Note from Art…hey, these can’t all be deep! Have some fun with the idea and maybe we’ll start a revolution in leader selection in the process.
I cannot claim this as an original idea. I was re-reading Tom Kelley’s outstanding book, The Art of Innovation, based on his experience with design and innovation firm, IDEO, and I was particularly enamored by the part where Kelly describes the process of IDEO’s project teams picking their own leaders. The leaders serve at the discretion of the team.
Hmmm. Maybe, just maybe, the rest of us have been going about this all wrong for all of these years.
Thoughts on a New Model In Leader Selection:
It might take a leap of faith to delegate leader selection to the employees, but based on the nearly endless supply of horror stories that I hear from readers, workshop participants and MBA students, I don’t think we’ve cracked the code yet on consistently selecting quality and qualified leaders.
In attempting to identify the potential flaws in my “employees pick the leaders/inmates running the asylum” idea, it helps to think through my assumptions.
Why This Might Work:
- The proper alignment of incentives and compensation with goals and results serves as a check against selecting chuckleheads. If the members of a team or even an entire company have their livelihoods on the line, their own best interests are served by choosing the best-qualified individuals.
- This approach practically guarantees that the “role of the leader” will quickly orient towards a “True North,” that emphasizes serving the team, knocking down barriers, encouraging innovation, and finding and developing even more talent.
- This one may put me way out on a limb with some readers, but here I go. Most people are inherently good and I believe (perhaps naively so), that they would opt for ethical, capable leaders versus those that may be more charismatic but significantly less capable. (Yeah, even writing that makes me believe that I’m moving towards naïveté on this one. Nonetheless, I’m sticking to it.)
The Success Will Be in the Details:
There are a few kinks in this plan that I’ve not yet worked out, including how to keep leaders from constantly seeking a vote of confidence, how to boot out leaders that aren’t performing, who defines what it means to perform and how to make sure that strong values and positive ethics guide everyone along the way.
Long story short, I’m still working on my checks and balances.
Nonetheless, it would be nice to shift the burden to the people to ensure the best and brightest are in place and serving. After all, it works so well in Washington!
And If This Model Doesn’t Work…
OK, if this idea doesn’t hold water, I’m already working on adopting my Jeffersonian-model of leader selection. Jefferson was of the mind that anyone that wanted to hold political office should not be allowed, and that our elected officials should be drafted from the citizenry and serve for a limited period of time. Same here. If you want to lead, there’s clearly something wrong with you, and you are automatically barred.
What say you? Is it time for a new method of leader selection, and how can you help frame a new Leader’s Constitution and an Employee Bill of Rights?
Art,
I have to disagree on this one. You and I went through a period in time where we got a chance to see quite a few people get the opportunity to step up and assume leadership positions. Often times these people were the natural focal point of the team, for one reason or another, which you could possibly equate to the team selecting that individual. As you recall, we were not all that successful, watching a lot of those leaders fail. In some cases, there was a realization on his/her part that leadership was not as easy or as rewarding as their previous role. In other cases, those leaders, once removed from their past area of expertise, did not command the same level of respect from the team and could not keep from directly interfering with the work going on.
I do not believe it is natural for human beings to look past personal biases to the greater good and select leaders from within that will do a great job. It’s usually the “what’s in it for me” approach. That’s how it works with politics – nobody seems to want to choose people to lead who will make tough decisions for the greater good of the nation. What rank and file employee would choose someone who they knew would be a tough boss and would potentially fire them someday over someone that they knew would be easy to work with and would support their career goals, regardless of the long term impact to the business.
Selection of the chuckleheads will always prevail. Would I have ever picked some of my bosses? I highly doubt it at the time. I would have looked at my ability to relate to them and how well I would align with their approach, not at whether they would drive the business forward and potentially make things uncomfortable for me in the process. It’s sad too, because good or bad, I’ve always learned something from my bosses, even the ones that I didn’t like all that much.
One final thought (yes, I bet you never thought you’d see this much text from me at one time!) – I think that leaders chosen from within suffer at times from not having been selected by upper management. Senior managers are not always well respected by everyone, but you could certainly argue that someone chosen to lead by a well respected management team gains a certain amount of credibility, just by having the sponsorship and backing of that leadership team.
Dave, I’m honored to have motivated you to write more than I’ve ever seen from you in a decade! Well written and as usual, remarkably logical! Don’t worry, I haven’t lost my mind…just pushing over to the lighter side on a Friday. I am fascinated by IDEO experience with this for project teams. Thanks again for adding your thoughts! -Art
Are we trying to develop leaders or are we trying to develop employees? Do we want to encourage people to step out of their comfort zone and take charge and be leaders or do we want to let them grow in what interests them and help them get better at it?
I could see how this model might work in very small groups with small projects coming and going all the time. This could be a very motivating tool to encourage individuals in a small group to take leadership position and to evaluate them based on success of each particular project as long as all these individuals are equally driven to improve their leadership skills. But then again how is the evaluation done if there is not one individual on the top evaluating the rest of the group?
This would work in a soccer team where the team chooses a captain to guide them during the game, but there will always be a manager and an owner who would essentially dictate what the captain should do.
Clearly, my wry sense of humor is failing here. See also my other 450 posts.
By the way, Ali, you raise some good questions and offer no answers. My answers: yes and yes!
Looking at an org chart, we see where the managers are supposed to be. We know that an organization has an informal structure as well, but we don’t chart it, or formalize it, because it is fluid and temporary. Leaders arise in and across this informal structure. This leadership is structured as a network of threads that come to constitute a mesh. This mesh is going to exist and persist and do the leading no matter what the formal structure of the organization and it’s managers do.
Don’t worry about that mesh. It takes care of itself. It even persists after the managers have laid it off. These leaders never see compensation like managers do. These leaders never get credit. These leaders might get fired for leading. Leaders get things done.
And, don’t worry about managers being leaders, because no they are not leaders. In twenty plus years, the only leader I encountered at work that I’d follow was a Scrum master, and he wasn’t my boss or in my line management. But, I work in startups where people are expected to be self managed–a trap really, because you won’t be able to work in a managed organization.
When you talk about replacing leaders, why are you not leading your leaders? Why are you insisting on leaders being managed as if they were managers, instead of leaders?
Is it that managers don’t respect themselves as managers, so they insist that they be people they respect more, leaders, and then honor leaders, because they, the managers have made themselves leaders, but then disrespect themselves again and insist that managers manage leaders. Recursion is so much fun, except for the invariants.
Or, is it simpler than that, manager fear leaders.
You never see a manager in the movies. Yeah, I know “Glendary Rose.” You see the leader. Jealousy.
Huh? David, that’s quite a ramble.
So if leadership is influence, look at who’s influencing the most people the way you want them influenced and make them the recognized leader. Do you think that may work? Or we could just pick straws and the shortest one leads.
Thanks for a fun post Art.
Blessings,
Dave
Dave, your idea may have legs! Thanks for reading and recognizing my slightly off-balance attempt to have fun. -Art
Happy Friday! Good topic as I can see from the feedback. Throwing in my two cents I have seen a top salesman get “rewarded” with a management position (his own shop) and fail at it so miserably that he actually got sick and died. It was no secret in the organization what his cause of death was – he suffocated under the pressure of doing something he wasn’t born to do and that was to sell. Need I say more?
Oh yeah! What is the average age of the IDEO employee? There is a new generation out there in the workforce that are, shall I say, different? They have different needs and expectations and are more comfortable working in an independent environment, but are jazzed to work with a team within their own generation. Just curious!
I have to agree with some of your readers on this one. I don’t think that the current environment in management would go along with the quality management approach on steroids. Still I think it can work with a team that is dedicated to the success of a business. The problem relates to most managers not wanting to give up the reins to others they see as subordinates. Being a manager that works as a facilitator takes special talent, that most managers just don’t have. Fridays are for dreaming write on my friend.
Pat and Bob, thanks for adding your much appreciated perspectives! Bob, it appears that I’m taking a beat-down on my hare-brained scheme here! Glad that I could stimulate some thinking though.
Pat, I’ve not seen any statistics on the average age at IDEO. The videos that I’ve watched of them (IDEO on Nightline “The Deep Dive”) shows a young culture filled with many creative designers and engineers. As for the millennial generation, I’ve written extensively on that in this blog and for other sites/publications. Check out my article for Communication World Bulletin, “Leadership and the Millennials.” http://www.iabc.com/cwb/archive/2009/0509/Petty.htm
Thanks to both of you and everyone else for joining in here. -Art
Hi Art,
I was thinking about how this type of rotating leadership role would pertain to my engineering design group and I think it would go over really well with different engineers having different strengths and being able to lead on jobs that are more applicable to their specific skill sets. I am wondering if this style could still work within a group like mine (electrical airfield lighting design) in an industry that relies so heavily on technical ability and reputation to win work. Wouldnt you always want your senior most leadership to be the face of leadership even though they might not be doing the management in house? Could you still have rotating leadership inside the company while showing your senior leader as the head of the group to win the work and have this leadership model still work?
thanks,
Joe
Joe, I love the application of this concept to your environment. In my experience, technical and creative groups have used these non-traditional techniques very effectively. I suppose there are a number of ways to approach the issue…many environment/situation specific. It may be Cisco that uses a version of this approach, and you might lead one initiative and one team, you are more than likely a participant on another. The customer interface issue is a sensitive one…I would have to understand your environment a bit better to comment. Thanks so much for reading and offering your ideas and questions. -Art