Managing Leadership^®

I use the phrase “purposeful organization” frequently in my attempts to explain what I mean by “managing leadership.” Admittedly, it is a bit of a redundancy. That is, you don’t organize an effort – create an organization – without a purpose for it in mind. The intent behind pairing the words, however, is twofold.

First, I want to emphasize the very redundancy: the purpose of an organization is inherent in its creation; it is not provided after the fact by a “leader” who wanders or parachutes into the group. In this sense, it is the leader – viewed as someone whose presence is required in order to invest an organization with purpose (expressed in your derivative term of choice – vision, for example) – that is redundant.

Certainly, that purpose can and often should be modified – sometimes even changed altogether. However, in my view it is not the place of someone other than the owner – even if you refer to such a person as a visionary leader – to unilaterally make alterations like these. Only the owners or their agents can legitimately do that. To the extent that this fundamental element of organizational integrity is violated by the modern CEO/leader (even with the complicity of the owners or their agents), we open many doors to many moral hazards. We have seen waves of varying sorts of these over the past decade or two.

Second, I hope to draw attention to the self-organizing and self-managing characteristics of organizations, so well elaborated by the brilliant Mary Parker Follett three-quarters of a century ago. When people join organizations, they have a tendency to immediately seek ways to order their activities in a way that conforms with and contributes to the larger efforts and aims of the group. Moreover, in the absence of specific guidance regarding how to do this, normal people in normal situations don’t just shut down like conflicted robots; they tend to develop their own solutions, whether individually or collaboratively.

There is a very close relationship between this phenomenon and the expression of leadership within an organization. We will talk about that briefly tomorrow. For now, it is worth noting that self-management and self-leadership can be both encouraged and given direction by senior management, or suppressed by it and arrogated to the top management team.

It is also useful to note that the tendency of groups to self-organize, self-manage, and even self-lead does not mean that we have no use for top-down direction or management. The role of senior executives is vital; my argument, however, includes the contention that executives deplete the vitality of that role by arrogating organizational leadership exclusively (or even just primarily) to themselves, rather than enhancing it by building upon and managing the leadership inherent in the very nature of the purposeful, collaborative organization.

Please stop in tomorrow as we continue elaborating this line of the argument. And please also don’t hesitate to dispute it – the resulting dialogue can only sharpen the thinking and improve the effectiveness at work of all of us.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of forcing our assumptions, intentionally or otherwise, down certain paths of docility, please take a look at this eye-opening piece by John Phillips, who authors The Word on Employment Law, about our ongoing relationship with the company store.

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