How well adapted are we? By Teresa Strausz

So what in the world does this video have to do with organizations or organization development? As we work with and in organizations, asking the question “How will the chicks fare here?” as the narrator does in this video, can help us open up to what ways we might adapt to an ever-changing organizational landscape. How are our organizational dynamics and resources faring in the face of new landscapes? Are we adapting our structures or are we hanging onto our old way of nest-building as the tried and true way of surviving?

The need for adaptation in our organizational and leadership lives is in direct relationship to the degree we are or are not “matched to a new set of circumstances.” How are you currently matched to your circumstances? How are your chicks faring?

Finishing and Using a Strategic Plan | By Seth Bate

Plan of the Royal Hotel, Carlton 1916, Courtesy of State Records NSW

You had a great planning retreat! Most of the board members were there, staff were involved, everyone ate cookies and drank iced tea. A week later, all the notes are typed up into a document with a pretty cover that says “strategic plan.”

Now what?


In most cases, a planning retreat is done in a work session setting to create a draft document. To make it official, it is necessary to add a little detail and have the board of directors vote to accept it. These steps may be useful:

1. Review the draft plan and adjust language and dates to reflect any progress or decision made since the planning session.
2. Review all people assigned and target dates for projects to see if they are appropriate and realistic. In some cases, these are recommendations from an outside facilitator.  Adjust as necessary.
3. Present the adjusted plan to the board of directors for feedback. Using the board’s ideas, re-write and re-submit for approval. This process may take 2-3 meetings depending on the feedback received.

How the strategic plan is used might be even more important than what it says. Think about these suggestions:

• Use a portion of each meeting to update progress on the plan. Actually make the changes electronically on the document as you go, deleting items as they are accomplished and adding new objectives and associated actions as they are determined.
• Consider using progress on the strategic plan as one of the ways board and staff are evaluated.
• If your organization follows its strategic plan to the letter, there may be an absence of creativity and responsiveness.
• If the plan gets completely overhauled, you may be lacking focus and discipline.
• If the plan gets put away and never looked at, the planning process is a waste of resources and a disservice to the organization’s board and all the people who support it.

CCSR can help you create a strategic planning process that is right for your organization--and help you ensure it remains useful.

Authority, leadership and the Little Napoleon | By Seth Bate

John McGraw and Christy Mathewson, New York Giants, 1911 World Series

, 

Photo courtesy of Boston Public Library 

John McGraw was the umpire-shredding manager of the New York Giants from 1902 to 1932. I recently read a biography of him; to my surprise, he has been on my mind as I have taught, discussed and tried to practice leadership in the last few weeks.

At the WSU Center for Community Support & Research and the Kansas Leadership Center, we define leadership as the activity of mobilizing people to do difficult work on complex issues. We think of authority as a position—such as manager of a baseball team—and we believe that people who hold authority are expected to provide protection, order and direction. Authority is sometimes useful in exercising leadership, but it is not the same as leadership.

John McGraw had and used authority. The press dubbed him (somewhat redundantly, as his biographer Charles Alexander points out) the Little Napoleon for his strategic prowess and bellicose manner on the field.  He often called every pitch and play in a game. One of McGraw’s innovations was to teach players sign language so when they missed a conventional sign from him, he had a second way to give instructions.

In a spring training interview, McGraw once explained that he told his players to execute what he told them, and if something went wrong, he would take the heat. It seems to me that this is what many of us look to in our authorities; tell us what to do, and shoulder the risk for us.

In baseball, relying solely on authority can be enormously effective. It worked for McGraw. He is second on the all-time list of wins for major league managers. There is some evidence, however, that there was an issue McGraw cared about for which authority was insufficient to make progress.

In the Ken Burns documentary Baseball, it’s said that when McGraw died, a list of African-American players he wanted to recruit into the segregated major leagues was found in his papers. I’m speculating, of course, but one interpretation is that McGraw couldn’t do more than make a wish list because he only knew how to use authority. To tackle a daunting civic issue like integrating baseball he would have needed to use leadership competencies.

The Little Napoleon’s baseball record makes me think he had some capacity to intervene. He demonstrated some elements of the KLC Competencies for Civic Leadership

• Hold relentlessly to purpose. McGraw doggedly pursued winning. On the field, every close play at the plate was worth a profane argument with an ump. Off the field, every political maneuver at the league level was suspect and could result in a blistering letter. What if he had recognized that the pool of black players could serve his purpose of winning and pursued that as fiercely?

• Give the work back. It might seem uncharacteristic, but McGraw had a soft spot for players who had washed out of the majors because of their drinking or womanizing habits. In a few instances, McGraw gave second and even third chances. Still, he didn’t take on responsibility for the player’s rehabilitation; he provided the space to play, but the work of getting back into playing form was the player’s. What if he took the same approach to a few pioneering minority players and created a level playing field on which they could succeed or fail?

• Act experimentally. McGraw was one of the innovators of “scientific baseball,” a style based on smart baserunning and small tactical advantages. He disparaged the new offensive style of baseball that came into vogue in the 1920s with Babe Ruth. In his final years, though, he risked ridicule and began actively recruiting sluggers, even landing the great Rogers Hornsby for a short time. If McGraw didn’t completely abandon his position, he at least experimented with another approach. What if McGraw had risked even wider ridicule and recruited African-American players?

Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa—who has a bit of Little Napoleon in him—is on pace to pass McGraw on the all-time wins list in 2012. When that happens, I hope McGraw gets his due. He was a fascinating character and a brilliant manager — and his story might still have something to teach us about the authority and leadership. 

This article was also posted on the Kansas Leadership Center blog, a great resource for reflections on leadership and information about KLC programs.

Assessing Impacts, Discovering Values | By Lael Ewy

A problem-solving tool we teach in the Certified Peer Specialist 5-Day Basic Training involves, among other things, looking how a person is negatively impacting his own problem, asking how one’s actions or beliefs may be exacerbating that problem or preventing it from being solved. This is an aspect of problem-solving we tend to shy away from or ignore. 

I suspect that’s because doing so brings us into contact with all sorts of things we don’t want to hear. Brainstorming practical solutions makes us feel effective; looking at our own role in causing a problem can make us feel uncomfortable. Coming up with solutions might change the way we act in the short term, until the immediate effects of the problem seem to be alleviated. But examining how we’re contributing to a problem may force us to change who we are and what we believe—and that has implications for the long term. 

Indeed, fostering long-term solutions is exactly why we examine what we are doing to create and perpetuate problems. How many “solutions” have been implemented, their effects measured, and congratulations extended to those involved, only to have the effects reversed by a new set of problems or another bout of the same old thing? We see examples of this everywhere, from weight loss programs that fail to address our basic attitudes about exercise and food to military “victories” that precede the chaos of a failed state. To admit to how we are negatively impacting a problem is to admit that we are flawed. But to do so is also to take responsibility for a problem, or at least for that part of the problem that is under our control. 

For individuals, this might mean measuring our espoused values against the beliefs we express through our actions: I may agree that the local coffee shop wastes an appalling number of paper cups, but my own vanity may prevent me from bringing my battered travel mug in for a refill. 

For an organization, taking stock of what it’s doing that contributes to a problem could force an accounting of institutional values for the first time—and that might reveal how incoherent or contradictory those values really are. For instance (and to keep a theme alive), the desire to stock the office break room with pricey fair trade coffee might go against the value of keeping operating costs low. 

But this also reveals the power of reviewing our own negative impacts: the organization might decide that the value of doing right by the grower of the coffee beans outweighs the value of cost-effectiveness in this case. Confronted with the values underlying the impacts, a person or organization is empowered to act intentionally.  And sometimes, through reviewing how we negatively impact a problem, we may realize that it’s not actually a problem, and that the proper solution is no action at all.