Transformational Leadership

There's a lot of interest today in the learning organization, and that has given birth to enormous interest in the creation and management of knowledge. This paper is brief description of the four steps than need to be taken to successfully implement a chosen strategy. In this discussion I am using the desire to create a strong knowledge-based learning organization. There are certain characteristics, as explained by Verna Allee, of such an enterprise: knowledge is strategically valued; the knowledge strategy is future oriented; knowledge-building and sharing includes customers and stakeholders; measurements include innovative measures, such as knowledge-value added; knowledge strategies are more human-centered than technology-centered; the culture specifically addresses and supports knowledge creation, sharing, and learning; people are encouraged to self-organize around knowledge competencies or expertise; people have ready access to the information and knowledge they need; people are supported in their personal efforts to acquire and apply knowledge; to name a few.
 
 

The effective creation and management of knowledge requires a culture that supports such a venture, and that's no mean feat. One of the most often over looked aspects of successful strategy implementation, is the fit of the culture to the chosen strategy. The prevailing culture has inherent values that give meaning to the organization. We as humans thrive only when we have meaning and meaning is self-created for and by each individual. It is the meaning that is agreed upon through the culture that creates a self-fulfilling vortex that will either validate actions and expectations or kill them. It is correctly understanding these sometimes "hidden" values that allows organizations to know what changes need to be made in the culture to ensure success.
 
 

The value of a tool like the Spectrum of Human Needs is that the individual or organization has an opportunity to assess and evaluate both individuals and the culture to assure a fit between a chosen strategic direction, like knowledge creation, and the current cultures values and norms.

Each point of the star, in the figure above generates a self-organizing undercurrent based upon the "need" exemplified by that point. While each point has its value organizationally, not all of them are beneficial for the creative generation and sharing of knowledge. The points of Security, Rules, and Personal Power are self-organizing around the self - the individual. As such they do not generate a willingness nor interest in sharing or collaboration, except to further a personal agenda. They are expressions of Primary Ethics- how I survive and prosper. The norms and values of the other two points: Relationship and Self-Actualization, being expressions of Secondary Ethics - how we survive and prosper, are much more likely to generate an interest and value in sharing and co-development, that is so essential to knowledge creation.
 
 

The role of culture has been most eloquently expressed in Built to Last, "The crucial variable is not the content of the company's ideology, but how deeply it believes its ideology and how consistently it lives, breathes, and expresses it in all that it does." This is a wonderful statement on the importance and effect of culture on an organizations capacity to succeed. So, the first step in achieving such a strategic goal is to understand the culture, and assessments are one way to do that.
 
 

The leading theorists on how culture is created all agree that one of the fundamental building blocks is leadership. It's not hard to understand that under a "command and control" leader the prevailing desire to survive, coupled with a survival strategy of following the rules to keep a low profile, but guarding your back through political intrigue and power plays would make it actually counter productive to share knowledge (seen here as power), even if doing so would benefit the corporation. After all, if it comes down to my career or an amorphous benefit to the organization - my concern is my career, in a power oriented organization, hands down. The leadership style makes a difference!
 
 

This maybe a radical statement, but I believe that every manager, and every leader has the good of the whole in mind. The intertwining of my "good" with the organizations "good" allows people to both protect themselves and inflict pain on others - all for the good of the organization (downsizing anyone?). Leaders work within a "command and control" framework because they think that it works. It does. It just doesn't work for those strategies that require an autonomous and self-regulating workforce. It doesn't work for an organization that is facing a volatile and complex marketplace, either. When is very common form of management doesn't work, then this often generates a case of doing the same old things harder and stronger expecting different results. To change a culture you need to change the leadership style!
 
 

As explained above, the leadership style is intricately interwoven with the belief system of the leader(s). Changing belief systems is not easy, nor can it be taken lightly. It is for these reasons that a leadership program, like Executive Thinking©, needs to fulfill several criteria. First it must be voluntary. Participants must find the prospect of personal growth and development interesting and exciting. It must be meaningful for them. Second it should be exploratory in nature. The participants must be free to argue, question, create, experiment and accept or reject any new learning. The information and experiences in such a program need to be robust enough to be challenged, and the applications and experimentation with new behavior open to critique and evaluation without personal penalty. Third the effectiveness should be tied to real world experience, measurable and clearly evaluatable. Fourth, such a program is consciousness-raising for the individual concerning their own self, sensitizing to others and their development process, and extraordinarily perceptive to the changing needs of the organization as a whole. So, the second step to creating effective strategy implementation is the clarification of the criteria needed for the new leadership
 
 

I believe that this kind of growth and development requires a shift in how we "know" something. In western societies the only form of sanctioned "knowing" is intellectual, thus all other forms have been systemactially invalidated. It has only been very recently that other ways of knowing, including emotional, intuitional, and embodied have gained any credence at all. If we have other ways of "knowing" then, one good way of developing the increased sensitivity needed to manage in a creative and charged atmosphere would be to develop all of our capacities to "know". The creation of a "whole" even healthy culture requires, in my mind, a "holistic" way of "knowing" that utilizes the entire human spectrum of information gathering capacity..
 
 

Leadership in knowledge creating companies, as explained by Dorothy Leonard-Barton, "Whatever their sphere of influence and power, they are able to emphasize or minimize the importance of the knowledge-building content of decisions." This means that they have a major impact on the ability of the organization to effectively create and sustain knowledge building capacity through the important and attention they place on learning in decision-making situations. In the day-to-day management activities and decision-making the ambiance, the context, is created that helps, or hinders the organizations knowledge-building capacity. Leadership shifts from leading individuals exclusively (one must still "walk the talk") to managing context and meaning . This is the shift that I define as the purview and domain of the Transformational leader. It is this change in focus that makes new kinds of leadership development so crucial. Now we've come to the need to design a leadership development program that will allow an expansion in the capacity of the current leadership, and that will also serve to help evaluate and train new hires.
 
 

A large part of the evaluation of such a program is the continuing monitoring of the culture (through assessments or other means) to ascertain if the desired change in values, norms and ethic focus has been obtained. Collins and Porras are very clear in Built To Last, that the real work of leaders is the design and maintenance of the organization itself.
 
 

This focus on, and sensitivity to the organization stands in sharp contrast to the traditional or transactional leader. The technique used by transactional leaders is manipulation. Don't get me wrong, the form of manipulation is most often friendly, i.e. rewards of one kind or another and sometimes even recognition, but the underlying message is; do this for me and I'll do this for you. As Alfie Kohn states, bribery is manipulation no matter what form it takes. The underlying premise of transactional leadership is that there needs to be an exchange for motivation to be created. Leadership here, is seen as something that you doto people. This kind of belief system and the skills it engenders will not disappear overnight. That it works and is effective in the short-term, only makes its hold on managers minds all that more difficult to release. It is the insidiousness of the short-term success that makes this kind of culture shift so difficult to start and sustain.
 
 

Summary

Certain cutting-edge strategies, in this article the knowledge creating company was used as the example, require different kinds of leadership to be effectively implemented. Part of the preparation for effective implementation is the assessment of the culture to meet the demands of the chosen strategy. The next step is the clarification of measurable criteria for leadership. The design and implementation of an innovative leadership development program is then done to develop new kinds of leaders in house, and to facilitate the hiring and monitoring of the expanded leadership base. The continued monitoring and assessment of both the leadership and culture is then needed to continue and sustain the desired culture change. This linkage of strategy to leadership to culture is essential for the effective implementation and maintenance of the chosen strategic direction.