Recently, I listened to the audio version of John Kotter’s 1996 book, Leading Change.  It’s a good book–at least within the distractions of driving a daily commute and jogging on a treadmill.  But this isn’t a book review.  I only mention it because the book ends with an argument about how everyone’s a leader, etc., etc.  This meme has struck me as a faintly ridiculous babble for as long as I’ve been swimming in the overwhelming tide of  “business” rhetoric.  This morning, I think it became clear.

The bottom line (another bit of business language) “leader” is a more 21st-century word than “manager.”  It’s vogue.  Rhetorically, its use feeds off of and makes the notion of a leader more appropriate in a business setting…  After all, a “manager” cuts not a dashing swath through the unknown for the greater glory of the organization. A manager deals with the mundane quotidian activities that actually constitute business. But it’s not much to rally around. And, “follower” is pejorative–who wants to be that when you could be a “leader?”

The basic argument underneath the statements that use some form of the phrasing is that everyone in any part of the administrative (and, apparently, the operational) part of the organization can be and is, in fact, a leader.  Being a leader, they say is not preordained by genes or a benevolent god, with only some being intrinsically leaders and all others followers.  Everyone has the capacity to be a leader and should release that ability to be a leader within the organization. It would make the organization better, continues the argument. The essential syllogism is that (a) if everyone can be a leader, and (b) leadership moves organizations faster, then(c) there should be more leaders.  QED

Sadly, this feel-good pablum has no substance and is not filling.  By definition a social system (i.e., an organization) that is nothing but leaders (“hawks” rather than “doves,” if you prefer; “chiefs” not “indians” if you’re feeling more politically incorrect; “chefs in the kitchen,” etc.) is anarchy.  Anarchy is not especially known for its radically rapid, directed progress. On those occasions when a social system marked by anarchy moves, it is a pure crap shoot to guess where that will be.  Any board of directors or group of shareholders that endorses and encourages such a philosophy and practice ought to very serious re-evaluate how it marshals its resources and assets.

Then there is the whole feel-good, everyone-gets-a-participant-ribbon red herring that anyone can be a leader.  Usually this ridiculous notion is trotted out in the form of a “nurture not nature” or “learned ability” or “no divine gift” statement–or extended discussion.  The horse stands no chance of winning, but it looks really good for the audience.  It’s appearance is, ironically, for effect only.  And that effect is to convince people who are not leaders and are not in leadership positions that they are something that every shred of evidence would indicate they are not (at least within the structure of their work-day organization and social system).  How empowering is that?  Even if the notion were being promoted genuinely and with the objective of giving every non-leader the confidence to lead (which, usually, means “to act” without being told every single thing), you don’t need to be terribly cynical to see how the power structure is spinning the powerless.

I’ll concede for just one moment that everyone can be a leader.  It is abundantly possible, I suppose.  There is a time and a place for everyone to lead.  That time might not be during M-F, 9-5; but everyone can be a leader.  But just because everyone can be a leader does not mean everyone should be a leader at every given moment.  I could regress back to the earlier logic of the essential requirement for a leader to necessarily have followers except in an anarchic system.  But I see no reason for that.  Typically, all systems are subordinate to other greater systems.  So, let’s say that a middle manager in a functional department is responsible for a cluster of employees.  That would make this woman that group’s leader.  It’s true.  Were the system only that large, she is definitely “the” leader.  Alas, she is in turn one of a larger cluster of colleagues and their respective employees beholden to another leader.  Ergo, she is a follower too.  And she MUST follow; so her so-called leadership is actually managing the execution of her leader’s (and her leader’s leader’s) direction.  And it’s turtles all the way up…

There is nothing wrong with being a follower.  It is essential in any social system.  Besides, if we were all paying attention, we’d notice the essential duality of role for anyone not at the very bottom or the very top of any organizational structure.

Finally, let’s just put a quick end to the whole business of God granting leadership qualities to born leaders as a set up for the argument that it is wrong and anybody can be a leader.  First of all, in the Christian tradition, there is only one such character (and in Judiasm there is none).  That one character is the Messiah, also known as Christ.  And I think we all know how that worked out.  Second, all those leaders that one could point to as being divinely created (at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition) were not.  It makes no difference whether one picks Abraham, Noah, Moses, Saul/Paul, or any other such leader from the Old or New Testaments.  They were all CALLED by God, not created by God, as leaders.  There is a material difference.  (It actually lends support to the idea that anyone can be a leader… so long as they are called to it.  But that’s not my point here.  My point is only to squash this idea of divine creation of leaders.)  Third, at any given time when a called leader was leading, there was only one.  When there were others, if you remember your early childhood Bible stories, things were not smooth or clean.  Finally, even when just ONE such leader was deigned by God, the tribe tended to wander a long time without direction.  The Good Book tells us that adding more leaders to the mix rarely made things better.

Leaders lead.  Managers manage for the leader.  For a leader there must be followers.  It’s not wrong or bad.  It is.

Silly and abstruse headline, I know.  But some days are better than others.  What the title is supposed to lead toward is a comment about the pervasiveness of “the place is collapsing, but I’m OK”-ness going on everywhere.  The opportunities to find this run from gated communities in high crime areas to happy economic sectors (even in Greece) among what is not unduly described as utter ruin.  For my part, the next few paragraphs will be about levels of government.

As a citizen of Canada, living in the province of Ontario, subject to the municipal responsibility of the city of Ottawa, and as a non-entirely daft observer, I’ve become troubled by the pathological, ideology-driven finger-pointing among levels of government in these times.  What are “these times?”  Well, for the sake of simplicity, they are a fatigued economy marked by many years of excessive living beyond our societal means despite a negligent awareness and inactivity toward a coming glut of economically-draining seniors and an absence of supporting youth, never mind a wickedly hollowed out working class.  In short and in the words of Bob Dylan, “A hard rain’s a gonna fall,” and we’re without a viable umbrella.

Through all this, since 2009, the federal government (Conservative) did what was responsible and supported the economy with government (deficit) spending.  Today it is in the throws of breaking its arm patting itself on the back about how well it did and how much faster than even anticipated the federal government would be back on track, having corrected the financial hole of the past few years.  Here’s one example:  Ottawa narrows budget deficit faster than expected.

At the same time, the provincial government (Liberal) is at war with its teacher and Lord knows who else because, after spending a term in government trying to correct the terrible condition of education in the province (which it inherited), the corrective action turned itself into a progressive entitlement.  That there was no material systemic improvement to education in Ontario gained by the corrective action should make all of us wonder about its value, but I digress.  In any case, the province has the right to raise taxes but receives transfer payments for national demands made on it for programs that the federal government insists upon but does not manage.  Read, “health care.”  Bottom line:  the ballooning cost of health care is only one of the provincial obligations that is presently unsustainable without additional revenue.  (At another time we can explore the crack-addict mentality of the provincial gambling business strategy.)  That, excluding provincial gambling, usually means taxes of some form.  The provinces, except maybe Alberta, are under pressure.  So, to the fullest extent possible they do the reasonable thing and lay it off on…

The municipalities are where politics is knee to knee and toe to toe.  Federal and, to a lesser degree, provincial politicians get more money and have a higher profile, but at the end of the day, the ones that have to deal with constituents on things that matter most, most often and closest to home are the mayor and aldermen and reeves and councillors of the municipal governments.  And they get the shaft.  Mostly this is because they have their own obligations but also increasingly get downloaded on them less transfer from the provincial tax revenues but more spending (read:  infrastructure).  And, let’s face it, they wouldn’t be politicians if they didn’t promise and commit to no tax increases.  We are all taxed to death and property taxes are among the most obvious and, for some reason, hurtful.  But who’s going to fix the roads, keep the bridges safe, maintain the water works, get rid of the waste, and all the other (ideally) invisible costs of living in an urban society.  It’s not the feds or province.  So, slowly, the municipalities do less and less and ask for more and more from its ratepayers (higher parking costs, higher transfer and filing fees, fewer books in and shorter hours for the libraries, fewer firefighters and police on the beat…).

What prompted all this was that in the midst of the good news from the federal government about its financial acumen came this bit of news from Parliamentary Budget Officer, Kevin Page:  Ottawa doing well but provinces in trouble budget watchdog says.  And he didn’t even go so far (beyond his mandate) as the local government level of Canada’s major 100 municipalities.  It would be a worse tale.  What bothers me, and undoubtedly depresses too many to do anything about it, is why we aren’t more clear about the TOTALITY of our woes.  It’s not like each of these levels of government has entirely distinct constituents or draws on entirely separate tax bases. I, like everyone else, fork out the dough for the needs of each of these levels of government to satisfy my obligation to society.  It should bother all of us that it is so detached and incoherent that the state of vast swathes of my (and your) social well-being is not only hidden and opaque but unconnected and so inefficient that the costs of living in our society demands (for all but the so-called 1%, and even for them as I officially belong to that group but sure don’t feel like it) the lion’s share of our productivity, leaving only the bitter end for anything else.

Where am I going with all this?  I’m not sure and I’m not going to get to the end in this post.  I think it points toward a need for a massive overhaul in the administration of government.  And, by “government,” I mean ALL administration of this nation’s society from the national interest on a global scale right down to what imbecile thinks that leaving garbage outside for two weeks between pickups isn’t going to increase the incidence of urban rats (the little furry kind), causing an entirely new problem.  Technology and the nature of our society today are both dramatically different and have dramatically different demands than when Canada was effectively constituted nearly a century-and-a-half ago.  It’s time for a rethink and an overhaul; and I’m not talking about lipstick for this pig.  It’s time to cook a little bacon.

This story that’s been everywhere (Edmonton teacher who gave 0s for unsubmitted work fired) is, first of all, a distressing commentary on the degradation of our society.  There is, apparently no bar too low that somebody in a position of authority can’t find a way to lower it further.  Great.  That’s how you reach the stars–by digging in the dirt.

As it relates to my favorite subject matter of innovation/productivity, the story is pure bad news.  Not today.  The mewing and puking softies that object to offending poor little Johnny or Sally’s delicate self-esteem can carry on pointing out that no harm is coming of it today.  The real offense to our society, our nation, ourselves will show up in a decade or two.  That’s when we will be even more systemically incapable of collectively fighting our way to something better or greater.

Canadians, as an advertisement or documentary I recently saw suggests, get on with things and figure out how to get through challenges and overcome adversity.  It’s a trait that has generated productivity gains and innovations and discovery for years and year and years.  But, of course, that presumes some measure of challenge and adversity has been present for children to learn how to overcome.

What has this situation shown?  It shows that, at least for this school board, children are not responsible for themselves.  There is no consequence to a self-indulging neglect of obligations.  The demands to get on with it and get through it apparently don’t count even to the extent of merely trying.  What would a child in this division need to do to feel the (very modest, let’s face it) pain of consequence for wantonly ignoring the demands of their work?  Apparently, showing up is enough.  No adversity here.  What’s to happen when these children get their first jobs and decide they don’t want to do the box stacking or french fry cooking they are obliged to do?  Shall they not get a zero (paycheck)?

How can we, here, spend our time prattling on about the dearth and problems of innovation and productivity, of lost ground in comparison to the Scandinavians, the Eastern Europeans, the Indians, and the Chinese when we are witness to a tiny brush fire–perhaps only a spark–that has the potential to annihilate even the possibility of catching up?  I’m making too much of this, of course, because the kids at hand are unlikely to be the ones that align to our (those present and reading this) understanding of the world or to be the ones that our economy depends on.  (Although they could be the ones dependent on our economy…)  The point is not about these kids, but about what they represent for the culture in the future.  The point is not even about the kids but about support for what this teacher was railing against.

Today it is one teacher in Edmonton.  Now others will not take a stand.  In a generation it will be the way things are done and fewer teachers yet will care.  After all, why bother collecting the assignments from the marginal kids; why bother asking them to even do the work?  When teachers don’t care, students don’t learn.  When student’s don’t learn, the quality of our most basic resource for escaping the hewing of wood and drawing of water diminishes.  The national capacity to grow and do better declines.  We become a dependency.

A zero is nothing, which makes it all for nothing…

A few posts back (here), I made a suggestion that government could do better to support the economy, including innovation by investing for its own selfish needs rather than by tinkering around the edges with tax incentives, loans, and other assorted forms of public largess.  I have to admit, this is one of the examples I trot out to make my point about downstream, broader economic and social up- and down-drafts resulting from government doing what it needs to do for itself (i.e., for its citizens) rather than pretending to be venture capital.  I just didn’t expect the example so soon.

Whether the group, which includes, Maj-Gen. Lewis McKenzie will succeed in bringing back to life the Avro Arrow remains to be seen.  More significantly, I supposed, even if it does whether the value would be the same as in the 1960s is another question.  As noted in this article, Will legendary Avro make a Lazarus-like return, a group of people would like to address the DND’s need for fighter jets not with the foreign F-35 but with a Canadian Arrow (offspring).  If it’s just an assembly of foreign technologies and parts, that’s a good start.  If it’s reconstitution of still-valuable (hmmm…) Canadian technologies and a runway (pardon the pun) for the Canadian manufacturer–Avro?– to reinitiate advanced technology development and manufacture not only for the Canadian government but to compete around the world, that’s a whole other thing.  AND, not to put too fine a point on it, if that path leads other Canadian businesses to develop (consumer) products on the back of such infrastructure and capabilities that are created for this (and ongoing) contracts, that’s a virtuous circle.

What else can I say?

Of course, it could be a pipe dream that for good or bad reasons ends as it did in the 1960s… so that the American aviation and defense contractors remain unchallenged here.

Today’s Globe and Mail had an interesting article entitled Why are we training our arts grads to be baristas? The gist of it, for those who don’t want to read it, is a lament for non-practically trained (i.e., not business (under)grads or engineers) university graduates being shunted from productive higher-paying jobs in favour of those MBAs and engineers, and professional school finishers.

The story is directed to the economics and so on of why this is a terrible situation not only for those underemployed but also for Canadian society at large, which ultimately funds higher education, and the employers passing up these people.  For the employers, the argument is that these folks bring with them everything that employers say they want except for instant work-readiness–something that business training provides allegedly.

My take was a little different.  And, for those who know me, no, this will not merely be another anti-MBA rant.  Except that in a way, and in keeping with my beliefs, it is just that.

While the author of the article makes good points and arguments, I think that there is much more damage going on by this practice (which I religiously oppose in all of my own hiring preferences and actions),  especially as it applies to the MBA-holding candidate bias. To that end, let me make one entirely different argument for why the current bias toward business grads–especially MBAs–and against arts or music or science grads is regressive and suboptimal.  It has to do with innovation.

The syllogism is straight forward.

Premise:  Innovation is based on the unusual connection of disparate pieces into combinations that unlock new value.  This can be by both bringing new knowledge into the system/situation or by perceiving the system/situation differently.

Premise:  MBAs in particular and representing those favoured training programs, are given a high-level trade training (which is what makes them job-ready in business) which is consistent with the best practices of the trade.

Premise:  It is alleged that post-secondary students are all taught to think (including business students), the ratio of critical thinking training to trade training in the desired programs is well below one wheres in the arts and sciences exceeds 1, sometimes by a margin that nears infinity.  (For those struggling to keep up:  in some arts programs there is NO trade training per se, only ongoing training to think for yourself.)

Conclusion:  Therefore, if innovation requires high doses of both different thinking and critical thinking the most likely candidates to achieve that would be anybody but the graduates of the more favoured programs such as MBAs.

QED.  And I would presume the reasoning is obvious.

So, not only would looking harder at archeology and biochemistry graduates keep them from behind the espresso maker, it would also raise the potential for innovation by the employer’s organization.

Just a thought.