Two Minds Are Better Than One: The Theory of Twin Leaders

Management processes are developed over time to facilitate, enable and ensure success. Organizations create departments around functions and identify managers to lead. Organizations are also corporations with departments, all headed by CEOs as singular leaders conducting corporate management in the quest for success. Organizational practice, over time, also got concerned about vesting singular powers in individual managers and leaders, and has tried to use departments as mutually critical of each other while requiring them to be collaborative.  Individual managers and leaders are trusted to deliver through such singular power or face consequences later (Google Nest is a recent example). Concerns are delayed recognition of failures has led to organizations being layered vertically and horizontally with departments that oversee each other.

The zig-saw puzzle of ‘trust and verify’ is reflected in several organizational structures. Production produces but Production Planning counts while Quality verifies. Accounting records and Finance tallies. Internal audit checks veracity of all these processes. This has been the traditional structure. It has not stopped some business failures and occasional malfeasance. Investors and regulators became concerned, and new departments such as compliance, risk management and ethics came into organizational mainstream. There is another dimension too. In early days, all departments used to be consolidated into just two broad divisions: technical and commercial. Over time, not merely due to increasing scale but also due to avoid departmental cartelization, every department (almost) started getting a C suite officer. Despite all this, looking at the broad range of business failures one would wonder if the management processes, as they have evolved, provide an infallible solution.

Which two?

The efforts to find the right balance continued to extend, and that too to the higher levels of organizations. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or Managing Director (MD) is required to hive off day to day operational responsibility to the Chief Operating Officer (COO). The roles of Chairman and MD are now expected to be different. MD and CEO are expected to operate under the superintendence and guidance of a board of directors with diversity of experience. The Board itself is divided into independent (non-whole-time) directors and non-independent (whole-time) directors, independence being related to material pecuniary relationship with the company of a director over a sufficiently long period of time. In further addition, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is expected to report also to the Board. An audit committee of select directors of the Board acts as an independent reviewer of accounts, interacting with external and internal auditors. And, there exist other board committees for investments, risk, compliance, and so on.  

The audit committee also acts the ultimate stop for the whistle blowing mechanism in the company and as an ombudsman of sorts. There are many further nuances, both from regulatory and company perspectives, which are expected to support the endless divisions and superintendence. All these mechanisms expect remediation to be carried out only by the CEO and the other C suite officers who alone have the day to day knowledge and execution capability. The audit committee and the board may go through all the internal audit recommendations but will only have to look at the CFO and CEO to implement the remediation plan. In battles between heads of production and purchase, production and sales, finance and all other departments, only those respective departments have to implement corrective processes. All this discussion leads us to wonder if different functions, departments or responsibilities that are headed individually are the solution (or the problem?) and something else is the problem (or solution?).  

Root cause 

The root cause for bad performance is usually bad decision or bad execution, or both. Without addressing the root cause for bad performance mere structural redefinition would not help. Better processes do help to an extent but essentially, individuals need to be better at decision making and execution. There is one reason other than leadership skills as to why leaders do make bad decisions or do turn bad at execution. That reason is that leaders are also human! We may aim to achieve precise and clinical leadership through various efforts of leadership development. However, leaders as humans are subject to pressures, internal and external as well as biases, internal and external. While it is part of leadership skill set to be confident and objective (which should address issues of pressure and bias, respectively) it is indeed humanly impossible to be extraordinarily virtuous. It is, therefore not uncommon to see even seasoned leaders wilt under pressures of the Street or get mesmerised by their own pet ideas.

When the issue is within the native profile of human behaviour, there is only a limited alleviation that organizational structures and processes can offer to offset the impact of pressures and biases; particularly when such structures are in the nature of dividing responsibilities, and reviewing decisions and actions sequentially.  The key here is that the primary decision or execution is singular by an individual; so is the secondary review of decision or execution. Though review by a board is plural it is also a post-facto delayed quarterly review of singular decisions or actions. It is important to enable challenges, debates and superior outcomes in decisions and actions. This cannot be achieved just through a discussion between the boss and his subordinates as the former eventually displays positional power and the latter eventually succumb to career growth issues. This cannot be through peer level discussions either as peer groups tend to eventually “live and let live” rather than aim at the best outcome.

Two minds

It is often said, “Two minds are better than one”. In fact, the concept of synergy lies in being “One plus One becoming Three, rather than an arithmetical Two”. The first is a typically social adage that implies that two minds can bring to the table viewpoints that would not be obvious to just one person. The second is a typically corporate adage implying that when two minds get together some sort of catalysis takes place. There is a saying related to individual experience that plays spoilsport though: “I am in two minds”! In corporate setting, indecisiveness is frowned upon. This has been one evolutionary reason why singular authority has been encouraged in all organizations. As we have seen in the earlier sections, this concentration of power has the potential to lead to inappropriate decision making or execution. A bold new experiment could be to have two leaders responsible for a single function. For example, key functions such as Finance, Operations and Commercial could have two equally titled top executives lead each of them. All decisions could be taken and executed only by the two together.

The rationale for two minds taking one decision or supervising one execution is clear: two minds are better than one, especially when the function is too complex to decipher or when multiple solutions require multiple viewpoints. Having two equally endowed executives enables each of them to overcome their pressures and biases through the critical thinking of others. Having another powerful co-sharer of decision making and execution enables the two member team take bold decisions which each individually would not probably be taking. There are, of course, risks that the two leaders could form a conveniently colluding cartel rather than critically thinking team. As long as this two member team concept is not limited to just one function but covers a few other important functions besides the CEO role itself, the risks of such cartelisation would be low. There would be higher costs associated with the concept but can be overcome with greater infallibility and greater value building through such pooling of strengths.

Left and right

The general approach in a Twin Leader deployment could be to select them based on complementary domain skills. For example, of the two to head the commercial function, one could be a sales oriented leader and another a marketing oriented leader. Of the two, heading the finance function, one could be a growth oriented fund raiser and another precision oriented cost accountant. In the operations domain, one could be a production expert and another quality expert. At the level of CEO itself, one could be conceptual and another analytical or one could be thinker and another implementer. The logic is that by putting together these skills at the leadership level one gets the best domain leadership capability. There is much to support such a skill based approach. There is another approach too that could be very viable that is rooted in neuroscience.

Ever since Roger Sperry, the 1981 Nobel Laurate, brought out the concept, lot of research has focused on lateralization of brain through left brain and right brain functionalities. Right brained individuals are expected to be more intuitive, thoughtful and subjective while the left brained ones to be more logical, analytical and objective. It is not that the two sides of the brain are completely compartmentalized; the brain does work together with the various parts of the brain including the left and the right conversing through the corpus callosum which joins them. The point here is that the twin leader approach has an enormous potential to bring together not only complementary domain skills but also a winning fusion of intuitive and logical, thoughtful and executional, and subjective and objective skills that are so essential to accomplish top-class leadership. If organizations look beyond the immediate costs of twin leadership approach, the organizational value that could accrue would be immense.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on June 5, 2016       

Strategy – Tactics Conundrum: A Philosophy of Neuroscience?

The world of strategy is replete with prescriptions for long term planning and strategic management. Over the years business management and leadership became more rooted around growth and profitability at a broad business or corporate level. Management literature also moved in tandem, focusing on the need to craft and execute strategies that deliver long term value to the stakeholders. As a result, there is hardly any focus today on the day to day managerial requirements. In fact, the concept of tactical or short term optimization of value does not seem to exist at all. This is somewhat surprising given that some of the thought leaders in strategic management owe their foundations to microeconomics.‎

The swing to strategic management has its support in the fact that many of the actions of a business fructify in the long term. Investments, whether on products or facilities, have to be made with a view on the long term. They also take time to fructify and deliver value. That said, every strategic resource has a very strong embedded tactical component in it, even several. For example, when equipment is purchased to upgrade technology, its daily output is the key embedded parameter. In other words, no strategic asset can be divorced from its tactical impact. A key issue for firms is the identification of the tactical delivery that is expected of any strategic action on one hand, and the tactical actions that are required to be taken to achieve strategic delivery. 

People  

Amongst the various resources that constitute or drive an operation or activity, people are the unique resource that can operate at both strategic and technical levels. From an oriental perspective which is based on lifetime employment, people may even outlast equipment and products, thus qualifying as the most strategic resource a firm can have. Even from a western perspective, people even if changing careers are seen to be the strategic assets of a firm. That said, the daily performance of the individuals in an organization determine the course of a firm on its strategic path.  

People in any organization need to have both tactical and strategic perspectives.‎ People are the ones who can make tactics align with strategy on a daily basis, and vice versa as required. For people in a firm to be strategically effective, they need to be tactically effective too. A dichotomy has developed between tactical and strategic aspects of people development and functioning over the years; for example that the leaders need to be more strategic and far less tactical and front line executives need to be more tactical and far less strategic. Such dichotomy sub-optimizes the most critical tactical and strategic resource of the firm, namely the people.

‎Driven by brain  

It needs no saying that how an individual behaves and acts is driven by his brain. Brain, therefore, holds the key to how people as workers, managers and leaders work in organizations and societies. Memory, communication, coordination, thinking, concentration are five critical brain functions. These functions affect how body and mind work. The five regions of the brain namely cerebrum, cerebellum, brain stem, pituitary gland and hypothalamus together dictate a very broad spectrum of abilities and competencies of a person. The large part of the brain, cerebrum, has six lobes which determine the basic abilities: frontal that determines thought, parietal that enables sensory, occipital that realizes visual, temporal that feels smell and sound, limbic that relates emotion and memory and insular that conveys pain. Cerebellum, the smaller part of the brain, however, influences a more complex set of competencies, which makes cerebellum a target of more intensive research.

In the past, cerebellum was thought to be linked solely to motor functions. Recent research, however, has focused on cerebellum as a learner and adapter of fine movement through learning and performance cycles. Cerebellum adds to the flexibility, plasticity and perfection of the mind and the body. The brain stem is the posterior part of the brain and provides the main motor and sensory nervous control and coordination to a person. The pituitary gland is at the base of the brain and is responsible for the release of a wide range of hormones in a person enabling the biological profile of a person, including certain hormones responsible to manage stress in a person, and stressful situations by a person. The hypothalamus, closely related to and influencing the pituitary gland, is another organ at the base of the brain influencing and coordinating many hormonal and behavioral cicardian rhythms, complex patterns of neuroendocrine mechanisms, complex homeostatic mechanisms, and important behaviors.  

The complex and powerful set of these five parts of the brain are bound together by billions of neurons and trillions of synapses for communicating with themselves and with the rest of the body through its central nervous system. The very simple rendering of the brain neuroscience as above demonstrates how complex, in terms of both brain genetics and brain development, the human brain is and how even more complex would it be to influence working, managerial and leadership behaviors and competencies to reach artificially targeted behaviors and competencies. This brings us the classic debate of whether leaders are borne or made. The neuroscience offers a platform to be blessed with, or acquire, the required competencies, traits and behaviors but it is the philosophy of introspection, which is essentially one becoming aware of oneself, that could offer tangible help in exploring, stretching and reaching the inner capabilities.

Varying needs 

Every organized activity, be it social or organizational, requires three types of responsibilities. The first is working responsibility, the second is managerial responsibility and the third leadership responsibility. In each of the responsibilities, there are certain basic profiles and certain additional nuances to achieve optimal efficiency and effectiveness. At the working level, three types of skills are required: grasping skills, compliance skills and improvement skills. These three skills make the workplace safe and productive with compliance to quality. These simply get honed and enhanced as a worker acquires seniority. At the managerial level, there would be a different type of skill progression. At the beginning management levels, the need is essentially of technical skills. At the middle management level, additional analytical and relational skills are required. At the senior management level, conceptual skills are required even more. The conceptual skills include judgment, foresight, creativity, planning and problem solving.  

The requirements in terms of leadership are significantly different. There are general leaders and there are also transformational leaders. General leaders, while leading, improve the process, inspire a shared vision, enable others, model the path and balance logic, emotion and aggression. Transformational leaders, while leading, challenge status quo (not merely improve the process), charismatically drive towards a focused vision (not merely inspire a shared vision), make change possible (not merely enable change), consistently model leaders and leadership (not merely modeling the path) and uniquely synergize logic, emotion and aggression. Everyone has the capability and entitlement to evolving from an ordinary worker to transformational leader. The core to that journey lies in one’s own brain as the several factors described above represent behaviors, competencies and traits made possible by the way one’s brain functions. The enabler to modify the brain function to suit the needs comes in the form of philosophy of brain neuroscience.  

Brain plasticity, mind flexibility 

Brain is a physical organ that makes a human being what he or she is. Mind is the abstract or intangible consciousness of a human being that is primed by the brain. Mind and brain are related to each other like software and hardware are related in a device. Persons are usually ignorant of the unexplored power and potential of brain and, in addition, are commonly protective of the known thought profiles of the mind. While the largely neglected philosophical foundations of our heritage have enough guidance to achieve flexibility of mind, advances in neuroscience are enabling new knowledge on stretching of brain to enhance the critical functions discussed earlier. Neuroplasticity or brain plasticity is a broad medical term that refers to the ability or tendency of the neural networks, synaptic and non-synaptic, to change based on learning, aging as well as any damage. The concept has relevance in understanding if the brain functions can be better understood by an individual for him or her to better respond to his or her aspirations.   

Philosophy enables one to understand the flow of thoughts in one’s mind. Mind is essentially composed of intellect and consciousness. While brain provides intellect, consciousness is a self-fulfilling aspect of the mind. The more conscious one is one’s competencies, traits and behaviors, and one’s desires and aspirations, the more conscious one would be of one’s ability-aspiration match. Mind flexibility refers to the ability of the mind to adjust thinking or actions to suit changing goals or environmental inputs. Flexible thinking requires attention, inhibition, working memory and goal focus. Interestingly, these overlap with some of the critical functions of the brain. While brain and mind are developed in a specific manner, encouraging one to be trained to be tactical workers or strategic leaders, there is no strict boundary that limits one to only tactics or strategy. A combination of brain plasticity and cognitive flexibility will prepare every individual to be equally good at tactics as well as strategy. Such fluency and flexibility is essential for organizations to realize the full potential of its human resources.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on December 8, 2013