Leading Without Title Versus Leading With Stature: The Real Essence of Leadership

In Chennai, on March 2, 2014, the popular new-age leadership guru and executive coach, Robin Sharma led a leadership coaching session titled “Leading without Titles”. The program was reportedly a sellout. Given the obsession of organizations as well as individuals with titles, one would think that there could not be a more apt program for the times that are we in. The historical evolution of the modern organization has verily been accompanied by an increasing engagement on the importance of organizational structures and the accompanying titles. This, by no means, is confined to corporate organizations; the Dictatorial State as well as the Democratic State and the Mutt of the Hinduism as well as the Church of the Western Christianity all have their own structures and titles. In fact, any organization that has more than one person faces the practical and legal requirements of organizational structure and title.

According to Robin Sharma, in many ways, the whole idea behind Leading Without a Title is the democratization of leadership. Robin acknowledges that positions are important to the smooth running of any organization (whether that organization is a business or a community or a family). Having said that, he proposes that the new model of leadership is all about every single stakeholder showing leadership in the work he or she does. As per his model of distributed leadership every single person owns the responsibility of showing leadership at his or her craft. Every single teammate is the CEO of his or her own small business unit called job. Traditional organizational experts referred to grassroots leadership but clearly Robin gave the concept deft posturing. All this is easier said than achieved, though. For example, in a true leadership program on being led without titles, Robin would have been one among equals, at least by the end of his conference; but not unnaturally, I am told, he continued to be the leader!

Self-leadership

Robin Sharma, in his popular work “The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success” postulates that in business and in life, anyone can be a leader. According to him, too many people go to work with the mindset that to be a leader they need to work their way up the company ladder, get the title or position they seek, and then they can be leaders. This is the wrong approach, according to Sharma. The book is written in a business fable style with a story that is engaging. The leadership principles that emerge out of the narration make the book worth reading. Sharma proposes self-leadership as the foundation principle of his hypothesis. Anyone who understands the concept of self-leadership can lead regardless of his or her official title in an organization. According to Sharma, “leaders are those individuals who do the things that failures aren’t willing to do…; too many people pay the sad costs of mediocrity and forego the spectacular rewards of being a leader”.

In the story told by Robin Sharma, the main character (Blake) has conversations with four unorthodox leaders. Each of these individuals works in a position that — based on conventional wisdom — would not be considered a leadership position. Each conversation brings out key principles that can help “ordinary” people become true leaders: The first is that to lead without a title on has to be persistent and courageous. The second is that challenging times are opportunities to learn and transform. The third is that the deeper the relationships, the stronger the leadership. The fourth is that a great leader has to be fundamentally a great person. Robin Sharma proposes a repertoire of principles, tools and techniques to achieve that, which is probably his business of leadership development. Much of his leadership kit focuses on self-awareness and self-discipline. There is a strong oriental approach with Robin that emphasizes introspection as the foundation for development, which resonates strongly with this blog post.

Stature, the leadership driver

Stature is the importance and respect that a person has because of his or her ability and achievements. In social life, title follows achievement, and in some cases precedes it as well; but stature follows distinctive ethos and accomplishment. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was called Mahatma Gandhi as a result of his stature (Mahatma, in Sanskrit, denotes a person who is respected for his distinctive greatness). As a leader who won independence for India Mahatma Gandhi is called the Father of the Nation. Stature does not come easy; it involves several distinctive capabilities as Mahatma Gandhi’s life demonstrates. From a leadership perspective, how stature gets developed is more fully described in my blog post titled, “Mahatma Gandhi: Ten Leadership Lessons”, Strategy Musings, October 2, 2013 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2013/10/mahatma-gandhi-ten-leadership-lessons.html). From a corporate organizational perspective, the concept of stature has certain implications.

Firstly, stature matters at all levels in an organization; from frontline executive to top level chief executive. Secondly, institutions and individuals reinforce each other’s status. Thirdly, stature inspires confidence, and motivates acceptance and/or followership. Fourthly, stature requires probity. Fifthly, stature is built on positive performance, and is lost on negative performance. A campus-fresh executive is judged by the status of the institution he or she hails from. At the same time, much as graduates are judged by the institutions, their performance in business or life adds stature to the institutions. IITs and IIMs are symbolic of the mutual stature building, with several top honchos getting early career traction due to the institutional stature and institutions gaining from the leadership achievements of their alumni. More recently, for example, Nadella’s elevation as the CEO of Microsoft added lustre to his alma mater, Manipal University. There is strong element of honesty and ethics in stature as much as, or even more than, performance.

Stature-title conundrum

From a logical perspective, statures and titles in an organization would need to be positively correlated. People of high stature should be occupying positions of high titles. As a corollary, people in high positions should be those with high stature. Simple as it may seem, the relationship between stature and title in an organization defies easy understanding. Not all persons of stature tend to be title seekers or position seekers; Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Theresa, for example. In certain cases, positions may require acts not in consonance with the stature. In national governance, for example, one may need to act independent of a recognized stature to remain or manage affairs at the helm. In certain other cases, the higher titles may not match the preferences of the statured individuals.  In academics, for example, the most accomplished or most statured professor may not accept the position of director of an institution due to a dislike for non-academic, administrative work.

The conundrum becomes a conflict when the ecosystems fail to recognize true stature, in terms of separating individual brilliance (or lack of it) from institutional brilliance (or lack of it) and bestow titles not commensurate with the statures. The conundrum becomes a conflict when the ecosystems confuse stature (or lack of it) with expertise (or lack of it), or vice versa. The conundrum becomes a self-limiting constraint when ecosystems are so constrained in culture, scale and scope that they cannot accommodate several individuals of stature. The conundrum becomes an intellectual riddle when ecosystems consider that stature implies statesmanship and wisdom while title requires go-getting and risk-taking performance. The stature-title conundrum in all such facets would look unmanageable when leadership is viewed as being all about getting results but would certainly be resolvable when leadership is viewed as being about building the stature of the institution as much as about accomplishing results.

Aligning stature and title

Clearly, every virtuous organization must aim to align and integrate stature and title. The Art of Living Foundation has the founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar with the highest stature in the institution also being at the helm. In fact, it is interesting that organizations dedicated to philosophy, spirituality, religion or theology are able to achieve alignment and integration of stature and title. Other organizations seem to reconcile themselves to a perceived inability to align stature and title, and appear to resort to alternative structures to accommodate the perceived dichotomy between stature and title. The separation of an apolitical President position and a political Prime Minister position in national governance is an example. The separation of a “wise” Chairman position from a “smart” CEO position in corporate leadership or constitution of a board of directors made up of persons of stature for corporate governance are examples of such alternatives to align and integrate stature and title in commercial organizations.

Returning to the starting point of this blog post, it may be possible to lead without titles but it would be impossible to lead without stature. That is because leadership is about not only competencies to lead people, organizations and businesses for smart performance but also about stature to assure them for good governance. Under the model of distributed leadership or self-leadership, it would be necessary for individuals to acquire stature in their domains of work from the very early stage of their careers, and build on them progressively and consistently. Performance may be measured by metrics but stature can only be experienced. That certain firms, conglomerates and leaders have superior statures compared to others even with greater scale and scope is a fact that means accomplishment that captures the imagination and trust of a broad sweep of population, be it of organizations or societies. Despite all the challenges discussed herein, organizations in their quest for virtuosity must seek to align and integrate statures with titles.  

Posted by Dr CB Rao on March 9, 2014     

 

                      

 

From Vision to Procedure: The Nine Directive Principles of Organizational Management

Organizations are created to provide products and services to mankind. Growth is the sine qua non of progress. Growth, in turn, requires revenues and profits. Very often, this paradigm is seen to be more relevant to business organizations, and less relevant to non-business organizations, whether governmental or non-governmental. That is not so true. All organizations require the same paradigm, except that in certain organizations which are not for profit, investments and grants substitute profits. To achieve any of these aspects, however, any and every organization needs direction. Direction is fundamental to the establishment and growth of an organization. This is often discussed in terms of what an organization seeks to achieve or what it wants to become. Strategy literature has many propositions on this aspect, three of the more important ones being vision, strategy and execution.

Running an organization is more complex than setting a vision, formulating a strategy in pursuance of the vision and executing against the strategy. It is noted that almost all the organizations are reasonably good at one or more of the three factors, and certainly not necessarily bad at the balance factor(s). Yet, the performance differences across organizations are so great that more factors are possibly at play in, and more levers are at disposal of, organizations for differential performance. This blog post dwells on the importance of direction for organizations and the principles which enable and ensure effective directed growth. There are nine facets of this organizational paradigm, which range from vision to procedure. The author would like to call them the Directive Principles of Organizational Management. However, before considering the principles, some understanding of what direction could mean to organizations would be in order.

Direction; one too many?

Many times, direction is considered a unitary factor. People are urged often to decide on a direction and pursue it in life. “He does not have a direction in life!” is an often heard critique of people who do not meet expectations. Even organizations which are expected to accomplish many things are, often, criticized for either lacking direction or for working in many directions. Focus is often the associated or substitution buzzword for direction; ‘laser focus’ and ‘goal setting’ are more popular phrases. The fact is that rarely neither focus and goals nor executing towards the goals help organizations to the required extent. Organizations need an elaborate framework to understand direction setting and execute as per that.  Given that it is not necessarily virtuous or even ideally feasible for organizations to be unidirectional, challenges tend to be even more in practice. Based on the granularity of activities, even the most specialized organizations are required to work in multiple directions, particularly as they are also mandated to grow.

All organizations can be classified into two types; the first category comprises organizations which need to operate in places where customers or users exist, and the second category comprises organizations which have customers or users coming to the organizational campuses. Product organizations such as automobile, consumer goods and industrial goods companies fall in the first category. Service organizations such as service workshops, retail marts, educational institutions and hospitals fall into the second category. That said, the total value chain for any product organization or service organization involves co-existence of both the types of organizations. For example, an automobile company with multiple design and manufacturing sites and national sales-force needs a campus based dealer service organization to cover all aspects, from product design and manufacture to customer delivery and service. Similarly, a site based organization such as a hospital or retailer has to establish itself in several geographies to serve more customers and grow. The short point is that it is inevitable for even specialized organizations to establish themselves and grow in many directions.

Directive principles

A general direction (or set of directions) is important for an organization. However, equally or more important is the need for organizations to be appropriately directed. Directing an organization requires a complex and well-coordinated set of principles, which occur at three levels or tiers. The first tier is one of determining the destination. This is accomplished by a combination of vision, mission and goals. The second tier is one of determining how to reach the destination. This is achieved by a combination of strategy, plan and methodology. The third tier is one of ensuring compliant execution. This is mandated by a combination of process, system and procedure. The nine approaches listed above together constitute the nine directive principles of organizational management. It is neither the quality of the vision nor the quantity of goals, nor is it the elegance of strategy or the speed of the organization, that determines the competitiveness of growth. It is the deployment of all the nine directive principles, together as a seamless cascade, in an organization that determines the success.

It is important for an organization and its leaders and team members to understand the import of each of the nine directive principles. Vision is the space that is visualized for an organization in the long term, often painting a stirring picture of growth and transformation. Mission is a credo or an objective that makes an organization to stand up, and work for, in pursuance of the vision. Goal is the definition, in quantitative and qualitative terms, of the destination or the metric of achievement. Strategy is a broad set of short, medium and long term multi-functional coordinated actions required to achieve goals. Plan is the detailed calendar of activities that are required to provide the framework for execution. Methodology is the set of methods and principles used to execute the plan. Process is both a culture and a way of doing things that is particularly characteristic of an organization. System is the broad policy framework that establishes the degrees of freedom as well as the boundary limits to carry out a task. Procedure is the detailed set of prescriptive instructions that govern execution, compliance and accountability in clear and no uncertain terms.  

Defining nuances

The above descriptions of the directive principles are not mere semantics. Each of the terms, or the guiding principles, has important philosophical connotations that can determine the performance differentials across organizations, and even set them apart distinctively.  Vision is inspirational while mission is motivational and goal is aspirational.  For an educational institution in India, becoming the top-ranked university in the world and becoming a global center of education is an inspirational vision. For the same institution, providing the highest standards of pedagogy and personality development is a motivational mission that makes the institution assemble the best of faculty and attract the best of students. Goals for the institution are in terms of courses, seats, collaboration, and so on. Strategy aims to develop competitiveness with reference to external and internal factors. Strategy cannot be executed without a plan. Methodology, on the other hand, is a choice of certain alternative approaches to execute a plan. For example, the university may choose to adopt a course management approach, student management approach or faculty management approach to achieve the goal.

Similarly, process, system and procedure have clear nuances. Process refers to the management’s way of doing things. For example, an organization may deliberately follow consensual processes in the way it operates. The organization may also adopt top-down or bottom-up approaches, in the alternative. The process, in many ways, determines the culture of an organization. Process is a very visible behavioral enabler as well as manifestation of an organization’s culture.  For the educational institution, it could be a highly collegial approach, a chancellor-driven management or a student-staff council driven process.  System, on the other hand, is a technical way of executing. The university, for example, may choose to conduct its teaching in the conventional face-to-face teaching system, pre-recorded tutorial system or in any other combination of manual and electronic audio-visual interface. Finally, procedure is a mandatory requirement of good execution and robust compliance. They provide clarity to individuals in their day to day working. Organizations tend to differ in the ways in which they are able to deploy these nine directive principles.

Competency-responsibility matrix

Not many organizations get rated equally high on all the nine directive principles of organizational management. As a result, they tend to have less sustainable or more volatile growth. For example, entrepreneurial and startup organizations tend to be high on the vision tier, average on the strategy tier and low on the process tier. Established, mature companies could display the ratings in reverse order. Truly world-class organizations that rank high on sustainable revenue and profit growth path with commitment to safety, quality, productivity and compliance, would rank high on all the nine directive principles. The reasons are not far to seek. Uniformly high ranking on all the nine principles combines innovation with conformity, long term with short term, and compliance with clarity. If, however, one principle needs to be specially highlighted for enabling the institutionalization of all the nine directive principles, it is the process. The right process determines institutionalization of all the activities in a right manner in an organization.

The directive principles require a coordinated leadership and managerial effort across the hierarchy to become institutionalized in organizations. Different levels of organization are responsible for the nine directive principles, not in terms of the three horizontal tiers (where they have natural competencies) of vision (and, mission and goal), strategy (and, plan and methodology), and process (and, system and procedure) but instead in terms of three verticals of vision (and, strategy and process), mission (and, plan and system), and goal (and, methodology and procedure). Typically, in an organization, the chief executive officer needs to be responsible for institutionalizing vision, strategy and process while the CXOs reporting to the CEO should be responsible for institutionalizing mission, plan and system and the functional heads reporting to the CXOs should be responsible for institutionalizing goal, methodology and procedure. This approach generates an appropriate competency-responsibility matrix of the nine directive principles for seamless institutionalization for sustainable organizational performance.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 6, 2013

 

     

     

Organizational Dynamics: Social Forces and Interpersonal Skills

Organizations are structures created to bring together people who possess requisite competencies and attitudes to deliver common organizational objectives for the companies they represent. The theories of organization have evolved over the years to identify appropriate methods and approaches, and tools and techniques by which an organization can function efficiently and effectively. The need for such theories arose because some of the fundamental and essential building blocks of organization such as departmental arrangements, performance management systems, business priorities, leadership opportunities while ensuring organizational delivery also generate forces of impedance. This, coupled with the fact that people tend to have dissimilar backgrounds despite sharing common criteria and objectives makes people management in an organization truly challenging and complex.    

Several types of organization structures have been devised to enable organizational dynamics that support rather than impede business objectives. Functional, geographic, business, project, matrix, and flat organizational structures are deployed to meet specific requirements. It has, however, been found that structures rarely solve anything by themselves and management of interpersonal relationships is something that has enduring substance and challenge. This blog post hypothesizes that organization being a social structure at its core interpersonal management needs to recognize and understand the social forces that operate in an organization. While interpersonal skills are important to ensure organizational harmony, the social forces in an organizational setting must first be understood.

Social forces

Just as an industry has competitive forces that impact firm performance, organizations also have social forces that impact team and individual performance. Similarly, just as there could be industry specific generic competitive strategies, there would be generic organizational strategies to manage the social forces effectively. Social forces in themselves fall under two categories, neither of which is necessarily bad nor good on an individual basis. Collectively, however, one set of social forces that are called Type A Forces collectively generate impedance while the other set called Type B Forces generate synergy. Both the types do exist in organizations. The challenge is to enable Type B Forces.

Type A Forces are typically five in number, and have a significant impact on how people, teams, departments and domains work together in a firm. These are rivalry, paradoxes, conflicts, misalignment and silos. It is easy to appreciate that each of the five forces is a natural corollary of organizational diversity while together they form a counterproductive set. Type B Forces, on the other hand, are inherently more positive, individually as well as collectively. These are collaboration, clarity, harmony, alignment and “one firm” as an operating paradigm.

Individual comparison makes it clear why Type B Forces are eminently more desirable for an organization. Collaboration, as opposed to rivalry, enables synergy of mutual strengths. Clarity as compared to paradoxes avoids loss of time and effort on confusing paths. Harmony as contrasted with conflicts ensures positivity and fulfillment. Alignment helps the value chain function seamlessly while misalignment leads to broken processes. And finally, when specializations and departments turn into silos processes slow down in an organization while the organization functioning as one firm works with synergy.

Generational styles

Type A and Type B Forces are not new to discover or aim for in organizations. They have been in existence from the very beginning of organized activity. Over time, conservative and non-competitive organizations are characterized by a preponderance of Type A Forces while proactive and competitive organizations are characterized by a preponderance of Type B Forces. Leaders have tried to manage these forces with different management styles. These styles are both the causes and result of the respective forces, and often represent generational differences in people management philosophies of managers and leaders.

Certain leaders facilitate and manage the Type A Forces in an organization by their Command and Control Style (CCS). Leaders adopting the CCS model simply direct people to obey. They typically let the Type A Forces build up and when they feel that such forces have become inimical to the organization they used their CCS model to root out the negative forces. This approach works in spurts, and is both a cause and a result of Type A Forces. In fact, team members who are observant of the CCS model adopt that in their own behavioral approaches leading to greater generation of Type A Forces.

Certain leaders facilitate and manage the Type B Forces in an organization by their Influence and Deliver Style (IDS). Leaders adopting the IDS model consciously inculcate in their people positive aspects of collaboration, clarity, harmony, alignment and one firm. They articulate a shared vision, detail out a workable strategy and demonstrate execution through constant employee engagement.  They are observant of the emergence of Type A Forces and work towards converting them into positive Type B Forces. As with the CCS model, team members who are observant adopt their own positive behavioral approaches, creating a virtuous organizational ecosystem.

Interpersonal skills

In the context of the foregoing, it is easy to observe that interpersonal skills would tend to be more impactful in an organizational ecosystem that has IDS leadership model and Type B Forces. In ecosystems marked by CCS models and Type A Forces, interpersonal skills act as temporary palliatives. The effort must therefore be focused on creating a positive organizational ecosystem that enables the full play of interpersonal skills. That said, there is considerable misreading of what interpersonal skills mean in an organizational context. While these are, no doubt, social skills they are not all about being nice to each other. In an organizational context, they have certain deliverables too.

Interpersonal skills, though falling under the category of social skills, are driven by technical or professional competencies. In today’s competitive world, managing people or partnering people is impossible without an ability to understand and analyze issues and present solutions. Strange as it may seem, competency is the foundation of successful cultivation of interpersonal skills. The foundation of being skilled interpersonally lies in the ability to build trust and rapport. Trust and rapport between individuals, whether they are colleagues or bosses and subordinates, are built based on three fundamental appreciations.

To be acceptable in an organizational setting, one should be aware that an issue or a problem exists, should be able to understand the ramifications and empathize with the other person who has the problem. This ability to build trust and rapport comes with the technical and professional competency to grasp problems and issues. In the absence of such an ability, the statements made by different individuals and departments  to each other in the ordinary course of business become positions of silos, rather than approaches of collaboration. Competency and trust thus coexist but can find the linkage only when people are able to connect through communication.

The third equally important enabler of interpersonal skills is communication. Communication, in an organizational context is not a matter merely or solely of language or grammar, which, of course, are nice to have. Communication is relevant and complete only when it comprises an equal and equitable measure of listening and speaking, enabling both the parties to communication developing a common platform, from which they can work together.  

Skill triad

Successful organizations approach organization dynamics in a holistic manner. While organization structures are drawn up to meet business needs, the real emphasis will be on creating an organizational ecosystem that promotes the positive Type B Forces of collaboration, clarity, harmony, alignment and one firm concept, managed by an Influence and Deliver leadership style. In such a solution, interpersonal skills are developed on a triad of professional competencies, trust and rapport building and communication. Organizational efficiency and effectiveness require a holistic approach as outlined in this blog post.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on December 30, 2012