A633.9.3.RB_DavisCarl Polyarchy Reflections

                                                       POLYARCHY REFLECTIONS

Welcome to the last installment of the Educated Leadership Blog for class number ten of my Master’s Program! This week we’ll take a look at Polyarchy and Oligarchy, how those models fit in the world of business today, and how I intend to continue to grow as a leader.

If you have had an opportunity to read through the textbook we have been referencing throughout this class, you’ll be familiar with polyarchy. In short, polyarchy is when each person on a team, or in an organization, is empowered to step to the forefront and lead when the situation calls for it. In contrast, 99% of the business world operates via an oligarchy, where a few leaders set the direction and give orders to many employees. Our reading and learning have been about Obolensky’s proposition that organizations must move from silos and polyarchy (Fig. 1) to complex adaptive systems via a transition to a matrix organization (Fig. 2) in order to handle the dynamics of an internet driven world(Obolensky, 2016).

     

   

                         

                   Figure 1                                                                     Figure 2

                                                                                           (Obolensky, 2016, p. 22)

A question posed via our assignment was whether the old models of leadership were becoming redundant. I can say that I believe the model of oligarchy will have its place for at least the next eight to ten years. The main lever is the growth of automation in the workplace. At the current time, there are multitudes of workplaces filled with people doing jobs. As jobs are replaced by machines and artificial intelligence, the models will shift rapidly. Polyarchy may not be applicable then, but oligarchy will be less present for sure. An illustrative point would be to look at the military leadership model. The military must have a hierarchical structure that resembles an oligarchy to operate. The impact of more information being pushed down to the war fighter on the front lines is that the amount of hands-on leadership at the front may lessen, but the battle plan and decisions affecting execution will reside at high levels as part of the requirement to know who is responsible for certain decisions. The basic structure may shift and adapt, but the command and control structure will remain.

The benefits of polyarchy have been demonstrated but there are caveats to implementation. Hamel (2011) and Coutu (2000) wrote about companies that have thrived after moving decisively to the model. Both writers noted that the probability of transitioning a company from oligarchy to polyarchy is inverse to its size. The larger the company the header it will be to make the shift. Additionally, the older and more culturally set the company is, the harder the change will be. Ergo, one should not expect to hear about a Ford™ or a Caterpillar™ or an IBM™ to making the shift to polyarchy. However, small parts of those corporations can make the shift and become highly efficient and empowered. These islands of polyarchy will have to work very hard to maintain their structure as the larger organization attempts to get them to revert to the oligarchy prevalent in the rest of the organization. The larger system will fight to align the outliers to the processes of the corporate majority.

Ok. Now that we have reviewed the structures, let's talk about what it means to me in my career. Knowing what I do now, I intend to educate fellow employees at my company about the benefits of complex adaptive leadership. The flexibility provided by allowing the employees access to more information and authority to make decisions and take action is quickly becoming a necessity in today’s business world. I work in a very oligarchical organization. The company is structured that way because of the business we primarily conduct and the rules and liabilities that have impacted the organization are serious. At the same time, our competitor’s agility (because most are far smaller than us) and the impact of technology advancements to our business have made the need for polyarchy more apparent.

I am reaching the end of the Master of Leadership program and hope to be complete by December 31^st. The end of this program will not mean the end of my leadership development and education. Groth wrote about the model Google™ created that is referred to as “70-20-10” (2012). The numbers refer to the idea that one should devote 70 percent of their time focused on their core competencies, 20 percent of their time on related projects, and 10 percent of their time on learning new skills and working side projects. Stressing the core of what I do is important because, frankly, that is where I earn my paycheck. My company has an expectation that I will execute the tasks they hired me to do…and do that well. The 20 percent of my time on related projects is where I look for opportunities at work to provide input and look for synergies or to somehow act as a catalyst for some other team in my company.  The 10 percent where I work on new skills and side projects works back to personal growth, but more importantly, to recharging my inner desire and motivation. As noted by Boyatzis (2005), one cannot be a great leader if they are burned out or have lost the drive to help themselves and others succeed.

I intend to continue working very hard at my primary job. I know there are a number of side projects I can assist colleagues in creating, too. My personal growth will revolve around learning a second language, continuing to attend training about leadership, delivering training and presenting information to other groups and organizations, and working on improving my health. I am very appreciative to have been exposed to the information in this class and refer back to it as I continue to grow as a leader and as I develop other leaders (which is a defining goal of mine).

See you in class eleven in a couple of weeks!

Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Coutu, D. L. (2000). Creating the Most Frightening Company on Earth (Vol. 78, pp. 142-150): Harvard Business School Publication Corp.

Groth, A. (2012). Everyone Should Use Google's Original '70-20-10 Model' To Map Out Their Career.   Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/kyle-westaway-how-to-manage-your-career-2012-11

Hamel, G. (2011). FIRST, LET'S FIRE ALL THE MANAGERS. (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 89(12), 48-60.

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

A633.8.3.RB_DavisCarl How To Better Enable Leadership

                                                              How To Better Enable Leadership

Hello, readers! This week we’ll talk about the way the company at which I work can better enable leadership at all levels. I took the opportunity to talk to some co-workers and get their thoughts. From that data and from the reading we’ve been doing in class I’ll discuss how a better organization could be built. I’ll also talk about the role I’ll play in promoting leadership at every level of my organization.

My coworkers, for the most part, felt they had opportunities to lead, though some felt so more than others. The managers I talked to all had a desire and a style for leading. They are graded on their ability to lead and how they model the attributes of finding a way, setting high expectations, charting the course, inspiring others, living the Boeing values (trust, honesty, being ethical), and delivering results. Their scores are part of a formula that determines their salary and bonuses.

Employees are measured against performance values, which are very similar to the leadership attributes. Therefore, there is an implied expectation that employees will step up to be leaders when they feel it necessary. Many of the employees on my team are hired because they have been leaders elsewhere. The jobs they hold require that they feel comfortable taking on high levels of responsibility and making decisions. If anything, the high number of leaders in one area leads to stress at times, especially when the rules of engagement for a tasking are not explicit. It’s a good problem to have. I once heard, “I’d rather have to pull on the reins of an employee than to have to prod them to work.” I think I agree with that statement.

The information I received from the employees and the reading I have done lead me to the following conclusions: Communication is key to solving 90% of the leadership shortcomings and confusion. My company needs to be more reactive to the ideas that “bubble up” from the employees that step forward to offer help and plans for situations of which they are aware. Our company still makes too many decisions at levels too far away from where the issues, and the people who must deal directly with them, reside. This is not a new issue here. The processes, rules, and some less flexible managers have impeded the plan to “empower the lower levels of the workforce.

Obolensky (2016) reminds us to embrace uncertainty and look for opportunity in complexity. My company lives in the realm of complexity and we are constantly dealing with uncertainty. I can promote leadership by educating my staff and employees about the opportunities to be found in uncertainty. Additionally, given the position I hold in the organization, I have the capability to communicate across multiple organizations and to model the practice of providing followers opportunities to grow and stretch. I will be teaching classes at our Leadership Center, as well, which will further expand my capability to teach others about the power of enabling employees to take on more responsibilities. As the graphic at the top of this page reminds us, there are many benefits to empowering employees and trusting them to accomplish the task.

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

A633.7.3.RB_DavisCarl - Leader Follower Relationship

                                           LEADER FOLLOWER RELATIONSHIP

It’s a double posting week at the Educated Leadership Blog! Thanks for following along.

The leader follower relationship should be the focus of any manager wanting to get the most out of her or his team. It is through this connection that the magic of accomplishment of growth occurs. Obolensky’s (2016) writing has focused our learning on leading in times of chaos. We have looked at the ways complexity and chaos can lead to an opportunity for growth and that allowing our followers to get more involved in the process of finding the structure in chaos benefits all involved.

In Chapter ten, Obolensky discusses four strategies for leading teams depending on the focus of the leader on the followers and/or the goals of the organization. He created a graph that allows us to plot the leadership style that would be applicable based on the focus of the two variables. Please see Figure 10.11 (Obolensky, 2016, p. 179).

Figure 10.11

As a quick review, in case you haven’t been able to read Mr. Obolensky’s book, let’s start in the lower left quadrant, called section four (DEVOLVE). Here the people and goal focus are both “low”. Not a good place to be and Obolensky (2016) noted this area indicates the organization is in trouble and devolving.

Moving to the upper left, section three (INVOLVE), we have high people focus and low goal focus. Here the leader needs to get the people involved. The leader may hold back to get the followers to contribute and make inputs and solutions.

Section two (SELL) is where the high people and goal focus resides, in the upper right. The leader gets the followers to “buy-in” to the solution so they have ownership and maintain motivation. Mountains need to be climbed and the people want to do it!

The remaining section, number one (TELL), indicates that the leader may need to be prescriptive to get the goals of the company attained by the followers.

At the beginning of chapter 10, Obolensky provided a quiz to provide insight as to our own preferred style, considering our current leadership setting. The result of my quiz indicated that I lean toward the use of section three (INVOLVE) leadership. I do not find this surprising. I am privileged to lead a group of highly trained and skilled professionals who are tasked with jobs in which I am not an expert in accomplishing. I lean on their expertise to get our goals accomplished. I told this team when I first was put in position as their leader that I knew I was not the smartest person in the room, but I knew our group was one of the smartest I had ever seen and we could accomplish great things together!

I was not 100% in section three with my answers. Also, not surprizing. Section three is a place for leadership when time is not an issue. I feel comfortable moving into the other areas, depending on the situation.

The significance of the quiz, for me, is the validation I found in the result. I am far into the Leadership Program and hoped the ability to morph into the leader needed for a situation was taking hold. The quiz appears to indicate I can and do make the shifts. As far as further applying the information Obolensky provided in this chapter, I will use the terminology to help communicate the technique of being a flexible leader to those I lead, coach, and mentor. Oboloensky’s (2016) book will reside on my bookshelf at work to be used as an overall reference, not just chapter 10.

To tie these learning points to another real-life situation, I would point you to Stayer’s (1990) article in the Harvard Business Review. The metamorphosis undertaken by Mr. Stayer as he helped grow his company and lead the employees into areas of performance they never dreamed they would accomplish is a great example of moving through the sections as needed.

Keep learning. Keep communicating. Trust yourself. Test yourself.

See you next week!

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Stayer, R. (1990). How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead. Harvard Business Review, 68(6), 66-83.

A633.7.4.RB_DavisCarl - How Do Coaches Help?

ERAU Daytona Campus                            (C) C.S.Davis 2015

                                                      HOW DO COACHES HELP?

Readers, the week on the Educated Leadership Blog we are going discuss the practice of Executive Coaching. 

The exercise was to reflect on the following statement:

“To be an executive coach, it is necessary to know that clients are the first and best experts capable of solving their own problems and achieving their own ambitions; that is precisely the main reason why clients are motivated to call on a coach. When clients bring important issues to a coach, often they already made a complete inventory of their personal or professional issues and identified all possible (known) options. Clients have already tried working out their issues alone, and have not succeeded.”

The first sentence does not sound correct to me. Coaches can be called for many reasons. Maybe the client doesn’t know what they want out of their career. Maybe they are not capable of solving their own problems. (If they could, would a coach have been called?) As noted by Coutu, et al, (2009) many times an executive coach ends up working in areas that resemble that of someone trained in psychology. Leadership is a mental exercise and the line between coaching and therapy is blurry where they meet.

Another indicator of the need for coaches to help people who are, at the time they call for assistance, incapable of identifying and addressing their shortcomings, is the sum that professional coaches can earn for their services. XXXXX wrote that the rates he found were from $300 to $3500 dollars an hour! An issue that hovers around the Executive Coaching profession is how they can document the impact they may or may not be having on their clients and their companies. Yet, the rates they command are impressive. I believe the fact that most people struggle to truly take stock in their inabilities. If they do have the courage to truly inventory their abilities, it is rare for that person to correctly identify their shortcomings and, more importantly, have the capability to design a plan to alleviate or mitigate those shortcomings. This point speaks directly to the second sentence of the paragraph. Having a coach to assist in finding the way forward and who is educated in the many ways of leadership can be the lever for a subpar leader to step up to a new level. The coach has the benefit of distance.

Now let’s talk about distance. The ability to look at a situation from a new perspective is very empowering. Those of you that have followed this blog through the years will recall that leaders can struggle to extract themselves from situations and relationships. There may be high levels of responsibility binding and blinding them. It may be a case of the leader’s ego giving them tunnel vision. The type and quality of relationships the leader has cultivated with their employees, peers, and leaders may impair their ability to see failings, too. The coach can see the interactions with a clearer perspective. What is that worth to a struggling leader? It can be priceless if it saves a career or a company or a relationship.

If a leader is busy dealing with a business, or a department, or a handful of people, will the have the bandwidth to “know all their personal and professional issues and identify all the options available to them? From personal experience, I can tell you there’s no way to know “all the issues and all the options”. If I spent the time needed to do such inventories, I would be failing as a leader! Leadership takes attention and time. As with any project, doing smaller jobs more often is more manageable than waiting for the issues or tasks to pile up. Work and life can draw 100% of a leader’s attention. The shortcomings or areas for improvement, when they become apparent, have had to reach a level that overpowers or impact the job or relationships of the leader. The task of correcting the path is now a mountain that could appear insurmountable. Facing a challenge of magnitude is not as difficult if one has a coach to urge, prod, educate, and listen.

The last sentence can be true quite often. Leaders will likely make some attempt on their own to improve. Leaders may have been trying and reached an impasse. They may have had partial success. They are looking for the catalyst to push them to a new level of performance. If it was easy to fix oneself, the pay rates for coaches would likely be much lower.

Examining the statement above was an exercise that allowed me to dive into the need for executive coaches. I would add that the dynamic environment in which leaders now find themselves can leave a leader in new relational territory. The need for assistance from a professional that has been looking at the world from a fresh perspective is growing and the profession is growing in response (Parker, 2012). I would like to take the lessons I have learned while earning this degree and help other leaders grow and succeed.

Coutu, D., Kauffman, C., Charan, R., Peterson, D. B., Maccoby, M., Scoular, P. A., & Grant, A. M. (2009). What Can Coaches Do for You? Harvard Business Review, 87(1), 91-97.

Parker, A. (2012). Coaching Profession Shows Growth.   Retrieved from https://www.td.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/TD-Archive/2012/09/Intelligence-Coaching-Profession-Shows-Growth

A633.6.4.RB_DavisCarl Circle of Leadership

ERAU Daytona Campus - CSD 2015

It’s another week of the Educated Leadership blog! Welcome back. This week we’re going to talk about what Obolensky calls the “vicious circle for leaders” (2016, figure 9.5, p. 162). Take a moment and read around the circle.

                         
                                          

Who is in the wrong here? There is a shared responsibility. Notice that the circle doesn’t mention the leader or the follower stopping to have a conversation to level set the situation. If either person made an effort to clarify the desires or intentions of the other, the circle is likely broken.

Those of you that have been reading this blog for a while know that I spent time working as a flight instructor. As part of teaching someone to fly, the student has to be allowed to attempt maneuvers and skills. Flight instructors know they have to let the student make some mistakes so that lessons will be learned. The skill of the flight instructor lies in allowing the student to head toward trouble to see if they can recover while knowing exactly when to take control…before the airplane is in a situation beyond recovery. Instructors WANT the STUDENT to see the situation developing and work to get themselves out. That builds confidence. Instructors also know that as soon as they take control of the airplane from the student, learning ceases for a period of time. Depending on how the change of control was handled, the amount of time the student ‘shuts down’ will vary. The more abrupt or aggressive the take-over, the longer the period. Competent instructors do not want that to occur. If the instructor continually takes control, the vicious cycle ensues and the student is apt to give up flying lessons.

Micromanagers are excellent candidates for swirling down the drain of a vicious circle. At some point, the employee all but gives up trying to think or act. They know that their actions will be corrected or dismissed. One of the questions to be answered this week is if there are examples of vicious circles in my organization. Without a doubt, there is. How do I know? I have been on the receiving end of the circle from a leader. I did try to break the circle via conversation, action, and outright coaching. No luck. I did eventually quit trying to think ahead of my boss. I knew I would get detailed descriptions of how I was to handle anything that came my way. I decided two things during this experience. The first was that I would still strive to find ways to do my best and add my perspective to situations. I’ll call that a decision to persevere. The second was that I would learn from the situation and strive to never put a follower in that position intentionally. I’ll call that my commitment to leadership excellence. When I was at the Naval Academy I was taught about learning from leaders by observation. The obvious lesson was that I could learn from the great leaders. The lesson that was not as obvious to me as a teen, but has proven to be the more impactful in my life, is that one can learn what never to do from unskilled leaders. I decided to apply that practice to the situation at work. Use difficult situations to your advantage.

The vicious circle can be a very intimate situation. One on one with another person with whom you are in close proximity for 40 hours a week, relying on the interaction between the two of you to make things work is an intimate situation. If the relationship is unhealthy, from a social or leader/follower perspective the situation can dissolve into the vicious circle before either person knows what’s happened. Distance is no vaccine to falling into the circle. In fact, the barrier to communication that distance often brings can hasten the development of the circle. So, rule one for evading the circle is to communicate! Recall that to communicate means to receive a message, transmit what you understood, and receive either confirmation of the message OR clarification of the original message (which then should be confirmed). Only then has communication taken place.

Let’s tie this back into another leadership theory. Recall that Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory proposes that leaders will have two groups of followers. “The basic idea behind the leader-member exchange (LMX) theory is that leaders form two groups, an in-group and an out-group, of followers. In-group members are given greater responsibilities, more rewards, and more attention. The leader allows these members some latitude in their roles. They work within the leader’s inner circle of communication. In contrast, out-group members are outside the leader’s inner circle, receive less attention and fewer rewards, and are managed by formal rules and policies” (Lunenburg, 2010, p.1). Given that description, doesn’t it seem the members of the out-group are predisposed to fall into the vicious circle with the leader? At the end of each day, as you review the situations you have faced as a leader and critique your own performance, run a scan of your organization specifically looking for evidence of an LMX. Then look for evidence of vicious circles with those with whom you feel less…connected.

So, how do we create “virtuous circles”, as Peter Senge (1990) calls systems that build up an organization, not tear it down. We have already talked about the first thing. Communicate. Then we can begin to rebuild the circle’s parts. We’ll start in the upper right of the circle with “Follower asks for advice – demonstrates low skill to leader.” This is a great time to ask the follower what training they may have had, or what their needs are, or if there are other issues distracting them from performing. Taking a few moments to investigate the situation would then turn the next step from “Leader gets concerned” to “Leader provides training, or provides the correct tool, or assists the follower in dealing with the distraction”. From there we can change “Leader takes a more hands-on approach” to “Leader supports and observes follower to ensure the situation is rectified”. Now we can change “Follower’s confidence lowers” to “Follower’s confidence is bolstered”. By now, the follower is hopefully feeling a sense of accomplishment and a growing level of confidence so we can change “Follower thinks he has to defer more” to “Follower completes tasks and demonstrates mastery of the process”. We’re back at the spot we started, but we can change that slot to read, “Follower asks for more complexity or more tasks”. The beautiful part is that if we’ve done a good job as a leader, the follower will ask us for advice BEFORE stumbling, or will be unafraid to admit they have stumbled because they now know they will get support. Voila! A Virtuous Circle of our own making!

This virtuous circle can be applied across all facets of an organization. Finance, Sales, Accounting, Operations, Custodial Services, Transportation, Assembly, Marketing, Distribution, you name it, it can be used there. The really cool part is that it can be used ACROSS functions! I have spent time with finance personnel assisting them with situations, terms, and nuances that apply to my part of the organization so they could do their job better. Guess what? They came back for more help later, BEFORE situations developed that required re-work or repair. I have done the same thing with Supplier Management, Contracts, Accounting, Human Resources, Business Operations, Business Development, and Quality Assurance. The operations department now has a reputation of being helpful. I am proud of my team and the way they continue to nurture and grow the relations across our organization. We have open relationships based on trust. I and my team know we can go to these departments and ask for clarification and assistance when we are preparing to act on a project and that we will be received in a positive light and helped. Is it always perfect? No. Do we have a great foundation? Yes. We’ll keep working on it, that is for sure!

Lunenburg, F. C. (2010). Leader-Member Exchange Theory: Another Perspective on the Leadership Process. International Journal of Managment, Business, and Administration, 13(1), 5.

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency Doubleday.

A633.5.3.RB_DavisCarl Reflections on Chaos

Educated Leadership Blog readers! Welcome back to another week.

We were asked to observe a video on YouTube where a group of people completed an organizational exercise that required them to find order out of seeming chaos. The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E

As you have now hopefully seen, the group finds stability out of chaos in rather short order. They did so with very few rules, an open work area, a defined goal, and the ability to move (act) as they needed. The laughter of the group that occurred when Professor Obolensky asked the group, “What would have happened if I had chosen a leader for this exercise?” was a good indicator of how much more efficient the use of some seemingly simple principles is for dealing with chaos and complexity.

The principles can be broken into what Obolensky calls the 4-plus-4 model of leading (2016, p. 105). For a team to be capable of cogently dealing with chaos, they should be provided with clear, explicit and individual objectives. From this, they can derive an underlying, implicit and unifying common purpose. The group will also need their boundaries defined. Within these boundaries, they can have discretion and freedom to act. The group also needs to know a few simple rules of the organization. Knowing these rules, the skill and will of the individuals can be freed up greater than in organizations that do not define these edges. Lastly, the group needs to receive continuous and unambiguous feedback. This information will provide them guidance when dealing with ambiguity or randomness that is far from equilibrium.

In the video, the group has a set boundary (the room), a clear objective (maintain a spot equidistant from two other people), a few simple rules (don’t tell the people you are using as markers, move slowly, stop when you are equidistant from them), and they have continuous feedback via their eyes as to how they are progressing toward their goal. The group had the underlying goal of finding out what would happen. They had the discretion to move where they needed. They had the skill to move as necessary. Lastly, they found order in the chaos and were able to move to the solution quickly.

The impact this exercise had on my perception of chaos theory was to further impress upon me the fact that chaos is not something to fear, but something that can be managed with the proper leadership techniques. As Eric Berlow noted in his TEDTalk (2010) opportunity can be found in chaos. Obolensky has now provided us with more tools for assisting the groups we lead in dealing with complexity.

Tying these principles to strategic planning and strategy in general, we can look forward to chaos and complexity as opportunities and not risks. Now that we, at the Educated Leadership blog, are becoming far more comfortable with chaos theory we have a strategic advantage over other organizations and leaders that shy away from chaos, leaving us even more capability to differentiate our products and teams. Our experience with chaos also provides us the tools to review and revise our strategic plans as the dynamics impact the fidelity of our initial strategy.

Obolensky, N. (Producer). (2008). Who Needs Leaders? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Talks, TED. (Producer). (2010). Eric Berlow: Simplifying complexity. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB2iYzKeej8

A633.4.3.RB_DavisCarl Changing Dynamics of Leadership

Kusunoki Masashige statue - downtown Tokyo - CSD

Welcome back, Readers! This week on the Educated Leadership Blog we’ll look at the situation Obolensky (2016) describes as “charades” conducted by leadership and employees. As part of that discussion, we’ll look at how breaking down that charade is occurring in situations I face.

The “charade” that Obolensky (2016) discussed in his book occurs when management pretends to know far more than they actually do because they believe it is what their employees expect while at the same time, the employees pretend to know far less than they actually do, because they expect the leaders to already know the information. The reality is that leaders do not know everything and the employees know it. The employees know quite a bit and the leaders know it. However, in many organizations, the charade Is alive and well.

Leaders will greatly increase their possibility of success if they can break down this charade and open up the lines of information and communication on their teams. Why? A study noted in Obolensky’s book (2016, p. 35-37) indicated that the frontline employees in an organization generate approximately 60% of the ideas that are applicable to implementing enduring change. Top management is generally credited with about 10% of the ideas that work. Now we can see why the charade must be broken. The ideas must be allowed to flow!

Obolensky (2016) also provides some practices that leaders can employ to help the process begin. The first being that leaders can start saying “I don’t know” when they do not have an answer! The second involves asking questions of the employees and supporting the needs of the employees as they are identified. The third is to have the leader and the employees engage in a real conversation where both sides ask and answer questions. Honesty must be the basis of the conversations in all three versions of breaking through.

I believe there is a shift in leadership to try and break down the charade. The biggest driver, in my opinion, is the access to information that the employees has, especially as technology improves access to data. If a leader is disingenuous, the employees often know instantly, because they have the answer! Now, if they don’t know they answer immediately, they usually can access the information via a computer almost as quickly. It behooves a leader to admit to not knowing something. They will build trust if they do.

There are leaders with whom I interact that work toward breaking the charade. They will admit to not knowing information and they will actively seek the information from their employees via challenge and support or a dynamic conversation. They openly credit the employees that provide answers. They realize that they must engage all the employees and the managers to succeed in the dynamic environment in which we operate. I, too, have chosen to lead in this manner. Inclusion and open communication are my standards, as are accountability and recognition. At the same time, there are still examples of leaders that appear to be perpetuating the charade. There are groups of employees that also appear to perpetuate the behavior. However, the Millennials joining our company are bringing a desire to be open and contribute and to quickly be a part of the team. Their impact helps to break down the charade for both employees and leaders.

Lastly, our company just created a new organization and has striven to educate all employees and leaders about the need for operating in a manner that precludes the perpetuation of the charade! They have been proactive in communication and training that opens the doors for leaders to say they do not know it all and for employees to step forward with ideas and information.

It will take a dedicated effort by all the leaders and employees to obliterate the charade. Trust is a fragile commodity and must be handled carefully by all sides for us to gain the benefits of open communication and trust.

See you next week!

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

A633.3.4.RB_DavisCarl Complexity Science

Hello, again, readers! We have two blog entries this week. This one will be about the company for which I work and the strategies it has employed through the years.

Last summer, my company celebrated its 100^th anniversary. Its history is well documented and the number of times it has been near bankruptcy, only to go on to greatness is more than a handful. As world economies have changed and breakthroughs in technology have occurred the company has changed the way it operated.

Recently, the organization that I am assigned to was reorganized in a manner that Obolensky described in Chapter 3 (2016). We moved from a very silo-like structure to a matrix organization. The change occurred very recently and therefore, the jury is out as to whether it will remain, or we will snap back into silos and have to try again. However, given the environment in which we find ourselves, changing to a matrix organization will be essential to becoming far more capable of reacting to market changes.

Will we be able to move toward a Complex Adaptive System (CAS)? (Obolensky, 2016) The cards are stacked against us on a few fronts. The first being that we operate in highly regulated industries. There is a myriad of rules within which we must operate and often have little ability to influence. Because of the regulations, we are often required to have a built-in hierarchy and that inhibits the ability to evolve into a CAS. We are also a company steeped in chains of command and responsibilities. We work with the militaries of the world and tend to reflect their structure, at times. Our size is detrimental to evolving into a CAS, too. Changing the culture of a company of over 130,000 employees would take years (Wartzman, 2012, p. 2).

I believe, because many of the players in the new organization structure came from the silo-based structure, it will be difficult for the matrix to remain in shape this go-around. However, the demands of the market and the capabilities of our competitors, many who are smaller, will require us to make the shift. We can’t react at the speed our competitors appear to be able. We can bring to bear a very capable research and development team and knowledge of years of production that smaller competitors may not have.

When it comes to strategy, Boeing has changed their plans many times. Sometimes the changes were painful and sometimes they have been examples of strategic excellence. Our strategy is influenced by so many forces over which we have no control, we spend many hours on forecasts and reviews of historical averages. We spend a lot of time in the traditional area of Reeves’ strategic chart (2014). We look for opportunities based upon what we know and what our customers are asking for us to build. Where we have made a name for ourselves is when we venture into the visionary and shaping areas of Reeves’ chart (2014, 08:30). Whether it was the Bombers we have built that changed the advantage to the allies in battle, the amazing gamble that was the B747, the move to large twin-engine airliners (the 767 and the 777) and the re-writing of the rules of long-distance air travel, or the decision to change how we build airliners, the material we use, while changing the main systems to make the 787 we have had to change our strategy. In doing so, we have watched our competitors change their strategy to keep up. Recently, Boeing has found itself in the uncomfortable spot of reacting to its competitors. The change in the organization structure is part of the way we have decided to move and regain the position as a leader in the aerospace field.

Looking ahead 10 years, I believe Boeing will look different. There are several new competitors entering the field of building airliners and we will have to adapt our form and strategy to maintain our position of leadership. We will have to expand our fields of expertise and take on new challenges to build market share and revenue. We are expanding our products to help the USA get astronauts to Mars and will be at the forefront of the move toward pilotless aircraft. I hope to be playing a major part in one, or more of those programs as a Vice President leading a high performing team into the future!

Institute, TED. (Producer). (2014). Martin Reeves: Your Strategy Needs a Strategy. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE_ETgaFVo8

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

Wartzman, R. (2012, September 25, 2012). If Self-Management Is Such a Great Idea, Why Aren't More Companies Doing It? Forbes.

A633.3.3.RB_DavisCarl - Complex Adaptive Systems

Looking up at the bow of the Cutty Sark - Greenwich, UK
Strategies of shipping have changed since this was the fastest ship on the sea...
CSD 2015

Hello, Readers! This week at The Educated Leadership blog we’re going to look at companies that have moved from away from silos and matrices as organizational forms and adapted a Complex Adaptive System (CAS) (Obolensky, 2016, p. 22-27). CAS companies are unlike the other two styles in that there are few if any, designated leaders. Employees are expected to hold themselves and their peers to a high level of performance. The employees are expected to know and understand their business, their competitors, the business environment, and the capabilities of themselves and their co-workers. Instead of a centralized leadership directing the employees, the employees confer and act in the manner needed to move the company forward.

There are few examples of companies that truly operate in CAS fashion. Rick Wartzman noted, “” A recent survey of more than 36,000 employees in 18 countries, by the consulting firm LRN, found that only 3% of companies can be characterized as substantially self-governing” (Forbes, 2012). The style is complex and requires time and attention to detail that many companies simply cannot spare. Many executives that have visited Morning Star, a company in California famous for using CAS, attempt to take the ideas they learn home and get bogged down trying to implement them. “An advantage for Morning Star is that its founder, Chris Rufer, started with a clean slate some 40 years ago. Trying to retrofit an existing business with Morning Star-like principles is far from easy” (Wartzman, 2012).

Another issue that impedes companies trying to make a shift to less/little designated management is the time required to adjust. With shareholders and others looking for short term returns on investment, the time to shift culture and structure is often too steep a price to pay.

However, there are positives to take away from the stories of Morning Star (Hamel, 2011) St. Luke’s (Coutu, 2000) and their use of CAS. Both companies have driven the expectation of accountability and performance down through all members of the organization. They have made their workplaces safe for people to call out others’ performance, both good and bad. They have provided comprehensive training for all employees (even contract labor). Installing these cultural mores into my organization would be challenging, but wonderful, I believe. The way CAS organizations operate allows the company to see and react to changes in the market and the economy with better foresight and capability because all employees are looking for ways to help the company succeed, not just themselves. I wonder if the Titanic would have made it to New York if everybody on board had been looking out for danger that night…or in the design stage…or the build stage…or the “How many lifeboats should we have?” stage.

Applying strategy and reviewing strategic plans are difficult because the return on the time invested is rarely apparent. I enjoyed Martin Reeves TED Talk (2014) about changing the way one designs and applies strategy depending upon the situation one is in. I believe it ties into the reading on CAS we have done because it highlights the fact that not all companies can be as dynamic as others. The reasons for this lack of flexibility can vary, but include, regulatory constraints, labor constraints, and the competitive landscape. Reeves compares the malleability of the company and predictability of the market in which they operate to divine the style of strategic thinking that may work best. The graph he produces reminds me of the Cynefin Framework (Cognitive Edge, 2010) of situational complexity decision making that we have talked about in other lessons. The four quadrants moving clockwise from the bottom-left, are Classical, Adaptive, Shaping, and Visionary. Classical is the standard mode of making predictions, making plans and moving forward.  Adaptive is where the plans are built but are reactive to the unpredictability of the market or the competitors. Shaping is the “Wild-West” of strategy. In this area, the plans are so new as to define the market and be relatively free of competitors…for at least a little while. Visionary is where the plans go in ways that few others have seen and the begin to change the paradigm in which you operate. The area of chaos on the Cynefin chart is reflected by Reeves as an area of renewal where the company’s near-term survival is so doubtful the plans need to be all but scrapped and recreated to allow the company another day of life.

Moving strategic thinking around Reeves graph won’t occur at the same level of dynamics that a leader may move around a Cynefin graph. That’s a great lesson for me. The other lesson is that strategies will need to move as the environment in which they are created morphs into new levels of predictability, no matter the malleability of the company. My company is usually quite rigid and classical in its strategy. I see now how different teams have made dramatic achievements in that environment by moving toward the other three zones, depending on the opportunities and challenges their leaders have identified. We can all use the examples from Reeves to contemplate the strategy of our strategy.

Cognitive Edge, P. D. S. (Producer). (2010). The Cynefin Framework. [Film short] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oz366X0-8&feature=youtu.be

Coutu, D. L. (2000). Creating the Most Frightening Company on Earth (Vol. 78, pp. 142-150): Harvard Business School Publication Corp.

Hamel, G. (2011). FIRST, LET'S FIRE ALL THE MANAGERS. (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 89(12), 48-60.

Institute, T. (Producer). (2014). Martin Reeves: Your Strategy Needs a Strategy. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE_ETgaFVo8

Wartzman, R. (2012, September 25). If Self-Management Is Such a Great Idea, Why Aren't More Companies Doing It? Forbes.

A633.2.3.RB_DavisCarl Butterfly Effect

Hello, readers! It’s great to have you back at the Educated Leadership blog for another week!

This week, we learned about complexity theory. The first question to ask is: Is complexity a problem or an opportunity? (Obolensky, 2016) There is imposed complexity, like that created by laws and regulations. Inherent complexity comes from the operation of the business or activity. Designed complexity that derives from choices about where the business operates and/or what it is manufacturing or selling. Lastly, unnecessary complexity comes from the divergence of what the business or activity is and the way it is accomplished (Obolensky, 2016, p. 53).

Science has made great strides toward understanding complexity and chaos (complexity’s moody brother). Be it through chaos theory, the theory of relativity, quantum theory, or the field of complexity science, new ways of looking at seeming random actions and results are being uncovered. As leaders, we can utilize these theories to help understand the complex situations in which we find ourselves more and more often. One idea that has come from chaos theory that has been found to be very applicable to business and leadership is Edward Lorenz’s proposal of “The Butterfly Effect”. He originally proposed the idea in 1963 and then refined it over the next decade (Obolensky, 2016, p. 70).

Lorenz was attempting to model weather patterns on a computer. The numbers involved carried to five and six decimal places and the data entry was tedious. He was entering in the numbers a second time and decided to round off some of the numbers, expecting the result to be inconsequential. What he saw, after the simulation ran for a number of hours, was that the rounded numbers had caused a vastly different result from his first run of the simulation. Ergo, seemingly microscopic (rounding of the ten-thousandths places in some of the data) changes in a complex system had eventually driven large changes in the result. The graph produced looked like a butterfly’s wings and the phenomenon got its name (pictured above).

Can seemingly inconsequential changes in a business practice eventually drive large, unexpected results? Undoubtedly. I remember a senior manager that refused to stand behind one of his direct reports (a manager, as well) when that employee made a very difficult, well-founded decision regarding a policy. Not only did the employees start to test other managers and other rules, the direct reports of the senior manager all lost respect for the manager. Additionally, the direct reports were far less likely to hold the employees accountable because they knew there was a good chance they would be overridden. All the sudden, the senior manager had many more decisions to make because they were not being made at lower levels. Performance in the unit decreased, as did quality. Personnel began leaving and morale sank further. It took about a year, and the loss of many good people, but the senior manager was eventually replaced. The organization is still digging out of the hole that was created by one decision not to act.

Another example occurred when an employee for the same manager kept asking for a transfer to another base of operations. There was very little compelling evidence that the employee should be moved from the headquarters city and the business case only got worse when the cost of a relocation package was added. The employee was incredibly persistent. Making requests for a transfer at least once a week and lobbying the senior manager whenever he got the chance. The employee’s direct manager was not in favor of the move but was unable to stop the employee from continuing to make requests. Eventually, to rid himself of the constant nagging, the senior manager approved the move. The employee quickly worked his way up to manager in the new organization and began changing policies that had been set by the senior manager. Little communication was shared back to the headquarters and management until so many changes had been made, trying to revert the group back would have taken more money and time than headquarters wanted to spend. Additionally, doing so would have made the employee’s managers back at headquarters culpable for approving his move…why shine a light on that? The divide between the two operations still causes problems. The act of “just saying yes” to get someone to go away has been very detrimental to the overall group’s unity and operation.

So, how do we apply the ideas of complexity theory to our daily life as leaders? The first way is to understand the idea that a very small change now can lead to unexpected drastic changes later. I think a great example of that can be seen when observing a golfer driving a golf ball. A misalignment of the clubface at the time of impact with the ball of one-tenth of a degree can lead to the ball being tens to hundreds of feet off course down the fairway…a little means a lot!

Another great tool for our leadership kit comes from the fact that these theories are proving that order can be found in chaos. Additionally, these theories can help us to see that there are often just a few places in the seeming chaos that need to be addressed that can lead to big results! They can help us peer through the fog to find the right touch points. Eric Berlow illustrates this point in a TED Talk, very well (2010). Give it a watch! I would recommend reading Nick Obolensky’s book, too. It’s been very enlightening!

See you next week!

Obolensky, N. (2016). Complex Adaptive Leadership (2nd ed.). London and New York: Taylor & Francis Group.

TED Talks. (Producer). (2010). Eric Berlow: Simplifying complexity. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB2iYzKeej8