Hack:
Let's take leadership out of the individual

You build a good case here, Joe, for our use of words to show progress or stagnation. Would you agree that folks like you who expand on topics (like leadership) and engage others, also help to reconfigure the definitions? Thanks for raising a vital key to transformation! Thanks for keeping this piece so brief that we are forced to spot and grapple with core challenges of change!

MBA programs I have taught in, clearly struggle with similar challenges of language that languishes. It’s why at the MITA Brain Center - we try to push the bus and ride it at the same time I suspect you do much of the same, and would be keenly interested to hear more about your program. Does it include innovation

Would you agree that leaders can motivate people to rethink how they are clinging to traditions – and to focus on redesigning their roles innovatively? That is not motivating others to align with one leader’s view – as much as it is facilitating people to change focus. Perhaps in ways that motive people to ride new surfs of innovation, for instance, rather than simply vent over barriers to profitability.

What do you think?

Joe, it’s refreshing to see how you are developing better ways to work collectively, and the brain based insights can come alongside your own research here.

You and I agree on the fact that motivation at its best – is usually intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Love your notion of cultivating space for motivation to grow: “I prefer something like establishing conditions where people feel free and unconstrained to motivate themselves.” Had most of us waited for others to motivate us – we’d be on waiting lists everywhere
I am curious about your notion of questioner – since the MITA model starts with a 2-footed question. Can you elaborate a bit more on your statement:
“But the manager is involved too as an inquirer – even to the level of his or her own self-distanciation,
meaning the state where one can literally “take distance” from the usual non-reflective ways that we tend to see things. “
What an interesting look at both intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence and these work together in team work where we take the chance to open up with others we grow to trust. What adventure lies ahead for those who find innovative pathways with others who add different – but equally valuable components to the innovation.
Joe, I am intrigued with the notion of taking leadership out of the individual – and with the innovative process that follows. Thanks for the challenges to help that process along – as a way of the future.

Joe: I respect and appreciate the way you have recast 'leadership' as a form of teaming with others, rather than as an individual accomplishment. The best leaders are also excellent team-players, and while they can certainly create conditions for people to be self-motivating, they can also foster the kind of human synergy that causes internal motivation to resonate and 'come alive' in ways that can only be described as inspiring. This has been felt by anyone who has ever worked on a team in which 'the whole' truly became greater than the sum of its parts.

The need for an enduring source of inspiration exists in every organization. Too often, the need goes unfulfilled. But we know through Role-Based Assessment that some people are drawn to contribute this way in a group. They have the drive and the ability to motivate, to inspire, and to attract people who are drawn to serving other kinds of organizational needs. Being attracted to a specific organizational need (long-range planning vs. executing tasks vs. preserving and imparting knowledge, etc, etc) is what we call Role, and it is measurable with TGI Role-Based Assessment. RBA supports the idea that the mission of the team will determine which Role can best fill the position of "leader," and that--on any given team--many team members contribute to leadership.

I trust it will be right to conclude your viewpoint as "Leaders must be good followers". That is not my original phrasing. It had settled in my head from my readings. A Google search revealed it to be the key message of motivational speaker John Cameron and a tenet of lay leadership to be followed by pastors: Leaders must be good followers in order to be good role models. You have added richness to the concept by seeking to make it a way of thinking for progress of the enterprise.

However, positive thoughts must be launched to sustain and take effect. I have come to the conclusion that poor control over the conduct of knowledge interactions is an important factor in the stagnation of leadership and productivity. Personnel, and that includes leaders, have precious little time and energy to manage their interactions. Consequently, their volition to engage in interactions runs low. Trust and teamwork, i.e., Collective formation, suffers. Corrective action requires intelligent energy to manage interactions.

Do you think intelligent energy to organize and drive knowledge interactions will assist positive leadership of the nature conceived by you?

Regards,

Raj Kumar

I trust it will be right to conclude your viewpoint as "Leaders must be good followers". That is not my original phrasing. It had settled in my head from my readings. A Google search revealed it to be the key message of motivational speaker John Cameron and a tenet of lay leadership to be followed by pastors: Leaders must be good followers in order to be good role models. You have added richness to the concept by seeking to make it a way of thinking for progress of the enterprise.

However, positive thoughts must be launched to sustain and take effect. I have come to the conclusion that poor control over the conduct of knowledge interactions is an important factor in the stagnation of leadership and productivity. Personnel, and that includes leaders, have precious little time and energy to manage their interactions. Consequently, their volition to engage in interactions runs low. Trust and teamwork, i.e., Collective formation, suffers. Corrective action requires intelligent energy to manage interactions.

Do you think intelligent energy to organize and drive knowledge interactions will assist positive leadership of the nature conceived by you?

Regards,

Raj Kumar

Hello Joe,

I agree the means must enable everyone to be a leader. My focus is emergence of reality and I seek to provide everyone across the extended enterprise means to learn. I hope you will re-look at my last post in this revised light. I remain keen to have your learned viewpoint:

Q: Do you think intelligent energy to organize and drive knowledge interactions will assist positive leadership of the nature conceived by you?

Regards,

Raj Kumar

Hello Joe,

Thank you for sparing the time and energy to review my direction of thinking.

It is possible that in the time to come it is the engagement in multi-dimensional leadership behavior by personnel that shall determine the performance of organizations. I accept this viewpoint but differ in my priority. I think the availability of time, energy and volition to apply Knowledge or the efficacy of means for personnel to conduct interactions that will determine the future of any organization's performance.

With best wishes,

Raj Kumar

Hello Joe

Your hack reminded me of John Seely Brown’s (ex-head of Xerox Parc) comment on the work of Peter Senge:
“Senge’s five disciplines provided instant utility for learning to organizations in 1990, yet learning organizations remain rare to this day.”
Senge’s work is acclaimed across the world. The motive force of his ‘Learning Organization’ is unquestioned. He has successful examples to his credit, a popular Handbook as well as a flourishing Society for Organizational Learning to spread his concept. Yet, his concept is floundering for want of an engine to drive it inside the organization.
You have proposed an idea that all personnel are potential leaders. It differs little from the management model practiced by David Packard. The management thrived on his energy but withered away post his departure. Fiorina drove in the final nails. I do not see any engine for your hack or how it will overcome the weakness of Packard’s ideas. In fact your idea qualifies to be called ‘foofaraw’ per Scholtes. The relevant quote from Scholte’s ‘The Leader’s Handbook’ is as follows:
“All of the empowered, motivated, teamed-up, self-directed, incentivized, accountable, re-engineered, and re-invented people you can muster cannot compensate for a dysfunctional system. When the system is functioning well, these other things are just foofaraw. When the system is not functioning well, these things are still only empty, meaningless twaddle.”
Please let me know if I have overlooked some virtue of your hack.

Hello Joe
The forces identified by you appear to be those of idealism. They always have a problem with reality since people are very practical when it comes to reason and quite rightly: your reason may serve you but not me! Besides, I may not share your principles or may have a different threshold for standing up to them. That is why I was very keen on an engine founded on some aspect of deeply ingrained human behavior. Thus, it is not sufficient to say that a system is dysfunctional because of the absence of Freedom or a thriving leadership behavior in people and that trained “change agents” can fill this lacunae. David Packard did something very similar as did Ken Iverson and a few others. They achieved remarkable success just as I am sure you will in some cases. My point is that it was not sustained. I believe what MIX is looking for is a force that shall transform the landscape and not grow flowers here or there. That is the force I am seeking to discover.

I like this concept! Await more development on it! My top thought for the day.