ON LEADERSHIP

What is leadership? This is a question that has boggled me since the day I finished my academic works in MBA. It has also recently become a topic that occupies my thoughts for sometime now. My professor, Professor Elfren Cruz was the main culprit in both instances. It all started 5 years ago when I asked my professor during a break in the lecture on an article I read in the paper concerning competitive advantage of firms. Specifically, my question is about people and why some strategy makers believed that they are the source of a company’s advantage and not in its assets or in its resources. My professor’s answer was that a firm’s capability is performed by it’s people using the assets and resources available to them. Without people, the assets and the resources amount to nothing. The answer was simple as that but back then, with my relatively simplistic view about business, I was simply awed by the realization. So much so that I blurted out that “Why isn’t it being emphasized that way in MBA, I mean why we are being taught with analysis and techniques and everything else and not the big picture?” And to that, he gave me a curt reply, “because most of the professors are not aware of that since none of them are CEOs. Many of them had only a very limited view of the business.” Inadvertently, he also mentioned that I’m not (yet) a CEO either. I was profoundly shocked by his frank comment. For all my life up to then, I was being groomed to handle the family business and to realize that I’m not ready to be a CEO and therefore unworthy to carry the task was something I couldn’t simply accept. If I had to run the business someday, I had to change. I had to be better. That night, I resolved to change my ways and to train myself to become a CEO by acting and most importantly, by thinking like a CEO. And to achieve my goal, I figured that I had to develop a strategic mindset. To see things in a big picture and to break it down to it’s individual constituents and analyze each of these pieces and from there develop a strategy to exploit opportunities, to counter, and to neutralize the threats. By the time I’m through with STRAMA, I was able to establish that kind of thinking even though it was kind of raw. However, I felt something lacking in my training to become a CEO and that is leadership. At that time, I thought that I could come up with the most incisive analysis and craft the most brilliant strategy but if I cannot make it work or make it happen or convince people that my strategies are correct, things wouldn’t change and that I’m no better than just a simple analyst. Analytical skills and technique plus a strategic mindset don’t a CEO make. In the end, it’s how you make it happen. No wonder, MBAs make good business administrators but not entrepreneurs. I wonder then why business school doesn’t teach such an important aspect of management. Probably, it is because leadership is something personal or personality based and that it is impossible to teach a person a standard set of “knowledge”. Leadership, I surmised couldn’t be taught with words but only with hands – on experience. And so, I experimented, taught myself, and developed my own style and know – how on leadership. You could say that the past 5 years or so was a sort of training for me. I thought that I was on a right path until recently. About 2 months ago, I had lunch with my professor and he was talking about the recent trend in Strategic Management based from his readings on Harvard Business Review. He mentioned that the trend seemed to shift towards emphasizing leadership. I was curios with what he said and actually questioned that trend. For how could that happen? I mean, Strategic Management is all about frameworks, and analysis while leadership is personality based. The former could be taught while the latter could only be trained. To suggest that strategy is tied up with the personality would transform the study of strategy making and management into more of an art rather than a strict science, which goes against the grain of strategic management. My professor feeling amused with my shortsighted understanding asked my evaluation on some historical personage and their leadership. Specifically, he asked me what do I think about Hitler’s leadership? What about Hu Jin Tao’s (the current Chinese leader)? Or for that matter, Mao? I was dumbfounded by his questions. Leaders from what I remembered in textbooks are people who directs and guides an organization towards it’s goals and are able to command the cooperation of a majority of it’s constituents in working towards that goal either through force i.e., executive fiat or coercion or through consensus or through motivations i.e., reward and punishment. By this definition, Hitler, Mao, and one could even throw in Stalin (Soviet dictator) would turn out to be good leaders for they were able to garner the support of a majority to work towards the established goals in spite of their ultimate failure. The failure of their ventures shouldn’t denigrate their leadership. For can we blame leaders who did their best but ultimately fail? (By the way, this is no exoneration of their culpability or their immoral acts). However, to say that the end result of their leadership is immaterial is to turn a blind eye to the sufferings of the multitude within the organization i.e., people eventually suffered from their failure. The case in point, Germany defeated in WWII was divided into two and was in shambles while China suffered decades of stagnancy as a result of the failed Great Leap Forward and the destructive Cultural Revolution. Not to mention the multitudes, who died because of it. By this context, their leadership was a failure. If that is the case, then the definition of leadership and of leaders is inadequate (by the way, these are text book definitions). It is not enough that leaders work toward a goal with the support of the many in an organization. They should also succeed. However, some of the variables of success are way beyond the leader’s control i.e., there are things beyond the control of an individual. One can control events but only up to a limited degree. If a leader couldn’t control all the factors of success then wouldn’t it be unfair to them if we use success as a yardstick? Furthermore, is leadership merely about success or achieving goals? Perplexing indeed, couldn’t imagine myself unable to grasp a simple concept like leadership. Over the past weeks, I try to understand the concept that my professor parlayed to me. I thought about it, I read about it, I researched about it but I was nowhere close until recently. In most books I read or in researches I made on leadership, various author tried to “portray” leadership. They didn’t define it per se but describe it. They describe leadership either by example (of famous personage) or through type (authoritarian, charismatic), or through style (paternal, participatory). In fact, most authors are biased towards charismatic, participatory type of leadership. As if to further enlighten us on what leadership is all about, authors emphasize about the difference between a manager and a leader. To simply put, a manager is told what to do and does it while a leader decides what to do and does it, i.e., leaders possesses the overall strategic initiative. In spite of all of this, I don’t seem to get anywhere near the mark of what he is talking about. What does initiative, style; type etc has to do with ultimate success and achieving goals? One could be open and participative as well as charismatic but still aimless and incompetent. I tried thinking about in terms of ethico – moral perspective considering the example of Hitler and Mao. Is ethico – moral perspective an important aspect of leadership? Yes, indeed! If so, by what ethico – moral framework a leader should subscribe to? Should it be Christian? Buddhist? Islamic? Or even philosophical? What is considered morally and ethically correct or even permissible in one framework may not be the case in the other framework. Aside from that, what if the ethico – moral perspective of leadership clashes with the expressed mission or goals of the organization, which are to be sacrificed? Furthermore, is ethico – moral framework the only one to consider? Is it in fact, operating independently from let say, tradition? Ultimately, ethico – moral framework is but a strand of culture, or more aptly, organizational culture. It is in this realization that I finally understood what my professor is saying for he hinted it as much when I asked him that is leadership related to culture and to which, he answered that I was thinking in the right direction. You see, I was thinking leadership in terms of personality while my professor was thinking all together in another plane. He is thinking leadership as a strategic concept. Why is it some organization (not just business firms but could include polities as well) stand out among the rest while others are barely noticed? Why is it some organization are able to consistently deliver the goods while others find it difficult to do so? Why is it some organizations are able to sustain their performance and achieve their goals year in, year out while others are erratic in their performance? Why is it some organization are able to constantly outperform their peers and went beyond everybody’s expectation while others are simply engrossed in surviving? Why is it some organization are able to continuously grow while others stagnate? Why some organizations are able to survive for so long, outlive their competitors while others come and go like the wind? The answer is leadership. Leadership I am referring here is not about the traits and personality. It is not about a leader rather it refers to leaders, generations of leaders who pursued the same goal in the same way as the founder(s) of the organization with the same intensity, the same dedication, and the same passion. It is in the consistency of each generation of leaders and not in their IQ’s or in their business education that enables organization to thrive. And this has to do with the organizational culture that bred those generations of leaders. Admittedly, organizational culture plays an important role in shaping an effective leadership. During succession, organization as a whole “chooses” (whether such rights are exercised by the many or a select section within the organization is immaterial) the next leader based on their cultural biases for each organization has it’s own view what an ideal leader should be. Candidates for leadership that aren’t in the mold of an ideal leader are waylaid by the selection process. This is to ensure the consistent quality of leadership. As an added insurance to the consistency of leadership quality, culture also trains leaders within the different levels of the organization as well as future leaders by conditioning candidates to accept certain behavior seen ideal for leadership position. Furthermore, it is also this cultural view of leadership that dictates the behavior of leaders. For leaders should act within a certain premise of acceptable behavior (example: ethico – moral framework) in order for them to become effective and thus garner support for their endeavors. Hence, this would tend to discourage leaders from being “disruptive” as in pursuing other interest inimical to the organization’s interest as a whole and therefore preserve leadership quality and consistency over generations. Though culture has a definitive control on leadership, leaders also exert a huge influence on both the organization and it’s culture. A leader’s flair, style, preferences, and even their biases tend to modify an organization’s culture and even more so during crisis situation. During crisis, when the confluence of outside pressures tends to conspire to push an organization to the brink of extinction, organization tends to be awakened to the need of change realizing the “old” ways don’t work anymore and that a new solution should be made to bring the organization out of the rut. In such situations, the organizations more often ejects the current leaders and in it’s place supplant with non – traditional leaders, hoping that they would bring in fresh ideas on how to run the organization (you can say it is part of their fail – safe mechanism). However, in most times, such actions aren’t enough. Leadership changes aren’t real change but a direction towards it. Real change comes from the changes made in how things are done in the organization that could better cope with the new environment. This means that organization collectively has to give up or more appropriately sacrifice some of their most prized and cherished rights as well as some of their behaviors, values. However, most of the time, organization resist change for it wouldn’t sacrifice cherished values and expected benefits for an unknown outcome. But, more often than not, crisis leaders are able to extract such sacrifices from a desperate organization through the manipulation of expectations by the conscious and selective awarding of rewards and punishments. Viewed in such light, one could say that the case of Hitler and Mao, the Cultural Revolution were such a response (again, this is no exoneration of their guilt). It is in this fail – safe mechanism of selecting non – traditional leaders (but before an organization could do that, it should be aware what is a traditional leader) to head the organization that ensures the survival of an organization in spite of all odds. Another fail – safe mechanism inherent in any organization is the existence of alternate leadership. Leadership exist the moment an organization is born and ceased to function when the organization dies. Leadership is part and parcel of an organization. Leadership however is not the office or the hierarchal structure of an organization. The office provided the holder with legitimate authority to provide direction. Authority makes the exercise of leadership easier however; authority is not substitute for leadership. Once hierarchy fails to deliver the goods, alternate leaders from the hierarchy or informal leaders arose to take charge of the situation. Power struggle would inevitably ensue with one desperate to maintain power while the other keen on legalizing their role as leaders. Again, this is but a way to ensure consistency of leadership quality. Though the system is barbaric but it is nonetheless, effective. Henceforth, in the final analysis, leadership is not simply about direction or initiative towards a set of goals but rather leadership should be about an insurance on the consistency of achieving goals, on the sustainability of above par performance, and most important of all, on the continuing of the organization’s vitality and ensuring it’s survival. The emphasis of leadership should be on creating a dynamic organization with a positive culture of performance and the training of future leaders, ones that share the passion and vision of the founders. Given that understanding, I’m in no way near the mark. It seems that I still have a long road ahead of me to become a real CEO……………

P.S. Tell me if I’m making any sense on this.