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Charm school

Monday, October 6, 2008

We have been questioning the veracity of the modern leadership movement’s various claims for individual leadership. Whichever particular view strikes your fancy of the many offered for what a leader is – or whatever selection you make, from the colorfully diverse display available, for your very own leadership bouquet – there is one prominently shared element of these assertions: they all presume that we can identify leaders on the basis of specific characteristics or behaviors which are the source of this individual leadership.

Moreover, an inescapable consequence of this is that they must therefore further presume that we can use this “knowledge” to create more of it. Otherwise, of course, there is no point to the movement and its claims at all. If the purpose of these observers was simply to produce documentaries about the fascinating and rarely glimpsed creatures called “leaders” for the wildlife and science channels, the phenomenon wouldn’t have the power it clearly does. Too many of us are eager to believe its claims so that they can be realized in us, and too many of its advocates are happy to stoke those ambitions.

But does it smell right to you? We already know that there is no generally accepted definition of individual leadership. That’s fine, just pick any one of them. After decades of the most heated and earnest promotion of this sort of thing, are there any leadership curricula regularly and reliably producing leaders according to any at all of the competing “no-two-ways-about-it” arguments for what it is? Are you aware of any program that accepts novices and routinely transforms them into context-free “leaders” that can safely be parachuted into any situation, produce energized followers from the previously confused and disputing masses, and save the day for everyone involved?

No? Then why are we still talking about individual leadership as though we know what it is and how to produce it?

Actually, there are truly serious-minded and productive observers and advisors who believe in the concept of individual leadership and the value of studying it, but who do not conclude from their insistence that it can be detected that it can also be predicted or produced. We will look at that tomorrow – please do be sure to join us!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of the stubborn perseverance of diversity in the face of insistence that there is only one way to go, please see this terrific article from BNET by Lindsay Blakely about some widely differing corporate management models that all seem to work just fine.

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Get smart

Friday, October 3, 2008

A physician once told me that the specialty he had entered was the elite of all medical fields – only the smartest doctors, he said, could get into it; the rest contented themselves with what was left. There are a lot of interesting things about this claim, but the one that initially attracted my attention was the presumption that any MD not in his specialty was not as smart as him.

Many of us make such assumptions about one field or another, or about people in top positions. We think they’re not only smart, but smarter than other people – smarter than those who have not attained their visible marks of success.

Do you think that’s true? Is it not possible, for instance, that someone vastly more intelligent than the greatest ever rocket scientist, if you will, is simply fascinated with, say, the study of insects? Maybe he or she became a postal carrier, or happily struggles to master the tympani. Perhaps our genius stayed home to care for the family, and has come to devote him or herself anonymously to the welfare and advancement of others.

Are you aware of people around you in your family, social circles, community, or at work who seem to be spectacularly capable or intelligent, albeit in what might appear to be unspectacular endeavors or roles? Do they seem embarrassed or unhappy? Do you or they doubt the veracity of your impressions of their abilities on the basis of their more or less ordinary circumstances?

How about the presumption that a degree from certain schools points inevitably to superior intelligence – does that sound right to you? Is there supposed to be some sort of mechanism that somehow causes all the smart people to go – or at least to want to go – to such schools? Are there not countless reasons why much sharper people – and great numbers of them, to boot – might not go to supposedly humbler institutions, or even not go to school at all?

Why do we make such assumptions? Why do we place such weight on the infallibility of such indicators? Would we not be wiser to seek out and benefit from the vast range of genius all around us? Might it not be better if we spent less time seeking means for expressing our own putative brilliance, and more in acknowledging, identifying, and sharing in that of these countless others?

Indeed, perhaps there is more moral in this story than merely the unlikely self-regard or unexpected distribution of intelligence. We’ll look more at that possibility in the future.

In the meanwhile, we return next to our current topic of the nature of leadership with a discussion of leadership development. Have a great weekend – see you on Monday!

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Today’s tip: In line with today’s subject, please see this profile in the current edition of The Economist, about a CEO who takes this view of his role: “You always have around you specialists who know much more than you,” he says. “So you ask them questions and you challenge them on their answers. And from time to time, you have to make decisions.” There is neither a presumption here that he has to be the source of expertise, nor that those who possess it do so infallibly. What he does do is the fundamental duty of the manager: when the time comes, make decisions.

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A fine mess

Thursday, October 2, 2008

We have been discussing one of the founding principles of the modern leadership movement: the threefold idea that leadership is distinct from and superior to management, and that management is essentially a static activity inherently incapable of foresight or the provision of direction and purpose. Hence, the sophism that managers know how to do things, but leaders know what to do.

We’ve already considered the likelihood that management and leadership are not separate activities, but rather are intermingled features of a single one. The presumption here is that one does not merely partake of the other, but that each flows from the other. Indeed, they are one function that is expressed by the same individual(s) in various ways as the occasion warrants.

But we’ve also noted that some of the key leadership functions belong to owners. These are the ones related to strategic aim and vision. Those certainly are key, because without them there is no purpose for a purposeful organization. I don’t know if that makes them superior, though, since in the absence of competent management there would be no enduring expression of them, either.

What’s more, the other so-called leadership functions – from planning, communication, relationship-building, and the like to innovation, creativity, and even inspiration – can be argued to actually be management functions. They are things managers do to get things done in a collaborative environment. So, they seem to offer little support to the hugely successful proposition that leadership is distinct and separate from management.

That leaves us with the leadership functions reserved to owners. These are preconditions to the existence of a purposeful organization. Moreover, anytime you hyphenate “strategic” onto something, you’re going to attract awed attention, despite the fact that most strategic activities, as important as they certainly are, are also quite mundane.

So, perhaps the suggestion that leadership and management are separate is an unthinking reflection of the distinction between activities rightfully reserved to owners and those that can be delegated to executives. This might be both more understandable and relevant a consideration if we also note that most businesses are family-owned enterprises.

But the problem is that it is not in this context that the subject is discussed. The modern leadership movement makes the case that leadership is a sort of activity that transcends such pedestrian considerations or settings, and that transforms any reality on which it is brought to bear.

This is not exaggeration. Rhetoric built on such remarkable assumptions is regularly used to describe concepts of individual leadership in modern organizations, concepts which have attained wide currency.

And it is a real and quite serious problem. In dismissing putatively trivial considerations like the rights of owners and the responsibilities of their employees, it makes a real fiduciary mess of the whole situation.

The news has plenty of evidence to support that concern. For our part, we will return to another aspect of the problem: If we can neither define leadership nor specify the location and nature of its putative boundary with management, how can we teach it? We will pick that up next, and hope you will join in.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of confusing ownership, leadership, rights, and modern fiduciary duties, please see this WSJ opinion piece arguing that CEOs should follow the late Paul Newman’s example by giving more corporate money to philanthropic interests. While you read it, please bear in mind that Paul Newman’s generosity was expressed in his capacity as the owner – not as a hired CEO – of his companies. That is, it was his money – not his boss’s. It is this unthinking conflation of the “CEO” with the very identity of the “company” that is behind a good bit of the wide range of difficulties we have faced in the past decades and continue to confront today.

And speaking of confusion about fiduciary duty and today’s financial crisis, please see this essay by Carl Icahn, from his site The Icahn Report, detailing his view that any bailout plan should include provisions to restore the proper center of gravity in corporate governance in owners, rather than management.

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False distinctions

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

As we noted yesterday, there is much made of the putative distinction between leadership and management. Moreover, this assertion is inevitably paired with the proud presumption that leadership is also superior to management.

This argument is sufficiently pretentious to be objectionable in and of itself. Concealing a deficit of substance with a surfeit of powerfully articulate rhetoric, it has created a most undignified and unhelpful stampede of people eager to join this ill-defined – and thus peculiarly unimpeachable – class of superior being.

If we can be made to stipulate that leadership is indeed an inherently – even incompatibly – different function than management, why, I think it is fair to ask, must we also be pressed to accept that it and the “leaders” who engage in it are superior? What value does that belief add to the proposition? What extra effectiveness does it impart to the expression of leadership in our organizations?

Questions like those seem to be troublesome enough, with plenty of grist for milling more. But here’s an additional one about the presentation of this claim that just seems to me to be a real puzzler: Why does the modern leadership movement find it necessary to add what can only be characterized as the gratuitously obnoxious addendum that managers are uniquely substandard beings in comparison?

Where’s the leadership in that affront? Where’s the unifying vision, the clarion communication of shared values and sacrifice, the ineffable propensity to attract energized followers?

The classic way of posing this pointless defamation is to suggest that managers are indeed expert at how to climb ladders, but it takes transcendently insightful leaders to know where to place those ladders.

Honestly now, does that sound right to you? Do you know managers who mindlessly do what they are told, building plans with intermediate phases and landmarks to accomplish goals without any comprehension, curiosity, or opinion regarding the larger organizational purpose those goals are intended to serve?

Do you know of managers who would (other than in a vindictively oppressive environment (who creates those?)), submit to working in the dark like that? Do you know any competent managers who, in order to ensure that they are doing their work right, or even to be able to recommend a better way to do it, would fail to ask what aim it is intended to further?

On the other hand, do you know of “leaders” whose sole function seems to be to exhibit one or another of the so-called leadership functions – and nothing else? Do they provide vision, communicate purpose, build teams, and the like – every day? Do they merely arrange the big arrow, and then leave it entirely to the management drones to make all the little arrows line up appropriately?

Or, do you see the same people exhibiting both leadership and management – not just when one or the other is called for, but specifically in order to express both appropriately and effectively? If that is so, does it not suggest that they are not separate, but rather that they partake one of the other? And if that is the case, what then does it mean to refer to them separately, or to those who engage in them as distinct beings – and, moreover, to do so in an antagonistic way that simultaneously elevates one and deprecates the other?

We’ll look at this question, a key element of our current discussion, from yet another angle tomorrow. Please do stop in!

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Today’s tip: On the other hand, if you really want to be a leader, it appears that there are some pretty valuable perks that come with it. You might wish to spend vast sums on “elite” executive MBA training to learn to be an “international leader.” What sets these programs apart? How about “fireside discussions,” poetry sessions, and even scheduled reflection time? Grab your box of warm milk off the radiator and see this WSJ piece about how intense it can get at the top. If it’s too much to take in all at once, just nap on it.

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Hands off my ladder

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Possibly the most impractical and unhelpful – not to mention annoying - “insight” of the past several decades was the “discovery” that management and leadership are different – so much so, in fact, as to be essentially incompatible individual functions. Of course, they are also supposed to be unequal, with leadership superior to management. And thus the modern leadership movement, with its members champions in their various incoherent ways of the individual leader, was born.

The movement’s definitions and prescriptions, as we have noted, are constantly changing, always slipping through our grasp. But do we take that as evidence of their lack of substance? Of course not.

I recently read a piece acknowledging that there is no agreement among the many differing definitions of leadership. The author resolved this by gliding with effortless illogic to the conclusion that it means that there are many “facets” to leadership. How about that? Whatever mirror you choose to gaze into in Lake Woebegone, you will be assured that you are the fairest of all.

The notion of leadership as a separate individual characteristic or function from management – and a superior one, at that – continues easily to survive, even to thrive on such stupefyingly insubstantial foundations; clear evidence of the great seductive power of the concept. It is not evidence, however, of its veracity.

Here are some of my assertions regarding this:

  • Leadership is not superior to management.
  • Rather, the overriding function necessary to the successful operation of an organization is management. It comprehends – contains – (most of) the functions of leadership.
  • Management can be argued to be superior to leadership in this sense, but that, too, is a distinction with no valuable, actionable meaning in this context. The issue is simply that most functions of leadership are best viewed as falling under the general duties of management.
  • Leadership is of strategic importance, but so are several other management functions; there is no practical value in inflating the role or importance of leadership at all, much less with respect to other functions. The issue is merely to do the work, of which leadership is a part.
  • There are certain elements of leadership that, strictly speaking, do not belong to management; but they don’t belong to a distinct class of special beings called “leaders,” either – they belong to owners. Yet, for all the importance of those elements and, even, their irreplaceable role in the genesis of the purposeful organization, they are essentially prosaic in prosecution.

We will attempt to cover these points – the heart of the current discussion, intended to address challenges presented previously by commentators – over the next two days. I do hope you will stop in and offer your own opinions!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of clarity of comprehension in complex and highly-charged circumstances, Bruce Weinstein, who offers a regular Business Week column under the heading of “The Ethics Guy,” has recently published a two-part discussion of the ethical issues involved in viewing and dealing with downsizing – a topic of growing visibility, recently. This is a carefully considered and presented effort, and I am happy to recommend it. Please do stop over to see the installments for assessing the issue both from the perspective of managers, and from that of employees.

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