Chapter 14: Lateral Leadership-How to Lead When You Are Not in Charge
Situation: You've discovered leaders get things done in three ways when they are not in charge: 1) charisma that makes people follow you, 2) force of argument or pressure, 3) building coalitions. What is the best way forward for you? Here's a great mentoring tale.
As you get off the metro from National Airport and approach the Pentagon, you see handsome young soldiers, sailors, marines in dress uniforms, with neatly cropped hair, all who appear to be on some kind of mission. For a civilian like myself there is something about walking into the door of the Pentagon that makes you feel like the character in the movie, "Mr. Smith goes to Washington"-humbled before the great institutions of state, but nonetheless swelled up with a sense of self importance.
Today I am here to get some 360º feedback from Bill Faxon, a four star general and the Chief of Army Operations, on a political appointee I am coaching, the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Army. I am met by a polite young lieutenant who escorts me through the long halls of the Pentagon lined with pictures of "Old Ironsides," the USS Constitution embattled off the Barbary Coast, Teddy Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, and the battle scene at Iwo Jima. Every question I ask along the way is answered with a cheery and polite, "Yes sir," or "No Sir."
When we reach the long anti-chamber to the general's office, there are other colonels, majors, and master sergeants bounding around, as well as executive assistants, military assistants, and secretaries. The General comes out and shakes my hand, and invites me into his huge office, filled with American flags, Army flags and other memorabilia from his days as a battle field commander in Vietnam, Bosnia, and the Gulf War. He has strong, deep-set eyes that reflect the steely decisions he must have made under fire, but as he gives his feedback for the 360, he also reveals a kind and compassionate side.
"I'll give you one about your guy, the Secretary. We have a good relationship and I think highly of him. His strength is that he is brilliant and very hard working and he really has taken a stand for the future of the United States Army, especially in terms of developing new warfare capabilities. He has a strong vision and gets people to see all the possibilities by presenting out-of-the-box solutions. And he is very good at taking an acquisition like the next generation Joint Strike Fighters, and establishing a business case for why we need it."
"What do you see as his 'biggest gap'?" I asked.
He replied, "His biggest gap comes from the fact that he spent ten years on Capital Hill working for the powerful Senator Simpson, head of military appropriations, and he sometimes is too interested in pleasing people up there. He is also tends to do too many deals himself and not leverage his organization."
"What do you see as his winning strategy? We say a winning strategy is the source of his success, which is now a limitation."
"The source of his success was being a "one man band," someone who got everyone dancing to his music because the Senator had so much power. That strategy has become somewhat of a limitation for him today, because he has to get people from many different competing special interests groups to buy into his programs, and he doesn't have the raw power to make this happen."
"The programs he wants to get budget approval on are getting hung up due to the different special interests groups, which include powerful senators and congressman on the Hill who want defense contracts in their states, the Military who always wants more warfare capability than they can get budget for, and industry who is only interested in making a profit for shareholders."
When I asked the General to give me his advice as to what my client needed to do to be more effective, he provided a teachable point of view that would be useful for any executive in business or government with a powerful change agenda, but without the clout to make it happen, tomorrow or the day after. This teachable point of view provides a powerful antidote to the frustrations of having many voices around you, all of which can say "no" to your change program, but few of which can alone say "yes." Let's let Faxon articulate it for us.
Teachable Point of View: Forget charisma and might. Building coalitions that generate support and dissolve opposition.
"General Faxon," I said, "people who want to make a difference are the initiators of change. The inheritors of the status quo are often the resistors of change. As is often the case, the people who are the inheritors are often in positions of top-down leadership bearing the title of Chief Executive, President, Executive Vice President, General this, Admiral that, and so on."
"Yes, said Faxon, "It's one thing to lead when you are in charge of a big organization. The question is, how do you lead and actually make a difference when you are not in charge?"
I responded, "One of the best strategies I have discovered involves fundamental shifts in our thinking about leadership, for example a shift from top down to lateral leadership."
"I like that idea," said Faxon, "but I think that both are needed."
"Look," he continued, "I have noticed that there are three ways a leader can get things done in the face of resistance. The first is to have a powerful position like being a president of the United States or a four star general, together with so much charisma and the capacity to generate so much electricity that everyone does what you want. General George Patten possessed this quality and demonstrated it throughout World War II. There is something to be said for that kind of power."
"The second thing you can do is to try to obliterate people that oppose you. When Saddam Hussein came into power with the Baath party, he said he was modeling his leadership on Nebuchadnezzar and Joseph Stalin. This approach can work for a while, but before long, your enemies band together and attack you."
"I like the third approach which involves what you have called 'lateral leadership' and is effective where there is no one individual who is in charge or where there are many hands in the pot of making a decision. This is precisely the situation we have in Washington, as a result of a system of checks and balances, as well as in many corporate joint ventures. This kind of leadership involves building coalitions of concerned stakeholders united by a shared position on a single issue or issues and who are ready to work together to move things forward. And this is what I think the Secretary needs to develop."
Template for Action
1. Take a stand that a difference can be made in a situation and assess what is missing that will make a difference. For example, let's say that, if you want to take a stand for universal healthcare, your needs assessment might reveal you need a different kind of HMO. Or if we want to create the Army of the Future, a needs assessment might reveal that we need to develop the next generation of Joint Strike Fighters. Or let's say, for example, you want to dramatically grow your international oil business and a needs assessment shows what's missing is to make a major acquisition of a refinery in Germany. Once you have taken a stand, it is crucial to realize that taking a stand to make a difference always generates support and opposition, as there are always vested interests who see the world differently and there is always competition for scarce resources.
2. Identify the natural allies you need to build support and dissolve opposition. The first step in amplifying the support and diminishing the opposition is to identify natural allies you need for building a coalition. For example, if you are the Secretary of the Army and pushing ahead with the Joint Strike Fighter, people on your list might include the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force, Pentagon generals and admirals, the Chairman of the Senate Military Appropriations committee, and chief executives of corporate defense contractors. If you are successful in engaging most of these groups in your coalition, the chances are that you will have created so much support that the opposition will dissolve.
3. Familiarize stakeholders with each other and with the shared goals of the coalition. Your first step as a lateral leader is to meet with key leaders early with the intent of engaging them in joining with you in a collective effort to accomplish something. The next step is to act as a convener, bringing individual stakeholders together in one room, both to familiarize them with each other and the shared purpose and goals of the coalition. Create an opportunity for people to engage in dialogue about the issues, goals, and specific proposals for meeting them. Be clear about what you stand for, but flexible enough to take into account organizational differences and motivations and needs.
4. Take joint action to make something happen. A group of individuals or organizations talking about the problem is not a coalition. A coalition starts to think of itself as such through common experiences and joint actions. A coalition needs regularly to develop specific approaches, strategies, and time lines that are action-oriented. Spread credit and praise for those who complete coalition tasks.
5. Speak to the listening of key leaders in your organization whose support you need. It's important to be aligned with the goals and intentions of the leadership in your organization rather than act at cross purposes with them. Engage them and find out just what their goals and intentions are. Then frame your ideas and proposals in a way that speaks to their listening. Forget about walking into the CEO's office with a hundred-slide PowerPoint presentation you have been working on for six months. Instead introduce key decision makers to your ideas and proposals early by inviting them or their staff to act as "sounding boards." If they are at all warm to the idea, ask them if they have any "builds." This will get them interested and keep the issue alive when the going gets tough.
6. Engage key stakeholders through a passionate message that brings people together around a purpose larger than themselves. FDR, at the 1936 nominating convention, spoke just four simple words, "I join with you" (in ending the Great Depression) and as a result, put together the most powerful, but unlikely, electoral coalition in American history. This gave him the platform he needed to provide what was missing that could make a difference through a torrent of innovative legislation. I coach executives to begin every meeting by sounding the tone of a higher purpose that will keep a coalition in tact and diminish petty squabbling amongst competing parties. "We are here today because we all stand to be the future of our industry and doing what's best for the business."
7. Identify people with the clout to act as conveners in bringing reluctant "coalition partners" to the table. One of the most important responsibilities of lateral leadership is to be (or find) a convener who can bring all the stakeholders that surround a nagging issue together in one room so they can engage in meaningful dialogue. A good example is Jimmy Carter who brought Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin together at the Camp David to create the Camp David Accords. Ask yourself: who do you need to convene in one room with the intent of people engaging in building new shared understandings that perhaps lead to something new? If you don't have the clout to convene people, find the person who does and enlist their support.