Effective Leadership and Human Resources Management is about ensuring that an organisation in a complex environment, such as the VUCA environment of today, achieves its intended performance management goals. Effectiveness should be measurable in order to give a concise idea to management on how well they are doing if they truly intend to achieve business strategy.

Whilst leadership is about influencing people for achievement of desired results, managing people is about operational control for achievement of agreed company goals. Today’s operational environment is highly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) (U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (February 16, 2018). “Who first originated the term VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity)?”USAHEC Ask Us a Question. The United States Army War College). Keeping people motivated for delivery of organizational goals in a VUCA environment calls for unique leadership and management approaches.

Whilst most businesses have a tendency to concentrate on the ‘what’ aspects of business results, i.e. quantitative aspects like profitability, revenue etc,  the ‘how’ aspects, i.e. the qualitative aspects of leadership and people management have become even more critical given the immense competition on scarce talent in today’s environment. The ‘how’ aspects include living the organization’s values in the truest sense, leadership and managers, walking the talk as they deliver service on their staff and clients, being exemplary to the extent that the whole workforce follows suite without questioning.  It costs a lot more for a company to fail to deliver on strategic goals and demotivated staff are expensive to keep. A staff compliment which is demotivated becomes under-productive, with their negative attitude being infectious to everyone else they work with, be it colleagues within the organization or clients resulting in loss of teamwork and valued clients. Whilst some may stay others will resort to leaving which can result in heavy losses to not only the human resource pool but drastically affecting the effectiveness of the organisation. Replacement of lost talent is by far too expensive compared to retention.

Key questions around leadership and management effectiveness include:

• What are the performance results versus the agreed strategic deliverables?
• What are the pros and cons for the performance results?
• What aspects of the pros and cons are directly attributable to people?
• How can the pros be maintained/enhanced? What lessons from the cons? How do you improve?
• Are staff performing at the right levels? Are they competent and do they have the right skills to deliver as expected?
• Have you done competence assessments of your staff following adoption of your new strategy? What are the competence gaps? How and when can you close the gaps up? At what cost?
• What are the organization’s staff turnover rates?
• What are the replacement rates for key talent?
• What is the average turnaround time to replace critical talent?
• Does the organization have a succession plan?

The starting point is for the HR leader to ensure the values of the organization are well entrenched into the day-to-day people management approaches of all leaders and managers within the organizations. This is achieved through training, regular communication, updates, leader/manager walking the talk and reinforcement mechanisms of correct behaviours by all levels across the organization. If the entrenchment is not done at the right level of depth, an organization can have leadership and management approaches and styles that are as many as the number of managers and leaders they have. Organizational performance review systems should include as a minimum, the 180 degree performance evaluation and feedback system, especially on leaders and managers. This involves feedback from superiors, peers and subordinates as a minimum. The results should be taken seriously with consequences. Targeted training should be undertaken to address all people management issues raised, followed by further follow up reviews to assess for change in approaches.  Failure to improve should result in disciplinary action on the manager and leader. Employment contracts for leaders can be contract and performance based. Failure to deliver, all things being equal, should end in contract termination.

It is time managers and leaders are held truly responsible and accountable for effective organizational performance.