The BaldrigePlus Newsletter
Issue 18, Monday May 15th, 2000
Leadership 301
If you’ve been along for the ride (Newsletters 16 and 17), you’re maybe thinking a bit differently about the 'L' word. Leadership. Why it matters, what it is, how it looks and how it works (or not) in the real world.
In amongst all the opinion and observation were a few subversive ideas. Like, leaders are made, not born. Or, hey, we’re all leaders! If that’s really the case (it does seem a bit counter-intuitive, but who are we to argue with Prof Kakabadse’s 8,000 organisation, 14 country survey), then what about the idea that leadership can be measured?
Well, not measured, exactly. Assessed. Let’s look at how the various performance excellence awards deal with leadership, and at what that tells us about the nature of leadership. Our source is a provocative and occasionally opaque paper by Rick Edgeman, Su Mi Park Dahlgaard, Jens J Dahlgaard and Franz Scherer (www.geocities.com/WallStreet/District/1798/) titled “On Leaders and Leadership – Business excellence models, core value deployment and lessons from the Bible.”
All the business excellence models emphasise the importance of leaders and leadership, Rick and the team say. And “While leadership is focal, the function and form of leadership that best sustains and advances organizations intent on business excellence is subject to ongoing revision.”
Their article proposes a model of leadership based on competence and core values. “Businesses have long neglected the core value subsystem,” they say, and that neglect has erected barriers in the way of systemic leadership. Such models – necessarily centred on principles – are sometimes controversial, ‘and so is ours.’
Leadership and business excellence models
If the Demingite tenet that ‘defects beget defects’ is true, than so, perhaps, is the corollary – bad leaders provide poor leadership, “which may be worse than no leadership.”
If that’s the case, Edgeman et al say, the antithesis of business excellence is what happens to organisations when a bad leader provides poor leadership – the company won’t win quality awards and, more important, will probably struggle for survival.
While the criteria of quality awards do not define leadership, they do suggest activities and roles for leaders, and they do provide what’s effectively a template for assessing organizational leadership, portraying it as either a foundation or an enabler, “often overly, although perhaps not overtly, dependent on Leaders (with a capital L) and not truly a leadership system.”
Their article proposes that leadership is everyone's responsibility, that everyone can and should be ‘a leader,’ so that, ultimately, Leader becomes leader becomes leadership – systemic (‘the way things are done around here’) rather than heroic – and the highest form of organizational leader is the ‘servant leader,’ the coach or team builder.
Leadership is not rigorously defined in the criteria of most business excellence schemes, they say. What’s assessed may more truthfully be the “fruits of leadership,” even though most focus on approach and deployment rather than results. What’s more, there’s often a difference between the higher level words, and the detail of the examination items (the ‘areas to address’ in the Baldrige scheme).
The leadership criteria of the 1998 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award says: "The leadership category examines the company's leadership system and senior leader's personal leadership. It examines how senior leaders and the leadership system address values, company directions, performance expectations, a focus on customers and other stakeholders, learning and innovation. Also examined is how the company addresses its societal responsibilities and provides support to key communities.”
This suggests systemic leadership, Edgeman et al say, but there is an incongruity between the ideal expressed in the quote and the details in the criteria, which for example deal with "how senior leaders guide the company in setting directions and in developing and sustaining effective leadership throughout the organization."
It’s the exercise rather than expansion of leadership that is examined, clearly equating senior leader(s) with leadership. It’s not systemic.
So how do Edgeman et al define the art and science of leadership? It is, they say: - Vision that stimulates hope and mission that transforms hope into reality - Radical servant-hood that saturates the organization - Stewardship that shepherds its resource - Integration that drives its economy - The courage to sacrifice personal or team goals for the greater community good - Communication that coordinates its efforts - Consensus that drives unity of purpose - Empowerment that grants permission to make mistakes, encourages the honesty to admit them and gives the opportunity to learn from them - Conviction that provides the stamina to continually strive toward business excellence. “In a few words, leadership is we, not me; mission, not my show; vision, not division; and community, not domicile.”
Note on internet addresses
Rather than live links, we've included the adddresses to off-site resources in full - cut and past to your browser.