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Breaking free

Thursday, July 3, 2008

It’s harder than one might think to break with the past, to begin anew, on a new footing. But that’s what we tried to do in the United States of America 232 years ago, and we are still struggling to make a go of it. It’s a never-ending revolution.

But a revolution it is, a great turning of the wheel, vastly altering the landscape. Consider this, written a century and a half ago, by the great French economist, Frederic Bastiat - it is from the introduction to the then current French constitution:

France has constituted itself a republic for the purpose of raising all the citizens to an ever-increasing degree of morality, enlightenment, and well-being.”

On the face of it, it sounds pretty good, even elevating. But on closer examination it suggests some questions: Who, precisely, is France? What, exactly, is the morality and enlightenment they aim for.? And, more importantly, who gets to decide what those mean?

If the relevance seems doubtful today, consider the current condition of the vastly important European Union experiment. It was racing to verification of its own constitution, with aims just as grand as those just cited, a few years ago. Parliaments in country after country approved it, but it was stopped cold where it was submitted to a popular vote in a referendum - including in France.

This caused great dismay among the intellectual and political elite. Some even recommended either ignoring the results and plowing ahead, or not-so-gently compelling the offending publics to revote until they got it right. But cooler heads prevailed, and the cumbersome constitution was reconfigured.

But now, the new Lisbon Agreement - intended to bypass the national sovereignty concerns of the previous effort by not quite rising to the level of a constitution itself, and thus requiring no or at least fewer national referendums - has  just succumbed to the same fate. The drafters and supporters of the constitution are livid. They fault the voters bitterly, and ridicule the misinformation and sloppy thinking that they believe caused them to reject the new EU charter.

Again, the intellectual and political elite debate how they might either redo the vote with the “proper” result or somehow bypass it. There are even suggestions that those who vote “no” could be invited out of the EU.

But now consider this, also quoted from Bastiat’s Essay on Government, from the preamble to the American Constitution:

We, the people of the United States, for the purpose of forming a more perfect union, of establishing justice, of securing interior tranquility, of providing for our common defence, of increasing the general well-being, and of securing the benefits of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, decree . . .”

Note that the aims have a similar cast to them, although the only one that pairs up in the two documents is “well being.” But the other significant difference is that the other three questions are either answered directly, or the source of their answers is identified precisely: Who is the United States, what are the meanings of those aims, and who defines them? The answer to these is unmistakable - it is the people of the United States.

Now, it is argued that select elites in Europe are striving to deny, or at least sorely attenuate, the direct say by the people of Europe in the expressed purpose, aim, design, and even functioning of their own government. But it must be said that the same is argued to be true in the United States.

Indeed, a great part of the political debate in the US is precisely whether we should be more decentralized - as we are now relative to the rest of the world’s societies - or more centralized and guided by principles formulated by expert elites, as is argued is the direction being taken by the Europeans.

But doesn’t that sound like what Bastiat decried so long ago? Might he not have the same concerns about governments in Europe today? Mind you, he expressed those concerns quite strongly, describing so vaguely formed governments, surrounding themselves with such narcotic promises, as the fictitious medium through which parties with power legitimize their continued exploitation - even oppression - of those without it.

He criticizes governments constituted on grand abstractions, designed to be wielded by elites to whom they are uniquely suited. He contrasts this with the Americans who, he says, “formed another idea of the relations of the citizens with the Government . . .” Referring to the citation just above, he goes on:

Here there is no chimerical creation, no abstraction, from which the citizens may demand everything. They expect nothing except from themselves and their own energy.”

It is fascinating to see the shape this debate continues to take in the United States today - and even in Europe; indeed in France itself under President Sarkozy.

Where does sovereignty - in all reality - reside? Who defines it? Who deploys it? To what purpose and in whose interests?

It is just to the extent that we can keep such questions meaningfully debated and can subject the resulting ideas to practical experiment and expression, that we can keep independence itself alive. This is so vital a debate that when one side wins, both sides lose.

So, two hundred thirty two years of blissfully fractious, contentious, even sometimes divisive dialogue about who we are, why, and how. May we maintain its blessings for many generations to come.

Happy Independence Day to my co-citizens around the world!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of who’s trying to put what over on who, please see this interesting and timely piece from the NYT - sometimes we’re just fooling ourselves.

Please also stop over to the WSJ to see this brief Independence Day essay by Professor Thomas Madden.

It is a pleasure to offer my appreciation to Cam Beck of ChaosScenario for making a reference to Frederic Bastiat recently that caused be to read him more carefully. Please do read him, yourselves. His work is in the public domain and is widely available and inexpensive. But you may easily find his writing more valuable - even more accessible and relevant - than the last book you read.

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Business leaders

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

A short while ago I offered a review here of Captain D. Michael Abrashoff’s new book, It’s Our Ship. Lee Thayer, the author of The Leader’s Journey, made a comment filled with fascinating insights, one of which I think is of particular relevance in our current discussion. Here’s a quote from it:

Sure, there are probably many potentially better pianists out there than those who are our celebrities. But that by itself does not guarantee they could perform better than those who have competed to get there.”

Do you think that, or something like it, might really be what distinguishes “leaders” from the rest of us - the quest for acknowledgment and influence?

Think of managers (or “leaders”) as those who compete for position and power. The truly superior leaders, perhaps, are really those who don’t do that, who are unknown, and who just want to left alone to be great piano players, to enjoy making the music.

If you are a manager who is aware of Lee’s insight, you might see it as offering you two choices. First, you could use your position to keep those truly more gifted than you toiling alone in the dark - or even to take their pianos away, as it were, so no one finds out about them.

Second, you could view your job as facilitating their expression of their abilities for the benefit of the organization. Mary Parker Follett argued that power is capability. By increasing the capability of your unit - through allowing full range to the expertise and talent of your staff - you thus increase its, and your own, power.

So your job as official business leader, then, is to find ways to help the true working leaders do their work.

There’s something worth competing for.

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Today’s tip: Some while ago, I proposed reason to hope that the modern leadership movement - as evidenced by the increasingly preposterous writings emanating from its putatively most distinguished representatives - might finally be on its way out. Please see this review in the WSJ by Aram Bakshian Jr., which suggests the same, having run across a book about what leaders can learn from toys. The actual review, however, is about lessons to be garnered in this area from President George Washington - take a look.

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Real leaders

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

While I think it is worthwhile to encourage a robust skepticism of the concept of the sort of singularly and exclusively exceptional individual leaders so often promoted by the modern leadership movement, it should nevertheless be noted that such persons really do exist. Some seem to occur naturally, so to speak, and others develop as a result of the writings of gurus who celebrate them.

But what are the implications of such leaders for modern organizations?

There are a number of circumstances where such leaders can arise, and have real value in unclear, turbulent times for organizational progress - even survival. The question isn’t whether or not this happens; it is whether or not we want to emulate it, to construct circumstances where it becomes the norm.

Surely, when things are uncertain, we like to hear a certain trumpet calling us to action. And when we are beset by the personal and organizational anxieties such circumstances produce, we welcome a leader who appears to have the attributes applauded by so many observers.

Moreover - and especially when we seem to be confronted with a strikingly accomplished exemplar of the type - we even have a tendency to submit to that leadership. We become willing followers, trusting in the vision of the leader, maybe even suspending belief on our faith in him or her.

Now consider this: if these are the circumstances in which we welcome such a leader, what sort of circumstances do you suppose might be prolonged, or created - or purported to be so - in order to maintain the atmosphere breathed by such a leader?

That’s the problem. Such leaders don’t come without baggage. This consists in the expectations that both those leaders and we have. Our mutual hopes and concerns combine to create - or imagine - organizational and environmental conditions suited to the presence of such leadership.

It is just such circumstances that produce so many of the peculiar additional notions designed to facilitate this concept of leadership. Among the most egregious examples is that of “followers” as that term is understood by those who advance this form of leadership. Another is that of organizations designed and operated in such a way as to give the most immediate and unfiltered expression possible to the inspired reflections of their leaders.

As fervently as such ideas are advanced by their adherents, they could hardly be more out of tune with the times. Indeed, they act inexorably to undermine the fortunes of those who venture them in the modern world. This is a world, after all, that Peter Drucker described as requiring approaches that enable ordinary people like you and me to run our organizations.

So transcendent individual leadership, despite all the attention it receives, belongs in the past. The future belongs to you and me (and has for some time!).

But the word “leader” is hard to avoid in the business context. So, we’ll try to get a better handle on it tomorrow - see you then!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of real business leaders, please see this article from The Economist about the Bill Gates, on the occasion of his stepping down from an active role in the firm he founded. As you read it, keep our current discussion in mind.

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Charisma and leadership

Monday, June 30, 2008

Just a little over a week ago I saw a television program on which a full professor of psychology was a guest. He spoke with a sort of brook-no-argument authority about what it takes to be a leader.

And there was no question about it in his view: a leader and executive must have charisma; it is a fundamental requirement. Mind you, he wasn’t talking about some sort of post-modern all-things-to-all-people charming magnetism; he was talking about a lantern-jawed, gimlet-eyed, cigar-chomping, power-radiating charisma.

Moreover, the professor added emphatically, they must be the ones who have the vision on every topic - not, mind you a central, unifying theme, or the key, important issues, or something like that. All of them.

It is most unfortunate that this sort of thinking retains the influence it has. But the sad truth is that it represents a past that - however thrilling and romantic some imagine it to have been - will not return. It is a view of leadership and leaders that represents the pre-modern, pre-organizational age, when sovereignty resided in the elite and the lot of the rest was poverty and thralldom.

Is that what you’re looking for? If you choose a leader for your organization that passes the muster of the good professor, that’s what you’ll get: first, employees reduced to dispirited, faceless peons, and then soon enough afterwards, shareholders bereft of their investment.

The modern world of organizations, as described by Peter Drucker, is every bit as revolutionary as modern political society. In the latter, sovereignty has (increasingly, around the world) migrated away from the elites and into society itself, owned and expressed by its members.

But in the former, what has done the migrating is leadership, which is now to be not just located in, but actually an inherent component of the collaborative enterprise which is the organization. The leaders of such an organization, unsurprisingly, are its members, just as the sovereigns of modern societies are its citizens.

The question remains: how often and how well do they express that leadership? The health of the organization depends on the answer to it, just as that of society does on the informed, vigilant, and conscientious exercise of sovereignty by its citizens.

There are differences, of course. A key one is that in organizations, it is up to managers to ensure that leadership thrives productively for the benefit of corporate aims. For more about this, please see the “must see” posts listed at the top of the sidebar (or, for those of you viewing this in an RSS reader or email, see here, here, and here.)

In the meanwhile, we will talk tomorrow about a little about the consequences of traditional leadership. On Wednesday we’ll close this discussion with an effort to develop a more appropriate, business-like definition of a “leader.”

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Today’s tip: Speaking of managers, their key function, on which all else depends, is decision-making - and that can be a surprisingly interesting topic. Please see this item by Nina Simosko at her eponymous blog about how decision-making relates to opposing social systems - and, when done well, can even unify them. Then, visit this one at The Economist on how what James Surowiecki has called the “wisdom of crowds” can be replicated in each of us individually - over time; there may be something to procrastination, after all.

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Creativity and leadership

Friday, June 27, 2008

This is a pretty big topic. Often, innovation gets mixed up with it, but that’s okay for our purposes here, since the dialogue promoting these as leadership functions or essential traits of leaders is generally not overly particular about their scope or application in specific ways.

Creativity and innovation certainly are desirable in an organization. New ways of viewing everything from ordinary daily problems and processes to markets, strategic purpose - even the identity of the industry - can vastly aid productivity and profitability, and even help prevent decline. Similarly, innovative solutions and products, which often are themselves the result of creativity, enhance efficiency and can maintain market share and momentum.

But are they leadership functions? There is, of course, a great deal of argumentation that they are. These are universally regarded as highly desirable qualities. Moreover they have the additional attractive feature of being difficult to define, describe, or even identify.

Consequently, they make highly fertile ground for the most remarkable assertions. Few if any of these can be practically tested against the promises made for them as elements of leadership. But the two concepts (of leadership and creativity/innovation), both at once impossibly vague and deeply sought after, are inevitably combined in the minds of observers and practitioners alike.

But it is really not all that difficult to see that the concepts of creativity and innovation in an organizational setting, like those discussed on Wednesday, long predate the modern leadership movement’s frenzied efforts to lay claim to them. After all, when you look behind the glamorous façade erected to present these endeavors as those of leadership, you will see classic management tools and techniques, as always, hard at work.

For all that you call a process something that suggests elusiveness and transcendence, like “out of the box” thinking, what you really have is what used to be called simple brainstorming. Whether conducted individually or in a group setting, it is an effort not just to find new answers, but to ensure that the questions are properly understood - even appropriately formulated. Innovation can be seen as the procedural unfolding of the resulting insights operationally throughout the organization.

So, where does it come from? Here’s where the argumentation can get quite insistent that this sort of thing either issues directly from or is unleashed singularly by creative or innovative leaders. It certainly accords with the persistent libel that managers merely do, while leaders decide. The issue is further complicated by the fact that much creativity or innovation results in endeavors headed by owner/entrepreneurs, who are often singled out as the exemplars of individual leadership.

But this doesn’t alter any facts. When the ideas these persons convert into businesses are being generated, they are identifying and solving problems or generating better ways of meeting new or present needs.

Creativity and innovation are long-standing management functions, performed by managers, or by people who, in doing or facilitating them, are acting as managers. Whatever other delightful characteristics you may be looking for in a “leader,” when you’ve found these unique problem-solving abilities, you’ve found a manager. Count yourself fortunate.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of locating innovation, please see the article - What crisis? - from The Economist, explaining why the United States is still the world’s - well: leader in this area.

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