Looking forward to your continuing visits and observations, as well as my own (and hopefully those of our other viewers here) visits to your own site.

Thanks!

Appreciate the support and encouragement all around. And I’ll be back to this site every now and then to update how it looks like from the “front lines” so to speak.

Ben,

Visited your website - appreciate the offer! I’ve already downloaded through PayPal your eBook and will start reading it this week. In two weeks, there’s a big functional off-site “team building” event over a couple of days. I’ll be thinking about all this while preparing!

Many thanks again,
-Lui

Lui, your thoughtful comment does a wonderful job of bringing the concepts under discussion into the light of real-world management concerns. Are the theories we generate universally valid? Can we apply concepts generated in one culture with workforces from another? What about mixed workforces, or managements that are caught between the exptectations of staffs of one culture and those of investors, regulators, and directors from another?

But, as you point out, people are people, and we should bear in mind, for example, that the concept of continuous incremental improvement that Toyota has made famous was an American approach taught by an American theorist in a collectivist culture with a distinctly different approach to and regard for authority than that customary to Americans. But it has worked brilliantly.

Two keys to this you also touch on - your scope of responsibility can easily exceed that of your direct personal influence. This requires indirect influence, which is often best expressed through institutionalized procedures and systems. An advantage of these is that they can preserve value beyond the arbitrary whims of perhaps less able or astute successors. A disadvantage is that they can be exploited by juniors or successors to produce unintended and unhappy consequences.

The other key is your focus on organizational results. Ben will recognize the military maxim that the first priority is the mission, followed by looking after the (in his case) sailors. If you, from a surfeit of sensitivity or altruistic fervor, get these reversed, you will likely fail both in the mission and the development - and even protection - of your staff. So, that focus is right on the money.

So, your effort to adopt Ben’s approach to the extent possible within those constraints (mission and reach) - including using that instinct to guide your actions when those constraints are exceeded - is wonderful - I applaud you!

And thanks so much, both you and Ben, for this continuation of the discussion deeper from endlessly contentious theory into relentlessly demanding practice!

I agree the Drucker’s “’systems approach’ was meant to bring out the ‘best’ performance in people”. But I believe that it resulted in bringing out mediocre performance at best and often the worst.

I congratulate you for your approach to managing people that of serving your people rather than expecting them to serve you. People are the same all over the world and the naysayers have it wrong.

If I can help you in any way, please don’t hesitate to ask. I would send you a gratis copy of my book by email if you desire it. The book is a bit heavy, actually several books in one, but it does have everything you need to become an exceptional manager of people.

Best regards, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”

Fascinating discussion. While I’m not a Drucker expert, my limited understanding of his writings is that his ’systems approach’ was meant to bring out the ‘best’ performance in people. Having the right ’system’ would somehow create an environment conducive to superior business performance.

In any event, I believe that context is critical to a better understanding of what has/did happen. Using case studies to help explain principles are great for learning, but does require us to understand the uniqueness of the case(s) to ensure we are learning the right lessons and then to apply them to the appropriate situations.

In my case for example, as a traditional functional manager seeking to improve my organization’s efficiency and effectiveness, I have a particular constraint that would make it difficult for me to adopt Ben’s approach toward management and leadership. I am a western (ABC) manager in a British multinational company operating in Asia - specifically Chinese speaking East Asia.

The people I deal with are not only conversant with top-down approach to doing things but that is a way-of-life. It’s in their DNA. So, trying to get these people to be self-directed…well, let us just say a structured systems-based approach works much better because their life is highly structured and systematic (i.e. clear policies, procedures etc)

Nevertheless, the fact is people are people. I believe in both the good and the bad in human nature. Allowed to their own devices, people can and have achieved amazing things, no doubt about it. So then, the key question to me is, “What is one’s view of human nature?” I think that’s really the essence of how or what approach we take. I don’t believe that I can take each one of my team members solely as individuals because I cannot manage that - team is too big or due to my own managerial or personal limitations.

I can say that in my experience, which is still on-going, I’ve tried to adopt Ben’s approach as much as I can. The reason is that in order for one to have a high performing team, individuals need to be themselves high performing (perhaps this is a sign of my biases). Whether the system creates high performance or the individual efforts results in it, I only care of the outcome. If we use a basketball sports analogy, do we get 5 all-stars or 5 “team players” (that assumes all-stars cannot be effective team players which seems to be the case)?

The frustration is there, but I can also say, that the results are there too, it does work, despite the fact that my Asian managers have told me numerous times, that my “westernized” approach needs to be adjusted constantly “to fit” the environment. In other words, be prepared to be disappointed and frustrated. To be frank though, I sometimes wonder whether the effort I put in to create this result is the most effective way to manage the team.

To sum up briefly, I’ve concluded that I need to create a systematic way of operating that permits each team member to showcase his or her specific talents. My role, is more of a coach/facilitator/umbrella as a way to create an environment they can perform in. I see that is my fundamental role as a manager - create the environment and circumstances for success, individually and as a function. For that, there’s been a lot of trial and error adopting the principles, tools & techniques, you all write about.

Thanks,
-Lui

You have hit on a point of the question - is it, in fact, an either/or choice? As you know, I am not a fan of the “star” side of the equation, but there is no doubt that we need an effective boss. The next question is what sort of role does he or she play (and how personally prominent must it be) in the functioning of leadership in the organization.

As for the issue of change, your use of the medical example is an eye-opener - and I don’t suppose it would tax too many people overmuch to come up with examples of organizations that proved unwilling and unable to change even though confronted with indisputably impending disaster.

Thanks, Lee, for stopping by and joining in!

I have picked up your book - Adobe Reader version - looking forward to getting to it.

In the meanwhile, you and others may be interested in a piece that just came through my RSS reader from Management-Issues which uses recent research to make very nearly the same points you do in your excellent comment above.

Your discussion of the presence of self-directed self-starters and others who may viewed as having become accommodated to “followership” is close to a fundamental point I make in developing my argument in Managing Leadership - there is a distinct difference in the way I view such “followers,” but it is nevertheless very interesting that you have seen something like this and produced these conclusions from it.

I look forward to more discussion on these topics soon.

Thanks again Ben!

The conversion to being self-directed resulted from learning that “leading” employees to high performance was not enough to stop them from being led right down by the next leader. That happened to me in my first turnaround, a destroyer escort.

I lead it from disaster state to being one of the best ships in a matter of 18 months. I then left to take my next position as Reactor Officer of Nimitz, but the man who replaced me led the crew right back to disaster state in less time than it took me to fix it. I berated myself for creating a “house of cards” and pledged to learn how not to repeat that.

I knew that my very best people were self-directed self-starters who always do what they think is right, not what they think is expected of them or what they are “led” to do. So they aren’t followers. But only about 5% of all people are this way. The other 95% are followers who can be “led” more or less because of having been beaten into that mode by a highly authoritarian society - first by their parents and then teachers, churches, government and finally bosses in the workplace.

My investigations caused me to believe that at birth we are all self-directed and if that is our natural state, why could I not lead people back to being that way? So I started trying that and eventually proved that a majority could be converted and once converted would never go back to following ever again. This solved my “house of cards” discrepancy.

The only tool powerful enough to create such a change turned out to be meetings of about 40 or less for the purpose of receiving and responding to their complaints, suggestions and questions. Properly run, these meetings can change culture in a relatively short time given that they continue.

Best regards, Ben
Author “Leading People to be Highly Motivated and Committed”