Brock Vodden is concerned with "the way our society selects, promotes, and
develops its organizational leaders". He goes on to say "Those
organizations that blindly follow the main stream tendencies tend to
develop, select, and promote leaders with limited vision, inadequate
skills, and limited ability to respond to changes in their business and in
society."
There is an element of truth to Brock's point of view, and I find myself
agreeing with him many times a day, especially on a bad day. On the other
hand, when we indict the leadership selection process, we do so only by
ignoring history. The industrial -- and now information -- revolution has
been an astonishing period of growth and change when compared to any prior
period. The gains made -- not without costs -- have been incredible.
Just to focus on one aspect, life expectancy has increased from 45-50
years in 1775 to what -- 83 years? -- in the US today? Not bad for
mediocre leadership.
I know, one can argue that it might have happened faster, that the costs
in quality of life are too high, that it could have happened no matter who
the leadership was. Maybe. Still, pretty good for the leaders we
selected using this process.
I would hypothesize that organizations 'learned' to select their leaders
based on what worked, and they defined 'what worked' to be continuous
forward progress, not maximized, but not risking the organization at every
turn, either. Conservative, ongoing success. Not terribly unlike
continuous improvement.
The system was not created by accident. It evolved -- at least in my
hypothesis -- based on the accumulated experiences of what skills, styles,
and experience worked. It was undoubtedly not a conscious evolution or a
conscious learning.
If this hypothesis is correct, then the system of leadership selection
will be self-correcting. As the skills needed of our leaders changes,
this will show up in a higher failure rate. This will in turn result in a
renewed round of unconscious learning, ultimately resulting in a different
-- not better -- kind of leader. More suited to the new requirements of a
leader.
So, what can we do, in this environment? As proponents of LO it is our
role to make the process conscious. Gather stories of leadership success
and failure, and create opportunities for people to think and learn from
these experiences. Remember, leadership begins with the first line
supervisor, not with the head of the company.
In a very real sense, we all have responsibility for helping the change to
occur.
--Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>