Humility in leadership, blah blah…
If I was given a penny for each time I read or heard that humility is key to authentic leadership, my accountant would be one happy lady indeed.
Humility:
[mass noun] The quality of having a modest or low view of one’s importance:
The John Lewis story
This morning I went to hear Andy Street speak at the Said Business School in Oxford. In October 2016 Street stepped down from his role as MD of John Lewis to focus on a political career in the West Midlands.
Reciprocate, a new-ish local business network that aims to support local communities, had invited Street to share the story of the John Lewis partnership to an audience of 200 local business people and it was a sell-out.
For those of you who like me didn’t know this; the John Lewis partnership is the biggest industrial co-operative in the UK. It has 92,000 employees or ‘partners’ who own the business. There are no external shareholders and so the company answers only to itself.
I found myself thinking, How on earth do 92,000 people on the work floor exert any kind of decision making power? and so I asked the question. (more…)