Leadership and Organizational Development

My daughter asked me this question. Here is my answer:

We all stand in many communities, simultaneously. Some we are anchored in, and when they shift, we can be jarred. Others we stand in for a time. We can be anchored in our cultural community, or in our community of faith. We can be present for a time in a community to re-elect Joe, or to complete project xyz. What these communities have in common for us is the offering of a sense of purpose, belonging and affirmation. These are the benefits of community. But they are not what standing in community is.

Standing in community is more than giving to the community, too. It is more than your contribution, or your value proposition. It is much more than loyalty. Loyalty is a blind person’s faith. My experience with loyalty is that it has an expiration date.

I think standing in community means being part of the conversations that create our purpose together, that design our way forward and that organize our resources, skills and talents to realize our dreams. It may be as a facilitator, as an individual with strong positions and interests, or as a silent, caring observer. Even the cynic can stand in community if they respectfully participate in the conversation.

When we stand in community we make a choice not to banish ourselves. The communities that would banish us don’t deserve our loyalty.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this video from Upper Canada College, a private boys’ school in the heart of Toronto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RYfSuyNSZQ

Watch it when you have time.

I thought it was wonderful—not because I am a UCC booster (I’m neutral), nor because it is a great way to market the school. I thought it was wonderful because the question being answered is an important one: What do you believe?  The answers and body language reveal a bit of the character of each boy that responded:

• I believe that music is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

• I believe that this injury… has actually given me a new perspective on hockey. I remember now that it’s a privilege and not a right [to play], and I’m going to cherish every moment that I have on the ice this year.
• I believe frogs can hop. Dinosaurs are extinct.
• I believe in honesty
• And freedom
• I believe that to make my life successful I need to make a difference to the world.
• I believe theatre defies gender.
• Who you are is far more important than what you know because people will remember you by who you are.

It is easy to get lost in what you know. What you know can elicit hubris and blindness. What you believe, on the other hand, shapes who you are.

The question in the video is not: what do you believe in? It is simply: What do you believe? The question doesn’t direct the respondent to an other, and as a result, nearly every boy answered from his direct experience: I believe that my grandma makes the best soup in the world. Clearly, Upper Canada College has been a good experience for these boys. More broadly, we are reminded that nurturing experiences create positive belief systems.

I believe that leaders should reflect upon their own beliefs. Our beliefs shape our actions. Our staff want to follow us based on our beliefs. They want to follow leaders with integrity, for instance. But they understand our beliefs principally through our actions. They might follow us whether we truly believe in what we are doing, or not and, based on our actions, they will ascribe beliefs to us that we may not truly possess. And so, when we succeed or fail at something we don’t truly believe in, we become Emperors without clothes: visibly inauthentic.

My questions to you (and I hope you will write in) are:

• What do you believe?

• What beliefs will sustain you when you celebrate success with your staff and when you assess failure?
• What beliefs will be a part of the legacy you leave to your children, friends, work and volunteer places?

To get the ball rolling, here are some of my deeply held beliefs:

• It is better to have one true friend than many acquaintances whom you have mistaken as friends. (This is a belief I hold for my children)

• It is good to live a life that embraces new people and new ideas. Make new friends.
• Being close to the natural world is re-creating.
• Listening deeply to people engages and empowers them, whether or not you agree with them.
• What you don’t know, will always be greater than what you do know, and that is reason to live a life that is driven by curiosity and humility.
• Competition creates excellence. Sharing creates more excellence. We need to live lives that are filled with generosity (abundance) even during times of scarcity.
• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Know what the whole is. Break down walls to make the whole better. Share intelligence. Tell the truth. Contribute to something greater than what you can see immediately in front of you. You know what I am talking about.
• I make pretty good soup. But I have tasted better.

What do you believe? Write in and I will send something nice to the first five contributors.

We want Consensus; but what will we do to have it?

First, what is Consensus? Consensus is agreeable to all—in some way. It is neither trash nor treasure.  It is not what we want most, but as a second or third choice, it will do.  We are all willing to go forward with Consensus.

Why do we want Consensus? Consensus solves a problem that we can’t live with in a way that we can. It reduces the time to solution. It reduces the cost of finding a solution. It is gratifying.

How do we get Consensus? We step back from our initial positions on an issue. We reveal to each other the interests we hold that have driven us to our respective positions. We create a solution that serves the interests we hold in common and hope that this solution is powerful enough to make the interests we do not hold in common irrelevant.

In a pinch, for a time, Consensus will do.

What do we give up for Consensus?

• Durable Solutions When consensus solutions don’t serve our most powerful interests, they erode. We continue to ache for what we really want, and we may passively or aggressively work to get it.
• Durable Relationships When we drive to solutions that will do, we miss the opportunity to get to know our interlocutors. We may trust them to abide by a consensus solution, but not more.
• Accountability When executing a consensus solution, we tend to hide behind Consensus’s apron strings. “This is what we agreed to”, we might say, “… I could have told you it wouldn’t work”.

What is the alternative to Consensus?

A good marriage. A good partnership.

The alternative to a consensus solution is to have a conversation that creates solutions that rest inside the marriage or partnership. That conversation needs to start with what we truly want, together. This conversation doesn’t focus on the problem or dissect respective interests. When we focus on interests, we focus on the past. We focus on what we have wanted in the absence of the other interlocutors. When we focus on what we want, we can build solutions that rest in a mutual future.

Consensus is a cruel mistress. It rests outside the durable relationship. It provides comfort, and a way out. But it is unlikely to last. It erodes relationship, and it gives us permission to behave badly.

In a pinch, for a time, when there is some hope, Consensus will do.

What do you think? What has been your experience with consensus building?

I like to the think that the more civilized a society, the more the rules are under tension. For instance, laws are the codification of the rules that keep order in a society. They ensure that citizens are safe and treated justly by both the state and each other.   Democracies know that laws need to be interpreted in context, and so we have a judicial system and laws that evolve over time with input from the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government.

I recall the one time I challenged a parking ticket in court. I was amazed by the defences that others raised to get out of their violations or reduce their fines. One articling law student argued that his twenty parking tickets were the same colour as the falling leaves that covered his vehicle. And since he hadn’t driven his car that month, he also hadn’t realized that he had been ticketed. He was ordered to pay half the cost of his fines. Though comedic, was the violator’s argument and the subsequent judgment he received heresy? Should it have pushed the bounds of our faith in the judicial system? I argue that  the judgment given to him was a fine example of civilization at work! The courts had recognized the special context in which his twenty tickets had arrived.

Organizations have their own laws. You can recognize them as processes or standard operating procedures. Organizations value their processes because they lead to higher quality outputs, achieved with greater efficiency. Processes create value for the organization. But they also can tie the organization to a past that neither its staff nor clients want. Organizations need heretics who will push the bounds of current ways. Organizations need ways to listen to and learn from their heretics and then, they need to adjust in ways that don’t threaten the benefits in quality or efficiency that processes bring.

For example, a process is created for delivering a service that will work in most situations. When confronted with a new situation that doesn’t fit the process, either a new process is developed, or the clients in this outlier situation are not served. In the first case, an organization might, over time, create five or ten processes to direct how a single service is delivered. Processes can run amok. In the second case, the organization creates unhappy stakeholders inside and outside the organization. Its staff and markets are diminished. In both cases, the pace of service delivery grinds to a halt.

Organizations need to create ways to ensure  staff who use their processes make sound judgments when new situations arise. “Sound” is a loaded descriptor. It implies that individuals will make the right choices. We know that this doesn’t always happen. It can’t happen.  So, how are organizations to respond?

• At one end of the spectrum, they can stop the propagation of new processes. But this solution creates organizational rigidity; and as a result, the organization cannot respond to either opportunities or challenges.

• They can create structures that govern the propagation and interpretation of processes—an internal judiciary, if you will. These solutions tend to be costly, cumbersome and always running behind organizational need.
• They can create gates in processes where activities are reviewed at critical points to ensure that processes are being followed or appropriately adjusted. Policing solutions also tend to be costly and cumbersome. But more important, those being policed tend to hide the whole truth from reviewers.
• Another possibility would be to ensure that processes are interpreted  in full view of all stakeholders within the organization, garnering their advice about new ways, risks and ways to mitigate risks. When processes are interpreted,  internal stakeholders need to learn about what went well, what didn’t go well, and how to improve. Process authority and accountability within an organization should be part of the learning enterprise within organizations.  Manyfold new processes are not created as a result; but staff who are better equipped to deal with change are.

Civilized organizations find ways to listen to and learn from their heretics.

How civilized is your organization? What are your stories about how processes are governed, how they are adjusted, and what happens to those who bend the rules?  Please write in.

Tags: civilized organizations, organizational learning, Process development

In his book, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, (ISBN: 978-0-307-39621-1), Jeff Howe argues that, in opening the possibility for getting input from everybody, indeed, from anybody, the Internet has given rise to the power of amateurism over expertise.

The importance of getting input is not new, neither for democracies nor business. Democratic leaders that execute critical policies that few citizens want will eventually lose elections.  Ford learned from Honda and Toyota the importance of getting consumer feedback to support the design of their vehicles, leading to the development of market winners like the Taurus — the first vehicle with a coffee cup holder—and the Probe—designed for women entering or returning to the workforce with input from this same group. Input predates the Internet.

But Howe’s argument runs deeper. He argues that crowdsourcing—the capacity to get input from anyone, everywhere through the Internet to support design, create a product or service, get advice, etc—creates better designs, products, services and decisions. This too, is not a new idea. Author James Surowiecki, in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds (ISBN 0-385-72170), likewise argues that distributed intelligence, convened through an aggregating mechanism, leads to better decisions than those that are supported by experts with similar training and perspectives.

Truthfully, I am slightly enamoured by these ideas. They are democratic. They create openness and abundance. They lead to wonderfully unexpected results. They compel the powerful to be transparent and forthright.

Leaders must make decisions based on imperfect data. Even scientifically gathered data can be imperfect. Policy makers rely on statistical evidence to make important policy decisions that few people want. They rely on incomplete or inconclusive scientific data to make reasoned, but wrong decisions. And they sometimes ignore data to do what the majority wants. When the gap between what experts say, and what people believe or want is too great, policies fail. When science is wrong, disastrous consequences can ensue, like the collapse of the cod fishery off Canada’s east coast. And when they ignore data or expertise, a generation may get what it wants at the expense of the next generation.

Within bureaucracies—public and private bureaucracies—there is often unease between the policy makers and the scientists, and the business development leaders and the engineers, for instance. In a collaborative environment the people representing each of these interests and perspectives would have great conversations, create  new hybrid communities of interest, and work things out. We are still learning about how to create collaborative working environments, but in traditional organizations these are most often cases of experts from one field learning to exchange ideas and make decisions with experts from another field. The rise of amateurism is quite another matter, and it is having profound effects on democracies, firms and how we live. For instance:

• Internet advertising is shaking the business model of traditional print and broadcast media. The most important consequence of this is the demise of journalists and journalism. The free press, with content generated by ethical, resourceful journalists is a fundamental pillar of democracy. Will the rise of amateur journalists fill the gap? Can we trust them to give us well-researched, unbiased information in the absence of an editorial hierarchy?
• Patients visit their physicians with a wealth of information garnered from the Internet. Is the patient who visits his doctor with a self-diagnosis an informed consumer to whom the doctor must respond, or an amateur who, without his doctor’s expert filter, is apt to poison himself? Or am is he something in between—a curious patient who has ideas that an expert, his doctor, could consider?

Is the rise of amateurism creating a wider gulf between what we want and what is best? Is what we want also what is best?  In Crowdsourcing, Howe asserts that we may be witnessing the demise of vocation. After all, each of us has the potential to be more than the vocation we have trained in. Once our multiple talents are unleashed, and an abundance of thought and opinion is perpetuated on the Internet, he argues, the world will be a better place. For Howe and others, what we want is what is best.

In the spirit of crowdsourcing, I am interested to know your experiences, opinions, and learned assertions about the ascendance of opinion over expertise.

I will send a very nice gift to the top three contributors, and we will determine who they are together in the weeks to come.

Tags: amateurism, Crowdsourcing, democracy, James Surowiecki, Jeff Howe, journalism

Much ado about something has transpired over the last few days since Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Respected media commentators seem to agree that the nine month incumbent of the U. S. Presidency should not have been accorded this honour. After all, he has not brokered a single peace accord.

Michael Enright, host of the important CBC radio program, The Sunday Edition, went further, this morning arguing, for instance, that President Obama:

• has not met his deadline for closing Guantanamo;
• has not ended military tribunals for processing detainees at Guantanamo;
• has kept the U.S. at war on two fronts;
• has had no impact on the Israeli policy to expand its settlement policy on the West Bank

Enright goes on to argue that the prize was awarded to Obama because he is America’s first black President and because he embodies hope. Others have argued that the prize was awarded to Obama to enlist him in the expectations he has already set for himself.

Are they right – and does it matter?

Well, one test is whether Obama was the best candidate among the other contenders for the Prize. Here they are :

Sima Samar, women’s rights activist in Afghanistan: “With dogged persistence and at great personal risk, she kept her schools and clinics open in Afghanistan even during the most repressive days of the Taliban regime, whose laws prohibited the education of girls past the age of eight. When the Taliban fell, Samar returned to Kabul and accepted the post of Minister for Women’s Affairs.”

Ingrid Betancourt: French-Colombian ex-hostage held for six years.

“Dr. Denis Mukwege: Doctor, founder and head of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo. He has dedicated his life to helping Congolese women and girls who are victims of gang rape and brutal sexual violence.”

Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition: “These organizations are recognized for their consistently serious efforts to clean up cluster bombs, also known as land mines. Innocent civilians are regularly killed worldwide because the unseen bombs explode when stepped upon.”

“Hu Jia, a human rights activist and an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, who was sentenced last year to a three-and-a-half-year prison term for ‘inciting subversion of state power.’”

“Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China’s communist system. He now lives in the United States.”

(Source: http://ingunowners.com/forums/politics_laws_and_2nd_amendment/56387-meet_the_other_contenders_for_the_nobel_peace_prize_2009_a.html)

You can decide for yourselves whether Obama deserved the prize more than the others. I don’t think the comparative test matters at this point, but please contribute to the blog if you have an opinion about who you think should have won.

Does the Nobel Peace Prize matter? It does matter because it sets a moral standard for world leaders that world citizens can aspire to, and should expect. In some years the Nobel Peace Prize has showed up more as a brand than as a standard. It has served to make a political point rather than to reward great achievement. I am thinking, especially, of the year that the prize was bestowed upon Yasser Arafat. (But what the political point was in 1994, I cannot fathom). Most years, the Norwegians have got it right: Nelson Mandella in 1993, Doctors Without Borders in 1999, Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, in 2006 are examples.

Does Barack Obama’s win perpetuate the brand or the standard of the Nobel Peace Prize? Does his win simply make a political point—we like his politics; he is not George Bush—or is President Obama setting a standard?

I was not convinced by Mr. Obama during the early days of the 2008 Presidential campaign because he had lofty ideas that were supported only by his own charisma. I don’t trust charisma, and I needed to hear about how he would implement his ideas. As the weeks drew on, I heard more about how he would go forward and I became more at ease with him, the candidate I would have preferred to vote for (had I been an American citizen).

The critics of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize argue that his stunning failures make his win a sham—his win is an example of the Prize as a brand and not a standard. I argue that how he has gone forward matters more than his successes or failures.

We want leaders who walk the talk.  The President of the United States is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world in terms of military, economic and technological might. What he or she says has immediate impact. When the President of the United States talks, he or she is already walking. Obama has said and done a few things already, that put the walk in the talk.

• He has reached out to Iran, recognizing that the people of Iran are not members of an evil empire. At the same time, he has warned the leaders of that country that they had better stop showing up as a nuclear threat.

• He has supported the State of Israel, while letting them know that the U.S. does not support the provocative expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
• He has let the world know that the U.S. does not tolerate torture or the suspension of due process. He has been pragmatic enough to accept that his plans for closing Guantanamo by January 2010 might be too soon. Should military tribunals at Guantanamo cease now? Yes, but he has not lost sight of the ultimate goal.
• He has made health care reform in the United States a Presidential matter. He has directly faced the angry misgivings of  U.S. citizens, including his own supporters, replacing misinformation with facts.

My assessment is that Obama has been a leader who:

• Makes important distinctions even when the world wants simple answers.
• Has a clear sense of what should be the immutable values of his nation, and reflects them in all that he says and does.
• Has his sight on what needs to be present on the horizon, and is pragmatic enough to change how we can get there.
• Has changed the language of politics from “what I will do” or “what my administration will do” to “what we will do”, and thereby, embraces both his supporters and his detractors in the way forward. His commitment to communities as political determinants has endured well past the election. His ability to learn from community voices, adjust, and remain committed to what is really important has been balanced and just.

Obama is a game changer, and for the better.

In a world that is much more dangerous than was the world of my youth, Obama has brought the temperature down. Does he deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?  I don’t know. But I do think that his failures have not made him unworthy of the Prize. Those who guffaw at his Nobel win are either short-sighted, blind, or caught in a tempest that is the tea pot they have made of the Nobel Peace Prize.

What of Obama’s failures?  He seems to recognize them. He has apologized when he needed to. He has altered his course from time to time. And he has not felt like a failure on any of these occasions. That is leadership!

What do you think?

Tags: Barack Obama, Michael Enright, Nobel Peace Prize, Obama