Last week the new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sent a memo to all of his companies employees. It was a tough message, in reality because the grave problems that Nokia needs to deal with are also tough. It is rarely easy to remove the veils that many executives use to filter reality and yet it is precisely this that is one of the most essential functions of leadership for if we don’t start with a realistic vision of our present situation how are we ever going to find the right path to follow towards a better future?
One of the people who have most influenced my thinking on Leadership and with whom I studied at Harvard, is Ronald Heifetz. In his book, “Leadership Without the Easy Answers” he argues that the true function of Leadership is the Adaption of organizations from their present situation to a new one, most often radically different. For him, the rest is Management. For Heifetz the first step in this voyage is “Identify the changes which are truly necessary”. However, for me, before we can do this we need to convince our followers on the need to embark on these changes.

To do this Stephen Elop told a story (an ability that every leader would do well to develop), a story that contained a powerful image. It was about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. One night he awoke to find the platform completely enveloped in flames in a couple of minutes he had to decide between staying on the platform and being consumed by the flames or taking a leap into the darkness and towards the freezing waters a hundred meters below.

Elop’s message is clear and he delivers it with brutal honesty. Since the iphone stormed into the market revolutionizing the whole industry, Nokia has constantly found it self on the defensive. It has lost the top end of the market to Apple, the middle to Google’s Android and the cheaper end to the Chinese. Not a lot to celebrate. Elop observes, with that clarity that often only someone from the outside can have (Elop comes from Microsoft) that Nokia’s platform is in fact on fire and the only thing to do is to take that valiant leap towards into the unknown.

In my work with Electrolux I have had the privilege of working with one of the great CEOs of the last thirty years, Hans Stoberg who over a period of nine years carried out one of the most profound and successful corporate transformations ever seen. Hans had the habit of dropping into our leadership courses in Stockholm and speaking directly to his present and future leaders about his vision of the type of Leadership that Electrolux needed. Hans always hammered away with the same message asking his executives to get out there and generate this “sense of urgency”, because if they don’t put into place some deep and radical changes their company won’t have any future. His message got through because his leaders did just as he asked, and the whole organization changed.

And so one of the most important functions of leadership is to create this sense of urgency to carry out the necessary changes, something always painful for the great majority of people. With his memo, this at least Elop has achieved, the jury is still out on wether or not Elop will be able to follow it up with a new direction as successful as that set by Hans Stromberg for Electrolux. At least his first broadside has hit the mark.

And you, my friends, how do you create this sense of urgency capable of setting the people off on the path to change’