Trends in Leadership

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the U.S. has identified five leading trends for senior executives, based on 247 leaders who participated in their "Leadership at the Peak" program from July 2006 to April 2007:

The Rise of Complex Challenges - driven by internal changes to the organization, market dynamics, a shortage of talent and globalization.

The Innovation Revolution - innovation efforts achieved through new ideation processes, task forces, cross functional innovation teams, off-site innovation programs and stage-gate processes, accompanied by a focus on talent/talent development, reward/recognition programs and research/external best practices.

The Art of Virtual Leadership - communication as a central skill to bridge cross-cultural, geographical and functional boundaries, but with the skills for virtual leadership differing from those used for face-to-face leadership.

Collaboration Nation - over 97 percent of executives surveyed believe that leaders in their organization must collaborate to succeed, but only 47 percent of believed leaders in their organization are highly skilled in collaboration.

The World of Interruption - dealing with fragmented work time, with a typical worker interrupted every 11 minutes, and taking an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task. Senior executives report being interrupted every 30 to 40 minutes.

The results are reported in the August 2007 issue of the CCL Leading Effectively e-Newsletter, and are drawn from a broader white paper titled 10 Trends: A Study of Senior Executives' Views on the Future, authored by Corey Criswell and Andre Martin.

Of significance, the wider study goes on to highlight the importance of several additional trends, including an increased emphasis of authenticity of leadership, being able to plan for leadership succession, and ensuring that current leaders maintain their personal wellness to maximize leadership longevity.

Organizational wellness & dysfunction – watching for the signs

Too often, organizational leaders equate “wellness” with physical health-oriented programs, such as giving staff subsidized memberships to the local gym, or adding health support programs to the benefits plan.

But true organizational wellness is much broader in scope, and the best organizational leaders seek to identify and address root causes rather than symptoms. If stress-related absences are on the increase, internal conflicts between people and teams is mounting, and there is declining productivity and morale, this can be a strong sign that there are deeper issues of dysfunction inside the organization. These issues directly impact the organization’s relative wellness and its capacity for peak performance, both of which warrant the attention of senior leadership and the board.

The International Institute of Management (IIM) has published an online white paper titled Organizational Politics: Symptoms of Dysfunctional Organizations by Med Yones that outlines a range of warning signs to be looking for if you are an organizational leader or board member. These include:

• Management that stifles discussion and disagreement
• Inefficient allocations of resources and unequal workloads internally
• Poor linkages between strategic plans and actual performance
• Constant crisis mode
• Excessive fragmentation, turf wars, and empire building, with poor internal collaboration
• Low overall productivity, high stress levels, and backstabbing

Since senior management is often an integral part of the problem – either as a direct contributor, or in terms of not being seen by front-line staff to be taking interest in or acting to correct the problems – it is more difficult to return to a positive state if things get too far. Accordingly, a better solution is to continually monitor the organization for signs of its relative wellness and act promptly when negative symptoms appear.

Potential actions for senior leadership and board members include:

• Recognizing that organizational wellness is a priority and that it directly impacts long-term performance
• Using scorecards and/or objective external assessment to get a good picture of current organizational wellness, and making ongoing use of scorecards and direct feedback a priority
• Emphasizing collaboration as an organization-wide initiative, with senior leadership and board members clearly “walking the talk” (this includes the board providing adequate support to senior leadership for necessary changes)
• Providing necessary training and coaching across the organization on collaboration approaches, and backing this up with incentives for positive behaviour
• Not tolerating unacceptable behaviour (i.e., continual non-collaboration), including replacing uncooperative staff if mediation over valid differences of view doesn’t solve the issue

Similarly, the Booz | Allen | Hamilton consulting group has developed an online self-assessment tool called the Org DNA Profiler® that helps you to understand your organization’s cultural style compared to one of several “DNA types” that their consultants have developed. Is it Passive-Aggressive, Fits-and-Starts, Outgrown, Overmanaged, Just-in-Time, Military Precision, or Resilient? And what does it mean to fall into any of these categories?

Although not a detailed assessment of your organization’s relative cultural wellness, the value of the tool lies in its ability to start a conversation on how people see the organization. From there, it is possible to start addressing the root causes that are leading to the different interpretations of how the organization operates, and how to take steps to improve its relative wellness. **Note that the assessment tool has modified versions for for-profit and government or non-profit organizations.

The assessment tool builds on a series of articles about the concept of organizational DNA, including “The 7 Types of Organizational DNA” by Gary Neilson, Bruce A. Pasternack, and Decio Mendes in the Summer 2004 issue of Strategy+Business magazine (free registration required to view articles).

Wellness Programs: Continuing Progress

Workplace wellness programs have evolved in terms of their scope and relative complexity, but there is a continuing body of evidence that any program -- no matter the relative size of the organization -- can have positive impacts.

Two related studies highlight the trend, and provide an interesting glimpse into the evolving nature of workplace wellness programs. Of note, many programs have advanced considerably from an initial health-dominant focus to a broader range of considerations around whole-person wellness, improving organizational culture and workplace learning, and improving overall productivity.

The first, published in 2002 by the now-defunct Canadian Labour and Business Centre (CLBC), provided an overview of Twelve Case Studies on Innovative Workplace Health Initiatives. While highlighting the long-term nature of such initiatives and the relative difficulties in creating universal impact measures, the study emphasized that health and wellness initiatives are most effective when they are seen as an integrated part of the organization's business strategy, rather than being a "nice to have". In turn, this spotlights the leadership dimension of such initiatives -- both executive and staff participation are key.

A follow-up study in 2006 by the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL, which now incorporates the prior work of the CLBC as part of its Work and Learning Knowledge Centre) observed a continuing trend toward greater effectiveness in such programs since 2002. A highlight of the 2006 study is again the critical importance of leadership in such initiatives, with several key steps being present in most of the programs adopted:

Policy and Communication—Senior managers signed health and safety policy commitment statements, which were then brought to the attention of all employees. In some cases, these statements were embedded in the firm’s mission statement.

Organization—Roles, responsibilities and accountability for employees, committees and management were clearly outlined.

Planning and Implementation—Guidelines were developed for proactive health and safety planning, setting of objectives, internal inspections and risk assessments.

Measuring Performance—Commitments were made to consistent data gathering in order to monitor progress in implementation and success in achieving overall objectives.

Audit and Review—Audits and reviews were built into the programs to assess the effectiveness of program delivery systems and overall impact on business performance and employee health, wellness and morale.

Source: http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Reports/LessonsInLearning/LiL-31March2006.htm