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The art and science of the possible

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The art and science of the possible

Tag Archives: Leadership

Leadership: between passion and lunacy

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by lnedelescu in business, innovation, management, Organizational Development

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Innovation, Leadership, Psychology, Risk

harlequin

I just came across an interesting article from CNN Money on the story of Microsoft’s Surface product line. Apparently somewhere along the path to the success that the Surface Pro 3 has turned out to be, Microsoft lost lots of money on intermediary product versions. Particularly, they were left with $1 billion worth of Surface 2 inventory. Microsoft never wavered in their support for the guy behind the Surface line, Panos Panay. That my friends, is the essence of leadership. You ain’t a leader until passion has gotten you in a position where you’ve either questioned your own sanity or been suspected of lunacy by others.

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The renewed meaning of hierarchy in Friedman’s flattening world

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, knowledge, Organizational Development, philosophy, society

≈ 11 Comments

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aspirations, Crowd Sourcing, Friedman, heightened awareness, hierarchy, higher purpose, horizontality, Leadership, the world is flat, Thomas, wisdom

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It’s uncertain to me whether our recent obsession with horizontality started with Thomas Friedman’s flat world. What is certain is that it is picking up steam. The theme of the Internet and mobile technology facilitating asymmetric competition, empowering the little guy, and dissolving traditional barriers is pervasive in business literature – see for example Nicco Mele’s “The End of Big” and Michael Saylor’s “The Mobile Wave”. New business models such as crowd-sourcing and complexity science inspired ant colony organizational models combine with the literature to reinforce the horizontality orthodoxy.

Yet even as technology is dissolving the barriers that had prevented a “flat world”, the invisible hierarchy of human purpose and meaning remains as if not more valid than ever before.

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On why descriptive notions of leadership fall short

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, management, Organizational Development

≈ 3 Comments

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Alignment, Consensus, convergence, democracy, Diversity, Experience, Leadership, mental models, Organizations, Thatcher, Totalitarian Regimes, Trust

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I don’t believe in descriptive instantiations of leadership – and even less so in prescriptive recipes. Paraphrasing Thatcher’s “being a leader is like being a lady”, describing what leadership is or how it can be enacted defeats the very purpose.

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On leadership

13 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, human capital, management, Organizational Development

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creative design, Leadership, Russell Ackoff, Sense Making, visioning, W. Arthur Brian

leadership-penguins1

We all like to think of ourselves as moderate, reasonable beings, but as a society are never too far from extreme viewpoints – call it the peer pressure effect or our desire to fit in. As an example, the collective view on leadership has swung completely from the authoritative, masculine figure exerting total control to the unobtrusive nurturer of talent. We made no pause along the way to ponder the possibility of exaggeration and overreaction. Dare say the leader still has a very real and involved role in the organization and you are likely to be black listed and deemed a heretic nowadays. Say the leader should politely evaporate, and the audience immediately erupts in applause.

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Passion: the best competitive strategy

06 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, human capital, management, Organizational Development, Uncategorized

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business, Emotions, Kennedy, Leadership, Love, Napoleon, Passion, War

Napoleon

Let me attempt a positive twist to Napoleon’s “all’s fair in love and war” as applied to the world of business. Let me first propose that Napoleon’s insightful correlation can be extended to business in the first place. Love, war and business all have in common the competitive side of human nature – for the sake of procreation in the first case, and for survival in the other two. In all cases things have a high likelihood of becoming (very) personal, and when things get personal emotions usually flare.

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The essence of management in 20 minutes

29 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in knowledge, management

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Ackoff, Aesthetics, Art, complexity, Decision Making, Development, Hamel, Leadership, management, Ontology, philosophy, Sense Making, Snowden, Society, Systems

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From Harvard Business Review articles on entrepreneurship, to New York Times bestsellers on leadership and innovation, to the top management consulting firms’ whitepapers on effective change and transformation, management knowledge is a labyrinth more daunting than the discipline itself. One could probably fill an entire career with sorting the knowledge available on management, with no guarantee that at the end one would master the discipline of management.

And so, is there a twenty minute read that would capture the essence of what Gary Hamel appropriately calls the “technology of human accomplishment”?

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How subtle is the psychology of communication

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in business, Communication, complexity, consulting, human capital, learning, Organizational Development, society

≈ 2 Comments

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Coercion, Communication, Complex Adaptive Systems, complexity, culture, Cynefin, Dave Snowden, Human Behavior, Language, Leadership, Psychology, Resonance, SenseMaker, Slogans

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I ran into this blog by Dave Snowden and I was absolutely impressed with the insights he introduces on communication being a double edged sword: illuminating on one hand, or having the potential to be used to coerce. He proposes that context-devoid slogans found on corporate posters and value statements don’t serve any educational or inspirational purpose, and rather quite the opposite: they often become tools for coercion driving a compliance organizational culture.

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Foundational thinkers vs. “how” teachers

12 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in consulting, human capital, knowledge, learning, taxonomy

≈ 2 Comments

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Coaching, Leadership, Learning, strategy, Thought Leadership, Workshops

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As the complexity of modern life grows, so does the number of seminars, workshops, coaching sessions and other “learning how to cope” events. Can there be as many “truths” as there are gurus?

To answer that question I introduce a distinction between “foundational thinkers” and “how teachers”. I see foundational thinkers as those advocating “why” models based on key notions associated with a particular issue. These type of thinkers attempt to capture the underlying cause. How teachers on the other hand concentrate on recipes for dealing with an issue, often in the form of steps, frameworks, etc.

In my personal experience and research I have come across much fewer members of the first category. This is also the category that I value the most. That is because “why” models allow and indeed demand that the student use his own problem solving skills to derive the “how” particulars for a given situation. In other words “why” models allow customization and adaption of the methods to the circumstances. “How” teachings on the other hand provide a recipe which the student is to memorize and repeat. This is bad for two reasons: memorization discourages critical thinking, and in a complex world no circumstance is likely to repeat exactly.

Many of the teachers (leadership coaches, high end consultants, etc.) I have come across wisely avoid the “why” question and go straight into “how”. “Why” questions are hard and can even be uncomfortable and what business-savvy teachers know is that many of the customers for these types of sessions come there to feel good and relax, rather than be mentally challenged beyond their abilities. Mental challenges create stress, and a stressed customer is not good for repeat business. “How” teachers are astute observers of human psychology, while foundational thinkers are scholars of knowledge and discovery.

Returning to foundational thinkers, they also come in different echelons of value. The most valuable provide complete and internally consistent ontologies for a pervasive issue. These individuals are a few a century. But in terms of generating a following, “how” teachers definitely hold the upper hand.

When going to the next seminar or workshop or coaching session, do ask yourself what category your teacher fits. If you feel too good about yourself and no hard thinking is required, you’re probably in the “how” teaching zone.

Can we stop already with management by popular opinion?

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in management, society

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

business, Celebrity, culture, Hollywood, Leadership, Marissa, Mayer

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Let me start by asking: aren’t you tired already of seeing Marissa Mayer’s face on every online media channel every single day? Since when did management become a popularity contest in the court of public opinion? Do we all have nothing better to do? It seems to me we are slowly transforming the profession of management into a circus, complete with soap drama. If we are looking for role models, I would say we are looking in the wrong place. We have a new breed of executives, namely the “celebrity” CEO. I am sure she is a good human being and of above average competence and intelligence, but to me a role model has to have done significantly more than taken full advantage of the opportunity of being at the right place at the right time. Role models to me have to somehow embody that Greek tragedy hero quality of fall from grace and resurrection.

Now management is an endeavor that aims for long term results. Results speak louder than words, and long term means that an observer shouldn’t judge one micro-decision at a time. So if I were Marissa, I would respectfully ask everyone to please abstain from having an opinion about the duration of my lunch, or my working hours, or other similar triviality. But to me she appears to at least partly enjoy the attention. CEOs are not alone in the quest for “celebrity”. CNN anchors and many others are helping to spread the Hollywood phenomenon outside of the entertainment industry.

Counter-intuitive management tips: excessive transparency can lead to anarchy

02 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by lnedelescu in management, Organizational Development

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

business, Leadership, Organizational Development

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The brain is a problem solving device. It is in a constant pattern search, even when there are no patterns to be found. This reality has a heritage in survival anthropology: the fight or flee decision had to be computed even with incomplete information. Waiting for all information to be available could be fatal (by the time one of our ancestors would pause to carefully analyze whether a moving bush meant there was a tiger behind it would have been too late). And so the brain, if it has to, will make up fictitious information to fit a pattern.

But this ability presents an inherent risk: we all have the potential to reach incorrect conclusions by forcing the wrong pattern to a situation we don’t understand. The leap from conclusion to strong opinion is effortless, as is attaching emotional value to a certain opinion. And with strong opinions comes the potential for questioning authority. Want proof? Consider how often you hear the conspiracy theory. What is the conspiracy theory if not a pattern that provides a simple way out for complex situations which are beyond the ability of simple comprehension?

So what does this have to do with management, transparency and anarchy? Well transparency is seen as a key ingredient of enlightened modern leadership. But consider this; the leader has an additional ability for perspective, which is why he or she is the leader in the first place. Call it a more powerful pattern fitting ability. And so, if the leader shared all the information he is exposed to with his subordinates in an effort to build consensus and rally the team around a purpose, the opposite may happen. That is because, given access to the same information the team is likely to fit simpler patterns to a given situation. And regarded from a simpler perspective, the leader’s actions won’t make sense. Questioning the leader is only a step away, and anarchy is always close by. Consensus may indeed be reached, against the leader’s authority.

And so, the solution? Give people an inspiring vision and share with them enough so they can do their jobs effectively in support of the vision.

The insights presented have to be of course tailored to the situation at hand. Office situations are seldom heated enough to qualify for the “anarchy” appellation. Also, in organizations where politics trumps competence, leaders are often less competent in perspective than their subordinates. In other words an incompetent leader may give the team good reason to question his or her decisions.

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