Why Leadership Needs ManagingExcerpts from an article by Bill Tate in Business Strategy Review
“The belief that organisations are successful because their individual managers are successful holds a powerful attraction for companies. Their vast expenditure on individual-based leadership development programmes evidences their faith in the trickle-up theory. But that assumed cause-and-effect link was demolished by Enron’s collapse in 2001: high talent in wasn’t matched by what came out... Concentrating development on the individual doesn’t take the organisation very far. It is what is going on around and between individuals that [matters]… The infectious cult of the individual In Western culture, the individual lies at the heart of the popular conception of organisations. The individual is taken to be the key unit most deserving of attention when seeking to raise effectiveness and productivity, whatever the level — job, company, sector or nation. This assumption has long been taken for granted in business and national planning; in fact, the human resources edifice is largely built on this hypothesis… Recently, many highly regarded banks collapsed in spite of having hundreds of talented bankers. What failed was the glue that binds talented leaders to one another, to the purpose of the business, to goals other than financial, to the full range of stakeholders in society, to the long-term future and to needed improvement. This reality challenges the conventional view of leadership, what it means organisationally and how to get it. It suggests a systemic model of leadership is needed… The old strategy of relying on strong and wise leaders doesn’t work with today’s complex adaptive systems… Systems thinkers invite us to recognise the power of the system, one of which surrounds each of us in the workplace… The challenge at the heart of systemic leadership can be phrased as a question: How can an organisation best understand, expand, release, promote, improve and apply leadership capability suited to its needs? The advice that flows from this is founded on the principle that leadership is a property of the organisation. It is one of its chief resources. As such, like any resource that needs optimising, leadership needs managing — however oxymoronic that may sound…” Read the full article Think, Manage and Lead Systemically in Business Strategy Review (restricted/paid access) |
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