Tag: book review

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights

Leadership Book Review: Lessons in Disaster

lessons in disaster

I read a book that so impressed me that next semester it will be required reading for my undergraduate students. Gordon M. Goldstein’s book Lessons in Disaster is a gem reminiscent only of Graham Allison’s and Philip Zelikow’s book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Essence of Decision. Allison and Zelikow show us how groupthink can overwhelm us when checkmated. Goldstein scares the heck out of us by showing us how confidence, intelligence, perseverance, and vision can take us straight over the cliff. Ultimately, in many of our political organizations, beneath the veneer of logic and planning, lies a world of second-guessing and crippling uncertainty.

Chief among the cast of personages in Goldstein’s work is McGeorge Bundy, the Kennedy administration’s National Security Adviser. As the author notes, Bundy’s focus was political, not strategic or tactical. Goldstein reports that most of Bundy’s ruminations during his service in Washington was concerned with the political aspects of national security. His recommendations rarely dealt with the military mechanics of achieving political goals. Bundy was quick to recommend escalations of troop levels or bombing campaigns in Vietnam, but he didn’t bother with the details on how to implement those recommendations so to maximize success in the overall objectives of American foreign policy. Goldstein shows us in his portrayal of Bundy that ego, blind vision, and arrogance are the antithesis of systematic execution.

In a world of Deepwater Horizon, with no backup plan, no exit strategy, where everyone seems to living in a Rube Goldberg Machine, and where policy is seemingly held together by tape, Goldstein’s book is essential.

For us academics who believe that we have control of some objective knowledge and are capable of pure rational analysis Goldstein reminds us that this same academic arrogance manufactured derivatives and complex securities that depleted our collective 401ks and suckered us into détente and the domino theory in the fight against communism.  Execution was cast aside because of a certain pompous insularity.

With the current quagmire in Afghanistan, Gordon Goldstein is must reading for Barack Obama’s national security team. Lessons in Disaster serves as a cautionary tale about the perils of intellectual arrogance overpowering good judgment at the highest levels of political decision making. Of all the books I have read, this is the must leadership book to be read by all.

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Features

Book Review: Leading Outside the Lines

There’s always a thin line between books that have mass appeal and those that are considered serious in their academic insight. It takes a unique voice to walk along the thin border between trivia and irrelevance. Those authors that can walk this line and find this sweet spot are few and far between. In my opinion they include, among others, such writers as Edgar Schein, Peter Senge, and Jon R. Katzenbach.

Katzenbach’s work stands out because it has the ability to operate in the world of what academics call, “the mesa level,” that combines individual psychology with organizational structure. More specifically, it explores the social psychology of teams and groups. In his recent work, Leading Outside the Lines, written with Zia Kahn, Katzenbach continues this tradition of examining the meso level with good writing and sharp academic insight.

Organizational writers can roughly be separated into two groups. One group adopts the position that organizations should be structured and formal in order to become optimally productive. The other group declares that formalism kills creativity, random-interaction, and off-the-cuff action. They feel that organizations should be informal in order to boost performance. In Leading Outside the Lines Katzenbach and Kahn take a different stance. They argue that an organization should adapt both formal and informal strategies to get the best results.

Walk into Home Depot with a question and chances are you’re going to leave with an answer. It’s the “Home Depot Way” and it is what made Home Depot the most “successful building materials chain in history.” The Home Depot Way is an outcrop of what Katzenbach and Kahn believe to be the right mix of both formal and informal organizational design. Workers were given a formal structure to work within, but were encouraged to draw on their own experiences and knowledge to help customers. They were told to problem solve and help, not sell and worry about targets. The atmosphere created a dedicated, highly-social, team of home repair experts. Staffers relished the opportunity to solve problems autonomously while working within a formalized retail structure. It’s a nice example of how formal and informal strategies can motivate people to do a good job.

Balancing formal and informal methods isn’t always easy and isn’t always the obvious solution. Katzenbach and Kahn know that leaders need to push change at both the individual and organizational level and oftentimes the path isn’t clear. Leaders frequently have to ask themselves if they should stress formal or informal policies. They know that their decision could be the difference between failure and success. It’s not a simple call.

Katzenbach and Kahn offer real strategies, exercises, and compelling case-studies to help leader’s best resolve the formal-informal question. They push for autonomy while stressing peer-to-peer review and formal discussions. They embrace the problem solving abilities of informal organizational cultures and propose guidelines that can keep everyone on course. They welcome formal orders if they are leveraged with informal networks and get people talking organically.

It would have been interesting of Katzenbach and Kahn looked more at social media and its role in creating formal and informal organizational networks. In a world where many organizations are developing their own social media bases, it would be relevant to look into ways leaders can motivate performance and get things accomplished in a famously informal framework. Still, leaders who work with these problems can still learn a lot form Katzenbach and Kahn.

If you’re interested in learning the concrete steps you need to take in order to create a mixed organizational culture Katzenbach and Kahn won’t let you down. Their compelling thesis is presented clearly and backed up with illuminating case studies, stories, and interviews. It needs to be read by leaders who are endeavoring to adapt their organizations to new, ever-changing, realities.

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23072179@N00/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Categories
BLG Leadership Insights Leadership On the Edge

The Gut Feelings of Leaders: Two Books You Should Read

power-intuitionIn this world of pressure, uncertainty and speed, leaders are all too often overwhelmed by the need to make decisions, while not having all the time all the information we need to optimize.  Some would hope that leaders would use methodical cost-benefit analysis–sometimes there is not simply enough time to be so analytical. Sometimes optimization is a myth.  Economists put their faith on the ability of individuals to estimate the expected benefits of taking action. Classical economists would have us believe that we can evaluate the array of alternatives, estimate outcomes, and anticipate the probability of success and failure.  That may be an ideal methodology for making decisions, but it’s not the way most of us live.  It’s not the way we decide what universities to attend, who to marry, and how to invest.  When push comes to shove, analysis can only go so far.

Rational optimization can only get us in the door, but the final leap often depends on the power of intuition and gut feelings.  The final leap may often depend on what decision theorists and social psychologists refer to as heuristics, or if you will, rules of thumb.  These rules exist in the uncomfortable social-psychological world of quick decisions–decisions that seem to come from nowhere.

Continue reading “The Gut Feelings of Leaders: Two Books You Should Read”