Managing Leadership^®

An improbably small, resource-poor island-state unleashed stunningly powerful military force across vast stretches of sea and shore, bringing great swathes of the planet’s largest continent under occupation and delivering a staggering blow to its strongest nation. This state’s leadership produced brilliant campaigns executed with lightening speed and unprecedented efficiency. It was inexhaustibly energetic and vibrant, leading in technology, focus, will, and, inevitably, morale. It appeared unstoppable.

But it had what turned out to be a fatal weakness. It was invisible, seemingly inconsequential, hidden from view by the very successes the military produced. What was it?

This state’s military forces had no retirement system.

The result was that a general who wanted to stay in uniform had to displace others who competed with him for promotion, and ward off those who sought to occupy his current office. Those who failed found themselves suddenly on the street, with no pension and no position.

To avoid this fate, each general was driven to develop ever more dramatic “visions” with doubly cynical purposes. One was to attract the attention of the civilian and military powers who held his fate – and that of his competitors – in their hands. The other was to attract the support of large numbers of junior officers, which could help a general make his vision seem more plausibly seconded by a strong following.

These junior officers were composed both of those who genuinely bought in to the vision, and of others who simply calculated the odds of the various generals and placed their bets accordingly. But the thing is, if they bet wrong and their general’s vision didn’t fly, they all crashed with him; the dynamics of the culture and the system prevented the winning generals from taking in those who had campaigned for their defeat.

The competition among these cliques of leaders and followers wasn’t merely the bureaucratic battling so many of us are familiar with. It was a real fight for survival – career combat with grave and lasting consequences for the officers involved and their families.

In the end, this attrition warfare resolved into an essentially monolithic culture of one inflexible leader with exaggerated ambition and hubris, supported by legions of desperate officers. Many if not most of these believed neither in the general nor his vision other than as tethers to their own livelihoods and reputations. In order to maintain their general in power, and themselves in his good graces, adherence to the goals and policies he espoused took on desperately distorted dimensions.

Frank debate disappeared, self-deception rose. It became difficult to differentiate between truth and delusion. There was no deliberation, only obedience. Loyalty was insidiously misdirected from purpose to person. Even grotesquely impossible orders were pursued with willfully ignorant earnestness, or desperate resignation.

Have you ever worked in a “my-way or the highway” corporate culture? Do you recognize any of this in what you experienced? It can produce breathtaking progress and dynamism. But ultimately, the leader/follower dynamics it promotes consume each other until what’s left is an empty caricature of organizational leadership.

Of course, we all have retirement systems these days, don’t we? And yet, if we actively cultivate a misplaced confidence in singular visionary leadership, we can still wind up crashing and burning in inglorious unanimity.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of the scramble for the top spot, there appear to be some suggestions that women executives lack the ability to develop gripping visions that can get them there, or the ability to communicate them in a way to generate support from bosses and followers. Please see this intriguing article, from BNET, which, among other things, explains why women “may be hesitant to make audacious statements.” There are, recent news would seem to suggest, plenty of good reasons for such prudent hesitance.

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