The leader has no clothes

By ASHLEY CAMPBELL

First The Naked Civil Servant, next The Naked Chef, now The Naked Leader.

I blame Jamie Oliver.

Surprisingly enough, so does David Taylor, author of this latest exercise in metaphorically exposing oneself to the world.

"Funnily, it was where the idea came from," he admits when I accuse him of nicking his title off the popular television chef. The book was going to be called The 10-second Truth Taylor says, but he and stepdaughter Olivia (she gets blamed for a few things, too) were watching Oliver on TV and she suggested he could be the naked leader. So now he is.

He's also refreshingly honest about the content of his guide to self-fulfilment and business success. "I'm not pretending there's anything new in this book at all," he explains down the phone. "I'm just taking the most powerful existing messages that are out there and making them accessible to everyone."

So accessible, you might be tempted to call them simplistic. Take, for example his four-step "formula for guaranteed success". It goes like this: know where you want to go; know where you are now; know what you have to do to get to where you want to go; do it! (That exclamation mark is his, by the way.)

Well, yes, David, of course. It is, as he happily proclaims "the most blindingly obvious thing I've ever written in my life". It's rather disarming, all this cheerful honesty in the face of professional scepticism.

I'll try again. There could be a slight problem if you're having difficulty with the first step and, I hate to tell you David, but a few people are.

I may have underestimated him. "The number one challenge most adults have is knowing where they want to go," he says. "I still don't believe that's any reason for saying we shouldn't have the formula."

And, he adds, while most people look at that formula and think "of course" when relating it to personal development, they stumble when trying to apply it to business success. Which brings me to another question: just what is this book, a self-help guide or a business success manual?

Both, apparently, and Taylor's written it that way. He aims to "strip away the hype, the jargon and complexity that surround success" as he guides the reader through seven "journeys" (blame Olivia) to leadership of self, people, teams, company, culture, skills and career.

The British largely regard it as a guide for business success, but the rest of the world tends to approach it as a personal development manual.

The book, which Taylor's first publishers thought might sell 300 copies, appears to have met a need, selling 24,000 copies in Britain since it was published last year. He doesn't know how many it's sold globally but admits it's "a pretty big source of income" and he has signed a five-book contract on the back of it.

So how did an IT director from multinational corporations such as Rolls-Royce, Berger Paints and insurance giant Allianz, end up as a best-selling leadership guru (something he's loath to call himself) with a book and his own TV series (Working Wonders, on Britain's ITV network)?

"Because I realised that there are no solutions that we haven't tried in information technology that really work, other than focusing on people and leadership issues," he says.

Taylor says that, like many people in business, he'd been through too many "change initiatives" and business leadership fads for too little reward. "We've spent billions on change initiatives and consultancies ... but most organisations around the world have stood perfectly still."

There is only one thing left to try, he says: valuing people. "I'm saying the answers lie in the shape of your people," says Taylor. "We've really, really destroyed our main assets for many years. I'm saying enough is enough."

While Taylor spouts a good line in cliches - "We are human beings, not human doings," he proclaims at the start of chapter 30 - The Naked Leader can be frank. Take the chapter on motivation, or our secret driving forces, as he calls it.

He lists the five most important motivators of people as the desire for personal power and mastery over others; a sense of personal pride and importance; financial security and success; reassurance of self-worth and recognition of efforts; and peer approval and acceptance.

You will notice that only one item in that list involves money, and the first one involves something that most of us would rather not talk about in front of the children - or each other. Yet that is what drives much of our behaviour, says Taylor.

"One of the reasons we have office politics ... is because most people want to gain power. They believe the way to gain power for themselves is to take power from someone else." Of course, he contends that gaining power is not a zero-sum game.

But unless business leaders meet these motivational needs, they won't get the best from their employees and their businesses won't be as successful as they can be. Because there is only one reason why people do anything: they want to do it.

"Chief executives are now realising they have to motivate their people," says Taylor. "They don't necessarily want to do that ... but they are realising they have to.' '

He maintains that we are at the beginning of a new era in business, with and employees and business leaders alike searching for more meaning in their success.

Pressed, he concedes that the attacks of September 11, 2001, and corporate scandals such as those hitting Enron, WorldCom and HIH may have something to do with it, but he also hints at something more unknowable, more spiritual.

I detect shades of the Age of Aquarius, and he - again disarmingly - says just about everything he's written on leadership of self comes from the self-help books of the 60s and 70s.

Taylor doesn't care if you disagree with him, doesn't care if you throw his book away, mumbling "What a lot of nonsense". What he does care about is that you do something.

"If these things don't work for you, then do the complete opposite. If you think my book's crap, then go and do something different.

"But most people sit around in their organisations, they moan and sit around waiting for answers. There aren't any answers anymore, there are only choices."

* The Naked Leader, Bantam Books, $27.95.

The Auckland Chamber of Commerce will host a lunch with David Taylor on Wednesday, September 10, at the Carlton Hotel. Email events@chamber.co.nz or phone (09) 309 6100.