Isn’t it interesting how it often takes someone from far away to introduce you to someone in your own neighborhood? Earlier this year, one of our friends from the Netherlands contacted us to suggest a speaker for our annual conference. Each year, a team of Dutch educators makes the journey to the U.S. for our event, and this year, they were hoping we would invite Andy Hargreaves to keynote.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit that I wasn’t familiar with Andy, so I Googled him. Imagine my surprise to find that he is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College—which happens to be in the next town over from the Pegasus offices. Small world!
The more I learned about Andy, the more obvious it became that we had to bring him to our audience. Although he is mainly known for his groundbreaking work on educational change, Andy has also done research on sustainable leadership and is currently engaged in an exciting project on organizations in business, healthcare, education, and sports that perform “beyond expectations.” We were delighted when Andy accepted our invitation to present at the November conference.
My colleague Keith McKinnon and I recently had an opportunity to visit Andy and get a preview of his keynote presentation. In the brief video below, Andy touches on some of the themes that he will explore in greater depth on November 9.
You can also click below to read some of Andy’s writings:
On Sustainable Leadership
This piece appeared in a publication for independent schools, but the principles hold more generally.
This piece appeared in an academic journal.
On “The Fourth Way," a framework for sustainable education reform that integrates teacher professionalism, community engagement, government policy, and accountability.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
 Have you prepped your team for success?
Understanding systems is crucial to effective teamwork. Join us at this year's Systems Thinking in Action conference in November and give your organization the skills it needs.
Learn more about team registration.
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By Chetan Dhruve
In part 1 of this post, guest blogger Chetan Dhruve introduced the idea that, intentional or not, all organizations are “dictatorships.” In part 2, he explores how this structure can lead to crises such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and presents ideas for shifting this dynamic.
As you know, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster claimed 11 lives and resulted in one of the world’s worst-ever oil spills. What went wrong?
There were equipment failures, of course. But the truth is that subordinates who knew about the dangers were pressured into shutting up. An article in Propublica says, “[M]anagement flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed 
employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.” The article adds, “A 2004 inquiry [BP’s own] found a pattern of intimidating workers who raised safety or environmental concerns.”
But how do workers feel intimidated? Who, exactly, intimidates them? The answer is, of course, their bosses. Here’s an example of how these pressures are exerted and play out in real life, on the ground.
In August 2006, Stuart Sneed, a pipeline safety technician, found a crack in a transit line just five months after a 200,000-gallon oil spill in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Because of dangerous sparks from work near the cracked line, Sneed ordered the work to stop. He assumed that his employer would be happy, given that he had flagged a safety issue so soon after a major spill. But rather than being praised, here’s what happened to Sneed:
“[I]nstead of receiving compliments for his prudence, Sneed—who had also complained that week that pipeline inspectors were faking their reports—was scolded by his supervisor for stopping the work. According to a report from BP’s internal employer arbitrators, Sneed’s supervisor, who hadn’t inspected the crack himself, said he believed it was superficial.
The next day, according to multiple witness accounts and the report, that supervisor singled out Sneed and harassed him at a morning staff briefing. Within a couple of hours, the supervisor sent emails to colleagues soliciting complaints or safety concerns that would justify Sneed’s firing. Two weeks later, after a trumped up safety infraction, he was gone.”
In other words, Sneed’s boss eliminated the messenger of bad news—precisely the fate of dissenters in dictatorships. Moreover, whistleblowers are usually shunned by the job market. It’s incredible: people who should be re-hired in a jiffy have doors slammed shut in their faces. Why is this? Because every organization is a dictatorship, and dictatorships do not like dissenters.
In May of this year, Sneed wrote in the comments section of a Propubica article: “I stood up and told the truth about BP and their fraudulent careless programs at Greater Prudhoe Bay. My intentions were not to attack BP as a company, only to expose safety issues that if not corrected would surely cost them and the people working for them much harm. Their way of thanking me on two separate occasions, years apart, was only to make sure I was blacklisted and that I would never work again in the Alaskan Oilfields.”
This July, an article in The New York Times stated, “A confidential survey of workers on the Deepwater Horizon in the weeks before the oil rig exploded showed that many of them were concerned about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes or other problems.” A worker was quoted as saying, “The company is always using fear tactics. All these games and your mind gets tired.”
The reality is that fear is present in all organizations, not just BP. But we have a mistaken notion that a culture of fear is deliberately fostered by managers, when in fact fear is an emergent property of the workplace dictatorship system. As a result, tragedies have happened time and again. Often, these disasters are blamed on the lack of a “safety culture” in organizations, most notably NASA for the Challenger and Columbia accidents.
However, when you delve deep into the investigation reports of such cases, you inevitably find that a safety culture is absolutely not lacking. Far from it. Experts lower down the organization hierarchy always know when safety is being endangered. But their expertise is disregarded and trampled upon in pursuit of “higher” organizational goals such as profit or politics.
Redesigning Our Organizations for Freedom
It’s not that we’re unaware of these issues. Hence, all kinds of efforts are made at “empowering” employees—whistleblower legislation, leadership training, assertiveness training, seemingly flat hierarchies, and anything else you might care to throw at the problem. But all these efforts have failed and will continue to fail, because the system hasn’t changed. To change the behavior of people, we need to change the system.
So how do we get subordinates to behave freely, and bosses to behave as real leaders, not dictators? The answer is quite simple: We need to redesign our organizations so that the emergent property of the system is freedom. And the way to do that is to give subordinates the right to vote for their bosses.
If you have all kinds of reservations about this apparently insane idea, let me end by asking: Would you like to have the right to vote for your boss? Would it change the way you conduct yourself in the workplace?
Chetan Dhruve is the author of Why Your Boss Is Programmed to Be a Dictator: A Book for Anyone Who Has a Boss or Is a Boss (Marshall Cavendish, 2007). He has worked for IBM, Cisco Systems, and the Department for International Development. He is also the cofounder of several Internet start-ups. Chetan has an MBA from Cass Business School (London), an MA in international journalism from City University (London), and a BSc in Mathematics, Physics, and Electronics from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore University.
Photo of oil on water by Creativity103
By Chetan Dhruve
If you’ve worked for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly 
had a bad boss. A bad boss can blight our existence in a way that no one else can.
The thing is, although bad bosses are a common phenomenon the world over, we still react the same way when we have one. We say, “My boss is bad.” The implication is that it’s the fault of the individual boss. But since bad bosses are everywhere and have been around practically forever, it’s time to address the issue in a radically different manner. We need to ask: “Rather than bosses being individually bad, is there something about the system that automatically produces bad bosses?”
So instead of blaming individuals, let’s examine the system. As a reader of the Leverage Points blog, you’re already familiar with systems thinking (ST). But ST has many variants, offshoots, and philosophies. Hence please bear with me while I describe the version of ST I’m going to be using—the version developed by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy.
The Bertalanffian System
In this version of ST, a system is defined as an entity that maintains its existence due to the mutual interaction of its parts. The critical part of this definition is the word “interaction”—without the interaction, the entity cannot exist.
Take water as an example. Water is a system—without the interaction between hydrogen and oxygen, water cannot exist. A property of water—liquidity—is termed an “emergent property.” This is because water emerges from the interaction of its parts (hydrogen and oxygen). The emergent property of liquidity cannot be found in the constituent parts, which are gases. It’s quite incredible, when you think about it, that a gas interacting with another gas produces a liquid.
What does this have to do with you and your boss? Well, every human relationship is a system, because the existence of a relationship depends on the interaction of its parts (human beings). Since all human relationships are systems, the relationship between you and your boss is also a system. What kind of system is it? To answer this question, let’s look at what bosses are called in the workplace.
Bosses in today’s organizations are labeled “leaders”—team leader, group leader, project leader, and so on. Presumably this is done so that bosses behave as leaders. But are bosses really leaders? To find out, we first need to define the word “leader.”
In the context of interpersonal relationships, there’s only one objective definition: A leader is someone’s who’s elected to lead by those s/he is leading. You can be a tremendous orator, a great visionary, an inspiring figure, a consensus-builder, or whatever. But if you’ve not been elected, you’re not a leader.
Similarly, let’s define “dictator.” A dictator is someone with power over you, over whom you have no voting rights. Hence, your boss is a dictator by definition. It’s important to understand that this is true of all bosses—not just the nasty ones. Further, because your boss is a dictator, you are a subject. And the relationship between you and your boss is a dictatorship system.
What are the emergent properties of a dictatorship system? For the subjects, it’s fear. For the dictator, it’s the abuse of power. At the workplace, fear doesn’t have to be body-shaking terror. It could be something as simple as someone not speaking up in a meeting. Remember this is an emergent property of the boss-subordinate relationship—the subordinate could be a very assertive person outside of work. Power abuse doesn’t mean being nasty; it could be your boss stating, “Any questions?” in a way that means, “I don’t want any.” Again, this lack of openness is an emergent property—this boss could be perfectly nice and approachable outside of work.
There’s more to this dynamic. Sometimes, subordinates do muster up the courage to speak, only to be labeled “whistleblowers.” They lose their jobs and have their careers ruined because the dictatorship system hits back with a vengeance. The consequences, while terrible for the individual whistleblower, can be disastrous for organizations too. Take, for example, the recent BP oil spill.
(Check here for the second part of this post, in which Chetan explores how this organizational structure can lead to crises such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and presents ideas for shifting this counterproductive dynamic.)
Chetan Dhruve is the author of Why Your Boss Is Programmed to Be a Dictator: A Book for Anyone Who Has a Boss or Is a Boss (Marshall Cavendish, 2007). He has worked for IBM, Cisco Systems, and the Department for International Development. He is also the cofounder of several Internet start-ups. Chetan has an MBA from Cass Business School (London), an MA in international journalism from City University (London), and a BSc in Mathematics, Physics, and Electronics from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore University.
Chain photo by Toni Lozano
Editor's Note: As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has come under scathing criticism for the litany of errors and omissions that led to the current crisis. In a classic article, 
"Leading Ethically Through Foresight," Pegasus cofounder and 2010 conference keynote speaker Daniel H. Kim talks about leaders' ethical responsibility to understand the underlying structures within their domain well enough to predict future consequences of current actions. We offer Daniel's timely and provocative article with the hope that his insights might help prevent disasters down the line.
By Daniel H. Kim
Rereading Robert Greenleaf's renowned 1970 essay "The Servant As Leader" is always an exercise in humility for me. His writings are a constant reminder of the high standards leaders must set for themselves if they are to be worthy of people's full commitment. Of all the things that Greenleaf wrote, I have found the following passage to be the most striking and most challenging to live up to:
"The failure (or refusal) of a leader to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure; because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgement on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today's events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action which society labels 'unethical' in the present moment is often really one of no choice. By this standard, a lot of guilty people are walking around with an air of innocence that they would not have if society were able always to pin a label 'unethical' on the failure to foresee and the conscious failure to act constructively when there was freedom to act."
I have never heard anybody talk about leadership responsibilities in that way. Others may admonish us for not having exercised better foresight or for incorrectly anticipating the future. They may call it a failure of planning or an error in judgment. But to call such a lapse an ethical failure is such a strong stance that it compelled me to take a deeper look at the issue so that I could come to better understand why Greenleaf used such provocative terminology.
Click here to read the entire article.
This article originally appeared in The Systems Thinker, Vol. 13 N. 7 (September 2002). Click here to receive a free current issue of The Systems Thinker.
Daniel H. Kim is co-founder of Pegasus Communications, founding publisher of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and a consultant, facilitator, teacher, and public speaker committed to helping problem-solving organizations transform into learning organizations.
photo of Brown Pelican by Alan D. Wilson This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
By Deborah Meehan
As the debates raged over healthcare reform in an attempt to break the political gridlock on Capitol Hill, I wondered what had happened to "yes we can." The election of Barack Obama was an energizing time that mobilized high levels of participation across the political spectrum. Change was a big theme. Presidential candidate Obama's rallying cry reminded many of us that we were a part of making change happen.
During the campaign, tens of thousands joined meet-ups, used online tools for campaign organizing, and contributed small donations. But what happened to this active engagement among Obama supporters once he was elected? While there is much to learn from the 2008 campaign about how to create the conditions for self-organization and how to leverage social networks, I would like to focus on how our mental models about leadership are limiting our ability to achieve breakthrough change.
Our current thinking about leadership, whether in communities or boardrooms, is heavily influenced by the idea of the hero. We generally think of leadership as the skills, qualities, and behavior of an individual who exerts influence over others to take action or achieve a goal using his or her position, authority, or charisma. Our attachment to the heroic model is one plausible factor for why high levels of civic engagement did not continue among Obama supporters after the election. People who participated in the campaign retreated and expected the president to deliver on change by virtue of his office/authority, without their continued involvement.
In this way, the culture of heroic individuals is undercutting our ability to mobilize ourselves for large-scale change. We cannot approach systems-level transformation one leader at a time. We can reach more people and tackle bigger problems by investing our energy and resources in strengthening leadership processes that support organizations, communities, and networks to take collective action.
My colleagues and I have joined forces with key innovators in the leadership field to promote leadership as a process through which individuals and groups identify and act on behalf of a larger purpose, such as greater equality and the well-being of people and the planet. We believe leadership as a process is grounded in relationships that are fluid, dynamic, and non-unilateral.
Although the dominant model of leadership in the U.S is deeply rooted in individualism, numerous other cultures understand it as collective and relational. Intuitively, many of us have experienced the power of shared leadership through teams, sports, and music groups, but we have not brought this experience to how we think about leadership.
Imagine a different way for how we could become involved in the topics that we care most about, such as healthcare, the environment, or the economy. To support our engagement in 
leadership that can tackle systems-level change, we need to focus on how individuals and groups are connecting, organizing, thinking systemically, bridging, and learning as a dynamic leadership process.
Those of us looking to sustain our involvement in the issues of the day need to build relationships and shared commitment with others around our common concerns. We need to develop transparent communication pathways and employ organizing (and self-organizing) principles and structures to set direction, plan, allocate resources, make decisions, and mobilize action within networks, organizations, and movements. We need to inform our change strategies with a systems perspective that helps us identify patterns and feedback loops, intervene using leverage points, and continually learn and adapt our strategies. This is the type of leadership process that will help us to implement "yes we can."
Deborah Meehan is founder and executive director of the Leadership Learning Community (LLC), a nonprofit organization focused on transforming the way leadership is conceived, conducted, and evaluated. The LLC recently launched a collaborative research initiative that promotes leadership as a collective process.
By Becky Smith
I've recently been studying leadership models, with the intent of picking the top 10 and comparing them to my two favorites, The Leadership Challenge by Posner and Kouzes and the organizational learning model and treatise on leadership by Senge in his 2006 edition of The Fifth Discipline. In the process, I stumbled upon a quirky little book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin.
Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, and change agent. In Tribes, Godin paraphrases the Peter Principle; his version reads, "In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear." Fear of criticism, blame, and lack of faith are the stumbling blocks that prevent many from assuming a leadership role. Godin believes that, because of this fear, many of us are content to be followers, to push harder and harder without achieving tangible results.
His notion is that people need to break free from this constraint and embrace their roles as leaders, from wherever they sit in an organization. And the most effective way to make a difference is to find or assemble a "tribe" and lead it. According to Godin, a tribe is a group of people who are connected--to each other and to a leader--by a shared interest.
Today's social networks help us "assemble" or follow a tribe of those who share our interests and passion rather than wasting energy on those who may not. These technologies also appeal to our human need to belong, to contribute, to work together on things that matter, to be included, and to make a difference. Godin presents social networking as an opportunity to create a movement based on shared meaning and actionable goals.
A tribe's success depends in large part on its story or ability to say who we are, where we are going, and how we are going to get there. According to Godin, to support this process, leaders must "paint a picture of the future." When a leader and tribe have a 
compelling vision and aren't afraid to confront problems, the system changes. His belief is that if you "fall in love with the system, you lose the ability to grow."
Godin's challenge is that we need more heretics, people who take initiative, who don't ask for permission but "ask for forgiveness later." Great leaders do what they believe in, care, listen, and are responsible for how others hear them. They lead not out of fear, but out of the desire to contribute meaningfully to achieving a goal. To that end, they often deflect personal glory for pride in the collective efforts of their tribe.
I am not sure how my fellow systems thinkers would respond to this book, but I do believe too many of us are driven by fear and would rather follow than lead, as leading takes us out of our comfort zone.
I look forward to dialogue about some of Godin's beliefs about tribes and leadership. For those of you who are currently part of a "tribal cultural," what lessons are the rest of us missing?
Becky Smith has 28 years of experience in leadership, systems thinking, implementation, conflict resolution, and business ownership/ management. She currently teaches leadership, action planning, and presentation skills to Middle Eastern, North African, and Pakistan groups. As a certified facilitator, she conducts The Leadership Challenge workshops and administers the Leadership Practice Inventory. Becky has a master's degree in public administration with a minor in business management, and holds a doctorate focused on leadership, learning organizations, and systems thinking.
by Janice Molloy
What separates outstanding leaders from merely good ones? The Work Foundation, a British think tank, recently released a report on the beliefs and practices of exceptional leaders, Exceeding Expectation: The Principles of Outstanding Leadership. Based on a two-year study, authors Penny Tamkin, Gemma Pearson, Wendy Hirsh, and Susannah Constable concluded that the b
est leaders do three things:
1. They Think and Act Systemically. These leaders see things as a whole rather than compartmentalize. They connect the parts based on a guiding sense of purpose. According to the report, "Outstanding leaders achieve through a combination of systemic thinking and acting for the long-term benefit of their organisation. They recognise the interconnected nature of the organisation and therefore act carefully."
2. They See People as the Route to Performance. They are deeply people- and relationship-centered rather than just people-oriented. They not only like and care about people, but have come to understand that people are the key to exceptional performance.
3. They Are Self-Confident Without Being Arrogant. One of the fundamental attributes of outstanding leaders is self-awareness. They understand they cannot create results themselves, but must do so by influencing others.
In the project, a team of eight researchers conducted 262 in-depth interviews with leaders, their managers, and their direct reports in six of the UK's most well-known and stable organizations: BAE Systems, EDF Energy, Guardian Media Group, Serco, Tesco, and Unilever. The investigators found that outstanding leaders see some of their primary roles as creating purpose, maintaining a sense of how the organization's people and systems fit together, and articulating a vision that "extends from the past, through the present, and into the future." The most successful leaders don't simple fall back on "empowering others" to deliver results; they facilitate and nurture empowerment through a conscious philosophy and practice.
The team concluded "that the emphasis on people-centred leadership is particularly critical while the world is still experiencing tough economic conditions." In difficult times, people tend to turn to controlling, target-driven leaders. Yet the research indicates that the opposite approach can be the most effective route to high performance.
The second phase of the research will focus on questions such as: How do organizations identify people with potential to become outstanding leaders? To what extent can the required behavior be developed? And, assuming it can be, what kind of management development will work best? Many of us will be eagerly waiting the next report-out of this fascinating study.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
Thanks to Sharon Eakes for contributing this story idea, which she found on LeadershipNow's Leading blog.
Photo of winter forest by Böhringer Friedrich.
by Vicky Schubert
We huddle together in the tiny, darkened room, waiting with breathless anticipation for the characters we've created to appear on the giant screen at the front of the theater. How grand they'll be!
First, we'll see the Noble One. With his classic good looks, intelligence, and eloquence, he'll embody all our hopes. He'll movingly remind us that we've emerged from our emotional adolescence to embrace a post-racial society. Cool as a cucumber, he'll take on the enormous challenges of our time, healing our differences and single-handedly delivering better education, better healthcare, a stable climate, and a world at peace.
As soon as he falters and we begin to feel like he's selling us out to the Wall Street moguls and special interests (forgetting that it was we who created him), we will send in the Righteous Gunslinger. Affable and sincere, he'll take no prisoners. He'll embody our outrage at being underestimated and he'll single-handedly return the People to power. We can see that he's flawed--not too flawed, mind you, just flawed enough to be one of us. He drives a truck. Yeah, that's a nice touch.
The projector whirrs into action, and we smile expectantly as the feature starts to roll. But what's this? In the chaotic barrage of images that fills the screen, we strain to follow the plot. Through bone-crushing Dolby sound we can barely discern our original heroes.
We're taken at breakneck speed from one scene to another. The camera manically pans urban streets and wild landscapes. We see utility grids, manufacturing plants, the blur of a stock market trading floor, and a crater-pocked battlefield. We hear undecipherable deals being hashed out in boardrooms and back rooms. Buildings are tumbling, bodies of the sick and dying lie in piles around us. Shouts of panic ring out in hundreds of different languages. Children run toward us with outstretched hands, and angry mobs point fingers of blame.
There's too much going on here! Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What happened to our heroes?! Rewrite!
We turn off the projector. Someone hits the lights and, dumbstruck, we look around at our fellow projectionists. After a long silence one of us speaks up. "We need to create better heroes, folks. Things have gotten way too complicated for these guys to fix." Another long silence. "Maybe it's not about heroes," one small voice offers. "Let's just talk for a few minutes about what really matters to us. Maybe that's where we start."
Vicky Schubert is marketing director at Pegasus Communications.
By Janice Molloy
The 2009 Pegasus Conference in Seattle, WA, is over, but in many ways the learnings have just begun. We have invited our presenters to share some of the highlights from their 
presentations over the next several weeks. In the meantime, here are some key points from the first day's keynotes. We'll share a taste of the other plenary sessions in future postings.
Peter Senge on Courage
The overarching theme for the first day was that of courage. Peter Senge started by musing on the theme of his talk, "Organizational Courage Begins with You." He pointed out that the word "courage," from its roots, means "heart" and "opening, rending, tearing." Peter asked participants to consider the question, "What is at the heart of my organization? What does it stand for?"
While this question may seem relatively simple, Senge suggested that it requires real courage to take a stand for something. Doing so is both an act of commitment, in that it implies action, and an act of vulnerability, in that we may not know exactly where we're heading or how to get there.
Darcy Winslow then joined Peter and described what it can look like when, through individual acts of courage, an organization's heart begins to awaken. She talked about how she and others at Nike, within its masculine corporate culture, led the company's efforts to involve women and girls in sports. Studies have documented that participation in sports can improve girls' lives by boosting their self-confidence and self-awareness, in turn reducing teen pregnancy, lowing rates of domestic violence, and lessening the incidence of breast cancer--ultimately leading to a higher quality of life for families.
Through a mixture of passion and courage, combined with a strategy of framing initiatives within the company's existing lexicon, Darcy and her colleagues have spearheaded numerous projects supporting female athletes around the world. Darcy provided a vivid example of why, as Peter concluded, "We need courage now more than ever."
David Whyte on the "Three Marriages"
David Whyte spoke about the three marriages in each of our lives: with our partner, with our work, with ourselves. Referring to the term "work-life balance" as "too small a phrase," he talked about a "marriage of marriages," in which the three important aspects of our lives are in ongoing conversation. Through a series of poems, he painted several truths that apply equally to all of the marriages: showing up and being present; "giving away" your work, partner, and self cyclically, then being open to what comes back; learning to change in anticipation of the changing seasons; cultivating a relationship with the unknown.
David echoed themes from Peter Senge's talk about the difficulty of and necessity for courageous conversations. As he pointed out, difficult conversations will happen with or without us. To illustrate, he cited the case of a food conglomerate that balked at discussing the rising obesity epidemic in the U.S. and shortly thereafter found its products being removed from school vending machines in droves. By seeking out our areas of vulnerability rather than ignoring them, we keep these kinds of important conversations alive--and better prepare ourselves for the "unknown future" that awaits us.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
Photo of Space Needle: Original source; used based on the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.
By Janice Molloy
What words do we use to describe a team that's functioning well? Whether we realize it or not, we often use musical terminology. We say we're "in unison," making a "concerted" effort, "attuned" to each others' concerns, and, at our best, "harmonious." In a sterile office environment, it may seem difficult to draw substantive parallels between our work groups and a professional orchestra. Yet conductor Roger Nierenberg has gleaned lessons about collaboration and leadership for businesses and other organizations from the inner workings of a world-class musical ensemble.
Several years ago, I was lucky enough to take part in an unusual workshop that Nierenberg offers, called "The Music Paradigm." (Nierenberg has recently written a book, Maestro: A Surprising Story About Leading by Listening, based on this work.) When participants enter the room, they encounter an orchestra, its members clad in formal performance garb, waiting to play. Executives are encouraged to sit side-by-side with musicians.
The program begins with a brief concert. It turns out that a symphonic performance serves as an ideal laboratory for studying organizational dynamics: Observers can easily view the entire system; communication is transparent; and the connection between behavior and results happens immediately.
Nierenberg points out that, like a business, an orchestra has an "org chart": Each "division"--such as strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion--is divided into "teams." The strings division consists of five teams: first violins, second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses. The audience compares the results when the orchestra plays normally and when one of the teams is out of sync or missing altogether. This experience dramatizes the interdependence of the group as a whole and the importance of each team to the quality of the final "product."
To illustrate the impact of different leadership approaches on performance, the orchestra plays the same selection in several ways: as they normally would with a conductor, without a conductor, with the conductor carefully controlling every aspect of the performance, and with a "guest conductor"--someone from the audience. Even the untrained ear can perceive variations in the style and tone of the different scenarios.
When asked to perform without a leader, the orchestra plays accurately, but the music lacks emotion and pace. When Nierenberg micromanages the performance, the group sounds stilted and flat. When the inexperienced conductor stands in, the performance is tentative and uneven. But when the maestro confidently wields the baton again, the musicians respond with a lush and expansive rendition.
In describing their experiences under a controlling leadership style, the musicians report that the group may be together in terms of timing, but they give less emotionally and feel less able to make their own unique contributions to the overall effort than in the other scenarios. The leader's dominant style blocks the flow of information, isolates the players from their network of colleagues, and squelches their creativity.
Nierenberg describes the group's performance without a conductor as "business as usual." In the absence of guidance from the podium, the players turn their eyes to the concertmaster and listen to each other with greater intensity. In this way, they manage to work together remarkably well.
That observation raises the question: If an orchestra can function successfully without a leader, then what purpose does a conductor--or general manager, president, or CEO--serve? Nierenberg suggests that the leader's first job is to provide others with a sense of the big picture. From his or her central position, a conductor is able to see and hear the whole, gather information, and convey that information to the group.
Even more important, a skilled conductor infuses the notes of a musical score with meaning, inspiring the orchestra to perform with richness, depth, and emotion. In this way, Nierenberg argues, strategic, visionary leadership can make a qualitative difference in a team's functioning.
Conductors don't make music directly; the people they lead do. A skilled conductor focuses on enabling musicians to execute their jobs well: revealing things about the music to the players, showing them what's important, and lifting them out of their silos. Likewise, in organizations of all kinds, good leaders elevate people's awareness beyond their day-to-day tasks by articulating a unifying vision and sense of new possibilities.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
photo: European Union Youth Orchestra