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Carl Welte is the principal of Welte Associates, a consulting firm whose purpose is to help organizational leaders and teams gain greater clarity, confidence, and skill to head in desired directions.

LEADERS LETTING GO

Leadership Implicatons of the Move to More Organic Forms of Organization

Driven by the ramifications of fierce global competition, organizations are increasingly trying to find ways to do things "better, faster, cheaper". To successfully compete in this world requiring increased flexibility, quality, speed, cost effectiveness, innovation, and customer satisfaction organizations are transitioning from the traditional mechanical model of organization with its hierarchical control to more fluid and flexible organic forms.

This transition has tremendous implications for leadership. No longer can a few people at the top effectively run organizations. Leaders need to let go of personal power and control if organizations are to successfully transition to the more organic, horizontal forms of organization. This cascading of power needs to occur not only at the top of the organization, but down through the entire organization.

The Difficulty of Letting Go

The relative newness of the more organic forms of organization and the entrenchment of the traditional model in most organizational cultures makes the transition from a directive ("command and control") approach to more participative approaches difficult for most individual managers. This is especially true for managers who have used a directive approach for some time. And many of these managers may have been successful using the traditional approach. But things have changed. Current realities dictate that the traditional model will be less and less effective as the dominant approach of management.

Guidelines for Letting Go

The following guidelines provide a valuable framework for individual managers to do the necessary thinking and take some practical steps to transition to more participative approaches to management. Likewise, these guidelines can help those who are in a position to coach such managers.

Have a clear understanding for the business reasons for changing one's approach to management.

The same rationale that dictates that people at the top have to let go if the organization is going to be able to effectively transition to more organic forms of organization hold true for local leaders. The organization needs to take advantage of all its' peoples input and move from environments of compliance to environments of commitment to succeed in the light of current realities. A large part of commitment is the realization that people will tend to own things they help create.

Come to grips with one's beliefs about people.

Managers who believe that given the opportunity most people would rather contribute at work rather than just being there will obviously have an easier time making the necessary transition than those who assume that personal control is necessary to move people toward desired results. More enlightened organizations will provide help for those managers needing to revise their mental models of work and workers. But regardless of the degree of help provided, those managers who cannot change their mental models will fail and organizations need to honestly and humanely deal with such situations. After all, the organization put these managers in these positions and, mostly likely, reinforced the traditional approach to management.

Envision the new approach and what specifically the manager will be doing differently.

Being specific regarding the behavioral aspects of a new form of management will help in planning the transition. Under the more participative approaches, the manager needs to move from direct supervision to being more of a coach and a resource. In addition, hopefully there will be opportunities for the manager to take on boundary management, which is a higher-leverage form of work. That is, the manager's primary focus will be the system surrounding the work of the group (i.e., upstream and downstream constituents and activities, higher-level management, customers, trade allies, the relevant outside environment, etc.) rather than the day-to-day operations of the work group.

Identify requisite skills and support available.

The steps are: 1) determine what skills are needed to be successful in the new role; 2) make an honest assessment of current capability; and, 3) identify appropriate developmental strategies. The developmental strategies may include identifying and implementing new practices, receiving coaching, gaining support from others going through similar change, and training.

Craft performance compacts with key individuals as a way to manage results instead of activities.

One of the toughest things about letting go of personal power and control is the fear of losing control. That is, not knowing what is going on. Developing results-focused performance compacts with key individuals and managing toward such shared expectations through quality conversations is an essential practice. The organization can go a long way in helping managers by not insisting that they know all the details of what is going on. It has to be okay for managers to say: "I don't know, but I'll find out right away".

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