In my last posting, I wrote about the contributions of Jim
Collins and Tom Peters to the literature of organizational leadership and
change. In this posting, I want to
comment on the work of Ronald Heifetz.[1] Along with Collins, he downplays the
centrality that people tend to bestow on leaders and likes to point out that
organizations are collectives and hopefully communities that are dedicated to
perform and accomplish certain goals and aims.
The immediate
question many ask is whether or not businesses can afford democracy –
collective decision-making – when the chips are down; when the organization is
facing an important challenge. Can a CEO
take the time to solicit from those down the ranks what they think should be
done? Well, several things can be said
about this.
First, crises are usually – not always
– the product of poor decisions in the past.
The reason matters get so bad as to demand quick action is that some or
many adverse conditions were not taken care of in the past. Smart thinking is geared toward, as much as
possible, taking care of those conditions needing care in a timely manner.
And that calls
for many actions to occur. Adding to the
challenge of this process is that reality is becoming more and more
complex. So, gathering good information
is essential. And where does that information
lie? Well, when it comes to large
organizations or communities or a society, that information is often in lower
ranks or on the streets or in households.
To get at that information, those who
have it need to feel trust in the system and in the leadership before they
divulge it. Trust emerges, in part, from
feelings of ownership or partnership in what is going on. This takes time and experiences that
reasonably justify trust, especially if one is considering important elements
of one’s life and, in turn, one’s livelihood.
This view is
counter to the one that leaders fulfill a paternalistic role; that they are
there to satisfy needs and demands that people generally want someone to
fix. On the other hand, Heifetz calls
for a rank and file that is disposed to wanting to tackle the problems and take
a legitimate role in addressing what is confronting the collective.
And the leader? He or she creates the environment within the
collective that gets people – employees or citizens – to think and feel in
those ways that encourage confidence in themselves and others. In turn, that calls, at a minimum, for leadership
to establish an environment of trust.
Of course,
nothing brings these issues to the fore more than change, especially profound
change. Heifetz makes a distinction
between technical change and adaptive change.
Technical changes are those tweaks to the organization’s processes or
structures that meet some shortcoming(s).
This type of change is ongoing and normal.
What he is more interested in is
adaptive change which some might call transformative change. This type is more fundamental to how the
organization sees itself and how it performs.
It generally calls for the participants to redefine themselves within
the organization or how they see it. This
is difficult and time-consuming.
Heifetz
suggests a series of steps by which adaptive change occurs. These steps have a dual purpose: fix the problem(s) and get a workforce or
citizenry to mobilize in having the changes devised and implemented. This approach goes beyond influential leadership
to a higher level of commitment on the part of leadership and follow-ship.
The first step
is identifying the challenge or problem.
Heifetz uses the term diagnosis which communicates a more thorough
analysis of the component parts of the problem(s). This calls for that in-depth search that
depends on good information channels across the system. It calls for truth-telling which can be painful,
fearful, and threatening. This occurs
when the environment of trust can be indispensable.
The second
step recognizes that no matter how trustful an environment is, if the challenge
calls for adaptive change, there will be stress. This second step calls for stress management,
which turns out to be a balancing act when leadership informs participants of
the profundity of change, but paces it so that the system has the time and
space to adjust to the changes. In this
way, those who are affected can control the stress levels that would otherwise
negatively affect performance and be counterproductive.
Third, in
addition to stress – or because of it – people tend to be distracted. Therefore, the third calls for leaders to
direct participants to remain or establish a focused attention on what the
change is demanding. If workers or
citizens are being asked to act differently, to acquire the new understandings
and skills the changes demand, leaders will probably call for participants to
be focused and to avoid distractions.
The fourth
step is for participants, in a timely way, to take on more ownership over what
is being instituted. This calls for them,
in a reasonable fashion, to take on more responsibility in working out the
details that the change is demanding.
This occurs when the creativity of the participants can be very
important and should be encouraged.
And to
understand the fifth step, Heifetz points out a distinction; that is, in any
organized arrangement, there are those who have authoritative leadership status
and those who have unauthoritative leadership status. Those with authority should protect the
voices of leaders who do not have authoritative positions. They might be the critics or supporters of
what is going on, but in either case, they can provide useful input as to what
is happening and what they see will be the consequences.
Throughout
this, one can detect that the leader’s main function is to create the correct
environment so that the organization can get through the change successfully
and be healthier at the end of the process.
As indicated, much of it entails either creating an arena or a square.
An arena – as is the case in boxing –
is antagonistic and takes on the air of a zero-sum game. One participant wins and another loses. A square – as in a town square – promotes the
image of win-win results; decisions are made in the spirit that everyone will
advance his/her ultimate interests by implementing those decisions.
Arenas encourage
distrust and squares encourage trust. One
can readily see that emotions are just as or more important than any detached
results analysis might discover. These
changes reflect human endeavors and human ambitions and welfare. They are serious turns in people’s lives.
[1] Ronald Heifetz, Leadership
without Easy Answers, (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998).
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