A colleague once said of his rancorous department, “these people can’t be led.” Complex governance and diffuse decision making had crossed the line to create a Complex Legislative Organization (CLO). No one disagrees that appropriate process is important to an organization’s results, but at a certain point this wholly internal affair becomes counter-productive. Managing around this threshold is increasingly challenging in change and crisis. [Read more...]
CLS and Synthetic Crises
November 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
A smoothly-running EOC is a work of art. (Just finished a gig as an observer at UCSD’s annual disaster exercise where one of the world’s best – Phillip Van Saun – ran the show). This EOC turned a sprawling University into a synthetic organization for a few hours.)
Jim Collins said that “social sector leaders need both executive skills, the exercise of direct power, and legislative skills, the ability to influence people through motivation and persuasion—the latter being more nuanced and more difficult to learn.” Change and crisis automatically push the organization from legislative leadership back toward the executive leadership pole of the continuum. [Read more...]
Is agile University an oxymoron?
October 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Executive leadership morphs toward legislative leadership as complex governance and diffuse decision making emerge, according to Jim Collins. Many organizations plod along with some effectiveness as homes for legislative leadership – the ultimate example may be the U.S. Senate or a Quaker college where essentially any individual can stop the show. [Read more...]
A disaster of manners + crisis leadership
October 8, 2010 By 2 Comments
The ease and speed with which an organization can tank is staggering. Equally astounding is the eventual realization of how important cultural triggers work to make it happen. A recent NYT article sets the stage for Sam Zell’s acquisition of The Tribune Company: [Read more...]
That fatal 1/3 of a second – leadership and learned helplessness
October 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The rather intriguing idea that helplessness can be learned seemed to fit some familiar situations. Courses addressing learned helplessness have been available to our medical students for a while here where we teach. Briefly learned helplessness is: [Read more...]
The M-Spot: 1 soldier or 20 schools?
October 2, 2010 By 3 Comments
We should all be looking for the “M-spot” to answer the perpetual question of how much mitigation is enough? Whether managing change or crisis we should hope to mitigate vulnerabilty. Some not-so-scientific thoughts follow… [Read more...]
Measuring, making meaning and matchsticks
September 30, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Using an unusual method for research on at-risk populations in a South American barrio, a friend watched as community members filed forward and placed individual matchsticks in specific areas of the map, thus creating a population density chart for her evaluation project. As one individual stepped up he broke the matchstick in half, said “this is me”, placed it on the map, and then walked away. Apparently all gathered around the table collectively held their breath – then a shared sigh passed through the room.
3 dynamics for high AMPerage leadership
September 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Adaptive management paradigms (AMPs!) helped me think about the different toolkits needed for local and global management practice. The two contexts seem to be different, requiring different emphases. [Read more...]
The Prime Capacitor: management
September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
If a capacitor is an electrical device characterized by its capacity to store an electric charge, maybe we could imagine “community capacitors”?
Community capacitor: anything that generates “common ground”; any community/neighborhood function, entity, organization or agency that creates capacity before and provides resources during a community crisis. Capacitors are assets that generally or specifically mitigate areas of vulnerability. All capacitors lead to common ground and create social capital.
Is crisis management a form of social capital?
September 27, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Peter Drucker said management is making knowledge effective, and I like to add “through relationships”. One definition of Social Capital is “anything that facilitates individual or collective action, generated by networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust, and social norms.” There’s overlap here somehow. Management creates and integrates social capital, and takes on its property of increasing with use – it compounds itself. [Read more...]
3 steps to sustainability loops: the Jesuits
September 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Why are we intrigued by the Jesuits?
The Jesuits have thrived for nearly 500 years. Surely there is a sustainability loop here somewhere. [Read more...]
5 steps to sustainability loops: Simeon’s Trust
September 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Some management history…
While at Cambridge University several generations ago, I researched an historical management case study focused on sustainable organizations. An innovative clergyman, Charles Simeon, created a 5-step cycle that fixed a minority group in English ecclesiastical society “to the remotest ages” through a strategy that generated a balancing loop, which offset an existing reinforcing loop. Reinforcing loops are cycles that build momentum each time a loop is completed. They can work like virtuous circles or like death spirals. (The former are preferable, btw.) To counter a death spiral, you need a balancing loop. (But if it’s an airplane were talking about, better use the parachute.) [Read more...]
Thumper’s Law and leadership
September 8, 2010 By 2 Comments
Bob Sutton picked up on a pertinent subject once again in bad is stronger than good. I was initially most amazed by the need for five times as many affirmations as negatives in a marriage or romantic relationship. I confess to being a grumpy husband at times. John Gottman wrote some good books and in at least one, demonstrated that he could predict marital success just by listening to whether spouses despised each other in a brief, video-taped record of a marriage interaction.
The most effective organization (in crisis)
September 8, 2010 By 4 Comments
No, it doesn’t show up in the Fortune 500 or any other business list de jour. Peter Drucker thought the Salvation Army got the nod. At one point, the world’s largest nonprofit (supplanted by the United Way when they apparently started counting their branches differently), this group brings an entirely new dimension to effectiveness and crisis management.
When the sailors command the admirals: constituency decision making
September 7, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Peter Drucker said that constituencies were different in business than in politics. Essentially they were single issue groups who did not always seek to make their company or organization successful, profitable or effective. (Sometimes whistleblowers start out this way and that’s not a bad thing. Why they operate and where they end up is the true test.)
Part Deux: true emperors should always be naked … and hang out with circles of loving detractors
September 7, 2010 By 1 Comment
Observers of celebrities can move from natural skepticism to trust and followership. The celebrity leads through an assumed and artificial credibility. Observers become followers by buying into this credibility, essentially trusting a truth created and amplified by technology and made meaningful by an evolving brand, (whether well-managed or not), as the following crowd grows and sometimes even goes viral.
True emperors should always be naked …
September 6, 2010 By 2 Comments
Leaders who metaphorically wear royal robes and query their followers might find that they were less clothed than they thought.
As soon as enough people give you enough compliments and you’re wielding more power than you’ve ever had in your life, it’s not that you become…arrogant…or become rude to people, but you get a false sense of your own importance and what you’ve accomplished. You actually think you’ve altered the course of history. Leonard0 DiCaprio[1]
Every Millennial leader needs a crisis
September 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment
If you want to lead you need a transformative crisis. This from Bill George and Andrew Maclean who write[1] about transformative leadership passages. (By the way, the lack of one may contribute to what holds many “gap leaders” in the nonperformance zone. They simply never had the tears or scars required to move on.)
But the price is high.
Your path to PORPs
August 11, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Actually, this is not about leaping sea creatures at Sea World, but moves toward deeper waters…
PORPS teach us lessons about leadership and sustaining organizations.
An uncommon education?
July 21, 2010 By 1 Comment
Thinking about the broader concept of odysseys needed by an increasing number of adolescents accelerated because of an impassioned phone call from my 21-year old son Sam. Fresh from a university-sponsored trek through Death Valley and in cell phone range on a reprovisioning stop, he almost breathlessly recounted what appeared to be a transforming experience for him. Our co-pilgrimage [me, my wife Janis and Sam], officially starting when he walked away from a traditional high school at 15, generated some gray hair and sleepless nights for us. At times these six years mimicked the anxious times when our eldest wandered the alleys of large Iraqi cities lugging an M-16. Other than crediting almost ceaseless prayer in the years prior, what happened to Sam in Death Valley that created this conversation?
7 steps to an MBA that matters: 6) Accreditation
July 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
(Clara Lovett’s commentary fired a round over the B-school trenches. It made me think that we need an MBA attuned to “the rise of the rest”. Seven steps followed – here’s a discussion of the sixth.)
6) Trash current ideas about accreditation and start over
I’m all for accreditation. I’m pedaling as fast as I can right now to get some for our MBA and PhD programs. (and, okay, “trash” is a strong word). The assessment of quality and the process of continuous improvement are huge issues now, ranging from the concerns of the U.S. federal government on down to my desire to get value and results for the tuition that I’m paying to a small liberal arts college for my son. Degree mills and dropout factories make common standards necessary.
There is no such thing as leadership
June 2, 2009 By 3 Comments
Conversations with Peter Drucker
November 11, 2005
Today, my friend Peter Drucker died. That thousands of other men and women around the world can say the same thing is a testament to his character and his reach, over time and across cultures.
