By Clive Simpkins
The last thing I want to do is rain on someone’s parade. But themedia coverage surrounding Standard Bank South Africa’s CEOJacko Maree, riding on the back of the organization’s excellenthalf-year financial results, bears a little tempering. There’s aglobal shift away from regarding and treating staff asexpendable commodities. I fear, based on the CEO’s mediacomments that this trend has not yet struck a chord in the heart(if that isn’t an oxymoron) of Standard Bank leadership.
The intended retrenchment, due to be implemented in December2005, of some 360 workers from the bank’s retail distributionnetwork has largely slipped off the media radar. The bank givesas its rationale for the cuts: the predicted downturn in themarket following what has been described as a ‘lending boom’fuelled by the lowest interest rates in a quarter of a century.
In a Financial Mail profile on and interview with CEO Maree, heis quoted as saying that his guiding principle is, ‘You have todo what’s right for shareholders, not what’s right for anindividual.’ Ouch. That’s in my view outdated and inappropriatethinking. It’s the kind of cut-slash-and-burn approach thatproduces a quick good bottom line. It’s the style of over-ratedpseudo leaders such as Jack Welch of General Electric. Suchhatchet men author books on ‘leadership’ which are then devouredby the undiscerning. It’s the antithesis of the values andrespect for people espoused by companies with phenomenal andsustained (decade and longer) results, in Jim Collin’s ‘Good toGreat’ writings. It’s also out of kilter with a global shifttoward people being valued, genuinely, as the most importantassets of an organization.
The idea of taking on people when business booms and thenditching them when leaner times are on the horizon was and insome cases still is, a feature of the advertising industry. Wina big account and you beef up the headcount. Lose the accountand the people have to go walkies. The unique nature of thatsector provides at least some justification for the modusoperandi. But 360 people in the grand scheme of the thousandsemployed by the Standard Bank? That’s circumcising mosquitoes,surely?
When you hear your CEO speak about you in language that quiteclearly labels you as an expendable commodity, it can’t do muchto inspire drive, commitment or loyalty. So when theBarclays-Absa headhunters start prowling in South Africa, it mayjust be payback time for such an attitude.
If you really want people to operate on the poorly trafficked‘extra mile’, they need to have a sense of ownership. Notnecessarily in equity terms but at least in terms of having avoice in the organization and ‘counting for something.’ Theyneed to know that their ‘leaders’ have a genuine respect forthem and for the diversity they represent. They need to seethose leaders walking the talk and verbalising the appropriatetalk. A former colleague of Maree’s presciently says, ‘He hasn’tbeen tested in a downturn.’ Since he’s already halfway throughthe ten years he feels is a good tenure for a CEO, maybe we’llnever truly know. But in the interim he might well want torevisit the language he uses when describing his peopleperspectives.
Clive Simpkins is a marketing and communications strategist. Hisforte is helping people and organizations make sustainablechange. www.imbizo.com
Article Source: www.ArticlesBase.com
