“my dog ate the forecast,” maybe the dollar-to-yen conversion rate changed, and so on. Alas, these types of occurrences, while as ubiquitous to every ini-tiative as are ignored, faded project posters in a conference room, are almost never the cause of major program failures. What is the cause? It is human nature, operating without the benefit of effective leadership within the con-fines of the leadership black box (LBB).
The LBB nicely illustrates the disruptions caused by the lack of a struc-tured leadership approach. Figure 6.1 displays the LBB and the situation that leaders of all organizations face. The top of the figure shows the mechanisms that executives use to direct their organizations. A formal or informal vision and mission drive the strategy of the organization. The strategy is pursued by an annual operating plan. In this plan are schemes for operating the day-to-day business and achieving planned projects that differ from, or are more sig-nificant than, customary day-to-day business operations. These special efforts include such things as developing new products or services, major cost or quality initiatives, software upgrades, new facilities, and so on. There will also hopefully be some thought and resources put aside for dealing with unplanned projects and circumstances (natural disasters, customer service crises, etc.).
Figure 6.1 The LBB.
Executive energy
Vision and mission
Strategy
Annual operating plan
Day-to-day plans
Results
Unplanned projects Planned projects
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The LBB
Once the annual plan is launched, the executives apply their energies to compel the organization to implement the plans as efficiently as possible. This is where leadership structures come into play—increasing the organization’s ability to do what the executives require via better leadership and the resulting improved execution. Executives’ energy and actions are represented by the
“lightning” arrows in the figure. So far, this is textbook management.
The situation begins to deviate from the ideal when the rest of the organi-zation gets involved in trying to do the work associated with the plans. Few organizations have defined procedures for each manager to use in order to evaluate, prioritize, and direct the myriad activities associated with both the annual plan and the employees’ everyday work. There are always procedures for setting objectives and budgets, but there are never any procedures for what leaders must do every day to guide employees toward performing the most effective actions for their situations.
In other words, there are no standard leadership processes or structures.
While there are countless documented business processes for many things, none exist to ensure that the intent of executives is properly implemented as the executives intended. In confidential interviews, senior executives concur that they are constantly amazed at how simple, clear objectives at their level can morph beyond recognition once they have traveled only two levels into the organization. Each of them has lived the example presented at the start of this chapter many times in their professional lives.
The LBB is an area of intense but confusing activity. Most executives and managers understand how it works in the same way that nonmechanics under-stand how automobile engines work: They can describe what’s happening in general (“This is our proposal development group”) but know few of the tech-nical workings of day-to-day processes and how they interact with, confound, and complicate other processes. When the LBB produces good results, execu-tives assume that their leadership and that of their managers was good and that the organization did as it was told. When a poor result is attained, executives assume that their leadership was good but that either the organization’s busi-ness processes were faulty or the employees fouled up, or both. In reality, the business processes within the LBB are not the primary cause of major prob-lems, although they can contribute to increased costs, quality lost, and cycle time. The failures are almost always a direct result of the absence of leadership structures to guide the implementation of changes and improvements while the day-to-day business rumbles along. The summed results of dozens or thou-sands of people each reacting individually, even amid good business processes and overall good intentions, are not leadership but chaos. The existence of
value stream maps (VSMs), organization charts, and job titles serves to put a structured face on what is occurring (and may in fact create more efficiency), but it is still leadership chaos.
The large gray shaded arrow in Figure 6.1 shows what happens when exec-utives are not happy with a major endeavor or when they are worried about an important effort that has just been launched. Executive energy increases and executives get “personally involved” to a deeper level in the organiza-tion. This is manifested by more frequent management reviews, demands for more frequent and/or detailed status reports, and/or red teams, tiger teams, war rooms, and the like. This extra effort does not eliminate the ambiguity; it merely compresses it a bit toward the bottom of the LBB. The executives can check on only so many things, and when they “check,” it almost always causes many other problems.
Figure 6.2 opens up the LBB to demonstrate how the chaos of unstructured leadership creates damage to both initiatives and day-to-day work. The short white arrows represent the energy and actions of various managers, supervisors, and employees. The starbursts are places where conflicts, omissions, misinter-pretations, adjustments, overlapping efforts, missed assignments, conflicting agendas, and the like occur. At the first few levels beneath the executives, there are relatively few problems. This is because there are fewer upper-level managers, and most of them are more experienced than lower-level employ-ees in dealing with the top executives and interpreting their plans and inten-tions. They also have more frequent interactions with the top executives. These interactions enable the top executives and senior managers to catch a number of misconceptions and off-key decisions before they cause bigger problems deeper in the organization.
As activity descends into the organization, more people, processes, and departments get involved. There are fewer course corrections from senior executives, and more and more of the employees’ actions deviate further and further from executive intentions. The number of problems begins to multiply exponentially, especially in larger organizations. The exponential growth of these problems is not shown in Figure 6.2 due to space constraints and a desire to present a clear diagram. As the area around the gray shaded arrow demon-strates, the impact of executive intervention often creates as many problems (these are the black starbursts) as it fixes; executives can make things happen fast in a specific area, but they often do so by taking resources from other processes and/or overriding established practices in nearby areas.
Keep in mind that Figure 6.2 is a vast oversimplification of reality. In any organization, the dynamics of processes and information flow in all directions
within a three-dimensional space. The starbursts in the figure represent only a minute proportion of the disruptions that occur daily in every initiative and project in every organization.
When a problem occurs deep within the LBB, it tends to stay hidden (unac-knowledged and uncorrected) for a longer time because it is the “property” of a specific group or process. The owners are justifying their decisions and actions and protecting their pride as well as trying to correct or control the “mistakes”
they believe others have made. Executives are seldom aware of what is going on until poor results begin to come out of the bottom of the LBB. By then the damage is done and profits are lost.
A key for creating more effective leadership is to get all the arrows in Fig-ure 6.2 running more or less parallel in the direction that leadership desires.
This translates more of the organization’s energy into results rather than fric-tion and collisions. This is done by providing each employee with numerous presentations of irrefutable evidence as to proper direction and intent about daily work, key initiatives, and small improvements. With the proper structures in place, employees can’t help but see and hear management do and say the right things at the right times at the right points in processes. Employees will
Figure 6.2 The LBB opened up.
Executive energy
Vision and mission
Strategy
Annual operating plan
Day-to-day plans
Results Prior extent
of the LBB
Unplanned projects Planned projects
monitor and chart metrics that require them to attend to their inputs to the criti-cal processes they impact. Employees will be required, guided, and coached to constantly reexamine their assumptions about improving their work processes.
No matter where they turn, whether it is a conversation with a manager or a glance at their area’s metrics board, they will be confronted with clear, explicit direction and support for doing the things that best enable their work area to support the organization’s overall objectives. Their “me’s” will be constantly challenged and required to engage their “I’s.”