Democratization

THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE LEADERSHIP

THE BIG SHIFT

Wily A. Sussland

Prof. Vlatka Hlupic’s “The Management Shift” attributes the 75% decline of corporate life-expectancy and performances to the lack of a clear model of a leadership that raises people’s engagement, capabilities, and creativity. (1)

Let us take a quick look at how the different schools of management have shaped the model of leadership.

Taylor’s efficiency movement clearly separated the managers and the workers. The former planned and checked, the latter executed and corrected as told. Total quality management introduced many new tools to manage the processes, and teams were appointed to solve operational problems. Hoshin Planning involves teams in strategic planning, but this tool was seldom applied outside of Japan. Innovation management gave more powers to some innovators.

As companies grew, they placed more hierarchical levels and more bureaucracy. And so, each of the various levels added their distance between the leader and his/her employees. Finally, the top-leadership has no relation to the front-lines or to its external partners. The middle-management is given targets and means, and it gets blamed if they do not achieve the results that top-leadership had planned.

Of course, the first three schools of management have made many improvements. Some of the business-leaders changed from “command-control-castigating” to “steering-synergizing-supporting”. But by and large the separation between the leaders that planned and checked, and the employees that executed and corrected remained.

The spirit and the style of leadership, the company-culture, and the structures of the organization have not changed that much. As a result, this model of leadership entails challenges that kept mounting with the acceleration of the changes in the external and in the internal business environment. The markets and the competition are becoming more volatile and unpredictable. Conversely, the internal environment has become predictably marred by the disengagement of the personnel, which results in some unprecedented sloppiness causing serious quality-problems. Moreover, some of the most valuable elements are ready and resolved to quit for a better job.

And so, many organizations are hard put to keep ahead of fast-moving times and to drum up the agility, the boldness, and the creativity to thrive or even to survive. Fortunately, the publication of the Agile Manifesto by a group of soft-ware programmers led to a new school-of-management, agile management, which helps companies to democratize their leadership as discussed in the following sections of this article.

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The publication of the Agile Manifesto by a group of soft-ware programmers led to the innovation of the method-of-management. For short, agile management keeps things simple and small, it optimizes the synergies among the teams, and thusly it maximizes stimulation of collective creativity and of swiftness. Agile management decentralizes and delayers the leadership, and it delegates powers to self-organizing teams at the different levels and in the different functions. (2) Business-leaders at the different levels and in the different functions form networks that optimize the enterprise’s performances with agility, boldness, and creativity.

Thus, this new method-of-management also creates favorable conditions for the establishment of the democratization of the leadership, which comes at the neck of time to raise the commitment, the cooperation, and the creativity of the people. However, the powerful middle-managers may strongly resist the change unless shown how they can benefit form it. Moreover Steve Denning observed that many companies only introduced agile management in part of their organization and in 2022 he wrote “The Age of Agile Has Not Arrived”.

Taylor’s “The Principles of Scientific Management” of 1911 submits “In the past, the man has been first; in the future, the system must be first”. In his brilliant article referenced below, Steve Denning suggests that the most valuable and fastest growing firms put man ahead of the system. Yet rather than putting some factors ahead of other, we should put the men and the system side-by-side, working closely together to sustain superior performances. The next generation of method-of-management, the management of men and intelligent machines, will furthernbsp; scale the mutual interest of the people and of their organization to broaden the base of leadership as necessary to maximize the connectivity, the creativity, and the celerity in the organization company-wide. Let us see how the democratization of the leadership can best be introduced and implemented in the frame of thenbsp; enterprise’s business system.nbsp;

THE ENTERPRISE’S BUSINESS SYSTEM

The enterprise’s business system features strategic and operational processes that deploy the resources to produce results. “The Five Forces of Enterprise” features the process strategic management called SP.I.D.E.R. and the following capitals, namely: the organizational capital, the talent capital, the marketing capital, the life and time cycles, and the financial capital. (4) This model integrates the internal and the external activities as well as the present performances and the future prospects.

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References

1.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Vlatka Hlupic “The Management Shift: How to Harness the Power of People and Transform Your Organization For Sustainable Success” Oct 2014

2.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;W. A. Sussland “The Platform of Agile Management” Routledge 2018

3.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Steve Denning “Putting The Man Before The System Drives The World’s Most Valuable Firms” Forbes 02/02/24

4.nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; W. A. Sussland “The Five Forces of Enterprise” Kindle 03/23

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