Holistic Leadership

Build a system that trusts the frontline teams. They lead. The senior team follows, helping to bring it all together but fighting the urge to control or manage.

“I killed almost 4,000 elephants before I realized I was wrong,” explained a respected land conservationist recently on NPR. Or maybe he said 40,000. I can’t remember. Either way, I was struck by what he experienced after a lifetime of working to preserve grazing and farmland in Africa. “My biggest regret,” he said. It seems according to the traditional view, land needs to be actively managed. But after years of active management, this conservationist still saw land going dry, overused, barren. Desertification continued until he adopted a process of anti-management. Basically follow nature. Let nature be your guide. Self management.

This got me thinking. MBA schools teach our business leaders to actively manage their businesses. Micro-manage. KPIs, outcomes, targets, and structured plans. Quarterly QBRs to track progress. Spreadsheets, reports, hierarchical control. But something doesn’t feel right about this. Research shows that this top-down approach neither inspires nor creates outstanding results. Instead it creates some level of predictability. That’s the argument. And it makes sense. To a degree. Reminds me of my high school football coach, “I’d rather you were consistently mediocre instead of being erratically outstanding.”

But are those the choices?

I think of startup businesses. They are often minimally managed. They rely on well-articulated missions, goals, and freedom to create magic. Their teams are usually extremely engaged and when they hit, they hit big. But then as they scale, they feel compelled to bring in mature leadership to constrain, organize, bring logic. I get it. You can’t stay in the startup mode. People will die working like that.

The book Reinventing Organizations introduces the idea of the “teal” organization. This approach is truly anti-hierarchical, anti-management, anti-MBA. I don’t quite buy that either. There must be some sort of middle ground. Something that gives the money people the predictability they demand and employees the inspiration they need to enjoy their work and perform their magic.

The nature-driven approach to land management is called holistic management. It has six key steps. The sixth one says to “monitor proactively before your managed system becomes more imbalanced.” Always assume your plan is less than perfect and use a feedback loop that includes monitoring for the earliest signs of failure, adjusting and re-planning as needed.

This embraces the team approach. Give your front line teams control. They inform, guide, and make decisions. The senior team plays the role of “holding in place” by monitoring and reporting progress, helping the teams achieve company goals, and jumping in only when there are unresolved questions or conflicts. It’s kind of like the hands-off approach to soccer refereeing in Europe, “Let’s let them play.”

Holistic leadership. Build a system that trusts the frontline teams. They lead. The senior team follows, helping to bring it all together but fighting the urge to control or manage.

But can it be done? Is it being done?

What companies are successfully doing this at scale? It’s that ongoing problem of needing active examples before the MBA’s will jump. Oh well.