The spirit of industrialism is alive and well in board rooms and leadership approaches. The conventional wisdom of that spirit is that more is always more, data rules the day, and only results matter. The paradox of leading well inverts those tendencies and reveals a deeper reservoir of effectiveness. Solely allocating resources and leveraging innovation to maximize profit fails to understand the most valuable resource of all: people.
Less is More
At one point in my career, I served in administration at a school, taught a few classes, worked as a part-time youth pastor, and attended school concurrently. The administrative role alone involved student discipline, curriculum planning, and teacher observations. The days were long, but the checklists were longer. Like a cat chasing after a laser, I was expending much energy in many directions but accomplishing little.
If I had more wisdom during that time, I would have understood that dialing back and saying no to several roles and requests would have allowed a few things to thrive instead of many things merely surviving. There are many reasons we take on more than we can handle and achieve less than our potential, but the underlying cause is our failure to understand the simple axiom that, in many cases, less is more.
Greg McKeown’s 2014 work Essentialism is an excellent and concise read on the disciplined pursuit of less.
Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean doing less for the sake of less, either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy to operate at our highest point of contribution by only doing what is essential.
(McKeown, 2014, p. 5)
Leaders who apply this principle to their lives and encourage it in their followers will curtail burnout, promote creativity, and foster a culture of care for their people.
Data is Only the Beginning
One of my favorite sci-fi characters profoundly observed: “Logic. Logic. Logic. Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end” (Spock of Vulcan). Data is similar. Imagine a business prospectus filled with charts and graphs pointing to the undeniable conclusion that an organization’s strategy must change to fit the market. Such data is a precious revelation that must be analyzed and integrated. However, it is only the first step in restructuring and seeking attunement to a new strategy.
How does this information sync with the core values and vision of the organization? What practical steps must leaders take to effectively communicate and incorporate the data’s implications into the culture? When will the changes required to adapt need to be implemented? These are only a few of the important questions that follow. Leaders who fail to answer them well will quickly see the result of their lack of wisdom. Leaders who ignore them are foolish. Data is not the silver bullet. It is a GPS that lets you know when to readjust your heading. Possessing a GPS doesn’t mean you can neglect to change the oil, refuel, or regularly service your car.
To rely solely on data without human intuition or judgment presupposes that the decision-making calculus doesn’t need the human element. Anthony (2014) argued it was “time to make business human again” and outlined three components: customer value, viewing employees as assets that need to be nurtured, and a motivating purpose. Disregard the data to your peril, but the cost of denying your personal or collective humanity might be your soul.
Motivation Matters
Leaders in all types of organizational contexts heavily rely upon “assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science” and “pursue practices such as short-term incentive plans and pay-for-performance schemes in the face of mounting evidence that such measures usually don’t work and often do harm” (Pink, 2009, p. 9). Organizational culture, core values, ethics, and best practices connect with the bottom line. Bypassing each of the former for the latter may lead to immediate gains but always with a higher long-term cost. Instead of only asking how to achieve your ultimate goals, it’s essential to ask what those goals are and why. Then your practices, policies, philosophy, and people can be aligned.
Pragmatism can have many practical advantages, but one needs only glance at corporate abuse and corruption case studies to see that motivation matters. Wells Fargo was fined in 2016 for aggressive cross-selling practices that gleaned additional customer data that might lead to increased revenue for the bank. To meet sales quotas, bank officials often opened fraudulent accounts by misleading customers without authorization (Elson and Ingram, 2018).
Ultimately, an imbalance in the type of motivation is a better way to frame the situation. Extrinsic motivation isn’t inherently immoral, but it can lead to corrupt practices if it’s exclusively emphasized. Employees need adequate, even generous, compensation and benefits, which are extrinsic. However, intrinsic motivation is more potent in cultivating creativity, loyalty, and efficiency. It also seeks input and develops a shared vision based on convictions, passions, talents, and resources.
Innovation and excellence are the natural results of helping people experience intrinsic motivation. But intrinsic motivation can not survive in an organization that treats its employees like pets. (Kohn, 1993, p. 49).
Thomas (2008) observed that the “high-grade ore of extrinsic motivation has already been mined and that we must now focus on improving intrinsic rewards, which make the work itself more fulfilling and energizing” (p. 9). Fulfilling and energizing work performed by highly engaged employees opens doors to possibilities and outcomes that a model of mere compliance would slam shut.
Leaders have an increasingly difficult role: navigating tumultuous change with limited resources. While intentionality in focus, balance in data, and motivation are hardly the only areas that need inverting, there are still two options before leaders. They can either blindly adopt the inclinations of the past or dare to embrace the paradox of leading well.
References
Anthony, S. (2014). In 2014, Resolve to Make Your Business Human Again. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2.
Elson, R. J., & Ingram, P. (2018). Wells Fargo and the Unauthorized Customer Accounts: A Case Study. Global Journal of Business Pedagogy (GJBP), 2(1), 124–133.
Kohn, A. (1993). Alfie Kohn Responds. Harvard Business Review, 71(6), 48.
McKeown, G. (2014). Essentialism: The disciplined pursuit of less. New York: Crown Business.
Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
Thomas, K. W. (2008). Intrinsic motivation at work: building energy & commitment. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.