Leadership – understand-culture

Check with Colleagues and Manager

Agreements of substance and importance have effects, ramifications, influence on the work of others. And since Americans work in teams, many of them in several teams at any given time, they are not inclined to enter fully into an agreement until they have checked out what those effects might be.

Why invest additional time discussing the details of a potential agreement, if one or two aspects of it are counter to their other responsibilities? Instead, Americans will check with key colleagues in those organizations potentially influenced by the agreement. In many cases, they will also briefly discuss the case with their direct manager.

This approach is often mistakenly interpreted as a sign that many Americans are either incapable or unwilling to make decisions on their own, without having to run to their boss for permission.

American team leads ultimately carry all responsibility for what occurs within their organization, and are therefore keenly interested in what obligations their team members make in their – the team leader’s – names.

Strategy Consultants

The approaches used by strategy consultants – also known as management consultants – are advanced versions of those taught in business schools: data-driven analysis with some degree of attention given to the non-quantifiable human factor. The goal is the standardization of best practices within client companies, drawing also on insights gained from other clients.

The management consulting sector has grown dramatically since the 1930s, when the Glass-Steagall Banking Act was passed, limiting affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms. Management consulting grew out of the demand for advice on finance, strategy and organization. In 1980, only five consulting companies existed, and each had 1,000 consultants worldwide. By the 1990s, however, more than thirty firms entered the market each with at least 1,000 management consultants.

In 1993, McKinsey had 151 directors. This figure dramatically increased to 400 by 2009. From 1993 to 2004, McKinsey revenues more than doubled with 20 new offices and twice as many employees. McKinsey grew from 2,900 to 7,000 consultants scattered across 82 offices in more than 40 countries. In 1963, Boston Consulting Group had two consultants. By 1970 1980, 1990, 2000 BCG had 100, 249, 676, 2370 and 4800 consultants on its payroll respectively.

Situation Room

The so-called situation room – a complex of rooms of several thousand square feet and located in the basement of the White House – is where the President, selected members of the cabinet and the national security teams meet during a crisis or when secure communications are essential. They make up the President‘s inner circle of security advisors.

NASA has a similar kind of „war room“ in which it manages and monitors all space flights. Access have experts in altitude control, dynamics, power, propulsion. In the lead are the flight controllers.

„The War Room“, a 1993 documentary by D.A. Pennebacker, told the story of the inner circle of then presidential candidate Bill Clinton‘s election team. Although the film crew shot less than forty hours of material over a roughly three month period, it succeeded in giving viewers an authentic inside view of how a presidential candidate‘s inner circle works.

Kitchen Cabinet

American management teams are made up of members of unequal rank. Depending on the nature of the work some disciplines might be more important for overall success than others: such as product development or manufacturing or sales/marketing moreso than accounting/finance, human resources or health/safety. And within product development, design engineering might be more important than testing.

Some team members may have more power and influence due to their experience or record of producing excellent results. Then there are others in the management team who enjoy a high level of influence based on their personal relationship with the team lead, a relationship perhaps built up over years of close collaboration.

The term kitchen cabinet refers to those team members who have a special relationship with the team lead. The kitchen cabinet might also include people from other parts of the organization, such as a senior-level mentor to the team lead.

Kitchen Cabinet was a term used by political opponents of President Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) to describe the unofficial advisers he consulted parallel to his cabinet. It was said that Jackson would meet formally with his cabinet to discuss important issues of state, then meet informally afterwards with selected, trusted advisors in the kitchen of the White House to discuss more openly and critically those same issues.

Mentor

Mentor: A trusted counselor or guide; tutor, coach; from Greek Mentōr. First known use 1616. Mentoring has become popular within American, and other, companies. It asks an experienced senior-level colleague to provide advice to a less experienced, junior-level colleague. American managers will seek advice wherever they can find it, as long as it is sound, helpful, and most importantly discreet.

American Football play-calling

Calling a play in American football is a complex process. During any one given play each of the players on a team has a different, specific, scripted role to play.

Who calls the plays? Either the head coach or the offensive coordinator. In some situations the quarterback.

How is the play communicated to the players? The quarterback may have a speaker in his helmet connecting him with the coaches. A substitute player can be sent in with the play. The play can be communicated from the sidelines via hand signals.

More and more teams are using a no-huddle offense to speed the game up. Players take their positions as quickly as possible, and get their assignments from the quarterback or from the coaches on the sideline.

“Lead, don‘t moderate“

Consensus: General agreement, unanimity, judgment arrived at by most of those concerned; group solidarity in sentiment and belief. From Latin consentire, cōnsēnsus agreement, from cōnsentiō meaning literally feel together.

For Americans, businesses, and therefore the teams within them, are not democracies. American team leads do not feel obligated to reach consensus within their leadership group in order to set strategy or to make a decision. Both sides of the relationship – leaders and led – are in agreement that the lead is paid to set strategy, make decisions, not to be a moderator.

Team members, as specialist in their areas, want and expect to be listened to. They want their input to have impact on the decision to be made, the strategy to be set. But they will and can not insist, without possibly damaging their working relationship with the team lead.

Decisive: having the power or quality of deciding; resolute, determined; unmistakable, unquestionable. Synonyms: firm, intent, purposeful, resolved, set, single-minded, do-or-die, hell-bent.

No Standing Army

Up until the end of the Second World War the United States did not maintain a standing army. America‘s founding fathers warned about the dangers a standing army presents should it become the instrument of tyranny. The American military history is a series of mobilizations and demobilizations.

After the the First World War the U.S. reduced its forces to approximately 100,000 soldiers, equal to the limit imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles. American mobilization after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 took up to an entire year.

Although American armed forces have been present in many countries since the end of the Second World War, it does not have a European-type tradition of officer corps and militias with long-standing doctrines, training and fighting methods.

In many ways, Americans have had to retrain themselves for the wars they fought – enlisting, training and managing young men at short notice and within short periods of time. It could also be argued that the average education level of the average American enlisted soldier is/was not as high as his counterpart in northern European countries.

These factors – a tradition of demobilization, the need to enlist and train rapidly, a broad spectrum of levels of education – may have forced the American military to develop leadership approaches which make necessary close management of personnel and operation.

Presidents and Cabinets

President Lincoln held Cabinet meetings on Tuesdays and Fridays. These meetings were informal gatherings of equals with no formal structure or assigned seats. The President, however, preferred to deal with matters directly with individual members rather than have discussions with the full group.

Lincoln was deeply involved in the day-to-day affairs of the War Department. According to the diary of Gideon Welles, the president went to the War Department three to four times per day to look over communications in the telegraph office. Lincoln was known for his deliberative style, patiently listening to what his Cabinet members had to say before making a decision.

President Obama did not convene frequent Cabinet meetings during his first term. The meeting held in July 2012 was only the eighteenth. Obama does, however, hold daily meetings with White House advisors in which they discuss specific policies. The president reportedly prefers to understand problems with a high degree of detail. Some have criticized him for micromanaging his staff.

Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan are considered to be the classic examples of delegators. Both brought a broad, bold vision of the role of government to the White House, and each relied heavily upon staff, executive agencies, and cabinet heads to implement their policies. Not coincidentally, both were largely successful in advancing their agendas, though at opposite ends of the political spectrum. In the first two years of his presidency, George W. Bush had exhibited many of the leadership traits of Reagan and Roosevelt.

Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter were known as micromanagers. As a former Senate majority leader, Johnson took an unusually active role in Congressional affairs, and was fond of monitoring the minutiae of the legislative process. He took a similar approach to managing the Vietnam War, picking many of the bombing targets himself during late-night strategy sessions with his generals.

Although Jimmy Carter campaigned as an outsider to the political system (having served one term as the governor of Georgia), he quickly developed a reputation as a “policy wonk” and micromanager. He was faulted for lacking the grand vision of previous presidents, and for obsessing over the administrative details of the office at the expense of seeing the big picture. It was reported that Carter once took time to resolve a scheduling dispute between staffers over the use of the White House tennis courts.

Richard Nixon’s leadership style has been described as “keeping his own counsel.” The thirty-seventh president had few advisors that he trusted, and rarely sought out dissenting opinions or advice from others. It is believed that Nixon’s mistrust of virtually everyone around him contributed to his downfall following the Watergate break-in.

Team Sports

How a society fundamentally defines the everyday working relationship between leader and led, is imbedded in how that society teaches its young people to compete in athletics. In its most popular sports. If that working relationship does not function well, the team loses.

It is no coincidence that the terms common to American teams sports are used time and again in the American business context. For the overwhelming majority of Americans have experience neither in the military nor in politics.

Other than being a member of a family, participating in team sports is the most common experience Americans, especially youths, have in a team context. And for those whose days of playing in a team are past, most remain fans of those sports. Teams sports in America form how Americans work in teams. The relationship between coaches and players is very much the model, or the mold, for the relationship between team lead and team.

The American sports tradition involves a close working relationship between leader and led, between the coaching staff and the players.

The coach and coaching staff in American football are the dominant actors during the game without stepping onto the field. They determine not only the strategy, but also the tactics. Both they can change quickly.

The rules of the game limit in no way when, how often, which and how many players they can substitute. Nor are there any restrictions on team formations on the field.

The coaching staff in almost all circumstances calls the individual offensive and defensive plays via direct communication with designated players: the quarterback on offense, the middle linebacker or safety on defense.

Playbooks are extensive descriptions of what each player does in a given play. They are detailed and prescriptive in nature. Depending on the position there is no to little room for variation.

During breaks in play, as well as changes in ball possession, the coaching staffs instruct directly their players on the details of execution. In other words, teaching occurs during the game.

American football is a very tightly managed and scripted sport, in many ways a sophisticated chess match between opposing coaching staffs. The television and radio commentators refer time and again to what decisions the coaches are making during the game: strategy, tactics, player substitutions, play-calling, time management.

Basketball – invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian-American, while teaching physical education in Springfield, Massachusetts – is also a sport dominated by the coaches. It has all of the characteristics of American football.

The teams of five players are smaller. The lines of communication between coaches and players are shorter and more direct. Although there are fewer set plays memorized from a playbook, the coaches can determine more directly how their team plays.

The chess match character is particularly evident during the final minutes of close games with coaches standing on the side of the court directing their players in real time, substituting players rapidly based on ball possession, and calling timeouts in order to give them explicit instructions.

Although baseball is in many ways a different kind of sport than American football and basketball, its rules and how the sport is played very much echoes the coach-player relationships in football and basketball.

It is the coaching staff who decides who pitches the ball, what pitches are chosen, when they are pitched. The coaching staff also instructs to a certain degree the batter on when to swing at which pitches. When players are on base as runners, they too are given instructions on when or when not to attempt to steal a base.

American colleges recruit their athletes from high schools across the nation. The athletes are often offered full tuition scholarships to play a sport at a university. Top basketball players are identified as early as in their 8th or 9th grade. The best players will be recruited during their junior year of high school.

This is a very personal process which consists of a dialogue between the university‘s head coach and player during his or her lasts one pr two years. Although there are many deciding factors in where a player decides which school to attend, the personal relationship with the coach is one of the most important.