The Illusion of Successful change requires the top person

[john engle]

friends,

i'm really enjoying this conversation about leadership.  i like to think of
influence as an important aspect of leadership.  money has power that can be
used to influence.  throughout history we see examples of people who had
influence but who chose to not have much money.

yesterday i was looking at the peter drucker foundation newsletter. here's
and excerpt from an article about dee hock, ("the founder and chief
executive officer emeritus of visa usa and visa international, and founder
and coordinating director of the chaordic alliance.")

"Mr. Hock defined chaord as [an autocatalytic, self-governing, adaptive,
non-linear, complex, organism, organization or system exhibiting patterns
and behavior characteristic of both order and chaos.]  He explained that
society needs to move from using the old machine metaphors influenced by the
industrial revolution because it causes us to try to structure society and
organizations in accordance with this clock-like mechanism.  He encourages
instead comparison to more complex biological organizing systems that have
the capacity to receive, utilize, store, transform, and transmit."

"He also encouraged a different way of looking at leadership in
organizations.  Rather than traditional management of authority--hiring,
motivating, training, organizing, and directing subordinates, a leader
should first manage oneself.  Without proper management of self, no one is
fit for authority, he said.  After managing the self, a leader should manage
those who have authority over us, our peers, and lastly, those over whom we
have authority.  Management of peers and superiors is done by such things as
understanding them, persuading them, and motivating them--by leading them.
Induced behavior, he said (Dee Hock), is the essence of leadership,
compelled behavior is the essence of tyranny.  You can only lead them if you
can properly lead yourself.  It is true leadership, leadership by everyone,
chaordic leadership in, up, around, and down this world so badly needs, and
mechanistic, dominator, industrial age management it so sadly gets."

... a perspective to throw into the discussion.

john
port au prince, Haiti
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