Leadership

Leadership

organizing for the network era

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In my last post I noted that many organizations today are nothing more than attractive prisons. The current organizational tyranny was a response to a linear, print-based world. These organizations are artifacts of a time when information was scarce and hard to share, and when connections with others were difficult to make and required command and control. The network era, with digital electric communications, changes this. Organizations today should be designed more like the internet: small pieces, loosely joined.

Last year I described several of my principles and models for the network era and showed how they related to each other. I would like to put these together in a coherent framework to show how we can design organizations for the network era, instead of ones optimized for markets, institutions, or tribes. The network era needs new structures, not modified versions of obsolete models.

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networked knowledge triad

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There are three structures that exist in all organizations, with three different sources of power, and three types of leadership required for each structure. This is the thesis that Niels Pflaeging puts forth in Organizational Physics.

  1. Formal Structure – Hierarchy – Compliance Leadership
  2. Informal Structure – Influence – Social Leadership
  3. Value Creation Structure – Reputation – Value Creation Leadership

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the learning loop

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John Boyd’s OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) was developed as a framework to help pilots make better decisions in battle. Since its inception in the 1970’s it has been adapted for other areas of operations, including business.

“Decision makers gather information (observe), form hypotheses about customer activity and the intentions of competitors (orient), make decisions, and act on them. The cycle is repeated continuously. The aggressive and conscious application of the process gives a business advantage over a competitor who is merely reacting to conditions as they occur or has poor awareness of the situation. Especially in business, in which teams of people are working the OODA Loop, it often gets stuck at the “D” (see Ullman) and no action is taken allowing the competition to gain the upper hand or resources to be wasted.” —Wikipedia

I came across the OODA Loop while in the military and have referred to it a few times, but it was not a major influence on my own thinking, or so I thought.

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learning from the peloton

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“The peloton is the main group or pack of riders in a road bicycle race. Riders in a group save energy by riding near other riders. The reduction in drag is dramatic; in the middle of a well-developed group it can be as much as 40%” —Wikipedia

“Pelotons are able to operate in the way that they do because learning and experience is embedded within them. Young riders are mentored by seasoned professionals. They learn through imitation, trial and error, developing both instinct and intuition, daring to experiment when the occasion presents itself. The sport is all about life lessons acquired on the road, the knowledge gained from numerous failures as relevant as that acquired through the occasional success. Teamwork provides firm foundations. But autonomy within loose frameworks, decision-making and accountability are all encouraged from early on. It is this crucial combination – individual action contextualised in relation to the collective – that the modern corporation, government agency and charity now need to learn.” —Richard Martin

Leadership is fluid in the peloton. A lead rider one day may be hauling water bottles to support teammates the next day. I describe this as temporary, negotiated hierarchies. This is emerging as the new nature of work in the network era. What is needed to win a bike race, with complex human relationships in constantly changing conditions, is similar to working in the creative economy. Connected leadership serves everyone.

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connected leadership is smarter

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If diverse teams are smarter, why do most organizations only put one person in charge, and then continue to replace that person with another individual ‘leader’?

“In a nutshell, enriching your employee pool with representatives of different genders, races, and nationalities is key for boosting your company’s joint intellectual potential. Creating a more diverse workplace will help to keep your team members’ biases in check and make them question their assumptions. At the same time, we need to make sure the organization has inclusive practices so that everyone feels they can be heard. All of this can make your teams smarter and, ultimately, make your organization more successful, whatever your goals.” – HBR 2016-11-04

Should not leadership be diverse as well? Richemont, which owns Cartier, Chloé, and Montblanc, among other luxury brands got rid of its CEO and now each branch reports directly to the board of directors. It removed a bottleneck of information flow and diversified the perspectives and knowledge the board now receives.

“As for going without a CEO, chairman Johann Rupert said that “one individual cannot be held responsible, it’s unfair.” Richemont runs nearly 20 separate maisons, and the group generated revenue of around $12 billion in its latest fiscal year. That’s big, but not nearly as big as other multinationals that give their CEOs great power (and paychecks) to steer company strategy.” – Quartz 2016-11-04

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a network perspective

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The three overlapping circles of the network learning model – social networks, communities of practice, work teams – have been described by Patti Anklam as three network types – connectivity, alignment, productivity. This makes sense, because in social networks we mostly connect, while in communities of practice we strive to find alignment between ideas and practice, and in our work teams we produce something of value. Patti goes on to describe the key tasks for ‘network builders’.

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a note to business ‘leaders’

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Would you still be a leader if you lost your positional authority? How would you know? In networks, your authority is derived from your reputation and the value of your connections to others in the network. Value and authority come from engagement with a network, usually over a long period of time. It’s the sum of many small interactions. So what would happen if you suddenly lost your positional authority?

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leadership in an age of pervasive networks

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Leadership can be examined from the perspective of Marshall McLuhan’s famous media tetrad. Using the tetrad, explained by Derrick de Kerkchove, co-author of McLuhan for Managers — every technology has four effects:

1. extends a human property (the car extends the foot)
2. obsolesces the previous medium by turning it into a sport or a form of art (the automobile turns horses and carriages into sports)
3. retrieves a much older medium that was obsolesced before (the automobile brings back the shining armour of the knight);
4. flips or reverses its properties into the opposite effect when pushed to its limits (automobiles, when there are too many of them, create grid lock)

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What is connected leadership?

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Connected leadership is an emergent property of a network in balance and not some special property available to only the select few. This requires leadership from an intelligent and engaged workforce learning with each other. Connected leaders practice the discipline of personal knowledge mastery which comprises working and learning out loud as well as critical thinking and active curiosity. By seeking, sensing, and sharing, everyone in an organization can become part of a learning network, listening at different frequencies, scanning the horizon, recognizing patterns, and making better decisions.

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