Changing Dynamics of Leadership

November 9, 2016

The Changing Nature of Leadership

 

The leadership charade as described in Obolensky’s book can only be broken by developing strong, secure, and humble leaders who are able to take input from the lower echelon workers within an organization.  It takes strength and courage for a leader to say “I don’t know”.  Full Disclosure:  My guess for the exercise at the beginning of Chapter 4 was close.  I estimated: Top management = 10%, Middle management = 20%, and Lower echelon workers = 70%.  This was to represent the actual breakdown of ideas and solutions to organizational challenges.  I was close, but no cigar!  The actual breakdown was: Top = 10%, Middle = 30%, and Lower = 60%.  I was off by 10% between the lower and middle management levels.  I know that within the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD), which employs a plethora of MBA graduates, has senior managers that have heard about this concept.  However, it doesn’t appear as if our new initiative, the “Art of the Possible” is actively soliciting input from the bottom up.

 

If the charade were to be effectively broken, then mandatory town hall meetings with upper/middle management and the lower echelon of workers would become mandatory.  This would provide the best feedback loop to generate the ideas needed to drive improved processes.  It would also require experienced facilitators that would have to break through resentment, anger, and the charade game of “knowing but pretending not to know” (Obolensky, 2016). 

 

This change format alone allowing the feedback loop from the bottom to the top to be complete would represent radical change for our organization.  As others have probably read on my previous posts, CCAD is a classic oligarchy.  It has a surprisingly small military presence and a very large civilian workforce presence.  The civilian supervisory chain mirrors that of the military.  This structure alone makes it difficult to evolve an organization in a needed direction.  When you throw in complexity of the organization, personalities, history, and culture, it is nearly impossible to foresee CCAD ever moving into a polyarchy type structure that solicits ideas from the bottom up.

 

While the static nature of CCAD doesn’t directly affect my position, nor would it if the evolution were to take place, I feel as if I am working against the trend.  Many of the concepts described in Obolensky’s book were ideas and processes that I was already utilizing.  For example, in an effort to solicit information from the bottom up, I work that into my programs when I am conducting safety training of any type.  I ask for problems, complaints, useful suggestions, and process improvements from the lower echelon of artisans that are doing the work.  One idea they had ended up saving CCAD $350k - $500k in past fiscal year.  I am in a unique position to move freely through all echelons of the organization due to my senior rank and position.  In an effort to ensure that initiatives that I have begun don’t become a “cult of personality” where a concept dies when I move on, I actively solicit strong teams that will be capable of carrying on the process when I am gone.

 

John Hescott

 

Reference:

Obolensky, Nick. (2016). “Complex Adaptive Leadership Second Edition”. New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group