EXCERPT -- The Worker, Alone!

A LEADERSHIP MANIFESTO FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© May 12, 2015

“The wise man has his follies no less than the fool; but herein lies the difference – the follies of the fool are known to the world, but are hidden from himself; the follies of the wise man are known to himself, but hidden from the world.”

—Caleb C. Colton (1780-1832), English clergyman

Leadership is in a state of retreat bordering on confusion. Not only is leadership out-of-date but out-of-touch with the reality of work and workers. Leadership models are now in jeopardy because they were designed for another time and another workforce. Institutions today go from crisis to crisis, scandal to

scandal, outrage to outrage. We wait for the other shoe to drop and have become the United States of Anxiety.

—James R. Fisher, Jr., Misdirected Leadership Ideals

The Chronic Problem: Typology of Leaderless Leadership

Jack Welch, venerated former CEO of General Electric (GE) never realized how short he was until he saw a picture of his high school sports team. Welch became the ultimate workaholic to compensate for this shortcoming, and one day found himself “like a man standing 6 feet 4 with a full head of hair,” the quintessential executive and corporate leader of America.1 Welch had his GE management team and rank and file basking in his reflected glory with soaring accomplishments.

John Francis “Jack” Welch, Jr. was born November 9, 1935 of Irish American parents, his father a Boston & Maine Railroad conductor, his mother, a homemaker.  He has been focused, industrious and successful  throughout his life.

During high school, he worked summers as a golf caddy, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman, and drill press operator. 

At Salem High School, although small, he participated in baseball, football, and captained the hockey team.

Late in his senior year, he was accepted to University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he studied chemical engineering, and worked summers in chemical engineering at Sunoco and PPG Industries, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering.  He turned down several corporate offers in order to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois where he earned a Master’s degree in 1960 and a PhD in chemical engineering the following year.

A score of years later, he became chairman and CEO of General Electric and held that position from 1981 to 2001.

During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose 4,000 percent.    In 2006, his net worth was estimated at $720 million.  When he retired from GE he took a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in history. 

Despite this impressive portfolio and record of success, he has had his critics.

Academics, such as Rahesh Khurana of Harvard, are not so easily impressed. Dr. Khurana suggests that leadership at GE has been superb for the past 100 years and that Welch’s contribution to that leadership is consistent with that reputation. The system, Khurana points out, created the climate for such leadership to evolve. The system created Jack Welch, he did not create the

system.2

Being newsworthy these days is not a function of culture or unobtrusive performance, but personality and charismatic appeal, where the mystique of the brash 14-year-old mindset in the 60-year-old bodysuit becomes the prototype of what constitutes leadership.

Welch fits the mold and worked to create the impression he was a regular guy and working stiff – even if he made 700 times more than the typical worker. What role did the 300,000 GE employees play in this success? Apparently little.

Why should a single CEO at the top of an organization be treated like royalty? This makes no sense when we consider that thriving organizations assign decisions to workers who are close to the level of consequences and depend on timely feedback from these workers to generate strategies with positive outcomes.

Yet MBA students are taught to focus on the management of things with only passing attention to the leadership of people as persons. They learn that people are expendable and are necessary only to accomplish given goals; the less people the better the financial advantage. One executive took this philosophy to heart and instituted a 20-40-60 plan: re-evaluate all employees who have had 20 years of service, who are more than 40 years of age, and/or

earn $60,000 or more.

Senior managers at K-Mart sued the company in the US Court of Appeals (February 14, 1995) for this alleged practice.  This case against K-Mart proved not to contain probative evidence as it was an oral rather than a written policy. K-Mart filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002. Ex-CEO Charles Conaway was ordered to pay $10 million, reduced to $5.5 million for misleading shareholders about the retailer’s prospects before its 2002 bankruptcy. Conaway eventually became Chief Operating Office of CVS Pharmacy.

What is most disturbing about this case is that once trust is broken struggle for survival is doubly difficult, as is the case with K-Mart today. The careers of corporate sinners, however, go on as they remain essentially unscathed.

Charles Conaway was fired from K-Mart for hiding the company’s credit status from stockholders, only to become COO of CVS Pharmacy.3  These outrages are labeled as the arrogance of power, and they represent a corporate society adrift without a rudder. They show the love of total war. Competition must be obliterated not simply beaten. The enemy must be destroyed, no mercy granted. If these actions cause collateral damage, such as people losing their jobs, so be it. This is leaderless leadership, leadership without a rudder, the dilemma of leadership today.

Leadership discussions assume everyone is talking about the same thing. Leadership often is personified in a charismatic leader (President Kennedy), a central figure (Pope John Paul II), or a person in the organization (Jack Welch).

Leadership invariably is reduced to an individual at the helm.  I find this too narrow a perspective. I don’t think charisma is relevant, and I don’t believe leadership is personified in a central figure. I believe leadership is organic, an all-encompassing phenomenon in which everyone is a leader or no one is!

Typology of Leadership Behavior

Our institutions are failing and such failures are always human.  The fact that scandals grow nastier is evidence only that we have a problem – not a morality issue but a contextual problem. Because the leadership culture programs the way workers behave, and corporations get the leadership and behavior they deserve. Crisis, scandal and outrage do not occur in a vacuum. They are unwitting products of corporate design, and when the design is wrong, the social termites or “six silent killers” produce their silent havoc.4

Circumstances are forcing a re-evaluation of leadership. I suggested

more than a decade ago that work could be conducted more efficiently without managers, that performance appraisals were a costly and counterproductive sham, and that the total quality movement was an expediency driven by crisis management.5 Time has not changed my mind.

People are failing, and we need a typology to describe the humanness of this failure. After observing people for over four decades, I have gleaned the typology of leadership behaviors described in the following sections. If you notice that these types focus on failure, it is because I have encountered far more failures than successes.

Manipulators

Manipulators believe everyone has his or her price, and the leadership system was made for exploitation. The more able the exploiter, the faster this leaderless leader rises to a position of consequence. Manipulators conceal hidden agendas and naked ambition, deceptively promoting an image of being straight arrows. Their weapons are fear and intimidation; first they try

and cajole others to accept their perspectives; if that doesn’t work, they threaten.

Frustrated Participants

These leaderless leaders believe in the corporate system and see themselves as dedicated managers. They often are frustrated but are reluctant to complain. When they find inconsistencies in company policy, flagrant violations of fairness issues, etc., they feel their role is to protect the company’s image without protest. After a particularly exasperating experience, one frustrated

participants was asked what he would do. He replied, “What I

always do. Suck it up and move on.”

Inside Outsider

Some leaderless leaders possess critical specialist skills, often having professional credentials that rank with officers of the company. Although they arrive to enhance their status by impressing others with their unique skills, they don’t attain the authority exercised by generalists and are never considered key players. They experience the paradox of being needed but not wanted. To the old guard they are cowboys, to the new guard, necessary evils.

Winning Side Saddlers

This type of leaderless leader appears more frequently at higher levels of the organization. They are consummate pleasers, which endears them to their bosses. They focus on what is wanted, not what is needed. They are chameleons with the capacity to change camouflage at a moment’s notice. Should a power shift be eminent, they are the first to leave the old saddle and climb into the stirrups of the new boss.

Nostalgic Elitists

Remnants of a less egalitarian past, these leaderless leaders long for the way it once was, when a clear demarcation existed between workers and managers. Today’s less structured, open-systems approach causes them great pain. They cannot fathom why their authority is challenged, why the less gifted are treated as equals, or why their superiority is no longer self-evident. Nostalgic elitists see a more permissive culture emerging, where everybody does his or her own thing. They fail to recognize that creativity and chaos are related and that open systems spawn creativity.  Their attitude alienates peers, frustrates subordinates, and agonizes superiors.

Waiters in the Wings

These pragmatic leaderless leaders marshal resources, plan strategies, and develop tactics. They periodically compare their careers to company progress, having no desire to tie their future to a sinking ship. Their ambition is not obvious because they feel no need to campaign openly. Although they seem relaxed, they usually are impatient and are not willing to wait very long for recognition and promotion. Operationally, they make themselves indispensable and are self-confident, but they are not cheerleaders. They are

balanced and maintain perspective without being easily ruffled. This makes them calming influences in crises, and inadvertently threatening to those who are less secure.

Happily in Harness

These contented leaderless leaders love what they do and are appreciative

and generous, good co-workers and supervisors, competent without being arrogant. They create a climate for peers and subordinates to grow – even if they are not always effective coaches. They are trusted and fair, consistent and honest. They never think of countermanding an executive order or bad mouthing a superior. They take pride in their ability to do the job, but are surprisingly tolerant of those who don’t. Although laziness is foreign to them, they remain philosophical about lazy people. They are unlikely to rock the boat.

Quiet Soldiers

Although these leaderless leaders may appear similar to those that are happily in harness, they differ in some striking ways. They are comfortable as followers and identify with subordinates but are not necessarily content in their jobs. They do only what they are told and don’t take risks. They have talent but little resolve.  They are apt to accept untenable situations rather than complain. “Not my job,” echoes in their silence. Simply put, they are passive passengers on their own ship of destiny. In the past, quiet soldiers were the impetus to paternalistic authority, but now they are more often part of the logjam. They are an atavistic holdover from an anachronistic system.

Victims

This martyr-like leaderless leadership pattern is displayed by managers

who expect to be trusted without being trustworthy, given cherished assignments without being dependable, and taken at their word without being reliable. They delight in the failures of others, but find no humor when others delight in theirs. When others fail, it is because they’re incompetent, when victims fail, it’s because others let them down. “If only” is their litany and mantra.

Unbending Idealists

Idealizing life and living in a dream world, these leaderless leaders see themselves as saviors of lost causes and lost souls, explaining away failures. “He didn’t mean to steal the laptop. He just forgot to bring it back.” As apologists, they envision a world where there is no conflict or contradiction, only utopian harmony. The problem is that managed conflict is the adhesive that holds workers to their tasks, and contradiction is the natural volutionary spark of ideas.6

Adventurers

As the category name implies, these leaderless leaders are consumed with adventure; they are out to push the envelope. Being productive is not exciting enough for adventurers. They are geared for the sensational. When cornered, they come out swinging with an incomprehensible explanation. Nothing is impeded by its possible consequences, as it never occurs to adventurers that

they might get caught. They are often brilliant and could succeed without all the artful dodging, but it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. Often the adventurer is the darling of the organization, the daredevil and nonconformist that is envied for monstrous accomplishments that often seem unbelievable (and may be based on cutting corners, slipshod work, or outright fabrication).

Spin Doctors

Spin doctors see themselves as the eyes, ears, and voice of authority and their role to put the best possible face on the worst situation. These leaderless leaders tend to reduce everything to digestible sound bites, which often leads to credibility issues. Assessing explosive issues and putting a positive spin on them is no small achievement. It requires the skill of the illusionist to change

complexity into simplicity, give the chaotic situation an orderly context, and cloak crisis situations under the umbrella of calm. The danger is that spin doctors’ short-term solutions often create long-term problems. Spin doctors are apt to be quick witted, congenial, decisive, and backstage performers.

Reluctant Soldiers

Everyone knows and tolerates reluctant soldiers without expecting anything from them. They are in the same job and at the same level where they started. They are leaderless leaders who wandered into a job and found a home. Long ago they retired on the job. They have received increased compensation and improve entitlements for doing less and less over the years. To call them lazy is an oversimplification. They are often crafty with an instinct for survival. When first employed, they were considered safe hires and then were forgotten. Statistically, they are part of the 15 percent foot draggers that plague most organizations.7

Overachievers

Overachievers equate working hard without necessarily working smart. They pride themselves on their multitasking and fail to see its down side, and demonstrate surface acumen that garners the attention of superiors. It doesn’t hurt that they are usually likeable, agreeable, and never seem to sleep. Their attractiveness blinds others from how little they achieve. No one seems to notice their obsessive attempt to cover all bases rather than to focus on the

critical 10 percent causing the problem. These leaderless leaders are actually not achievers; they are well meaning but get lost in the detail. They equate accomplishment with time spent doing, and intensity of effort with competence. Overachievers personify a whirlwind process that far too often generates a marginal product.

Messiahs

Whereas unbending idealists dream of a utopian world where answers are not needed, Messiahs believe they have the answers. They provide corrective recipes to what ails the workforce, assuming motivation can be defined, packaged, and disseminated as a product – along with more appropriate styles of management – to rejuvenate a lethargic organization. The solutions presented by these leaderless leaders don’t succeed because the culture dictates behavior, and the culture is driven by the structure and function of work and not by divine intervention. This requires architectural insight, which is missing in their answers.

Professionals

Professionals are a breed apart. They think in a language unique to their technology. No entry level salary or job for them. They feel they have paid their dues in academia and now they are entitled. Somewhere lost in this scenario is the importance of experience, the benefit of failure in the learning process, and the realization that a career is a journey. These leaderless leaders want positions, not jobs; they desire authority without accountability. In an age when much work requires self-management, when maturity is essential

to deal with ever changing and conflicting circumstances, these leaderless leaders epitomize the spoiled child that feeds on itself and the system. Campaigning for the next position is a fulltime job.

Ten Guidelines for Successful Leadership

To move from leaderless leadership to leadership, workers and managers

need to remember the following points:

• All contributions large and small are essential to an objective. All work is ennobling.

• No worker, manager, group, or function is complete within itself. Pulling together towards a common objective creates organizational synergy.

• Competitors are not the enemy. An obsession with killing the competitions saps the collective strength and derails effort from the objective. Much can be learned from competition because competitors are serving the same customer.

• Technology should be user-friendly, available, and applicable as a tool to fit requirements, not as a toy to exaggerate differences.

• The best organization is not harmonious. The best employee is not the safe hire. Nor is comfort the best design for success. A Culture of Contribution is the key where struggle, failure, pain, disappointment, chaos, conflict, and confrontation are managed, as opposed to being avoided. What is a Culture of Contribution? It is organized chaos, a challenge to the existing status quo and modus operandi, to misguided authority, and to the objectives that are inconsistent with the mission. It is also a challenge to do more than what is expected.8

• All organizations are in a state of dying. To survive they must constantly be reborn, retooled, and redirected. This requires a change in mindset and culture, which often results in a step backward before taking a step forward, a

retrenchment to reassess the situation. In sports, we call it a time out, in life, we call it getting a second wind, in organization, we call it survival.

• Any organization is a human group. People are not things to manage but persons to be led. Leadership must encounter and deal with suspicion and questioning of authority in order to realize cooperation.

• People tend to compare and compete, to look at the “in” group and the “out” group, at the pecking order, on who is getting the perks and keeping score, and who is working and who is not. Given this tendency, there will be lapses

– times when people  won’t be on the same page and times when the organization isn’t working anymore. When this happens, don’t bring in consultants or implement cosmetic changes; let the dust settle, re-evaluate where the organization is and how it got there. Don’t point fingers, but apply strategic interventions that focus on the 20 percent causing 80 percent of the problem.

• The vertical structure of organizations isn’t working. Nor is vertical thinking based on linear logic and critical thinking enough. Horizontal organizational structure is needed to complement the vertical structure. Likewise,

lateral thinking, based on intuition and creative thinking, is needed to complement vertical thinking.

• Remember, organizational culture follows this formula:

• Structure of work determines the function of work;

• Function of work creates the workplace culture;

• Workplace culture dictates organizational behavior;

• Organizational behavior establishes whether an organization is to vegetate, flounder, expire or flourish.

Summary

Leaders don’t know how to lead and workers don’t know how to follow.

The workforce has changed in the past 50 years from 90 percent blue collar to 90 percent white collar, but the mindset of management has changed little. Some feel the problem is management style, but it is not. Management, as it was paternalistically designed isn’t working. Leadership is needed where workers are treated as partnering adults, not as dependent and obedient children.

Leadership is the vision to see and the ability to serve. To serve, leaders must become followers. They must understand the needs, desires, motivations, interests, fears, and dreams of workers – not by giving workers everything they request but by challenging them.

Every organization has the workers it needs to be successful. The problem is workers are reluctant to add their voices to the dialogue. Workers have the answers because they experience the problems! These inclusive factors determine in large measure whether an organization has true leadership or leaderless leadership. They revolve around three spheres of influence of the Fisher Paradigm™; workers and managers (personality), the organization (geographic), and the prevailing culture (demographic). Where does your organization fall in this continuum?

Resources

1. Ellen Goodman, “A Downsized Jack Welch,” The Tampa Tribune, September 20, 2002, p. 17.

2. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, “Executive Perks,” Ray Suarez talks about pay and perks given to corporate CEOs with Rakesh Khurana, professor at the Harvard School of Business and Robin Ferracone, partner with Mercer Human Resources, PBS television, September 16, 2002.

3. James R. Fisher, Jr., Six Silent Killers: Management’s Greatest Challenge (CRC Press 1998), pp. 7-21.

4. Fisher, op. cit. pp. 83-142.

5. James R. Fisher, Jr., Work Without Managers: A View from the Trenches (The Delta Group Florida 1991).

6. Edward de Bono, Parallel Thinking (Penguin Books 1995), pages 147-149.

7. Most organizations form a performance curve: 15 percent foot draggers, 70 percent followers, and 15 percent hard chargers.

8. Fisher, op. cit. pp. 197-220.

Note: This appeared in The Journal for Quality & Participation, Winter 2002, pp. 20-24.