Leaders decide, let them learn how
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Every organization needs a truth teller. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling is a truth teller.
If you recognize the name, it's probably because some of his bold statements about the Army he loves and serves have been reported in the mass media. Here's a sample.
"As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war."
"The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship."
"It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations will emerge as an innovator in his late forties."
The Small Wars Journal blog recently carried part of a speech Lt. Col. Yingling gave at the US Command and General Staff College on April 2. It's titled "Irregular Warfare and Adaptive Leadership." You can click through to a pdf of the full presentation, but here's the money quote from the blog.
"Officers conditioned to conformity in peacetime cannot be expected to behave boldly and flexibly in combat. This phenomenon is not new."
This tension between conformity and innovation is not unique to the Army or even the armed forces. It's something you and your business need to wrestle with every day. Here are my big take-ways from Lt. Col. Yingling's writings along with some comments on adapting them for business,
Leadership development is a cumulative process. Leaders do not spring full-grown from the brow of Zeus. They develop over time, hopefully for a lifetime.
The trick is encouraging leaders to develop habits of decision making early in their career. That means that young leaders must be allowed to decide things. They need to be allowed to get things right and get them wrong and learn from both.
You can help this process happen if you provide leadership opportunities, assure that feedback is both certain and helpful, and provide peer support systems to aid learning.
Help leaders prepare so they can handle whatever future they stride into. In leadership development, follow the advice of Jamie Dimon on planning: "At JP Morgan, we try to prepare for all kinds of weather. We don't guess what the weather will be and prepare for that."
Here's something that Yingling doesn't say, but that fits his philosophy well. It's not just about those who do and will occupy leadership positions. Everyone needs to be encouraged to bring ideas to the party.
You need every brain in the game. You don't want to find yourself like Woody Morcott, CEO of the Dana Corporation asking: "Why did we hire 55,000 brains and only use three of them?"
Boss's Bottom Line
You don't get everything right. Neither will your team members. To grow and develop and innovate and contribute meaningfully people need to know that it's safe to say things and try things.
Don't create an environment where people are willing to take risks. Instead, remove the risk from experimentation. Experimentation and innovation will follow.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Categories: leadership development, Innovation
Tags: Leadership Development Innovation
Wally,
Nice combo of current military reality and a reliable source plus business situation and reliable source.
The million-dollar line:
"Don't create an environment where people are willing to take risks. Instead, remove the risk from experimentation."
How sensible.
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Thanks for the comment, Steve. That "trying things is good" attitude has been part of just about every great workplace I've encountered.
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Isn't "Why did we hire 55,000 brains and only use three of them?" a perfect condemnation of top-down, authoritative management styles?
Great post Wally.
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Absolutely, Trevor. To put it in context, that was an insight for Morcott who set about changing things at Dana.
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Wally,
Good post. Timely too. I caught Private Ryan on cable last night and watched in amazement. I can't imagine what the kids storming the beaches of Normandy and Omaha must have thought. How brave our Veterans of all the wars have been...
I'm not sure if I agree with the risk reduction/removal postulate for experimentation; maybe that's because I don't fully understand experimentation without risk...then again, I may be thinking about when I was 17 too!
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Thanks for adding the comments, Scott. Let me take a run at explaining what I mean by "no risk for experimentation."
In most companies, if a team member uses their judgment and tries a new way of doing things or goes outside the policy manual to help a customer and it doesn't work out, we call it a "failure."
But it's not a failure at all if we learn from it. If we want people to use their judgment and if we want them to try new things, the best way to do that is to remove the risk.
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"Officers conditioned to conformity in peacetime cannot be expected to behave boldly and flexibly in combat. This phenomenon is not new." - Loved this one.
Thanks to Michael Wade (ExecuPundit) for sharing this.
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Thanks Tammy, and thanks to Michael Wade to pointing you here. As far as the quote, Lt. Col. Yingling gets credit for that one. I just get to say "thanks" to all of you.
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Your article is a compelling read Wally, artfully written in how you have shared Lt. Col. Yingling’s truths. As others have done here, it is so tempting to grab several quotes for repeatable affirmations and self-coaching, starting with that first one – yours: “Every organization needs a truth teller.”
I so agree that “Leadership development is a cumulative process” and that we “need every brain in the game.” Achieving these two things in that atmosphere where risk is removed from experimentation as you explain, is where that partnership of leader and manager can shine in real practice, i.e. where manager/leader are conventionally thought of as positions and roles in most business hierarchies still today. In doing so, they will also encourage the better adoptions of self-management and self-leadership to emerge throughout an organizational culture. Learning really is the key.
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Wow, Rosa, you distilled an extra bit of wisdom from the post. Thanks for adding your thoughts.
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There's not a whole lot of guidance in this. I'm sure we'd all agree that these things are important, but the all important question is, the how question.
I'd also have to say that pointing out that the military is conditioned to no be creative is a pretty apparent observation.
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