Thinking Deeply About Relationships Between Leaders & Committees
Many of my Sundays are filled 50% with seemingly never-ending farm work and 50% with contemplative independent study on some topic that interests me for no other reason than basic curiosity. My Sunday routine in the latter is usually the same:
- Select a topic.
- Identify THREE diverse sources of likely insight from desperate bodies-of-knowledge.
- Read and think about each of the sources.
- Review tangential information, if necessary.
- Form an opinion or identify additional inquiry before forming an opinion.
Most Sunday intellectual endeavors go nowhere. Sometimes I think they are just an Alan-made excuse to relax with a good book or two. Nevertheless, I continue to do them.
Learnings and intellectual outputs from a few occasionally return later as a result of other “thinking endeavors”… and lead to yet another Sunday mission. But occasionally, a real and rare epiphany strikes. Virtually every article I have ever written and training course I have designed has evolved from this discipline.
On a recent Sunday, I was curious about true leadership characteristics, mainly because I am producing several conferences on this subject, and because I know a number of great leaders who never stop challenging my leadership-as-a-topic thinking. For resources, I selected these disparate sources:
Source #1 – Academic Leadership Research … A series of research reports written by the late Warren Bennis, describing “crucible events” that tend to form leadership characteristics.
Source #2 – Philosophy & Literature… “St. Thomas Aquinas” written by Gilbert Chesterton, a 19th century English writer, philosopher, modernist & lay theologian. In this plainly written book, Chesterton digs deeply into Thomas Aquinas as a leader who “listened broadly and decided narrowly.”
Source #3 – A Recognized Successful Business Leader… In his book, “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done,” Lawrence Bossidy described how GE’s Jack Welch (his former employer) forced realism into all of GE’s management processes, making it a model of an execution culture. This was a good reference because many years ago I consulted briefly at Allied Signal after Larry was hired (as CEO, President and eventually Chairman) to execute a global transformation of AlliedSignal. He often referred to consultants he engaged as his “loyal information butlers.” He was not shy about reminding us that our job was to serve up trusted, fact-based information and leave. His job was to make decisions with the trusted information, which he did. For the first time in my career, I experienced a larger-than-life leader who made tough decisions on complex matters without second questioning and self-doubt. Mr. Bossidy made tough decision-making look easy.
As I went into this layman’s intellectual weekend endeavor, I was biased toward finding answers, probably from Bossidy’s insights and probably because of my personal experience with him. And yet, when I was done, I realized that Bennis “the scholar” (source #1) and Bossidy “the executer” (source #3) had shared with me mostly what I had already learned about leadership. It was what Gilbert Chesterton (source #2) wrote that struck me the hardest (an epiphany of sorts). One important Chesterton quote summed up some important leadership guidance:
“I have searched all the parks in all the cities – and found no statues of Committees”
In many of his writings, he suggested that “decision-making-by-committee” is not leadership. It is an abdication of responsibilities, and no positive legacy would ever be forthcoming from such behavior. He supported this with examples from religious and political perspectives, reminding us that the purpose of committees in the leadership process is to be “loyal information butlers” (my addition while channeling Bossidy, to Chesterton’s words).
This is how committees serve… not by making enterprise impacting decisions, but by serving up credible, unbiased information to leaders who have the “strong shoulders” necessary to make tough decisions. And while diversity of “opinion” can provide different perspectives on the same issue, a perspective’s contribution is only valid if it is founded on truthful analysis and facts, be those technical, organizational, cultural or behavioral in nature. In other words, diversity of perspective is only valuable if it aids in finding and exposing the truth. This is probably why Jack Welch’s forced realism learned at GE became the keystone of Larry Bossidy’s highly successful global transformation of AlliedSignal.
Chesterton points out how strong shoulders derive from convictions of truth and credible information derives from convictions of integrity… which circularly derives from convictions of truth. Thus, all those who surround and “aid” a leader, are bound to the same convictions of the leader. They are bound by loyalty AND integrity AND truth. Anything less should demand the committee and/or aids’ removal.
Your thoughts?
Director Marketing and Communications and Owner at Happiness at Home Healthcare Inc.
2yServing in senior management for many years, and I agree with many of your conclusions. When it’s a strategic, high consequence decision, I relied on best information from my direct reports to support my decision making process. By not “budging” on my expection, my staff became talented at discerning fact / truth from fiction / feelings. The best fact based information available at that time is what I need to justify my decision. However there is a place for committees or team based decisions. I write this for 2 reasons: first, I wouldn’t waste my valuable time (or my managers) on some lower level decisions. Second, if you want your employees to take more ownership of work and stretch their skills, they need to make decisions, see their outcomes and grow the next generation of leaders. We need to create work environments where employees solve day to day problems for business. Otherwise an army of supervisors is required which isn’t usually productive or profitable in my experience. It is senior management responsibility to ensure people know at which level they are expected and should make decisions. It is a failure of management to let employees think everything is up for consensus or participative decision making.