Posts Tagged ‘leadership’
Entrepreneur, leader, space creator
The great desk tidy continues. Professional organizational designers will instantly recognize what I am going to describe as Level 2 or C Band in Paterson parlance.
Understanding what is needed when
Let’s imagine a mechanic. He, and increasingly she, has served an apprenticeship, gone to college, and worked on lots of cars under the supervision of experienced mechanics.
A car arrives. They look at it. The learn of symptoms from the driver. They make some investigations in a manner that any other trained mechanic would recognize as methodical (or haphazard). They take action.
From time-to-time though, the bundle of symptoms is out-of-pattern. It may be a rare case that they haven’t encountered before It may be a complicated case where feedback to the basic tests they carry out is obscured and muddies the decision making process. The case may be complicated by factors not really to do with the car itself. Spare parts might be short or the car might be needed in less time than the mechanics need to do everything as well as they would like.
When the job becomes complicated, a more experienced colleague steps in “reads the situation” and explains the priorities to the skilled but inexperienced worker. Now that they are oriented again to a set of tasks that they know how to do, they can pick up the task from there.
In time, of course, they become experienced themselves and mentor others.
Directing traffic
In an organization, the role of the experienced worker is sometimes played by a controller who cannot do the job themselves. The archtypical example is the Air Traffic Controller, who prioritizes aircraft and coordinates them with each other and resources on the ground. The controller is not the aircraft Captain’s boss. But does give orders of a kind.
The intersections of networks
In networked industries, the role of the controller is likely to become more common. They may have rudimentary grasp of the skills they coordinate – they may have the equivalent of a light aircraft license, they could join in firefighting in elementary roles, they can do elementary electronics – but they are specialized in control. They have the mindset to concentrate on what is in front of them for long periods. They have good mental maps which they keep up-to-date. They are important enough for psychologists to study them in depth. Indeed many of the advances in applied cognitive psychology have come from studying air traffic controllers.
And so it will be with “managers” of the future. Though that term has developed so many connotations that we may have to drop it.
We will have people skilled at managing “space” where people come together to get things done.
People in this line of work will probably start early. We will see them organizing conventional clubs at school, working online and developing mental models about how to create cooperative spaces in a networked world.
Five competences for space creators in our networked world
As I am on a great clean up of my paper world, I want to write down five competences that the “space creators” of the 21st century will have.
#1 What needs to be done
#2 Emotional energy to connect
#3 Form a collective umbrella
#4 Delegate tasks to protect the collective
#5 Keep commitments to positive emotional space
Sort of abstract but it follows a logic to be: what needs to be done, why are we bothered and how or why would this be our priority, what is the space that we need to work together, what are the important tasks to maintain this space and who will do them, are we having fun here?
How do we learn these skills? A post for another day, I think. First, any comment on the competences?
Let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition
Posted on: April 18, 2010
Live neither in the past nor in the future, but let each day’s work absorb your entire energies, and satisfy your widest ambition
Sir William Osler (1849-1919) Canadian physician and instigator of medical residencies
Sometimes it is really hard to live mindfully. We want to reminisce, or we left the past untidy and it bothers us. Or we are are excited by future possibilities or anxious about negative side-effects.
How would we feel if we were stranded, in the great grounding of planes by volvcanoes, in a place we didn’t want to be? Most of us will fret until we have a plan.
Organize agilely and leanly
That is the secret, isn’t it? To become ‘agile’ and ‘lean’, so that each day matters for what it is.
What if we rephrased the day’s purpose “from get back home because that was my plan yesterday” to “let’s see what is possible and let’s have fun working out what my choices”.
Leadership vs management
On another channel, some of us have been lamenting the lack of leadership in British politics and the distinction between management and leadership came up, as ever.
I don’t think that leadership and management are ever far apart. We cannot manage without leadership. What looks like management is just clerical work when it is separated from judgment, moral responsibility and poetic imagination.
Leadership, when exists apart from management. probably exists because good management, happening quietly in the background, allowed us to think about what we are doing today without stressing unduly about yesterday or tomorrow.
When the world gets in a muddle, we need leadership AND management to get our heads straight again and the world orderly again so that we can give unto today our full attention.
But that is our goal – to let today be enough to absorb all our energies.
When life is out of order, to put some effort into straightening out the way we think. Sometimes it is a trial. But we do have to ask ourselves how much energy we waste fretting.
We must believe so deeply in those we lead and serve that we want them to be at our side in the heat of enemy fire.
Posted on: March 3, 2010
Art Kleiner
I haven’t read any of Art Kleiner’s books. How did I miss him? Well, I seem to have missed him and it is time to make good.
Managers & the Core Group
I am taken with the idea that every organization has a core group. The group could be corrupt, of course, but every organization does have a core who are part of the value chain.
I joined a university early in my career for that reason. As an academic, I was part of the core, while as a psychologist in HR, I was not.
The perils of neglecting the core
Many of the tensions in modern organizations arise because ‘managers’ have tried to dominate the core – the academics in universities or the doctors in the health service. It doesn’t work. Trying to dominate the core, or heart, eats away at its vitality.
Nurture the core
We, managers and administrators are here to serve. When we understand the core, or heart, and help it function as it should, our organizations flourish.
Managers & the Influencers
And of course, within the organization are groups who are very important because they influence the process in a critical way. Radar in MASH is much more powerful than the Colonel. And Hawkeye, a Captain, dominates the Majors with his wit and grasp of the essence of war.
Social dynamics
Kleiner points out that when we first start working with an organization, that we must read the social dynamics. Who has undue influence? Who has privilege. Formal rank may not matter very much. When does it, and when does it not?
On the periphery
When we are on the periphery, irritating as it may be, it is worth acknowledging how the system really works. Then we can influence the system, even if we will never be part of the core.
Supporting the core
When we are managing an organization, we can acknowledge who is the core ~ not to give them further privileges, they have those already and will defend them to the last ~ but to subtly influence their acknowledgment and influence of other stakeholders who may not be core, but who they cannot do without.
In the university world, there is a cute poem that begins with students who splash through puddles, then associate professors who can jump over puddles, and Professors who are so magnificent that they can jump over the University Library, the Vice Chancellor who can speak to god and the Departmental Secretary ~ she is god.
Managing organizations
Helping an organization maintain its vitality doesn’t take a lot of heavy-handing action. Indeed, the opposite. It takes a little system thinking. A gentle nudge here and a tactful reminder there. Sometimes a good humored reminder of reality when we stand aside and stop protecting people from their own arrogance. When the harm will not be permanent, a lesson in cause-and-effect can be salutary.
The core will always be there. We destroy value when we deny it. And we risk corruption when we sweep relations between stakeholders under the carpet.
Relationships matter. Interests matter. We need to get real.
Look harder for an organization whose core you respect
Art Kleiner makes an important point. There are many organizations whose core is rotten ~ who are evil at heart. We may be in that core, or we may be fretting about our lower status on the periphery. What counts is whether we essentially believe that the interests of the core group are good for the organization and our community. If we believe that, then we stay.
Otherwise, we need to look harder for an organization whose core we respect. It’s best to be part of the core. If not, we can serve it. Gracefully. Thankfully. With a little reverance, but with understanding that the core needs others too and that we should help them manage their relationships with others.
Remember power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. We should never let something we respect become so isolated from reality that it corrupts itself with meglamania.
But to change an organization, to nurture its vitality, we must believe that the interests of the core are the organization’s interests. We need that deep down belief to respect the core and to help it confront issues about its relationships with others.
Am I rambling? I like the acknowledgment of the core or heart of an organization. Remember in the words of Colin Powell, leadership is follow me. We must believe so deeply in those we lead and serve that we want them to be at our side in the heat of enemy fire.
NYtimes does well in its interview with Dr Tachi Yamada, the CEO of the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation. It’s worth a ten minute break to read the words of a warm person who tells us how he leads and manages an organization and not how we should do it!
(No irony intended, of course. I’ll be reading it again.)
Suspicious of poetry
As a young psychologist, I bought into the notion that psychology must tell us something that is not common sense. Many leading psychologists still think this way. I don’t think it is right. The profession is setting itself apart from the world, above the world, beyond the world. It is now other worldly.
We should be more like management scientists. You know those tough guys who schedule the plans and manage the electricity grid so an airport never has more planes and people than it can cope with and the national grid doesn’t fall over when we all make supper at the same time?
Hard core scientists don’t set themselves up against common sense. They support common sense. Maybe they also read poetry.
Bridging the divide between poetry and management
That being said, maybe we need some prose to help people take the first steps. Writing coach, Joanna Young, tweeted this Lao Tzu quote today.
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
The core of contemporary management thinking
Sounds soppy, but these words from 1500 years ago are the core of modern management thinking.
Kindness in words creates belonging and the possibility of collective efficacy.
Kindness in thinking leads to creativity and strategic clarity and hence provides the bedrock of common action.
Kindness in giving creates the common ties that allow resilience and flexibility.
Some time on Google Scholar and you will drown in academic references.
Leadership, management, human resource management
Leadership: who are we journeying with and why are they essential to our journey?
Management: which way are we going and what can each of us do to help?
Human Resource Management: who feels secure with us and will be with us tomorrow?
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