Managing Leadership^®

While there remains considerable resistance in certain quarters to the idea, the real advances enjoyed in the world since the advent of the industrial age have come from commerce, from business people who respond to market signals, which ultimately are sent by consumers. That is, progress has be driven from the bottom up, not from the top down.

People often associate the one approach with the putative “nation of shopkeepers,” England, and the other with the supposed pinnacle of elitism, France. Both depictions are caricatures that serve their purpose poorly. So, of course, it could only be a Frenchman who would be able to make perhaps the first clear-eyed observations of what was really going on. Consider this, by Voltaire, from his “Letters on the English:”

I need not say which is most useful to a nation; a lord, powdered in the tip of the mode, who knows exactly at what o’clock the king rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of grandeur and state, at the same time that he is acting the slave in the ante-chamber of a prime minister; or a merchant, who enriches his country, despatches orders from his counting-house to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the felicity of the world.”

It seems pretty plain, stated that way. But the discussion continues, because one of the peculiar things about power flowing around society is that it creates its own markets. Markets are like vacuums; they demand to be supplied.

And there is a market for central control. That is, it too is often driven from the bottom up. It is provided by people who fear the buffeting and change that unfettered free market economics might subject them to – as well as the welfare and future of their families. So, of course, there are those more than happy to supply this market.

The presidential election this year in the United States will certainly give us plenty of opportunity to observe this. But as you are doing that, consider the degree to which your own organization resembles a society, with its own dynamics driving the currents of power around and throughout it.

Is it a central command economy? A democracy, of sorts? Are there conflicting markets for control, guidance, favor, support? Does power flow where it is needed?

As important as may be any answers you are able to generate for such questions, the reasons for them are even more important. Understanding those reasons will help you determine how functional your organization really is, how well designed it is to actually give productive expression to its purpose.

Perhaps your outfit will turn out to be a complex combination of top-down and bottom-up organization. Are there not good reasons for that? Can you manage the unorthodox nature of it?

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Today’s tip: Speaking of bottom up generation of advancement, please see this fascinating piece, from The Economist, about how ordinary people like you and me – or our kids – are being successfully recruited to solve difficult problems in science. From the article: “Many of the best players were not scientists but were able to find the correct structure faster than computers.”

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Note: My apologies to those who have commented on the posts of the past few days; each will get a response, hopefully by week’s end. Thank you for you patience.

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