By Matt Paese, Ph.D.
Sometimes a startling question can lead to shocking insight. Out of nowhere last week, someone asked me to comment, on camera, in 30 seconds or less, about what I believe leaders need to do differently to be effective today. Now, this wasn’t live television or anything, but still.
I asked if I could use the bathroom first.
After cursing my decision to skip a shower that morning, I cleared my teeth, face, and hair of debris from lunch and life in general and took a moment in front of the mirror to reflect, on leadership. Drawing that familiar blank, I did what any self-respecting person would do in a moment of quiet desperation – I thought about someone worse off than me.
More specifically, I thought about an executive I know, a leader in a big corporation, who is having a pretty tough time right now. It seems that as soon as the economy tumbled, so did any semblance of leadership effectiveness in his organization. As though losing their grip on the future, the executive team clenched tighter, using words like execution, accountability, discipline and driving performance which my client said were code for obscene C-suite aggression.
In other words, the reaction to the economic crisis was to make double sure that everyone was doing their job and doing it right. Command and control. So what’s the harm in that? Isn’t that what’s required to survive in difficult times?
Maybe it used to be.
In my view, at this moment in time we’re sitting on more human potential than at any other time in history. Don’t get me wrong. We aren’t better than our predecessors, but we can generate, share, distribute and organize information and knowledge faster than ever before. We have vast abilities to travel the world physically and electronically, and encounter global events and discoveries in ways never before seen. In short, we have more opportunities to make superstars out of inexperienced people – fast.
Which is exactly why command and control is such a colossal mistake in a crisis.
Crises are opportunities, and the greatest leaders leverage them by involving others in the solution. Fist pounding may feel good to anxiety-racked leaders, but for everyone else, it creates fear – the enemy in a crisis.
After a quick splash of water in my face as a proxy for a shower, I went back out and stumbled through my 30 seconds–What’s needed now is to leave the single-leader model behind, and to adopt a “we all lead” approach that leverages the capability we’ve developed to learn and grow on the fly, together. That’s the way we’ll lead through this crisis, and those yet to come.
Matt Paese is the Vice President of Executive Solutions for Development Dimensions International (DDI).
Hamel's been a leader in this line of thinking for some time now. In addition to his wonderful 'Moonshots' piece in Harvard Business Review, he has also had direct impact on the unique structural work that's been done at places like Cisco under John Chambers' leadership. Thanks for the comment!
Posted by: Matt Paese | 07/30/2009 at 06:07 PM
If it makes you feel any better (not that you need validation), Hamel's "Moonshots" article in HBR indicates that many management thinkers agree with you!
Posted by: Bryan Baldwin | 07/29/2009 at 07:24 PM