When executives become a brand name more than the company they manage

At the top of business, in many of our minds, sits an idol — an image that we have of the true business leader.

He is a shrewd and powerful man who never errs and never doubts, who rules on matters wisely and without fuss, delivering hard, but fair decisions.

His No can sweep a year or a department or a project aside at one blow, but this leader always knows what he is doing.

There is always a point, always a reason, and he is always right.

And thank goodness for that.

For when we vest all the power in the ‘perfect figure’ at our head, we render ourselves children in the matter.

We need him to be right — for if he isn’t, he might lead us into bad times.

So our leader MUST be all-knowing and all-seeing. Just as before he came to business, when we had Gods, and then Emperors, and then Emperors who were Gods, and then Kings, and then Presidents, and we had Barons and Governors and Commissioners and Chiefs.

So nowadays we have CEOs. They are the company, and the company is them. And they are HUGE.

Especially here, where our cults of personality are more important than perhaps anywhere in the world.

Take Kenya Airways, and with no offence to Titus Naikuni, but having just this day flown from Nairobi to Amsterdam, he introduced himself as the CEO of Kenya Airways in a trailer on my in-seat screen not once, but four times, built into the preamble of every single multinational movie I opened.

Yet I left the next flight in Europe, on KLM, without the foggiest notion of who the CEO is of that esteemed airline.

I even searched the airline magazine, the Holland Herald, for a clue, having earlier read Titus’ latest opening statement of leadership in the KQ equivalent Msafiri.

But No:  there was KLM, operating seemingly quite without a rallying figurehead.

However do they manage?

Yet here, it is the same across the board. Safaricom is not a telecoms company. It is Michael’s brand name. Then there’s James’ bank…and on.

Should we likewise understand the world as Nelson’s South Africa, and Mahatma’s India? Or might we just maybe be getting this leadership thing a bit out of context?

For sure, there’s plenty of reason to.

Everywhere I turn these days there seems to be incitements for leadership.

We need leaders in business, not managers, we’re told.

But there’s a whole bunch of things about these huge, powerful LEADER positions that aren’t quite stacking up for me. The first thing is information.

When one guy holds the axe, who in their right mind is going to tell them anything?

Isn’t it only built into the whole structure of the ‘big man’, that the big man might well be the very last person to be told anything that matters or that might deliver a ‘decision’.

Like, if your department wasn’t doing so good, would you take the news to HIM?

And if our imagined perfect leader is still all-powerful, but actually cut off from the facts, isn’t that going to affect the quality of his decisions just a little?

Then, I’m not quite getting with this ‘wise, always-right person’ how he got to be that way.

Was he born that way, happily just several hundred percent wiser than the rest of us, like the young rescuer of the race, emerging in tender years as a hero of pure heart and complete understanding?

Not for him the first burn or squashed finger in a door. This one was made in the right-first-time mould.

Or did he learn some stuff along the way, and if so how?

By which I mean, to be explicit, did he make a mistake?

You see, there’s some theory about leaders that they are the ones who make the most mistakes and learn the most from them.

But its management theory, so probably not applicable here.

Except if it was, are they still making any?

In some places, it’s generally thought that all people make mistakes, which fuelled a whole big thing in the 1990s about corporate governance — checks and balances, making sure power was shared.

Here, power-sharing, as we all know, is confusing and undesirable.

We need one leader with all the power who gets it right.

Yet the third thing that has struck me of late is that the leadership that truly does seem to be awesome isn’t about names, personalities or people at all, but about things.

It’s easy to see that Nelson Mandela might have been no name without apartheid needing overthrowing, and Mahatma Gandhi was a lawyer until he dedicated himself to world peace.

Our truly great leaders weren’t leaders because they did the voiceovers on their corporation’s radio ads, or even because they gave the speeches.

It was the things their leadership was setting out to achieve that marked them out.

Which was something I noticed recently, when I was lucky enough to hear several directors of Equity Bank talking about why they do the (rather demanding) jobs that they do.

In quite different words, they all spoke about getting banking and first funds to more Kenyans – a mission Equity Bank has undoubtedly pulled off.

A rather noble mission, and one that’s important for Kenya. And one that, from another quarter, Mpesa has actually contributed to as well.

Which brings to my own mind even Kazuri Beads, started by a woman.

I saw her picture once. But is it her that matters? Or is it that Kazuri makes beautiful beads and employs some 400 single Kenyan mothers making them?

Maybe our idol image can stay if we need it to, impractical and god-like as it is.

But when it comes to great leaders, it’s all about the flight you get as the result.

jenny@webaraza.com