What Works in Management and
Leadership Education and
Development
Professor John G Burgoyne
j.burgoyne@lancaster.ac.uk
Agenda
• What works: the conclusions
• Critical realist evaluation
• An example – developing diabetes networks
references to follow
What works: conclusion 1
Leadership development needs to prepare
people to deal with ‘wicked’ problems.
The ‘context sensitive methods’ (coaching,
mentoring and action learning) are best for
this.
See Horne and Steadman for the evidence.
What works: conclusion 2
Management needs to be addressed to, and
addresses tamer problems, and includes the
management science and evidence based
decision making skills.
This is to avoid turning what are tame
problems into wicked ones.
What works: conclusion 2 cont.
A degree of didactic teaching of knowledge
and skills is appropriate here.
Followed by practice on simulated problems
What works: conclusion 3
People need to learn to manage the
management – leadership balance.
Case studies may be useful here.
See Burgoyne and Mumford on the case study method.
What works: conclusion 4
For corporate leadership development there is
a need to consider where the leadership is that
matters, so that the investment can be made in
the right place.
What works: conclusion 4 cont.
This diagramme may help:
What works: conclusion 4 cont.
Development programmes should target social
and human capital combined.
Corporate programmes may do this, not
necessarily deliberately.
The Advanced Management Programme is a
rate example in the Business School world.
See Mintzberg and Gosling for account
What works: conclusion 4 cont.
In corporate leadership development the main
investment is usually in senior leaders and
their likely successors.
In our case studies Bernado’s was an
exception: the pinch point in their business
model was the leaders of their charity shops.
See Burgoyne, Boydell and Pedler for report.
What works: conclusion 5
In a corporate setting, and for open academic
programmes, attention needs to be given to
the fit of the development programme with
the selection of people likely to benefit and
the likely future utilisation of the management
and leadership talent developed.
What works: conclusion 5 cont.
According to evolutionary psychology the
will to lead is largely innate, but the ability to
do it well can be learnt.
See Nicholson for refs.
What works: conclusion 5 cont.
Organisations, arguably, should only develop
management and leadership talent if they do
not have enough. They should check first that
they are fully utilising what they have.
Utilisation is achieved through correct career
management, performance management and
reward systems.
What works: conclusion 5 cont.
The acquisition of leadership talent or the
potential for it, its development and utilisation
is called the ‘bundle thesis’ because they are
like three chords in a rope each made up of
strands.
See Burgoyne (2010)
What works: conclusion 6
According to meta-reviews of evaluations of
management and leadership education and
development, in the Business School and corporate
worlds, there are three benefits from almost all
programmes, in terms of both process and outcome:
•Standing back from work and reflecting
•Networking with colleagues in similar roles
•Learning a few models like Porter’s five forces.
See Burgoyne, Hirsh and Williams, and Hirsh, Burgoyne and
Williams
What works: conclusion 7
Needs to fit with corporate culture, or be part
of a strategy to change it:
What works: conclusion 8
Can benefit by developing a leadership approach
that enhances organisational learning.
Contrary to popular belief learning organisations
can, with benefit, be hierarchical. Senior leaders
need to listen to accurate information from below
and use their overview to direct downwards.
See Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell, and Pedler, Boydell and Burgoyne
What works: conclusion 9
Should take advantage of appropriate forms of
virtual learning.
There is evidence that e-learning is largely
used for technical skills and organisational
procedures, however this may well be due to
an unimaginative view of its pedagogical
possibilities.
Even in high tech IT firms f2f is preferred for
leadership development, partly because they
spend much time in front of screens already.
What works: conclusion 9 cont.
Virtual action learning is believed to work and an
increasing trend. Some believe it has positive
advantages.
Low tech approaches (phone and email
conferences) are much preferred to hi tech ones
(second life and Cisco Presence).
As organisations and teams become increasingly
virtual this is likely to be an increasing trend.
What works: conclusion 9 cont.
Educational process mirrors work situations
See Bowles and Gintis
Virtual organisation involves virtual
individual work style, internal virtual
interaction and virtual relations with
organisational stakeholders.
What works: conclusion 10
More attention needs to pay more attention to
formative evaluation.
So that we can improve on the understanding
in the points above.
See various of my publications in the references on how to do
this and examples. Also Pawson for a critical realist approach
to meta-analysis or systematic review as he calls it.
Critical realist evaluation
A challenge and opportunity
Evaluation led development strategy
and implementation
Integrated evaluation built in from the
beginning of development design
Afterthought add on evaluation
No systematic evaluation - development as act of faith
See Pawson reference
Evaluating Action Learning: A
Perspective Informed by
Network and Complex
Adaptive Systems Theory
This largely theoretical section will
argue the case for the usefulness of
applying network and complex
adaptive systems theory to an
understanding of Action Learning
and the challenge it’s evaluating
This approach, it will be argued, is
particularly helpful in the context of
improving capability in dealing with
wicked problems spread around
complex systems and networks.
Network theory is the general
proposition that the world can be
understood as a system of nodes or
links at recursive levels (individuals,
groups/departments, organisations,
clusters and industries etc.) and
includes, but is by no means limited
to, social networking.
Murray Sunders argues that evaluation itself can
operate as ‘an island of stability in a sea of chaos’.
This idea will be held in the background using this
theoretical approach, as will the point that most
evaluation is instrumental, about testing the
achievement of aims that are assumed to be right and
good, rather than testing and challenging them –
supporting single loop rather than double loop
learning in other words. In this part of the argument,
and others, I will be building on the ideas I presented
at the last conference on Critical Realism and Action
Learning.
See Saunders et al.
Amongst other things it will be argued
that Action Learning can help
organisations and groups, understood
at networks, balance the destabilising
tendencies to explosion and implosion,
and, rightly used, can help prevent
network distortion (over dominance of
one group of stakeholders).
Although largely theoretical, this
presentation may be illuminated by
an example taken from an evaluation
project on a distributed leadership
development initiative with Diabetes
Care Networks in the NHS and a
current evaluation of customer care
initiatives.
Critical Realism argues that the world is an
open system with emergent properties
Rather than the deterministic machine of the
positivists
Or the ungrounded shifting sea of cultural
meaning of the extreme constructionists and
post modernists
Highly compatible with complex adaptive
network system view
In my presentation a number of
years ago and a paper subsequently
published in the Action Learning
Research Journal I raised the
question of what exactly is carried
forward, if anything, from action
learning
See various Burgoyne refs. below.
Action Learning is often judged in terms
of success in dealing with the focal
challenge
However this really treating an action
learning set as a task force
The question is what is carried forward to
make success in the face of the next
challenge more likely
Possible candidates are:
•
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P that was previously Q
Ability to learn – but how does this work?
Confidence
Familiarity with networks
and, no doubt, many others
Relatively closed simple systems
effects
causes
Relatively complex open systems
effects
causes
= emergent properties
= unpredictable events
What we could look for in evaluation interviews with AL
participants is the ability to read complex adaptive
network systems
At two levels: specific situations and the general (and
generalisable) ability to do so
In this case networks are events and causal links, with an
eye to intended outcomes and events open to intervention
Understanding mechanisms and their contextual variation
An example of an event chain:
From an evaluation of cusomer service interventions:
Grading literature about this causal chain
accounting
1.) Quantitative correlation with
evidence of causality from
left to right
2.) Quantitative correlation
without evidence of
causality from left to right
3.) Strong qualitative data of
influence from left to right
4.) Weak qualitative data of
influence from left to right
5.) Strong logical or theoretical
argument of influence from
left to right
6.) Weak logical or theoretical
argument of influence from
left to right
7.) Unsupported personal
opinion or polemic about the
above
8.) Not relevant
Hence looking for one route through
this, the rest is context
effects
causes
= emergent properties
= unpredictable events
What else from complex adaptive network system theory?
Thinking about what it takes to move to more sustainable and
more desirable equilibrium states
Far from equilibrium positions – the all over the hill into the
next valley
Can we do it? How do we spot the opportunities, the ‘tipping
points’
Should we do it, morally and ethically?
Are others doing it to us?
Which takes us on to the observation that most evaluation is
instrumental, ie does it work against taken and
unquestioned objectives and purposes?
What about evaluating whether we are doing better things as
well as doing things better?
Moving to larger units of survival (Bateson)
Negotiating with other stakeholders – Agonistic Liberalism
(Isiah (not Irvin!) Berlin)
We might get quite a long way with evaluation through
talking to AL participants with these kinds of interpretative
frameworks in mind.
But what if their ‘understanding’ is largely or partly tacit?
Talk to them about their actions and help them dig into the
reasons for this, ie surface tacit knowledge? Look for
where things ‘come out of nowhere’?
Is short term, quick cycle, action learning experimentation
something to look for, and a skill learnt from AL? Looking
for early signs of the effects of moves taken in situ?
Networks, as people and relationships, can ‘implode’ or
‘explode’
The NHS Diabetes Network example
Action Learning is potentially good at balancing these two
forces: bond the group within but also strengthen the links
with external challenges and their stakeholders
In evaluation should we look for the recognition of the
need for this and skill in doing so?
And distortion
Network Organisations and
the NHS:
advantages and disadvantages
with special reference to Diabetes
Networks
Network Organisations
and the NHS:
advantages and disadvantages with special
reference to Diabetes Networks
The Agenda:
1. Networks – basic concepts
2. Levels of recursiveness
3. The nature of links
4. Implosive and explosive networks
5. Transaction cost economics
6. The history of private enterprise
7. How the NHS is different
8. The diabetes care network
9. What worked
10.What can you do?
1: Networks – basic concepts
• Nodes and links
• Strong and weak ties
• Number of links from A to B
2: Levels of recursiveness
• Individuals
• Small groups/departments
• Organisations , e.g. Trust Hospitals
• ‘Industries’, sectors, e.g. NHS, or UK health sector
including private
3: The nature of links
• Power
• Information
• Affiliation
4: Implosive and explosive
networks
• Implosive: strong internal links, weak
external ones – at the extreme e.g. cliques
• Explosive: external links stronger than
internal ones, e.g. cancer, diabetes, cardio
vascular?
5:
Transaction cost economics
– three main forms of
organisation
• Markets
• Hierarchies
• Clans/cultures
6: The history of private
enterprise
• Market to hierarchy (Henry Ford) to
clans/cultures (Hewlett Packard)
7: How the NHS is different
• Clan/culture (pre NHS) to hierarchy,
nationalisation and to market purchaser provider split etc.
• NHS now trying to get back some of
the benefits of clan/culture - a good
way of understanding what NHS
networks are about.
8: The diabetes care network
• Tendency to explosion rather than
implosion
• Progressed better in Scotland and
Wales due to less environmental churn
• Effectiveness of OD help:
• Positive at the level of team work
• Not discernable at the level of
QOF data
9: What worked
• Getting to know each other better
• Having meetings
• Having a chair
• Meetings with managed agendas
• Having action points
10: What can you do?
• Get to know people
• Balance your energy between the
different professional cliques
• Understand the big picture
• Have meetings, manage the agenda and
capture action points
• Be aware of environmental churn