Month: May 2022

I have been thinking about this quite a bit lately. I won’t bore with all the details but my current project is not going well. Despite all of the technical problems, the issue is not a lack of capable doers, but a failure of leadership. Before I go too far, I will expose my bias. I am a firm believer that accountability for success/failure always goes uphill.

If there are capable doer’s then why does leadership matter? I would say that it certainly makes the job easier, but leaders are responsible for delivering bad news as well as good. Leaders are the voice of skepticism as well as support. They are encouraging and coaching, admonishing and pushing, representing and cooperating. All of those opposing forces are difficult to juxtapose well.

Just so you don’t think I am just a finger pointer, leaders are at all levels. In my own case, I can visibly see areas where my own work is suffering from my personal leadership failures. My particular group has a manager and a good leader in her own right. However, the trend of matrix organizations has led to an ambiguous level of decision making and accountability which has given rise (and a pass) to poor leadership on a project level.

Sticking with the theme of matrix organizations and my own role, I recognize that my peers operate largely in a vacuum. We all tend to do what we think is best and it doesn’t seem to have any level of coordination or follow through, once again responsibilities of leadership. Knowing this, it is a perfect opportunity for someone to take the responsibilities (without a title). This is exactly what natural leaders do: recognize a problem and take action without requiring more pay or recognition.

There is one additional component to successful leadership and that is trust or willingness to follow. In order to actually build that, it takes one of two things. It is either time for natural trust to build or an organizational appointment of a person to a role. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and the best case is when you have both; an appointment of someone that the group trusts.

We can all think of our view of good and poor leaders. I would say that our list of desirable qualities might be all over the place. Unfortunately, our bias often blinds us to the actual facts of situation and once we take a position it is very difficult to un-entrench ourselves from our position. Despite the fact that this is a business conversation, politics are an easy comparison.

By now, you can probably guess that I lean right. You also probably should know that I am a strict constitutionalist. That means that I have accepted the current definition of the Bill of Rights and apply that to all aspects of my opinion. So, lets take a look at some recent Presidents and apply my filter to get a judgement.

1. Bill Clinton – I found him to be a deplorable person. That being said, in a rank of recent presidents relatively little damage was done. Only minor conflicts like the Balkan intervention, no major fiscal expansion, the 1992 Assault Weapons Ban (that actually sunset) were notable occurrences in his tenure. Grade B
2. George W. Bush – I want to like the guy, conservative Christian with high marks as a governor. On the surface, a good choice. Let me count the ways that he screwed this country: Medicare Part D, creating a new department of the government, a multi-front boondoggle of a war, Patriot Act, and Too Big to Fail bank bailouts from their own reckless fiscal policy. Grade F
3. Barack Obama – He seemed likable enough, certainly a change from the previous president. The damage that was done was not on the traditional aspects and size of government but to the culture of country. That being said from the Healthcare tax to race baiting and sexual ambiguity I find the fabric of the country irreparably changed. Grade D
4. Donald Trump – This is a guy that is a dichotomy. On one hand, he spoke the truth and on the other he couldn’t stop talking and it was often intertwined with as many lies. All in all, policy was largely acceptable including initiating the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and tax reform (heavily in favor of business). I think he could be good if he wanted to, but more often chose to behave childish and solidified the damage done during the Obama administration. Grade C

I wrote all of that to say my bias clearly reflects my opinion. You might want to live in a socialist utopia and would definitely flip my grades. However, when I look objectively the person that should have been my highest choice actually got my lowest grade by a mile. And, the president that I wanted to hate actually got my highest grade. There are a couple key characteristics that I want to talk about below.

Leadership requires vision. That being said, what we interpret as clear may not be the same to everyone else. Only time will tell if leaders make the right decision, especially if it is extremely contrary to the popular or accepted direction.

The second property requires leaders to take a position on any and every relevant issue. This can be a tricky situation when you are uneducated on the subject or even unaware of the topic. But, it can be done tactfully and most of the time you can change that stance if provided clear reasons for doing so. The reason this is important is that it sets the tone for the group to follow.

I think the third and most important property is transparency. This supports trust, builds vision and explains positioning. I think it is worth noting that transparency is not truthfulness. There is a time to protect the group and there is time to provide the facts. But, transparency explains the situation when the time is right. Generally speaking, I am also being truthful, but there are are good reasons not to be at times.

Applying our properties to the presidents and adding my layer of speculation I put together this analysis.

Generally speaking, most of the poor leaders I have observed lack number one and number three. Truthfully, the worst leaders are strong in opinions yet don’t have vision or transparency and they fail to build trust. That being said, transparency without vision or position leaves the group listless.

I suppose to round out my work here, I think that there are some characteristics that are not required to be a good leader, for instance a good communicator. I rank this as helpful and certainly can accelerate trust. It also can more easily turn from a leader to a despot and you don’t even know it until it is too late.

How about having a winning record? I suppose that depends on the context. A platoon leader better have a winning record or their leadership is over. But even in that case, winning doesn’t necessarily translate into a good leader. Leadership is not about the objective and the result, it is about motivating others to work toward the same goal and to be content that it is an acceptable way of doing it.

In many ways, the parallels between leadership and sales go hand in hand. In one way, the salesperson is convincing you that this is the best item for the circumstances. Once you are convinced for whatever reason, you are likely to be brand loyal or even salesperson loyal. Leadership is the same way, you are convincing the others in the group of the best approach, best way to organize data, the best technical path forward, etc.

End Your Programming Routine: Coming full circle here, my experience within the matrix organization, the ‘leaders’ lack all three of these properties. Without leaders to front the effort, it turns into a mess like I referenced in the first paragraph. In their defense, they are way out of their league. For the most part the organization is trying to do something that is really not within the realm of experience or competency and I am not in a position to change this despite my counsel to the contrary. All that being said, good leaders will overcome these circumstances because they have the properties that make a successful leader.