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VIGILANT VS. OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP
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Jeff Miller
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Oct 13, 2006 09:39 PDT
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Hello from a windy, very "fall like" Indiana. The leaf color here is
looking to be at about its peak. A lovely time.
This entry comes from a newsletter I receive of various items. The piece
below struck a chord with me. It makes a clear distinction in the two
major styles of how organizations are run. Most of the time I refer to
those two styles as "manager" and "leader". A link to the full article
is provided at the end.
Be well.
jeff
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VIGILANT VS. OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Ford’s recent and well-publicized travails offer a clear example
of the distinction between vigilant leadership and operational
management, say Wharton marketing professors George Day and Paul
Schoemaker.
Vigilant leaders are externally oriented. They’re open to new ideas,
seek diverse perspectives, listen to a wide array of sources and foster
broad social and professional networks. Richard Branson is a good
example. The inveterate inventor and promoter already has 200 start-ups
under his belt, and is now developing alternative fuels. Vigilant
leaders are more imaginative. They probe deeply for second order
effects.
For example, one CEO looked at China's victorious bid to host the 2008
Olympics in Beijing and immediately began to consider what impact that
would have on steel and cement orders. Vigilant leaders also embrace
uncertainty and learn from well-intentioned failures. Operational
leaders, on the other hand, are more narrowly focused, have less
interest in outside opinions and confine their networking to familiar
settings. They’re more predictable, stay focused mainly on the task at
hand, rely on past experience and try to avoid mistakes at any cost. Day
says Ford's top management did not have "vigilant leadership, which
ultimately has to do with anticipating events, seeing what is coming
next before others do.
You can bet that Toyota is already thinking ahead to what the next
version of the car will be."
(Knowledge@Wharton 20 Sept 2006)
<http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1553&CFID=195478&CFTOKEN=42333656>
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