Are we Leadership Hypochondriacs?

Ayelet Baron recently shared her article in IT Business Canada, “How to stop the band-aid solutions for 21st century leaders”, which is a good read for a new approach to leadership practices as opportunities for this new millennium, and a drastic change from the past hundreds of years of business. She has a bold willingness to think different, as are many of the cohort of other thinkers she directly shared it with (Jane McConnell, Bill Jensen, Jon Husband, Marcia Conner, myself and more.)

But, part of a willingness to think different is also think that we might be wrong, otherwise we are simply an echo chamber. So I will play the devil’s advocate here (as I often do). There is no animosity here to Ayelet, but I see debate as a way for progress.

So far, most people who are saying these things are wrong are management scholars, and we consultants—yes, everyone on her list seem to be one. The executives who agree we label as enlightened, and those who don’t or don’t even register it, we denigrate and demonize. More so, it is usually leaders who are the easiest to demonize and blame for everything, while trying to take the side of the followers / workers. This approach has been used throughout history by advocates, from everything from religions to business to politics.

The article begins with two assumptions: 1. the conclusion (the bleeding, the band-aid) is true; and 2. that organization leaders see that is happening. I’d posit that these aren’t perceived as so by the majority of organizational leaders.

We have had several revolutions that accelerated the face of human society: (a) Industrialization; (b) Scientific progress, development & commercialization; (c) and most recently (since the 1970s) a financial revolution. The last one in particular has been driving businesses towards scale & perpetual growth, towards making money for its own sake first, and then solving global, local and even customer issues second. This last one also has been practically burning the candle at both ends for a brighter but shorter spark.

Companies aren’t bleeding in that sense because org leaders see that the primary goal of making money continues to accelerate for them. Customer continue to buy from them. The markets celebrate the biggest accelerators and gainers the world over. It lifts economies that directly impacts those individuals with investments, and indirectly affects the rest. It isn’t anywhere near some semblance of balance of course, but that isn’t the concern of the perpetual-growth-set. Excessive inequality is a system-wide problem, not what any one organization sees as something they should try to solve.

That drive for continual growth pushes everything. Design your organization to structures best suited for speed: increase productivity however you can; add newer technology; replace units (people) with newer versions; reduce long-term investments for shorter 3-5 year opportunities; strive for economies of scale; applaud and reward the biggest outputs and achievers; fund unicorns; and don’t make changes that might derail the plan.

In the meantime, people all throughout the organization find themselves dealing with both the speed, and trying to keep up with the increasing oncoming outsides changes & trends from the industry and economy, while keeping in line with the requirements (legislation, internal policies, business agreements, process, etc.) Most —and I mean from the workers, middle managers, and leaders alike--simply feel there aren’t enough resources to do beyond the minimum. They aren’t necessarily bad people. They aren’t also fools or all misguided. They’re generally guided to this above different reason that this group thinks is damaging in the long run.

All these suggestions that they change their gestalt strategy and identity are meaningless tropes, or at best, things that are nice to smile and wave to the public.

[Edited: I removed the quote. It was the Socrates; actually, from a character named Socrates in Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives, byDan Millman: "The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new." I still do like it.]

So are we hypochondriacs?

I don't think we are hypochondriacs. Yet, we see pain and problems that affect the health that isn't yet universally accepted. Over the decades, more voices have added where this is now moved from ridiculous to plausible, but we still see the need for the change to happen.

Change of this sort is difficult because we are trying to convince terribly busy people that there is something else that is better and more rewarding. But the rewards they are currently used to are well recognized, while these are not. More so even when they agree, they need some assurances.

Show some signs they really work, more than on an experimental level; more than on one-off unique examples; more than organizations that were designed this way from the very beginning. Show that steps can be taken for an existing organization. If you’re asking people to abandon their current organization for a new one, some assurances that the new one will provide them with a sense of security in able to maintain their current level of needs.

If you want to see that change on a wide basis, then you need both the examples, and time in progress. Simply saying the current models are wrong in however many ways, creating new words and catchphrases, and getting into echo-chamber lovefests that produce more ideas doesn’t cut it.

As Kenneth Mikkelsen said in Ayelet's thread, let’s get to the HOW and actual live implementations, even if small. One year of a new model isn’t enough of an example, even 3-5 years is still as short a term as we say leaders focus on. Ongoing changes and Small victories are nice to celebrate but lets not blow things out of proportion that it will change everything. It will take time, patience, perseverance, and most of all direct involvement in organizations to make the change, rather than talking about it from afar.

My own suggestions some of which I hope to myself accomplish somewhere in some organization soon:

• Work with what exists. Design models that could apply to that organization in their current state.
• Start small, but look for things which can apply broadly.
• Create new points of stability: define new job roles, altered processes, new verifiable outputs and KPIs, develop people as new stars.
• Rethink the culture as a mesh between how your organization really behaves, and how you could collectively envision it; not just what someone declared as organizational values.
• Be an itinerant navigator: Guide the way, grow the system, and plan not to always be at the helm.