Brendan Guenther's Portfolio & Blog

We read a Warren Bennis article this week, called "Exemplary Leadership Is Impossible Without Full Inclusion, Initiatives, and Cooperation of Followers". The article highlighted the importance of fostering organizational change from the body of the organization, rather than the top. The author, Warren Bennis, argued that assumptions that organizational change be driven by strong leaders from the top can be false and are maladaptive in our current era. A strong leader, without a sufficient body of followers, will have their talents negated.

Bennis encourages leaders to curate talent by understanding when and how to show appreciation for the work and talents of others. The focus of our efforts should be less on our own accomplishments and ego, but more so on others contributions and potential. He also encourages leaders to remind their followers what is important and why they are doing the work. The article also reminds leaders of the importance of a true knowledge of self, and authenticity to your own identity as a source of confidence with which one can accept the encroachment of others and build trust. Bennis argues that by working in alliance, great leaders are made by the strong groups they work with, based on a "social architecture of respect and dignity".

In my career I often have the task of trying to lead people past the point of inertia. Often this is associated with trying something new, committing to a course of action, or deciding between alternatives. I think I've become an amateur scholar of decisions, and probably could just as easily have pursued graduate study in psychology or economics.

This semester our campus has been deliberating about what our future LMS should be. Learning Management Systems are very complex and can easily be seen differently in the eyes of the beholder. Really, these systems merely facilitate, as the actual teaching and learning is composed of the content, activities, and interactions of the users of the system.

This semester one of my primary leadership tasks, in the blocking and tackling part of actually getting work done at the university has been to help guide the selection process for our next learning management system. At different times I've had to focus my attention on explaining the need for change, marshalling interest in participation, evaluating people's opinions, structuring a scientific approach to collecting evidence.

As is usually the case in university decision making, I've had to counsel many different audiences. There are people that think no decision need be made. Others don't want to be bothered with the details. Each alternative has a loud and partisan band of loyalists for a variety of reasons. Some are loyal in perception, some got socially connected to a "side", while others just prefer the only alternative that they already know. Throughout the process I've enjoyed opportunities with my team and the larger campus to call them back towards a critical analysis of each alternative. At this point in the process I can honestly say that both are good alternatives for different reasons, and it's nice to know that regardless of the outcome the decision has reached a point where there will be things to build positively around.

One of the articles we read for class this week focused on how to develop leadership throughout the organization. This particular article caught my eye because of the connection to an interest of mine. I have some parts of my organization in which the leadership is so pervasive, the only challenge is collective selection of which organically generated initiative to pursue. Other parts operate transaction by transaction, and lean so heavily on the formal supervision chain that I'm concerned nobody can live up to the expectations if they were put "in charge" at the top.

The article has the misfortune of identifying publicly traded companies, based on performance, as data points worthy of analysis. Thus they included the Enron of the 1990s prior to the discovery of fraud and the subsequent implosion. It creates an interesting cautionary tale in terms of the advice provided in the article.

The authors note that after their analysis, "what is striking is that none of the companies we studied stresses all twelve of the systems we identified. Instead, they each focus on managing a few systems tightly, while leaving the others loose." What I'm trying to determine is which systems to implement thoroughly throughout our organization and which to leave loose. Clearly Enron maximized the ability of individuals within the company to create new lines of business and operate independently. Given their penchant for energy "trading" and the creation of swap markets, this allowed for a flourishing of new trading opportunities. Clearly since they loosely controlled the audit process, by the time they realized some of their markets were designed to conceal losses, they were trapped in a coverup scheme.

As our reorganization moves forward, I'm confronted repeatedly with the task of encouraging groups to clarify their values and share them with our broader group. We don't all share common values. Each distinct part of our organization seems to share some commonalities among the individuals. These are shaped by the nature of their work, the kind of person the profession attracts, the reputation of the team, the customers they interact with, and what the organization needs from them. For some, innovation is critical... while for others the risk associated with it makes it unwelcome.

Much of what is being generated also becomes shaped by the reorganization and the messaging around it. Since we are certain we are operating with a strained relationship to other parts of campus, we are focused intensely on relationship based values. Even internally the tensions associated with change have us particularly focused on keeping the peace and with civil discourse. Necessarily, these values rise to the top under such pressures, but are they really timeless and necessary for long-term success, or merely until we reach an equilibrium?

I believe that working through such questions about ourselves, and our groups is important. It helps us collectively form an identity and to find out individual place in the tribe. On the other hand, such discussions are only fruitful if we can associate our values with how we desire to be, to change, and to behave. If we can not hold ourselves accountable to realizing our values in our lived behavior, they remain aspirational.

I think holding attention on the ideal and the reality of where we currently stand is an important part of leading organizational change. This is the importance of adaptive work in an organization, and values help create the tension between the ideal and the real.

One of the book chapters we read for class this week came from Carl Weick, and was titled "The Legitimation of Doubt". I found this chapter helpful in the ongoing reorganization efforts I'm participating in this semester. Such sweeping changes in structure and purpose for individuals necessitates a series of leaps, taken partly on faith. One hopes that they have correctly identified the problems, and that the direction forward has merit and worth. It's worth exploring the doubts about the way forward and to legitimize individual's perceptions, sense, and ability to make sense. Weick reminds us "the map is not the territory". Often when we threaten individual and group identity, the safety of belonging or of being seen as a loyal follower can yield group think or denial of reality.

One of the relieving things about Weick's ideas, is that it lowers the bar on selection of a change agenda or program. He does emphasize that while the specific content isn't important, it must trigger sustained animation, provide direction, forces attention on what is actually happening, and facilitate respectful interaction.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been reading "Leadership Without Easy Answers" by Ronald Heifetz. This book is proving particularly valuable for the organizational change we are trying to make in my workplace at the moment.

Heifetz writes from a public policy leadership perspective, but what he writes about is relevant to any leader attempting to lead the moral development of followers, to change deeply held values. Heifetz refers to this as adaptive work, leadership that enables a group to face the harsh reality that change is necessary to survive/thrive and begin shifting values to match a necessary future state.

This is exactly what we are talking about within the ranks of central information technology at MSU. We've come to realize that if we continue to operate with the social norms and values of the past, that it will be increasingly difficult to thrive.

This study examines the usefulness of viewing leadership in terms of adaptive work. Adaptive work consists of the learning required to address conflicts in the values people hold, or to diminish the gap between the values people stand for and the reality they face. Adaptive work requires a change in values, beliefs, or behavior. The exposure and orchestration of conflict-internal contradictions-within individuals and constituencies provide the leverage for mobilizing people to learn new ways.38 In this view, getting people to clarify what matters most, in what balance, with what trade-offs, becomes a central task.

Ronald Heifetz. Leadership Without Easy Answers (p. 22). Kindle Edition.

I was recently exposed to some material from the CIO Executive Council. They've created a concept called the "Future-State CIO" that challenged an organization's technical executive to transcend the role of service provider.

When we gathered the whole staff together towards the end of our VP's Q&A session, someone asked something to the effect of "what should we do next?", meaning the staff. He went into the details of all the mechanics that would have to change, account numbers, unit codes, etc. The day before when we were preparing for the meeting, it was clear we didn't want to turn all the staff into newly minted missionaries and send them forth onto campus, but we also didn't want them focusing on all the internal machinations that were necessary to pull the relabeling off.

We wanted them focused on the values and behaviors exercise while the administrative assistants took care of all the accounting details. I asked him to stop and redirect his answer in to what we had discussed yesterday, that this was "boring stuff" and the "values are what is important".

Our recent reorganization of IT services has provided plenty of opportunity to reflect on leadership messaging. Leadership is often the act of explaining, helping others interpret events and shaping the discourse of the group. As a senior leadership team, we have been trying to refocus the group's attention on our collective values and critical behaviors. The natural tendency has been to focus on the changes in organizational structure. Who reports to who, where is my team, when are we moving? This isn't where the attention of the group matters, it is a short term worry.

We read a number of pieces for class last week that focused on female leaders, feminine leadership identity, and the contextual influences that gender has on leadership situations. For me this was an opportunity to reconsider aspects of the current reorganization effort in MSU's Libraries, Computing and Technology.