Endless Knots

Occupying leadership #occupy

Without making the media the story here since the media has this recursive, repetitive pattern when it can't make sense of a story... a few words about leadership and Occupy.

Google "leadership occupy Wall Street" and you'll find thousands (6814 as of this moment) of articles like this pretty good one in the Washington Post, attempting to describe a phenomenon where something elusive is wrongly explained by its opposite.

If it's not in the article's headline, it's in its lede--and if not there, it's certainly not more than a few grafs down: The Occupy movement is leaderless ((e.g., the Post story, "What is Occupy Wall Street? The history of leaderless movements").

Many articles have grabbed this quote: "We are all leaders." And from there goes the faulty logic that if everyone's a leader, then no one is. Or, its converse by implication: Without a designated, authoritative single leader, then it's just a messy group with... and here we go: no clear purpose, no mission, confusing demands, etc and so on.

Is the Occupy movement leaderless?

Leaderless?

Absolutely not.

It's leaderful.

Many leaders, not none.

Many leaders, not one.

Years ago, University of Minnesota anthropologists Luther Gerlach and Virginia Hine (see People, Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation) studied the social movements of the Sixties, which many writers in the past month have used as the explanatory vehicle for the leadership structure of this current global phenomenon. Most have gotten the interpretation of the Sixties wrong too, rehashing the old saw that there was no leadership in the anti-Vietnam War, women's, civil rights, gay liberation, and suchnot movements in which my generation grew up.

What Gerlach and Hine discovered (and supported with extensive research) is that social movements are networks. And networks have polycephalous--many headed--leadership structures.

Given our prevailing structures where one leader sits atop a stack holding yes/no power, we have a really hard time comprehending organizations where many people are making decisions. In Gautney's Post piece, she describes a completely different way of arriving at action: 

Occupy Wall Street’s organizational presence is the New York General Assembly or “GA,” which convenes numbers in the high hundreds at its squat-site in Zuccotti Park. Daily GA meetings are led by facilitators who rotate on a regular basis, and facilitation training is open to all. Specific issues, such as food, medical, legal, outreach, security and others are handled by working groups—also open and inclusive—that periodically report back to the GA. Instead of issuing top-down directives, Occupy groups use a consensus process in which anyone can join in the decision-making and propose an idea. Proposers must field questions, justify the hows and whys of their ideas, and engage a large-scale group discussion. Votes are then cast via an innovative system of hand signals, and proposals are revised until a nine-tenths majority approves.

How did this unelected, unhired, uncredentialed revolving band of disaffiliated thousands arrive at such a structure?

By dozens, if not hundreds, of articulate people stepping forward at different moments with good ideas about how to engage the commitment and intelligence of their peers. There is only one word for such people: LEADERS.

In the early 1990s, Andy Campbell, then an employee of the CIA who was working on the Clinton Administration's Reinventing Government program, said something to me that I've used in virtually every presentation since:

        "We can't solve 21st-century problems with 19th-century organizations."

Having studied and written about new organizational structures for the past 30 years with Jeff Stamps, I've attached a corollary to this:

    "Nor can we guide 21st-century organizations with 20th-century leaders."

"Solving" the "Wall Street problem" will not happen through traditional bureaucracy or hierarchy. As many a pundit has already said, the bureaucracies charged with curbing the abuses of greed are so tied up in their own knots (and such the beneficiaries either directly or indirectly of that greed) that they cannot disentangle themselves enough to even see solutions, never mind execute them.

We need to grow up. We need to recognize that networks--flexible, constantly-morphing, ever-linking organizations--are the structures we need to solve the phenomenal dilemmas in front of us.

Networks have many leaders. Some networks encase more formal organizations, like the ones we're all familiar with where people have recognizeable titles and clearly understood power structures, i.e. some organized groups are also showing up to "occupy."

Just a few ideas tend to link networks. As is the case with Occupy, a few simple phrases bubble up, even without the help of branding specialists: 99% for example.

Underneath it all is the thing that money can't buy (hello, Wall Street): commitment. Shared commitment was the energy field that Gerlach and Hine wrote about lo those many years ago. It's the gossamer thread that links all the Occupy sites, heaved from one to another by many many many many...

        LEADERS

And then I said...

Manuela Zoninsein's "Keep it Personal: Technology certainly has its place when managing virtual teams, but it’s the relationships that truly count," in this month's PM Network, hits all the right notes about virtual working.

I did my interview via email; Zoninsein then picked quotes for the article. Thought you might enjoy seeing everything I said as this gives a bit of insight into how such pieces are constructed. For those new to being interviewed by the press, you'll get a view of how much you can say and how little actually makes it into print. This is not a complaint. I find it useful to do interviews for the simple reason that it helps me clarify my thinking. Here's my full response to the questions I received: 

Q: How do you define and then identify critical success factors while working with a remote team? How do you identify appropriate methods and metrics to evaluate success and results of a virtual organizational structure?

A: Teams need to think about four key areas when evaluating their success: Purpose—is it clear and does everyone define it in the same way; People—who’s involved and how clearly do they understand their roles and responsibilities; Links—how strong are the relationships among people and how well do they use the available technology; and Time—how aware is everyone of the obvious time differences when working across distance and cultures and how clear is everyone on where the work is in the project lifecycle. We’ve developed this model over 25 years of research into virtual and remote teams and have constructed a Virtual Team Assessment to measure individual and team performance.

Q: Are there technological tools you use that help with this process?

A: Research (54 teams in 26 companies in 15 sectors) that we conducted with two business school professors and which we published in Harvard Business Review, “Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger?,” indicates that successful virtual teams use two principal technologies: conference calls and shared workspaces. Email was regarded as a poor means of communication except for 1:1 communication. We anticipate video becoming a more useful tool as bandwidth issues improve but seeing people’s faces is probably less important than everyone having the same information to focus on during calls. Combining the two is a good solution but screen real estate is a real issue.

Q: Does integration of information systems pose a particular challenge?

A: Yes, it’s a huge challenge. After twenty years of “knowledge management,” organizations are still struggling to get the right information to the right people at the right time—and to find ways for people to seamlessly share what they have when others need it. One very important clue lies in teams using shared online workspaces that document their work as they do it rather than trying to capture information separately. That’s onerous and no one wants to take the time to do it.

Q: How are the following factors affected by remote working conditions:

• determine confidence levels amongst team members

A: Developing trust among team members is key from the beginning. Ongoing communication, shared small group activities, and pairing people with differing perspectives are a few ways that confidence develops quickly.

• identify schedule drivers

A: Understanding all elements connected with Time, as per above, is critical to the team achieving its objectives.

• determine contingency and risk response plns, and incorporate these changes into your projects

A: Likewise, thorough discussion of the team’s purpose and those elements that put it at risk are mandatory for team success.

Q: Are there technological tools that you have found help you resolve challenges amongst the aforementioned factors?

A: The principal technology “tool” is communication, in whatever form suits the team. Some teams are comfortable using IM on a regular basis; in other companies, it’s still banned. Others depend on some video while still others have not used it yet. The technology is not what’s important; it’s the depth of honest and ongoing communication that is.

Q: As per a KPMG survey of 252 organizations, technology is not the most critical factor. In fact, inadequate project management implementation constitutes 32% of project failures. Do you find this to be representative of what you’ve experienced in your own company and professional practices?

A: Our conclusion based on years of study is that success depends on 80% people factors and 20% technology. In our first edition of Virtual Teams, published in 1997, we said it was 90% people and 10% technology, but since then, technology has improved so much that we threw another 10% its way.

Q: Are there cases where team members have stepped up to the plate and taken on project or team leadership roles? Was that aided or hindered by working remotely? Were there technological tools which aided this process?

A: Shared, rotating leadership is key to these teams. Leadership shifts depending on the task at hand which means people also need to learn how to be better followers. Shared team sites that capture the People-Purpose-Links-Time elements make it much easier for people to move among roles.

Q: Have you ever worked with a coach, someone to oversee you as you manage different projects? How did that relationship evolve, if you based remotely? What tech tools did you use to enhance the relationship?

A: I’ve served as a coach in many cases, using the technologies mentioned above. Coaching requires continuous communication, which in the 1:1 relationship also benefits from use of email and person-to-person telephone calls (not group conference calls). Face-to-face is nice too but not mandatory.

Q: Do you feel you are conscious of the technological resources available to you? How do you keep up with innovations and developments in technological tools?

A: Yes. I read, talk with people, speak at conferences, and am constantly learning.

Q: Have you ever been in the need for synthesising different opinions of a group of disparately-located stakeholders in order to reach the best alternative for a decision making problem? What technological tools did you turn to?

A: Again, yes, and as per above. Technology helps but it’s the depth of honest communication that really matters.

Q: Have you felt an increasing tension between the role of the expert – you, the project manager – and the opinions of the masses, as in your staff unit? How do you balance the growing integration of “the masses” while moving projects forward in a timely, efficient, successful manner?

A: Talented project managers know how to help “the masses” own and grow their own expertise. The greatest attribute of a project manager is being able to celebrate the growth of the people on the team.

Nohria: "Global century of business"

See Denison and Bray's "Harvard Business School Dean Is Bent on Change," covering Nitin Nohria's first day with the new students. "Nohria said he intends to open Harvard Business School to wider influences, a job for which he feels particularly well suited."

In the accompanying video, he says he's just back from a whirlwind trip around the world, looking at business practices. Nohria: "If the 20th century was the American century of business, the 21st century really is becoming the global century of business." Says he saw "amazing companies and amazing management practices being developed all over the world." Short video, worth watching.

TAE Radio: What Are “Virtual Teams” and How Do They Work?

My conversation yesterday on The American Entrepreneur, interviewed by David Iwinsky. We talked a lot about email, communication "lenses," the next generation of leaders, stuff...

Why I didn't (or couldn't) become an academic

Google alert set to "virtual leader" brings us to this abstract:

Without assuming that the interaction diagraph is strongly connected or contains a directed spanning tree, this paper studies the second-order leader-following consensus problem of nonlinear multi-agent systems with general network topologies. Based on graph theory, matrix theory, and LaSalle’s invariance principle, a pinning control algorithm is proposed to achieve leader-following consensus in a network of agents with nonlinear second-order dynamics. Furthermore, a pinning consensus protocol is developed for coupled double-integrators with a constant reference velocity. In particular, this paper addresses what kind of agents and how many agents should be pinned, and establishes some sufficient conditions to guarantee that all agents asymptotically follow the virtual leader. Numerical simulations are given to verify the theoretical analysis.

I think it says that everyone follows the leader, which I believe we learned in first grade. But without the numerical simulations. Here's the citation for what is certainly a brilliant paper (no offense, authors of "Second-order leader-following consensus of nonlinear multi-agent systems via pinning control").

List #358 of virtual team success factors

I don't mean to denigrate these lists -- and this one is pretty good -- but they do tend to be the same, often derived from someone else's research, or, as I've said before, come right off the top of someone's head. This one, from Carl Eidson at Wilson Learning, rests on research published in Sloan Management Review this year that reinforces our findings in our 2004 Harvard Business Review article: virtual teams can outperform their face-to-face counterparts...if they behave like grown-ups. Yes, I added that last bit. Here are Eidson's six points. All good.

1. Keep all team members in close communication.

2. Create a collaborative mindset.

3. Clarify the team’s purpose and goals.

4. Establish clear performance standards.

5. Adapt coaching strategies for distance management.

6. Celebrate milestones and successes.

What's to argue with, whether face-to-face or virtual? Let me try.

1. To stay in close communication requires a slightly different angle than "regular communication." Requires cooperative development of operating agreements, pairing off those who don't know one another, attention to time zones, holidays, cultural differences...and on and on.

2. Yes...and what precisely do you do to establish a collaborative mindset? Big topic that requires design of work that calls for collaboration and rewards it.

3. No argument at all. Clarifying purpose and goals is the first task of any successful work endeavor. How the team has access to its clarity is the key here. Online venues for updating how purpose plays out are critical to success.

4. Performance standards can't be a throwaway line for virtual teams. Because members often come from different organizations, this can become a huge challenge and negotiation among leaders. Huge.

5. Finally the issue of coaching virtual teams is showing up in nearly everything coming out. Very important. Watch for virtual leadership coaching to be developed for executives, the cutting edge of this new coaching market.

6. Celebrations are very important - but the article fails to mention that virtual celebrations may be the only alternative. Execution is the Achilles heel of intent.

GeekDoctor: Leading by clicking around

I'm doing a webcast on virtual leadership in a couple of weeks for eighty people, all situated virtually and all around the world. The link between the executive sponsoring the event and me  will be via Cisco's Telepresence -- though for everyone else, thank heavens, I won't be in high def.

In preparing for the webcast, I asked a few questions of one of my virtual leadership role models (scroll down for some great pics taken the same day this one was), John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, whose answers I thought others would enjoy seeing:

Q: You're on the move constantly. How do you maintain strong relationships with your direct reports?

*I live by Blackberry, laptop and conferencing technologies (Webex, iChat, Telepresence)

Q: What do you find most difficult as a "virtual" leader?

*Managing communications while constantly traveling is challenging.   My goal is to reduce the hours spent in airports through more virtual work

Q. What do you find to be easier when you're virtual?

*I eliminate many hassles - Parking, traffic, airport security lines, delayed flights, and lack of places to recharge my devices

Q. In terms of your reporting to your boss, how has your non-face-to-face presence affected your relationship?

*Paul [Levy, BIDMC's CEO] is just as virtual to me - we live in the world of social networking and web connectivity

Q. What advice on maintaining virtual connections with customers do you have for others who are very tech-savvy but whose customers may be less so?

*It's a journey. Start by eliminating as many face to face meetings as you can and set a goal of less travel/less in person meetings each year.

"Voluntary Simplicity" and "The Living Universe"

By Jeff Stamps, guest blogger for Endless Knots

This is Sunday morning, a time when people in my culture are used to receiving or giving sermons on the greater meaning of life and the practical applicability of the Golden Rule ("do unto others.."). Today's modest effort has been stimulated by a recent book, The Living Universe, by an old friend, Duane Elgin, whose 1981 book, Voluntary Simplicity, still resonates almost 30 years after its publication.

Our first book came out at about the same time as Duane's. In Networking: The First Report and Directory (see our books), Jessica and I recognized networks as a new form of organization in the grassroots movements of the 1970s. In the "report" part of the book, we chronicled the emergence of groups that were to become the centers for today's nonprofit world. So we often crossed paths with Duane and soon became friends.

Duane is a big thinker and a simple liver, and has devoted a lifetime to the notion of human transformation and inspiring positive change. He was a futurist researcher with SRI International in the 1970s, and worked on a number of cutting edge projects including Changing Images of Man, a stunning report with Joseph Campbell, Willis Harmon, and O.W. Markley.

His latest book hinges on a simple question, one you can take a moment to answer yourself before you go on:

Is the universe dead or alive?

Deadness is the prevailing scientific view, a container of inert matter that is the physical layer upon which the miracle of life grows. However, most people answer quickly, intuitively--in a "blink"--that of course the thing-as-a-whole is more alive than dead.

For me, it crystallized another question to pose about human beings, which you might also answer:

Are our organizations dead or alive?

Deadness is the prevailing view. The deadness of inert matter is found in our conventional "machine model" of organizations, particularly Big Ones, and most especially government ones. Many of our friends who promote networks dismiss the physical hierarchy as an antiquated machine relic rather than an evolving human organization that is becoming more networked. Our organizations are our greatest unexploited resource for addressing the confluence of disaster, change, and opportunity that defines our transitional time, so the answer "dead or alive" really matters.

While organizations cannot live without people, they are also different from people, yet still distinctly human--and alive. Two great networks--one social, the other organizational--intersect in the interrelated configuration of jobs, positions, and roles. Together, we get stuff done that as individuals we cannot do alone (see our Working Papers for some deep diving on this theme).

GM was the epitome of the industrial model, the archetype of the impersonal machine organization. 'Nuf said with Chrysler already in bankruptcy and GM headed there shortly.

Our organizations never were machines, but regarding them as such ensures a failure to adapt and learn and grow.

So this is where The Living Universe took me. If you enjoy a mix of religious and scientific views on the how the universe lives and why it matters, you should read Duane's newest book.

Mapping the recovery - "follow the money" - part 1

AIG. Again. Let us add our voices to the outcry over the bonus scam. Outrageous. Worse than outrageous is the damage it does to the Obama agenda, particularly the still critical moves to come on the economic rescue plan, as Tom Friedman pointed out in a March 18 opinion column in the New York Times.

What to do? On the recipient side of bailout funds, it will always be difficult to get real transparency and build trust. However, on the input side, the government itself, there is a lot that can be done.

But there's something even more disturbing than the AIG bonuses themselves.

It has to do with an aspect of transparency that is getting a bit of short shrift, in our opinion. There's a lack of visibility into the clear responsibility within government for overseeing the use of so many billions, this oversight, so to speak, from no less an authority than President Obama. Jennifer Loven and Martin Crutsinger's AP story reported in today's Boston Globe quotes the president: "Nobody here was responsible for supervising AIG and allowing themselves to put the economy at risk by some of the outrageous behavior that they were engaged in. We are responsible, though. The buck stops with me. And my goal is to make sure that we never put ourselves in this kind of position again."

Responsibility is the flip side of accountability, two roles in one relationship. While AIG is accountable, the government is responsible. Clarifying--making transparent--the structure of responsibility, aka the org chart (see our dynamic map of the top levels of the US Government in your browser, which takes a moment to load), is one way the government can directly increase the public's trust and govern more effectively. This is a much more direct route to developing trust, and will apply much more broadly across the multiple complex agendas of this administration.

To this point, we've written "Mapping the Recovery," another NetAge Report, this one on transparency, accountability, and responsibility particularly as they apply to tracking the recovery spending as laid out by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). We are posting Part 1 today (after the break below). In this first part, we describe the network of accountability and responsibility, and how the accounting system IS NOT the organizational system, although it sort of looks like it. In the second part, which we'll post tomorrow, we  look specifically at how OMB has set up the data to track the recovery funds, how its multiple elements can be mapped, and, most important, what's missing (hint--responsibility).

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency and open government - Obama's midnight memos

At the stroke of midnight on January 21, 2009. five "Presidential Actions" went into force (see White House press statement), establishing a clear foundation of organizing values and principles for the new Obama Administration. The "Midnight Five," with their links, are:

Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government

Presidential Memorandum on Freedom of Information Act

Executive Order on Presidential Records

Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel

Presidential Memorandum Regarding Pay Freeze

The capstone action is the one we list first, the memo on "Transparency and Open Government," a remarkable document that lays out the fundamental reason we need openness and how to achieve it. This understanding of the central role of transparency is vital at this extraordinarily critical moment in the still-accelerating economic crisis. Transparency is both necessary and beneficial. To paraphrase Judge Brandeis again, things get better with sunlight.

The president doesn't mince words in his preamble to the memo:

"My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government."

How are these open government benefits of efficiency, effectiveness, and a stronger democracy to be achieved? The memo outlines three imperatives ("shoulds"):

• Government should be transparent.
• Government should be participatory.
• Government should be collaborative.

Lest you think transparency and openness apply just to government, listen up all you leaders in organizations of every size in every sector who are feeling and dealing with desperate challenges. We can only get out of this mess by all of us being smarter and contributing to the overall solution.

We are posting the whole transparency memo after the break below, inserting in brackets words that indicate its applicability to all organizations, thus, the revised title and what follows. Please take a read and see if you might be able to endorse the same statement in your organization.

-- Jeff Stamps

Transparency and Open Governments [Organizations]