Search the site...

  phil mora
  • The Global Nomad
  • About
  • Contact
  • The Training Log
  • The Global Nomad
  • About
  • Contact
  • The Training Log

The Global Nomad
(Doer edition)

Follow

When No One's in Charge

2/3/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
The end of Leadership: Are we headed to a final stage, in which the governed are no longer willing to give their consent to any leaders—political or corporate? The solution to bad leadership isn’t no leadership. It’s betterleadership. -By Philippe Mora

[Thank You HBR | By Andrea Ovans 05.12]
Our leaders are failing us, or at least that’s the prevailing narrative nowadays. In the United States, confidence in Congress is at a record low, President Obama has been struggling with tepid approval ratings for much of his term, and only 45% of people say they trust executives of major corporations even moderately. That’s stellar compared with sentiment about leaders in Europe, and let’s not even talk about public opinion in North Africa and the Middle East.

The disaffection is so great, and so pervasive, that allegiances around the world seem to be shifting not to new leaders but to the exact opposite—to leaderless movements like Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring, and the Tea Party, which aim to show that crowds can and should wield as much power and influence as those individuals officially in charge.

After reading Harvard government professor Barbara Kellerman’s The End of Leadership, you might consider this to be the natural progression of things. Tracing the history of leadership from the all-powerful Greek and Roman gods, to religious leaders like Abraham and Buddha, to philosopher kings and tyrants, to constitutional monarchs, to elected representatives ruling with the consent of more and more of the governed, Kellerman effortlessly demonstrates that the pattern has been relentlessly consistent: a constant diffusion of power from the few at the top to the many more below. Are we headed to a final stage, in which the governed are no longer willing to give their consent to any leaders—political or corporate, despotic or democratic?

That’s where Carne Ross is certainly going in The Leaderless Revolution. A former British diplomat and the architect of the UK’s sanctions policy against Iraq (which he now believes led directly to the deaths of a half-million Iraqi children), Ross makes an impassioned case not just against leadership but against any form of representation, even representative democracy, arguing that it hasn’t worked—just look at the global economy and the environment—and that it never can, because even democratically elected representatives have to work at so high a level of abstraction that they can never really operate in anyone’s interests and can easily lose all sense of their humanity.

In place of leadership, he advocates for “participatory democracy”—something like the New England town meetings I remember from my childhood—in which everyone comes together in person to discuss problems and forge solutions through civilized debate. As evidence that this can work, Ross offers up the participatory budgeting process of the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre—which has quadrupled the number of schools, initiated renewable energy and recycling programs, and achieved near-universal water and sewerage service—and the New Orleans restoration effort, in which 4,000 former city residents scattered across the country came together in a virtual “community congress” and produced the Unified New Orleans Plan, to which 92% of the participants agreed. This sounds very much like the consensus-driven general assembly process of Occupy Wall Street, which David Graeber describes in This Changes Everything, and which you can see unfolding in something close to real time at nycga.net/category/assemblies/proposals-past/.

Ross and Kellerman see the same principles at work in the private sector in cooperatives, mutual organizations, and other companies where ownership and leadership are widely dispersed. So does Marjorie Kelly, former editor and cofounder of Business Ethics magazine. In Owning Our Future, she cites dozens of examples, including the Beverly Cooperative Bank in Massachusetts; Denmark’s Lynetten Wind Cooperative; Organic Valley, a group of more than 1,600 farm families based in Wisconsin; and the community forests of Mexico, which represent 50% to 80% of the country’s forests. All are employee- or community-owned and operate for their owners’ benefit. (Another example comes from Gary Hamel, whose December 2011 HBR article described Morning Star, a tomato-processing company, which has posted double-digit growth in volumes, revenues, and profits for 20 years with not a boss in sight.)

Intriguingly, Ross and Kelly focus on the same large-scale corporate example—the venerable UK retailer John Lewis, which, with 35 department stores, 275 Waitrose grocery stores, and more than $13 billion in revenues, is entirely owned by its 76,500 employees for the express purpose of furthering their happiness. This they did last year in part by distributing the fruits of their labors in an across-the-board 18% bonus—that is, an extra nine weeks’ pay.

Having worked happily for more than a decade in a leaderless team, I found these stories thrilling. I completely agree with Ross, Kellerman, and Kelly when they argue that self-governance can enliven and engage both employees and citizens, spurring them to feel more committed to and responsible for their companies and countries. That was certainly true for me.

And yet generalizing from the particulars in these situations is nettlesome at best. The obvious truth that leaderlessness has its virtues is a far cry from Ross’s notion (and Kellerman’s suspicion) that we’d always be better off without leaders. The citizens of New Orleans didn’t spontaneously show up on GlobalVoices.org; they were brought together by city officials. My self-managed team, while impressively expert at tactical matters and probably capable of developing strategic insights, couldn’t advocate for our views as forcefully as other teams that had dedicated managers.

And to what degree leaderlessness is working in the Occupy movement is an open question. InWhat Is Occupy? Stephen Gandel purportedly explains how the Zuccotti Park protesters got things done “with no titles and no corner offices,” thanks to a web of working groups focused on particular tasks. But within a month, he reports, the general assemblies were pared back and a smaller “spokescouncil” was created to make some of the decisions. The emergence of a “high-level committee” followed not long after—rather the way the mandatory direct-democracy town meetings in my hometown were eventually run by elected members, then supplemented by a town manager. It’s worth noting, too, that Corey Ogilvie, the filmmaker behind the crowdsourced (but expertly edited)Occupy The Movie, says his purpose isn’t to recruit more participants but to spur Obama and other leaders to take action.

Which is why it intrigues me that even though Kelly highlights many of the same examples as Ross and Kellerman do, she sees leadership not as problematic but as essential to the solution. Organic Valley and the Beverly Cooperative Bank have charismatic CEOs. Strategy at John Lewis is conducted by a CEO and a top team that looks fairly traditional, made up of the heads of finance, legal, HR, and the two main divisions. In fact, practically all of Kelly’s points about the virtues of widely shared ownership are made through very personal interviews with committed organizational leaders. And in detailing why the model is so hard to sustain, Kelly points again and again to the failure of organizations to maintain their missions once the founding leader steps down.

At the end of the day, I’m with her: The solution to bad leadership isn’t no leadership. It’s betterleadership. And, yes, maybe we will get that via essentially (or at least initially) leaderless movements like the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Arab Spring that help us throw the bums out. But to turn their myriad passions into productive change, leaders will have to emerge.

Read More: http://hbr.org/2012/05/when-no-ones-in-charge/ar/2

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    i blog about the things I love: fitness, hacking work, tech, Experiences and anything holistic.

    Picture

    Phil Mora

    > Head of Digital  Product at Nutrien
    > I am passionate about delivering products and technologies that change people's lives
    ​> I look forward to connecting with you!

    Categories

    All
    Change Agents
    Experiences
    Fitness
    Hacking Work
    Technology

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010

    RSS Feed

Phil Mora . 2225 E Bayshore Road . Palo Alto, CA 94393
Phone: (415) 315-9787 . twitter
@philippemora . Instagram philippemora


Copyright © 1999-2020 Philippe Mora