At Least 3 Reasons We’re Still Raving About Lousy Leaders
Filed under: Leadership, Management Innovation, Performance, Surviving Lousy Leaders, Values
Note from Art: As I approach my 500th post here at Management Excellence in the next few weeks (that’s in the neighborhood of half-a-million words on management and leadership) my writing mood is shifting to one of, “let’s get this leadership thing right people.” The blueprint for effective leadership is not carefully guarded like the secret formula to Coca Cola. It’s on display for all of us to see and to apply. Why then are there so many exceptions? Read on for my wildly speculative and hopefully provocative thoughts.
Spend any amount of time reading or engaging with the many remarkable individuals that write, speak, teach and coach leaders, and you’re to be excused if you quickly conclude that we’re all in violent agreement with each other.
The principles behind what a reasonable person would agree represents effective leadership are practically universal truths that support an unarguable argument.
I’ll wager a month’s worth of coffee that if you asked everyone that you know to generate a list on what makes an effective leader, the output would be nearly identical. While preferences in styles might vary, (and there would certainly be differences across cultures,) core attributes and behaviors generally remain constant. The only differences will likely be due to memory lapses such as, “Oh, I forgot that one, but you’re right,” versus true differences of opinion.
So if this construct of an effective leader is so readily apparent, why is there a nearly endless supply of disgruntled workers capable of describing lousy leader horror stories to anyone that will listen? Importantly, why doesn’t this intuitive and common understanding of what an effective leader acts like manifest itself with more frequency in our workplaces?
3 Reasons Why We’re Still Raving About Lousy Leaders:
1. As humans and workers, perhaps we’re happy being miserable. While I would be saddened to adopt this viewpoint, it’s easy to see that “the boss” gives us something to work for and rail against and his/her actions and utterances serve as a source of bonding with peers.
Is it possible that we could work for someone with the presence of Washington or the authenticity of Lincoln or Gandhi and be unhappy? You bet! OK, that’s a bit sad, but there’s at least a kernel of truth in there somewhere.
Possible conclusion: we need to accept our own propensity to enjoy our misery. While it’s not as bad as being chased down by a sabre tooth tiger or consumed by the last remaining group of cannibals on the planet, the boss being a jerk gives us something to occupy our minds and mouths.
2. Humans are inherently preoccupied with their own survival and leading effectively requires one to sublimate that core drive. Hmmmm. Some good psychobabble here, but it’s worth thinking about. Good campfire fodder when the talk on “are we alone in the universe” runs out.
Possible conclusion: We’re screwed and all of this noble talk is wasting time that could be better spent lamenting our plight and beefing about the boss.
3. Perhaps the predominant management system in use in most of society is horribly flawed in terms of values, motivations, expectations and enabling structures. OK, I’m warming to this more than the “evil” or “predominantly miserable” theories expressed earlier.
Maybe, just maybe, we’ve not licked this management thing yet. Deming did us a great service in crying B.S. on the Deadly Diseases that he viewed in most organizations. And while his 1980’s view to the purity of the models adopted by Japanese companies may be a bit naïve, listen to the Great Doctor describe these 5 and tell me if they’re fixed in your organization yet. At least a cup of coffee that the real answer is no.
Possible conclusion: Fix the flipping management system. It’s time to move beyond the practices of the industrial revolution and build success, effective leadership and enabling systems into our approach. Oh yeah, and that values part is the foundation to build upon!
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I’ll opt for the fact that it’s time to move management forward and build the new systems around the emerging realities. If innovation, creativity, speed, ability to execute and adaptability are all table-stakes attributes of the new winning organization, then it’s time to move management forward and create systems that breed leaders at all levels and for all types of situations. Note to top leaders: ignore the need to breed and build people that will help you navigate this strange, fast and foreign new world at your own peril. It starts with you at the top creating the right foundation. And hint: the foundation is built upon meaningful, actionable values.
Your thoughts?
A Follow-Up to My “Evil Leaders” post: Your Firm’s Values Have No Teeth
Filed under: Crisis Leadership, Decision-Making, Leadership, Leading Change, Values
My recent post, “Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish in Some Organizations” struck a chord or at least a nerve for many, as the many insightful comments quickly outstripped the value of the original post. Thanks to all that jumped in and shared on this topic.
On the heels of what turned out to be a deluge of good thoughts on why some leaders and some people get away with less than agreeable (to the rest of us) behaviors in the workplace, I keep coming back to the topic of Values as a core issue.
Some people watch birds and some watch people, and in one of my odd quirks, I watch values. Rather, I have made it a habit to ask people about their firm’s values and the role that those values play in defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior inside organizations.
The results of my informal polling as well as my formal surveying (as part of culture assessments) indicates that for many organizations, values exist as nice statements in a frame with little meaning or use in day-to-day business dealings. Based on my own travels, firms where values are both clear and they are connected in people’s minds to acceptable and unacceptable forms of behavior are the minority.
In a fascinating article on the aberrant cultures in many law firms (please withhold your chuckles), author David Maister offers the following regarding values:
“The single biggest source of trust in an organization occurs when everyone can be depended upon to act in accordance with a commonly held, strictly observed set of principles. Examples of such principles are “Our clients’ interests always come first; if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow” and “We have no room for those who put their personal interests ahead of the interests of the firm and its clients.” (Both of these, by the way, are from Goldman Sachs.)
It is important to note that commercial benefits do not come simply from believing in or encouraging these principles but from actually achieving an organization where partner behavior is always consistent with them. When this is the case, less time is wasted in internal negotiations and posturing, strategies are implemented, and true teamwork results.”
And the payoff:
“Law firms appear unable to achieve this level of ideological consistency. They will buy into principles—firms can have very high ideals as long as they remain ideals—but they have difficulty with the concept of enforcement. Firms are seemingly willing to adopt strategies and statements of values and mission, but are usually unwilling to specify what the penalty would be for noncompliance. Not surprisingly, that rarely results in effective implementation.”
Mr. Maister sums up very eloquently the contradiction between having principles and enforcing principles in law firms. Unfortunately, this is the same contradiction that exists in many and perhaps most organizations. The values have no teeth.
Can We Change?
A good friend of mine read the “Evil Leaders” post the other day and offered the depressing comment that sounded something like this: “Doesn’t it ever bother you that you write and teach all of these good things about leadership and values and at the end of the day, none of it makes a difference and human nature will still allow the dysfunctional or evil leaders to flourish.”
If this were an audio blog, the sound you hear would be a man screaming.
While I’ll grudgingly allow that changing human nature may be outside of scope, I have complete faith that the right behaviors can be encouraged and the wrong behaviors discouraged by putting teeth into a firm’s values. Of course, first, someone has to send the firm’s leaders the memos that values count.
One of my readers and a good colleague from a former life is responsible for my values-obsession. We taught a workshop to our first-time supervisors and leaders on how to leverage the values as a powerful leadership tool. It was fascinating to watch the lights come on as these early-career leaders understood the power of values in dealing with topics like recruiting, managing conflict, encouraging development and driving innovation.
If just one of those leaders from that first group carries that philosophy forward to her future teams and organizations, and ensures that the values have meaning and teeth, we will have made a difference.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
In case you are like my friend and just a bit cynical on our ability to change, consider the power of the still-forming backlash to the excesses and abuses of leadership and the complete lack of values and character that have combined to create the mess that we all find ourselves swimming in today. My money is on a surge in the value of Values.
What about you? Without looking at the frame on the wall in the conference room, what are your firm’s values? When was the last time you actually thought about actively applying those values to your tough decisions?
It’s not too late to start.
Values in Action-Helping Your Son or Daughter Choose a College
For anyone who has lived through the process of supporting their son or daughter in the search for a college, it is a truly exciting, perplexing and tiring endeavor. It’s also an opportunity to watch values in action at the various institutions as well as with your own child as they wrestle with what is to them a monumental choice.
First, a word about my son. I have no qualms highlighting my parental pride as I’ve watched him arm-wrestle peer pressure to the ground during this process. Many of his friends are escaping across state lines to “Party U” and their exuberance over staying together and their encouragement for him to join the herd has reached the point where it now annoys him.
This is a great test of character and while he has excellent grades and good test scores and has some options, he is looking at this decision from a very mature perspective. Oh, and just to add some real-world context for his decision, like most of us, he faces some parameters that complicate the decision-making process.
The Parameters:
- In the absence of a clear-cut academic or professional goal, we will support him for in-state tuition, or he can take it upon himself to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition. He is also welcome to move out of state, work for a year and gain residency before starting college.
- If he chooses to complete his general education requirements at the community college, and if he has a clear academic and professional goal at the end of two years, we will support him for the institution of his choice.
- He must work during vacations to contribute to his books and living expenses.
- Four years only and Mom and Dad are done.
He’s in the process of working through the choices, and is considering two very different institutions and the community college route. We are trying hard to not hinder or complicate the process for him. If asked, we offer our thoughts, mostly in the form of questions. We’ve also suggested various frameworks for decision-making, but we are trying hard to not influence his choice. I know what I would do given the opportunity, but the extra 30 years of life experience tends to help simplify the choices. To an 18 hear-old, it seems like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Stay tuned.
The Values and Performance Commitment of the Institutions:
I have a hard time not letting my sensitivity to values and my quest for performance excellence interfere with my opinion about different academic institutions. In the case of universities, I believe that you learn a lot by how the organizations conduct themselves during student open house events.
The formula is pretty much the same everywhere you go. The visiting parents and prospective students meet in a big auditorium, watch a video or two, listen to the Director of Admissions and hear from a panel of over-achieving students. After a general session, you break out into a College Fair, take a campus tour that ends up with a visit to a typical dorm room (yikes!).
At noon, you grab a quick lunch and then hustle across campus to hear from the academic area that your son or daughter is most interested in. You ask questions, walk around a bit more, and cap off the visit by buying a t-shirt at the bookstore and then embarking on the long trip home.
The formula is OK, and you can learn a lot if you pay attention, ask questions and immerse yourself in the experience. If your son or daughter has strong interests in a particular area of study, these are great opportunities to compare schools. However, for the undecided masses, after you do this three or four times, they all tend to blend together.
Finding Gold in the Corn:
While all of the institutions that we’ve looked at have some great positives to offer, one stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Surprisingly (to me), it is Western Illinois University. This relatively small (by state school standards) institution in the middle of who knows where, IL, definitely has it going on.
Attend an open house at WIU, and you’ll meet and hear from University President, Al Goldfarb and the top executives. Most other organizations roll out the Director of Admissions, but at WIU, the entire management team thinks enough of you to attend, talk and mingle. Mr. Goldfarb stresses values, treats and talks to the students and parents like they are customers and goes so far to offer his personal e-mail address and an invitation to use it.
While one might be able to dismiss the President’s good sounding rhetoric, as you meet and talk with the executives of the institution, you hear the same messages about values and personal care and students as customers over and over again. The cynic in me thinks, “Hmmm, OK, Al runs a tight ship and has his managers singing out of the same song book.”
Start meeting with the instructors and administrators, and the same encouraging messages come through. People talk like they believe this stuff.
Fast forward a few months and bump into a group of purple-clad people in the airport and introduce yourself to realize that you are meeting Al’s entire management group on their way to California. Try as I might to penetrate their P.R. message defense, I can’t. These people are genuine in how they view the world. They are like the old Avis commercial…”They Try Harder,” because they have to.
Our oldest son decided to attend WIU a few years ago, and as we mingled in a room of hundreds at the new student orientation session the Summer before he started I was shocked when one of the university employees walked up to me, looked at my name badge and said, “Mr. Petty, you must be “son’s” father.”
It turns out this was his counselor. Talk about an impression. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe that I went through four years at a remarkable institution, the University of Illinois, and never met a counselor, much less someone that knew my Dad’s name.
At every turn, we’ve been impressed with this lesser known school in the cornfields of Macomb, IL. The other very good institutions just seem to fail in comparison. The passion, the customer-focus and the strong sense of values-based management come through loud and clear at WIU and are missing in the presentations of the other programs. At WIU, you begin to establish context for the people behind the bricks and mortar and at least for a parent, this is palpable.
Our youngest son may or may not attend WIU, the choice is his, but I do know a group of people focused on performance excellence when I see it. Kudos to the team at Western Illinois University. He could do much, much worse.
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