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11 - Leading from the Middle

It's perhaps ironic that leaders in the West look to eastern philosophy for guidance (Sun-Tzu, Musashi, etc.) while one of the bestselling leadership books in China is Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations," which is often over looked in the West. The authors feel this to be one of the best references on the qualities of leadership - particularly in the perspective that there is no singular pattern for leaders to follow, but instead each person leverages his personal strengths in providing leadership to others.

It's also ironic that some of the greatest leaders in the present day feel uncomfortable being described as such. Each is aware of his flaws and uncomfortable in his role. The authors suggest that people often come into leadership accidentally, doing what comes natural to them on their way to success - that leaders are neither born nor made, but they evolve.

A recent theory of leadership speaks of the quiet leader, people who are not in the spotlight and are often not even in the top ranks of an organization, but who exert significant influence within organizations to encourage their colleagues in the right direction, and who are often more influential than those with formal authority. This style of leadership is quite common among creative people.

As such, an innovative organization is very often led from the middle ranks - by people who do not have the authority to command compliance, but instead must persuade others of the value of their ideas.

All Roads Lead to the Middle

Leadership has evolved in recent years from a top-down process of domination in which leaders tell followers what to do and expect them to execute orders to the letter. In the present day, leaders play more of a supporting role in describing a desired outcome, then providing support and guidance to those who will achieve it.

There are no fixed set of personality traits that can assure good leadership: they will vary according to the nature of the work and the resources. A leader must be flexible in finding the right mode in which to operate, which means taking different approaches to different teams and tasks as necessary.

With this in mind, the authors will describe eight "routes" that leaders have taken under various circumstances.

Route 1: The Rise of the Knowledge Age

It has often been suggested that society itself has transformed. Creative power is no longer housed in the industrial-age trio of land, capital, and labor but instead by knowledge and information that is necessary to put these factors to productive use. That is to say that land and capital are inputs that must be acted upon, and while labor is the force that acts upon them, it is guided by intelligence.

This correlates to the shift in leadership as previously described: when workers perform prescribed tasks, they are merely organic machines that must execute procedures designed by their leadership. When workers solve problems, they take on the intellectual tasks of investigation and design, as well as the execution of prescribed tasks. That is to say that companies no longer profit from exploiting the bodies of their workers, but by exploiting their minds.

This also represents a shift in the value of a firm: the knowledge that drives the firm is not in the blueprints that are created by few at the top, but in the knowledge that resides in the minds of the people further down the line - and these people are a valuable asset. When one firm hires away the best and brightest employees of another, it benefits not merely from their ability to perform routine tasks, but from their ability to think and solve problems.

(EN: What's obviously lacking here is that there is still a bottom layer of old-school workers who carry out the orders of others - though this seems to be shrinking. In part, it is because many firms can "outsource" or contract the lowest ranks of their workforce to other firms, conveniently ignoring the fact that the work must still be done. Even in the most dramatic instance, in which machines replace labor, someone must still build and service the machines. So it's unlikely the bottom will disappear, and there will be need for command-and-control leadership.)

Route 2: Using the Wisdom of Crowds

The authors present both sides of the argument for relying in the judgment of the masses - in some experiments it is found that the average guess of a large number of people who have no basis for expertise can be surprisingly accurate (Galton's experiment with 800 people guessing the weight of a cow was off by one pound) and other instances in which it is clearly inaccurate (bank panics and stock market crashes).

Ultimately, the authors cannot make a convincing case for its accuracy, but what matters is that an increasing number of organizations are seeking to leverage the voices of others - surveys and other market research tools may not strictly be crowd sourcing, but they all rest on the premise that the opinion of a large number of non-experts is more valued by firms than the opinion of a single expert.

With this in mind, leaders no longer lead by the virtue of their own expertise, but seek to aggregate the opinions of many to inform the problem-solvers who serve under their command.

Route 3: Rediscovering Intuition

It's generally been recognized that anyone who is highly effective has a keenly developed sense of intuition that they rely upon to make "judgment calls," without a great deal of analysis In spite of this, there has been a trend over the course of many years to devalue human judgment in favor of a deliberate decision-making process that favors a great deal of information gathering and analysis prior to coming to a decision..

It has also been routinely observed that, in spite of the most meticulous processes, bad decisions are still made - and quite often, they are made because of the decision-making process - even where "common sense" would indicate that the decision is bad, people go along because the sophisticated decision-making mechanisms must, in their belief, be smarter and better than their own intuition and human logic.

As such, there has been a sense that we should return to intuition for faster and better decisions.

It is important to avoid taking an overly simplistic view. Specifically, distinguish acting on intuition from acting at random: intuition is anything but random, in that it represents a person's ability to recognize a pattern that they have encountered before - they may not be able to find the words to explain exactly what it is, but they have a strong "feeling." The authors cite a few neuroscientists (Gladwell, Gershon, Gigerenzer) who point to the physiological and psychological bases of "gut feelings" and "instincts" that have evolved as part of the survival mechanism, enabling a person to act quickly when they "sense" danger.

(EN: elsewhere, the "gut feeling" has been referred to as a survival mechanism ... the person who reacts based on their gut feeling is more likely to survive predation than the one that wants to stop and investigate what's making the noise in the tall grass. But to the latter point, it is not an instinct or an innate fear, but experience and knowledge that enable us to recognize the signs of danger even when we don't know the precise nature of the threat.)

Whereas an effective person can rely on his individual intuition, and effective leader must be able to leverage the members of his team - to bring together different [perspectives to get a sufficient "sense." It's not the same as building consensus or getting everyone to agree, but drawing on the intuition of the group rather than relying entirely on personal reactions.

Route 4: Tipping Rather than Charging

The authors present the notion that a culture will resist change if it is forced upon them, but if it is introduced in a more gradual manner, it will eventually gain enough momentum to spread on its own. It's also noted that there are some individuals within organizations who have greater influence with others, and whose endorsement of an idea will help it reach the tipping point much sooner.

Of particular importance is that, in the new school of leadership, this is done through informal influence rather than formal authority. Blanket proclamations from on high are often ignored, but the suggestion from a knowledgeable person further from the top is given serious consideration.

Route 5: The Power of Networks and Relationships

There's a great deal of hype about social networking now that the practice has been taken online - but it's nothing new. It's long been acknowledged that informal connections have greater power than formal ones to spread information. Information reaches most of the workers in an organization via the "grapevine" faster than they get it through official channels, and businessmen have long acknowledge the value of having "connections" to other people they can call upon.

Leaders in the middle of an organization must cultivate and manage networks, as they lack formal authority and have no voice in the official outlets.

Route 6: Smart in Specific Ways

Previously, it was recognized that a person seemed "smart" or "savvy" in a general way, but the mental skills that a person brings to bear have been considered in greater depth and variety. Consider the number of pop-psychology theories that suggest various "quotients" (borrowing on "intelligence quotient") that people may have.

Various authors have devised schemes for rating the technical quotient, emotional quotient, motivational quotient, people quotient, cultural quotient, and various other skill-sets that people leverage in organizations.

Of importance is that it's highly unlikely that a leader has a high level of proficiency in all of these characteristics, but have personal strengths and weaknesses. He must leverage the skills he has in his role.

It's also suggested that skills that have a social element (the ability to communicate with people, to understand their emotions and motivations, etc.) are far more instrumental in success than measures of personal capability (traditional intelligence and technical aptitude).

This is also echoed by some informal conversations with management recruiters, who state that their interest is less in the ability to achieve personal goals and more in their ability to support others.

Route 7: Post-Heroic Leadership

In the early twentieth century, German sociologist max Weber provided three archetypes of leaders:

All of these have the common premise of a leader who is heroic, who stands on a podium and leads from the front, promising rewards in exchange for obedience.

In the late twentieth century, there was a shift to a post-heroic leader, whose focus is on gaining cooperation rather than commanding obedience and on coordinating and building consensus among others rather than imposing their will upon them. A post-heroic leader sells a vision, but does not dictate the means by which the vision will be achieved, and in that way he empowers his followers and leverages their strengths in a cooperative effort.

That is not to say that post-heroic leaders do not need to step in and take formal command - but that they recognize there are few instances in which it is necessary to exert formal authority. The authors quote Jeffrey immelt, CEO of General Electric and a much respected leaders, who stated "There are seven to twelve times a year when you have to say 'you're doing it my way.' If you say it eighteen times, the good people will leave. If you say it three times, the company falls apart."

Route 8: Strategy from the Middle

Leading from the middle means that people closer to the action determine how to accomplish the goals of the organization. Strategy from the middle means that these same people begin to decide what those goals should be.

(EN: The authors fail to support this "route" with additional information, but instead cheer the notion without a clear indication of the reason why it should be so. My sense is that there has been an evolution in middle leadership from merely supervising the execution of orders from above to making more tactical decisions, and in some instances they are involved in formulating strategy, but strategic leadership still comes from the top, and I have the sense it is rightly so - a stronger case will need to be presented to convince me otherwise.)