What’s the Next Big Thing?

It could —and should — be you
 

As we enter a new year, peoples’ minds turn naturally to fashions and futures. What will be the next ‘big thing’ to seize our imagination. What big, new ideas will take root in 2009 and change the way we all think about the world of work?

In recent years, many gurus have come to prominence by claiming they know how to transform our world for the better. Yet conventional attitudes to management has been with us for a considerable time and most of these ‘next big things’ have been variations on the same themes. Today, we can, all of us, see the problems that some of those views of leadership have brought.

Maybe the real challenge for those in leadership positions over the coming year is to reshape people’s view of work in ways that go above and beyond the outlooks that have been the norm since the profession of management began.

In transforming ourselves, we transform the world around us. If, as a leader, you can demonstrate the power of shifting your own thinking, it provides the space and opportunity for your ‘village’—the community that surrounds you in the workplace—to do the same. And once you tap into the power of that network, broader transformation becomes possible.

So perhaps ‘the next big thing’ is not something ‘out there’. It may be staring at you in the mirror.

Changing your work environment is not something that you can expect others to do for you. Leaders at every level of an organization must take responsibility for the future of their workplace. Don’t wait for the next big thing to come along. BE the next big thing yourself.

Technorati Tags: leadership, change, finding new ways, innovation, fresh ideas

Are we looking for the right qualities in our leaders?
 

Photo: www.lumaxart.com

Suppose someone asked you to list the most important qualities you want find in any genuine leader. What would you say? Toughness? Authority? Decisiveness, perhaps? Tenacity? You could make a case for all of these. Today’s conventional thinking about leadership tends to stress the more active, resolute qualities in a leader. Leaders are expected to get results and remain effective under the constant pressure of reeling markets.

What I want to suggest to you is a little different. The qualities of the strong, Hollywood-style leader may make for good newspaper copy, but they aren’t the ones that will create the kind of leader we really need today.

They are too superficial, too much the product of stereotypes. They over-emphasize action and underplay the need for leaders who can go beyond setting a direction to coax the best from everyone around them.

For that you need three far less glamorous qualities: restraint, generosity, and mercy.

Restraint

Lack of restraint is a common failing of tough, macho leaders. They cannot hold themselves back from taking charge. They cannot hold themselves back from making decisions where none are needed, or where any choice will be premature. They interfere constantly with other people’s jobs, micromanaging and over-supervising in their constant need to be doing something—anything—to stay active and involved. When people say a leader like this is “on top of things,” they are more truthful than they realize. She is constantly imposing herself from above where she is not needed.

Leaders need restraint for to hold back from rushing into action when time is needed to wait for the situation to clarify. They need it to keep from doing things, or making choices, that are the responsibility of their subordinates. Much of the reason why executives today are so over-burdened with work is an inability to delegate. They are so convinced that they must stay on top of everything that they demand to be involved in every decision of any magnitude.

The results are plain to see. Decisions are delayed because the people in charge are overwhelmed; choices are made by those least able to see what is needed, because they are furthest from the action; subordinates’ jobs are reduced to carrying out instructions sent down from on high. Add to all this that many decisions are made that were never needed, and which perhaps made matters worse, and you have the causes of many of today’s problems: self-inflicted wounds.

Generosity

Generosity used to be the defining quality of kings and great lords. The word even began by meaning ‘noble’ or ‘of high birth’. Kings and princes were expected to be generous with gifts, favors, and attention. It was how they held sway over quarrelsome petty nobles without constant fighting. A mean-minded king quickly faced rebellion or found his nobles transferring their allegiance to a more generous neighbor.

Today’s organizations are very like medieval kingdoms. There are the same petty lordlings, each with his or her own group of followers; the same turf wars and quarrels about influence and status; the same need for each person in charge to be able to rely on the loyalty of followers who have their own concerns about making a living; and the same requirement for those at the top to practice generosity as a means of holding everything together.

I don’t simply mean generosity in giving material rewards—though many top executives could benefit from remembering that nobles of the past who enriched themselves at the expense of their followers usually ended up as victims of palace rebellion. Today’s leaders need to be generous with their time, their attention, their recognition of good work, their listening, and their help for everyone around them. The leader’s role is to serve her followers by making sure they have the resources and know-how they need to achieve the objectives laid before them. You cannot do that by sitting in your remote castle on the executive floor, counting your stock options.

Mercy

We all need mercy—often. We need to be forgiven for our mistakes and blemishes; to be given a second chance to get things right; to be saved from the consequences of our own, foolish actions. Mercy has always been seen as a quality of greatness.

Ordinary leaders delight in exercising power. Poor leaders go further, seeking to bolster their insecurity by appearing ruthless and punishing every fault. Only great leaders realize that to be merciful is the true proof of authority; and that forgiving people’s honest mistakes (and helping them do better next time) not only builds a stronger group, but cements their loyalty. Tough, unbending leaders inspire fear. Merciful leaders inspire love. Which is better for motivating people to give their all, even when you are not there to watch them?

Restraint, generosity, and mercy: leaders who possess all three have the raw material to become truly great. Of course, they still need know-how, experience, and some technical skills, but these are rarely in short supply. It is the inner aspect of great leadership that is misunderstood—and rare enough to be worth more than any pile of stock options. The sooner everyone comes to realize that, the sooner we will have organizations we can be proud of.

Technorati Tags: qualities of leadership, great leaders, restraint, generosity, mercy, true leadership, what makes a leader

Does competition bring out the best in people? Only sometimes.
 

Conventional management uses ideas from many sources, but the military and the sports arena are the origin of more widespread ideas (and downright myths) than anywhere else. Perhaps that’s because of the domination of business by men. The military was, until very recently, a male preserve; and sport has long been a staple of male conversation, since the days when it consisted of kicking an enemy’s head around a muddy field. Sport has influenced business as much as business has now come to dominate sport.

Competition is essential to sport, whether you play against your own past achievements or another team or individual. Take away the element of competition and football becomes group of hooligans in helmets knocking one another over. Golf becomes the stupidest way imaginable for putting a small, white ball into a series of holes in the grass—and why would you want to do that anyway? And tennis . . . why should one person hit a ball to one another over a piece of netting, only to have the other person hit the ball back again?

Business is not a game—though many people treat it as such

Business has a purpose, and supposedly that purpose is beneficial. Competition between products or corporations may be essential to prevent monopolistic exploitation in a free market (if only because we accept that organizations will not restrain themselves otherwise), but the assumption that putting people into competition against each other inevitably causes them to work harder or better is just that—an assumption.

Outside the sporting arena, most people find competition increases their anxiety and level of fear. Do people do their best work when they’re anxious, frightened and under stress? Do you? If you win, all is well, and you may forget the terror you felt. If you lose—well, who cares about losers? I’m not saying competition always has such negative effects, but it’s very far from being a universal spur to healthful actions.

There’s the problem. For every winner, there must be one or more losers. And before you say losing will spur them to greater efforts next time, think about it. Is that simply your experience—or do many “losers” resolve never to risk repeating their humiliation? Doesn’t it also cause alienation and wreck people’s self-esteem? And doesn’t it sometimes drive people to seek to win by any means available, including deceit and violence?

Is winning really all that matters?

Of course, competition in sport has another purpose: it’s what spectators come to watch. The best game, from the spectators’ point of view, is a close-run match where neither player or team seems capable of beating the other.

But if winning is all that counts, as we’re often told in the business world, the best game from the player’s point of view will always be the one where he or she dominates to such an extent the opponent never has a chance. Win fast with little or no effort. But who would go to watch? And without spectators and TV audiences, there would be no money. That’s why the organizers try so hard to produce matches which hang in the balance; even, in the case of some sports, to the extent of choreographing events and sending players into the game with suitable scripts.

Business isn’t—yet—a spectator sport (though Donald Trump and his imitators seems to be trying to make it one), so ease of winning ought not to be a problem. If you want to be a winner, pick on others who have no chance against you. And that’s exactly what happens, only it’s usually done by competing against superficially able ‘opponents’ whose ability has been hamstrung in some way: because you’re the boss; because you’ve made it clear you’ll destroy their careers if they make you look bad; or because you’ve rigged the game against them in advance.

Competition may not be the only way

Making people compete against one another for rewards, attention and praise has become traditional, but it’s not the only way to set standards or share prizes.

There used to be a time when awards were about showing outstanding skill or ability, regardless of other people, or winning and losing. When showing your skill and sportsmanship counted for more than coming out on top.

Thanks to the media’s obsession with turning everything into a no-holds-barred wrestling match, politicians have become die-hard competitors, judges preside over trials that closely resemble gladiatorial contests, and even literary awards are tricked out in the paraphernalia of competition, complete with squabbling judges and post-game slanging matches.

Competition spurs some people to higher effort. It convinces many others it’s not worth trying and being humiliated. It causes some to seek to win by honorable means, and others to cheat. So who rises to the top? The able and honorable competitor, or the cheater? Can you tell the difference before it’s too late? Does the rash of top executive prosecutions tell you anything about the results of today’s ‘winner takes all’ outlook?

Competition in business isn’t always the best way to encourage individual or team excellence, let alone the only one. Management myths like this contain an element of truth, somewhere, and only become dangerous when they’re treated as self-evident.

Technorati Tags: competition, motivation, incentives, winning, winner takes all, business ethics

Remind me again, what was so bad about hierarchies?
 

Here’s a question for you. What is the fundamental type of management structure which has been invented independently on many occasions in human history, all over the world?

As clues, I can tell you it has been continually refined through a process of trial and error up to modern times. The Egyptian Civil Service and the Roman Army organized themselves this way. It also seems to respond to something deep in the human psyche, which needs order and structure if it is to work effectively.

I’m talking about hierarchies of course. For an idea that seems so natural, and has been independently discovered so often, it’s surprising that the idea is in such disfavour now. “Hierarchical” is almost a swearword, unless we are speaking of databases.

What’s the problem?

Leaving aside the obvious point that any form of organization can be well or badly run, there’s a basic misperception about hierarchical organizations; one that has been encouraged by those who write about them without ever having worked in one. They assume that hierarchies are rigid structures in which every idea and every initiative has to go through endless, multiple layers before anything is decided. In most people’s minds, hierarchies are linked with Max Weber’s descriptions of bureaucracies, which even those who have never heard of Weber have absorbed by osmosis. (If you’re interested, Weber was describing an “ideal type” of organization, not something that actually existed).

In realty, a well-organized hierarchy is a sophisticated device for ensuring that work gets done at the most appropriate level. In most organization, work—sales inquiries, letters from the public, requests for assistance—comes in at or near the bottom. In a properly constructed hierarchy, issues which are entirely routine are dealt with at the lowest feasible level. Those which require more thought are passed up to the next level, and so on. In that way, only the most important and difficult issues ever get to the top of the organization. Conversely, those at the top can ask questions in the knowledge that somewhere below them is an expert, whom they may not even know, who will have an answer.

However, a hierarchy only works properly if two conditions are fulfilled:

• It has to be based on promotion by merit. Those above must have the confidence of those below, and should ideally have done the same or similar jobs earlier in their career.
• It has to be based on a long-serving workforce, capable of developing a common culture, and tackling problems in much the same way. These concepts, pioneered by the British Civil Service in the 19th century, were deliberately based on the way the Chinese ran things several millennia before.

Why are hierarchies out of favor?

Partly, it’s a confused idea that they are inappropriate to what we like to think of as a ‘democratic’ era. (Ask yourself how ‘democratic’ the average flat management structure is.) Partly they’re a victim of populist folklore about inefficient bureaucrats and the benefits of unleashing entrepreneurial independence . . . or something like that. There are other and more worrying reasons too:

1. If it ain’t broke, there’s no money to be made in fixing it. The Maoist permanent revolution required by the consultancy industry generates profits by developing expensive new structures which then fail, so they have to be replaced by even more expensive alternatives. Much of the money spent on organizational consultancy these days is to repair the damage caused by earlier reorganizations. Systems that people design for themselves generally work well and last a long time.
2. Hierarchies are an easy target for cost-savings. How often have you heard about “stripping out unnecessary layers of management”? Have you wondered why these layers of management were ever introduced in the first place, if they weren’t necessary? Have you ever tried to fight your way through a flat, non-hierarchic organization in search of someone who knew what they were doing and had the authority to decide something? Or have you ever been a manager in a flat structure overwhelmed with queries from subordinates? (If in doubt, human beings always refer problems upwards.)
3. Most importantly, attacks on hierarchies are a way of avoiding responsibility. If you are the leader of a twelve-person team, you’re responsible for their welfare and development—with power comes responsibility. But if you are one of several reporting points for matrix-managed, ad hoc ‘tiger teams’, you can afford to forget about that and concentrate on your career. Most organizations long ago stopped promoting people because they were good at managing others. The attack on hierarchies makes the promotion of the ruthless and the ambitious much easier and more acceptable.

Trying to abolish hierarchies is pointless: people will simply re-establish them unofficially. Every time you ask a more experienced colleague for advice, you’re creating a virtual hierarchy. If organizations realized this, and spent some of the effort that goes into destroying hierarchies to make them work better, organizations wouldn’t be in the mess they are.

Technorati Tags: organization, management, hierarchy, leadership, organizational structure

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