Our Views

Leadership Solutions Philosophy

Since the advent of the industrial revolution, we have built organizations based upon hierarchy and command and control structures. Capital has been viewed as superior to people talent and we have increasingly relied upon management techniques (systems and efficiency thinking) to meet performance and profit goals.

For the more advanced societies to continue enjoying their lifestyles and remain ahead of other fast up-and-coming societies – China, Singapore, Brazil, India, Eastern Europe – and cope with increasing moves to shift manufacturing and routine technical roles (bookkeepers, programmers, administrative staff) off-shore to less advanced societies, the advanced society members have to develop workforces based upon innovative and knowledge-based workers.

At the dawn of the 21st Century examples of knowledge-based workers include financial advisors, software engineers, consultants, bankers, design engineers, entertainers, professional sports people, media experts, and so forth. Companies will be distinguished by their innovation and knowledge capacity, in the form of key competencies, and their customer/marketplace skills, in the form of key capabilities.

In these innovation focused economies, highly talented and relatively worldly knowledge-based workers will have different expectations and requirements to give of their best. “Manipulate and squeeze” and “command and control” organization environments will not suffice. A typical refrain from American managers is that they experience tremendous difficulties in motivating the younger generation of workers.

Against this background Leadership Solutions, Inc. ® advocates a fresh approach for encouraging organizations to grow within the 21st century. Our traditional approaches to company growth have served their time. The way organizations grow in the 21 st century will be considerably different from methods used in the past.

We believe in . .

• much greater use of workplace people’s intuitive capabilities and their overall "collective wisdom” which is vastly underutilized in today's business environment”

• business community environments (heterarchies) rather than hierarchies with “command and control”, which, in the final analysis, are anti-customer, anti-employee and coercive in nature.

• strategic positioning rather than strategic planning (which is an oxymoron) as a way of creating an energizing and opportunity oriented environment for future workplace people.

• leadership more than management – even though we need both – where leadership is about “effectiveness and people thinking” and management is about “efficiency and systems thinking."

• companies building their intellectual capital resources as their vital competitive edge rather than purely their financial capital resources. Intellectual capital is a barometer of future wealth, whereas financial capital is more a measure of historical management prudence.

• innovation as a sounder long term strategy than efficiency.

• an environment of continuous renewal will be far more exciting and growth oriented for leaders and knowledge-based workers than one of incremental change.

• organizations that choose this 21st century framework for growth will learn how to “light fires within their knowledge-workers” rather than “fires under them.”

Once this fresh approach takes hold the “sky is the limit” and ultra-successful organizations will be born.

Principles – Our key current principles include:

• Maximizing organizational growth by utilizing 21st Century enlightened leadership practices and tools versus traditional industrial-age management policies and processes.

• Maximizing organizational growth by optimizing its leadership capacity, both as groups and as individuals, to build greater organization effectiveness. It is our experience that effective leaders are usually pretty efficient managers, too.

• Maximizing an organization's intellectual capital (people talent, brainpower, and its competencies [know how] and capabilities [innate market/customer skills]), so as to give it a vital competitive and wealth creating advantage

• Innate (organic) growth is invariably a more powerful, natural and effective way to build a business than mergers and acquisitions, re-engineering, restructuring (using outside financial mechanisms), and so forth. These are all manmade devices that, more often than not, do not succeed or provide strong investor value over the long haul.

Busting Out of Recession’s Grip

by Peter Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“We will have a harder time planning for the up than we did for the down,”
Carol B. Tomé, CFO, Home Depot – Business Week, August 2009, ‘Still Stuck in the Fog of Recession.’

This article went on to share Tomé’s admission that it will take courage to “step out and say, ‘O.K., I think sales are going to increase.’” But isn’t that what leadership is about, courage? Leadership is also fundamentally about vision, integrity and wisdom. We cannot write enough about integrity but, assuming most readers reach this standard; their other challenge is to possess the vision and wisdom to bring the vital edge for busting out of recession’s grip.

A discerning point for key executives is their quality of decision making and vision, especially when lifting their companies out of a downward trend. Good decision making requires wisdom and insight for inspiring the most compelling options. James Surowiecki in his book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ (Anchor Books, 2004/5) wrote, “Truly successful decision making, of course, demands more than a picture of the world as it is. It demands in addition a picture of the world as it will (or at least as it may) be. Any decision-making mechanism therefore has to be good under conditions of uncertainty.”

Here again, the quoted Business Week article may prove helpful when it said, “While it may be hard to manage through the current state of uncertainty, economists predict most companies will see improvement in the second half.” This is a very valuable statement. Why? Because in Surowiecki's book he refers to “decision markets” and makes the comment “…the most mystifying thing about decision markets is how little interest corporate America has shown in them. Corporate strategy is all about collecting information from many different sources … and making decisions in the face of an uncertain future. These are tasks for which decision markets are made for. Yet companies have remained, for the most part, indifferent to this source of potentially excellent information … by tapping into the collective wisdom of their employees.”

We ignore the collective wisdom of Business Week’s independent economist poll at our peril – this is true of our people, too. Surowiecki’s book makes a compelling case for drawing upon a broad cross section of informed independent opinions: “collective wisdom” brings a degree of accuracy which is staggering. He calls this a decision market, which is why leaders will take the quoted economists’ view extremely seriously and act now, while managers will wait for proof.

Equally, leaders will be the first to draw upon their people’s collective wisdom because it becomes their own natural decision market. An excellent tool for doing this is “option solving” because it calls upon diverse participants to bring their independent perspective to figure out different viable options for taking their business forward. Once those particular options have been flushed out, then their leaders can draw upon the participants’ collective wisdom (decision market) to determine the most favorable future opportunity. There are particular techniques available for making the most of this natural phenomenon.

“Any decision-making mechanism therefore has to be good under conditions of uncertainty.”

There are two possible reasons that corporate America has shown little interest in this approach. Firstly, because executives are stuck with the idea that it’s their job to make all the decisions. Secondly, their belief that their people are not particularly smart. Both views are fundamentally flawed. As Surowiecki also pointed out, “We assume that the key to solving problems or making good decisions is finding that one right person who will have the answer … We should stop hunting and ask the crowd (which, of course, includes the geniuses as well as everyone else) instead. Chances are, it knows.”

To ignore the incredible amount of “collective wisdom” in a room – its intuitive brain power - that’s available to them, when they bring the right group of people together, is an executive’s virtual nightmare. The only thing standing between executives and releasing this phenomenal capability is their own facilitation skills, the right preparation and using an appropriate technique. Option solving has most of the ingredients to bring this about.

In the same Business Week edition, Barak Obama was interviewed about his evolving relationship with business leaders. He was asked the question, “Can you tell us what you’ve learned about management and leadership that you didn’t know six months ago, and what you’ve gotten better at?” His reply, “…A lot of decisions you’re making, whether it has to do with Afghanistan or the banking system, involves seeing a set of options, the outcomes of which are never guaranteed, and then making the best possible decision…”

Surowiecki also wrote, “… individual judgment is not accurate enough or consistent enough: cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making. The positive case for diversity…is that it expands a group’s set of possible solutions and allows the group to conceptualize problems in novel ways.”

It’s clear from our latest economic tsunami that we have a crisis in decision making. The best way to bust out of recession’s grip is to make smart decisions: decisions that our people are fully behind. Their collective intuition knows instinctively when to “smell a rat.” By using option solving, you will be able to involve them (vital for increasing engagement) as well as produce optimum solutions for pushing your business forward. Your people are a critical “decision market.”