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Book Review: Resurrecting the Street

Saturday, August 11, 2012

We tend to look in specific places for specific characteristics – to entrepreneurs for innovation, the military for courage and resolution, firefighters and police for unflinching service, to government for stability in crisis, and in particular to politicians for astute direction in the midst of disorder. It’s normal enough.

It is better to think of these characteristics, though, not as the exclusive reserves of distinct groups, but rather as a collective subtext for our community as a whole. Through one societal device or another we have cultivated them to manifest among these distinct groups, and so that is where we are accustomed to find them.

But when they are needed elsewhere, we should not be surprised to find them there as well. After all, they are flowing beneath us all, a vibrant admixture of undercurrents ready to surface amongst any of us at any time, with all the vigor and force that characterizes them even in the hands of their more trained exhibitors.

Surely on 9/11 – the setting for Jeff Ingber’s “Resurrecting the Street” – our expectations were wonderfully met by all of those in whom we invest this viscerally vital trust and confidence. Those stories entered our national consciousness immediately. Even as the shock waves of these ghastly crimes still emanated from their ground zeros, police, firefighters, and others on whom we so deeply rely began rolling inward, to the very sources of the danger, stanching the wounds, stitching the injuries, helping us to focus, orient, heal; proof, in the inexhaustible dignity of their response to this depravity, that the barbarians cannot force the gates of this great society.

But there are more stories yet, arising from this crisis. And they are borne aloft by the same themes – the same immediate acknowledgement and acceptance of the need to act, the same awareness of the immense stakes at risk, the same quiet determination that the shoulders upon which these burdens fell would bear the load.

Please keep this idea in mind as you read this excellent, eye-opening book, “Resurrecting the Street.” Surely you will learn much about the nature and history of one of the most complex and important underpinnings of the national – indeed, the international – economy. In fact, you will no doubt be surprised and even alarmed to realize how much more of our society than merely economic activity rests on the smooth operation of this amazing infrastructural market, and upon the confidence that it can be relied upon to continue to do so.

Perhaps more surprised at such realizations than will be you upon reading of them were the people who are the subjects of this book, who suddenly understood what their work meant to society, even to the world, and who then simply, grimly, irresistibly, turned to it.

You shouldn’t be surprised to realize as well that, should your turn come, you too will find wellsprings of strength and determination rising within you from those undercurrents of national character that define us all.

That is the great lesson of this wonderful book, and one well told. Please get your copy of Resurrecting the Street; Overcoming the Greatest Operational Crisis in History, by Jeff Ingber now,

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Today’s tips:

First, many thanks to Dr. John Warner of Ready to Manage for including this site in his list of top leadership blogs, and to Dr. Ellen Weber of Brain Leaders and Learners for drawing my attention to it – I’ll get to the question posed me soon!

Second, I’d like here just to pass along (in alphabetical order) a list of sites I read every day, or whenever a post is published to them, and that I confidently recommend to you as well. Please be sure to give them a visit – you’ll become a regular:

  • Cultural Offering – That’s what it is indeed: grippingly thoughtful glimpses of all of us
  • Eclecticity – incredible, eye-opening, inspiring, immensely enjoyable.
  • Execupundit – the most effective brief reads you’ll encounter all day – virtually every day
  • Leadership Schpleadership – more by the author of Eclecticity, but brilliantly focused on the endlessly entertaining topic of leadership
  • Mapping Company Success – Miki Saxon’s trenchantly insightful observations about what makes management work
  • Three Star Leadership – you must not only read Wally Block’s blog – you must subscribe to it in order to receive his incredible email newsletter.

Enjoy!

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If you look at the contents section on the sidebar of the main page of this site, you will see a listing of the article series that have been published here. You can click through to view summaries of the pieces, and then read the full series or selections that are of most interest to you. Enjoy! (And don’t forget to subscribe, while you’re over there!)

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Reverse-engineering leadership

Friday, May 4, 2012

Have you ever had a boss that clearly had his (or her, of course) act together? He seemed to have all the answers, could grasp the core issue of a problem and resolve it on the fly, and understood every aspect of the business from everyone’s perspective – employees, vendors, customers, even prospects.

This all made him the focal point of everyone’s attention. Everything emanated from him, and everything that was sought but not found could be asked of him. This is all pretty heady leadership material, isn’t it?

But wait, there’s more:

In spite of these superlative abilities, he wasn’t the least bit arrogant. Not only did his attitude seem refreshingly humble, but he had an almost zen-like self-effacement about him. And when you spoke with him, he turned and gave you his full attention, as if he was about to learn something important from you, that listening to what you had to say was absolutely the most valuable use of his time at that moment.

Wow! Now that’s a real leader, isn’t it? Intelligence, technical ability, focus, drive, humility, people skills, all adding up to a magnetically charismatic personality. The whole package. All the things the Modern Leadership Movement’s (MLM) experts say are what make a leader.

In fact, they say that those are precisely what make him a leader, and what can make you one, as well, if you only purchase their products and follow their prescriptions.

So, now, let’s consider that for a moment. Do you think that’s what your boss did? Do you think he learned to be a “leader” as we’ve observed him to be from a seminar or a book? For example, when he was listening so attentively to you, do you think he was truly focused on the import of your message, or was he silently reminding himself that this was the perfect opportunity for putting that leadership attribute on display?

Let’s go back to his role as the answer-man. Did he get that (genuine) ability just from being smart, or perhaps from technical reading, or from his own personal experience?

Or did he get it from seeking out and listening to everyone’s perspective – employees, vendors, customers, even prospects. In fact, listening attentively and fully, not placing himself – and his pet projects, personal biases, or professional prejudices – between him and what his informants were saying to him about his business and their relationship with it?

That’s how first-class bosses come to obtain the set of qualities that MLM experts erroneously try to reverse-engineer “leaders” from. Real managers like these get it from the work, and from everything and everyone related to the work. And the only way they can do that is by subordinating themselves to the work and to those who can help them make it succeed.

That “leadership” they’re radiating is really you reflecting back on you, because they have enough sense to know that – unlike the arguments of the MLM community – it’s not about them. It’s not about their personal qualities. It’s about the business, how it’s perceived by everyone connected with it, and how that knowledge can be obtained, harnessed, and employed to make it more successful. That process, of course, is a classic description of management.

If you are all about attaining these specific personal qualities MLM-style, then you are doomed to failure. Seeking the cynically marketed magical aura of leadership will undermine both the work at hand and you as well.

On the other hand, if you are about the work, you may find that you are beginning to be perceived as that mythical creature: a leader. But don’t fall for your own PR – the moment you do is when it all begins slipping away.

You just keep working on how to be a better manager for your business. You’ll learn how from the effort itself, as well as from the unique nature of your industry and your place in your company. Put the leadership books down. Get out of the office. Observe. Pay attention. Ask questions. Forget about yourself long enough to listen to and absorb the answers.

The qualities often associated with leadership aren’t its building blocks; rather, to the extent they exist at all, they’re wholly incidental consequences of the focus on their duties invested by dedicated managers. They’re likely not even actually the personal qualities of the person with whom they’re associated, but rather are those of a diverse cadre of people and experiences that person draws them from.

Next we’ll look a little more particularly at how this idea plays out at different levels of management, in different industries. See you then!

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All about the leader

Thursday, February 16, 2012

We have been reviewing the argument against individual leadership in modern organizations. We have discussed the problems with

  • the concept being associated with the person rather than the work at hand or the organization,
  • the stoutly advanced but wholly unproven contention that the extraordinary qualities of individual leadership touted by the modern leadership movement (MLM) can be taught,
  • the disturbing disjunct between the aims of personal leadership and those of organizations – and, certainly, between the presence in an organization of MLM-style leadership and organizational success,
  • the numerous fallacies erroneously presented as proof of the notion’s veracity,
  • the inability to predict either its presence or its potential in individuals or organizations, and
  • the oddly persuasive insistence that grown managers can and should alter their very personalities in ways that have not been shown to even be possible, and which may rather more likely be harmful to attempt.

We come, now, then, to an element in this long anti-leadership argument that stands out as among the most noxious: the MLM-style leadership development programs essentially without exception – and, indeed, basically inescapably – encourage potential acolytes to develop these traits and abilities strictly in order to enhance an exclusively personal power and influence.

Many voices from the MLM movement will, of course, object to this. They are calling people, they will say, to service. They claim that their systems enhance teamwork and collective productivity. Indeed, many will ostentatiously proclaim, chief among the characteristics they instill is the primacy of individual humility – of the attainment of which they, of course, are inordinately proud.

But there is really no way out. These claims are mere fig leafs, and the naked greed and ambition inherent in the baldly self-aggrandizing promises of almost mystical personal influence and power escape no one’s attention – certainly not that of those who crudely insinuate (or, more likely, overtly assert) these promises, nor – admit it! – of those of us hungrily seeking to benefit from their fulfillment in ourselves.

None of these systems examine the needs of the organization, explore its goals and founding or re-established vision, or teach “leaders” how to extract this information and help it become expressed in the organization’s activities. Far from it. According to the MLM, this sort of insight and inspiration has only one source: that of the leader they help to create. It is hard to avoid wondering what exists for the purpose of what: the “leader” to serve the organization, or the organization to serve simply as a vehicle for the display of the “leader’s” superlative qualities.

So, which is it? Who do you work for? Whose interests do you intend to serve? If we happen to see any of the most popular leadership books on your desk, what do you suppose we should think of your answers to those questions?

You will be infinitely better at what you do – (even, probably, more likely to actually be viewed as a genuine “leader“) if your professional reading shelves have more books on management that were written 40 years ago by Peter Drucker or 80 years ago by Mary Parker Follett than the latest wildly best selling book on leadership by professor this or internationally acclaimed expert that.

Get off your high horse. Get to work. Your value, your sense of reward – and your reputation – will flow from that.

The argument against leadership, however, is not over. We will continue next with a discussion of how the MLM distracts us from the search for what really works at all levels of management.

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Today’s tip – Missing your daily dose of Eclecticity, who is on a sabbatical of sorts? Not to worry: please see his brilliant new site, which much more concisely and clearly combats a common foe than is done on these pages: Leadership Schpleadership!

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Why not try out this feature provided here by Answers.com: If you double-click on any (non-hypertext-linked) word on the main page of the site, a window will open providing definitions or encyclopedic material about that term, together with links to additional sources of information. Try it out – it’s interesting and fun.

And, of course, while you’re clicking around, don’t forget to click on your choice of an email or RSS-feed subscription to these pages – we’ll be proud to have you join us!

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A Baker’s Dozen for 2012

Sunday, January 1, 2012

It is time once again for the always pleasant task of offering a New Year’s list of recommended additions to your daily reading. While the Mayan calendar may be winding down this year, the value of these authors and their insightful writing surely won’t – I expect they will remain valuable sources of thought-provoking and actionable insight, as they have been for many years for me, and as I hope they will be for you for many years to come.

Please do bookmark this page and give them all a thorough visit over the next week or so. You undoubtedly will be glad you did.

Here they are, in random order:

Please do enjoy, and use these terrific resources to help fuel a productive, rewarding, and profitable New Year for you all.

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Pod people

Sunday, December 18, 2011

As the modern leadership movement’s (MLM) many and various advocates compete for attention, we inevitably find ourselves being bombarded with simplistic insights, each one, its “discoverer” will argue, the very cornerstone of a brave new world that can be built only on its foundation.

As it happens, if you can dismiss the ludicrous promises made for many of these, what is left may still be useful to peruse, even thought-provoking and helpful.

Unfortunately, though, the intensity of our angst over how we each individually relate to the pseudo-vital subject of leadership can make it difficult to distinguish between the product and its packaging.

This is particularly so in the MLM – with its devastatingly misplaced focus on the uniquely special attributes of the individual. Leadership is what you are, they pontificate. What you are – if you are the right things – is leadership, they add with trivializing profundity.

An exceptionally unnerving quality can become embroiled in this unstable mixture when the advocates of a particular insight-based approach come to uncritically accept their own hype. They can then become dogmatic about it, almost fanatical. Even not-so-subtly intimidating.

A manager recently wrote me about just such a leadership sect, if you will. The group is a well-known leadership consultancy of international reach, and the beneficiary of explosive growth built on the back of a run-away best-selling book by the founder. This book presented the well-worn idea – but with spectacularly well-tuned spin in the telling – that there is an inseparable link between success and wisdom in one’s person and private life, and one’s business position and career.

This group had been hired by my correspondent’s organization to present its leadership training program to the outfit’s managers. It seems, though, that some disquiet was caused by the presenters’ almost glassy-eyed praise of the founding principles of the program philosophy. Evidently, it was even described to the attendees as something that would – indeed, that must – have a “spiritual” impact on them.

The last straw for my correspondent was when there appeared to develop real, personal pressure on the attendees to demonstrate their willingness to drink the Kool-Aid. It seems as though an inordinate amount of time was spent ensuring that each attendee had genuinely internalized – rather than merely stipulated to for the sake of the argument – the philosophical underpinnings of the program. Those that resisted drew unsettlingly focused attention, and it seemed as though the program would not progress until they capitulated.

At this point, the alarm bells sounding in this manager’s head succeeded in drowning out the liturgical droning of the acolytes. He left the multi-day workshop, which had been a requirement, and explained to his seniors why.

When you hear alarm bells yourself during any sort of presentation – especially a workshop like this one – always heed them. Try to determine what they might mean. And never let yourself be intimidated by those who want to rush you along into group-thinking lock-step with their positions without allowing you time for calm, clear deliberation. Get out of the hot-house and evaluate the comprehensiveness and consistency of the case presented yourself. Make your own decisions, and draw your own conclusions.

Certainly, don’t turn into a mindless “follower” of a “leadership” of this ilk. If you’re alert to the phenomenon, you’ll be surprised to find how much of this kind of “training” so dangerously fits this mold.

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Real people

Monday, October 17, 2011

The purpose of this current discussion is to identify the key and fundamental problems with the notion of individual leadership in modern organizations as it is professed and propounded by the modern leadership movement (MLM); to outline the case against this misguided concept. Many of these have been addressed to one extent or another, as well, in other discussions on these pages.

But today’s subject is one that belongs firmly in our current topic. It is easily among the most astoundingly ill-conceived, and even dangerous, of the many bafflingly preposterous claims made by the MLM.

It is that you can and must abandon who you’ve been, and change your personality into the “leadership” persona.

Think you can do that?

You are, after all, the sum of the immensely complex and interacting admixture of your upbringing, experiences, relationships, and multi-faceted contemplations, not to mention the never-ending self-assessments arising from all of these.

Do you really believe that you can simply read a book or attend a seminar, and suddenly realize you’ve missed the point all these years? Never mind that, as we have seen, there is no such thing as a (non-pathological, or inherently constructive) leadership personality, nor a magical leadership ingredient, or character trait, that will transform you willy-nilly into such an unfortunate creature. For our purposes here, suspend that inconvenient truth for just a moment.

Do you really think all you need to do is to find your inner child, think outside the box, or even enter into a brand-new journey of self-discovery? Now? After all these years?

Can you really wrench yourself out of the path (not the rut) that leads to the “you” you are today? Should you?

You realize that this path isn’t static. With each step you trod along it, you established perspectives, insights, experiences on the bases of which you developed habits and decision-making patterns.

Consequently, the junction where you find yourself today isn’t a simple intersection, divorced in time and space from your past or your future. It is not a place where you abandon one and enter, essentially reborn, into another. You cannot simply turn left or right entirely independently of what has gone before, or of where it is propelling you.

For you do not stop and contemplate the panorama of choices before you here; you add and modify, grow and mature. become better or worse, step by step, adding definition and meaning to not merely the path that brought you here, but to the very momentum that bears you along it, which momentum is also the “you” presently pondering the diversity and realism of these alternatives even as they rush by.

Think you can wrench yourself out of that into some superficial, wide-eyed, “you can do it!” personality prescription written by the latest “researcher” or “scientist” who rolls into town, promising to cure whatever ails you as a leader? The idea that you can taps in to a long and distinctly American sense of self-sovereignty and control. It is powerful and seductive, and it continuously lures millions of us into its ambit.

Unfortunately, the foundation for this one (as for many others) is false. But even if it were real, to attempt to re-write the whole script of your life, your meaning, your core self, would be at best ill-advised, and possibly quite wrenching indeed into the bargain.

And we will point out just one example of why and how in our next installment. Thank you for staying with us!

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Looking for leadership

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Some years ago a game was used to identify the presence and dynamism of leaders. Groups were randomly organized, then each was tasked with building a tower out of Tinkertoys. The towers had to be both sturdy and tall, and time was sufficiently restricted to make either accomplishment difficult. Roles within the groups were not pre-assigned, but were left to the members to sort out.

There were two run-throughs, one allowing speech followed by one allowing only gestures. Each group identified its leader based on the roles that members took or acceded to during the exercise. Then the groups voted on the virtues of all the towers – height and stability – thus supposedly identifying the quality of the leadership expressed by each group leader.

This, like many such experiments, confuses leadership – particularly as described by the modern leadership movement (MLM) – with command. Taking charge of a situation – especially one like that posited in the exercise which shares characteristics with a crisis – is fundamentally different than expressing the visionary, charismatic, empowering, lofty sorts of leadership celebrated and promised by the MLM and obligingly sought by the rest of us.

In its defense, though, this exercise was at once a good deal more fun yet no more juvenile than any of the more “sophisticated” measures that promise to identify the presence of or potential for leadership. Moreover, it was probably every bit as effective, even though it didn’t really identify leadership at all.

And that’s probably one of the most dispiritingly fascinating problems with the ever-peculiar notion of individual leadership in modern organizations. For all the blather whipped up about the topic over the past few decades, we can still predict neither the presence of leaders for assignment nor its potential in individuals for development.

But, really, why should we be able to do that? After all, as we have seen repeatedly, we really don’t even know what it is.

Consider the issue from the other direction: if it were true that we knew what leadership is and how to identify it (or its potential for development), then there surely would be plenty of evidence for the presence of that ability. But where is it? Where are those leaders? And where are the inspired, fulfilled, empowered, happy “followers” that clamor merrily after them?

Are they in our businesses? In our non-profits or governments? In the U.S. or elsewhere in the world? Is that what you see?

Of course it’s not. So why do we keep kidding ourselves about this?

And we do keep kidding ourselves – to our own detriment, as well as to that of our organizations. We’ll pick up the current discussion with that issue, next. See you then!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of identifying what leadership is – not to mention where in our organizations it’s located, please ponder this excellent post on culture by Miki Saxon.

And speaking of not kidding ourselves, please see this list of recommended business books from Authentic Leadership. Everything about it, from its individual components to its general shared characteristics, is likely vastly better than what you’ve been encouraged to read lately.

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