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Kot 02-5-58 What Leaders Really Do John P. Kotter Harvard
Business Review, 1999, 172 pp |
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A
compilation of and commentary on six articles on leadership previously
published in the Harvard Business Review.
The material deals with the challenges inherent in managerial work and
what differentiates effective from ineffective responses to these
challenges. (4) Kotter is a professor of leadership at the Harvard Business
School. He is the author of several
books including Leading Change (1996). 1 Leadership at the Turn of the Century
“[M]ost organizations today lack the leadership they
need. And the shortfall is often
large. I’m not talking about a deficit
of 10% but of 200%, 400%, or more….” (1) “What is
clear is that the increasingly fast-moving and competitive environment we
will face in the twenty-first century demands more leadership from more
people to make enterprises prosper.
Without that leadership, organizations stagnate, lose their way, and
eventually suffer the consequences.”
(2) “[M]ore
change demands more leadership, which places managers in more complex webs of
interaction.” (5) “The
fundamental purpose of management is to keep the current system
functioning. The fundamental purpose
of leadership is to produce useful change, especially nonincremental
change. It is possible to have too
much or too little of either. Strong
leadership with no management risks chaos; the organization might walk right
off a cliff. Strong management with no
leadership tends to entrench an organization in deadly bureaucracy.” (11) “Because
managerial work is increasingly a leadership task, and because leaders
operate through a complex web of dependent relationships, managerial work is
increasingly becoming a game of informal dependence on others instead of just
formal power over others.” (14) “In ‘real
life,’ effective executives spend a lot of time just talking to other people,
including people who are not their subordinates. They deal in a broad sweep of topics…., are
much more likely to ask questions than to give orders, and actually make
‘big’ policy decisions only rarely.”
(17) 2 Choosing Strategies for Change
The four
most common reasons people resist change: (31)
“Few
organizations can be characterized as having a high level of trust between
employees and managers; consequently, it is easy for misunderstanding to
develop when change is introduced.”
(34) “Managers
who initiate change often assume both that they have all the relevant
information required… and that those who will be affected by the change have
the same facts, when neither assumption is correct.” “Moreover, if the analysis made by those
not initiating the change is more accurate than that derived by the
initiators, resistance is obviously ‘good’ for the organization.” (35) “One of
the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people
about it beforehand.” (37) “If the
initiators involve the potential resistors in some aspect of the design and
implementation of the change, they can often forestall resistance.” (38) “The most
common mistake managers make is to use only one approach [in dealing with
resistance] or a limited set of them regardless of the situation.” “A second common mistake … is to approach
change in a disjointed and incremental way that is not a part of a clearly
considered strategy.” (43) “A common
mistake…is to move too quickly and involve too few people despite the fact
that they do not have all the information they really need to design the
change correctly.” (47) 3 What Leaders Really Do
“[L]eadership and management are two distinctive and
complementary systems of action.”
“Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and
volatile business environment.” (51) “Most
U.S. corporations today are overmanaged and underled.” They
need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership. Successful corporations don’t wait for
leaders to come along. They actively
seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career
experiences designed ot develop that
potential.” (51) “[S]trong leadership with weak management is no better, and
is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse.” (52) “Management
is about coping with complexity.”
“Without good management, complex enterprises tend to become
chaotic….” “Good management brings a
degree of order and consistency….”
(52-3) “Leadership,
by contrast, is about coping with change.”
“More change always demands more leadership.” (53) “Each system of action
involves deciding what needs to be done, creating networks of people and
relationships that can accomplish an agenda, and then trying to ensure that
those people actually do the do. But
each accomplishes these three tasks in different ways.” Companies
manage complexity by planning and budgeting, by organizing and
staffing, and by controlling and problem solving. By contrast, leading an organization
to constructive change involves setting a direction (developing a vision of
the future and strategies to achieve the vision), aligning people, and
motivating and inspiring them to keep moving in the right direction. (54) Setting
direction is not the same as long range planning. It is more inductive. “Leaders gather a broad range of data and
look for patterns, relationships, and linkages that help explain things. What’s more, the direction-setting aspect
of leadership does not produce plans; it creates vision and strategies.” (55) “What’s
crucial about vision is not its originality but how well it serves the
interests of important constituencies—customers, stockholders, employees—and
how easily it can be translated into a realistic competitive strategy.” “When a company that has never been better
than a weak competitor in an industry suddenly starts talking about becoming
number one, that is a pipe dream, not a
vision.” (56) Alignment
is a communications challenge. It
means talking to many individuals.
“Anyone who can help implement the vision and
strategies or who can block implementation is relevant. Trying to get people to comprehend a vision
of an alternative future is also a communications challenge of a completely
different magnitude….” (58) “Another
big challenge in leadership efforts is credibility—getting people to believe
the message. Many things contribute to
credibility: the track record of the person delivering the message, the
content of the message itself, the communicator’s reputation for integrity
and trustworthiness, and the consistency between words and deeds.” (59) 4
Leading Change (Why Transformation
Efforts Fail) Errors:
5 Power, Dependence, and Effective
Management
Chapter
answers three questions:
[Somewhere
in the book he comments that looking back he would change some parts that
appear manipulative.] Typical
managers are highly dependent on the activities of a variety of people to
perform their jobs effectively, many of whom they do not directly control and
who may not be cooperating. This is
one of the biggest frustrations of managers.
(97-8) “As a
person gains more formal authority in an organization, the areas in which he
or she is vulnerable increase and become more complex….” (99) “Successful
managers cope with their dependence on others by being sensitive to it, by
eliminating or avoiding unnecessary dependence and by establishing power over
those others.” (100) Four
different types of power over others: [some seem manipulative] (103 ff)
6 Managing Your Boss
The
relationship involves mutual dependence between two fallible human
beings. “Some people behave as if
their bosses were not very dependent on them.
They fail to see how much the boss needs their help and
cooperation….” (126) Requirements
for a productive relationship: (128)
“Managers
who work effectively with their bosses…seek out information about the boss’s
goals and problems and pressures. They
are alert of opportunities to question the boss and others around him or her
to test their assumptions. They pay
attention to clues in the boss’s behavior.”
(130) “You are
not going to change either your basic personality structure or that of your
boss. But you can become aware of what
it is about you that impedes or facilitates working with your boss and, with
that awareness, take actions that make the relationship more effective.” (131-2) “The
subordinate who passively assumes that he or she knows what the boss expects
is in for trouble.” “Ultimately, the
burden falls on the subordinate to find out what the boss’s expectations
are.” (138) “Few
things are more disabling to a boss than a subordinate on whom he cannot
depend…. It’s difficult for a boss to
rely on a subordinate who repeatedly slips deadlines.” (140) 7 What Effective General Managers Really
Do
The daily
behavior of successful general managers means spending most of their time
with others, including many beyond their boss and direct subordinates. The breadth of topics is extremely
broad. The GM asks lots of questions
and rarely makes “big” decisions. They
is much informal conversation and humor. Frequent topics are irrelevant or
unimportant to the business. They rarely
give orders but frequently attempt to influence others. They often react to others’
initiatives. Most conversations are
short and disjointed, covering many topics.
They work long hours. (148-9) While this
doesn’t look like management textbook behavior, it can be very efficient. The GMs
greatest challenges are to figure out what to do despite great diversity,
uncertainty and a mountain of information and to get things doe through a
large and diverse set of people. What
this requires is a complex and subtle approach in line with a general preset
agenda via a huge network of relationships.
(150-151) These
agendas are “loosely connected goals and plans that address their long-,
medium-, and short-term responsibilities.”
(151) In a new job, the general
manager must develop this network of cooperative relationships. (155) Execution
= Getting networks to implement agendas.
(158) Executives
don’t plan their days in much detail but react with many short, disjointed
conversations. They take advantage of
the opportunities that arise to build networks, learn information, and
influence people. “Yet these patterns
are possibly the most important and efficient of all.” (162-3) Insights
on what top managers should do?
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