Why Leaders Can't Lead: The Unconscious Conspiracy Continues by Warren Bennis

Author:Warren Bennis
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Open Circle Press
Published: 2015-06-08T14:00:00+00:00

compatible, able to work as -3. team, knowledgeable and competent within their areas of specialization, and very serious about the idea of a "president's office" or "executive constellation" and its importance.

There's an interesting, easy group exercise I use which goes like this: We try, on one axis of a blackboard, to identify what a particular office must or should do—what its goals, tasks, objectives are, both short-term and longterm. Then we ask each individual what it is that he or she wants to do. is motivated to do, aspires to do. And then, finally, we look at competence. How competent are various individuals to perform those tasks? What I strive for, but never fully succeed in doing, is to create a fit, a tnangulation, between competence and capacity and aspiration— what each person wants to do—and what needs to be done in each particular job.

The leader, at every level, must be partly a conceptualist, something more than just an "idea man." By that I mean someone with a kind of entrepreneurial vision, a sense of perspective, and, most of all, the rime to spend thinking about the forces that will affect the destiny of that person's shop or that institution.

In this connection a srory comes to my mind: A king returned to his capital, followed by his victorious army. The band played; and the king's horse, the army, the people all moved in step with the rhythm. The king, amazed, contemplated the power of music. Suddenly he noticed a man who was walking out of step and slowly falling behind. Deeply impressed, the monarch sent for the man and told him, "I never saw a man as strong as you are. The music has enthralled everybody except you. Where do you get the strength to resist it?" The man answered, "I was pondering, and that gave me the strength,"

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'MORTAL STAKES

That old story is relevant to the point I want to make. Almost all leaders complain about getting involved, or overly involved, in routine (turning off the lights, the dayto-day operations). Given the overload on all of us, it's understandable. But I don't think this is any excuse for not realizing that one of the main functions of every leader, every manager, is to maintain his sense of perspective, to know how to ask the right questions, to be a conceptualise, to be able to look ahead so that an organization or part of that organization can make the right decisions for the future. It is not only generals who are always fighting the last war.

The leader must create for his institurion clear-cut and measurable goals, based on advice from all its many constituencies. He must be allowed to proceed toward those goals without being crippled by bureaucratic machinery and routine that sap his strength, energy, and initiative. He must be allowed to take risks, to embrace error, to use his creativity to the hilt, and encourage others in the institution to use theirs. This cannot he done without the leader's

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