The Wisdom of Cows – choosing leaders the Swiss way

The news of Andy Hornby ’s appointment to Boots was of course the cue for the digital cuttings file to be raided for lots of images of him being abused by Parliamentarians. How could this man so recently discredited, rise again so soon to head up one of our great British businesses? How can this happen to a man so fresh from being bombarded by rotten vegetables in the stocks of public opinion?

The appointment of managers is a process that more and more, takes place in public. As the process of ‘externalisation’ takes place in the NHS with lots of new social enterprise service organisations being established, how will they find their managers and agree stable management structures for all these new businesses? Read on for the Moore Adamson Craig & Millar solution to filling the need for a credible and effective process for choosing our future business leaders.

Managing in the Public Eye

How do we learn to manage in the public eye? How can we find the leaders we need and organise succession in a way that will provides solutions that stick? We give you the Swiss Queen Cow approach to succession management – an organic approach to organising succession and finding leaders, tried and tested every year.

Heirarchy and the Herd

Each spring the herd emerges from its long winter confinement in the village barns out onto the mountain meadows bright with Alpine flowers. A natural amphitheatre in the bowl set in the mountain side is our stage and it is here that the drama of the annual struggle for the right to lead the herd, takes place.

The black bull-like Herens cows stand out against the green hill and their horns while carefully tended and trimmed are kept in full working condition. These vast beasts clash – click on the clip below to see the video captured by our on the spot but rather far away cameraman.

The hours pass, the onlookers get steadily more refreshed and steadily over time, the winner emerges from the group. All can now look forward to a summer under their their Queen Cow until the autumn transhumance when crowned with flowers, top cow leads the herd back to winter quarters.

We have witnessed a management process that is fit for purpose, regularly tested and is based on the principles of wide consultation with the involvement of the key stakeholders. The process is sustained by total confidence in the result giving a period of stability to ensure maximum outputs over the critical production period.

No to Testosterone

One final point – we are just talking cows. The animals may look a lot like bulls but they are not.

Bulls have no part in this. No flashy parade of testosterone-fuelled fighting for the sake of it from males – au contraire, a contained process calibrated to achieve the desired outcome, agreed by all.

Put them in the field and let them fight it out, we say.