LEADING THOUGHTS

When it comes to fostering innovation in organizations, does less leadership lead to better results? After all, creative people have a high degree of “achievement motivation” and exhibit strong characteristics of autonomy, flexibility, cognitive complexity, self-confidence, dominance, and introversion. Given the nature of creative people, say researchers Byrne, Mumford, Barrett, and Vessey (U Oklahoma), “it is often thought that leadership influence is not always necessary.”

In fact, leadership has a substantial impact on the innovation process. Writing in the journal Creativity and Innovation Management, Byrne et al review the literature on leadership of creative efforts and advance a model of core leader functions tailored for creativity.

What do effective leaders of creative people look like?

They have substantial knowledge of the area in which they work and have creative problem-solving skills. According to the researchers, “Expertise allows the leader to: effectively represent the group; communicate clearly with the group; assess the needs of followers; and cultivate and encourage less experienced followers.”

They define the mission, providing structure and goal orientation. “Creative people are likely to respond better to concrete goals that guide project selection and evaluation, rather than idealized end states that rely on affective appeal.”

They provide support for ideas, the work, and social needs. “A leader’s role is to buffer her/his creative followers from the negative contextual influences that are often associated with large mechanistic organizations, while simultaneously capitalizing on the available resources and expertise provided by that organization.”

They have a broad understanding of their organization. “This understanding will allow the leader to tailor the creative ventures pursued
to the organization’s strategy, which in turn will make these ventures easier ‘to sell’ to top management.”

The authors suggest that leadership training should focus on creative problem-solving skills and reshaping the common assumptions often held about creative work. “Leaders must be able to recognize and respond appropriately to original ideas,” they write, “as well as be able to provide a direction for their followers’ problem-solving activities.”

“Examining the Leaders of Creative Efforts: What Do They Do, and What Do They Think About?” by  Cristina L. Byrne, Michael D. Mumford, Jamie D. Barrett, and William B. Vessey; Creativity and Innovation Management (Vol. 18 No. 4 2009; 256-268)

If you cannot find this journal is your local library, email me for a copy of the article at Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

photo credit: jeanbaptisteparis

Leader-Follower, Uncategorized engagement, innovation, leadership

Augustine O. Agho (Indiana-Purdue U) administered  a three-page questionnaire to a sample of 302 senior executives. He wanted to determine what they thought were the distinguishing characteristics of effective leaders and followers. Survey says. . .

Ranking for Leaders
1. Honesty/integrity
2. Forward looking
3. Competent
4. Inspiring
5. Intelligent
6. Fair-minded
7. Courageous
8. Dependable
9. Imaginative
10. Straightforward

Ranking for Followers
1. Honesty/integrity
2. Competent
3. Dependable
4. Cooperative
5. Loyal
6. Intelligent
7. Supportive
8. Mature
9. Caring
10. Straightforward

Interesting that the executives did not think that leaders needed to be caring or supportive. How does this compare to your list?

“Perspectives of Senior-Level Executives on Effective Followership and Leadership,” by Augustine O. Agho; Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis; Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies (Vol. 16 No. 2, Nov. 2009, 159-166)

Leader-Follower, Uncategorized Leader-Follower, leadership

Here is a nice six-minute story from Fabienne Munch, Director of Ideation at Herman Miller, about how she transformed and energized her 15-member team in the space of five months.

Stealing an idea from Google’s playbook, Munch gave members of her team $5,000 each to pursue an idea of their choice. There were three conditions: the project had to relate to Herman Miller’s mission; the staffers had to invite an outsider to participate; and they had to be open to the idea of pooling resources with their colleagues. At the five-minute mark, Munch talks about what happened next.

In the final two minutes, Munch talks about workplace trends that are informing how Herman Miller is designing work spaces.

Leader-Follower case study, change, ideas, incentives, motivation, Org Design, teamwork, video

Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup, says process improvement (Six Sigma, lean-management, and the like) was “the last big leadership evolution.” “Now companies are structured to do a magnificent job with that kind of data,” he says in an interview with Gallup Management Journal. “But it’s absolutely not enough anymore. There hasn’t been a big idea for leadership in 25 years, nothing that shows the huge sweet spots and pushes the big advancements.”

The next big idea, Clifton says, is for leaders to have an in-depth understanding of “states of mind” of their constituencies, which he describes as “their will to work, their will to live, their will to revolt, their will to follow you.” And it means understanding their emotions: how much stress your constituency feels about money, trying to get to work, or dealing with over-bearing supervisors.

That understanding has to be based not on anecdotes and gut feel but on behavioural economics and mathematics. According to Clifton, if you can quantify states of mind, you can better understand the emotions that cause behavior. An example: “Remember when everyone thought Middle Eastern Muslims hated Western freedoms? That’s dead wrong, according to our research. Freedom is one of the things they admire most about the West. It’s the politics they don’t like.”

Sounds a bit like an advertorial for the services of Gallup, though his call for greater rigor in decision making is fair comment. For the full interview, go here.

photo credit: majorlycool

Leader-Follower emotional intelligence, Leader-Follower, lean, six sigma

Joel Klein, New York City School Chancellor, has some refreshing perspectives on how to manage the human resources of a school system. In the Oct. 12, 2009 issue of Fortune magazine, he talked about paying for performance and empowering principals. Excerpts follow.

On the culture of the public education system in the U.S.:
“Fundamentally, the only differentiator is seniority. The power in the system in fundamentally the power of the bureaucracy, of the political forces, of the union.”

On paying teachers based on performance:
“I think about it this way: Every university I know pays differently for science teachers than it does for English teachers. But I pay the exact same for a science teacher and physical education teacher. And then I pay the same whether you work in my highest-need school or in my most successful school. Money isn’t the only thing that drives teachers. . . but money is an ingredient in the mix of things that matter to people. Fairly compensating them if they take on tougher assignments, if they’re doing the work that’s harder to attract people, like science and math — that seems to me a critical component.”

On empowering principals:
“When I started, superintendents used to pick the principals and then pick the assistant principals. I said, ‘If the principal can’t put together his management team, it’s not going to work.’ And they said, ‘Well, Chancellor, you shouldn’t do that because our principals can’t pick assistant principals.’ I said, ‘If they can’t pick assistant principals, we’ve got to get new principals.’

“Isn’t that ridiculous? Shouldn’t principals be deciding which administrators they need, which guidance counsellors they need, what community programs they want to bring in . . . and start to differentiate based on their challenges and also take some risks in this game?

“I think people would be surprised by this: Every principal in New York City signs an agreement saying what their prerogatives are, what discretion they have, and also what their accountabilities are. And if they don’t meet their accountabilities, we can terminate them or close their schools. We do that. And that’s a very different way of doing business.”

photo credit: azipaybarah

Leader-Follower accountability, incentives, leadership, schools, teachers, unions

In this video clip, INSEAD Professor Herminia Ibarra discusses perceptions of women being relatively weak at “envisioning,” essentially the ability to articulate a vision of the future and translating it into a strategic direction.

Ibara’s study is based on 360-degree evaluations of some 2,000 male and female managers. Prevailing wisdom is that there is a bias against female managers, who are generally rated less favourably than their male counterparts. Not so fast: Ibarra found that women score higher than men on many measures (such as communication, emotional intelligence, feedback) except for one: envisioning.

Yes, this is perception and not reality, but “when it comes to senior management,” she points out, “perception is reality.” (3:15 mark)

At the 4:00 mark, Ibarra says it is possible the way in which women arrive at a new vision is simply different than the process used by men (consensus versus going to the mountaintop), and that this organic process is not as evident.

At 6:10, she wonders if some women prefer to stick to the facts rather than striking out with a bold vision because they are often in a more vulnerable position in organizations.

And at 8:50, she talks about the “identity trap” in which men and women often find themselves: being pigeon-holed as an expert in one area. One way to escape this trap is to get out of the office to enlarge your perspectives with your network and do some “pattern recognition” in other areas. (11:24).

Leader-Follower assessment, communication, discrimination, gender, leadership, strategy, video, visioning, women

In this video interview with The McKinsey Quarterly (biz journal of McKinsey & Company), Stanford U Professor Robert Sutton talks about how, in tough economic times, leaders/supervisors experience the “toxic tandem.” On the one hand, people in power tend to be oblivious to the needs and actions of people with less power. On the other, subordinates are hyper vigilant; they closely watch the boss for cues and clues as to what is really going down (“Am I next on the chopping block?”).

I presented the ideas to a group of executives. And this guy walks up to me and he starts describing his executive vice president and how one of the secretaries walked up to him and said, “When are the layoffs going be?” And he says, “What?” And then she went to explain. She said, “Well, it’s an ‘interesting shoes’ day for you.”

What this guy has a reputation of doing is he can’t look people in the eye when he’s upset about stuff, so he would always be looking at his shoes. They were saying, “The boss is having ‘interesting shoes’ day.” So from just the fact the guy walked around not looking anybody in the eye, she went straight up to him. So that to me is a pretty good sign he was oblivious to that, right?

The antidote for the toxic tandem, says Sutton, is prediction, understanding, control, and compassion. “Prediction”: Give assurance where you can and don’t overpromise. “Understand”: Make the effort to clearly communicate  the situation in ways that people will understand. “Control”: Give people a measure of control over the way layoffs happen. And “compassion”?: Have a heart, buddy.

As for dealing with the psyche of those who survive layoffs, Sutton says the key is fairness. “When they see that it’s fair,,” he says, “they are more likely to stay loyal, suffer less psychological damage, and also feel more guilty and work even harder to help you.”

Link to Bob Sutton’s excellent blog

Leader-Follower, Uncategorized change, communication, Leader-Follower, sutton

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

Leader-Follower adaptive, commentary, development, leadership