January 30, 2015

Uncommon Leadership
How to Build Competitive Advantage
by Thinking Differently
Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess
©2014 by Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess
Adapted by permission of Kogan Page Limited
ISBN: 978-0-7494-7104-0

Key Concepts
• Seeing refers to the ability to identify solutions by relying on intuition and common sense. Answers often
hide in plain sight, and it is the leader’s job to uncover them before others do.

• Shaping is the process by which leaders make others believe in and follow their insights. More subtle than
argument or rhetorical power, shaping refers to changing organizations’ cultures to follow leaders’ visions.

• Showing is the way organizations build customer loyalty by demonstrating commitment to customer ser-
vice. It goes beyond customer satisfaction to truly captivating customers and making fans of them.

• Serving refers to the way leaders conceptualize their roles within their organizations. In the traditional hier-
archical corporate structure, front-line workers serve managers who, in turn, serve the leadership. Instead,
leaders should invert this pyramid so they serve others.

• Sharing power is the ultimate expression of the uncommon leader. Sharing leadership broadly makes orga-
nizations more robust. Organizations with narrowly held power are susceptible to being undermined by
wrong decisions or unethical leaders.

Introduction
Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess believe that what is known about good leadership is not commonly practiced.
They have written Uncommon Leadership to help bring effective leadership practices out of the shadows.
Their five-part model helps leaders identify solutions, change their companies’ cultures, focus on customer ser-
vice, serve employees, and share power.

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Uncommon Leadership Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess

Seeing
A pair of Save the Children workers set about trying to improve childhood nutrition in Vietnam. They found
staggering numbers of malnourished children in the villages they visited, but rather than focus on the obvi-
ous—the underfed—they instead looked to the minority of healthy children. These children ate more often and
ate a greater variety of foods than their underfed peers. The problem was not lack of resources but conventional
wisdom about how and what to feed children. The solution was hiding in plain sight: Feeding children more
often and with readily available sources of protein reduced malnutrition. Seeing this solution took uncommon
sense.

This story illustrates the 80/20 rule of change. The underlying point of the rule is that solutions are found not in
the majority but in the minority. In other words, 80 percent of change comes from just 20 percent of the popula-
tion, or from those the authors call “uncommon leaders.”

Several lessons about uncommon leadership emerge from the story of the Mann Gulch fire, a tragedy that killed
all but one member of an elite firefighting crew. The crew parachuted into the fire with a new foreman, Wagner
Dodge. He was an expert firefighter, but the fact that that he had just joined this particular crew would have
tragic consequences. Faced with an out-of-control fire chasing the crew up a steep hill, Dodge lit an escape
fire, a small fire intended to deprive the main fire of fuel, giving the crew a safe place to stay. However, when he
told his fleeing crew to stay with him in the burned out area, they did not trust his leadership and fled. The fire
overtook them; only Dodge survived. Had Dodge been with the crew longer, perhaps the tragedy could have
been avoided. Dodge took the uncommon path by lighting the escape fire and staying put rather than trying to
outrun the fast-moving fire.
There is a clear need
The experience of the Mann Gulch crew occurs in business when employ-
for effective leader-
ees do not share their leaders’ visions or have a sense of how their own work
has meaning within their organizations. Once leaders identify the visions that
ship, yet there is also
will drive their organizations forward, they need to share those visions with credible evidence of
others. Simply trying to communicate or impart a vision is not enough; lead- a shortage of skilled
ers must create meaning together with those in the organization. leaders. And it there-
Uncommon leaders also make use of tipping points to reach goals. For fore follows that there
example, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton reduced crime must also be a prob-
significantly by going after low-level violations. The so-called broken window lem in the way we
theory of policing held that responding forcefully to small violations would support and develop
prevent more serious crimes from occurring. Bratton realized that any neigh-
leaders.
borhood had a tipping point, a point at which small nuisances of urban life
become so commonplace they threaten the very rule of law. Researchers who have studied Bratton’s success
describe his work as “teaching a tipping point,” or convincing stakeholders that an inflection point can be
reached. They found four steps in the process of teaching a tipping point:

1. Take a cognitive step to convince individuals of the change.

2. Overcome resource hurdles by concentrating existing resources where they are most effective.

3. Use influential people in the community to convince others.

4. Overcome political barriers to change.

The secret to good leadership is to see solutions as obvious before anyone else does. Newspaper columnist
Robert Updegraff collated five tests of obviousness:

Business Book Summaries® • January 30, 2015 • Copyright © 2015 EBSCO Publishing Inc. • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 2
Uncommon Leadership Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess

1. Is it simple? The obvious solution typically hides in plain view.

2. Is it common sense? Everyone should see the solution as sensible once it has been explained.

3. Is it easy to explain? The essence of the idea should be expressible in just a few words.

4. Is it striking? The idea should stand out and be contagious.

5. Is it timely? The right idea needs to be executed at the right time, neither too soon nor too late.

Shaping
Shaping is the process by which leaders persuade, influence, and give sense to their teams and organizations.
Aristotle described three kinds of persuasion:

1. Ethos: An appeal to the credibility of the person making the argument.

2. Logos: An appeal to logic.

3. Pathos: An emotional or motivational appeal.

Persuasion requires a two-way street of constant communication. Leaders should present their visions and strat-
egies as if they are right, but they should also listen to feedback as if they are wrong. Open conversations must
be founded upon a culture that values such give and take.

Thinking about ser- Corporate culture is complex, so shaping it is no simple matter. Moreover,
vice as a show, and much of a company’s culture consists of persistent elements that lie below the
your role in it as a surface, hidden like the bulk of an iceberg. CEOs such as Tony Hsieh of Zappos
see shaping company culture as their single most important task. Zappos does
performer, can put a
not sell shoes so much as it provides a great customer experience. Getting the
whole new light on culture right facilitates that customer experience.
how you manage.
Even organizations with great cultures need strategies to move forward, but
But how many of us
calling strategy meetings and then setting forth with fixed strategies in mind
would think of their is the wrong way to go. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, came to the con-
service in that way? clusion that companies with clear visions and strategies were not the ones
that made the leap from good to great. Using the metaphor of a bus, Collins
explained that deciding where to drive the bus was less important than getting the right people on the bus.
With the right people in place, a strategy and direction can evolve.

A fixed strategy can drive the bus right into a ditch. The authors argue for “bricolage,” or a more free-form and
improvisational strategy. This more iterative method helps companies adapt more quickly to changing environ-
ments.

Showing
Faced with a picky eater who often complained about school lunches, a cafeteria worker packing lunches for a
trip decided to add a personal note to that student’s bag. The note read, “This lunch packed especially for you.
I hope you enjoy it.” The teachers reported that not only did the boy read the note and eat his entire lunch, he
enthused about it afterward. This is a simple example of doing common things uncommonly well, what the
authors describe as showing. Customer service, according to this model, goes beyond meeting expectations to
building customer experiences.

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Uncommon Leadership Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess

Virgin Atlantic has made the concept of customer experience central to its brand. For example, when flying first
class, the traveler is chauffeured to the airport and taken directly to the airline’s clubhouse rather than having to
stand in line. On landing, these passengers are directed to a “Revival Lounge” for a complimentary breakfast and
a shower. The airline delivers the entire experience with a degree of showmanship.

What is true for customers is also true for employees. Employees want continual praise and recognition. One
of the best ways to improve the quality of products and services is to ensure that workers find their jobs mean-
ingful and rewarding. Leaders must reframe the work, no matter how seemingly mundane, so that it becomes
meaningful. For example, the Royal Automobile Club, a roadside assistance organization, has imbued its work-
ers with a sense of mission. Front-line workers understand that their role is to focus on the customer first. As one
RAC worker put it, “Everybody is a trained mechanic, so everyone can treat the vehicle, but what matters is how
you deal with the person.”

Serving
Service, the fourth part in the uncommon leadership framework, suggests that leaders invert their understand-
ing of their organizations and their roles within them. Looking for ways to serve others, rather than to be served
by them, may be one of the best ways to pursue uncommon leadership.

For example, professor Muhammad Yunnus pioneered the field of microlending in opposition to the con-
ventional wisdom about how banks should operate. Banks only lend money to creditworthy individuals, but
Yunnus recognized that there were villagers in Bangladesh who were trapped in loans with high interest, loans
they needed in order to buy the raw materials for their businesses. In one village, he found that a total of 42 vil-
lagers had borrowed a mere 27 dollars, a tiny sum that nevertheless left them in perpetual poverty because of
exorbitant interest rates.
People who see their
Once Yunnus had proven the viability of microlending, he created the Gra-
meen Bank, which today has more than eight million borrowers, almost work as a calling
entirely women. Loan defaults are below two percent. Microlending has tend to work far more
grown to be a conventional part of capital markets in many places, all because effectively in teams
one professor defied conventional wisdom and saw money lending as a ser- than those who see
vice rather than a means to profit. their work as a career.
When thinking of service, leaders should consider themselves as servants of And having more of
their employees, inverting the standard organizational pyramid. By serving these people in your
the needs of employees and helping them reach their own potential, leaders team is likely to make
also ensure that customers are well served.
it far more produc-
Uncommon leaders serve their customers, workers, and companies. This third tive.
element of service might best be described as serving the legacy of the com-
pany, ensuring that it endures and continues its mission long after current leaders and employees have left.
Service in all of these realms demands authenticity. Uncommon leaders retain the common touch even as they
ascend to the highest levels of leadership.

Sharing
The final element of uncommon leadership is sharing. The conventional view holds that teams and organiza-
tions depend on the work of superstar leaders to achieve great success. Shared leadership should be more
common because it is more effective. Two MIT professors describe four kinds of organizations that have experi-
mented with distributed leadership:

Business Book Summaries® • January 30, 2015 • Copyright © 2015 EBSCO Publishing Inc. • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 4
Uncommon Leadership Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess

1. Traditional organizations that introduce shared leadership over their existing hierarchies.

2. Companies such as Google and WL Gore & Associates that have minimized hierarchies from the beginning
and make distributed leadership part of their corporate cultures.

3. Nimble-network organizations that bring individuals and groups together as needed to solve particular
problems.

4. Cross-organization collaborations that bring together companies in joint ventures.

Any one of these models can improve on the traditional hierarchical model, but to be most effective, shared
leadership should be built into the organizational culture from the very beginning. Getting to the point where
individuals think of themselves as leaders is not easy. Without a supportive atmosphere and continual positive
reinforcement, people may be unwilling to take on the risks inherent in leadership roles.

With shared leadership, organizational strengths grow out of the strengths of each team. These, in turn, flow
from individual strengths. Management expert Peter Drucker argues that it is far easier to build on individual
strengths than to try to overcome weaknesses. In other words, positive reinforcement will make the good great;
negative feedback will have no positive effect.

Features of the Book

Estimated Reading Time: 3–4 hours, 237 pages

Uncommon Leadership is intended for anyone who hopes to find competitive advantage in unconventional
thinking about leadership. Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess present a five-part model for more effective lead-
ership, and each chapter describes one element of this model. The authors provide extended illustrations and
parables to explain their model. Chapters are best read in order to follow the flow of the authors’ arguments.

Contents
List of Figures

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Uncommon Sense of Leadership

1. Leading with Vision: Seeing the Sense before It Becomes Common

2. Leading with Action: Shaping the Organization by Turning Sense into Common Sense

3. Leading with Purpose: Showing the Way by Doing the Common Things Uncommonly Well

4. Leading with Service: Serving Colleagues and Customers through Common Touch Leadership

5. Leading with People: Sharing Leadership by Making It More Common

6. Conclusion: Building Competitive Advantage Through Uncommon Leadership Roles

Business Book Summaries® • January 30, 2015 • Copyright © 2015 EBSCO Publishing Inc. • www.ebscohost.com • All Rights Reserved 5
Uncommon Leadership Phil Higson and Anthony Sturgess

Bibliography

Index

Further Information
Information about the authors and subject:
www.uncommonleadership.co.uk
Information about this book and other business titles:
www.koganpageusa.com

Click Here to Purchase the Book

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About the Authors

Phil Higson has over 30 years of experience as a manager and management educator in small and large organi-
zations in both the private and public sectors. He is a former head of business at a UK university and a cofounder
of Apex Leadership. He continues to teach, examine, consult, and write on various subjects, including strategy,
marketing, services management, and tourism.

Anthony Sturgess has a proven track record developing award-winning programs with his clients. He has
been a manager in a large, private sector management development consultancy and has served as head of
executive education at a UK business school. After setting up his own business, Apex Leadership, Anthony has
recently returned to university life at Manchester Metropolitan University Business School to further his interest
in teaching and researching leadership.

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