Today, let us take a different direction. If leadership is about learning to deal with open systems, what are we doing currently to teach it?
Part I activities are being taught by B schools. A MBA definitely learns how to develop a strategy. He knows the elements involved in developing the strategy and can find out quite easily what every competitor is doing and why. This is a big step in learning Part I. The second step is however quite difficult: finding a strategy (it is called developing business model) that will help his company sustain its competitiveness over a long period of time. After all, remember, nothing is difficult to replicate at the end. So it is about gaining the lead that is difficult to catch. For a fashion industry, lead of 6 months is difficult to catch. For a old industry it could be 6 years.
The difficulty of second step is apparent when you see two companies bashing each other with similar strategy. Pepsi and Coca Cola is a good example in India. They have been follow similar me-too strategies and bleeding profusely in India. But no one is backing out. Jim Collins reports in his book that the 12 leaders took a very long time ( about 8-12 years, I guess) to get the business models of their company right. So although the first step can be learnt, the second step requires understanding of the deeper dynamics of an industry to be able to evolve a significantly sustainable strategy.
Part II activities are taught in bits and pieces. Generating dialogue amongst the senior management team has been well researched and understood. Servant leadership is understood, although one does not know how to practice it in the real environment of a competitive corporate world. Performance appraisal systems to align individual goals to organisational goals are understood well but they are too static to deal with the challenges faced on the ground.
Work on rewards and incentives – based on Pavalovian model – unfortunately do not help us in influencing today’s individuals who want something ‘more’ from their jobs. It is therefore not surprising to find that jobs in social system, not based on salary and rewards but on voluntary commitment, are more easier to ‘man’ than a job in corporate world.
The biggest knowledge bottleneck is in designing the soft architecture of an organisation. We have understood a lot about it: about using vision, values, organization structural options, MBO, Balance Score card. But every element is a ‘part’. We do not know how to put together all the pieces in designing a ‘soft architecture’ of the organization.Researchers therefore throng to companies like SEMCO who have designed a different soft architecture, but fail to understand how it can be done in another company.
Instead, the trainers and the industry have taken an inside-out approach of teaching leadership qualities. It defines five, six or seven leadership traits as being ‘absolute’ and then proceeds to inculcate those ‘traits’ in their top executives. Assessment centres have been designed to assess and evaluate the ‘leadership qualities’. But this is just one half of the requirement. The second half - the capability to deal with the external or internal ‘system’ is not even understood – leave along ‘taught’ or ‘enabled’. We therefore have to rely on luck and chance to find our leaders. Rests remain as managers.
Part I activities are being taught by B schools. A MBA definitely learns how to develop a strategy. He knows the elements involved in developing the strategy and can find out quite easily what every competitor is doing and why. This is a big step in learning Part I. The second step is however quite difficult: finding a strategy (it is called developing business model) that will help his company sustain its competitiveness over a long period of time. After all, remember, nothing is difficult to replicate at the end. So it is about gaining the lead that is difficult to catch. For a fashion industry, lead of 6 months is difficult to catch. For a old industry it could be 6 years.
The difficulty of second step is apparent when you see two companies bashing each other with similar strategy. Pepsi and Coca Cola is a good example in India. They have been follow similar me-too strategies and bleeding profusely in India. But no one is backing out. Jim Collins reports in his book that the 12 leaders took a very long time ( about 8-12 years, I guess) to get the business models of their company right. So although the first step can be learnt, the second step requires understanding of the deeper dynamics of an industry to be able to evolve a significantly sustainable strategy.
Part II activities are taught in bits and pieces. Generating dialogue amongst the senior management team has been well researched and understood. Servant leadership is understood, although one does not know how to practice it in the real environment of a competitive corporate world. Performance appraisal systems to align individual goals to organisational goals are understood well but they are too static to deal with the challenges faced on the ground.
Work on rewards and incentives – based on Pavalovian model – unfortunately do not help us in influencing today’s individuals who want something ‘more’ from their jobs. It is therefore not surprising to find that jobs in social system, not based on salary and rewards but on voluntary commitment, are more easier to ‘man’ than a job in corporate world.
The biggest knowledge bottleneck is in designing the soft architecture of an organisation. We have understood a lot about it: about using vision, values, organization structural options, MBO, Balance Score card. But every element is a ‘part’. We do not know how to put together all the pieces in designing a ‘soft architecture’ of the organization.Researchers therefore throng to companies like SEMCO who have designed a different soft architecture, but fail to understand how it can be done in another company.
Instead, the trainers and the industry have taken an inside-out approach of teaching leadership qualities. It defines five, six or seven leadership traits as being ‘absolute’ and then proceeds to inculcate those ‘traits’ in their top executives. Assessment centres have been designed to assess and evaluate the ‘leadership qualities’. But this is just one half of the requirement. The second half - the capability to deal with the external or internal ‘system’ is not even understood – leave along ‘taught’ or ‘enabled’. We therefore have to rely on luck and chance to find our leaders. Rests remain as managers.
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