EMAC ASSESSMENTS, LLC
CREATE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE WITH EMAC'S LAMPE
LEADERSHIP MODEL AND OUR HALO TECHNOLOGIES.
THE LAMPE MODEL OF ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Introduction: First the Bad News
One sure indicator of the popularity of a subject is the number of sites it generates on the Google search engine. The word leadership produces almost a billion hits. There is a minor industry providing leadership conferences, DVDs, tapes, articles, seminars, posters, workshops, lectures, etc.
It is important to understand leadership. We comprehend this intuitively and this understanding is buttressed by dramatic stories of military generals who, by taking over command, can turn around any army. General G. S. Patton, for example, in WWII assumed the command of the U.S. Army II Corp. after its disastrous defeat at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia on March 7, 1943. By March 17, it joined in the successful attack against Rommel at Gafsa and attacked again at El Guettar on the 22nd. Patton's motto, "L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace" gives an idea of how his energy, initiative, and daring could turn a failed army corps around in two weeks. Joel Haywood in his study of Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson (For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War, 2003) points out:
"Following a change in leaders, a fleet or an army may
suddenly become either less or more disciplined, contented,
audacious, and ultimately effective simply because the new
commander introduced a new style and way of getting
things done" (p. xvi).
One would think that with all of the attention paid to leadership it would be well understood. Unfortunately, there are few literatures in worse shape. With a few exceptions, if the truth were known, the leadership industry is an intellectual backwater.
The leadership literature is an intellectual swamp. Rarely is leadership adequately defined and many inconsistent approaches are touted (but rarely refuted). Until now there has not been a coherent theory of organizational leadership. The leadership industry shares these common beliefs:
1. Leadership is good
2. More of it is better
3. Leaders are bosses
4. It's easy
5. Everyone wants to lead and
6. Leadership is binary.
Good leadership is good. But not all leadership is good. History is full of tyrants (Hitler) and crazies (Jim Jones) who led their peoples into disaster. Many corporate CEOs have led their companies into ruin and bankruptcy. There are many conditions under which leadership is both good and necessary. But there are circumstances in which to exert leadership is to make matters worse (e.g., interfering with natural market forces by government decrees or micro-managing competent employees). Micro-managing can become excessive leadership that has negative but unintended consequences. So, it is not true that leadership is always good and that more of it is necessarily better.
The world has many bosses. Not all bosses are leaders and not all leaders are bosses. In some organizations the CEO pretends to lead and the employees pretend to follow in a grotesque dance of deception. The idea that leadership cannot be distributed with different individuals performing different types of leadership on different tasks is simply false. Actually, it is necessary.
The most dangerous belief is that leadership is easy. The claim that all one needs to lead is to follow certain maxims, engage in certain behaviors, and express special attitudes is in error. Leadership is hard, requiring persistence, courage, sacrifice, endurance, intelligence, patience, and forebearance. Leadership is an incredibly complex social behavior. It is anything but easy. The belief that leadership can be made easy is dangerous because it encourages the dilettantes, the unworthy, the unsteady, the vainglorious, and the weak to think that they can lead without hard work,personal discipline, competence, and sacrifice. Leadership is a moral act. Failed leadership will damage careers, lives, families, and communities. There is no magic cure for failed leadership and there is no maxim or cheap remedy to make someone a leader over night. No one should seek a leadership role unless he or she is prepared to work hard and learn painful lessons.
Most leadership authors and speakers emphasize the beliefs that leadership is good, more of it is better, leaders are bosses, and it is relatively easy to become a leader. They show you what they think you are lacking. Then they offer redemption from their own diagnosis. They sell the idea that you can become a better leader by following their advice, which is usually an expensive mélange of hope and dubious self-improvement strategies. It is not clear that any of this does much good.
The prerequisite for attracting customers to the leadership industry is the belief that we all have the desire to lead others. This is simply not true. I think that most people fall into three categories in terms of their propensity to exert leadership. There are the eagers, the avoiders, and the reluctants.
1. The eagers (probably less than 20%) feel entitled and driven to lead in
almost any situation, whether or not their leadership is actually wanted or needed. Some eagers are simply jerks. Some eagers have both the talent and character to lead. Eagers don't need motivation. Rather, many need to be toned down. Their "will to dominate" needs to be channeled and disciplined.2. The avoiders (probably less than 20%) avoid exerting leadership in almost all conditions. They don't want to stand out, give offense, or spend the time necessary to lead. The avoiders rarely benefit from leadership training.
3. The reluctants (probably about 60%) are the persons who will exert leadership if the right circumstances are right for them. Reluctants are contingent leaders who will lead in some situations but not in others. The reluctants can be encouraged and trained to lead. However, their choice depends on their alternatives and the conditions within the group or organization to support them.
The dominant fact about leadership is that most people, most of the time, in most situations choose not to lead. This flies in the face of the dominant beliefs in the leadership industry. The leadership industry acts as if no one is an avoider and that reluctants can be converted into eagers by motivating them as individuals. They seldom mention curbing the eagers. They seldom take seriously the seriousness of the reluctants. The avoiders are viewed as a type of moral loafers and thus not understood.
Another serious problem with the leadership industry is that leadership is not binary. It is not a reasonable position to assume that one either leads or follows in all situations. Most reluctants are sensible. They belong to many organizations and need to budget their time and energy. They know that there are different circumstances and that some are more suited than others for them to lead or not lead. For example, the CEO of a company may be a member of a bicycle club and not want to be its President. The President of the bicycle club may be a clerk in the local city government. The mayor of the city may choose not to be an elder in the church and the church elder may be content to go fly fishing.
Furthermore, some reluctants, because of their heritage and other outside interests and commitments, are more interested in preventing others from exerting power over them than they are in exerting power over others. It is not so much that they do not want to lead, rather it is that they prefer their independence. Those seeking personal autonomy and independence tend to respect others. They do not readily volunteer to reduce another person's autonomy and generally lack the desire to increase the dependency of others on themselves.
Thus, the observed behavior of adults in groups and organizations is markedly inconsistent with the beliefs held about them by the leadership industry. Leadership is not binary. It is more of a continuum along which there are many circumstances which will encourage some to offer or withdraw leadership. People vary in the extent to which they lead, and they vary in the conditions under which they will provide it. Furthermore, leadership is not always required. What is needed is an organizational leadership model for the reluctants. What will it take to get them more involved with leadership and how will distributing leadership help the organization?
Now the Good News: Our Approach to Organizational Leadership
Moreover, it seems to us that the practice of viewing leaders from the top down makes little sense given the great number of avoiders and reluctants. After all, adults have spent decades in organizations and have experienced many "leaders". People watch, evaluate, and learn. It makes sense to shift the analysis of leadership. Instead of emphasizing individual motivation, style, etc. we need to focus on what we see leaders do and how they do it in an organizational context. That is, what are the basic leadership practices? That way we can begin to understand the reluctants, channel the eagers, and make better use of the avoiders.
EMAC Assessments' long-term involvement in organizational design consulting has whetted our interest in the general subject of organizational leadership. We have worked with many leaders in over 30 years of designing organizations. We see a few truly brilliant leaders. These natural leaders are usually sprinkled throughout an organization. However, most leaders are mediocre and a few are simply awful. We see both emergent and failing leadership. We find that some persons in leadership positions succeed in leading in some situations but fail to lead in others. We see efforts to "cut down" leaders who are not in the management hierarchy or "the right sort of person." In some organizations, the task seems to be to squelch new leaders. In better organizations, we observe the opposite: These organizations are continually seeking, training, developing, and testing leaders. They never have enough. Whatever the organizational design problems, leaders and leadership are always part of the solution ... and the problem. That's why designing organizations makes one aware of the complex processes of leading and to have a feel for their importance. We think that the cult of personality is vastly overrated and serves to distract us from the real problem of improving organizational leadership. We know that motivational models of leadership are inadequate to explain and improve organizational leadership. They are too simplistic, too manipulative, and morally bankrupt.
Eventually, our accumulation of knowledge about and experience with leadership began to crystallize into a working model of organizational leadership. We were able to identify specific leadership practices that seemed to work to improve organizational leadership. This was followed by sustained, serious scholarship to convert this working model into a theory which could be written down, analyzed, tested, and taught. It took Ken Mackenzie many years to do this. The result is the LAMPE model of organizational leadership (104, 105).
The basic premise of the LAMPE model is that there are five ingredients that must be coherent, logical, and operational throughout an organization in order for it to be effective. These ingredients are the leadership practices provided, the authority supporting the leadership, the management of the organization, the power of the leader, and the external and internal environments in which the organization operates. The thesis of LAMPE is that organizations perform best when leadership, authority, management, power, and environments are all working together throughout the organization. LAMPE focuses on the execution of specific leadership practices. It recognizes the inherent complexity of leadership and the skill and persistence of learning how to do it.
These conclusions for the LAMPE model stand out:
- Leading and leadership are processes not outcomes
- Leadership is not solely the property of the individual
- Leadership is an organizational phenomena
- Leadership is strongly linked to management
- Leadership incorporates the use of power
- Leadership often makes use of authority
- There are 29 specific leadership practices (LPs) that must be operating throughout an organization for it to become and remain maximally productive, adaptable, and efficiently adaptable.
- When these 29 leadership practices are operating throughout an organization, it will have the greatest leadership capacity and it will be dynamically congruent.
- Leadership practices working throughout an organization produce a phenomenon called an organizational hologram.
The Essence of the LAMPE Model of Organizational Leadership
Because the acronym, LAMPE, incorporates the terms leadership, authority, management, power, and environments, it is necessary to carefully define each.
Leadership is the processes of initiating, enabling, implementing, and sustaining change in the management of a group or an organization, where
Note that anyone engaged in any or all of these major change processes is showing leadership. It is not necessary to do all of them to be engaged in leadership. Individuals can contribute as they deem best. Leadership can then be encouraged and distributed.
Management is defined as a process and not as a noun. Management is an active process. It is also not a thing that is easily represented by a number. Management is the on-going effort to achieve the organization's strategic direction in the presence of changing conditions through the processes of:
The LAMPE model of organizational leadership makes assumptions about the dimensions of management. These are contained in Table 1.
Authority is the legal right to preempt the outcome of a decision process. Sometimes a legal right is not enforceable and sometimes it is unacceptable.
A processual agent is any person or thing that is capable of effecting a task process in a group or an organization. Two processual agents are said to be interdependent if each can support the other. If there are no interdependencies, there is no group or organization to lead. If there is no uncertainty, there is no need for leadership. The essence of power involves both interdependence and uncertainty. Its core is interdependence uncertainty. Power is the control of interdependence uncertainty. Control can be used to reduce interdependence uncertainty by making and enforcing changes. Control can be used to create new interdependence uncertainty by starting up new initiatives or blocking those of others. Control can be exercised by manipulating one party against another. Control is not always pretty but that's what power is about.
Authority is legal or potential power but real power is kinetic. Authority can be delegated. Power cannot be. Authority can be converted into power and power can be used to gain authority. Abuse of authority can result in a loss of power and ultimately, the loss of authority. Abuse of power can create resistance which will set into motion processes to achieve a new power balance and a redistribution of authority.
These ideas about power and authority may seem odd or politically incorrect at first reading. But they are as old as civilization. For example, C. Kelly (2004) published his book (Ruling the Later Roman Empire) on the operations of the 6th Century (CE) bureaucracy in Constantinople. Here there was explicit recognition of the interplay between power and controlling interdependence uncertainty. On page 191, Kelly states:
"In the later Roman Empire, the conflict between the competing
demands of bureaucracy and autocracy exerted a double pressure.
On the one hand, for emperors to subordinate themselves to regulation, to
delegate power or to conform to the demands of order was to strengthen
the bureaucracy at the cost of their own independence and authority. On
the other hand, for emperors to resist the constraints imposed by a more
institutional pattern of rule was to assert their own personal preferences at
the cost of that certainty and reliability necessary for administrative
efficiency. … The art of successful rule was, in part, the art of
incomplete and uncertain delegation. The exercise of power entailed
the ability to destroy established patterns or to prevent their
formation, to create chaos, and to conform expectation. Intermittent
terror and instability allowed emperors both to manage and to
undermine their administration."
If one wants the same basic ideas expressed more bluntly, the Chinese 3rd Century BC classic, The Book of Lord Shang will serve. Personalizing the use of power and control of interdependence uncertainty, Lord Shang states:
"Allowing someone to live or killing him, enriching or impoverishing him,
honoring or debasing him, these six handles are what the ruler grasps."
Environments include those forces, institutions, and people outside one's group or organization which are interdependent with the organization. As environments change so will the organization. One of the jobs of a leader is to detect and interpret environmental change and then adapt the group or organization to exploit or accommodate it.
The 29 Leadership Practices
The LAMPE Model of Organizational Leadership identifies 29 practices that each and every leader throughout the organization should adopt and perform.
The 29 leadership practices are what sets the holonomic model apart from other leadership models. The holonomic model of leadership describes specific roles that successful leaders perform to their fullest. The holonomic model provides leaders with a clear, understandable road map for daily actions, decisions, and improvements.
Most advice on leadership focuses on the talents or traits that are considered to be common among successful leaders as judged by the advisor. These observations are rarely operational. While it is inspiring to read about Admiral Nelson or General Patton, what has this to do with managing the accounts receivable department? Individuals striving to elevate their organization's success need much more direction than "try to develop these talents."
The lack of clear, actionable direction limits the performance of the typical leader. The leadership practices avoid this problem by getting to the heart of the matter. They do not focus on the skills or talents needed to perform the practices. They guide the leader to know what needs to get done. In many cases, their comprehensive nature amplifies the leader's intuition and provides a "to do" checklist. How the leader performs each practice is up to the leader. The proper approach will be a combination of the leader's natural talents, personality, communication style, and skills; the organizational culture; and personality, resources, and priorities of those being led.
The 29 leadership practices are listed here (and defined in the Glossary).
LP1. Understanding Environment Changes
LP2. Developing and Using the Strategic Direction
LP3. Ensuring Unit-Level Strategic Direction
LP4. Using Strategic Long Range and Tactical Plans
LP5. Updating Organizational Assumptions
LP6. Linking Organizational Rewards to Performance
LP7. Updating the Organizational Logic
LP8. Updating the Organizational Architecture
LP9. Ensuring Consistency of Organizational Rewards
LP10. Ensuring Results Consistency with Strategic Direction
LP11. Ensuring Successful Goal Achievement
LP12. Ensuring Compatible Interests of Results
LP13. Using Tough and Realistic Standards
LP14. Ensuring Job Performance Standards
LP15. Applying Total Compensation Process
LP16. Integrating Job with the Organization
LP17. Ensuring Compatible Interests
LP18. Developing Employees
LP19. Aligning Employees with the Strategic Direction
LP20. Encouraging Best Decision Making
LP21. Ensuring Ethical Decision Making
LP23. Ensuring Healthy Problem Solving
LP24. Ensuring Results Oriented Problem Solving
LP25. Nurturing and Rewarding Innovation
LP26. Ensuring Quality
LP27. Ensuring Improvements in Technology
LP28. Managing the New Technologies
LP29. New Technology Integration
Linking Leadership and Management
The LAMPE model of organizational leadership specifies the relationships among the four major leadership practices of change (initiating, enabling, implementing, and sustaining) and the three types of management processes. The linkage between leadership and management processes are the leadership practices. These relationships are shown in Table 2.
Note that by defining both leadership and management in terms of their inherent and constituent processes, it is possible to uncover the natural linkages shown in Table 2. The usual practice of viewing leadership and management as nouns leads to imponderable linguistic puzzles and silly slogans (e.g., "Leaders do the right thing and managers do the thing right"). Whereas, viewing them as natural processes leads to conceptual clarity.
Windows
and Leadership Requirements Matching (LRM)
The LAMPE model of organizational leadership proposes that leadership is appropriate if it serves to control interdependence uncertainty. It also assumes that every leader has a "supervisor's window" which defines those tasks and persons for which he or she is responsible. There is also a change event window, which describes the tasks and persons involved in a change event. Figure 1 shows the combinations of supervisor's windows and type of change events. The LAMPE model involves change events that trigger the other change events. Two types are ripple effect change and white water change:
A central idea in the LAMPE model is leadership requirements matching (LRM). Leadership requirements matching occurs when the leadership provided matches the leadership required for any given change. This occurs when the change event is contained within the supervisor's window. Leadership is considered deficient when the supervisor's window does not contain the change event. Leadership can also be excessive when more is provided than needed. At the organizational level, there is also organizational LRM. Organizational LRM occurs whenever, throughout the organization, there is LRM.
Some
Properties of Leadership in the LAMPE Model of Organizational Leadership
The LAMPE model of organizational leadership examines these properties of leadership (both for the individual supervisor and for the organization as a whole):
Leadership capacity
Leadership quality
Leadership effectiveness
The distribution of leadership.
A supervisor's leadership capacity, CL , is given by: CL = aL NL ML , where
aL is the proportion of time available by the leadership to handle its
leadership requirements,
NL is the number of participants under the leader, and
ML is the number of tasks for which the leader is responsible.
Note that in a role-matrix, NL is the number of rows representing the subordinates of the supervisor and ML is the number of columns representing the tasks allocated to the supervisor and his/her subordinates. The product, NL ML , is the area (size) of the supervisor's window.
Leadership quality of an organization is the average leadership practice (LP) score taken from the HALO survey.
Leadership effectiveness of an organization is the relative improvement in leadership quality.
Leadership is distributed if its processes involve other processual agents, each appropriate to his/her level and role in the organization.
Leadership is non-distributed if either it is:
a. not provided, or
b.delegated to a single individual.
Failure to distribute leadership can lead to overload and failure in conditions of modest or rapid change.
Furthermore, just as there can be ripple effect changes, there can also be virtuous leadership events involving ripple effect leadership practices. A virtuous leadership process occurs when leadership on one part of a change event stimulates coherent leadership by others in the same change event window.
Important Conclusions About Organizational Leadership Derived from the LAMPE Model of Organizational Leadership
The full exposition of LAMPE (104, 105) was published in 2006 in a relatively obscure academic publication. It is unlikely that anyone outside a very small circle will ever see it. The main paper (104) contains derivation for 36 conclusions, listed here as propositions.
Propositions About Leadership
Proposition 1. Leadership is the attempt to exercise power in a group or organization.
Proposition 2. The magnitude of required leadership is minimal in the case of contained changes in a pure hierarchy.
Proposition 3. The magnitude of required leadership is greater for uncontained than it is for contained change events.
Proposition 4. The magnitude of required leadership for white-water change exceeds that of a ripple-event change.
Proposition 5. The magnitude of required leadership is greater for ripple event changes than it is for contained change events.
Propositions About Leadership Requirements Matching
Proposition 6. An organization controls the interdependence uncertainty when it has organizational leadership requirements matching.
Proposition 7. When there is organizational LRM, the organization has the power to handle its change events.
Proposition 8. As the quality of leadership increases, its interdependence uncertainty become more manageable.
Proposition 9. As organizational LRM improves, so does the quality of leadership.
Proposition 10. As the organizational leadership approaches organizational LRM, leadership quality approaches its maximum value.
Propositions About Leadership Effectiveness
Proposition 11. Leadership in the absence of a leadership issue may result in a loss of power.
Proposition 12. (Timing proposition). Leadership takes time and requires timing to be effective.
Proposition 13. Effective leadership requires the discipline for setting priorities for handling leadership Issues.
Proposition 14: In a dynamically complex milieu, effective management always involves leadership and effective leadership always involves effective management.
Propositions About Leadership Capacity
Proposition 15. The larger the change event, the greater the leadership requirements to contain it.
Proposition 16. Increases in LRM increase the need for more leadership capacity in an organization.
Proposition 17. The larger
the change event, the greater the need for more leadership capacity.
Proposition 18. In a dynamically complex milieu, increases in LRM create demand
for more management.
Proposition 19. In a dynamically complex milieu, increases in LRM create demand for more leadership capacity.
Propositions About Distributed Leadership
Proposition 20. Ripple
effect leadership practices improve the distribution of leadership by increasing
the number of Processual Agents engaged.
Proposition 21. Distribution of leadership increases leadership capacity.
Proposition 22. As the leadership practices become more fully distributed throughout a group or an organization, the ability to achieve LRM increases.
Proposition 23. Strategy three (distribution of leadership practices) is preferred to the other strategies in a dynamically complex milieu.
Propositions About LAMPE and the Organizational Hologram
Proposition 24: The more holonomically an organization operates, the more it distributes leadership practices.
Proposition 25: The greater leadership quality in an organization, the more distributed its leadership practices.
Proposition 26: Distributing the leadership practices has the effects of:
1. Creating more change events
2. Increasing the number of persons engaged in leadership practices.
Proposition 27: The change
events in a holonomically run organization have these
properties:
1. The change effects tend to be much smaller
2. The change effects are more containable
3. There are fewer ripple-event changes
4. There are fewer white-water changes.
Proposition 28: As the quality of leadership increases, there are these effects on a L:
1. a L increases (where a L is the proportion of time the leader is available for handling leadership requirements) and
2. the a L goes up throughout theorganization due to experience (they get better at leadership practices).
Proposition 29: As the quality of leadership increases, there are more ripple-effect leadership practices.
Proposition 30: Improving the quality of leadership allows more selectivity in how the individual chooses to be involved in leadership practices.
Proposition 31: As the quality of leadership increases, so does the capacity for leadership.
Proposition 32: As dynamic complexity increases, so do the advantages of distributed leadership.
Proposition 33. LAMPE obtains if and only if the organization is holonomic.
Proposition 34. If there is dynamic congruency, LAMPE obtains in an organization.
Proposition 35. An organization works best if and only if it is holonomic.
Proposition 36. An organization
works best if LAMPE obtains.
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