The Leadership Series: Making Sense of the Puzzle; Part II

2: What was the burning question?

So, I had my subject, Leadership in Early Stage Firms, but what was the really interesting part of this world that I could shine a light on as a researcher? What questions did I want to answer through my studies? This is harder than it sounds.  Ask any PhD student and they will recollect times where they felt like they were wading through treacle to identify crisp research questions. As this isn’t an academic context I won’t labour this too much, but I would like to take you through a couple of key stages that I went through to help me with this.

Talking to leaders

I decided that my first significant step, in parallel to a rigorous literature review which involved reading 100’s of research papers on leadership, was to talk to start-up leaders in addition to small, medium enterprise (SME) leaders.  I wanted to explore their concerns, the different landscape in which they led and what that meant for them and their team.  Talking to people and diving into the population that you are studying to seek to understand and build a picture is vital.  In addition, suspending as much framing, judgement and shaping as possible was paramount, easier said than done.  In the initial research phase I spoke to 26 CEO’s, 5 venture capitalists, 7 commentators (Business Link, Technology Transfer Office and Industrial Fellows) and 3 academics with an active interest in this area (in addition to the support I had within the Institute of Manufacturing).

Emergent Issues:

On first analysis of the interviews I found that a number of issues revealed themselves.  Leaders were very vocal about how they constructed coherence by painting a picture of the future; acted for coherence through action, experimentation and problem solving; and communicated this coherence by engaging others and shaping perception. A few of the quotes from these early stage leaders hopefully bring this to life for you:

“Clarity is extremely important, I catalyse that clarity. I don’t do it all but pulling it together is part of my skill.”

‘My role is to stand back and check that we are doing the right things, the strategy, the direction and ensure that we can articulate this effectively”

“People talk a lot about vision…..I think it is about being able to describe it so vividly that they can see it in their mind, and see where they fit”

Leaders were very aware of the need to evolve their leadership as they developed and grew the organisation and seemed mindful of points of transition also. The leadership tasks of engaging others in both an intellectual and emotional way became clear.

“A start-up of 25 to 30 people survives on emotional bonds. Passion, excitement, risk, empowerment, inspiration, these are all emotional things that a leader connects on. The leader has to have the ability to get the emotional and intellectual buy-in.”

Acting as a resource broker, developing others and understanding the need to fulfill varying roles as a leader with the different stakeholders were other facets of this evolutionary picture of leadership.

For those in funding rounds, the control exerted on their organisation was a critical factor in their leadership journey. The term ‘investor friendly founders’ cropped up.  On further questioning, this was someone who worked effectively with investors, could respond to their concerns and provide a clear picture and demonstrate consistency in producing results.  Some leaders found the external control a challenge and I interviewed founders ‘in situ’, displaced founders as well as ‘professional CEO’s’ who were recruited to replace the original founders; who gave some really interesting insights into this complex power relationship.

In the end I boiled all the issues from this first phase of interviews down to the following areas to explore in more detail in the next stage of research:

1. Sensemaking - the ability of leaders to create and retain a mental model of the organisation, its business model and the context in which it operates in a coherent way.

2. Sensegiving - the act of shaping others’ perceptions of events and their environment, which is all the more important at times of uncertainty and ambiguity.

3. Environment - influence of external control, transition and culture.

4. Leadership - evolution and capability.

It strikes me now how these skills are all the more demanded within the world of business and politics as we face the challenge of the pandemic.

Now for the next phase - in-depth case studies of real change in these early stage firms.  The goal, to understand the process of leadership in this context and work out what leaders actually do when they are making and giving sense, interacting with the environment (both responding and shaping) and thinking about their own leadership throughout.

Next time: What the case studies revealed........