Managing Leadership^®

No matter how you define organizational leadership, you will likely agree that goals are fundamental to its proper functioning. We will be taking a brief look at that this week.

Today, we will just begin by asking a few quick questions about where they come from. It’s interesting that, like leadership more generally, there is a lot of talk about what goals ought to be (as we have seen, this is not always very enlightening), somewhat less about the function they perform (although there is valuable work in this area), and really not much – certainly not as much as we need – on where they come from.

That is an important issue, because of what it suggests about their veracity both as organizational goals and as promoters of effective collaborative action toward their attainment.

So, where do your group’s goals come from? Who has the legitimate corporate responsibility to generate them? Who has the organizational authority to provide input – to inform – them? Do you create them yourselves, or are they just tossed through the transom at you? How do they feel to you? Do you understand them? Do you support them? Do you feel like any of that matters?

Rob Jacobs, the author of Education Innovation, offered a comment to last Wednesday’s post that is especially illuminating, here. He noted that in education, goals are often established in settings quite distant in space and alien in motivation and dynamic from the institutions to which they are given to be carried out.

This is the normal course of affairs in that field, and it is difficult to imagine any politically feasible alternative. But what do you suppose the effects are of this approach on the responsible institutions – not to mention on the intended beneficiaries, the students?

Steve Roesler, author of All Things Workplace, observed in a comment to Friday’s post that the question of the source of goals strikes right to the “core of commitment, engagement, focus . . .” That, of course, goes straight to the question of what goals do, and how they do it in an organization.

It is why, as we noted above, the under-appreciated matter of where they come from is so important. Steve goes on to make trenchant insights about the effect this issue has on roles and attitudes – please see his comment.

So: who’s goals are they? Or, putting it another way: where do they come from? Have you ever thought about that? Do they come from the “leader,” to be implemented by others? What does that suggest about their fundamental organizational efficacy – not to mention about leadership? Are they self-generated from within the group? What might that suggest about their corporate legitimacy (think about owners, here.)?

Have you ever thought about questions like these? If so, please do share your thoughts!

In the meanwhile, these questions will remain a presence in the rest of our examination of goals. See you tomorrow!

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Today’s tip: Speaking of goals and their sometimes painfully powerful influence on choices and action, please see the thoughtful post called Next Focal Point, by Beth Robinson, author of Inventing Elephants: Thinking towards the whole.

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Technorati Tags: organization, leadership, goal, responsibility, authority, Rob Jacobs, education, motivation, dynamic, institution, Steve Roesler, leader, Beth Robinson