A633.7.3.RB_MedleyKim_Never Stop Learning

Never Stop Learning

           Once again, Obolensky (2010) challenges future leaders to develop an open mind by critiquing possible responses to possible leadership circumstances. A set of sixteen questions, designed to be completed twice, once prior to reading the chapter’s text and again upon finishing the reading, allows future leaders to identify where he or she falls with regards to “People Focus and Goal Focus” and to chart the various strategies: tell, sell involve, and devolve a leader may employ in order to transition from oligarchic ways to a path toward polyarchy (Obolensky, 2010, p. 160). Yet, this is exactly what has been taking place over the past six weeks.

            Reflective exercises provide opportunities to discern emerging viewpoints of leadership spanning several generations. The concept of working smarter not harder can be achieved through the simplicity of chaos. In order for a leader to begin to understand the basics of Complex Adaptive Leadership, according to Coutu (2000), one must be willing to peel back the levels of individual personality in order to then peel away the levels of the organization’s personality. Leaders must stop the charade that has been perpetuated since the time of Egyptian Pharaohs, “those at the top do not know the solutions to the problems faced by the organisations they lead” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 35). In order to do this, leaders must align, adapt, encourage, improve, locate and embrace the notion that while chaos initially provides for a worsening of conditions, the complicated becomes better, simplicity emerges, and an organization grows from one run like a machine to one that “runs itself” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 27). Understanding how a leader would normally approach a situation, along with an understanding of how followers see their role within the organization, is the basis of the exercise at the beginning of “Complex Adaptive Leadership in Action” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 155).

            Just as Stayer’s (1990) “attitude survey” was designed to identify “what people thought about their jobs and the company” (p. 67), Obolensky’s (2010) exercise is meant to show its participant the strategies most often relied upon, identify those not tapped as often, and provide a cause and effect when certain strategies are used more consistently than others. Initial responses revealed a balance such that “the sum of S1 and S3 is greater than the sum of S2 and S4”, indicating “too direct an approach” is being employed by the leader (Obolensky, 2010, p. 166). After reading the text, second responses still provide a balance; however, the approach becomes less direct. The implications are directly linked to that which Obolensky (2010) describes as “a steady state, a particular point - … attractor” (p. 64). Regardless of the type: point, period, or strange attractor, the flow of strategy begins with: sell, tell, devolve, and involve. A leadership approach that is too direct indicates selling needs to be improved upon in order to align with rule one, “First work on the will – so the person wants to do it” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 164). Stayer (1990) sold plant managers with the opportunity to end the practice of working weekends by allowing them to identify the efficiency problem and offer a solution. Teams, once sold on the idea of eliminating weekend work, could then be told, become involved, and Stayer (1990) could eventually step back and allow the workers to realize the cause and effect of machine downtime, their role with the operation of the machinery, find a solution, and do away with working weekends.

            Stayer’s (1990) first person, personal story provides a succinct summary for that which has been gleamed from the past six weeks. Think before you act. Ask yourself, do my actions support or undermine the vision? Yukl (2013) concludes, “Effective leadership at all levels of society and in all of our organizations is essential for coping with the growing social, economic, and environmental problems confronting the world. Learning to cope… is not a luxury but a necessity” (p. 422). “Nevertheless, much more remains to be learned”; therefore, leaders can never stop learning (Yukl, 2013, p. 422). Leadership is a constant work in progress and requires constant reflection.  

References

Coutu, D.L. (2000, Sept. – Oct.). Creating the Most Frightening Company on Earth: An

            Interview with Andy Law of St. Luke’s. Harvard Business Review, 143-150.

Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex Adaptive Leadership. (2^nd ed.). London, UK: Gower/

            Ashgate.

Stayer, R. (1990). How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead. Harvard Business Review, 68(6),

            66-83.

Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in Organizations. (8^th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

A633.6.4.RB_MedleyKim_A Tale of Two Troops

A Tale of Two Troops

          Yukl (2013) provides a key component of strategy is how an organization effectively competes and realizes profits. Typical organizational strategies, those reminiscent of Porter’s “deliberate strategy”, coined by Moore (2011), range from providing goods and/or services “at the lowest price”, filling a unique need in a niche market, and providing flexibility such that goods or services may be customized to meet specific needs (Yukl, 2013, p. 298). While Porter’s methods were probably used to some extent by Robert Baden-Powell, founder of a movement that would become Boy Scouts of America, scouting across the globe as relied upon Mintzberg’s approach to strategy, one that emerges (Moore, 2011). As outlined by Boy Scouts of America, BSA, (2009), the organization grew from one that sought to “help boys become young men of good character” to one that added “nature study” and “outdoor skills” (p. 60), embraced the benefits of mentoring boys from a less than advantageous childhood, and continues to expand and modify its program in order to, as Yukl (2013) states, remain competitive; and, in this case, viable.

          “The mission…is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law” (BSA, 2009, p. 15). It is troop structure that is, as Collins (1999) observes, “the crucial link between objectives and performance” (p. 72). Boy Scout Troops, as opposed to Cub Scout Packs, are designed to be boy run groups and have as their foundation the goal of what Obolensky (2010) terms as “followership maturity”, the level when the Scouts, not the adults, are “capable of taking the lead themselves and getting on with what needs to be done with minimum input needed from the ascribed leader” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 147). The concept is rather straightforward and simple in design. Boys, either entering Scouting for the first time, or crossing over from a Cub Scout Pack, enter with a “high will/low skill”; and, through a series of both individual and troop leadership opportunities, Scouts form or join patrols, seek senior patrol leadership positions, advance from Tenderfoot to Eagle Scout, and may continue on as adult leaders. Departures from the planned strategy can have serious implications.

          Obolensky (2010) constructs a “vicious circle for leaders” which occurs when leaders fail to move followers from level one to level five followership (p. 152). This happens all too often in Scouting. Troop 281 in Palm Coast typifies this vicious circle because the adult leaders maintained a leadership hierarchy more consistent with that of Cub Scouts wherein the adults make most of the decisions. I have witnessed boys from this troop at district events. Whether the task was something as simple as pitching individual tents and forming the patrol lines or one a bit more challenging, such as tying a series of knots needed to construct the bridge used for crossing ceremonies, most of the Scouts could be categorized as either a Level 1 or Level 2 and their skill set became “low skill/low will” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 148). There were times I actually sat and watched as adult leaders essentially set up camp while the boys waited to be told, or given permission to do a job. The body language of these Scouts was quite telling. Their heads hung down. Their shoulders slouched. The overall energy level of the Troop and Patrols was low. Because they were not able to do that which Scouting is all about, experiencing nature, outdoors, and learning things boys love, such as chopping wood, building fires, and cooking, their followership maturity level had stymied and many lost interest over the years. A boy run organization not only provides for “lateral leadership”, as discussed in “How to Lead When You’re Not the Boss (2000), it also allows for Obolensky’s (2010) “vicious circle” to be broken and redrawn (p. 152).

          Troop 402 of Palm Coast is the opposite of Troop 281. Here, boys enter with a “high will/low skill”; but, instead of asking for advice, Senior Scout and Adult Leaders demonstrate and coach those boys so that instead of a leader becoming concerned, the leader can begin to take steps back, allow the boys to learn camping skills, and from this the boy earns his first Scout rank of Tenderfoot, increases his confidence with each rank achieved, and is able to take on more responsibility and leadership roles within his patrol and troop (Obolensky, 2010, p. 148). Instead of a “vicious circle”, Scouts climb a mountain that leads to Eagle:

Hamel (1998) suggests “the goal of strategizing” is “order without careful crafting” (p. 11). This is Scouting at its finest. Adult leaders are there to provide guidance and offer suggestions to the Senior Scout Leaders. Senior Scout Leaders help younger Scouts develop skills and knowledge. Each patrol plans, purchases food for, and cooks its own meals for camp outs. Adults help by identifying and going over basic food groups. Senior Scouts take younger Scouts shopping. They help younger Scouts compare prices and quantities. Patrol’s demonstrate independence and autonomy through separate menus. Adult leaders follow the same example. From planning a menu to planning an out-of-state trip to North Carolina, the strategy at the troop level must be designed and consistent with those from national so that the goals of Baden-Powell and others are not only achieved; but, enhanced.

          The differences between Troop 281 and 402 are like night and day. Troop 402 consistently fosters an environment from which Eagle Scouts emerge. These boys are confident. They are excited and strive diligently to achieve individual, troop, and district achievements. They seem to grow a bit taller each time they put on their uniform and stand before their Scout Master as yet another rank or merit badge is awarded. I’ve attended my own son’s Eagle Court of Honor, proudly accompanied another Scout to his Eagle Board of Review, and am awaiting two more Scouts from Troop 402 to finish their Eagle Scout Projects. Because leadership knew when to step in, stay on the sidelines, or just completely out of the way; these boys became curious, confident, and completely effective followers who now offer leadership in the way it was taught to them.

References

Boy Scouts of America. (2009). The Boy Scout Handbook. (12^th ed.). Irving:.

Collins, J. (1999). Turning Goals Into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms. Harvard

            Business Review, 77(4), 70-82.

Hamel, G. (1998, Winter98). Strategy Innovation and the Quest for Value. Sloan

            Management Review, 39 (2), 7-14.

How to lead when you're not the boss. (cover story). (2000). Harvard Management Update, 5(3),

1.

Moore, K. (2011, March 28). Porter or Mintzberg: Whose View of Strategy Is the Most

            Relevant Today? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2011/03/28/porter-or-mintzberg-whose-view-of-strategy-is-the-most-relevant-today/#5ebe90536e36

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd ed.).  Surrey, England: Gower Publishing Limited

Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in Organizations. (8^th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

A633.5.3.RB_MedleyKim_It's Not Just an Exercise

It’s Not Just an Exercise

            Ah, reflection. How appropriate to be tasked with reading about and viewing a video that outlines and conducts the very chaos Team A-6 faced with this week’s initial group assignment. A team, initially composed of three, is effectively formed through a virtual process and tasked with completion efforts that, as outlined by Obolensky (2008), require identifying points of reference, without revealing said points, organizing a research document that complies with established boundaries; and, then, for an added dose of real world experience, two teams are merged into one, causing each team to reassess and adjust those initial points of reference. As the week and team duties progressed, suddenly a poem from long ago came to mind, “If”, by Rudyard Kipling. Would I be able to keep my head while others lose theirs and blame me?

            Sull and Eisenhardt (2012) chronicle simple rules: align activities with objectives, adapt to local situations, encourage coordination, make better choices, locate bottlenecks, data overrides opinion, those who apply rules craft rules, and rules should be solid and evolve. These rules, when successfully applied, enable individual and teams to “complete a highly complex task” with relative ease (Obolensky, 2010, p. 96). Our team had initially agreed to have one member as a project manager. The second team had provided for rotational leadership. In an effort to assign jobs to each member, our project manager divided the assignment. For the most part, completing various sections of the research paper were standard and straight forward. Our chaotic oscillation moments, our bottleneck, came when we were charged with comparing and contrasting five organizations. Although the initial comparison chart appeared to be simple in nature, the very “number of possible solutions” reminded each of us just how complex this task was (Obolensky, 2010, p. 95). Because each “has the ability to judge distance and move accordingly” and because each member offered continuous feedback and was “able to act without having to wait for permission”, our initial strategy was able to change in response to the situation, provide clarity to ambiguous and uncertain concerns, strengthen the underlying purpose of submitting a quality project, and stay within the boundaries established by the project instructions (Obolensky, 2010, p. 98). Although a touch of Porter’s “deliberate strategy”, as outlined by Moore (2011), was presented as our plan by our project manager, survival and completion of the project required the team to embrace Mintzberg’s “emergent strategy”.

            The underlying implication of chaos is change, regardless of the amount, occurs. A story without change becomes tedious and boring and soon lulls the reader to sleep. Leaders cannot afford to be lulled to sleep. Yes, chaos means at times a situation may become worse before it gets better; but, as my husband would say, that which does not kill us makes us stronger. We see chaos in our lives on a daily basis; yet, a miraculous balance always seems to occur. From a devastating hurricane or tornado comes a rebirth in communities, one that witnesses neighbors helping neighbors and the reinvention of construction standards. Wild fires destroy thousands of acres each year; yet, new growth and better forestry management skills follow. As I write this, this country remembers the chaos from fifteen years ago and is still adjusting strategies to insure such terror is never brought to our shores again. Embracing chaos is the first step to weathering any storm, by mother-nature or that of the business world; and, those who embrace chaos and learn from it, evolve to lead another day, and keep their head a little longer.

References

Moore, K. (2011, March 28). Porter or Mintzberg: Whose View of Strategy Is the Most

            Relevant Today? Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmoore/2011/03/28/porter-or-mintzberg-whose-view-of-strategy-is-the-most-relevant-today/#5ebe90536e36

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd ed.).  Surrey, England: Gower Publishing Limited

Obolensky, N. (2008). Who Needs Leaders? [Video file]. Retrieved from             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E

Sull, D., & Eisenhardt, K.M. (2012). Simple Rules for a Complex World. Harvard Business

            Review, 90(9), 68-74.

A633.4.3.RB_MedleyKim_Topsy-Turvy Leadership from the Bottom-Up

Topsy-Turvy Leadership from the Bottom-Up

            Obolensky (2010), opines, leaders don’t know, know they don’t know, and can’t say they don’t know the very answers to questions needed to provide success to the organization; yet, haven’t both leaders; and, for that matter, followers known this for as long as leaders have existed? The opening salvo to Obolensky’s (2010) “Finita La Comedia – Stop Playing Charades” offers readers the challenge of considering the primary source of “solutions that actually make specific changes happen on the ground to get positive results” (p, 33). Presuming one’s initial reaction aligns with that of research results, the majority of solutions come from the bottom; and, further presuming this discovery has held true since the time of the great pharaohs, why is our long-held perspective of leadership, one that placed leaders in heroic, ivory towers of knowledge, beginning to change to one that not only removes the ornate Mardi Gras mask from our leaders; but, one that asks followers to consider their role in that which is described as “the greatest discontinuity of leadership assumption” (Obolensky, 2010, p. 19)? While venting around the workplace water cooler may provide a temporary release of frustration, little is contributed to the overall success of any organization when those at the bottom only offer criticism for those at the top; thereby leaving those in the middle left to “pull their hair out” as the great divide continues (Obolensky, 2010, p. 36). Perhaps in some sense it is the expansion of the middle, Kelley’s (1998) “effective followers”, along with an increase in technology and a decline of heroic leaders with messianic foresight that have combined to provide this paradigm shift in leadership (p. 144).

            The way in which my grandparents viewed leaders varies greatly to the way leaders are viewed by today’s generation. Watch any documentary on The History Channel and the titans of industry, Rockefeller, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, and Ford are portrayed as all-knowing, all-powerful leaders who stop at nothing to gain their measure of success, increased profits. My mother was from Pennsylvania and the story of the steel mill strike that involved Carnegie’s hiring of the Pinkerton Agency to quell the worker’s uprising is legendary. Yet, through all of this, Carnegie is nowhere to be found. Carnegie and others failed to learn that which Stewart and Gallear (2014) identify as key for engaging employees, “paying attention to your people” (p. 1). My own generation was spoon-fed the concept of a career included being hired and working one’s way up the corporate ladder with the dream, in my case, of achieving a career height of becoming an executive’s assistant because I had dutifully mastered typing skills. By the way, to this day, I abhor typing. Today’s millennials are far less concerned with the typical nine to five job; instead, they seek a quality of life which is a contributing factor to the change in leadership.

            Remember the movie, Nine to Five? At the end, the audience sees the innovative ideas that have been put in place by the women of the office, portrayed by Lilly Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and Jane Fonda, “effective followers”, who listened to the water cooler rants from the bottom; and, now proudly support Dabney Coleman’s leader character, as he explains the changes to his bosses. Flexible scheduling allowed two clerks to split their time in order to enhance each worker’s quality of life. An in-house daycare facility relieves mothers and fathers of stresses associated with childcare, thereby increasing worker productivity. Considered novel and futuristic at the time, SAS, as outlined by Fishman (1999), offers its workforce the “Good Ship Lollipop”, complete with on-site child care, unlimited sick leave, a family-oriented dine-in cafeteria, and a policy of locking the company gates after all workers have left promptly at five o’clock. Likewise, the concept of nine to five itself is giving way as demonstrated by workers in Japan who routinely find work by using today’s technology.

            Sungawa, as noted by Katayama (2008), recognized Japan’s youth, those who routinely relied upon their cell phones to plan meetings and subsequent evening activities, preferred “freedom and flexibility” rather than being tethered to a traditional job. Sungawa brought the “concept of real-time online resale” to Japan’s dwindling, traditional workforce; and, in so doing, launched the Otetsudai Network, which uses GPS to link millennials to jobs that provided them with immediate gratification, cash for a job well done, and the freedom to pursue other life goals (Katayama, 2008).

            Rather than conclude the traditional hierarchal pyramid of leadership is being turned on its head, I see a rounding, almost oval appearance as today’s concept of leadership continues to shift. Stewart and Gallear (2014) contend that before leaders can lead, they must first “lead themselves” (p. 3) This has been affirmed in countless leadership courses that recognize the graduated with honors MBA is no longer “the sine qua non”; and, more often than not, leaders are at times followers just as followers are at times leaders (Obolensky, 2010, p. 24). Those stuck in the middle, literally at their wits’ end, have, in my opinion resulted in today’s recognition for employee engagement and served as the starting point for leaders to begin to adopt the idea of humility and admitting they do not hold all of the answers. The relationship between leaders and followers has always been there. Regardless of how history recalls a general’s battlefield successes, without soldiers, without followers, how successful is that general? The dynamic, or the focus on the dynamic that has changed is it is not an either/or proposition. Either a successful career or a successful family life. Rather, it is a great career and a great family life; and, when that is married with the changing workforce, the advances in technology, and the changing view of leadership, we can begin to see the value of and the need for Yin and Yang relationship with leaders and followers and why leaders must be willing to oil, tune, grease, synchronize, and unleash the power of an engaged workforce (Stewart & Gallear, 2014).

References

Fishman, C. (1999). Sanity Inc. Fast Company. Retrieved from

            http://www.fastcompany.com/36173/sanity-inc

Katayama, L. (2008, June 4). Tokyo upstart offers freeters mobile flexibility: Otetsudai

Networks connects employers with staffing problems to aspiring workers for short-term

temping tasks with cell-phone service. The Japan Times. Retrieved from

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2008/06/04/digital/tokyo-upstart-offers-freeters-mobile-flexibility/#.V7CgrZgrKhe

Kelley, R.E. (1998). In Praise of Followers. Harvard Business Review, 66(60, 142-148.

Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex Adaptive Leadership. (2^nd ed.). London, UK: Gower/

            Ashgate.

Stewart, A. & Gallear, J. (2014). Employee Engagement through the lens of leadership. Insights.

Retrieved from https://www.insights.com/files/1.employee-engagement-through-the-lens-of-leadership.pdf