CEOs play chess with people

The last thing I want to do is rain on someone's parade. But the media coverage surrounding Standard Bank South Africa's CEO Jacko Maree, riding on the back of the organization's excellent half-year financial results, bears a little tempering. There's a global shift away from regarding and treating staff as expendable commodities. I fear, based on the CEO's media comments 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 December 2005, of some 360 workers from the bank's retail distribution network has largely slipped off the media radar. The bank gives as its rationale for the cuts: the predicted downturn in the market 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, he is quoted as saying that his guiding principle is, ‘You have to do what's right for shareholders, not what's right for an individual.' Ouch. That's in my view outdated and inappropriate thinking. It's the kind of cut-slash-and-burn approach that produces a quick good bottom line. It's the style of over-rated pseudo leaders such as Jack Welch of General Electric. Such hatchet men author books on ‘leadership' which are then devoured by the undiscerning. It's the antithesis of the values and respect for people espoused by companies with phenomenal and sustained (decade and longer) results, in Jim Collin's ‘Good to Great' writings. It's also out of kilter with a global shift toward people being valued, genuinely, as the most important assets of an organization.

The idea of taking on people when business booms and then ditching them when leaner times are on the horizon was and in some cases still is, a feature of the advertising industry. Win a big account and you beef up the headcount. Lose the account and the people have to go walkies. The unique nature of that sector provides at least some justification for the modus operandi. But 360 people in the grand scheme of the thousands employed by the Standard Bank? That's circumcising mosquitoes, surely?

When you hear your CEO speak about you in language that quite clearly labels you as an expendable commodity, it can't do much to inspire drive, commitment or loyalty. So when the Barclays-Absa headhunters start prowling in South Africa, it may just 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. Not necessarily in equity terms but at least in terms of having a voice in the organization and ‘counting for something.' They need to know that their ‘leaders' have a genuine respect for them and for the diversity they represent. They need to see those leaders walking the talk and verbalising the appropriate talk. A former colleague of Maree's presciently says, ‘He hasn't been tested in a downturn.' Since he's already halfway through the ten years he feels is a good tenure for a CEO, maybe we'll never truly know. But in the interim he might well want to revisit the language he uses when describing his people perspectives.

Clive Simpkins is a marketing and communications strategist. His forte is helping people and organizations make sustainable change. www.imbizo.com