Margaret Wheatley, in Leadership and the New Science, says:
One of the differences between new science and Newtonianism is a focus on holism rather than parts. Systems are understood as whole systems, and attention is given to ‘relationships within those networks’. Donella Meadows, an ecologist and author, quotes an ancient Sufi teaching that captures this shift in focus:
“You think [that] because you understand 'one' you must understand 'two', because one and one makes two. But you must also understand 'and'.”
The point, of course, is that the ‘and’ is represented by the system and the way it makes positive connections. Any organisation should be capable of adding two parts together without loss, though in practice many detract value (the book The Search for Leadership identifies all the places and ways in which leadership runs to waste). The trick is to manage the system that surrounds the parts in such a way that the total organisation adds net value so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Then we might be able to claim that we truly understand and manage 'and'.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Monday, 30 November 2009
Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust is sick
Reminiscent of the up-one-minute and down-the-next ratings applied by the children’s regulator Ofsted to Haringey’s children and young persons services, something similar is happening now with hospitals and their sector’s regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
On 27 November, Telegraph.co.uk reported that CQC ‘… found that poor nursing, filthy wards and lack of leadership at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust contributed to 400 avoidable deaths in a year. … Concerns about death rates … were first raised a year ago, but an internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and senior managers dismissed the concerns. … The new external report found “systematic failings” in the trust’s senior management team … Yet the trust was rated as "good" on quality of service in the CQC's 2008/09 assessment and marked "excellent" for its financial management. It was also given 13 out of 14 for safety and cleanliness ...’
The inspection system calls for an overall rating (e.g. ‘excellent’); but this cannot capture the variability over multiple aspects which may be marked low, while others may be marked high. How can you average these, and how meaningful is such an outcome? Baroness Young, who chairs the CQC, herself admits that ‘the rating covers about 200 indicators and tries to summarise the performance in a very complex hospital in one word, either 'good', 'excellent', 'fair' or 'poor', I don't think that's right’. What I personally find frustrating is that I was pointing out this problem 15 years ago in the book Developing Corporate Competence!
A way round this rating dilemma would be to rely on narrative descriptions of the component elements; it is the detailed story that contains the potential for learning and improvement. A rating is merely a crude headline that induces anxiety and the threat of managers being replaced, or alternatively leads to relaxation. In a previous round of inspections, hospitals were incentivised to achieve an ‘excellent’ rating by offering them ‘foundation trust’ status, becoming semi-independent of government control. Another hospital, Stafford, was one of those whose executive team tried so hard to achieve foundation trust status that it took its eye of its real goal, that of serving its patients and blamed this for its poor performance! Many of the hospitals that passed the first hurdle and became foundation trusts have now been labelled ‘failed’. But the system of labelling has also failed and has even contributed to that failure. Elementary psychology teaches us, for example, that external inspections are responsible for the situation quoted above; i.e. where a subsequent “internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and senior managers dismissed the concerns”.
Ultimately, it becomes impossible for the leaders of a failed regulatory system, one which has become so corrupted and discredited, to provide their own solution. The remedy usually entails a change in the cycle between central and local control, and between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The need for such about-turns is an argument for limiting tenure – not just of chairmen, chief executives and regulators’ chief inspectors, but also governments.
A further issue in the hospitals debacle is that leadership is itself being rated as though it is an independent variable. This presupposes that it would be theoretically possible for all the other measures of hospital success to be rated high while leadership is rated low. Or vice versa. But where the organisation has suffered systemic failure there has, by definition, been a systemic failure of leadership. The confusion over the place of leadership in the inspection regime arises where a distinction is not made between the enterprise’s ‘business’ (what it exists for) and its ‘organisation’ (the internal arrangements that enable it to serve its business). Leadership is in the latter category; it is a means to an end. Incidentally, note the CQC’s reference to ‘systematic failings’ instead of ‘systemic failings’. Leaders who don’t understand systems frequently make this error. ‘Systematic’ means methodical, regular or deliberate – you wouldn’t deliberately set out to fail, would you? ‘Systemic’ means it is a feature of the system.
On 27 November, Telegraph.co.uk reported that CQC ‘… found that poor nursing, filthy wards and lack of leadership at Basildon and Thurrock University NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust contributed to 400 avoidable deaths in a year. … Concerns about death rates … were first raised a year ago, but an internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and senior managers dismissed the concerns. … The new external report found “systematic failings” in the trust’s senior management team … Yet the trust was rated as "good" on quality of service in the CQC's 2008/09 assessment and marked "excellent" for its financial management. It was also given 13 out of 14 for safety and cleanliness ...’
The inspection system calls for an overall rating (e.g. ‘excellent’); but this cannot capture the variability over multiple aspects which may be marked low, while others may be marked high. How can you average these, and how meaningful is such an outcome? Baroness Young, who chairs the CQC, herself admits that ‘the rating covers about 200 indicators and tries to summarise the performance in a very complex hospital in one word, either 'good', 'excellent', 'fair' or 'poor', I don't think that's right’. What I personally find frustrating is that I was pointing out this problem 15 years ago in the book Developing Corporate Competence!
A way round this rating dilemma would be to rely on narrative descriptions of the component elements; it is the detailed story that contains the potential for learning and improvement. A rating is merely a crude headline that induces anxiety and the threat of managers being replaced, or alternatively leads to relaxation. In a previous round of inspections, hospitals were incentivised to achieve an ‘excellent’ rating by offering them ‘foundation trust’ status, becoming semi-independent of government control. Another hospital, Stafford, was one of those whose executive team tried so hard to achieve foundation trust status that it took its eye of its real goal, that of serving its patients and blamed this for its poor performance! Many of the hospitals that passed the first hurdle and became foundation trusts have now been labelled ‘failed’. But the system of labelling has also failed and has even contributed to that failure. Elementary psychology teaches us, for example, that external inspections are responsible for the situation quoted above; i.e. where a subsequent “internal investigation failed to find anything wrong and senior managers dismissed the concerns”.
Ultimately, it becomes impossible for the leaders of a failed regulatory system, one which has become so corrupted and discredited, to provide their own solution. The remedy usually entails a change in the cycle between central and local control, and between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The need for such about-turns is an argument for limiting tenure – not just of chairmen, chief executives and regulators’ chief inspectors, but also governments.
A further issue in the hospitals debacle is that leadership is itself being rated as though it is an independent variable. This presupposes that it would be theoretically possible for all the other measures of hospital success to be rated high while leadership is rated low. Or vice versa. But where the organisation has suffered systemic failure there has, by definition, been a systemic failure of leadership. The confusion over the place of leadership in the inspection regime arises where a distinction is not made between the enterprise’s ‘business’ (what it exists for) and its ‘organisation’ (the internal arrangements that enable it to serve its business). Leadership is in the latter category; it is a means to an end. Incidentally, note the CQC’s reference to ‘systematic failings’ instead of ‘systemic failings’. Leaders who don’t understand systems frequently make this error. ‘Systematic’ means methodical, regular or deliberate – you wouldn’t deliberately set out to fail, would you? ‘Systemic’ means it is a feature of the system.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Ofsted receives a low rating, but that's its job
A month ago (see post dated 28 October) I first mentioned public criticism of Ofsted, the inspectorate for children and learners. The stream has become a torrent, including the Association of Children’s Services, which represents the head of children’s departments in English local authorities, claiming that the new annual performance profiles being developed by Ofsted are “not fit for purpose”. Why is that of interest here? The point is that systemic leadership focuses on what is going on between and around managers when they try to take on a leadership role. Are managers’ efforts helped or hindered by Ofsted’s approach? The answer from those being inspected is an overwhelming thumb’s down. For a summary of the problem, see www.free-school-from-government-control.com.
The root problem is that Ofted is required by government to sit in judgement – of schools, teachers, social workers. Is that helpful? Is it necessary? The heavy-handed style is pervasive in the present government culture, and ratings are a big part of that. Ofsted aside, many people seem obsessed with being able to confer a rating on others. Organisations’ performance appraisal systems are frequently brought low by this assumed requirement. As the inspiring conductor-cum-management guru Benjamin Zander says in his book The Art of Possibility, such ratings “are all invented”. In other words, why should we take seriously something that lacks any objective foundation? In his classes his own approach is to give all his students an ‘A’ grade, so that they can stop worrying what grade they will receive and can ‘grow into this top grade’, as he puts it. “An A radiates possibility through a family, a workplace, and a community, gaining strength, bringing joy and expression and a flowering of talent and productivity. Who knows how far it will travel."
Behind this is the view that it is learning and improving that matters, not having a fixed grade. There are times when it can be helpful for others to know what your grade is because it drives something (such as a job application or a computer programme calculating a bonus), but sometimes a grade serves little purpose and tells us more about the rater and the system than the person or organisation being rated. If Ofsted refocused its ‘inspection’ on learning and support, then it might have a future. But that would mean changing its values and those of its government sponsors. That is unlikely to happen. Trust has evaporated. As has faith in Ofsted’s own internal organisational management. The only question now is ‘Do we need an OfOf – a regulator to cut the regulators down to size?
The root problem is that Ofted is required by government to sit in judgement – of schools, teachers, social workers. Is that helpful? Is it necessary? The heavy-handed style is pervasive in the present government culture, and ratings are a big part of that. Ofsted aside, many people seem obsessed with being able to confer a rating on others. Organisations’ performance appraisal systems are frequently brought low by this assumed requirement. As the inspiring conductor-cum-management guru Benjamin Zander says in his book The Art of Possibility, such ratings “are all invented”. In other words, why should we take seriously something that lacks any objective foundation? In his classes his own approach is to give all his students an ‘A’ grade, so that they can stop worrying what grade they will receive and can ‘grow into this top grade’, as he puts it. “An A radiates possibility through a family, a workplace, and a community, gaining strength, bringing joy and expression and a flowering of talent and productivity. Who knows how far it will travel."
Behind this is the view that it is learning and improving that matters, not having a fixed grade. There are times when it can be helpful for others to know what your grade is because it drives something (such as a job application or a computer programme calculating a bonus), but sometimes a grade serves little purpose and tells us more about the rater and the system than the person or organisation being rated. If Ofsted refocused its ‘inspection’ on learning and support, then it might have a future. But that would mean changing its values and those of its government sponsors. That is unlikely to happen. Trust has evaporated. As has faith in Ofsted’s own internal organisational management. The only question now is ‘Do we need an OfOf – a regulator to cut the regulators down to size?
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Thoughts about thought leadership in declaring war
On the day that Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry opens for business it’s worth reflecting on the work of Keith Grint. I find his work riveting and troubling at the same time – see ‘Problems, problems, problems: the social construction of leadership’ in Human Relations Vol 58(11). Grint takes a swipe at contingency theory. The theory holds that leadership is situational: that once a situation has been rationally assessed, the appropriate leadership response can be adjudged. In this view, George Bush’s ‘commander’ style happened to be the appropriate response to what he found going on in Iraq. But Grint says that the process actually works in the reverse direction: that decision-makers render their accounts of situations in such a way that the style of decision making needed is preordained and self-interested. So Hans Blix didn’t stand a chance. Bush was able to portray Iraq as an urgent crisis in need of strong command leadership. Opponents who wanted to ask questions, explore options, or try well-honed management processes such as diplomacy could be portrayed as weak, given that Bush’s description of the situation in Iraq (e.g. Saddam Hussein is a friend of Al Qaeda and has weapons ...) successfully overpowered other interpretations. A popular feature of leadership studies is belief that situations can be rationally assessed; but as Grint points out, they are the products of ‘social construction’. The ‘truth’ is simply how it can successfully be portrayed. That’s a step beyond ‘what we perceive it to be’: it’s how we sell it. The shadow side of leadership is alive and kicking!
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Who needs to behave ethically?
Do competency frameworks adequately spell out the requirement for managers to behave ethically? Some people look at the state of the banking sector, business in general, and the UK economy, and conclude not. But, while moral failure is occasionally individual (e.g. Bernie Madoff, Robert Maxwell), it is usually more widespread and a feature of the way the organisation chooses to do business. The banking failure was systemic. The TV premium rate phone racket was systemic. The MP's expenses scandal was systemic. Pensions misselling was systemic and probably the most egregious: the induction process and message for this high-turnover workforce was blatant. Once the companies were found out, they blamed their salespeople and either fired them or sent them for pointless retraining. Then the companies reassured the public that the culprits had been discovered and dealt with. You can’t get more unethical than that.
Most of the individuals who get caught up in these scandals are not bad people, but the organisation's purpose, business model, market pressures, design, culture, processes, pay and recognition, targets, incentives and dynamics leads these people collectively to behave in a way that most outsiders consider unethical. You cannot get such a system to behave more ethically by adding items in competency frameworks or by training individuals. To bring about improvement you need to directly work on what is going on between and around individuals (the quality of the water in their 'fishtank' that is poisoning them). And there will usually need to be some external pressure on the organisation to make changes (e.g. the FSA putting the squeeze on bankers' bonuses).
Most of the individuals who get caught up in these scandals are not bad people, but the organisation's purpose, business model, market pressures, design, culture, processes, pay and recognition, targets, incentives and dynamics leads these people collectively to behave in a way that most outsiders consider unethical. You cannot get such a system to behave more ethically by adding items in competency frameworks or by training individuals. To bring about improvement you need to directly work on what is going on between and around individuals (the quality of the water in their 'fishtank' that is poisoning them). And there will usually need to be some external pressure on the organisation to make changes (e.g. the FSA putting the squeeze on bankers' bonuses).
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Planned versus emergent leadership
I have been challenged: how can organisations get their needs for leadership met (or should they even try) when commentators now claim that leadership is ‘emergent’ and should be allowed to do so; all the organisation should do is create the right conditions. Good question. Here is how I reconcile the dilemma.
Situations are unpredictable (as my book discusses), especially in the light of what complexity scientists say. So there must be scope for individual leadership responses to emerge, free of the organisation hand on the tiller. Yet, that cannot be the whole story. When Thatcher put my old boss Lord King in charge of British Airways, she gave him a brief - broadly, make it earn money and become independent of annual Treasury bailouts, take customers seriously, and privatise. There was a new agenda for BA. King couldn't do it on his own. It would not do for his managers to say: 'that King's job: our job doesn't change'. Nor could they afford to say 'what we do will 'emerge' '!
Rarely is an organisational need or message 'steady as she goes'; usually change is required - be it the banks, BBC, Royal Mail, etc. There will be an inevitable tension between top-down, organisation-mandated change (which requires the organisation to take a positive view of what it needs leadership for at a given time) and a bottom-up emergent perspective where little can be predicted and forced, and people need a considerable degree of freedom in what they use their leadership for.
Taking another example, did the TV companies' telephone premium phone charge scam 'emerge' in some bottom-up, uncoordinated and unplanned way? Or were objectives and conditions deliberately being set which made such behaviour by executives inevitable? When it all went pear-shaped and fines were imposed, the top brass made clear what it wanted from these leaders to put it right. If the truly emergent model rules OK, then it seems to me we will lurch from unexpected crises like this followed by a crackdown, and so on. That doesn't seem a very clever way for an organisation to manage its affairs. And yet, you might argue that a firmer view of what the organisation needs before things go wrong might stifle creativity and testing the boundaries. Overall, the answer to the conundrum probably lies between these extremes.
I end up thinking how can organisations be happy to spend so much on leadership development without taking a view on what they want it for? If you were put in charge of the MOD, wouldn't you want to be clear about that and to communicate it and make sure it was being used for that? Or would you put all your faith in 'let's see what emerges'?
Situations are unpredictable (as my book discusses), especially in the light of what complexity scientists say. So there must be scope for individual leadership responses to emerge, free of the organisation hand on the tiller. Yet, that cannot be the whole story. When Thatcher put my old boss Lord King in charge of British Airways, she gave him a brief - broadly, make it earn money and become independent of annual Treasury bailouts, take customers seriously, and privatise. There was a new agenda for BA. King couldn't do it on his own. It would not do for his managers to say: 'that King's job: our job doesn't change'. Nor could they afford to say 'what we do will 'emerge' '!
Rarely is an organisational need or message 'steady as she goes'; usually change is required - be it the banks, BBC, Royal Mail, etc. There will be an inevitable tension between top-down, organisation-mandated change (which requires the organisation to take a positive view of what it needs leadership for at a given time) and a bottom-up emergent perspective where little can be predicted and forced, and people need a considerable degree of freedom in what they use their leadership for.
Taking another example, did the TV companies' telephone premium phone charge scam 'emerge' in some bottom-up, uncoordinated and unplanned way? Or were objectives and conditions deliberately being set which made such behaviour by executives inevitable? When it all went pear-shaped and fines were imposed, the top brass made clear what it wanted from these leaders to put it right. If the truly emergent model rules OK, then it seems to me we will lurch from unexpected crises like this followed by a crackdown, and so on. That doesn't seem a very clever way for an organisation to manage its affairs. And yet, you might argue that a firmer view of what the organisation needs before things go wrong might stifle creativity and testing the boundaries. Overall, the answer to the conundrum probably lies between these extremes.
I end up thinking how can organisations be happy to spend so much on leadership development without taking a view on what they want it for? If you were put in charge of the MOD, wouldn't you want to be clear about that and to communicate it and make sure it was being used for that? Or would you put all your faith in 'let's see what emerges'?
Monday, 16 November 2009
How are you feeling?
The call by the Chartered Management Institute for managers to sign a pledge “to develop the way I manage and lead, setting the example for others” reminds me of what my boss in British Airways used to say about edicts. He didn’t think they made much difference to what actually happened (he was less polite than that). A good test for anyone who has made the pledge is this: what are you now doing differently? Or even, what do you expect to do differently?
Organisations have two faces. One is rational (the side that’s taught in business schools); it consists of policies, structures, directives, strategies, standing orders, budgets, plans, etc. The other is non-rational; it contains politics, greed, ambition, the grapevine, friendships, jealousies, power, etc. This second ‘shadow side’ better explains what really happens. Edicts are part of the former; they are an expression of intention, wishfulness and hope, usually flying in the face of humanity’s self-interest and weakness. Pledges fit here too.
Pledges make people feel warm. We all need some of that. It’s an important emotion. Yet when I think about the banks and look out on the state of the economy, politics, climate change, criminal justice, global warming, Afghanistan and think about leadership, a more appropriate emotion right now would seem to be anger.
Organisations have two faces. One is rational (the side that’s taught in business schools); it consists of policies, structures, directives, strategies, standing orders, budgets, plans, etc. The other is non-rational; it contains politics, greed, ambition, the grapevine, friendships, jealousies, power, etc. This second ‘shadow side’ better explains what really happens. Edicts are part of the former; they are an expression of intention, wishfulness and hope, usually flying in the face of humanity’s self-interest and weakness. Pledges fit here too.
Pledges make people feel warm. We all need some of that. It’s an important emotion. Yet when I think about the banks and look out on the state of the economy, politics, climate change, criminal justice, global warming, Afghanistan and think about leadership, a more appropriate emotion right now would seem to be anger.
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