Category: Leadership

Friday, 9:30 pm, another humiliating workday. Boss mocked your client presentation—then four-letter insulted you in front of colleagues. Come 4:30 pm, he threw you a “little weekend project,” due Monday morning.

Back home, ready to scream, you head to the kitchen: “Please oh god, let there be malt whiskey.”

Tonight, consider a less inebriating way to “get a little perspective” about your boss from hell. Banish your sorrows with Josiah Osgood’s fun and instructive How To Be A Bad Emperor: An Ancient Guide To Truly Terrible Leaders (introductory essay plus texts, translations, from the ancient Roman biographer, Suetonius).

Take a breath. Things could be worse. Imagine if you worked for some cruel and depraved emperor from Roman history.Consider Caligula (AD 12-41). This tyrant reveled in humiliating rivals (e.g. extorting sex from their wives) and brutalizing august Senate elders (forcing them to honor a horse as their consul, and to run behind the emperor’s chariot).  Caligula’s nightly paranoia was to lie in bed, plotting false accusations against his countless enemies. Rome sighed in collective relief when a few of his body guards dispatched him with loving swords.

Or how about reporting to Nero (AD 37-68)? Notorious for murdering his wife, mother and hundreds of Christians, this creature also demanded that subordinates ooh and aah for his operatic songs (yes, while Rome burned). 

Or imagine a boss like Emperor Tiberius (AD 14-37): a craven scoundrel who enriched himself with stolen citizen fortunes, chased carnal pleasures in Capri while ignoring repeated public crises, and proudly proclaimed that “as long as people obey me, I take joy in their hatred.”

Beyond imperial antics, Roman civilization also offers some positive wisdom. That empire endured many chaotic bosses, but still kept all the operational machinery whirring for centuries. Some workaday professionals clearly figured out how to survive the monsters in charge.  I asked Professor Osgood to reflect on Roman lessons for coping and prospering if you work for a boss both loathed and feared. 

“Much is just common sense,” he began. “But there are also timeless insights in the stories of well-intentioned people serving awful leaders.”

Our discussion surfaced five career-enhancing suggestions:

1. Understand the risks and rewards of your professional aspirations. Do you have the stomach for a heartless supervisor? If you’re ambitious, there will always be one or two along the way, as you climb the ladder. Osgood explained why the risk increases as your career progresses—drawing from ancient Rome.  “Working for the Emperor—essentially the CEO—was the ultimate prize: like today, a route to glory, wealth, and more prestigious marriages. The competition to join imperial service was fierce—which also made the man at the top the fiercest of all. Rising in the ranks always enters you into more stressful arenas.”

Own what every ancient go-getter knew: you have to steel yourself for the professional dangers and personal costs of some horrific boss in your future. It’s just part of the career-building game.

2. Accept assignments but keep learning and performing. The most effective leadership development derives from experience in different jobs—but only if you work harder and smarter with each new post. The more you grow, the greater your value—even to future bosses from hell. Increasing skills become a protective asset.

The Georgetown professor invoked another Roman text: “Tacitus’ Agricola, a biography of a successful imperial statesman, reminds us that nothing builds your career faster—or better insulates you from reproach—than developing your capabilities and continuously improving. Agricola was first sent by Nero to help pacify the unruly British province. He turned the difficult commission into a learning opportunity. Working under experienced generals, he year by year cultivated essential knowledge about waging war and commanding soldiers. It eventually made him invaluable. He took less abuse from volatile emperors, because they needed him.”

3. Align yourself with the fundamentals of strategy and values. Beneath every bad boss lies an organization with tangible goals and its own cultural values. Anchor yourself to those, to help withstand the gales of a stormy overseer. Osgood again bridged to an ancient example: “Agricola’s success was buttressed by his steady focus on traditional Roman ways and empire-building. In Britain he resisted personal luxury and enrichment which was the norm of provincial generals.  He also consolidated military victories by importing Roman institutions and schooling the locals in Latin. He shrewdly kept furthering the civilization for which his boss emperors wanted to be known.”

4. Reach for the sky—but not too high. “Never look better than your boss”— sage advice today, and no less for ambitious Romans. Jealousy is a dangerous human emotion—especially in your supervisor. Strive to contain it.

First, have some empathy for the boss himself: jealousy springs less from vanity than fear. Professor Osgood underscored that with another Roman insight: “There was no law of succession for emperors, so anyone could potentially usurp—or kill— them. They had reason to be paranoid, and not surprisingly, many lashed out when they saw rival talent rising.”

“Note, therefore, the contrarian wisdom of Agricola. Throughout his career he tip-toed with his personal reputation. Asked to organize public games for Nero—who himself loved hosting big flashy circuses—Agricola produced events that were professional but never extravagant.”

“Under Domitian, who was a poor military leader, Agricola sent campaign dispatches that were informative, but minimized his own accomplishments. He deliberately restrained friends from boasting on his behalf. Assiduous modesty propelled his rise.”

5. Dare the tyrant only when you dare. Even if you do everything right, you’ll still come to some moment of final despair with your insufferable boss. You’re fed up and want to fight back. But before you do, press “pause”—consider what you’re willing to sacrifice. Or not. And why the confrontation.

Osgood again explained: “Many Roman statesmen reached the breaking point with cruel emperors, and then died for opposing their wishes. Today, thankfully, most of us don’t have to worry about that—but of course insubordination in a job can quickly get you fired. That can be its own existential moment in a career. History again offers some instructive insights.”

“First, know your bosses and your true worth to them, before you decide to push back. Consider the story of Marcus Agrippa. The emperor Augustus heavily depended upon this all-competent lieutenant. So occasionally, if Agrippa was unhappy with some imperial demand, he would subtly hint about retiring from service. Then, as now: if you think you’re on solid ground, be willing to walk. But weigh the risks and rewards—if you miscalculate, there’s no turning back.”

“Second, confronting a boss will be different in different moments of your career. Some Roman statesmen, in their later years, simply became more philosophical about their lives (literally “Stoic,” following the then popular school). They were not afraid to take the consequences of challenging a corrupt leader — for the greater good of the institution.”

“One famous Senator, Thrasea Paetus, rebuffed the disgraceful subservience demanded by Nero. In visible dissent, Paetus spurned both applauding the Emperor in public games, and praising him in the Senate. The emperor had him killed. But Paetus took comfort in a noble death.  His bravery echoes that of whistleblowers and others who act courageously in service to someone in power—at great personal cost, for the betterment of something more important than just flattering a self-absorbed leader.”

P.S. For a more lighthearted but still historical Roman tale—with contemporary lessons about leadership, imperial power, art and romance—check out Esme von Hoffman’s charming new film, Ovid and the Art of Love  (streaming on multiple platforms).

Originally published on Forbes.com

As an emerging leader, you’re growing your skills and behaviors through learn-by-doing—seizing opportunities for more responsibility, and then using the crucible of experience to keep honing your performance. But you also know that active practice benefits from reflection. With some quiet study, you can assess your own performance, think about what you can learn from other leaders, and continuously better your capabilities.

Executive coaches can help you with that study and reflection. They can hold the mirror up to you, to guide your self-awareness about skills and deficits, and compare/contrast best practice leadership behavior. Coaching can also sharpen your understanding of specific leadership challenges, and teach you how to wrestle with the decision-making trade-offs when you exercise more responsibility. So when the gray-haired sage sent over by HR shows up at your office, don’t be afraid to open the door.

Appealing to Ancient Wisdom

But also, don’t be afraid to engage a more virtual and indeed different kind of coach for your study. So how about the Hellenic philosopher and essayist, Xenophon? Or the ancient Greek poet Homer? Or the second century CE biographer Plutarch? You might just find that reading and thinking about the works of such ancient writers will also sharpen your leadership practice today.

Norman Sandridge, an associate professor of classics at Howard University, wants to refer you to these and other virtual coaches from the liberal arts canon. He’s on a mission to reinvent classical literature and history as another vehicle for your leadership development—whatever your professional field. His enthusiasm jumped out during a recent conversation.

“If you read them in the right way, ancient authors can help any rising leader better anticipate their own experiences, navigate moral dilemmas, and articulate an inspiring vision for their organization,” he says. “For example, in Homer’s Odyssey, you find a detailed and complex depiction of how to mentor someone into a leadership role. Plutarch’s essay on The Virtues of Women challenges us to think about the differences, if any,  between the virtues that women bring to a leadership role versus men. Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus offers a meditation on what it truly means for a leader to care about the needs of others.”

Beyond “Flatter-ature”

Sandridge emphasized, however, such “coaching” only works if you make the proper ancient-modern connection. “To make meaning out of these ancient texts you have to bring them into dialogue with contemporary issues of leadership,” he continued. “For example, if we believe that we want everyone to have access to the most important and influential leadership roles, we have to ask ourselves how narratives about ancient leaders might exclude others who have not traditionally been seen as a ‘great leader.’ Ideally, you’ll pursue these kinds of reflections in conversation with others, to get more perspective and see the implications of adapting ancient examples to contemporary problems.

“Unfortunately, many people today have reduced study of ancient leadership to an overly-simplified set of rules or superficial analogies between ‘great’ ancient leaders and the modern CEO. Rather than challenge aspiring leaders to engage in more creative and self-critical processes, they reassure them of their own status as titans in a modern world. It’s an approach I call ‘flatter-ature.'”

Sandridge has brought his vision of leadership development through the liberal arts beyond his Howard classroom. He helped found a humanities-based leadership institute (Kallion.org), with a network of like-minded academics, providing both online resources and courses for the general public. As a fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies he also helps organize practice-oriented study events for students and diverse leaders in the Washington, D.C. metro area.

Become Your Own Leadership Artist

“My approach begins with leadership as an art and the leader as artist, fashioning themselves to better serve the people in the organization. Just as a serious painter doesn’t ask Leonardo da Vinci for the five basic lessons of portraiture, so, too, the modern executive shouldn’t look to ancient leaders for simple lessons. Instead, she tries to analyze and understand the storied leader in context, and from there initiates a creative and evaluative process, turning herself into something that fits who she is and whom she is trying to serve.”

Sandridge added that the appeal of ancient study is its combination of modern familiarity and remote strangeness—offering students a vital process of compare but contrast.

“Ancient leaders felt emotions recognizable to any contemporary leader: self-doubt, envy for a rival, anxiety over the weight of responsibility, over-confidence, love for fellow human beings,” he says. “They faced familiar moral dilemmas about self-interest versus the good of others. Or using persuasion versus force to get a job done. Or wrestling with self-confidence versus doubt and uncertainty. But these ancient leaders also lived in a world full of superstition and constant mediation with the gods. In ancient times, wealth inequality was extensive, human slavery was central to most economies, and science was a mode of thinking for only a limited few. Ancient leaders sometimes faced challenges hard for us to imagine today.”

Five Steps To Shape Your Leadership From Humanistic Study

Sandridge’s approach to humanistic learning follows a five-step diagnostic for reading and discussing a text:

1. Identify: The first step is simply to identify instances of leadership, “just as an entomologist might collect different kinds of butterflies,” he explains, adding that as you read, you should collect examples of someone “exercising authority, delivering a persuasive speech, articulating a problem, making a decision on behalf of a group. And look beyond roles and titles that are the traditional markers of leadership.”

2. Analyze: Next, break the examples into constituent parts and explore the implications. “Say you come across an ancient leader who will do anything to win, no matter what—the Greek concept of philonikia,” Sandridge notes. “What are the situations where such a tendency would help a community and when might it involve so much risk-taking, self-aggrandizement, squandering of resources, and counter-productive negotiation that it actually destroys a community?”

3. Translate: In this step, Sandridge asks readers to make the connection with meaningful leadership issues today: “The key is to translate your analysis to how you see yourself and what problems you see facing your organization. Do you find the examples of ancient leadership analogous to contemporary ones? If not, what do the differences tell you about your issues today?”

4. Evaluate: In this next step, readers judge leaders’ morality and/or effectiveness in the story. “Once you have an idea about how an ancient example could apply you,” Sandridge says, “ask yourself, ‘Would this be a good or ethical thing to do?’ Would it work for me and my organization?'”

5. Practice: The final step shifts your learning into action for yourself. “Once you’ve developed some ideas of good leadership behavior from ancient examples, practice them in your role as leader—as soon as you can find an opportunity to do so. If you make practice your ultimate goal, you will continue to reap the benefits of your study for self-improvement.”

A  Universal Concept For Any Leader?

And is there was one overarching concept of leadership found in ancient literature that is applicable to leaders today?

“Well, if we’re looking for something universal,” Sandridge responds, “I think it’s best captured in Book One of Xenophon’s Education of Cyrus. It’s when Cambyses, the Persian King, extols the glory of ruling as a good leader to his son Cyrus, but also explains why it fundamentally depends on duty and caring for one’s followers: ‘Don’t you see that the most amazing thing is to be able to provide for others so that they have all that they need and become what they need to be?’”

Originally published on Forbes.com

It’s almost midnight, the band plays, and the waiter pours. The bubbling foam atop your fluted glass previews what lies below—lovely champagne to cheer your heart and soul.

But what if your friendly waiter simply served you the froth on top? No way to toast the New Year, is it?

Beyond Frothy Fads

Don’t make the same mistake with your  leadership development in 2019. Look past the foamy bubbles of today’s fads, to the essence hiding below: the timeless core of what leadership is, and what you must always do to build it throughout your career.

But it’s easy to get distracted. The leadership development industry has exploded in recent years, and, alas, there’s more than enough froth to confuse any aspiring professional. Too much shallow or gimmicky advice: about quick digital solutions, magical time management, secret leadership sauces, metaphors from history or Shakespeare, breathless predictions about the “completely new future.”

Abandon the ephemera. Build your capability on five fundamental principles:

1. Aim at what “leadership” really is. “Leader” has come to mean too many things—someone with an imposing title, or upper box on the org chart; or someone who simply challenges authority to stand apart from the crowd; or your eager-beaver colleagues who keep raising their hands for  extra assignments. Cut to the core! If you want to build leadership, keep your aim on what leaders achieve: they create significant impact by building an organization of people working together on big common goals.

2. Leaders worry about motivating and aligning  people, not specific structures of organization. Leaders achieve impact by mobilizing followers to get something done. The context for that can take many  forms: a corporation (e.g. a big or small for-profit business); an extended enterprise (e.g. Amazon and its ecosystem of suppliers and sellers); a network (e.g. communities of open software developers or affiliated non-profit agencies); or a movement (e.g. armies of volunteers who followed Martin Luther King’s civil rights initiatives). Leaders also create impact in smaller-scale ways, e.g. with a team, a partnership or some other unit within a larger organization. What ultimately matters is not the form or structure, but how leaders assemble the necessary talent, and coordinate and inspire people so they can achieve major goals together.

3. “Management” is not a dirty word. The collective work of the team, corporation, network or enterprise doesn’t have to flow only from a leader’s hands-on direction; great leaders also drive results through indirect or intangible means with followers—appealing to purpose, building cultures of commitment and performance, encouraging others to take leadership on their own accord.

But achieving impact with any kind of organization always requires some management too. For decades, business academics have argued that leaders are different from managers, prompting too many would-be leaders to shirk from overseeing (or even engaging in) operational activity. Don’t get hung up on the labels, and be willing to step into some everyday real work. If you’re going to have impact with an organization, you have to develop enough experience to sometimes manage others. And doing so, by the way, also builds better judgment for you to hire and guide others who sometimes provide management for you. Leadership must be more than just having big thoughts or making motivational speeches at all-company meetings.

4. Build your leadership by on-the-job experience with critical organizational practices. You have to get good at a lot of things to be a successful leader—but start by prioritizing your development around a short list of must-do’s. Here are five fundamental practices that are always part of driving impact through organization. (“Practices” because you build  knowledge and skills hands-on, reflecting and improving over time.)

• Building a unifying vision: setting out goals and a picture of success to provide purpose, motivation and ownership for the people of the organization
• Translating vision into strategy: working through choices about where and how to move the organization towards shared goals, and create distinctive value; and then planning and coordinating action
• Getting great people on board: recruiting, engaging and developing great talent through a “social contract” that promises growth, reward and relationships in exchange for people’s achievement
•  Delivering results: establishing disciplines to ensure continual high performance by all members of the organization
• Innovating for the future: maintaining a dual focus on present performance and future opportunities, to keep the organization sustainable amidst changing trends and new challenges of competitors

5. Practice also “leading yourself.” Many leadership books emphasize what might be a sixth practice—focusing on what you do for yourself “to be a leader,” e.g. building your character, understanding what’s important to you, developing certain “leadership behaviors,” etc.  Those aren’t wrong—but don’t get too buried in yourself. Keep your leadership focused on energizing the broader organization that will lead to major impact.

So, structure your self-care around four themes, to make it most effective for both you and your enterprise:

• Understand yourself—engage in regular, reflective diagnosis, so people following you know who you are, can better work with you at your best, and adapt to where you most need help
• Grow yourself— keep building specific knowledge and skills, so as you get better at your job, you are also improving the broader organization
•  Share yourself—always develop other leaders, expanding your own growth through the give and take of teaching others, while also expanding the distributed capacity of the enterprise
• Take care of yourself—avoid burnout, cynicism and your own lesser performance, by harmonizing your work and personal life; keep yourself healthy, and ensure that the most meaningful things to you are always part of your everyday work.

Come January 1, make your leadership development resolution on the simple metaphor of that glass of New Year’s champagne: “Yes, I will enjoy some occasional froth, but only as a complement to the real wine below. I’ll keep my focus on the enduring fundamentals of  impact, practicing the practices that have always moved organizations and leaders towards their common goals.”

Originally published on Forbes.com

Holiday travel—navigating aging airports, over rusting and pot-holed bridges—reminds us all of a national infrastructure desperate for repair. But an inspiring new book, Engine of Impact: Essentials of Leadership in the Nonprofit Sector (Stanford University Press), points to a more intangible infrastructure also needing renewal: the historical culture of America’s community associations and volunteer networks, people solving problems together, helping one another and addressing physical and spiritual needs of fellow citizens. Authors William F. Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker offer a call to action and a prescription for how to make a difference in rebuilding that: go serve the non-profit sector—as a leader, board member or philanthropic contributor–and dedicate yourself to achieving change that really matters.

But why, I asked Bill Meehan in a recent conversation, should any talented leader on the rise do that? Why now?

The Search For Common Ground

“Americans today are looking for some ‘common ground’,” he began. “Big money and gerrymandering have polarized our political parties; organized religion is less important for many of now, and society faces huge pressures. It’s time to look back to Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th century French traveler who observed that America’s people, uniquely, come together in associations for their greater good—mutual assistance, community solutions, shared worship. Our associative initiatives are a formal sector now. It’s perfectly positioned to give us all a chance to do something meaningful without politics. It’s a perfect antidote for today’s dysfunction—because when people join in shared purpose, they see they have more in common than they first thought.”

Meehan noted the personal rewards of leading or otherwise contributing to the non-profit sector. “All the research shows that people today are looking for more fulfillment in work—and that serving others has great power to provide that. Non-profit service is fundamentally meaningful. But to make it count, any social organization you join has to deliver real performance—which most fail to achieve. Our book will to help you understand why non-profit work matters, and what leaders must do to create the impact it depends upon.”

Meehan and Jonker have been finding their own social sector meaning for many years. He’s an award-winning lecturer of Stanford GSB’s perennial popular course on non-profit management, and long active as a board member, donor and practitioner across multiple civic organizations. Jonker is an experienced non-profit executive, and today leads King Philanthropies. Both are former business consultants who achieved plenty of for-profit impact with commercial clients in earlier careers.

Head And Heart

“We like to say,” as Meehan joked about their hybrid careers, “that we’re analysts who happen to also like Yeats.” Engine of Impact will in fact engage you with plenty of poetic inspiration—but also its rock-solid business methodologies which Meehan and Jonker have deftly adapted to the needs of social sector performance. The volume is a plain-spoken handbook to help you build “strategic leadership”– the combination of strategic thinking and management which the writers will persuade you is the true path to achieving measurable non-profit results.

The book maps “strategic leadership” across seven fundamental practices:

• the primacy of mission

• the critical concepts of strategy

• measuring the right performance

• leadership insight and courage

• building a “teams of teams”

• the “essential fuel” of funding

• accountable governance

Each practice is an Occam’s Razor of best research about what differentiates high-performing from simply feel-good social organizations. The aggregated issues, illustrative examples and practical approaches rhetorically challenge you page after page: this is what performance excellence looks like—so why not go for the gold?”

Indeed.

What It Takes To Serve And Win

That said, no leadership book can turn every reader into a successful leader. Your executional discipline and suitability for role will also be part of the equation. I probed Bill Meehan more deeply. If you’re seeking more meaning and greater good as a future nonprofit leader, how to know if it’s right for you? What are you actually signing up for?

Three themes emerged from our conversation:

1. Consider the nature and size of the opportunity. This book offers the data to prove what you already know: the non-profit sector is a chronic underperformer by any set of measures (and finding the right metrics is its own strategic challenge). Chaos and poor performance is always an opportunity for new leadership. But the real upside to make a difference becomes vivid when you read the rest that the first chapter of Engine lays out: the operating environment of this sector will become even more intense in the coming decade.

“Talent and operating costs will rise, earned revenue will stay limited, investment returns will shrink and most non-profits will need a lot more money,“ commented Meehan. “But remember, retiring Baby Boomers are also about to deliver the largest wealth transfer in modern history—where will that flow? How will it be used? So looking at both demand and supply, this sector will need a major jump of management skill. And because donors increasingly want to know their money is well used, and because society is desperate for better civic performance, there’s going to be a premium on leaders who can deliver impact.”

2. Define what it takes to be successful. Bill Meehan quickly acknowledged that “just because it seems noble, doesn’t mean you should—or can—do this kind of work.”

“Before you jump, check yourself against three criteria. First—it’s a calling. Do you hear a voice, have a visceral feeling for some cause that pulls you? Education, homeless vets, clean water for our townships, whatever—if it doesn’t personally drive you, you won’t be successful.”

“Second, you’ll need insight and courage. Insight meaning you can analyze why some social strategy works. If you’re running a rehab center, can you figure out what makes the addict show up? Build a charter school in a poor neighborhood, can you see that you have to have the parents participate too? You have to be able to find the mechanisms that create change.”

“You need courage because it’s hard to go into jungles and build a clinic. Scary to ask donors for a lot of money in order to survive. Scary to be paid less than you could in a regular job when you have a mortgage and kids in school. Scary to be hated by people opposing the program you’re leading. But remember, courage is not lacking fear; it’s being steadfast in the face of fear. Insight and courage are not magical genius. Our book gives examples of how they can actually be learned.”

“Third quality is ethical fiber. That’s now sadly lacking in the for-profit world, but it still matters for mission work. You need to know what the right thing is to do. And more important, how to find out what the right thing is, if it’s not evident. Successful leaders in this sector constantly define and navigate the moral boundaries of their work.”

3. Get ready to work harder and smarter than your business job. “The capitalist system has superb incentives to get people to do things and reward those who succeed. You’re going to have to be cleverer and more determined to motivate and align a social sector organization. When you create value in a business, customers pay you for it. In nonprofits, the people who benefit from your programs won’t be the ones paying for it. So another one of your hands is tied behind your back. And finally, given the complexity of the social and economic systems you’re working to transform, change will take years. When Ashoka’s Bill Drayton created social entrepreneurship in the 1980s, it was fifteen years before donors started to see the fruits, and began to really invest. Nonprofit leaders have to get good at keeping things going, while sacrificing for years. Because success can be so elusive to define, the hill can be even steeper.”

Looking Ahead

Meehan finished on a more optimistic note. “This kind of leadership is not for everyone. Some people may simply want to serve as a volunteer or board member, or engage in philanthropy to help fund the sector. But if you think you have what it takes, don’t miss a leadership opportunity if one comes your way. Behavioral science has shown that ‘happiness’—however you might want to define that—flattens out once people reach a certain compensation. After that, personal meaning drives our spirit. So why not help make a better world?

Originally published on Forbes.com

Last week’s World Series is now history. But before you turn the page on that baseball story, take one more look, in the context of a bigger conceptual map. The tale has some interesting strategic lessons about a paradigm broader than our national pastime, about leadership in a world increasingly dominated by automated intelligence and the continuing convergence of machine and human learning.

Embracing Moneyball

Okay, so how about those Houston Astros? They won a thrilling World Series against the Dodgers in seven dramatic games, capping a multi-year strategy to take the trophy. Hats off to them, climbing from “worst to first,” from league-losing laughingstock to the spirited victors that bested three of the most formidable (and bigger payroll) rivals in the final month of play. As Ben Reiter of SI.com nicely chronicles (and even predicted in 2014!), the Astros’ gutsy rebuilding plan yielded a major turnaround. They did it thanks to great new talent and a relentless embrace of the now famous “Moneyball” model.

Moneyball (popularized by the pioneering statistic-based management of the Oakland A’s Billy Beane) has been its own revolution for baseball: a transformational innovation driven by empirical analysis of past player performance, which coaches use to more strategically hire and orchestrate their squads against competitors. Analytics-driven strategy has been evolving for a couple of decades since Beane’s breakthrough, and is now followed in some version by most teams.

But Also Embracing More

Five years ago, Houston’s owner, Jim Crane, went looking for a general manager to take Moneyball up another notch. He hired Jeff Luhnow, a mid-level recruiter for the St. Louis Cardinals; Luhnow was also (more significantly) an ex-McKinsey consultant and tech entrepreneur, trained in engineering and economics.

Luhnow soon built a computer-savvy, scientific and quantitative research team unmatched in pro baseball. Before long, “the Astros developed into the one of the most industry’s most analytically driven organizations, relying almost entirely on data to navigate through a full-blown rebuild,” as sportswriter Jared Diamond reports. After a few years of experimentation, the investment in super analytics started to pay off. The Astros began winning much more consistently.

Discovering Both/And

But as Luhnow also conceded in his interview with Diamond, the new Astros magic was not just science and technology but also “the human element–especially “blending them together.” The sports reporting suggests that the strategy succeeded because, over time, it moved beyond the all-too-common “either/or” choice of automation vs people, and instead adopted a fusion of “both/and.” Astros-style Moneyball was beating other teams because of the more human touch the club brought to algorithm management.

For example, the Astros made recruiting choices that innovatively combined “softer” people-related information (e.g. players’ personal backgrounds, health, swing idiosyncrasies, etc.), with more objective performance stats; their managers also took care to leverage the subjective intuitions of their scouts and seasoned staff during hiring and strategy processes. Numbers-driven talent development was continually buttressed by extra human effort along the way too. At a critical moment, for example, the front office added key (and more expensive) older players to mentor younger newcomers and build more team spirit. Luhnow and players also give plenty of credit to Astros field manager (head coach), A.J. Hinch for his strong leadership, motivational communication and personal trust-building belief in the team.

Evolution And Learning

The analytical-human fusion developed in stages. At first, some players resented being turned into a number. Luhnow reportedly went through his own epiphany, and then launched an educational and relationship-building effort to help players understand how and why analytics could make such a difference to them as a team. The campaign helped further humanize the culture.

As the Astros approached the final games of the championship, Luhnow and Hinch once more added to the people side of the ledger, by turning the local city’s hurricane disaster into community-spirit opportunity. The managers endorsed team members’ efforts (including their donations, volunteering, and public discussions) to support Houston fans looking for solace in the wake of Harvey. No number-crunching can explain the motivational chemistry that arose between this Cinderella team and the 40,000 screaming fans showing local pride in the hometown bleachers.

One Size Won’t Fit All

In the wake of the World Series victory, Luhnow acknowledged the importance in rebuilding the winning team of people, culture and analytics together. But he was also quick to downplay any universal formula. As he told Tyler Kepner of  the New York Times, “Not every plan makes sense for every team . . .  But where we started, with the worst team in baseball . . . we really had no choice. We had to focus on developing our own, and when the time is right, adding to it.”

But Lessons Nonetheless

Luhnow rightly waves off proclaiming a generic blueprint for World Series victory—every Major League team is different, and no step-by-step replication of Astros 2017 will guarantee someone else the next trophy. There are just too many variables in play.

But the Astros’ story does hold a few deeper lessons for leaders, beyond baseball. I’ll mention four.

Lessons No. 1 and 2 affirm what strategist Michael Porter long ago taught. First, if the rules of competition shift—e.g. baseball brings quantitative analytics to what was once just a gut-judgment sport—you have no choice but to join the arms race. Owner Luhnow knew he needed to play Moneyball too, if he wanted to have any hope of bringing the Astros back. Whatever your game, you can’t fall behind the  protocols of today’s competition.

But then Lesson No. 2 says: Getting in the new arena is simply the price of admission. To win the now more serious game, you have to also go above and beyond—be different or better than everyone else. The Astros raised the stakes in the Moneyball wars by putting extra horsepower into their analytics—but then went  another step further, artfully combining human and organizational strategy with the hard numbers. What will you do, to be better and different in your game?

Lesson No. 3 echoes the wisdom of more recent strategy thinking: innovative business models iteratively evolve. The new leaders of the Astros grabbed analytics full-on, but then dynamically adapted, adding more human aspects, based on year-by-year experience. Like the Astros, you need to have the patience and fortitude to keep experimenting and learning as you develop your strategy over time.

A Deeper Insight For The Future

Lesson No. 4 takes us into more subtle issues, of a global economy increasingly transformed by technology-enabled knowledge. As we hurtle towards a new reality of algorithms everywhere, growing artificial intelligence and robotic work, how will leaders in fact make strategy? Or does the forthcoming “singularity” now trivialize the question?

Nobody knows, of course. But savvy bettors believe that at least for the foreseeable future, victory will go to the entities that most adeptly combine computing and human intelligence,  both learning aided by technology and learning still in people’s head and hands. The Astros are a micro-case of an organization that successfully combined the two for their sports challenge. But this is only one more small datapoint in an ongoing trend. How will you find the right combination of algorithms and people for your challenges?

Each New Algorithm Forces More Human Innovation

For every leader today, success in building tomorrow’s strategy must begin by exploring the relative value-added of machine versus people in doing work—and then deeply understanding the boundary where the utility of algorithms stops and human effort still matters.

That search continues a process traceable to the dawn of civilization (as nicely explained in Philip Auerswald’s Code Economy). Since earliest time, man’s knowledge discoveries have been progressively turned into tools and technology, at each stage creating a platform of codified intelligence on which the next phase of human endeavor then improves. Cave symbols allowed for writing, which in turn spawned printing, which then led to industrial machines. And then on to calculators, computers, algorithms. With every inflection point, a new need—and opportunity—emerges for the next phase of human creativity to develop. Each new smarter machine impels yet another S-curve of even smarter human work.

The cycle continues today.

So pay attention to it. The final and deeper lesson of a small historical event called World Series 2017 is to think intentionally, now more than ever, about the ever-shifting boundary between codified knowledge and the spirited creativity of people—in whatever you do. The more acute your understanding of that boundary and the more clever you are in finding new ways to bridge it, the more likely you are to hit a really big home run.

Originally published on Forbes.com

President Trump has once again hired a new chief of staff, to bring needed order to a White House rocked by infighting and missed opportunities. Many people hope that John Kelly, a veteran Marine general known for his organizational rigor, will now provide “adult supervision.” Critics voice pessimism: rigor or not, no chief of staff will ever discipline this famously impulsive celebrity president.

But Kelly has gotten off to a promising start, moving swiftly last week to improve White House information flow and meeting protocols. So far, so good — but will Trump tire of yet another new manager? And even if Kelly survives, can he change the game? Will new rules about memos and staff access in the West Wing be enough to lift today’s presidential leadership to a higher, positive level?

A Living Case Study

Trump’s personality is reason enough to be bearish. But suppose the coming of John Kelly were to make a significant difference. What would that actually look like?

The question might seem like just one more inside-the-Beltway parlor game. But as a thought experiment, it might actually hold relevant lessons for organizational life today. As the story unfolds, we are watching a living case study, offering an opportunity to consider anew how managers and leaders find success in working together.

Rethinking The Default Assumption

Early day aspirations for Kelly & Trump seem modest and uninspiring. Many believe the Marine general will simply take more control of the fractious White House staff,  but “Trump will still be Trump.” Kelly might also be able to exercise his standing to “guide the President towards some non-partisan problem-solving.” But the default assumption will still be that president and chief of staff will remain a fundamentally old-fashioned hierarchical relationship, where Trump always has the last word. If so, the best hope is that the subordinate will exercise enough career confidence to gently improve the daily operating context for his leader, nudging periodically to limit damage, and help the boss put a few more points up on the board.

Alas, it’s an organizational model from the Wax Museum of Mad Men Era Management.

A More Modern And Strategic What-If

But suppose instead, some magic dust fell from heaven — and then the White House began to operate like leading-edge organizations now pacing transformation in every sector? In such cases, how do managers and leaders work together to win?

In brief, they operate more like partners, not Boss and Apprentice. As partners, they commit themselves to common goals. And then they collaborate to build effective strategies and innovate, to drive results and create major impact.

Let more fairy dust now fall. How in this magical world would Kelly and Trump develop such a partnership in the White House?

Here are a few principles from a more aspirational playbook:

1. Begin by defining success, not personal prerogatives. White House watchers, obsessed with palace intrigue, chatter about how much authority Kelly will wrest from Trump, and whether Trump will allow the chief-of-staff to control him in any way. It’s a debate bereft of higher purpose. Leader and manager must clearly find a way to work together, but a more partner-like relationship can form if these two men first agree on longer-term goals for this administration– not simply who gets to do what.

Leaders and managers start right by identifying, and then clarifying for all stakeholders, the vision and goals of success. It’s the necessary prelude to developing the strategy and organization to make it happen.

2. Think about roles not rules. The best organizations frame leadership and management in terms of differentiated function, not relative power — leader for vision, inspiration and change; managers for process, tracking goals, delivering results. That’s not to say a leader — e.g., a president — won’t have authority over his managerial chief-of-staff. But instead of arguing about turf and battling about  restrictions, Trump and Kelly might emphasize the different roles each must play to achieve the most strategic impact, even if those roles will sometimes (and necessarily) overlap.

Trump captured the enthusiasm of many voters with a preliminary vision about “making America great again” — but he now needs to develop it further. Kelly knows how to turn ideas into programs and get results from people. He too faces major challenges to do that. Manager and leader will make the most progress by calling on their relative strengths and functional differentiation, working together in pursuit of higher strategy, not dueling about visitor access to the Oval Office.

Like the best CEOs and COOs Trump and Kelly should emphasize roles ahead of rules.

3. Build process and trust through real work. Sure, leaders and managers do have to finally agree about who does what and when. But figuring that out should be done over time, with  partners forging and adjusting  the collaboration through  practice — together developing strategy, learning what works and doesn’t work, managing talent. Bureaucratic, ego-enhancing negotiation about status, conducted in a theoretical vacuum,  is just a fast ticket back to the Management Wax Museum.

4. Develop the partnership into a broader organizational platform. A good manager-leader partnership goes beyond feel-good collaboration between the two main parties. It stands or falls  on the basis of the broader impact it creates. Both roles must contribute, and both roles must be accountable for the tone, tempo and broader organizational culture driving strategy.

To achieve impact together, leaders and managers grow the extended enterprise they share, turning it into a foundational platform to influence a broad ecosystem of stakeholders. Business leaders and managers build organizational platforms to shape networks of customers, governing directors, networks of experts, market influencers, members of broader value chains — as well as continuing to recruit and develop talent for their own company.A collaborative president and chief of staff will create a White House platform to guide policy and transform action across Congress, cabinet agencies, branches of the military, voters, foreign leaders, the press, and more. It’s not about better staffing of edicts or modulating Twitter feeds. The right strategic partnership must mobilize people, ideas and focused talents, creating more influence and followership in every critical arena.

OK, maybe now even Heaven has run out of fairy dust. But as Trump and Kelly struggle along to find the right kind of “adult supervision,” ask yourself what your own potential for a more strategic partnership might be — with your favorite manager? Or maybe your favorite leader. What’s your playbook for that?

Originally published on Forbes.com

Do you find leading your organization to be a constant balancing act? Sometimes you’re giving people flexibility to link up and learn, to “be their best”— but then you’re pushing them to the limit, demanding results. You want to be interconnected, horizontal, and coolly supportive of people far and wide — a true “network leader” — but you also want discipline and vertical respect. Old-fashioned hierarchy can still have its place.

Tired of balancing “command” versus “community?” Maybe it’s time to get off the horizontal/vertical see-saw and think differently about your organization.

Getting To Both/And

So argues Chris Fussell’s new book, One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams. Fussell (assisted by C.W. Goodyear) sketches a compelling “both/and” approach, exhorting leaders to build “hybrid organizations” that blend networks and hierarchy in the same enterprise. The former Navy SEAL and now McChrystal Group business consultant writes that network-hierarchy fusion is not only doable, but even critical. And why not? Today’s global economy forces every leader to master the cognitive dissonance of granting freedom all around, while also continually seeking higher performance. One Mission is a blueprint for building a winning hybrid organization to support your business strategy.

Beyond A Team of Teams

A decade ago, Fussell was aide-de-camp to Stan McChrystal who was leading a global Counterterrorism Task Force in the Middle East. The two worked together, developing what McChrystal described in his own book as a “team of teams” — a high performance intelligence and commando operation across the region to meet the then unprecedented network terrorism of Al Qaeda.

McChrystal’s strategy-cum-memoir of 2015 painted an inspiring picture of transforming the bureaucratic dinosaur of allied military intelligence units into a nimble and deadly effective network too, dramatically increasing successful strikes against insurgents. McChrystal’s story highlighted a new organization model that combined “shared consciousness” among networked but still hierarchically-organized units with “empowered execution” by front-line soldiers. The book insisted it was a formula  that could also benefit commercial organizations competing in today’s interconnected and volatile world.

Business leaders rallied to McChrystal’s New York Times bestseller, but for many, the book lacked how-to, non-military detail. Fussell’s successor volume, crafted with two subsequent years of business applications, redresses the gap. One Mission serves up valuable under-the-hood analysis of what McChrystal first pioneered — making the team-of-teams vision that much more actionable for businesses today.

The High Performing Hybrid Organization

One Mission now explains why “team of teams” worked so well in war, and more important, how its hybrid organizational model is now delivering higher performance in business. Fussell explains that the magic is created by leveraging the strengths of each organizational approach and in tandem offsetting the negatives. The big idea is that savvy hybrid leaders leaven the structure of vertical bureaucracy with a more respectful and empowering culture of horizontal networks.

This is not the first call for bringing network and hierarchy together in one enterprise. As Fussell notes, “academics have been writing about this for years,” and of course the infamous matrix organization model is a living museum of corporations trying to achieve the both/and of org-chart structure and team-based flexibility.  More recent experiments to note might also include Nonaka’s “hypertext organization,” networked community platform businesses (e.g. Uber, Task Rabbit, Airbnb), Red Hat’s “open-ish organization,” Zappo’s holacracy, and others.

But there’s something new and valuable in Fussell’s book. One Mission goes beyond the original McChrystal team-of-teams story, now providing a more detailed discussion of what it takes to actually build the hybrid. As Fussell explained, “Structure is important, but this hybrid only works with the right kind of leader, constantly setting an operating context for people to work together across silos and boundaries.”

So how does a leader create that context?

Understanding Organizational Dynamics

“It begins,” Chris Fussell elaborated, “by understanding the positives and negatives of both parts of the potential hybrid. You have to get beyond the traditional framing of either/or.”

“You can’t throw away what works in a bureaucracy — optimization of assets, accountability, long- term planning and development of talent, certain linear decision-making processes. But we also know bureaucracies can be rigid, slow and risk-averse.”

“Teams and small units, by contrast, are unmatched for their spirit and agility of performance; also their ability to make non-linear decisions and innovate on the fly. But they have disadvantages too: they get dug in with their own micro-cultures, creating parochial echo chambers, and then they won’t collaborate with other units”

“Sometimes a small team will connect with other people — which is human — and form networks, which is good. But then another negative: there’s no real plan or accountability when they do. Flash mobs or loose communities will arise, but they don’t get anything done long term. Just remember, for example, Occupy Wall Street: lots of engagement, but no lasting change.”

“After working with several business clients, we realized that capturing the right strengths of both hierarchy and networks is partly design but mostly about leadership — showcasing expected behavior, setting context, and encouraging ongoing experimentation — building a culture that honors and signals the need for both structure and freedom at the same time. The leader of a hybrid organization has to let go of control, but also not let go too much.”

Four Imperatives

So how to do that? Fussell’s book offers four imperatives for leaders, each framed under a “one mission” culture: many small teams operating as a structured but flexible community, freely operating but engaging and accountable to another; guided to keep learning and take action towards a shared performance goal.

The four imperatives each demonstrate a synthesis of  horizontal freedom and vertical structure that shapes the performance of a “networked hierarchy.”

1. Create an “aligning narrative.”

The all-dominant performance mission begins with leaders creating an “aligning narrative.” This first step is a bonding story of community and duty that cuts across “tribal prejudices,” aimed at building shared commitment among all. The narrative appeals to both reason and emotions to focus everyone on the same meaningful outcome — a classic tool of hierarchical alignment. But the storytelling must also still respect the frequent need for individual units to go their own way to meet the challenges of shared mission — thus swinging the pendulum towards network freedom and flexibility.

As Fussell commented, “the leader must weave stories in a way that each of the “tribal units” sees threats and opportunities beyond their own smaller perspectives — and come to the realization that only by working together can they ever reach the desired performance.”

2. Foster “interconnection.”

Small teams and “tribal units” create their own realities that silently block listening to others, retarding collaborative innovation (endemic to a hierarchy) — so the leader must work tirelessly to foster communication and learning among all, going beyond formal structures (facilitating open, organization-wide exchange; cross-team problem-solving and reflection to form social networks, and vice versa). S/he must also accelerate cross-boundary communication, by judicious “embedding” of key influencers across and even beyond the organization. These “planted advocates” tap into knowledge and trade problem-solving insights with sympathetic partners.

In the Middle East military theater, McChrystal achieved “interconnection” by hosting and moderating community-wide open intelligence briefings, and also placing knowledgeable allies in contributing civilian organizations (e.g. the CIA). Fussell has now been profitably applying the same approach in commercial organizations, for example, by creating multi-unit briefings and network formation among historically adversarial groups working on one company’s technology service programs.

“The key,” Fussell noted, “is for leaders to facilitate the information sharing, encouraging people to start ‘thinking out loud together’. A good leader will pull the right values and ideas out of a community, by challenging people to reflect on the bigger issues that the leader himself or herself is facing. That raises the level of thinking and helps build the aligning narrative.”

3. Shape the hybrid organization’s “operating rhythm.”

A hierarchical organization moves slowly but acts deliberately and  hedges risk. Networks can be fast and fluid, but also volatile, or sometimes ephemeral. At its best, a hybrid organization will not just balance deliberation and execution but actually create a self-reinforcing cycle of both.

“The leader’s challenge,” Fussell explained, “is to help the broader organization find the right cadence to meet the pace of external threats and competition. The leader has to help the widely- distributed teams to develop a sense when to fall back—and listen and learn from others — and when to turn those lessons into action.”

In fighting Al Qaeda, McChrystal wanted to ensure field operatives were continuously sharing intelligence across the entire network — and then at suitable moments converting that knowledge into living strategy, using new, superior insights about the enemy to beat terrorists at their own game.

Fussell highlighted a similar tempo he helped establish between group learning and front- line action, in a major sportswear manufacturer plagued by supply chain issues. “Over time the company evolved an effective rhythm of continuous improvement, with different units learning how to problem-solve together: first  understanding what was causing delivery failures; then moving rapidly to implement fixes; and then falling back to analyze the next and higher level of issues, then to collaborate on solutions again, and so on.”

4. Reinforce “decision spaces” for front-line operating units.

“Better to ask forgiveness than seek permission” goes the old cliché — and a liberating cry for anyone frustrated in a bureaucracy. But too much “permission-free” action can  literally bring down a company — yet not enough innovating freedom can also spell doom, if competitors are moving faster than you. Which they always seem to do.

Thus another hybrid organizational solution, again reflecting  “both/and” — define specific boundaries (as a hierarchy), for when permission-free action is not only allowed but encouraged (as a network). It’s the job of the leader to unleash and also leash: delineate well-defined decision-spaces that clarify when acting on your own might risk the success of the entire mission, but at the same time, within “the red lines,” also encourage rapid entrepreneurial action when need or opportunity arises.

As Fussell recalled: “McChrystal’s development of decision spaces across the Counterterrorism Task Force was a major breakthrough, enabling the collected operational units to up significantly their strikes against the enemy. In businesses, we’re seeing the same liberating power of decision spaces, leaders intentionally framing front-line empowerment, so they can act more quickly and confidently than before.”

Becoming A Hybrid Leader

One Mission is rich with technical insights and examples that bring to life building an effective hybrid organization. But as I questioned Chris Fussell, he kept returning to leadership itself.

He concluded our conversation with quiet reflection about the man at whose side he had learned so much — and then went on to extend his comments in more impersonal terms.

“McChrystal always says how building a ‘team of teams’ forever changed his assumptions about being a leader. He had to begin by transforming himself, shifting his own identity to someone who doesn’t command so much as instead creating context for others to be successful.”

“Good leaders, including now many of our commercial clients, become  humble. They don’t abandon control but use it to create structure for continuous development of a performance community. And instead of focusing on themselves, they devote their efforts to building the capabilities of others, giving them the knowledge and freedom to act whenever mission demands. That allows them to achieve things far greater than any one person or team could ever produce.”

Originally published on Forbes.com