The 3 Leadership Lessons from Carillion

Time to Read: 2 minutes

The 3 Leadership Lessons from Carillion

1. Money is where an organisation gets real

The Directors can blame the banks, the Government and the economy as much as they like, at the end of the day it is their fault.

They didn’t just suddenly end up with just £29m, while owing £1.3bn to the banks, just before going bankrupt, the warning signs will have been there for months.

Lesson for us all – Leadership is not just about leading people, it is also about being accountable for Accountables – for money. Especially cash.

2. Auditing and Governance can’t go on like this

It has always amazed me that after carrying out a full audit, auditors still start every report with a huge disclaimer. No, in this case KPMG, you have serious questions to answer, all of them being asked by people who are waking up this morning without a job, or in fear of their positions.

Lesson for all Leaders – Hold your Auditors accountable.

3. Big does not always mean trustworthy

The UK Government has a stated policy to provide more contracts to small and medium enterprises, and the way they seem to be doing that, in the main, is by continuing to appoint bigger suppliers and have them sub contract work to SMEs.

The same SMEs who now going under through no fault of their own.

Lesson for Government – The game just changes – appoint more SMEs in smaller contracts at a time.

David