E-book out now: leadership- approaches, developments, trends

E-book is out now, horray! Get it for your iPAD, kindle, nook & Co:
"Leadership: approaches, developments, trends". Ranking welcome!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Approaches-Development-Trends-ebook/dp/B005I32V8S/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314208589&sr=1-6

Leadership Approaches - Development - Trends
www.amazon.co.uk
Everyone is talking about leadership but what are the common approaches, camps, and theories? What is current, what are the new classics, and what is obsolete? The crisis and the latest Web 2.0 developments have not rendered the topic any less relevant. Which school of thought is closest to yours...?!?

Check it out- So far it has five stars on amazon.

Would love your feed-back!!

Pioneer of organizational culture Ed Schein on "The End of Patriarchal Leadership"

Check out this wonderful article on Ed Schein by Axel Gloger in Handelszeitung, here translated into English.

enjoy reading!
available as upload in German/English on www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/leadership

The End of Patriarchal Leadership

At the age of 83, the pioneer of organizational culture comes forward with yet a new leadership theory: the time of the all knowing all powerful boss is well and truly over.


By Axel Gloger

Edgar H. Schein doesn’t sit on his laurels. At a time when many of his colleagues are drawing their pensions, the grand old man of organization culture is as active as ever - travelling the globe, explaining the world to managers – and showing himself as a force for renewal. At the age of 83, the professor and famous American management guru has now come up with a new idea about the way leaders should lead. What he says is that leadership means helping: employees need only a little support, the rest they can manage by themselves.

“We’ve still got the leadership as dictatorship model,” says the emeritus Professor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), “only it’s no longer in tune with the times.” The all-knowing boss - the boss who lights the way forward, lays down the law, keeps tight control and is blessed with permanent foresight – is an anachronism, claims the academic.

You can see this happening in politics as the chairs of dictators start to shake across the Arab world. And in the enterprise sector too the role of the patriarchal leader has had its day. “The idea that one person alone tells all the others what to do doesn’t work anymore.” Schein has had his own direct experience of what dictatorships mean. He was born in Zurich in 1928 where his parents settled after emigrating from the Soviet Union. Part of his childhood was spent in Czechoslovakia before his family emigrated to Chicago.

His constant drive to provide a better explanation of the way companies work than management experts are capable of has made him the founder of modern organizational psychology. And this role has brought him countless honours and distinctions and made him the star guest at the world’s top conferences. He fits into a picture of the world considered by many to be highly problematic, precisely because he delivers clear explanations of how it functions.

Cultures of Experts on the March

If Edgar Schein didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him. He’s the type of east coast intellectual dressed as though he’s just left the mahogany and leather armchair interior of the Harvard Club and sporting of course the inevitable beard. He embodies a vision of good old America, of a time when academics didn’t have to be as brash and pushy as General Electric salesmen. Schein is distinguished by what he has to say, he has no need of a manner of presentation overblown with hype and “wow” effects.

He can capitalize on the benefits of a long lifetime. “Certain things are clearer to someone who’s lived as long as I have, and seen as much as I have.” And what he says carries immediate conviction. Clever thoughts couched in short sentences and simple language. The same way as he presents a clear idea that now needs to be adapted: “Companies nowadays are cultures of experts” he says, talking to the Handelszeitung newspaper about the modern world of work during an event organized by the Bertelsmann Stiftung. Employees know infinitely more about their own area of speciality than the rest of their colleagues – and certainly more than any CEO. “Everywhere we look nowadays we see higher levels of technical complexity. Managers are dependent on specialists who know their stuff.” To illustrate this, Schein gives the example of a doctor and a technician operating an X-ray device. “The doctor might be higher up the hierarchy, but it’s the technician who explains to him just what can be seen on the patient’s X-rays.” The real task of leadership is to ask and inquire – and to take jigsaw bits of information and build up the big picture that first enables the right kind of decisions to be made.

Ed Schein has spent his whole life on such inquiries which have enabled him to map out new areas of scientific study. In his usual tireless manner, he now seeks to bring such a spirit of inquiry to senior management, a mission he finds so important because most senior managers are by no means adept at inquiry. “They only ask what they already know”, he admonishes. If you stay on the “Well, Smith everything shipshape today?” level, you will never find out the true state of affairs. Managers caught in this mindset can never get the true facts - which is why their picture of reality is so hazy.

All this Schein explains with the authority of a professor intimately acquainted with the world of workaday practice, of a man who has spent many decades advising companies all around the world how best they can improve their organization. His roll-call of clients includes such names as Ciba-Geigny, one of the two predecessor companies of Novartis, as well as Apple, Shell, Saab, and Procter & Gamble. It is from insights gained in the ways companies actual function that he has derived his ideas on how senior management should formulate their questions if they really want to know what’s going on.

Personal Authenticity

Schein gives the impression of a man in the know. His mind is a vast library of intellectual resources and when you listen to him talking you have the feeling that he is selecting first this thought then the next from different shelves in the library of his mind. Each of his pronouncements is carefully considered, well rounded and meticulously crafted.

Peter Drucker, the doyen of all management thinkers who died in 2005, had a similar way of speaking. Schein follows but does not copy him. And in doing so he reveals glimpses of a personality no longer concerned with winning. Lauded and loaded with honours by his peers, Professor Schein is already a winner.

The proposals he puts forward carry the weight of this easily worn authority. “Focussed dialogue” is how he terms one of the techniques which has proven its worth in management. To achieve this, he says that management needs to create a truly open climate for dialogue in which everybody can freely speak their minds without fear of reprisals. “Imagine a situation like the one you get around a camp fire where people come and sit together at the end of a long day. Whoever speaks out there is speaking more to the fire than to any one particular person” is how the management guru describes the open environment for dialogue. “Everyone should say something for the round of people in general and not for or against one particular person.”

This is the kind of environment bosses must have to get the information they need to fill management objectives with life and where employees can be non-partisan and say where they stand, where the hitches lie, what has been achieved and what is still needed to make things run even better. “And this is where the boss can step in with support and help for his colleagues” says Schein. He calls his idea of leadership “servant leadership” and sees the coach or trainer standing on the sidelines and urging on his team on to score goals.

Edgar Schein is impatient with dirigisme as befits a psychologist who has spent many long years pondering why some organizations succeed – and why others fail. Ultimately Schein has come up with a startlingly simple formula – “Help is important” this research scientist says, “Every leader should know the best way to offer help, to give help but also to receive it.” Among other skills, this means knowing how to clear the way of obstacles and how to judge the right moment to give encouragement as well as knowing what it takes to create a single productive entity out of the work of many individual knowledge workers.

This means that excellent leadership works mainly from the background – which as Schein proclaims, spells out the demise of alpha male assertiveness in the leadership role. “The role of the eternal front man and mentor doesn’t work anymore,” says the organizational psychologist because the realities of corporate life have changed too drastically as management levels are thinned out, spans of control steadily widened and hierarchies flattened.

This gives superiors – particularly those in the upper echelons – more people under their direct control while at the same time it limits their direct sphere of influence. “This is why the point is to accept the expertise of individual team members. A good boss will set the general direction but won’t attempt to take control of the work of the people under him.”

In such a complex world the ability to delegate becomes a means of ensuring your own survival because it’s the only way management has of ensuring that it won’t stifle in a mass of operational details. Schein does not accept the lament so frequently heard from leaders that they don’t have enough time to do their job properly. “You do have enough time if you stick to the essentials and use your time wisely” is the advice this management guru urges managers to chew on.

More people, less influence

On a practical level he thinks that bosses shouldn’t let themselves be constantly distracted by calls from their cell phones. “Time for reflection, for seeing things as they are, for recognizing emerging trends and thinking them through to their last consequence – all this is much more important than immediately responding to each and every email or phone call,” he says setting out the priorities.

Many leaders would find it difficult to replace the hustle and bustle of operative business with quiet periods of reflection on strategy. “But it can be learnt,” replies Schein and says that the next train journey is a good point to start. “Stop messing about with your blackberry and notebook and take the time to think something through to the end.” 

AN EVENTFUL LIFE

From Zurich to Chicago via Odessa

The son of emigrants, Edgar Schein first saw the light of day in Zurich in 1928 where his father completed his Ph.D. in physics. When his father was later forced to give up his post at the university, the family moved to Soviet Odessa where Schein senior had accepted a post as professor of mathematics. In 1936 the family then fled to Czechoslovakia to escape Stalin’s reign of terror. Yet the ever growing threat of Hitler’s expansionism made them flee once more – this time to Chicago via Zurich.

Learning for life. This eventful childhood was formative for Schein who says that it was mainly in children’s playgrounds that he first learnt to observe and analyse, not to jump to foregone conclusions about strange cultures and to rapidly assimilate.

Academic career. Schein studied psychology at the universities of Chicago, Stanford and Harvard after which he joined the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was made a professor in 1964.

Famous author. Schein has written dozens of books, one of the most famous of which is “The Corporate Culture Survival Guide”. His latest book is “Helping: How to Offer, Give and Receive Help”. 

Photo Caption. Management guru Ed Schein is a venerable visionary who now proclaims the demise of the alpha male leader.

Why David sometimes wins: interview with Marshall Ganz about leadership, public narrative & organizing

Marshall does not only talk about public narrative, he is public narrative.

In this interview which we did together on the occasion of his new book "Why David sometimes wins" (Oxford Univesity press) he talks about leadership at the grassroots level, particularly his time with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s.

Marshall teaches at Harvard and advised amongst other Obama during his election campaign.

Most inspiring interview, ideas AND person!

Enjoy! http://www.ila-net.org/members/directory/downloads/newsletter/April2011.pdf

Virtual Launch WE_Leadership, Wednesday, April 6, 6 pm CET

Virtual Launch WE_Leadership, Wednesday, April 6, 6 pm CST

Bertelsmann Stiftung Leadership Series ONLINE presents:

Virtual launch “WE magazine – Leadership”

with Peter Kruse and John Hagel, Wednesday 6 April at 6-7 PM CET

(12-1PM EDT, 9-10 AM PDT),

moderated by Ulrike Reinhard (WE) and Tina Doerffer (Bertelsmann Stiftung) and kindly sponsored by Adobe Connect.

Join the launch and discussion at: http://bertelsmann-stiftung.reflact.com/launch-we-magazine/

(no registration, only login)

“WE magazine – leadership….in a networked world” is featuring contributions from cutting edge thinkers, practitioners and pioneers such as Don Tapscott (Wikinomics), Gunter Dueck (IBM), John Hagel (The power of pull), JP Rangawasami (British Telecom), Martin Spilker (Bertelsmann Foundation), Lee Bryant (Headshift), Sabine Donner (Bertelsmann Foundation), Ismael Khatib (The heart of Jenin), Peter Kruse (nextpractice)/Thomas Sattelberger (German Telekom), Stephen Denning (author)/Luis Suarez (IBM), Dave Snowden (cognitive edge), Hermann Demmel (SportScheck), Klaus Doppler/Andreas Nau (TUI), Frank Roebers (Synaxon), Itay Talgam (conductor) and Beate Haumann (Power of horse sense).

This magazine has been supported and elaborated in cooperation with Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Release WE magazine 6 April 12AM CET (6AM EDT)

http://www.we-magazine.net/

ONLINE session 6 April 6-7 PM CET

http://bertelsmann-stiftung.reflact.com/launch-we-magazine/

Paradigm shift of leadership - What do YOU think?

Leadership in the Web 2.0 world

The evolving Web lately seems to spur some new understanding of leadership. A number of authors refer to a shift in culture, from one-way, hierarchical, organization-centric relationsips toward two-way, network-centric culture, participative and collaborative relationships (Shirky, 2008, Tapscott 2010, Hagel 2010, Li 2010, McGonagill/Doerffer, 2010).

The cluetrain manifesto was the book that heralded of the game-changing nature of Web 2.0 (Levine/Locke/Weinberger, 2009). Proposing the „end of business as usual“ in its book sub-title, the authors advocated that companies could no longer exert control over markets and delivering messages. Instead, they needed to figue out how to enter the global conversation, accepting „openness, decentralization, fallibility, messy context-rich information and sound of the authentic voices of individuals“(Levine/Locke/Weinberger, 2009).

In Here comes everybody Clay Shirky calls the developments of the Web a revolution and compares it to the invention of the Gutenberg press. He makes the argument that „we are shifting from closed and hierarchic workplaces with rigid employment relationships to increasingly self-organized, distributed, and collaborative human capital networks that draw knowledge and resources from inside and outside the firm.” He highlights that the collapse of transaction costs in the Web enables the new social tools to spur actions which had been impossible before (Shirky, 2008).

Supporting that patterns point to a new paradigm, Don Tapscott speaks of “age of collaboration”(Tapscott 2008a). In their bestseller Wikinomics Tapscott & Williams (Tapscott/Williams, 2006) see emerge new models of production in light of profound changes in technology, demographics and global economic powerful which are built on community, collaboration and self-organization, much less than hierarchy and control. Followingly in MacroWikinomics (Tapscott/Williams, 2010) they challenge to rethink fundamentals about education, media, industry and rebooting the public square. They argue that industrial age institutions brought mass production of goods, which functioned “on a centralized, one-way, one-size-fits-all mass model controlled by powerful owners of production and society”. A new force of “mass collaboration” is underway where social networking changes forever not only the way products and services, but also become a more encompassing societal shift. In core they advocate for 5 new principles to succeed in the new environment of rapid change by embracing collaboration, openness, sharing, integrity and interdependence (Tapscott/Williams, 2010).

While Charlene Li (2010) encourages leaders how to be “open” while maintaining control to tap into new resources and transform their organizations with the power of social technology, John Hagel advocates for a Power of Pull (Hagel/Brown/Davidson, 2010) to draw out the best in people and institutions by connecting people through three levels of pull- access, attract and achieve.

McGonagill/Doerffer (2010) observe the emergence of a new paradigm for leadership as more and more apparent in the two decades of rising Web impact, having analyzed a vast number of pioneer examples. The authors name seven indicators of the paradigm shift: The new leadership paradigm defines leadership rather as an activity and collective process, pointing to shifts from organization-centric to network-centric leadership and recognizing organizations as “organisms” where learning and adaptation call for new levels of leadership capacity. This requires most of all a mind-shift as well as new skills, knowledge and “Fehler-kultur”.

Buhse & Stamer as well as Reinhard identify the shift of mindset as most critical in Web 2.0 leadership. While inviting leaders to cultivate „the art of letting go“ (Buhse & Stamer, 2008), the authors recognize that the new challenge of leadership is to foster the best efforts of individual contributors and nurture the emergence of the highest possibilities from the collective. Reinhard underlines as key element in all Web 2.0 change the importance of authenticity and „walking the talk“ (Reinhard, n.d.).

German network guru Peter Kruse identifies the complexity as the greatest challenge in the Web-world. In order to successfully cope with complex dynamics of the internet and overload of information, he advocates that it is most important to recognize higher-level patterns (Kruse n.d.). He identifies this as a vital element to highl-level collective intelligence..Kruse concludes that „the more people are interested in the dynamics of society and the more they are able to detect underlying pattern-formation processes, the greater becomes the amount of distributed knowledge needed to gain collective intelligence“(Kruse, n.d).

What do YOU think?

for more information see "reader leadership: approaches-development-trends, part V:

www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/leadership or /fuehrung

Participation = higher effectiveness*motivation: Workplace Democracy in the Lab

Workplace Democracy in the Lab

"Groups of workers that voted to determine their compensation scheme provided significantly more effort than groups that had no say in how they would be compensated."

Check out this interesting study, which just came out: http://ftp.iza.org/dp5460.pdf

Despite the difficulties to produce empirical evidence, it seems that a team of scientists at Middlebury College in Vermont and Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn, Germany notably succeeded to prove that "consistant with intuition, allowing groups of workers to participate in determining the compensation scheme for their group increases effort significantly."

 

Scientists developed a behavioral experiment in which 180 subjects were able to earn money by solving math problems. The participants were divided into groups of three. Half of the teams could decide by majority vote whether the jointly produced profits staggered in equal parts OR to be paid to individucal employees depending on their performance. The other half had no influence on the compensation model.

It clearly showed that participants who could determine the model were more effective and motivated: they worked an average of seven percent more and increased productivity, as measured by the number of correctly solved tasks by nine percent. It did not matter, for which wage model, the group had decided.

 

Philip Mellizo / Jeffrey Carpenter / Peter Hans Matthews:

Workplace Democracy in the Lab, IZA Discussion Paper No. 5460

http://ftp.iza.org/dp5460.pdf

James Turell- feeling something, something come through light, come through space.

I have just been spending the afternoon reading the entire catalogue of James Turrell "Zug Zuoz"after recently having seen his skyspace in MoMA PS1 in New York. His reflections about light, seeing and being....outside-inside-outside light

"Even in the skyspace you are not looking even at the light; you are looking at what the light does to the sky. so this idea of the presence of light, making it physically felt to feel its power, you can't use it with image because then you're paying attention to the content or story. you can move through time with this light, as in music. ... Pianists can even sometimes go beyond what the composer was mapping out. and in mapping the territory, these people can very elegantly express that territory. So I see this quality of light without image as having the possibility of having a sort of inner pure emotion, or perhaps a stricter and more direct way to the idea of an expression of how to survive. you can begin to get toward that way of feeling something, and feeling something, something come through light, come through space... The big thing is that it's something we don't see a lot of, coming, moving through volume, just this color coming from behind, through the front, and then the color that's expressly part of it....I mean if you have something that has no image, and maybe there's no particular object, and nothing to focus on- so without image or object or focus what is there, you know?...It comes from nothing; and then, nothing is not nothing, emptiness in not emptiness...."

"I generally make a light that we don't normally see; I like that. Now we're looking at light. We're not looking at what light reveals about somethings else. Light is not illuminating another thing. We're looking at the light itself. "

"It's just like the skyspaces are a gentle reminder, or a mild koan - a koan being the Zen question that doesn't really have an answer about how we create the reality in which we live, because we color the sky but we are very unaware that we give the sky its color. and it is only becaus we give the sky its color, that I am able to change the color of the sky for you. ... We are not so much of how much this reality, this thing we receive is actually created by us....It is this idea of how much we ourselves make of this reality within which we exist."

That what people in leadership call the "inner place- a capacity that sets apart one person/leader from the other- that the same situation and actions can have two completely different outcomes, depending on that inner starting point." Otto Scharmer

Seize and enjoy this outside-inside-outside light!!

James Turrell 2009

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Turrell-Zuoz-048.jpg

Book www.hatjecantz.de/controller.php?cmd=detail&titzif=00002602&lang=en or AMAZON