Where did the summer go? I'm looking out the window at a gray, rainy day, the first day of fall. Someone said to me, "Wow, just imagine if we have as much snow this winter as we've had rain this summer!" An unpleasant thought, especially after last year's record snow. But I'm trying to stay in the moment and avoid living in that cold, snowy future while it's still September.

  

 In this issue, I'm beginning to explore a topic that's of great interest to me: Leading in a network. This whole idea of social networks, while it has a modern, technological flavor, is actually about something that's pretty timeless: relationship and community building.  I suspect the underlying principles are the same, but what's new are the myriad tools available for connecting with others that come with some interesting questions about privacy, availability, priority setting, and focus.

 

There's also a short piece on "Taking Stock of Your Leadership" that was prompted by a combination of the political climate and some soul searching I've been doing.

 

Hope you enjoy them both! 

 

 

 For back issues of this newsletter, you can find them in the archives. 

Thanks for your interest and support. 

Deborah

"When Daniel McCallum became the General Superintendent (CEO) of the New York and Erie Railroad in 1855, he immediately did two things. He laid out six principles of administration for the managers on the railroad. And he drew up the first organization chart to portray their relationships and responsibilities. 

 

The organization chart was a powerful innovation at a time when railroads were just beginning to define the "modern" corporation. It's served well for a century and a half, but now it's time for a change.

The organization chart doesn't show everything or everyone. There are probably people who are very important to you that don't appear on the org chart at all.

 

The org chart reinforces hierarchy and rigidity. Today's organizations need to be agile and nimble, not static and inflexible.

 

The org chart shows formal authority relationships, but not the network of relationships we all have. Social network diagrams do a better job of that.

 

The org chart reduces only a few people to boxes and limited relationships. That may have worked in the Industrial Age, but we need something more human and more flexible."

Three Star Leadership 

 

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I subsequently discovered the work of John McKnight, who helped us focus our efforts on enabling people with disabilities to become contributing members of civic organizations and studying what worked and what did not. There was a tremendous amount of learning there. One important lesson had to do with the power of relationships and informal connections to produce positive results (aka, social networks).

 

Later, when I became Director of Training for the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Disabilities, I applied the same principles and strategies I'd used in my community building work within that formal organization and found them to be equally effective.

 

Several years ago, I encountered the work of Dennis Sandow. About the same time I was running ECI, Dennis had been working on the west coast helping people with developmental disabilities to find competitive employment and become integrated into the community. As he was doing this, he was studying how this happened (through networks of people). From that experience as well as what he learned from studying how other networks operated, Social Action Research was born. I may be missing many nuances, but I hope I'm in the ballpark. Had I been familiar with Dennis's work when I was running ECI, I believe there would have been more reliable results. When I ran across his work around 2008, I felt it was the missing piece in what I'd been working on for many years.

 

Social Action Research is an exciting approach to working with organizations and communities that focuses on conserving and expanding performance and well being by paying attention to how people are accomplishing what matters to them through networks of collaboration.

 

A group of us spent a number of months learning about and teaching the fundamentals of Social Action Research with leaders in a large federal agency. We then went on to participate in a certification program offered by Willamette University, which I wrote about in my Summer 2009 newsletter. 

 

How do you lead in a network? That's a critical question for today's leaders. I expect to do a lot more thinking, writing, and learning on this topic but here are some thoughts for today. During a 2009 retreat, a group of us reflected on this question. Here are a few of our ideas:

• Fred Simon offered a useful description of the function of the org chart: "The formal organizational structure is a way to allocate resources and conduct performance and financial reporting: Management lies in formal structure. Leadership can be exercised by anyone in the network." If leadership can be exercised by anyone in the network, then you don't need a formal position to lead. Capitalize on that.
• As you seek to understand the networks you're part of, focus on studying performance as it is already occurring. You don't create a network, you study it. The process of studying how the network operates strengthens it.
• Instead of asking what needs to change, start off by asking what is most valued, what needs to be conserved?
• People in organizations feel dissatisfied if they can't see a way to make a contribution. Leading in a network entails making it possible (even easy) for people to make a contribution.
• Remove barriers and create tools that enable collaboration. Some examples:
  • Create evaluation and reward systems that support collaboration across organizational boundaries.
  • Enroll members of the network in establishing relevant measures for performance.
  • Create easy-to-use mechanisms for timely communication and sharing of relevant information with the right people.
  • Support structures that focus on learning from outcomes, not punishing failures.

There are many people with much more depth in this area, but I consider myself to be a lifelong student whose knowledge has come primarily through personal experience. I'm currently involved with trying to create a Society for Organizational Learning North American community. As a membership organization that aspires to have minimal structures that primarily support people to organize themselves around what matters to them, being able to lead in a network will be really important.  What have you learned about leading in a network?

As I'm writing this, it's a gloomy day, the first day of fall. We're in the middle of local, state and national political campaigns. All the candidates are positioning themselves to be seen as the most suited to address the challenges we face. It seems like a good time to think about assessing one's leadership.

 

I've been in leadership roles throughout my adult life and, for the most part, have been pretty effective. On occasion, it seems that no matter how hard I try, I don't have the impact I'm intending. Recently, I've been in one of these situations. To make matters worse, I've observed that the leadership of others has apparently been able to push things forward where I was ineffective. In order to understand how I might have done better, I've been evaluating my leadership in light of this situation. In doing so, I've tended to focus in two directions.

 

The first tendency is to focus on my approach to leadership. For example my self -assessment might go like this: "I'm polite, diplomatic. I don't like telling people what to do, I'd rather invite them. I'm rarely a forceful advocate."

 

The next tendency is to focus on the context: "The timing wasn't right when I was pushing for that, circumstances have changed and now people are ready."

 

Both of those ways of evaluating my leadership are necessary but insufficient. What's more interesting is the relationship between my approach to leadership and the context, especially over a number of specific situations. For example, if I find that there's a pattern of being ineffective when I use my usual leadership approach--polite, diplomatic, inviting--in situations where the timing isn't right, then I'm in a better position to make adjustments. Put more generally, if I can identify circumstances or contexts where I regularly fall short and those where I'm regularly effective (or highly successful), I can enhance my leadership effectiveness.

 

Several months ago, I worked with a colleague, Grady McGonagill, to identify some of my high performance and low performance leadership patterns.

 

Some of the questions he asked were:

• What do you do when you are at your very best?
  • Describe several instances of unusual success.
  • Infer from these examples your "high performance pattern."
• Where do you sometimes fall short?
  • Identify and analyze an engagement that did not go well.
  • Draw lessons about where you are vulnerable.

 Once I surfaced some of these patterns, I was in a better position to manage them. "Manage them" could mean partnering with someone else or deferring to others who don't have the same vulnerabilities. If I suspect that forceful advocacy is the only thing that will get people's attention at a certain point in a leadership situation, I can partner with someone for whom that is a comfortable style. It could also mean consciously choosing leadership situations and roles where I have demonstrated success or declining to take a leadership role in situations where I haven't been previously effective. If one of the patterns turns out to be both a strength and a vulnerability (being polite and diplomatic works really well in some situations but not all), developing a broader range is one way to address that. Merely being aware that our core competencies can often have associated vulnerabilities puts us in a better position to manage them. (See Core Incompetence: The Flip Side of Your Signature Strength  for an interesting article by Prasad Kaipa, one of my SoL colleagues.)

 

The simple practice of continually striving for greater awareness of your leadership strengths and vulnerabilities and your "best fit" contexts can have positive results on you leadership effectiveness and your own well being.

 

 

This has been an exciting summer for new developments. Here are some of the high points:

• My book, Why Not Lead? A Primer for Families of People with Disabilities and Their Allies is due out this fall. I've had to make the transition from writing the book to designing the cover, proofreading, and getting the word out that it's in print. Oh, and where and how does it actually get sold?? This is a whole new world, so if you have any experience with marketing and selling a book, please get in touch.  
• I finally created a Facebook profile, plus a page for Reidy Associates and one for Why Not Lead? It's all a work in progress. I'm exploring how to have a social media presence without devoting my whole life. I'm also trying to figure out whether it makes sense to keep these separate or blend them together. Reminds me of when I was in high school and I had jock friends, artist friends and "greaser" friends. My worst fear was that they would all show up at the same place at the same time and hate each other. There are some really interesting social and psychological implications of these seemingly small decisions.
• I'm using a new approach to managing my website, which will allow more flexibility and interactivity, including posting a blog. The revamped website, including the blog, goes live this week. Please check it out and send along your ideas and suggestions.  
• Plus I've qualified for the next level of coaching certification, Professional Certified Coach, which entailed completing over 750 hours of coaching, along with graduating from an ICF-recognized coaching program (which I did in 2008).