Leadership in a Complex World

In 1949, thirteen of sixteen men died battling a relatively small blaze in Mann Gulch. In investigating the circumstances of why most of the smoke jumpers died while three lived, Norman Maclean wrote a book entitled Young Men and Fire, the true story of the smoke jumpers - firefighters who parachute into the back country to fight fires.

Maclean found some startling facts. Mann Gulch has steep canyon walls with the northern slope at a 75% incline. When the wind turned on the smoke jumpers, they were in a race with the fire up those steep walls. Most forest fires feed off dry grass. The north slope of Mann Gulch was mostly tall grass,  so the fire started to spread much faster than anticipated.

A key finding by Maclean was that the thirteen who died had carried their tools - poleaxes, saws, shovels, plus very heavy back packs - while attempting to out-run the fire climbing up those steep walls. In other words, the thirteen laboured as far as they could with all their equipment, even though that equipment was worse than useless in a race with the fire. Their inability to drop their heavy tools and packs ultimately prevented them from outrunning the fire. To these firefighters, their tools were more than simple objects - they represented who they were, why they were there and what they were trained to do. Dropping their tools meant abandoning their existing knowledge, training and experience.

This might not seem like a hard choice to make, but with no training for such a moment, they had no alternative models for behavior. In moments of uncertainty and danger, clinging to the “right” way might seem like a good idea, but not in this case.

The three survivors of the blaze thought outside the box and used different strategies to escape the fire.  Realizing that they were no longer fighting the fire but fleeing from it, they dropped all of their useless equipment. One survivor used a technique called the ‘escape fire’ where he took a match and lit a ring around him so that the fire would “jump” over him.

When he tried to convince others, they continued running up the steep slope because the ‘escape fire’ technique had not been part of their training.

It was their inability to drop the tools and equipment that weren’t working and seek new methods to help them escape that lead to the fire fatally engulfing them.

In your world today:

• What are the poleaxes, shovels and backpacks you continue to run with?
• What are the tired, worn out strategies and tools which you are lugging around with you?
• What existing models of behavior do you need to drop?
• What existing knowledge, training or experience needs to be abandoned?

Very often, what got you to here won’t get you to there. Those who learn the critical business skills and tools necessary to survive (and thrive!) will be the winners.

Survivors and successful people are always learning and practicing to improve their game. New circumstances always require new skills and tools.

Mary Teresa Bitti, Financial Post

Published: Monday, September 15, 2008

Intergenerational differences in the workplace is getting a lot of media coverage, says Claude Balthazard, director, HR excellence and acting registrar, Human Resources Professionals Association. But the fact remains, these are not new issues. New generations have always entered the workplace, and companies always cope.

“What has changed things is that because of the demographics, the economy, the retirement of the Baby Boomers — which is a bleep in terms of size– that facet has brought the issue to the front burner.”

Interestingly, Mr. Balthazard points out that most of the people talking about intergenerational issues are Boomers. “I have never seen a millennial or Gen-xers give a presentation or talk on what these issues look like from their perspective. It seems to be mostly Boomers that are concerned about the relationship between generations.”

And the focus is always on the differences. “To sell books, people focus on the differences, which is much more entertaining than talking about the similarities,” Mr. Balthazard says. “But, if you talk to people in the field they will say: ‘Talent is talent; good managers are good managers’. In every generation there are workers that you would like to see in your organization and others you would not. As managers, it’s the same basic good management skills that are what you have to bring to the fore to handle this situation.”

Full Article

From Friday’s Globe and Mail

September 12, 2008 at 10:54 AM EDT

With more telecommuting, global work forces and rising travel costs, more than two-thirds - 67 per cent - of employers expect to rely more on “virtual teams” in the future, a new survey finds.

The benefits (according to the survey from the Institute for Corporate Productivity):

• 75 per cent of the 278 respondents said such teams facilitate information-sharing
• 70 per cent said they encourage diverse thinking
• 62 per cent said they result in higher productivity and facilitate cross-training

The detriments:

• they are too difficult to manage, according to 35 per cent
• problematic to co-ordinate schedules, according to 31 per cent
• As well, 31 per cent felt their company’s technology tools are inadequate for holding virtual team meetings.

An entertaining and instructive video clip on Conductor B. Zander on his mission to get more listeners turned onto classical music.

Benjamin Zander on TED 

CHRISTINE ROSEN, the New Atlantis:

In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.” To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one’s time; it was a mark of intelligence. “This steady and undissipated attention to one object, is a sure mark of a superior genius; as hurry, bustle, and agitation, are the never-failing symptoms of a weak and frivolous mind.”  more from article

Is the millennial generation a bunch of job-hoppers seeking instant gratification? Not at all, new research says.

by REBECCA DUBE

Extracts from From Toronto Globe and Mail

April 14, 2008 at 8:52 AM EDT

Oh, those fickle Generation Y workers: Raised by helicopter parents, now these coddled young adults are entering the work force and screwing up everything with their all-about-me attitudes and their impatience with quaint traditions such as working hard for promotions.

Right?

Wrong, 25-year-old Ursula Terlecki says.

“You do have to pay your dues … I always feel like I have something to prove” says Ms. Terlecki, a publicity co-ordinator for CanWest Broadcasting. She aspires to be a full-fledged publicist one day, but says, “if I don’t get promoted in the next year, it’s not like I’m going to leave.”
Gasp - a Gen Yer with a work ethic. And she’s not alone. Plenty of workers in their early 20s beg to differ with self-proclaimed experts who have identified the “millennial” generation as one filled with self-interested job-hoppers.

Now, Ms. Terlecki and her friends have hard data to back them up. A seminar debunking the conventional wisdom about millennials, the generation born roughly between 1980 and 2000, was one of the bigger draws at last week’s conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in San Francisco.

The message: Don’t believe the millennial hype.

“It’s this snowball that keeps going,” says Evan Sinar, an organizational psychologist who led the session on millennial myths. Examining research from four new studies of thousands of job applicants and employees, he said, “we found the differences [between generations] weren’t there, or were smaller than expected.”

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that young people aren’t as engaged in their work as their Generation X and baby boomer colleagues, Dr. Sinar says. On the contrary, millennial workers are just as enthused by and invested in their jobs as any other generation.

Which is true?

Myth

Millennials are not really engaged at work, and will probably job-hop a lot.

They demand instant feedback, even when applying for a job.

Their tech-savvy will crush older generations.

Reality

Millennials score the same on measures of career engagement as Gen-Xers and baby boomers.

They’re willing to go through a long job application process.

They prefer online tools, but don’t necessarily have more experience than Xers and boomers.

Full Article

According to a new book from Hay Group directors and Harvard academics, today’s leadership challenges require tight top teams, not heroic chief executive officers (CEOs.)

“Senior Leadership Teams: What It Takes to Make Them Great” recommends three essential conditions for creating such effective management teams:
1. a real team
2. a compelling direction
3. the right people.

The book, based on field research with management teams, make the case that the responsibilities of leading today’s complex organizations are too broad for just one person. Instead, there’s a growing role for senior leadership teams, who can share the responsibilities, whether in terms of coordinating activities, providing advice or actually taking responsibility for making key decisions.

On top of the essential conditions are three enabling conditions that help ensure the best possible results from the team:
• a sound structure, based around a small number of people (ideally no more than 10) and almost a code of conduct for how team members work together.
• a supportive context, so that the team has the skills and resources it needs to operate effectively. Paradoxically, most executive teams are better at providing resources for their front-line teams than for themselves.
• expert coaching – The most effective teams are coached as entities, developing together.

Amazon Link

Leadership in today’s world is living in an environment of cross-matrixed and team-oriented structures hopefully designed to meet, beat and often cooperate with competitors in a global marketplace increasingly flattened and interconnected by technology.

Our goal is to provide thought leadership, through our insights and research of leadership issues, to help you as a leader bring out the best in your teams and do it in a “win-win-win” way that enhances:

• business performance
• personal growth
• work-life balance

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All the best from the 5D Leadership Team.