinctive names. Job titles tend to follow a standard formula. Many people have the same job titles, even inside the same business. So what? Because job titles matter. They can helpfully inform or wilfully mislead the customer, not to mention employees themselves, as described here. Now an academic study described in the Harvard Business Review (May 2016) has shown how they can also motivate people and inspire creativity. You’ll know that Disney engineers are “imagineers” and their theme park workers are called “cast members” – simultaneously flattering them and keeping them in line. But this approach is not just for creative industries. It’s being tried in conventional businesses, to re-focus and re-energise people. The new job title can replace the old one; that works where everyone doing that job agrees on a new name. Or people can choose a new secondary title. An infectious disease specialist in a hospital has decided she is a “germ slayer” – I bet that feels good. People may even create unique, individual titles that reflect their informal role as well as their formal one. The finance director of a charity became “the minister of dollars and sense”, while the office manager is now “the keeper of keys”, from Harry Potter.

What’s really going on here is the creation of propositions. Job titles that say, “this is what I do”, and even, “this is what I do for you?”. They’re active. They’re goal-driven. They’re shaped by a purpose and a desired outcome, and unbounded by functional limits. That’s a pretty good starting point for anyone who wants to feel good about what they do, and it provides the stimulus and freedom to take a fresh approach to familiar, well-defined jobs. It should be possible for everyone inside to have a job title that contributes towards the overall aims of the organisation. At the very least, everyone should have a job title that feels like they are doing something worthwhile.

Contrast this approach with one that focuses on superficial things like dress code, or “appearance guidelines which ensure customer-facing staff are consistently well presented and positively represent a client’s brand and image” – as the man from Portico put it. In the recent receptionist high heels row, the implication was that the job of receptionists was to look nice. But they’re not part of the décor, they’re people who welcome and direct visitors. An active job title might have focused a few minds. Also, it is harder to smile sincerely if your feet are killing you.

A senior marketer told me recently, you have to be careful when you create a role in your team. Because as soon as you give people a job title and an area of responsibility, they’ll find things to do. This study should give her encouragement. If the job title defines the role in an output-focused way, with the name providing a constant reminder of its purpose, then people stay focused on the why and not the what of their job. They’re more likely to evolve what they do, rather than sinking into a rut of familiar activities. I hesitate to call this rebranding your people, but in a way it is – without the spandex song-and-dance routine, or the big spend. The study showed that it can release energy and creativity, directed towards the aims of the business. If chosen with care, those aims will align with serving customers better. So here you have an effective marketing tool, and it’s free.

There are a few brilliant people who never lose sight of the main goal. But for the rest of us, a purposeful job title might be quite helpful on a rainy Monday.

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attributed to Wallace Earl Gray Stephens, American poet

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I agree it is not a helpful example to set. But I’m more concerned by the notion that a leader is so essential to a business that, even though she’s been there three years, she can’t leave for a few weeks. It’s been reported that the share price dipped on the news. If I were her, I’d find that profoundly depressing. There are twelve thousand people working at Yahoo. Does that indicate a market belief that she’s the only one keeping Yahoo going? (Other reports say the dip was in line with market moves, and not related to her news.)

When Marissa Mayer was appointed I wrote this piece, The myth of the leader, defending her right to be fallible, and to be a leader not a messiah. But maybe she likes it this way. When Yahoo’s new logo came out barely six months later, Mayer posted this blog:

“On a personal level, I love brands, logos, color, design, and, most of all, Adobe Illustrator. I think it’s one of the most incredible software packages ever made. I’m not a pro, but I know enough to be dangerous
So, one weekend this summer, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the trenches with our logo design team: Bob Stohrer, Marc DeBartolomeis, Russ Khaydarov, and our intern Max Ma. We spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday designing the logo from start to finish, and we had a ton of fun weighing every minute detail.”

Almost the whole weekend. That’s how much it mattered! I don’t know who the three non-intern people are but even if they’re all fully up-to-date graphic designers well-versed in corporate identity, I’d still recommend taking a little longer. One’s response to any new design often changes as you get used to it. That’s one reason it’s usually recommended that you “live with it” before deciding.

The logo story troubles me in two ways. First, it trivialises brand identity. Sure, anyone can pop off for the weekend and have some fun on Adobe Illustrator – if you don’t think it matters too much. Odd that it mattered enough to change it, enough for the chief executive to spend most of her weekend on it, but it didn’t matter enough to do during the working week. Odd, too, that for something important enough for the chief executive to work on directly, it didn’t merit professional, expert help. Does she write the Yahoo code too? It surprises me that she could believe this is ok. This is either a bad way to get important stuff done, or a good way for the chief exec and others to waste their leisure time.

The other troubling thing (for an investor) is what this says about delegation and succession planning at Yahoo. The boss’s job is not to know it all and certainly not to do it all. That’s just not sustainable. If she gets ill will everything stop? Contrast this hands-on approach with that of John D Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, who apparently would often sit in meetings just listening while everyone else debated and worked out an action plan. Perhaps he was thinking. He also had a policy of hiring good people as and when he met them, confident they could be found useful roles soon enough. One imagines he didn’t spend his weekends drawing logos. Doing deals or playing golf, maybe. But not drawing logos. They’re too important to be left to the chief executive.

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Martin Glenn, Marketing Society president, CEO of the Football Association

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