The Search for Leadership

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When managers are called on to display leadership they do so in a particular environment. That environment is often toxic and difficult to penetrate. Leaders need to be able to navigate dirty waters. They also need to see that their job is to clean away the toxic garbage which the organisation - the system - surrounds their people with, rather than managing the people.

Moral: ‘Manage the fishtank, not the fish’.

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The Search for Leadership is a practical book that answers the question ‘how?’. How can we improve leadership in, of, by and for organisations – organisations in all sectors of business, economic, and political and public life?

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The organisation is not a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it. The organisation is an active player that has to contribute to leadership appropriately if it is to receive its due from managers. This explains why this book is as much about organisations (their needs, challenges and dynamics, and their infuriating flaws and neuroses), and the part they must play, as it is about leadership itself.

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2009 might seem like a year to look for heroic, archetypal leaders to lead us out of the fear and uncertainty wrought by depression, war, terror and climate change and into the high mountain pastures of peace, equality, fraternity and liberty. Or is it rather a year for even the most gifted leaders to invite us to consider and change the system?
As the world awaits redemption from President Obama, it also becomes clear that he can only be as good as the system that surrounds him - including the advisers, procedures, powers, planning mechanisms, policy bodies, laws, media, political climate and others' expectations.
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On every page there's room for you to leave your thoughts about the book and its themes. Please do.

Why leadership needs managing…

2010-07-13T05:25:00.001-07:00

Excerpts from an article by Bill Tate in Business Strategy Review Q2, 2010

“The belief that organisations are successful because their individual managers are successful holds a powerful attraction for companies. Their vast expenditure on individual-based leadership development programmes evidences their faith in the trickle-up theory. But that assumed cause-and-effect link was demolished by Enron’s collapse in 2001: high talent in wasn’t matched by what came out...

Concentrating development on the individual doesn’t take the organisation very far. It is what is going on around and between individuals that [matters]…

The infectious cult of the individual

In Western culture, the individual lies at the heart of the popular conception of organisations. The individual is taken to be the key unit most deserving of attention when seeking to raise effectiveness and productivity, whatever the level — job, company, sector or nation. This assumption has long been taken for granted in business and national planning; in fact, the human resources edifice is largely built on this hypothesis…

Recently, many highly regarded banks collapsed in spite of having hundreds of talented bankers. What failed was the glue that binds talented leaders to one another, to the purpose of the business, to goals other than financial, to the full range of stakeholders in society, to the long-term future and to needed improvement. This reality challenges the conventional view of leadership, what it means organisationally and how to get it. It suggests a systemic model of leadership is needed…

The old strategy of relying on strong and wise leaders doesn’t work with today’s complex adaptive systems…

Systems thinkers invite us to recognise the power of the system, one of which surrounds each of us in the workplace…

The challenge at the heart of systemic leadership can be phrased as a question: How can an organisation best understand, expand, release, promote, improve and apply leadership capability suited to its needs? The advice that flows from this is founded on the principle that leadership is a property of the organisation. It is one of its chief resources. As such, like any resource that needs optimising, leadership needs managing — however oxymoronic that may sound…”

Read the full article Think, Manage and Lead Systemically in Business Strategy Review (restricted/paid access)

2009-11-18T03:08:00.000-08:00

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Appendix 2

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The Nine Themes

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The Toolkit includes nine modules each with detailed usage guidelines and questionnaires designed for immediate use in your organisation.

Each module reflects one of the nine key themes from the book. They are:

Leadership and Management Development - How to make management development a more strategic activity that is better connected with the organisation's goals, needs and realities.

Leadership and Organisation Development - How to address the systemic issues that are beyond the reach of management development.

Leadership and Learning - Considering the learning and development-related options for your organisation.

Leadership and Competence - Getting to grips with leadership competencies and competency frameworks: what is useful in your organisation?

Leadership and Culture - Analysing (and changing) the corporate culture with organisational leadership in mind.

Leadership and Decline - How to approach organisational decay and rejuvenation from a leadership perspective.

Leadership and Systems - How to apply the language and ideas of Systems Thinking to organisational leadership.

Leadership and the Shadow - Addressing unofficial and non-rational systems and networks in your organisation. (You can read this section of the Toolkit in full here.)

Leadership and Accountability - Designing and implementing a suitable accountability process in your organisation.

Extracts from the Toolkit

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The Toolkit, which is designed to be run as a self-assessment audit in any organisation, has 9 modules - each reflecting one of 9 key themes from The Search for Leadership. The Toolkit and its self-assessment questionnaires are ideal for use by a small team. Team members don't all need to have read The Search for Leadership because there's a short introduction to each theme in the Toolkit - but we really recommend that one member of the team has got to grips with the book.

Scroll down to read the full text of Module 8: Leadership and the Shadow, including the introduction, questionnaires and advice. Or, if you're wondering what the Systemic Leadership Toolkit feels like to use, here's a selection of the kind of questions you'll find in each module. They're taken from two different modules (on culture and accountability) and won't make sense on their own. But you get an idea of the kind of topics the self-assessment team will be discussing.

Each question is designed to be scored as follows:

How well do these statements describe your organisation? Rate each one on a scale of 0 - 3, where 0 = not at all/untrue and 3 = very well/true.

From: Module 5: Leadership and Culture

5.12.... There is plenty of scope for managers to be involved in corporate leadership issues that lie beyond their own formal job.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

5.15.... Your organisation has no ostentatious symbols of hierarchical authority.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

5.21.... Among your managers there is a stronger feeling of empowerment than of disempowerment.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

5.47.... Your leadership culture is serving the long-term needs of the business and its internal organisation.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

From: Module 9: Leadership and Accountability

9.4.... In your organisation there is an expectation among managers that they will be formally required to account for those things that matter most.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

9.13.... In your organisation your senior managers' leadership performance is considered separately from their management performance.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

9.17.... It is clear with whom the main responsibility lies for monitoring and advising on the system's health, design, functioning and improvement.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3
What is that official's position? (Write in) ...........................................................................................................................

9.31.... Your performance review process includes discussion about the functioning of the system in the wider organisation.
Don't Know ....................0........................1..........................2......................3

To see the full text of Module 8: Leadership and the Shadow follow the link below. In this section Bill Tate explores the non-rational side of the organisation and the 'unofficial system':

Read Module 8: Leadership and the Shadow

Order your copy of the Toolkit here.

From systemic failure to systemic leadership

2009-05-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

Reflections by Bill Tate - May 2009

Systemic leadership changes everything. Once you get into the habit of taking a systemic perspective, you begin to observe leadership with a new focus. In the systemic model, leadership is a property of the organisation, not of the people inside it. Instead of viewing the organisation as a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it, the organisation becomes an active player that has to contribute to leadership if it is to receive its due from managers. The connection between leadership and its host is symbiotic, with the organisation proving a vital partner both to leadership and improvement.

The majority of management programmes and development courses are built on the belief that good leadership is a quality that is demonstrated by talented individuals. Consequently, the traditional model for improving leadership is to solve perceived gaps in performance by sending managers to be trained. But in this model, little or no attention is paid to the systems within which these managers have to function day-by-day. Workplaces can be fear-ridden, unsupportive or bureaucratic – not because they are full of nasty or officious individuals, but because over time the organisation-wide systems and processes have resulted in the creation of a toxic environment. Once inside such environments, the leaders and managers may get so used to the leadership culture that they lose sight of its shortcomings, rather than being able to see clearly what is needed to improve it. Any training that is conducted away from this problematic environment will ultimately be ineffective: once they are returned to it and its daily pressures, those managers will revert to type.

Why do we cling to such a dysfunctional model? The answer is that, over a long period of time, the idea has taken hold that we live in an individual economy (to quote the management writer Simon Caulkin). Organisations are assumed to succeed because individuals succeed, and fail if individuals fail. But this notion is false. Take the global banking crisis. The banks didn’t suddenly collapse as a result of individual leaders’ lack of skills or poor behaviour; it was the dynamics of the banking system that played the major part. The fact is that we live in an organisational economy. Businesses, trade and society work (or fail) because of the way organisations operate as systems in delivering outcomes: products and services. Individuals and their skills are just one input to this end. What matters is the way the organisation glues those individual contributions together – how it binds people in meaningful and purposeful relationships with one another and with the organisation’s needs. And that comes from what organisations surround people with.

When Systems Thinking is applied to the study and practice of leadership, it becomes clear that the system fails leaders as much as leaders fail the system. Just look at the current UK parliamentary expenses fiasco. Blaming individual MPs and demanding honesty and repayment may be an understandable reaction, but it doesn’t solve the problem. There is a flawed system running in the background that surrounds the MPs. This system includes past norms, expectations, peer pressure (to be restrained, as well as to keep up with the Joneses), accountability structure, secrecy/transparency, parliamentary officials and committees, auditors, frozen salaries and perceived basic pay injustice, etc.

Displaying leadership – including moral leadership – isn’t easy in a quagmire. If we want to improve people’s behaviour in an organisation we need to examine the system and look at what people are surrounded with. Leaders often create their own mess, or fail to notice that entropy is doing it for them. And they often have to clean up the mess themselves. But most leaders are part of the system; they do not have the luxury of watching comfortably from the outside.

The language of systemic leadership is slowly but surely becoming part of the public vocabulary. ‘Systemic failure’ is increasingly cited in public reports and investigations, including those in response to Hurricane Katrina, deaths caused by poorly equipped military forces and the global financial crisis. There is less and less confusion between the terms ‘systemic’ and ‘systematic’. And while, in the wake of tragedy or scandal, the burden of accountability all-too-often still falls on the shoulders of individuals, the public is fast becoming wary of the practice of scapegoating. We are starting to notice when attempts are made to divert our attention from more serious and entrenched errors.

In any kind of management, leadership or development role, a sophisticated understanding of how organisations work as systems is vital. Systems Thinking offers explanations of failure – whether it is personal, collective or of a whole organisation system. But this is just the first step. In fact, this is the easy bit. Those who have got this far often know little of what to do next with their newfound understanding and vocabulary, beyond mouthing the mantra that ‘lessons will be learned’. The crucial next step is in how they respond. Those fondly quoted ‘lessons’ are rarely learned because the response is not systemic. You can’t fix systemic problems with old-style leadership, with its top-down approach consisting of edicts, targets, incentives, punishments and training. Leadership of the system is called for.

Systemic leadership changes everything.

The benefits and practical implications of taking a systemic approach to leadership are discussed fully in The Search for Leadership: An Organisational Perspective

2009-05-27T05:45:00.001-07:00

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The organisation is not a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it. The organisation is an active player that has to contribute to leadership appropriately if it is to receive its due from managers. This explains why this book is as much about organisations (their needs, challenges and dynamics, and their infuriating flaws and neuroses), and the part they must play, as it is about leadership itself.

=============

2009 might seem like a year to look for heroic, archetypal leaders to lead us out of the fear and uncertainty wrought by depression, war, terror and climate change and into the high mountain pastures of peace, equality, fraternity and liberty. Or is it rather a year for even the most gifted leaders to invite us to consider and change the system?
As the world awaits redemption from President Obama, it also becomes clear that he can only be as good as the system that surrounds him - including the advisers, procedures, powers, planning mechanisms, policy bodies, laws, media, political climate and others' expectations.

=============

On every page there's room for you to leave your thoughts about the book and its themes. Please do.

2009-05-27T05:43:00.001-07:00

Discourse about organisations is littered with leadership theories, models and paradigms that focus – not unreasonably you might think – on the qualities, traits, skills and habits exhibited by individual leaders. Even the frontrunners of leadership thinking – Bennis and Kotter in particular – still talk about leadership as if the organisation in which the leader operates were largely peripheral.

It's as if historians were still talking about the character of Robespierre and Danton and hadn't yet begun to notice the importance of hunger, rationalism, unemployment and housing in fomenting the French revolution.

Until now, only Peter Senge has really confronted the systemic aspects of leadership, and he has moved on into the Elysian Fields of Presencing and Theory U.

Finally, Bill Tate has written the defining book on organisational leadership. Called The Search for Leadership, it seeks to reintegrate the organisation into the debate, downplay the personality of the leader and reopen the discussion about what leadership actually means for any organisation in a networked economy.

Read an article on Systemic Leadership by Bill Tate
Read a sample chapter from The Search for Leadership
Order The Search for Leadership (hardback, paperback and e-book editions available).

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A Short History of Leadership Thinking

Modern theorising about leadership began with the Great Man theory and theories based on leadership traits. It was most notably developed by Kurt Lewin with his thinking on leadership styles (best discussed by John Miner in:

Miner, J: 'Organizational Behavior: Behavior 1: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership)

Blanchard and Hersey's Situational Leadership model sounds as if it gives more value to context. In fact, it principally suggests that individual leaders should adopt different leadership styles depending on the context – a different idea altogether. Victor Vroom's Expectancy Theory was developed from this model and also focuses on the skills of the individual leader. See:

Hersey, P and Blanchard, K: Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources (8th Edition)

Vroom, V and Jago, A: The new leadership: managing participation in organizations

Richard Hackman and others have developed the theory of Functional Leadership, but this again focuses on the role of individual leaders and groups of leaders, although it stresses the different types of leadership behaviour that can emerge in different situations. It identifies the tools by which leaders can become more effective and extract improved performance from others.

Hackman's latest contribution is:

Wageman, R, Nunes, D, Burruss, J and Hackman, JR: Senior Leadership Teams: What it Takes to Make Them Great

Contingency Theory suggests, again, that the "Great Man's" capacity to lead is constrained by a range of factors, but these mainly include the leader's preferred style and the ability of followers.

John Kotter, one of the two modern gurus of leadership has long stressed the differences between managing and leadership. His underlying argument appears to be guided by awareness of the surrounding organisational system and he says that leaders need to live comfortably in a 'web of relationships'. But these relationships are used to formulate and communicate a vision to 'inspire and control'. Once again, the message is about individual leaders (albeit lots of them in any organisation) becoming more effective. Kotter's latest book has his name (and middle initial) in the title – a mark of his celebrity status:

Kotter, J: John P Kotter on What Leaders Really Do

Kotter's rival, Warren Bennis, known as the 'dean of leadership thinking' (which makes academics sound like gangsters), likewise teaches leaders how to maximize their virtues, correct their faults, face change successfully, and love their work. (Actually that sounds more like St Paul than a gangster.) Once more, this is a resolutely leader-focused version of leadership:

Bennis, W: Why Leaders Can't Lead

Around 2002, Peter Senge became the first organisational theorist to talk at length about 'systemic leadership, but, as his interest in Presencing and the Fifth Discipline thinking developed, he rather left this notion behind. Now Bill Tate has revived the discussion with a masterly book about the theory and practice of Systemic Leadership.

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The Search for Leadership is a comprehensive study of the way leadership operates in organisations. The book is split into two parts:

The Thinking Challenge offers the kind of detailed analysis of the problem that will be welcomed by researchers, lecturers and students in universities and business schools everywhere.

The more practical Intervention Challenge tackles each aspect of leadership on a theme-by-theme basis and is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to improve leadership in an organisation or studying the process by which leadership is engendered and disseminated without and across the organisation.

It provides an in-depth focus on current leadership issues, from discussing the purpose of leading versus managing, through learning the language of Systems Thinking and developing a leadership culture, to exploring a range of processes by which leadership can be held to account.

This eye-opening account of the leadership challenges organisations face will change forever the way you think about leadership and help improve the way any organisation is run.

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Click here to read reviews of the book by Professor Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School, Professor John Storey, The Open University Business School and Professor W. Warner Burke, Columbia University, NY - and many others.

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About the Author

William Tate MA, FCIPD, MCMI, FRSA has a rare combination of practical and academic experience of leadership issues. He is a consultant, writer, researcher, lecturer and speaker in leadership; organisation development; the shadow side; change and learning; innovation and corporate social responsibility. Click here for more details.

Read an article on Systemic Leadership by Bill Tate
Read a sample chapter from The Search for Leadership
Order The Search for Leadership (hardback, paperback and e-book editions available).

Thinking

2009-05-26T07:04:00.000-07:00

Only Peter Senge has really confronted the systemic aspects of leadership, and he has moved into the Elysian Fields of Presencing and Theory U.

Until now.

Bill Tate has finally written the defining book on organisational leadership – seeking to reintegrate the organisation into the debate, downplay the personality of the leader and reopen the discussion about what leadership actually means for any organisation in a networked economy.

Read a sample chapter
Buy the book (hardback, paperback and e-book editions available).

========================

A Short History of Leadership Thinking

Miner, J: 'Organizational Behavior: Behavior 1: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership)

Hersey, P and Blanchard, K: Management of Organizational Behavior: Leading Human Resources (8th Edition)

Vroom, V and Jago, A: The new leadership: managing participation in organizations

Hackman's latest contribution is:

Wageman, R, Nunes, D, Burruss, J and Hackman, JR: Senior Leadership Teams: What it Takes to Make Them Great

Contingency Theory suggests, again, that the "Great Man's" capacity to lead is constrained by a range of factors, but these mainly include the leader's preferred style and the ability of followers.

Kotter, J: John P Kotter on What Leaders Really Do

Kotter's rival, Warren Bennis, known as the 'dean of leadership thinking', like wise teaches leaders how to maximize their virtues, correct their faults, face change successfully, and love their work. A resolutely leader-focused version of leadership:

Bennis, W: Why Leaders Can't Lead

Around 2002, Peter Senge became the first organisational theorist to talk at length about 'systemic leadership, but, as his interest in Presencing and Fifth Discipline thinking developed, he rather left this notion behind. Now Bill Tate has revived the discussion with a masterly book about the theory and practice of Systemic Leadership.

========================

The Search for Leadership is a comprehensive study of the way leadership operates in organisations. The book is split into two parts:

The Thinking Challenge offers the kind of detailed analysis of the problem that will be welcomed by researchers, lecturers and students in universities and business schools everywhere.

This eye-opening account of the leadership challenges organisations face will change forever the way you think about leadership and help improve the way any organisation is run.

========================

About the Author

William Tate MA, FCIPD, MCMI, FRSA has a rare combination of practical and academic experience of leadership issues. He is a consultant, writer, researcher, lecturer and speaker in leadership; organisation development; the shadow side; change and learning; innovation and corporate social responsibility. Click here for more details.

Read a sample chapter
Buy the book (hardback, paperback and e-book editions available).

From Systemic Failure to Systemic Leadership

2009-05-19T12:10:00.000-07:00

In this article written just before the book's publication, author Bill Tate examines our reactions to the systemic failings witnessed in a number of recent and current UK news stories:

MPs' expenses
the killing of Baby Peter
the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes by the Metropolitan Police.

They provide a timely backdrop to his incisive analysis of the problems that underpin our current approach to leadership in organisations.

And they highlight the need for a new approach, which he explains lucidly in his new book.

To see the document full screen, click on the rectangle icon which is top right in the box below. Click the X as usual to revert to normal viewing.

Buy the book

2009-05-06T03:44:00.000-07:00

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This being World 2.0, The Search for Leadership is available in several different formats and can be bought in several different ways.

Book

To buy the paperback for £25 + postage (Saving £3 on the published price) click here.
Customers outside the UK will be billed in their currency at the current exchange rate. The book will be shipped from the nearest print point (normally USA or UK).

To buy the hardback for £35 + postage (Saving £5 on the published price), click here.
Terms as above.To buy the downloadable e-book for £40 (you can read, search and print the book on your own computer) click here.
Terms as above.

To buy the read-only e-book for £10 (you can read the book at our website but cannot download, search or print it) click here.
Terms as above.

Toolkit

To buy the printed edition for £55 including postage click here.
Customers outside the UK will be billed in their currency at the current exchange rate. The book will be shipped from the nearest print point (normally USA or UK).

To buy the downloadable e-book for £95 (you can read, search and print the book on your own computer) click here.

To buy the read-only e-book for £18 (you can read the book at our website but cannot download, search or print it) click here.
Terms as above.

Systems Thinking and Leadership

2009-05-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

Traditionally, the mantra has been: ‘If you want leadership, look for a leader’.
Bill Tate’s response is: ‘Look inside the organisation first to find out what is happening’.

Although there’s been a long-running debate about whether leadership can be taught, most people would say we know good leadership when we see it. Well, it turns out we were wrong.

In what is destined to become the new leadership ‘bible’, leadership guru Bill Tate uses a Systems Thinking perspective to take us back to basics to examine our assumptions about leadership and organisations. As elegantly as a fishmonger filleting a Dover sole, he exposes a number of key misconceptions:

Separate leadership from leaders

Although it is now generally accepted that leadership is not tied to elites or authority, it is still often associated with a senior management position and hierarchical thinking.

Bill reminds us that most leaders spend only a little of their time leading and that leadership can be a vital aspect of people’s jobs anywhere in the organisation.

Separate leadership from people

Even spreading the job of leadership around more widely, still leaves the focus of leadership on individuals.

Bill asks us to put that deeply ingrained approach to one side, and think in a radically different way. He sees leadership activity as grounded not in the individual but in the organisation. He calls this approach systemic leadership and defines it as follows:

“Improving the way an organisation is led, based on understanding the organisation as a system, focused on the interdependency between leadership and the organisation, concerning how leadership is applied, managed and developed.”

Separate leadership from development

When an organisation identifies a need for ‘stronger leadership’, the first thing to emerge is always an agenda for developing people.

Drawing on his long experience, first as head of HR Strategy at British Airways and then as a consultant, Bill shows how the usual defective thinking about leadership and people has infected the way organisations think about improving leadership.

The discussion, he says, typically starts with ‘Let’s have a leadership development programme’. Instead, it needs to begin with a process of questioning the organisation’s needs and goals.

Separate development from improvement

Conventional thinking means that leadership can safely be left for individual managers to sort out and for HR to develop. Collapsing the leadership agenda into personal development is where the quest for improved leadership in organisations starts to go wrong.

Bill invites us to shift from a ‘development’ to an ‘improvement’ perspective. Asking the question ‘How can we improve leadership in this organisation?’ opens the door to a wider variety of interventions and a wider range of targets for improvement action.

Separate the organisation from the business

The word ‘organisation’ glosses over an important distinction between the business and the organisation. The business is essentially outwardly focused and profit driven. A company’s business model answers the question ‘How will this company make money out of what it is doing?’. By contrast, the organisation is the set of internal arrangements at the service of the business.

Bill insists that a clear distinction must be made between the two before leadership can be properly considered.

Separate the organisation from its people

If the business is to receive the leadership it needs, the organisation has to provide more than a context.

Bill asks us to see the organisation not as a passive vessel waiting to have leadership poured into it but as an active player that has to contribute to leadership if it is to receive its due from managers. The connection between leadership and its host is symbiotic, with the organisation proving a vital partner both to leadership and improvement, and to making use of leadership action delivered by managers.

2009-04-09T02:47:00.000-07:00

Below are the Table of Contents and the full text of Chapter 2 of The Search for Leadership, courtesy of scribd.com.

To see either document full screen, click on the black and white rectangle icon which is top right in the box below. Click on it again to revert to normal viewing.

If you find either document difficult to read in full screen view, click on <More> then <View Mode> and then <List Mode>. You can then scroll through a standard pdf.

The Key Points

2009-03-05T15:45:00.000-08:00

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Here are just some of the points that Bill Tate makes in The Search for Leadership. If you agree with most or all of them, you'll love the book. If this seems like completely new thinking, you should definitely read it (and use the Toolkit to implement the approach in your organisation). If it all seems like common sense and you've been doing it for years, please talk to us about your experiences - or write us a case study!
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Leadership is not the sole preserve of those who are designated ‘leaders’. It is one part of every manager’s job at appropriate times.

Leadership never happens in a vacuum. It becomes possible in a specific organisational context and is largely shaped by that larger context.

The prime purpose of leadership and its main value to a business is to ensure that the organisation continually improves and changes to ensure that the business has a secure future.

Lists of competencies that distinguish between managing and leading will not, on their own, ensure that managers will choose the leadership option or know when or to what to apply it.

Leadership is an organisational resource. It needs to be managed.

The need to manage the process of leadership is separate from the need to manage the people who lead.

Individual managers’ learning and development is important, but organisations can take too much responsibility for planning and managing it, while correspondingly showing too little interest in the organisation’s development.

While managers should be personally competent as leaders, the use of leadership competency frameworks for individual managers achieves next to nothing in terms of organisational/systemic leadership.

Competency frameworks assume that once managers know how (‘doing things right’), they’ll make sound choices about what (‘doing right things’). But organisations are full of people doing the wrong things competently.

The notion of a more distributed leadership culture throughout the organisation is fundamental if organisations are to tap into front-line experience and generate energy for change.

All organisations are continually engaged in a cycle of decay and increasing disorder, usually followed by rejuvenation and order which may be brought about through the exercise of leadership.

Reduced openness and discussibility, and a growing number of taboo subjects, are signs of an organisation’s increasing toxicity.

Don’t confuse effectiveness with success. Identify and choose effective leaders as role models.

In order to better understand and improve organisations, work and leadership, it helps to adopt a systems way of thinking about how the various aspects of the organisation come together, interact and work as one.

When a leadership problem arises, ask ‘Might we be overlooking a systems dimension?’

Organisations are not rational places. Besides their formal/official side, organisations have a more potent non-rational side – messy, crazy and sometimes dark, casting a shadow – which can be, and needs to be, recognised, understood and managed.

Awareness of, and respect for, the shadow system’s contribution and power is essential for effective leadership, especially in the context of change. A healthy scepticism for the rational system’s relative impotence (e.g. the futility of relying on edicts) is also a prerequisite of effective leadership, and avoidance of hubris and naivety.

For an organisation to be vital, innovative, flexible and changing, it needs to be held at a point that is just stable – not ossified but not anarchic – at a point known as ‘the edge of chaos’.

To put flesh on this skeleton, read The Search for Leadership. To start applying these principles in your organisation, have a look at the Toolkit.

The Reviews

2009-03-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

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From Jim Stroup's review on Managing Leadership:

"Tate asks with disciplined focus what, precisely, leadership in organizations is intended to serve, and how we are to make sure that it does so...

He is especially concerned with the problem of leadership development as it is typically conceived and undertaken in contemporary organizations. He insists that it must not be allowed to continue as a patchwork of personal improvement modules pursued independently of the needs of the outfit.

The first step in the creation of such programs, he laments, is ordinarily an almost eerie disassociation from the organization’s needs. Rather, developers turn earnestly but disconnectedly to the assemblage of boilerplate individual leadership components. He argues repeatedly that such programs should begin not with a discussion of what the attendees may need, but of what the organization needs from the leadership it wishes to generate and benefit from in its strategic and operational efforts.

...At bottom, he rightly makes a strong case for the view that leadership is, at the very least, inferior to the organization. And he does so in an engaging, readable manner, reinforced with vivid expression and memorable metaphors. This book represents an important full forward step in the right direction toward an effective understanding of leadership – and how to rein it in."
Read the review in full.

William Tate has written a comprehensive assessment of the leadership debate and, in a congested arena, found space for a different way of understanding leadership from which new applications can be developed. He asks the critical question, "How does the system work to deliver leadership and ... take advantage of it?"

After a testing review of the conventional approaches to leadership, in the second half of the book he tests his proposition by assessing his systemic approach against key criteria. The book deals with an unclear subject with great clarity and contains many practical measures for the practitioner in addition to a thorough analysis of the subject of leadership.
Keith Cameron
HR Director, Marks & Spencer plc, (2004-2008)

Leading change has become the mantra of the moment, and Tate’s book is a timely and highly significant contribution towards our thinking about the interactions between an organisation and leadership, and how each influences the other in an open systems model. His work is thoughtful, clear and highly practical.
Professor W. Warner Burke
Edward Lee Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education
Columbia University, New York

In his fascinating new book Bill Tate offers a fresh perspective for thinking and talking about leadership in organisations, looking beyond individual leadership development to the systemic development of leadership, equipping organisations as systems to use leadership to continuously change and adapt. Full of practical tips and insights, this is a ‘must read’ book for any leadership or organisational development practitioner who wants to make a difference to business success.
Linda Holbeche
Director of Research and Policy, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, UK

This is a refreshing, insightful and above all, useful book on leadership in organisational contexts. It is a pleasure to read and it offers a practical road map for understanding and improving organisations and the way they are led.
John Storey
Professor of Management, The Open University Business School, UK

Organisations spend a fortune developing leaders, most focusing on the individual rather than the organisation. Without addressing leadership as a fundamental part of the organisation the organisation will never progress. Bill Tate proposes that the organisation must address leadership as a corporate responsibility. Organisations that value leadership flourish, but to achieve this all the various levels of management must embrace leadership, with systems and processes that support the ethos.
Dr Richard Cullen
former Director of Training and Development, Metropolitan Police Service, London

Seeing leadership from the organisational rather than the individual dimension makes obvious sense - you can train individual swimmers to perfection but put them in a swamp and the dynamic changes completely. In this book, Bill Tate rightly re-focuses the lens onto the organisation itself in a series of simple, clear and relevant examples. As someone who has used the diagnostic Organisational Leadership Audit, I believe this offers insights that simply cannot be achieved in other ways; you might have gut feelings, but do you have the evidence? The first step is, however, for the leadership to look at itself and realise what its organisation needs. This book is that first step.
Air Vice-Marshal Jon Lamonte
Royal Air Force

Bill's insights into systems leadership enables developers to move beyond short-term operational needs and pressures. The book provides the language and rational argument that will enable the kind of strategic conversations with your executive to transform the way that leadership is developed in organisations. Let's stop polishing the fish and tackle the dirty tank instead!
Karen McKenzie-Irvine
VP Learning & Development, Metronet Rail

Our work in the Management Lab at London Business School calls for nothing less than wholesale reinvention of how to run companies. Bill's latest book makes a valuable, timely and highly practical contribution to that debate. The travails in the financial sector show how urgent and deep the need is. His forthright, informed and practical style shows organisations how to assess their system's leadership needs and how to go about getting them met using a systemic perspective. The financial crisis in Britain's and western economy brings into sharp relief how badly broken are our models of management and leadership. Bill's bold model shows how a systemic approach sheds light in some dark corners that are badly in need of illumination and improvement.
Julian Birkinshaw
Professor of Strategic and International Management, London Business School

Bill Tate has produced a book to challenge both orthodox thinking on leadership, and shift the focus to the organisation. He cleverly mixes generic concepts with case studies and real experience, in a blend of the commercial and public sectors. There is also a neat diagnostic tool to ensure engagement with the approach articulated. This book is a valuable addition to the corpus of leadership doctrine.
Robin Field-Smith
Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, London

Much has been written about personal leadership, but until now very little about leadership’s organisational purpose. William Tate offers a journey of discovery, looking through the other end of the telescope and focusing on what leadership should really be about – engaging directly with the organisation’s needs. Tate’s book de-mystifies the complexity and theory of leadership in a practical and systematic way, enabling the reader to appreciate the strong inter-dependency between the leadership process and organisations looking for wholesale improvement. This ground-breaking work should be read by all who are interested in improving the way their organisation works and how it is led.
Richard Crouch
Head of Human Resources and Organisational Development, Somerset County Council, Taunton

Triarchy Press

2009-03-05T10:48:00.003-08:00

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Driving in France - or cycling or walking, come to that - you will soon see that Renault a choisi Elf, while Total and Peugeot have quite different, but clear, preferences.

Bill Tate is the latest in a lengthening line of distinguished authors who have chosen Triarchy Press and whom Triarchy are proud to publish.

They include Systems Thinkers like Professors Russ Ackoff and John Seddon - the first known as the scourge of Business Schools and conventional management wisdom; the second known as the scourge of targets, standards and blinkered thinking in government and business.

If you've got an hour or two, there's a fantastic free video of Ackoff talking here. His book Management f-Laws (written with Herb Addison and Sally Bibb) can be previewed here (free pdf download from Triarchy) and there's much more here (Management f-Laws website). You can buy the book here (for £18 + postage).

John Seddon frightens government ministers. Here's why (reviews of his latest book). You can buy the book here (for £20 + postage).

Triarchy authors also include breakthrough thinkers like Michael Thompson (doyen of Cultural Theory) and Gerard Fairtlough (doyen of Triarchy Theory - after which our publishing house is named).

Michael Thompson talks to Matthew Taylor of the RSA here (RSA video). His book's here (Triarchy bookshop).
There's an e-book summary of Gerard's work on Triarchy here (pdf download from the Triarchy site).

Not to overlook award-winning writers like Sally Bibb, radical legal thinkers determined to change the system (like Edward Lloyd-Jones), organisational anthropologists like Andrew Jones - determined to understand what it is that makes innovation happen - and many others.

If you're writing a ground-breaking book on how organisations work (including issues like leadership, innovation, complexity, wisdom, myth, teams and systems thinking) please get in touch.

If you're not, but you'd like to read one, we have all sorts of books, pamphlets and articles online and free for you to read - as well as proper printed books to buy.

To get on our mailing list and find out what we're publishing next, please visit our main website, and enter your details in the small but enticing box entitled "Sign up for FREE email updates".

Leadership in Context

2009-03-05T10:48:00.001-08:00

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The Search for Leadership offers a radically new way of thinking about leadership in organisations.

Just as the whole study of history changed when we stopped talking just about Kings, Queens, Popes and Generals and started talking about ordinary people in a broader context (families, communities, food, illness, work, etc.) - so the study of organisations changes radically when we stop talking about individual leaders and focus on leading as a whole.

In the book and the associated self-assessment toolkit, Bill Tate does three things:

He offers a radical change of perspective about leadership and organisations stressing their interdependence.
He proposes a new way of intervening in organisations to bring about improvement in both leadership and in the organisation.
He describes what managers and whole organisations are doing as 'actors' when using this approach.

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See what people are saying about the book:

...a timely and highly significant contribution... thoughtful, clear and highly practical. Read more
Professor W. Warner Burke, Columbia University

...a ‘must read’ book for any leadership or organisational development practitioner... Read more
Linda Holbeche, Director of Research and Policy, CIPD

The book deals with an unclear subject with great clarity and contains many practical measures for the practitioner in addition to a thorough analysis of the subject of leadership. Read more
Keith Cameron, HR Director, Marks & Spencer plc, (2004-2008)

...a practical road map for understanding and improving organisations and the way they are led. Read more
Professor John Storey, The Open University Business School

Let's stop polishing the fish and tackle the dirty tank instead! Read more
Karen McKenzie-Irvine, VP Learning & Development, Metronet Rail

Bill's bold model shows how a systemic approach sheds light in some dark corners that are badly in need of illumination and improvement. Read more
Professor Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School

This ground-breaking work should be read by all who are interested in improving the way their organisation works and how it is led. Read more
Richard Crouch, Head of HR and OD, Somerset County Council
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Go here to see some of the key points Bill makes about organisational leadership.

Go here to read more about the Systems Thinking approach to leadership.

Go here to read other reviews of the book.

Go here to read a sample chapter from The Search for Leadership.

Go here to read Bill's article From Systemic Failure to Systemic Leadership

Go here to hear a podcast of Bill's interview with Wayne Turmel at Management Issues

The Toolkit

2009-03-05T10:32:00.002-08:00

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The Systemic Leadership Toolkit is a practical resource that is closely based on The Search for Leadership. It comes as an A4 paperback and contains 3 things:

A full set of self-assessment questionnaires that you can (and should) be using in your organisation. Getting answers to these questions will help you work out how your organisation thinks about leadership - what it does well and what it does poorly. However well you think you know your organisation, the answers will probably surprise you.
Detailed information on how to interpret the questionnaire results and suggestions and advice on what and how to change. This is a complete implementation guide.
A brief introduction to Systemic Leadership (so Toolkit users don't all need to read The Search for Leadership - though it'll be very difficult to use the Toolkit unless one of you has read the book).

Click here to see a selection of sample questions from the Toolkit and to read the full text of Module 8: Leadership and the Shadow.

Click here to see Appendix 2 from the Toolkit: Advice for Systemic Leadership Developers, Consultants and Coaches.

The Toolkit is designed for management teams needing to improve their organisation's leadership. Group size varies from small senior executive teams up to groups of 100 managers, guided and facilitated as required. To help with this, we offer big discounts (50%) when you order more than two copies. [Enter promotion code SL50 when you order online from our website and you'll receive a 50% discount on your third and subsequent copies of the Toolkit. Or call +44 (0)1297 631456. Or e-mail us.]

William Tate

2009-03-05T06:58:00.000-08:00

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Bill Tate is a consultant, writer, researcher, teacher and speaker in leadership, organisation development, the shadow side, change and learning, innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR). He runs the independent consulting practice Prometheus Consulting and is also a director of Conduct Becoming, a CSR consultancy.

Bill's long career at British Airways included responsibility for management training and for human resource strategy and planning. He was part of a small team involved in the airline’s privatisation and culture-change programme, where he worked alongside Professor W. Warner Burke of Columbia University, New York. He studied organisation psychology with Professor Gerard Egan in Chicago.

Bill is a prolific writer, having authored six earlier books and many magazine and journal articles, plus researching papers for The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership, and the Centre for Tomorrow’s Company. He has taught Strategic HRM and Corporate Social Responsibility at London’s City University Cass Business School on its Executive MBA Programme.

Amongst Bill's other publications are two organisational self-assessment audits published by Triarchy's sister company Cambridge Strategy Publications. The Business Innovation Audit can be read in full, online for £20 here and you can order a paper copy here for £90. The Organisation Shadow-Side Audit can be read in full, online for £20 here and you can order a paper copy here, also for £90.

Read the author's blog
Visit the Prometheus Consulting website
Visit the author's Systemic Leadership website
Visit the Cambridge Strategy website for details of all their organisational self-assessments
E-mail Bill Tate