Leader interview - Alex Jacobs on goals, performance and listening

Alex was the founding Director of Mango, a UK charity that is the leading international provider of financial management services to NGOs. He has played a leadership role in aid work on the ground as well as in efforts to improve the accountability of aid agencies. His blog, www.ngoperformance.org, provides expert commentary on managing the performance of NGOs. Alex is about to take up the position of Director of Programming and Effectiveness for Plan International, the UK's largest aid agency.


1. What is the key to great leadership?

Setting ambitious but realistic goals and knowing - or working out - how to achieve them. Bringing people together behind the shared endeavour, making sure each person's contribution is valued. Living the values you want to encourage in others: commitment, compassion, customer service, listening, considered judgement and an endless desire to understand and improve.

2. What is the secret of motivating a team?

Making sure everyone believes in what you aim to achieve together and knows what is expected of them. Creating personal incentives that are aligned with overall goals. Providing people with the space to get on and do their jobs. Constantly creating opportunities for communication across the team. Celebrating good performance and dealing with poor performance.

3. What is the most important lesson you have learned?

Listen first. As a leader, resisting the temptation to start a conversation by offering advice or jumping to conclusions. Listen carefully to what people have to say and demonstrate that you value their views. Then take a decision, considering what they say but not necessarily bound by it.

4. What are the key ingredients of success in business development?

Develop great products that your clients want and set stretching strategic goals. Recruit people who share your goals and values. Nurture the team. In the charity sector, build alliances and collaboration with others working in your field, not enmity and opposition.

5. What book(s) would you like everyone to read?

The Elements of Styleby Strunk and White. It's a bible of how to write clear English.

Effectiveness vs efficiency - why the mission should come first

The relationship between effectiveness and efficiency has always been a rich source of disagreement. I think a helpful distinction is:

Effectiveness - doing the right thing
Efficiency - doing the thing right

A recent auditor's report has found that the Ministry of Defence has lost track of assets worth £6.3bn. It is nearly 200 years since the Duke of Wellington wrote the following message to the British Foreign Office in 1812:

Gentlemen,

Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by His Majesty’s ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters.

We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty’s Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.

Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion’s petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.

This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty’s Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:

1.) To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or, perchance…
2.) To see to it the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.

Your most obedient servant,
Wellington

While it is important to ensure that taxpayers' resources are well looked after, the fog of war is always likely to result in some wastage and administrative discrepancies - though £6.3bn is quite a discrepancy! But I suggest that the even more important question is about the overall mission - the desired effect - rather than the flaws in the associated administrative processes.

After all, what use is good book-keeping if you lose the war?

Footnotes:
See also Evelyn Waugh's letter to his wife about explosive military mathematics.
The 6th Duke of Wellington was killed in action while serving with No. 2 Commando in 1943.
Thanks to Alex Jacobs of NGO Performance for reminding me of Wellington's letter.