Henry L. Thompson, Ph.D.
The nineties have produced a barrage of new fads, books and management techniques on how to re-engineer the organization, move to horizontal management, implement total quality control, establish employee involvement, change to self directed work teams, downsize, rightsize, etc. The end result of this band-aid approach is we aren't any better off than we were before!
Our current approach to leadership has created large bureaucracies incapable of operating efficiently or responding to the demands of customers. “Leaders” have lost sight of what leadership is all about. What we need now is not more fads, it's not more people talking about leaders with vision, but rather a change in our leadership paradigm.
Research on leadership, organizational effectiveness, information processing, quantum mechanics and chaos provides a set of concepts which not only help to explain why many of today's corporations are not doing well, but also how to make them better. The effectiveness of organizations is a function of the leader, resources, organizational structure and the followers.
To be effective, the leader must have adequate resources to accomplish the job, an appropriate organizational structure, a set of followers to perform the tasks and certain leadership skills and abilities. Leadership is a function of the leader's motivation, skills, style and level of conceptual ability. High Performance Leadership is founded on matching the right leader to the appropriate organizational level.
Motivational level is a function of the match between the organizational structure, the level of the organization at which the leader works and organizational climate. The structure must be such that the leader is able to operate within his/her time frame of discretion. The organizational level and climate must match the leader's skill and conceptual level.
The skills component of leadership is composed of three factors: technical skills, interpersonal skills and leader skills. Technical skills are peculiar to the type of industry, e.g., chemical, engineering, forest products, etc., in which the organization operates. Interpersonal skills involve those skills required to successfully interact with other people. Leader skills will be presented with each leader level below.
Leader style is based on the premise that leaders exhibit behaviors along two axes, relationship and task. The result is four basic leader styles: Limiting, Encouraging, Assisting and Developing.
Conceptual ability (CA) refers to how a leader processes, organizes, stores and retrieves information, makes sense of it and acts on it. Stratified systems theory indicates that CA is one of the primary factors influencing the leader's ability to make appropriate decisions and lead successfully at varying organizational levels.
The Level I leader works with concrete problems with time frames out to six months and tends to look for one black and white answer. The approach to problems is straightforward and head on resulting in very concrete and linear reasoning. This works well at the supervisor and lower manager level with a focus on the team.
It requires the leader skills of motivation, decisionmaking, stress management, performance counseling, goalsetting, delegation, communication, conflict resolution and team development.
The Level II leader uses a qualitatively different and more sophisticated problemsolving approach, working with complex problems with time frame durations out to 18 months. The scale of the problems is so large that it cannot be constructed in a single, coherent mental picture. This requires the creation of a series of time slices to view a piece of a problem at a time. These time slices are viewed in concrete terms and used to link individual situations into overall patterns. Leaders at this level are senior managers through junior executives and focus on the organization. It requires the leader skills of conceptual thinking, organizational design, organizational dynamics, analytical decisionmaking, financial decisionmaking, project management and process improvement.
The Level III leader represents a profound change in the level of conceptual ability. The thought processes change from concrete to conceptual. This leader works with complex problems with time frame durations out to 36 months. A systems approach is used for understanding and solving problems. An ability to work with gaps in information allows this leader to begin with something known and construct something totally new out of it. This level is the first to utilize negative information for structuring material and information into frameworks.
At this level neither projects nor outcomes can be seen in concrete terms. Projects are of such duration and complexity that they can only be partially constructed mentally. Unconstructed parts unfold and take shape as the project evolves. Senior executives require a CA level of III to integrate the systems of the corporation. The leader skills required are strategy formulation, systems integration, change management and portfolio management.
The Level IV leader has the conceptual ability to work with extremely complex projects and problems with time frame durations exceeding 60 months. Problems of this complexity rely on intuitive mental theories built over time through experiences. This Level searches for relationships between apparently unrelated information. Gaps in understanding provide a source of information and encourage looking for new links.
There is an expectation that the problem will change before the solution can be found. The approach represents the highest level of conceptual ability and encompasses a large scale, complex activity evolving over an extended time frame. These leaders are institution creators. They like to find solutions to problems that haven't been conceived.
Their focus is on the metasystem and requires the leader skills of environmental scanning, networking and visioning.
Matching the leader with the right skills to the right organizational level and providing adequate resources and followers is critical for building high performing organizations that can compete in the 21st century.
© 1996 Henry L. Thompson, Ph.D.
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