Leadership: Managing Diverse Agendas
Dr David Butcher
Steve Macaulay
Today we are going to examine the challenges of leadership. Now many
people look at what’s termed consensus management and say what you
really need is to take account of the diversity of views. Some people would
call this distributed leadership, some people say we need to tap into the
wisdom of crowds. On the other hand other people look at the success of
people like Steve Jobs, somebody with a very clear vision of the future who
expected people to fall behind that. Now these present dilemmas that we
are going to discuss today with Dr David Butcher. Now David, you have
worked with a lot of people who over the years have expressed views about
leadership and you have seen leadership practice, are these dilemmas
paradoxes reconcilable?
David Butcher
Steve they are, look you mentioned Steve Jobs there aren’t many people like
Steve Jobs and of course what people don’t remember when thinking about
Apple is that in reality he relied on, as people always do, the view of many
people not just his own it’s a myth that there is just one person sitting at the
top of the pile who can somehow or other galvanise everybody else to one
simple way of thinking. The reality is this Steve, you don’t have any choice
nowadays we build organisations, the business world is so complex that it’s
never going to be one person or just a few people who can deliver all of the
leadership. Not only that but of course we put a lot of effort into developing
people into educating people you put people in organisations who are
educated and developed they think for themselves and that’s what we want.
So it’s a situation where we have to use it there’s no choice that’s what it
means going forward somehow or other to find a way of reconciling
diversity of leadership view.
Steve Macaulay
Well let’s take this down to specifics then, if we look at the executive
leadership level what would you expect to see of people that are doing just
what you say and reconciling these two approaches?
David Butcher
Obviously if you are talking about a small organisation Steve, it’s still
possible for just one person to have a very large leadership presence. But
obviously when you are talking about larger organisations when you are
talking about big organisations, multi nationals, what it means at executive
level is simply this - that those people must set some kind of parameter
some kind of guiding framework which is as unequivocal as possible but they
must do two other things they must indicate within the business that they
realise there are many ways of achieving the objectives the strategic
objectives that they are setting and provided obviously you don’t break the
law in meeting those objectives and you are ethical then we at the top
recognise that that’s of great value and that is to be encouraged. That’s one
thing they have to do and I think the second thing that they have to do is
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recognise that sometimes people can see more from within the organisation
than they at the top can see in certain regards and therefore even when you
set clear parameters, you should be open to challenge, you should be open
to people saying well have we thought about this, and maybe there’s other
ways of thinking about it and I suppose I could put that in a different way
and say if you are executive level you must be open to being led from below
sometimes and that’s quite a difficult trick to achieve.
Steve Macaulay
So is this kind of consultative management that you are advocating, I mean
it certainly doesn’t sound like consensus management and it doesn’t
certainly sound like autocratic management. I am just trying to get a feel for
where you are coming from.
David Butcher
That’s a good question, it’s neither of those things really, although obviously
sometimes you do need to say we have to do it this way. So if that’s
autocratic yes and sometimes you need to say what do you all think and if
that’s consultation, yes, but a lot of the time it’s neither of those things, it’s
better described as a process of managing diverse agendas and working
those things through, giving enough time, airspace, so much depends on
relationships, people in influential positions in businesses have good
relationships with those around them, what we these days call social capital
in a business, that’s just worth so much Steve because it is the mechanisms
that allows for competing agendas and what I mean by that is agendas that
have genuine validity, they are agendas for the business, they are not just
personal agenda, they are not just the agendas for individuals who want to
feather their careers. All those things are important of course but we are
going to see in any organisation if it’s got good leaders in it throughout the
organisation people who don’t literally see it all the same way the idea of a
simple vision to which we all buy in is mission impossible it’s probably a
myth anyway. So that’s the key to be able to work with those diversity of
agendas and absolutely key to it is good relationships.
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