The Seeds of Change

Just before the turn of the century (the 21^st century) a number of leadership-gurus started turning heads by talking about the organic nature of organizations, and how traditional theories of organizational change were proving to be wrong. One of these leaders was Margaret Wheatley who, in her book Leadership and the New Science, said:

The dominant world view of Western culture – the world as machine – doesn’t help us to live well in this world any longer. We have to see the world differently if we are to live in it more harmoniously. Leadership and the New Science, (p. 172), Margaret Wheatley, 1999

She went on to say that an organization’s “…behaviors don’t change just by announcing new values. We move only gradually into being able to act congruently with those values.” (p 130-131)

This view of organizations as something other than machines was also expressed by Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and the Dance of Change.

In an article (Learning for a Change) published by Fast Company Magazine in May 1999, Senge brought his view of the organic nature of companies to the casual reader. He said:

We need to think less like managers and more like biologists. …Companies are actually living organisms, not machines. …Perhaps treating companies like machines keeps them from changing… We keep bringing in mechanics – when what we need are gardeners. We keep trying to drive change – when what we need to do is cultivate change.

If we approach our organizations as mechanical systems we develop high level leaders who drive change through formal, top-down change programs. If we approach our organizations as living systems we develop leaders at all levels who approach change as a natural part of the growth of the company.

Senge goes on to point out that in nature “nothing that grows starts large; it always starts small." In his view, in the natural world, “…no one is in charge making the growth occur. Instead, growth occurs as a result of the interplay of diverse forces.”

These forces are not under the control of any one person including the person at the top of the organizational structure, the “leader.” They are the natural forces that exist within every organization.

In Senge’s opinion, we often “use the word 'leader' to mean 'executive': The leader is the person at the top. That definition says that leadership is synonymous with a position. And if leadership is synonymous with a position, then it doesn’t matter what a leader does. All that matters is where a leader sits.”

Historically we have assigned to the leader the power to make organizational changes, to take an organization in a certain direction, or to know what changes are needed even when the people within the organization can’t see the need for change. The leader was seen as all-powerful and all-knowing. Change efforts were directed from the top, handed down from on-high and, more often than not, doomed to failure.

If all that matters is where a leader sits, there is little hope that strong leadership will be found at the line level, where leadership is most important.

The Wheatley and Senge research tells us a number of important things about organizations:

• We must view organizations as organic rather than mechanical structures.
• Change comes about through growth from inside the organization rather than through a mechanical repair of existing systems.
• To quote Senge, “Just as nothing in nature starts big; the way to start creating changes is with a pilot group – a growth seed.” Start small.
• For these seeds of change to survive and grow, organizations must have line leaders (people at the heart of the value-generating process – who design, produce, and sell products; who provide services; who talk to customers) who will nurture and care for the change efforts.
• Meaningful and lasting change comes from inside the organization.
  
• The planting of seeds in areas that are surrounded by gardeners in the form of committed and motivated people is much more likely to result in lasting change than programs that are the result of top down efforts.

Those of us who are trying to bring new ways of thinking into an organization will do well to bear in mind the organic nature of change. Whether your goal is to bring the Leadership Diamond into the decision making process of your organization, or to change a process or service that results in improved customer satisfaction and a better bottom line, every change effort should consider the value of planting seeds, and developing line leaders who act as gardeners.

The Good Society

During the last few thousand years, philosophers and authors have tried to define the role of government in creating The Good Society. These great thinkers struggled to define the perfect social system and the quality of life experienced by the people that lived within the systems they envisioned. Their approaches differed, and the quality of the resulting societies changed based on the values held by each of the philosophers.

In his book The Executive's Compass – Business and the Good Society, James O’Toole provides an interesting overview of several thousand years of philosophical thinking about The Good Society, and which of those societies might be best for humanity. O’Toole says:

• To Aristotle, it [the good society] permits some of its members to live “the good life.”
• To Hobbes, it provides sufficient order to allow material progress.
• To Locke, it guarantees life, liberty and property.
• To Rousseau, it preserves as much as possible of the conditions of liberty and equality that humankind enjoyed in “the state of nature.”
• To Adam Smith, it has nearly absolute economic freedom.
• To Thomas Jefferson, it consists of people who live in small-scale, rural communities characterized by a high quality of life.
• To Alexander Hamilton, it consists of people who live in modern industrial cities characterized by a high standard of living.
• To Marx, it has nearly absolute economic equality.
• To J.S. Mill, it allows nearly absolute social freedom.
• To Harriet Taylor Mill, it allows women to enjoy the equality of opportunity with men.
• To Weber, it is governed by laws, so that no citizen is treated arbitrarily.
• To Martin Luther King, it guarantees the “natural rights” of all its members, without regard to their race, sex, religion, or class.

(p. 19-20, The Executive's Compass – Business and the Good Society, James O’Toole, 1993)

How can there be so many different definitions of what constitutes The Good Society?

Perhaps the answer can be found by applying some of the principles of the Leadership Diamond.

The Ethics point on the Diamond gives us some insight into this question. From an ethical perspective, every philosopher defined The Good Society based on an underlying set of values and assumptions about how people within a society should be treated and live. Their underlying ethics and values shaped their thoughts about the quality of life people within the society should experience. Their underlying ethics and values also helped each philosopher clarify his or her thoughts about equity and justice.

When we see that it is possible for so many thought leaders to differ widely on the definition of what constitutes The Good Society, it should come as no surprise that governments across the country, and around the world, have difficulty agreeing on exactly how government should behave to create what is best of the community.

Perhaps the answer is that there is no single Good Society, and to recognize that there are many societies that may be chosen by a community to serve its needs. Perhaps what is necessary is for the community to invest the time and effort to first define its values, and to use those value statements to help define the vision of what it is they want to create as a result of their efforts. Once defined, perhaps the role of government is to reflect the ethics and values of the community in its effort to live within The Good Society.

What are your thoughts on The Good Society, and the role of government in its creation?

LPV: Leadership Point of View

(The following was contributed by Mark S. Thanks, Mark, for taking the time to share your thoughts with the group. The "Pizza Lunch" that Mark refers to is a monthly lunchtime gathering of people who want to share ideas and thoughts about leadership.)

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I brought up the topic of the importance of a “leadership point of view” (LPV) at one of our recent Dr. K. pizza lunches. This is a concept/phrase I learned in my Masters of Executive Leadership program at the USD School of Business and was coined by Ken Blanchard. Jim suggested I explain this idea further in this blog.

Developing a LPV is just another way of saying what do you really believe in, where did it come from, and how will you enact it in your business and personal lives? On the surface, this idea seems pretty basic, but it is amazing how few leaders have taken the time to really dig deep and answer the following questions:

Who are the influencers (leaders) in your life who have had a positive (or, in some cases, negative) impact on your life, such as parents, teachers, coaches, or bosses? What did you learn from these people about leadership?

Think of your life purpose. Why are you here, and what do you want to accomplish?

What are your core values that will guide your behavior as you attempt to live your life “on purpose”?

Given what you’ve learned from past leaders, your life purpose, and your core values, what are your beliefs about leading and motivating people?

What can your people expect from you?

What do you expect from your people?

How will you set an example for your people?

These questions are all important to explore in the role as an “authentic leader”.

Finally, at the end of exploring these questions, we all were required to share our LPV with the rest of the class. This was intended to be a precursor to sharing our LPV with the people we lead at work. It can’t be overstated how important it is for the folks you work with to learn more about their leaders - where they came from, what they value, what they expect from “you” and what you can expect from “me”.


(Editor. I just want to add a few words about "authenticity". Dr. Koestenbaum talks about Leadership being the sum of two vectors - Competence and Authenticity. Competence deals with skills and abilities, while authenticity deals with character. The questions that Mark has outlined above go to the heart of who you are. The answers become a way of examining your character. This exercise is well worth your time if you want to learn more about yourself.

Also, take a look at the Blog Entry titled Asking the Right Questions for more on this subject. Also you might find the short story at the bottom of that entry interesting.)

Emotional Intelligence and the Leadership Diamond

In the highly acclaimed book Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman, and his co-authors Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, describe the attributes of great leadership. In chapter one, in the first paragraph they say “Great leadership works through the emotions.”

This bold statement moves the discussion of leadership away from formulas and “how-to” manuals into the realm of the mind, and the human side of the workplace. Goleman says

No matter what leaders set out to do … their success depends on how they do it. Even if they get everything else just right, if leaders fail in this primal task of driving emotions in the right direction, nothing they do will work as well as it could or should.

Goleman and the co-authors go on to show how emotional intelligence (EI) includes elements of self-awareness and self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

As you read Goleman’s thoughts about leadership you discover that ethics and empathy play a huge role in defining great leadership. Words such as emotions, self-worth, transparency, honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, flexibility, initiative, optimism, empathy, understanding, the needs of others, inspiration, and cooperation are used to describe the traits of great leaders.

Those of you who are familiar with the leadership diamond may be seeing the connection between the Ethics point of the Leadership Diamond and the characteristics of great leaders described by Goleman.

Goleman goes on to connect the Ethics and Vision points of the diamond by stating:

Of all the EI competencies… empathy matters most to visionary leadership. The ability to sense how others feel and to understand their perspectives means that a leader can articulate a truly inspirational vision.” (Primal Leadership, p. 59)

For those of you interested in how the human side of the Leadership Diamond works, I encourage you to pick up Goleman’s book, Primal Leadership, and give it a quick read. You will learn that great leadership (part of what creates an opportunity to achieve Greatness as defined by the Leadership Diamond) is a key factor in the success of an organization. Using your emotional intelligence, and being able to get in touch with the human side of the organization is an essential part of achieving "greatness". But, it does not take a Super Hero (male or female) to be a great leader. We all have the ability to bring our emotional intelligence to the forefront, and to create opportunities for our greatness within our organizations.

Goleman’s work is a valuable contribution to those trying to become great leaders, and leaders who can successfully apply the Leadership Diamond in their daily life.

Ethics

The Ethics point on the Leadership Diamond is probably one of the most difficult to define. When we hear the word "Ethics" we immediately think of the most common meaning: the process of dealing with the difference between what is right an wrong, or the more philosophical use of the term related to existing within society's rules and morals. Although these definitions are helpful, when we use the term in relation to the Leadership Diamond we have an additional layer of meaning to consider.

Ethics, when used as part of the Leadership Diamond model means being of service, doing things that honor you and others as human beings, and understanding that people matter. Ethics incorporates empathy for others and understanding that there are principles that help us decide which path leads to integrity, trustworthiness, and keeping our promises. (The Philosophic Consultant, © 2003, p. 107-108).

In the larger world, a breach of ethics can lead to punishment and jail. This lapse in ethics usually means that laws have been broken, often for personal gain at the expense of others. This is what we saw with ENRON, Broadcom, and Tyco, just to name a few. It is also hundreds of cases of backdating stock options, misuse of corporate money, and other examples of fraud.

However, in the leadership world of Peter Koestenbaum, ethics goes deeper than the legal system. At its philosophical roots ethics contains empathy and principle. “Empathy is the struggle against emotional indifference. And principle is the fight against unscrupulous behavior.” (The Philosophic Consultant, © 2003, p. 108). Dr. Koestenbaum goes on to add that ethics involves “reaching out, understanding how other feel, and caring about that.” He also says that principle is “doing what is right, not necessarily what feels good, keeping promises, integrity, and being thoroughly trustworthy."

In its Leadership Diamond context, a breach of ethics could be a behavior that would be considered illegal, but it is more likely that this ethical slip would be a personal failure of character that would make it difficult for the person creating the breach to be a strong and effective leader.

If we look at the ethics of the law as the body, the ethics of the Leadership Diamond would be the sole. The two together make the complete person, and the effective leader.

The authors of the Successful Manager’s Handbook (Previsor, © 2004, p. 586-588) suggest that in order to make ethical decisions in business, a manager or leader must give thought in advance to a number of factors that will affect the decisions made in support of the business. These factors include:

• The values involved for the individual, company, community
• How different constituencies view the issues before you
• What your values and code of ethics tell you about the decision you are about to make
• The consequences of the various choices you might make
• Listen to and consider the concerns of others

Finally, a leader should not leave the consideration of ethics and conduct until faced with a situation requiring immediate action. Devoting time to examining personal, organizational, and community values, morals and ethics, and developing your own code of ethics that supports your vision of what you are trying to create is essential to being able to use the strength of the Leadership Diamond in to create greatness in all that you do. 

(Note - Wikipedia has an interesting article on Ethics on its web site. Although Wikipedia is not known as a reliable source of information for academic purposes, you might find this summary of the philosophical view of ethics an interesting read.)

Motivation

Traditional thinkers will tell you that “What gets rewarded gets done.” However, Kouzes and Posner, authors of The Leadership Challenge, suggest that this well worn statement is a little off. In their minds it should read “What is rewarding gets done.” (p. 40 The Leadership Challenge). This thought goes to the heart of what drives a successful organization – motivated people doing meaningful, rewarding work.

Peter Koestenbaum has said that “The most powerful sources of motivation are not money or fear of punishment, but rather pride, honor, self-respect, self-development, and a sense of accomplishment. …(U)ltimately, only you can motivate yourself.“ (p. 160-161 - Leadership The Inner Side of Greatness, 2002)

If it is true that motivation comes from the inside, that you are responsible for your own motivation, and ultimately the quality of your life, then the real question is: What motivates you? And, why have you chosen to do the job you are now doing?

In his book, Crossing the Unknown Sea – Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity, David Whyte wonders at how we can “…spend a third of our lives preparing ourselves for our work, and find ourselves forgetting the original inspiration behind all that preparation the moment we take a seat at our new desk.” (p. 164) (See a previous post on this blog “Applying the Diamond to Life” for an additional reference to this work.) Our own motivation brought us to this point, but somehow, once settled behind Whyte's proverbial desk, we allow our motivation to wane and we attempt to substitute the motivation and goals of others for our own.

But true motivation comes from the inside when we are doing what we consider to be “good work”. Whyte says that

“The stakes in good work are necessarily high. Our competence may be at stake in ordinary, unthinking work, but in good work that is a heartfelt expression of ourselves, we know, in the end, we are our gift to others and the world. Failure in truly creative work is not some mechanical breakdown but the prospect of a failure in our very essence, a kind of living death. Little wonder we often choose the less vulnerable, more familiar approach that places work mostly in terms of provision. If I can reduce my image of work to just a job I have to do, then I keep myself safely away from the losses to be endured in putting my heart’s desire at stake. (Crossing the Unknown Sea, p. 13)

By choosing ordinary, unthinking work we may find ourselves in a career path that provides no motivation beyond safety and low risk. These may initially be strong motivators, but in the long run, a safe and risk-free existence may not prove to be fulfilling. Finding work that provides a "heartfelt expression of ourselves" may mean stepping out of the safe and cool shade of uninspiring work into the light and heat of work that provides meaning and a vehicle for us to share our gifts with those we serve.

These authors tell us to shift from believing that others are responsible for our energy, happiness, and motivation to recognizing that we are in control of our own destiny. Understanding this is a key to gaining control of your life and ultimate happiness.

So, the questions become - What motivates you? Are you doing "good work"? Or, are you waiting for others to come along and light your motivational fire?

The Truth As We Know It

Noted author and expert on organizational culture, Edgar Schein, points out that there are many ways to establish what is “true” for an organization, groups, or individuals within a group. These definitions range from the moralistic to the pragmatic (neither of which is meant to be a prejudicial term), from the more faith or belief based to the scientifically tested theories of truth. Schein lays out six types of truth that may be found within organizations or groups:

• Pure dogma, based on tradition and/or religion: It has always been done this way; it is God’s will; it is written in the Scriptures. 

• Revealed dogma, that is, wisdom based on trust in the authority of wise men, formal leaders, prophets, or kings; our president wants to do it this way; our consultants have recommended that we do it this way; she had the most experience, so we should do what she says. 

• Truth derived by a “rational-legal” process, as when we establish the guilt or innocence of an individual by means of a legal process that acknowledges from the outset that there is no absolute truth, only socially determined truth; this includes majority rule where things are decided by a vote 

• Truth as that which survives conflict and debate: We thrashed it out in three different committees, tested it on the sales force, and the idea is still sound, so we will do it 

• Truth as that which works, the purely pragmatic criterion: Let’s try it out this way and evaluate how we are doing. 

• Truth as established by the scientific method, which becomes, once again, a kind of dogma: Our research shows that this is the right way to do it; we’ve done three surveys and they all show the same thing, so let’s act on them.

(From page 102 – Organizational Culture and Leadership, Second Edition, copyright 1992)

So what is true? We all take it for granted that we know what is true. We express our opinions about truth every day in our behaviors, conversations, assumptions, dress, habits, in short every part of our daily life. We express what we believe to be true about ourselves, our employer, our families, our friends, our city, and our country through the acts of daily life.

We seem to know what is true.

But, if the truth is so easy to see and know, why are there so many arguments over what is true, or how people should live, or which culture should survive and which should cease to exist?

Gaining an understanding of how the organizations you work with, and the people you interact with, define their truth will help you understand where the root of many misunderstandings may lie.

In a recent address to the Alliance for Innovation (June 6, 2008 – Greenville, SC), highly regarded teacher, author and lecturer, Rafe Esquith, said that to be a successful teacher you must be able to approach issues from the perspective of the children you are trying to reach. You must first understand the truths of the world from the child’s perspective.

The same advice would be helpful to anyone trying to affect an organization, group or individual – To be a successful leader, first understand the truths of the world as seen from within your organization, group, or from the individual perspective.

Getting the Right Thing Done for Society

(Contributed by Courtney)

Is operating Government like a business really the best thing? Many citizens wonder why things get addressed so slowly and question all of the “hurdles” that bureaucracy adds on. Can society be better served by those who have more of a closed and intimate decision making process rather than try convening a town meeting each time there is a discussion? The answer is different for everyone… it depends on who you ask.

I like to think of Government (be it Federal, State or Local) as a protector. They provide a safe haven and create an environment that many in this world would die to have. Government can be seen as an entity formed to serve as a moral compass for leading people towards safety and an improved quality of life. With the goal of common good in mind, Government promotes an open process to gather all the stakeholders together prior to decision making. Although Government is often criticized for being slow and some what unclear, it can also be viewed as holding a vision for the future and can be applauded for not moving forward based on gut reaction.

Corporate America also belongs in society. Corporate America is a force that drives the world economic market, claims victory when trampling the competition, and supplies the world’s population with commodities to make the globe turn. Their focus is narrow and specific, making Corporate America much more clear and concise. They are driven by profit. Each outcome is defined and precise… no variation... there is no gray. Corporate America has enough flexibility to make decisions in a split second, and has few controls when deciding what is right for them.

The two cultures are poles apart. So is it all about the population who will benefit from the efforts or is it about the dollars spent and saved at the end of the day? That brings us to the ultimate question… do you do what’s right or what matters when managing a business?

In my opinion… there is no doubt as to how Government should operate.

(Editor: Courtney points out an interesting polarity that is worth considering more deeply. She asks: Is it appropriate to run our government like a business? Can you serve the needs of the general population by taking a business approach to dealing with public issues? Any thoughts?

I invite others to join in this discussion. )