Leadership: Getting The Timing Right

A quote from Victor Hugo

"No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come”

If that is true then when is that right time?

• Bill Gates finally standing down as CEO of Microsoft having created a two year orderly transition to three people - Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. Leadership is about knowing when to go, great leadership is about not leaving a vacuum behind.
• John Hunt sold his estate agency business Foxtons for just shy of £400 million last year, right at the top of the property boom. He’s now considering reacquiring the business, for a fraction of what he paid for it. It now looks an obvious thing to have done, why didn’t the buyers see the same way? Leadership is about not following the herd but following your own judgement.
• Warren Buffett, the world’s most successful investor (and largest single shareholder in such business as Coca Cola and Tesco) doesn’t worry about getting out of ‘frothy’ markets because he doesn’t buy into them in the first place. Sometimes leadership is about not doing something – less is more.

What are some of the key timing issues that will reveal the thought leaders and business leaders over the next few years?

• When will the property slide reach bottom and it’s time to sweep up all the undervalued properties and businesses?
• How is ‘peak oil’ (if it exists) changing business models? Should we be hunkering down and waiting for things to calm down, or is this the cheapest oil we are ever going to see and act accordingly?
• When and what will be the environmental tipping point that radically changes customer behaviour?
• Will moving from a consumption/growth based economic model to a sustaining/conserving one, be voter or politician led? i.e. will elections be lost because politicians didn’t act, or will they be won because politicians catch the zeitgeist and offer difficult but necessary solutions?
• As the huge baby boomer demographic (born 1945-1960) moves into retirement, bringing with them their sense of entitlement, disposable income and quality of life motivations, how will these needs be fulfilled?
• As business power consolidates increasingly into huge global organisations, dominating sectors, with incomes greater than many countries GDPs and micro businesses/freelancers flourish, what opportunities are there for the middle tier organisations that haven’t been ‘hollowed out’.

Leadership isn’t about the obvious, or the predictable, unless viewed with hindsight, it’s about insight, risk and self awareness. How is yours?