Penna Consulting : Leadership challenges in Transport and Infrastructure

We recently got together with a number of transport leaders to discuss the leadership and talent challenges in the transport and infrastructure sector.

From aviation to rail to marine and road, today's leaders of transport face immense challenges. Increasing customer demands, safety and security issues, infrastructure pressures, competition, regulation, and skill shortages all mean that leadership and talent are now central to driving success.

So, what important themes came up as the key leadership challenges for our transport leaders?

Vision

Clear visioning across the sector is required with the need to take at least a 10 year view on what the infrastructure, commercial products and services and talent requirements should look like. Boards need to consider the future and not just the short term. Forward thinking leaders will need to create a compelling vision of how things can be different and better, and convince stakeholders accordingly. There is still a 'we've always done it this way' culture in many organisations. How do we change attitudes?

Infrastructure

The National Infrastructure Commission was set up as an independent body to enable long term strategic decision making. There is without a doubt a need for sustainable long term infrastructure planning with a cross sector approach to the UK's transport network. This includes decisions being made and action taken to increase runway capacity, reduce our congested roads, provide better road/rail links to airports, improve rail links to strategic ports, etc.

Skills Shortage

There is concern throughout the transport sector over existing and future technical and engineering skills shortages. Inspiring school children to pursue science,technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and careers is key, as well as creating more apprenticeships. All leaders, their respective organisations and their trade organisations and representative bodies are committed to addressing the skills shortage and will be actively pursuing a number of initiatives in this area.

Gender diversity is another opportunity with rail, for example, remaining particularly male dominated. More efforts from practising engineers, particularly from under-represented groups must be made to encourage girls into STEM subjects. The enormous potential for a challenging, fulfilling and long-term future in engineering, transport and infrastructure must be actively promoted.

Culture, Products and Brands

Whilst not as pronounced in aviation and certain parts of the maritime sectors, rail is generally not considered to be a 'trendy' industry within which to work. This doesn't need to be so: there are several UK railway stations that have become iconic 'destinations' in their own rights and places that people want to visit. The overall customer experience is capable of being enhanced, whichever the mode of travel for a given journey and the transport interchanges (stations, ports, airports, service stations, etc.) involved.

The sector needs to be more appealing to Generation Y. University leavers are looking for very different things in their careers than previous generations. Having a compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is essential and this is very much about motivators other than pay. Organisations could do worse than asking whether their own employees are actually the real customers. There is considerable opportunity for creating compelling brands and changing attitudes and culture that will reflect the needs and values of both employees and customers.

Leadership and Transformation

What kind of talent do CEO's need in their leadership team? Diverse and complimentary skills are clearly important. It was generally agreed that the leader of a technical function need not be technically skilled themselves. Without such detailed technical knowledge, the individual could be more inclined to lead and empower the team, rather than manage or even micro-manage them. There is a real desire to seek talent from outside the regular spheres of influence. Common themes included recruiting individuals who had had considerable exposure to retail and also digital and technology backgrounds. There was considerable debate about when this was possible and plausible and whether the overall benefits and injection of external perspective outweighed the slightly longer induction and ramp up time.

Executives from functional and technical backgrounds commonly need support transitioning to leadership roles, for example, through effective coaching and mentoring.

As regards structure, having a reasonable number of direct reports (6 - 8) and reducing organisational layers of bureaucracy is often seen as highly desirable. Engaging and motivating middle management requires attention as they will be pivotal in turning the leadership's vision into reality. With a silo'd functional approach common in many organisations, there is an emerging need for generalists with broad skills and understanding of the business. A focus on the customer was universally acknowledged to be essential but it was also agreed that too many transport sector organisations had yet to fully embrace this concept.

Safety and Security

What keeps many transport leaders awake at night? Safety and security is of course paramount across the entire sector and will continue to be. Instilling a culture of awareness along with robust processes is vital.

At this gathering, it was interesting to see how so many of the issues are common across the infrastructure and transport sectors. There was consensus that there is much to gain by sharing experiences and learning at all levels across air, road, rail or marine. However, we continue to live in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world and this particularly so in the transport sector.

Andrew Cholerton,
Sector Lead, Infrastructure and Transportation, Executive Search