The Center for Creative Leadership's DAC Model vs The Framework. Part 1.
Prometheus Project
Co-creating a new level of leaders and leading. Interrupting the norm for the better.
There may not be a better articulation of conventional thinking than the DAC model.
What is there has value. We are not playing the 'we-they' game or the 'villainize one perspective to elevate another' game. However, there is a difference in the content and the mindset between DAC and the Framework.
The contrasts show us where its strengths and weaknesses lie as a model of leadership - a broad claim but is focuses on a narrow slice of leaders and leading.
"It Isn’t Just About Individuals — Leadership Is a Social Process"
Prometheus' perspective and language is that leadership is about both individuals and a social process. "Leading" is about the social process. "Leaders" are about individuals.
This balanced view matters because the two perspectives are too often used as dichotomies vs framing leadership as a human and social system.
"It’s as if we’ve taken every positive human quality and made it into a requirement for effective leadership."
Prometheus shares this perspective; it is why we chose the terms "Be Enough" and "Know What Helps" as categories for individual development (and logically, self-awareness and situational awareness).
We agree that too often, we humans pause before we take the risk to engage because we sense we are not ready, not powerful, and not perfect in some way. Instead, leading courageously and collectively affords opportunities to make change and to learn in the process. We like the idea of leaders weighing action first, and then, IF they are not enough or IF they do not know enough of what helps, they can be clear on learning those things. Most of the time, they have the capacities and capabilities - especially if they share those efforts.
The Framework - at its highest level - frames three key elements - the Leader's Awareness-Intent, The Leader's Learning-Action Objectives, and the Choice Point.
In the present moment, the individual has a choice to engage in change or not. If they have an intent for their actions, if they are able to leverage individual strengths and collective strengths, if they do not sense they will derail their efforts, then choose action over (or with) individual development.
"Leadership happens in the interactions and exchanges among people with shared work."
Prometheus shares these two perspectives.
Leading is always a social experience.
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Even if one person is the protagonist or the initiator, the other individuals respond - "yes, and" style - or "when pigs fly" style. However, the broader the context, the more likely those initiations (the leading) are shared - in a more collective contribution.
Leading includes achieving results.
Getting results, making an impact, and achieving some work product is a part of the framework - but it is only one slice. Early versions of the Framework emphasized this action and achievement of leading, much like the DAC. However, we realized throughout testing in real situations that there was a larger story. And, if we were going to frame leadership as a whole, we would have to include all of it.
Where Prometheus and CCL's DAC diverge is in that very last word in the quote: "work". The DAC is thinking about getting work done. Its language, its content, and its metaphors are achievement-focused. The Framework sees the intentions of leadership more broadly - systemically, with more focus on being part of an adaptive system.
The DAC rightly frames the leadership challenge as a system and succeeds in including many contributors in its thinking, but if it claims it is a leadership model it needs to include other aspects of the system besides achieving. The DAC takes a conventional, corporate view of leading as achieving - telos.
These 'take the hill' situations are valid. Illuminating them is useful. But they are not as common as we might think in organizations and certainly not in our communities, given the exclusive focus they have in the DAC Model.
"We’ve been using the DAC model with people across every level, sector, function, culture, and demographic for over 20 years."
Maybe we are not learning enough from those experiences. Maybe our conventional boundaries and mindsets are not serving us well enough.
Tom Bohinc is the founder of the Prometheus Project and the primary author of The Prometheus Framework.
Sociological Safety? | The Sociological Workplace | Trivalent Safety Ecosystem
1 年I recognize it. The inverted 3x3 is the core of my own methodology. (You'll see it on my profile.) It enables everything from an in-depth individual analysis, to small or large group assessment and analytics, and easily scales up to an octahedral organizational analysis at the scale of nations. Properties and qualities are the granular level of analysis, and there are no limits to the dimensions you can feed it, except one. You have to be able to define what you're assessing. The challenge with leadership is that there's no definition. Frankly, we don't know what it is, and can't describe it meaningfully. We tend to use the measurements of what happened in the wake of people who take on leadership roles. That's about the best we've been able to do, based on what's in the literature. If you can come up with the definition, and define the inherent properties and qualities of leadership, you're golden.