Beyond “Déjà vu”: Uncertainty and the Need for Leadership

Why do we need leaders? Before trying to answer the question “why” we need leaders, it might be useful to consider the question “when” do you need leadership? What occasions and circumstances require “leadership” rather than other solutions (such as management)? When is leadership more effective than any other solution and how does that relate to the business environment?

I once attended a lecture by Keith Grint, a professor of public leadership, who taught a real eye-opening concept of when leadership is necessary. The start point is that management is dealing with the “déjà vu” (seen this before) whereas leadership is dealing with “jamais vu” (never seen this before). Elaborating on this, Grint built a theory (which appears in the British Association of Medical Managers “Clinical Leader”, 2008, Vol. 1, No.2) of how leadership is all about dealing with uncertainty.

Here’s a summary followed by my culturally biased critique (“et alors”).

“Wicked Problems and Clumsy Solutions: the Role of Leadership.”

Grint defines two key axes for analysing a given situation: one reflects the increasing level of uncertainty about a solution to a problem; the other reflects the increasing requirement of “collaborative compliance” required to achieve a solution. Moving across these two axes simultaneously, one can see the three following situations:

Command

·         There is no uncertainty about the solution as the crisis requires an immediate answer.

·         To achieve a solution, coercion, physical strength or authority is required.

·         The form of the “solution” is therefore “commanding” – providing answers.

Management

·         There is little uncertainty about the solution to the problem as it is usually a “tame” problem i.e. whilst possibly complicated, it has been seen before and is resolved in a linear fashion.

·         To achieve a solution, “calculative compliance” is required using a rational process.

·         The form of the “solution” is therefore “managing” – organising processes.

Leadership

·         There is high uncertainty about the solution to the problem as it is usually a “wicked” problem i.e. inevitably complex, contextual and with no clear link between cause and effect it might never have been seen before.

·         To achieve a solution, authority is passed from the individual to the collective because only collective engagement can hope to address the problem (cf. “normative compliance”).

·         The form of the “solution” is therefore “leadership” – asking questions.

Et alors?

It might look like the problems faced by any given business are “tame”, but if you look again and put the business in the context of the complex and fast-changing, never-before-seen environment then it could be argued that all the problems faced by businesses today are “wicked”. With the relative position changing every day, we therefore need leaders to constantly adapt the business towards an uncertain future.

As Grint says, the “irony” of leadership is that it is often avoided where it might seem the most necessary! Unfortunately, this seems apparent in large industrial companies where there is a legacy of “engineering mite” always having provided a solution to very complicated issues. Unfortunately, given that perfectly tried-and-tested processes are in place to solve “tame” issues, when a “wicked” problem comes along, it is often treated as another “tame” problem. Beyond “engineering culture”, is the dilemma of trying to solve “wicked” problems as if they were “tame” more evident in French culture than elsewhere?

Professor Geert Hofstede analysed national cultures to see how they affect values in the workplace. One of his five dimensions is the Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) which deals with a “society's tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity”. To quote Hofstede, “It indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations. Uncertainty avoiding cultures try to minimize the possibility of unstructured situations by strict laws and rules, safety and security measures, and on the philosophical and religious level by a belief in absolute Truth; 'there can only be one Truth and we have it'.” On this scale, French culture scores highly (86) while Anglo-Saxon cultures score low (e.g. USA, 46 and UK, 35).

Can we therefore conclude from Hofstede’s study that French society is organised to avoid uncertainty (including uncertain solutions); and in combination with Grint’s theory, that the French workplace culture is therefore likely to try and categorise problems as “tame” so they can be solved using management “solutions”? In uncertain times, businesses need to find as many solutions as possible and given the “engineering cultures” along with the tendency to ordinarily avoid uncertainty within French culture, leadership is needed now more than ever in large French industrial companies! Grint elaborates on the questions to be asked: think of reflecting rather than reacting; think of constructive dissent rather than destructive consent; think of empathy and collective intelligence rather than egoism and individual genius... and then you have the framework of questions to build “leadership” in an uncertain environment.