"Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell. 'Thirty-six,' he said, looking up at his mother and father. 'That’s two less than last year.'… By the time … the summer holidays had started … Dudley had already broken his new cine camera, crashed his remote control airplane and, first time on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches." ¹  Dudley Dursley was a spoiled brat. He resembled that breed of corporate leaders who measure their importance by increasing the resources they command and, having acquired what they consider the best, are extravagant and wasteful in their use. Perennially whining about the inadequate quality of people India’s education system makes available to them (omitting to mention that most of the jobs they offer are for underpaid contract workers) is another characteristic of these dismissive Dudleys. Contrast this to resourceful leaders who have purposely (or by circumstance have been forced to) looked for less obviously capable people with little to lose and much to gain.

There have been many dichotomies of leadership style. Among the most lasting and renowned of these has been the X-Y typology which this column has extended and used.²  Now you can get in at the ground level on a new one that is based on the extent to which leaders value or waste the people they lead. Extremes are rare but they help us get an idea of the continuum. At one end are the Profligate Leaders who use people, generally in excess, and then abandon or dispose of them, usually far the worse for wear. At the other extreme are Kintsugi Leaders, who are parsimonious in acquiring talent and focused on re-building what is available. Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery in a manner that not only fixes the broken object but adds value and beauty to it. Kintsugi treats breakage and repair as symbols of resilience and transformation that should be displayed with pride. When Kintsugi Leaders are put in charge of an inadequate talent pool, they leave it better, both in skill and spirit, than they found it. 

Profligate Leaders 

"It is very hard to decide what was in Haig's mind at this time. Certainly the reports coming into 1st Army did not indicate any other result than 'loss' of life… Despite this patent collapse of the offensive momentum Haig seems to have thought that the answer was simply to throw in yet more troops." ³ Since 'The Donkeys' was published, Douglas Haig’s reputation has undergone some rehabilitation.   However, the tone of Clark’s book better captures the profligate character of the leaders we are now seeking to describe – and the title, of course, is irresistible. 

Profligate Leaders are not only gluttonous in their appetite for consuming resources, they are usually also choosy about the kind they will order. Not for them the tedious effort of using their own best-selling, training cookbook for seasoning and stirring the youth coming out from the country’s stretched and creaking educational system. On the contrary, they push their HR to queue up for ready-cooked candidates outside the portals of elite institutes on day zero. It is particularly ironic that the same leaders (and their HR acolytes) who attend seminar after seminar on rewiring the brain, premise their recruitment on the principle that unless people are recruited from prestigious colleges they are of little use and, contra-wise, once such paragons are brought in, nothing further needs to be done for their development. 

The level of leadership profligacy becomes truly extreme when and to the extent the leader has three amplifying traits. I use Churchill as an example to demonstrate that resource profligacy need not preclude results and renown. A craven reason for avoiding the use of stars from the current corporate firmament is the high cost of defending defamation suits. For a leader to be extremely profligate s/he has to be:

Brainwave and action prone:

Winston Churchill may be given credit for saving Britain during the Second World War but several of his decisions were disastrous. A case in point was his strong espousal, as a member of Neville Chamberlain’s cabinet, of the Norway campaign in 1940. "Indeed, a considerable responsibility for the failure of the campaign falls on Churchill – as he, himself, acknowledged… The intensity of Churchill’s passion became his own worst enemy. His single-minded pursuit of what he called, 'my pet . . . my first love' – Narvik – amounted to a dangerous obsession that blinded him to logic, reason and the objective, dispassionate consideration of strategy. As a future CIGS was to remark of him, 'He is like a child that has set its mind on some forbidden toy. It is no good explaining to him that it will cut his fingers or burn him. The more you explain, the more fixed he becomes in his idea.' Ironside, too, and independently, followed the same analogy: 'He is so like a child in many ways. He tires of a thing, and then wants to hear no more of it.' ⁵"  Once Churchill was besotted with an idea, the larger picture seemed to fade away in his mind. Many corporate CEOs too permit a passion to turn into an obsession. The difference is revealed as time passes and the leader either writes books or is forced to cook them.

Unconcerned about a decision’s collateral damage, especially on people

Churchill could claim he was facing a life-and-death war – a more tenable excuse, surely, than the shareholder return reason given by profligate leaders for destroying livelihoods and families. ⁶  What is common, in both cases, is the impatience such leaders have with advice to minimize suffering. Churchill’s treatment of his advisors on Norway provides a cautionary tale. "These advisers were constantly providing the Chiefs with warnings and cautionary advice which were either overruled or rejected... They were already in Churchill’s sights as what he termed 'the forces of negation'. Eventually, his patience snapped… Its director… was summarily sacked… and his three most senior subordinates followed shortly afterwards."⁷

Making the victims (or circumstances) responsible for the suffering

Again, we find in Churchill’s callous response to the Bengal famine of 1943, a classic example. "Churchill had corroborated Malthus’s perspective, writing of an 1898 Indian plague: 'a philosopher may watch unmoved the destruction of some of those superfluous millions, whose life must of necessity be destitute of pleasure.' " ⁸  One might be excused for wondering whether the loud demands for excessively long working weeks by industry leaders, at a time of uncertain job tenures, are not ways of easing 'terminator' consciences by trying to make the victims feel their own lack of diligence led to the jobless straits in which they find themselves.

Kintsugi Leaders

"These two weeks were the most nerve-wracking for Park and Dowding and the most exhausting for the pilots… [S]quadrons were… suffering steady attrition of experienced pilots… [and] suffering steady attrition of replacements, at five to six times the rate of experienced men... [Dowding] proposed re-training thirty ex-Battle pilots and finding another forty trained pilots for rapid conversion to Spitfires."  ⁹ Imagine how the Battle of Britain could have ended if Hugh Dowding, as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of RAF Fighter Command, hadn’t pushed back against the strong resistance the Air Ministry had to his idea for training Fairey Battle light bomber pilots for flying fighters or, worse still, if he had refused to engage the enemy till he had a full complement of trained and adequately experienced pilots. Gruppenführer Fritz Kellerman may have really been London’s Commissioner of Police a couple of years later – and not only in a novel. ¹⁰

An example with pilots was chosen precisely because that’s the kind of job most leaders would not dream of staffing with raw or inadequately trained personnel. Such leaders would also not win the battle against such humongous odds. I am not suggesting our friends heading HR for airlines try this experiment but many of us in HR still carry antiquated notions of fitting people to jobs of one type forever. Even those who have progressed beyond using race or gender to type-cast aptitudes cling to the orthodoxy that major skill acquisition is possible only at very tender ages. This reduces our repertoire in times of change and crisis to slash-and-churn i.e. part with perfectly capable and willing-to-learn human beings and replace them with people who have a currently (mark that ephemerality) valid skill-in-fashion certificate. In the meantime, neuroscience has been shouting a very different message to those who are willing to hear. "Sixty years ago, the idea that nervous tissue can change was anathema to neuroscience. It was widely believed that the mature brain is a fixed structure and, therefore, that 'you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.' This dogma has since been overturned by a huge body of research which shows not only that the brain can change, but also that it changes continuously throughout life, in one way or another, in response to everything we do and every experience we have."   Among the most well-known demonstrations of the plasticity of adult brains emerges from a study of London taxi drivers who, as adults, acquire 'the Knowledge' of London’s streets, proving "… there is a capacity for memory improvement and concomitant structural changes to occur in the human brain well into adulthood." ¹²

Once again, we turn to characteristics that maximize Kintsugi leadership. These leaders are:

Two-way non-transactional commitment builders:

Wouldn’t a simpler and commonly used word like 'engagement' be better than this clumsy header? It would be shorter, certainly, but in its general connotation, while it captures the 'Organizational Citizenship Behaviour' of employees, it misses the reciprocal 'engagement' leaders must have for their teams. Sinek describes what employees feel about Kintsugi leaders. "Leaders would sooner sacrifice what is theirs to save what is ours. And they would never sacrifice what is ours to save what is theirs. This is what it means to be a leader…. And when we feel sure they will keep us safe, we will march behind them and work tirelessly to see their visions come to life and proudly call ourselves their followers." ¹³ 'Tribal', perhaps comes closer to tapping our evolutionary heritage in teaming with non-kin. "Acting in a tribal way simply means being willing to make a substantive sacrifice for your community – be that your neighborhood, your workplace, or your entire country." ¹⁴   It also brings our evolutionary legacy into positive play.  ¹⁵Unfortunately, 'tribal' too brings the unwanted baggage of parochialism with it – hence, our awkward sub-section header. 

Able to inspire ordinary men with missionary zeal:

Those of us who bewail contract labour today might be unaware that that the navy with which Great Britain first impressed the world suffered from this evil, which also prompted the country to rely on press gangs that forced unwilling and untrained men to serve on board ships. Among the "… reasons why the press-gang was to the Navy an indispensable appendage…. the most prominent was that fatal flaw in naval administration which Nelson was in the habit of anathematising as the 'Infernal System.' … [W]henever a ship was paid off and put out of commission, all on board of her, excepting only her captain and her lieutenants, ceased to be officially connected with the Navy… [T]he 'lowering' effects of such a system, working year in, year out, upon a fleet always in chronic difficulties for men, may be more readily imagined than described." ¹⁶   Despite this seemingly losing hand he was dealt, Horatio Nelson went on to lead his men to victory after victory. How? "Nelson's ability to connect with his men on a personal level was unmatched. He made it a point to know their names and their stories, which fostered a deep sense of loyalty and trust… His speeches, filled with passion and patriotism, stirred the hearts of his sailors. They felt they were part of a noble cause, fighting for their country and their beloved leader." ¹⁷  Not many corporate captains can train 32-pounders on their adversaries, but at least they have the same verbalizing equipment as Nelson possessed to give purpose-pride to their teams. 

Leave the team far more capable than they found it:

Before the battle of Agincourt, Henry V supposedly promised each common soldier he led into battle that "be he ne’er so vile, [t]his day shall gentle his condition." ¹⁸  Kintsugi Leaders can create nobility of a different kind if they follow three precepts. The central one is the willingness to bet big and take risks on untried talent. In one of my Group HR roles, eyebrows were raised when I placed the HR leadership of large businesses in the hands of young, internally groomed talent instead of picking stars from the market. Every one of those bets paid off and every one of them is now the esteemed CHRO of a much larger enterprise. There is both a prelude and a postlude to this risk-taking. A certain amount of formal training and on-the-job experiencing cannot be substituted just by boldness (though the number of years experience deemed necessary is often vastly exaggerated). Both of these demand investment of the kind detailed in an earlier column. ¹⁹  There is no escaping this preliminary cost. After being the put through the grind, no one comes out with unblemished makeup and uncrumpled clothes. This is the time for the Kintsugi touch. "The practice of kintsugi – repairing broken vessels by sealing the cracks with lacquer and carefully dusting them with gold powder – is a remarkable art. The Japanese believe the golden cracks make the pieces even more precious and valuable." ²⁰  The best leaders are masters of human team Kintsugi.

HR for Profligate and Kintsugi Leaders

Profligate and Kintsugi Leaders have extremely different expectations from HR. CHROs are not well advised to join firms where the CEO’s demands are at too great a variance from their personal or professional values.

Profligate Leaders just need CHROs with high RED (Recruitment, Onboarding and Decapitation) scores. Personalities with some Dark Triad shading may find it easier to cope with such demands.²¹

In contrast to the Hiring and Hacking HR that matches the Profligate Leaders’ demands, Kintsugi Leaders find congruence with Helping and Healing HR. A previous column sought to capture this profile.²²

There is a third (albeit rare) kind of HR leader: the Trusted Transformer who can convert a Profligate Leader into the Kintsugi kind. Revealable corporate examples are thin on the ground. In keeping with the Kintsugi theme, then, I have to fall back on Japan. Itō Hirobumi had a profound influence on Emperor Meiji and played a pivotal role in shaping the political landscape of Meiji-era Japan. Presumably based on his tutelage, the Emperor is believed to have said: "We shall sweep away the evil customs of the past, and shall base our actions on international justice and humanity…. The Emperor and his ministers are to work together to promote the welfare of the state and the happiness of the people." We couldn’t ask for more. ²³

Notes:

 ¹ J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Bloomsbury Children's Books; 2014. 

  ²Visty Banaji, A Company Of people, By People and For People, Angry Birds, Angrier Bees – Reflections on the Feats, Failures and Future of HR, Pages 534-541, AuthorsUpfront, 2023.

  ³ Alan Clark, The Donkeys, Forgotten Book, 2018.

  ⁴ Gary Sheffield, The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army, Aurum, 2011.

  ⁵ John Kiszely, Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940 (Cambridge Military Histories), Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition, 2019.

 ⁶ Visty Banaji, Countering the merchants of emplocide, People Matters, 10 February 2023, (https://www.peoplematters.in/article/employee-relations/countering-the-merchants-of-emplocide-36862).

 ⁷ John Kiszely, Anatomy of a Campaign: The British Fiasco in Norway, 1940 (Cambridge Military Histories), Cambridge University Press; Reprint edition, 2019.

  ⁸ Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II, Basic Books, 2011.

  ⁹ Stephen Bungay, The Most Dangerous Enemy: A History of the Battle of Britain, Aurum Press, Reprint edition, 2015.

  ¹⁰ Len Deighton, SS-GB, Penguin Modern Classics, 2021. 

  ¹¹Moheb Costandi, Neuroplasticity, The MIT Press, 2016.

  ¹² Katherine Woollett and Eleanor A Maguire, Acquiring 'the Knowledge' of London's Layout Drives Structural Brain Changes, Current Biology, Volume 21, Issue 24, 20 December 2011.

 ¹³  Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last, Portfolio, 2014.

  ¹⁴ Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Twelve, 2016. 

  ¹⁵ Visty Banaji, (Re)evolutionary Thinking, Angry Birds, Angrier Bees – Reflections on the Feats, Failures and Future of HR, Pages 245-252, AuthorsUpfront, 2023.

  ¹⁶ John Robert Hutchinson, The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore, Legare Street Press, 2022.

¹⁷  John Sugden, Nelson: A Dream of Glory, Pimlico, 2012.

  ¹⁸ William Shakespeare, King Henry V, Arden Shakespeare, 1995.

  ¹⁹ Visty Banaji, Fast Track to Organizational Transformation, Angry Birds, Angrier Bees – Reflections on the Feats, Failures and Future of HR, Pages 38-44, AuthorsUpfront, 2023.

  ²⁰ Candice Kumai, Kintsugi Wellness: The Japanese Art of Nourishing Mind, Body, and Spirit, Harper Wave, 2018.

  ²¹ Delroy Paulhus and Kevin M Williams, The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy, Journal of Research in Personality 36(6):556-563, December 2002.

  ²² Visty Banaji, A Hippocratic Oath for HR, Angry Birds, Angrier Bees – Reflections on the Feats, Failures and Future of HR, Pages 497-502, AuthorsUpfront, 2023.

  ²³ Visty Banaji, HR’s Business Should Be Happiness Raising, Angry Birds, Angrier Bees – Reflections on the Feats, Failures and Future of HR, Pages 488-496, AuthorsUpfront, 2023.