“In moving from the traditional authoritarian, hierarchical organisation to a locally controlled organisation, the single greatest issue is control.  Beyond money, beyond fame, what drives most executives of traditional organisations is power, the desire to be in control.  Most would rather give up anything than control”

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

I have come across this issue many times in my career.  One example involved implementing a global change programme which saw the low-level, repetitive,administrative and data intensive work of our corporate  functions move to Bangalore, India.  Despite the people outcome – a loss of about 200 roles as the activity moved to our partner in India, the business case and benefits could not be argued.  These included improved service,  greater opportunity to learn from and streamline the work and data and eventually create a more integrated way of using  information.  And save a lost of cost.  But our country managers fought tooth and nail to stop this from happening.  Our Operating Model (the way we are organised to do our work and make decisions) was structured so that these country managers were kings of their own domains with little or no interference from the centre.  They controlled their operation from end to end including their people and their activities.  The role of the Centre was to provide guidance, expertise and solutions which  the country manager could choose to implement or ignore. This made any global change very tricky!  There was little room for tell and do, this was all about influence and persuasion, treating each country manager individually, recognising some are influenced by others, some need to see the change in action first, others need to see the intricate details of the cost savings, yet others needed to speak to and know companies who have implemented similar changes.  Our stakeholder engagement plan was large and complex.  This was not change implemented by ‘sheep -dip’.  At the heart of it all was the fact that the operating model had changed, the centre was asserting control over the kings in country.

But I have great empathy with these country managers.  My first role in Africa was as ICL’s Business Transformation Director, tasked with implementing our shift from hardware to software and services.  When the Regional Director  resigned in protest about this change, I found myself with my old job and my new – Regional Director for ICL East Africa and Malawi – poacher and gamekeeper!  Getting under the skin of the new role gave me the insight that what we had planned back in the comfort of HQ in UK, would ruin our business across Africa. This was a continent that had no stable power supply, that needed layer upon layer of infrastructure long before we could talk about IT services.  Our best sellers – cash machines to rival NCR, retail machines for the growing consumer goods market, laying network cables for business growth – had no room in the new strategy.

The African Exec team spent long and fraught days preparing our response – our 5 year business strategy  – to present to the Group CEO.   I flew back to the UK with the Africa CEO to make this presentation and to influence the Executive team.  It was hard to hear the Group CEO accuse me of “going native”.  We flew back to Johannesburg with their instructions ringing clear in our heads.  We knew the strategy was doable in South Africa but there was little room in East or West Africa for such a move.

Two years later I did a deal with President Museveni of Uganda to automate the voter registration process across Uganda using a thumb print and a bar code scanner. Throughout the negotiation and the development of the prototype,  every document was poured over, debated, re-drafted and discussed by our legal and corporate strategy teams in the UK .  On the morning of contract signature a call came from the UK.  On reflection, they did not want us to provide the technology or service it.  We were not to sign.    It was the beginning of the end for ICL in the region. And the most difficult conversation to have personally with the President. This outcome and the reality of  who really was in control was one of my big lessons in business.

There is no such thing as absolute control.  Throughout the chain of command from the fund managers to the board, the CEO, the Exec, the customers, the employees, the suppliers, their suppliers and beyond, no one group or individual has control.  This network and layers of governance keeps everyone safe.

The only thing we control is our thoughts and our behaviours.  Everything else is illusion.