Ideas: We're
All in This Together
When every employee--from receptionist to
CEO--has a piece of the leadership pie, it no longer works to say, "That's not my
job."
BY JANET ZICH
 |
| Photo by Saul
Bromberger/Sandra Hoover |
DAVID BRADFORD likes
to tell a story about Henry Ford. It seems the automobile manufacturer was despairing
about his employees' inability to perform their work without asking questions first.
"Why," Ford asked in exasperation, "when I only want to hire a pair of
hands, do I get a whole person?" Says Bradford: "My question is: When we hire a
whole person, how can we use the whole person?"
It is summer quarter and Bradford, a senior lecturer
in organizational behavior, is seated in his office at the end of a full day of teaching
in the executive program. On the floor beside his desk is a pile of brand-new books,
representing his third collaboration with Allan R. Cohen, a professor at Babson College.
The book is Power Up: Transforming Organizations Through Shared Leadership (John
Wiley & Sons, 1998), and it builds on their earlier books, Managing for Excellence
(1984) and Influence Without Authority (1990).
"I think what we're talking about in Power Up
is a fundamental shift in how one achieves high performance. It's about how to use the
whole person," Bradford tells me. "In the past people believed that the answer
to excellence rested in the heroic leader--whether Alexander the Great or Napoleon or
Henry Ford. That worked when the world was simple. You knew what needed to be done and you
needed people only to carry out your vision. But our sense now is that excellence really
comes from tapping into and releasing the knowledge, competence, and expertise throughout
the organization. That's where the answer is. Not up on the 36th floor.
"The other important thing we're saying--which I
think is a change from our first book--is that what prevents the energy in the
organization from being fully released and realized is not only the mindset of the leader,
but also the mindset of the members," Bradford says. "Members of the
organization no longer have the excuse of saying it's not their job, it's the boss's job.
Boiled down: I would want every manager, every leader, to say, 'Why am I doing this?' And
I would want every member to say, 'Why aren't I doing this?'"
Times have changed profoundly since Bradford came to
the Business School in 1969. "I think we're seeing a culture shift," says
Bradford. "In the old days, organizations had layer upon layer upon layer. Much of
the function of this layer was to control that layer, which controlled this.
We've gotten rid of the layers. But with the shrinking of organizations, we've
increased job complexity, which some people argue is overloading jobs. At the same time,
we're moving toward an environment of self-fulfillment. People don't want to just punch in
and punch out. They want fulfillment."
Bradford was hired by the School to teach the MBA
elective Interpersonal Dynamics, fondly remembered by more than a generation of
alumni/ae as "Touchy-Feely." He still teaches the course, and he is currently
working with lecturer Mary Ann Huckabay to write an outline to distribute to other schools
as a model. "The course is risky for students, but it's validating," Bradford
says. "I believe people spend all this energy trying to prove that we're cool, that
we have the answers, that we're sexy, when what we really think is that if you really knew
me, you wouldn't like me. One of the wonderful things about Touchy-Feely is that when you
let yourself get known, you discover that other people find the real you more powerful
than your persona."
Just as Interpersonal Dynamics aims to release
the potential of the individual, the organization that Bradford and Cohen describe in Power
Up (and that Bradford teaches about in the MBA course High Performance Leadership)
is one that allows potential to be realized at every level of the company.
"Post-heroic leadership is about powering up," Bradford and Cohen write,
"increasing the total power of each individual, every unit, and the entire
organization."
The post-heroic organization is marked by several
qualities.
* It is more of a partnership than the old
organization. "I hope within 10 years the words 'superior' and 'subordinate' will be
obsolete," says Bradford. "Not that we're denying authority--we're acknowledging
a senior partner and a junior partner. But I'm a partner to you, boss; I'm not your
servant. We're in this together."
* It is an organization in which power extends not
only up to the boss but laterally to peers and down to those on the next level of
authority. Responsibility is shared. Implementation can occur anywhere in the
organization. "It's nice when it starts at the top," Bradford says. "But it
doesn't have to."
* It is an interactive partnership. "If I change
one part of the system and don't change another, it won't pass," Bradford says.
"So the first thing we have to do is to change expectations--about the leader's role
and about the members' role in the relationship." Not only do members' mindsets limit
their own roles, unless members unhook their heroic assumptions, Bradford and Cohen write,
they will "pull the leader back into heroic responsibility."
This all sounds good, but what is its value to the
organization? I ask. There are several, says Bradford. First is that the organization is
increasing the performance of a crucial asset. "If we had lived back in Henry Ford's
day and bought a piece of machinery and used 20 percent of it, we would have said, 'Gosh,
we're not making good use of our investment.' Today, we say that people are our most
important asset--and yet we use only a small percentage of that asset. One of the
questions I ask our MBAs is: 'What percentage of your abilities do you use in your
organization?' I've found that it's gone up in the last 10 years. It used to be about 20
percent and now it's probably about 40. But what if it went up again, to 60 percent? You'd
be increasing the performance of your crucial asset by half. And that's a pretty important
payoff for the organization."
Another advantage is that problems tend to be
identified earlier. "When the boss is responsible for managing, you often get
subordinates hiding problems. It's hard to hide things from peers. The old model was that
you're responsible for your area and I'm responsible for mine. If you screwed up, well,
that helps me to look better. But if we say we're all responsible for the whole, I'm not
going to let you screw up."
And a third is that a powered-up organization is a
learning organization. "The traditional organization is antilearning," says
Bradford. "A manager once said to me, 'I love to learn but I don't want anyone else
to know I'm learning.' Managers tend to be great individual problem solvers but lousy
group problem solvers. Let's say we go into a meeting and we have a problem. Most managers
show up with a solution. So we start arm wrestling over which decision is best. We may
compromise and put something together, but that's different from real problem solving.
Problem solving works only if I don't have the answer. In a learning organization, I can
admit ignorance.
"This is not a universal model of
leadership," Bradford warns. "There are still times when the traditional is
appropriate, when the leader should be the one to provide most of the answers. Those tend
to be in simpler organizations where there is no interdependency or in companies where
you've got a highly experienced manager and very fresh, unseasoned employees." The
unseasoned employees grow into their jobs, of course, and Bradford notes that one of the
problems there is they tend to grow faster than anyone realizes.
Still, "almost every executive with the
exception of 'Chainsaw' Al Dunlap says the old command-and-control style of leadership no
longer works. And Dunlap's star has been short-lived," says Bradford. "But
there's a lot of ambiguity about what does work. Others have talked about the importance
of stewardship and transformational leadership and so on, but they haven't been very
specific about it. What we think we've done with Power Up is to build a conceptual
model and build in a lot of practical ways to implement it. It isn't just a how-to book
and it isn't just a conceptual book. We're meeting a lot of executives who find the book
useful because it gives them both."
We've seen the advantages for the organization, but I
wonder what's in it for the people involved? How about the team member? I ask. "I
have more influence. I deal with more significant issues," says Bradford, playing the
worker. "I have more control over what happens to me. I have a partnership
relationship, not a subservient relationship." And for the boss? "It's riskier.
I no longer can give orders. I no longer can say, 'This is the way it is.' They can say,
'Why? Have you thought about this?'
"Let's be clear about this; this is not a
comfortable way to manage," says Bradford. "The question is: Do you want to be
comfortable or do you want to be effective?
|
 "I hope within 10 years the words 'superior' and
'subordinate' will be obsolete."
"Most managers think about power too narrowly. To them, power is the control that
comes from formal authority associated with position: the power to give orders to
subordinates and know that their orders will be followed. This power is, in fact, in
increasingly short supply. In today's environment, that kind of license is not likely to
expand since it presumes a static world in which leaders know all problems in advance and
their expertise perfectly matches their organizational position.... Managers who long to
force compliance are now handcuffed by employee rights and attitude, cultural disapproval,
and organizational complexity. The old command-and-control style no longer works."
--DAVID L. BRADFORD AND ALLAN R. COHEN |
