SpaceShipTwo – the Virgin Galactic rocket plane capable of taking private citizens to the edge of space.

Sir Richard Branson Leadership – a style of business leadership that is more focused on drawing a line in the sand than robust profiteering.

Branson is an entrepreneur and a pioneer. His leadership is able to fabricate the skeleton onto which others will later attach ligaments, tendons and muscle tissue. This is a hard place to be.

He has spend millions in moving space travel into the realm of the everyday. He has chosen to ignore the self proclaimed prophets who label commercial space travel as dangerous or unprofitable.

The tragedy of 31 October 2014 when SpaceShipTwo exploded after dropping away from the mothership  is one of the risks of being a pioneer. The question is this – will it do for space travel what the Hindenburg crash did for the airship? I think not. Sir Richard Branson’s Leadership is equal to the negative fallout resulting from failure.

Branson is no stranger to failure. He knows that it can spawn success with bold leadership – that one learns more from a setback than unconditional success. He will allow the public to embrace the loss and make it their own. He will invite them to walk the path of failure with him before turning their attention back to the future success. His leadership and singular focus will get Virgin Galactic over this challenge and allow them to recover the momentum they have lost.

Virgin Value . . . “To change the game and challenge the status quo by providing a product or service of great use.” – Sir Richard Branson

Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson, left, and Scaled Composites LLC founder Burt Rutan wave from the mothership aircraft White Knight Two “Eve”.

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Apple’s success was often pinned on the thought and leadership of the CEO, Steve Jobs. When Jobs got kicked out, the company went down and when he passed away the share price crashed. It took a long time for the company to build a brand independent of the CEO because of the critical role he landed up fulfilling.

Apple is often regarded as one of the best brands and businesses in the world but in saying that I think Steve Jobs failed as a leader because of the fact that he didn’t build strong enough secondary tier management. This is evident in the fact that the organisation was immediately negatively affected when he was removed from the organisation.

On the other hand let’s look at the organisation of Google. No one actually knows who the leadership of Google is. No one can actually tell me who the current CEO of Google is or their secondary management. The brand and the company is bigger than the managers and the CEO.

For me, when the brand and the company are bigger than the people within their organisation, a great company has not only been built but phenomenal leadership has been achieved.

The goal of entrepreneurship is for the entrepreneur to only pioneer it so far but then have the ability to remove himself and the company’s existence continues in perpetuity.

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The idea is that the entrepreneur can be removed at any time and the company continues to grow independent of the entrepreneur as the correct structures and processes have been put in place. Most specifically, the correct human capital will remain working within the organisation.

Human capital thinks independently, understands the vision of the entrepreneur and implements that vision of the entrepreneur on a daily basis, ultimately expanding the organisation in their field of expertise. We have got to the point now, in our medium size company, that our HODs have each been given the mandates: they each know what they can do and what their budgets are.

More importantly they know how to utilise and apply the creativity and vision of the company to their independent area, to grow the company through their individual efforts.

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In July, you should be sitting on 40% of your yearly turnover if your objectives were correct because of April having such a low turnover.

It is good to remind the company of these objectives. This will hopefully inspire them at this half way mark of the year, looking at where the company is at and where it is going. This will remind them of the goals that were set at the beginning of the year and remind them that they are held accountable for achieving these goals. There should be a sense of excitement when they see how much has been accomplished and what needs to be achieved moving forward.

Topics that should be covered in the general address are;

• Objectives.
• Culture.
• Values.

Never underestimate the role that culture and values play in a general address as well as the value of reminding the company on the type of ethos that they stand for.

The general address also includes;

• What is expected of them as people.
• What is expected of them in their workplace.
• What the company represents and stands for.

Our culture and values are an inspirational and passionate document that will be proudly read out as we plot and correlate it towards our next six months strategy.

The general address should outline how the strategy for the next six months has changed.

Objectives and yearly benchmarks may be the same, but it should fundamentally look at the strategy at that of the Head of Department level. The HOD levels should deal with the next six months and what every department should be instituting. This should include when the department will have their September and November campaign completed for implementation, as well as when will it be pre-approved, how much are you relying on it at that point in time and what figures have to be achieved by then.

At a HOD level, the general address should tackle what the next six month’s bigger strategy is going to be. At a junior as well as a day to day executive level, it should address what they should be looking at month to month, week to week and day to day. Breaking those objectives down into bite-sized pieces to ensure they are easily understood.

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Here is mine and it’s just four words . .  “YOU ARE THE PROBLEM”.

Your business is a direct reflection on you. Problems in the business are problems in you. Staff imitate you.

What excites you excites them. What disinterest you disinterest them. Your interpretation of balance is their interpretation of balance.

Here is the longer version of this strategy . . .  “What is the problem within you that is causing the problem in the business?” Address the problem in your own life and the problem will disappear in the business. Once you have it mastered your own problem, the business problem will disappear permanently (which is unlike with any other externally imposed solution).

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Genghis Khan built one of the greatest empires from scarcity.

His homeland of Mongolia is a harsh environment; freezing cold, arid, isolated, treeless and with little in the way of natural resources. The Mongols developed a lifestyle matched to this environment and flourished. Every man had three horses and with a few chunks of cheese and blood from his horses he could survive for 16 days. When he fired a shot, he never missed because arrows were scare.  Russia by comparison was an easy environment with food, trees, water and infrastructure – even the Russian winter the Mongols took in their stride.

Building a business in a recession is not for the fainthearted but then that depends what you are use to. If you have developed an appetite for abundance then you will hunker down and with the rest of your bushiness sector wait for the good times to return. If however you are used scarcity you will see big wide open spaces of opportunity. Your ability to do great things with little will leave your intimidated opposition far behind as you reap in fields of little competition and great opportunity.

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Genghis Khan surrounded himself with people that had two characteristics i.e. they were brilliant in their own right and they were loyal . . . . . . . . .

Loyalty is not a strategy. If people continually do business with you you cannot give them a customer card and call it a ‘loyalty card’ – rewards and loyalty are not the same thing.

Loyalty

Loyalty is a fundamental principle or value. It is a two way relationship and includes trust, honesty, transparency and credibility. When things go wrong, as they do, clients, friends and staff who leave are functioning at the level of reward. Those that don’t, who function at the deeper level of loyalty do not abandon ship; both parties have a long term commitment to the other regardless of the cost.

Setbacks affect people who are rewards orientated but not people who are loyal . Building your team with people who are loyal to your cause is a critical part of leadership.

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In business people want to be led; they appreciated and value leadership . . . . . . . . . They will buy into being led if the leader is confident and has a clear direction and strategy; it is better to be led (and make some personal and probably superficial compromises) than not to be led at all.

Leadership

Being led by a confident bold leader with a clear direction means one less thing to worry about; you can get on with your own issues when you know that your country, your business, your club is in the hands of a bold leader with a transparent plan. The only era of peace that the Arab world has known  was the 400 years when they are ruled by Genghis Khan; being ruled by a Mongolian dictator was not ideal but it did bring its own rewards.

People want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Contrary to Pink Floyd lyrics we want to be ‘another brick in the wall’ as long as the wall recognizes, values and rewards each brick’s uniqueness.

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Management Structure

Genghis Khan had a unique chain of command  . . . . .  every man was an officer who could make a decision. Unlike his enemies who had a centralized command system of ‘do, stop, wait’, his army was broken into hierarchical groups of units who independently could exploit any opportunity that came their way as long as it tied into the overall master plan of ‘defeat and destroy’.

His army was made up of 80 000 fighting men . . .

• The fighting men were actually 8 independent armies working to a common objective.
• Each army was actually 80 independent groups of 1000 each working to a common objective.
• Each group was actually 800 groups of 100 working together.

Therefore it was impossible to neutralize his attack. Down to the last man they had a mandate to do whatever was needed for the good of the whole regardless of the size of their group or whether Genghis Khan was in immediate command or not. This empowered his troops to exploit an opportunity in the environment before his enemies could even recognize it was a potential weakness.

LIVEOUTLOUD concurs with this empowering view of business management and leadership. The ‘do, stop, wait’ model of centralized command is redundant in today’s business environment.

Every person needs to believe in the common vision. Every person is mandated to think on their feet either on their own or within a small group. Every person must value and exploit the advantage that speed and opportunity offers.

At LIVEOUTLOUD we don’t have minions. Every person is a fighting officer.

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As an entrepreneur I have benefited for lessons of leadership and business from Genghis Khan . . . . . . . . . .

I love stories of successful leaders like Genghis Khan. He conquered ¾ of the known world in 1215.

I find his strategies useful for my business LIVEOUTLOUD South Africa.

He was a leader ‘who did more, with less’ which makes him a perfect role model in the tough business environment we find ourselves in 2013. His army was smaller and less sophisticated, yet he routed the nations of the Middle East and China despite being a member of a tented nomadic Mongolian tribe who had never seen a city, a stone wall or a well. His success can be attributed to one thing i.e. speed, both physically and strategically.

I found that his life and strategies offered lessons for management structures, leadership models, values and strategies.

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