A633.6.5.RB_MedinaM.

After considering all of this week’s reading assignments and the exercises with upward and downward leadership, I can say with certainty that my organization is following “The typical vicious circle for leaders” on page 152 (Obolensky, 2010). This cycle has been happening in the organization since before I was hired back in the summer of 2008. During my first years of hire, I was told that this was the typical way of conducing business where: “Followers ask for advice (which demonstrates low skill to the leader) followed by the leader getting concerned. The leader then takes a more hands on approach followed by the follower’s confidence lowers. This then causes the follower to think he or she has to defer more to the leader, which turns to the follower asking for more advice demonstrating to the leader a low skill level” and the cycle once again continues (Obolensky, 2010).

Now that I have learned more with the MSLD program, I see that this is not the correct way for any organization or leader to conduct business. Handling or conducting business in this type of way just causes more confusion, employee exhaustion, and stress on everyone. Imagine if more than one leader was conducting business in this type of way. This type of leadership just causes the entire organization to act or react slow to changes in this new, faster, always changing business environment. This vicious cycle causes the leader to focus more on the small details of the organization rather than the bigger picture. Meaning, the leader now focuses on the details of each day-to-day tasks rather than on the overall completion of weekly and monthly tasks. For example, in my organization it would be leader focusing on the small cleaning details of the store rather than dealing with departmental issues such as machines breaking down, employee exhaustion or the next ordering of product. Overall, this will cause the organization to lose focus on what is happening around them (competition), on the organization’s strategy, goals, objectives, which in turn will cause the leaders of the organization to act slower and adapt later to the changing conditions of the environment. Ultimately, it can cause the organization its business.

Unfortunately, since I have not had much experience with management, I can only apply what I have learned in the MSLD program to the next organization. Therefore, creating a new cycle that would promote strong followership and even leadership at the lower levels in my past organization would require involvement from all levels of the organization. In my opinion, the best option that could start helping the organization by promoting followership and even leadership in lower levels would be the Level 5 Followership. The levels are as follow:

Level 1: Wait to be told – this is where individuals just sit back and wait to be told what to do next

Level 2: Ask to be told: - In this level, individuals go up to the leader and ask what to do next. (Both of these first levels are unacceptable)

Level 3: Seek approval for a recommendation – This is the level where individuals are unsure what to do and has an idea, but seeks approval from the leader before acting.

Level 4: Seek approval for action undertaken – In this level, individuals have taken action but are unsure if the action taken is the correct one and therefore, seek approval from the leader

Level 5: Gets on and informs in a routine way – This is the best level for any follower and leader to be working on. In this level, the follower informs the leader routinely the action taken (Obolensky, 2010).

Leaders within the organization must realize that the lowest acceptable level of followership should be level 3. If individuals are working in any other lower levels then the confidence of the individual should be built up over time in order to create the support needed for the next higher level of followership. In my opinion, in my organization followers lack some of the skills but majority of the employees lack the will. Since skill/will and Level 5 Followership go hand in hand, I believe that using Level 5 Followership will be most effective in order to build both skill/will and followership at the same time. Obolensky uses the following phrases in order to help leaders respond to a certain level of followership in hopes of building the trust, comfort, skill/will, knowledge, and in response the followership of the follower for the next level.

Possible responses to:

Level 1 – “Why did you not come and see me?” or “Ask me next time!”

Level 2 – “What would you suggest?” or “Go away and find out the options”

Level 3 – “Why are you asking?” or “Next time just do it and let me know!”

Level 4 – “Why are you telling me?” or “Next time just include it in the report/meeting” which builds to the Level 5 followership (Obolensky, 2010).

By leaders just starting out with these small simple steps, the entire organization can benefit from this now greater pool of knowledge that is educating and gaining at the same time. The biggest benefit for the organization is that these simple steps do not involve any financial backing. This will actually help the organization by being more effective with customers, which means more sales for the organization. The next biggest benefit that management will gain is the freer schedule of the supervisors, which means that supervisors will now be able to focus on departmental needs by keeping the strategy, goals and objectives of the organization in mind. Supervisors will now be more focused on the bigger picture of the organization.

Reference:

Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex adaptive leadership embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.

A633.5.3.RB_MedinaM.

The objective of Obolensky’s game on the video “Who needs leaders” is for leaders to reflect on complexity and chaos theory. The underlying understanding of how chaos theory works “is that the more complex the situation and task, the less directive traditional leadership is needed” (Obolensky, 2010). Reflecting on the overall exercise of the video, I can detect all of Obolensky’s 8 principles. Within the first few minutes of the video, we can experience the first three principles: clear individual objective, a few simple rules, and a clear boundary. The examples of these are when Obolensky explains the rules and instructions of the game. The instructions of the game were: Choose two people at random as your reference points and make slow movements to position yourselves at equal distance of these two points. The only rules to the game were for participants not tell anyone who their reference points were and not to change their reference points. As you can see the objective, boundary, and the rules of the game were very clear.

Once participants began positioning themselves at equal distance of their reference points, we can see the next three principles being applied to the game: continuous feedback, skill/will of participants, and discretion and freedom of action. As the game continues we can detect that all participants had the ability (skill) to judge distance and move according to their reference points and the will to do the exercise (Obolensky, 2010). By having all participants move slowly, we can see that all the participants move according to their reference points. As this happens, all participants gain the continuous feedback of their reference points and adjust their positions accordingly.

In regards to discretion and freedom of action, each participant had the freedom to act without the need to ask and wait for permission from their reference points. Participants were confident enough to move along on their own, to get the task of being at equal distance from the reference points completed. This brings me to the next principle of ambiguity and uncertainty. From the start of this game none of the participants could predict where they would end up even as the game continued. But, even though this game seemed chaotic and there was uncertainty on the outcome of the game, participants still proceeded to participate. This leads me to last principle, which is the underlying purpose of the game. Even though no participant could predict the outcome of the game, all of the participants had a unifying underlying purpose; which was to remain at equal distance of the chosen reference points.

As it can be seen from the complexity of this exercise, all 8 of Obolensky’s principles were experienced. This exercise serves me as a first-view example of how complexity and chaos theory work together. It might've seemed to participants as a game full of chaos because there was no leader in-charge but underneath it all there was a sense of order. There was order because everyone had a clear objective, boundary, rules, and a unifying purpose. So, this impacts my view and understanding of chaos theory because it shows me that if within an organization there’s a clear objective and boundary, a few simple rules and a unifying purpose, among other things, it will all come together in a form of self-organization.

The implication that chaos theory has on strategy is unknown to me, as I have not had the opportunity to create a strategy in an organization. From my basic understanding of strategy, strategy typically involves a detailed plan of action designed to help the organization achieve a mission or goal. According to Levy, “long term planning is difficult in a chaotic system. The notion that long term planning for chaotic systems is not only difficult but essentially impossible has profound implications for organizations trying to set strategy based on their anticipation of the future. Rather than expend large amounts of resources on forecasting, strategy planning needs to take into account a number of possible scenarios. Moreover, too narrow a focus on a firm’s core products and markets might reduce the ability of the organization to adapt and be flexible in the face of change. The implication for business strategy is that the entry of one new competitor or the development of a seemingly minor technology can have a substantial impact on competition in an industry” (Levy, 1994).

In my opinion, the implication would be that leaders should not spend so much time planning out every detail of the strategy. The information provided by Levy, leads me to believe that strategy planning on a chaotic system can be done but on a shorter term. Since things can change within and outside of an organization, it is important for an organization to have a strong clear objective and boundaries, and underlying unifying purpose, a few simple rules, continuous feedback, skill/will of employees, discretion and freedom of action, and to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty in order to quickly adapt to the changing conditions of the environment within which it operates.

Reference:

Levy, D. (1994). Chaos theory and strategy: theory, application, and management implications. Strategy Management Journal, 15, 170. Retrieved February 15, 2014, from http://www.academia.edu/947922/Chaos_Theory_and_Strategy_Theory_Application_and_Managerial_Implications

Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex adaptive leadership embracing paradox and uncertainty. Farnham, Surrey: Gower.

A633.4.3.RB_MedinaM.

Reflecting on the opening exercise of Chapter 4 of the book Complex Adaptive Leadership (Obolensky, 2010) and this week’s other readings, I think the shift in leadership is occurring because of the need for organizations to quickly adapt to the changing environment. Organizational leaders realize that front-line employees are the most informed about the organization, details, projects, situations, problems, and so on. Front-line employees are the employees that deal with the changes and they are the first employees to become informed about the changing demand. So in my opinion, I think the need for organizations to be more adaptive to the changing environment has caused the shift in leadership. As organizations continue realize how valuable front-line employees are and how valuable their information (input) is for strategy development purposes, leaders see how much organizational charade is present within the organization. By using Obolensky’s three changes of attitude approaches leaders of organizations can effectively break organizational charade. These are: ‘I do not know’ approach, the challenge and support approach, and lastly, the dynamic approach to question and answer sessions (Obolensky, 2010).

            After being with the organization for over 5 years, I believe this shift in leadership is exactly what is happening with my organization. From personal experience, I can say with certainty that in the past organizational charade has been present. Leaders have realized how important it is for a food industry organization to receive customer feedback and for employees to pass on that information to leaders. The three reasons that support this information are:

1.     Customer taste buds change over time so demand changes

2.     As the generation changes, so does the quality of the product (meaning the new generation is now more health and calories conscious than the past generation)

3.     New, young employees do not know the importance of understanding the change in strategy so information tends to get lost along the process.

As my organization has noticed how much the strategy of the organization can change depending on the above reasons, the organization has made some changes to its approach to information. Leaders now encourage employees to pass on information about demand change, taste preferences, feedback from customers and so on. Almost every day employees get asked for his or hers opinion on how the business is going, which food is selling more, what customers are asking for, what are their suggestions and so on. This has helped tremendously the organization to include front-line employees to decision-making and for strategy development, to increase communication between top management and front-line employees, and overall the change in culture of the organization. Now the culture of the organization is not an “us (employees) vs. them (managers)” but rather an overall team effort. Since, the culture of the organization has changed over the past 2 – 3 years to a more adaptive, communicate culture, in my opinion, I believe no leadership dynamic needs to changed or altered at the moment. I think that as the organization continues to properly train new employees to be conscious of customer feedback and the difference in taste buds, the organization will continue to improve its strategy and overall organizational performance.

Reference:

Obolensky, N. (2010). Finita La Comedia - Stop Playing Charades. Complex Adaptive Leadership: embracing paradox and uncertainty (pp. 34-42). Farnham, Surrey: Gower

A633.3.3.RB_MedinaM.

When I think about Morning Star and St Luke, I begin to remember reading articles about their unusual ways to success. St Luke and Morning Star are two successful companies in which control from management barely exists, its almost nonexistence. These two companies believe in complete employee empowerment. It can almost be said that the employees own the company, as they do their own hiring, strategy development, innovation, budgeting, and so on. By creating such a company where management does not have control of the organization but rather gives the freedom to employees to create the path of success of the organization, it creates a culture that truly nurtures creativity and employee empowerment.

Therefore, when I think of a company that has a similar image to St Luke and Morning Star’s culture, I think of Google. In my opinion, Google has the type of culture that seems chaotic, as there is no control from management. But even though it seems chaotic, it is actually an ordered chaos culture where there is creativity and employee empowerment. Google helps it’s employees unlock their true creative potentials by allowing them to take up their own task. That is, out of the tasks that need to be completed, employees can sign up for the tasks they wish to complete.

Reflecting on the complex adaptive system of these 3 companies, I believe one of the implications is that employee empowerment, creativity, and freedom from control is truly the new approach to organizational success. I think organizations need to restructure their business in a way that allows creativity to flow and for management to empower employees into making key decisions in the organization’s behalf. Organizations need to create a culture in which creativity is nurture and employees believe in the organization’s mission, goals, product, etc. These new types of organizations have the power to sense, respond, and adapt more quickly to the ever-changing environment of the organization.

The implication for my past organization is that it should soon begin to update its organizational structure to one that nurtures creativity, employee empowerment, and adaptation. Continuing to do business by controlling, managing all employees and changes, the company may soon begin to fail. In my opinion, there are many external forces that cannot be controlled and by managing a company in which everything must be controlled, it will often create a sense of chaos to employees and managers. This will also diminish any level of creativity and adaptive sense the company may still have left. In order to create appropriate action to boost the organization forward, the organization must first reorganize its structure. Meaning, it must first become a little flatter in order to give more decision-making power to employees, employee empowerment. Another option that can help the organization forward is through seminars (with follow-ups) that concentrate on teaching leaders how to adapt to the changing environment, how to be better leaders inside their organization, how to empower employees to decision-making, and so on.