Although world business is undergoing historic changes, the
prevailing view of what constitutes business leadership is stuck
in the past. Generally, business leaders view leadership as an
order-giving process. The word “leadership” itself comes from
old Norse root meaning “to make go.” Many leaders believe that
they must “make” people go by ordering them to do things.
But today’s new business realities are requiring new kinds
of leadership, leadership that has very little to do with order
giving. Organizations are more competitive when leaders don’t
make others go but instead have those others make themselves go
— when employees are not ordered to do tasks but instead are in
the frame of mind and heart that they want to do those tasks.
That “want to” is the cutting edge of competitiveness.
Order-leadership in business has its roots in the beginnings
of the Industrial Revolution. “Order” comes from a Latin root
meaning to arrange threads in a weaving woof. The captains of
the Revolution dealt with the relatively uneducated country
people who flocked to their factories by ordering them where,
how, and when to work. The most efficient and effective
production methods resulted from workers being “ordered” or
ranked like threads in the woof of production lines. Refined
and empowered by the Victorian commercial culture, with its
patriarchal power structure and strong links to Prussian military
organization, the culture of the order-giver leader reached its
zenith in the United States after World War II.
During the post-war years, many U.S. businesses were like
ocean liners plowing through relatively calm seas, their leaders,
like liner captains and mates, running things by getting orders
from superiors, giving orders to subordinates and making sure
that those orders were carried out.
But today, with competition increasing dramatically, with
the volume and velocity of information multiplying, with the
pyramidal structures of order-giving businesses flattening,
leaders need skills not akin to ocean liner piloting but
white-water canoeing. Order leadership founders where lines of
authority are blurred, information proliferates, markets rapidly
changing, and employees are highly skilled and educated.
A new kind of leadership, a new vision of leadership is
needed — leadership based on the principle that the leader
doesn’t make others go by ordering them about but instead has
them go by creating an organizational environment in which they
prompt themselves to go.
This new leadership is: 1. Motivational. 2. Action-based.
3. Results-driven.
Motivational: Leaders do nothing more important than get
results. But leaders can’t get results themselves. They need
the people they lead to get results. And the best way for them
to get results is not to order them but to motivate them to take
action that produces results. However, the English language
misconstrues motivation. English describes the act of motivation
as something one person does to another person. Leaders can’t
motivate anybody to do anything. We communicate — the people
themselves motivate. They motivate themselves. Only they can
motivate themselves. The motivators and the "motivatees" are the
same people. We engage in the new leadership when we recognize
that we are motivating people to get results only when we set up
an environment in which they are actively motivating themselves.
Action-based: A key aspect of the new leadership lies in
the first two letters of the word motivation. Those letters —
“mo” — are also found in the words “motion,” “momentum,” “motor,”
“mobile,” etc. The words denote action — physical action.
Motivation isn’t what people think or feel but physically do.
To engage in the new leadership, leaders must constantly be
challenging others to take physical action that leads to results.
Results-oriented: Motivated people are useless to a
business. People taking action are useless to a business. Only
those people who get results are useful. The thing is that
people who are motivated and taking action are more likely to
get results. Leaders must have a passion to achieve results.
Not just results — but more results, faster results. They must
permeate the culture of their organization with a more results
faster esprit.
Clearly, many order leaders have a passion for results.
But as to the new leadership, how people get results is as
important as their getting those results. To get
more-results-faster, the order leader demands that people run
faster in the organizational gerbil wheel. But there is a limit
to how fast and hard people can work before they burn out.
The new leader, however, recognizes that to achieve more results
faster on a continuous basis that people can’t simply speed up,
work harder, and be straight-jacketed by tight controls. They
must replenish their spirit and energies. They must slow down to
develop and employ powerful processes, and they must challenge
others to lead for results. The new leader’s effectiveness is
not measured so much by his/her actions but by the effectiveness
of the leadership activities he/she challenges others to engage
in.
The recent emergence of interlocking global markets has
stimulated a new vision of world commerce, a vision of a single
global playing field. Leaders must match their business
activities to the demands of that vision. But a corresponding
new vision of leadership has not emerged.
Stuck with an outmoded vision of order leadership, today’s
leaders are not seizing the full array of opportunities before
them. When they begin to establish leadership that is not
order-driven but is instead motivational, action-based and
results-oriented, the world might not beat a path to their door
but more importantly, they will beat paths to the doorsteps of
the world.
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2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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