Executive Intelligence: The Leader's Edge

Executive Intelligence The Leader’s Edge

Irving H. Buchen

R O W M A N & L I T T L E F I E L D E D U C AT I O N A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Rowman & Littlefield Education A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmaneducation.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2011 by Irving H. Buchen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Buchen, Irving H., 1930– Executive intelligence : the leader’s edge / Irving H. Buchen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-61048-077-2 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-61048-078-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-61048-079-6 (electronic) 1. Leadership. 2. Executive ability. 3. Intellect. I. Title. HD57.7.B83 2011 658.4'09—dc23 2011016968

 ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To my wise, intense, and savvy learners and future leaders in my doctoral seminar on “Theories of Leadership” at Capella University

Contents

Introduction

ix

SECTION I

DEFINING LEADERSHIP INTELLIGENCE

Chapter 1

How Smart Do CEOs Have to Be?

3

Chapter 2

Only Superman or God Need Apply

13

Chapter 3

Fred Smith and Tough Intelligence: Learning to Lead

19

Chapter 4

Intuitive Intelligence: Mastering the Leadership of Forecasting

25

Chapter 5

Downsides of Visioning: Misguided Use of the Future

31

SECTION II

APPLYING INTELLIGENCE

Chapter 6

The Emergence of the Reciprocal Leader: The Intelligence of Managing and Leading New Networks

39

Chapter 7

The Leadership of Leadership Experts

45

Chapter 8

Leadership Profiles and Matrices: Deciding What Kind of Leader to Be

51

Chapter 9

Navigating Leadership Taxonomies: Five Choices, Five Directions

61

Chapter 10

Coaching Paranoia and Avoiding Failure

75

v

vi

Contents

Chapter 11

Leadership Applications of “Multiple Intelligence”

85

Chapter 12

Network Intelligence and Network Science

93

Chapter 13

Spotting and Developing Cross-Breeds

99

Chapter 14

Paradigm-Shift Leadership: Perils and Pitfalls

SECTION III

BASIC LEADERSHIP TYPES

105

Transformational Intelligence Chapter 15

The Profile of the Transformational Leader

115

Chapter 16

Transformational Intelligence

125

Chapter 17

Transformational Leaders as CLOs

131

Chapter 18

Foresight of Transformational Leaders

143

Chapter 19

Transformational Coaches: Stretch and Transition Training

151

Transactional Intelligence Chapter 20

The Conversations of Horizontal Leaders

161

Chapter 21

Problem Collaboration: The Scenario Methodology of Horizontal Leaders

171

Integrative Intelligence Chapter 22

The Intersectional Leader

183

Chapter 23

The Ideology of Convergence

189

Innovative Intelligence Chapter 24

Innovation Mantra

203

Chapter 25

Innovation Prep: CEO Conversations

209

Anticipatory Intelligence Chapter 26

Futurizing as the Magic Bullet

217

Chapter 27

The Science Fiction Model

223

Contents

vii

Chapter 28

Anticipatory Coaching

235

Chapter 29

The Anticipator Intelligence at Work: Trend Testing as Futures Insurances

243

Chapter 30

Overcoming Future Avoidance

251

SECTION IV

CONCLUSION

Chapter 31

Hybrid Intelligence: Circular, Cyclical, and Convergent

263

Introduction

Leaders consider themselves special—not part of the crowd—extraordinary. Moreover, they see their difference as defining—as having the staying and shaping power to set them apart, and even, ambitiously and predicatively, to determine who they are, what and who they will become, and, finally, how they will achieve distinction. But what are the sources of such leadership difference? What sets them apart as a separate breed? Many factors—but clearly a universal and timetested one is intelligence. In fact, when various experts have compiled lists of leadership traits over time, the one that appears on every list—and often at the top—is intelligence. To be sure, as a descriptor it may have to be renamed as cognitive abilities, mostly to suggest rightly that one does not to be a genius to qualify. But still intelligence remains an absolute sign of leadership. However, what has increasingly and intensely challenged is not just intelligence or its supreme positioning but the entire traits approach to leadership definition. In its place leadership skills and behaviors have been proposed and have rapidly come into favor. It is important, then, to pause and examine why the challenge occurred in the first place and what finally emerged. Singling out a leader by traits has the value of clarity and brevity. In a relatively few strokes, five or so characteristics quickly can sum up the essentials of what makes an outstanding leader. In addition, when advanced and endorsed by outstanding practitioners of the art, the list appears etched in stone—the short profile is confirmed and affirmed by direct observation—by witnesses. But there is a downside: qualities such as intelligence, enthusiasm, integrity or any of the other traits are givens. Either you have them or you don’t. Either ix

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you are smart or you are not. To be sure, they can be enhanced, refined, and polished, but they cannot be invented. In today’s terms, they appear genetic. And thus, strangely, without fully acknowledging it, the traits approach argued inadvertently for the case of the born leader—endowed at the outset with a fixed set of commanding traits which enabled him to take charge, be set apart, attract followers, and rise to the top. It was an aristocratic, nonegalitarian, and organic definition of leadership reserved for the few chosen for a special destiny. And none of that was teachable—it was bedrock—it was there or it was not. In contrast, the value of all the other approaches of skills acquired put forward was precisely their developmental nature. They made available more democratically learnable skills and behaviors that could then be focused and applied to leadership development. With one stroke that focus created the incredible empire of leadership training within corporations and throughout academia—with executive MBA and PhD programs enrolling thousand annually and being exported abroad—so many in fact that we may now have more aspiring to be CEOs than there are available openings. But one of the key arguments of this book is that the critics stopped too short or too soon. They failed to examine whether traits were indeed fixed and immovable. They did not inquire whether they were also developmental. For example, if a time line were placed over a leader’s tenure, what would emerge? No change? Obviously not. There would be movement, shifts, discontinuity. Above all, origins and end points would span growth—we would have found that leadership traits change and grow over time on the job. And, finally, that if anything changes, it is intelligence. But how could it be otherwise? Smart people know how important it is to become smarter. Leaders are too savvy and sensitive to new situations not to know they have to change. Every leadership biography or memoir offers countless examples of before-and-after contrasts. Thus, the essential traits are not static. They not only display movement from where they originally started, but also never stop—producing finally not a fixed leadership profile but one that is unfinished, evolving, adaptable. Most dramatic at all, we would have discovered cross-breeding—the mixing and blending of traits from other leadership types, in the process producing unfamiliar and unique new wholes. Indeed, such complexity challenges the sacred image of the leader as singular and constant. Leaders are determined to succeed, and if that requires taking over and becoming other leadership types and modifying their content and intellect, that is what they will be do. They thus routinely and of necessity advance and ultimately extend their core leadership identity. Indeed, the process is always preceded by intelligence serving as an advanced guard appreciating the value of other intelligences to cope and

Introduction

xi

succeed, and evaluating how those special strengths can be added to the original identity and absorbed seamlessly as an acquisition. Clearly then a number of correctives are called for: • The first is that intelligence is not a fixed IQ number or entity. It is a restless and voracious epistemological machine engaged in the process of understanding of and advancing itself and whatever it seeks to manage, master, and ultimately lead. • Second, intelligence’s inherent complexity is compounded regularly by growth add-ons—initially familiar to the range of the basic leadership intelligence identity in general but later on grafting onto different kinds of leadership intelligence. • Third, leadership intelligence is the supreme intelligence for making and framing all choices, especially decision making, and in particular deciding what is needed when, why, and how. It is the leader’s distinctive driving force. This book therefore has three goals: 1. To posit the existence of leadership intelligence and to examine how that defines leadership difference and how leaders think their way to change and distinction 2. To demonstrate how such intelligence develops over time—in many ways has to—and in the process becomes agile, multiple, and adaptable 3. To identify the evolutionary shapes and brands that leadership intelligence typically embraces, and what forms such amalgams can take My principal assumption, therefore, is that mind drives matter, and is inevitably a linking agent. Intelligence has a core identity which seeks its mate or alter ego—it is a generalist seeking also to become a specialist. The net result is the creation of special intelligences for all professions— engineer, attorney, mathematician, economist, etc.—that combines smarts and methodology as their identifiable, primary, and compulsive nature and direction. Applied to leadership, that means that leadership intelligence is the driver: it sums up and guides all that the leader is, all that he chooses, and all that he seeks to do. But a surprising caveat: a special application is reserved perhaps only, or primarily, for leadership intelligence. Leadership intelligence is always doubly applied—to the leader and what he leads—to ego and to enterprise—to the role of leader and how it plays it self out. Why? Because leaders always have to take care of themselves. They always have to come first—and stay first. Obsessed by protocol, the CEO is also inevitably political and wary. He is schooled to be so.

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The difficulty of getting there is compounded by the difficulty of staying there—and anticipating whatever is to come later, including assurances of a golden parachute. To keep himself above the fray and yet be informed, he has two advanced guards: his protective intelligence and an executive coach serving as his executive trusted advisor, frequently paid from a separate budget. Thus, the leader is always a self-server and self-preserver. He is one of a kind—the only one who leads—and he has to protect his lead. And because it is lonely at the top, and because he can’t trust any one, he is often paranoid. It is the function of his trusted advisor to reduce the level of suspicion and intrigue. But ultimately it is the task of leadership intelligence to act as a coach itself and to keep him focused on his task lest he be distracted and inclined to make decisions based on ego rather than vision, on politics rather than strategy. Indeed, here intelligence finds its most persuasive work: adjusting and leveraging situations and decisions and functioning as an internal executive mentor. So that you can be guided through the many activities and applications of executive intelligence as it journeys through the major sections and goals of this book, below you will find ten basic principles about leadership intelligence that structure its performance and development: 1. Intelligence is not fixed, but evolving. 2. Intelligence grafts itself onto work. 3. Intelligence is obsessively and singularly work-specific and disciplinespecific. 4. Leadership intelligence exists as professional versions of all professions: engineering, medicine, and so forth. 5. Each intelligence is thus both generic and unique, shared and special. 6. Analysis of leadership intelligence defines the intelligent operational dimension of leadership. 7. Analysis of individual leadership intelligence also defines its style or brand. 8. Evolving over time, leadership intelligence adapts and chooses other styles and brands. 9. Multiple and evolving intelligence is the leader’s agent of adaptability. 10. The add-ons chosen by leadership intelligence uniquely extend, identify, brace, and prepare leaders for surviving new challenges. Such is the scope and power of leadership intelligence, and the differentiated source of all leadership differences. That is the claim that this book intends to persuasively document.

Section I

Defining Leadership Intelligence

Chapter 1

How Smart Do CEOs Have to Be?

There was once a prisoner who yearned to be free. One day the prophet Mohammed appeared to him, and gave him a set of keys to his cell, saying “Your piety has been rewarded. Allah has set you free.” So the prisoner took the set of five keys, mounted them on the wall, and prayed to them five times a day. —Sufi tale

There was a time when years of experience and successful performance was all that it would take to go all the way—and to stay there as well. But minimally now many CEOs have advanced degrees, even acquiring PhDs like their European counterparts, and, most troublesome of all, behaving like academics, pontificating about business metrics, dashboards and cultures. But the entire issue can be uncomplicated and its basics restored simply by noting what choices effective CEOs make when both leadership and knowledge work in tandem. In other words, when each reinforces and guides the other, the result is quickly recognized as smart leadership decisions. Indeed, the literature even displays the essential patterns of such choices. They are three in number: the directional/aspirational, the inclusive, and the reverberating.

DIRECTIONAL/ASPIRATIONAL The aspirational decision signals clearly where we are going—but not often why. When such leadership decisions are intelligence-driven then the rationale of why we are going that way is made equally clear, and followship is 3

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encouraged. The CEO as professor runs the directional seminar. Such executive knowledge-sharing also in turn serves to advance two other subdirections: to justify actions of acquisition, and to pursue excellence. Often the new direction is both acquisitional and inspirational in nature. What is chosen may be a soft takeover, an alliance rather than a conquest. But often directional pursuits do not just add but annex areas— they are territorial—they always serve to extend and expand the range of the leader’s domain and signal the extent of his ambition, testosterone, and mission. The pursuit of excellence is frequently made into the company’s brand— this is the way we do things around here—and shares with the acquisitional the goal of getting ahead and being first in class. Leadership intelligence thus always defines itself by the performance standards and values of its choices. Smarts always has to be persuasive.

THE INCLUSIVE Less aggressive and often both inward- and outward-facing, the inclusive does not seek to conquer but to co-opt, not to take over but to enable. And always the goal is to be totally accommodating—to patch up territorial feuds and spiffs—to leave no one out—and to implement ultimately the harmony of alignment. Above all, its goal is to create a culture of consensuality needed for the effective functioning of teams and networks.

THE REVERBERATING Applications are intended to be bequeathing—they start things off, get them going, and then step back to pursue a life of their own. Instead of takeover, they turn over; they delegate, not dictate. Thus, the choices are always doubling: they link and are linking, connect and are connecting, broker and are brokering—they are permanently unfinished. They are always a mode of stretching and searching, inevitably a prober of first and final causes, a unifier of innovation as the offspring of the future— they come closest to embodying vision. Leadership intelligence thus always partners with what defines not only its own brand of intelligence and leadership, but also that of the company. Although the specific affiliations may vary extensively, it is clear that the threefold pattern supports the effective exercise of leadership to the point where absent leadership falters.

How Smart Do CEOs Have to Be?

5

In short, CEOs contemplating decisions have to ask of the options before them three questions: are they clearly directional and aspirational, inclusive, and reverberating? Above all, smart leadership seeks to clear and level the field by making the following distinctions: 1. Gifted athletes do not often make good coaches; the best violinist will not always be the best conductor; the best teacher will not necessarily be the best head of the department. Different skills are involved. The skill of performance is not the skill of leading performance. 2. Natural leaders stand out. Employees listen and follow them. But look for the one who is capable of learning leadership over time. 3. Leaders are developing. They are always long-term. They have to persuade us that they are capable of going all the way—that they and we will last. 4. Diversity rules. What may work in the West may not work in the East. Smart leaders, do not keep making the same decision, tapping the same people, or using the same words. Hybrids should begin to talk hybridese. 5. Leaders should not be one-sided or one-dimensional. They should be tolerant of ambiguity and coexistence of opposites as norms—they should regularly read both the Wall Street Journal and text messages. 6. Change is one thing, progress another. Not all change is progress; that requires conversion, the test of time, and the ethics of the common good. Evolution is slow, technology fast. Evolution tries to catch up; technology leaves things behind. Leaders are interveners—they are peacemakers and pacemakers between the slow and fast. In the process they also convert change into progress. Finally then how intelligent do leaders have to be? We know that many are not geniuses, and, do not have to be. Indeed, perversely, being too bright may even be an impediment to decisiveness and invite decision analysis paralysis. And yet, for all that, we single out and admire those whose smarts sets them apart—who think and act in such a distinctive way that it becomes their leadership brand—and even, happily, that of their company. Indeed, that latter legacy tends to be generated by CEOs who have internalized their organizations to the point where we cannot tell where one begins and the other leaves off. Descriptive though these observations are, they do not take us very far in penetrating the mystery of leadership intelligence especially the issue of what intelligence brings to the relationship. A number of issues need to be addressed at the outset to clear the field for deeper probing. The first is identification. Are we talking about IQ—scores which for all their fallibility are objective and boast a national standard? Of course, but that is not where it ends. To that base factor of assessing how smart leaders

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are, we also have to ask how they are smart—the various means they characteristically employ to process knowledge, evaluate situations, and make decisions. Then we have to add the perennial issue of whether the intelligence is native or acquired—genetically or educationally enhanced. Is there a leadership gene? Indeed, there is significant biographical evidence that many current leaders exhibited leadership traits early on; but that is not balanced or offset by other studies of those who evidenced the same traits but never became leaders. So we are left with the inevitable choice of including all factors initially and then sorting them out on an individual-by-individual basis: genetic, familial (birth order, geography, education, experience, and so forth. But because the inquiry here is focused on a fused subject—on executive intelligence— differentiation is critical from the start. What if anything distinguishes the intelligence of leaders from that of managers who, after all, they were once; or from that of researchers, scholars, and artists? Do they all think the same, follow a common way to solve problems? Is there not just a special but an inevitable relationship between leadership and intelligence? And, moreover, is the contribution of intelligence to leadership reciprocal—does it ultimately alter each half of the whole to the point where the standard 1 + 1 = 2 becomes 1 = 1 = 3? If a case can be made for that claim, can guidelines then be developed which would serve to guide future leaders? Focusing on basics, what roles does intelligence play, and what are its deliverables? ADVANCED GUARD Executive intelligence initially scouts out situations and people ahead, scoops up information about what games are being played and who are the major and minor players. Above all it functions as an early warning system. This is in essence political and social intelligence gathering, particularly valuable in assessing new situations and associates and warning whether the oval garden is also a minefield. When the advanced guard signals it has gone as far as it can go, intelligence shifts and deeper probing takes over. EXTENT AND SCOPE OF EXPERTISE Here executive intelligence is called upon to catch up. Typically that may take many forms. First, many leaders value self-education. Self-study and mastery require intelligence to gather key books, articles, and reports; set up briefings; and ask for direct reports to bring the CEO up to speed.

How Smart Do CEOs Have to Be?

7

If the leader is sensitive to risk or if an initiative may fail, he presses intelligence to go further. He wants to know the downside—what can go wrong, and what are the wild cards? If he values history, he will want also to know about earlier incarnations and, especially, their contexts. If he is a globalist, he will want to know who else is pursuing the same path, as well as why and with what resources. If he has supplemented his MBA with a PhD or DBA, he will want to know what the research shows. If he routinely looks ahead, he will want to know what future-driven research has to say about what the subsequent transformations of the problem are likely to occur. Catch-up is the ultimate preoccupation of leadership intelligence, especially catching up with a swift future.

THE WAR ROOM OF NEXT! Although obviously this dimension can be folded into the above inquiry, leaders who pride themselves as effective and smart problem solvers tend to single out this focus for separate consideration. In effect they convene a problem seminar or war room. There leadership intelligence reigns as it presides over minimally three pursuits—root cause searches, treating every solution as a problem, and the ideal of win-win. The quarry is relentlessly pursued, cornered and pinned to the wall until it tells all. It is also there where the solutions are vetted and their hidden vulnerability exposed. Only the fittest survive. Next! COMMUNICATIONS GAME PLAN The options are then trotted out and tested with a different kind of third-degree. Communication and implementation are joined at the hip. Indeed, intelligence in its proactive role argues that the communications of all decisions to stakeholders and the way it will happen are such critical factors that they must accompany and be made an integrated part of the original decision making process. This is also where the issue of followship surfaces as a reality check. Indeed, that inclusion often not only adds a necessary dose of critical reality to the process, but also sets up the need for pilot testing.

IMPLEMENTATION The value of assigning separate importance to a key step is to signal how critical the wiring of a solution in place has to be—how much it is inextricable part and parcel of the solution—how in effect it becomes what is

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communicated—and finally how it becomes and reflects upon the leadership brand that is its advocate. If the roles described above have validity then clearly intelligence enjoys an active and reciprocal relationship with leadership very much like that of an executive coach or trusted advisor. The scenario of imagining conversations between the two is helpful in defining not only the extent to which intelligence and leadership interact as partners, but also the extent to which leaders use and trust knowledge capacity and agility to build their leadership brand. By rendering this secret sharer less secret and observing its functioning as almost a separate and independent agent, it is also possible now to profile and sum up the kind of intelligence aspiring managers need to acquire to become leaders: • • • • •

Be suspicious and wary. Smarts is always 360. Obsess about root cause. Solutions are problems. Execute flawlessly.

One additional application remains: the perceptions and values of others. What does it take for intelligent leaders to be hired—and then to attract followers—the ultimate affirmation of leadership? The five pathways of directional leadership offered here are obviously not meant to be worshipped or accepted uncritically or to serve as a quick fix or shortcut. They are certainly not intended to overthrow and replace all existing leadership theories and categories. Rather, they are meant to dramatize twin truths: that leadership is all about intelligence and choice, and that when it comes to choosing what kind of leader one wants to be, there are basically five basic leadership choices and directions available from which to choose. Decisiveness is what leaders demonstrate. The factors involved may be complicated and often conflictive, and beset by variables. A decision is a decision. It is finally clean and clear and singular. It is summative and directional. The claim here is that it also combines smarts with savvy, which in turn means that decisions are knowable, learnable, and defensible. They are also historical—the range reflects what leaders have chosen in the past—what defines wisdom in the exhausting and often worshipful literature of leadership—and what emerges as the best practices and state of the art of our current heads of companies and countries. If the entire discussion is shifted from what is chosen to what patterns of choice appear as preferential—in particular those patterns which appear to be

How Smart Do CEOs Have to Be?

9

distinctly driven by the double demands of leadership and intelligence—what parameters emerge as defining?

BIG PICTURE Perhaps the most striking overall pattern that emerges from any survey of leadership intelligence is that it always selects and values the big—the summative—a miniature of the whole—typically a big-picture choice. Vision precedes mission. Leadership intelligence always asks for frameworks, and demands to know the context of contexts, the paradigm of paradigms.

NUTS AND BOLTS But in same breath the leader demands specifics: data patterns, market trends, operational politics. He wants to know what persuades, motivates, and engages support—and are they deliverables? Can it be customized to fit company capacity and image? And does it match the CEO’s brand of leadership?

STAND OUT Leadership intelligence straddles. It alternates between what is held in common and what is unique. Although transferable to some extent, it should always be inimitable, almost patentable. Occasionally, heroically selfchosen—when and if success comes and whether it is also spectacular, it is haloed as industry-wide benchmarks, and our leader appears on the face page of Time magazine.

DIRECTIONAL Clearly it signals where we are going. But that is not enough. Leadership decisions that are intelligence-driven inevitably are accompanied by communication of why we are going that way and why that is the smart choice. Such executive knowledge-sharing is particularly appropriate to addressing two accompanying subdirections: to justify actions of acquisition, and to rally courses of action and performance necessary to reach goals.

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THE INCLUSIVE Less aggressive, more exploratory, even more tentative, the leadership impulse in this area does not seek to conquer but to co-opt, not to take over but to enable, to be not divisive but reassuring. Diplomacy, not war, is its signature. The CEO dons the HR hat. The focus is mostly inward and seeks to marshal and coordinate internal diversity to create a culture of consensuality for effective teams and networks to achieve their own collective versions of leadership intelligence. Ultimately what is thus shaped is team intelligence.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE But inclusivity is not unity. The goal is neither to mute the differences of diversity nor to insist that the majority rule, although both sadly may remain when inclusivity fails or is not a direction chosen. Rather, the focus is on relationship management and consensuality as the principal go-between. Inclusiveness rests on the absolute importance of teams (especially virtual) and learning networks (virtual and informal, too) to achieve company goals. Indeed, often teams, more so than individuals, not only discover and implement with distinction root cause problem solving, but also artfully manage diversity to enrich both the ends and the means. The key to inclusivity is emotional intelligence, which is the power of leadership intelligence to project empathy as the agent of inclusivity and the dynamics of team management of differences. Indeed, under the benevolent umbrella of emotional intelligence, the problem solving power of teams becomes the ultimate source of innovation. Finally, emotional intelligence is thus not separate from or superior to general leadership intelligence but is how the initial executive choice of inclusivity taps and applies empathy as the means of creating a consensual culture.

REVERBERATING BRAND OF DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP The choice of a direction that is reverberating is the leader’s way of building legacy and courting the future. But that in turn presupposes his knowledge of not only how the baton is passed, but also how the future will behave—and how both are generationally perceived. In other words, legacy choices have to be multiple and egoless—they cannot be replicative—they cannot be a hall of flattering mirrors.

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The bequeathing CEO must thus always be engaged directly in building and developing leaders and providing the opportunities for their assuming commanding roles. The most effective ways of designing an internal leadership MBA program is to couple leadership sharing and succession planning. Leadership options must be built into the job description of every manager, who in turn is required to do the same in adjusted fashion for those he supervises. But distributed leadership also needs the recurrent challenge of a discontinuous future. Most succession plans are thus not futuristically legacy-building. They often assume a static replication of the present and the status quo. The only succession is to a never-never land. The task of constructing a succession plan has to become the ongoing, evolving, and across-the-board mission of distributed leadership—scenarios of the future have to be composed and compiled across the board if the strategic plan is be empowered and enriched.

APPLICATION-DRIVEN Applications are intended to be bequeathing—to prime the pump, stir things up, quicken the pace and then step back to allow the momentum to pursue a life of its own. Instead of taking over, reverberating leadership turns over; instead of dictating, it delegate. Thus, its choices are always doubling: they link and are linking, connect and are connecting, broker and are brokering—they are permanently unfinished. They are always a mode of stretching and searching, inevitably a prober of first and final causes, a champion of innovation as the offspring of the future—and thus come closest to embodying vision. Past, present, and future are thus always the continuum encompassed in the characteristic choices of direction of leadership intelligence. To be sure the specifics may vary from industry to industry and leader to leader but what is reasonably clear is that the patterns above support the effective exercise of leadership to the point where when absent or neglected leadership falters. In summary, then, what can be claimed for leadership intelligence? Most obviously, decisiveness—and equally as important the classic choices: the directional, the inclusive, and the reverberating. Although the forms each can take accommodate external differences and adjustments to circumstances and temperament, they are not capricious or haphazard. They are contextual and dictated by the shaping power and identity of each choice, discoverable by that choice, and in fact display a magnetic kinship. In addition, knowledge and application of the above parameters dictates that decisions always bridge the big and the small, vision and application.

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And with this claim we finally come upon what intelligence uniquely brings to the partnership. It is the knowledgeable bridge between leadership choices and what is needed to make those choices happen operationally and futuristically—and that when finally fused offers branded distinction to the CEOs who again prove who is in charge, and who deserves the big bucks. In the next chapter we inquire how we find this wonderful leader.

Chapter 2

Only Superman or God Need Apply

Advertisements for CEOs are generally overwhelming and intimidating. The list of responsibilities is crushing, the number of years of experience required suggests that only senior citizens should apply, and the scope and depth of knowledge needed would be satisfied only by a team of professors. Do we really expect CEOs to do all this? Well? For very long? Any aspiring executive who thinks he can fill the bill may be excessively hungry, naive, or an egotist. In any case, hopefully the interview process or a savvy search recruiter can scale down or translate the requirements to a more manageable scope and terms. Still as a leadership document such ads tell us much about the state of the art of leading today and how it is currently and variously perceived. An examination of representative sample ads thus may reveal what are the central expectations of CEOs, how are they are couched, and what if anything is new or different. Minimally three patterns emerge.

THE MACRO MUST MINIATURIZE THE MICRO The CEO is supposed to know it all—to be an interdisciplinary expert and knowledgeable about every business operation. He has to master all that his direct reports know, be able to carry on an intelligent conversation with and even challenge his executive team of vice presidents, and do so as an equal. Aside from such demands being unrealistic, the real worry is that such 360 degree competence may encourage the morale-destroying behavior of micromanaging. 13

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Has the list grown? To all of the above has to be added functioning in a global economy, embracing diversity and supporting ecological sustainability and—the newest wrinkle—stealth executive bells and whistles—hide conspicuous displays of wealth. Finally, our CEO’s office should also be his home, to minimize the wear and tear of commuting and working 24/7/365.

THE UNIVERSAL AND GENERIC LEADER Although each company and industry creates their own advertisements, the CEO requirements have become increasingly generic. Indeed, the traits desired take on the profile of universal criteria—so much so that the ad can be run by any organization searching for a CEO. Thus, for example, he must develop overall business strategy and direction, market positioning and branding, increase efficiency, enhance profitability, interface with both internal and external constituencies, and develop a winning vision. Even the language and terms of the duties sound familiar and suggests that if all the CEOs were lined up next to each other, the final image would be that of a hall of mirrors. Gone are the days of Andrew Carnegie, who claimed he went to work each day, made one major decision, and went off to play golf. Somehow given the busy and almost frantic range of responsibilities noted above, the Carnegie model of decisiveness may be appealing largely because it exemplifies the one true and ultimate executive talent.

BE A CHEERLEADER Energy and enthusiasm are absolutely essential. The CEO must be able to rally others around a winning vision, lead teams to excel, inspire exceptional results, strike a balance between hands-on and delegating, handle multiple priorities simultaneously and promptly, and foresee issues before they become obstacles. The executive agenda reads like a summary of all those motivation posters hung on training or meeting walls. But what is eerie and discomforting about these happy tasks is their cookie-cutting familiarity. They are a summary of bibliographical sources. They have caught and echoed back in distilled form most if not all the ideas and even the language of all that has appeared and been advocated in our leadership journals and books. Sadly, we have been listened to.

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Given such excesses surely there has to be a more sensible, down-to-earth, level-headed way of advertising for a CEO—perhaps something so simple and arresting as listing one outstanding executive trait. Thus, a nostalgic throwback to Andrew Carnegie would feature decisiveness. Or impatience with all the jargon and the failure to focus on what is central—money. In that latter case the following cynical but honest list of what we should be looking for in a CEO would be the ability to • • • • •

Make money (profitability) Continue to make money (marketing) Invest in making new money (innovation) Save money (efficiency and productivity) Hire moneymakers (HR alignment)

Any takers? Refreshingly, what this ad states clearly and unequivocally is that the job of the CEO is to make money. Numero uno is finally focused on what is numero uno. However he does it, the CEO above all has to keep his company on the money trail, make sure all know and share that mission and are on board with it, and finally recognize and reward the moneymakers who make it happen. It may finally echo and be as basic and simple as the Godfather, who claimed, “I always made money for all my partners.” Does that trivialize or minimize all the other executive traits listed above or devalue all the glowing profiles of leaders found in the never-ending literature of leadership? To some extent it does—it puts them all in second place—to functioning essentially as the means to the larger end of being profitable—to focus all the well-managed and clever processes of all operations on the bottom line because that is where both leadership and profitability coexist in reciprocal affirmation. Indeed, capitalism can’t exist, let alone thrive, without such leaders. But curiously, we always hide that fact. It is a dirty secret, and generally leaders are never that crass. But the real reason that claim is never made is that the financial is a factor of size and density—big companies make money in complicated ways, involving many hands in complex environments. That is why we have leaders in the first place—to make sense of and bring intelligent order to internal personnel and process, and to align that unified and critical mass with external challenges and customers. The sign of his being able to do both again and again over time is the bottom line. Fulfilling that expectation again and again, with changing demands, is also the sign of his lasting as a leader.

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But how do they become good at that? What do they have to know to continue making the right choices again and again? And is that learnable? What is clear is that achieving profitability over time not only puts the most intense demands on fusing savvy and smarts, but also largely explains why the expectations of CEOs are so high. Profitability is the grand sum game. It is total and totally demanding—by, with, and from all. Many leadership traits are involved. And each is enhanced by its own knowledge base. But three are absolute.

360 The first key leadership trait is to be holistic—to have a vision not only of the whole, but also of all its essential interactive parts. That needs to be put up against and aligned with the equally complex nature of the operating environment in which the company has to make money.

SYSTEMIC Second, the knowledge needed is that of the nature of systems. No CEO can be successful without systemic vision, internally and externally—without understanding how things and people work, whether they are working together, how that is tied to earnings, and whether those relationships can be altered to increase revenues. Tinkering or tweaking can produce incremental gains, but again, only within the context of expert systems knowledge.

FUTURISTIC In addition, a CEO and his system are data-dependent. He is only as good as his information—from minimally three sources: the productivity of the workforce and the extent to which they see a relationship to profits and customers, the operational complexity and competitiveness of the external environment focused especially on what can enhance or put you out of business, and finally monitoring the short-, middle-, and long-term trends of an increasingly discontinuous future. Our CEO minimally may wish to follow what others have done—appoint a CIO (Chief Information Officer) and also a CLO (Chief Learning Officer) to coordinate and interpret critical data. But still the initial and final question the CEO must ask is What do I need to know to continue to make money?

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Perhaps, then, the leader’s three driving goals are to become smarter, invest in research capacity, and hire futurists and stargazers. It should command the lion’s share of the budget, place a higher priority on hiring PhDs and research degrees, and above all empower the rank and file to look ahead, The three overriding questions every CEO needs to ask again and again are: What do we know? What does the research show? and What does the future have in store for us? Clearly in these instances smarts equals savvy; and the case for fusing leading and learning hopefully has been made, as well as the case for composing ads created in that image. The next few chapters try to document how that might be done.

Chapter 3

Fred Smith and Tough Intelligence Learning to Lead

Although CEOs generally learn much about leading during their tenure, their wisdom is often not generally shared or made available. For many good reasons: their insights are often proprietary or at least private—they are also frequently tentative, awaiting further testing and application before emerging as insights. Finally, CEOs are just too busy leading. They are not professors gathering notes for a lecture or book or reporters pressing for news delivered on the run or during the heat of the fray. Indeed, leadership knowledge is usually an accumulated and delayed mother lode left alone on the side until all the battles are over, the general has departed or, like an old soldier, faded away, and our leaders retire and look back to reflect. Often that takes the form of a memoir or a biography which tries to retrieve, catch, and distill all that has been learned in a series of lively recreations and memorable war stories. Are such recollections helpful and instructive? Often very much so, especially in filling in historical gaps and providing missing information only known to the insider at the top. They also have great appeal to all those aspiring to be top executives and hoping to find in the advice of a Welch or Iacocca the magic bullet. But even the best of these recollections suffer from at least two major limitations. They are recorded after the fact, and thus are dated. Leadership is of the moment. A leader looking in a rearview mirror cannot tell us very much about what lies ahead. Then, too, eulogizing kindness often intrudes to soften the bite and protect the incompetent and the innocent. But Fred Smith, who built Fed-Ex from the ground up, is different in at least three ways. 19

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First, he did not wait until he had left the scene, but waded in early on to address leadership on the move and adjusting to change. Second, he did not refrain from calling a spade a spade and speaking bluntly, clearly, and personally, warts and all. But most important is his claim that the principal task of the CEO is to discover new CEOs. That meant to Smith placing leadership potential at the center of all deliberations and equally important advocating the CEO role of finding potential. And what emerged was a redefinition of leadership as a process of “learning to lead.” It is an unexpected focus—almost egoless—atypical of CEOs who usually relish holding forth when they occupy the bragging pulpit. But Smith is after bigger and more elusive prey: leaders who are not there yet—leaders who appear to be what he calls them in the title of his piece in Leadership Journal Vol. XVII (Fall 1996) “promising.” In fact, he immediately offers a rationale for that focus: the “natural leader will stand out. The trick is identifying those who are capable of learning leadership over time.” According to Smith, we should not worry about the one already endowed; his or her leadership gene will work its magic way. It is the long-term, not the immediate, that structures Smith’s quest. Most important, he focuses on the leader who learns to lead, because ultimately, in his judgment, that is the only true leader. Leadership is thus gradual, absorptive, forever unfinished. It is not something you ever finally attain—something you grow into and learn your way into leadership—rather, getting smarter is the leader’s core business. The CEO is the ultimate knowledge worker. The leader is ultimately and always a learner. He can never turn off his brain. He is his intelligence. Smith then quickly goes on to make another critical distinction: “The most gifted athletes rarely make good coaches. The best violinist will not necessarily make the best conductor. . . . So it is critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different skills.” In other words, expertise does not reside in being able to do the specific job but in being able to lead those who do. Moreover, that skill is transferable, internally from one division and externally from one company to another—horizontally and vertically. But throughout, learning to lead remains the constant. Happily Smith does not shirk from the hard task of specifics. He proceeds to list in detail what he is looking for—what to him is leadership potential— and how it might be recognized, discovered, and released. A presentation of his 10 probes follows (and many appear to be so critical that one is tempted to reformulate a number into a potential leadership test to be administered to future prospects):

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CATCHING FIRE For leadership to be a calling, there has to be a proportionate and immediate response. Thus Smith first looks for enthusiasm and energy often paired: “When I talk to people about the future, I want their eyes to light up. I want them to ask the right questions. . . . The founder of Jefferson Standard built a successful insurance company from scratch. He assembled some of the greatest insurance people simply by asking, ‘Why don’t you come and help me build something great?’ A person who does not feel the thrill of challenge is not a potential leader.” To Smith then the infallible sign of leadership potential is the capacity to be stirred deeply—to the core—and not just initially but continually. When success becomes certain, predictable, or mechanical and the light leaves, the eyes then one is no longer a learning leader but a producer.

SPIRIT OF DISCONTENT Smith urges that CEOs also identify and measure potential by a capacity for “a constructive spirit of discontent. Some people would call this criticism but there is a big difference in being constructively discontent and being critical.” The pivotal two questions Smith routinely asks, “Have you ever thought of a better way to do this, and if so, what might it be?” If he says no, he is being critical, not constructive. But if he says yes, he’s challenged by a constructive spirit of content.” To Smith then discontent is the telltale “unscratchable itch. People locked into the status quo are not leaders. Nor are those who only pick the low-lying fruit or settle for answers not root cause. Of all the traits and tests listed, the potential for discontent remains absolute and lifelong—exists always as potential.

PRACTICAL: WHAT WORKS To Smith highly creative people are often not effective leaders. They are good to have around to stir the pot but they usually can’t discriminate between what will work and what will not. Brainstorming is not a particularly helpful practice for leaders, because ideas need to stay practical. Not everybody with practical ideas is a leader, but leaders seem to be able to identify which ideas are practical and which aren’t. Vision and discontent still need to have their creative feet planted on solid ground.

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ENERGIZING THE GRIND Smith worked long days, typically starting with the first shift and leaving at the end of the second shift. One evening an employee stopped him with a comment: “Mr. Smith, I sure wish I had your pay but I don’t want your worry.” Smith thought about that and concluded that even if the pay between the two were the same, the real difference was not about the money, nor about leaving the job behind at the end of the day. Responsibility and burdens are easy when you lead others to experience “the joy of accomplishment—contributing to other people which is what leadership is all about.” So, rather than feel sorry for yourself, find the grind energizing.

BE A FINISHER It is relatively easy to finish routine tasks. The challenge is to solve unfamiliar problems, and then to look minimally for three things to emerge: newfound competence, grit, and completion. Smith quotes Carnegie: “Men in the ranks won’t stay in the ranks because they have the ability to get the job done”—and done well and completely—half-baked meals are not good enough—the completion factor rules—“no one can be a leader who suffers from finisher completion syndrome.”

MENTAL TOUGHNESS AND LONELINESS Smith also claims that “no one can lead without being criticized or facing disappointment. A potential leader needs metal toughness. I don’t want a mean leader; I want a tough-minded leader” who can face and manage the biggest challenge of leadership—going it alone and not caving in to the temptation of being liked. Smith concludes, “A leader must be able to keep his counsel until the proper time.” Toughness and patience are two sides of the same coin.

PEER RESPECT Smith claims that “peer respect doesn’t reveal ability, but it can show character and personality.” The value of such respect is that it identifies people who want you to succeed. Maxey Jarman used to say, “It is not important that they like you.

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It’s important that they respect you. They may like you but not follow you. If they respect you, they will follow you, even if perhaps they don’t like you.”

HOLDING COURT Leaders do not babble or make small conversations. “When they talk people listen. Others may talk a great deal but nobody listens to them. I take notice of people to whom others listen.”

DESTRUCTIVE WEAKNESS “There are only two things I want to know about myself: my constructive strength and any destructive weakness. A destructive weakness may not show up on a test; it’s a character flaw. A destructive weakness may for example be an obsession. An obsession controls us; we don’t control it. It only grows worse over time.”

SUCCESS ENVIRONMENTS The only environmental issue is whether a congenial situation and supervisor can be found especially in the early days supportive of emerging leadership. “I wouldn’t want for example to put someone who requires mentoring with a leader who pays no attention to people. An environment that threatens our sense of sense of security and well being splits our concentration” on learning to lead. In summary, then, what is puzzling is how Fred Smith found the time and energy to build, manage, and lead Fed-Ex on the one hand, and also find, diagnose, and encourage the emergence of embryonic leaders on the other hand. My guess is that he would argue that they were one and the same.

Chapter 4

Intuitive Intelligence Mastering the Leadership of Forecasting

Although Robert Greenleaf’s commitment to the anticipatory leader appears often throughout his philosophy, in which he developed a coherent and rigorous discipline of forecasting which involved three stages: 1. Preparation: Establishing Thresholds 2. Positioning: Tactics and Stance 3. Propelling: Stepping Out, Leaping Forward Each stage consists in turn of a complex series of exacting rituals which, when completed, lead to the next stage. But most important was establishing an organizing relationship with time. All the stages are encased within a chronological forecasting framework in which “one constantly thinks and defines ‘now’ as the moving concept in which past, present and future are one organic unity.” The forecaster is “at once in very moment of time, historian, contemporary analyst, and prophet—not three separate roles.” He must live by a rhythm which constantly moves back and forth from “the indefinite past, through the present moment, to the indefinite future.” Paradoxically, it is the temporary, unstable, and vulnerable present that constitutes the nexus and the launching pad of the forecast. Nesting within that framework is the ritual of Greenleaf’s three stages.

PREPARATION The discipline initially involved in creating the thresholds for forecasting are a series of lifelong habits of survival and optimization. In all, there are four. 25

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Withdrawal and the Art of Systematic Neglect The focus here is to avoid hasty pressure to be engaged in premature futurizing. Events and needs may be deemed urgent, even life-threatening, but if allowed to compel thought or action, the result inevitably will be partial and askew. The strategy, then, is to engage in withdrawal and to buy time, to forestall the expenditure of limited resources, and to establish a neutral and quiet space for gathering together of new perspectives. But inaction is not inactivity. The task is one of constant discernment: “systematic neglect sorts out the more important from the less important—and the important from the urgent—and attend to the important even though it may involve penalties and censure for the neglect of something else.” Allowing the urgent to become the important permits the clamorous noisy present to dominate and obscure basic and strong historical patterns which have the momentum to persist into the future. A certain stoical and sometimes unpopular silence is at the heart of systematic neglect. The embryonic forecaster has to risk being perceived as above it all or out of it. Pace and Choice Selection of direction determines the next phase. Having stepped back, the servant forecaster has to ask, “How can I use myself to serve best?” The search is for a match between the pace of the most important issues and trends on the one hand and the drive of one’s strengths, intelligence, and mission in life on the other hand. Greenleaf thus accepts from the outset that the forecaster must make choices, and those must be purposeful and even ideological. However, both the discipline involved and the nature of the future temper indulgence. Accepting the Imperfection of Followers To Greenleaf all forecasters are leaders, whether in fact they are or are not CEOs. In that role, the forecaster “requires an acceptance of the tolerance of imperfection” and the limits of followers, just as later to be effective he must accept the limits of his knowledge base. Such unconditional acceptance and empathy is precisely the threshold for understanding that the forecast itself will also and always be imperfect and incomplete. Inevitably, like those who have to live it, the forecast will be fallible and less than whole. But its flaws at least will reflect all that flesh is naturally heir to, and be redeemed in part by the affection and acceptance by the futurist of

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the limitation of followers. After all, “Anybody could lead perfect people—if there were any.” Finding the Optimum Putting everything together at this point is discovering that what should govern one’s life, intelligence, and work as a futurist is “the law of the optimum—optimum being that pace and set of choices that gives one the best performance of a lifetime” (19). Optimum choices are lifelong. That is the best and only mortal standard that sets the standards for the longevity and durability of one’s long term future forecasts. Thus to Greenleaf, accepting the disciplines of systematic neglect and abandonment—the discriminating hierarchy of what is not urgent but important, the imperfection of followers—determines the substance, centrality, and fallibility of good forecasts.

POSITIONING: TACTICS AND STANCE This intermediate stage straddles preparation and positioning. Here the emphasis is more internal, less willful. The forecaster seeks to get inside the forecast and be the object of the complex dynamics and interplay of forces that inevitably release the forecaster and his forecast from its being earthbound. Two Levels of Process To Greenleaf forecasting is both highly rational and creative. He compares the analytical part to a computer constantly incorporating “intersecting series and random inputs. of the events of the instant moment and comparing them with the events of the past.” But surprisingly, the creative side involves a descent into the unconscious and the world of intuition. The way to combine and tap the strengths of both is “to stay with the conscious analysis as far as it will carry one,” then practice systematic withdrawal to “release the analytical pressure, in full confidence that a resolving insight will come” (25). Two Levels of Consciousness The duality of process supports the duality of consciousness. The futurist constantly has “to live a schizoid life. One is always at two levels of

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consciousness.” One level is in the turbulent real world of the daily newspaper. The other is detached and absorbed in the long sweep of vision Both are necessary. The forecast must be rooted in the immediate and the real of the present but aspire to a perspective which is endlessly unfolding and indefinite. Indeed, that duality serves as the standard for evaluating whether a forecast is in fact one. Two Kinds of Impact Forecasts must both disturb and keep the peace. They must dislocate and restore. If they fail to stir things up, no one will believe it is the future. After all, if the future is obediently continuous with the present, what need is there for forecasting? But if there is no “solution or solace offered,” the forecast will fail to be bracing. It will scatter focus. It will produce panic. Without requiring false comfort, Greenleaf thus believes that there is both a humane and ethical dimension to forecasting, The humane must always minister to the imperfection of followers; the ethical to their capacity nevertheless to respond creatively to discontinuity. This further test of the forecast is also always a test on behalf of those who have to live it. Fortunately, the favorite target is clear: “the young are always with the future.” The Information Gap and Intuition Greenleaf concedes that there “usually is an information gap between the solid information in hand and what is needed.” Moreover, even when more is forthcoming the belief persists that still more is needed. Worse, while one waits and collects data the window of decision may be lost and the old problem may be joined by a new one. In addition, the leader/forecaster may lose his anxious followers or audience who always “want more certainty than exists in the situation” and than is possible to grant. The relief of their anxiety is critical to preserve their capacity to react later to the future. At this point the leader and the forecaster must go quiet and withdraw. He must allow the future to visit him, to almost possess him. Then he must abandon himself to discovery and allow himself to drift into unchartered areas. At this point also intuition bridges the information gap between what is known and what is unknown. It is finally then a “discovery process in which the leader and the forecaster think like a scientist, an artist or as a poet.” To be sure, such thought processes may be just as fanciful and fallible as theirs.

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The Three Failures “Foresight is the ‘lead’ that leader has. Once leaders lose their lead . . . they are leaders in name only.” The same is true of forecasters. They face three potential failures: the failure to foresee, the failure to act while there was still time, and the failure to be responsive to constituents being consumed by the anxiety of discontinuity. Such failures are ultimately “unethical” because they betray the leadership of anticipation.

STEPPING OUT AND RELEASING THE FUTURE Before the leader/forecaster makes his final future-driven decision or issues his forecast, it needs to be tested and reviewed. It must be humane and therefore imperfect. It must offer a reality that calls for stretch and imagination. Coping thus has to be built in. It must also seek the optimums of timing, circumstances, and expectations. The preparation and positioning initially required of the forecaster must now be replicated for the forecast. Above all, the span of the forecast must be displayed up front so that its extent is clear. In fact, the range must be made part of the forecast. It is critical that those who have to respond to the forecast understand its progressive range. The forecasting span incorporates the known, the unknown, and the unknowable—the seen, the unforeseen, and the unforeseeable. Analysis defines the known and the seen. The data of the past and the present generate a shape of what is to come. When there is no discontinuity it is possible merely to extrapolate that shape onto the future. But when change dominates and dislocates, one has to go to the second stage of the unknown and unforeseeable and gather trends, the perspectives of experts, and the underlying dynamic forces of structures under stress. What is then known and seeable is amplified by the comprehension of what is unknown and the unforeseen. At this point only genuine leaders and forecasters can go on. They are poised at the ultimate thresholds of the unknowable and unforeseeable. They alone have to find the coherence that holds the previous stages together. They have no other way of entering the holy of holies other than by insight or intuition. Such a creative leap or penetration cannot be willed. The leader or forecaster is as much acted on as acting. The forecast comes as a surprise, unexpected but not unsolicited, strange but somehow familiar. The insight is like innovation in that it builds on a solid base of pattern and data, but suddenly breaks new ground, inhabits a new country, and brings forth a new tomorrow.

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Above all, the ultimate test of the viability of the forecast is the ability of the leader/futurist to see things whole. The indefinite past and the indefinite future come together in the definite present with a seamless coherence that constitutes the authentic content of the forecast. The final affirmation of its holistic character stems from the imperfect followers who may be dazzled and braced by the future but whose task it is to complete it. Their anxiety is relieved and they are ready to embrace the difference asked of them with their adaptability. They finally also acknowledge that then leader has used his “lead” to know the unknowable and to see the unforeseeable. One should not conclude that Greenleaf is creating or reserving for the charismatic leader an almost magical capacity and power. Nothing could be more precious and further from the truth. In fact, Greenleaf argues that leaders who make a splash of their egos and importance are too full of themselves to allow the future to enter and possess them. What he is ultimately claiming is that one cannot be an effective leader and not be a forecaster. To Greenleaf it is a matter of basic competence and ethics. And it is seldom taught in graduate school. When it is, it is never presented as a discipline with a series of ritualistic steps not unlike those required of Zen initiates. It is not Greenleaf’s aim to create an exalted view of the leader, but rather an exalted view of the future. It is the focus not the fortune of the leader/ forecaster that deserves emphasis. The role of the leader is to transfer his leadership through his forecast to that of his institution. It is also to put before his imperfect and often anxious followers a future which is theirs to embrace and to be empowered by his conscious refusal to serving as an indispensable intermediary. All these self-effacing acts are but the outward manifestations of what made possible the internal dynamics that welcomed insight in the first place. At that moment, the leader/forecaster is one with the future and the young who live daily with that future.

Chapter 5

Downsides of Visioning Misguided Use of the Future

One of the standard criticisms of companies is the lack of a vision statement—which usually and quickly leads minimally to two conclusions. First, no wonder you did not know where you were going; and second, no wonder there is no or little unity of purpose or focus. Occasionally, the indictment is less harsh: a vision statement exists but it is old, most do not recall what it is not even having one, and it has been around so long that no one remembers when or who wrote it, and clearly was top-down and failed to achieve consensuality. Rapidly a committee or task force is selected to craft a vision statement. But seldom if ever is the practice questioned, let alone its content. In other words, perhaps it is time to pause and examine the entire issue of vision as a sign of executive intelligence and to evaluate its efficacy. Five patterns emerge. The first is how it generally happens.

POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE Visions often are never simply stated—they are launched, heralded, even hallowed. Timing is critical. Nothing else must be allowed to go on, certainly nothing competitive, to clutter center stage. It takes place in public with a podium and all the trappings, with members of the executive team obediently in attendance as a halleluiah chorus, and the aura of a grand performance. It is not so much pronounced as staged like a political event (which it is) or a coronation (which it resembles). Style becomes brand. Sometimes the occasion is worked up to a full fledged multi-media event so that it can be 31

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taken on the road as a traveling dog and pony show visiting the troops at different satellite locations or debuting at the annual meeting. An additional piece of business involves purging—making sure that the name of the former CEO is removed from all official documents and chain of command structures. One final touch is carving the message into stone: summarizing the main points and putting them up on the website, posting and displaying them on training walls, and printing them on the back of business cards and distributing them to the faithful, at no additional cost.

FORGING UNITY If how this is done borders on the devotional, that is probably intentional, because it is meant to signal a new order, a new way to see and do things, and above all the new demands of a new leader. Indeed, it has routinely become the occasion for describing leadership expectations. Indeed, above all it is a sacred moment perhaps never available again in quite the same way; visioning is intended to command and generate loyalty, obedience and unqualified support. It serves to bring everyone together on the same page—to create a unified workforce with now a new single purpose—to rally all to the cause of shaping a new and superior future of the organization. It is thus not the time or occasion for dissent or skepticism or worse for suspicion. All must stand at attention, salute, and hail the new commander in chief with unanimity and single-minded devotion.

EGO TRIP To the CEO hot to trot, the prospect of there perhaps being some misgivings about visioning may come as a shock. It never occurred to him or her that there could be any downsides to visioning, including whether it even should take place. To most new CEOs the only question is when, not whether. But the truth of the matter is there is no ground swell requiring or yearning for it. Some leaders do not do it at all, postpone it, or fold it into an annual report and thus safely avoid scrutiny. So going public with a vision is not necessarily what constituents want or the company has to have, but it is often what the CEO has decided he needs to do to be the CEO. He wants to be out front, in charge of calling the shots— and he wants further to describe in no uncertain terms what and who will be

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driving the show. In many ways vision proclamation is an ego trip telling everyone who is the boss. FAMILIAR GOALS But the boss of what? As vision drifts into mission, goals emerge. But they are remarkably predictable and tame. Regardless of the industry the familiar trinity surfaces: there is always a focus on quality or excellence, the necessity of being a market leader, and the forging of singular oneness of mind set and purpose. In some cases the goals are indictments of the previous administration and thus may justify being promulgated and spelled out. Indeed, often at the same time those below the CEO who are to lead the various charges are officially named and singled out with a mixture of bravado and accountability. There is no mistaking whose heads are now on the chopping block—known and named in advance. THREE DIRECTIONS There are no surprises. Most vision statements are predictable and boring. They are never controversial or interesting. Although designed to stir and uplift, the reaction is often ho-hum—same old, same old. They are never angry or indignant. The language is polite and reassuring until one gets to the inevitable fork in the road where choice of direction has to occur. Typically there are then three options: catch up, surpass, and stay ahead of the competition. Better still, be better than they are. Best of all we have to be different from them. The last really gets the juices flowing—and tells all that it is not enough to be as good or be better than they are; we have to eat their lunch, too. The reason that last item is so important is that that is exactly what vision is supposed to offer—a new vista of competitive innovation and creativity. Indeed, if the vision of the CEO does not touch, release, and stir the collaborative and collective aspirations of those who have to achieve that excellence, market share, and singleness of purpose, nothing will happen— the proclamation will go unanswered, the momentum of legacy will be lost, and the CEO will appear ordinary and easily forgotten. Given the value of visioning, the remaining issue is how to avoid the downsides. What alternatives, if any, can be offered? Perhaps three. The first focuses on the organization; the second on its people; the third on both but fast-forwarded to a very different future.

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ORGANIZATIONAL IDENTITY In addition to a history, organizations have personality, style, structure, and intelligence. They also have a special energy and self-image. Employee attitude appears in whether they are proud to say where they work or just they mumble the name. The profile is both palpable and subtle, obvious and hidden. It combines highs and lows, great war stories, and, sadly, some disasters. How it taps the one and survives the other describes its inventiveness and resilience. But it takes a certain kind of deep patience, listening with the third ear, and an understanding of how a place also gathers and holds itself together, for it to assume the substance and identity of a human and tangible face and form. It is the task of the CEO and HR to compile and then articulate that identity and then to grant it the momentum of its future incarnation—to describe its goals in terms of what it is, what it has been, and where it should be going. But the process is not neutral but rather judgmental—it features what the CEO believes should be continued, what should be discarded, and what needs to be reinvented. Finally, it always concludes with a mixture of both continuity and gaps—of the familiar and old company profile and what its new history and character will look like.

HR CAST OF CHARACTERS A variation on the above focuses on people, and especially on their conversations. Again the emphasis is what is going on behind the scenes—how rank-and-file employees and middle managers talk to each other (or don’t) and how they typically problem solve (or fail to)—the extent to which they routinely play the blame, shame, and gotcha game. Official training as indicators is duly acknowledged, but the deeper exchange of informal and network learning which is the real mother board and lode has to be pursued. How relationship management takes place, or doesn’t, is also part of fact finding. The end result is typology—identifying and targeting five or so key personalities who sum up, in HR terms, company scope and span. They are then made into a typical cast of characters and act out and profile the visioning drama of before and after. The latter script is particular fascinating as we hear and see the new conversations and relationships projected by vision.

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2020—THE YEAR OF PERFECT VISION This last version is designed to be intriguing and to begin with a question posed by the CEO: “Have you ever wondered what the year 2020 will be like? What this company will be like? What will be the nature of your job?” A quick survey of past futures would be sufficient to impart credibility to the current inquiry. Then not one, but a range of future directions would be presented, avoiding the charge of being know-it-alls or of putting all our eggs in one basket. Gradually, a three-trend version for the industry as a whole would be put forth: the probable, the possible, and the wild card. Selecting the safest or most likely visioning takes the form of running the film backward from 2020 to the present and asking what do we have to do now and next year to get us in shape for not only being around but also taking full advantage of a different future that is only ten years away. Best of all the future vision compels a company-wide response of complete alignment. Ideally what sets these three alternative visions apart is that they should all be interesting and intelligent—engaging and not generic—a personalized and customized scenario of what their fate and that of their company will be like. In addition, visioning of this kind establishes for the CEO and HR the key connection between learning and leading. Insofar as that partnership is maintained and renewed often later on, such alternatives offer the unique executive opportunity of vision not being a one-time but ongoing occasion for infusing leadership with vision and vision with leadership, and both with the intelligence of each. The first belongs to the CEO—and the company’s history, culture, and future-driven conversations to HR.

Section II

Applying Intelligence

Chapter 6

The Emergence of the Reciprocal Leader The Intelligence of Managing and Leading New Networks

Historians alert us that “a crisis should never be wasted”—because that is when—and sometimes only when—desperation can be the mother of invention; when arrangements and combinations regarded as too exotic or chancy can be tried out; when we have been given the license to experiment. Thus, it can be argued that trying to get through and beyond current tough times may be a special learning experience in its own right. To be sure, its outcomes and implications typically have not been spelled out, let alone identified. That is understandable: survival and fear absorb energy; and when we think ahead all we hope for is restoration not alteration of the status quo. But tough times often are life-changing. They force unexpected changes in the way we do and manage business, alter our perceptions of process, and challenge hierarchies. To be sure, not all the yields are totally new; some continue existing trends. Certainly not all are pleasant or reassuring; some are jagged and disconnective, and not all are actionable, but hang in the air like bad dreams for further contemplation. But they all disturb the peace and thus leave behind critical questions which cannot be ignored. The focus here has been limited to five that bear on the subjects of learning, leading, and leveraging.

CULTURE OF TRUST/BELIEF In crisis, the paternalistic view of the company as a family becomes suspect. Parents do not lay off or throw their kids out into the cold; CEOs and accountants do. Out the door also goes acceptance of communal coherence or the capacity of existing company culture to hold the workforce together. 39

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The only culture that is not totally suspect is what the workforce and their managers have forged often uniquely on their own in the present crisis. But that is still in flux, even temporary, and has not hardened yet into any permanent mission statement. All we know at this point is that like the Ten Commandments the crisis ethos is dominated by “nots”—by what not to do. In other words, tough times bring to bear a merciless transparency and create a strangely comforting inventory of rejected approaches and processes. Even a belief vacuum becomes preferable to broken promises.

FOLLOWSHIP The inclination to follow the leader is no longer automatic. CEOs have been shown to have not only clay feet but greedy hands. A cynical correlation has taken place between pocketing and losing millions. Followship may still exist but is not bestowed easily or quickly, and certainly not based on inherited tradition and trust. Followship becomes increasingly endowed with conscious choice, and if there is no one deserving of support, then the preference is to do without. Thus, whether or not tough times make or break leaders, rank and file now regard leaders minimally with suspicion and occasionally as superfluous.

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE Largely abandoned by circumstances and top-down direction, and urged to do the same old thing which has gotten us into the current mess, the workforce and their managers gradually take over and fill the leadership gap. The hierarchy of the pyramid is collapsed into a series of horizontal networks which span and crisscross the company. Indeed, linkages and interfaces suddenly occur that are almost utopian. The predictable standard objection, “That is not in my job description” is replaced by its last line “And all other responsibilities as assigned.” The ethos becomes going the extra mile and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. Being put in charge by circumstances was all that was required to turn stretch job goals into upgraded job roles. It the process, every job description is exceeded. Then, too, customers were perceived differently—as generating the models for employees. The kind of levels of attention reserved previously and sometimes exclusively for customers became extended to internal customers.

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A new and more reciprocal bond now exists between customer and the worker. Indeed, customers often are as fearful or reluctant as those providing the product or service. Hence a new standard of transparency and equality is now operative: lowest cost, highest quality, and outstanding service. The notion of the customer as the ultimate partner or collaborator has become the win-win of a new relationship norm.

NETWORK RULES Probably the most dramatic yield is the emergence of divisional and crossdivisional networks of teams. Ranging up and down and across the board, networks of problem solvers and process managers took over. In a number of cases networks occupied intersects they had never had before and in the process discovered the leveraging power and innovative potential of being at disciplinary cross roads. Many were doing things that involved making decisions they had never made before. Every one was on a steep learning curve. Also the time between knowing and applying had to be reduced to near zero and mid-term had to be factored into short-term. Above all, what emerged were self-managing, selflearning, and self-leading networks that could do it all—if given their head, in good times as well.

THE EMERGENCE OF NEXT! Because fast and dirty fixes and short-sighted approaches had brought about in part the current mess, all were more open to finding a different way of problem solving and making decisions. Driven by networks, not by singular fiat from on high, and by new performance standards, Next!, or the root cause approach emerged gradually and tentatively in stages. There was still the temptation to stop short and settle for intermediate gains and not go all the way before it acquired its present uncompromised form. But once the search for root cause took hold and the clarity and promise that such a methodology offered did its magic, then Next! surfaced as an emerging culture capable of a leadership role in its own right. A muted yield or dirty secret seldom mentioned is a new skepticism about capitalism itself, now seen not solely because of failure but in the new context of ecology and limited resources. Two major misgivings have appeared and are linked. The first is an economic system that is wasteful, that excessively

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overshoots the mark, that consumes valuable finite resources, and that trusts the market to clean up its excesses. The same lopsided arrangement is found in the disproportionately payment of excessive salaries and bonuses to top executives, especially when their companies do poorly. But when these two patterns are joined, the political system of democracy finds the emperors of economic capitalism often to be without any clothes. The task that now remains is applying and spelling out what impacts if any these five developments have on leadership awareness, intelligence, and management—what lessons have been learned to guide leaders to preside over a very changed landscape? The old leadership standby of “Trust me” won’t cut it anymore—perhaps it never should have. What the workforce has learned, often bitterly, is that such promises were often beyond what even the best-intentioned CEO could keep or deliver on. Indeed, his frequent decision to put himself first and save his own executive hide and position is exactly what the workforce has learned to do. Their effort to go the extra mile is motivated by self-interest not trust—so much so that not expecting the culture to deliver has led to taking over and managing units and networks which they are now empowered to deliver. The new culture presided over by CEOs is now a more mutual and reciprocal culture—one that resembles leaders having to work with unions, only now with less acrimony and threats of strikes or job slowdowns. The key to leaders forging a new culture is not so much based on trust as on negotiated agreement that what the workforce want and value is the same as what the leaders does: minimally, the preservation of jobs, and optimally, benefits and pension. As long as leaders can deliver job security, and, hopefully, job growth, then loyalty and followship may return and leaders can be granted all the hierarchical means and needs traditionally available to them, including the big bucks. But the one absolute that now governs all executive decisions and strategic plans is to preserve job viability and employment. The other commitment leaders must make is that whenever that absolute is put in jeopardy everything must stop and be put on hold—nothing is to be decided or implemented without first communicating the dilemma to the entire workforce along with the rationale for the proposed solutions. Furthermore, the leader’s anticipation of this development must be immediately shared with the workforce so that there is no stampede, and time is given to understand the situation and weigh the options before them. Moreover, it is not to be done in a long one-sided communication on the website but through a series of small forums and dialogues chaired wherever

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possible by teams of vice presidents, managers, and workers. It would be ideal if workforce had available to them, through a small independent budget, consultants who could argue and document alternative options. Be that as it may, what the leader needs to tap is his previous experience of stepping up to the plate, the unexpected productivity gains of networks crossing over to eliminate redundancy and increase seamless exchange, the development of root cause or Kaisen problem solving ability and expertise, and finally the empowered judgments of worker-managers and manager-leaders. In effect, the leader now has available as collaborators to him not only an expertise and intelligence equal to that of his executive team, but also the cooperative means of implementing new policy decisions or directions by rank and file. The world of work cannot change without altering the world of leadership as well. Congruence and convergence rule. The days of the lone ranger leader, manager, and worker are over. The reciprocal and collaborative team player may be less romantic and sexy but it has brought, to leadership especially, a new intelligence and a new agenda: • • • • • •

Not to proclaim but to persuade Not to expect but to earn trust Not to promulgate a uni-directional but a collaborative culture Not to avoid but to welcome challenge Not to see the future as fixed but as pliable Not the same old, same old but reinventing new ways of learning, leading, and leveraging

Whether all will be a passing fancy or not, only time and reciprocal leadership and intelligence will tell.

Chapter 7

The Leadership of Leadership Experts

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. —William Shakespeare

Did the Bard have it right from the start? Did he stake out the three essentials of a leadership continuum and designate how leaders come on stage? Some stride forth already complete and endowed, others evolve and grow into their achievement, and the remaining are chosen—suddenly emerge as circumstances, challenges, or power brokers come along and embryonic and reluctant leaders are charged to rise to the occasion and carry the day. But does this cover all the bases? Confirmation appears in recent leadership surveys in which about one third (surprisingly?) believe that they were born to lead—that when they looked back all that they needed was already there. The remaining participants are split on what remains between them, and conclude that they grew into or developed leadership or that it was thrust upon them— they vividly remember how almost out of nowhere, an overwhelming challenge appeared and they were pressed to seize the day and emerged triumphant. In addition to being confirmatory about the three basic leadership types, the surveys also supplied what was missing: rough statistical apportionment. One third are born leaders, with the other two splitting up the balance. Conceivably, then, the entire range might be evenly divided, with each representing one third. In that case we appear to have in hand all the essentials: a basic cast of characters, their distribution along a leadership continuum, and a brief script about how they were launched—all succinctly and poetically conceived as a historical summary for all time. 45

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So what is there left to do? Evidently a great deal, if the recurrent annual output of some 2,000 leadership books, articles, and webinars is indicative. Then, too, we must add the number of in-house leadership development programs as well as the arguments about how effective they are. The ranks of commentators also have swelled. They now include academics, executive coaches, business consultants, executive recruiters, think tank types, and bloggers endlessly twittering away. Finally, it is not possible to ignore the incredible proliferation of executive MBA and even PhD/DBA degree programs—with all those professors unleashed to publish or perish and all their students researching and writing dissertations adding some 500 per year to an already exhaustive leadership bibliography. When all the above is assessed, what unexpectedly emerges is a focus shift. Leaders and their commentators now minimally share and even compete for the same spotlight. In many cases the latter even dominates to the point of constituting a separate, standalone, and codified body of leadership practices equal to those of executive performance. Thus, not one but two dramas are being rendered. Alongside the drama of how leaders arrive on the scene and acquire visibility, there is now the analysis of how they are constituted and defined, how they may be classified, ranked and portrayed, and how they finally can be processed into recognizable models of archetypal profiles. In short, the world of leadership commentary has become as big and busy as the object of its analysis. Its major commentators in stature and substance rival the heads of Fortune 500 companies. Indeed, their performance and visibility not only match and sometimes exceed what and who they measure, but also are presented in more impressive and persuasive forms. They replace anecdotes with documentation, types with taxonomies, impressions with surveys, and rites of passage with matrices. The only way CEOs can cross over and join this sacred position is to write a book, ape the language of dashboards and metrics, echo and affirm the wisdom of the commentators, and like them then be invited as plenary speakers to hold forth at major national and international conferences. In the process, how has Shakespeare fared? His wisdom generally has been ignored, regarded as one-dimensional, found to be too simplistic, and dismissed as deceptively final. In short, whether or not his poetic summary is accurate or substantive, its principal deficiency is that it eliminated, trivialized, or minimized the expertise of what all the commentators had to offer. In other words, commentary rather than practice has evolved to the point where its cast of characters, settings, and plots are now as important and pivotal as those that inspired its creation in the first place. Thus, at this point it might be more meaningful to pause and turn the tables and to examine

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the arguments of the commentators rather than the rationales of leaders—to inquire how such commentaries not only have added to but also shaped the current discourse of leadership. Are any patterns discernible? Minimally three, all surprising and initially disarming. The first is that the commentators are generally not timid or shy. In fact, what they put forward more resembles ideologies than neutral objective concepts—they are often visionary and passionate in their own right. Second, they are not passive or neutral. They almost always feature interventionist roles which not only proclaim those visions but also take on, chastise and even correct leaders who have strayed. Third and finally, the net result is a body of commentary that is presumptuous. Their analysis is not objective but partisan, is partial to certain kinds of leadership, and offers a comparative span of leadership types across all industries that exceed the perspective of any one leader. In the process, commentary parallels and even competes with what it examines, and ultimately even assumes or presumes the role of being leaders in their own right. But that is not new, necessarily bad, or without value. Indeed, what redeems such presumption and competition are the compelling findings which are not solely leadership-rendering but leadership-creating. Thus, when one turns to the causes they advocate, hearkens to their voices of intervention and counsel offered, and reviews their leadership preferences, what finally emerges is impressive. Minimally, five principal patterns surface and constitute the vision and mission of commentator leadership: leader recognition and definition, predictive and open-ended applications to training leaders, big-picture early warning factors, strategic contingency planning, and dynamics of organizational reconfigurations. A word or two about each.

LEADER RECOGNITION ATTRIBUTES The principle here is that if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it is likely to be a duck. But why is that important? Many reasons. First, it establishes a common base line where all leaders meet—where all those born, made, and fated meet and exhibit the common traits they all share, whether five, seven, or fourteen. Second, that common benchmark transcends origins and appears finally as an egalitarian wedding of the aristocratic and the democratic, privilege and access, hierarchy and across-the-board. Third, leadership traits can then be applied to serve as the goals of all leadership development programs, constitute the learning outcomes of all academic executive degrees, and guide

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executive search committees. Above all, whether or not perceived as absolutes, collectively they offer multiple access to the intervention of corrective commentary. In the process, updating occurs. Thus, the born leader is now endowed with the leadership gene (at least initially as metaphor) and this naturally endowed leader is advised to focus and replicate his stamp on the DNA of his organization. Even those who questioned whether leaders are in fact born are silenced by the elaborate executive surveys which document and clinch both the common attributes of leaders and limit that number to a select few. And finally wedded to technology, the leader is imaged as a cyborg presiding over the singularity.

PREDICTIVE AND UNLIMITED TRAINING APPLICATIONS Here the list of attributes is put to two different uses. The first is as official ideology—to proclaim and promulgate what in fact constitutes leadership absolutes. Lest that appear presumptuous, the list is retroactively and prospectively applied as an overlay to the point where it is unarguably predictive. It not only provides an infallible guide of who to hire, but also finally serves as a checklist to club all in line and eliminate pretenders to the throne. Then, too, by changing traits which tend to be genetic givens to skills and behaviors which are learnable, the list also grants and accommodates access—unlimited leverage to the developmental aspect of leadership. The door is now totally open to the intervention of learning and to the designs of programs and workshops that feature such absolutes. Above all, commentators can constantly recommend the inclusion of new executive competencies such as emotional intelligence or alert leaders to executive hubris.

BIG PICTURE EARLY WARNINGS Although the lessons imparted to leaders may be many and ongoing, the most recurrent and immediate are those dealing with the big picture—with macro changes of the magnitude of paradigm shifts. Such wake-up calls are not only leadership-directed but also leadership-charged. They are in short the stuff of leadership; they are finally his alone.

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Leadership commentators thus function as second board of directors telling CEOs what to do, and often what to stop doing. Thus their message is often urgent—pressed forward by what they see as excessive reliance on rearview mirrors on the one hand and the paralysis of the deer caught in the proverbial headlights on the other. Time is a critical factor because a huge ship can not change direction quickly. Equally difficult is changing global attitudes brought about by US apparently losing its lead, the fallibility of major American companies and the future capacity of American capitalism to generate full employment. To the prospect of such future end games has to be added that of the planet itself and of the need to add ecology to globality as the top of the list of leadership vision. Daunting though these early warnings are, commentators play a key role in defining the leadership agenda and reminding them that it is no time for business as usual, or to ignore two big-picture choices in particular.

STRATEGIC CONTINGENCY PLANNING Leaders are urged to make certain basic changes to their strategic planning and budgeting. Commentators now urge that all planning become contingency planning. At least 50 percent of all planning now has to become monitoring. Planning also has to include multiple data sources, including wild cards. The long term is no longer a token activity but has to become a norm, and now be aligned with and reflect the adjustments to the big picture. Above all, the leader has to become an anticipator/futurist and supplement the incremental with the innovative. He has to increasingly be able to read the handwriting on the wall and follow the model of Wayne Gretsky skating not to where the puck is but to where it is likely to be. Above all, he has to be aware of the law of escalation, and that the amount of time he has to act is tied to and as limited by the options available to him. The future like the planet is finite. It presents itself as stretch, strain, and shock. A law of escalation determines choice. Acted upon early in the game, stretch offers many and generally attractive options. Neglected or rejected, strain replaces stretch, and although the range of initiatives is fewer and often grim, matters still can be moved forward. Not so with shock, where the alternatives are draconian and bitter. In short, the commentators preside over a nonstop seminar drawing upon disciplines and mega trends in excess of what most leaders have available to them, and dispense unsolicited wisdom of what they should know and do.

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ORGANIZATIONAL RECONFIGURATIONS In addition to lecturing leaders on the macro ways to plan for a tricky and difficult future, commentators also ask CEO s to assess what shape their companies are in for the long term, and how receptive they are to organizational change. In effect, the analysts set up a design class. On the one side are the new realties and parameters of the second decade of the 21st century: discontinuity and transition. Intertwined they represent the permanence of transition as shifting bridge to the new. On the other side are the given and available structures which have successfully managed different realities for generations. The immediate issue is how well suited these conventional designs are to accommodate and absorb these new evasive and fluid realities. The second stage is evaluative—a combination of yes and no or yes, but. The design requires the invitation, this time, of the workforce—often, happily, with employees overcoming or compensating for the limits of the design and exceeding their job descriptions. But increasingly the current design often seems to buckle and break down, especially when down sizing and fewer employees are added to the reduced and strained mix. That ushers in the third aspect of redesign. Drawing upon the changes of other proactive and imaginative leaders, the commentators recommend in quick order flattening the pyramid, instituting distributed leadership, putting vice presidents in charge of interfaces, creating virtual teams, and wiring in place a total communication system in which everyone knows everything about everyone. One could go on. But without belaboring the point, leaders who hearken to the commentators have access to an unlimited number of executive coaches available, minimally, to bail them out and, optimally, to set their organizations on new paths of survival. However, for that kind of exchange to be beneficial it must take place between equals. What is perhaps now reasonably clear is that the ideologies of leadership commentators not only enrich our understanding of leadership and leaders, but also secure their roles as arbiters of leadership—as leaders in their own right. Indeed, as profilers and promulgators of leadership orthodoxy, they inhabit and dominate the Parthenon of commentary leadership. As such they become the preferred plenary speakers, the authors of seminal articles and editors of journals, and sometimes members of boards of directors, and even are invited to serve on search committees as power brokers and kingmakers. The only distinction is that they don’t make the big bucks. But given the abuses that has led to of late, that may be a blessing in disguise. Besides, not surprisingly, they also have something wise to say about that as well.

Chapter 8

Leadership Profiles and Matrices Deciding What Kind of Leader to Be

Why are we so preoccupied with profiling leaders? with classifying their leadership style? with ferreting out the bent of their characteristic vision? Because—simply put—leaders are important. We expect them to make a difference. That is why we have leaders in the first place. But we want to know beforehand what kind of leader we have so we can know what to expect and what they can deliver. Then, too, as followup, we also plan to train the kind of future leaders we want, and for that we need some definable prototypes. But equal if not greater pressure for categorization also comes from those who want to be top dog—from those who constantly soul-search and ask themselves what kind of leader they want or hope to be, and then proclaim why that choice is needed for our time. And lest such intensity of introspection remain solely selfinitiated, reinforcement comes from another source—search teams—asking the same questions in virtually all job interviews and evaluations. So there is no escaping the process of typology. Indeed, the situation is compounded by the fact that there are not one but minimally two audiences insisting on leadership profiles. The first are the aspirers—those now in undergraduate and MBA programs studying leadership, middle-level managers stretching toward and gearing up for leadership positions, heirs apparent in company leadership development programs, vice presidents with or without coaches preparing for the final assault on Mount Everest, and of course academicians and consultants seeking to traffic in the latest leadership definitions and fashions. Not surprising, given all those seekers of the Holy Grail, that there is such an enormous appetite for such categorizations leading to the production of some 2,000 books and articles each year. 51

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The hunger for models is so intense that aspirers particular favor memoirs where they hope finally to find the magic bullet or absolutely clear-cut guidelines to follow. But sadly, instead of facilitating the choice of what kind of leader to be, the matter is often made so overly complicated or trivialized that it becomes a shot in the dark or a crap shoot, and would-be leaders go off in search of the latest guru for the answer. The second audience are the hirers—the search teams, executive search recruiting firms, HR task forces, and so forth—all those equally involved in and critical to the process of definition. But although the quest is shared and even mutually self-defining, the two streams of inquiry more often than are not only separated, but also not even on the same page. The net result is a half passed off as a whole, and instead of a collaboratively enhancing set of leadership profiles we are limited to one dimension; and the question of what kind of leader one should be is cut off from what kind of leader they are looking for. Indeed, what makes that separation so myopic and mutually defeating is that both aspirers and hirers value and focus on the same topics of the classification process and even seek answers to the same basic five questions: 1. Leadership Choice: a. What a kind of leader do I want to be? b. What kind of leader do we need to have? 2. Leadership Vision and Direction: a. What kind of leadership vision optimizes my passion? b. What kind of leadership is the best fit for us? 3. Leadership Ideology: a. What kind of leadership best generates a success culture? b. What kind of culture do we want and need? 4. Leadership Methodology: a. What kind of leadership best supports continuous improvement? b. What kind of leadership will focus on company-wide development? 5. Leadership Brand: a. What kind of leadership accommodates unique customization? b. What kind of leadership will serve as our industry signature? If we pause to summarize and apply the five essentials above to our expectations for leadership profiles what emerges are the following operating assumptions: • Basic leadership choices must be essential, limited, and generic. They can’t be only 1 or 2 or as many as 20.

Leadership Profiles and Matrices

• • •

•

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Choice is tyrannically limited by leadership history, legacy, and bibliography. Every leadership choice inherently houses and projects a directional vision and energy. It is its core identity. Every leadership form generates and inspires an ideological culture. It is its passion and cause. All leadership is also down-to-earth, daily, methodological, and operational. Although often collaborative or delegated, it keeps alive the inevitable manager in the leader. All leadership is ultimately one-of-a kind and evolves into a recognizable and admirable leadership style. It is its brand.

Although the above facets are listed here separately for purposes of clarity, they are, of course, all of a piece, and blend and flow into each other. The value of listing leadership choice, vision, ideology, methodology, and brand as separate and individual topics is that they individually and collectively support the profiling process. They also can lead to the summarizing power of a visual matrix, or rather three. The first would display what defines each leadership profile, the second the content or source of each profile, and the third how leadership development can be enhanced and assessed. But matrices need a built-in starting or kickoff point. In this case it is reflected by the driving differences of five basic leadership types: Table 8.1

Defining Matrix

Choice

Vision

Ideology

Methodology

Brand

The Changer The Rearranger The Integrator The Innovator The Anticipator Table 8.2

Content/Sources/Five Building Blocks

Type/Choice The Changer The Rearranger The Integrator The Innovator The Anticipator

Biog.

Learning

Values

Relationships

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Chapter 8 Enhancement/Assessment/ Interventions Matrix

Building Blocks

Followers

Emotional

Strategic

Intelligence

Planning

Biog. Learning Values Relationships

Finally, to sum up our deliberations to date of what are the key expectations, conclusions, or guidelines about the leadership classification process, there are at least five: 1. Keeping the two audiences of hirers and aspirers aligned and interactive throughout so that each collaboratively can supplement the other side of the coin. 2. Keep leadership choices basic, directional, generic, limited, and at the center of all deliberations. 3. Accommodate leadership diversity and passion of vision, ideology, and methodology. 4. Accept the individual stamp put upon generic choice in the form of leadership branding. 5. Be prepared to welcome as a dynamic result of all the above leadership amalgams which may be one-of-a-kind and, ironically, finally unclassifiable. The last note hopefully should satisfy or pacify somewhat those who find matrices and taxonomies too mechanical and predictable. Defining leadership is one thing; claiming that it is finally and totally definitive is another. The first is fun; the second grim.

DECISIVE AND PERSUASIVE: THE BRAND OF LEADERSHIP CHOICE Leadership audiences are generally demanding. Whether composed of eager doctoral candidates or impatient upper-level managers, they always want more than you offer—and inevitably accuse you of major sins of omission. How could you have left out this or that critical leadership trait or, worse, how could you have given such short shrift to or ignored completely the latest leadership guru?

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But your worst crime is that you have not facilitated choice—that in your desire to be objective, complex, and comprehensive you have concluded by leaving everything up in the air—and that like all leadership experts you have intentionally even relished being inconclusive so that cynically and selfishly you can return to the podium and go on teaching and lecturing on leadership forever and enjoying again and again—all protests notwithstanding—the martyrdom of being misunderstood. Actually that cynical conclusion applies not solely to the purveyors of leadership, but also to the subject itself. Routinely treated as the holy of holies, leadership is often so exalted that at times it rivals a religious quest. It is reserved for a few exceptional and inspirational types who are routinely hailed and haloed as if they emerged from scripture. And the ritual is reenacted each year in the publication of books and articles consumed by those seeking the magic bullet or formula to make it to the top. The net result is a kind of complicity between teachers and learners, between those who want to preserve the mystery and those who are eager to wrap themselves in its mystical mantle—between the desire to permanently keep it open-ended and the need for some sort of reasonable closure. Over the years I typically have favored the first group of leadership pontificators and sermonizers. But of late I have found myself increasingly and more sympathetically drawn to the second group of aspiring practitioners and their desire for explicit guidance. I think that has happened largely because I shifted my focus, sympathies, and activities from consulting to executive coaching. The latter is quite different. Information and wisdom transfer still occur, but now they tend now to be integrated: theory and application are routinely blended. Typically mentor and mentee step back and look ahead, but reflection and action are always joined at the hip. And nothing escapes practical application. But how is that done? In many sessions we would often identify and weave together a recent article or portions of a book on leadership with personal war stories or pressing challenges. If debate occurs it was always sustained by a double perspective: distance and immediacy, character and circumstance. Thus, the leadership that emerges from mentoring is always both personal and organizational. It fuses together who the CEO is and what he seeks to do—his identity and vision—and then aligns that unique developmental journey with the trajectory of where he believes his company has to go. And then it struck me—we make so such ado about the executive decision making process that we fail to acknowledge that the most important leadership decision of all is choosing what kind of leader to be. In fact, it is nothing less than who you are—your leadership bedrock. Nothing else comes as close to setting you apart and driving everything you do.

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It also later becomes your reputation—how you are known in the industry, how the executive recruiters classify you in their files, and finally what kind of followers want to hitch their wagon to your star. Leadership choice thus sums you up. It is your primary color. It is your signature. But neither the process nor the outcome is easy or mechanical. It is not a one-size-fits-all. You can be conservative or outrageous, boring or totally compulsive—the parameters of leadership choices are elastic and forgiving; there is always room for shading, styling, even idiosyncrasies. But the argument here is that leadership choice is a conscious decision, that it needs to be prepared for and contemplated early on before circumstances and choices are thrust upon you and you lose the opportunity to honor the special career path that is a unique match for your talent. In addition, you also have to be involved in shaping your shadow. The process of deciding on your driving difference unexpectedly is paired with the pressure of another driving difference. All leaders are obsessive in what they choose to do. But not all leaders are obsessive in the same way. So there is a need to distinguish ourselves—to appear as one of a kind. Fortunately, there is a way to make the unique generic. The worst kind of leader is vanilla—interchangeable—always sounding like all the other executives, and surrounded by look-alike associates all wearing the same trench coats. But the initial choice of talent involves a second choice: branding what you have chosen so that it is now identifies your niche, stakes out your singular style, accommodates all the other hidden talents that may be tapped later. Why is brand so important? Because it is not enough to take the lead; it has to be self-evident and recognized—it has to be attention-getting as a form of intelligence—possess a curve of savvy—exude confidence that is a smart way to go. No matter how apparently outrageous it may be, it has to resonate with and acquire an immediate sympathetic audience—above all, it has to be sharing—it has to communicate leadership. You have to be both decisive and persuasive. Brand not only defines what you have decided to do but signals why and how. It automatically scans the range of descriptors and selects only those that set your leadership apart. It is a shorthand form of executive command. Brand is unmistakable, tyrannical, and nontransferable—it confirms again and again your characteristic leadership intelligence, decisions, behaviors, and even style. It is your trademark. It is also tenacious. If along the way circumstances change and a point is reached where you are no longer a perfect fit or are totally at odds with the kind of leadership the company wants and that your talent provides, so powerful and determining is brand and its guiding intelligence that rather than

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choosing to change, the CEO will choose to leave—or hopefully be offered another command that taps his brand and what it uniquely has to offer. But leadership and brand selection do not occur in a vacuum, but as an evolving process which in fact determines the nature of that executive stamp. Like the choice of what kind of leader one seeks to be, brand selection is not free of determiners. Brand-building rests on a number of prior choices—specifically the convergence of three: the personal, the circumstantial, and the preferential. The first is who we are and how we have come to be that way—the composite makeup of our native talents and drives, how the psychology of family and sociology of family and society have prepared and programmed us to be, whether we were born leaders or acquired leaders or a mix of both. The second is the external challenges and problems being faced by the culture of the organization we join or head up. The embrace in fact is inevitably historical—where we are at and where that business and country are at in time. Finally, after taking into account and allowing for the impact of the first two contributory factors, we run into the problem mentioned at the outset: choice is not facilitated. Leadership options are typically not spelled out. To be sure, the leadership literature displays, classifies, and analyzes leadership patterns as an objective exercise, but choice is not invited. Surprisingly, it is often absent, even in company leadership development programs where one would expect explicit guidance and where academic paralysis seldom operates. Then, too, the curricula of most executive leadership MBA or PhD programs stop short of accommodating the key question of deciding what kind of leader to be. Even later, when prestigious institutes offer seasoned and experienced CEOs short seminars, they are always about getting smarter at what a CEO is already doing rather than asking them to trade in their spots and stripes for another and different kind of leader. Why then is leadership choice postponed, avoided, deflective, or even ignored? treated as a taboo or private subject between you and your therapist or mentor? The major obstacle is the general absence of a list of choices. But leadership does not become impoverished, robbed of its secrets, or lose its integrity by explicitly identifying its range. The five options laid out here stake out the basic choices that over the years have guided others and are designed to encourage informed choices: The Changer The Rearranger The Integrator The Innovator The Anticipator

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These five are archetypal and summative. They identify the basic historical choices in their most essential forms. Do the categories overlap? Of course; they are meant to. And if not chosen initially, are they never again available? On the contrary, no option is ever discarded. All that is not chosen can later be recycled—reconfigured—and subsumed to be aligned with and supportive of the basic leadership choice. Thus every leader who is primarily transformational in nature also possesses the potential of all the other remaining talents. He has the capacity to alter organizational design, integrate and optimize units and disciplines, bring innovation to the forefront, and of course be futuristic. The difference is that in the process each of the remaining leadership factors is enlisted and defined by the dominant one in charge to the point where individually and collectively they acquire a unique supportive hierarchy of identity. The proportions and territoriality of each are determined and negotiated from the top. They are all variables called on to step up and minister to changing organizational circumstances and leaderships. In this sense leaders lead from within as well as without; their reserves are marshaled internally to match external challenges. They are also, by definition, unfinished. They are all finally hybrids who enrich and extend their identity by linking, learning, and leveraging. However, lists are a necessary evil—sometimes more evil than necessary. They provide clarity, but in the process they have a way of disguising or obscuring dynamic interplay. They also favor hierarchy and imply that what appears first is preferred. That is a reason for displaying the range of choices in the arrangement of a pentagram, and a reason why leadership needs to be both clear and complicated—explicit to facilitate choice, and multiple to serve as the building block of brand. The initial choice prepares for the follow-up threshold of subsequent choices. The net result is a leadership profile which is multiply layered and faceted and which in turn feeds upon itself and its historical partners to generate a whole and a brand equal to the task of being a comprehensive leader for all seasons. But the basic argument remains: that the above leadership options are classic, recurrent, and defining, and remain so even in their reinforcing roles. They never disappear or lose their integrity. Like reserves, they stand ready to be called into the game plan by the quarterback calling the plays. In this sense leadership not only models a team but also embryonically is team-driven. But equally important, the commitment to leadership choice and branding in turn is anchored in a comprehensive set of assumptions about leadership in general which constitutes and sums up the ten central themes of a belief system:

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1. Leadership choices are known and knowable. 2. They are not singular but multiple. 3. The initial range is limited to a relatively few and supports a robust taxonomy. 4. Leadership houses not just one basic choice but many. There is always a dominant one which often sadly is frozen prematurely into exclusivity by talent or success. But all the other options are there to be called on. 5. Leadership roles and choices are archetypal and classic. The test of all current leaders is to combine the old and new, the recurrent and familiar, the obvious and radical, the cyclical and unique. 6. Leadership is both inherently driven and externally shaped—compulsive and chosen—leaders are born, made, unmade, and reborn. Leaders are never finished. 7. Leadership branding sets the executive apart—doubly—by how he leads and how he communicates, by how he is both decisive and persuasive. 8. All leaders are ultimately one of a kind—by choice, by brand, by internal design, and finally by the unique organizational circumstances and history of what they lead. 9. Leadership is also differentiated by the kind of followers it attracts. The range includes disciples, yes men, but also types, coequals, colleagues, associates, etc. Followers thus make choices also—not only about what kind of leader they emulate and in turn they may want to be, but also what kind of follower they want to be and what they need to learn. 10. Leadership produces leadership intelligence. Developed over time, it is a unique way of thinking and knowing, of root cause problem solving, framing elusive and contradictory issues, and converging talent and circumstance. Above all, it informs and guides choice from a cluster of options of what kind of leader one needs to be to fit what is needed. Intelligence is shaped by the when, how and why of circumstances. In conclusion, then, the burden of this exploration is to describe and analyze what choices are available at the outset to get you to the top and what options stand ready later on to keep you there. Indeed, if one is already or nearly there, how to contemplate and bring to the surface other leadership directions that create a new match of talent and circumstances and new leadership hybrid brands which are unique and adaptable and yet born both of this time and of the future of our age and guided by executive intelligence, the leader’s shadow and coach.

Chapter 9

Navigating Leadership Taxonomies Five Choices, Five Directions

Classifications are not passive ordering devices in a world objectively divided into obvious categories. Taxonomies are human decisions imposed on nature—theories about the causes of nature’s order. The chronicle of historical changes in classification provides our finest insight into conceptual revolutions in human thought. —Stephen Jay Gould (l996), Full House (New York: Crown Press)

As Alice the sage of Wonderland wisely noted: if you don’t know where you are going any road will do. But is the corollary true? If you do know where you are going, will only one road do? Or many, but each one different but equal and appropriate to getting there? And then what about the reasons for the journey? What role does that play? Does it shape content as well as choice of direction? Finally, is the notion of a journey itself ultimately Jungian?—freighted with the archetypal?—a universal quest? When Robert Frost reflected on how and why he became a poet, he invoked the metaphor of roads to explain his choice (and perhaps all choosing?): “Two roads diverged in the woods/I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference.” J. P. Donleavy, the American-Irish novelist and satirist, developed a special multi-directional walk to elude creditors. It involved being able to turn suddenly 90 degrees and take another direction “whose end was not in sight,” and thus he would disappear, magically. Whether less traveled or disappearing, roads chosen are often identified as life-changing. Roads in general, but especially crossroads, dramatize choice. But although they offer options in many directions, they are not infinite in number or equally viable. Besides, we often rationalize that if things do not work out we can always go back and make another choice. The thing is not set in stone. 61

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Actually, Frost entertains that possibility in that same poem but then notes that as things and matters have a momentum of their own and a way of going and sliding on, choosing something else is left unexercised. But in another poem he more profoundly notes that every choice is not made once and for all time but returns many times in different guises only to be chosen (and affirmed?) all over again. So where does all this lead? Initially, to a series of paradoxes. The first is the classic clash between free choice and determinism—to have the freedom to choose but to find the choice controlling—to discover that choice is fate. Or, as Camus argued, we think we are choosing when in reality we are chosen. That is because what we choose reflects not only who we are, but also who we are likely to be. But that in turn is diagnostic: it displays a telltale profile—psychologically and embryonically—which fuses and sums up where we have been, where we are now and where we will be—past, present, and future. In addition, why we choose what we choose—our reasons or rationale—is equally tyrannical—even dictating whether the road(s) chosen will be familiar or different—majority or minority pathways—continuous or discontinuous. And that in turn opens up and combines the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. All roads thus inevitably contain secrets and surprises which surface unexpectedly as partners—of dexterity and integrity. But the act of choosing is invested with the specific rituals and the behavioral standards for getting there. Even, or especially, loners and escape artists follow a script which is not self-indulgent but rigorous. But although choosing is what we all do—often and with deep, contradictory, and lasting consequences—there is one group who historically has been singled out and tasked with decisiveness—the supreme deciders—they are our leaders. That, in fact, is what they preeminently do. Sometimes that is all that they do, but that is enough, in Frost’s words, to make all the difference one way or another. Although leadership traits abound and even compete for primacy, the clear consensus is that leadership is essentially always about choosing—about direction—where to go, why, and how. Nothing is more important than deciding that. To be sure, decisions are often deliberate and deliberating— requiring more time and data—and still more data—involving many collaborators, but ultimately the leader has to make the decision. Often the expertise of a leader is doubled: it involves directing his own career of getting to or advancing at the top and that of his company becoming an industry leader. Perhaps, then, all decisions ought to start with the military which lays out the inevitable and compelling parallel chain of command in a matrix relationship with business:

Navigating Leadership Taxonomies

Private Corporal Sergeant Lieutenant Colonel One-Star Five-Star

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Rank and File Team Facilitator Employee Manager Manager Manager-Leader General Leader/Manager (VP) General Leader (CEO)

Although pyramidal structures can be rendered and animated in various ways, what is clear is that they are decision trees. Wherever one starts each level possesses its own range of decisions. But two matters are constant: obedience and achievement—yielding to levels above yours, and doing whatever it takes to get the job done. But although chain of command structures the interconnected process, it leaves untouched how leaders become outstanding deciders? How are they helped to chose wisely? And further, what are the criteria for judging such success? Perhaps the first and most helpful contribution to note is that although the decision making progress is complex and involves juggling many variables and various personalities, the number of directional options from which to choose are surprisingly few in number. But typically the field is not pictured that way: it is either very crowded or sparse, inclusive or preferential. We are offered a great many variations on a theme or, obsessively, only two main choices: the transformational and the transactional. To be sure, over time the descriptors may change and thus give the impression of evolution. Then, too, some are coupled or hyphenated with other strategic factors and appear on the scene as new. Inevitably also contemporary pressures routinely compel the favoring or positioning of certain leadership preferences in a fluctuating hierarchy of priorities. But a review of the literature of executive decision making and the characteristic choices of CEOs unexpectedly yields only five basic choices and classic directions: • • • • •

The Changer (Vertical) The Rearranger (Horizontal) The Innovator (Intersectional) The Anticipator (Cross Over) The Integrator (Circular)

The argument here is that these five essential directions sum up what justifiably can be called the five-star range of directional leadership. That

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designation summarizes the fundamental options available to all leaders and thus represents collectively and separately all the perennial square ones where all leadership originates or where it has to go to restart. They also represent what all leaders are exhorted to do: choose direction and exercise directional leadership. Clearly, only potential leaders can decide their own fate. It is essentially a do-it-yourself task. But it needs another, more objective pair of eyes—it needs to be coached. It thus makes sense to join the two. Having come out of HR and served as an executive coach for over two decades and listened to and counseled managers and leaders from many different industries and countries at various stages of their journey, I have come to a number of conclusions. The first is that HR is uniquely positioned by virtue of its unique involvement in the trinity of recruitment, retention, and evaluation to undertake and to minister to leadership definition and development. The second is reciprocity—that whatever HR gives in terms of leadership knowledge and insight it gets back in terms of defining and developing its own capacity for HR leadership. Then, too, I have found that minimally the difficult task of self-definition needs both guidance and standards, or, rather, the kinds of standards that HR routinely employs to guide performance and evaluation. A key factor or standard is that leadership assessment is not a cakewalk. It is hard work—ditch-digging—descending deeply and unflinchingly—seeing oneself warts and all—profiling a character only a mother can love. Then the timeline is ambitious—it starts before birth with the fetus and is permanently open-ended, because, as noted, all leaders are unfinished; they are constantly in a state of revision and reinvention. Similarly the scope must be inclusive—not just 180 but 360—not just savvy or smarts but both—uses multi-raters—and has to be big—the big picture, big history, and the big future—global norms and paradigms—yet intimate, almost private. Finally, it must also be playful and open to surprise lest the task become too grim or predictable. In short, it is not meant for the faint-hearted or those expecting a quick fix. Equally vexing is structuring the process—not just adding but building in the guidance standards. Sequence is indispensable, but each stage can not be fixed or permanently sealed off from the others or regarded as finished. The process is not a definitive series of progressive and linear sequential stages but a circular system of inquiry. Each set of answers is never left behind, finalized, or sealed off from subsequent input, but remains available for revision or alignment or reinforcement by what follows. The net result is that the process is always cumulative and

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interactive—the number of voices of this dialogue lifeline is many and ongoing; the effect is more choral than soliloquy. Finally, it is anchored at both ends with the same focus. The entire journey starts with each participant writing down what kind of leader he wants to be; the sealed answer is then given to the coach. It concludes with an answer to the same question at the end. The two are compared. There are no wrong answers. Both responses constitute the last entry. The overall recommendation is that this do-it-yourself inquiry take on the completeness of an annual medical checkup replete with a checklist of items and a battery of diagnostic tests—a combination of subjective and objective sources. Ideally, the compilation of that history needs to be checked, amplified, and corrected by another as indeed it regularly is—this time by an HR coach who is thorough and shrewd—adept at keeping such records, developing and enforcing job descriptions, and reviewing overly creative resumes. But more important and unique is HR’s role in identifying what diagnostics to use, especially for self-assessment. The self-assessment process shows a tendency to please and to persuade—to overstate and overclaim—in this case that the subject is a born leader exhibiting leadership skills in nursery school, or that he is an extraordinary, selfless team player always giving credit to everyone but himself. In short, the process invites the same kind of fakery and creativity that one sometimes finds in some glorious resumes. Although understandable and in a way commendable, such excesses need the corrective and diagnostic power of objective tests and input. And for that we turn to our HR professional, who not only can lead us through the incredible labyrinth of what diagnostics are out there and what is appropriate and what is not, but also generally knows what the results mean and, above all, how they can be applied, often with decisive revelation. One example of the last may suffice. A few years ago I came on as a new director of HR who was called on to address a persistent and counterproductive ongoing problem of constant bickering and infighting by the top managers of a key division. Previous heads had tried to reason with each, had met and engaged them as individuals and as a team, but nothing seemed to work. My recommendation was simple, basic and neutral: have all of them take the Myers Briggs Test, both the individual and team versions, including the director. The result: they were all in the same quadrant, half even in the same spot. The diagnostic defined them. I then abandoned them to the task of working out how to manage a team of all Indian chiefs. Two of them I subsequently coached; both became vice presidents.

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Paralleling the do-it-yourself profile with outside tests can be both corrective and extending; they can put on the brakes but also be insightful. Minimally they would include Myers-Briggs, DiSC, Hogan, Birkman, and HBDI. A new test has just appeared from ETS which, although designed for graduate school admissions, might be applied and adapted to leadership coaching. The test is called the Personal Potential Index (PPI). What immediately draws me to it is that it unabashedly tries to address potential. It is also 180, using as many as five or six raters or evaluators. Best of all, the multi-raters are asked to rate and describe six categories, which, whatever their value for graduate admissions, address significantly leadership criteria: Knowledge and Creativity, Communication Skills, Teamwork, Resilience, Planning and Organization, and Ethics and Integrity. Minimally, five general areas would have to be addressed: what makes you tick, how you learn and think, your values, how you relate and interact, and how you operate and make things happen. The details follow: 1. Self-History/Biography: Who am I? What have I inherited? What is my genetic profile? How long will I live and what is likely to kill me? What has shaped me? What is my life story? What are my essential genetics, psychology and sociology? My family upbringing, siblings, friends, birth order, gender, home environment, where we lived, what talked about at meals, religion, what my father and mother did, level of education, etc. 2. Learning/Smarts: Did I like school? Favorite subjects? Teachers? What turned me on? Good student, or average? Grades? What was my GPA? SAT? GRE? Mental blocks, if any? To what? What about writing, speaking, communicating? Art, music, singing? How smart am I (take an IQ test now)? How are you smart (take Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence test)? 3. Values/Beliefs/Creed/Goals. What is important to me? Why? What was said regularly at breakfast? Take the Maslow test. Role of ambition? Military service? Relationship with religion and God? Do you pray? Describe your code of conduct. Write your obituary and legacy. 4. Emotional Intelligence—how you relate and interact. Take and interpret Myers Briggs and Strong Personality tests—all Skills One tests. Who are typically your friends—enemies—why? Do you need approval? Do others follow you? Why? What is your relationship to followers? Take diversity test—survey. 5. Leadership Roles/Intelligence: What kind of leadership do you admire? Why? Who are your role models? Why these? How do you make things happen? How do you start? Do you build alliances? How do you problem solve? What are your standards of a solution? If you start out at point X, where do you want to be as a result of your leadership; how will you get there and how long will it take? What is your vision? Describe it in ten words or less.

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There remains one final collaborative task—application—capturing and extracting the essentials from the above and profiling what kind of leader our candidate is likely to be. The suggestion is that the distilling process take the practical and specific form of compiling a leadership resume—listing and featuring the kind of leadership characteristics and behaviors that will be brought to the table—in many ways simulating the answers to questions asked in a typical interview. Unlike traditional CVs, this one would be aspirational and designed in effect as a future application. It would be an appropriate take-away summary of the above process for our future leader and an equally welcome leadership profile for the files of HR. The final entry would be a reproduction of the vision statement crafted earlier but now supplemented and buttressed by the resume of a leader for whom that is not only now a deliverable, but also a leadership definition.

THE FIVE-STAR LEADERSHIP TAXONOMY PROFILES Summary Version Table 9.1 Role

Focus

Modes

Direction

Outcomes

1. The Changer

Transformation

Action/Aspiration

Vertical

2. The Rearranger

Transactional

Interface/Teaming

Horizontal

3. The Integrator

Holistic

360 Networking

4. The Anticipator

Leapfrogging

Transitioning

5. The Innovator

Inventive

Convergence

Zig Zag Clusters Out Front and Ahead Circular

New Vision New Structures New Composites New Cyborgs New Amalgams

Elaborated Versions 1. Profile of the Changer Role The Climber The Driver The Lone Ranger Type “A” Personality Action-Oriented Gut Instinct

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Workaholic One-Man Show Takes Over Everything All Grist for the Mill of Change Genius Leadership Great Man Big Idea Busy Indispensable The Savior Focus Review and Eliminate Alter to Align Shape Up or Resign Our way or the Highway Get with the Program Energy and Enthusiasm Leave Nothing Intact Driven toward Excellence Modes Rallying Cheerleading Inspirational Retreats Bonuses for Winners A Star System Loyalty CEO Knows Best Endless Improvement Balanced Score Card Direction Upward No End in Sight Sky Is the Limit Highest ROI Industry Leader Hierarchical Pyramidal Chain of Command Outcomes New Stirring Vision of Company Branded Excellence

Navigating Leadership Taxonomies

Measuring Transformation Before and After Celebration of Growth/Change Next 10-Year Plan “Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!” 2. Profile of the Rearranger Role Reorganizer of Everything Consolidator Interfacer Networker Negotiator Restructurer Outsourcer RIF Relater Researcher Servant Leader Focus Increased Productivity Greater Profitability Cost/Time Savings Continuous Improvement Transparency Accountability State of Art Best Practices Teaming Culture Modes More with Less Kaisen—Root Cause Conflict Resolution Internal Customers Involving Customers in Improvements Direction Horizontal Across the Board Divisional Interfacing Customer Interfacing Outcomes New Teaming Structure

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Higher ROI and Profitability More Efficient Networking 3. Profile of the Integrator Role Uniter Intersecter Converger Asking Why Includer Synergist Knowledge Pusher Frontier Challenger Focus More Bigger More Inclusive Holistics 360 Virtual Teaming Singularity Modes Lateral Thinking Cross-Thinking Intersectional Knowledge Human-Machine Identity Direction Left and Right Up and Down Diagonal and Across Circular Outcomes New Organizational Composites New Human Amalgams New Hybrids 4. Profile of the Anticipator Role Leapfrogger What If? Trender Science Fictionist Living Ahead

Navigating Leadership Taxonomies

Endgamer Projector Prophet Entrepreneur Focus What’s Ahead What’s Next Disruptive Gaps New Frontiers Outer Space Under Seas Apocalypse Cornucopia Succession Planning Modes Forecasts Trends Markets Scenarios Survival Games Transition Training Endgames Directions Beginnings and Ends History of the Far Out and Ways Future of the Past Up in Space Down in Water Ahead to Year 3000 Outcomes New states of Being New Worlds New Orders New Solutions New Succession Plans 5. Profile of the Innovator Role Leverger Intersector Out of Boxer

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What About Assumptions Challenger Science Fictionist Synergist Non-Incrementaler Focus Time Space Utopia/Dystopia Ask Problem to Solve Itself Childthink Play Modes Brainstorm Jack Be Nimble Lateral Thinking 360 Ultimate Solutions Endgames Directions Backward Way Ahead Around the Corner Inside Out Upside Down Outcomes New Products New Services New Businesses New Careers

THE BENEFITS OF DIRECTIONAL/INTELLIGENCE LEADERSHIP Three tasks remain. The first is to describe the value of directional leadership— what it has to offer leaders and students of leadership. The second is to define the difference of each one and what recommends or compels its selection, and why. Finally, there is the need to address the capacity of each option to accommodate customizing. The argument here is that leadership options contain a built-in series of suboptions which it is the task of leaders to discover, sequence, and integrate

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as an integral part of making the final choice. In other words, content, known and hidden, invests choice with the persuasive substance of a leadership identity. The value of the above taxonomy is the richness and clarity it brings to the directional choices of leadership and the following benefits its choice confers. Range of Executive Choices Directional leadership puts before current and aspiring executives a summary of the classic choices leaders have made in the past. As such, it serves not only to benchmark historical preferential patterns of directions and alliances, but also to display the multiple and unique brands of leadership individually crafted by executive vision, intelligence, and style to make each one unique. Although the options may be limited in number, one-size-fits-all does not apply. Current and Updated Choices Although detailed and thorough, the taxonomy is unfinished and constantly needs to be updated and upgraded. Currency is thus its most immediate and absolute add-on. Indeed, that process in effect tests the durability and continuity of the categories. In addition, what is chosen reflects and defines not only the leader but also his time—what kinds of decisions have been made in the twentieth century and what kinds will be needed in the twenty-first. Levels of Standards Each choice is differentiated, rendered, and front- or back-loaded with levels of achievement. Each one is scorable and carries its own handicap of difficulty. In addition, performance variability is built in. Each direction chosen has its own peculiar ante, historically and comparatively driven and always involved in a double judgment—that of peers, and that assigned by each executive. It is not a canned product. Operational Linkages Each direction is not a hollow scabbard but typically houses minimally two secret swords or sharers—often initially unknown—which are prescriptive. One is ritualistic—certain rites of passage which are organic with the reasons and roads chosen.

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The other linkages—hidden or disguised sets of relationships especially to other decisions. Thus, two choices are always involved: the direction and its sidekick—where to go and how to get there. Operational rituals are in the driver’s seat; process runs the show and determines outcome. Just as only certain roads will do, so only certain methodologies will work. In addition, all choices also factor in communications of final decisions, not as an afterthought to be polished but as integral part of the decision-making process. Indeed, if the decision made strains credibility, that is sufficient to send it back to the drawing board. Leadership Development Curriculum Directional leadership is pre-eminently teachable and learnable. Once we postulate and accept the notion that prospective leaders learn to lead, and further that the prospect of making choices and selecting directions is perhaps the most critical stage of their own leadership development—what they choose is what they become—then when the options of directional leadership are spelled out and put before them, they constitute a leadership learning curriculum for development of executive intelligence. In summary then the taxonomy offers principally two gifts: the summative power, clarity and specificity of an overall framework for executive intelligence and decision making; and the constant flexibility of a system of directions available at every step of the entire process—beginning, middle, end—to be recalled, restarted, and sent off in another direction—in short, a dynamic model of the leadership process of contingency decision making and direction choosing. The next step is zeroing in on and defining each of the five choices, including how the methodologies they favor reflect not only how they think, but also how they implement. Of course, the results are not always happy, as noted next.

Chapter 10

Coaching Paranoia and Avoiding Failure

A favorite strategy of executive coaches is converting obstinate attitudes into flexible behaviors. It begins with assessing a leadership continuum that ranges from the manageable to the impossible and stakes out the challenges leaders regularly face. The evaluation juxtaposes an average attitude with a worst-case version as follows: Difficult? Taxing? Occasional?

Impossible Exhausting Daily

The task of turn-around is to transform the negative into the positive as follows: Discouraging? Overwhelming? Impasses?

Challenging Energizing Breakthroughs

In addition to the above, the following has to be added: leaders generally believe they are indispensable, refuse to acknowledge that they have limits, can’t admit that the job consumes body and soul, frequently accept martyrdom as a refuge, and expend superhuman efforts to succeed which generally fall short. In the past, coaching, perhaps like traditional therapy, counseled acceptance. Leaders were encouraged to live within the demands of their jobs, and if possible to reduce some of the excesses through delegation. They were also urged to see and appreciate the upside—the achievements—the rush, respect, even admiration of those they lead. But for some perverse reason, such consolation does not generally work or last very long. 75

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Recurrent fears persist: not being equal to the challenges, surrounded by untrustworthy and even back-stabbing associates, with an incredible array of external forces and factors making success problematical if not impossible, and so forth. The net result is frequent and urgent callbacks of coaches. The CEOs then spend their time venting and displaying their stigmata. Finally exhausted, the inevitable question surfaces: “What is wrong with me?” Typically, reassurance is offered, but as noted, it fails. A new direction is to call the spade a spade and to acknowledge paranoia as a norm: “The job is crazy and so are you. It is a mirror match. No divorce is possible. You have a tiger by the tail. Neither one of you will let go. It will never change its stripes. The only thing you can do is not hide or bury your paranoia because it goes with the job and with who you are.” The CEO protests: “Wait a minute. Are you saying I am crazy?” The coach agrees: “You are certifiable. Not only that. All your symptoms signify nearly total loss of control. The only way out is to bring to the surface and start with accepting paranoia as a permanent tension, for you and your job. Then we have to find ways of making that paranoia work for you—making it protective, purposeful, and proactive instead of destructive, guilt-ridden, and draining.” I paused and waited. Then, I leaned over and in a softer less assertive voice asked, “What do you think?” The initial response was a deep breath. It was not disapproving, but thoughtful, as if wrestling with a new complexity. Gradually, the leader came back to himself: “Well. I certainly did not expect that. I thought we would have a let-it-all-hang-out session followed by a pep talk and off I would go. But you stopped me in my tracks. Clearly, I am not comfortable about thinking about myself or my job in terms of paranoia. Then, too, if I am really going off the deep end, then maybe I should go to a real shrink—no offense attended. But the problem with those guys is that they don’t know about business and being a leader as you do. OK. What’s the next step? Let’s give paranoia a try.” I gave him an assignment: “For our next session I want you to think about and make a list of three things: tasks that are daunting, people out to get you, and those on the sidelines cheering you on to failure. That is the first step of making your paranoia work for you. From that point on we will go further.” That experience turned out to be as much of a turning point for my coaching career as it was for the leadership of many of my clients. As the methodology of paranoia took hold, major shifts occurred. The value of changing focus from resisting to embracing the limitations of the job, from believing that there is nothing wrong with you to recognizing

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the insightful nature of paranoia, became a new norm for a number of other leaders. And above all following that up by focusing on the development of protective, purposeful, and proactive paranoia for leaders. What follows below is the record of a series of strategic conversations about typical executive paranoia issues expressed mostly in the form of questions. Often the questions exhibit a surprising capacity to be self-solving and informative but always require intelligent introspection. Although coaching is generally problem- and solution-oriented, the focus here was doubly unfamiliar: not just paranoia but rather problem-finding and problem-solving paranoia. Structuring and stirring the muddy waters of paranoia creatively, three recurrent situations surfaced: threats, quandaries, and discontinuities.

THREATS—PROTECTIVE PARANOIA The coach begins with paranoia basics. He asks the CEO to put together a list of threats. Typically, they include who is out to get me, who wants my job, who is undermining me and/or my company plans, what factions are forming or already exist, what the rumor mill or grape vine is saying about my leadership, what my general standing and image with the rank and file is, with stockholders, with board members, and on and on. Alongside the traditional to-do list, paranoia thus creates a to-worry-about list, ultimately more important than the first one. Heeding paranoia and making it serve protective ends, the CEO finds he has to assign a higher priority to information gathering and to follow the sage advice of the Godfather: “Keep your enemies close.” A second major related set of questions examines his assumptions about his key interpersonal relationships. Who will tell the emperor that he has no clothes? What has been his relationship with his senior staff? Has he surrounded himself with yes men? Does he require constant approval with little or no dissent? Does he shoot the messenger? In short, has he inspired and developed “followship”? Has he created a team that will protect the quarterback from being blitzed? Indirectly and ever so gently, the coach uses the occasion of threats to reexamine not only information networks, but also executive interpersonal relations. The advantage of operating from a base of paranoia is that threats can be accepted as a norm and not a personal leadership failing—that, once put in place, executive problem solving can be engaged. Thus, what the CEO needs to do is gradually wire in place an early warning or heads up system.

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The internal intelligence-gathering function should match that of the external monitoring of the market and the competition. Indeed, the one may feed into the other. Learning about internal capacity or the lack of it may directly affect market performance. Thus, surprisingly, worrying about threats may save not only his job, but also his company.

QUANDARIES—PURPOSEFUL PARANOIA If one of the ultimate benefits of valuing paranoia is normalizing threats, another is relieving the CEO of the burden of always having to be Solomon. Expectations of being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-successful can lead to a false sense of indispensability. Paranoia does not make the CEO less needed but it does argue that he or she may not be able to solve everything or be the only problem solver. The coach suggests the compilation of another list: what at work drives you crazy? What frustrates or compromises what you believe should be done? At this point the coach shifts gears. This dimension of paranoia requires a more reflective, thoughtful, and shared exchange. These are not direct threats with teeth bared as much as powerful enigmas that can cause sleepless nights and undermine companies at their core. And so the coach and the CEO together sustain an open-ended seminar on identifying and unraveling Gordian knots. Although many inevitably will surface, especially those nourished by ambiguity, the most difficult, perhaps, is how to bring about and persuade people to change. Even the famed learning organization, in retrospect, failed to alter many fundamental attitudes and belief systems. Resistance to revisions suggests that species hang on tenaciously to who and what they are before allowing any change in the form of species-splitting to occur. In other words, another generation may have to appear before there is real transformation. But that philosophical perspective may fail to silence the restlessness of paranoia or stop the determination of presidents to act presidential. The CEO may be led to show a new interest in what the research may have to say on stirring change. Wisely, the coach focuses on the egoless modes of organizational structures and mechanisms. So that change is welcomed, not required, and invited, not coerced, the coach introduces the approach of changing the outside as a way of changing the inside and of shifting leadership from the vertical to the horizontal. In particular he cites the notion of distributed leadership in which every employee’s job description is rewritten to include a leadership component and to encourage rotational leadership of teams.

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Or, contemplating a less mechanical chart of organizational boxes, follow instead the more integrative and ecological design of Mitsubishi Electric which fused divisions and functions into a more interactive seamless whole, based on the interconnected design of the rain forest. In short, shift the focus from changing people to changing environments that change people. Often what determines whether CEOs are closed or open to reengineering is their perception of whether it increases or diminishes the importance of their leadership. But nothing feeds the paranoia of failure as discontinuity.

DISCONTINUITIES—PROACTIVE PARANOIA The high price paid for holding onto the past is that the future may abandon the organization. Instead, the coach and the CEO collaboratively try to engage the future now. What surfaces are three villains: unacknowledged assumptions; singular, not multiple, forecasts and plans; and the dissipation of coherence. Although all three are critical, and the last brings everything full circle to square one. The major issue has to become, “What kind of leadership is required when discontinuity becomes a norm.” The CEO pulls back and is deep in thought, but unlike earlier discussions, the issue of leadership was his comfort zone. Almost inevitably, his first overriding commitment is to fuse organizational mission and organizational leadership. In effect, he made them one. He came to believe that he not only was in charge of the mission, but also was its supreme advocate. At best, he embodied it. The fusion compelled him constantly to search for common and shared purpose. The past may offer some cherished older beliefs that still might have binding power. But vision will have to stretch for new sources of coherence in the future. He finally concluded that the principal task of the CEO is to bind both past and future together and to search for commonality. The final paranoia was the harmony of time discords and of space continuums, of serving as prophet of science fiction. And curiously that taxing duality also made wearing two hats much easier, balanced, and almost respectable. Nothing mismanaged lasts long. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Failure at the top can be catastrophic. The prospect of failure, not unlike paranoia, with which it is intimately connected, has to become the ultimate focus

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of executive intelligence. In any case, there are at least five laws of demise which can be put forward as an early warning primer for leaders. Although these failings reflect both past and present practices, they also offer the durability of enabling leaders to back into the future as well. In short, they look back and forward at the same time.

FIVE LAWS OF DEMISE Competition Nothing lasts which is not competitive. All monopolies sooner or later are pierced. Mergers are dedicated to limit, minimize, or eliminate competition. The ideal merger creates a monopoly. But because that is illegal, it has to be explained in terms of market share, distributor access, route acquisitions, and so forth. The recent mergers of banks and airlines have not produced any real benefits, claims notwithstanding. In fact, the real competitors like Southwest Air Lines or new start ups like Jet Blue always evidence their competitive stance in the form of lower air fares or leather seats in coach. In fact, mergers often acquire new routes in order to eliminate the competition through price wars which those with deeper pockets stand a better chance of winning. The Microsoft case is by now a classic example of oblique dominance. The strategy of indirection and behind-the-scenes indispensability created, gradually and piece by piece, an encircled barrier which no competitor could penetrate—except the Justice Department. Leaders should not be seduced by the comforts of monopolies or nearmonopolies. They should be vigilant about finding new opportunities. They should always stay sharp, aggressive, and innovative. Above all, they need to trust and embrace competition. That is the way they remain leaders. Costs Nothing lasts when the numbers nosedive. Money is life-sustaining. And there at two ways to make it: earn it and save it. Excess always kills the goose that lays the golden eggs. Cost controls and cost containment represent a constant and internal form of competition. In addition, the constraints must be multiply maintained. There are thus not one but many bottom lines throughout an entire organization. Each one individually and collectively impacts on the ultimate bottom line. Leaders always treasure the multiple interconnections of cash flow.

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Determining final price is finally a leadership decision. Henry Ford, Sr., provided an interesting example of how leadership can determine the relationship between price and salaries. When he first started to crank cars off the production line, he was concerned with who would buy his cars. He decided that his workers should be his key customers. So he paid them at a level higher than production workers in the industry so that they could afford to buy what they had made. He thus created the market for what he produced. In the process, he also established that the price of a product or service should be what segments of the population can afford to pay. Claims of more or better services often fall on deaf ears when price fails to remain the prime focus. Leaders who do not monitor the cash register may not be around when it rings up empty. Indeed, that is why many CEOs have their own accountants as aides. Conversely, money cannot solve everything. Money has almost no effect on stirring innovation. Security helps but does not determine job satisfaction. Incentives work, but when withdrawn may create a serious vacuum and loss of morale and productivity. The problem with bribery is that one has to keep at it. Currently, state governors are trying to outscore each other in throwing more and more money at education in general and at teachers in particular. It won’t solve the problem, because the problems have nothing to do with money. The best use of money is for across-the-board professional development, for tuition remission programs, for support for sending teams to professional conferences together, and so forth. In short, it should be a growth fund exclusively. It should be used to create an employee university in which some employees are also the instructors. Development and training are not HR responsibilities. They are leadership options. Structures Nothing lasts which is excessively bureaucratic and committed to one size fits or one box contains all. The reason we constantly encourage thinking outside of the box is that corporations are in fact made up of boxes, stacked alongside and on top of each other. We thus structure inertia and then invest thousands, even millions, to overcome it. Leaders have to review their organizational structures from the point of view of Robert Frost’s classic warning: “Before I build a wall/I would like to know what I am walling out.” Motorola took Frost to heart when it sought to reduce the number of days it took when a customer placed an order to when it was delivered. All the divisions separately were able to do was to shave off six days.

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But when they turned to interdivisional savings, it totaled twelve—twice as much. Savings and productivity fall, proverbially, between the cracks. Leaders have to become engineers, or, really, reengineers. They have to review how work is organized, parceled out, set up, carried from one division to another, stuck, and delayed . . . bottled up and jammed. At the same time they have to study the flow of communication and how it is facilitated, shared, stalled, stifled, and fragmented. They particularly have to weigh what gets lost in the translation. And finally the study of structure and communication has to be joined, then focused on how we determine who does what. What we have learned from MBO is that its obvious jurisdictional gains obscured a hidden loss. Job descriptions by objectives offered considerable clarity, but we also discovered that when employees were asked to identify who should undertake new assignments, they choose people whose job descriptions did not match the requirements of the task. Frost triumphs again. To prevent demise or premature failure, leaders must understand that we are fixed or released by our environments; that the degree to which we can talk to and interact with others is determined by whether we live in a soundproof cubicle or open space; that further that singular, separative, and sealed systems need to be supplemented by interactive and flowing encounters in a fluid and permeable environment. Every organization should have a meandering river flowing through it. In fact, one might claim that ideally the leader/manager should be a river. Relationships Nothing lasts which loses customers, alienates its partners and allies, and jeopardizes the morale and trust of its employees. The leader keeps the faith, attends and nurtures the sacred flame, and is the standard bearer. No one else can be entrusted with the fragile relationship between making money and responsible behavior. Will Firestone ever recover? Will Microsoft ever enjoy the reputation they had before? Will the tobacco companies ever be free of their stigma? The leader is the only one who takes and holds the lead about conduct— about the way we do things around here, about the way we describe what we do, about the way we maintain respectful and trusting relationships with each other, and above all about where we draw the line and our determination not to cross it. Moreover, CEOs have to practice what they preach. They have to model the behavior they wish others to follow. They cannot treat their vice

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presidents shabbily, flippantly or sarcastically and then expect others to pursue the opposite tack. The goal of the walk-around manager should not be to serve the public image of being seen, but to exhibit the leadership behavior of valuing relationships. In all relationships, the mutuality of equals must prevail. The quality of organizational relationships determines success. CEOs need to be reminded that they are always being watched. It is not enough to regularly make good decisions, increase market share, and satisfy customers. It is how all that is done that matters. That is how leaders provide themselves and their companies with their future. Vision of Self-Renewal Nothing lasts which stays the same. Change and growth are not options. Again it has to start at the top. Leaders have to review their leadership profile. Most leaders have a tried and tested tool kit. They take it with them from job to job, sector to sector. But is it SOS—the same old stuff? Will the round pegs always find the round holes? We are generally very good at learning, but horrible about unlearning. Leaders who fail to unlearn ultimately will fail to lead. To be sure, there are constants. These laws of demise seek status. But how one designs the way to avoid failure and to insure growth is not prescribed. Nor is the past often much help. All this is by way of arguing that the leader who is not engaged in the future, who is not open to and even led by what is to come, who does not confront discontinuity and dislocation, is not offering the leadership of self-renewal. In many ways, the most important contribution of succession planning is not to be found in the ego cult of heirs to the throne, but in bequeathing an organization that is not just future directed but future driven. To argue for that commitment is to argue for attracting, courting, and stirring the young or newly arrived in the organization. They, in fact, embody that future. They will live or not live the mission of constant renewal. But they will not be drawn to or stay at a company that has no sense of their difference and that fails to welcome their unique views about the future. What really generates the excitement of a start-up, even within an established company, is the recognition and acceptance of transition as a norm. The conventional search for stability is an illusion. The present is always in a state of contingency. Leaders who embrace such discontinuity not only challenge their companies, but also hold aloft a beacon for attracting those stirred by such challenges. One caveat: leaders should broaden the base of their recruiting.

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Recruiting only from certain schools compromises diversity and the creativity that such difference generates. To summarize then: CEOs have to always be mindful of the essentials of failure. The checklist is short but telling: • Remain fiercely competitive; do not be seduced by promises of monopoly. It is probably illusory anyway, and you may lose your edge. • Be fanatical about maintaining income streams and cash flow and cutting costs. • Be sensitive to design. Recognize that we are shaped by our environments. Box people in, and their thinking becomes constrained. Pay attention to rivers and rain forests. • Bring honor to relationships. Begin internally and it will expand of its own accord to customers. • Nurture self-renewal. Spend a good portion of your time, energy, and intelligence in and on the future. Remain always a visionary. Negatives can generate positives. Fear of failure can drive success. The laws of demise realistically serve as an early warning system. They alert the driver when he is too close to the edge. In short, they compel the pursuit of leadership alternatives. Leaders have to cultivate the instinct for self-survival, because it is transferable to, and can benefit, the organization. And when it does, then the leader and the organization become indistinguishable from one another. The survival of the leader signals the survival of the organization.

Chapter 11

Leadership Applications of “Multiple Intelligence”

Although corporate smarts are highly valued, the general impact of MI on the business sector in general and human resources in particular has been minimal. A few consultants have suggested applications to training and leadership. Even a quick review of HR assessment tools reveals that only the old war horses of Myers-Briggs and personality inventories like those of Strong are still around and generally still being used. No major training programs or Learning Management System (LMS) show any signs of tapping into MI, let alone reconfiguring the extensive menu of offerings accordingly. Speculation as to why MI generally has been ignored by business yields three possible answers. The first two are characteristically short-sighted, even snobbish; the third substantive. First, MI’s origins are academic. Gardner was advancing theory, not application; research, not conclusive findings. His primary audience was other psychologists. Then, too, although the criteria developed for determining both the range and operations of each intelligence appeared to be rigorous and comprehensive and its results definitive, the absolute nature of the original seven shortly was shaken by the emergence of an eighth and now by the contemplation of a ninth and even a tenth. The effect in some circles was akin to adding additional commandments to the original ten. The issue of what the final number would be suggested to many that the research was still an ongoing. Second, because MI began to partner primarily or only with education, distancing by business occurred. Indeed, that linkage confirmed its lineage: this was basically an academic taxonomy designed for teachers and schools. And as the number of books and articles proliferated, and as the curricula and 85

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staff development adaptations began to surface, MI appeared to have found its place and advocates. Given the typical devaluation of education by business, many corporate practitioners concluded that guilt by association once more was operative. Third, MI seems to be at variance historically with the dominant thought patterns. After all, it originally was presented and subsequently proliferated in book form; and literacy is still in fact the principal form of thought and expression. Others challenged whether multiple intelligences were merely a more ambitious version of learning styles or the traditional exceptionality of talent or gifts possessed by a relatively few lucky individuals. Finally, MI appeared to be unmanageable. There are too many, the range was bewildering, the way they internally interact still a mystery, and so on. In short, perhaps it would be better to ignore MI completely or adopt a waitand-see attitude, because if it were to be taken seriously and implemented, it might require a total transformation of a number of business operations. But in the twenty-plus years since its first appearance, at least three major related developments have made it more difficult for professionals committed to performance improvement to play ostrich. First, brain research has made major gains. New professions have emerged: cognitive psychologists, genetic physiologists, cognitive programmers, and so forth. The mapping of the learning pathways of the brain is offering breakthroughs in many areas as extensive as those following the cracking the genetic code. Indeed, the links between the two are shaping a future research agenda of convergence. More relevant to this discussion, brain research has not only identified and confirmed the specific pathways for each of the eight intelligences, but also registered the electrical synergy of their interaction. In fact, Gardner’s own initial research began with examining brain-damaged patients and relating specific impairments to intelligence deprivation. In short, the science of brain studies has served to anchor and to impart empirical credibility to MI’s academic origins. Second, Gardner himself has become less tentative and more aggressive and explicit about what MI is and has to offer. Largely emboldened by the successful educational applications of MI, he has argued that these various intelligences are not culturally or psychologically driven learning styles or preferences determined or shaped by history or fashion. Nor are they the precious monopoly of a small number of talented individuals or idiot savants who may be blessed or cursed with certain intelligences in abundance. Rather, they are congenitally the basic equipment of the human species. In fact, when Gardner was invited recently to give a speech on the occasion of twenty years since his book was first published, the subtitle of his address defined MI as “The Optional Taxonomy of Human Learning Capacities”

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(2003). In short, MI is being presented as the new science of human potential. It has given new meaning and precision to Maslow’s supreme goal of self-actualization. Third, major changes in business training and performance improvement have taken place. The competitive quest to do more with less; to work smarter not harder; to raise levels of productivity, quality, customer satisfaction and profitability, etc. have changed training root and branch. Non-duplicative and cost sensitive e-learning has come to the fore. The need for greater management and leadership of learning coupled with cost effectiveness led to the creation of corporate universities, Learning Management Systems (LMS), and even new executives, CLOs or CIOs (Chief Learning/Information Officer). The net result is the recognition that attracting and retaining human capital requires constant upgrading. Training has in effect become a company’s competitive edge. But because of the relentless pressure of the global economy not only to remain productive but also to exceed previous levels on the one hand, coupled with downsizing as perhaps the key American way of achieving such gains on the other hand, two disturbing future issues are emerging. Are there limits to productivity? Are there limits to learning? And are the two openly and/or secretly linked? In other words, asked again and again to repeat and even exceed the stretch goals of last year and perhaps in the process beginning to encounter the law of diminishing returns of productivity or its outer limits, CLOs, LMSs and performance improvement professionals may be more receptive to what MI has to offer. Fortunately, business does not have to reinvent the wheel. The general and specific benefits MI can provide already have been spelled out in twenty years of application to education. Limiting the focus to what business would value, two patterns emerge. The first is disturbingly obvious: students graduating from MI schools and curriculum gradually will apply to organizations for jobs. Disparity will be immediately apparent, comparable perhaps to students of e-learning coming to paper and pencil organizations. In fact, almost all organizations are generally not aware of the extent to which they are structured fundamentally to function as singular rather than multiple intelligence organizations. In other words, these prospective new employees, many the best and the brightest, may compel a total review of basic organizational assumptions about intelligence. The sign of a genuine challenge is that it affects both root and branch. Organizations may be forced to assess prospective candidates by Gardner’s version of the key question: not “How smart are you” but “How are you smart?”

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The second yield is more focused and may have a major impact on recruitment and selection, promotion, team productivity, and ultimately training. Happily, the range of that change already has been identified by educators. Below is a summary of the common operating conclusions of different educators with varied curricula and at diverse school levels on the value and application of MI to learning (for teachers read trainers, for students, employees). MI teachers assume, develop expectations, and act on the belief that students are intellectually competent in multifaceted ways. Students respond accordingly. The range of student responses and combinations of intelligences are unlimited, elude final classification, and designate long-term potential. The school’s mission is rewritten to support and promote intellectual diversity. Instructors become acute observers of student learning behaviors, take their teaching cues from such observations, and link the immediate snapshot with the big picture, the short term with the open-ended. Student learning is routinely multi-modal. Teachers encourage and direct students to use their strong intelligences to work on and improve their weaker or less used ones. Students develop autonomous skills and habits through independent project learning. Self-reliance rules. Students develop collaborative and team skills and habits through multi-age and differentiated groupings and through multi-disciplinary and integrated studies. Interdependence rules. Finally, assessment takes as many multiple forms as there are intelligences, the favorites being rubric self-assessment, portfolios, simulations, and scenarios. Although not all the above impressive outcomes of education may carryover totally to business or performance, their principal value is compelling a review of what minimally would be required if MI were to be applied to business structures, operations, and human capital. Specifically, five reengineering principles can be distilled as guidelines for business from the above: 1. Inclusive: Application to all employees at all levels at every stage of their development. 2. Benchmark: Initial identification is to be noted, factored, and followed by constant and seamless data tracking of potential. 3. Alignment: Individual employees and the company are joined at the hip; the process must be undertaken jointly and tested and monitored regularly by the degree of its reciprocity. 4. Pervasive: MI must permeate everything. Although ubiquitously invasive, initial foci on productivity and innovation for example may reflect company priorities.

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5. Interoperable: MI also must define all work descriptions and interpersonal relationships to the point where in aggregated form they collectively become and sum up the company’s mission. Translating these guidelines into a plan requires a five-step process: identification, interpersonal dynamics, focus, reflection, and mission. The first stage is identifying the MI range of every employee. Happily, a number of assessment tools are available, all online. The more difficult task is replicating that process organizationally, which many companies have never undertaken. It requires defining what intelligences the organization values and predominantly uses. That is enriched by identifying the organization’s preferred forms for communicating the range and diversity of its intelligences. Sooner or later such organizational self-assessment has to engage company vision and mission. If a task force of senior staff, middle-level managers, and representative employees were appointed to analyze and to tease out the essential intelligences assumed or implicit in those statements, and the input of human resources on the problem solving and creative factors that actually have shaped hiring decisions and promotions were added, the final profile would identify the company’s archetypal smarts and competitive edge. Whatever the results, the process of getting there would be enervating. The next stage is contextually dynamic. The intelligences identified cannot remain as stills. They have to be animated in real time, terms, and work contexts. They have to appear as interactive and communicating behaviors operating in the environment and culture of the company. In other words, they have to be intrapersonal and interpersonal. Inevitably, this again involves a double assessment: how employees work together intelligently, and whether smart work flow and design as well as team performance are facilitated or impeded by company structures. The goal is to achieve optimum interoperability of smart interpersonal relationships and fluid environments. The third stage follows Gardner’s definition of the tasks of the eight intelligences in the first place. They all are involved in problem solving, creating innovation, and fulfilling goals. Of the three, the last is the mobilizer. To work effectively MI needs goals and direction. MI is not self-activating or directing. It is driven by work or play. It reaches optimum levels when the two are fused. In education they are the learning goals of the school and the social goals of the community. In business they are the performance goals of productivity, quality, profitability, and customer service on the one hand, and the collective power of company vision and mission statements on the other. In other words, goals animate and direct MI, not the other way around. The companion task of the company, then, is integration: to determine the extent

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to which, by informed hiring and training, employees have the smarts to achieve smart goals. The fourth stage may be the most difficult, because it is the most individualistic, speculative, and fluid. It requires reflection and self-observation. Essentially, each employee has to generate a series of mini-narratives or films that describe the interactive dynamics of their individual intelligences. The initial step only identified the intelligence inventory and range. Now that needs to be rendered interactively: why different intelligences organize themselves internally for problem solving and creativity. For example, one standard cluster typically may show one intelligence dominating and others in supportive roles. In some other instances, a number are all equally and simultaneously active and contributing. But again such self-assessment is not free-wheeling, but targeted by and against specific and recurrent work goals, activities, and patterns. What also needs to be emphasized is that this, like the first one of identification, is also a benchmarking process. It establishes the growth point for each employee’s future potential and thus sets the stage for a series of later growth steps. The final stage of applications is where MI displays the full range of its potential applications. Minimally, what appears are critical applications to training, personnel, performance, and mission. In addition, the entire training menu and its delivery systems can be reviewed toward the end of being reshaped as a MI training program. In fact, the principal responsibility for implementing the five-stage MI process probably belongs to CLOs and directors of performance improvement and LMSs. All personnel processes and procedures need to incorporate MI screening and assessment as conditions and criteria for initial hiring and subsequent promotion. But such a commitment to a new fusion of human capital and human potential in turn requires executive willingness to revisit and reformulate company vision and mission. In many ways and in the final analysis, the company unexpectedly is asked to play a larger and more proactive role through MI than though current modes of operation and measurement. MI also may grant organizations caught in everincreasing spirals of having to outdo themselves with new way of doing so. Above all, it would provide business with the opportunity to display a vision and mission of embracing human potential rather than its dispensability. What follows below is a visual summary of the five step MI process. Clearly, MI is not a panacea or magic bullet. It can’t solve systemic failures or executive lapses. It is also not a template of one size fits all. Companies like MI itself will display multiple MI versions and visions. Above all, it is not a quick fix. It requires trainers, HR and performance improvement professionals, and company leaders to pause, to step back, and to contemplate total reengineering.

Leadership Applications of “Multiple Intelligence” Table 11.1

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MI Application Stages Process

Focus

Yields/Gains

1. Identification

By individual By company

How are you smart? What do we value as smart?

Employee MI Profile Company MI Profile

2. Interpersonal Assessment

By individual

How are smarts Team Smarts interoperable? How does structure Fluid Design facilitate relationships?

By company

3. Goals Focus: Customer

By individual By company

Customer knowledge base? Knowledge-gathering

Customer Targets Customer Is Data

4. Interactions By individual By company

By individual By company 5. HR Applications A. To Training

By individual By company

B. Personnel

By individual

C. Mission

By company By individual By company

How do smarts internally interact? What kind of interaction do we need? How do team smarts interact? Structure to facilitate teamwork

Synergy Range

Problem solving and innovation Big picture and longterm Recruitment and selection Promotion by smarts Customer- and innovation-focused MI organization

MI Taxonomy

Preferential Patterns

Team Optimums Collaborative Culture

Diagnostically Driven Training MI Screening MI Reward System Employee Managers Future-Driven

Happily, it can be done in stages. It also can accommodate company priorities. Only certain divisions or operations can be initially targeted. But as training and human resource professionals link forces through MI, what, in effect, will gradually occur over time is that companies will be given a future lease on organizational life, and employees on their unfinished human potential. That double gain or integration is what in fact MI has to offer: the fusion of company and individual smarts.

Chapter 12

Network Intelligence and Network Science

Although talent management systems are currently in the process of being tweaked to achieve competitive mastery, recent research reveals a major sin of omission—that of nonverbal communication and its significant involvement in workplace hiring and retention. Interestingly, the same holds true for our confidence in official workplace learning and training. The specter of informal learning looms large as equally neglected or omitted to haunt us. In both instances the before we finalize hiring and knowledge acquisition systems we should first insure that what is excluded does not compromise what is included. But what really ups the ante is being caught with our calipers exposed—with the embarrassing admission that we are unable to capture and document such unseen and invisible activities and render them in tangible form. And of course the final indictment: because what we cannot measure we cannot manage, we thus forfeit application to performance improvement. Happily, however, recent researchers using technology as diagnostic probes have come to the rescue there and, equally important, have a new kind of leadership—network leadership. The unseen and invisible dynamics that have been researched are nonverbal communications (NC) and informal learning (IF). They are paired here for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that they both share the same fate of being generally undervalued and even unacknowledged. Then, too, although NC and IF are unofficial and unrecorded, no one questions their existence or their importance. Indeed, when pressed many can describe what forms they take, how pervasive and invasive their reach is, and even their impacts on work interactions 93

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and learning. And yet given such invasive and pervasive involvement in daily work exchanges, they are seldom credited as motivation or decision factors. Finally, although both are unknown, they are not unknowable. And with that last point it is necessary to introduce the separate elusive nature of each as well as the technology that has made the unspoken audible and the unseen visible. Nonverbal is automatic. It is part of our reflex nervous system and as such functions without our control or direction. It does not take orders and thus cannot be feigned or manipulated. It is therefore always authentic and truthful. It is communication’s shadow. It accompanies everything we think and say. Like body language, it is often at odds with our official communications. It follows a values script programmed early on but constantly updated to include the preferences and priorities of current organizational cultures. Indeed, when deciphered we secure a double yield: not only the individual’s nonverbal world and values, but also those of his organizational culture. The research of nonverbal communication by Alex Pentland is presented in his new book “Honest Signals” (2008). A member of the MIT Media Lab, Pentland and his colleagues developed an electronic device which they call a “sociometer” which monitors and records the nonverbal ways we feel, think, and react in interactive situations. Typically, the contributions of NC are not small, singular, or separative. Moreover, they do not surface apart from, and are indeed defined, by the constant contrasts between rational and official behaviors and emotional and private feelings—between official responses and honest signals. Using the standard mixture of a control and an experimental group, Pentland’s research focuses on the dynamics of choice. Indeed, what he has discovered is that the decision making process is not only at the heart of virtually all workplace interactions but also is unknowingly conflictive. That archetypal situation finds its application routinely in all presentations of proposed initiatives and, above all, in job interviews. A typical experiment involved two groups of venture capitalists who were asked to review the proposals of a number of entrepreneurs for funding. One group had the proposals “pitched” to them in a series of face-to-face presentations. The other group was just given the documents to examine. Even though they were composed of the same kind of experts, the differences in conclusions between the groups were substantial, far beyond statistical allowances. The pivotal factor which the socoiometer recorded is the interactive nature of the first group of presenters and its absence from the second. Indeed, that difference alone led the first group of venture capitalists to make decisions to award grants which were at significant variance with those of the rational group.

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This was not a hypothetical situation. Nor was the matter small. The amounts invested were large, the risks of return on investment were sufficiently worrisome, the judges experienced and yet the recommendations were worlds apart. Why then? Clearly, it was not the decision makers; they were interchangeable. What then could account for such opposite outcomes? According to Pentland and his team of eavesdroppers, what was taking place was what routinely occurs in all hiring interviews and choices, and in virtually all decision-making—the invasive and persistent presence of an unknown and unacknowledged additional partner to the negotiations—a non-verbal, second party participant who not only shadows the exchange, but also guides and even inclines it to a more emotional decision. The sociometer was able to note not only the passionate appeal of the presenters, but also the equally strong response of the judges. The final decision to invest was based on a composite—of proposal and presenter—on both nonverbal and rational grounds. The award finally granted was as much emotional as rational. What to do with such findings? One response is to be upset by such group discrepancy and by the contamination of what should be a totally rational process. The obvious solution is to eliminate the noise and distortion—the troublesome face-to-face presentations—altogether and rely solely on paper reviews. Of course, by analogy that would be comparable to eliminating hiring interviews and using resumes and other documentation only—or reviewing competing strategic plans based solely on data. Subjectivity and variability would thus be eliminated and decisions would rest on solely evidentiary grounds. But other research has shown that the nonverbal is as crucial to judgments of later success as content. The giveand-take process measures the all important factor of the commitment of the entrepreneur to his project and to giving his all to making it happen—or the persuasive professionalism of a job applicant or a vice president arguing for a new initiative. How often do we conclude: “He looks good on paper, but can he get the job done?” or, “The proposed project is right on target, but do we have the horses to make it happen?” or finally, “What is the track record of the advocate?” In other words, ideas and performance are joined at the hip. Should it be done is always paired with can it be done—and that in turn inevitably rests on by whom? The estimate is thus inevitably multiple and interactive. The decision formula is a series of back-and-forth linked judgments. It requires the interactions of rational merit, situational reality, and professional competence. But overlaying all is the nonverbal emotional estimates of the reputation,

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personality, and passion of proposers. In short, every such judgment is ultimately an HR decision—and, according to Pentland, shaped by nonverbal forces. Three masters thus have to be served. The first is the quality of what is being proposed—is it what we want and what we need? The second issue is doability—can we do it? by those already in house? The worry throughout is that the passionate advocacy of a seriously flawed proposal will be enough to carry the day—give it an edge and carry it over the line. We all know of job candidates who are such good professional interviewers that they will always make the short list but, if selected, fizzle on the job. But the third and final master is performance assessment—does he or she have what it takes to get the job done and to go the extra mile? That emotional measure—that gut instinct—still is operative. What then do Pentland’s research and sociometer bring to the table to address the paradox and complexity of choice? Minimally, three guidelines: 1. Chemistry still rules. It is, and always will be, involved. Not only is there no way to eliminate it, but doing so would be like throwing out the baby with the bath water—we would lose a valuable assessment tool. Assessing performance potential is as absolutely defining as what is to be implemented. The advantage of acknowledging nonverbal responses is that it objectifies a subjective process. Such signals, when known and acknowledged, bring the nonverbal closer to, even align it with the rational model without losing or obscuring its separate and different contribution. 2. The subjectivity of nonverbal communication when known and measured with precision essentially makes visible a values map that typically fuses personal and organizational priorities. As such, choices become less driven by hidden or idioysyncentric factors and are more transparent and above all focused on what is shared. 3. The patterns of social signaling taken together redefine and affirm group judgment—indeed underscore its increasing use and value. Indeed, Pentland claims that when the subjective and objective are integrated the net result is the creation of a “network intelligence that is broadly superior to individual human intelligence” (p. 94). In short, network science is emerging as the new definition of teamthink. If we now turn to informal learning, we find at the outset that it is equally ubiquitous and invasive. In fact, informal learning surrounds and greets every new hire in at least two job orientations. The first is to the company, the second to the new position itself. Discrepancy often appears from the start. Many official orientation sessions alternately

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feature intimidation or cheerleading, or both. In any case, what rapidly becomes apparent to the new hire is the need to read between the lines—to separate the official from the unofficial party line—and, sadly, to wonder whether there were questions he should have asked at the interview or whether he or she should have taken this job in the first place. But frequently the real wake-up call occurs when he is introduced to his new job and his home division. Although various instructors may be involved, they all weave variations on “Welcome to the Real World.” That often begins by advising you to forget every thing you learned in college or on your last job or whatever you have heard about the future of the industry. All this leads sooner or later to the proud or lamentable conclusion that this is the way we do things around here. But, finally, informal macro education is not complete without additional sage advice about survival or getting ahead in the micro world. Thus, certain managers and co-workers are singled out as killers or brutes, others as those who suck up and steal ideas, still others as loners or creepy. The informal orientation thus always ends with a description of the lay of the land in HR terms. That in turn always involves identifying who to go to if you want this or that done, and who to avoid and mistrust. When the programming of the nonverbal and the informal learning are combined, the net result displays not only the true unofficial operations of the work place, but also the hidden networks which are too imbedded, substantive, and pervasive to ignore. This network world worthy of Pentland’s network world. In both instances what substantiates their claims is a generation of new data and insights—of quantitative rendered patterns of workplace behaviors which previously were unrecorded but which can now be identified, measured and managed. The technology involves computer tracking using visualizing software to monitor the learning interactions of all members of a unit. The technology is able to discover and document, for example, not only who is the favored go-to person in the division, but also how many hits that favorite source received. In addition to such micro records, the network’s characteristic macro learning flow patterns could be rendered. That diagnostically not only displays what obstructs or compromises learning flow, but also records over time when learning needs peak and what triggers the pace and intensity of knowledge acquisition. Finally, such visible and tangible stills can be used to compare and contrast the informal learning patterns of various divisions. Like an X-ray generating metrics of learning flow and interactions for evaluating learning-driven performance improvement, it also pinpoints learning breakdowns in the chain of command and thus invites interventions and corrective surgery.

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Thus, in one instance the analysis revealed a hiring blunder. A high-priced expert was brought on to service the leaning needs of a key unit. The patterns revealed that everyone avoided him like the plague and sought out others who were generally not perceived as very high on the smart feeding chain. The reason? The expert was a selfish, smug, and egocentric SOB who did not suffer fools. Someone not aware or ignorant of the dynamics of informal learning network made an initial big mistake in hiring such an arrogant expert and in not determining in advance his inability to share knowledge in a networked world. Happily, technology driven research has made nonverbal communication and informal learning more transparent and less elusive, the key issue throughout is application. What do we do with the findings? How can they be linked to performance improvements? At least three interventions can be recommended. The first is to revisit the interviewing and hiring process of talent management systems to determine the extent to which, if at all, the assessment of NV and IF has been factored into not only the process, but also the perceptions of hiring authorities. Second, that needs to be followed by a comprehensive review of how new employees or those transferred to another division are oriented, and by whom. What the research currently shows is that that is the critical point where the seeds of later discord or distrust are sown, and that it is also where organizational culture is imbedded in nonverbal values. Third, thought should be given to bringing NV and IF within formal and official training parameters. The introduction to the hidden dynamics of networking should be followed by how NV and IL could be improved or managed to affect decision-making and performance. Whether or not one agrees with hailing network science as a new field, what is clear is that diagnostic technological probes in partnership with talent management systems and learning program arrays have provided professionals and their organizations with new ways to optimize learning environment networks and culture. And that is no small advance, especially when what has been walled out earlier is now brought inside, and the process of making choices has become now more inclusive, dynamic, performance-driven, and intelligent.

Chapter 13

Spotting and Developing Cross-Breeds

Identifying leaders has been a perennial activity in all ages and sectors. What to look for may reach back to Plato’s classic portrait of the reluctant ruler, Homer’s profile of the always suspicious but entrepreneurial Odysseus, or the biblical champions of faith and prophecy. They all contribute in one way or another to the image of the leader being bigger than life, a variation on the hero as super-leader. But although charisma is still highly valued, the contemporary landscape is more modest, almost ordinary. Everything has changed: the focus, the expectations, even the scale. Robert K. Greenleaf speaks about servant leaders, Charles Handy and Richard Elmore about distributed leadership, Howard Gardner about leaders being linked to followers. Moreover, each new definition is often accompanied by a condemnation of leadership excesses. Greenleaf, for example, believes most leaders suffer from too much ego. Handy concurs, but pushes it further to criticize their indispensability. Gardner laments their failure to restrain hero worship and to educate and develop responsible followers. But perhaps the major radical shift is the recognition and even slight elevation of proletarian leaders, those in the trenches. Nothing dramatizes the change in focus more than the emergence of teams and of team leaders. The literature clearly documents their multiple achievements in productivity, profitability, quality, customer satisfaction, and even innovation. Although seldom as charismatic or romantic as CEOs, and though obviously performing on a less grander scale and range, the team manager has now not only joined the ranks of leaders, but has also come to dominate the group. But myths die hard. No one will write a biography of Jack the team leader, but they will about Jack the former CEO of GE. No publisher will change the market 99

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focus of his books on leadership; ambitious managers, not workers, buy books. No academic executive programs will change their focus to executive workers. No magazines or journals will abandon the use of the leadership from their titles. Imagine also the dilemma of all the future commencement speakers. Instead of exhorting graduating classes to see themselves climbing and inhabiting the apex of the pyramid, they may have to glorify a horizontal organizational chart which celebrates those happy leading at the middle or the base. The cynical comment that no monument was ever erected to a committee is now countered by the number of horizontal memorials commemorating not the heroes but the rank and file. The glorification of the Unknown Soldier has been replaced by the acknowledgement of all the known soldiers. The old standard of judging victory, namely, how many generals were killed, has new meaning today. All this is by say of noting how entrenched the leadership business is and how much is invested in keeping it alive and well. The ordinary leader is the best-kept secret in town. The fiction of the solitary, singular, lonely, and martyred leader at the top continues to thrive. The best the less glamorous group of team managers can come up with are the virtues of competence and collaboration. Moreover, that old leadership worship mirrors a culture so formidable that it has inhibited and even today obscured the emergence of team leaders as part of the larger development of employee centrality. In short, in many ways current operational breakthroughs and reengineering have to overcome not only the culture of the old ways of doing things, but also the culture of the old notions of who is in charge. Finally, it was not enlightenment but desperation that finally brought about the change. For companies to really innovate, they not only had to venture and to exist outside the traditional organizational systems and structures which consistently had stifled all experimental efforts, but also to depart from and divert their exclusive focus from the top in order to welcome and embrace the emergence of the new leaders at the bottom. There were many reasons for not granting status to these newly emerging leaders. There were just too many of them, and they were often ordinary; many did not even have MBAs, some not even BAs; and they were nameless and faceless, blending into and occupying the background. Finally, it was almost un-American in pull back from hero worship. But perhaps the most serious sin of these rank-and-file leaders is that they appeared to be less the product of a capitalist than a socialist society. Still they kept coming—saving companies—and in the process critiquing leadership definition. Thus, the reasons most official leadership development

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programs miss the mark is that they are developing the same kind of leaders for the same kinds of jobs, when both already may be already structurally obsolescent and operationally compromised. More serious, they have excluded developing team leaders by claiming that they are not really leaders but managers—and there are separate lower level programs for that. In effect, leadership was limited to official titles and job descriptions. That excluded leadership smarts from being recognized and valued at every level. Moreover, it led to a structural rigidity. Everything had to fit: round pegs into round holes; boxy job titles and job descriptions had to be developed to fit into the boxes on the organizational chart. And then later separate rescue programs had to be come up with to lure them out. The test for spotting potential team and worker leaders is that it first has to be title- and rank-neutral. It cannot, for example, be dominated by supervisory experiences or language. It has to be a generic survey of leadershiplike behaviors elicited by situations and challenges which all routinely face regardless of job title and level. Here, then, are ten situations with which respondents are asked whether they encounter:

1. Evidence of reasonably high levels of discontent—frustration, exasperation, even anger—stirred by a sense that things are being done wrongly, ineptly, even stupidly. 2. Unhappiness and impatience with those who should know better but apparently do not, and instead put on a politically correct face but fail to bite the bullet. 3. Obvious solutions staring one in the face and pointed out but ignored or not acted on. 4. Although abundantly warned, willingness on the part of others to let things drift into more troublesome waters while remaining either oblivious or indecisive. 5. Objections ignored to selecting people and actions that perpetuate ordinariness and even mediocrity. 6. Call for innovations unheeded as business as usual becomes the normal order of things and in the process confirms again and again an incapacity to think outside the box. 7. Warning signs and handwriting on the wall appear and are underestimated, indeed count for naught because of a systemic incapacity to change and anticipate. 8. Deaf ears turned to the cheerleading and hype of administrators seeking to rally the troops to perform minor miracles.

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9. Battered and intimidated team and worker leaders who bitch, moan, and complain; and finally turn to their unions for comfort but find no real consolation and no action. 10. Dangerously close to cynicism, a small group offering as a last-ditch effort another way to restructure is rebuffed and once again becomes convinced that no real change is possible within the existing system. If the results of the test showed a substantial degree of discontent with the status quo, that establishes the minimum baseline for the next step. Frustration is the soil for planting and harvesting leadership potential. In other words, the happy, contented, and passive need not apply. Basic dissatisfaction with the system constitutes a crucial threshold for emerging leaders contemplating change. The next step has to be a careful and judicious juggling act. It seeks to strike a balance between insecurity and telling the truth—letting go of the comfort zone of being part of the rank and file for the visibility and risk of being a leader. Immediately, knowledge of what is involved is demanded. Indeed, one of the insistent questions is what the differences are between being a worker and worker leader—between being a team member and a team leader. Perhaps the best way to answer the question is to image the emerging leader as inevitably a crossbreed—a straddler between two worlds—a worker who remains so but also has to acquire the additional skills to manage his work. Thus he never abandons his fundamental work base; the team manager never gives up his specific job to become a manager. Once the passion for the craft goes, so does the standard for measurement and implementation disappear or wither. Coexistence of job and management has to occur—doing and managing the job at the same time. But he does need to know more about the second part—he needs to know not only how to manage but also what to manage. Here then are some of the basic skills and awareness he has to acquire: 1. Teams need to become smarter. They have to be open to learning. But workers and team leaders have to be aware not only of the various obstacles to learning by workers, but also the hidden obstacles to learning that are built into company structures. 2. Teams need to celebrate achievement, but rigorously defined from within—not by external numbers but by baseline comparisons of what changed, why, and how. 3. Teams have to evaluate their own performance and thus understand and apply the value of multiple metrics and measures—how to evaluate achievement, not just deficiency.

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4. Teams have to know their internal and external customers. They thus have to learn how to interface and develop horizontal partnerships. 5. Teams have to be aware of their relationships to the total system; and acquire the art of vertical alignment. That takes care of the micro and the basics. It also prepares for the next level of the macro. Teams also have to know where and how they fit in and what they contribute to the overall effort. That requires that they also become self-conscious about their total environment—that requires that we add to the above the key elements of the big picture: 1. Teams need to know structure—what currently exists, how it came to be that way, how it currently works, what it rewards and what it discourages, and how it succeeds and how it fails. 2. Teams should know what the company’s expectations are. They are not under any compulsion to create everything new. Take the best, get rid of the rest; but don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. 3. Teams should review and critique company vision and mission statements as a prelude for each writing of their own and compile as statements of the team’s vision and mission. 4. Teams should be anticipatory. They have to recognize that time and space are not fixed but variables. They need to project what their current jobs may be in five years and what kind and level of training they will need to get there. 5. Teams require the governance of collaboration, not directive behaviors—to acquire the skills of team dynamics, diversity training, negotiation, conflict resolution, consensus building, and so forth. 6. Teams have to value integration—of administration, instruction, and evaluation—as a seamless and transparent process. 7. Teams have to be exposed to the management of the budget and cost controls to determine not only the viability of programs but also the salaries of personnel. That is too important to be left to the mystique of high finance or in the hands of accountants. 8. Teams have to value research to the point that the key question of what the competition is doing is supplemented by what the research shows. Best practices need to constantly be updated. 9. Teams need to be technologically savvy. It should become a partner in learning and operations, and technology should be a standard meeting agenda item. It is the ultimate futuristic partner. 10. Teams should be asked to define the basic attributes of leadership to be used as the goals of the in-house leadership development program and, hopefully, open each to applications from team members.

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In summary, then, what is reasonably clear is that the practical needs for change and innovation, on the one hand, coupled with the empowerment movement on the other, has created a new and different crop of potential leaders which have generally been ignored or untapped. It also has been obscured by the traditional search for the paternal and charismatic CEO which still remains the goal of various in-house leadership development programs. But the argument here is that right under our nose is a treasure house of leadership potential which when tapped and developed is easily equal in impact and growth to each year’s graduates from such programs. Indeed, in many cases such programs would benefit greatly from the input of workerleaders and team leaders, especially their variations and versions of everyday leadership on the factory floor. But whether or not such efforts attain such leverage, what should be clear is that leadership is not a monopoly of the top; that by embracing, encouraging, and developing the potential of across-the-board leadership an organization can transform itself from within—and because such leadership is self-producing, it can continue to renew itself and the company that supports its continuous improvement without end. There are not many CEOs who could make that claim; and the few who do would probably first acknowledge and give credit to their hidden leadership partners.

Chapter 14

Paradigm-Shift Leadership Perils and Pitfalls

After Thomas Kuhn used the term to designate change levels of enormous magnitude and urgency, all jumped on the bandwagon and called for CEOs to be leaders of change. And then to add glory to the call, the change had to be total—root as well as branch, vision as well as mission. The calling rapidly found its answer in the emergence of transformation leaders; including the addition of charisma—invaluable to inspire followers not only to accept such transformation, but also to become in turn change agents. As a result, for a number of decades the standard rallying cry of such leadership has been the notion of paradigms, and specifically of paradigm shifts. Given the momentum of the cause, the absolute support of celebratory consultants and academics, and the near-perfect fit of paradigm and transformation, how have we fared in general? And how have its leaders fared? To what extent, if at all, has the introduction of paradigms taken hold and made a difference? Clearly, the change has been enormous and remarkable, especially given the resistance not only of an entrenched workforce, but also of haloed structures and bureaucracies built up over the years to insulate professionals from just such changes. Indeed, the degree of change has been hailed as Darwinian in scale and scope. But of late, things seemed to have slowed down or even come to a halt. A recent book claimed that change has died, and that we need to look for its killers and put them on trial. However, more telling is the fact that the original paradigm shift over time has lost much of its power to engage or, more recently, has had to take a back seat, or at least share the front seat, with forces and factors of equal or even greater impact but which seem less amenable to singular leadership change. 105

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There are three in particular: the gradual emergence of a global economy restructuring of international finance and fusion of public and private sectors, and the issue of a sustainable planet. Of course, it can be claimed that these three factors were implicit in the original depiction of paradigm shifts, or that they are merely its most current versions. After all, why should paradigms not enjoy progeny of their own? Clearly, they can, but because here we are preoccupied with leadership, it is important to pause at this point and apply these new challenges to evaluate the overall relationships established between leadership and paradigms, both in the recent past and now the present. What emerges rapidly is that the two were made for each other: paradigm shifts and transformational leaders are a match. Given the magnitude of the change needed and the range from top to bottom, transformational leaders became the favored model. But momentum notwithstanding, the latest three versions of change do not seem automatically to be a fit for the transformational leader and his agenda. In fact, these challenges seem of a different order; strangely better suited to management than leadership, more amenable to collective action and negotiated solutions. If we step back for a moment and look at the big picture what emerges is the following three-act drama. Act 1 displays paradigm-shifts and transformation leaders occupying center stage and bringing about change, root and branch. Act 2 now is focused on getting us through a different kind of transition and set of circumstances for which the transformation leader is not particularly suited or adept. The search, then, is for the kind of leader to get us through this stage so that we can survive to reach Act 3—whatever that will be. In other words, in terms of leadership development, paradigm shifts and transformational leaders dominated the foreground, but only up to a point. Less acknowledged and less examined was a parallel development—a less sensational leadership style which followed in the wake of the transformational, and which wired the changes in place and ensured continuity of operations. Aside from preparing for the next wave, increasingly many companies found this supplementary support role equally valued in its own right; and it came to rival and compete with the more glamorous role of the Changer to the point where it became a separate, standalone choice. In other words, just as the standard matrix comparing leaders and managers was used to flatter the former over the latter, now a new matrix comparing transformational and transactional leaders began to appear, and to grant minimally equal status to each, and preferred status to the newcomer.

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Actually, such a leader was less a newcomer and more an emerging contender, there all the time behind the scenes but initially in more subdued and supportive form and roles. In other words, the dynamic being played out dramatized another kind of paradigm shift—but this one was created not from without, but from within—and involved mysteriously the independent evolution of a hybrid—the manager-leader. That, in turn, signaled a major shift from the focus on changing to that of rearranging, from the vertical to the horizontal, from dramatic interventions to gradualism, from the bravado of vision to the steadiness of mission. In other words, not surprisingly paradigm shifts spawned not one development, but two. To understand this double dynamic requires a more neutral examination of the less obvious and more ambiguous nature of leading paradigm-driven change. A separate examination later will explore how such leader managers came to the fore as part of overall workforce changes. But for now, here is a rapid review of how some of the basic drives of paradigm shifts resulted in the coexistence of two very different leadership styles and generated leadership expectations that affected both. There are minimally five factors.

SALVATIONIST EXPECTATIONS Paradoxically, leadership paradigm shifts initially were perceived as neutral and even totally exonerating. Everyone and everything was caught up short and off guard. No one and no single part is singled out for blame or fault; hence all were forgiven. All is flawed. Even the emperor did not have the right clothes. Moreover, paradigms compel solutions which are never of the order of tinkering or tweaking. Limited downsizing is not enough; instead opt for the need to clean house altogether and the clean surgery of lopping off the top. The last CEO lacked what the paradigm called for. Replace him. Indeed, many current CEOs were brought in initially as change champions and knights in shining armor, charged with promising not just solution but salvation. Thus, the most obvious consequence of invoking or proclaiming paradigm shifts is its call for a leadership that is warlike or purging—that perceives all that exists as inadequate or inimical to change—and that requires a commitment to nothing less than total transformation of the entire culture. But while that grand sweep was taking place, the church of the savior had to be built and the plate passed. Operations had to be ongoing and in the

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process imposed change was increasingly replaced by negotiated change. Nor were the results small or insignificant. For example, the managers knew that there was more of a disconnect and corresponding loss of productivity between units than within divisions; and that is where the leverage of change had to be applied. But the transformation leader directed his mandate for change across the board. Not only was the focus of the manger not only targeted, but also the new arrangement required the negotiation of ownership so that it held together afterward. Thus, changer and rearranger often unknowingly worked along side each other. Vision was the driving force of the CEO, succession planning the special expertise of the rearranger. In the process, two parallel assumptions increasingly were questioned: pinning all hopes on the top, and that CEOs alone got the message. Instead what emerged was the need to combine the big and the gradual—to offer the corrective of a total vision but achievable over time. Vision thus embodied paradigms but had to be adjusted to be mission-centered and a work, in progress—salvation had to become sequential and gradual—planned, not spontaneous—sustained, not a one-time big fix. And equally important, CEOs did not have a monopoly or lock on knowledge or history. Others were equally aware of and stirred by paradigm shifts and the need to alter structures and motivate others to change. What emerged gradually was the knowledge worker who was also a worker-manager, and, correspondingly, managers who became manager-leaders. Thus was the complex leadership legacy of paradigms.

IMPERILING THE MIDDLE Two other extremes inevitably followed the automatic accepting of paradigm shifts: the stigmata and the hot potato. The first is often embraced as the inevitable burden of those at the top. They bleed and are pained visibly as the resistance of inertia begins to appear and opposes wholesale change. “Either for me or against me” argues our savior. Firings of those unwilling to get with the program occur. In many cases purging follows. The pyramid is flattened; paradigm is linked with diminishing numbers, and with trimming sails to increase sales. But in the process, the middle is imperiled and reduced. In addition, middle-level managers not only have to do the cutting, but also have to bridge the skill gaps it creates. Understandably, many stepped back, become reluctant, and came to regard paradigm as an untouchable—a hot potato best left in the hands of senior

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executives, who, after all, are paid the big bucks for martyrdom. But in the process, ownership of the middle was lost or diminished as the range of senior executives expanded to sacrificial proportions and indispensability. But the new mantra called for doing whatever it takes to get the job done. All goals become stretch goals, and the collective replaced the singular. What emerged is a new leadership ethos—that of distributed leadership, which created the sanction for the emergence of the manager-leader. That corrective was not always or even often heeded by transformational advocates, who were puffed up by their sense of indispensability and the new gospel of change. But what was being called for was moderate and reasonable. Its favorite managerial terms were balance, alignment, and ownership. No one was being asked to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rather, that vision had to be balanced by mission; the workforce had to be aligned in a new relationship of shared leadership and, above all, that only the leadership and ownership of the middle and the base could realize the vision of the top. The transformational and the transactional came to exist side by side to save the top and the middle.

CREDIBILITY AND DOABILITY CEOs are often tempted to become cheerleaders, especially when it comes to announcing and implementing the discontinuity of paradigm shifts. But credibility is jeopardized or sacrificed when executives proclaim, “We can do it. We have done it before, and we can do it again!” Don’t be surprised if the responses are less than enthusiastic, even cynical: “Easy to say, hard to do”— “Once again the generals leave the dirty work to those of us in the trenches.” Manager leaders, who are directly on the factory floor and aware of the reverberating impacts on work routines and rituals, have to step in to close gaps or build temporary bridges. Unlike the CEOs, these manager-leaders never minimize or oversimplify the task. They never trivialize the deep-seated and hidden dynamics of what is involved. The truth is that the scale and extent required have never been undertaken in the past, or what is involved now would not be a paradigm shift. Moreover, all is impacted—the nuts and bolts, the daily rituals of process, and the way we typically do things. All has to be deconstructed and then reconstructed, and it has to be done on the fly, while operations are going, on because the system cannot be shut down. And what was discovered is that they did it—the beast of change was tamed and made manageable. Doability defined credibility. The horizontal saved the vertical. God is in the details, or He is more than His message.

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COACHING LEADERSHIP Proclaiming paradigm and implementing it are not the same. The latter does not automatically or obediently follow the former. CEOs cannot leap into the future but have to step-by-step their way into what is ahead—develop a succession plan, applied this time to succession of cultures. Minimally, that must address and disarm resistance, invite collaborative supervision of implementation, and focus on the gradual but company-wide creation of culture of continuous innovation. The desire to preserve or hold onto the status quo is deep-seated. Thus, token responses of rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic and returning to turf management and business as usual are predictable and expected. But even when such side-stepping is ruled out, what is left in its place is the paralyzing magnitude of the challenge. Caught like deer in the headlights of an oncoming car, the workforce needs the reassurance of scale. The old adage of how do you eat an elephant?—one bite at a time—is cited in order to dramatize that the paradigm change has to be adjusted and managed in continual stages. And then it must be wired in place on both the divisional and individual levels; otherwise, it will not take hold and lead to the creation of a paradigm-driven culture. But such collaborative empowerment requires manger-leaders acting as coaches, not only to ensure divisional and individual implementation, but also to align both with company-wide goals. The collaboration of middle manger-leaders is required because what is at stake is negotiating not only the acceptance of change, but also the acceptance of ongoing, continuous change. It fell to this hybrid to establish continuous improvement as the new norm of paradigm shifts and to support the training of stretch goals as the companywide commitment from which no one was exempt.

NEW WAYS AND NEW FUTURES The believability and doability of paradigm visions finally requires the gradual and persuasive introduction of new metaphors engaging those discarded. Two extremes need to be avoided: the mundane and the sensational—the tried and the true, and the apocalypse of science fiction. Past and current success may not be reliable guides to the future. The way we have solved problems before may fall far short of adapting to and managing discontinuity and ambiguity. What is now required are new paradigm

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methodologies—convergent and inclusive—engaging the complexity of permanent transition, not reassuring everyday stability. But doom and gloom also may follow the introduction of new metaphors such as globality and sustainability. Factoring those into the standard equation may appear to strain existing systems to the breaking point. Contemplating China as World-Mart may generate a sense of the end in sight—of a system unable to cope. But the antidotes to apocalypse require the old guideline of thinking globally but acting locally. The transformational leader may see and proclaim a brave new world, but only the transactional leader can bring it about on a daily basis—can make vision a deliverable. Reassurance and creativity are his double message: while we are catching up, let us also get ahead; system breakdown may be a necessary prelude to turnaround; endgames give way to new scenarios. Saviors may point to where we have to go, but only horizontal leaders can negotiate us past the big and the bad, the old and new metaphors, in such a way that we emerge and are poised to be smarter, savvier, and tougher. In summary, then, paradigm leadership is clearly the most important and most difficult leadership challenge of the twenty-first century. But although its recognition may be universally accepted, its response is not automatic or assured. The argument here is that failure often stems from not anticipating the built-in and formidable obstacles inherent in paradigm leadership. The corrective is to make vision mission, and mission vision. But that, in turn, requires a partnership between top and middle, between the lofty aspiration of the Vertical and the every day ongoingness of the Horizontal, between proclamation and negotiation. When these two essentials coincide and reinforce each other, that signals that paradigm has attained the status of a new culture and become in fact, its creation story. But it also dramatizes that the successful transactions of the rearranger, although initially in support of the transformational visionary, are not limited to that sensational role. Increasingly through the aegis of distributed leadership, the transactional not only emerges as a leader in his own right, but also is the most dramatic early example of the emerging leader as a hybrid and the affirmation of transactional intelligence.

Section III

Basic Leadership Types Transformational Intelligence

Chapter 15

The Profile of the Transformational Leader

The overall context for all leadership types appears in the five categories summarized below: Table 15.1 Role

Focus

Outcomes

Direction

The Changer The Rearranger The Integrator The Anticipator The Innovator

Transformation Transactional Holistic Leapfrogging Inventive

New Vision New Structures New Composites New Cyborgs New Culture

Vertical Horizontal Lateral/Zig Zag Out Front/Ahead Circular

Zeroing in on the transformational leader, here is an elaborated version of the roles he plays: 1. Profile of the Changer Roles The Climber The Driver The Lone Ranger Type “A” Personality Action-Oriented Gut Instinct Workaholic One-Man Show Takes Over Everything All Is Grist for the Mill of Change Genius Leadership Great Man Leadership 115

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Big Idea Indispensable The Savior The transformational leader looms large—is bigger than life—appears tireless and everywhere—is one of a kind—is a miracle worker. A one-man show, his intelligence turns every thing upside-down and inside-out as his mercurial analysis and evaluation determines what is grist for the mill of change. He proceeds through a company like Sherman marching through Georgia, department by department, level by level, until nothing remains unexamined, intact, or unaltered. After a while, no one even remembers what was initially there. Old published manuals of operations and procedures are discarded and now can be found in documents on the Web which are endlessly edited and revised. Focus Review and Eliminate Alter to Align Shape Up or Resign Our way or the Highway Get with the Program Energy and Enthusiasm Leave Nothing Intact Driven toward Excellence The transformational leader has zero tolerance for the old ways of doing things, and is determined to drag this relic, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the 21st century. No respecter of tradition or the nostalgic ways success was delivered before, all he relentlessly asks is does it meet current metrics? And if it does not, or resistance surfaces, woe to any unit or professional that gets in the way of salvation and does not get with the program. They appropriately become “History!” Modes Rallying Cheerleading Inspirational Retreats Bonuses for Winners A Star System Loyalty CEO Knows Best Endless Improvement Balanced Score Card The transformational leader loves to keep score, constantly maintains and updates his brag book, pauses regularly to cheerlead and to celebrate and

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single out winners like himself, send them to Hawaii and hail them, “If I had 50 like these I could transform not just this company but the entire industry overnight!” Direction Upward No End in Sight Sky Is the Limit Highest ROI Industry Leader Hierarchical Pyramidal Chain of Command Basically a vertical leader, he supports the chain of command and the eternal hierarchy of the pyramid. He knows no other way of achieving unity of purpose and clarity of command. Professionals get their marching orders, marketing is a campaign with attack segments, strategic planning anticipates and counters the efforts of the enemy. He is the general as CEO. He takes no prisoners. Outcomes New, Stirring Vision of Company Branded Excellence Measuring Transformation Before and After Celebration of Growth/Change Next 10-Year Plan “Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet!” The transformer is a producer—a maker—a creator across the board. The bottom line shows a surplus each year, ROI is favorable and stockholders are happy, and sales and productivity have been posted every year. To be sure we now have an employee union brought about by failures of due process in firing or reassigning workers. But that has been dealt with. Every three years a new contract has to be negotiated, but that, too, is manageable and has not stopped the momentum. Above all, we have a new company with a new vision. Its future mandate for excellence is accompanied by the CEO proclaiming, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!” Although the strokes above may be a bit broad and the rendition at times one-dimensional, the portrait of the transformer generally rings true and is reminiscent not only of the giants of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also of the twenty-first and the legacy of icons like Iacocca, Fred Smith, and Jack Welch. Hero and leadership worship, after all, share much in common.

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But what is missing is a separate and detailed examination of how the transformer makes such accomplishments happen—so much so that what can be posited is that transformational intelligence is as distinct and identifiable as the leadership type it supports and helps to flourish. To be sure, that also means that each leadership type possesses its own brand of intelligence which is distinctive and learnable. Indeed, one of the key ways of becoming such a leader is to have that intelligence gradually to become part of his command and vision center. Here, then, is a profile of some of the key dimensions of transformational intelligence.

STUDENT OF HISTORY No other leadership type is as absorbed or obsessed with history, even ancient sacred texts. The transactional leader has only passing interest, the innovative leader almost none; the anticipatory leader uses it as a benchmark, the integrative leader to identify rare instances of a da Vinci. Not surprisingly, then, this supreme changer of change puts his intelligence to the historical task. What does he hope to find? Enviable examples of other great empires and heroes. Even Jesus and God are retrofitted to emerge as ancient-modern CEOs. The contemporary emphasis today on stewardship has a biblical base in the leadership role of the shepherd protecting his flock. Each leader of the enviable Roman platoon was governed by the principle of transformation—of primus inter pares—first among equals—which many leaders of change adopted as the way their executive team would operate. In other words, there is much to choose from because history and scripture essentially was written about and from the point of view of great men. But what was the key lesson? Transformation—all the great leaders struggling to bring about change and having to deal with a stiff-necked obstinate people always looking backward and preferring the comfort of slavery to the headiness of freedom. It all reads like a modern text and case study. No wonder modern leaders behave like Moses or Caesar—why they turn to history and find it so reassuring and affirming of their equally contested role, why adapting the role of the prophets gives new urgency to their vision, and how it is possible to convert the notion of the promised land into a deliverable. To be sure, history also generates a lesson many transformational leaders seek to ignore or to disqualify its application to them and theirs. Namely, that of demise; great empires rise but they also fall—and it happens so

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regularly and across nations, cultures, and timelines that endgames seem to be inevitably the common fate of even spectacular start-ups. But such unwillingness to accept termination is characteristic of the willfulness of transformational leaders and their faith that intelligence will find a way out and around such a common fate. In short, the ultimate role of transformational intelligence is to exempt this worshipper of history from history.

STRUCTURES—PYRAMIDS If ever history could claim one direction over all the others it would be that of the Vertical. Pyramidal and ascending, it embodies hierarchy and order. It enshrines empires, religions, and organizational charts. It is the epitome of beauracracy, always busy putting one layer above another and one ruler or supervisor over rank and file, and in the process justifying itself by establishing orderly succession up the ladder. An entrepreneur would be a misfit in this Vertical world, and if he survived he would be forced to fit in. The chain of command is absolute and unforgiving. Loved and even worshipped by the military, the Vertical became the favored way to manage a new wilderness or a conquered people. Indeed, Rome, like all empire builders, exported and replicated its top-down vertical structure all over the world, just as later Christianity spread the gospel of its upward-bound hierarchy. In fact, the ability to take hold in such varied climes and cultures often provided triple proof: the superiority of the conqueror, the power of the vision, and the infallibility of its vertical management system. And, obviously, it worked for decades and even centuries, although stretching too far often jeopardized control and invoked the law of diminishing returns. Hitler and Stalin, linking a universal ideology with worldwide domination, tried to achieve a secular version of religious evangelism in the last century but failed, leaving the Pope still the supreme ruler of the Vertical. This way of regulating up and down also became the favored form of capitalism for three basic reasons: to manage size, to exercise control, and to extract profitability. Once manufacturing and business in the nineteenth century discovered mass production and the correlation of units and manhours, modern management was born. Followed soon thereafter by marketing, scientific management came to the fore by linking efficiency to earnings and discovering through experimentation at Bethlehem Steel how many shovels per minute yielded the most

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profits, and, later, when greater gains were sought, how to increase the size of the shovel. Is the pyramid obsolete today? Far from it. In fact, one of the distinctive features of the global economy is the coexistence of virtually every phase of the economic evolution of capitalism somewhere in the planet. In addition, some multinationals are still exporting and replicating their pyramids abroad, now tied together and managed electronically. Above all, many leaders who are in fact the beneficiaries of their Vertical climb to the top are still enamored of the hierarchy and chain of command. To be sure, with outsourcing of functions and distribution of supply centers, the monolith has been tamed and reduced somewhat in size and extent. In addition, the sources of profits have been enhanced by shifting from more to less expensive workers and suppliers. And management by metrics and software has replaced the last of the third rationales for capitalistic management of the Vertical. Although the Vertical persists in less familiar, total and dominant forms in the United States and abroad, it is still a direction favored by those who value command and control. Like generals, such leaders are drawn to the combat of competition and to the rallying call of being supreme in the field and in an industry. In this connection it may not be so surprising then that so many ex-generals are called upon to lead governments and corporations. The prospect of molding and marshalling a motley group of unmotivated workers and an assortment of different parts into one unified and dedicated force still holds enormous appeal for those leaders who believe they have the talent and the tenacity for just that kind of ennobling and heroic effort. Their thinking is Darwinian and is predicated on Toynbee’s famous exhortation that the greater the challenge, the greater the response. Indeed, vertical leaders believe that professionals and companies need such challenges to stir and to get the juices flowing, and to realize their performance potential—of what they can be and do. They also believe that they uniquely have the capacity to develop a vision to achieve such distinction, and the inspiration to motivate what it takes to get there. The Vertical is thus inevitably the favored choice of the transformational leader, who in fact needs size and reluctance to demonstrate his transformation power, and whose charisma has to be sufficient and stirring enough to win through and carry the day. Such leaders are compulsive changers. Everything and everyone is grist for the mill of total transformation. The given, the inherited, the status quo all invite the wrecking ball of cleaning house. If the eighteenth century watchword was, “Whatever Is, Is Right,” the twenty-first claimed “Whatever Is Is to Be Changed”—irrevocably, forever.

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The plan is clear: rebuild the world in the image of change (and the changer) until piece by piece it becomes a totally new creation. What then? Move on to the next calling—to the next dinosaur of a structure that requires a complete new sweep and breath of fresh air. But lest one conclude that the Vertical is solely the monopoly of transformational leaders and inevitably accompanied by bravado and rallying slogans, there are some more quieter and more analytical signs that as a leadership pathway it is being chosen for reasons which are somewhat at variance from its more rigid and hierarchical history. The overall direction remains vertical, but now moves not only up, but also down, courts not only the heights, but also the depths. There the transactional supplements the transformational, the situational the visionary, as transformation and vision become not the sole objects of leadership but instead are replaced or forced to share the stage with the less glamorous but persuasive nature of process. Charisma is now tamed and paired with analysis. In other words, the image of the commanding leader does not disappear as it becomes less official and more dispensable—not so much a star on the stage, but a guide on the side. But the telltale sign that the vertical leader is not changing his spots appears in the characteristic problem solving methodology he chooses. In fact, one of the recurrent leadership patterns is the strong preference not only for how he solves problems, but also for how he communicates.

COMMUNICATIONS We still tend to pay attention to changer-leaders who are different—who set themselves apart—by what they do, by what they say, and often by how they act and think. We particularly value those who are not bland and who do not inhabit the shadows. We prefer the visible, assertive, and vigorous who are knowledgeable about their business and industry, who speak their minds, who explain their decisions, and who do not play it safe or indulge in predictable platitudes, but openly are champions. At their best they combine savvy and smarts, but they do not claim to be geniuses or parade their high IQ. Besides, as Fred Smith, CEO of Fed-Ex, has wisely reminded us, the outstanding violinist or top hitter probably would not make the best conductor or coach. In other words, the determiner is not performance, but leading performance. And again and again that is their distinction—they love to be out front and in charge, they cherish the affirmation of followers, and they work hard and long. When asked for advice they typically claim that leading is learnable—it is a craft—a skill—a style—and that it is also addictive.

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But, preeminently, it is always actionable—it is in the doing, especially in the doing of things differently and creatively. That trait, when added to two others, forms the leadership trinity: the ability to read the times, and to remain unfinished. To read the times—we are accustomed to regard the forces around us as not of our own making—as a given of history. Our task is to somehow make sense of what we have inherited, and play the hand dealt to us. But that is not what Vertical leaders do. They do not accept the given. They do not regard anything as immutable or fixed in stone. They test, they probe, they turn things on their head. And they do so by being doers. They don’t understand any other way. To them reality is a contest to see who comes out on top, which vision prevails, and which company survives, grows, and outlasts the others. The ultimate way they view their role as a leader is neither as a time server nor as a passive observer of the passing scene. Instead, he is a constant combatant who never ignores challenges or leaves anything intact or unmet, and who aggressively, confidently, and quietly goes about the business of being smarter and more imaginative than the competition. And if in the process the leader is able to persuade others not only to follow his lead, but also to add their unique gifts to the repertoire of doing things differently, then he is justified being in charge and earning the big bucks: “How far and fast do we have to go just to catch up, let alone get ahead?”

TOUGH TIMES Perhaps the ultimate test of being a leader is tough times. Rightly or wrongly, fault is directed at the top. The need to find a scapegoat is absolute. Of course, the search for a final fixation—a satanic final cause—is not new. It has happened often before. Kudos in good times, hits in bad. But for CEOs and their boards the key questions still are: what do we do when times are rough? how do we manage? and do we change course? And that, in turn, leads to a search for how other CEOs and companies have responded in the past. Three sources immediately surface. The first is the literature of leadership. Alas, it mostly focuses on the upside rather than the downside. After all, best-sellers that advertise failure do not sell well. Essentially, the literature is aspirational and inspirational. Demise, individual or organizational, is not a major or recurrent subject. Getting there overshadows staying there; entry rather than exit dominates. So, sadly, little yield can come from this source.

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Next we turn to succession plans which of late have become such a feverish priority of consultants and academics. That, at least, typically accepts and faces the inevitable prospect of change and exit strategies. But its comfort may be illusory. In hard times, often more than half of those designated as successors may be let go or have already jumped ship before it sank. Then, too, most plans focus largely on personnel, not business futures. They are seldom “what if” exercises. They do not ask “Succession to what? To what we were? To what we are now? To what we will be?” In short, succession plans are often a progressive hall of mirrors offering the illusion of extrapolated continuity. They assume good times, not bad. Nevertheless, such myopia serves to dramatize a major sin of omission and a possible fifth and final dimension of the transformational model of intelligence.

TURNAROUND The major temptation is to assume that all tough times are essentially the same. Why? All the available data is tyrannically comparative. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. Besides, it is reassuring to link present difficulties to a cyclical timetable. Everyone is exonerated. There are no villains. Everyone is in the same boat. All we have to do is hunker down, invoke tried and true remedies, and weather the storm. Many CEOs have in fact responded by invoking the recurrent historical cyclical pattern of the economy. There are some other signs of more creative responses where CEO and companies, rather than adhere to the party line, have exercised leadership and come up with a number of other options. But that is a separate story in its own right.

Chapter 16

Transformational Intelligence

Intelligence, like all leadership assets, is singular and separately measurable, in this case dramatically as an IQ. But what does that number mean in terms of leadership? Two essentials: whether there is enough smarts to do the job, and whether any excess or deficiency may compromise getting the job done or needs to be offset. The former is straightforward and decisive; the latter ambiguous and requiring analysis. But in all instances the number itself defines little. Whatever meaning and substance that intelligence has is not intrinsic but acquired—imparted to, added on, extended by, and determined by what it is asked to do and who does the asking. Intelligence thus has little relevance apart from its applications—the roles it plays, the foci it assumes, the modes it operates in, the directions it takes, and finally the nature of its outcomes. That typology of its basic behaviors is thus defined by what it is allied to—by what gives neutral intelligence its identity, its voice, its ego, and finally its brand. Intelligence is thus animated and activated not only by what it is applied to, but also by who owns it—who it belongs to—who tells it what to do. In other words, the first lesson of leadership intelligence is that it is owner- and goalspecific: it only goes where its driver tells it to; it only does the task assigned to it; only seeks outcomes stated in advance as its goals. Thus, the intelligence of a transformational leader is dramatically different from that of a transactional CEO or an inter-sector leader. In short, leadership intelligence is of a piece with its host—with what it guides and informs it—its operating system. But that does not mean that intelligence is static, fixed, or solely decorative. It is capable of growth—qualitative as well as quantitative. Although its 125

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final number may not change, it generally develops and becomes more sophisticated and nuanced—reads change more subtly, even embyonically, and thus serves as an early warning system or an unexpected opportunity to fuse an alliance with its secret sharer. So the second characteristic of leadership intelligence is that it regularly increases its value—to its alter ego. Indeed, that occurs so often, with such extent and with such distinction that it functions like an advanced guard— signaling the intellectual energy and signature of its author. A third development has to do with the relationship. The initial relationship is top-down—between master and servant. Intelligence is made to do its master’s bidding. But as it learns the landscape and increasingly understands its owner, it does not need to be always told what to do or how or why to act and seek out knowledge. Sooner or later intelligence develops an independent and autonomous character of its own. Without being asked, it thinks ahead and warns of threats coming down the pike, or intervenes to avoid making a big mistake or a questionable decision. That generally marks the point at which the halves become, if not equals, then partners; and the nature of the exchange becomes less unilateral and more negotiated. In a very real sense, intelligence functions as leadership’s life long coach or mentor. A final key service intelligence performs is totally unexpected and potentially suicidal: it sometimes calls for the use of another kind of intelligence. Often the ego of leaders is tied up with their plans and accomplishments, and their environment so heady with the praise of their executive team and the board that they do not see that the road has forked and taken a new direction, and that it is time to stop and adjust. But how do you change a changer? How do you slow him down to consider a new way to go and to be? How can you teach an old dog new tricks? Sometimes you can’t; the transformational leader, the warnings of his aide de camp notwithstanding, is determined to keep intact his unique brand and commitment to changing change; and rather than alter he will elect to depart, accepting another calling and bringing his transformational skills to climb another mountain and save another company. In his place, a different kind of leader arrives on the scene replete with his own distinctive intelligence—probably the one the anticipatory intelligence earlier recommended, unheeded. The new CEO begins to do that job differently—so much so that the company affirms replacing the transformer, who may have shaken things enough so that now the new transactional leader can settle down, wire in place, and consolidate the gains of transformation. But the inevitable question still occurs: why would not a savvy CEO read the handwriting on the wall, hearken to the warnings of his intelligence and

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change to what was now needed and valued? Or is his calling so compulsive that he can’t change his stripes—that once a changer is always a changer— that it is an absolute niche fit? Although that may have been generally true before, a new leadership model has emerged that may be more of an enabler of such differentiation choices and embrace adaptive leadership. Three factors are shaping the emergence of this new leadership model. Although already noted and explored earlier, they need now to be brought to bear on their contribution to this new multiple model. The first is the proliferation of leadership education and training opportunities nationally and globally, and the inevitable diversity such variations on a theme have introduced as options. In addition, how one becomes a leader has now become enriched and complicated by such choices and has generated multiple areas of approach. Even in-house leadership development programs, which in the past tended to be restrictively singular, now offer a wider menu of directions and outcomes. Then, too, that range and differentiation was reinforced and extended by the research and commentaries of a powerful culture of leadership experts who have increasingly leveraged a new and richer range of leadership typologies and matrices. They also have shifted the focus from portrait to situational dynamics—to what is implementable, and what has proved to be doable. Lastly, they championed including global and ecological leadership to expand the range and new agenda of leadership types. Finally, a third source was provided by a number of actual leaders who demonstrated that leadership was a continuum—that it did not preclude development in office—that leaders could match changing situations and times—that it went beyond one shot at the golden ring. The net result is that we now have a new cadre of leaders who are multiple, not singular; variables, not constants; nimble and quick change artists, not plodding, fixed figures staying the course, instead applying the example of flux to their own evolving leadership definition. In the process, these new chameleon hybrid leaders coupled with the diverse contributions of training channels and the research of the experts have not only left their multiple marks on the current leadership scene, but also summed up what sets them apart from previous models. Current and aspiring leaders thus now have before them the following richer palette and agenda. 1. Gallery of Choices: More knowledgeable about the number and types of leadership available, and with the option to combine many or all into leadership amalgams.

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2. Transition Permanence: More aware of the changing demands and paradigm shifts of leading, learning, and leveraging, and the impacts on CEOs of the permanence of transition. 3. Disruptive Norms: More comfortable with disruptive and discontinuous developments, especially of technology, the Singularity, and perhaps even being a cyborg leader of cyborgs. 4. Global Scope: More accepting of incorporating the diversity and scale of world economy and ecology, and now preoccupied with integration and synthesis. 5. Leadership Politics: Shrewder about executive survival skills—that what it takes to get there may not be what is required to stay there. Given the range and depth of such a new complexity, leadership coaches and commentators have not held back but welcomed new leaders to this brave new world with extensive guidance and workshops. Extending the same helping hand here, however, is limited to three explorations: • Identifying the leadership choices and intelligences to five recurrent basic types. • Describing how the intelligence of leaders is applied to combine and creatively bring together different leadership types in a unique amalgam or hybrid form to confront changing situations. • Demonstrating that one of the keys ways of profiling leadership types, as well as their composites, and of tracking their evolution is through their intelligence, which, unlike personality, is transferable and learnable. What now needs to be identified and examined are the five kinds of intelligence, and how each is associated with and inextricably advances the cause Table 16.1 Role

Focus

Modes

Direction

Outcomes

1. The Changer

Transformation

Vertical

2. The Rearranger

Transactional

3. The Integrator

Holistic

Action/ Aspiration Interface/ Teaming 360 Networking

4. The Anticipator

Leapfrogging

Transitioning

Out Front/Ahead

5. The Innovator

Inventive

Convergence

Circular

New Vision New Structures New Composites New Cyborgs New Amalgams

Horizontal Lateral/Zig Zag

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and vision of each type. The overall taxonomy of that process for all five is summarized in Table 16.1. That is followed by the first of five in depth examinations—the nature of transformational intelligence. The overall context for all leadership types and for describing the dynamics of how their respective intelligences work and define their individual differences, appears in the five categories summarized in Table 16.1.

Chapter 17

Transformational Leaders as CLOs

Things do not just happen. Needs drive history and even nomenclature. Human resources are now human capital, employee evaluation is now performance improvement, work contracts have become work covenants, and so on. But perhaps the most dramatic recent change has been the emergence of Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) and their being heralded as an idea whose time has come. The position is usually designated at a senior level and is independent of Human Resources, although often recommended by the VP of HR and obviously involved in presiding over and preserving the training piece. But what do CLOs do? The examples we have to date display track records that rapidly document and dramatize their value. CLOs immediately save money on training, often as much as one half, by reviewing, condensing, and downsizing the total training curriculum. They combine and focus what is left so that it is not duplicative or non-incremental. They selectively introduce e-learning, and thus reduce time away from work and travel costs. For those who are reluctant or unfamiliar with distance training, they combine classes with electronic experience and thus gradually wean employees into the twenty-first century. They support tuition remission programs for those relatively few employees who desire more speculative and philosophical fare. The final result is a totally more robust, trim, and effective training commitment and program than existed before their arrival on the scene. Why are they able to accomplish so much in relatively so little time? Many reasons. First, they bring together under one roof what often has been parceled out to many divisions as their favorite or pet training hobby 131

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horses. Second, they are cost/benefits-oriented and document follow-up course effectiveness; third, they have made learning as much a demonstrable discipline and expertise as strategic planning, accounting, or management information systems. Fourth, their training list is clean, crisp, and cumulative. Finally, they are proactive. The training agenda always exists in the future. What are the essential process steps CLOs employ? Catch up; line up; ratchet up; step up; and back up. 1. Catch up: CLOs are expert diagnosticians. They find knowledge and skill gaps and bridge them with incremental training. 2. Line up: CLOs take a holistic approach. They bring together macro and micro, top and bottom, and advocate alignment. 3. Ratchet up: Anticipating greater competition, they favor stretch goals, raising the bar, and agile interfacing. 4. Step up: They support next-step thinking and questioning: “Okay. Where do we go from here? What is the next step? How can we push the envelope further?” 5. Step back: Taking both a holistic and proactive approach. they encourage stepping back to see the system as whole and in the process to recognize that the solution is often not proximate to the problem. Unlike other senior professionals who have a prescribed job and range, that of the CLO is constantly unfinished. His boundaries are set only by the future. For example, CLOs are increasingly studying the linkage between learning styles and managerial styles. In addition, they relate those findings to those between learning frontiers and organizational vision. The difference between incremental and futuristic learning is movement and positioning. Incremental learning at best is cutting edge. It extends itself and reaches for the present and the current. It brings employees to state of the art boundaries. But futuristic learning is anticipatory. It leapfrogs: while we are catching up, let us also get ahead. It not only pushes but is on other side of the learning curve. Whatever its particular focus, it is always about artificial intelligence, thinking robots, and man-machine symbioses. To nuts and bolts it routinely adds speculation, intuition, and imagination. It is selective investment. The goal is not only to get ahead but also to get there first, with the best applications, with optimum return on ROI. It is the closest thing there is to avant garde learning, but advanced with all the rigors of systematic research. But perhaps the most dramatic yield of the anticipatory is the detection of not just occasional or temporary but permanent learning gaps between the

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present and the future. Those gulfs are born not just of general discontinuity, but of a series of continuing disconnects, perhaps without end. If so, then that requires a new kind of training and leadership—that of transition training. As transition becomes not the exception but the norm, learning and training for the future correspondingly may require more than knowledge base catch-up. It also may require managing the mercurial, reducing anxiety, and seeking temporary steady states in permanent flux. The new image may be not that of the agile manager but of the artful dodger, as Prometheus is replaced by Proteus. When such advant garde knowledge and training is added to all the standard offerings, it may be better understood why CLOs may offer the best ROI a company can earn from its human capital.

CLO ACCEPTANCE A good place to start is to question why any savvy, cutting-edge, forwardlooking organization would hesitate moving in the direction or appointing a CLO in the first place? Alas, the answers may be unsettling and discomfiting, especially to the converted. A number of responses quickly surface: 1. Cost. It is expensive. Making it a chief position immediately puts it in the top salary bracket. Then, too, there may be the not-so-hidden expenses of an accompanying staff of pricy specialists following in his wake. 2. Dislocation. It may create internal inequities and insecurities. Will strategic planning and R&D take umbrage, become uneasy, appear threatened, even paranoiac? Will they rush to read his resume to see if in any way he may be in their court? Will they perceive the appointment as an implied criticism of their performance or learning outlook (which it well might be)? In short, how many chains will be jerked? 3. Positioning. Where does he fit in the organizational chart and chain of command? Does he have a direct line to the CEO, bypassing the COO and the CFO? That may be enlightened, but threatening. What is his job or task? What are his marching orders? Does he have an agenda, given or invented? Is he given free rein to roam on his own without limits or constraints? 4. Precedent. What other organizations are going down this chancy road? In our industry? Why, and with what success? Given such concerns, it is not surprising that the prospect of a CLO may strike terror in the hearts of senior staff and lead to the following qualified recommendation (or is it the kiss of death?): “Let’s work toward it.”

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Given such misgivings, what options are available to move and advance the cause? Are there any examples or models that would be helpful in overcoming such formidable misgivings and skepticism and bringing about if not complete implementation initially, at least a transitional arrangement? After all, a half a loaf is better than none. There are, but they may require at least three conditional and operative factors to succeed: Age The initial transitional appointment must not threaten senior-level appointments with job displacement, on the one hand, but must be their equal on years and experience to offer wise counsel, on the other hand. For example, Jack Welch recently came out of retirement to accept appointment to head up the highly visible and controversial Leadership Academy of the NYC School System. Although some would quarrel whether he is a CLO, what is certain is that he will introduce and impose the GE brand of Six Sigma as the main learning/planning salvation. If younger aspirants are put off by this senior citizen recommendation, they need to recall that this is a transition strategy designed to open the door and prepare the way for later application. Temporary The appointment is to be further perceived as an experimental and rotational arrangement funded for three years. Such reassurance includes undertaking an evaluation by the middle of the third year to determine whether the arrangement should be formalized and continued and if so made permanent. The model followed would be that of the visiting professor long established for many years at universities. A variation of that model has been used by some corporations to appoint a resident futurist ((Ian Wilson at GE) or organizational gadfly (Charles Handy at BP). Selection The first appointment for the first year should not be chosen by a committee. It should be the exclusive selection of and funded by the CEO. Ideally, it should set the standards and establish the criteria for subsequent visiting or resident CLOs. Those standards should be thoroughly explained by the CEO and obviously exemplified by his choice. Later on a process of future selection can be put in

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place and negotiation accommodated. The subsequent opportunity to put in the hands of managers and leaders the nomination of outstanding learning officers, aside from calming fears, would clearly serve the CLO profession well. It would raise to a high level of consciousness, discussion, and debate the immense value of focusing on both professional and corporate learning, and how they can be converged. Of course, this may seem like a less-than-ideal and overly elaborate and cautious way to gain acceptance. The devoted may argue that it may dilute the dedicated effort to achieve visibility for CLOs. Then, too, nominations may be so glamorous and varied as to be inimical, and the choices so exalted that they may be not just hard but impossible acts to follow. Imagine Peter Senge being named to GM, or Steve Pinker from MIT to Paradigm Learning or Pearson Electronics—or a Nobel Prize–winning chemist being invited to Merck. But the arguments advanced here are more than pragmatic. They also acknowledge profound change. New, different, and deviant learning dislocates. Add unlearning, and that ups the ante. But in order to establish a beachhead and threshold for the dissemination of such mind-altering and organizationchanging learning, CLOs need above all to be reassuring, and to blend past and future. They must exhibit in fact the kind of patience, ingenuity, and savvy associated with and part of the toolkit of CLOs. In short, initially, during, and subsequently, CLOs will have to practice what they profess and not only be learning leaders, but also futurists.

THE FUTURE AGENDA OF CLOs What invests the new role of Chief Learning Officer (CLO) with puzzling importance is its somewhat unexpected appearance. It has emerged at a time when training generally has been downsized, minimized, and in some companies trivialized; when many HR departments have been dismantled or outsourced; when the budget line for consultants including IT specialists has been decimated or deleted entirely; and when the future of corporate universities as separate entities is being scrutinized. But desperation sometimes can lead to enlightenment; the glass may be half-full rather than half-empty. CLOs may have emerged precisely because the crisis of training required not just management but leadership. Organizations were in the counterproductive stance of cutting themselves off from their future. The baby was in danger of being thrown out with the bathwater. Turnaround required executive-level cost containment,

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consolidation, and reconfiguration. No small achievements, because in tough times, those who can save money in the present and at the same time preserve growth in the future are doing precisely what top leaders are supposed to do. Due diligence and vision still remain the sign of executive expertise. But where do CLOs go from here? After taking apart and putting humpty dumpty back together in a trimmer and more robust e-learning state, what are the future leadership options for CLOs? Ten areas of advocacy are rendered below in generic terms to accommodate the diversity of organizations to which they can be applied. It also assumes the subject range of CLO to be the trinity of Thinking, Learning, and Training (TLT). The Future Leadership Agenda of CLOs 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Flux Management Integration Convergence Holistics Anticipation Innovation Decentralization Self-Regulation Assessment Research

Flux Management It will increasingly become the responsibility and focus of TLT to manage the pace and invasiveness of change. The toolkit of CLOs will employ the bridging contributions of blended learning, man-machine hybrids, and stretch goals management. Above all, in recognition that transition may be shedding its temporary character and in the process becoming a permanent norm, CLOs will offer transition training. The common goal of managing flux will be to temper future shock. Integration: Linking TLT has to be the agent of integration on multiple levels. Minimally, it should include cross-training and crossover training. The first is divisional, the second interdivisional. In both instances, the direction is horizontally to extend the cultural base of the work so that it becomes increasingly reciprocal, proximate, and mutual.

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That also may require that the traditional uni-directional focus of job satisfaction acquire an interpersonal dimension. Securing satisfaction has to involve the obligation to provide satisfaction to others. Such interactive give-and-take behaviors shift the focus from product to behavioral productivity. The goal of integration throughout is gradually to transform units into communities that face inwardly to the mutuality of cross-training and outwardly to the collaborative alignment with company objectives. The glue is provided by the rationale of productivity: more gains are possible through goal alignment and between, rather than within, units. Convergence Convergence is a higher level version of integration. If integration applies mostly to rank and file, convergence ministers to middle and upper level managers. Convergence routinely includes the usual deviant and out-of-thebox thinking. But realizing the math of 1 + 1 = 3 requires positioning in a multidisciplinary range and world of impinging parallels. Convergence requires standing on mountain tops so that apex developments in multiple fields can be perceived as they surprisingly link and converge. Such horizontal coupling has even been given a new name, the Singularity, which is projected to occur over the next twenty-five years and to bring about in that span of time the equivalent of 20,000 years of progress. The pace of convergent change may become so intense that nature and technology may fuse; machine intelligence may rival and even exceed human intelligence; and work, play, and thought relationships may be redefined. Science fiction? Perhaps, but reviewing SF reveals that two-thirds of its technology forecasts came about, a better batting average than conventional strategic planners and forecasters. Convergence, in short, is always the unexpected next step, the extraterrestrial solution from left field. Holistics Bumper sticker wisdom sometimes is telling. A recent one proclaimed:”It is not only the Hole we are in, but the Whole we are not.” The argument is that some measure of relief or remediation comes from seeing the big picture and saying perhaps, “Oh, now I see why we are doing what we are doing!” Increasingly, TLT needs to deliver vision and mission. It ultimately should blend the macro and the micro, and be rendered as various mini-wholes of divisions and individuals.

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Each company has to become its own case study nested within the case studies of its industry and market. The more reflective and self-conscious nature of scenarios must replace conventional reports and summaries. Narrative has to become the dominant form of holistic communication. Anticipation Problem solving must increasingly factor in the consequences of its solutions. It no longer can function solely in the short term. Like environmental impact statements, it must anticipate the second, third, and even fourth level of impact. Employees also need to be invited to speculate on the future nature of their jobs and in the process to identify what training may be needed to get them from here to there. Aggregated upward, such findings may suggest not only the overall directions of the company’s future, but also its future training agenda. The goal is to shape a workforce that is, minimally, future-directed, and optimally future-driven. Innovation Innovation fuses the quantitative and the qualitative. The current gradual transformation of work to yield incremental gains of productivity needs the quantum jump of creativity. Innovation is important and different because it not only advances the present, but actually creates the future. It suddenly distances companies from each other. It lays down the ultimate gauntlet of competition. But this CLO agenda item requires finding new motivating and incentive mechanisms for stirring innovation across the board. In a recent survey of the mission statements of 301 companies, the favorite operative words were “Quality,” “Value,” and “Service. Only sixty eight, or less than one-quarter, cited “Innovation.” Decentralization CLO leaders have to speak out on behalf of leadership-sharing. They have to move the knowledge culture of the company beyond the mindsets of centralization and hierarchy. The goal of distributed leadership is to write leadership options into every job description. Fortunately, the current commitment to teaming provides the receptive soil for planting the seeds for building such collaborative leadership. Each team should function as both a profit and quality control center. An interesting variation is Robert Greenleaf’s notion that teams should follow the model of

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the Roman legion: team leaders at best are primus inter pares—first among equals. But the position of being first is temporary and rotational. When a different expertise is required another member of the team who has that expertise becomes first. But throughout all remain equal. Self-Regulation Control, the chief weapon of middle-level managers, is sometimes over-used and always overrated. Benign abandonment also may be needed, perhaps even preferred. Research on birds, traffic jams, economic systems, and informal organizational and communication reveals the extent to which relationships and work are organized without an official organizer, and coordinated without a coordinator. The cherished image of the lead bird leading his flock south turns out to be a self-selecting process requiring no official intervention. In other words, TLT needs to identify and to recognize those unofficial and informal pathways and systems that undergird organizations and provide them with their on-going and self-organizing power. There are not one, but many invisible hands, and they all have to be allowed to work their magic no matter how marginal the role of indispensable control and supervision may become in the process. Assessment Every organization increasingly must become intensely self-evaluating. Whether it is called accountability or post-Enron oversight, work, policy, and executive decisions need constant scrutiny and review. The kind of follow-up tracking designed to measure the effective implementation of training has to be applied across the board, throughout the company. In the process, stretch goals have to be disaggregated into rubric levels of accomplishment. They also should be designed so that they become the do-ityourself focus of self-assessment. Monitoring has to become at least half of every job if corrective self-management is to have its optimum affect. Cognitive Science Research Brain research, or the science of knowing, thinking, and learning, has to be folded into the agenda of all CLOs. In fact, cognitive science is becoming as formative to TLT as instructional design. Moreover, it is perhaps the supreme area of integrated, holistic, and convergent study. It includes computer science, artificial intelligence, behavioral

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psychology, linguistics and language development, neuroscience, and so on. In fact, one of the new frontiers of cognitive science is precisely the exploration of how the brain reasons about and manages uncertainty. Here is where TLT may find its new diagnostics, the sources of its training effectiveness, and innovation dynamics. Here is where CLOs will discover the future of the future. Perhaps the most comprehensive way to summarize the future agenda of CLOs is in the following matrix: Table 17.1 Agenda Category

Means/Modes

Goals/Outcomes

1. Flux Dynamics

Transition Training

Change Management

2. Integration

Cross- and Crossover Training

Alignment

3. Convergence

Multi-Disciplinary

Synthesis

4. Holistics

Vision and Mission

Big-Picture Knowledge

5. Anticipation

Problem Solving Projections

Future Driven Work Force

6. Innovation

Out-of-the-Box Thinking

The Competitive Edge

7. Decentralization

Leadership Sharing

First Among Equals

8. Self-Organizing

Unofficial Networks

Self-Directing Systems

9. Evaluation

Data Tracking Follow-up

Monitoring Effectiveness

FLT Findings

FLT Applications

10. Cognitive Research

Another value the matrix may offer is turning it back upon itself to help define what CLOs have to be in order to implement such modes and achieve such ends. Any composite profile of the position would likely have to include, minimally, the following characteristics of the CLO’s job description: 1. TLT Expertise. Whatever the original area of specialization, learning has to become not only the new discipline of CLOs, but also their compulsive analytical perspective. Everything must become grist for the mill, converted into TLT challenge and opportunity. 2. Managers of Cost Effective Performance Improvement. CLOs have to be supreme resource managers. Like the organizations that employ them, they have to do more with less, not just maximize but optimize programs, and constantly save money as their way of making money. 3. Documenters of Effectiveness. CLOs have to document not so much the training but its implementation, and even then not only that it has been wired in place but that it also has made a measurable difference. Data must become the ultimate persuader. The CLO mantra should be DDD— Data-Documented Difference.

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4. Organizational Broker. The integration of employee and division goals with company objectives should also include the convergence of learning and performance goals. CLOs should be the constant advocate for learning linkages as ways of bringing greater coherence and interdependence to discrete and often disparate parts. In effect, CLOs are the guardians and articulators of the Big Picture—of vision and mission. 5. New Knowledge Officers. CLOs have to model the cutting edge. They constantly have to be alert to and knowledgeable about impactful research breakthroughs, and above all be open to future-driven innovations emerging unexpectedly from convergence. Thus they have to become the information officers of future knowledge and innovation. Ideally, they should build a research-driven base into their own operations of documentation and instructional design. In short, CLOs have to function as resident futurists. The lists above are obviously neither definitive nor prescriptive. They also are not accompanied with timetables, although clearly some might be immediate, others ongoing, and one or two long-term. Their singular and/or combined value is to stir proactive debate as to what should be the future agenda of thinking, learning and training as perceived, developed, and implemented by CLOs—the new learning leaders and managers of the twenty-first century.

Chapter 18

Foresight of Transformational Leaders

How do we find leaders with foresight, especially early on? Would an early Welch or Iacocca have been tagged? What does “futuring” do for a leader—is it an intellectual edge? an intelligence? Does he favor hunches over data? Make suddenly shrewd leaps? Whatever the profile, the quest is twofold: find out what is special, intractable, and unmanageable about this new future, and what it will require of future CEOs. Intelligence identifies the embryonic leader. He is more self-conscious and is about planning; his design always exceeds specs. He writes his own career script. His life becomes crafted. His intelligence lives ahead of his time. But knowledge about engaging the future is not easily come by. Memoirs are helpful because they keep alive the give-and-take of success and failure. As noted previously, for many years I served as an executive coach and trusted advisor to many CEOs and senior staff. Not unexpectedly, the subject of the future, and, above all, the characteristics of future leaders, were a recurrent subject. In particular, three subjects always triggered dialogue. First, identifying and singling out in-house future leaders in their organization, as well as those in their competitors’, and how to lure them away. Second, finding a successor to the throne or chair of the board or senior cabinet. Third, conducting, especially for a captive audience of senior staff, endless and open-ended seminars on the characteristics and qualities of emerging future leaders. As a group these top professionals were uniquely wise, cynical, egotistical, and cocksure. They believed they had a monopoly on the knowledge of the future. No one could or would contest their pontification. To their credit, however, these executives were always insightful, so much so that in my 143

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judgment their seminars were far superior to most offered at doctoral programs in business. More to the point, there was remarkable agreement as to what makes or breaks emerging leaders for a changing future. Here, then, are their five common denominators for identifying future leaders: vision (the big picture now and ahead), mission (leadership sharing), operations (transparent excellence and flawless execution), structure (decentralized and collaborative), and commitment to professional development (unlearning and transition training). Before elaborating on each area, the discussion needs minimally to be framed. A future context needs to be identified for each of the above five categories. That preserves the role of the future as a partner in identifying the characteristics and qualities of leadership. Indeed, in many ways, objections might be made that these five leadership qualities do not appear very futuristic. In fact, they seem quite traditional. Not so, however, when the future bears down on them and alters both their form and content. The following matrix provides future equivalents for each and will be folded into the discussion of how those future dimensions challenge, drive, and shape the emerging leader. Leadership Qualities and Their Future Contexts Vision: Interdependent World Mission: Collaborative and Holistic Decision Making Operations: Horizontal Congruence and Vertical Alignment Structure: Employee Centrality Professional Development: Unlearning

PROFILES OF FUTURE LEADERS Vision Generally, the contemporary discussion of vision has been muted or minimized. It appears as too grandiose, as belonging to an earlier time when major enterprises were launched. The days when Walt Disney could stand on a mound and look over acres of swampy land are over. Few new big companies will be created, though they may be cobbled together by mergers. Thus, all visions now, and anything new, are really variations or combinations on what already existed. And so vision is disposed of and subsumed under mission, especially by those hard-nosed types who do not wish to be deflected from dealing with real stuff by puffery.

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But acknowledging the future in fact restores vision to the agenda. One of the functions of the future, especially a compelling and discontinuous future, is to disturb the present. Consider the projection of the two data spikes in technology and population. Can any organization not find its mission jarred or rendered askew? When such shocks to the system occur, only vision can serve to restate what lies ahead and how we engage it. Mission then takes its obedient second place in the pecking order. The major new factor of vision is globalization. As a system, it is denser and more elusive than we realized. It generates strange or different partnerships: software companies subcontracting with programmers in India, manufacturers exporting the most polluting stages of their process, epidemics crossing national and even international lines, and so on. In other words, the increasing interconnectedness of the world compels a vision which seeks to comprehend, express, and somehow master the new competence of interdependence. Moreover, in scale and daring such an effort would be not unlike the impressive one a number of year ago by Meadows and Forester in The Limits to Growth. Meadows and Forrester were visionary futurists. Their computer simulation model, while flawed, nevertheless produced a powerful finding: there is no human goal that requires more people to achieve it. They not only studied the future, but their study itself had impact on the future. Critics found fault with their databases, with the lines of interacting factors, in fact with the entire computer model. Nevertheless, the impact was so great that reviewers in their discussion even changed the title from the limits to growth to the end of growth. Ideologically, for many the limits to growth meant the end of growth. And so systematically we shot (down) the messengers and gave global visionary efforts a bad name for quite a while. Effective future leaders have to build a series of new visions of the planet, its relations to the environment and to each other, to sustainable growth and redistribution and, above all, to the complex and often fragile ways the new globality operates. Those new leaders have to assemble and peruse a new future bibliography, which focuses on the kind of span of Meadows and Foresters and many others on the one hand, and the imaginative range of the science fictionists on the other hand. Finally, the parameters of the vision must go beyond obvious self-interest. It should not follow the old pattern of accumulating a fortune perhaps rapaciously and then spending the twilight years dispensing wisdom. Rather, the vision should address not only global economics but political science so as to preserve the option that leaders may exercise as part of a larger cumulative and reinforcing effort, building a sustainable future.

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The future cannot be left to governments, especially nervous ones, and their notions of national security and sovereignty. A new dialogue has to include visionary leaders whose principal agenda item is always the future of the planet. Mission Ideally, each leadership characteristic should somehow resonate with all the others. The effort, however, should not compel a stifling consistency but rather demonstrate that future leadership has an interlocking range, that it is conceived, reflected on, and adjusted to be coherently whole. In this way, the most insistent dimension of the future, global interdependence, impacts on all the characteristics of leadership. Thus, the mission of the leader is no longer to be a separatist entity designed to serve only those who lead. Nor is it solely limited to how the CEO can best lead his company. The future compels a new consideration: What do I do with my leadership? How do I use it? Traditionally, leadership belonged exclusively to those at the top. It was held close. It was a source of power and distinction. If it sought change, it was in the form of how to exercise more power over more holdings. Leaders of old always were empire builders and inevitably monopolists. Their goal, like that of empire builders, was to extend their rule totally. Future leaders are not timid or myopic. They know that the top holds power and sway. But the new futures issue is how the power of the leader is leveraged. How can it be used to meet organizational change on the one hand and global change on the other? In other words, leadership has joined intellectual capital as a major factor on the asset side of the ledger. Leadership itself is on the block. How leaders use the assets of leadership determines whether the company succeeds and in fact has a future. The key mission then of futuristic leaders is leadership transfer and sharing to encourage and preserve the possibility that each leadership initiative could be aggregated upwards and potentially be applied company-wide. Operations The overriding distinction of outstanding leaders is their decisiveness. They are able to make decisions within tight timeframes, often with less than total data at their command, and choose a course from among a bewildering and complex set of options. That ability alone all sets apart the men from the boys, the successful leaders from the has-beens.

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But leaders shaped by the future will need to be not only more decisive, but also technologically amplified. Increasingly, real-time and just-in-time data systems provide access and transparency to virtually all operations. In some cases the data will make the decision or more will be asked for such an automatic process to take place. The role of the leader will shift from content to context. Futurity and globality may be joined at the hip. Structure Currently, success or profitability is determined by productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. The future factor is innovation. It is the CEO’s task to insure the interlocking durability of all factors. And in the past that was exclusively perceived as, in fact, the responsibility of leadership, at the top and throughout the middle. Embracing distributed leadership brought a degree of decentralization which was immediately bracing and productive. Decisions could be made quickly on the micro operational level without having to endure the delay of ascending the chain of command. The introduction of new technology also often impacted productivity. But the global competition especially impelled by much lower wages and standards of living became crushing. To survive, leaders had once again to use or dispense their leadership in a unique way. Gradually, over time employee productivity began to supplement technological productivity; employee centrality began to extend distributed leadership. Leadership transferred its capital once more, but this time more radically, and created a new governance structure, the employee collaborative. The process was gradual, even piecemeal, because few leaders foresaw the prospect of employee leadership in totality, and because the evidence was not in that in fact it would work. But the latest and numerically most extensive decentralization created a major supplement to distributed leadership in the form of new collaborative governance structure. Employees were gradually brought in terms of governance, from the periphery to the center, from being the objects to the subjects of productivity, from being workers to being partners. This newest investment of leadership capital was again driven by global competition in particular the lower wages and standards of living of competitors. Technology alone could not offset the differential (in some cases, it even increased it). Only employee productivity could even the odds.

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Thus new structural norms began to appear: teams became the dominant form of work relationships; quality and productivity employee circles were charged with producing time and cost-saving changes; alignment teams were created across divisional lines to achieve a double alignment, horizontal and vertical. Thus, to bring divisional goals and company goals in coincidence, planning and scheduling even of projected layoffs became increasingly an employee responsibility, evaluation factored in more heavily employee self-evaluation and a 360-degree to bring customers into the heart of the process, employees increasingly had input into the training agenda and even often creating unofficially employee universities when they also were asked to serve as workshop instructors, and, most recently, depending upon the enlightenment or desperation of the company involved, employees have been invited to be involved in future scanning processes. In the process of discussing this empowerment of workers as stakeholders, one older retired CEO remarked, “If we had been smart enough to do all this earlier, we might have avoided unions.” That sparked a lively exchange which included the observation that if unions had been advocates for employee centrality earlier they might have the leaders. Taking the high visionary road, what sets leaders apart is the degree to which they accept the future as the determining and defining ideology. And what the future offered was the prospect of a collaborative governance structure that required leadership vision to make an incredible investment of leadership capital into the hands of workers. Perhaps the most dramatic example has occurred in the form of an employee environmental scanning process in which teams or divisions read, identify, and discuss trends and rate and record their durability and degree of impact on a monthly trending form. The forms are aggregated upward and reissued with common denominators identified. That establishes company-wide commonality to identify leadership options. What more could a futuristic CEO ask? Professional Development Typically, professional development is sporadically driven by the budget and its agenda is determined by the top or supervisors. Although one of the new yields of the collaborative governance structure is the increasing acceptance of employee input, what about the professional development of leaders? Typically, they are exempt or removed from the process. To be sure, they may decide what the training should be or serve as cheerleaders for Senge’s learning organization, but generally they generate the questionable image

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that they are complete. They have achieved perfection, or they would not be where they are. But one of the telltale signs between present-occupied and future-driven leaders is that the latter model their incompleteness and the need for life-long learning and development. In particular futuristic leaders have to embrace and promulgate minimally three kinds of professional development: futuristics, holistics, and innovation. As noted, future leaders need to study the future of the future. In every communication CEOs in one form or other must share news of and from the future. One CEO I know was so passionate about science fiction that he created an extraterrestrial newsletter. Holistics is a critical antidote for companies too preoccupied with incremental development just as unlearning is the threshold for innovation. It falls to the leader who openly, officially, and frequently describes the ways in which unexamined past assumptions have blocked ways of thinking outside the box. That is best done, as I have witnessed it, by leaders telling stories of their own mistakes, opacity, myopia, and misgivings. They become learning leaders by paradoxically advocating unlearning.

Chapter 19

Transformational Coaches Stretch and Transition Training

Increasingly, leaders and managers are serving as coaches or mentors. The distinction offered is to be a guide on the side rather than a star on the stage. Although time consuming, the request makes sense. It is individualized, addresses resource building of team members, and hopefully advances their contributions. But coaching is not always successful or reassuring. Frequently, coaches prod and push leaders to stretch, often beyond their comfort zones. When resistance occurs, the counterargument is that such stretch and strain are the antidotes to future shock. The coaching mantra should be that taking time to think ahead is always better than hurrying to catch up. Crisis management is a contradiction in terms. The basic goals are always the same: recharge and surprise—become unfinished. Here, then, is a list of coaching exercises designed to help managers stir, restart, and surprise those they counsel: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Be new. Be big. Be multiple. Be contingent. Be quiet. Be integrative. Be empathetic. Be inventive. Be flawless. Be ahead.

A word or two about each. 151

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BE NEW That’s hard for those who are typically overwhelmed. But the worry is their becoming predictable, routine, and mechanical—worse, routinely predictable and mechanical. The persuasive antidote is to sharpen the saw. The newness needed is not familiar or friendly. The key is to see the challenge differently, even obliquely, at an angle. It might be a recent arresting book or article, the lens of new manager, a difficult stockholder, a favorite professor. Suggest creating and maintaining an increasingly expanding folder labeled “The New.” Managers and workers need to find their work finally elusive. BE BIG This is not the same as the big picture, which, again, may be a regular preoccupation. Rather, this requires going back to square one and endowing basics with macro extent. That way, origins emerge as bigger than life, and their impacts as mega trends. Such bigger frameworks may be already housed like a series of nested boxes in past history. Or it may require stepping forward to redefine not only the scope of competition—now worldwide—but driven by new and more urgent agendas. What is your Chinese counterpart thinking and contemplating? What is his big picture? Finally, the stretch of the ecological or the divine is often bracing and gives pause. But in all cases the key challenge of being bigger is making vision mission. BE MULTIPLE Success may often obscure limitation. Problem solving kits have carried us through so often that their application is almost knee-jerk. Although such a singular-minded focus should not be abandoned—it might precipitate an identity crisis—it should be supplemented, amplified, and multiplied. One way is to get to know and master the methodologies of other fields, and to observe and marvel how they differently reconfigure data, display solutions, and capture reality. It may finally help you to understand the insurance industry.

BE CONTINGENT Managers generally place a high value on knowing all so as to make informed decisions on the one hand and to avoid surprises on the other. In the process they urge their staff to be independent and interdependent—to think on their

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own and as a team. But it also may be important also to acknowledge that not everything is knowable or manageable, and that leadership occasionally may have to be less decisive and express itself in contingent and tentative terms. To be sure, that may not be the popular or conventional image of leadership, but in many ways it may be a better model to follow. Not being so totally sure of all that is going on, not totally trusting the data, being somewhat uncertain of the hidden impacts of decisions or new policies, far from appearing indecisive, may encourage contingency planning as a new norm. It also may bring new respect for uncertainty and ambiguity. BE QUIET There are many quiet ways to wisdom and insight. Turning a troubling problem over to the unconscious is often surprisingly inventive. Asking or empowering a problem to solve itself is another. Stilling the constant in-yourface noise and urgency can often produce an intelligent stillness. Above all, embracing quiet may introduce workers to reflective inaction. You are not indispensable. You don’t always have to make a decision—at least not now, maybe never. Indeed, sometimes the most important leadership act is attitudinal—remaining calm, confident, and committed. It coveys the quiet and reassuring steadiness managers and leaders have to provide others. BE INTEGRATIVE Productivity gains between divisions are generally greater than within divisions. But they are also tougher to achieve. Divisional heads are excessively loyal and separatist in preserving their boundaries and budgets. Integration has to be modeled from the top. All have to embrace a constant new doubleness: facing both inward and outward at the same time. Whatever else a manager may do, he is the supreme integrator—the connector between parts, the bridger between professionals, the aligner between top and bottom. His obsessive question again and again is “How is this linked to_____?” The future of his company has to mimic the future itself by becoming increasingly symbiotic. BE EMPATHETIC This request is often totally misunderstood and resisted. It is wrongly perceived as compromising being hard-nosed. Actually, it is a supreme form of crossover and stretch. It seeks to understand difference—the behaviors,

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thinking and values of those who are so far beyond your own orbit of assumptions that they may appear like aliens from outer space. But such appreciation follows the proverbial wisdom of walking a mile in another’s shoes. Never underestimate the substance of those who are not like you.

BE INVENTIVE Managers have to help make innovation a company-wide goal for all. Incremental gains may be sufficient for survival but not enough for lasting growth. Innovation is growing your own competition from within. It surfaces internally as a potentially new business or a totally new way of doing business. When it actually appears externally, it is capable of putting you out of business or becoming an acquisition. Managers have to make innovation an absolute—an expectation that has the same pervasive power as the now amended catch-all last line of all job descriptions: to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

BE FLAWLESS Never underestimate the endgame—not the point of sales but the promise of delivery. Pride should always precede profit. Quality is painstaking. Contrary to popular advice: sweat the small stuff. One old parable suggests that if you want to learn from the master, watch the way he ties his shoes. God is finally in the details. So execute flawlessly.

BE AHEAD In many ways this encapsulates all the above. It is not enough any more for managers to exist at the edge of the future’s boundary. They need to cross over and be imbedded regularly in its flux. To be students of the business now requires managers to become students of the future, its history, and its own future. Only by granting what lies ahead separate and intimidating substance and difference can the present acquire its cutting edge and offer the illusion of continuity. Managers have to court the future, set aside time every day to read the handwriting on the wall, and require that all executive summaries be in the form of scenarios and simulations. Managers who look ahead lead ahead. Obviously the above list is not definitive. Many other things could be added. But all coaching is payback. It honors how each of us has been helped

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in turn along the way. It also should be self-applied. The doctor, in the final analysis, also has to heal himself. But above all, coaching is a change agent. It uniquely facilitates not only stretch, but also transformation—managers mentoring work management. All training follows the same paradoxical rhythm. It combines reassurance with change, affirmation of the status quo with incremental advances—in short, it straddles present and future. It is thus inevitably persuasive, coaxing the now and the given to include more—and more that is different—beyond its original benchmark position. But to lure such venturing forth from its comfort zones typically is eased by offering only modest and digestible bites and bytes. However, the pressing issue now is change management. Indeed, the need for that larger competence has led to questioning whether incremental gains are comprehensive and sufficient enough to provide catch-up, let alone to be ahead of the game. Then, too, the expectation is that engaging and mastering discontinuity also may bring the workforce closer to the threshold of creativity. But as in all training, the bold needs to be anchored in the familiar. So the search, then, is initially always for what is in-house—already existing examples of change management and creativity—as well as what affects the entire workforce. In other words, what stimulates creativity should be sufficiently mainstream that if innovation does not occur or soon, there is still the consolation of mastery. Who, then, are the most innovative types? Invariably, three groups appear. The first are the entrepreneurs. These perpetual motion and restless start-up protean types live on the edge of change. Their career path is measured not so much by how many jobs they have had, but by how many businesses they have created. They generate unlimited variations on a theme, exhibit spin-off thinking, and often display the uncanny ability of being ahead of the pack. Or as Wayne Gretsky claimed: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it is.” They are a marvel and often exhausting to be around. The second group are those managerial coaches whose stock and trade are challenging workers to change. Their value resides in their ability to read signs, decipher the handwriting on the wall, and operate as early warning and opportunity agents to those they mentor. Their success is always reciprocal. Finally, there are all the exceptional professionals and project managers found in all organizations and all sectors who are routinely transformational. They are endless advocates of training and unlearning, finding collaborative ways of doing things differently, and endorsing leap-frogging: “While we are catching up, let us also get ahead.”

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What do all of the above have in common? • • • • • • • •

Living and thinking ahead of their time. Impatient with, even disdainful of, current paradigms. Always negotiating change—one state to another. Keen sense of the dynamics of implementation—reality checks of scenario and simulation. Imagining and creating what did not exist before. Inclusive, integrative, and collaborative. Patchwork cobbling—always putting together holistically what is separate. Thriving on and managing risk and blur.

What stirs such innovative types? Are there special contexts, conditions, and cultures which are not only a match but a spur for their creativity? If one steps back and observes their performance, what dynamics emerge as norms? • Their goals always are a moving target. • Performance evaluations correspondingly have to occur more often, sometimes daily. • Mid-course corrections are regular adjustments. • Job descriptions are regularly exceeded and outdated. • Crossover operations and integration are routine. • Nothing and no one remains behind or intact. Such workforce impacts are so far beyond the norm that even the standard and familiar answer of change addresses only symptoms, not causes, businessas-usual practices, not basic assumptions. Perhaps, what is needed is a deeper definition of change—one that engages not just branch but also root, and above all directly reflects the new everyday working reality of employees. The standard expectation is that when dislocation or disruption occurs, it will be both temporary and non-recurrent. It is a singular event that happens every once in a while, but if we are just patient and stoical enough, everything will return to the way it was. After all, cycles of ups and downs are familiar and inevitable. But suppose a transition lasts a very long time, much longer than previous transitions? Or, worse, suppose the transition finally gives way not to reassuring and familiar stability but to another transition? And, further, that that transition is then replaced by another and still another, and so on and so on? What then? When that happens often enough and lasts long enough, transition, not stability, becomes the norm—then we confront the paradox of continuous discontinuity. The only problem is that we not been trained to recognize, let alone accept and engage, transition as a permanent and recurrent reality. Instead, we worship the absolute God of stability.

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But what if instead one were to acquire another outlook entirely? Perceive transition as not the exception but the rule? With such expectations, we would not have to develop surprise-free forecasts. Surprise would rise every day with the sun. Rather than avoiding change or running away from threats of novelty, they would be a daily occurrence. Transition might even be welcomed as a new constant not an occasional variable. Above all, transition would normalize continuous improvement as the minimum response of keeping up with ongoingness. It also would optimally stir innovation to be the new version of incremental gains. There is a need to provide transition training for the entire workforce. But how? Three immediate directions surface. First, consideration should be given to creating a special and separate workshop on transition as a common orientation for all new hires at all levels. It would extend the typical discussion of company values to now include company operating assumptions. The conventional statement of “This is how we do things around here” has to be supplemented by “This is why we have to do those things this way.” Performance expectations thus would be imbedded in the metrics of the company’s operational reality. Second, mission and vision statements should be reviewed to determine to what extent, if at all, they embody the norm of transition and the performance expectations associated with workforce reality. Third, employing transition as an overlay not an overhaul, all training offerings should be reviewed to determine to what extent they support both the continuous and disruptive nature of transition. Where lacking, a healthy dose of the temporary may have to be injected. All offerings thus would embody the new principle that all performance is a work in progress. There are no longer any final goals. The endgame has become the ongoing game. Persuading employees to embrace transition as a permanent condition of daily work may be eased by developing and offering a taxonomy of transition in the form of a performance template. Although additions and supplements can be encouraged, the following perhaps can serve as common ground: Table 19.1 Taxonomy of Transition

Goals Evaluation Tasks Focus Structure Leadership Innovation

Past

Present

Future

Given Annual Singular Divisional Vertical Hierarchical Limited

Stretch Multiple Multitasking Team Horizontal Shared Accessible

Embryonic Daily Crossover Interoperable Intersecting Diffused Required

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Trust is based on truth. In this instance, it requires telling the truth about the new reality of work. That in turn needs to be followed by the various ways new performance expectations and evaluation metrics are being shaped and driven by the new norm of transition. Far from shrinking from the challenge, the workforce not only may welcome the truth of what is in fact their familiar daily reality, but also bring new mastery and creativity to the reality of permanent change.

Transactional Intelligence

Chapter 20

The Conversations of Horizontal Leaders

In the film Cast Away, the character played by Tom Hanks finds a volleyball among the debris washed ashore on a deserted island. It looks like a face. He decides to call it Wilson, after the manufacturer’s name on the ball, and proceeds to have regular conversations with Wilson. Clearly, that arrangement saves his sanity. In fact, when he is on his precarious raft trying to find land or a ship, the ball is swept overboard. Hanks jeopardizes his life swimming after it. But it drifts away, and is gone forever. Wilson is lost, but the castaway is saved. Clearly, Wilson functioned as a way for Hanks to maintain human contact and conversation. We know it was an active dialogue because Wilson’s answers appear in the responses of Hanks. In other words, not only did Hanks preserve Wilson’s half of the exchange, but Wilson’s evolving character—his difference, disagreements, and dissension— also supported the relationship. The exchange was thus enervating. It did not just offer companionship—it offered the relationship of opposition. In fact. William Blake rightly maintained that “Friendship is Opposition.” It was an authentic voice because it did not obediently mirror one’s own voice. Through that dialectic, it helped Hanks not only to communicate but also to make critical decisions. Can this personalized version of dialogue serve as a narrative metaphor for business and professional exchange? How familiar and beneficial is such dialogue, especially to the process of those charged with communicating and making critical decisions? The linkage with communication is immediately apparent. 161

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Dialogue, internal or external, not only mimics the communication process itself, but also underscores the give-and-take of making decisions. One in fact can argue that there are minimally two dialogues: the one that shapes the decision, and the other that determines the communication of that decision to others. Indeed, to be totally comprehensive, one can include another dialogue: namely, about how to implement the decision. We all know professionals who talk their way through their work. Sometimes it is internal, other times overt. In a number of cases, it also may take place in front of a client or colleague. “Let me see, you want to get this done, fast. Let me try this first; and if that does not work, I have a few other aces up my sleeve.” If the customer is smart, he will sit quietly and listen to the problem solving process make its way clever and circuitous way to a solution. The role of the listener is passive. He only has to pose the problem. He may have to answer a few questions along the way to refine and focus the problem, but that’s all. He sits back and follows the dialogue, often finding it fascinating as he learns about the way this particular problem solver thinks and in fact problem solves. Although the solution obviously is the bottom line, observing the workings of a mind in a self-relationship process is equally absorbing and revealing. Self-dialogue does not require another. Many people have conversations with their pets, some with favored inanimate objects or paintings or sculptures—which we may also touch. Some talk back to the radio or TV. If viewers are really angry or annoyed, they express themselves by clicking it off or switching to another channel usually accompanied by a few choice exclamations. Others, not yet having decided on a course of action, may initiate a dialogue in their heads and call in the warring opposites, one always stressing the downside and the other the upside—two different Wilsons, as it were. The dialogue of self-relationship becomes a balancing act until enough accumulates to make a decision or to postpone it for another dialogue. Many CEOs and senior managers pay handsomely for this kind of dialogue in the form of executive coaches or trusted advisors. Although it appears there is considerable value to the exchange, it is seldom acknowledged officially as a way of knowing. As a result, it is seldom taught, inculcated and above all designed as a managerial tool. The structuring of dialectic self-relationships thus may improve problem solving, communication, decision making, and even strategic planning: Structuring a dialectic self-relationship minimally involves five process steps: Scanning, Selecting, Formulating, Trying Out, and Deciding.

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Table 20.1 Stages

Events/Behaviors

Outcomes

1. Scanning

Self-Inventory Goals

External/Internal Balancing

2. Selecting

Cast of Characters/Voices Thesis/Antithesis

360-Degree Inclusiveness

3. Formulating

Scene and Sequence

Reality Check

4. Trying Out

Evaluation

Revision

5. Deciding

Circular Conclusions

Priority of Alternatives

SCANNING This first step is crucial. It involves an internal and an external inventory. For the dialogue and self-relationship to be effective, there must be self-candor. Thus, it is necessary to identify one’s blind spots and the involvement of ego. True self-image, with all its blemishes and warts, must emerge if the dialogue is to stand a chance of being full and challenging. A closed mind or defensive attitude will preclude flow and change. Receptivity has to be firmly established. That is balanced externally and objectively by the outcomes that are expected or the decision which has to be made. The bridge between the two worlds of dialogue and action prepares for and sustains the traffic across it.

SELECTING The screening process of preparing the objects of the dialogue, psyche, and objectives, now sets up the selection of participants. A cast of characters has to be assembled. The first choice is to always insure a dialectic—minimally an advocate for one thesis, another for the antithesis. Others are selected to amplify the participants to create a miniature reality. For example, if certain managers and/or their divisions will be affected by the decision and how well it is communicated to them, a communications representative voice must be included. If the central character has not had the best of experiences dealing with these other voices, he has to build into the process different versions of himself. He has to acquire an understudy who is enough like him for continuity but functions at another angle or frequency to test whether that alters the outcome of both the dialogue and the decision.

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FORMULATING It’s time for an initial mock-up. For some it may take a visual form. Revealingly, the main participant may position himself in the middle. The dialogue may then take place all around him. Or he may distance itself from the entire exchange and lurk on the periphery. Whatever his location, the cast of characters is assembled and stages of discussion identified and sequenced. A preliminary run-through is conducted to determine whether the cast of characters should be changed, added to, or subtracted from; and also at what point they should enter the fray. Anyone who plays chess and has to contemplate multiple moves at any time or who routinely is involved in strategic planning, estimating first, second, and third orders of impact, understands and feels comfortable with such juggling. Once the number and kind of participants and the sequence are chosen, the dialogue is formally locked in and ready to proceed. TRYING OUT Like a play taken out of town for a tryout, all is set in motion in a limited way. Because the entire process is constantly circular, the focus here is evaluative. What has been left out? Is the major participant open enough, or do we have to call in his understudy? Are the major participants representative of the whole? Who have we left out? Have the outcomes been stated directly and unequivocally? Do the representatives from other divisions properly embody or miniaturize the dynamics? Once revisions have been made according to a reality check, all is ready for the exchange to take place. DECIDING (COMMUNICATING AND IMPLEMENTING) Whether or not a visual of the major players and their sequence has been made, it is probably helpful here not just to hear the voices, but to write down their talk in the form of a script. The dynamic of the exchange can thus be reviewed. Such a recorded scenario also compels the major participant to get inside other characters and, above all, to express points of view other than his own. For the process to work its communicative magic, the voices all must be authentic. The last task, before the curtain drops, is to record the solutions offered and the decisions made. If more than one, they need to be attributed to the different advocates and then prioritized. But they must all be saved, for they represent alternative solutions and decisions which still may be called upon or used as arguments to buttress the

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one selected over all. In addition, before one discards the entire process like scaffolding after a building is complete, there may need to be one more use distillation. The decision or solution must be rendered as three decisions: the decision to do something, the decision as to how it will be communicated and the decision on how it will be implemented. The dialogue must engage all three dimensions. Moreover, just as the decision making process involved alterative options, so now the same process must now be extended to accommodate the best ways to communicate and implement the decision. Thus, the dialectic process is circular and bestows its configuration on the decision itself as well as its communication and implementation. A set of internal parts produces an external whole, and does so in real time and real place; and with the potential for growth on the part of all major participants. Each is shaped and extended by all the others. Dialogue also creates a check-and-balance system. If the decision made poses major problems of communication and/or of implementation, it must go back to the drawing board. The solution may be a problem. The gods of communication and implementation must be satisfied. The decision fails its future tests. The dialogue must go back to square one. A new decision must be found that has to live and function in all the key dimensions of the real world and its cast of characters. Otherwise it will be stillborn or, worse, create problems bigger, tougher, and less repairable than the one that spawned the process in the first place. It is this last gain that is particularly noteworthy, and perhaps unexpected. The entire process seeks to bring about not only more effective decisions and solutions, but also more effective leaders and managers. The new manager, vivified, stretched, and extended by the dialectic of dialogue, will be more inclusive, more balanced. more open, more diverse, and more multiple. In the final analysis, the process is a form of professional development that is more holistic and dynamic than the traditional tunnel vision workshops on communication and decision-making skills. We need to talk our way through to success. Listening and hearing voices may lead some to conclude that we are crazy—but crazy like a fox, or a Plato. COMMUNICATIONS TRAINING OF DECISION MAKERS Most communications is after the fact. Once decisions have been made, new polices formulated, acquisitions and mergers agreed upon—then communications specialists are called in to wordsmith the announcements.

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Communications is never involved or invited to play a direct and formative role in any of the initial processes, only their final formulations. But often bad decisions are made, policies are inept, mergers questionable. When that regrettably happens, the temptation is to return to the same process that created the problem in the first place, try to be more diligent next time, and expect a different outcome. But the problem may be endemic. It may involve the procedure itself, or the range of participants, or a conflictive interaction of both. Converging process and personnel, it can be argued that communications might be a valued new partner to bridge the two. But for that to happen, companies and trainers have to take the initiative and endow communications with more power as a contributing partner in critical business processes. For example, if CLOs trained decision-makers regarding the muscular and proactive contributions communications can offer, there might be less lapses and failures. And if a rationale is needed to describe the benefits communications can deliver to decision making, the following discussion may serve. Communications minimally can bring three dimensions to current decisionmaking when invited as partner to the process at the outset. The first is to put the decision arrived at on pause in order to determine its “communicality.” The second tests the capacity of various and often conflicting information sources to be sufficiently broad-based, reconcilable, and integrated to elicit collective support. The third focuses on decision making as a values process in which a series of smaller values decisions punctuate and stir the final summative decision. Proactive Role of Communications In this instance, communication functions as reality check. Managers can be taught the basics of anticipatory or proactive perceptions. How will this decision be perceived and received by a representative array of employees, customers, stakeholders, and shareholders? Is its “communicality” rating high or low? What are some of the ways it can be misunderstood even distorted? To what extent is the decision a match or mismatch with the culture? Is it a fit with mission and expectations? Is it operationally savvy, or is it a square peg being fitted into a round hole? Ultimately, will this decision affirm its makers, or give the impression that the Emperor has no clothes? The responses to such questions of communications may be disturbing enough to put the decision on hold. Risk analysis thus becomes perceptions analysis. Communications thus functions as an advance guard, an anticipatory manager, and a measurer of decision impact.

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Typically, decision-makers are too imbedded and absorbed in the process to undertake 360-degree evaluation. They may be myopic and short-term. But communications stands between the decision and those affected by it. Its allegiance is to those directly and indirectly impacted, compelling awareness of both immediate and long-term consequences. Managers are trained to see both sides of the street. Communications simulate the voices of acceptance, rejection or ambiguity. That feedback alone is sufficient to affirm or challenge the decision. In the latter instance it warns of failure or miscalculation. And its message then is clear: the decision in its present form and direction needs to be changed. And with that powerful corrective, communication establishes its value as a special and perhaps equal partner in the decision making process. Refocused through training, the decision process becomes a double process: the decision to do something and the decision to communicate that something. Integrative Function of Communications Communications also has the capacity to be a broker of information. Managers can be given workshops on data sources as alternate communication paths. The goal is always to identify the broadest base possible on the one hand, and the durability and longevity of the life cycle of the data on the other hand. To accomplish and converge that double focus, communications has to champion the integration of information over the long term. That future dimension tests the durability not only of the product or service but of its supporting information. In the process, managers can appreciate the traditional persuasive power of communications as it seeks to coach various owners of information to share and to integrate sources and outcomes. Those putting forth trends, market segments, and customer buying profiles tend to be lone rangers riding their own hobby horses and pushing to be positioned as the number one source. Because communications alone embodies audience, it imparts the force of the collective to the decision making process. It uniquely can serve as the gatekeeper and guardian of integrated data. If as noted earlier communication can serve to give voice to those impacted by decisions, here communications has to orchestrate a series of data soloists into a coordinated choral. This is particularly critical because the common lament is that there is never enough data for decision-makers. What communications brings to that perennial gap is at least the optimization of available information.

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Communications as Values Advocate The competition of data is compounded by the competition of values. Teams bring forth value-laden recommendations which even cross-functional teams, constituted as they are as a miniature of the whole, cannot harmonize. Assumed or implicit values driving data or recommendations are like the proverbial tip of the iceberg; the full extent is buried underneath. Each team providing decision input has to make explicit the values driving their recommendations, and even more important what tradeoffs and alternatives can be offered to optimize broader corporate goals and mission value. Such vertical alignment can minimize unproductive conflicts. Moreover, the alternatives offered can be used to negotiate upward final consensus. But if the values process has been less than honest or total, communications may be called on to fill the values gaps. In particular, communications can stand at the receiving end and solicit values criteria for decision making. Inevitably ranking or prioritizing will be required. Because communications is not directly involved, nor does it favor any one recommendation over another, and because in effect its only allegiance is to optimizing the decision making process, it can preside with equanimity. It enjoys the high road of the big picture, sometimes matching or even exceeding the range of senior staff, and thus when learned grants all managers executive perspective. Hopefully at this point companies recognizing the value of communications training not only schedule such training, but also make it doubly inclusive. On the one hand, middle- and especially upper-level managers have to be persuaded to welcome communications into the decision making process as a critical partner and ally at all levels. Minimally, in that capacity it can serve as an early warning system, practice damage control, help to establish a more integrated base for decision making, and advocate an open values process so that decisions are in fact multiply value-laden in alignment with company goals. On the other hand, communications professionals themselves have to prepare themselves for the challenge of being differently and more comprehensively perceived and used. In particular, they have to learn to envision themselves as possessing unique skills and roles not provided by any other specialization. In other words, for the training to be effective the trainers have to go outside the box, and build into the workshops, setting up both sets of participants for optimum interactive interfacing. Communications is the supreme middle man. It presides over the cracks between which data falls. It bridges and aligns the values gaps between

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competing team recommendations so that the final decision can be inclusive, diverse, transparent, and balanced. Above all, communications experts must directly and knowledgably enter the management and operations fray. If they are to be brokers and advocates of vision and mission, and to bring to the decision making and operations process what is currently missing and what is uniquely theirs to provide, they must in fact act and perform like learning leaders. Indeed, communications so redefined may ultimately turn out be the best ally and extension of CEOs and senior staff. Because communications takes place not only at the top but also at every decision point across the board, it miniaturizes and diffuses its connecting power and anticipatory function throughout the entire company at every level of decision making and information-gathering. Communications properly relearned, refocused, and championed can diffuse throughout an organization its contribution of optimization, perhaps in itself the supreme mission of trainers.

Chapter 21

Problem Collaboration The Scenario Methodology of Horizontal Leaders

Problem solving epitomizes process. Although the forms have evolved over time and vary from industry to industry, its basic direction and character have remained the same. All problem solving displays the ritual of a military operation. The problem is positioned as a target to be defined, surrounded, and finally subdued. Tactical support is provided before and during by a data system which contributes to precise problem definition. The methodology selected is usually tried and tested and associated with similar successful applications in the past. Indeed, its recurrent application and rate of success not only may elevate the preferred problem-solving mode to the level of a best practice, but also may define company culture. And yet although many current problems and decisions appear to be more intractable and resistant to current treatment, our standard approach remains aggressively unidirectional, basically driven by a masculine command stance and system. Perhaps an alternative and supplementary approach which should be explored and welcomed is that of problem collaboration. Problem collaboration is based on three positioning changes. First, the problem solver is no longer the sole principal player or activator. He now occupies the periphery as the problem moves to the center. There thus is a basic exchange of roles—subject and object exchange positions. The problem is now in charge. Second, that role change in turn involves another repositioning. As the subject, the problem is now the talker and the problem solver now the listener. What takes place is no longer one-sided. It is not solely a monologue but a 171

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dialogue. The new relationship between problem and problem solver is now essentially collaborative and takes the form of an evolving scenario. Third, the problem is personalized—through a series of prompts the problem is asked the following questions: • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Why are you a problem? To whom? Big or small? Affecting other units? How do you present or manifest yourself? How would you define yourself? Any deeper connections? Are you new? Or have been around in somewhat different versions? If we solved you before, what was the solution? And why did you decide to come back now? What would we have to put in place to get rid of you once and for all? Finally, since you know so much about yourself, what is your solution?

Because problem solving is often a team process, final interaction requires that the responses noted above be shared and consensus sought. That process not only multiplies but also disciplines the variety of perspectives into a more unified and manageable range of solutions. Given its own unique voice, each problem would thus define itself, establish the benchmark criteria for its solution, and finally whisper its solution to those who listen closely and deeply to what it has to propose. In many ways, this is typically not what is done. In many organizations when a new dubious policy or solution is unilaterally announced, the typical response often is, “If they really wanted to know what to do and how to do it, all they had to do was just ask those who do the job.” Turning to the problem for answers is in effect a variation on seeking an expert solution from those who do the job. And if in the process our egos may be somewhat diminished or eclipsed, we should find consolation in that our problem solving lives and operations have become more interesting, less predictable, and more open-ended, and further in that this new symbiotic relationship is finally of our own choosing and for our own benefit. Pushing the inquiry further, many organizations often characterize their missions and operations by their preferred methodologies: Deming Continuous Quality Metrics, Six Sigma, Balanced Score Cards, and so forth. Even subunits may embrace a preferred protocol: HR may elect Talent

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Management; Strategic Planning, Trend Banks; R&D Innovative Training. Moreover, how an organization and its problem solvers confront complexity may be heralded, in fact, as its competitive edge. The way a company manages itself, optimizes its workforce, and navigates through often hostile environments is often driven and defined in large part by the state of the art of its problem solving. Organizations stand or fall, secure a future or fail to, largely because of the way they process problems. And yet although corporate identity is often largely synonymous with the problem-solving processes, we often fail to grant the mode the centrality of reexamination and perhaps reinvention. In such a case, best practice perhaps may be ironically and unexpectedly inhibiting and limiting. But if successful, why change? Because a significant percentage of the problems we now face are not familiar, recognizable, classifiable, or docile. In other words, they are not just new and different—that is expected—but they also appear to elude current calipers. They exhibit an unfamiliar profile: • • • • • •

Time: Future-imbedded Space: Global Scope: Ecological Rate: Rapidly discontinuous Shape: Holistic Systemic: Intersectional

And yet when the favorite problem solving methodologies of the past are obediently called on and applied to such often unique intransigence, we are surprised by the mismatch. A new kind of tough complexity is greeted by past-driven processing with the result that we are regularly coming up short. Here are a few of the telltale signs: • • • • •

Misdiagnosis—we are missing the mark. Nonholistic—passing off halves as wholes. Root Cause—we are solving effects, not engaging deep/hidden causes. Not 360—we are singular, not interdisciplinary. Mechanical—knee-jerk, obedient, and uncritical applications.

Such shortcomings are bad enough, but what is worse is that the search for what went wrong is confined to making sure that the problem solving process was followed to the letter of the law. Talk about due diligence gone awry! What other courses of action might be considered? The most promising is epistemological because it challenges how we think, how we learn, and how

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we know what we know. Abstract and theoretical and yet precise at the same time, this emerging development banks on new knowledge from • • • •

Brain research—how we learn, best Cognitive science—how we think, critically Multiple intelligence—how we are smart Innovation—how we are creative

Although the implications for not only problem solving but also training may be far-reaching, we are not there yet. But while we are waiting for the emergence of those research findings and their being tested for validity and reliability, there is perhaps a more mundane and immediate approach to consider. And, curiously, it comes not from business practices but from science fiction.

DIAGNOSTIC SCENARIOS—NEW VISIONING TOOL? Why is looking ahead so hard, especially now? For at least three reasons. First, CEOs have more information than they know what to do with, partly because much of it is incoherent—unconnected, unintegrated, and often even conflictive. Second, on top of that, members of their executive team (often from the same generation) mount their favorite hobby horses and press forward with their chorus of future warnings, urgencies, and priorities. Third, politics, which at this critical decision point sadly comes into play, rears its jockeying head and revolves around not whose ox is gored but whose voice and view has most access to the executive ear. In addition, strategic planners, echoing members of the board, call for taking care of current shortterm business problems while taking on the longer term—for both present and future viability. So what is a CEO to do? Where should he turn? One suggestion is to develop and apply diagnostic scenarios. What is that? It is a fusion/hybrid methodology. From the outset it puts together problem solving and forecasting—decision making with its projected reverberating impacts—solution and positioning—in short, leapfrogging. While we are catching up and taking care of present business, let us also try to get ahead. It also functions as a screening process: identifying and defining those problems and decisions which are not familiar or run of the mill but which strike terror into a CEO’s heart because they imperil survival and because they are in bed with a discontinuous future. What’s involved? Minimally, five steps.

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Problem Scaling Who else has this problem (of talent shortages, profit margins, global competition, etc.)? What have they projected as its future impacts? What is its extent? Is it industry-specific, or does it cross sectors? Is it regional, national, global? Is any company immune? In other words, is there anyone who does not have this problem? What does the case study research show? Finally, is the problem like the proverbial iceberg, bigger and more entangling and hidden than we thought? And is it solvable once and for all, or will it continue to plague us for years to come? Future Scaling Did we ever have this problem before? And if it was solved, was it linked to a particular future that in effect shaped, eased, and welcomed its solution? Or are you claiming that this problem and its troublesome future is new? That can’t be. There is nothing new under the sun. Check the index of all the leadership books—it has to be there in one form or another. Otherwise we, like everyone else, are in uncharted waters and are not sure where to go. Is this what they call a paradigm shift? And are we already at that intersect? Is the world really flat after all? Problem and Future Fusions Take both the problem and our business on a time journey. Develop three scenarios—one predictable, one terrible, and one wild card. Dump the problem and our business in each. What happens? Do we survive? grow? disappear? Is the problem still around—but we are not? Above all, does the problem have a future? Does it persist? Is it tenacious, long-term? Or has it morphed before our eyes into a lovely butterfly of opportunity, or assumed the menacing shape of a hostile acquisition or merger? If we are still around—in the same business—what do we look like? And am I still around? Globalizing Contexts Are there different cultural, nationalistic, even ideological ways of solving the problem and projecting the future? How would the French, Germans, and Russians go about it? The Japanese, Chinese, the Indians? Do they each have different futures which make their problem solving processes more effective, less timid, more long-term? Are we prisoners of our

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short-term, quarterly fixation to such an extent that it determines not only our focus but also our inability to fuse problem and future solving? Suppose we were to outsource or subcontract our problem to the Danes or the Chinese: what would be the result? Would it be better than what we come up with? Would they also have difficulties? But not the same ones? Are we stuck in our traditional strengths? Innovation: Fused Solutions-Futures The ultimate end result of diagnostic scenarios is creative exhaustion—when all the tried and true strategies turn out to be tired and jaded platitudes—when our standard visions fail to engage and even pale before a future that does not welcome us—when we experience the throwback of being a start-up—and when in desperation we hear the familiar call: think outside the box. Piece by piece the problem solving and visioning tool box is emptied and we find ourselves not at media res but at genesis—not being asked to add another chapter but to craft a new creation story. Diagnostic scenarios thus minimally offer three gifts. First, the methodology defines the new box we are in so that we don’t reproduce or take it with us when we change vantage points. Second, it signals crossroads, paradigm shifts, and the imperative of innovation. Third, it develops the ultimate test for defining innovation as the creation of a new business which never existed before. The final vision posed then is to become or incorporate that new venture armed now with the knowledge gained by diagnostic scenarios that if we don’t, someone else will, and in the process may put us out of business. In America we are now sadly preoccupied with endgames and losing the lead. We therefore need new tools, MBA programs, and executive teams to fuse problem solving and strategic planning, to bridge and manage discontinuity, to recover our future, and to support leaders who use diagnostic scenarios to integrate innovation and vision.

HORIZONTAL PROBLEM TRIAGE It has become increasingly fashionable and predictable to call for outside-ofthe-box thinking and to make such creative applications a training staple. To be sure, old issues still plague implementation: should it be across the board or selective, a generic overlay or personnel-specific? Of late a new pressure has been added: to what extent should innovation be included and assessed as a determining factor of recruiting and hiring? And

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finally, what in general supports innovative company collegiality and culture and thus reinforces training and HR? Although the answers to all the above may require extensive consideration, what is clear is that the subject of innovation has the capacity to break open and take us to the heart of program array, workforce performance, team collaboration and organizational structure. But why? What about innovation grants it such centrality? Makes it so pervasive, inclusive, and invasive? The most obvious answer is that it has become the make-or-break, do-ordie factor. Innovation thus emerges as both villain and hero. On the one hand, cutting-edge competition globally is so fierce that market share has not only been invaded and redistributed, but also threatened with losing the lead altogether. On the other hand, as a countermeasure, innovation has been called upon to rescue mission and to renew vision. As a result innovation is no longer perceived as an option but a necessity, no longer a limited and singular factor but a major driver of everything, especially survival by leapfrogging. But there is at least one other, perhaps more mundane but no less basic, reason for the centrality of innovation: it epitomizes process. Process permeates every organization. It is its distinction. It is what sets you apart. It is your competitive edge, your secret weapon. For many it even serves as corporate definition—we are now totally a Six Sigma or Balanced Score Card operation. As such it is proudly introduced at the orientation of new hires as your brand—as the way we do things around here. Worked up as company-wide rituals affecting and managing every unit and all personnel, it is ubiquitous and colors and leaves its defining stamp on everything. But precisely because process is so pervasive, the introduction of new ways of thinking, doing, and managing imparts to innovation both the opportunity and the threat of total access. Thus, the first consideration is that the call for innovation may be potentially overwhelming—initially too totally demanding, too all at-once—for training to manage, especially if it is across the board. Perhaps a bridge needs to put in place between the old and the new ways of doing things—especially if we are to persuasively wean those away from the tried and true to the experimental and the new. Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater, but instead mix the familiar and the different, what is reassuring and what may be stretching. And finally, should we not practice what we preach by being somewhat innovative in how we construct our standard workshop on critical and creative thinking? One approach is to begin by making all more scalable and manageable—by creating a process taxonomy, in this case that of problem profiling— identifying and classifying problems so that they can be matched with

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appropriate problem solving methods. Such a taxonomy would identify where innovation is appropriate and where it is not. In effect, the workshop would be a series of exercises in problem triage. The key assumption is that not all problems require creativity. Many are routine and familiar. With little or no fuss or adjustment, they obediently can be trotted through standard processing. Indeed, one could apply the famous Pareto rule of 80/20 to problem identification by claiming that 80 percent of all problems are essentially run-of-the-mill and only 20 percent exceptions to the rule. It thus makes little or no sense to burden the everyday garden variety of problems with the heavy-duty and specialized focus of innovation. But it does make significant sense to train all to discern the difference so as to achieve better match-ups. The decision of who to train now takes on the more informed and productive form of training everyone in problem triage but not necessarily everyone in innovative problem solving. But for the 80/20 to be a workable first cut, it needs to be followed up by what in fact defines each. How do we tell whether what we are dealing with a problem that is routine or an exception to the rule? In short, what determines and triggers bringing in the big guns of innovation? Although what appears below is not designed to be definitive, it may offer a number of essential criteria to not only separate the wheat from the chaff, but more important to use the contrast to define what is not manageable by current calipers. Although a number of processing screens could be cited, the three below can function minimally to sustain problem triage. In the process a doubleedged sword is applied so that defining the differences between ordinary and exceptional problems is constantly a parallel and mutual activity. Definable Is the problem describable, recognizable, and classifiable? Does it exhibit and replicate familiar and recurrent past problem profiles? If different, are those differences of degree or of kind? If the former, then what adjustments can be made? When the checklist is completed, the problem then can be dispatched to appropriate solution ritual. But turning to the flip side, is its definition elusive, tricky, almost obstinate? Does it exhibit chameleon-like qualities—not only regularly changing its shape, but also depending on when the definition occurs or who is doing it? Is it not only new but also one-of-a kind? When undertaken by teams, such perplexing problems out of a mixture of respect and precision are often given favorite and affectionate playful classifying names, such as the artful dodger, tricky Dick, or the extraterrestrial.

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Processability Is it solvable through a dry run of conventional processes? Are the results sufficiently complete and persuasive to argue that the current state of the art or best practices are adequate and sufficient to assure mastery? Is the solution complete and holistic? Is all taken care of? But suppose it resists? Behaves like a square peg in a round hole? Or somehow can only be squeezed though but many parts are left over? Seems finally in excess of all basic measuring and managing modes, speaks a foreign language, looms large but is too important and worrisome to ignore—acquiring in this case mythological stature: a fierce composite of Proteus and Prometheus—over-reaching technology and endless flux? Data Base Does the problem exceed or fall within the range of existing data banks and defining and processing metrics? Are it and its variations accommodated by and accounted for by what descriptors already exist? If not, then that immediately signals not only the emergence of a different kind of problem, but also one which involves a data-quest. But what kind of data? Does anyone have it? How much? Will it ever be enough? Finally, did we suddenly and unknowingly cross over the threshold into epistemology? When a problem exceeds what we currently know, and when it also exhibits difficulties of definition and processing, then it in effect describes the parameters not only of innovation, but also of its own companion data research agenda. It is now not just stubborn but a total outsider behaving like an intergalactic time and space traveler or probe. Although triage generally works, it is not infallible. Mislabeling may occur. If it walks like a duck, it must be a duck. The tip is familiar, but its hidden depth may not be. The impulse generally is to be risk-adverse—to classify and process every problem so that one size fits all. But there are telltale signs that give pause and compel a return to the drawing board. A number of parts are left out. Precious containers behave like sieves. The debris of processing machines that are overwhelmed litter the floor. Now there is no question that it is broken and needs to be fixed. Above all, that most nagging question of all—“Yes, but!”—is encouraged and granted new creative value and focus. In this case, the Emperor without clothes becomes a naked problem without a solution. In summary then what has been gained? Basic operations have been affirmed and can continue. Tried and tested rituals can proceed to process now tried and tested problems. The workforce generally has a clearer idea of what innovation is by what it uniquely has to engage and solve. It also has

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an anticipatory understanding of the accountability of solutions criteria and conditions. The organization discovers it has a data research agenda. And, finally, problem profiling and triage has created a fascinating group of somewhat unclassifiable problems, all of which stand at the threshold of the company’s future, awaiting their being welcomed as its cutting-edge messengers of innovation.

Integrative Intelligence

Chapter 22

The Intersectional Leader

The main difference between a directional idea and an intersectional one is that we know where we are going with the former. . . . Intersectional on the other hand, changes the world in new directions. They usually pave the way for a new field and therefore make it possible for the people who originated them to become the leaders in the fields they created. Intersectional breakthroughs do not require as much expertise as directional ones and therefore can be executed by the people you least suspect. —Frans Johannsson, The Medici Effect (2006)

The holy grail of philosophy historically has been the pursuit of unified knowledge. Of late there are many theorists calling for a renewed preoccupation with the integration and unification of all knowledge. But why especially now? who are some of the major figures? and what are the shaping factors which individually and collectively may elevate the Intersectional to the status of a mega trend and as a commanding choice of contemporary and future leadership? Many representative areas of convergent thought have surfaced. The discussion here will be limited to three. The first deals with the technology of convergence; the second with the socio-economic and political dimensions of “connexity”; and the third with the “consilience” of science and the humanities. Finally, a summary of the range and substance of those three areas should serve to establish the basis for postulating convergence as a mega-trend of the Third Century and the Intersectional as its supreme leadership option.

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CONVERGENCE Science’s quest for convergence is really and always a quest for the origins of all things. In this connection, the human genome is the mother lode. It offers re-creation. Much of the intellectual novelty and power of the Great Convergence is that it will finally bring about a fusion of science and religion, Prometheus and God, capitalism and spirituality, rabbis and priests. Although the scope of current and future scientific inquiry was originally the exclusive preserve of scientists now it has to be shared with priests and mystics. Similarly, although the issue of the nature and origins of the laws of nature come from scientists they are now both scientific but metaphysical questions; and their separation is no longer respected or valued. In partial summary then the Intersectional often has strange bedfellows, eclectically combines poetry and physics, behaves like the stereotype of an English eccentric Oxford don dressed in jeans, is a techie wiz but enjoys the throwback wizardry of a Harry Potter. In many ways such convergence of styles is born of being at an ahistorical stage not only poised for a future that will be spectacular and intimidating, but also globally coexisting with all previous stages of history and evolution. Thus, inevitably, the first and last task of the Intersectional will always be that of synthesis.

CONNEXITY Misgivings about understanding and managing human and societal complexity is in fact a central focus of Geoff Mulgan, who directs a think tank, teaches at University College London, and most important for our focus, was a member of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Policy Unit. The title of his book “Connexity” not only introduces a new and futuristic term to the discussion of synthesis, but also takes it in a new direction. Mulgan’s concern is with culture, especially the culture of politics, government, and social change. His contribution to and reinforcement of the theory of convergence is thus offered from a social science perspective. To Mulgan, human history basically has been preoccupied by three major definitions of the sociopolitical self. All three currently coexist in different countries, societies, and classes because the world is a total time machine. The first one is the culture of dependence in which freedom is in very short supply and a single dominant and dominating ideology/theology is tyrannically in place. Deservedly, maintains Mulgan, wherever that kind of bondage prevails it is appropriately designated as the dark ages.

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Happily, declarations of independence, through both revolution and evolution, ushered in a culture not only of democratic, egalitarian, and proactive discourse but also of unbridled and unshackled inquiry. Indeed, it is from this emancipation that the twins of democracy and science emerged and flourished. But Mulgan finds substantial evidence for the emergence of a third or new phase: interdependence. Like the phases that preceded it, interdependence came about as an antidote to two excesses of the modern world: freedom and the notion of the self as sovereign. In conditions and cultures of freedom, the individual rules supreme and feels free to call upon all the means of his society to protect and even increase his freedom, especially when anything appears to challenge, contain, or abridge it. The net result is an ambiguously liberating and self-indulgent society of freewheeling, self-contained, autonomous individuals whose orbits are unrestrained and undirected. That is basically a win/lose process in which the self wins but social coherence loses. But what Mulgan sees increasingly emerging are individuals and societies that increasingly accept that they are connected to everyone and everything else. This alternative culture, increasingly accepted and encouraged by both psychologists and sociologists, is one in which the self is perceived less as given, complete, and whole, instead accepting your incompleteness, your permeability to other people. Although Mulgan clearly favors this new image of the self in an increasingly interconnected society, he sees it as largely voluntary in Western cultures and more of a tradition in Eastern cultures. But he does argue rightly that it is being hastened by need on the one hand and by enlightenment on the other. Thus, the incredible commitment in business to interdependent teams is being driven by intense competition and by the capacity of teams to be more innovative. Indeed, that “teamness” is celebrated by a new term—“Coopetition”—a fusion of cooperation and competition. Habits of association foster virtuous circles of self-organization. In politics and social reform it is increasingly recognized that freedom only works in partnership with other ideals, not on its own. The limits of freedom are more than offset by the benefits of collaboration. The new ideal of the future is a reconstitution of identity, which will take the form of the collectivized individual who encloses self and other in the same person. Mulgan further identifies three major laws of interconnectedness. The first is generally a corrective. The notion of technological advancement as discrediting what it ostensibly displaces is not born out by patterns of evidence/Throughout the twentieth century physical mobility and communications grew in tandem rather than as substitutes.

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Electronic culture did not replace books; sales have increased. In fact, the availability of both appears online at Amazon.com. The growth of video conferencing ironically boosted the market for hotel conference centers. Economists claimed that the 80 percent of economic growth on the l950s was accounted for by technological change. The second key law of increasing connectedness is the convergence of the world economy and world ecology. The environment has become the supreme advocate of interdependence and compelled a recognition of a single world, without borders and perceived as a single whole from outer space. The same recognition is attributed to the global economy, which is a composite of world trade, world direct investments, global diffusion of technologies, and an integrated communications system. Indeed, the infosphere has the same integrated qualities of the biosphere. In fact, Mulgan claims that we need new maps of the world to replace the standard ones of land masses as chosen by political masters. Today the links matter as much as the territory, and our maps should show the volume of trade, the interaction of messages, and the movement of people. We need maps that can measure the ease of communication or travels in terms of how long it takes to send a message or to move a thing between two points—giving us a map of the world made up of isomorphic lines, rapidly coming closer together over time, until most parts of the world are within 24 hours of each other in physical movement, and a few microseconds in terms of the movement of information. The intense economics of exchange in a global economy has created world prices for goods and services, where in the past there were only local prices. In fact, that is precisely the source of intense competition: a plant in Ohio is aware of the price and the quality of the same product made in Korea—and, more seriously, so are its customers. Homo sapiens is increasingly becoming also Homo economicus, a person who defines himself as a series of multiple exchanges who functions in an interconnected world made up a of a lattice of contracts and reciprocal flows of goods and services. The effort conceptually to master such complexity is reflected in the reinvention of political economy, which ironically existed as a single discipline in the nineteenth century and then was split, wrongly, into political science and economics. As a result, we had political scientists who know nothing about economics and economists who know little about politics. But unified again, the two disciplines have produced a significant body of research that affirms interconnectedness. Institutions of free trade have proven more effective than those designed to prevent or contain war, and more diplomatic activity is now devoted to managing trade than to managing security.

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Global economy is thus as good, if not a better, an advocate of peace than the United Nations, which is still a creation of barriers of sovereignty rather than their removal by interconnectedness. Another agent of global convergence is ecology. Pressure for ecological integration has become a critical force that acknowledges and defines both. Finally, Mulgan’s third law of convergence or connexity provides those who like himself are preoccupied with social, political, and economic design with a model to image and to design a self-organizing society that can organize itself, adapting and evolving, without the need for hierarchies and belief systems that stand above people enforcing continuity and responsibility. If each human life can make the transition from dependence through independence to interdependence, then societies could make the same transition, evolving into a common framework within which each element can take responsibility for itself and for the whole. To Mulgan, the promise of connexity is thus ultimately utopian.

Chapter 23

The Ideology of Convergence

It is usual to treat Leonardo as a scientist and as a painter in separate studies. And no doubt the difficulties in following his mechanical and scientific investigations make this a prudent course. Nevertheless, it is not completely satisfactory, because in the end the history of art cannot be properly understood without some reference to the history of science.In both we are studying the symbols by which man affirms his mental scheme, and these symbols, be they pictorial or mathematical, a fable or a formula, will reflect the same changes. —Kenneth Clark (l993), Leonardo da Vinci

Every major forecasting effort of the last twenty-five years has always exhibited an intellectual core. To the traditional history of ideas, forecasters have added the history of future ideas. The key task has always been to discover the major forces in the present driving future development. What appears to be emerging now is a resurgence of the pursuit of unified knowledge. What is there about the current situation and the next two decades that is pressuring and presaging a preoccupation with the integration and unification of all knowledge? Who are some of the major figures, and what are the shaping factors, which individually and collectively help to determine whether the content generated has the conceptual power to function as a megatrend? Three representative areas of convergent thought will be examined. The first deals with the technology and theology of convergence, the second with the socioeconomic and political dimensions of “connexity,” and the third with the “consilience” of science and the humanities. Finally, a summary of the

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range and substance of those three areas should serve to establish the basis for designating convergence as a megatrend of the third century

CONVERGENCE: TECHNOLOGY AND THEOLOGY According to many “the universe of one science” exists and presupposes a constellation of common research inquiries and activities. There is always the many before there is the one. Gradually, however, discrete and scattered strands of inquiry coalesce, become initially a cluster, then a consortium of cross-fertilization, and finally converge and emerge as a powerful force with a common theoretical and intellectual agenda. To make sense of this dynamic progression and to provide reassuring tangibility, the future is often rendered as a new creation story or science fiction focused on the specifics of creating for example autonomous humans, amplified and potentially ageless. And so begins the sometimes uneasy partnership between technology and theology. Two frontiers that already have been crossed. The first involves what he calls the “internal pharmacy” by which humans can be maintained at an individualized optimum level automatically. A metabolic profile is developed for each individual and to it are pegged all known medications, chemicals and nutrient supplements to maintain optimum balance. When implanted it monitors the various functions and vital signs that are to be maintained and dispenses the appropriate chemical in the appropriate amount to maintain efficacy. All of this builds on new implant and sustained release technology of drugs or electrical charges that have been disease-specific (cancer or diabetes). As a result there is already considerable expertise and even familiarity with the procedures. But if this a quantum jump, it is based on a total understanding of the interacting and integrating dynamics of the entire human system. It is that convergence of knowledge that provides the intellectual base for producing a complete metabolic profile of each individual. Perhaps its greatest value, given genetic predictors and family history, is to provide proactive options to be involved in preventive medicine. The second convergence of this magnitude is what has been called “the third intelligence.” Incremental knowledge only adds to the overload. What is needed is pattern recognition of knowledge patterns and paths between and across knowledge areas. Only such models of integrated knowledge clusters can then comprehend multiple reverberating effects of drug interactions, the dynamics of global

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pollution and recovery, and finally thinking in ten dimensions. But easily said than done: how do we get there? Our technology needs to undergo a double development. First, it has to be given a range of sensory inputs (with enough blank space to accommodate more); second, the neural ability to create its own perceptions. Development along cloning lines is not the way to go. That is the incremental direction. What we need is an interfacing chip that can understand the way we think and conceive and yet possesses its own intelligence, which is intentionally different and even divergent. It is a permeable relationship: sometimes equal, sometimes not; sometimes one dominating, sometimes the other, sometimes neither. But although the fit initially at least has to be mutual and consensual, it must be allowed to develop on the one hand and to call on other means when the problem exceeds the combined power and comprehension of the third intelligence on the other hand. In short, the projected convergence requires human-technological intervention in the evolution of the species—a new Adam and Eve—with the midwife being unlimited synthesis. But is it doable? In the human brain there is no distinction between hardware and software. The biological neural networks of the brain are instead special kind of intelligent hardware that is not completely fixed at birth but evolves and modifies with time as the person grows and learns. In other words, part of the daunting complexity of the brain is that it is already integrated—already hardware and software whereas our current intelligent machines are dualistic. Then, too, not only do the neural networks of the brain change with patterns of use and experience, but also in the process generate “ the mind” which is a combined creation of the brain and information and learning. Increasingly the brain and the mind develop a master-servant relationship. In other words, it is no small matter to design “brain chips” but it is an incredible difficult task to design “mind chips. Finally, the brain-mind is a selfprogramming, self-learning and self-managing system. It is autonomous. Reconfigurable hardware, once programmed for sufficient autonomy, has about it the promise of being self-regulating, and thus supportive of precisely the way mind thinks and learning proceeds. The test of whether it is a successful mimic of the mind is whether it helps to develop information impact and causes change. Sometimes, the applications and objects of projected convergences surface even before the theoretical and intellectual convergence knowledge base has fully solidified. One occurred after the Civil War and involved the convergence of piano and firearms technology to produce the first rudimentary typewriter. The results of convergence are greater than the sum of its parts.

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In the process, science increasingly will sound like religion. But that is not totally surprising. In fact, if nature were not so profound to begin with, science would not exist at all. There would be nothing to explain, no patterns to be found, no order to be discovered. The classic comment by Einstein is correct: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Thus, science’s quest for convergence is really and always a quest for the origins of all things. In this connection, the human genome is the mother lode. It offers re-creation. Much of the intellectual novelty and power of convergence is that it will finally bring about a fusion of science and religion, Prometheus and God. Indeed, the scope of current and future scientific inquiry was originally the exclusive preserve of priests and mystics. Although the issue of the nature and origins of the laws of nature is strictly speaking not scientific but metaphysical, that separation is no longer respected or valued. But three major objections surface. First, what have been called patterns of coming together occur all the time in nature and just as often come asunder. But to invest the occasional or even frequent patterns of convergence with the force of a total and permanent arrangement is to inflate the significance of partial occurrence with a reassurance that just is not there. Second, man is not unique. Evolution operates not by progress but by diversity and variation, and there are many species of Homo sapiens. Then, too, the complexity of human design and human society is greater than that of nature. The number of variables is so great that it cannot be understood, let alone managed. Finally, the convergence really seeks to attack the last great frontier and to take on time itself. It is nothing less than the ultimate presumption of immortality. The last issue is a real one, but the proponents of convergence are not willing at this point to contemplate anything so absolute or arrogant. In effect they are really talking about longevity or relative immortality, not an absolute condition. But what is dramatically clear is that the new technology born of convergence is in effect a theology. Indeed, the ultimate synthesis may be to make them one. Misgivings about understanding and managing human and societal complexity is in fact a central focus of Geoff Multan who directs a think tank, teaches at University College London and is, most important for our focus, a member of Prime Ministers Tony Blair’s Policy Unit. The title of his book “Connexity” not only introduces a new and futuristic term to the discussion of synthesis, but also takes a new direction. Mulgan’s concern is with culture, especially the culture of politics, government, and social change. His contribution to and reinforcement of the theory of convergence is thus offered from a social science perspective.

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To Mulgan, human history basically has been preoccupied by three major definitions of the sociopolitical self. All three currently coexist in different countries, societies, and classes, because the world is a total time machine. The first one is the culture of dependence, in which freedom is in very short supply and a single dominant and dominating ideology and theology is tyrannically in place. Deservedly, maintains Mulgan, wherever that kind of bondage prevails it is appropriately designated as the dark ages. Happily, declarations of independence, through both revolution and evolution, ushered in a culture not only of democratic, egalitarian, and proactive discourse, but also of unbridled and unshackled inquiry. Indeed, it is from this emancipation that the twins of democracy and science emerged and flourished. But Mulgan finds substantial evidence for the emergence of a third or new phase: interdependence. Like the phases that preceded it, interdependence came about as an antidote to excessive freedom and to the notion of the self as sovereign. In conditions and cultures of freedom, the individual rules supreme and feels free to call upon all the means of his society to protect and even increase his freedom, especially when anything appears to challenge, contain or abridge it. The net result is an ambiguously liberating and self-indulgent society of free-wheeling, self-contained, autonomous individuals whose orbits are unrestrained and undirected. That is basically a win/lose process in which the self wins but social coherence loses. But what Mulgan sees increasingly emerging are individuals and societies that increasingly accept that they are connected to everyone and everything else exists in a web of mutual interdependence evolving toward a higher integration. The alternative culture increasingly accepted and encouraged by both psychologists and sociologists is one in which the self is perceived less as given, less complete, less whole . . . Maturing means accepting your incompleteness. your permeability to other people. Although Mulgan clearly favors this new image of the self in an increasingly interconnected society, he sees it as largely voluntary in Western cultures and more of a tradition in Eastern cultures. But he does argue rightly that it is being hastened on the one hand by need and by enlightenment on the other. Thus, the incredible commitment in business to interdependent teams is being driven by intense competition and by the capacity of teams to be more innovative. Indeed, that” teamness” is celebrated by a new term— “Coopetition”—a fusion of cooperation and competition.

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Compelled or chosen, the limits of freedom are more than offset by the benefits of collaboration. The new ideal of the future is a reconstitution of identity, which will take the form of the collectivized individual who encloses self and other in the same person. Mulgan further identifies three major laws of interconnectedness. The first is generally a corrective. The notion of technological advancement as discrediting what it ostensibly displaces is not born out by patterns of evidence: Throughout the twentieth century physical mobility and communications grew in tandem rather than as substitutes. Electronic culture did not replace books; sales have increased. In fact, the availability of both appears online in amazon.com. The growth of video conferencing ironically boosted the market for hotel conference centers. Economists claimed that the 80% of economic growth on the l950s was accounted for by technological change, but studies have shown the primary role played by ideas and knowledge growth in driving economic growth. Thus, connexity tends to be cumulative. Each new medium of communication does not replace its predecessors so much as complement them. Thus, connexity rests on the recognition of recurrent co-existence. That is how so-called opposites or disconnects are perceived as being in tandem—as co-operating. Even in science, which tends to regularly throw out the past and to be noncumulative, what is really discarded are the conclusions not the theories; the Greeks still haunt Darwin. The second key law of increasing connectedness is the convergence of the world economy and world ecology.The environment has become the supreme advocate of interdependence and compelled a recognition of a single world, without borders and perceived as a single whole from outer space. The same recognition is attributed to the global economy, which is a composite of world trade, world direct investments, global diffusion of technologies and an integrated communications system. Indeed, the info-sphere has the same integrated qualities of the biosphere. In fact, Mulgan claims that we need new maps of the world to replace the standard ones of land masses as chosen by political masters. The links matter as much as the territory, and our maps should show the volume of trade, of messages or of movements if people. We need maps that can measure the ease of communication or travels in terms of how long it takes to send a message or to move a thing between two points—giving us a map of the world made up of isomorphic lines, rapidly coming closer together over time, until most parts of the world are within twenty-four hours of each other in physical movement, and a few microseconds in terms of the movement of information” (23).

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The intense economics of exchange in a global economy has created world prices for goods and services, where in the past there were only local prices. In fact, that is precisely the source of intimate competition: a plant in Ohio is aware of the price and the quality of the same product made in Korea; and more seriously so are its customers. Homo sapiens is increasingly becoming also Homo economicus, a person who defines himself as a series of multiple exchanges; who functions in an interconnected world made up a of a lattice of contracts and reciprocal flows of goods and services. The effort conceptually to master such complexity brought about the reinvention of political economy which ironically existed as a single discipline in the nineteenth century and then was split wrongly into political science and economics. As a result, we have political scientists who know nothing abort economics and economists who know little about politics. But unified again, the two disciplines have produced a significant body of research that affirms interconnectedness. Institutions of free trade have proven more effective than those designed to prevent or contain war and more diplomatic activity is now devoted to managing trade than to managing security. Global economy is thus as good if not a better advocate of peace as the United Nations. which is still a creation of barriers of sovereignty rather then their removal by interconnectedness. Another agent of global convergence is ecology. Pressure for ecological integration has become a critical force that acknowledges and defines both Finally, Mulgan’s third law of convergence or connxeity provides those like himself who are preoccupied with social, political and economic design, with a model to image and to design a self-organizing society, as opposed to one made up of separate self-organizing groups, the favorite isolated states of politicos. The philosophical idea that best expresses this ideal of a selforganizing society self-creation. Rather than thinking of systems in relation to an external environment, we should see them as autonomous, circular, self-referential, primarily concerned with their own organization and identity. The creation of a culture of autonomy suggests how a society might organize itself, adapting and evolving. without the need for hierarchies and belief systems that stand above people. enforcing continuity and responsibility. If each human life makes the transition from dependence through independence to interdependence, then societies can make the same transition, evolving into a common framework within which each element can take responsibility for itself and for the whole. To Mulgan, the promise of connexity is thus ultimately utopian.

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Perhaps, the supreme spokesperson and articulator of the unification of all knowledge is Edward O. Wilson. In fact, his last book Consilience is subtitled The Unity of Knowledge. In this role, he follows the lead of many who called the pursuit of the unity of all sciences, the Ionian Enchantment. The roots go back at least to the 6th century BC and to Thales of Miletus who according to Aristotle was the founder of the physical sciences. Wilson also acknowledges the pioneering work of Einstein, “the architect of grand unification of physics.” But Wilson goes further in at least two respects. First, he takes as the scope of future convergence nothing less than all knowledge—not just the sciences but also the social sciences and the humanities—the course of human history from the course of physical history. Second, he envisions a coincidence of vision: namely, that the convergence of all knowledge will effect be a creation story, and tell us once and for all time who we are and why we are here; and thus test and affirm perhaps Holy Writ, the science of mythology. It will in essence constitute “the 21st version of the struggle for the soul.” What is particularly instructive about Wilson’s views is his identification of what has or may continue to prevent or compromise convergence. Thus, socially and politically we are typically unbalanced:most of our political leaders are trained exclusively in the social sciences and humanities; and have little or no knowledge of the natural sciences. And no one appears to be concerned about such a lopsided and fragmented situation. Nor is it often any better on the other side. There are physicists who do really not know what a gene is and biologists who are ignorant of string theory. The fragmentation of expertise became a norm. In short, pieces are being passed off routinely as wholes across the board. Wilson offers a real life illustration of typical fragmentation. Governments generally are having a difficult time developing a policy to manage dwindling forest preserves of the world. Clearly, this is a multi-faceted problem. Minimally, it involves ecology, ethics, economics and biology. Picture a quadrant in which each of these four fields inhabits one quarter of the quadrant. The fact that four perspectives are identified in the first place is a major step forward but it deteriorates rapidly from this point on. Immediately, arguments of jurisdiction or territoriality surface. That is rapidly followed the ego of size and extent: how big or small each of the quadrants should be. In the process, mutual ignorance comes to the fore. Each field knows little or nothing about the others but enough to challenge pretensions to the throne and their being in the arena or quadrant in the first place.

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Let’s change the configuration a bit, suggests Wilson. Draw a series of concentric circles of different sizes that cut across all the intersections of the quadrant. That establishes the agenda of consilience. The smallest circle would be a set of minimum interfaces that would permit each discipline at least to acknowledge both its contributions and their limitations. The larger more inclusive circles stress connections rather than separations. The largest circle offers the collective, cumulative and convergent The higher one goes in the food chain, the bigger the bite. But there are few established ethical guidelines and those that exist generally are not shaped by ecological knowledge. The economics of sustainable yields is still a primitive art. What biologists know derives from short-term observations. The ecologists have been embarrassed by the boomerang of their premature death announcements as nature and animals often have bounded back. So there is a double problem: each discipline needs to deepen its own knowledge; and each discipline needs to know more about them have in common. Consilience compels the highest most encompassing and inclusive concentric circle that provides the optimum number of crossing and bridging points across boundaries. It is Wilson’s contention that when a convergence agenda becomes paramount then increasingly the likelihood is that concentric circles rather than quadrants will be the primary structure. But the agenda needs to be shaped by the leaders of each discipline in order to guide the research throughout the entire enterprise. The politics of positioning may be necessary for the interfacing benefits to be realized in daily exchange. There are at least to Wilson four great chasms that need to be bridged. They are the conflict between the cultures of science and the humanities; the nature/nurture controversy; the physiology and psychology of the brain/mind; and the racial superiority/inferiority of world cultures. Not much progress has been made because each side believes it is right and the other is wrong. According to Wilson they are both right. Indeed, the most difficult conflicts to solve are not between right and wrong, but a conflict of rights. Significantly, the way that Wilson seeks to bring about a more cooperative attitude and ultimately consensual convergence is in fact to reframe the opposition in terms that bring all the conflicts together under one roof. For example, the conflict between the two cultures is less the result of a fundamental antagonism than the creation of artificial territorial lines. If that were replaced by a broader unexplored terrain inviting cooperative entry from both sides a larger, more formidable but more reconcilable version of the conflict would emerge.

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All human behavior and its artifacts are transmitted by culture. Biology has a share in the creation and transmission of culture: The question remaining is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalties of human nature. What, in the final analysis, joins the deep mostly genetic history of the species as a whole to the more recent cultural histories of its far-flung societies?” Although Wilson admits that at the present time no one has the total solution, the answer already is apparent: linking genetic evolution with culture evolution. Similarly, the great divides between different human societies have nothing to do with race, religion, or the innate superiority or inferiority of certain peoples, but with the chasm that separates scientific from pre-scientific cultures. Wilson accepts the notion that myth and religion function like science to explain who we are and why we are here. But without the knowledge of natural sciences, humans are trapped in a cognitive prison. Science, in contrast to art and religion, which accept or seek to preserve mysteries, penetrates mystery in order to demonstrate the incredible order of a world shaped by natural selection. Wilson brings the same logic to the nature/nurture controversy: both clearly are involved, and further genetic research on the one hand and psychology and sociology on the other hand will produce more precise allocations of nurture or nature situationally, and perhaps even individually. Finally, in this connection Wilson believes radically that Freud needs to be suspended as providing critical explanations of dreams and unconscious behavior until sufficient empirical research has been conducted to verify or nullify his views. The causes and treatment of schizophrenia, which have eluded many psychologists, seems to be amenable more to a genetic explanation and appropriate psychological treatment. Wilson is most tentative about the brain/mind duality. Wilson starts with the basic premise that natural selection built the brain to survive in the world. But only incidentally to understand it at a depth greater than is needed to survive. Humans thus share with all other creatures the survival thrust of the brain. But to master both survival and achieve dominance at a higher level—in effect to dominate the survival of all other creatures and the world of nature itself—the brain was compelled to create mind. But that does not mean that the mind or the intelligence gathering and analytical capacity of the mind was fundamentally different physically but rather neurophysically. In other words, mind was still a scientific engine, not a soul or spirit.

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Indeed, the molecular biology of the learning process will considerably enhance the study and creation of artificial intelligence as well as the embryonic field of artificial emotion. Finally, Wilson believes that the three great areas of inquiry and convergence for the next twenty years will be mind, behavior, and ecology. Equally important is the recognition that the ultimate goal of all science is “Predictive Syntheisis,” still in its infancy but extremely important and attainable. It is not achievable without enough empirically based demonstrations of consilience. But the substantial development of such evidence will be the mergence of predictive synthesis as the ultimate fruit of convergence. What, then, are the yields of this examination of convergence as a megatrend? There at least five. The most obvious is that convergence has the capacity to radically disturb not merely the branches but the roots of all knowledge. Second, it is developmentally progressive and supports an epistemological and structural taxonomy not unlike Maslow’s classic hierarchy. The following stages of evolution appear basic: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Similarity Duality Parallel Paradox/Ambiguity Crossovers Integration Synthesis Convergence, Connexity, Consilience

Third, convergence provides the theoretical and empirical basis for understanding and anticipating a number of developments born of integration. These include the technology of theology; the creation of an internal pharmacy, brain chips, and the third intelligence; the appearance of the Great Convergence (the fusion of science and spirituality); and the pursuit of immortality. Fourth, Mulgan took convergence into sociology, politics, and economics and envisioned interconnectedness as the antidote to excessive self-assertion by individuals and societies. His descriptions of the social benefits of connexity suggest that similar gains may be as possible and persuasive in the technological, scientific, and theological areas as well. Finally, Edward O. Wilson offers resolutions to a number of the major debates of our time. In the process, he maintains that everything is linked, that nothing is singular, and ultimately that the physical, spiritual, and cultural

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expressions of human existence and definition shall be known in common. It is a faith based on strong empirical research and documentation, and it represents his vision of the third century. But if it is to happen with less rancor, the specialists need to become generalists and the generalists have to persuade the specialists to join them. The first step of convergence thus always requires exchange. The intermediate stage involves interdependence The last step is always greater than the sum of all the crossovers—including what follows next.

Innovative Intelligence

Chapter 24

Innovation Mantra

“Tell the truth, but tell it slant.” —Emily Dickinson “Ruining companies is a full-time job.” —Anonymous worker’s comment

Conventional wisdom warns: don’t rock the boat, call attention to oneself, volunteer, or, above, suggest changes. The rationale is that if one is obedient, invisible, or harmless, one will be rewarded over time, probably even be protected and promoted, and escape downsizing. But promotion does not guarantee retention, and downsizing is basically statistical, not individual. But different advice is now being offered by leaders committed to talent retention and innovation. It is not for the faint of heart, for those who always play it safe, or for those who worship political correctness. Rather, it is recommended for those willing to take some calculated risks, who have a mind of their own, and are intelligent and sometimes creative enough to discover and point out better ways of doing things—in short, for about one-third of the typical workforce. But lest any conclude that this is the siren call of a Pied Piper urging a jump off a cliff, some safety nets are provided. Two issues need to be co-joined at the outset. The first is determining the qualifications of those who undertake such quixotic adventures. The second is to describe in detail the process of rocking the boat. Each feeds into and illustrates the other.

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Five qualifications and five rethinking or unlearning exercises have to be linked together. Here, then, is a short qualifying quiz for identifying rockers: Table 24.1 Question

Safe Answer

Rocking the Boat Response

1. 2. 3. 4.

Yes True Generally So Of course

Yes, No, and Maybe Both, but it is also never neutral But often tyrannical and myopic But who owns the data in the first place? No, but that is the challenge

Thing are either right or wrong Technology is good or bad Teams are always smarter Info-sharing is good

5. The customer is always right

Absolutely

In addition, there are at least five ways of rocking the boat, and all involve versions of executive intelligence: embracing paradox, using the third degree, revealing that the emperor has no clothes, insisting on going back to square one, and invoking the cause of the bleeding heart.

EMBRACING PARADOX Rocking the boat requires a nimble, thoughtful, and often mischievous mind. The world is perceived through the other end of the telescope or at a tilt. A certain perversity tips the scales so that the answer is both unexpected and yet profoundly complicated. Matters are made more interesting and unsettled. Unfortunately, the successful rocking the boat often is greeted with annoyance and impatience. The orderly and ongoing nature of business is forced to pause or deflect from its designated path. Things are stalled, while everyone tries to figures out whether this odd way of thinking means that business as usual cannot continue. Sometimes, there is in fact great anger at this trouble-making intrusion and intruder. A determination to persist even at the expense of truth surfaces and bulldozes the troublesome obstacle out of the way. Indeed, if no one speaks up, the opportunity for greater understanding and development is lost, and the one who cried wolf is treated as a troublemaker and an outcast. That, unfortunately, is a regular occurrence in many organizations. Whether or not the one so pilloried enjoys or resents his martyrdom, the truth is that in order for the act of paradox to benefit both the rocker and the boat, there must be other rockers. In short, the process must take place in a company-supported environment so that there is some chance of creating a substantial minority and loyal opposition.

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Learning organizations require not only many predictable, incremental learners, but also deviant and discontinuous unlearners. A loner who is not joined by a few other solitaries does not stand a chance of change, and everybody loses the edge.

THE THIRD DEGREE The second kind of eligibility and intervention is sometimes attention-getting and even sensational. It is not unlike the performer who stops the show to thunderous applause. Curiously, it may happen with a little question that disturbs the universe. Thus, one of the best ways of rocking the boat is to encourage the art of inquiry. Many are familiar with the powerful Japanese ritual of asking “why” at least five times in order to get to root cause. This second exercise builds upon the power of constant inquiry and Platonic “noodgery,” and echoes the wisdom of Louis B. Mayer’s classic remark, “For your information, let me ask you a question.” The basic kind of inquiry is epistemological—how do we come to know what we know? Such introspection has been invested with greater sophistication and precision with the advent of extensive brain research. It has even helped by extending the question of what we know, to what we don’t know. All of this can become somewhat convoluted and even paralyzing, but its value is that it creates sufficient uncertainty to stop matters in their track, which is as good a definition of rocking the boat as one can find. A less philosophical but no less important set of questions has to do with what the current research shows. Why reinvent the wheel? This is not a favorite subject in business, because the prejudice is that the practitioner has it all over the researcher, and further that case study is superior to survey. Besides, one’s learning days are over. That is all behind the holders of the MBA. But even the Harvard Business Review has adopted a new more popular format and style so that it more resembles Fortune and Forbes and makes research more available. Then, too, the pursuit of a doctoral degree in business, which used to be exclusively a European tradition, has increasingly attracted many contemporary managers, especially through distance education or weekend programs. The PhD is a research degree, and what is being called for here is to be involved in original company research. Indeed, many companies have expanded their tuition remission programs to include doctoral study so that they secure the benefit of a trained researcher and a dissertation that researches practices in their own company.

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Another different set of questions centers on where things are going, what directions the company is taking, where the market is, where the customers are, and where the competition is heading. It is also here where the scenarios challenging the status quo have to surface, where all the assumptions of continuance have to be raised and questioned, and where nothing is sacred or out of bounds. Once again the one rocking this boat may meet with impatience and resistance. But William Blake defined friendship as opposition. Finally, adopting the questioning and thinking of ecology, there is a need for a rigorous examination of the second-, third-, and fourth-order impacts of products, services, and decisions which, like the proverbial rock thrown into a pool, send out ever-widening circles. It resembles the classic case of the tragedy of the commons which Harden Craig illustrated in “The Tragedy of the Commons” nearly thirty-five years ago, in which each neighbor innocently added one additional sheep to the grazing. The cumulative effect of overpopulation resulted in the end of the commons. In other words, questions regularly have been asked about what lies ahead, especially about the life expectancy of current success.

THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES A third approach to rocking the boat considers the mystery of the herd instinct applied to intelligence. Why do so many Broadway plays fail? Why are so many jerky movies made and lose money? Why are so many short-lived products or questionable services ever offered? The answer is the emperor has no clothes and nobody tells him, or anyone else for that matter. There is often an incredible lack of truth-telling in business. Worse, when honest feedback is offered and not heeded, one understands why the truth is not told in the first place. What supervisors regular seek and encourage is the heavenly choir, the exhalation of yes. Observe the face and body language of a typical supervisor when one of his favorite projects is challenged, or when he is the martyred enforcer of a new and unpopular policy or procedure and encounters criticism. The failure of not exposing an emperor without clothes is the obscuration of unarticulated and unacknowledged assumptions which drive decisions and strategies to their doom. If the Platonic notion that the unexamined life is not worth living is worth heeding, then what shall be said about the unexamined assumptions of an organization’s existence? Rocking the boat in these instances is really saving the boat. Consider the fallout of morale when a company blunders its way into the future by acting

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on reassuring but unquestioned stereotypical scenarios and regularly fails. Who wants to work for a dumb company? Or worse, who wants to work for a company that has successfully intimidated and persuaded its employees to play dumb?

SQUARE ONE METHODOLOGY A fourth way of rocking the boat is the square one approach. It raises multiple issues: What is our core business? How did we start? What was our original vision and mission? What did we originally think our future was? The value of questioning and returning to first principles is that it backs a company up to it source, momentum and what drives it forward. Square one argues for a time-out—a pause to deliberate about origins and ends. It is essentially both an introspective and anticipatory process. As such, it generates Janerian benchmarks. Rocking the boat aligns retrospect and prospect and makes them seamlessly one. When encouraged in organizations, this Janerian nexus accommodates and creates a recurrent focus on reframing, repositioning, reengineering, reconstructing, and above all refocusing. Information-sharing becomes who owns the data. Team leadership is not an oxymoron if the leader is designated as primus inter pares—first among equals—and the position is rotational. The learning organization becomes also an unlearning organization. Leadership is no longer a monopoly at the top but is distributed throughout the company. In short, all kinds of paradoxical reconfigurations are possible by returning to a double source—the past and the future—and in the process making them one.

THE BLEEDING HEART Finally, there is the cause of what some negatively call the bleeding heart: the entreaty that the company adhere to ethical and humane standards that in effect go beyond what is required by law and regulation to behave as the model of a good corporate citizen. Research tells us that companies that establish a caring and even spiritual environment experience higher levels of retention and productivity and that companies that consciously value the environment enjoy higher than average levels of profitability. Why? Because it goes beyond what is required to what is needed, because it exceeds profit as a sole determiner and instead is committed to ennobling

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ends. Employees and customers respect that. Indeed, that creates immediately a bond between them. Ask mangers to be leaders. In summary, then, when employees rock the boat by asking their companies not only to be smart but also humane, they should be heeded. And when they are, watch for the emergence of a more assertive, innovative, and challenging truth squad and problem solving professionals. Rockers of boats reveal not only that the emperor has no clothes, but also what he needs to wear in the future. As you sow, so shall ye reap. The way the problem is posed sets up the innovative solution. Going against the grain creates finally a unique company, or at least one that is set far apart from all the others with their assumptions buried in the sand. And best of all it does not require massive exhortation or training. Just suggest to managers a different way of managing. Encourage paradox, loyal opposition, and minority positions: invoke the rule of the devil’s advocate. Instead of giving orders or promulgating official policy, pursue inquiry. Pay more attention to the questions than the answers. And when solutions come forth, treat them as problems—subject them to same five questions directed to finding root cause. Establish the company’s double source—its Janerian identity in the past and the future. Return always to square one but create a square alpha as well to stretch the present. Finally—and this may be the most difficult—lure managers away from the hard-nosed, heartless, and often cynical behaviors that they have wrongly been persuaded to take in order to be successful and efficient. An incompetent individual can still be fired without treating him inhumanely. Caring companies generally succeed. So do those who cherish innovation and develop a high tolerance, especially when encouraged by those at the top, of the troublesome and ornery. These creative types provide the rare occasion to return a company to its origins and grant its CLOs and CHR the opportunities for envisioning new beginnings and anticipatory hybrids. When they also encourage rocking the boat and challenging the status quo then they will have demonstrated that, as e. e. cummings noted, “tomorrow is our permanent address.”

Chapter 25

Innovation Prep CEO Conversations

Preparing the way for anything new or difficult is a neglected art. It requires anticipatory reflection and creative thresholds instead of direct and impatient assault. For example, the senior management of a small high tech firm made an executive decision to promote company-wide innovation. That was summarily announced as not only a crash course but also a crusade. Everyone in the organization would be involved. A designated steering group was appointed. Tangible results were to emerge within six months. Breakthroughs would be rewarded with one-time bonuses. Does all of the above sound disturbingly familiar? Does any of it cause you to squirm and groan? Or do you find nothing wrong? In any event, by the time six months came around the company had nothing to show for its efforts. As a consequence, three of its vice presidents (marketing, human resources, and strategic planning) were dismissed. Then, troubled and confused, the CEO decided to call in a consultant with the idea of performing a quick fix and cleaning up the debris. I was that consultant. Our first meeting started off with the CEO venting for ten minutes. My reaction was to listen and to wait patiently and then afterward to slow everything down and try to engage him in a general if not almost philosophical discussion of innovation. “Innovation is one of the most difficult objectives to accomplish. It is never easy to introduce. Its definition is slippery. Many argue as to what’s really innovative and what isn’t. And whether everyone is creative.” Then I moved on to specifics. “How many of your managers in your judgment exhibit innovation? What percentage of the workforce do you estimate are creative? Do you believe employees can be trained to be creative, or is 209

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such ability basically innate?” We also talked about innovations that occurred in the past in the company, as well as in the industry. “What were they? Who brought them forth?” My strategy was to suggest that innovation is complex and not in the same league as announcing a salary increase or benefit package. In short, my goal was to encourage a more reflective and deliberative approach. I tried to give the impression that we both had all the time of the world to sort this thing out. The approach worked. In closing the session, I suggested devoting one session to go over what apparently hadn’t work and why that was the case. The CEO responded: “Let’s make it early in the day before things get cluttered and my time is gobbled up.” I found the CEO the next morning, not anxious to have another philosophical discussion but instead to get down to cases. His game plan clearly was to come up with a new and this time successful launching process for innovation in the company. I was reluctant to totally abandon the process of dialogue or lose what had been captured the day before. But the CEO was hot to trot, so I tried to weave together all three elements of reflection, evaluation, and action— what I viewed as the essential trinity for preparing the way for all new initiatives. “OK,” I said, “But first let’s look at how we launched this initiative in the first place.” That immediately puzzled the CEO: “Why should an announcement even be an issue for reflection, evaluation, and action?” “We could get into an extensive discussion of how you announce decisions in general,” I responded. “But I know you are anxious to get to the heart of this particular situation. So let me just ask whether there is anything special about innovation—the way which we talked about it yesterday—that might affect the way the announcement was made?” The CEO, musing out loud, recalled, “Many are uneasy about innovation, many feel they are not creative. And I would even say that many may not know what innovation is, or be fully aware of what it could mean to the future of this company.” “Exactly! Given all these apparently legitimate concerns and hidden questions,” I asked, “what, in retrospect, would you have done differently about announcing the initiative?” “With the benefit of hindsight, I guess I would have discussed it first. I would have used examples. Big ones, and many little ones, as many I could think of; some of those we talked about yesterday. I might have told them the story of what was done at 3M. You know, that article you gave me on their fifteen-minute system. . . . Above all, I would try to strike a balance: While I don’t want innovation to appear facile or accidental, I also don’t want it to

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appear distant and impossible, beyond their reach, reserved for only R&D types.” “Good! So now we know that can’t just drop an announcement like a bomb without taking the chance that it will blow up in our face. Okay, so that was not the best way to start, and you already have to found another way. It is interesting that you mentioned R&D. A little sidebar if I might?” The CEO nodded and leaned forward. I continued, “Thomas Edison still holds the record for more patents than anyone else to this day. Of course, he may have been an inventing genius but he had others working with him who were not Edisons. So he developed for himself and all his employees idea quotas. “But he also knew that some ideas had to be big and others small; so for example he gave himself six months to come up with one new major idea, and a number of smaller ones. “I mention Edison because he may be telling us something. His emphasis was not on inventions but ideas. Maybe that holds a key for the company and innovation. Maybe the process we want to get going is IG—Idea Generation. And maybe what we have to do is to encourage each employee to work on his ID—his own Idea/Innovation Diary—which is private and which is not available to anyone unless he says it is.” The CEO nodded reflectively. “You’re right. The focus is really on ideas. We can’t all be Edisons and match his record, but if we can get our people to write down what they think and what they have come up with we will be way ahead of the game. In fact, I never told anyone this but I keep an idea journal by my bedside. Okay, let’s keep going. This is good stuff.” “Okay, let’s go on to the next point. The initiative was presented as a crash course and a crusade. Put yourself in your employees’ place. How would you have reacted to such a statement?” The CEO snapped, “I would have resented it. I don’t like being stampeded into anything. And I personally don’t warm to the cheerleader role. Worst of all, it sets us up for success or failure. We either make it or we fold. “Besides, nothing could be further from the truth. We are actually doing quite well and all indications are that we will have solid sales for the next three to five years. So this was a future-oriented activity. But, okay, I see where you are going. What you are saying is that we should have just told it like it really is—as way of getting a leg up, ensuring our future success. Right?” “Absolutely,” I quickly answered. “And maybe even to grow another business or at least another division. When the juices start to flow, you never finally know what people will come up. Now, pressing on, why a timetable of six months?”

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The CEO bristled,” Now I think that was perfectly defensible. You can’t have an open-ended arrangement without limits and without closure. I would let that stand.” “OK,” I said and then paused, “But suppose nothing happens within six months? Do you shut everything down, or let it just go on? Or suppose then something surfaces by month seven, something else by month eight. What then? How will that six-month deadline look? “ The CEO interrupted: “Maybe arbitrary, even dumb. But there has to be some oversight and control. They have to know that they will be held accountable.” I mildly protested, “But accountable for what? You did not put a dime into this. You are not providing any training. You are not giving people time off. You are not sending them to any conferences. You are not even buying them books and magazines to read. You put this pot of money aside for bonuses, but if no one comes up with anything, even that money won’t be spent. I understand every executive’s need for control and outcomes, but deadlines and innovation are not compatible, unless you are willing to settle for halfbaked goods prematurely delivered before their time.” The CEO was quiet. Had I pushed too hard? I stepped back and took another tack: “Instead of control, you may want to go for indirect monitoring. Schedule weekly brown bags or pizza lunches (you pay). Mix divisions, levels, shifts. Have the supervisors just listen; tell them not to talk, just take notes. Carry forward those notes to the next level, then to the next, and then to senior management. Walk around, drop in on sessions unexpectedly, listen for a change.” The CEO sighed, “Well, it makes sense not to dictate creativity. It’s like pushing spaghetti. It just won’t behave the way you want it to. Well, I guess you’re also questioning my picking an innovation steering group. Did I do anything right?” I said reassuringly, “You came up with idea of an innovation initiative, and that is right as rain. But I am curious. What was your thinking here? What did you hope to accomplish with this steering committee?” The CEO sat back and thought: “Well we picked people from each division. Each had an excellent record and had given some evidence of being creative. The idea was they would model for each of their divisions the behaviors to produce results.” I agreed, “That makes a lot of sense. Modeling is critical. That is what Edison did. But here’s my problem. It’s either going to be company-wide or it is not. It is either going to be collective or not. “Innovation often occurs with the least likely people and in the least likely ways. Besides, most selected steering groups are political. Those chosen are always the same ones picked. The winners of trips to Hawaii are always the

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ones who win again and again. Good for the few winners, lousy for all the rest who may get used to being losers, and there are always more of them than winners. “Besides, everyone in the division will rib their representative to death and make him regret he was ever chosen in the first place. Finally, it will be seen as a transparent way again of maintaining control. Make it egalitarian. Inclusive, not exclusive. Fish or cut bait.” The CEO protested, “Okay, okay, but what’s wrong with incentives? It’s been used since the beginning of time, and it works.” I conceded, “You’re right. Generally it works. It certainly has been effective for years, in sales especially. But money and innovation have nothing to do with each other. It is a mismatch. “Incentives stimulate only the familiar, not the different. Besides, such incentive-driven innovations will by generate a lot of look-alikes of what you already have. But you will not get anything different.” The CEO was not ready to toss in the towel: “Well, what should we do? Drop the idea of incentives altogether?” I again became reflective, “I am not sure. My instinct tells me that it is a question the employees should tackle. See what they come up with. Make it part of the creative challenge. “I have to confess. I am a little old-fashioned. To me the best incentive is the future of the company—the future of my job. Or, as one worker put it to the COO: ‘Your job is to keep this company around so that I can collect my pension.’” The CEO leaned forward, “I agree. I am old-fashioned that way too. And that worker is right. You can’t have growth and change unless you are around to try both. But it’s the executive’s job to look ahead and to decide now what will keep us around later.” He stood up and held out his hand, “Well, I think our exchange has set us on a new course. I now see why care must be taken with certain initiatives— preparing the way, as you call it—thinking it through. I would like you to stay with us on this project, through all the stages, for as long as it takes.” “I’ll be happy to do so.” “And let’s get together soon and hold another seminar. Okay Professor?” Postscript: I nodded, smiling, and said to myself, “He was right on both counts. I am a professor, and it was a seminar.” But after I left and was walking down the hall, I realized that he was a professor as well, and that good seminars are always shared if they are to be seminal. In any case, in less than three months three major employee-generated proposals for innovation passed the review committee and were on their way to implementation. Many others followed.

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All were energized by the Idea/Innovation Diary, which often led to small, non-dramatic changes which could not be called innovative, but just different ways of doing things. Above all, the employees entrusted with the future of their jobs and the company rose to the challenge and became preeminent and permanent idea generators. In the process what were the lessons learned? Innovation should never just be announced. Preparation is required. Examples should be given from the company itself, from the industry. Innovation should not appear facile or fortuitous but never beyond reach of the rank and file. Speed is not relevant. Deadlines are the enemy of creativity. If you have to have quotas, stress number of ideas. Urge all to develop an Idea/Innovation Diary. Deadlines and innovation are not good partners. Keep all open-ended, like the process itself. But stir the pot. Schedule weekly brownbags. Top management should not pick innovation teams. The effort is collective, or it is not. Besides, it as not a political popularity contest. Money and innovation have nothing to do with each other. It is a crass mismatch, and it will not stimulate difference, but incremental familiarity. If you need an incentive system, let it be employee-designed. It is likely to be creative in its own right. The ultimate pre-conditions for innovation are environmental. The key variables are identified and summarized below: Table 25.1 Situation

From

To

1. Culture

Directive

Questioning

2. Focus

Same

Different

3. Structure

Closed

Open

4. Systems

Mechanical

Biological

5. Information

Limited

Shared

6. Distribution

Insiders

Network

7. Communication

Vertical

Horizontal

8. Status

Official

Unofficial

9. Incentives

Financial

Environmental

Prescribed

Evolving

10. Quality

Anticipatory Intelligence

Chapter 26

Futurizing as the Magic Bullet

The All Purpose Elixir Improving Problem Solving, Decision–Making, Team Synergy, Career Choices, Strategic Planning, Heads-Up Training, Multiple Intelligence, Whole Brain Applications, Divergent and Convergent Thinking, Creativity, etc. And it only costs $500! “Wow! I’ll take a dozen!”

But, alas, the cure-all is not pre-packaged. It requires attending the two day annual conference of the World Future Society July 29–31 in Chicago. Indeed, to get the inside and total scoop, have to sign up earlier for the preconference courses because that is where all the above benefits will be explicitly featured and displayed. It is always tempting and easy to expose the obsessive behaviors and claims of various professions. The process is essentially a variation of the folly of giving someone a hammer who then treats everything as a nail. (The Korean version is that every nail that stands up gets pounded down.) But after all, what is the great crime in this case? Futurists are as compulsive about the future as CLOs are about training, HR professionals about career-pathing, and entrepreneurs about innovation. But even granted such self-interest and self-insulation, is the case for futurizing special and different enough to be exempt from typical and excessive pleadings for uniqueness? What is there about the basic process and intelligence of looking ahead? routinely? comprehensively? systematically? that sets it apart from

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conventional approaches and in the process generates new perspectives and encompassing results? Even so, some assurances must be given. Prophecy as the legacy tapped by current futurists may carry too much baggage to inspire confidence. End-of-the-world visions are not the stuff of strategic planning. Even less so the apocalyptic. Besides, this new breed is as historically new as is its track record. Founded in 1966, the World Future Society has held annual conferences only since 1991. But the nature of its membership may tell another story. Almost all futurists are typically also something else. They are engineers, lawyers, sociologists, demographers, trainers, educators, and so forth. As such, they also belong to other societies appropriate to their various specializations. Although typically bifurcated—half futurist, half subject expert— why have they chosen additionally and separately that proactive role? Because such straddling reenergizes, expands, and extends the specialized half to the edge. When companies or professional associations are unable or unwilling to absorb the discontinuity of a different future, breakaways emerge. Separated from their parents, they resemble start-ups that take flight with their own booster rockets. Often, these new mavericks seek to find like others who share their discontent and impatience with the myopia of traditional perspectives. But increasingly it is also a sign of the times that these fledgling satellites become separate mega-organizations, not necessarily in numbers—although WFS now has over 25,000—but in vision. Created and sustained by new mindsets, they serve as the heralders, advocates, and managers of change as a new norm. What they thus project and embody is of a piece with what they study, examine, and seek to fix. If this pattern has validity and resembles what is also taking place in other professional associations, then an analysis of what futurizing has to offer as an emerging discipline may help to shape a cutting edge of commonality not yet apparent. An examination of the syllabi of the pre-conference courses, the research of its presenters, and the general future literature reveals a surprisingly degree and number of common assumptions of how and why futurizing may be both different and impactful. At least five drivers surface: Inclusivity Diversity Integration Collaboration Transition

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INCLUSIVITY Inclusivity requires clearing the field of narrow foci and creating instead a receptive and embracing center for a recurrent obsession with foresight. That in turn compels rejecting the typical decisions of organizations and senior staff to concentrate only on the urgent and immediate issues and leave alone for the moment all the abstract or less pressing intrusions of the future. After all, their argument typically is that survival should occupy the foreground, not pie-in-the-sky long-range items, as if the two were not secretly connected and even finally one and the same, and further that survival tomorrow may be more imperiled than that of today, or that today’s myopic decisions may hasten tomorrow’s demise. To realize the benefits of futurizing thus compels at the outset operating normally with not just 180- but 360-degree inclusiveness. In particular, it requires the fusion of thinking, problem solving, and planning so that all approach totality. A half cannot be passed off as a whole no matter how urgent the moment or its hard-nosed advocates. Time should not be enemy but ally. All factors, near and far, must be not only identified but also their secrets yield up the glue of clustering. Wild cards regularly have to be not only acknowledged, but also honored. The possible must always be nipping at the heels of the probable. Inquiry has to develop a lateral range and scan inclusively all known and suspected threats and opportunities. What can end your business or reduce its market share also has to be reinvested with the embryonic emergence of new ventures. Above all, futurizing compels the big picture as the norm of both the now and the yet-to-be. Creativity has to become the critical survival mechanism of all not just the normally crazy and paranoiac. And its parameters routinely have to approximate the holistic.

DIVERSITY There is little point to being inclusive if all those involved are basically the same. Alignment of macro and micro is of little value if it includes only the harmonious and homogeneous. For inclusivity to be externally encompassing it needs to be matched by internal diversity. The goal is to fuse 360-degree range and depth. That means that thinking must run from standard to divergent to convergent forms. Standard problem solving toolkits must be expanded to

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include out-of-the-box starting and end points. Organizational charts should be subject to numerous vertical and horizontal communications intersects. Intact and inward-facing professionals and divisions need to meet and talk to each other, and in the process find out what they do and how they relate. Favorite conventional methodologies have to in turn embrace computer simulations. Planning parameters have not only to be more inclusive, but also welcome the wild cards of science fiction. Evaluation of everything and everyone has to employ not singular or single shot but multiple measures and metrics. Training has to supplement its current preoccupation with ROI with developing the workforce of the future. In short, the aim is to miniaturize the diversity of global demographics, which in effect constitutes the future operating reality of all enterprises.

INTEGRATION Futurists constantly test trends. To remain genuinely futuristic, trends have to survive four measures: exhibit the greatest impact, enjoy the highest probability, last the longest, and offer the potential for integration. The search for integration which is driven by these future-driven performance measures is also the most difficult to implement, but offers the greatest gains. The first step requires placing the entire organization in future mode. Its operating norms are then trends that have survived the multiple measures above. Under the pressure of that projected state, an inventory identifies what processes and personnel that are currently separative, parallel, and even conflictive could benefit from integration. Proceeding from that vantage point, even all existing alignments are reexamined to determine whether such micro integrations would benefit in turn from more macro overall comprehensive unification. The final push for integration requires measuring output. If it is largely or only incremental gains, efficiency may have to be partnered with the creativity of continuous improvement. If goals have changed or been stretched and workplace roles have not followed suit, then integration of goals and roles may be required to achieve quantum performance jumps. The glue of integration is discovering the degrees of interoperability. The optimum yield is integrated interoperability. Only by tapping the synergistic math of 1 + 1 = 3 will the criteria of the future be satisfied.

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COLLABORATION The days of the lone ranger are over. So are the days of the singular CEO savior. And above all, so are the conventional pejorative comparisons of leaders and managers designed to make the former look good by devaluing the latter. Indeed, the best rank-and-file managers are the ones that really maintain productivity, grow profits, and sustain companies. And the reason they are able to accomplish so much so often is that mangers are now the supreme collaborators. Teaming is what managers do. Constantly raising the bar to factor in inclusivity, diversity, and integration is the way they move through and negotiate the complex interactive dynamics of group performance. That comes naturally to them because they are the new hybrids—they are manager-leaders, supervisors and coaches, planners and implementers—in short, their constant doubleness miniaturizes the company and models integration of what should keep employees and divisions together cooperatively. Above all, such collaboration is the glue of globality. It follows the slogan: “Think globally, act locally.” The integrated interoperability of communications and commerce has not only shaped global infrastructure, but also made negotiation the key skill of collaboration. Constantly aligning and harmonizing the multiple relationships of diversity links the company to the ecological model which requires cooperative competition to be sustainable. Diplomacy is thus no longer the monopoly of statesmen. It is the stock in trade of the collaborative manager-leader. Significantly, a favored methodology of futurists is Delphi, which involves a series of collaborative iterations between experts.

TRANSITION Transition epitomizes the future. It embodies protean flux and the new permanence of transition as an operating norm. What futurists and many others have discovered is that temporary dislocations have a way of not only lasting longer, but also being replaced by another transition. And that in turn gives way to still another in an endless hall of mirrors. The expectation of arriving at a stable plateau is thus regularly disappointed. A few chameleon types, often entrepreneurs accustomed to negotiating, surviving, and even thriving on such constant shifts, model and embody the transitional vision of current and future reality.

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Examined and profiled, instructional designers might be able to extract the essentials of surviving and managing transition as training for all managers and employees, with a special adaptive version for teams. After all, transition may be the central reality of the future workforce. Hopefully, what may be clear now are not only the benefits of looking ahead, but also the systemic yields of inclusivity, diversity, integration, collaboration, and transition. Although futurists do not have a monopoly on such goals, they do argue that the above are in fact the operating ways and even laws of the future which if incorporated can position companies and professionals for survival and success in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 27

The Science Fiction Model

Isaac Asimov defined science fiction as “an escape to reality.” That softens the threat but leaves intact the truth. But even such protective and adept trickery cannot diminish or alter a now two-way street. The fictional visions are leaving the future to become the reality of the present. Science fiction (SF) has become increasingly science fact. SF has much to recommend it. For example, its forecasting record is superior to that of strategic planning. Two-thirds of its projections have happened in one form or another. Then, too, SF’s powerful alliance of imagination and technology outmatches and outperforms the standard linear analysis of think tank strategic planners. SF is invariably creative; innovation is the grist of the future. But, perhaps, most important SF is not just a powerful way of rendering and managing the future. It is also a mode of knowing. It is one of the key incarnations of future thinking-learning-leading (FTLL). But do futurists really think differently? Does a recurrent fixation on what is to come involve distinctive thought patterns, problem solving, image clusters, metaphors, methodologies, pattern detection, and so forth? Do futurists sign their forecasts like painters? Are futurist consultants sufficiently different enough from their less futuredriven counterparts to be understood, valued, and even preferred as such by prospective clients? Finally, is there such a separate commodity as futurist thinking? And if so, are its benefits sufficiently generic on the one hand and persuasive enough on the other hand to overcome the typical resistance to looking and thinking ahead? FTLL already exists in many ways and places. It can be found in K–12 adaptations of future labs and modules in the Rover Elementary School in 223

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Tempe, Arizona. It also is obviously alive and well in the number of university offerings, and especially the enduring efforts of undergraduate and graduate programs like that of the University of Houston at Clear Lake City. The contributions and impacts of resident futurists like Ian Wilson at General Electric cannot be minimized. One even might argue that his seminars on the future influenced the later development and refinement of Six Sigma by GE. But a number of new developments, applications, and trends may impart new importance and urgency to the value of futures thinking/learning/leading. In the process, FTLL may become not just a peripheral, borrowed, or occasional mode of learning and training but as a mainstream methodology in its own right. There are at least five major developmental areas and conditions that are more open to future thinking and training now than ever before: new training metrics, new strategic planning modes, corporate universities and their knowledge cultures, employee empowerment and productivity, and the future learning leaders—Chief Learning Officers (CLOs).

NEW TRAINING METRICS How have organizations and individuals coped with even the less exotic versions of flux? Basically, through three kinds of training and learning; catch-up, line up, and crossover. The thrust of catch-up is incremental: bringing professionals up to date with the latest developments. These are usually add-ons. Occasionally, they may incorporate new directions, but in almost all cases they are focused designs to bring everyone to the cutting edge or state of the art, together. Although future-influenced, they are essentially present-bound. Line-up involves structure, not content. It is also multi-directional and requires not so much the acquisition of new knowledge or skills as it does their constantly repositioning and prioritizing. The aim is to align individual and divisional goals with company objectives, especially if there are satellite centers, and especially if these are multinational. A key new learning complexity is managing and aligning multicultural and multi-generational diversity and values. Crossover involves two kinds of additional learning. One is cross-training. Co-workers are trained in each other’s jobs not only for obvious purposes of replacement if necessary, but, more important, to expand the knowledge and skills base of workers. The other crossover is more structurally ambitious— more interoperable. It involves linking the work-focus of different divisions with each other to promote greater collaboration.

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It may link such operations as planning and customer service, marketing and auditing, purchasing and production, and so forth. Employees may spend a day or week, for example, on the phone in customer service. The goal is greater integration of function and process across the board.

NEW STRATEGIC PLANNING MODES Because of increasing uncertainty and discontinuity, strategic forecasting needs future thinking if it is to preserve its integrity as a discipline on the one hand and sustain the reality of its mid- and long-term projections on the other. The changes required reflect the degree to which the knowledge of at least three distinctive ways the future operates has been incorporated into strategic planning methodologies: in particular, patterns of escalation, degrees of knowability, and the partnership of monitoring. Responding to future discontinuity varies over reaction-time and with advanced intelligence. In fact, the goal of strategic planning is to preserve decision time and store options. But FTL perceives unfolding prospects in the progressive and aggressive terms of stretch, strain, and shock. The sequence is ruled by the grim law of escalation. The first version of stretch, if ignored, is followed by the second, and if that in turn elicits no response, then the third dominates the scene. If the future is an enigma, it is a transparent one. It is an amalgam of the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The obvious strategy is to move the knowledge base along that continuum. Extrapolation of present data and demographics builds the extent of the known in the present and short term. Trending converts the unknown into knowable long-term patterns. But then all stops short with the unknowable, because that is in fact is what defines the final future. But the consolation is that as much as two-thirds of what may come can be in hand. Monitoring is no longer occasional and external but permanently imbedded. It constitutes at least half of planning. Tracking sensors are distributed throughout to function as an early warning system to catch deviations. Monitoring requires its own plan. Usually it is a permanent overlay of data-tracking equipped with its own software program, which has the capacity to adjust planning when certain parameters are exceeded and calculated. The futuristic adjustments of strategic planning produce not only a more integrated and dynamic whole, but also—and here again is the critical point— the plan itself would be a future thinking document. It would behave like the future.

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CORPORATE UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE CULTURES The incredible growth of corporate universities, ranging from McDonald’s to Ford to Disney to Toyota, bears witness to the centrality of training and learning as a major American and especially multi-national investment in the future. Constantly responding to new challenges, corporate universities in the process have been involved minimally in two major future-oriented shifts: multi-national acculturation and e-learning. Acculturating new employees whose work cultures are different and may in fact be at variance from that of the desired mainstream is an increasing focus of global companies. For example, Dell employs a number of software programmers from India and recently outsourced a significant portion of their customer tech support there. Typically, employees from India favor supervisors who tell them what to do. They find it difficult to act on their own initiative. They prefer description to opportunity. Dell, which values worker participation over obedience and nonlinear thinking over rote, employs extensive situational training to bring about a shift in values and thereby a shift in work dynamics. The other major change is the gradual conversion to e-learning. In some cases, a blended approach has been used for older less technologicallycomfortable workers: traditional face-to-face classes have been joined with e-classes. The primary motivation is cost: lower instructional costs, less time away from work, elimination of travel and per diem expenses to centralized training sites, and so on. The other gain is increased quality control through standardization of content in the three areas noted above: catch-up, line-up, and crossover. To a large extent, corporate universities are themselves future entities. They embody Senge’s learning organization and incorporate Toffler’s knowledge workers, which, when combined, create unique knowledge and learning cultures. They are almost like countries in their own right. To be sure, unlike traditional academic universities, corporate universities are ideological. They promote the perpetuation of their own survival and growth, and the bottom line. They are their own lobbyists. They, use themselves in effect, as case studies. But individually and collectively, they also need to be corporate global citizens by including the new ideologies of global interdependence and sustainable development. It is not enough to hail and benefit from the global economy.

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It also requires the unique leadership of multi-nationals calling for and aspiring to world stewardship of the global commons. Such a commitment requires going beyond singular ideology to embrace an interdependent ideology which commands the international respect and loyalty of all professionals. In both instances, the value of future thinking again is thus inevitably visionary. Finally, future thinking would encourage convergent thinking which raises the integration of thought and process to optimum levels of synthesis without compromising differentiation. Whether or not the Singularity occurs according to its projected timetable, what is clear is that it is born of and driven by convergence. Edward Wilson called it consilience to signify the future synergistic math of one plus one equaling three or four or five. Emily Dickinson claimed that “everything that rises converges.” Discoveries or breakthroughs at the apex will in volcanic fashion reach out, touch, extend, and enrich all the other apexes to produce a total greater than the sum of its parts. In short, the visionary corrective here is the future itself is essentially a convergent force.

EMPLOYEE EMPOWERMENT AND PRODUCTIVITY The obvious goal of training and learning is to increase the holy trinity of productivity, profitability, and quality. Of the three, the first enjoys the highest priority because of the competition of the global economy. To preserve their middle-class status, American workers have had to become more productive. Often because of downsizing, that also involves less workers doing more. Although there are many ways of increasing worker productivity, one approach that has received generally less attention on the one hand and that offers the option of a major application of future learning and thinking is that of employee evaluation. In the last five years the nomenclature has changed. Employee evaluation became performance evaluation, and then shifted to its present version, performance improvement. Employees themselves have become human capital and as such training is perceived as way of securing return on investment (ROI). Worker agreements have in many organizations become worker contracts, then worker covenants. The common denominator of all these changes is the increasing centrality of employee productivity and the increasing dependence of companies on the capacity of workers to constantly create or find cost-saving and creative ways of increasing productivity. There are signs

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that some organizations are contemplating a future step in the performance improvement process. Currently, the standard way to improve productivity is to encourage employees to consider how they might do their jobs differently. Many managers, especially those with seniority, have had to be retrained as coaches. They found it difficult to confer such initiatives upon the workers they supervise and to admit to those who do the job the expertise that they know it better than anyone else. In some instances, the inquiry into performance improvement has been pushed further in two ways: asking employees to define and evaluate the effectiveness of the interfaces between divisions; encouraging more overt interpersonal attitudes and behaviors so that receiving work satisfaction is accompanied by giving it as well to others. The gains have been significant. Structural changes have been made and interpersonal behavior modification has improved the mutuality of work environments. Matters appear to have gone as far as they can go, in the present. Not so if one adds futures thinking/training. The next logical step is to push inquiry into the future itself. Welcome though the changes recommended by employees on doing their jobs more productively, they are still present-bound. They deal with new configurations of various kinds but they are generally incremental in nature. But endowing empowerment with more forward-looking vistas, workers can be invited to speculate on what they believe their jobs will be like in the future. Building upon their increasing competence in job review and change, workers not only may welcome such an opportunity, but also warm to the task of projecting their future roles. Such worker projections can be followed by inquiring what kinds of training would be critical to get them from here to there. Such speculation can be a gradual rather than a one-shot process, and also may be accompanied by discussion and the distribution of some basic reading materials. In any case, the yields can be significant. Individual projections of work change can be aggregated upward to generate patterns of the future which may shape that of the company itself. In addition, the same process may identify the common training needs and in effect identify the training agenda of the future. Of perhaps greater long-term importance, the process would contribute to developing a future-directed workforce. Finally, those companies supportive of such futures empowerment would have in effect created an employee-based alternative to the expert model. in the form of futures learning communities. In all the above instances, the vision of the future not only brings a new dynamic to work environments, but also shapes futures learning communities of best practices.

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THE FUTURE LEARNING LEADERS: CHIEF LEARNING OFFICERS (CLOs) One of the signs of the future arriving head of schedule is the emergence of jobs and titles for which there is often no previous classification or formal academic preparation. The positions of Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Learning Officer (CLO) are cases in point. No traditional or even corporate universities offer masters programs or degrees in learning, management or have retrofitted existing executive educational programs to accommodate learning leadership at an executive level. And yet professionals are being appointed to such top-level positions; and a new journal (hard copy and online), professional organization, and website have appeared devoted to the CLO. For many the appearance of CIOs and CLOs comes out of the blue. Not so for futurists, but then they may be not only reenacting the emergence of futurists themselves decades ago, but also resemble their obsession with what is to come. Indeed, one can study and compile the emergence of every new profession as reflecting the regular and most current incarnation of the future.

CONCLUSIONS Stepping back in order to sum up the arguments presented here on behalf of futures thinking, the first order of business may be to summarize them visually:

Table 27.1

Futures Thinking and Learning Summary Matrix

Current Area

Futures Contribution

Future Changes Benefits/ Outcomes

1. New Training Norms

Transition Training

Optimizing Knowledge

2. New Strategic Planning

Strategic Monitoring

Optimizing Choice

3. Corporate Universities

Global Interdependence

World Citizens

4. Employee Productivity

Future Work Projections

Future Workforce

5. Learning Management

Future Learning Foci

Future Intelligence

And similarly, perhaps the best way of expressing what futures thinking at different levels can bring to the learning challenges of the twenty-first century is to offer the following display:

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Progressive Components of Futures Responses to Steep Learning Curves Futures Thinking Futures Problem Solving Futures Learning Futures Visioning Futures Intelligence

Divergent and Convergent Innovation Methodologies Knowledge Anticipation Paradigm Shift Anticipation Intuitive and Holistic Forethought

One final observation. Over the last two decades a considerable amount of thoughtful work has been done in developing new theories of intelligence. One of the most impressive compilations is that of Howard Gardner, who in his 1993 book Frames of Mind identified seven kinds of intelligences. He subsequently added two more. To round it out to an even 10, I would nominate futures intelligence, which because of its convergent power may exhibit the modest hubris of subsuming all the others as belonging to that list of essentials.

FUTURES FTLL AGENDA: THE SCIENCE FICTION MODEL Traditionally, organizations pursued the future. Now the future seems to be pursuing companies, in some cases into the ground. E-businesses appear and disappear with almost daily regularity. Or they are acquired, are subsumed, and then are no longer. Even big and traditional organizations no longer have a singular or familiar shape. They spawn incubators, new divisions, off-shore offshoots, or outsourced variations, and so forth. Structurally they resemble more planets of different size and speed in a solar system than the traditional pyramidal wedding cake monolith. Young MBA whiz kids major in entrepreneurship. Why does the future appear to be arriving ahead of schedule? Are we provoking it into happening prematurely by being Promethean or, worse, like Icarus, flying too close to the sun? In other words, is there the presumption, as some moralists would argue, that it is being brought about by overreaching? Or is simply a neutral phenomenon brought about by shorter time periods between discovery and implementation? Whatever the answer, the real issue is neither blame nor innocence, but understanding of the characteristics of a fast future in order to better manage it. Historically, the future was better behaved. It waited for us to come to it. It did not have a mind or agenda of its own. It was there obediently ready to serve and to be around as an affirmation of our continuance. Often it had great political or economic value. What could not happen totally or immediately could be put off or gradualized.

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Of course, it also served to afflict both the faithful and the godless. After all, the second coming was always seeking a future date of incarnation. In short, as long as the future stayed in its place, it could serve a multitude of purposes and overlays. It was ultimately a servant, there to do our bidding. But we also know that there were historical quantum jumps which opened the cage of the future and released a beast ready to pounce. Again and again stealing the fire of invention mythically and metaphorically marked one of those shifts. Eating of the tree of knowledge marked another. The printing press in preserving and releasing the past from oblivion also liberated the future. Technology in general increasingly became the midwife of major discontinuities. Science fiction (SF), appeared with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It celebrated the first of many fusions of mind and machine, intelligence and artifice. Indeed, since that time, there has been a steady and parallel race between SF and the future. Sometimes the one leading, sometimes the other, but the two permanently in contention or acting in collusion. Indeed, SF embodies such a total pursuit both of the future as well as its pursuit of us that it is difficult to determine where the one begins and the other leaves off. But in any case, SF may provide a key model for managing fast futures. Constantly exhorted to fight fire with fire, perhaps the way to engage and manage a fast future to employ a fast future form. SF minimally provides three managerial guidelines: stance, scenario, and solution. Stance The most basic stance of SF is that the future has already arrived. It is not only the key setting, but also the main protagonist. SF stands unequivocally in its midst. The future is thus not just coyly visited, but intensely portrayed. Readers experience a future world in the present time and place of fiction. In addition, much of the drama may stem from the future dynamically envisioning its own future. Whether it may is glorious or disastrous, it firmly establishes that the future has a future. Managers and strategic planners, like SF, have to be time travelers. They cannot timidly and obediently stand in the present and peer out to what is to come. They must abandon their secure moorings and assumptions and allow themselves to drift into a time and place that never existed before. The only way strategic planners can withstand and understand the pursuit by the future is to inhabit and engage where the future is coming from in the

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first place. Although the future may still be a moving target, it now nevertheless is a tangible entity that can be examined. Scenario If God is in the details, in Zen understanding is to be found in observing the way a wise man ties his shoes. SF is a second creation story. In SF, although it can be largely fantastic and even wild, scenario also makes the outlandish appear familiar. As Eudora Welty noted, poetry is an imaginary garden in which there is a real toad. Similarly, SF has to present a reality that offers verisimilitude, the substance and stuff of recognizable existence, and the external and internal consistency and coherency of real people and situations. In short, imagination always needs, like Antaeus, to have its feet on the ground, otherwise it loses its power and impact. Managers mistakenly use tunnel vision to look and plan ahead. They are so preoccupied with their own special focus that the future appears monochromatic and familiar. By limiting their views to only what they believe will effect their organization, their vision invariably appears myopic, singular, and safe. They must also examine alternative events and dimensions which, like the proverbial rock thrown into a pool, send out wider and wider ripples. In the process they may discover wider, deeper, and unexpected applications beyond what their more compulsively singular competitors have found. In short, inhabiting the future is not enough. It must also be a rich, unexpected world, one that is dizzily strange yet logical. Solutions SF is fundamentally a problem-posing and problem solving genre. To be sure, sometimes the solutions are terminal, but given the problem, that may be a logical conclusion. If well-crafted, the solution appears inevitable. In good SF, many solutions are proposed and debated. Discussions, sometimes heated, take place, the purpose of which is to eliminate options until one absolutely final solution appears as the remaining and winning contender. Whether the ending is an unhappy or wrenching one, there is at least the consolation of all possibilities being exhausted. The work that comes to such a well-rounded end has about it the ring of inevitable truth. The best of SF thus sets high standards for managerial solutions. Nothing cheap, trivial, or lame will pass muster. In this case, life needs to imitate art. Following the problem solving methodology of SF, minimally

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every solution has to be perceived as passing five standards. First, the solution must solve the problem—the whole problem, and nothing but the problem. Second, the problem cannot be reworked or reduced in magnitude, because the solution is not big enough to handle it all. Third, the solution must not become a later problem. Fourth, it must be communicable—persuasive and lifelike to secure acceptance and cooperation. Finally, it must take hold and be implementable, not in some future time and place but now, in the present culture; if not, what would it take to make it fit snugly and securely? The SF process is exhaustively circular. The end point of future speculation must always bend back to connect to the beginning points of the present. Ultimately, they may appear one and the same, with genesis becoming terminus and terminus genesis. The SF problem trajectory requires managers to take the high road of generating solutions that are robust, rigorous, and renewable. Above all, the fast future of SF compels managers to recognize that they are dealing with a rapid reality that has a mind and timetable of its own. If one views the difference of the future as an adversary to be beaten or a competitor to be bested, that will not yield the value of transforming an enemy into an ally. A begrudging captive will not reveal as much as a liberated colleague. In short, confronting a fast future is a challenge of discontinuous growth unlike any other. SF offers managers a model of living in the future, creating or recreating its world and laws in all their fantastic tangibility, mastering the tasking standards and circular process of higher-level problem-posing and problem solving, and testing applicability with its final embodiments of communication and implementation. Finally, all managers should reread Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and discover that the creature snatched from the future had no name.

Chapter 28

Anticipatory Coaching

Most information-gathering surveys are unidirectional. They are monologues, not dialogues. Answers to questions are never turned back on themselves for instant response and revelation as they would be in regular conversation. To be sure, after such multiple surveys are compiled and compared, overall response patterns are distilled and then shared. But by then the survey has lost much of its immediacy of involvement. In addition, unless the initial copy has been saved, individual answers have been obscured and absorbed into aggregates. Although the final data may be interesting and have general value, it no longer is as personalized as when it originally was generated. Generally, that tradeoff is accepted as a necessary price of the survey process and results. In short, the generic yields justify the loss of individual input and profile. But there is an alternative survey process that is both customized and generalizable, and that also records and preserves give-and-take. And that is a coaching relationship when it follows a set and structured protocol of inquiry. Consultants should be added because consultants/coaches favor the same kinds of exchanges that are doubly diagnostic. When the coaching relationship focuses on the future, it a more intimate version of the identical relationship the anticipatory leader has with his company. The goal is to generate and make available insights for each partner of the dialogue. Often coaches/consultants have had to disarm resistance to candor by offering various forms of reassurance. Indeed, coaches often have to prepare their clients for the kind of two-way exchange that is at the heart of a mutual learning relationship, coaching process. Such an orientation offers the additional value of priming 235

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participants to grow through self-discovery. It is not unlike the introductory course describing how to optimize distance learning. The consultant/coaching process is shaped by their common experiences with clients. What they have learned again and again is that problem solving is often a premature temptation that has to be resisted. Professionals are often so good at problem solving that they rapidly seize on the first pattern that comes of the box or the weakest link or broken piece that needs to be repaired. The coach has to put on the brakes. Problem solving must await problem identification. Indeed, often the problems identified to consultants/coaches are not the real ones triggering difficulties. The source frequently turns out to be quite different, of a greater magnitude or substantially distant from or not proximate to the problem. In other words, the initial exchange has to be more patient, reflective, and finally systemic. Most serious of all, clients often are so hot to trot in an urgent direction which upon analysis turns out to be only the lesser and more deceptive version of an emerging disruptive future. Coaches immediately intervene to adjust the range and scope to that of long-range problem solving. Otherwise, what may occur is the ironic prospect of a time-bound or future-avoidance solution returning later as a problem. Finally, myopic complacency not only breeds initial resistance, but also may compromise later acceptance and implementation of recommendations. Like a therapist, the consultant/coach not only has to ferret out or elicit revealing and diagnostic information, but also has to do so in a way that it is a form of self-discovery. That way, the one questioned gradually crosses over to the same side as the questioner, but now they problem solve together. The ego has acquired an alter ego. That dynamic partnership creates a model for internalization that gradually can take place later sans coach. Once problem identification and definition has taken place, coaches regularly engage the issue of where we go from here. Although next steps are usually those of application or implementation, they need to be frontloaded into the inquiry process as extensively as anticipation of future developments. In the process, a new focus emerges: company culture has to be assessed. Frequently problems are generic or company-wide. There is thus the need to define and structure solutions to achieve wider distribution. But once again the initial temptation of premature problem solving rears its head again, but this time favoring that which is more easily implementable, costs less, and promises rapid results.

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The tradeoff here is compromising the quality of a future solution by what the culture is politically willing and capable of accepting. Such choices have to be turned back on the culture because often such opacity and preference may be precisely the reason for the existence of the problem in the first place. Company values may also be why premature and partial problem solving are the preferred modes of both inquiry and implementation. But good coaches are not revolutionaries. Nor do they ask professionals to jeopardize their jobs by telling the Emperor that he has no clothes. But what they do is link effective problem solving not only to the long term but also to the way the company structures itself to stimulate and welcome optimum solutions. In other words, the dialogue ultimately focuses on the capacity of both company and its workforce not only to be smarter about its business and operations, but also in the process to assess its capacity to change. Although the coach may suggest some implementation strategies, at this point role reversal occurs. The professional knows better than the consultant/ coach how, when, and even if such dissemination should take place. At that point, the reins are turned over to those who have to implement, and the consultant/coach fades into the background. The additional challenge posed here is whether it is possible to capture the essentials of the coaching relationship in a structured interview protocol that is electronically delivered. Such a simulation would serve as a coaching primer not only to introduce the process, but also to demonstrate how such a probing exchange can link company/culture analysis to professional selfdevelopment and self-discovery. The electronic coach would thus serve as a way of personalizing and professionalizing the enhancement and enrichment of current training and education. The sample provided below demonstrates one form such an introduction to coaching would take. The dialogue is between EC (Electronic Coach) and ME (write in your initials or nickname and title and division). Focus is to develop generic questions on different subjects which can support an almost universal exchange. The sample topic below is a company vision statement: All exchanges are structured through five stages: Informational Demographics Evaluation Review/Revision Implementation/Application Dissemination

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FRAME: COMPILING AN ORGANIZATIONAL PROFILE Subject: Vision Statement Informational: EC: Do you have a vision statement? ME: Not sure. EC: If not, why not? ME: Don’t know. EC: If so, what is it? ME: Wait. Have to get it. EC: Is it generally accessible and known? ME: Not really. EC: When was it written? By whom? ME: Don’t know that either. EC: When last revisited and revised? ME: Two years ago. EC: Does it appear in the annual report? ME: Yes. That is where I found it. Evaluation: EC: How good is it? ME: Mostly generalized platitudes. EC: Extent to which it is future-focused? ME: Vaguely. EC: Are you proud to have that as your organizational signature? ME: Not especially. Reads like a company song. EC: Is it important, or just window dressing? ME: Mostly hype or PR, but should not be either. Revision: EC: Let’s take a few minutes to rewrite it. ME: Start from scratch or revise? EC: Try revision and tweaking first. ME: Here is my revision. EC: Does it factor in being future-driven? ME: Not really. I think I had better rewrite the whole thing. EC: Okay, now compare the two versions. Are the changes slight, moderate, extensive? ME: Extensive. EC: Happier with the result? ME: Much happier. More reflective of what we are and what we want to be.

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Intervention /Application: EC: Do you think this exercise of rewriting should be shared? ME: Most definitely. It would be clarifying. EC: How might that be done? ME: I can set aside part of the next one or two divisional meetings. Visiting, discussing, and rewriting the vision statement would be on the agenda. EC: How will you introduce the exercise? What will you say? ME: We need to know clearly who we are and where we are going as a company if the alignment of this division is going to take place and be effective. So knowing and understanding our vision statement is the first step in that process. EC: That implies that there are further steps. ME: There are, but I am not going to cloud the issue or blur the focus at this point. EC: Good idea. But what are the further steps you are contemplating? ME: If all goes well with writing the company-wide vision statement, I am going to ask then to write one for our division which supports the overall company vision. EC: That is ambitious. Has it been done before? ME: Not as far as I know, but it is needed and important. I also think it would be self-defining and empowering. EC: How would you resolve the differences that undoubtedly would surface? ME: Ask them to apply the conflict resolution skills they have been taught to achieve team consensus. EC: Anything else? ME: Yes. The final assignment is to write an individual vision statement which focuses on what their current job might be like five years from now, and what knowledge and training adjustments have to take place for them to get there and be effective. EC: Good macro-micro thinking. You are trying to align every level. ME: We have to miniaturize the whole. Dissemination: EC: Is anything about this process that is transferable? ME: Absolutely. It should become a leadership initiative for all divisional heads, and each division in turn should develop its own version. EC: How would you go about disseminating the process? ME: That’s a problem. If I bring it up at the divisional meetings, the VP of Operations will resent that I have not followed chain of command and come to him first. Chain of command is a big thing around here.

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EC: So why not go to him first? ME: Because he never wants to rock the boat. He is a time-server and nay-sayer. And if he says no, it would be a dead issue and never get anywhere. EC: What about discussing it with other divisional heads? ME: The last time I did that, I was accused of grandstanding and always pushing my ideas and my division. EC: Were you? ME: Probably, but why should that be objected to if it results in meaningful ways to change? EC: Because with dissemination you are in a political environment. You also are taking on the company culture and its leadership of the way things are permitted to change around here. One philosopher confessed that he skipped steps—and that no step will ever forgive you for skipping it. ME: So what you are saying is forget it. There is no way this is going to happen. EC: No, but we have not yet found the right strategy. Let’s back up for a moment. How would you sum up this entire exercise and conversation? ME: It was a rethinking experience. Forgive the pun, it was also a revisioning experience. EC: Right. Who regularly does that and is responsible for across the board dissemination? ME: The Chief Learning Officer and the entire Learning Management and Training System. Is that the way to go? EC: Given the absence of other avenues and the fact that basically you were delivering training on a divisional level, you have nothing to lose. ME: Okay but how do I make the case? EC: Carefully and thoroughly. Put together a packet of three kinds of materials: rewritten vision statement, divisional versions, and finally individual versions projected five years into the future. Make no suggestions as to how it should be recast into a training format unless asked to share the dynamics involved in the divisional and individual process. Note in passing that the individual versions also itemized what sort of training they would need to be effective five years down the road. ME: Should I also suggest HR involvement since the five-year job projections inevitably involved revising and updating job descriptions? EC: Excellent point! You are beginning to think like a coach.

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ME: Wasn’t that one of your goals? EC: Yes, but you are a quick study. ME: The coaching process not only accelerates learning, but also constantly tests that learning so that it ministers to both the present and the future. EC: You are absolutely right on target. And in the process I learned much. ME: Wasn’t the two-way process supposed to go that way?

SUMMARY Professionals often do not have anyone with whom they can talk things over in confidence. They also are often fearful of showing their ignorance or dependence. Thus there must be trust, so that anything can be freely said. Conversation also should be non-judgmental so as to encourage easy and free further exchange. Above all, the listening partner must be disinterested. He can have nothing to gain or leverage from anything learned. His sole rationale is that he is your trusted advisor and personal trainer. But coaches are expensive, and generally reserved for executives. Arranging face-to-face coaching meetings frequently encounters time constraints of both parties. Distance, especially different time zones, also compounds the difficulty. Whenever cost and access are obstacles, alternative delivery systems should be considered. In this case, a new hybrid: the electronic/phone coach. The value of supplementing the electronic with direct voice contact is to minister to the surfacing of issues on an ongoing and as-needed basis. It thus can serve as both a hot and help line. The value of the internet connection is to accommodate homework assignments (such as rewriting vision statements) or additional tasks which may require further research (including recommending an article or book to be read). Each mode contributes its own value to sustaining the dynamics of the coaching relationship. The yields of self-discovery and self-development are just too valuable not to be made available to wider audience of professionals. Certainly, another fruitful area of application would be its inclusion in academic programs especially those focused on course applications and leadership development. But whatever the sector, only coaching dialogue can engage the incredible variety of company situations on the one hand and gently prod and prompt different and even divergent kind of thinking on the other hand. It also offers a totally personalized and customized framework for professional development and workforce retention.

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Coaching thus not only may help professionals to discover the cutting edge, but also may through its adoption constitute the institution’s competitive advantage. Indeed, by virtue of its focus on anticipating future developments, embracing coaching may be not only the sign of a commitment to professional development and retention of personnel, but also of the emergence of a futuredriven culture and organization. Recognizing the power of coaching to bring both the learning culture company and its workforce to new and higher levels of productivity and innovation may lead enterprises to adopting and facilitating that exchange in every way possible. In summary, what are the goals of a coaching program that set it apart from a traditional program? Above all, in what ways does coaching offer unique value-added benefits? At least five distinct areas and yields appear: 1. Knowledge enhancement and application—course content is customized and adjusted regularly to the specific differences of the student’s work environment. 2. Implementation strategies—exploration of how this new knowledge or systems should or can be effectively introduced and wired in place. 3. Stepping back to look at the big picture and aligning changes under consideration with company mission. 4. Looking ahead to possible future developments to determine what it will take to survive and succeed. 5. Career pathing and professional development—focusing on current and future steps which might be considered for promotion and leadership advancement. In short, a coached program is an integrated program. It fuses course content and work environment, study and career development, and current bigpicture needs with future trends. Above all, the coaching process is gradually internalized to the point where it not only becomes your own individualized form of self-discovery, but also shapes your relationships with co-workers. Coaching is like scaffolding; once the building process is completed it can be dismantled, having served its support function. More likely, it will be reassembled for another project, and then for another, and so on. Coaching is professional growth and is always a work in progress—like the future itself. Offering renewal is always the special gift of anticipatory leaders.

Chapter 29

The Anticipator Intelligence at Work Trend Testing as Futures Insurances

Information overload has encountered a new overwhelming source. This new need may not be absorbable or disciplinable by current management information systems. More and more executives, planners, and marketers are engaged in trend identification and analysis. Such projections rightly are regarded as the data of the future and as such are now appearing alongside sales and productivity figures. Trend-spotting also has become a regular feature of company newsletters, annual reports, and the e-mail communications of professional associations. Although their frequency, complexity, and range resemble and recall earlier stages of information overload, assimilation into current systems has been encumbered by the stubborn fact that trends are trickier forms of data than conventional versions. The most obvious difference is that trends are speculative. Even when accompanied and ballasted by past- and present-based statistical extrapolations, trend trajectories still end up as uncertainties of a point ahead of its time. Then, too, some trends may turn out to be temporary or fickle, a version of the latest fashions. Most dislocating of all, a spectacular trend may be endowed with such driving power that its supporters are almost obsessive in its singular and total applications. Equally troublesome is the selection of a macro context such as globality and then proceeding without being fully aware of the complexities involved. And yet trending is increasingly becoming the anticipatory data on which current decisions are being made, strategic plans formulated, and marketing directions determined. What to do? 243

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What may be helpful is trend testing as a form of futures insurance. That way, at least if anticipatory leaders are going to go out on a limb, it should be sturdy enough to bear company weight. What appears below are twelve criteria for testing trends that may provide a sufficient degree of risk reduction and management to support moving into the future with more light than heat, with more confidence than uncertainty. Individually and collectively, they also in the process also offer a bonus—a series of suggestions about not only how the future behaves, but also why. But three caveats: no shortcuts, no cherry-picking, no abstract applications. All have to be used (not a few), all have to reinforce each other (that is the key macro test), and all have to be personalized and applied to one’s own organization (the final and ultimate testing ground). The future, after all, is a total-sum game, interoperable, and variably accommodating.

DURABILITY The first judgment seeks to separate the wheat from the chaff—to distinguish whether the trend has lasting or staying power or is a flash in the pan and the flavor of the month. Subjecting and moving the trend through different projected change contexts can be used to test its survivability. Concurrence by others, especially through the various iterations of a Delphi, may certify that it is not going away but will be around for the foreseeable future. Such persistence means that the trend is intractable, big and ugly and not just a temporary and noisy aberration. Although there is much current discussion about the future of assessment, in this instance the focus is on the assessment of the future and its capacity to restore the long term to its previous preeminence. In short, durable future trends always affirm strategic planning.

IMPACT Impact measurement requires systematic impact analysis. Various simulations and methodologies can be used, but all, like the EPA spreadsheet, have to record multiple orders of subsequent impact, including those of piggybacking. Or an impact scenario can be constructed which assumes the trend happening and then spells out to what extent it would disturb and even disrupt current operations and targets. Is it invasive, pervasive, and penetrating enough to affect virtually every division and employee? Is it bullying and in your face? Verifying both durability

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and impact in tandem positions the initial Toffler shock wave and all those that follow in an emerging anticipatory landscape of new benchmarks. The future in short always exhibits, requires, and rewards systemic multiplicity. PROBABILITY How likely is its happening? Is it accompanied by expert judgments from a diverse group of forecasters? Are they confident enough to offer a timetable? What weights do they assign to its more speculative versions or wild cards? Does it appear, like death and taxes, to be unavoidable and inevitable? The future always welcomes numbers. Is it statistical? Disruption is quantifiable. ASSUMPTIONS ANALYSIS Is the trend or trend cluster sufficiently upsetting to challenge basic assumptions about the continued survival of existing products or services and the maintenance of market share? Above all, does it reach down to question the fundamental operating principles about the future of your business and even your job for the next 10 years? Genuine trends do not just affect branch but go to the root of the matter. The future is not a trivial pursuit. It shakes us to our foundations. INTEGRATING AND INTEROPERABLE Authentic trends are seldom singular, obedient, or self-contained. Compulsively engaging and connective, they intrude upon and often alter or rearrange the sacred orders of structures. They cut across divisional lines and break through firewalls. They routinely fuse the transformational, transactional, and transitional and thus regularly exceed the calipers of a single discipline. Instead, they compel transdisciplinarity and display a range which is minimally 180 degrees, and optimally 360. In the process, they gather and aggregate new miniature wholes, aligning disparate parts typically separate and separative. The interoperable becomes the standard. Divergent thinking now requires the addition of convergent thinking. BACK DOOR REDESIGN Genuine trends are quietly threatening. They are not always noisy or blustering, nor do they insist on their importance or altering power. They often enter by the back door which inadvertently may have been left open.

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The visitors may be called consultants or futurists, but they all resemble polite extraterrestrials who arrive without the benefit of spaceships or advance warning and calmly sit among us using the right fork to consume their metabolic nuggets. Suddenly they are sitting on our boards, acting as gadflies by suggesting that our structures are not only antiquated but also non-facilitative. Like compulsive engineers, these visitors from the future use their placemats to redesign the flow of the organization so that it more resembles a river than the boat upon it, behaves more like a start-up than a Fortune 500 pyramid. The future is thus inevitably both creative and destructive until it reaches a point where its design fuses both. The future, for all its flux, is ultimately patient and embryonic.

PREMATURE EXPEDIENCY/TACTICS Would response and adjustment be relatively easy, hard, or impossible? Inevitably and rapidly, many convert the trend into a problem to be solved. Thus expediency and tactics take over early on. Typically, preference is given to trends that offer the highest payoffs, lowest costs, and easiest implementation. While such tactics are obviously important and reassuring, they are premature and lead to favoring trends which may be more attractive because they are more manageable but really are less genuinely threatening or dislocating. In other words, early adaptation and application may be a substitutive and negative test. It is a temptation that should either be resisted altogether or postponed until after trend verification. A genuine trend does not yield to fast and dirty fixes. The test of an authentic future is not that is solvable but that it is plannable. Indeed, the test of the plan may involve trusting the future as the ultimate problem solver. In short, the future is R&D.

EXTERNALLY CONFIRMATORY AND COMFORTING The understandable need for reassurance and comfort is better found in searching for signs that the trend is already happening and discoverable right in our midst. To be sure, it may be occurring only occasionally or at the periphery, or it may be surfacing in immanent or piecemeal form. Recall

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Naisbitt’s argument—that all his Mega Trends originally appeared first in daily newspapers and weekly magazines. The key is for leaders and planners to be regular and intuitive future scanners: to attend conferences and listen to the buzz of far-out conversations, to begin to credit science fiction as the basis for science fact, and to pay more attention to “what if ” questions than “how to.” The nose of the future is always under the tent. Or it is like the footprint that Robinson Crusoe discovers on the beach: enigmatically, it was only one foot.

INTERNALLY VERIFIABLE Trends are not just discoverable, they are also created. When companies seek to go beyond the incremental gains of continuous improvement in order to find new and discontinuous ways of doing things, they in effect are coaxing the future to visit the present. Indeed, every genuine innovation does not merely anticipate but incarnates the future. The test of the innovation is not limited to improving the current business but identifyies totally new ones. When such developments surface internally as part of a company-wide commitment to innovation, that effort provides an available and confirmatory basis for assessing the capacity of trends similarly to stir new businesses. Indeed, if unacknowledged or unacted on, the chances are that others or start-ups will take it up and run with it. In short, a trend that possesses innovative potential not only earns a high score, but also establishes a two way reinforcing partnership—between the future and creativity.

COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE Because the future, like the Internet, is ubiquitous, it is equally available to all. No one has a monopoly on being proactive. Your competition is already studying the same trends you are. Indeed, anticipating what lies ahead and what directions to go in fact redefines the new nature of the competitive edge. Although it is obviously safer and easier to allow someone else to go first and to have them absorb the arrows, playing it safe may not only may jeopardize losing market share, but also playing catch-up of me-tooism may image you as a follower rather than a leader in the industry.

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So it is necessary to imagine how your competition will act on the same trends that you may still be studying. What might they come up with? The capacity to create and to entrust satellite or incubator operations with launching and living those future trends may in fact determine the extent to which the mother ship may survive and prosper. Acquisitions and mergers are often another name and means for leapfrogging into the future. The future is the competitive edge.

CULTURE DEFINITION AND IMPACT Trend testing also serves as culture testing. How we perceive, examine, and judge trends delineates the futures extent and capacity of the enterprise. Minimally, organizations sort themselves out as future-oriented, future-directed, or future-driven. The degree and extent of openness to and access from the future in turn determines whether trending is occasional, partial, and haphazard or permanent, compulsive, and systematic. Trend testing is thus like the familiar two-edged sword. It is doubly diagnostic: the perception of trends as well as the value attached to them is really a reflection and function of company vision and mission. If the trending process is not also self-defining and realigning, then the chances are not only that the trends and trend testing process itself will be unheeded but also that its potential life-threatening warning may be ignored. The future favors those who are driven to favor it.

NINETY DEGREE TURNS J. P. Dunleavy created the character of the ginger man in his novel of the same name. The gingerbread man is like his earlier counterparts, the artful dodger and the nimble Jack-be-quick. He developed a special talent. When he would see a creditor approaching, he instantly executed a 90-degree turn and thus moved off smartly in another direction to escape capture. Trends that possess such a similar capacity to change direction often reflect on the dexterity or rigidity of existing leadership structures to abandon the status quo. They also try to read or anticipate the plays of the other side and then to adjust accordingly. The future only yields to agile chess players. In summary, the twelve ways of testing trends can serve multiple uses. They can function as a possible set of additional criteria for developing a MITS—Management Information Trends System. Such a checklist also

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might be employed by decision makers, planners, and marketing strategists to identify future directions to contemplate and perhaps initiate. A key application is obviously training. Corporations and universities should be focused on not one but two cutting edges: the present and its next version down the road. Indeed, workshops and courses should be devoted to preparing the workforce of the future, not the least of which should be the new competency of trend generation and testing. Every academic degree program should be intentionally incomplete and open-ended, to the future of course. The MBA should be routinely reconfigured, extended, and projected as MBA-Plus. Above all, inculcating and encouraging the value of systematically thinking ahead in terms of trends may not only help to create new company cultures, but also restore surprise to definitions of survival and success. But trends are also the windows into the soul of the future. They not only tell us about what is to come, but also reflect the dynamics of their creator. Thus the summary below diagnostically links each of the twelve trends to its companion and fundamental match with the behaviors of the future. Trends Durability Impact Probability Assumptions Analysis Interoperable Redesign Premature Tactics Confirmatory Verifiabe Comparative Advantage Redefinition 90-degree Dexterity

The Future as Long-term Multiple Statistical Foundational Convergent Start-ups Embryonic R&D Innovation Competitive Edge Future-Driven Culture Agile Chess Players

This could also serve as the job description of the anticipatory leader.

Chapter 30

Overcoming Future Avoidance

Future avoidance happens regularly, routinely, recurrently, and almost compulsively. Here are some examples: • The future is usually the last item on the agenda. Meetings end without ever getting to it. Promises are made to carry the future over to next week’s agenda only to find once again that the urgent present preempts thinking ahead. And so the future languishes, undiscussed, unreached. • Human resource professionals are aware of the imminent retirement of baby boomers, currently 27 percent of the work force. They are busily gearing up to hire replacements. The only problem is they are using twentyyear-old job descriptions out of synch with industry changes. • CEOs are so preoccupied with achieving glowing quarterly earnings that they often put on the back burner or give short shrift to long-term business trends. They forget that over half the companies listed in Built to Last (2001) didn’t. • School boards scramble to find the money to build new schools, ignoring the trend that 35 percent of current students already are studying online and that the number is expected to double in two years. Senior citizens may be taking perverse delight at the prospect of converting unused schools into community centers. It perhaps would have been more intelligent to hedge the future by designing schools from the outset as multiple forms of real estate. Other examples could be added from virtually every sector, but they would only clinch what is clearly a major pattern of future avoidance or deflection. Although many other examples and case studies of futures neglect can be cited, the focus is on the failure of organizations to anticipate and to respond. 251

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Far from eliciting the self-righteous indignation of futurists and strategic planners about not being listened to, futurists and anticipatory leaders perhaps need to recognize that it is partly or largely their fault. There is complicity here. We are not totally innocent. Futurists scare people. We often browbeat or scold audiences or students on their short-sighted myopia. We breathlessly trot out a barrage of trends that are overwhelming and intimidating. Nothing stirs normal paranoia like encountering the ends of things—events and processes being illuminated and triggered by a series of what could be called endgames. Although regrettably there are many such endgames which often appear with in-your-face persistence, at least three are illustrative of the 360-degree convergent impact of having to imagine the unmanageable. WORK ENDGAME Jobs are no longer secure. An estimated 3.3 million service jobs will move out of the United States in the next ten to fifteen years. Between downsizing and outsourcing, and the decline of the manufacturing and now the service sectors, the workplace has become for many not only an uncertain and precarious place, but also a fertile breeding ground of cynicism. If job and income loss become the dominant motivator, what impact does such a frame of mind have on training and leadership? Will executive encouragement be cynically viewed as merely a manipulative way of extending productivity before the inevitable ax will fall? Why wait? Why not bail out as soon as possible? AMERICAN ENDGAME The United States is being used. It is not only the place where jobs leave. It also may become where American professionals also leave. For the first time in its history, the United States may see a significant portion of its population emigrate due to superior overseas opportunities. Acceding to forecasts, Generation Y, the segment born between 1978 and 1995, may be the first U.S. generation to spend large portions of their professional lives, if not all their adult lives, overseas. PLANET EARTH ENDGAME As if that were enough, planet vulnerability has become a frequent endgame. The prospect of global warming has invested the real estate scenario of coastlines with real urgency. The enormous populations of China and India

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and their pursuit of the American dream of consumption has given new and terrible meaning to global competition and environmental impact. In short, there is now a new competition for engaging the imagination. Can it be stirred and directed toward innovation, or will it be consumed by endgames? For better or worse, vision and mission—the mainstays of leadership—have become now the battleground for a contest for a workforce perfect storm. We impatiently leap ahead to a future which is so totally discontinuous from the present and worse from past futures that it reads like the science fiction profile of an extraterrestrial civilization. In short, inadvertently, perhaps, futurists may have given the future a bad name or rap. In the process, we also inadvertently may be creating or widening a futures gap, which ironically it is our task to bridge. To be sure, it is partly excusable. The future we faithfully portray is often diabolically disruptive. For example, it generally has wrecked the basic assumptions of strategic planning. Many constants are now variables. Narrow parameters have been forced to be more inclusive, even global. The planning environment itself has been made so complex and volatile that only computer modeling and simulation offer mastery. Risk analysis and management has been factored in and in the process compelled planning to be at least 50 percent contingency in nature. Early warning sensors have been introduced to such an extent that planning in many cases is largely a lit-up 24/7 monitoring screen. The net result is the embarrassment of generating contingency plans which define the long term as six months. It is like the oxymoron of another futures creation: crisis management. But what are we to do? The future in fact is often a hard sell. And evidently we are so good at it that we leave audiences and readers in a state of future shock. Disavowing that aim is as beside the point as is requesting not to shoot the messenger. Ecologists may find futurists and science fictionists soulmates. All three seek to persuade populations, companies, and nations to look ahead, to anticipate multiple and often lasting impacts of current behaviors and actions, to create and put in place alternative, more long-term systems and solutions, and finally to make all this change appear manageable and doable. But, put another way, all the worthy goals above mask the key obstacles all three share. Ecologists as the more recent champions thus may wish to join forces and find collective wisdom in what their two older partners have identified as the key common hurdles and what strategies have been developed to overcome them. But a number of tactics have become problematic, backfired, and even alienated prospective supporters.

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Before welcoming new allies in the common cause of anticipation, futurists and anticipatory leaders perhaps should first pause and review how they launch their initiatives and how they have fared. Below is a characteristic sequence of initial steps typically taken by many futurists to deliver the future but now accompanied by an analysis and evaluation of those standard approaches that perhaps need to be minimally questioned and even revised. The delivery system used by futurists typically involves three stages: dramatization, persuasion, and instruction. Sequence is also critical. The first stage always involves attention getting—dramatizing a new there. Toffler dubbed it future shock, Gore an inconvenient truth. Style still remains critical. The second is tougher because it involves not only keeping attention, but also discouraging deflection. The boat once launched has to weather the initial storm of second thoughts. Finally, the last stage has to put it all together but in a new global form and frame—a primer has to be provided on the nature of a future brave new planet. Below are elaborations of each stage, warts and all.

DRAMATIZING A NEW THERE The first task is always attention-getting—to find ways to get both the public and movers and shakers to look ahead to a future that may be troublesome. The standard approach pioneered by science fiction is to put the future in jeopardy—to render it vulnerable and fragile to technological transformations and cumulative disasters—to even threaten demise. But futurists who follow the lead of science fictionists often find themselves regrettably associated with these more sensational versions and then find subsequently that they then have to distance their projections by anchoring and buttressing forecasts with data and trends. But still credibility remains formidable—so much so that early warning advocates perhaps need to question the tactics of doom and gloom. Appeals to apocalypse do not work, for many reasons. Too many past examples of the sky falling—such as the prediction of digital chaos at the turn of the turn of the last century—did not happen, and thus many are skeptical of endgames. Then, too, to dramatize their point, most disaster scenarios picture the future as so helplessly passive and unresponsive to what is threatening its continuity that many find such inertia at odds with the way things are and how threats are generally responded to.

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Most troubling of all, the scale of the problem or the solution offered is either so total or draconian that it reenacts the collective paralysis of the drama of Everyman. The prospect of everyone or a great many having to change in the same way at the same time leads instead to a preference for the dictates of strong leaders or czars and/or for externally mandated and imposed solutions. The net result is that scare tactics, aside from generally being ineffective, inadvertently may turn over the future to those who may have put it in jeopardy in the first place. The solution? Scrap endgames altogether. Instead, the future and the planet have to be presented as livable and manageable in various forms and degrees. The range of options has to be spelled out in terms of a typical day five, ten, and twenty years from now in the daily life and work of average people. Ideally, those scenarios should be composed by those who will have to live those futures. If attention is to be secured, we need hope and choice, not despair and scapegoats, and a future that, for better or worse, is still there. Whatever interventions are called for, granting the future a future is still the highest priority and the best attention-getting tactic.

GETTING US THERE—DOABLE, DELIVERABLE The next step is perhaps the most difficult one for professional futurists to take—because it requires offering clear-cut clarities and assurances. Typically forecasters resist and regard such requests as compromising. But if they are to be listened to, the most obvious step is to be persuasively actionable. Instead we hem and haw and are not sure of our data and timetable, expressing uncertainty or qualifying what will happen and what will work. But all we have done is create an anxiety level equal to the threatening future we are portraying. It is irresponsible to dramatize without energizing. If indeed we are that uncertain, then perhaps we should instead be urged to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we—and the future itself—will die. In short, attention cannot be followed with paralysis. Minimally, futurists and ecologists have to offer three assurances: that what is being claimed is probable, solveable, and doable—that it is not fanciful science fiction but in fact good science and data, that change can make the difference, and, most important, that it can happen in this world, in real time with real and existing populations, institutions, and nations—and finally that it can last. The future portrayed must be not only credible, but also livable.

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NEW PARTNERSHIPS TO GET THERE—COOPETITION Here is where futurists finally can focus their sense of complexity by describing not only a new set of relationships for a new world but also its differentiation, diversity, and ambiguity. We have to be made more comfortable with the competing diversity and demographics of images of global futures. What has upped the ante is the overlay of global diversity and demographics. Traditionally individuals, companies, and nations carry around in their heads and histories different images of the future. They generally sort themselves out as a chronological continuum of past, present, and future. As such, they represent the various ways the future is perceived progressively, as a throwback or a dead end. Thus, generally three images dominate: the old, the now, and the next. What has complicated sorting out is the familiar dilemma that one’s heaven is another’s hell—and so ambiguity rules. Thus, the good old days are to others the bad old days; the now which is turbulent and unsettling to some is promising to others; the future may not be as bright to some but to others is the best yet to be. In other words, global time zones and demographics also reflect competing images of all the ways the future itself is perceived—the views of the Western world may be totally at variance with those of China and India. Stasis and progress now compete; cornucopia alternates with stark landscapes. Thus, futurists, in addition to being advocates for a generic future, have to assume the additional task of becoming cultural historians and straddling diverse and often conflictive images of a global future. Failing that, the global economy may pit nations and their images against each other and jeopardize the negotiation of collective action and planning. But for this to happen, common ground and cause has to be found. Futurists have to bring their expertise to bear on global cultural histories and demographics if the future is to become nationally and generationally deliverable and desirable. Scenarios minimally have to be bilingual, ultimately multilingual—they span worldwide. In summary, then, futurists have to change the ways they communicate, construct, and complicate what lies ahead. They must stop being alarmist and alienating. They must instead build an audience of advocates. And then they have to persuade them to take a series of next steps because these are not only smart but also doable things to do—not enormous or pie in the sky, but gradual ways of embracing future stretch and strain so as to forestall shock. Finally, the toughest task of all is to deal with unbridled competition of whose ox is gored. It is here where global vision has to come into play, grant national missions their due, and establish a new planetary order of coopetition. It is also here where futurists may find their new allies of ecologists indispensable.

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CREATING FUTURE-DRIVEN CULTURES Creating future-driven cultures also involves anticipatory leaders in three questions: who leads, what does it take, and how do we know when we get there? Often, the current learning agenda of organizations is not helpful. Minimally three issues beset such agendas. First, how do we replace productivity with innovation as the new source of competitive advantage? Indeed, the current preoccupation of finding ways to stir creativity has become so obsessive that it is almost herdlike. But if we all move collectively to think outside of the box, have we only succeeded in carrying the box with us? Second, learning program array is primarily preoccupied with updates and upgrades—with small and manageable incremental and sequential improvements—not with complete changes of direction. So we are locked in by what we do well. Finally, the ante has been upped. The prod is not just change but discontinuity—managing and surviving the enormous gaps between labor and machines, outsourcing and employment, domestic insularity and global traffic, organizational charts and informal networks, face-to-face and virtual teams, free trade and treaty capitalism. Although the list of gaps and disconnects is serious and almost endless, the focus on innovation tends to be small and narrow, almost frivolous and self-centered, and floats free of any of the big issues that in fact have made it necessary in the first place. It is thus without context—without cause and effect—without history. But why should it be so burdened? Because innovation is essentially a futures exercise—it not only constitutes the history of the future but also marks its creation—and as such grants companies so driven new life and longevity. But isn’t that a little heady—too big to take on? Typically we are better at fixing, tinkering, or tweaking than replacing—avoiding at all costs creating a totally new culture even though the handwriting to do so is on the wall. And so typically we settle on what is doable and deliverable—on piecemeal or smaller versions of all the major challenges so that they can be made more manageable as singular and unconnected, definable and researchable, clear and ambiguous issues. But in the process we have ignored the telltale intrusions of a totally new and 360-degree future. We know intuitively and statistically that we will have to live in a brave new world, but we are not sure how to get there, who will lead the charge, and what it will it will look like when we arrive—above all, how to start. Happily, there are five steps, minimally, to begin with.

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ANTICIPATORY LEADERSHIP Culture change is a CEO focus. Leadership is affirmed and confirmed when two factors converge: when what has to be done can be done only by top leadership and when what is required can come only from a singular and urgent initiative of executive vision. That in turn may define what companies should search for in a new CEO, or, better still, become the expectation of the current holder of the office whose change would dramatize the organizational capacity to pursue a totally new direction. In either case, CEO and the future have to become one.

START SMALL BUT EVERYWHERE Assemble, review, and adjust ever so slightly and slyly all in-house frameworks and timetables. Enlarge parameters to include more than before— gradually approximate 360 degrees. Encourage not stopping short at the present or even the short term, but pushing, no matter how tentatively, a little further—acting like an advance guard. And then report back what is found out there, and aggregate such feed-forward-feedback upward to strategic planning as an early warning/opportunity system. Also gather together teams of vice presidents and ask them to look carefully at all the ongoing processes they supervise and see whether any can accommodate more of a look-ahead perspective. For example, can performance evaluation include a speculative component and anticipate what changes might impact each job and its future performance? See how many across-theboard little leaps ahead can be quietly built in and wired in place.

NOT ALONE Signal that you are not the only ones involved in this journey into uncharted waters—or that what is being asked is reinventing the wheel. That you have colleagues, even partners. Create a futures page on your website (along with room for blogging) which lists the World Futures Society (which celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2008), its global counterparts in Copenhagen and Rome, the 3,000-year project, climate change organizations, and so on. In other words, that not only establishes credibility, but also links your culture change to what is being supported and undertaken by many respected professionals and organizations and gradually taking on the dimension of a collective and worldwide movement.

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Send some of your vice presidents and senior managers to attend different annual futures conferences. Meet with each afterward for breakfast, noting any changes in language, listening for any newness—excitement would be a bonus.

HOW WILL YOU KNOW WHEN YOU GET THERE? Two ways. First, conversations will change. There will be little more buzz and electricity in the air. Exchanges will be more frequent, entangling, breathless, and hurried; the focus will be different, lighter, more curious, even philosophical. There will also be a bit more playfulness and mischief: “What if” will replace “Yes but.” Ideas will be put forth and introduced with a new apology: “This may sound crazy, but suppose the following.” Above all, there will more enthusiasm and excitement—exclamation points will return to e-mails—conversations will resemble those of a start-up. Second, proposals to do things differently will begin to appear—from all areas and divisions—and range from the incremental to the innovative—from small to big, from the continuous to the discontinuous—from new, better, and shorter ways of doing things to total breakthroughs. All need to be equally welcomed and valued. The eureka moments should not crowd out everyday improvements which grant daily and incremental competitive advantage. Occasionally, a blockbuster will surface. Inevitably it will take on the form of a new business—one that never existed before—that is revolutionary. If seized, it will grant your company a new lease on life. If ignored, it may be taken up your competitor and put you out of business. Executive vision thus may start it all, but executive initiative still must be there to act and to save the day and convert the future into the present.

TURN THE FUTURE OVER TO THE WORKFORCE Not trickledown but bottom up, not vertical but horizontal, not along divisional but across divisional lines, shake up and engage all personnel at all levels with the future of their jobs and the company. It can’t be otherwise if the objective is changing an entire culture, and for invention to become the new norm and everyday expectation. The CEO’s goals? To become the future, to give it voice and vision, to bring all together as creative partners, and above all, to allow all to lead and anticipate.

Section IV

Conclusion

Chapter 31

Hybrid Intelligence Circular, Cyclical, and Convergent

Laser intelligence probes deeply into a topic but ignores opportunities to cross-pollinate. Searchlight intelligence may not probe as deeply but is always scanning the environment and therefore may more readily discern connections across spheres. Both types may synthesize but the contents they synthesize and the criteria for success will differ. —Howard Gardner (2007), Five Minds for the Future

The standard objection to identifying or classifying the number of leadership directions to a relatively few is that it strains credibility. Surely the choices are too many and complex—the timetable too intense—constituencies so extensive—situations so diverse—that the choices accordingly have to be as infinite in number and devilishly taunting But the essentials are not. In fact, the range of leadership types and intelligences designated over time is relatively small; and just as the classifications of cognitive essentials by a Maslow or a Gardner can be summed up by relatively few—five or so—properties, so almost all the main types of leadership find their equivalent in and are reinforced by and correlated to one or more of the those central psychological or cognitive directions. But the deeper answer is not the numbers but the coupling. Leaders link. Outstanding leaders do so frequently, often non-repetitively. They are self-altering. They are always seeking alliances of difference to extend their diverse reach. Their additions to their product line or service portfolio reflects their own growth by accretion and differentiation. But throughout the logo and the logic stays clear; the original choice remains steady; the brand inevitably accompanies the evolving adaptability. 263

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Thus, minimally multiple dramas are always going on in the corner office. Leaders call upon, borrow from within, and add different allies and partners to their primary identity, just as businesses acquire and add other businesses to their core business. Often triggered by the unique situations they face, all good leaders play this game of shuffling, molting, adding, and casting off old and donning new skin, because the drive of leaders and their companies is always Darwinian. In the process the impression generated is that there are an unclassifiable number of chameleon leaders on stage, whereas in truth there are really only a basic few doing their compulsive performance in a hall of mirrors. But the process of linking and becoming a hybrid is shared by all. Initially all incarnations of leadership—the Vertical, the Horizontal, the Intersectional, the Innovative, the Futuristic—are rendered and chosen separately and kept apart from each other for three reasons. First, to preserve the illusion of clarity of direction and argues for the separateness of substance. Second, to underscore historically how persistent, attractive, and powerful each direction is in it own right and has been over time. Third, to posit that they are all still available as self-contained and standalone options—that as choices they still command the respect granted and tested by history and by current leaders who in fact affirmed their value again by selecting them as their leadership styles. But now it is time to complicate and multiply the complexity of choice—to describe the evolving drama of adaptability. Although directional leadership dramatizes the singular act of decisiveness, and although the traditional number of choices has remained essentially constant, how does one account for the appearance of so many other and different choices and leadership styles? Virtually every new book or seminal article on leadership adds another icon to the leadership Parthenon. But when stripped of its contemporary dress and examined more closely, what appears is the proverbial variation on a theme—not new but rather multiplied. Through inbreeding and cross-breeding, what have appeared are eclectic combinations and amalgams. But the essential archetypes are still recognizable and still drive and animate the subsets. Thus, the special and even tyrannical advantage of each direction does not preclude its being combined and even fused with others into unique clusters—the power of that synthesizing searchlight exposes connectors and connections between directions which grant leaders the further option of adoption, adaptation, and integration. Thus, the incremental abundance of the Vertical can be blended with the network intimacy of the Horizontal, aligned with the multiple smarts of the

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Intersectional, and projected ahead through scenario to the future of the future and the anticipatory. Or, in more familiar terms, transformational and transactional can coexist in order to rotate and take turns doing what each does best. Indeed, the ultimate direction of such differentiated continuity is in fact the circular intellect, the perfect symbol of 360, the elastic metaphor of the twenty-first century where all leadership options coexist and sit equally at the knightly round table as representatives of the basic leadership types. In fact, each hybrid acquires its add-on by the circular process of being surrounded and being assimilated into the core. But to understand the impulse to cross over, to adopt and adapt the traits and brand of another type, we have to pause and to address this supreme version of annexation which in fact is at the heart of each hybrid in embryonic form. How do hybrids of intelligence happen? Is the dynamic process common to all leadership types? Five major stages are involved. COLUMN A CHOICES The first stage is usually singular and tyrannical. It always starts with one of the basic five choices. It is a fit with who the leader is, a congenial match of his motivation, make-up, and passion—it is what the leader perceives to be his lifelong direction and source of distinction—what he will accomplish. It is a heady start—full of energy and enthusiasm—creating new egalitarian rituals of walking the factory floor or welcoming the early shift with coffee. He dresses down with everyone else on Fridays and comes to work without a tie and in jeans. Early on there is buzz about the new boss. He carries around with him the full force of his difference. As a transformer he changes every thing he sees, sometimes totally but always quickly and almost overnight. Initially no one questions the pace and the choices. As part of the mandate, trust and support coexist. Breathlessly, many wonder what is next. The brand is not only new, but also insistent and accepted. It is a fit for our times—it is what we need. The path is generally the same for all leadership choices. Starting out they need to stake out their claim, to put a stamp and brand on all that is pivotal and strategic—to send out a message of difference—that a new vision has arrived. Not everything or everyone is singled out initially, so followers have to learn to see the priorities and assemble a new hierarchy or pecking order. But what no one knows at this stage is that the leadership choice may be temporary—a Column A.

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CONSOLIDATION Sitting back in a reflective mood, our chosen CEO surveys the leadership scene of his industry and finds many counterparts. He is aware that this is no accident. History has preferences and in times of paradigm shifts favors the Changer, or in discontinuous times the Anticipator. He also increasingly recognizes that leadership is a creation of history and that the leadership direction he has chosen has also been chosen for him. Rapidly, then, his ego and early successes set him apart and grant him the distinction of a brand. Above all, he may from the outset, or later on, reconfigure his executive team. His choices either reinforce his leadership style or supplement it, or combine both. In either case, his choices are telling. They quickly reveal whether he seeks to surround himself with good old boys, Harvard college chums, or mavericks. Seldom examined as predictive of later evolution, the inner circle helps the leader become aware early on of what is available in the outer circle. Consolidation thus offers the security, comfort, and time to consider other leadership choices.

CHANGE IMPACTS Why? Because no matter what leadership direction he has chosen, context trumps all. The industry changes, competition becomes increasingly global, unhappy economic cycles take over, Washington seeks to regulate executive pay, corporate scandals and meltdowns occur, too big to fall or fail is no longer true or consoling—in short, endgames surface with increasing persistence. Suddenly leaders are presented with choices they did not expect to make or that they thought were already subsumed and taken care of in the original choice. In fact, remaining intact and going back to the same well again and again is what many leaders initially do—and to their peril continue to do. It is understandable. They seek to remain a match with their talent, but alas that strength is now a weakness—a mismatch with what they have to lead. Old solutions are trotted out, but doing the same old, same old does not cut it. The board begins to rumble—there is talk of bringing on a new CEO— one who is better at positioning the company to survive current turbulence and preserve its future. The word on the street is that the gulf between the incumbent and present circumstances is too great for him to bridge. Whatever he does appears to be not just tried and tested but tired and bested—the same old, same old, as the only arrow in his quiver.

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Is that the way it has to be? Not according to what other like-minded leaders in similar situations of discontinuity have done. Column A looks across the aisle at Column B.

GROWTH OPTIONS Success often masks two failures. First, the major problem talented leaders face is being a prisoner of their own successes—of believing that that makes them a man for all seasons. The second that having reached the top they are finished—they just have to stay the course and keep doing what has brought them success before. But three early warning signs regularly surface. Their boards are restless. Members of their executive team increasingly talk about changing direction. The leader’s executive coach, or the leader himself, begins to read the handwriting on the wall. If he has remained a student of the literature of leadership and bolstered his executive intelligence, he understands that his learning curve is not over, that leadership is not a one-time choice, that who he is now is not all he can be. The truth is that most leaders who survive the crisis of their initial singular identity already have been contemplating and changing over time. He begins to sample and nibble at what the other leadership choices have to offer. Are they the road less traveled? If chosen, where would he be now? He looks around to study what all the other newly appointed recent leaders seem to have in common and to bring to the table. How different are they from him? And is that difference acquirable? Finally, he decides to arrange a retreat and to convene a seminar of his executive team with only one item on the agenda: what do we have to become as a company and as its executives to remain viable and sustainable until at least 2020?

THE BIRTH OF HYBRID LEADERS/INTELLIGENCE There are many reasons for hybrids—not all of them flattering. The most obvious is a confession of limits. Leaders frequently do not wish to go out a limb. They also can’t, or are reluctant to, change their spots. They thus need the reassurance of testing the waters—manageable stepby-step intermediate points of stretch. Above all, hybrids are tentative—gobetweens—they can function as feelers—beachheads until they are solid enough for commitment.

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But what is surprising is how that originally manipulative nature of hybrids becomes affirmed and embraced as not only the way for a leader to change initially, but also as the permanent process for all subsequent growth. The scaffolding is never discarded, but stored for another use next time. Our leader is finally led to acquire another leadership identity and passion. Initially he may not be comfortable in this new skin—it is not exactly a match. And even later it is not as final a fit as the original primary talent. At best it is a shadow, an alter ego, a secret sharer—a sign of his uncertain future of fusion and integration. Curiously, he worries most about the future of his brand and how he shall be now known as a hybrid.

THE IDENTITY OF THE HYBRID LEADER The unique nature of the hybrid leader is that he is an amalgam. At his core is metamorphosis and aggrandizement. The hybrid is no respecter of boundaries; nothing is ever ruled out or out of bounds. He has no fixed or final shape. He is unboxed from the start. Like a chameleon, he can administer different strokes for different folks. He is unconcerned whether the gurus of leadership theory or critics of history lament his eluding their established categories or creating new combinations which exceed their obedient ones. He does not fit into either round or square holes; he overlaps Myers-Briggs quadrants; he is neither fish nor fowl; he is a one-of-a-kind widget who somehow can talk to all kinds of widgets. He does not follow the rules; he is not content with only one chance at the golden ring. He is totally accommodating and inclusive and gives new meaning to one size fits all. Thus, whereas the Vertical ascends, the Horizontal moves forward, the Intersectional straddles, the Innovative breaks new ground, and the Futuristic leaps ahead, the Hybrid Version of all five is circular in nature. It moves like an amoeba in many directions often at the same time—and its shape at any given moment is temporary. It leaves its mercurial stamp on a reconfigured executive group which operates as a circular tag team. The passing of the baton is a nonstop succession process; the favored structure of the executive team is a protean network. Finally, like all the other directional choices and the leadership types, the process of becoming a hybrid has its own characteristic style and language.

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The circular consolidates and brings all together. It is the agent of becoming a hybrid. It embraces the totally inclusive acts of synthesis—one-of-akind, constantly ongoing, and unpredictable in its combinations. It departs so completely from the norm of specialization on the one hand and of steady incremental growth on the other that it seems to belong only to the realm of the genius or of extraordinary leaders. Thus, a list of some of its ultimate circular types reads like the high points of civilization: Moses, Homer, Plato, Buddha, Alexander, Caesar, Christ, St. Augustine, Mohammed, Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Einstein, and so forth. What makes them circular, and what do these exemplary figures share in common? Minimally, five characteristics: 1. History. They are all intensely historical—they see themselves as leaders made by and yet beyond their time—their coming on the scene is not regarded as accidental but fortuitous (in some cases as prophetic). They often see and depict their day and its institutions as petty, punitive, stifling, and fragmented—bordering on collapse, yearning for redirection. Their works, acts, and language are always that of making things and souls whole, of connecting, including and empowering whatever and whoever has been excluded back into the fold. 2. A Mover and a Shaker. The hybrid is busy and engaging. Nothing is left undisturbed. Sooner or later, everything and everyone is affected. The hybrid favors redefining or creating new forms and structures that will accommodate the newly enfranchised and liberated—that welcome the diverse, not just the familiar—that bypass the predicable and stagnant channels and combinations of knowing which inhibit and block change. 3. Vision. The hybrid is inevitably a visionary. He sees things differently; he turns things upside down and inside out; he asks problems to solve themselves; he foresees things, people, professionals, fields, nations, and disciplines coming together in ways they never have before. 4. Creativity. He celebrates creativity—the restless and uncompromising of innovation as the nexus of the intersectional—plodding along the slow, steady path of the lab as well as the eureka moment which has not just built a better mousetrap but gotten rid of mice as a problem altogether. 5. Holistic. The circular absorbs, internalizes, and connects all directions to each other—the Vertical, the Horizontal, the Intersectional, the Innovative, and the Futuristic—into a unique miniature of the whole. Although in the process new and unpredictable versions of leadership option and

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definitions may evolve, they all will embody the one new norm of the circular—the hybrid. All of history, in fact, can be surveyed in terms of hybrid moments, personages, and structures. The above list is in fact exemplary. But the problem with such a list is that it is often inhibiting, paralyzing, and misleading. It creates the impression that one has to be among the giants to deserve being designated as a circular. The truth is that the circular comes in all sizes, at all levels, in all fields— wherever things, people, and forms are put together in ways in combinations that are new; generates energizing and synergizing bonds of belonging; makes strange bedfellows of diverse partners and above all displays their hybrid nature. Indeed, it is precisely that nature that defines the circular version of the twenty-first-century leadership. Minimally, all the current major developments before us are circular hybrids: machine-human fusion of intelligence and brain research (the Singularity—Kurzweil), genetic-environmental (internal and external) optimum reconfigurations, and relationship management of the collective network science and team co-sharing. Everything has been doubled up, folded into each other. The far off suddenly is nearby. What has been negated or solved unexpectedly has come back to haunt us or demand reentry. We have run out of singular words to describe new and elusive dynamics; our favorite mark of punctuation has become the hyphen. The dilemma of language dramatizes that it cannot easily describe itself. Indeed, what we are finally left with, and what in fact distinguishes the vision of circular leaders, is a reality that is not just fluid but that moves in all directions at the same time. The only form of temporary comprehension dictated by such a dynamic is that of hybrids inhabiting and shaping same circle. The future itself, like the optimum leader it creates, is thus circular. A major character in its own right, it is regularly unrespectful and prematurely arrives ahead of schedule—and, most troubling of all, introduces directions and prospects that elude conventional planning. But the ultimate role of the circular leader is to critique other leaders—to point out what is missing and needed—to underscore that they have to evolve—to urge upon them the internal reconfiguration of becoming hybrids, and thus finally to model a double creation: to be a mirror of their hybrid time and also to be finally unclassifiable, inimitable, one of a kind.

About the Author

Irving H. Buchen earned his PhD at Johns Hopkins University and is a member of the doctoral business faculty of Capella University. He has taught and been an administrator at Cal State, the University of Wisconsin, and Penn State. An active consultant, executive coach, and researcher, he is the author of eight books (soon to be nine) and over 200 articles. A charter member of the World Future Society, he currently serves as training editor for The Futurist magazine.

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