John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do.
John P. Kotter. 1999. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business Review Book Series. 184 pages.
Reviewed by Daniel Ng, Saint Mary’s College of California
John P. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at the Harvard Business School, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1972. He attended MIT and Harvard. Since 1968, Kotter has been a consultant for 400 companies including Avon, Coca-Cola, and General Electric. In addition to his consultant activities, Kotter has authored nine business books and created two executive videos. Through his works, he has received several awards for his expertise and innovation in business leadership. Among these, Kotter received a McKinsey award for best Harvard Business Review article.
What Leaders Really Do is a collection of Kotter’s articles on the subject of leadership, for the Harvard Business Review. Through his extensive business experience, including his 14 formal studies, with more than 1000 interviews directly with executives, Kotter reveals the necessity of leadership and change. Differentiating between leadership and management, he explains in detail the differences between the two aspects and describes the downfall of mistaking one for the other. Management, Kotter explains, emerged because of huge organizations that developed in the twentieth century. Good management solidifies an organization’s existence by bringing order and consistency to critical elements such as quality and profitability in products. Leadership, on the other hand, deals with change. Constant business adjustments to challenge competition and the ever-changing demographics in the workplace are a few examples of the need for the constant change of organizations. Change is now a necessity to ensure survival of companies through the fierce competitive environment. As Kotter explains, more change needs more leadership.
Kotter’s military analogy provides a great visualization for his readers: A peacetime army can usually survive with good management throughout the hierarchy, teamed with good leadership concentrated at the top. A wartime army, however, needs competent leadership at all levels. No one yet has figured out how to manage people effectively into battle; they must be led into battle.
Kotter goes into detail to clarify the intimate skills leaders need in contrast to management functions: Setting a direction vs. planning and budgeting; aligning people vs. organizing and staffing; and motivating people vs. controlling and problem solving. The differentiation of these aspects is supplemented through short abstracts, describing how to use these leadership skills in real-life business applications. These abstracts along with other examples help readers understand the material.
Prior to addressing the differences between management and leadership, Kotter discusses change strategies. Since most companies go through moderate changes through a year’s time and a major change every four years, managers need to be well versed on the various causes of resistance to change and select a strategy to implement the change efforts. Kotter explains four common reasons why people resist change. He also provides tools to help managers deal with resistance. These tools range from passive, collaborative techniques to fierce, shove-it-down-your-throat approaches. Each approach includes advantages and disadvantages, and is explained in the reading and supplemented with an easy-to-read chart.
Leading change is yet another important aspect of the change process. Kotter describes an eight-step process to follow in order to avoid key errors when leading change. He states the importance of avoiding any critical mistakes during the phases and warns about skipping any steps: “Skipping steps creates an illusion that the change process is happening faster and never produces optimal results.”
Kotter touches on other aspects such as power, influence, dependence, and managing your boss. These aspects, including the strategies for change, cover pressing issues managers need to learn to become effective leaders.
Kotter reviews urgent leadership issues and helps readers understand important aspects by reinforcing each process with analogies, charts, and real-life examples. Unlike typical business books, Kotter does not force upon readers a “one best way” to tackle a situation. He provides a list of methods, depicting the advantages and disadvantages of each method, while urging readers to align to the method that best fits the situation. This situational teaching allows readers to become more flexible in their leadership roles.
What Leaders Really Do provides an invaluable opportunity for managers to take a hard look at today’s uncertain and ever-changing environment; it provides a tool chest to help managers rethink and revamp their working relationships, more toward the attributes of a leader and to lead organizations successfully through turbulent times.
Teams at the Top, Unleashing the Potential of Both Teams and Individual Leaders.
Jon Katzenbach. 1998. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. 238 pages.
Reviewed by Brian McLellan, St. Mary’s College of California
Jon Katzenbach is a well-known business writer who co-authored the best-seller The Wisdom of Teams. This follow-up book, Teams at the Top, Unleashing the Potential of Both Teams and Individual Leaders, describes how executives and CEOs function, and explains the advantages and disadvantages of executive teamwork, depending on the situation. Katzenbach is director of McKinsey & Company in Dallas. In addition to The Wisdom of Teams, he has co-authored Real Change Leaders.
In The Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach defined teams as “a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they will hold themselves mutually accountable.” In Teams at the Top, Katzenbach exposes that leadership rarely functions as the defined team, but when necessary, the best senior leadership groups can function as a team if major events necessitate such behavior. Individuals become leaders primarily because of their exceptional individual leadership skill, but when focused on teamwork, excellent executives can switch between team leadership and individual leadership roles. What Katzenbach conveys in Teams at the Top is that in senior management discipline is more important than teams.
Katzenbach’s blend of experience, personal observation, and quotes from senior executives and CEOs provides an entertaining and enlightening perspective on what goes on in the board rooms of corporate America. His anecdotal style of conveying his thoughts holds readers captive. Katzenbach has worked with executives from both small and large corporations, and relays what has worked and what has not been successful in attempts to form teams at the top of such organizations. Large established organizations, such a Champion International, worked in team-based performance for years before attempting to organize a team at the top. By comparison, Ben & Jerry’s operated under a single leadership style since conception before attempting to organize a senior management team. Katzenbach’s detailed descriptions of the inner workings at these companies, along with many more, provide insight on what may work and what may not. Katzenbach’s evaluations provide insight that informs readers in a comparative, yet interesting process.
Katzenbach challenges readers to identify when executive team performance is needed, and when individual leadership is appropriate, and balance the use of both disciplines to achieve optimum performance.
Management Challenges for the 21st Century.
Peter F. Drucker. 1999. New York: HarperCollins Publishers. 195 pages.
Reviewed by Fran Lose, St. Mary’s College of California
The author of approximately two dozen books, including Post-Capitalist Society, Peter F. Drucker is a well-known and respected member of the business management world. Born in 1909, Drucker was a professor of politics and philosophy at Bennington College. Then he was professor of management at the Graduate Business School of New York University for more than 20 years. In 1971 he became the Clark Professor of Social Science at Claremont Graduate School in California. Currently living in Claremont, California, Drucker has just completed this latest book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century.
In this book, Drucker looks at the economic and social changes in developed and developing countries. He addresses the issue of how these changes affect business management. Even more, he looks at how management must face these changes today in order to stop from falling behind. Therefore, Drucker considers his book not a prediction about what the future will bring, or a book addressing business challenges, but rather a book of management issues–a “call for action” (p. ix).
Drucker points to a new management paradigm: management as a specific tool, a specific function, an instrument to allow organizations and institutions to be capable of producing results. “Management’s concern and management’s responsibility are everything that affects the performance of the institution and its results–whether inside or outside, whether under the institution’s control or totally beyond it” (p. 40).
Drucker takes readers through an historical account of information technology, starting with the first written word, through the breakthrough and expansion of knowledge distribution gained by the printing press, and on to today’s computer age and the knowledge distribution made possible through the Internet.
Drucker suggests that a call to action is needed to change the structure of organizations. He suggests that there is more than one correct organizational structure for a given situation. He contends that, “One cannot manage change. One can only be ahead of it” (p. 73). He suggests that “change leaders” will see change as an opportunity and exploit it for success. Only the organizations with “change leaders” who are prepared and who are open to periods of rapid structural change will survive. Drucker contends, we are moving from the traditional manager being viewed as a boss to that of a leader, and that we are moving from the “manual worker” to the “knowledge worker.”
Drucker discusses the impact of the collapsing birthrate in the developed world and the repercussions this represents (pp. 43-50). The fact that as society ages, we will be working more years and that we will, in fact, outlive the organizations for which we work.
What I found most thought provoking was the last chapter titled, “Managing Oneself.” This focused on how we, as individuals, can assess our strengths, our performance, and our values in our efforts to find where we belong and where we fit in this frantically paced, ever-changing world. We, as the workers, must change our focus from manual labor and undergo a metamorphosis into “knowledge workers,” with careers extending well beyond what once was considered the norm. A fine example of this very concept is the author himself: Drucker, age 90, still writing books, open to change, attempting to stay on top of what is new and to be aware of the direction the currents of change take us.
On Becoming a Leader.
2nd edition. 1994. Warren Bennis. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. 226 pages.
Reviewed by Toni L. Rimer, Saint Mary’s College of California
Rosabeth Moss Kanter of the Harvard Business School has stated that, “Only Warren Bennis could write a book on leadership that is so inspiring and insightful, captivating and wise, eloquent and revealing.” Her interpretation of On Becoming a Leader is right on target, as Bennis has taken a complicated subject and created a simple, yet comprehensive guide for leaders in all walks of life.
Currently a distinguished professor of business administration and founding chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California, Bennis has been observing and writing about leaders and managers for more than four decades. He has authored a number of books including Leaders; the Pulitzer Prize-nominated An Invented Life; and his most recent volume, Managing People Is Like Herding Cats.
Bennis has been affiliated with MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Harvard University, Boston University, and was president of the University of Cincinnati during the 1970s. He has repeatedly demonstrated his thorough knowledge of the subject of leadership and has put it to practice as well.
By his own admission, Bennis noted that his book Leaders concentrated on the whats of leadership; it was more of a description of what makes a good leader, the different kinds of leaders, and so forth. In On Becoming a Leader, Bennis has taken the next logical step and describes the hows of leadership. He does this by dialoguing with proven leaders to obtain their observations and insight and by analyzing the type of education future leaders are receiving in the country’s leading business schools.
Interviews were conducted with a wide variety of industry leaders including entertainment artists and producers, a newspaper editor, several CEOs of major corporations, a college president, an assistant attorney general, an aviator, an athletic director, a writer, and an entrepreneur. Each leader interviewed condensed his or her idea of a good leader into the same general thought: It takes creativity and vision to be a good leader, no matter how much or how little formal education you may have. Time and again, Bennis discovered that what was most important was not having all the knowledge, but how you dealt with people in using that knowledge.
Bennis noted that leaders are important because they are the foundation of the effectiveness of an organization, whether it is the president dealing with the United States of America or the entrepreneur of the smallest new business. The world needs anchors and integrity, and leaders are the ones to provide those qualities. If they do not, then you must question their leadership ability.
When examining the concept of vision, Bennis noted that leaders shape life, rather than are shaped by it. He discovered that many ineffectual leaders are affected by the societal disease of our time: short-term thinking, and he discusses two different types of learning: innovative and maintenance. A true leader is an innovative learner who anticipates, learns by listening to others, and participates. On the other hand, a manager is more of a maintenance leader who preserves the status quo, acts in a limited and finite way, and imposes a static body of knowledge where we have to adjust to the way things are, rather than try to change them, create new, or develop new ways of doing old things.
Bennis provides a thoughtful and informative comparison between managers and leaders that says a lot about the way many businesses operate in today’s corporate world. He states that
- Managers administer, leaders innovate.
- Managers copy, leaders are originals.
- Managers rely on control, leaders inspire trust.
- Managers are shorter thinkers, leaders are long-term thinkers.
- Managers have their eye on the bottom line, leaders have their eye on the horizon.
- Managers imitate, leaders originate.
- Managers do things right, while leaders do the right thing.
The book also discusses the various types of learning that can contribute to being a good leader. Many of those interviewed were skeptical of the value of a formal education when considering the essence of a good leader. They noted that knowledge was important, but it was how you used that knowledge that defined whether or not you had excellent leadership qualities, not how much knowledge you possessed. Travel broadens one’s horizons and can lead to a variety of new experiences and goals. Friends and mentors can have a major influence on who and what you become. And adversity can play a major role in developing good leaders, as many have had to face and overcome enormous odds to become the great leaders of our time. Competence, articulation, strategic thinking, creativity, and self-possession all play a part in the emergence of leaders from the ranks of top-level managers.
Bennis encourages everyone to strive to be a leader, because they lead more fulfilling lives and contribute more to the lives of others. Why become a leader? Remember the old saying, “Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” On Becoming a Leader not only explains how to become a leader, but also inspires you to look for those qualities and opportunities in your life that would be the basis of excellent leadership, so that your scenery is ever-changing.
