Building on talent

Gary Ince, chief executive of the recently-formed Institute of Leadership and Management, sets out his agenda for expanding skills.

I am determined the ILM will play a key role in providing skills upon which the UK's social and economic well-being depends, and I am committed to fundamental change.

In my opinion, the UK has concentrated too much of its attention on building management capability and not enough on building leadership capability over the last 20 years.

The focus of business education in the UK has been on management and the processes involved. The proliferation of management systems is testament to this. Tools such as TQM and ISO, for example, are all designed to ensure that we can manage our organisations and do things consistently.

As a result, the UK has become a nation of managers and we have become accomplished at consistently sticking to systems and repeating processes. Did you know there are more ISO registered companies in the UK than anywhere else in the world?

Meanwhile, other countries have focused their attention on building leadership. Leadership is about encapsulating strategy, vision, risk-taking, setting direction and determining how an organisation should move forward. Management simply implements this strategy over and over again and is behind the failure of many UK companies. Short-termism has resulted in many UK public companies embarking upon a strategy only to reverse out at the first set-back.

If public companies are to compete on the world stage, they need to embrace leadership and ensure sufficient resources are invested into building their leadership capability. That will ensure they do the right thing, and not simply 'do it right'. Marconi, for example, implemented its strategy perfectly, which sounds fine, except in retrospect it seems its strategy was flawed from the outset.

The UK needs to understand the distinction between 'manager' and 'leader'. A leader tends to be the visionary who ensures the organisation is moving in the right direction, while the manager is the individual who implements that strategy and monitors the performance.

In the US, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus published a book called Leaders, which became known for the quote: "Managers do things right and leaders do the right thing". We appear to be successful at this in the UK. The recent corporate disasters to befall FTSE100 companies are testament to this - we are great at really implementing a strategy but the strategy is not thought through from the outset.

In addition to the above, the UK has focused too much on building and supporting leaders and managers at the top of the organisational tree. Too little attention has been paid to building leadership and management capability throughout the organisation.

Current management structures and 21st century culture means there is a greater need for leadership throughout an organisation, from the shop-floor to the managing director. Through better education, people ask 'why?' and don't just do. Leadership alone can answer the 'why?'.

Numerous research studies have provided empirical evidence as to these thoughts. Our own survey among workers, commissioned from Business Partners UK, indicated that 60 per cent of employees were unhappy with the state of leadership in their own organisation.

People in the UK are unhappy at the way they are led and our task is not just to improve leadership at the top but to ensure the message percolates throughout the management tree of any organisation.

Building leadership capability is one of ILM's key goals. We aim to unlock people's potential to be managers and leaders, and ensure managers at all levels, in every sector, can develop skills to run their businesses successfully and further their careers.

The fact the UK lags behind its international competitors in so many industries can partly be attributed to the lack of leadership.

It is imperative for our future prosperity that the UK focuses its attention upon building its leadership capability to ensure the future prosperity of the country rather than simply improving management.