15.04.15
www.thebookseller.com
FEATURE THE LEADER DEBATE
23
See the wood for the trees
With new competitors and new technologies, publishing needs a new kind of management. Duncan Enright explains the blueprint for would-be leaders, and argues that successful leadership does not necessarily correlate to intelligence
T
his may be extending a metaphor to within an inch of its life, but stay with me. It’ll be worth it.
Picture the publishing and bookselling
communities as travellers at a crossroads in the Amazon rainforest. The footsore adventurers are searching for a fabled nirvana, El Digitalo, where the old certainties of quality and profit are to be found once again as the slopes of Mount E-Publishing are conquered. The group is tracking customers who have plunged into the undergrowth and are way ahead—and threatening to lose the plucky wayfarers. Deciding on the right direction and setting off on the journey forward calls for a new brand of leadership. This trip requires emotional intelligence to navigate the tricky Amazon basin to a new promised land. In the past, many of the great publishing houses have been made and named for the wandering visionaries who created them:
Carl Bertelsmann, Henry Butterworth, William Heinemann, Paul Hamlyn, John Wiley and Louis Elzevir all have great landmarks in their name because they went where no one had gone before. In recent times, these and other publishers have merged and grown to become well-managed and organised corporations. However, all of them now face the largest challenge since they set off on the trek: the emergence of the tricky digital terrain and agile competitors from all directions who lie in wait. What these explorers need to do is stop
following the old tracks and instead take a new direction. This requires a new style of management, employing different leadership styles to suit the challenges and stimulating leaders throughout the company. A leader needs to become self-aware, to manage their emotions, to understand the feelings of others and to manage relationships productively. It is common for talented
managers to reach the top because they are a safe pair of hands, or an appealing prospect because of their financial savvy. They are also probably politically astute, competitive, directive and ruthless. There is, however, a gulf between good management and good leadership. For a short time I had the privilege to be the publisher of the great father of management, Peter Drucker. He expressed the difference beautifully when he wrote: “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” On our trek, managers make sure our water bottles are topped up, but leaders point the way.
IQ IS OVERRATED The old adage that “knowledge is power” is no longer valid and our human default leadership style of “know everything and tell people what to do” (to which we all regress when stressed) is ineffective. We are in uncharted territory. We simply can’t know everything and we now know that people respond far better to insights than being told what to do. Leaders need to create a climate in which
everyone on the expedition can develop and share insights, so all eyes and ears are tuned
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