The great management thinker and philosopher Russell ackoff died in October, a great loss to alternatives in management thinking. As a systems thinker, he regarded the detail of current management planning as a crisis, and wrote extensively about the flaws in this. Highlighting the risk aversion that is trained into most managers, he regularly proposed a new direction of management measurement - checking up on what people failed tro do as well as what people failed in doing. As he put it: "Managers cannot learn from doing things right, only from doing them wrong".
See more Ackoff at the Ackoff collaboratory (blog), on Mission statements, on systems thinking and an obituary.
Sunday 6 December 2009
Friday 13 November 2009
Servant Leadership
The term "servant leadership" was coined by Robert Greenleaf in 1970 (see The Power of Servant Leadership), but is based on ancient philosophies of leadership. After the economic collapse following the greed for growth era, perhaps servant leadership is the new style required to re-build businesses and re-build confidence in leaders.
Fons Trompenaars supported this idea in a recent article in people People Management (May 2009). Greenleaf believed that great leaders are motivated by the desire to serve others and see the served grow as people. Trompenaars suggests that this is a strength that is even more in demand in the current challenging times - a commitment to deliver a vision with the knowledge that their actions are always guided by the desire to serve others. He has extended the concept to handling cross-cultural challenges in his book Servant Leadership Across Cultures, contrasting styles of servant leadership in the east and west.
Servant leadership proposes a philosophy of management which is in sharp contrast to the mainstream leadership model based on the exercise and retention of power. But Trompenaars points out that many of the companies in Fortune’s “Best Companies to Work For” follow servant-leadership principles and have links to the Greenleaf Centre for Servant Leadership. Larry Spears, former president of the Center for Servant-Leadership, outlined the 10 characteristics of a servant leader as:
While Greenleaf is credited with starting this work in the 20th century, the earliest word on the subject may belong to Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching:
Fons Trompenaars supported this idea in a recent article in people People Management (May 2009). Greenleaf believed that great leaders are motivated by the desire to serve others and see the served grow as people. Trompenaars suggests that this is a strength that is even more in demand in the current challenging times - a commitment to deliver a vision with the knowledge that their actions are always guided by the desire to serve others. He has extended the concept to handling cross-cultural challenges in his book Servant Leadership Across Cultures, contrasting styles of servant leadership in the east and west.
Servant leadership proposes a philosophy of management which is in sharp contrast to the mainstream leadership model based on the exercise and retention of power. But Trompenaars points out that many of the companies in Fortune’s “Best Companies to Work For” follow servant-leadership principles and have links to the Greenleaf Centre for Servant Leadership. Larry Spears, former president of the Center for Servant-Leadership, outlined the 10 characteristics of a servant leader as:
1 Listening - seeks to identify the will of a group in what is being said and what is not being said.
2 Empathy - seeks to understand others, accepting everyone's unique spirit and good intentions. Accepts the person while seeking to correct behaviour or performance.
3 Healing - applies the power to heal self and others, creating wholeness, transformation and integration.
4 Awareness - takes a holistic view of self and situations to increase awareness. Is comfortable with the disturbances that increased awareness brings.
5 Persuasion - seeks to form consensus and convince others rather than using a position of authority to coerce compliance.
6 Conceptualisation - demonstrates the ability to look beyond the operational realities to a concept of the organisation that defines a vision.
7 Foresight - uses a broad range of past experience and intuition to plot the likely outcome of a situation.
8 Stewardship - acts as if authority is only given to hold the current position on trust on behalf of someone else.
9 Commitment to the growth of people - take personal responsibility for the growth of each individual within the organisation.
10 Building community - seeks to build a community among those who work within the organisation.
While Greenleaf is credited with starting this work in the 20th century, the earliest word on the subject may belong to Lao Tzu in Tao Te Ching:
A leader is best
When people are hardly aware of his existence,
Not so good when people praise his government,
Less good when people stand in fear,
Worst, when people are contemptuous.
Fail to honour people, and they will fail to honour you.
But of a good leader, who speaks little,
When his task is accomplished, his work is done!
The people say, “We did it ourselves”
Sunday 18 October 2009
A Systems Perspective of Targets
Came across an interesting perspective on targets in "The Systems Thinking Review" (web archive link). While most management thinking stresses the importance of setting goals and targets to motivate performance, in "a tool too far: a systems perspective of targets" (web archive link), the authors highlight some of the problems of target-driven cultures. There are numerous example:
These life and death situations present some real callenges to mainstream thinking about performance management. The authors highlight that many of these problems are caused by centrally set targets, which have little connection with the business action at the front line. The further the centre from the operation, the worse the problem seems to be, particularly when data is aggregated and averaged to produce management reports that drive new targets. This statistical process smooths out all the variations in performance and operational difficulties that make targets difficult or impossible to achieve.
The authors highlight the challenge that then arises for managers under this measurement regime - the options are (a) cheat, (b) tell the truth or (c) chase the target but do the wrong thing. Option (a) may deliver what the customer wants, but only works for as long as the manager doesn't get caught. Money and reputation are linked to target attainment, so option (b) is eventually career-limiting. Which leaves (c), so organisations are driven to do the wrong thing in order to meet an irrelevent target set externally.
So, can this be changed? It can be quite difficult to move an organisation away from a target-driven culture, as targets give the illusion of control. If a specific target is set out as a performance improvement, and subsequently achieved, this appears to be strong management, leading the organisational improvement. However, the deleterious impact on other services is skipped over in focusing on this single target.
So the change may be difficult, but it is possible. Locally set targets appear to motivate performance improvements, particularly when there is a connection between a target, an individual's behaviour in attaining the taget and the connection with some organisational or personal value. This simply needs a re-establishment of trust between local managers and the organisational centre - the centre sets direction and local managers set targets to motivate local performance.
This suggests loss of control from the centre, but local empowerment may achieve the required performance where central targets often fail. This requires a brave decision for the executive at the centre, but ultimately leads to greater achievement.
Update (Dec-2014): The Systems Thinking Review website seems to have disappeared - links moved to point to a snapshot archived by the web archive project.
- NHS targets 'may have led to 1,200 deaths' in Mid-Staffordshire
- Hospital chairman quits over dangerous targets
These life and death situations present some real callenges to mainstream thinking about performance management. The authors highlight that many of these problems are caused by centrally set targets, which have little connection with the business action at the front line. The further the centre from the operation, the worse the problem seems to be, particularly when data is aggregated and averaged to produce management reports that drive new targets. This statistical process smooths out all the variations in performance and operational difficulties that make targets difficult or impossible to achieve.
The authors highlight the challenge that then arises for managers under this measurement regime - the options are (a) cheat, (b) tell the truth or (c) chase the target but do the wrong thing. Option (a) may deliver what the customer wants, but only works for as long as the manager doesn't get caught. Money and reputation are linked to target attainment, so option (b) is eventually career-limiting. Which leaves (c), so organisations are driven to do the wrong thing in order to meet an irrelevent target set externally.
So, can this be changed? It can be quite difficult to move an organisation away from a target-driven culture, as targets give the illusion of control. If a specific target is set out as a performance improvement, and subsequently achieved, this appears to be strong management, leading the organisational improvement. However, the deleterious impact on other services is skipped over in focusing on this single target.
So the change may be difficult, but it is possible. Locally set targets appear to motivate performance improvements, particularly when there is a connection between a target, an individual's behaviour in attaining the taget and the connection with some organisational or personal value. This simply needs a re-establishment of trust between local managers and the organisational centre - the centre sets direction and local managers set targets to motivate local performance.
This suggests loss of control from the centre, but local empowerment may achieve the required performance where central targets often fail. This requires a brave decision for the executive at the centre, but ultimately leads to greater achievement.
Update (Dec-2014): The Systems Thinking Review website seems to have disappeared - links moved to point to a snapshot archived by the web archive project.
Thursday 24 September 2009
The Secret of Good Leadership
With book shelves overloaded with volumes on leadership, it's not often I come across an article that seems worth adding to the existing body of knowledge. This is the exception, a report from the FT on Ronald Heifetz' course on leadership (registration needed at FT site) at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Heifetz separates leadership from authoritarian instruction, and leads a course that challenges students to tackle the chaos and confusion that may result from high-stress problem solving situations. He creates an environment in the classroom which mimics this, and pushes the students to deliver in an unstructured setting. The drop-out rate is high, but the successes rise to greater achievements.
Similar to action learning definitions (of puzzles and problems), he differentiates between two types of management problem - technical challenges (for which there is a known solution that must be recognised) and adaptive challenges (in which both the problem and the solution may not be clear). During adacptive challenges, organisations experience long periods of disequilibrium, and it is the leader's challenge to control the pace of this while ensuring that momentum continues in face of the psychological needs for stability.
Heifetz offers this teaching as a counter-balance to the notion of charismatic leadership, particularly when this connection with a single vision prevents people and organisations from tackling the real problem they face.
Heifetz separates leadership from authoritarian instruction, and leads a course that challenges students to tackle the chaos and confusion that may result from high-stress problem solving situations. He creates an environment in the classroom which mimics this, and pushes the students to deliver in an unstructured setting. The drop-out rate is high, but the successes rise to greater achievements.
Similar to action learning definitions (of puzzles and problems), he differentiates between two types of management problem - technical challenges (for which there is a known solution that must be recognised) and adaptive challenges (in which both the problem and the solution may not be clear). During adacptive challenges, organisations experience long periods of disequilibrium, and it is the leader's challenge to control the pace of this while ensuring that momentum continues in face of the psychological needs for stability.
Heifetz offers this teaching as a counter-balance to the notion of charismatic leadership, particularly when this connection with a single vision prevents people and organisations from tackling the real problem they face.
Friday 24 July 2009
Is there a way to lead large IT projects to success?
Catching up on some of my favourite blogs, I noticed on The Philosophy and Life blog that Mark is (or was) a closet IT journalist with some interesting views about the nature of current IT projects. Echoing a view from the dark side of IT, there are questions about belief (more familiar territory for Mark) - do the sellers and clients really believe in the potential success of huge IT projects?
While these stories are not limited to one sector, there does seem to be an inevitable process that runs with IT projects: the vendors send in the sales people who over-promise on capabilities, the client counters with the procurement department who drive down the price and choose the cheapest solution, and then both parties appoint specialists to manage the project, none of whom will ever (or have ever) run the operation. Strangely, although these parties are fighting a cost battle to achieve their own aims, they all have a shared goal of initiating the project.
Once the project is started, with over-optimistic estimates of delivery and under-estimated costs, the problems spiral, requiring more time and money to complete the work. And once a huge investment has been made, it is a brave manager who pulls he plug and admits the project cannot deliver. So more money is thrown at the problem. Is there a better way?
Stephen Jenner has suggested some means to control projects in his book (Realising Benefits from Government ICT Investment: a Fools Errand?), and the time for control is at the start. Projects need to be set out with a realistic view of the benefits that will be delivered and a strong view of the means for controlling the project. This requires partnership between the business owners and project owners. Instead of a battle at checkpoint meetings where the project attempts to justify its costs, a negotiation between project team seeking costs and business taking responsibility for operational delivery of value. It's not easy, but it can be achieved.
While these stories are not limited to one sector, there does seem to be an inevitable process that runs with IT projects: the vendors send in the sales people who over-promise on capabilities, the client counters with the procurement department who drive down the price and choose the cheapest solution, and then both parties appoint specialists to manage the project, none of whom will ever (or have ever) run the operation. Strangely, although these parties are fighting a cost battle to achieve their own aims, they all have a shared goal of initiating the project.
Once the project is started, with over-optimistic estimates of delivery and under-estimated costs, the problems spiral, requiring more time and money to complete the work. And once a huge investment has been made, it is a brave manager who pulls he plug and admits the project cannot deliver. So more money is thrown at the problem. Is there a better way?
Stephen Jenner has suggested some means to control projects in his book (Realising Benefits from Government ICT Investment: a Fools Errand?), and the time for control is at the start. Projects need to be set out with a realistic view of the benefits that will be delivered and a strong view of the means for controlling the project. This requires partnership between the business owners and project owners. Instead of a battle at checkpoint meetings where the project attempts to justify its costs, a negotiation between project team seeking costs and business taking responsibility for operational delivery of value. It's not easy, but it can be achieved.
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