The human race, by and large, is genetically
programmed to keep the interests of self ahead of satisfying the interests of
the society. Fortunately, civilization has devised, over the centuries, a
number of structures and processes to achieve alignment between social and
individual interests. Organization is one of the most important structures that
are designed to achieve alignment. Goal setting and goal realization is one of
the most important processes that are designed to achieve progress. Progress
would be optimal when it is achieved by organizations with alignment of all the
members of the organization. Several leadership and managerial processes have
been designed and practiced to achieve aligned progress. Yet, a successful
model to achieve aligned progress could be surprisingly simple in its
components though complex in practice.
Advocacy, influencing and directing are
proposed in this blog post as the three core components of the aligned progress
model. Interestingly, all the three are facets and forms of communication, each
of which requires not only a different skill but even more importantly results
from a personality type. The Advocacy-Influencing-Directing (AID) leadership
communication model is a three step sequential yet iterative process that
enables leaders to accomplish aligned progress of their organizations. Advocacy
is the ability to argue a public cause or an individual view that could qualify
as a public cause. Influencing is the ability to steer a person or group of
persons to a particular view. Directing
is the ability to make people execute as per the agreed thought. Clearly,
advocacy is a prerequisite for influencing which is, in turn, a prerequisite
for directing. When all the three take effect in a seamless manner, aligned
progress tends to be an automatic result. Interestingly, each of the three
components has different shades.
Advocacy
Advocacy is the espousal of a public cause
for a definitive positive judgment. The courts of law and the judicial system
are the primary areas of advocacy. In the context of social or business
organizations, however, advocacy works two ways. It requires private acceptance
of public causes as well as public acceptance of private causes. A couple of
examples illustrate. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as mandated by the
new Companies Act 2013 in India, or CSR even otherwise commonly understood, is
a positive public cause. However, how the agencies of government interpret CSR
and how the business organizations perceive their own responsibility towards
CSR require advocacy. This is a classic case of a well accepted public cause
requiring private or individual advocacy to gain traction. The ongoing advocacy
efforts on establishing the new capital for Andhra Pradesh is another example
of advocacy of a public cause from multiple angles. The takeaway is that
however well conceived or well merited a public cause is, it triggers and requires
advocacy with multiple stakeholders in relevant forms.
The example of a private or individual
viewpoint gaining a more public or total public advocacy can be had from
business. An entrepreneur who has an innovative technical idea or a viable business
idea needs to mount an advocacy campaign at multiple levels; with professionals
to build his or her management team, with investors and lenders to attract the
resources, with governments to secure the necessary approvals, with vendors and
channel partners to become a part of value chain, with customers to establish a
value proposition, and even more fundamentally with his or her own family
members to become an entrepreneur. The strength of advocacy of an individual
viewpoint into wider public consensus is the core of entrepreneurship. Even in
established organizations, the ‘command and control’ approach has to be
replaced by an ‘advocate and influence’ approach if the plural intellectual views
have to be harnessed for the best possible outcomes. With advocacy comes the
next step of influencing.
Influencing
Language being what it is, the word ‘influencing’
evokes both positive and negative connotations, often caused by the interpretative
mindsets of the viewer or bystander, and not necessarily of the participants. For
the purpose of the AID model, we may assume all influencing to be positive
only. Influencing is the way of getting an important constituent to accept the
proposed viewpoint. Influencing cannot occur without advocacy. Powerful and
cogent adequacy makes the job of influencing easy but not necessarily
automatic. To return to our examples, a public cause such as CSR becomes an
individual leadership or business cause when the outcomes impact the individual
leader or the business in some manner; like, CSR in community education
improving the quality of people a firm can hire from the local community. The
committee constituted to recommend options on AP capital, Sivaramakrishnan Committee,
may advocate decentralized capital(s) model but the AP Government itself may
not be influenced by the recommendation. If the Committee also had the powers
to allocate financial support to different capital models possibly such
advocacy would have led to influence.
In organizations and businesses too,
influence has a capping up role to advocacy. Advocacy, especially for a cause
or a change, often challenges established mores and positions. The entrepreneur
who advocates his technology solution or business model challenges the status
quo and is typically met with skeptical response initially (“if you are novel,
what is the guarantee of success”, and “if you are a follower, what is the
guarantee of superiority”, for example). When the entrepreneur offers stock
options to his or her startup team members sharing his wealth, he or she would
be following up the advocacy with positive influencing. In the case of
established organizations, the stakes of individuals in established structures
and processes tend to be so enormous that they tend to be resistant, if not
impervious, to change. A logical extension of ‘advocate and influence’
approach, for example, would be to create organizational or business think-tanks
which can serve as forums to pool in diverse thought processes and develop advocacy
and influencing choices. These channel the intellectual power of large
organizations towards convergence.
Directing
At the end of advocacy and influencing
processes, the need for directing inevitably comes. Directing, as a process,
involves establishing goals and moving the organization towards accomplishment
of the goals. In the standard managerial template, the leader is expected to
direct. However, that is not the only option in the emerging managerial
context. Self-directed management of organizations is entirely possible,
especially if the processes of advocacy and influencing have been gone through.
In fact, these processes bring in ownership and accountability that makes
self-directed management at least as successful as leader-directed management. Organizations
can excel in CSR activities through such self-direction. As we may note,
self-help groups have been an important success component of the microfinance movement
in India. Building of a new capital could be a self-directed effort if the
interests of land owners and the capital builders are aligned through a special
purpose vehicle (SPV) for ownership.
In organized businesses, managements and
leaderships find it difficult to strike the right balance between decentralization
and centralization (self-direction and command-direction, correspondingly). Skeptics
may wonder the need for advocacy and influencing (or such other participative
concepts) if the final need is to direct. This skepticism arises from the
inability to appreciate the power of an aligned individual. Truly entrepreneurial
organizations are self-directed organizations that clock rapid growth on a
number of fronts. Large organizations and businesses should establish several
incubators for business ideas and technology solutions, and follow through the successful
ones with business units. Yet, many firms would be reluctant to adopt a
diversified federal structure until the whole monolith becomes completely unwieldy
and unviable. The AID model of leadership communication would result in aligned
progress of societies, organizations and businesses.
Aligned progress
Certain minimal factors support progress of organizations
and businesses as well as of societies and economies. The issue is whether the
full potential of an organization or a business is reached in such routine ‘lowest
common multiple’ manners. Despite the anecdotal evidence of weak strands of
thread when intertwined forming a strong rope, the powerful impact aligned
progress can have on enterprise activity and outcomes is not fully appreciated.
Aligned progress typically gets viewed in a gross manner than in a subtle way;
for example, a common slogan that is accepted by all or a common brand that is
related to by all is considered good enough reflection of alignment. In a
conglomerate setting all constituent companies buying each other’s products may
also seem to be aligned development. True aligned progress, however, gets
accomplished based on advocacy of the best causes or ideas, influential stakeholder
participation and self-directed management of affairs.
The concept is not necessarily an inversion
of the classic pyramid of power; nor is it an abandonment of the concept of
organizational pyramid either. On the other hand, it is a unique pyramid which
has three sides of advocacy, influence and direction converging into pivotal
power. Just as there can be no pyramid without three sides aligned progress cannot
come about without these three planks. It is a sequential and iterative
interaction between the three aspects; the leader at the helm needs to be an
advocate, influencer and director – all rolled into one. The issues to
advocate, the outcomes to influence and the efforts to direct would constitute a
holistic communication competence for the AID leadership communication model.
In their heydays several topnotch business leaders of India could achieve
unique combinations of advocacy, influence and direction for their enterprises
with aligned progress for them. Dr Homi Bhabha for BARC, Dr Abdul Kalam for
DRDO, V Krishnamurthy for Maruti Suzuki, N R Narayana Murthy for Infosys, Azim
Premji for Wipro, A M Naik for L&T, Dhirubhai Ambani for Reliance and Ratan
Tata for Tata Group are just a few examples.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on August 29, 2014
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