Managing Leadership^®

One of the most emotionally resonating elements of the story of Don Quixote is powerfully portrayed in The Man of La Mancha. It is his crazed optimism, his deranged vision – perhaps divinely inspired – seeing good where it was not otherwise visible, in people who themselves had been unprepared to acknowledge its presence.

In the very act of perceiving it, he sometimes actually drew it out, creating what had not been, before – virtue where there had only been vice.

It is a remarkably inspiring notion, filling us with the desire to emulate it, to dare the weaponed or vocalized barbs of the foes of righteousness in the good fight to redeem their victims. It was all the more compelling for being in keeping with much of the harmonics of the time when The Man of La Mancha first was produced.

Indeed, even the field of management has created quixotic champions who promoted – sometimes to great skepticism and even ridicule – ideas such as Theory Y and Transformational Management. As those concepts engaged the real world in practice, they evolved and, largely, survived. It is well recognized, today, that such enlightened management practices can be tremendously effective for all concerned.

But much of what makes life interesting is the issue of where to draw lines. In this case, many of us appear to have agreed that we ought to recognize and cultivate values in our operating principles that recognize the worth and virtue of our employees, or even of adventuring after extra-organizational objectives residing in everything from the environment to politics and society.

The question now becomes, as Wally Bock points out: how far are we willing to pursue those values? After all, even the objects of Don Quixote’s relentlessly wholesome vision object, resist mightily, or even suffer anguish and pain for his attentions.

What business is it of ours to insist on specific virtues in people who would rather not, perhaps, be identified with them? In fact, sometimes what people seem to be is what they really are – even (if you can imagine this) what they really want to be.

How far will we go – to what extent should we be willing or allowed to bend the organization’s resources – to pursue or prove otherwise? What’s more, how sure are we of what is virtue and what is vice – what is the windmill and what the giant?

Surely it is worthwhile asking questions like these. What are our individual and corporate values? What is their relationship one to the other? What is our individual – or organizational – willingness to pursue them in the face of resistance?

After all, if we act on values we haven’t thought through – or haven’t thought about at all – we might come off as something of a crackpot, ourselves. Our effectiveness as managers might be the least of our problems in such a circumstance. We’ll take a look at that tomorrow – see you then!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of acting on values, please see this piece from Joann Lublin‘s WSJ Theory and Practice column about CEOs voluntarily renouncing all or part of their bonuses. Are their motives entirely altruistic, or tied to morale and productivity? Or are they something else altogether?

And speaking of integrating values with purpose, individual aspirations with organizational goals, and specific hopes with resistant reality, please see this fascinating discussion of organizational dynamics by Steve Roesler, at All Things Workplace.

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