Song of Deborah

Leadership – Where will our children learn good leadership?

I have always been a big advocate of leadership and at Gartner I wrote a couple of papers on leadership. Over the years I have read many leadership texts and of course being an ex Army Officer I have been trained in and practised leadership in many different and trying circumstances. My current concern is our children, watching TV last night I noticed that many ads show parents delegating decision making to their children. In this culture of extreme egalitarianism where do children see and learn decisive leadership? I have seen children as young as 3 paralysed by the demand to inform their parents, what they want to eat, when they want to sleep, what they want to do…………. Why have we as parents given up on making decisions and seeing them through.

Since human beings first began gathering in social groups, they have grappled with the skills of leadership — who is a leader, what makes a leader, and how leadership can be done better. Is leadership is something one is born with or something that can be learned. After thousands of years, leadership is still a art that people aspire to but struggle to achieve. Yet here we are as parents NOT providing a good example of simple leadership in the running of our family and home.

I am not dictating the return to the dictatorial father model (if you believe the press as shown by the father in the picture) that many of my generation grew up with but certainly it is very important to become a leadership role model for your children. This requires decisive behaviour.

Leadership is a social construct — the product of emotional and often unconscious needs, early experiences, and group aspirations of the led, as well as traits and skills of the leader. A vast industry has developed in the 21^st Century that devotes itself to teaching and improving leadership skills. Yet many modern concepts of leadership are complex and locked in a time warp, constrained by lingering archetypes of heroic warriors, executive legends, and harsh but distant fathers. Winding through the maze of leadership texts and development theories to find real actionable steps to improve leadership skills is difficult and very little are devoted to leadership in parenting. Two books that have provided me inspiration are:

Firstly, Good to Great (Random House, 2001) by Jim Collins, his findings on leadership were a surprise to all in his research team: “We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one. Compared to the high-profile leaders with big personalities, the good-to-great leaders seemed to come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy — these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton and Caesar.”

Collins begins his chapter on Level 5 Leadership with the famous Harry S. Truman quote “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” He goes on to describe Level 5 leaders as people who channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It is not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, he found that they were incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not for themselves. He describes their key leadership characteristics of these leaders who turned their companies around as: 1) Ambition for the company: setting up successors for success, 2) Compelling modesty, 3) Unwavering resolve to do what must be done, 4) The window and the mirror — looking outside the window to apportion credit to others but looking in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming anyone or anything else.

In parenting we learn to put our ego aside, I am still amazed at my memories of my mother cheating to win games against us, her children. This is not good leadership or good parenting. We can take these business management books and apply these skills to how we use leadership within our family units. Exhibiting these characteristics and becoming a good example for our children.

The second I liked is a book by US Navy Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship (Warner Books, 2002). The following are Abrashoff’s key leadership principles (many of these are written in the language of the military, but their meaning is clear and easily applicable to parenting):

·          Take command and create a climate that enables people to unleash their potential

·          Lead by example

·          Listen aggressively

·          Communicate meaning and purpose

·          Create a climate of trust

·          Look for results, not salutes

·          Take calculated risks

·          Go beyond standard procedure

·          Build up your people

·          Generate unity

·          Improve your people’s quality of life

All of these can be equally applied as important leadership principles for a family.

I would like all parents to consider leadership as an important skill they need to develop and teach their children. Egalitarianism has its place and I am not against a family vote for where we go for our next holiday but I am worried that we have a generation of young people who will never be exposed to good leadership and decisive decision making. Continuous exposure and learning from a very young age are very important in building tomorrows leaders.

Discussion Extract: The Value of Enterprise Architectures and Strategic IT Planning

Question:

Check out http://www.architectureandgovernance.com/ or directly on this link: http://www.architectureandgovernance.com/content/guest-post-value-strategic-it-planning-and-enterprise-architecture

I would like to get your thoughts on this topic.

My Answer:

I think the issue (and thus the core of the value proposition) is neatly expressed in Kim/Mauborgne’s book – Blue Ocean Strategy. In Chapter 4 Focus on the Big Picture, Not the Numbers:

Think of a typical strategic plan. It starts with a lengthy description of current industry conditions and the competitive situation. Next is a discussion on how to increase market share, capture new segments, or cut costs, followed by an outline of numerous goals and initiatives. A full budget is almost invariably attached…. The process usually culminates in the preparation of a large document culled from the mishmash of data provided by people from various part of the organisation who have conflicting agendas and poor communications. In this process, managers spend the majority of strategic time filling in boxes and running numbers instead o thinking outside the box…….If you ask companies to present their proposed strategies in no more than a few slides, it is not surprising that few clear or compelling strategies are articulated………And a closer look reveals that most plans don’t contain a strategy at all but rather a smorgasbord of tactics that individually make sense  but collectively don’t add up to a unified clear direction that sets the company apart.

Focus on the big picture, not the numbers is the message. I call this traditional approach described above as “Christmas Wish List” strategic planning – and most IT organisation embrace this by sending relationship manager out a couple of months before corporate plans are due to ask business manager what they want next year?

I think if you use a tools like Troux (as mentioned in the article) or Alfabet's planningIT – they help to manage the complex information but the basic foundation of what you are doing with EA needs to be in place first other wise the tool will overwhelm the EA program.

Are you just going to continue to proliferate the Christmas Wish List approach? – if yes, then you will add little or no greater value than current planning processes but if you plan to deliver strategic business value through EA you need to look differently at what your EA program is doing. Most of the methods will support a new approach and both Gartner and TOGAF do focus on starting with business strategy and the external environmental analysis – it is only when you start to show how this wish list is making the strategic output poorly and that you have an alternative that you will succeed.

I think the best person to test this approach on is the CFO and the best time is during yearly budget planning. We have all seen the wish list grow and grow and recognised the problems it is creating but often are powerless to do anything about it because the relationship managers have promised the business IT will deliver. Take your alternative approach to the CFO and talk about the changes you would make, the saving you have identified and the strategic value you can add by using EA effectively. Start small and then as you mature consider using the tools the guide and manage the information and the deliverables.

 

Another Great LinkedIn Discussion - Enterprise Architecture vs Enterprise IT Architecture

The question:

Enterprise Architecture appears to have become synonymous with Enterprise IT Architecture. This gets in the way of those of us who are interested in enterprises as complete systems for delivering on mission and strategy. So we also want to be doing things like business process engineering and re-engineering (whatever happened to those terms!), irrespective of their information technology content.
What are your views on this and is there anybody out there doing true (in this sense) 'Enterprise Architecture'?

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=1822816&discussionID=4076169&commentID=4237668&trk=NUS_DIG_DISC_Q_ucg_mr&goback=%2Ehom#commentID_4237668

My Answer:

I think that there are two "types" of architects those that BELIEVE in EA and KNOW it will work and those that just believe in EA. The latter generally end up as enterprise IT architects and the former as enterprise architects.

In achieving holistic EA (i.e. solving real business problems and executing business strategy through detailed analysis across the BITS (business, information, technology and solution architectures) of the current and future states to identify a program of change) you need to KNOW how to make the business architecture (and the remaining ITS architecture of course) work. And I agree with Curtis – it is not via low level detailed UML models. Business architecture answers the question – how do I change the way my business operates to ……execute this strategy….solve the problem? There are many ways to answer the question, many models, many analytical tools that will help. Some we may not even have thought of yet as some of us are new to this architectural domain.

The revolution is coming – many more organisations are doing enterprise architecture in 2009 than were in 2007. I think this last 18 months was pivotal for the shift globally in understanding and delivery of EA programs away from enterprise IT architecture to the better more effective EA. Look at TOGAF 9 - it has really tried to make the EA view a reality ……though it still has UML models listed as key business architecture artefacts.  

All architects need to do a bit of naval gazing to see which side of the revolution they want to be on, me I want to be on the fun side – enterprise architecture!