Leadership

How Can the Role of Leadership Be Best Understood in Organizational Change?

Leadership as the Head

The Head offers a prescriptive long-range strategic framing of the role of leadership in organisational change, common in bureaucratic approaches to organisational theory. The Head may take a normative re-educative approach influencing bodily reactions to stimuli; asserting power with mind over matter to affect change in a power-coercive approach; or making decisions to improve the wellbeing of the body to perform better by employing an empirical-rational leadership approach.

In this context the role of leadership relies heavily on the bureaucratic position, political power, authority and an implicit assumption that all change is a result of a planned change strategy, whether continuous or episodic. It also assumes that it is driven from the top in a linear way influencing how the Body responds. This enables the change process to be modelled, simplified and implies that the Head knows what is going to happen and can control events and how the Body changes based on rational decisions-making. Thus the Head offers a normative approach, which can determine the beginning, middle and end of the change process and the Body is a socially constructed entity regulated by domination, control and power.

The biology of the Human Body exposes the limitations of this perspective. Bodily responses to circumstances are often subconscious. Mind over matter does not account for the complexity of system responses. Leadership as Head does not account for context or causality and implies organisations operate in a vacuum. It also concentrates the power to drive change programmes on senior management without recognizing minority influence, the reality of incremental strategy and ignores success achieved from mistakes and high level of failure in planned change programmes.

Leadership as the Heart

The Heart positions the role of leadership as the change agent. Focusing on charisma and leadership traits the Heart delivers organisational change through individual power and adaptation more often associated with emergent change and an interpretative paradigm. The Heart positioned at the centre of the Body remains sensitive to the environment, connected and responding to the needs of each member part of the Body. Although the Heart provides support for followers, it may put concern for itself above others metaphorically withdrawing support from extremities to protect the core organs.

The term ‘raison d’etre’ is often used to describe the vision, values or purpose of an organisation. The Heart has its own rules, draws strength from within and uses discourse to create desire for or a fear of organisational change. Adopting the tenets of Human Relations and post Bureaucratic Theory Heart as Leadership humanizes and individualises organisational change to include notions of fairness and consistency reducing resistance. However the Heart may resist change and it is difficult to evidence the interactions and processes between Heart and Body.

The physiology of the Body demonstrates the difficulty of the post Bureaucratic argument. The Heart is still in a position of power and control. The Heart assumes that charisma provides energy for change and suggests Heart failure results in failure of the vision expounded by the Heart. But a charismatic leader may only be able to lead because the followers share the vision, values and purpose in the first place. If the change the Heart wants does not fit the Body, failure will occur despite the charisma of the Leader. Unlike the Head that changes methods of control to gain acceptance, the Heart’s role as leader may, like a donor organ, be accepted or rejected by the Body.

The Body

It is the sum of the parts of the Body operating together that delivers healthy organisational change, every part an equal part of a system that relies on and impacts other elements of the Body. The Body represents a socio-technical approach to organisational change requiring consideration of not just the role of Leadership but its affect and impact of and on the organisation’s stakeholders, processes, context, leadership and employees. But this panoramic framing can make the study of organisational change abstract and impractical.

Positivist approaches to the role of Leadership rely on the Body remaining constant, enabling a mechanistic method of control that can be cloned. However a determinist view of the Body suggests it has its own DNA, system interactionism, controls and capability that create a unique context for organisational change.

Invoking an OD perspective, every element of the Body is part of, a determinate of and a product of the system. Change any one part of an organisation, deliberately or by accident, and the organisation changes. Work against the Body and resistance, drag and natural barriers affect the opportunity for healthy change. Work with the Body and participative change becomes self-sustaining.

Like the Body changes occur both inside and outside the control of the organisation. Organisational change happens by planning for the changes that can be controlled and adjusting to unplanned changes.

Rather than fighting against organisational context, trying to impose unnatural order, the role of Leadership seeks to find balance and use naturally occurring resources, cycles and controls in driving organisational change.

Headless or Heartless

The metaphor of the Human Body uses a unitarist construct of the organisation and a realist assumption that organisational change is inevitable, continuous transformation is necessary for organisational health and that the momentum of change will continue. But organisational change, like leadership, is a social construction. Without knowledge of whether organisational change would have occurred anyway it is difficult to understand what influence the role of leadership does or does not have on its significance, explanation or cause. Identifying organisational change as healthy assumes there is evidence that no change would be more or less healthy, than the organisational change that results from Leadership actions.

A Body needs both a Head and Heart to survive. Power and politics are often portrayed as bad rather than appreciating that politics and power help address the competing demands for stability and change.

The role of Leadership in directing and managing organisational change necessitates both Head and Heart. Heart without Head may result in unsuitable or unnecessary change but Head without Heart may result in resistance.

The metaphor of the Human Body accepts Leadership rationality and control are important, which is more appropriate to classical approaches to organisational change and Leadership.

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Leadership

The Fundamental Purpose of Leadership

It’s time to question the traditional assumption of leadership’s fundamental purpose. The textbook account focuses on the leader’s role in maximizing employee performance. All the decades of writing about leadership style beginning over 50 years ago focuses on how different styles affect the motivation and productivity of employees. When we question the conventional purpose of leadership and offer a different foundation, we get a very different conception of leadership. Until we recognize the need for a radical shift in perspective, our vision of leadership will remain stuck in the past.

Having an internal focus on employee performance was acceptable for leadership prior to the 1970’s. But since the success of the Japanese commercial invasion, business has increasingly operated in an era of hyper-competition where rapid innovation changes whole markets overnight. In the old days of leadership theory, business was not so competitive. Then, business’s only task was to execute as cost effectively and profitably as possible. Today, there is also the need for businesses to be constantly re-inventing themselves, to be continuously creating new futures. For leaders to be successful now, they must have an external focus.

The new purpose of leaders is to ensure that new futures are created as rapidly as their external markets evolve. All organizations now have two equally important tasks: to deliver today’s results and to create the future. The principle of division of labor suggests that we need two separate functions for these very different tasks. Management needs to be upgraded from a narrowly controlling, mechanistic function to take care of today’s business, leaving leadership to champion changes to enhance competitive advantage.

So, what are the implications of this shift in emphasis? Well, if your sole reason for being is to maximize employee productivity, you need to be in charge of the people whose performance you want to improve. You need a formal position of authority over them. You need the authority to promote, move, develop, train and pay in accordance with merit. People can be motivated by informal leaders but none of the other productivity-enhancing decisions can be made without formal authority.

Not so with the new leadership. Promoting new products, services or better processes can be done by anyone, regardless of their formal roles. Even a consumer group criticizing an existing product line could show leadership from the outside to the organization. This new conception of leadership is the only way to make sense of bottom-up leadership. If leadership is merely the successful promotion of new products, then front-line employees can do it. The Sony employee who invented PlayStation is a good example. He showed bottom-up leadership to the senior executives at Sony whose initial reaction to the idea of PlayStation was to protest that Sony doesn’t do toys.

The role of senior executives is now more multifaceted. They need to both lead and manage. But leadership, as conceived here, has nothing to do with motivating employees to perform better, contrary to the textbook account. So-called transformational leadership became popular because it was felt that employees needed to be really inspired to give of their best. But now, we need to shift everything to do with motivating employees to management, leaving leadership free to promote enhancements to competitive advantage. Why? Because we need a definition of leadership that makes sense of how leadership can be shown bottom-up which has nothing to do with motivating employees to work harder. The sole purpose of leadership, therefore, is to promote new directions. It is management’s job to execute them.

Leaders must have an external focus to be effective; managers can focus internally. Both leadership and management are equally essential organizational functions, but only management is a formal role. Leadership is an informal, occasional act, like creativity, not a role. Senior executives are managers by virtue of their roles, not leaders. If their businesses are operating successfully and don’t need innovation or process improvements to succeed, then these organizations don’t need any leadership. This is a second radical implication of the new vision of leadership, the first one being that leadership has nothing to do with managing people or getting things done through them.

Keep in mind that, if leadership equates to the successful promotion of new products, services or process improvements, and if anyone can do it regardless of position, then employees with no one reporting to them can show leadership. This is a liberating conclusion, but one that has revolutionary implications for our understanding of leadership.

See http://www.leadersdirect.com for more information on this and related topics. Mitch McCrimmon’s latest book, Burn! 7 Leadership Myths in Ashes was published in 2006.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Mitch_McCrimmon/79532

 

FAQ, Healthcare

Herbal Academy – Curriculums in Herbal Medicine

Find Herbal Academy(s) in the United States and Canada. Once you’ve decided to enroll in an herbal academy, you will discover a whole new world of natural healing, health and wellness.

At an herbal academy, you can often choose from different courses that are geared toward specific levels of education and certification.

For example, students in an herbal academy can often participate in diverse career studies including natural health consultant, herbal consultant, and professional certified herbalist programs.

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Internet, MyOrbit Blogs, New Media

Media Book Manuscript – almost ready!

The phrase “the last mile is the longest” must have come from the publishing industry. The manuscript of my book on the facts and trends in digital media has been there at that 90% complete level for a while, and the last 10% is taking much longer time. The book is titled: “The Death of Mass Media”….describing how mainstream media will morph into a large aggregation of individual media publishers via blogs etc. More about it in the coming days.

I am thankful to all those who have given suggestions and pointed out assumptions which needed some more text behind them. The support from the team at BookSurge has been great.

So in the next few weeks, the book should finally go out for publication, and this the place where the feedback will arrive. I wanted the book to also have a blog along with it, so the discusion of all things – good and bad- will happen here. Lets be ready for many critics who will point out various flaws. But that’s okay and welcome. It gives one more chance to answer their doubts! Continue reading →

FAQ, Healthcare

Ayurveda – The Science of Life

Lord Brahma, the creator according to Hindu mythology created this earth in six days. It included plants, animals and natural resources. But as the time progressed there were lots of miseries on earth and people were sufferings with so many diseases.

Seeing this Brahma- the Creator laid the foundation of ayurveda, which slowly descended to earth.

 

Ayurveda means science of life. This is a science that not only deals with the treatment of the diseased condition but also teaches us with the various methodologies that are essential to carry out a healthy and happy living.

These methods are time tested and uncountable people have gained extreme benefits from wonders of ayurveda.

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