Allan Leighton - Leadership

My view of business is very simple. Keep it simple. There are only two things that count: the people who work with you and the customers. People don't work for people, they work with people. The people in the organization are the most important. Customers come after because there is no such thing as a company; there are people who create it, make it successful, or make it unsuccessful. Companies don't go bust, people kill them. So people first, then customers. If you get the right people, they produce the right products and service. That's what I focus on.

The second thing is why people win: getting the right people, being customer focused, and executing well. Business is a pyramid: strategy on top, execution on bottom. Everyone thinks strategy is important because the books teach strategy, but not execution. In my world, strategy is the easy 20%. Execution is what cuts the strong from the weak. At Royal Mail, there were hundreds of strategists with great strategies but a terrible business because strategy and execution were completely different. Having 'strategy' in your title got you more Hay points and more money, which was the death knell for strategy departments. Execution happens by the people who execute—in shops, in delivery offices, on the lines. Getting close to the people who execute is fundamental, and communication is how it happens.

Why is communication important? Because you can't get execution without communication. The test of good communication is: did it happen? Not 'did I send it?' Communication is not to keep people informed; it's to make things happen. Communication is an unnatural act in business. We can chat with friends and everyone knows what was said without summaries or videos. But in business, we choke people with things we do for them when we're really doing it at them. Communication is talking with people, not at them.

So much communication I see in businesses is talking at people. When you talk at people, you don't get execution. It goes like this: memos, emails with wide distribution lists and thousands of attachments, videos, meetings, manuals. None of those are communication; they choke the organization and create treacle. Behind each is a department that adds to it. In every organization, there are the permafrost through which nothing goes and the business prevention squads that stop business. People allow them to exist, then wonder why nothing gets through. That's why I go direct to the operators. I gave up on the chain of command. I have more chance of communicating with my people by writing an article in the Sun than through any of those internal channels. Communication is there to make execution happen.