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Whence leadership?

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Have you ever noticed that when people talk about leadership, the unspoken but overpowering assumption is that it is a positive and constructive force? Have you ever questioned that presumed relationship? If you have, what sort of reaction did you get?

The falsity of this putatively inviolable connection is among the most grave of the many very serious problems with the modern leadership movement’s (MLM) concept of individual leadership in organizations.

It is most important to see that to the extent that there are naturally magnetic leaders – whether self-developed, indentified as latently promising and cultivated, or even somehow just plain taught – there is absolutely no inherent connection between the nature of that leadership in those individuals, and the value placed in your organization’s goals by its owners and its customers. Indeed, it might be argued that the very hypnotic power to cause people to rapturously drink the Kool-Aid is itself highly suggestive of leadership of which you ought to be most skeptical.

As noted here previously, Peter Drucker once said, “Leadership is all hype. We’ve had three great leaders in this century – Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.”

Consider this: when the assorted MLM gurus trot out their exemplars of the various representations they offer of the “essential” leadership characteristics, they tend to use one such ideal for each trait. Ever notice that? The thing is, if you look closer, you will find that many of those celebrated for their expression of one “vital” trait simply don’t have many of the others so described – or even, in truth, are infamous for having the opposite of such another trait.

But Drucker’s alarmingly influential trio and countless other such examples throughout political, military, and business history, ancient and modern, tend to be the complete package – virtual poster-children for MLM depictions of leadership. From passion to vision to humility to, in their own tortuously distorted ways, integrity and honesty. Certainly even today it is disturbingly easy to find such individuals who manifestly have it all.

Does anyone in your organization have them all? Are you sure you want them there? How about the “leaders” you believe you are selecting and developing in your training programs? How wise is it to instill in such as them the inevitable sense of entitlement and expectation of followership, and then to release them back into your units? Similarly, how sure are you that those outside candidates you recruit so confidently because they most completely fit the trait templates for leadership are really safe to set loose on your organizations?

Whenever you discuss the notion of individual leadership in organizations – especially in your organizations – be sure to address as well the question of what it is, to challenge the demonstrably untenable assumption that it is somehow an inherently constructive force in your midst. Do not engage in discussion of leadership on its terms. Insist on doing so on the basis of your own carefully determined and delineated requirements. You may be surprised what you actually begin to see.

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Today’s tip: But don’t just take my word for it. See this sensible dispersion of much of the hype surrounding leadership in this essay by Mark Henricks at BNET.

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Book Review: Traction

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Traction – an apt and reassuring title for one of an increasingly rare breed of truly satisfying and rewarding management books. Gino Wickman’s “Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business” aims to help the owners and managers of a small business to formulate a concrete, actionable picture of the business, and then to use that to develop equally concrete action to create more productive and profitable pictures with each forward step – generate traction to move forward into a position affording new and greater traction.

Who doesn’t want to feel they have such a profound understanding of and contact with the reality that drives their business? Who doesn’t want to be free of the glistening but ephemeral management fads that waft constantly by so noisily but fleetingly?

Gino Wickman proposes a specific series of components for accomplishing this degree of control and insight. These range from the obligatory (but, here, intelligently presented) vision, to taking action – with terrific discussions of key elements such as selecting and evaluating data to formulating issues and making decisions.

The author’s background is in sales and training, and you will see elements of this in your reading – you may feel that your arm is being twisted a bit with enthusiastically related success stories, or even your leg being pulled with various rapport-building moral-laden anecdotes.

But the core experience of reading this book is one of straight-talk that speaks directly to your problems, immensely sensible integration of foundation concepts pointing straight to solutions to those problems, and solid templates that can easily be adapted to your circumstances to help you put it all to work for you.

Importantly (and thankfully), Wickman doesn’t pretend to be revealing the heretofore secret formula for successful management, products of his own unapproachably profound insight and genius. Rather, he frankly admits that he is straightforwardly and practically reporting a comprehensive approach to management that incorporates the best of best-practices and hard-won common sense, the bulk of which he has learned from others. Moreover, he always acknowledges and attributes the true sources of the ideas he integrates into this book – a practice that is, sadly, not always to be found among even the best-known management writers.

As a consequence, Traction offers a breath of fresh air amid much of the wide-eyed froth spraying out at us from so many of the management books produced today. While it is targeted to the owners and managers of robust small businesses, it is also highly recommended for entrepreneurs, and for unit managers of larger corporations as well.

Traction by Gino Wickman – a pleasant and insightful read, and highly recommended – enjoy!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of pleasant and insightful reading, onlineclasses.org has developed a list of 25 biographies recommended for everyone in a leadership position. Perhaps you will find, as I did, some selections that seem peculiar in such a collection, but surely you will also find, as I also did, many more that you will be eager to add to your reading list.

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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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Slouching towards leadership

Saturday, March 26, 2011

We have seen, since the opening of the current series on the problems with the notion of individual leadership in organizations, that the most fundamental of them is that such leadership is inescapably not about those organizations – it is about the purportedly peerless and vital qualities of those putative leaders. Whatever after-thoughts or carefully contrived qualifications are thrown at the topic, there is no avoiding the truth about individual leadership as “discovered” and promoted by the modern leadership movement (MLM): it is about relationships with individuals who exhibit the described leadership – it is only peripherally, if at all, about the work at hand, from which, in any event, it most decidedly does not arise.

We have also looked at some examples of what appear to be actual instances of individual leadership in the workplace, only to see that they are either not really examples of leadership or are clearly not results of the teachings or other activities of the MLM.

That’s a peculiar puzzle, isn’t it? After all, the MLM has been pontificating for decades now (with surprising cacophony, given the uniformly stentorian voice) that they know what it is, why you need it, and how you can employ their expertise to get it yourself – either personally or in your organization.

But how many such leadership systems – whether executed in educational institutions such as universities, or by training programs within endeavors of various types and sizes – are actually developing leaders? Do you know of any? How many reliably emit “leaders” – according to one or another system certified by the “studies” of this or that guru – who fit the MLM mold? Do they suddenly start having awe-inspiring visions, generate creativity-enhancingly large goals (I hesitate using the at once crass and utterly inane – quite literally stupefying – phrases used by MLM gurus to describe these), or do they begin on cue to develop fundamentally profound understanding of and connections with their “followers?”

And speaking of that, do “followers” suddenly start gravitating toward these newly-minted “leaders”  as soon as they are ejected from the starry-eyed end of this mysteriously storied leadership development system? Here they are, reentering the organization, thoughtfully stroking their chins over the gravity of the issues they now heroically perceive and confront, gazing wistfully upward lost in their visions of the future, bestowing empowering and affirming smiles of understanding and appreciation on those around them, or – most distressingly of all – doing all of these at once.

Are you (or anyone) satisfied with that? Is it what you wanted? Is it leadership? Is it remotely like what you thought you were getting, what you were promised?

Of course not. And it can hardly be surprising that this should be so. There is no such thing as a leadership development program, however well-intentioned as most are, that develops individual leaders with personal – that is, work-unrelated or context-free – skills and abilities that result in their being characterizable individually as leaders in any fashion at all; certainly not as prescribed by the various advocates of the MLM.

Why not? For one thing, for all the brook-no-doubts certainty of the many mutually inconsistent depictions of what it is, no one really knows what it is. Nor, actually, can anyone really prove that it (as a distinct, reliably describable and replicable personality type) even exists.

Moreover, even if you stipulate to one or another of the noisily competing theories about it, no one has proven that the exemplars specified by any of these can be trained or developed. And even if you acknowledge that much, it remains necessary to note that neither has anyone shown that they can be identified, culled from the crowed, and groomed.

There is no proof, no evidence – none – that “leaders” of the superlative ilk promoted by the MLM can be developed. So what of the many leadership development programs – particularly those in-house to the benefiting organizations – that are widely respected and have evolved consistent and reliable methodology for producing graduates that are highly regarded and demonstrably beneficial to their outfits? How are they to be explained?

Easy: they don’t produce leaders. Whatever terminology they prefer to employ, they are producing managers. Thoughtful, goal-oriented, integrative managers. It would be best for all concerned if they acknowledged that, and removed the last vestiges of self-deluding dross that unproductively burden their programs and the self-perceptions of their graduates.

We’ll discuss this in more detail in the coming weeks. Looking forward to your visits and observations as we do.

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Today’s tips: “Often the ability of followers to succeed in spite of leadership inanities is a more fascinating process question” – any essay with a phrase like that is worth reading. Stop by to see Fred Schlegel‘s post at the Frog Blog.

As always, if it’s not about the work, it is going to be a problem. Please see Steve Roesler at All Things Workplace for yet another example of how and why.

Please see this WSJ article and observe the curious attitude and “What, me worry?” comments of the CEO of the highlighted company. What is the secret of success here: the management, the nature of the business, or perhaps the quality of the workforce?

There is no better advice for how to work your way out of a stumbling block than that offered by Cultural Offering – note his attribution at the end.

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Disorienting leadership

Friday, February 4, 2011

Some years ago there was a horrific crash during training maneuvers by a US Air Force precision flying team. All four aircraft in the group failed to pull up from a steep dive, and piled directly into the desert floor. The official statement blamed a mechanical malfunction in the lead aircraft, but the general view among military pilots seemed to revolve around a sort of human error peculiar to this special type of formation flying.

A fighter pilot explained it this way: These teams perform extraordinarily precise maneuvers at stupendously high-speed; there is no room for miscommunication or even collaboration. There is one leader, and three followers. Screaming above the desert floor at hundreds of miles an hour with perhaps only inches separating their wingtips, each follower focuses intently on maintaining constant speed and direction, with his single reference point being his relative position to a particular physical point located on the lead aircraft; he focuses on maintaining that exactly as specified, to the exclusion of all other facts roaring by.

As for the leader, his job is to follow the choreographed route, executing the exactly specified directions and speeds for the precisely specified durations. He has no time to check to make sure his followers are in position behind and around him; he relies on their focus on him for that, and they rely on his focus on the itinerary to execute the drill.

In the course of this, the leader will use features on the ground or the surrounding mountains toward which he may be momentarily heading to help him maintain direction. When the prescribed time for the current leg expires, he will shift to the next maneuver, and the next landmark.

This all requires a degree of focus that is so intense as to exclude all else. No peripheral considerations, no stray thinking allowed. The leader intent on his object, the followers on the leader.

In the case of this accident, the general impression of other fighter pilots is that the lead pilot may have became lost in the intensity of his concentration on the desert floor landmark he had selected for that leg of the drill, which then resolved into a hypnotic fixation. Losing even the limited perspective that his function restricted him to, he drove his aircraft straight into his focal point on the ground. His followers, intent as ever only on doing their jobs while wholly dependent on him doing his, drove straight in after him, maintaining perfect formation to the end.

Precision drill teams like this do great good for the military and the country, acting as grand ambassadors for the Armed Forces, exhibiting the great pride and honor inherent in uniformed service, as well as demonstrating the inspiring discipline, spectacular skill, and quietly relentless courage that such service both requires and elicits from those who answer its call. There is sometimes a great cost paid in providing this good, and this accident is an especially devastating example of that.

But we want to note here that the things these teams work so hard to display so stupendously is what we have just noted above: pride, honor, discipline, skill, team spirit, dedication. Not leadership.

The form of leadership/followership that can nominally be drawn from the interaction of the drill team members offers a dramatically visual depiction of much of what the modern leadership movement (MLM) teaches about individual leadership and the roles of those who are expected to submit to and partake in it. Indeed, while metaphors typically can’t bear all of the burden placed on them, this one doesn’t carry enough to faithfully describe the expectations made of the sort of leader the movement promotes. It is pretty good, however, at depicting the complete and rootless dependence the MLM expects followers to invest in that leader.

An interesting difference, though, is that the faith placed by the drill team “followers” in their leader is justified (extraordinarily rare accidents like the above notwithstanding) precisely because he is not the sort of leader promoted by the MLM. His “leadership” is tightly choreographed and scripted. His expression of it is tightly circumscribed and detailed. He is not a visionary the consequences of whose actions and decisions we are supposed to simply accept on faith to be constructive. They have been pre-planned, calibrated, tested. Everyone – whatever their position in the formation – has contributed, studied, and internalized them before taking to the air to perform the drill.

So these drills are not a display of leadership at all. Certainly not of the sort that is practiced in the mission-oriented, highly decentralized, and dynamically shifting operating structures of the modern US military.

Nor should they be the pattern you impose on or submit to in your own organizations. You want to limit your perspective or your freedom of action neither to the inviolable constraints of an inflexible script, nor to an inflexible and ill-advised faith in a leader whose qualities you don’t understand and whose “leadership” you don’t collaborate with.

No individual, and no organization, can bear the great rush of disorienting dynamics unleashed by such a relationship. The unscripted and unconstrained individual leadership promoted by the MLM, combined with the tightly scripted and willfully constrained followership expected to multiply its power, is virtually assured to produce the cataclysmic results that are the exception in the military approach. The MLM prescriptions for individual leadership ultimately and inescapably generate a closed, self-referential system which careens who knows where with who knows what results around it in the real world.

One day such a leader will become dangerously disoriented by the unnatural and unsustainable relationship you have established with him or her, and lead the entire organization to an unexpectedly sudden doom, everyone all the while completely content and entirely unaware that there has been the slightest cause for concern. The leaders and the followers, mutually misled and hypnotically unhitched from reality, will head together, fatally enmeshed in their increasingly unrealistic relationship, right over the cliff.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of delinking focus from perspective, please see this piece from The Presurfer, describing what happens when squads of foraging ants are separated from the main colony.

And speaking of the military, please see this piece from The Economist about a stunningly innovative new communications antenna – here when you need it, gone when you don’t.

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Take charge leadership

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Before returning to the main topics in our current discussion of the problems with the prescriptions of the modern leadership movement (MLM), we’re going to take a brief look at two more types of what are generally regarded as genuine examples of “leadership” in organizations.

Today, we will explain why one of these examples actually is not leadership at all as it is understood by the MLM, and why it is more accurately seen as a symptom of an unwell organization. This is the sort of leadership we see in the person who steps up and “takes charge.”

Ordinarily, we don’t refer to someone as taking charge unless that person is filling a vacuum that has been exhausting the organization’s resources and energy. After all, if the organization’s positions of authority were properly distributed throughout, and their occupants routinely discharged their duties effectively, it wouldn’t occur to anyone to comment on the matter.

Moreover, if some of those position holders turned out to be inadequate to their tasks while others were doing fine, it still wouldn’t occur to any one working under the management of either of these groups to say that the latter one’s members were “taking charge.”

It is generally only when someone steps in to resolve a situation normally beyond his or her formal range of authority to save the day, to fill a void that is paralyzing the organization or one of its departments, do we say that someone has appeared on the scene to “take charge” of the situation. This doesn’t happen when you are effectively managing your assigned duties. It happens when you step in to the chaos created by the mismanagement of someone else’s responsibilities to establish order there.

This commonly occurs when a co-worker or operational manager observes the problem, and in order to resolve it, assumes an authority not normally his or hers. “What do you say we fix this?” he or she says, or “I think I see a way out of this.” Instantly, heretofore enervated fellow employees become energized and focused. “Lead,” they say, “we’ll follow.” Somebody do something. Anyone. Anything. Let’s just start getting this thing underway again and see if we can see the way forward better as we get going.

This is a valid form of leadership, but it should be noted that it is not organizationally designed. It doesn’t arise from the intent or planning of the senior leadership. Rather, it surfaces on its own as a result of the sclerotic incompetence descending from there into the organization. That’s a key feature of this: it occurs where it is needed due to organizational ineptitude; not where it is intended by organizational design. It is situation-dependent, not personality-derived.

Even the “followership” is more or less genuine in instances like these. But it is no more institutionally valid than the unconventional risk-taking form of individual leadership which generates it. Indeed, it is often just as risky for the followers to follow as it is for the “leader(s)” to take charge where those formally responsible have proven incapable (a fact painfully highlighted by the appearance of unofficial and unauthorized “take charge” leaders attracting equally unofficial and unauthorized “followership” at various points around the facility).

What’s more, such intermittent eruptions of leadership/followership are more expressions of relief than the sort of relationship with an individual leader that is described and promoted by the MLM. They are organizational reflections of the developing situation, rather than inevitable responses to particular persons due to their possession of specified leadership traits.

When the problem situation resolves, ordinarily the leadership/followership phenomena fades away with it. That is, it is an organizational response to a situation, not to a person.

In fact, it is not really individual leadership at all – it is a manifestation of what I refer to in these pages as organizational leadership. In the case postulated here, it arises from managerial incompetence, and is often suppressed and even punished by that management once the latter regains its bearings and, wholly mis-appreciating the import of what has happened, reasserts control.

This suggests, of course, the importance of managers who acknowledge and manage the leadership naturally existent in their organizations, rather than attempting vainly and dangerously to arrogate it all to themselves. That is to say that the best managers don’t assume they are themselves the sole font of the organization’s leadership – they “take charge” of it, though, by managing the organizational leadership inherently there so it can produce “take charge” leaders where and when they are needed – not to resolve crises or incompetence, but to head them off with authorized innovations, and to seize opportunities to grow and improve.

Which brings us to our next topic: we’ll look at why the type of preeminent individual leadership most enthusiastically promoted by the MLM as what ought to be designed into an organizations is usually – in truth, perhaps  inevitably – actually so destructive of them. We will also look at why it so commonly takes a terribly long time to realize that, as we willfully persist in misattributing its baleful effects.

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Today’s Tips: Speaking of managerial incompetence, if worse comes to worst, you may want to check out these fascinating products of the power and insight of market forces to help you mitigate them: CareerExcuse.com and Alibi Services. I haven’t used these, by the way; they were discovered in the course of reading an illuminating book called Liespotting, by Pamela Meyer.

And speaking of the wonders wrought by the marketplace of needs and ideas, please see this terrific Economist piece on an adaptation of vacuum tube delivery systems you all have seen in hospitals and similar institutions – this one is for delivering your online purchases . . . all the way to your home.

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Book Review: The No Asshole Rule

Thursday, January 6, 2011

I once heard a company commander in the Marines criticize a then-common means of dealing with individuals who were chronic discipline problems: arrange for their reassignment to a non-deploying unit. “I don’t transfer problems,” he said with a resolute determination that brooked no argument. “I fix them.”

I was impressed by that, and inclined to follow his highly responsible sounding no-excuses attitude. But I later learned that he was mostly wrong. On the one hand, personalities of this sort won’t reform easily if at all. On the other, you aren’t in the business of reforming their personalities.

As a result, with this self-delusive “the buck stops here” attitude, all you do is set yourself up for an interminable losing struggle that saps your energy, the resources of your unit, and the morale of your staff. Jerks that require this sort of attention are more than individual problems to be solved; they are black holes of negativity, sucking all the productivity, solidarity, and initiative from ever-growing segments of your organization. They are a poison injecting damaging dynamics into the body of the business, infecting some with the same disease, and suppressing the ability and inclination of others to resist its spread.

So what do you do? Buy Professor Bob Sutton’s “The No Asshole Rule.” Look at the cover. Read the highly engaging and illuminatingly concise (yet still authoritatively comprehensive) book to learn the nature and scope of the problem. Then consider the cover again and fix its lesson firmly in your mind. The rule is the title, and the method of implementing it is the graphic depicted next: a delete button.

This is easily among the most productive generalist management books I’ve read in a long while. Like most superior books of this sort, it offers actionable insight well beyond the immediate range of its topic, insights that will inform other of your efforts to manage effectively than those it specifically addresses.

But that’s surely not to say that the topic at hand isn’t valuable enough. You will begin with an organizationally-effective definition of what workplace jerks are, move on to a revealing explanation of how damaging they can be and why, and then learn how to establish practical methods for deleting them (as well as several solid rationales for why you should, without hesitation, do just that). What’s more, you will discover how to honestly examine the possibility that you are being infected by – or even are the source of – the malignancy yourself, and how to remedy that.

But if you are unavoidably the victim, and if neither a delete button nor an ejection seat are practical options, you will also be given strong, effective tips on how to survive jerk bosses – and even workplaces thoroughly infested with jerks – without succumbing to that disease yourself, or to other very real, and extraordinarily debilitating, stress-related maladies the struggle can cause.

As mentioned, this book is compact while still very effectively and satisfyingly covering all the ground; it is entertaining, but in a way that is germane, contributing greater meaning to the text rather than distracting filler to the pages.

Professor Sutton’s “The No Asshole Rule” is deservedly a best-seller. It deserves a place on your reading list as well – the next place. Make it your first New Year’s resolution to read this terrific book. Make it your next to implement the rule. You will undoubtedly enjoy a productive, and certainly a more rewarding, year for having done so.

Happy New Year!

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Twelve excellent blogs for the next twelve months

Sunday, January 2, 2011

It is time to offer a New Year’s list of recommended additions to your daily reading list – sources that have found their way firmly on to mine over the past year or more. These all have clear staying power, offering value that is both thought-provoking and actionable.

I hope you will bookmark this page and give them all a thorough visit over the next week or so. I am confident you’ll 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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Note: Speaking of lists of regular reading, Managing Leadership is proud to have been included among a list of “insightful leadership blogs” compiled by the very gracious J.D. Meier, author of Sources of Insight. Please stop over to see the really very excellent collection of superb reading he has put together.

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