The 10 most predominant attributes of Mode II people

In terms of population distribution by far the most frequent group of people are mode two or co-operative people. Approximately 55% of the population have a tendency towards a co-operative thinking system (What is a mode?).
So what are the attributes of a mode two logic system?
1. The first thing of note about mode two or cooperative people is that they see value in other people. There is a realisation here that two heads are better than one and you need to work with people, a) to get things done, and b) to make things better. What underpins this largely is the mediation of risk. There is safety in teams. "If I make a decision on my own and it is wrong there is only one person at fault. If I make a decision based on a collection of others ideas that they agree with and 'we' are wrong, then that is less of a personal risk to me.
2. Democracy is the usual method of decision making here. Everyone has a vote and the majority win - except when they don't! Co-operative leaders / managers will usually reserve the right to make the final decision. This will in all likely hood be similar to the majority view but not always.
3. There is usually a collective wish / need to reduce risks as much as possible. So you find lots of structures like competencies etc. in mode two organisations as well as other risk reduction behaviours / thinking.
4. There is a distinct focus on task here. In mode two organisations the task is the focus. There is a little emphasis in modal mode two on process in as far as it effects the task. What I mean by this is that things like 'team building' and the reduction of conflict are highlighted activities in mode two environments. This is to ensure as far as is possible that the task gets done with the minimum of friction.
5. Friction is usually defined in this logic system as being anything or anyone that is percieved to get in the way of or slow down the completion of the task.
6. Cooperative problem solving approaches are the big feature here. Two or more people working together to solve a problem. It does not matter what the people involved believe, indeed people in this system are largely expected to work regardless of their beliefs. The prevailing thinking is, you are paid to work so work. If the people working together don't believe in the task they are just expected to get on with it, unlike as you will see mode three systems.
7. Using others as resources is really the name of the game - cooperate to get the job done.
8. As mentioned above mode two people really don't like conflict. In the workplace great effort is taken to reduce interpersonal conflict or better still to stop it happening. Conflict is seen as unproductive and an unnessessary distraction. It also (importantly) doesn't feel good.
9. Emotional resilience in mode two is pretty low to average to say the least. More about this in a later post.
10. Ambiguity and uncertainty is to be reduced. A lot of effort and money is used (often unsuccessfully) to make things simple and clear especially in mode II organisations. Ambiguity is seen as the nemasis of productivity.

Mode one as followers and leaders - relationships

As followership and leadership rely on relationships in this blog I will look at mode one relationships from both a leadership and a followers perspective.

Mode One Leaders
The key here is that mode one people do not like uncertainty or risk and that their reaction is to block it out in some way.

Mode 1 leader - Mode 1 follower
So if a mode one leader has a mode one follower or followers, in terms of relationships then the union is usually mutually happy - for a while. Both sides of this pairing are risk averse and will happily collude to make up their own versions of reality that exclude uncertainty (lots of structures and systems just to make sure) and reduce risk. If you need stability then a mode one leader will give you it - in bucket loads.
Problems, usually in the form of stress and blaming usually occur in this relationship when things start to go wrong (as they often will). Problems usually arise out of the fact that together mode one leaders and followers are the least likely to spot external changes and the most likely to keep doing the same thing regardless. In other words a mode one leader or manager with mode one followers are the most likely combination to fool themselves about what is going on. This is exacerbated by the fact that mode one leaders are very likely to recruit mode one people - diversity is seen as a risk.
On the other hand mode one leaders with mode one followers are most likely to have stable relationships with each other with little if any friction or conflict. In stable times, as long as nothing goes wrong and risk is low, then this is a happy and productive pairing.


However if a mode one leader has followers from other modes things will become problematic, with the paradoxical pairing of a mode one leader with a mode four 'follower'. I will look at these pairing in future postings as and when we get to the exploration of that mode.

Mode one followers

Mode one followers are largely passive and they want explicit direction which works well with mode one leaders who want to reduce risk and therefore give very detailed instructions. Problems arise when a situation moves away from the formulaic and require creativity and critical thinking. Their form of creativity is step-by-step slow and incremental change. Their form of logic and therefore critical thinking is control and risk reduction. They will work nicely in structured well defined situations. If you change this and ask for fundamental change quickly, denial will be the most likely initial response. Force it and stress and illness is likely to occur. This is a similar response if you ask a mode one follower to do anything that is ambiguous and not well defined.
They appreciate the structure of mode one leaders and suffer under mode two and three leaders. They can freak out under a immature mode four leader but work well under a mature mode four leader. I will go into these in greater details shortly as we get to each mode description.

In the next blog I will have a look at mode two people.

Mode one people - attributes

The first group of people I will look at as part of this series on followership and leadership are what is known as mode one or technical people.
The term technical leadership or followership comes from the thinking and subsequent approaches to problem solving that underpin and define this system.
Mode one individuals largely see the world as a series of technical issues that all have an answer. If you don't know the answer to a problem then someone else will. This is a world of experts and consultants, you just need to find the right expert to solve any problem. The view here is that everything has a well defined answer, you just need to find it. This approach is usually illustrated by 'flowchart decision making' with no shades of grey.
Mode one individuals (followers and leaders) tend not to entertain ambiguity and uncertainty easily if at all. The most frequent mode one reactions to ambiguity and uncertainty include:

• outright denial of the situation,
• create their own (usually imaginary) certainty / reality,
• displacement behaviour aka do something else (normally something comforting).

Mode one individuals (both followers and leaders) do not tolerate uncertainty and risk very well and operate to reduce these as much as possible, usually by resorting to methods of control.

Mode one leaders are autocrats. Mode one followers are largely passive and dependent people who want to be told what to do and they tend not vary from the script. Mode one leaders and followers go together well. However if a mode one follower is under a mode two, three or four leader, the leaders would do well to be very explicit about what is required of them. They will see people from other modes as increasingly unstructured and dangerous or a least unsafe. These are not great people in times of change as they will fight to get back to the old certainty or fool themselves that things have not or are not changing.

Mode one leaders in charge of organisations in times of change (like the current situation) are the number one candidates for loosing their business.

Mode one followers are the most difficult (but not impossible) to get to embrace change. Both mode one leaders and followers can embrace change if handled correctly.

A nice summary of mode one people:

Good at

• Following ‘characterised’ procedures
• Making incremental changes
• Postponing reward
• Staying safe
• Standardising procedures
• Leading from the front
• Detail
  

Struggles with

• Risk & Ambiguity
• Innovation
• Diversity
• Non standard thinking
• Empathy and emotional intelligence / resilience (they can appear very resilient but this is only due to denial and displacement)
  
• Co-operation and collaboration
• Strategic concepts (big picture)

Here is a video example of mode one behaviour when faced with something different from a previous blog.

Here are the distributions of modes in the leadership population.


Next I will look at mode two leaders and followers.

A note about systems of logic or Modes

I have been asked for a little more info about the concept of a mode.

Whilst
 conducting 
research 
for 
the 
book 
‘The 
Ambiguity 
Advantage’ 
I 
spent
 four
 years 
examining 
people’s 
reactions 
to 
ambiguous
 and 
uncertain 
situations. 
One
 recurring 
factor 
with
 people’s 
ability 
to 
cope
 with
 change
 is
 their 
ability 
to 
be
 able 
to 
cope 
with 
the
 ambiguity
 and 
uncertainty 
inherent
 in 
change. 


From this work it became apparent that the system of logic or perspective being used by any individual bounds and gives direction to their response. This includes how people respond in terms of their:

• Cognitions
• Emotions
• Attitudes
• Behaviour
• Resilience
• Perceptions
  

which are all guided and given direction by the system of thinking being used. Part of the thesis here is that the mode being used is created as a response to ambiguity, perceptions of risk or threat. I know this sounds negative, however threat (fear) is the primal driver no matter how much we like it or not.
So a mode is a whole system of logic, thinking, perception, emotion etc. It is impossible to separate these out especially in terms of which is causal and which is an effect, which is why I describe them as a system involving all these elements rather than a style.

Next, I will look at the system of Mode one or technical (dualist) individuals. It's nice to be back!

I'm back with some modes

Firstly sorry about the pause in the blog. I have been setting up a new venture which has taken up more time than I expected, and we have been a little busy helping people deal with risk, ambiguity and emotional resilience. I have a sneeking feeling that I am in a minority in enjoying the current times and finding them very exciting. Things are starting to settle down now so normal service will be resumed. I am going to start off where I left off - talking about followership and leadership using the modes of leadership from my own research around how people deal with ambiguity.

Before I commence just a quick word about modes v styles.
A mode is a system of logic, or of constructing our thinking and therefore a system of perceiving the world around us. It affects everything we do, think and feel. They are not styles or preferences in the strict sense that they do not describe behaviours as such however discernible behaviours are apparent as a result of the mode an individual is in.

Modes are usually semi-perminant in that people will operate from a mode and tend not to move between them unless a) they have learnt about the other systems and are onciously doing so, or b) are in transition between two modes in response to some change or other.

In the next few articles I will explore each of the four modes and how people in them see the world. I will then have a look at the interactions between the modes in terms of leadership and followership, and a few other things. You can get a good overview in the book The Ambiguity Advantage.
These are quite likely to be interspersed with comment on current topics as well as there is a lot to think about at the moment.

In the next blog we will look at mode one or technical leadership.

Ira Chaleff's follower typology - his response

I wouldn't normally do this, however Ira has responded to the last blog about his work. His response is very useful and adds to the short description I gave of his work so I will quote it at length here as it deserves a more prominent place than in the comments bucket.

Hi. This is Ira Chaleff responding to your description of my work on Followership.

First, thank you for a fair description and for alerting readers to the existence of our Followership Exchange WIKI that is becoming a posting ground for research and current activities on the topic of followership.

I think it would be useful for your readers to know that the two dimensions that create my "followership styles" typology are the degree of support given to the leader and the willingness to question or challenge (admittedly a bit of a strong word) a leader's actions that are counterproductive.

To answer your question "Are the styles fixed?" the answer is unequivocally "no." In workshops I have participants complete a self assessment questionnaire that places them in one of the four styles, or occasionally on the cusp between two styles. We then examine the growth direction for each style. Generally speaking, for those in the Resource or Individualist style the growth direction is giving the leader more support. For those in the Implementer style it is pushing beyong their comfort zone to vocalize questions or discomfort they are harboring about a leader's plans or actions. For those in the Partner quadrant, growth may be in either direction, continually working to serve the organization and leader better while being more willing to be an important source of candor for the leader. In my model, Follower is a role, not a personality type, and people can develop in a role.

My own view on these typologies is that their primary value is to begin giving people some language to think about the follower role, how they do it, and how they might do it differently. They typically haven't thought much about it, as there was an absence of language with which to do so.

To some degree you can view my typology as dynamically linked to Hersey/Blanchard's Situational Leadership typology. As the follower's "task maturity" increases there ideally would be a movement from Resource to Implementer to Partner. However, several factors can keep this from happening including internalized rule sets regarding authority relationships, organization culture, socio-economic stressors, etc. The aim of "Courageous Followership" is to lower the self-imposed barriers to acting as a fully responsible Partner for leaders, whether or not the leader invites this. Of course, doing this requires both courage and skill. The Courageous Follower book is a resource for an individual to develop in both dimensions. By contrast, The Art of Followership is a compendium of academic research into followership, and practitioner experiences with implementing followership development programs, in a variety of organizations.

The most fundamental point of Courageous Followership is that those who are not in the Leader role, can and should help the leader use his or her power well to achieve the organization's mission, and keep the leader from squandering or abusing power through courageous and skilfull support, feedback and, when necessary, moral stands.

Thank you again for this very valuable series which we will point Followership Exchange WIKI visitors to as well.

Thanks for the response. The link to Followership Exchange is here.

The interesting thing for me is the notion that even in the partner quadrant growth can be in either direction. Interesting because the emphasis appears to be on what is good for the organisation, or to put it another way, on the primacy of the goals of the organisation. This is where conflict for these people can arise.
Sometimes good partners who are intelligent (critical thinkers), courageous and challenging will also be using these skills on the ethics and morals (different things) of the aims of the organisation. As this is often profit before everything else (they can see through 'ethical' dressing up to make their goods or services more attractive / profitable), this then places a partner in a dilemma and thence into an ambiguous place where they have strong loyalty to the individual leaders but a weakening connection with the aims of the organisation. How they will deal with such a dilemma will depend on their 'mode' of thinking, which is what the modes of leadership are...

Ira Chaleff's follower typology

The next followership model, another typology, comes from Ira Chaleff who I believe is part of the Followership Exchange a rather useful wiki devoted to followership. Chaleff published 'The Couagous Follower; Standing up and for our leaders.' initially in 1995 and earlier this year (2008) published (with Ronald E. Riggio, and Jean Lipman-Blumen) 'The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations'.
Chaleff's original work on followership proposed an interesting typology which emphasises the relationship between leaders and followers. Importantly this work recognises the positive role of follower challenge to leadership thinking and as the title of the second book suggests the role followers can play in developing and maturing leaders. Chaleff (et al) blur the lines between follower and leader, seeing rather the dance between the two in influencing and developing each other. The focus here is on the skills of the follower rather than their personality. Skills can be developed and updated and appear less set. There is a downside to skills based arguments however. They often led to indoctrinational types of instrumental training programmes to ensure compliance, which when you look at the typology will work with only a few types of follower. This is not a fault of the model, rather of the interpretation and abstraction of the model by people who misunderstand how such models can be used.
Blind obedience in this model is not seen as a positive attribute, hence the emphasis on bravery (both of the leader and the follower) to tackle the things that need to tackled.

Chaleff's typology:

Implementers. These are the majority of most organisations workers. They do most of the work and busy themselves doing and completing tasks. However they tend not to question the leaders, preferring instead to 'just get on with the job'

Partners. These people want (and often need) to be seen as equal to the leader, especially in terms of their skills and thinking. If this state is allowed to exist in the relationship the partner-follower will respect the leaders position and support the leader strongly. They will also provide the intellectual challenge needed by the leader. With the right leader a strong and positive partnership will develop. If however the leader won't allow these people to partner them (often out of fear that their position/status will be diminished) then they can create powerful enemies.

Individualists. Individualists are independent and will think for themselves. This does not mean that they are selfish, they just don't tend to follow 'group think'. They also like to do as they see fit and do not make great followers in the traditional sense. the wise leader however will use the attributes of the individualist wisely. These people, as long as you keep contact with them, will often provide new ideas and ways of thinking that can be used.

Recourses. These people will do what they have been asked to do and no more. They tend to lack the requisite intellect, imagination and courage needed to do more (I do find the label 'Resources' somewhat depreciating, however I do understand the sentiment behind it!).

As can be seen the focus here is more of a partnership and therefore the relationship between leader and follower. The blurring of the lines between leader and follower in the partner scenario is useful. However as noted before it does depend on the maturity of the leader for it to work. What I do like about this work is the call for courage and therefore emotional maturity / resilience.

As with most typologies (which models of followership tend to be) there is the question as to the nature of the types. Are the types, personality based, fixed and you just need to accept them?
Are they skill based and all you need to do is increase the skills by training, which is an often alluring proposition?
Are they intelligence or even maturity based?
Or a mix maybe? Issues rarely tackled by the models.
Other questions include:
Can people move between the types? Most models appear not to discuss this and accept the position people play. The way around this is often seen as training people to be a particular (more useful) type.
Why are they all 2x2 models? Can the reality (whatever that is) of followership (whatever that is!) really just fall neatly into a world of two dimensions?
Notwithstanding these questions, Chaleff's work requires close scrutiny as the emphasis on relationships and courage is a very profitable (useful and practical) line of thinking which many leaders and employees would do well to think about.

Zaleznik's Follower Typology

Today we travel back to 1965, to one of the earliest contemporary models of followership. Abraham Zaleznik, a professor at Havard, proposed the model in an article titled The Dynamics of Subordinacy in the HBR. The title itself speaks volumes about the thinking of the time. The concept of the subordinate is not something that is entertained easily these days and any leader that referred to their followers / employees as 'subordinates' would likely be seen as 'old hat' at the charitable end of reactions.

This model owes much to a freudian view of the world which itself is also somewhat out of fashion these days and as a result the model is now rarely seen as credible. It tends to be included in curricula as an exercise in academic criticism.

Ahead of it's time however, this is an early 2 x 2 model, which is again indicative of the type thinking being used by Zaleznik at the time. On a personal note I do find my self a little suspicious of models that fit neatly into a 2 x 2 matrix, as many models do. My question is:
Is it likely that (and this is a challenge to all of these 'neat' models) the data really determined the model? Or has the data has been somehow squished into a matrix and made to fit, or were they filtered (either during collection or analysis) through bi-dimensional (x vs y) thinking? If my suspicions have any foundation then the validity of these type of models should be questioned.
As a side note I find Zaleznik's later leadership writings simlarly interesting in that he describes leaders as 'charismatics' and managers as 'non-charismatics'.

However regardless of these issues the model introduces interesting dimensions worthy of consideration. Zaleznik makes a comparison based on the dimensions of activity and control.
The four quadrants of this model are:

1. Impulsive followers (High Dominance / Actitive) who's defining characteristic is that they try to lead or influence others and their leader whilst being a follower them self. These are active and controlling people who try to dominate others and frequently (as the name suggests) act impulsively tending to move into areas that others wouldn't, sometimes seen as courageous and sometimes ill advised.
2. Compulsive followers (High Dominance / Passive) are more passive than their impulsive colleagues. The rationale here is that these people would like to dominate their leaders and others but hold back out of guilt (Freudian).
   
3. Masochistic followers (Submissive / Active) on the other hand want to submit and be controlled by authority. These people get pleasure from the pain of active submission. They submit (follow) willingly and enthusiastically, blindly following.
4. Withdrawn followers are passive submissives. They will do the minimum required but will not engage actively in the direction of the the organisation or make any decisions. They tend to care little for their work or workplace.

You can see the Freudian basis of the model which often makes it uncomfortable for contemporary scholars, which is one reason why Zaleznik's work is popularly criticised. However when viewed in terms of behaviour, rather than the level of psychological or motivational explanation, this model is worthy of consideration.

Zaleznik, A. (1965), The Dynamics of Subordinacy, Harvard Business Review, May-Jun 1965

Kellerman's Followership Model

The next model comes from Barbara Kellerman (Havard University's JFK School of Government) who I shared the stage with whilst we were both delivering presentations to the Royal Air Force Leadership Conference last year. Barbara who is famous for her work on bad leadership published an article last year (2007) in the December issue of the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘What Every Leader Needs to Know About Followers’.

Again this is a typological model that appears at first sight to be similar to the Kelly model I wrote about last, however there are differences as well as similarities. She has five types of follower, each with increasing levels of engagement.

Level of engagement is the defining factor of this model.

The interesting thing here is that she categorises bad and good followers and more importantly realises (unlike Kelly) that each type of follower can and are likely to change their approach depending on the type of leader they encounter.

Kellerman’s 5 types of follower are:

Isolates – these are people who care little for their leaders and will rarely respond to them regardless of who they are. These people tend to keep a low profile, they want to stay out of the way and just get on with their job without ‘interference from above’.

Bystanders on the other hand are the sorts of people who will offer little support to any leader. They will follow passively and really just observe things from the side lines, rarely getting involved in very much. They differ from isolates in that they tend not to hide from being led or managed nor do they resent it like the isolates can do.

Participants do care about the organisation and do usually want to make an impact. If they agree with the leader they will actively support them, however if they think that the leader is wrong they will actively oppose them, sometimes behind their backs.

Activists have strong beliefs both about the organisation and their leaders. They will actively engage depending on how they see both. If they like what they see they will engage and help create even better conditions. If they don’t they will actively try to get rid of the leader.

Diehards have the highest level of engagement in the organisation and with the leaders and have high passions. If the leader is going (in their opinion) in the right direction they will dedicate all to them and become a disciple. If they think that a leader needs some help to develop they will engage with them, however if they think that the leader is destructive they will set out to destroy the leader.

Kellerman’s model is a little less clear cut than Kelly’s and probably more realistic for that. It does recognise that each type will respond accordingly to how they see their situation in relationship to the organisation and the leader(s).

One problem I do have with this and the Kelly model is it does not appear to suggest that an individual might move from one ‘type’ to another. These are typologies and as such ‘type cast’ the people into types and gives no explanation as to how the followers (and leaders) might develop or change. For example few leaders get it right (or wrong all the time). They change and develop (for better or worse) and so do the followers. I think it is highly plausible that some people will not fully embody these typologies and change, sometimes rapidly in accordance to how they are interpreting things going on around them and the level of legitimacy they feel with the leader and in the organisation. Of course some will embody such types in a more stable way and just be one of these types regardless. (This is an argument against all typologies).

Kelly's Typology of Followership

The first model we will look at is perhaps the most widely used in the leadership / followership literature. The focus of the model are followers' behaviour and thinking characteristics. Kelly who published a book called the 'Power of followership' in 1992 proposed that followers tended (conveniently) to fit into four different behaviour types (this is a typology), each type of which are elements of two dimensions of passivity and critical engagement. In other words followers are more or less active or passive in terms of activity - (doing stuff) and more or less active or passive in terms of (critical and creative) thinking.

Looking at each quadrant in order Kelly describes their behaviour thus:

Alienated: These tend to be capable but cynical individuals. At the top left side of the Alientated quadrant, these people do little but snipe (usually with devastating results as they have the critical faculty to make valid negative comment, but actually produce little unless supervised. Alientated followers tend to be loners with influence who can get others to follow them, especially if people are scared or things are ambiguous.

Passive followers tend to be just that, uncritical and unproductive unless they are shown what to do and are actively managed. These people will tend to follow blindly and just do what they are told to do, and they will do it how they have been shown to do it and no more. They tend not to vary their working practices and don't engage with change well unless they are told exactly what to do. If these people aren't given a brief and managed they will do nothing productive, typically surfing the internet or anything else they want to do. These people often appear to have lots of time on their hands. If you give them a job they will do it and stop, waiting for the next instruction.

Conformists on the other hand tend to be 'yes' people. They will be industrious and will work hard doing what they have been told to do. These are the people who actively follow others orders without question - even if following orders right now is not the best thing to do. These are busy people who get on with 'process'.

Effective followers are those people who actively engage in work and actively engage in thinking things through. They are independent, creative and will question the leadership when they think there is a problem. These tend to be very principled people, however they tend not to work too well for more autocratic leaders who don't want feedback and challenge.

The pragmatic survivor in the centre of the matrix is the sort of person who weighs up what it is that the leader wants at any moment and will reflect whatever they think will increase their own chances of survival / enhancement. So that if they have a more autocratic leader they will flip into conformist mode. If the leader genuinely wants challenge they are capable of doing this but will first ensure that the leader really wants it rather than just saying that they want challenge. They are very flexible individuals, however they tend not to work from the basis of principles.

My comments about the model:
This can be a useful model to examine people's motivations and work ethic. More importantly it helps to open the discussion about work effort and thinking effort, autonomy and depth of thought. Autonomy, creative and critical thinking (different from being critical) are key aspects for the development and profitability any organisation. They are also the aspects that are sadly often lacking in organisations, with the culture, rules and policies of the organisation promoting control, obedience and compliance instead of crtical, creative and autonomous thinking and behaviour.

Unfortunately many leaders come to such models interested in how they can use it to manipulate people to do what they want them to do. So having this model is all very well however calling people 'effective' who challenge when the context is one where the leader can't cope with, or doesn't want challenge suggests that this is an idealised model of followership where the leadership is seen as having one set of (perfect) attributes. Indeed autocratic (mode one) leaders would quite likely see 'effective followers' as a threat and troublesome. Conformist followers however would be seen by such leaders as being the most effective from their perspective.

Given those points, the effective follower typology does usefully blur the distinction between leader and follower (see last blog posting).

The other advantage is that having identified your follower this model enables you to contruct differentiated strategies for each. On the other hand the problem with categorising people is that we can tend to then feed into the categoristaion and only see the evidence that puts a particular person in a particular category; in effect typecasting them.

Models of followership - a problem with the models

In this the first of a small series of blogs about models of followership I want to give an overview of the current models and examine the whole concept of followership from a number of different perspectives.
However I will start by criticising and arguing against the whole concept of followership! It might sound a little odd to start a series by knocking the whole concept, however I do think that it is important to be honest about my own personal arguments about followership.

The biggest criticism I have about talking about followership is that it can codefy the positions of leadership and followership. By this I mean that the concept is often introduced in organisations as a means to control people, to make them good followers, to ensure that they don't challenge or criticise the leaders - 'now run along and be a good and loyal follower', 'do as I say'. By codifying followership as a loyal activity usually means that leaders are fixed in their role as well. Someone is paid to lead and everyone else follows. Leaders lead and followers follow.

However from my own research it is often the case that (especially in crises situations) that leaders rise up in times of difficulty from the ranks. Frequently someone who is a good leader in one set of situations are not necessarily the best leaders when conditions change.
Really great leaders recognise that different times require different modes of leadership and often requires different people to take the lead. Generative or mode four leaders are great when fast change is required. However if the situation needs some stability more technical or co-operative (mode one and two) leaders tend to excel. It is rare that one person is good in all situations. There are a few multi-modal leaders around however most aren't and tend to excel in one or two types of situation. (Which is why we focus on developing leaders that can work across situations and when necessary know when to step aside). The interesting thing is that mode four leaders who aren't multi-modal themselves will engage other people to take the lead when necessary. Mode one leaders particularly tend not to notice that conditions have changed and that their thinking is out of date. Other leaders (Modes 1-3) will hardly ever hand leadership over to anyone else, for a variety of reasons.

So the criticism I have of many of the models of followership (and indeed many leadership models) is that they tend to assume that leaders should be leaders regardless of the circumstances. My view is that in certain situations most leaders would serve their organisations better by recognising their own situations of strength and moving aside when someone else would be better in a particular set of circumstances. Ego often gets in the way, which is why only mode four leaders tend to do this. I am arguing her for a model of shifting followership, not static like most of the models I will review here assume.

In a resilient organisation leadership will shift, followers will challenge and help to build stronger leadership. Some followers will lead and influence at times. The lines between leadership and followership should be flexible and fluid depending on what is best for the current situation. At other times the delineation will be clearer and better defined.
An example from my own past, as a senior police officer during briefings and debriefing, planning and normal day to day work I needed challenge and at times leading by others. However on certain operations, once the plan was agreed and was in action, operationally people did what they were told. They could criticise later. However even this rule was fluid if someone (a follower) noticed something (going wrong or new information) that wasn't part of the plan. Then they were expected to tell me and help with a solution. We discussed this often. People were part of the leadership / followership thinking. They and I discussed and knew when to flick into following, when to partner and when they (or I) needed to take the lead.
These are issues to be considered as we discuss models of followership - in reality the seperation between leader and follower is not always as well defined as many assume it to be, and in my opinion a resilient organisation would not want such a hard delineation and would prefer a more complex relationship to exist and be recognised.

Followership - what makes people follow?

Firstly sorry about the break in posts. One of my coachees in the city yesterday asked if I'd stopped the blog. No is the answer. The credit crunch has created a very busy time for me, especially in the area of emotional resilience and helping people perform better regardless of fear, nerves and anxieties. So followership....

Why do people follow someone? There is an old African proverb that says:

If you go for a walk in the bush and after a short time you look around and the people of your village are also going for a walk along the same path then you are a leader. If you go for a walk in the bush and after a short time you look around and there is no one behind you then you are just going for a walk.

What is it that makes people want to follow someone?

There are roughly for reasons why people follow another person:

1. Fear - They fear the consequences of not following. This is usually fear of retribution. Losing their job for example. Fear can be effective usually only in the short term. The moment the followers can either escape or bring the leader down they often will. Fear of the leader or leader's power often breeds weak loyalty and low levels of commitment.
   
2. Hope - They hope that this person will solve their problem or problems. This usually occurs where the group are in some form of difficulty, facing risk or ambiguity and can't see any other option. Hope usually springs from fear however in this case they don't fear the leader or the leader's power, rather they fear the problem and hope that the leader will solve the problem they can't.
   
3. Faith - This usually occurs because the followers trust the leader. They have faith in the leader and the leader's abilities to deliver. The difference between hope and faith is that in the former they don't want the situation as it is now and don't know how to solve it and just hope the leader does. With faith they have trust in the leader even if they can't quite see where they are going, which is why it is often called blind faith.
   
4. Positive emotional and cognitive coherence (Hearts and minds)- When people agree with the leaders representation of the current situation and are captivated by a clear vision of the future (direction) the leader creates and they can know what they need to do, then they tend not only to follow willingly
   but to collude with the leader in creating a new order. This reason for following operates at both a positive cognitive and a positive emotional level. This 'makes sense', is often an exciting logic and it 'feels good', it 'feels' like we can make a difference.

When there is both positive emotional and cognitive (intellectual) coherence everything fits together and creates a strong motivation. In situations like this it is almost immaterial who the leader is. If they have created the coherence in people, then those people will follow their thoughts and more importantly their feelings.

Theoretical theory and practical, pragmatic, practice.

Before we begin our series on followership I just want to talk about theory and practice. This came out of a couple of conversations I have had recently. The first of these was with a company owner who made a remark that he didn't want theory but practical training for his staff. This got me thinking about what he might mean and what his understanding of theory was. Then when I was coaching another business owner who runs a company of about 150 people she stated that she wanted to know what the academic research was 'as it helps to inform what we do here'. Last week I was teaching at Liverpool and this week at Oxford University when the MBA students, most of whom were running businesses started a conversation about how they had changed their view of the use of theory. As we are about to look at followership and some of this will involve theory, opposed to the theoretical it I thought that it would be timely to quickly look at the differences between, theory, theoretical, practical, pragmatic and practice.

In everyday language people tend to mix up the concept of theory and theoretical. Quite simply theoretical means that something has not yet been tested. In other words it is speculative however there may be some anecdotal evidence for the speculation. 

The first thing to realise about a theory on the other hand is that in an academic sense is that nothing can be proven only disproved. So when academics have a lot of evidence to suggest something is so, then the explanation is called a theory even though it is based on good evidence. The reason why something with lots of evidence is called a theory is that there may well be a better explanation or new evidence may come to light. Never in an academic sense, will anything be called a fact because it is always assumed that a better explanation might come forward. 

So a theory can be (and is often) based on very grounded practical evidence that the lay person might call a fact. So a theory can and often is both practical and pragmatic, and can help to inform practice and make the practice better. To think that because something is called a theory it is somehow not grounded or practical is a mistake many people make. All that is happening is that theorists are hedging their bets.

On a word of caution however; not all theories are equal. Some are well founded and based on good (valid and reliable) evidence, and some are based on no more than an idea someone had in the shower for which there is very little evidence. 

We all work off theories all the time. Every time we notice a pattern (the buses are taking a long time, or x is difficult to deal with) we are weighing up evidence to come to a conclusion (a theory). 

So as we start our exploration of followership it is wise to have in mind the idea that not all theories are equal - many in business for example appear to be pragmatic but can be based on little evidence or data, or the data is biased in someway and ultimately the theory turns out to be wrong, often with bad consequences. Good theories or explanations are based on good evidence where as much of the evidence as possible fits the theory. 

A theory can be practical, pragmatic and based on and inform good practice. Also a theory does not have to be theoretical. Simple really when you think about it!

   

Leaders and followership; the reality?

An emerging theme in the academic leadership journals over the last 15 years has been the concept of followership. This concept is starting to make the move from the academic journals and conferences to operational thinking. We are encountering more and more discussion of followership in companies and organisations, including in a couple of cases competency frameworks that make use of the construct. Unfortunately it would appear that a number of organisations have seized on the wording and developed their own (often less considered and more manipulative) versions of the term.
Just looking up the two terms in google 'leadership' returns over 133,000,000 (over one hundred and thirty three million) hits whereas the term followership returns just 124,000 (one hundred and twenty five thousand) hits, or 0.093% of the hits of leadership which is indicative of the level of attention it receives. A few blogs ago I wrote about leadership and management being part of a system where the leaders and managers need to fit and work together as part of that system, with each understanding their role and responsibilities. The concept of followership goes further, unfortunately the phrase 'followership' conjures up some misleading and largely passive connotations.
Over the next few blogs I will unpack some of the academic literature and research and look at how it appertains to the real operational world in business and services. I will also lay out an argument as to why the term followership does not help and what can more productively take it's place and enhance both the organisation/business/service and ameliorate an individuals experience of working in part of a system.

Too busy to lead III - The draw of certainty & ambiguity aversion

This series of blogs about leaders being too busy to lead appear, from the emails I have received, to have struck a cord with quite a lot of people. The emails can roughly be divided into three categories:

1. About 20% from leaders who recognise their situation and have emailed for help to change the situation, which we are busy dealing with,


2. About 60% saying 'this is so true' from people complaining that their bosses don't lead and spend most of their time micromanaging, interfering in their work and that they spend more time covering their backs and supplying 'urgent data' to the leader rather than being productive.


3. The rest (about 20%) were from leaders saying words to the effect that they would love to get on with leading only "My staff are incompetent so I have to manage them".

The emails were interesting on their own, however being a researcher at heart I decided to investigate a bit further so I started to ask some questions. I wanted first of all to know what the email writers (251 in all) thought the issues were that led to this situation.
In order of popularity of answer:

1. Leaders doing what they are comfortable with / used to doing
2. Role ambiguity between leadership and management
   
3. Lack of trust on behalf of the leader
   
4. Fear of the risk of something going wrong (Similar to but different from no 2)
5. Incompetent staff (guess which group this answer wholly came from)
6. Lack of confidence on behalf of the leader
7. Lack of training for the leaders and others
8. Incompetent leaders

It would appear, if this is correct, that the number one reason for the lack of leadership behaviour from leaders is the safety of doing what the leaders know best - what they used to do. Of the 20% of emails I got from leaders asking for help all of them agreed with the statement that tended to behave in ways that were consistent with their old roles particularly under pressure and revert to management activities rather than maintaining a leadership presence.

Last year (2007) Science published an article about the role ambiguity and certainty plays in our brains based on an experiment Camerer did based on the Ellsberg Paradox which I talked about earlier:

Camerer's experiment revolved around a decision making game known as the Ellsberg paradox. Camerer imaged the brains of people while they placed bets on whether the next card drawn from a deck of twenty cards would be red or black. At first, the players were told how many red cards and black cards were in the deck, so that they could calculate the probability of the next card being a certain color. The next gamble was trickier: subjects were only told the total number of cards in the deck. They had no idea how many red or black cards the deck contained.

The first gamble corresponds to the theoretical ideal of economics: investors face a set of known risks, and are able to make a decision based upon a few simple mathematical calculations. We know what we don't know, and can easily compensate for our uncertainty. As expected, this wager led to the "rational" parts of the brain becoming active, as subjects computed the odds. Unfortunately, this isn't how the real world works. In reality, our gambles are clouded by ignorance and ambiguity; we know something about what might happen, but not very much. (For example, it's now clear just how little we actually knew about Iraq pre-invasion.) When Camerer played this more realistic gambling game, the subjects' brains reacted very differently. With less information to go on, the players exhibited substantially more activity in the amygdala and in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is believed to modulate activity in the amygdala. In other words, we filled in the gaps of our knowledge with fear. This fear creates our bias for certainty, since we always try to minimize our feelings of fear. As a result, we pretend that we have better intelligence about Iraqi WMD than we actually do; we selectively interpret the facts until the uncertainty is removed.

Camerer also tested patients with lesioned orbitofrontal cortices. (These patients are unable to generate and detect emotions.) Sure enough, because these patients couldn't feel fear, their brains treated both decks equally. Their amygdalas weren't excited by ambiguity, and didn't lead them astray. Because of their debilitating brain injury, these patients behaved perfectly rationally. They exhibited no bias for certainty.

Obviously, it's difficult to reduce something as amorphous as "uncertainty" to a few isolated brain regions. But I think Camerer is right to argue that his "data suggests a general neural circuit responding to degrees of uncertainty, contrary to decision theory."

It would appear that our response (aversion) to ambiguity may have a neuronal explanation (not an excuse mind you), which may in turn explain why only about 2% of leaders are mode 4 leaders and are naturally comfortable, or more accurately have a greater ability to mediate their discomfort with uncertainty (emotional resilience).

Too busy to lead II - leading as part of a system

The point of yesterday's blog was that by:

• separating out the different levels of leadership and management on an operational basis,
• assigning clear roles and responsibilities for each level
• ensuring people stick to their areas of responsibility,
  
• keeping the lines of communication operationally relevant, and
• fostering a collective responsibility for success
  

then things run much more smoothly, effectively and efficiently. The realisation we had was that part of the command problem we had was 'role ambiguity'.

We had so many incidents where commanders felt they had to go to the scene because as police officers that was what they were used to doing, rather than stay away and keep a broader and more strategic view.

Leaders and managers get promoted largely because they were good at their previous jobs. When they were promoted or given a job they are (sometimes) sent on generic training for management or leadership but do not receive training or coaching about their new role and place in the system. When we researched how leaders and managers performed under pressure we found that they tended, when things get difficult or ambiguous, to revert to what they knew or were used to doing before they were promoted. This usually means that when there is a problem or stressful issue, they start to get involved in and micromanage people. We had so many incidents of inappropriate Action Bias where commanders felt they had to go to the scene of an incident because as police officers that was what they were used to doing, rather than staying away and keeping a broader and more strategic view.

The GSB (Gold, Silver, Bronze) system works so well because it sees the different levels of responsibility as interconnected parts of one system. What we learned was that:

• training and coaching the leaders to become more disciplined and draw back, concentrating on strategic issues (not getting sucked into operational decisions and problems),
• training the managers to manage at a tactical level and not get sucked into doing and micromanaging, and
  
• critically, ensuring that everyone understands
  
• the system,
  
• how it works,
  
• what their roles, responsibilities and expectations are, and crucially
  
• how and what (and what not) to communicate to whom
  

builds a healthy system where people become more professional and start making better decisions. A central part of the system is to train people how to make better decisions, think in different ways (See Modes of Leadership) when solving problems and learn how to deal positively with ambiguity.

Leaders that are rushing around doing things, fire fighting and managing are a symptom of an unhealthy system.

Leadership is one part of a living system. Like any organ in a living body, it has a purpose and a defined place within the system. Confuse the boundaries of these and the system will not function optimally. A healthy system requires that each part is healthy in itself and works in harmony with the others. Every organ is as important as the rest in the chain. Likewise leaders and managers need to work together in harmony with every other function.

Leaders that are rushing around doing things, fire fighting and managing are a symptom of an unhealthy system. They should have their finger on the pulse of the organisation and be looking after strategic issues, not solving operational problems - thats what the managers and their teams are for. Far too many leaders operate at inappropriate levels in organisations and as a result end up creating the very situations are trying to resolve.

This is all very well but does it work in profit making businesses as well as service industries?
We have worked with investment banks, engineering firms, sales companies, retail enterprises and growing transport companies. The minimum ROI we have seen in the first year has been 3350%. Yes you read that right and that does not include factors for happier and more professional staff and better decision making capabilities.

Are you too busy? Think again you may well be what is holding your organisation back.

Too busy to lead?

You won't be too busy to die

It's odd how things happen in themes, it's a bit like waiting for a bus. There isn't one for ages and then three or four all arrive at the same time. For some reason this is happening with our contact with a certain type of 'leader' at the moment. I put the word leader in parenthesis for a good reason; they aren't really leading even though they call themselves leaders.
They are far too busy solving problems, managing people and directing operations to lead.

Let me tell you a (true) story:

In the early 1980's, the British police forces had a big problem. There was increasing civil unrest in the form of strikes, riots and other large scale public order events. In 1981 the police service was largely unprepared for these events in all sorts of ways. I know because I was involved in all of these as a young police officer. We didn't have the equipment, training and worse still the leadership to deal with these kids of large fluid and dangerous situations. Many mistakes were made and many people were injured and in a couple of cases deaths occurred.

The big issue was the leadership.

The first night on the Toxteth (Liverpool) riots in 1981 saw a police force overwhelmed and needing backup from neigbouring forces. Rows of houses, shops and cars were in flames. Crowds of 100's and in some cases 1,000's were thrashing the local force. Only 1 in 20 police officers had the equipment or training for public order events, and even then not on the scale being experienced during that hot summer with it's very long nights. I know I was there.
One night we were in the front line being petrol bombed, bricked and generally attacked with anything the crowd could get hold of. An officer next to me got hit by a petrol bomb and a brick at the same time. I and another officer doused the flames and pulled the officer back whilst protecting him with our shields from the rain of missiles. The plan in these situations is to remove the injured officer to safety, get medical help (which should always be just behind the line) and then return to the line. We pulled the smoldering officer into a doorway whilst screaming for a medic. Whilst we were waiting we made sure the fire was out and started to attend to his most immediate injuries. At that moment we both realised that we weren't alone in the recess of the building. I flicked my torch on, quickly protecting the injured man with my shield fearing the worst. The beam of the torch quickly picked out the shape of a police officer who was standing right at the back of the deeply recessed doorway. Confused at first we then realised that it was the area commander, a superintendent who was meant to be in charge of this overall situation. the other officer who had helped me drag the injured man back with said spontaneously "F*** me, I hadn't realised we had gone that far back!"

Many things were learned in the those days of the 1981, particularly in terms of leadership which as I got promoted became a central theme of my professional work as Director of Studies at the then, National Police Training.

Like most leaders senior police officers get to their position by doing the job. When they come under pressure they often revert to type and want to get involved in the action (Action Bias). As a result I was involved, with many others in restructuring the way we lead and managed situations that were 'out of the ordinary' incidents. Out of this came the Gold Silver and Bronze command system.

The idea here was to put a framework around leader's and manager's roles and responsibilities. Gold are the leaders at a strategic level. They set the mission goals and then ensure that silver has all the resources they need to do their task. They are kept separate from Silver and are not to go on the ground.

Silver achieves the mission by developing a strategy with gold and bronze as advisers and then commanding operations with one bronze expert as a tactical adviser. Silver commanders are not allowed to leave the command centre. Under no circumstances are Gold or Silver allowed anywhere near operational workings. They almost always (there is lots of evidence for this) make things worse for the people actually doing the job and usually distract them.

Bronze are the managers / commanders on the streets. It their job to make the strategy work at a local level using their operational expertise and without interference from above.

As you will no doubt realise this takes trust. Trust in the professional abilities of other people to do their job.

In short if you are too busy to lead you are doing the wrong things. In our seminars, workshops and coaching we help to get people back to doing what they are meant to be doing and get the organisation running properly.

Quite often the blockages in an organisation are blockages of thinking at the top. Free this up, get organised, start trusting and organisations start to flow and achieve.

Recruiting, promotions and other nonsense.

Just about everyone who has had a job has been through a job interview. What was your last one like? What was your worst experience?
I was in a company recently and had the opportunity to observe the recruitment of a number of people. The process was quite typical. A job specification was drawn up, sometimes by the last incumbent and sometimes by a 'specialist'. Some qualifications are decided on together with the usual candidates such as good communication skills etc.
An advert is placed and CV's or application forms start to roll in together with references.
There is then the quick sift to weed out the no-hoper's and a date is set for the interview or interviews. The person arrives and the recruiters get a 'feel' for the candidates with or without the aid of psychometrics through an interview. A decision is taken and the job offer is made and hey presto a new employee is recruited. Most are a variation on this theme.
I have conducted many such processes and observed quite a few. And the success rate of all this activity? It would be hard to argue that most recruitment processes do much more than recruit across a normal distribution. About 10-15% are great choices with an equal number being real dogs that you wished you hadn't bothered with and the remainder sort of average.
Whilst I was observing the recruiting process this time I wondered if the chances of recruiting real stars would change much if people were chosen at random from the final sift? I would hope that all that effort made a difference, but from experience and from what the MD was saying - 'It's difficult to get quality people' I wonder.
The same goes for promotions. People get promoted for a variety of reasons. Again about 10-15% were spot on and turned out to be stars. Sometimes some people get promoted who you think are dubious and find that they really rise to the position. And an equal number who you think will make good managers or leaders from their previous behaviour and attitude turn out to be surprisingly bad. As they say past and current performance is not an indicator of future performance.
More sophisticated processes have assessment centres but I am still left wondering as their success rate.
One model I like is to give people a go. Come in and do the job and then we will decide.

Often when dealing with prospective clients we offer to run a workshop / coaching sessions etc. and if they don't like it / it doesn't deliver we will walk away we won't charge. (This has never happened by the way we have always secured the contract).

You wouldn't buy a car without doing a test drive so why do the same with jobs and promotions?

There is only one way to tell if you have a potentially good leader for example. Put them in a position of leadership and see what happens.

T5 - some departures on time...

In the previous blog; Terminal 5 Chaos I made comments about the apparent lack of leadership capability of Gareth Kirkwood and how he came across during the press conference on the first day of the fiasco. Interestingly today he announced that he, together with David Noyes the BA Customer Service Director are leaving the company. The press have now engaged in a 'was he pushed or did he jump' series of speculations.
As I have said on a number of occasions leading when things are ok and the problems are purely operational ones takes skill. Leading at times of ambiguity, change and difficulty is the real test of leadership. Times like this requires agility, emotional resilience and the ability to not only cope with ambiguity but to be able to use it to your advantage.
Most leadership however does not occur under the glare of the media. Poor leadership frequently gets hidden and carries on quietly causing damage unhindered, but noticed by many who can't or won't speak up.
Preparing leaders to deal with situations 'when the wheel comes off' is a specialist process that unfortunately gets left out of most development and coaching events.

Global Value Chains and global decision making - problem solved

Late last week I was working with a post doc from Cambridge University who's research area is Global Value Chains or supply chain management. At the end of the session she mentioned that she was having problems getting a job, which surprised me a bit. She then rattled off a list of interviews she had attended and given presentations at and not been picked. So we sat down for a couple of hours to 'solve the problem'. What came out of this amazed both of us.
The first thing we had to do was to workout what the problem was. So she gave me the presentation she roles out for such occasions and it was impressive research. However we soon discovered that it was (like a lot of doctoral research) so specialist that only a handful of people in the world could engage at any meaningful level with the subject, and I wasn't one of them!
We quickly did a profiling job on her audiences and discovered the same was largely true of them. They were supply chain experts in their own right but not to the level required to really get to grips with her research. As she said, "It's so specialised that it's not important".

So using the principles of solving ambiguous problems we set about getting to grips with this one. Quite quickly she was designing a full page advert for the New Scientist to attract money so that she could continue with her research. This process brought about some key realisations about Global Value Chains and the issues facing developing countries as a result of the activities of globalised companies.

The issues we realised were these:
In manufacturing global companies like source the components from many countries. The decisions about where to get or manufacture the components from are based on a matrix of factors. Some of the factors in the decision matrix include cost, quality, ease of access, stability of the country, labour force and production unit, skills, inducements like tax breaks, transport and proximity to the line of the chain (So if every thing else is sourced from the Asiatic countries sourcing a small component from Europe might not make sense unless there is a good reason for it) etc.
Once the global supply chain is established, countries find that they have a relationship with other countries in the chain through the company. They have close relationships with those links on either side of the chain and more distant but equally reliant relationships with other countries further down or further up the chain. Each country in the chain is in a symbiotic relationship with the others and the company and yet they as a country are in competition with each other and want as big an amount of the pie is possible.
Once these supply chains have been established (Decisions made) they do not remain static. Many things can change or even remove one or a number of the links (Countries) in the chain. The thing to bear in mind here is that many of the links are developing countries. So a large global company setting up in a developing country helps economically. However that country does not have control of this production capability and it can move away as quickly as it arrives, especially in times of market slowdown or when another country offers a better deal.

The issue is that just about all of then decisions make are about what is best for the company. It doesn't take much imagination to work out what happens to a country that has attracted a number of of these links in a number of global value chains, when it is no longer seen as not the place to be, for whatever reason, somewhere cheaper, closer etc. It is very possible to imagine a scenario where a developing country is on the receiving end of a decision to pull out, or reallocate the chain elsewhere. If the country has a number of these chains and they all pull out, the economy of some countries would be dire straights, with the potential for civil or even international conflict.

The problem is that all of the decisions being made are fragmented and based on the health of the company not global stability. This has already happened with the global credit markets. Leaders making moneymaking decisions have created the current credit crunch. It is the lack of systems thinking outside of their own company system that has created a problem that is harming them now.

One of the things mode 4 leaders are really good at is seeing and understanding wider systems. They tend to act with this bigger picture in mind. Unfortunately from our research only about 1.2% of the leadership population are mode 4 leaders.

As for the post doc she (and I)now sees and understands the wider context that her work vitally contributes to. Her research concentrates on the relationships between emerging market countries who are part of global value chains. Her next interview is tomorrow. I'll let you know what happens.

Decision making errors 4 - The Majority Fallacy

This problem solving and decision making error has a number of other names, such as the Bandwagon error. It is quite closely linked to 'group think' in which people do what the group decides to do.

Making great decisions

The infinite variety of people's problem solving capability and the basis of their decision making never ceases to amaze me:

Decision Making Error # 3 The Bias Bias

Today's video looks at a phenomena known as the Bias Bias, or the bias blind spot reported by Pronin in 2002. The full reference is below.

Pronin, E., Lin, D.Y., Ross, L., 2002. The bias blind spot: perceptions of bias in self versus

others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 82, 369-381

Emotional Resilience, Decisions and making good Judgements

Over on the Neuroanthropology site there is a blog I have been meaning to comment on for a month about emotions and decision making. Now whilst the actual blog is a critique of three studies on decision making and emotions from a neuroanthropological methods perspective it does make interesting reading from our point of view.
I don't intend to replicate the blog as it is examining a series of methodological issues and you can read it yourself here.

However I will comment on the three findings from a practical decision making perspective and how people deal with risk and ambiguity.

1. The first study it reports on shows that sad people "spend more money to acquire the same commodities than those in a neutral emotional state.”
2. The second is about trader behaviour and risk and concludes "that traders who let their emotions get the best of them tend to fare poorly in the markets. But traders who rely on logic alone don’t do that well either. The most successful ones use their emotions to their advantage without letting the feelings overwhelm them.”
3. "Studies have shown that adolescents are very well aware of their vulnerability and that they actually overestimate their risk of suffering negative effects from activities like drinking and unprotected sex…" ‘It now becomes clearer why traditional intervention programs fail to help many teenagers,’ Dr. Valerie Reyna and Dr. Frank Farley wrote. ‘Although the programs stress the importance of accurate risk perception, young people already feel vulnerable and overestimate their risks.’ In Dr. Reyna’s view, inundating teenagers with factual risk information could backfire, leading them to realize that behaviors like unprotected sex are less risky than they thought. Using an analytical approach of weighing risks versus benefits is ‘a slippery slope that all too often results in teens’ thinking that the benefits outweigh the risks,’ she said.

The points I want to make about these findings are these (somewhat different to the original blog):

1. The first (and simple) point I would make here is that each of these findings point to the importance of emotional intelligence and emotional resilience in decision making, especially when there is risk or ambiguity involved.
2. My second point is that it is impossible to have a wholly analytical approach without our emotions and beliefs being involved, none of us are robots devoid of such influences. Therefore it is vital that we understand our own individual biases and emotional triggers and can either incorporate them into our thinking or act to mitigate their effects.
3. That analytical approaches (the last study) to decision making can in certain situations exacerbate the problem and make the decision less effective, compared to an emotional or gut based one. What is happening in this particular case is that the fear of the risk prevents risky behaviour. When analysed the real risks became apparent (“The risk of pregnancy from a single act of unprotected sex is quite small, perhaps one chance in 12, and the risk of contracting H.I.V., about one in 500, is very much smaller than that") and therefore leads to more risk taking. This can also work in a positive direction. A very personal example I would quote here was when, many years ago I was in the Army learning to make parachute jumps. The analytical approach helped to move me past my fears - (terror actually) and walk out of a perfectly workable aircraft and plummet to earth, my life relying on a bit of silk and some string. One was considered to be a good result and the other judged to be not so good.

In summary making good decisions and solving problems well, is more than just collecting and analysing data. Judgement is a very large part of such activities. A big part of making good judgements is emotional resilience and intelligence.

This leads me to a question; How is judgement making developed in our leaders?

I'll leave this for another blog at another time as there are some concrete things that can help people to make better judgements.

The Probability Fallacy or Error

Common decision making & problem solving errors #1

Heathrow Terminal 5 Chaos - management and leadership

It opened on time, within budget (£4.3 bn or $10 bn) and to spec, well the technical specifications anyway. A triumph of a new project management (actually on behalf of BAA it was project leadership and management) model that saw the sponsor taking responsibility, leading with vision and humility and not pushing the risk to the contractors in the usual punitive way of management. BAA looked at all the famous project management flops and realised that the often used model of abrogation of risk and responsibility (i.e. no leadership) to the contractors doesn't produce good projects. It is interesting that many managed and not led projects are government programmes, but that's another issue.

It is estimated by the respected transport Journalist Christian Wolmar that if this programme had gone the way of most other large capital projects it should have overrun on costs by about 40%, been about 1-2 years late and an average of 6 workers would have been killed during the construction phase.

As it is the project, one of the most complex yet, didn't have any of these problems and yet we see this happening, delays, the baggage system halted because the loaders couldn't keep up, glitches due to the complexity of the system, check in staff confused about the new systems. There will of course be a post-mortem, many reports and it will be interesting to see what the results will be of these.

However from a preliminary trawl of the media and BAA / BA material (they are staying very tight lipped at the moment, giving quick briefings and walking off before they can be asked any questions, listening to the passengers stories it sounds like the technical systems are working fine. The problems appear to be when humans who didn't design and grow with the technology are suddenly required to operate it all together.
I am reliably told (by a BAA employee) that every system was tested and retested and works. However everything working together with real people and not the experts and designers operating the systems things started to go wrong.

On the face of it the success of the capital part of the project was down to the sponsors bearing the risk, leading as well as managing the project, by which I mean taking responsibility, allowing the risks to be real and not pretending they don't exist or minimising them, keeping communications open at all levels, listening to feedback at all levels as the project progressed and learning as they went along. The failure of the operations appear to stem from the opposite. There appears to been a lot of management and little leadership when it came to the operations side of things. Both need to work together, especially when it comes to people.

The difference between management and leadership and what happens when both aren't operating together came out loud and clear in the very different press briefings given by BA.

The sight of BA Director of Operations Gareth Kirkwood, clearly rattled, giving a press statement to say sorry (which was good) and then walking off refusing to answer any questions (which was not good), did not help. He was clearly trying to manage the situation however in doing so displayed poor leadership and very little emotional resilience, which are closely connected, especially in times of difficulty.

This is in contrast to the performance today of The Chief Executive of British Airways, Willie Walsh, who was composed, honest and human, took responsibility and answered the questions put to him. Leadership matters as does management - they have to work together.

Above average leaders

• Are the people in your organization smarter / better / more intelligent than the average?
• Are your leaders smarter / better / more intelligent than those from most other organizations?
• Are your leaders smarter / better / more intelligent than the rest of your organization, or do they think that they are?
  
• Are you, your team, your organization better at dealing with ambiguity and risk than the average?
• Are you a better driver than the average?

If you answered yes to the last question then you are in good company. A study by Ola Svenson in 1981. ("Are we all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers?". Acta Psychologica 47 (2): 143–148.) found that just over 80% of drivers considered that they were in the top 30% of drivers in terms of driving ability.

In 1987 John Cannell published a study in which he found that every state in the US reported that the students from that state had on average scored higher than the national norm in educational tests!

In other studies, project manager's ability to project manage, leaders ability to lead, people's time management capability, sales ability, ability to deal with ambiguity, police officers view of their force and their policing capabilities, military personnel's view of the standing of their service compared to others, etc. all report the same thing. That they are at least above average and usually in the top few percent of the population.

This tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities in relation to others is a common effect especially when people are reporting on traits or attributes of themselves or groups to which they are affiliated. It has it's own name - The Lake Woebegone Effect after a fictional town in a radio series A Prairie Home Companion, where, according to the presenter, Garrison Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

Obviously with the exception of a couple of mathematical obscurities, only half the population can be above average.

This may account for one of the findings I had recently that most senior (board level) leaders tend not to engage in development activities but require that others below them do.

Most of us are, it would appear, when compared to everyone else, above average!

Leadership development?

What would have to happen for any leadership development to be called a success?
That it develops more knowledge?
or better skills maybe?
Oh and some leadership models or theories maybe?
A mixture of all of these?

Just what are the attributes of a successful leader and how to best develop them?

How many coaches, leadership trainers and lecturers have answers to these questions that they have thought about before you ask them?

I was interested in what would happen if I started to ask such questions of the people who's job it is to develop leaders either in universities or in industry. The results were enlightening and somewhat depressing. Before I go any further this was an informal research project, but as a result of the findings I have started thinking about a more robust and formal exploration of this subject.

I have set about this task in the last couple of months and made a pest of myself with every leadership trainer and lecturer I have met. On the whole they were all happy to answer me. I have spoken to 161 such leadership developers since January. The lecturers from universities were much more likely to have thought about these questions before hand. Trainers and coaches tended, with a few exceptions, to have to think about this on the spot suggesting that they were just running programmes based on the activities and exercises they knew about.
The academics tended to have thought more about the end result and developed material that focuses on that.
It became apparent that trainers split roughly into two: trainers who mainly run set packages and facilitators who tend to work off the data presented to them by the delegates.
The problem with the academic solutions is that they tend to concentrate on the development of knowledge rather than skills.
Neither group had a ready answer to questions about what is their strategy for developing critical thinking, creativity, and autonomy.
When I asked how they helped to ensure that the leaders developed flexible practices and what they did to develop emotional resilience and the ability to deal with ambiguity I drew a total blank. No one had any thought out suggestions.

It would appear that there is a big difference between academic and industry leadership developers in their outlook and scope. Academics focus more on knowledge development, trainers on skills development and facilitators and coaches on personal development. These are not exclusive, just tendencies towards certain development activities.

Academic sources tend to be more up-to-date than their industry based colleagues. Additionally they are much more likely to present counter arguments for certain theories that industry trainers. Academics are also much more likely to have had their thinking and teaching challenged by peers.

On the other hand trainers are more likely to incorporate new material into their programmes than academics, however such material is much more likely to be unverified. In other words trainers will include material that has little or no research backing. This means that what you could get cutting edge thinking or a pile of drivel. Academics however are not immune to this either, but it is less likely to happen.

When asked how they help leaders make better decisions the most common answer was that simply knowing more helps here. Some (all academics) said they included decision making sciences in their programmes but weren't sure if this actually helped.

Lies, Hillary Clinton's Memory and Leadership Issues

A lot is currently being written about H.C.'s memory / lies / stories. Here are a couple more interesting and charitable blogs from a cognitive perspective :

1. http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2008/03/defending_hillary_clinton_from.php
2. http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/hillary-kwame-and-our-fallible-memory.htm
   

I think that there maybe other explanations here, and one in particular that I have researched with leaders, particularly when they are reporting on how they see certain situations like the reality of the market conditions for example.
The phenomenon, 'context recollection' incorporates the affect of the emotions on story telling and recounting of memory events. If there is a strong emotional situational context, in which the story is being retold, particularly those contexts that produce euphoria or fear (risk and ambiguity) there is a strong tendency for the story or memory recollection to be molded to the current context to either carry on the euphoric emotions or to mitigate perceived threats.

The tellers of these untruths know and can report that the memory is not real, however the context appears to change the meaning of the untruth to 'not a lie' for the story teller.

Without evidence to the contrary, many leaders will stick to the 'untruth' and force agreement, creating a false certainty, ignoring and filtering out evidence that everyone else knows the veracity of the situation. Denial of this type is typical mode one behaviour.

This has a lot of consequences in situations where leaders are making decisions based on their understanding of the current situation and perceptions of the past. If they make decisions at times of euphoria or fear (even if they are not conscious of the emotion at the time) the decisions are usually awful ones. Their recollection of the success of the decision is likewise altered by the emotions experienced. This is why I place such emphasis on the development of emotional resilience and intelligence for leaders.

Leaders or followers?

Leadership is a difficult activity: You have to work out what the reality of the environment is; try to predict what will happen over the coming period; decide what possibilities exist or what latitude for action exists; work out where you want to take the company, organisation or country; articulate the same in a way that everyone understands and can buy into; decide the appropriate time scale; methods and so on.

It's a difficult job even in the best of times. However when the environment starts to change or become volatile leading gets really tough. Things are made considerably harder when leaders find it difficult to separate reality from perception. Harder still when emotions start to alter our view of reality.

The research (press release here) I referred to in the last blog has showed that whilst just about all leaders say that they make decisions based on the data, 4 out of every 5 leaders recognise that these decisions , especially in uncertain situations, usually have a heavy emotional basis.

My question is how do leaders learn to make decisions in difficult and uncertain situations?
The answer appears to be not through any formal process. One leader told me:

"A university education is a good start and an MBA helps however it never prepares you for dealing with uncertainty. In fact it makes things worse.You tend to leave thinking that the answers are in the data. In hard times all the data in the world won't help you a jot. It's how you see things and how you fool yourself, and we all do, that counts. Their way of thinking is great for stable times but if you follow their guidance when things are less stable you are going to end up in a lot of trouble."

Another leader stated:

"It is important that people believe I know what I am doing. I have to admit that like many people, when things are foggy you can't in all honesty say I do know what I am doing. I think we all just trust to luck a bit and cast about and see what others are doing. I know it's not satisfactory but what can you do when things are changing so fast?"

.

"What I have learned since taking control of the service is that all the research and models you get fed in training and from college are historical. Not one of them tells you what to do when things have changed or when they are changing. New situations need new thinking, not old research and education. I would place the ability to make good decisions in the face of ambiguity and to be able to think new thoughts in new situations as the number one leadership attributes these days, not the degree someone has." Reported a CEO

Agile Leadership is the ability to be able to lead well in difficult and ambiguous situations, the very circumstances others are clueless in. There is precious little formal preparation for leadership in uncertain times anywhere in the world, which is why leaders are increasingly looking to each others for answers. We run Agile Leadership programs and modules (PDF version)designed to fit in with existing leadership training or as stand alone packages, that develop these attributes. The growing popularity of these events is testimony to the need for something different in formal education and training. I am not saying what is going on now is wrong. It is useful and has it's place. It just doesn't equip people for difficult times, dealing with uncertainty and rapid change where they need to solve problems, make good decisions and lead when everyone else is sat around wondering what to do next; just waiting to see what everyone else is doing (just like the current economic situation where rumour and volatility are rampant). That is being a follower not a leader.

Leadership - leading or following?

Does leadership development come up with the goods particularly when it comes to preparing leaders for dealing with a crisis or ambiguous situations?
Do leadership developers (trainers) know how to develop critical and creative thinking?
We are just finishing off a 5 year research project looking at leadership decision making, problem solving and agility in times of difficulty - when things are uncertain and ambiguous (I will post the articles from this when they are ready). What is becoming very clear is that most leaders have no personal strategy for dealing with difficult situations or ambiguous conditions. The study has found that only about 11% of leaders have such a strategy, or even think about it.

What, you may ask, is the number one leader's strategy for dealing uncertainty or difficulty?
The answer is not very encouraging. It is to see what others are doing and copy it. It's a sort of safety in numbers mentality.

Most leaders don't have a personal strategy for what to do when things get difficult or ambiguous

The second most popular response? To collect more data. The problem here is that the leader's report that this is usually self defeating as the data is normally conflicting and the sheer amount available is confusing. The ambiguity of this strategy usually means that leaders end up making a decision about what data to accept and which to omit. As you can probably guess they largely choose to omit the data that is less optimistic, more confusing and that which they don't understand. When they are confused by the data they fall back on strategy 1. See what everyone else is doing.

The current economic crisis is actually crisis of leadership

You only have to have a look at what is happening in the financial markets at the moment to see this behaviour writ large.

This current crisis is a crisis of leadership. It has been leadership decisions both at corporate and governmental levels that lead us into current economic mess.

Over 83% (the sample size for this study was 1628 leaders from business and service industries in 7 countries) said that they they would not consider them selves to be particularly creative or that they struggled with creativity.

We will look in greater depth this week at leadership development and more from the study.

Ambiguity, bad showers, and organizational restructuring II

This is (finally) the follow-on from this article. In the that article we were discussing when it is that the decision is made to engage in some form of organisational change process. Now bearing in mind what I wrote previously about the regression fallacy and in particular the issue that things only come to our notice once they have crossed some threshold (usually a very personal and somewhat arbitrary threshold) and put it together with what I wrote about our perchance for action bias.

There are some considerations here:

1. The first is that when we actually notice a problem we don't notice the problem, rather we notice the symptoms.
   
2. Secondly, by the time that we have noticed the symptoms there has almost always been a time-lag between the problem occurring and us noticing it (usually as it passes a threshold).
3. When the symptoms cross our threshold we almost always jump into action mode or solutionizing as it is known - as happened in this situation and evidenced here.

So what happens is like trying to use a shower I have at home:

The shower in question is the type that sits over the bath and is connected, via a long flexible pipe, to the bath taps, just like the picture above.
Have you ever tried to use one of these contraptions to have a stand up shower with??

You tend to find that you were are constantly juggling the taps as the water osculates between ice and steam with about three seconds in between where the water is the temperature you want. If you have such a shower you will undoubtedly know what I mean.

The key here is the water pressure and length and bore of the pipe. If the water pressure is low, the length of the pipe is long and the bore is narrow (like my shower), the lag between what you do with the taps and what the temperature the water is when it finally comes out of the shower head is quite considerable.

The effect of this long lag between what I am feeling and any actions I take with the taps means it is incredibly hard to get the right temperature. You either have to make the changes really slowly and incrementally and wait to see what effect it has had (got the link with organisational change?), or if you are in a hurry (because things are bad and we need action NOW) you find that you end up over compensating and a couple of minutes later end up with scalding water. Which when you try to compensate for this, a couple of minutes later you are back to freezing water with a 3 second period of just right showering.

All organisational change has a long lag between what we do and their effects.

Just to make matters worse there is a lag at the beginning from the problem occurring, us noticing the symptoms and then any action we decide then to take. This is followed by a delay before we notice finally what effect our actions have had, which may be months or more likely years down the line. By which time we have got impatient and turned the taps again!

Organizational Change - Leaders leading and managers managing

I am frequently asked why we concentrate on leadership and management, especially in organisational change situations. The answer is simple. We make far too many assumptions about the capabilities and beliefs of these key people. When you analyse why change programmes fail outright or fail to excel in delivering real advantage the top three reasons are:

1. Poor Strategy
   
2. Poor Leadership
3. Poor Management
   

As any organisational development / change process is going to depend on Leaders and Managers doing their job and making a positive impact it is essential that any assumption that they are going to do so are true.

It is quite a large assumption that because someone has the title ‘leader’ or ‘manager’ that they will lead and manage, especially in the difficult, uncertain and shifting conditions of change. This assumption is based on the further assumptions that they know what to do, how to do it and have the mindset and willingness to do what is needed, especially in a situation of change when emotions are often running high. These are difficult situations to manage and lead through, and such situations are an entirely different prospect than say leading and managing in normal operational conditions. There are some questions about the leadership and management which need to be answered:

• Do people know how to lead and manage in such conditions? Different thinking is required in such situations.

• Do they have the skills for such situations? Skills don’t transfer very easily from normal conditions especially when the leader’s and manager’s own emotions are likely to be involved.Do they have the required emotional resilience and intelligence? Can they deal with other people’s and their own emotions in a way which creates a positive working environment where change is constructive, rather than just amplifying fears and heightening emotions?
• Do they have the belief in the change and the vision of the future? People’s attitudes are apparent from the behaviour they display. Our attitudes stem from our beliefs. If people really believe in something they will think and act accordingly. Just asking people if they believe is not enough!
• Do they have a ‘can do’ – positive attitude in difficult situations? All change programmes will have difficult times. People who give up when the going gets tough are going nowhere. Leaders and managers who give up or keep their heads down when the going gets tough are of little use in organisational change situations.
• And finally are they willing to grasp the nettle and actually lead and manage in a way which leaves the organisation and their people stronger and more resilient? Leaders and managers who know what to do and when to do it but who don’t actually do anything will at best have no impact and at worst will have a detrimental influence.

Good leaders and managers can make all the difference between change that delivers massive benefits and catastrophic change that weakens the organisation and the bottom line. This means a bit more than just running a few workshops and briefings.

Leadership Resilience - the difference that makes the difference

Yesterday Keith Mcfarland on Inc.Com posted an article about the Polaris Motorcycle Company. As a biker (BMW) the article caught my eye. As a developer of leadership and organizational resilience the article was a great example of a leader being brought in with no knowledge of the industry or even motorcycles and turning a brand from being seen as one of the worst makes in the world to being some of the most desirable (I would have one!), innovative and well manufactured bikes ever and all during a shrinking US and global motorcycle sales market.
Keith McFarlands bottom line? Leadership resilience. Read his fascinating and inspiring article entitled 'You think you have it tough? here. Then come back here for more or better still head over to Centre i for more, or download the 2008 brochure and develop some resilience in your organization now.

Oh I will get round to finishing off the Ambiguity, bad showers, and organizational restructuring blog asap!

Leaders Leading and Managers Managing II

Many people get promoted to positions like manager or leader because they are good at their job. Others end up being the manager because they have been around longer than anyone else. And yet some become leaders and managers because they look or sound good or convincing. There is a question here:

Just because someone is good at their job, have been around longer than anyone else, look good, sound good are more convincing than others, does it necessarily mean that they will be good at being a manager or leader?

We are just finishing a research project one part of which was to look at leadership and management development:

From the preliminary results we estimate that only about 15% of leaders and managers receive any form of development for the role in preparation, before they take on the position.

Additionally and astonishingly, only about 40% of managers and 30% of leaders ever receive any formal development, like training, coaching or mentoring for example at anytime whilst they are in the role. The further up they are the less it appears that they are likely to have had any form of development and the also they less likely to engage in such activities.

Just under 90% of leaders and just over 70% of managers admit that they largely make it up as they go along, especially as far as decision making is concerned.

78% stated that they were aware that they had either frequently or very frequently made decisions based on their emotional reactions to events. Paradoxically 83% of leaders also stated that most of their decision making was based on the data. So maybe the data was sparking the emotional reaction. I'll let you know when the analysis is complete.

Something to think about.

Leaders Leading and Managers Managing

I managed to talk to the leader who sent out the email yesterday. Her responses to my questions were enlightening:
"I know about all the work being done but it was taking far too long"(Urgency and action bias)
"I hadn't heard anything for ages about what was happening in OD, they had just dropped off the planet as far as I was concerned" (Stakeholder management and different perceptions of time)
"Someone had to move things quickly. The company is in a bad state. I saw the last quarters figures. We don't have time to parp about." (Action bias, possibly regression fallacy, certainly lack of emotional resilience - panic)
"The effect? To motivate people I hope and get things moving" (Assumptions of cause and effect)
"Well we do need to shed a load of people. This way we will see who gives up and who floats to the top." (Concept of motivation)
"Nothing really, it's like all leadership decisions - you make it up as you go along. You do whatever you think is right at the time. I am sorry but we don't have time for all that fluffy stuff. We need to move and now." (To the question about how she developed as a leader and learnt to make decisions).
"Yes I suppose I could have done it differently or even better, but if we don't do something now it will be too late. I can see that it was a bit harsh and maybe a bit of a reaction to the figures but someone has to grip this."
"Well they are just going to have to get on with it aren't they? That's what we pay them all for."


Interestingly this has happened at a moment when we are just getting some initial results from some research into management and leadership development which makes for interesting reading coming next and then we will get back to the showers...

Communicating Change

Just a quickie. Sometimes you are left wondering why some companies bother to bring in expertise or even bother with their own OD departments, managers and leaders.

We have been working with a large organization who are about to go through a serious change process. A lot of research and preparatory work is being done at the moment, especially in the area of developing resilience, dealing with ambiguity and opportunity finding prior to any change. An internal taskforce is (was until this morning that is) working on new structures, strategic alignments and organisational/talent development.

This morning everyone in the organisation received an email from one of the board members with a powerpoint attachment. The email was titled 'Organizational Change - new structure'. The powerpoint with the same title comprised of 5 slides with a series of organisational charts. The email said that this was the new organisational structure. There are no explanatory notes to accompany the slides.

The entire organisation has as you can well imagine, now stopped working and are engaged in a process of trying to work out if the new structure includes them or not as no names are supplied just a load of newly named departments and reporting structures.

Many of the managers have managed to work out during the day that the new structure only accounts for about 1/4 of them.

How to stop an entire organisation in it's tracks in 2 minutes flat. Amazing.

Ambiguity, bad showers, and organizational restructuring

You look at your company or organisation. It has grown. Times have been good. Now times are not so good. The profit margin has shrunk. Cash flow is starting to become a problem. You look at your company. The last time you really looked, (you have been so busy making money or providing your service that you haven't really had the time or the impetus to stand back and have a good long hard look) it was smaller and less complex. Now it looks a mess compared to how it appeared before. You are not really sure what everyone is doing. It matters now that everyone is productive. It matters now that in a time of falling income somehow the cash flow situation is made more comfortable. Almost all the data you see is worrying. This is no longer a time of expansion and spend . Spending when there are copious amounts of inflow is easy. You can convince yourself that almost anything is worth a punt when things are good. The risk of loss is low. Even if it doesn't work there is enough money to ride over any errors. Taking risks is easy, the overall impact on the business, when things are growing and going well, of a bad thing happening is minimal. When we are closer to the edge of moving into a loss situation the impact of risks could (perceptually at least) be greater. We are now in a mindset of poverty consciousness as opposed to a mindset of abundance consciousness. This affects our perception of risk and uncertainty.

"a mindset of poverty consciousness as opposed to a mindset of abundance consciousness"

So what are we going to do?

Well it is obvious that if things stay on the current course what we fear is very likely to happen. This is a downwards spiral we need to halt and if possible reverse before things get critical (or even more critical if we are already at a crunch point).

Hmmmm a no brainer really. We need to act fast, work out what bits of the organisation are profitable and which aren't. Then we need to reorganise (reorganize - translation). Simple, neat and logical.

Or is it? This week I will have a look at the thinking, myths and rethinking about organisational change, decision making, the role ambiguity plays and what this all has to do with bad showers (of the bathroom type).

Ambiguity in Organizations

Click on the graph to make it bigger.

Again some interesting comments from Christine

Here are the approximate distributions of the modes of leadership. As you can see mode 4 leaders are in the minority. (modes 0 and 5 are theoretical at the moment as the research hasn’t been completed on these - these are the latest research distributions however only 1 -4 are accurate populations).

In terms of ability to deal with ambiguity, roughly the closer to mode 4 you get the better things get. Like everything in life every upside has a downside. The downside of this is that the closer to mode 4 you get the less methodical people are and they really don’t like stability too much. So at the moments an organisation needs change these are the guys, however the moment an organisation needs to just settle down and have a period of stability then mode one and two are the people to help here. The approach we take is to give people, particularly leaders the ability to operate in every/any mode depending on the situation and the outcome desired. This is what gives the leaders (and their organisations) their agility. Being agile usually means better decisions and more flexible thinking.

The point for me in developing (at least) tolerance of ambiguity in a wider population is that without it people’s decision making is usually impoverished. By this I mean that if they are reacting emotionally in a knee jerk way to uncertainty or risk for example, they are not usually making great decisions. Developing ambiguity acuity equips people to think clearer, make better decisions, behave better, it enhances problem solving etc. particularly, but not exclusively, in difficult and shifting situations. The very situations others spend most of their time avoiding or denying. They certainly outperform colleagues who don’t have much emotional resilience in a wide range of leadership tasks. These are also the people who will take a risk and try new things.

As you start to increase the numbers of people in an organization who can, as a minimum at least, cope with ambiguity the more agile the organisation becomes, the easier it finds it to navigate difficult times and find advantage where others are struggling. Such organisations also adapt to changing conditions quicker and with a better fit. This is why we do the work we do in companies and organisations. It makes them successful right at the time others are having it tough. To come out of a tough time like a recession for example in great shape, being innovative and having found new markets or other advantages during the difficult times, is like having a spring board into a new world, when others are still just looking up at the board wondering how to get up there.

In short - deal with ambiguity better and you and your organization become more agile, competitive, and swift.

Competency, proficiency and capability in ambiguity

I am currently teaching at Cardiff University where an interesting conversation was sparked about the difference and similarities between competency, proficiency and capability. Considering the last two blogs about developing ambiguity competency I thought that this might prove to be an interesting discussion for the blog. This might get a little convoluted but it is worth sticking with.

Capability: This is usually linked to the terms capacity and ability. So generally speaking in this context to say someone has the capability to deal positively with ambiguity usually means that the individual has the ability or skill and the capacity to deal well with ambiguity. However it does not mean that the person in question will actually do so. The have the capability, however if they don't have the desire to use their skills or contextual factors suggest that using their capability might not be ideal then the capability is unlikely to be realised.

Competence: This normally suggests that an individual has the required skills and knowledge to do something, in this case handle ambiguity. Now there is a question as to whether a person with a competence in say dealing with ambiguity is actually a competent person! Just because someone has a competence in an area does it necessarily mean that they are what what we would generally recognise as being competent? Whilst they use the same word one (having a competence) might not lead to the other (being seen as being competent). Go figure. You could argue that they should but do they in reality? This suggests that being competent takes more than having a series of competencies. One of the things that differentiates competencies from competence if the factor of context. A person would be described as being competent in dealing with ambiguity or risk, for example, if they appear to deal well with these in a wide range of situations and contexts, especially when the going gets tough.
Another factor in being competent is agility or flexibility; the ability to change and develop the competence in the light of new situations and thinking. Competencies therefore have levels leading up to competence that can be shown in almost any situation regardless of the degree of difficulty encountered.
So what about proficiency? This might well be what we would suggest competence is. To be proficient in something suggests an advanced level of competency, it suggests expertise.

So we can be capable and yet not actually use the capability, we can have competencies and yet not be competent in the area in question. However if we are proficient we mush be competent, have the required competencies and have the capability. Simple really!

So what does this mean for ambiguity and risk?
Many have the capacity to deal with ambiguity well and make great decisions, but don't.
Some may have the capability to find the advantage in ambiguity but don't realise it.
A few may have competencies in the areas of ambiguity, like emotional resilience, critical thinking, creativity etc. and yet may not be competent in ambiguous situations.
Only a few (largely mode 4 individuals) are proficient when it comes to dealing well and finding the advantages in ambiguity and risk.

Discuss!

Ambiguity Competencies II

This this the second part of the last blog. I will continue to cover the issues that Christine raised about ambiguity competencies.
3. Leading others in times of ambiguity
There are a series skills, thinking, attitudes and behavours that are specifically required when people have to lead others in times of uncertainty. These include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Creating a compelling and real vision of a required future state for people to move into - there are specific methods and tools for this.
   
2. Intrapersonal ability - being able to monitor your emotional state and manage it this includes:
   
1. Emotional resilience - the ability to move quickly out of one emotional state into another and change the cognitive frame being applied.
   
3. Interpersonal ability - connecting with others, empathy and being able to manage other peoples emotional states
4. Agility - the ability to see change and move with it, and respond accordingly. This is a key competence that has a series of sub skills, thinking, attitudes and behaviours associated with it. This is a major differentiating attribute that mode 4 leaders have.
5. Decision making in ambiguous situations where the outcomes are uncertain. There are some very specific methods are available here.
6. Problem solving, especially where data is missing, incomplete or contradictory. We are currently preparing a series of online workshops around this.
7. Generative (Creative and innovative) practices.
8. The ability to use diverse resources and thinking frames without prejudice.

to name but a few. The aim here is to have agile and flexible leadership that can see change as it happens, change it's approach when necessary to suit the situation and maintain progress, including counter intuitive moves.

4. Developing ambiguity tolerance / resilience in organisations
This requires a special strategic approach that denotes multiple pathways and outcomes. Most strategies have one future and one pathway. In order to develop tolerance to ambiguity, the ability to profit or advantage from ambiguity and increase organisational resilience takes more than just more plans. Just look at the pickle FEMA got into over the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Their problems did not stem from a lack of plans or planning. Organisations that are agile, and can adapt quickly require a different mind set and a different type of strategy. Again there are different sets of competencies and capabilities required for this than are present in most frameworks.

One further word. Any such competency or capability framework needs to have a direction (and a level of ambiguity) that produces the emergent properties required, i.e. the ability to deal with ambiguity positively, find and capitalise on the advantages in every situation and develop agility, excitement, energy and resilience.

Need more? Contact me

Ambiguity Competencies

The comment Christine left was on the last blog was really interesting. It raises some very important and practical issues about using ambiguity for development in organisations.

Oddly when I ran a department at Cranfield University I used to research and teach competency development as one of my areas of interest. I have come across a couple of competencies for ambiguity I would agree with you that just about all of them miss the point or help others like managers to miss the point!

For me there are a couple of important issues here which broadly fall under four broad headings:

1. Creating ambiguity for advantage
2. Dealing with ambiguous situations to gain the advantage
3. Leading others in times of ambiguity
4. Developing ambiguity tolerance / resilience in organisations
   

1. Creating ambiguity for advantage

The first is that creating ambiguity works in certain situations, mainly those where there is an advantage to be gained from doing so. This requires excellent decision making capabilities, or the ability to know exactly when to create ambiguity and when to create clarity, both of which are different but connected cognitive skill sets. There is then the question about how to create differing levels of ambiguity or clarity for the effect required.

When we are working in organisations we concentrate on developing 6 areas of capability that all contribute to the ability to use ambiguity well:

1. Emotional Resilience
   
2. Decision Making
   
3. Problem Solving
4. Critical Thinking
5. Creative Thinking
6. Development of Autonomy
   

2. Dealing with ambiguous situations to gain the advantage

The second is that the major skill in dealing with ambiguous situations is to find the advantage inherent such circumstances, especially when just about everyone else is heading for the hills or a bunker somewhere nice and safe.
This requires a good level of emotional resilience. This is different from emotional intelligence which is also required. One of the things we do know about ambiguous situations is that with the exception of mode four individuals (See Modes of Leadership) they almost always bring about a change in people's emotional state. Heightened emotional states almost always reduce the effectiveness of cognitive operations (thinking). Therefore what happens is that when a person feels that things are ambiguous they will respond in one of a number of ways. These responses can range from total denial, construction of a new reality, attention being placed less ambiguous items, displacement behaviour and so on. Therefore competency frameworks need to look at emotional resilience as a separate (but linked) skill set from emotional intelligence. Interestingly this is where a lot of our work comes from. Helping organisations develop the thinking and skills to profit from ambiguity and part of that is developing emotional resilience.

As a side note here we discovered that skills or competency development programmes have greater impact when the cognitive side of things are addressed. In other words the thinking needs to develop with the skill which is one of our USP's and is based on the idea of modes of thinking which is embeded in the Modes of Leadership model. The reason being is that the system of logic we apply to any situation changes the way we see things and consequently behave or react, which is inextricably linked with our emotional responses. Which is why when we engage people in our Agile Leadership Programme (pdf) we develop all six skill sets at the:

1. Behavioural,
   
2. Cognitive
   
3. Belief / attitudinal, and
   
4. Emotional levels together.

This holistic approach accelerates the development process and means that graduates of the programme can deal with any situation that occurs, make good decisions are creative and critical and can stand on their own two feet in any situation.

In terms of recruiting similar issues abound.

I will answer issues 3 & 4 later

Ambiguity Blogs

I have just done a Google search on the term Ambiguity Blog with interesting results. The top blog is one called 'Revel in Ambiguity' subtitled 'glory in the gaps', which I got quite excited about, until I opened the blog. To be fair it does indeed provide a lot of ambiguity - there isn't any! It is a blog of a newly married young woman who appears to be cooking her way to domestic bliss.
The next site 'Making sense of it all - Meow, doesn't appear as far as I can tell, to mention ambiguity or anything vaguely related to it. It contains the musings of a marketing guy who by the looks of his linkedin and face book profiles on the blog spends a fair amount of his life networking (well at the very least making links with a pile of other people). Surely networking is more than a million internet links to other peoples profiles. You are not even networking with the actual people. There is a guy who linked with my profile on Linked in when I had just started. When I looked at his profile he had over a million links! Networking? I think not, it's more like notworking.
Then comes a blog entitled Deliberate Ambiguity which sounded really interesting. It is sub titled ...'musings about philosophy, marketing and even the occasional taxidermy.' Oh Oh - another marketing bod - this time in braces and a tie. This blog is marketing first, marketing second and marketing third. My definition of philosophy must be way out of date.
The comes the Ambiguity Advantage blog - about ambiguity oddly.

That's it!

From there on in (in google) all the rest of the entries are from individual blog writings that mention the word ambiguity in some way, usually as a synonym for being uncertain.
May be people like the idea of ambiguity without having too much of it about. It might also say something about the ambiguity people feel in their lives and that the blogs are a way of disambiguating their lives. It's all a little vague, which isn't a bad place for it to be, maybe.

The Ellsberg Paradox - Ambiguity Aversion

A great explanatory video of the Ellsberg Paradox has been posted over on the Curious Website. This describes Daniel Ellsberg's (left) famous ambiguity aversion experiment. As I describe in 'The Ambiguity Advantage' most people shy away from ambiguous situations. The masters of ambiguity (Mode Four individuals) on the other hand are very comfortable with and explore ambiguous situations - the very conditions (as the video shows) most others steer away from. In part just being one of a small number of players in any (ambiguous) situation gives an advantage on it's own. However there are specific techniques and more importantly frames of thinking the 'Masters of Ambiguity use. Mode four thinkers rarely fall victim to the decision making and problem solving biases we are currently exploring on the Ambiguity Advantage blog. How come? Stay tuned and all will be relieved.

What happens when authority meets ambiguity?

An interesting series of responses of authority (in the form of the police) to an ambiguous, non-crime situation. This is a great example of mode one behaviour. Enjoy!

Action Bias in Decision Making & Problem Solving

The blogs have been a little sporadic in the last few weeks as I have been in the Middle East running workshops for a series of universities and agencies on how to develop critical and creative thinking, as well as higher levels of problem solving, decision making, greater levels of autonomy and leadership capabilities in students and employees.

Anyway...

Another factor that alters decisions to make a decision (!) ( or what it is that triggers us to make a decision) and contributes to the decisions we make is a phenomena called action bias. Simply put this means that just about everyone, when faced with ambiguous situations, especially those circumstances associated with risk, gets the feeling that they need to take some action regardless of whether this is a good idea or not. This frequently contributes to misjudgments about when to act (usually too soon or in the wrong direction) and misperceptions of the nature of the problem facing them, which means that people not only make decision too soon but they could often, almost always have easily made a better decision if they had an awareness of the unconscious psychological drivers we have to make decisions.

Simply put action bias states that when faced with uncertainty or a problem, particularly an ambiguous problem we prefer to do something, in fact we are happier doing anything, even if it counterproductive, rather than doing nothing, even if doing nothing is the best course of action. Action bias was noticed by Bar Eli et al (2007) in a study of goal keepers behaviour in soccer games when faced with trying to save a penalty. When they analysed where most penalty kickers place the ball on taking the penalty they found that just over 1/3 of the time they shoot for the middle and the remaining times, just under two thirds they aim for either the left or right corner. And yet when faced with the decision of what to do almost all goal keepers prefer to leap either to the left or the right rather than standing in the middle, where on average they are marginally more likely to save more goals. The thinking behind such a decision is that it looks and feels better to have missed the ball by diving (action) in the wrong direction than to have the ignominy of watching the ball go sailing past and never to have moved. Action bias is usually an emotional reaction based on the feeling that ‘I have to do something’ even if I don’t know what to do.

The same often applies in many other situations. In a study of police officers dealing with minor disorder outside of night clubs in the UK for example, it was noticed that when some (a minority of more mature and often more experienced) officers were present at the scene they were much more likely to be tolerant of minor disorder and hang back and not act. Preferring instead to keep an ‘eye on the situation’ when they considered the behaviour was ‘horse play’ and without consequence to other members of the public. When other, usually less experienced (the majority),police officers witnessed such behaviour they were much more likely to act, engaging with the ‘offenders’ at an early stage of the situations. The result was that where police officers didn’t act, there were fewer arrests, fewer injuries and the situations usually defused itself without intervention. However when officers did intervene early the situations were far more likely to escalate and more people were likely to be sucked into the situation. When the police took action more of a crowd of onlookers usually developed with the result that some of them got drawn into the situation. The police officers who did act early almost all reported that they felt compelled to ‘do something’ and that ‘sitting around doing nothing isn’t an option’.

Action bias frequently draws us into ‘doing something’ when hanging back, observing and exploring the situation for a while is often the best action to take. As you can see action bias can make easily situations worse and is the foundation of a lot of poor decision making in companies and organisations around the world. This is linked to both the illusion of control phenomena and regression fallacy which were the subject of the last two blogs.

It is also worthwhile noting that action bias leads us to jump into developing solutions before we have the problem fully articulated (solutionizing). A subject that has been the focus of previous blogs.

Also there are one or two places left on the March 4th workshop.

Michael Bar-Eli, Ofer H. Azar, Ilana Ritov, Yael Keidar-Levin and Galit Schein (2007) Action bias among elite soccer goalkeepers: The case of penalty kicks. Journal of Economic Psychology Volume 28, Issue 5, October 2007, Pages 606-621

Illusion of Control

Last week at the Medical Sciences Division (Oxford University) one of the subjects we explored follows on nicely from the last blog, illusions of control. In 1995 Langer wrote a paper in which he showed that many people tend to believe that they can control and change events that are in fact beyond their control. Even during truly random events like the lottery, rolling dice etc. people often believe that they have the skills and attributes to change or influence the events. Such a belief is not confined to individuals. Teams also fall foul of this decision making bias, which because others are involved in the bias, usually removes all doubt of the entire group that they can in fact influence events that when examined somewhat more objectively are beyond the control of the individuals and teams concerned.

The question, as I frequently ask lecture and workshop participants, is; So What?

When you think about the decisions governments, boards and committees make for example, you don’t need to go too far to see the effect of ‘illusion of control’ playing out. That some policy or other actions can do things like reduce crime, increase educational attainment, solve market related issues and so on. This does not mean that I am not a believer in action, only that many actions we take and assume have solved whatever the problem is, have not in themselves been the solution. It has often rather been some other effect like regression fallacy etc.

There are a couple of interesting things here worth mentioning:

The first is that the cognitive bias we develop called the ‘illusion of control’ is frequently a response to ambiguity. Disambiguating something beyond our control appears to help emotionally. Ok it doesn’t lead to good decisions but we feel a whole lot better. A nice example of this is the difference between being passenger on a plane and the varying degrees of ill-ease felt say compared to the pilots who have a sense of control. A smaller effect can be felt often driving your own car or being a passenger in someone else’s. Yesterday I flew to Riyadh (where I am now) and was asleep when the plane hit a patch of really bad turbulence. I found myself sitting up and becoming alert, just in case. In case of what??? I found myself reasoning that we were 37,000 feet up flying at 550 MPH. If anything went wrong what was I going to do about it? Sod all really apart from probably scream and even then for what purpose? It just felt better to be alert and have the illusion of control even though in reality I had zero control over the situation. I was just trying to disambiguate the situation and (this is an important point) feel better – the emotional connection again. Once I realised what I was doing I relaxed, gave myself up to the uncertainty of the situation, stopped disambiguating and fell asleep!

The second is something called activity bias. More of which next blog. Oh and we will cover the recency effect as well!

The Regression Fallacy and desicion making / problem solving

Following on from the last article, the question was why do make decisions when we do?

The answer is that usually it is because we discern that there is a need for action. (well yup-de-do, I hear you cry).

The problem is that at the moment we realise that action is required the problem has almost always been around for some time and it has just pushed through some form of threshold to become noticed.
Now problems like pain, the stock market, organisational or individual performance or just about anything else, don't increase in a smooth incremental way (see last article), even if they appear to. They tend to fluctuate. So we notice the problem as the fluctuation crosses a threshold and makes it important to us. We tend not to concentrate on problems when they are below (and building up to) a threshold.
What happens is that 'on average' such fluctuating issues tend to regress to mean, or average out. We notice only the peaks as these have the largest emotional impact. We therefore tend to make decisions to do something at a peak once the problem has crossed a threshold (which can be emotional or psychological but are rarely consciously defined - it just feels like a problem now!).
Because of the regression to mean effect - (fluctuating events will almost always come back off the peak and move back to an average situation again, usually below the threshold) we think that whatever action we took, like going to the doctor, buying or selling, or changing the organisation in some way is responsible for the change, when in fact even without the decision things were going to even out anyway!

So we tend to make decisions to do things when they peak and assume that the action we took rectified the situation when the problems reduce, even though in all likelihood they were going to decrease anyway. The flaw in the logic that leads to this situation is to assume that the extraordinary events happening right now are now the 'norm' or average for this time and situation. This occurs usually because what is happening in the here and now feels like reality - and this feeds us into a place where we take now as a predictive indicator of the future - if things carry on like this...

Which brings us nicely onto another interesting decision making phenomenon. The recency effect - read all about it in the next article.

You may be interested in a couple of workshops I am running in London on 4th March. See here.

How do we decide when to make a decision?

James is sitting browsing through the year old magazine and wondering what all the other people in the waiting room are here for. There is an old couple sitting next to each other talking quietly who smile politely when he catches their gaze, a young pretty girl in a short skirt who looks miserable and pale, workman in dirty work cloths holding his arm. He looks like he is in pain, probably an accident. Jams notices the pain in his stomach as it start to get sharp again. He first noticed that pain a few days ago and it hasn't really gone away. It eases off at times and at other times it is quite painful. He is worried, it might be an ulcer or cancer even, maybe he should have come to see the doctor sooner. He keeps pushing that thought to the back of his mind. He looks back to the old magazine.
Shelly is looking at the recent stock market prices. They have been a bit all over the place recently. She wants to invest but is this a good time? Some people are saying this is a good time to buy compared to last month and others are saying that in all likelihood the market prices will fall further in the coming months and maybe over the year. If only she knew what to do.
Arthur is trying to workout if this is a good time to start a full scale root and branch reorganisation of the business. Market conditions are tough and we certainly need to do things differently to boost the profitability of the company. If we do this now will it cause too much disruption at a time when everyone really needs to concentrate on the business and on making things more efficient or will it be just the tonic we need? Clear out the less profitable parts, get the bits working better that need to change and sort out the management structure. Hmmmm.

Why is it that people decide to do what they do when they do? For example why do people decide to start an organisational change programme when they do, or go to the doctor when they do, or buy or sell on the stock market and a million and one other decisions we make when we make them?
All of these things like most things in life fluctuate naturally. Organisational efficiency or effectiveness, pain or illnesses, the stock market fluctuate naturally. Very few if any events or processes have a smooth 'glide path' where the changes are wholly incremental and equally progressive. Fluctuations and variation are a natural part of any and every complex situation. So given that change is part of the system and that the rate and direction of the change is also variable and frequently defies prediction with any degree of certainty there comes a question. When we make a decision to make a change, like go to a doctor or sell / buy or do something to change things how do we decide when the best time is to do any of these things? What is it that prompts most of us to make a decision especially when things are uncertain?
In the next blog we will have a look at something called the Regression Fallacy and how it gives us the illusion of success and frequently wrong foots us.