A633.4.3.RB_BrianneGowens_Changing Dynamics of Leadership

Shifting Leadership – No More Charade

The charade is this – leaders who should know how to address organizational issues don’t know, yet they pretend they do (Obolensky, 2014). At the same time, lower level employees know how to address the issues, but they refuse to speak up when it really matters, turning their suggestions into watercooler gripes instead (Obolensky, 2014). However, Obolensky argued that a shift in leadership is taking place, and this is evidenced by the growing number of complex adaptive leaders in the workforce. Complex adaptive leaders are open to open communication, suggestions from the bottom, and even being challenged on their strategies if such challenges are backed by thoughtful evidence.

So, why don’t all managers behave as complex adaptive leaders? One reason may be due to the fact that employees generally hold their leaders more accountable today than they ever have before (Obolensky, 2014). The business environment is changing rapidly and all of this makes it increasingly difficult for leaders to maintain the reputation that they know it all. Employees today have higher expectations and they often have instant access to answers as a result of increased advancement in technology and smart devices (Obolensky, 2014). These expectations may reduce the confidence of certain leader, which makes them more defensive and less willing to collaborate with employees below him or her.

The shift towards a more collaborative leadership style is happening because businesses simply can’t afford for their leaders to ignore the real organizational problems anymore. “We live in an era of risk and instability,” where companies are failing daily and new entrants are lurking around every corner (Reeves & Deimler, 2011). This complex business environment requires that leaders embrace adaptability and utilize every resource possible in order to propel the organization towards success. Some of the companies most valuable resources are the lower level employees who, studies show, know most of the solutions to organizational problems but aren’t motivated to share them. This shift in leadership styles brings forward leaders who can adapt to unexpected changes and who value collaboration. Business leaders recognize these traits as critical attributes in today’s complex environment.

Is the Shift Indicative of My Organization?

My organization is undergoing a lot of change because of a very significant number of retirements over the past few months. At this point, we have at least five executive retirements out of a group of only 15 or so executive positions - and none of them have been backfilled. This means there will be a major change in personnel throughout the organization in the coming months. If the trend in my organization continues, I expect to see much younger employees promoted into executive leadership positions, as there was also a large push to promote the younger generation 3-5 years ago.

With retirements of senior employees and promotions of young up-and-comers, one might assume a more complex adaptive leadership style will penetrate the organization.  Oddly enough, this hasn’t exactly been the case. Many of the leaders who have taken the reigns over the past few years are trained to behave in exactly the same top-down manner as their predecessor. Several young leaders have joined the executive ranks and have immediately walled themselves off from active communication with the workforce. In many ways, the new leaders are more traditional than the 60+ year old leaders who are finally hanging up their hats. But why is this happening?

I believe it’s a combination of things, starting with the fact that several of these new managers learned how to lead by closely following and emulating the behaviors of the senior managers that mentored them throughout their career. According to Berkun (2009), younger managers are difficult to work for because “a boss they admired was an a**hole [and] in trying to emulate someone more powerful than themselves, they didn’t separate the good qualities from the bad.” Another factor at play is the potential insecurities these younger leaders feel when they are put into a position that fills the shoes of someone who was much more experienced than them. Many leaders simply thrive on the feeling of being more powerful than others, and this feeling may be exacerbated for younger leaders who manage their people their own age, but also manage employees who are older and more experience. Berkun (2009) describes this as relying “on their guns, not their minds, which enslaves the people who work for them out of using their minds either.”

3 Reasons to Support or Refute the Position

With all of that said, there are a handful of leaders who have recently been promoted into executive management roles and who are doing their best to break the charade. Three executives that I interact with regularly, Joe, Jen, and Kate, have completely changed the way traditional leaders in my organization behave.

Kate, for example, is highly engaging with the working team – rewarding strong performance with positive feedback and appreciation. In addition, she isn’t afraid to change tasks around within the team and constantly “seeks out the best fit possible between members’ skills and the tasks that need doing” (How to Lead, 2009).  Kate is smart and assertive, but also willing to listen and then ask thoughtful questions. When she doesn’t know how to solve a problem, she encourages a more interactive discussion with the work group, offering statements like “here’s what I think, what about you?” (Obolensky, 2014). Kate truly highlights Obolensky’s (2014) challenge and support approach to breaking the charade.

Joe is one of the most knowledgeable leaders I have ever interacted with, and somehow my interactions with him always leave me feeling as if I have in some way made him think about something in a way he hadn’t thought about it before. This is because Joe is the exact opposite of a leader who plays the leadership charade. The historical leadership charade leaves leaders pretending to know the answer to something when they really don’t, because they don’t have the humility to admit they’re unsure (Obolensky, 2014). When Joe doesn’t know something, he says “I am not sure” and almost always suggests “let’s see if we can find out.” Rather than research for the solution to the problem so than he can come back and impart his newfound wisdom on the group, Joe takes the person with a problem on the hunt for answers with him. Joe isn’t afraid to learn something new, even if he’s learning it at the same time as someone who works at a lower level within the organization. Joe is an expert at utilizing Obolensky’s (2014) “I don’t know” approach.

Finally, Jen always starts a meeting by asking how things are going. She asks if there are problems she can help solve, and requests to get involved in the work if, and only if, someone needs help. She thinks very systematically, meaning she avoids “plunging right into the topic at hand” and instead observes the situation, listens, and asks meaningful questions (How to Lead, 2009). Shortly after a large group of new people started in the organization, Jen took it upon herself to set up weekly question and answer sessions, where employees could ask for her guidance and she could ask for their impressions and suggestions as well. Jen is clearly a master at utilizing Obolensky’s (2014) “dynamic question and answer session” approach to breaking the leadership charade.

Although leaders like Kate, Joe, and Jen are clearly exhibiting qualities of complex adaptive leadership, it’s difficult to call their behaviors the start of a shifting trend just yet. I believe my organization is slower to adopt the ideas of Obolensky’s Finite La Comedia, but I have hope that it is moving in the right direction based on the actions of these three great leaders. At this point in time, the leadership trend in my organization is confusing at best. I attribute this confusion to the incredible amount of change that has taken place all over the company. There is an obvious shift in the strategy at my company, which has been discussed in previous blog posts. This, paired with the growing number of retirees and rotation in executive leadership makes it hard to pinpoint exactly where the leadership shift is headed. I predict that all of this activity will start to settle towards the beginning of 2018, and it will be fascinating to study the state of the organization and its leaders between now and then.

Resources

Berken, S. (2009). Top 10 reasons managers become assholes. [Web log comment]. Retrieved from http://scottberkun.com/2009/top-ten-reasons-managers-become-assholes/

How to Lead When You're Not the Boss. (2009). Harvard Management Update, 14(3), 1-2.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (2nd ed.). New York, New York: Gower Publishing.

Reeves, M., & Deimler, M. (2011). Adaptability: the new competitive advantage. Harvard Business Review, 89(7/8), 134-141.

A633.3.3.RB_GowensBrianne_Complex Adaptive Systems

Google: A Complex Adaptive System

Despite an organizational trend leading companies to structure themselves as a cross functional and flat system instead of a hierarchical and controlling one, complex adaptive systems are still somewhat sparse (Obolensky, 2014). A true complex adaptive system (CAS) requires serious organizational evolution that addresses the way leaders think about things like the contributions of their employees. On top of that, these systems are willing to abandon ideas that don’t work and replace them with ideas that do (Obolensky, 2014). In a complex adaptive system, there is little to no fear of throwing out a process because it’s always worked in the past. Instead, the failing process is quickly abandoned and is replaced instead with a process that aligns with the current business atmosphere.

Google is a key example of a company that has embraced the CAS organizational structure and has profited in its reputation and its earnings as a result. One key element of a CAS organization is that it puts incredible weight on the feedback of employees at all levels. In most companies, feedback means one-way communication from the boss to the employee (Obolensky, 2014). In order to display the qualities of a CAS organization, leaders must develop an interactive communication style where they spend just as much time listening as they do talking.

At Google, employee input is so important that it instituted something called “20-percent time,” which allows employees to spend 20% of their time doing whatever they feel like – as long as it’s something that will in some way add value to Google (Weir, 2008). This 20% of time can be spent finishing extra work, pitching a new idea, taking with other functions on collaboration projects, or any other combination of things one could imagine. The point is that it allows employees to stop their “day job,” talk to one another, and collaborate directly with leadership.

The idea behind this approach is to improve each employee’s job satisfaction, but also to improve their ability to think in creative ways. Google relies heavily on the ideas of its employees to establish its strategy, predict market changes, and invent methods of adapting to those changes. Two way feedback, as well as two way strategy development are key CAS behaviors that suggest advanced organizational evolution.

Google also values the idea that its organization can function like a self-running machine instead of a machine that needs to be controlled (Obolensky, 2014). Google relies very heavily on the ability of its employees to be innovative and they feed this need by providing extra perks to its employees. These perks include things like allowing them facilities and time so that they can play games, go outside for a volleyball match, or even hit up the snack bar for a treat and cup of caffeine (Weir, 2008). This focus on innovation and the desire to build an organization that runs like a well-oiled machine is what enabled Google to become a $62 billion company between 1998 and 2014 (Ross, 2015).

Implications on My Organization and How to Move Forward

The approach that CAS companies like Google, Morning Star, and St. Luke have taken resulted from the understanding that the degree of clarity a strategy has is largely based on how that strategy came to be (Obolensky, 2014). Some of the muddiest strategies are those that were developed in large companies, by top level leaders, and then dumped on the rest of the organization. The behavior of these companies makes it clear that employees at all levels must have a say in strategy development. On top of this, these CAS companies make a deliberate attempt not to be too deliberate about strategy development, recognizing that sometimes a strategy simply emerges from collaborative discussion. As Hamel (1998) stated “no one seems to know much about how to create a strategy,” so there is a good chance that some of the best strategies create themselves when employees and leaders are provided the flexibility to interact.

My company can benefit from the approach of companies like Google because it has proven that the CAS approach can be hugely successful, even in an extremely competitive market. In order to move forward, my company must focus on three main actions. First, it has to become more interested in what its employees think. Boeing is a massive company and it can be difficult to formulate a way to gather feedback, analyze it, and determine an action plan based on that feedback, but it’s absolutely critical that top tiered leaders find a way to do just this. The hesitancy is understandable, considering that many employees would take the offer to provide feedback as an opportunity to complain about their pay, or their boss, or everything under the sun. However, leaders must be willing to put in the extra work associated with gathering key feedback from the workforce.

The second thing my company must do is learn how to be more adaptive to the changing environment. As Hamel (1998) pointed out, “in industry after industry, it is the revolutionaries – usually newcomers – who are creating the new wealth.” Boeing is not the newcomer and it never will be unless it completely changes who and what it is. Instead of attempting this change, Boeing must get better at adapting to its environment. Some of the ways it can do this is to better message the value it places on employees who exhibit qualities like flexibility and level-headedness. In my organization, the most ridged and high strung people seem to be promoted most often, and this is sending the wrong message.

Finally, Boeing put renewed value on creating and innovating, like Google, if it wants to emulate the qualities of a CAS organization. This might just be where Boeing faces the largest uphill battle because it is at such a steep disadvantage compared to others in the Seattle area. As a result of its work environment and culture, Boeing loses many young and creative minds to companies in the area like Starbucks, Microsoft, and Amazon, who all have reputations for making employees work hard, but rewarding them with a more enjoyable work environment and the confidence that their creativity is valued.

Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: Implications on my Organization

In his Ted Talk “Your Strategy Needs a Strategy,” Martin Reeves (2014) discussed the substantial changes to the way businesses view strategies in today’s environment. At one time, strategy was a buzz word throughout corporations. Leaders have invested copious amounts of time trying to find the perfect strategy to lock into their own organizations. But as strategy became more popular, the health of corporate America’s biggest businesses continued to fail. In fact, Reeves (2014) revealed that although strategy has historically been a buzz word in the largest corporates, only 7% of these giants are named in the list of the 3 most profitable companies in their industry. What this means, is that traditional strategy isn’t working. Rather, strategy has become an “old fashion” word that leaders today ignore rather than try and understand. As a result, the “winners are winning bigger” while the losers continue to struggle (Reeves, 2014).

This video clearly relates to my organization as The Boeing Company is one of the two major players in the commercial airframe manufacturing industry, yet they struggle from year to year to post the kinds of margins that some of the smaller manufacturers do. In addition, the suppliers supporting the production of Boeing aircraft are securing larger profit margins than Boeing generally does. Although there are certainly factors outside of Boeing’s control (oil prices, political unrest, economic downturn, etc), perhaps part of this discrepancy can be attributed to a need to revise the way Boeing thinks about strategy.

Reeves (2014) suggested that organizations refocus their efforts on finding the perfect strategy based on what they see others doing and realize that this is not a “one size fits all” solution. Organizations must be willing to experiment with their strategy, embrace change, and adapt to evolving situations. More importantly, they have to be comfortable with the idea of failure.

For example, Boeing has been discussing a reorganization of several of its departments for over half a year now, and to date there is no clear indication of when (or if!) a decision will be made. Boeing can’t afford to spend three months to a year planning a strategy that is obsolete within one month (Reeves, 2014). Simply put, indecisiveness can’t be afforded in this economy, especially when a company is fighting against aggressive and very successful competition. As Buytendijk (2010) depicted – strategy is all about making choices, both big and small. My organization can benefit from this video by understanding that the right approach to strategy is decided based on the situation at hand. This means that the right approach could be A today, but D next week. What Boeing cannot afford to do, is be irresolute and hope that somehow the decisions will get easier in time.

References

Bogage, J. (2016). Uber’s controversial strategy to finally defeat lift. Washington Post. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/23/ubers-controversial-strategy-to-finally-defeat-lyft/?utm_term=.83e89f317c32

Buytendijk, F. (2010). Dealing with dilemnas: Where business analytics fall short. TDWI Education. Retrieved from http://download.101com.com/pub/tdwi/files/MK_ Buytendijk_20100218.pdf

Hamel, G. (1998, Winter98). Strategy Innovation and the Quest for Value.  Sloan Management Review. pp. 7-14.

Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (2nd ed.). New York, New York: Gower Publishing.

Reeves, M. (2014). Martin Reeves: Your strategy needs a strategy [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/YE_ETgaFVo8

Ross, A. (2015). Why did Google abandon 20% time for innovation? HR Zone. Retrieved from https://www.hrzone.com/lead/culture/why-did-google-abandon-20-time-for-innovation

Weir, D. (2008). Innovation from the bottom up at google. CBS Money Watch. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/news/innovation-from-the-bottom-up-at-google/