This was a talk from an academic, Gayle Avery about Sustainable Leadership models. The title of the session was “Updating business models during the financial crisis” and we assumed it was going to be about financial models or updating business practices. As another audience said after the presentation, they did not know what to expect either.

The session revolved around explaining a new type of business model called FourS, which is about sustainability and the organisation being part of a wider community. A lot of business operate on a TRAP business model, that is:

Tough

Ruthless

A-social

Profits

This is a business as usual mentality. That the company is out to make money and it needs to be aggressive, to met the expectations of shareholders. This model as labelled as “locust leadership”.

However, Gayle advocated a new business model called FourS:

Social

Sophisticated

Stakeholder

Sharing

This was known as “honeybee leadership”, how organisations are interdependent on their suppliers, clients, and the environment. Traditionally, we have been taught and reinforced that corporations need to be based on the TRAP model. But a new emerging trend is corporate social responsibility and triple bottom line, and this is only the start of it. FourS model is about changing the way that the whole organisation operates.

Our view? We agree that organisations need to be more socially responsible - you can’t simply pillage all our natural resources and you need to consider the community. There are competing considerations between profitability and environmental and social responsibility. Perhaps we do need to be more aware of these factors and also implement them in practice. We are seeing more of an emphasis on these issues and also on carbon emissions. These are things demanded by stakeholders, employees coming into an organisation and government bodies.

This session actually felt like a management university lecture! But the audience seemed responsive to it and someone asked a great question: ” I’ve worked in the US and there is a greater emphasis on CSR and sustainability over there, and it has been elevated by awards and accolades. Why isn’t there something similar in Australia?”. Gayle only shrugged and said we should and it is up to us to do so.

Leadership principles and success

We heard from a very senior and well respected executive, David Gonski. His resume is as long as my arm! He’s the chairman of Investec, ASX, Westfields, Coca Cola and a director of ING, Singapore Airlines, and Chancellor of UNSW. Clearly someone that a) needs a hobby and b) must be great at time management!

He gave us food for thought as to what makes a great leader. He was in fact very humble and said that he himself was not a great leader, but was merely a voyeur and observed those of who he had worked with.

These were the points he mentioned:

1. 1. Having long term thinking
2. Focus
3. don’t be narrow – have a broad view
4. be decisive
5. trust
6. vanity – play to other people’s vanity
7. Knowing when to quit
8. Being a teacher and preparing for succession

You can also read our  Day 3, Part 1 here.

The Taxabull team is attending the CPA Congress as a guest of CPA Australia.

You can follow us on twitter: twitter.com/austax

Cheers,

Taxabull team