Who’s your choice for the greatest all-around American leader? One of my top choices was born 305 years ago this month. He was never elected to a high office, yet his impact on American life was as profound and far-reaching as anyone could ever claim. On January 17, 1706, Benjamin Franklin came into the world he was to change in many ways.
If you were to ask people who the greatest American leaders have been, many would automatically respond with the names of presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and George Washington. Presidents are, after all, expected to provide leadership on many fronts. But they can’t provide effective leadership in a democratic context unless other leaders outside the political arena are doing their jobs well. Leaders in business, labor, education, religion, social affairs, diplomacy, and a host of other fields are crucial to the performance of society as a whole. And nobody I know of has influenced so many different areas of American life as Benjamin Franklin.
Almost every time he encountered a significant problem, he invented a solution and organized a human institution to deal with it. Printer, writer, scientist, inventor, social organizer, statesman, philanthropist, public servant, moralist, humorist, and diplomat, Franklin put his stamp on the American character in ways that still endure. Given his wide-ranging interest, he may have been more effective as a private citizen than he ever could have been as a president. Happy 305th birthday Ben, and thanks a lot.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The Power of Words
In our previous blog we mentioned the potential of overly critical or nasty speech to encourage destructive behavior. This time we’ll reference the power of language to inspire and galvanize creative and productive behavior. This month, in fact, marks the anniversaries of two memorable statements of purpose and meaning in the human community.
News and information media have amply reported on the fiftieth anniversary of John Kennedy’s inaugural address, which gave us several stirring calls to positive action. Of the two most famous lines in that address, the first was a statement of commitment: “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe.”
The second was a call to service: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Kennedy not only challenged Americans to serve their community, he also created a mechanism to channel that service through the Peace Corps, to which thousands of Americans have devoted themselves.
This month also marks the seventieth anniversary of an address delivered in an even more global context. On January 6, 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt delivered his annual address to the Congress, most of the world’s major powers were already at war, but the United States was still technically neutral. Nevertheless, FDR spelled out for Congress and the world a statement of the four basic freedoms which he felt should serve as a solid foundation for a peaceful world. Those four freedoms ultimately became the basis of the Allied nations’ battle against fascism.
The most often quoted passage from that address goes like this:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which translated into world terms means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which translated into world terms means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.
Those four freedoms are still the most appropriate and most durable basis for a peaceful world order. Unfortunately, they are still out of reach for millions of people in dozens of nations. Nonetheless, it behooves citizens of the world’s leading nations to keep the spirit of FDR’s address alive.
News and information media have amply reported on the fiftieth anniversary of John Kennedy’s inaugural address, which gave us several stirring calls to positive action. Of the two most famous lines in that address, the first was a statement of commitment: “We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe.”
The second was a call to service: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Kennedy not only challenged Americans to serve their community, he also created a mechanism to channel that service through the Peace Corps, to which thousands of Americans have devoted themselves.
This month also marks the seventieth anniversary of an address delivered in an even more global context. On January 6, 1941, when Franklin Roosevelt delivered his annual address to the Congress, most of the world’s major powers were already at war, but the United States was still technically neutral. Nevertheless, FDR spelled out for Congress and the world a statement of the four basic freedoms which he felt should serve as a solid foundation for a peaceful world. Those four freedoms ultimately became the basis of the Allied nations’ battle against fascism.
The most often quoted passage from that address goes like this:
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which translated into world terms means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which translated into world terms means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.
Those four freedoms are still the most appropriate and most durable basis for a peaceful world order. Unfortunately, they are still out of reach for millions of people in dozens of nations. Nonetheless, it behooves citizens of the world’s leading nations to keep the spirit of FDR’s address alive.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Courage to Learn
This week’s biggest news story happened at a Tucson shopping mall, where a disturbed young man went on a rampage with an automatic weapon that left six dead and fourteen injured. His primary target was Arizona Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who seems to be recovering miraculously from a bullet hole in her brain. Among the dead is nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, who was attending the event to learn about how the democratic process works.
As a community, we have witnessed so many of these violent episodes that the range of responses has become predictable. The resulting public conversation, in fact, has focused largely on who is supposedly to blame for this catastrophe and others like it. Among political partisans and some quarters of mass media, the talk has often been polarized, defensive, and accusatory.
Part of the problem, I think, is that too many people, especially those with a political or religious ideology to defend and promote, assume that cause and effect in human affairs can be reduced to simple one-cause-fits-all solutions. We are told that the horror in Tucson could have been prevented by more civility in our political discourse, by stricter limits on guns that are only good for killing lots of people in a few seconds, by reducing the amount of violence in mass media and entertainment, or by better monitoring of people with mental-health problems.
Some even argue that the best solution is to make sure that even more people have guns at the ready for self-defense. That argument may seem useful and personally satisfying after the fact, but it is not a prescription for prevention.
The fact is that people never do anything significant for just one reason. Causation in human affairs is always a matter of multiple causes. In cases like this, communities are a lot like gardens. Just as a garden’s growth requires healthy seeds, receptive soil, ample sunshine and water, perhaps some appropriate fertilizer, and attentive weeding, healthy communities must pay attention to all the factors that contribute to ultimate causation. If any one factor is weak or missing, the garden will suffer or die; if all the factors are just little bit deficient, the garden will still suffer and might not survive.
There is plenty of valid and reliable evidence that nasty, toxic rhetoric contributes to the tendency among a small fraction of the population to act out violently. In fact, the very presence of violence in any culture at any level, whether in real life or in the imaginative life of entertainment media and computer games, tends to generate copycat behavior among the small fraction of the population that just might act out the violence their eyes and ears and brains have absorbed. The process of desensitization to violence has been documented over and over again in many experimental and real-life contexts.
And it’s sheer common sense to realize that the ready availability of high-tech handguns makes it more likely that disturbed people will occasionally use them for their intended purpose.
Thus there is very good reason to ask our political representatives and our entertainment moguls to tone down the violence and the polarized nastiness that have been polluting our culture for some time now. We know that Old Testament episodes and Shakespeare’s plays are violent in places, but we are supposed to think about the reasons for and the consequences of such violence in the Bible and in Shakespeare. And nobody spends hours every day reading the Old Testament or Shakespeare.
The violence we see on television, however, is pervasive, graphic, and spectacular. It happens for no reason other than cheap entertainment, and many people watch it for hours every day. The nasty, polarized rhetoric to which we are subjected in our political life is never really intended to solve any significant problem, but just to work people up to attack or defend an ideology. And ideologies are not based on empirical evidence but on faith in some tradition or some authority; thus, when ideologies clash, there can never be a rational conversation with a satisfying conclusion. There can only be more and more rounds of pointless clash.
There is also good reason to expect our elected officials to take seriously the impact of guns in our culture. This would mean facing up to the unwarranted power of the gun lobby and looking carefully at all the available evidence on all the issues involved, including evidence from other nations where gun violence is a non-issue.
So what to do? The basic principles of collaborative leadership on which the Collaborative Leadership Network is founded can be very helpful here. One important principle is to recognize that the truth is often complex, and in human affairs it is always very complex.
Thus we should try to be patient and track down all the causes for a given problem before we propose solutions or take action. This means recognizing that we can only reduce the incidence of mass killing by addressing all the significant causes at once – in this case, by supporting civility in public discourse, by sensible limits on the kinds of guns that are only useful for killing people, by acknowledging the dangers of violence in mass media, by more effective monitoring and treatment of people with certifiable violent tendencies, and by whatever other means seem appropriate.
We should also be patient about turning prescriptions into actual solutions. In our instant-gratification quick-fix culture, patience is an often-neglected virtue. Legislation is not always the answer to large-scale social problems, but sometimes it is. And getting legislation passed can be a long, tedious process. In any case, for it to succeed, it should also be a collaborative process.
The first principle of effective collaboration, in fact, is that collaboration starts with relationships. Collaborative leaders spend a lot of time and energy building bridges, knocking down walls, and generally developing relationships with others, including those who seriously disagree with them, before they even think about achieving any particular goals together. This can be time-consuming and draining, but it ultimately works better than the old worn-out power games that depend on hierarchy, authority, intimidation, and competition.
Those who promote collaboration and collaborative leadership are frequently ridiculed by others for being idealistic, naïve, weak, or simply out of touch with the supposed realities of human interaction. Over the last two millennia, however, we have learned that collaboration based on concern for others actually works better than competition in many situations. Our wisest and most respected leaders, philosophers, and moral prophets have all said so. Of course, many of them have been assassinated or crucified as dangerous revolutionaries. Apparently, living out the lessons they taught takes considerable courage.
It may sound idealistic and naïve to claim that our first challenge is simply to get along with each other, but our wisest and most profound observers have been delivering pretty much that very message since well before the Sermon on the Mount, and contemporary psychology echoes much of that message.
It’s time we mustered the courage and the wisdom to take that message seriously.
As a community, we have witnessed so many of these violent episodes that the range of responses has become predictable. The resulting public conversation, in fact, has focused largely on who is supposedly to blame for this catastrophe and others like it. Among political partisans and some quarters of mass media, the talk has often been polarized, defensive, and accusatory.
Part of the problem, I think, is that too many people, especially those with a political or religious ideology to defend and promote, assume that cause and effect in human affairs can be reduced to simple one-cause-fits-all solutions. We are told that the horror in Tucson could have been prevented by more civility in our political discourse, by stricter limits on guns that are only good for killing lots of people in a few seconds, by reducing the amount of violence in mass media and entertainment, or by better monitoring of people with mental-health problems.
Some even argue that the best solution is to make sure that even more people have guns at the ready for self-defense. That argument may seem useful and personally satisfying after the fact, but it is not a prescription for prevention.
The fact is that people never do anything significant for just one reason. Causation in human affairs is always a matter of multiple causes. In cases like this, communities are a lot like gardens. Just as a garden’s growth requires healthy seeds, receptive soil, ample sunshine and water, perhaps some appropriate fertilizer, and attentive weeding, healthy communities must pay attention to all the factors that contribute to ultimate causation. If any one factor is weak or missing, the garden will suffer or die; if all the factors are just little bit deficient, the garden will still suffer and might not survive.
There is plenty of valid and reliable evidence that nasty, toxic rhetoric contributes to the tendency among a small fraction of the population to act out violently. In fact, the very presence of violence in any culture at any level, whether in real life or in the imaginative life of entertainment media and computer games, tends to generate copycat behavior among the small fraction of the population that just might act out the violence their eyes and ears and brains have absorbed. The process of desensitization to violence has been documented over and over again in many experimental and real-life contexts.
And it’s sheer common sense to realize that the ready availability of high-tech handguns makes it more likely that disturbed people will occasionally use them for their intended purpose.
Thus there is very good reason to ask our political representatives and our entertainment moguls to tone down the violence and the polarized nastiness that have been polluting our culture for some time now. We know that Old Testament episodes and Shakespeare’s plays are violent in places, but we are supposed to think about the reasons for and the consequences of such violence in the Bible and in Shakespeare. And nobody spends hours every day reading the Old Testament or Shakespeare.
The violence we see on television, however, is pervasive, graphic, and spectacular. It happens for no reason other than cheap entertainment, and many people watch it for hours every day. The nasty, polarized rhetoric to which we are subjected in our political life is never really intended to solve any significant problem, but just to work people up to attack or defend an ideology. And ideologies are not based on empirical evidence but on faith in some tradition or some authority; thus, when ideologies clash, there can never be a rational conversation with a satisfying conclusion. There can only be more and more rounds of pointless clash.
There is also good reason to expect our elected officials to take seriously the impact of guns in our culture. This would mean facing up to the unwarranted power of the gun lobby and looking carefully at all the available evidence on all the issues involved, including evidence from other nations where gun violence is a non-issue.
So what to do? The basic principles of collaborative leadership on which the Collaborative Leadership Network is founded can be very helpful here. One important principle is to recognize that the truth is often complex, and in human affairs it is always very complex.
Thus we should try to be patient and track down all the causes for a given problem before we propose solutions or take action. This means recognizing that we can only reduce the incidence of mass killing by addressing all the significant causes at once – in this case, by supporting civility in public discourse, by sensible limits on the kinds of guns that are only useful for killing people, by acknowledging the dangers of violence in mass media, by more effective monitoring and treatment of people with certifiable violent tendencies, and by whatever other means seem appropriate.
We should also be patient about turning prescriptions into actual solutions. In our instant-gratification quick-fix culture, patience is an often-neglected virtue. Legislation is not always the answer to large-scale social problems, but sometimes it is. And getting legislation passed can be a long, tedious process. In any case, for it to succeed, it should also be a collaborative process.
The first principle of effective collaboration, in fact, is that collaboration starts with relationships. Collaborative leaders spend a lot of time and energy building bridges, knocking down walls, and generally developing relationships with others, including those who seriously disagree with them, before they even think about achieving any particular goals together. This can be time-consuming and draining, but it ultimately works better than the old worn-out power games that depend on hierarchy, authority, intimidation, and competition.
Those who promote collaboration and collaborative leadership are frequently ridiculed by others for being idealistic, naïve, weak, or simply out of touch with the supposed realities of human interaction. Over the last two millennia, however, we have learned that collaboration based on concern for others actually works better than competition in many situations. Our wisest and most respected leaders, philosophers, and moral prophets have all said so. Of course, many of them have been assassinated or crucified as dangerous revolutionaries. Apparently, living out the lessons they taught takes considerable courage.
It may sound idealistic and naïve to claim that our first challenge is simply to get along with each other, but our wisest and most profound observers have been delivering pretty much that very message since well before the Sermon on the Mount, and contemporary psychology echoes much of that message.
It’s time we mustered the courage and the wisdom to take that message seriously.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Bureaucracy Pro and Con
The quality of leadership in any group depends an awful lot on the size and structure of the group itself. There's one kind of group, in fact, that almost seems to defy any attempt at creative leadership, and you'll hear people in government, business, education, and virtually everywhere else complain about it. It's the large, formal organization tangled in rules, regulation, and red tape. We usually call it bureaucracy
Bureaucracy is really just a fancy name for an organization so large and so specialized that it can only operate by maintaining clearly defined roles and written rules to govern all activities. The modern world does much of its work through such organizations, and without them many of the material benefits of life would be impossible. Yet they do present serious obstacles to leadership and creative innovation.
Ironically, bureaucracies have contributed to a more rapid pace of change in the modern world, but they are so large and cumbersome that they don't adapt well to change themselves. Also ironically, bureaucracies are the result of the human ability to communicate and store information in writing and other symbolic forms -- yet they also limit communication by eliminating much of the face-to-face interaction which helps people to really understand each other.
Since people can easily be treated as replaceable parts in a large bureaucracy, it can also be hard to motivate them to perform beyond minimal expectations or to take risks beyond the written rules and regulations. One of the most effective ways to make bureaucracies more responsive is to work on building small, effective teams within the organization and give each team a clear set of goals and expectations.
Individuals can't do much alone and massive bureaucracies tend to strangle in their own red tape, but small, close-knit teams communicating directly and personally can be creative and can act as flexible links between individuals and the organization as a whole. Small teams can also support a culture of collaboration between and among individuals, other teams, and the organization as a whole.
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