LEADING THOUGHTS

Better than anyone, Canadians have cause to complain about living in a northern climate. And complain they do. You need look no further than Environment Canada, which speaks of “misery days” as it reports on our brutish winter times.

But if you want to talk about misery days, why not pick on summer? Pathogen-packing bugs. Ultraviolet rays. Smoggy cities. By contrast, winter is a season of clarity. Drained of moisture, the cold air makes for clear, crisp sounds and a pulsating night sky, featuring Orion, the hunter. In snow-covered fields and backyards, the prints of scurrying animals are a tracker’s delight.

In winter, the stars shine brighter and there is nowhere to hide.

Which brings us to the here and now: In the winter of our economic discontent, what do we see clearly? Given the rapid expansion and precipitous contraction of the world economy over the past decade, one dynamic seems very clear: our organizations, like the natural environment around us, are tethered to adaptive cycles. Biologists describe these four phases as: rapid growth by exploiting opportunities; conservation through increased specialization and efficiencies; release of resources as a result of external shock; and reorganization in which new groups appear and chaos rules.

As we live through the present wave of creative destruction, it is more important than ever for resilient organizations to have adaptive leaders, non-rigid and divergent thinkers who have a good sense of their surroundings and have learning as a core organizational value.

Where are these leaders coming from? Apparently not from within. Executives themselves say that leadership development is of paramount importance but admit it is not being done well. As part of its Global Leadership Forecast, DDI recently surveyed 1,493 HR professionals and 12,208 leaders from 76 countries. Seventy-five percent of the executives identified improving or leveraging leadership talent as a top business priority, citing it most often from a list of 14 challenges. But that is only half the story, the survey’s authors say. “Despite recognition of its importance, leadership development is going nowhere fast. Confidence in leaders has declined steadily over the past eight years, and most leaders are not satisfied with their organization’s development offerings.”

In fact, only 41 percent of leaders reported they were satisfied with their organizations’ leadership development strategy, a decline of 12 percentage points from a similar survey two years earlier.

DDI’s research surfaces manifold issues: lack of on-the-job opportunities to learn; lack of monitoring and measurement of development programs; little effort to accelerate the development of high-potential managers or assist in the transition to a leadership position. Does this sound familiar?

If you are in a leadership position and dissatisfied with development opportunities, you will likely point to the HR professionals and say they do not understand business needs. And if you are in HR, you will fire back that senior leaders lack commitment to the cause.

Getting these two solitudes aligned around a leadership development strategy may be the key factor in building the adaptive capacity of our organizations. By bridging this leadership gap, leaders will be better equipped to embed the ingredients of a resilient organization: leadership visibility, transparent decision-making, ready accessibility to staff; positive and opportunistic thinking; and decentralized power and accountability.

These are lessons that we can learn from our winter of discontent. Forget stability. And mind the leadership gap.

photo credit: pablo:espinosa

Music provides an intriguing window on the world of work, says law professor Rafael Gely (U of Missouri).

“Throughout the centuries people have used songs while engaging in working activities,” Gely writes in The International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations. “Workers have used songs as a form of entertainment, as a way to tell stories, as a means to achieve solidarity and as an avenue of voicing their concerns.”

During the pre-industrial era, when labourers had a high degree of control over work processes, songs were used by weavers, domestics, and sailors to set and respond to the pace of work.

During the Industrial Revolution, workers lost autonomy to machines, and machines then dictated the rhythm of the work day. Management theory also evolved to view music as a leisure activity that had no place on the factory floor.

Over time, management tried to use music to boost efficiency, while for workers songs became tools for class struggle. “Songs became a mechanism to voice the workers’ grievances,” Gely writes, “and also a mechanism to transmit the struggle of workers and develop class solidarity.”

Winnsboro Cotton Mills Blues

Old man Sargent, sitting at the desk
The damned old fool won’t give us no rest,
He’d take the nickels off a dead man’s eyes
To buy a Coca-Cola and an eskimo pie.

In the post-industrial era, iPods and other music-listening devices allow workers to regain a measure of control over their workspace. But managers are still using mood music to structure behaviour for both employees and customers.

Gely offers a host of research questions that he says are worth pursuing. To wit:

• How common is it for employers to allow the use of music in the workplace?
• Do policies regarding the use of music vary by industry?
• In the context of unionized workplaces, have labour organizations negotiated over the use of music?
• Are there cultural differences in the way workers interact with music?
• Are there demographic differences in the use of music at work?

Workplace Songs: Developing a Framework for Research and Teaching, by Rafael Gely; The International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations 25, no. 1 (2009): 49-58

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: danceonair1986

When it comes to developing leaders of the future, North America’s business schools fail to walk the talk, says Stanford University’s Jeffrey Pfeffer.

A high-profile educator, thinker, and author, Pfeffer says business schools offer plenty of experiential activities, leadership labs, self-assessments, and group project work. The problem, he writes in a paper, is that “there is little peer-reviewed research evaluating such efforts and the available, albeit limited, evidence is almost completely inconsistent with the idea that business schools are having positive effects on the development of student values and attitudes. . .”

Pfeffer offers a number of research findings as indirect evidence. For example, a recent study by The Aspen Institute found that business school students’ confidence in their ability to manage values-based conflicts at work fell throughout their time in the program, as did the proportion of people agreeing that they had opportunities to practice ethical decision-making as part of their MBA. The survey also showed that the importance students placed on “having a positive impact on society” decreased the longer students were in an MBA program.

The problem, Pfeffer writes, is that leadership development initiatives are not core activities of business schools. He says they are weakly tied to the rest of the curriculum, frequently staffed by non-tenure track instructors, and offered outside regular class times.

These are Pfeffer’s suggestions for how business schools can get serious about leadership development:

Measure using the right criteria. “Schools need to measure not just the starting salaries of their graduates but outcomes that are proximately related to their stated mission of leadership development. Based on the results of such measurements, schools need to learn what seems to working well and what is working less well and adjust their activities accordingly.”

Change the marketing message. “Schools should emphasize leadership development in their marketing to prospective students and in how they brand themselves. Organizational identities matter and if leadership development is a critical part of the mission of business schools, it needs to be a more central part of the schools’ identity.”

Evaluate faculty with an emphasis on leadership development. “While not all faculty and all courses need to be held accountable for accomplishing the schools’ stated mission of leadership development, at least some of the evaluation of research and teaching ought to incorporate this objective.”

Leadership Development in Business Schools: An Agenda for Change, by Jeffrey Pfeffer; Graduate School of Business Stanford University (Research Paper No. 2016, February 2009)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: eschipul

As head of the world’s largest confectioner, Cadbury CEO Todd Stitzer has plenty of challenges, not least of which is leading a multinational corporation that retains some of its Quaker culture. In this interview with INSEAD, Stitzer discusses his own leadership journey, managing through a “de-merger” and downsizing, waging a war for talent, and maintaining your sanity.

Go straight to the 4:20 mark, where Stitzer talks about the split between Cadbury and Schweppes.

At 6:38 he explains his messaging to employees going through a major downsizing.

At 8:50 he discusses the still prevalent Quaker culture, and the tension between high performance and social responsibility.

At 10:12 Stitzer reveals the Cadbury approach to talent management. Factoid: over the past five years, about 30 percent of the top 150 employees changed positions.

At the 12:00 mark he discusses the qualities he looks for in a leader: selflessness and high engagement (a willingness to “invest in accomplishment”).

And at 14:15 Stitizer gives his recipe for work-life balance: not playing golf with the boys on Saturday mornings.

I see a bun fight brewing. The target: “servant leadership.”

Coined by Robert Greenleaf in a seminal 1970 essay, servant leadership refers to leaders who serve their fellow workers, helping them to develop as “healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous” individuals who become servants themselves. Judging by buzz alone, servant leadership is growing in popularity. Its proponents say servant leaders boost the motivation and morality of their followers and position their organizations as values-based, innovative, and committed to internal and external service.

Flummadiddle, says Jon Aarum Andersen (Lilllehammer University College, Norway). Writing in Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Andersen takes a hard-boiled management view of servant leadership and finds it wanting. Here’s why:

Lack of rigor. There is no generally accepted definition of servant leadership: is it a behavioural pattern or a personality trait? Consequently there is no empirical measurement of whether or not managers are servant leaders. “As for an instrument measuring the degree of servant leadership,” Andersen writes, “we still do not know how much ‘servility’ a leader must exhibit in order to be or to be seen as a servant-leader.”

Confused priorities. For servant leaders, followers and their needs are the first concern. What about the organization and its needs? “Managers are hired to contribute to organisational goal attainment. These goals can only be attained by having subordinates (not followers) solving tasks that lead to productivity and effectiveness. Leadership has to do with the systematic influence on other people so that they solve tasks related to the pursuit of organisational goals.”

Low mojo. Servant leaders score high on humility and empathy but low in need for power. According to Andersen, an established body of research shows that managers with a high need for power are more effective than others. Ergo, servant leaders are wired to be relatively ineffective.

Phone lines are open: Your thoughts?

When a Servant-Leader Comes Knocking . . ., Jon Aarum Andersen; Leadership & Organization Development Journal (Vol. 30 No. 1, 2009, pp. 4-15)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: Pulpolux !!!

Hail the outsider, for she will bring inspiration. Or at least help her new team solve problems more effectively.

Researchers Katherine Phillips (Northwestern), Katie Liljenquist (Brigham Young), and Margaret Neale (Stanford) wanted to test whether or not a “socially distinct newcomer” to an existing team would have any effect on how the group solved problems.

They conducted a traditional group problem-solving experiment with a number of fraternities but with a twist: a newcomer from a rival fraternity was added to each group five minutes into their deliberations. The researchers found that when the newcomer was a social outsider, teams were more likely to solve the problem successfully.

Writing in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, the researchers conclude that a socially distinct newcomer shakes up group dynamics and causes discomfort but ultimately acts as a catalyst for better outcomes. In such situations, the group tends to analyze options more critically, even if the outsider does not ask tough questions.

Interestingly, while group members felt they worked less effectively together, in fact they outperformed the socially homogeneous groups.

The lesson: next time someone from another department joins your team with a different background or education, acknowledge that there may be tense and awkward moments but that the group will be better for it.

Is the Pain Worth the Gain? The Advantages and Liabilities of Agreeing With Socially Distinct Newcomers; Katherine W. Phillips, Northwestern University, Katie A. Liljenquist, Brigham Young University, Margaret A. Neale, Stanford University; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Vol. 35, No. 3, 336-350, 2009)

photo credit: IsaDaGreat

MIT Sloan Management Review features a Q&A with Thomas Malone, Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and founding co-director of the Initiative on Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century. Malone talks mostly about sustainability but he also takes aim at the cherished hierarchies of modern organizations.

Here is an excerpt:

Q: Now I’d like for you speculate with me for a minute. Imagine I’m an executive, interested in understanding how my organization is going to need to function differently in the fast-coming future as the result of growing concerns about sustainability. What would you say I should be prepared for?

Malone: One thing, I think, will be a reconsideration of the “centralized mindset,” a term that comes from another MIT colleague, Mitch Resnick. The idea is that most of us have grown up with the concept that hierarchy is the answer to most organizational problems. That if there’s a problem to be solved, we should put someone in charge of it, and if things are not well organized, that’s because there isn’t strong leadership. It’s very pervasive in our world—and for good reasons, because it actually has worked quite well for the last century or so.

But organizing things this way is becoming less useful in many situations. There are now more decentralized ways of organizing things that are becoming more desirable in many situations. In Wikipedia, for instance thousands of people all over the world have created a very large and very high quality intellectual product with almost no centralized control. And in Linux, a loose band of programmers, with very limited top-down control has developed an operating system that rivals Microsoft Windows. As these examples show, sometimes, the best way for a leader to gain power is to give it away.

Q: What’s going to get in the way of that happening?

I actually think the toughest part will be dealing with our own assumptions about what’s true and what’s not. Peter Senge uses the term “mental models.” The basic idea is that we all have a lot of assumptions about the world and how it works. Some of those assumptions will need to change. Not all, of course, but some.

LINK TO FULL INTERVIEW