Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)

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By potentialities, we mean the scope for possible change, the opportunity spaces that may open up (Bryson, 1981).

A prime skill for leading in context is awareness of continuity and change. Some aspects of human social, political, and economic systems have endured for centuries—family and tribal arrangements, nations, cities, trade. Ancient stories from Greek, Chinese, Egyptian, or aboriginal cultures still resonate today; they are not about an alien race on an alien planet. Specific practices and systems may have shorter duration, yet still acquire a taken-for-granted status. They become part of the givens of our existence. In the United States, a federal form of representative government and a market economy are taken for granted. In other parts of the world, a parliamentary system, a religious state, or an informal economy might be the dominant tradition.

Those who seek to tackle major social problems can’t afford to ignore traditional systems, but they can’t afford to assume that they are static either. The breakup of the former Soviet Union, the institution of a common currency among European states, the move to a global economy, a permanent space station, advances in human rights, the information revolution, global warming—all are examples of change in taken-for-granted conditions. Moreover, these changes are bringing additional changes in their wake.

If you are working at the local level—and most of us are—it’s important to consider the forces of continuity and change in your community. Perhaps a political and economic elite has dominated local politics for as long as anyone can remember. Signs of change may be emerging. Perhaps the old “bosses” are growing old; new ethnic groups may be settling in; old industries may be struggling, while new technologies foster opportunities for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Let’s consider some forces of continuity and change that are context for the change efforts highlighted in this book. In the case of the early AIDS crisis, physicians, health officials, and gay activists operated in a society in which prejudice and discrimination against gay and lesbian people were still a strong force, but where gay and lesbian activists had also won significant political gains. Ironically, the understandable desire (among gay activists and their supporters) to protect hard-won rights in the face of continued prejudice contributed to unwillingness to confront practices that helped AIDS spread.

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As physicians such as Linda Laubenstein, Marcus Conant, and Michael Gottlieb sought resources for treating AIDS patients and preventing the spread of the disease, they had to deal with a federal political system of partly separated and partly overlapping powers (among executive, legislative, and judicial branches and among local, state, and national governments). Gottlieb and Conant also had to negotiate the public university systems of which they were a part.

The U.S. AIDS crisis also emerged in a market economy, wherein businesses (whether bathhouses or blood banks) operate with great freedom. The business sector also provides much of the nation’s health care, drugs, and other medical products.

Additionally, the United States has a tradition of developing nonprofit, or civil society, organizations for handling what markets and governments won’t or can’t. Advocacy and service organizations with an interest in the emerging AIDS crisis included “religious right” affiliates, gay rights groups, some hospitals and clinics, nonprofit blood banks, and medical research foundations. Public health officials and physicians were also part of national and global professional associations.

As for technological systems, those trying to understand and prevent the spread of AIDS could benefit from newly developed equipment such as cell sorters. Yet massive funding would be needed to build research labs to identify the cause of AIDS and develop tests and treatments for the disease, as well as a vaccine against it.

Some epidemiologists studying the disease that would be known as AIDS realized the potential for its becoming a global epidemic. They and other health professionals believed that some of the same structures set up to fight major public health threats— structures such as the National Institutes of Health in the United States and the World Health Organization—could launch the immense research and education campaigns that would be needed to curb the disease.

In the World Business Council case, advocates of sustainable development had to be aware of population trends, the dominance of industrialized nations in many international governance systems, and political trends within nations. For example, prospects for U.S.

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ratification of the Kyoto protocols were considerably diminished by the outcome of the nation’s 2000 presidential and 2002 congressional elections. Advocates of sustainable development also need to understand the structure of local and national economies and implications of the growth of global markets. They are aware of the potential for worse destruction on the one hand and for great improvements through development of renewable energy sources and through smarter management and consumption on the other.

In the African American men case, Mark Stenglein, Gary Cunningham, Herman Milligan, and many other leaders needed to understand shifts in family structures in African American communities. They needed to recognize the continued force that racial prejudice exerted on individuals and institutions. They needed to understand the distinctive, yet overlapping, responsibilities of county, municipal, state, and federal governments and local school districts. They had to attend to economic and technological trends that devalued unskilled labor. They grasped the potential of a large group of citizens for contributing to the economy and to their families.

Jan Hively and her colleagues focused on the graying of the population—a social trend affecting not just Minnesota but the nation and other industrialized societies. In many rural areas, the trend is especially problematic, because so many young people are leaving for urban areas. Meanwhile, advances in medical technology help people who have reached retirement age remain in good health. Fewer younger workers might mean there will be continued demand for older workers’ skills. Additionally, the so-called young-old may be a market for new kinds of educational programs that offer ways to update their expertise and put it to use. The founders of VAN also needed awareness of government programs on aging, of advocacy and service groups focusing on aging, and of the existing role of universities and other educational institutions in serving older citizens. They were alert to the potential of new communications technology that could help retirees connect with opportunities.

In addition to analyzing forces of continuity and change and hidden potentialities, change advocates should consider whether

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they are seeking major reform or a revolution—that is, a whole new way of thinking and dramatic change in social, political, economic, or technological systems. If a revolution is required, leaders have to organize a social movement to carry it out. The revolution may also begin with a coup d’état, replacing a controlling group that opposes change; but eventually a social movement has to be developed to support any far-reaching, lasting change. Change efforts often combine reform and revolution. That is, a series of reforms guided by revolutionary thinking can add up eventually to revolution.

Hively, Hal Freshley, Darlene Schroeder, and others saw the need for a radically different way of thinking about people in their sixties and beyond. They envisioned new systems for connecting and serving these people and for deploying their expertise. They seeded a vital aging movement in Minnesota. In effect, by addressing a public problem (the graying of the population, combined with ageism), they created a movement that is likely to create resources for resolving many other public problems.

Stephan Schmidheiny and his colleagues are promoting a drastically different worldview and practices in the business sector. To a certain extent, they are calling businesspeople to develop or join a movement within the larger environmental movement. They are calling on businesses to adopt eco-efficiency as an operating principle and become part of the solution to environmental degradation and the gap between rich and poor communities as well as between rich and poor countries.

As the AIDS crisis developed in the United States, systems were in place to deal with the disease, if public officials and others could be convinced to deal with it as a medical or public health problem. Thus reform might have seemed the best approach. Yet as time went on, it became clear that the virulence of the disease, its global reach, and its devastating impact on particular communities and nations could not be dealt with by reforming existing systems. Massive change in resource allocation and major reorientation of existing systems, as well as reduction of formidable cultural barriers, were needed to manage the disease, care for the sick and their families, and stop practices that spread the disease.

In the African American men case, change advocates decided that a revolution in thinking was required to improve conditions

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for young African American men. They offered several new perspectives: the view that what was good for African American men was good for Hennepin County; the view that this group had considerable existing and potential contributions to make as workers, fathers, and citizens; and the view that the various conditions leading to poor outcomes for young African American men were interrelated. The diverse African American Men Commission might be seen as a minisocial movement that will champion the broadly based and coordinated reforms in several systems needed to add up to the “revolution in practice” necessary to create better outcomes for these men.

Before we offer more guidance for leadership in context, we suggest you do Exercise 2.2, which prompts you to consider the social, political, economic, and technological conditions affecting your public passions. It also prompts you to consider possibilities for change.

Exercise 2.2. Assessing the Context for Leadership.

1.Thinking of your own cares and concerns, what social, political, economic, and technological givens might be important?

•Social

•Political

•Economic

•Technological

2.What changes in social, political, economic, and technological conditions might provide opportunities for leadership around what you care about?

•Social

•Political

•Economic

•Technological

3.What are the less obvious potentialities in these conditions that might support future changes?

4.What kind of reform or revolution will be needed to accomplish the type of change you seek?

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Further Guidance for Leadership in Context

Leaders in context should also seek insights from history, trends analysis, personal experience, and cultural anthropology.

1.Become a student of history. Don’t forget, though, that the prominent texts and biographies are often written from the point of view of great men, or the “winners,” of major conflicts. Seek out less prominent views, perhaps by visiting a local historical society, collecting oral accounts, and reading authors such as Barbara Tuchman (1984), Andrew Delbanco (1999), Howard Zinn (2001), or Dipesh Chakrabarty (2000). Novels and plays may be especially useful for understanding what an era was like. For example, Larry Kramer’s hard-hitting play The Normal Heart, about the early AIDS crisis, may be better than any history in conveying the human toll of the epidemic in the United States.

2.Analyze trends and get involved in the debates that surround them. Some scholars urge everyone to think about how current societal trends or shifts signal an “emergent reality” that offers opportunities for—and even demands—leadership (Quinn, 2000). Exercise 2.3 prompts you to think about the emergent reality signaled by several global trends, those mentioned in Chapter One and others that are important in the early years of the twenty-first century. Cleveland (2002) suggests that the most important overarching trend is what has been variously called the Information Revolution, the informatization of society, the explosion of knowledge, and the Age of Access. He argues that the melding of highspeed computers and advanced telecommunications is “creating societies where the dominant resource is information” and the emphasis is on “the production and sharing of symbols” rather than goods. In the face of this trend, the world’s citizens need to “rethink an economics based on scarcity, rethink laws based on ownership, rethink leadership based on hierarchy” (p. 138). The knowledge explosion has also produced earth-shaking advances in biotechnology, especially genetic engineering. Francis Fukuyama (2002) writes about a “post-human future” in which human nature itself is drastically altered. Both Cleveland and Fukuyama argue that existing modes of governance are terribly inadequate to ensure that the fruits of the information revolution are nourishing

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Exercise 2.3. Assessing Global Trends.

1.Consider these important trends seen in the early years of the twenty-first century:

•Global interdependence and the shift toward a global market economy

•The continued importance of the nation state

•Increased democratization around the world

•Post–Cold War politics, use of terrorism, continued nuclear threat

•Burgeoning telecommunications and computer technology

•The emergence of international organizations

•Growing cleavage between rich and poor populations

•Citizen disaffection with governments

•Global warming

•Increased prominence of human rights

•The global spread of AIDS

•Growth of secular culture, diminution of some forms of organized religion, strengthening of evangelical religion, the connection of religious extremism and terrorism

•Declining social capital and civic activism in industrialized countries

2.What signs of an “emergent reality” can be gleaned from these trends?

3.How does this reality affect what you care about?

4.How does this reality offer opportunities for leadership in the areas you care about?

rather than poisonous to human well-being. Cleveland also reminds analysts to resist the temptation of mistaking “current trends for future destiny” (2002, p. 131).

3.Get involved in an important part of civil society, politics, the economy, or technology. For example, you could become active in a political party, work for a nonprofit organization, become more adept at using the Internet, or explore your own company’s connections to the global economy.

4.Become a student of culture. Nations, subnational regions, ethnic groups, cities, neighborhoods, organizations, and other groups

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can be said to have a culture, a distinctive way of ordering relationships and responding to their environment. In addition to a prominent, or dominant, culture, these entities also often have one or more “co-cultures” (see Samovar and Porter, 1994). Most fundamentally, a group’s culture is a set of shared assumptions about reality and truth, time, space, and human nature. Here is guidance for thinking about each of these cultural dimensions, adapted from Leadership for Global Citizenship (Crosby, 1999):

Reality and truth. Scholars distinguish “low-context” and “highcontext” cultures (Hall, 1980). In a low-context culture, such as the dominant U.S. culture, reality and truth are conveyed in written and verbal messages. In a high-context culture, people are more likely to consider the context of the message as well— for example, nonverbal behavior and the status of the person sending the message. In some cultures, reality and truth are established by moral authority; in others, reality and truth are determined by pragmatic experimentation.

Time. A low-context culture tends to view time as segmented and linear, susceptible to scheduling. In a high-context culture, time is full of simultaneous happenings; an activity, rather than a schedule, may dictate how much time is devoted to it. Some societies are oriented toward the past; others focus on the present; still others are more future-oriented (Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck, 1961).

Space. Cultures have their own norms about appropriate interpersonal space or the best way to design work and living spaces.

Human nature. Cultures differ in their basic assumptions about the human condition. They may assume that human beings are essentially good, essentially bad, or a mix of good and bad. They may think of human beings as being at the mercy of the natural environment, superior to it, or at one with it. If a culture views humans basically as victims of natural forces, it is likely to reinforce acceptance of one’s fate; if the culture views humans as lords of the earth, the culture will reinforce efforts to tame nature. If a culture deems human beings to be com-

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pletely a part of nature, then it prompts them to attempt to harmonize their lives with nature (Schein, 1992). Societies also establish social hierarchies on the basis of assumptions about which groups are superior to others. Common hierarchies are based on gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, and class.

A group’s assumptions about each of these dimensions are woven together to form a distinctive worldview (Schein, 1992). To understand cultures different from yours (whether a co-culture in your own society or outside it), you might visit them for an extended period, talk to astute observers of the culture, or read cultural analyses. Perhaps the most difficult culture to understand is one in which you are a long-time participant. Leaving the culture may help you achieve some perspective on it.

In general, Edgar Schein’s approach (1992) to understanding organizational culture may be helpful. He advises studying a group’s artifacts: language, art, dress, eating habits, arrangement of space, technology. Then try to discern what those artifacts tell you about the group’s shared assumptions about the cultural dimensions as we have described them. Looking at the group’s espoused values may also be helpful, but there is often a mismatch between what a society says it values and the values embedded in its basic, shared assumptions. Since cultures are dynamic, you may also want to delve into layers of artifacts and values and consider the mix of layers from the distant and recent past. You might consider how major changes in political arrangements or demographic patterns, for example, are affecting the culture. Also vital is understanding cultural norms and practices about leadership and change. A culture’s worldview affects what kind of change is valued, what kinds of people are in formal leadership positions, and which leadership styles are valued. At the same time, analysis conducted as part of a major global project focusing on cross-cultural leadership does indicate almost universal support for transformational leadership behaviors—personal consideration and intellectual stimulation of followers, future focus, and inspirational communication (House, Wright, and Aditya, 1998). Exercise 2.4 prompts you to analyze cultures that are important for you to understand in relation to your cares and concerns.

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Exercise 2.4. Assessing Cultural Differences.

Focus on a culture that is important for you to understand, given your cares and concerns. You may want to complete the exercise for several cultures in your community and nation. One option is interviewing knowledgeable informants and adding their insights to your own.

You will be prompted to think about several dimensions of cultural difference.

Reality and Truth

1.Do people in the culture rely primarily on the content of written or verbal messages?

2.Or do people in the culture rely primarily on the context of written or verbal messages?

3.What are the implications for leadership and change?

Time

1.Do people think of time as linear—something to be scheduled or parceled out for specific activities?

2.Or do people think of time as cyclical—holding many activities and concerns simultaneously?

3.Do people focus mainly on the past, the present, or the future?

4.What are the implications for leadership and change?

Space

1.What places are sacred to people in this culture?

2.How far apart do people stand when they talk with each other?

3.How do people design and locate their homes, offices, and public spaces?

4.What are the implications for leadership and change?

Human Nature

1.Do people think humans control nature?

2.Or do they think humans are controlled by nature?

3.Or do they think humans should strive to live in harmony with nature?

4.Is a person’s value or importance determined by a connection to a family or other group?

5.Or is a person’s importance determined mainly by what the person does?

6.Is social hierarchy or egalitarianism valued?

7.What are the proper activities for women? for men?

8.Are people viewed as basically evil, basically good, or a mix and able to improve if they choose?

9.What are the implications for leadership and change?