Failure of the Leadership, Research Paper Example

The three main reasons leaders fail to act are lack of observation, lack of motivation, and lack of creativity. Leaders who fail to cultivate the skill of observation, including the disciplines of perception, attention, and pattern recognition, fail to act because they do not recognize the need for change. Leaders who lack motivation to act often seek to preserve their position in the status quo by failing to act. Leaders who lack creativity do not know how to act, often due to analytical blockage, reactive mindsets, or failure of strategic vision. Leaders who cultivate these skills will correctly observe the need for action, will have sufficient motivation to act, and will have sufficient creativity to implement action.

Leaders fail to act for a number of reasons, including poor observational skills, poor motivation, and lack of creativity. Leaders may fail to recognize the need to act; they may lack motivation to act, or they may lack a plan to act. Fortunately, the solutions for good leadership are not difficult to put into practice: good observational skills, motivation, and inviting participation and input from others.

Why do leaders sometimes fail to act, especially when inaction would seem to jeopardize their own interests, as well as the interests of the organizations, companies and political nations they lead? A good starting point is leaders’ own cognitive processes: the patterns of thought, belief and analysis that filter through their minds (Eubanks & Mumford, 2010, p. 25). One theory holds that leaders tend to view crisis in external terms, leading them to engage in a pattern of observation of the environment in search of any potential dangers (p. 25). Such ‘environmental scanning’ is a common behavior pattern in leaders of large, complex organizations, including companies and political nations: therefore, their ability to act will be shaped, to no small degree, by how effective they are at scanning the environment and perceiving potential dangers, as well as opportunities (p. 25).

Leaders’ perceptive abilities, then, are a seminal factor in determining whether or not a leader will act in response to a given situation. Consequently, the skill of observation is critical to effective leadership, and a major cause of leaders’ failures to act (Welter & Egmon, 2005, p. 47). But as Welter and Egmon explained, the skill of observation is not simply a matter of looking at the environment and gleaning facts from it: instead, it is a quest for meaning from the environmental data (p. 48). Only a leader who can observe the environment and extract (correct) meaning from it will be effective: a leader who fails to do this is likely to either fail to act, or to act in uninformed and harmful ways (p. 48).

But this does not take the question far enough. Why, then, do some leaders fail to observe and derive correct and useful meanings from the patterns of environmental data? A key reason, as explained by Welter and Egmon (2005), is an all-too-human error: the desire for coherence with one’s current mental map of the world, i.e. one’s current knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes (p. 48). This is a very common, very human tendency: the desire to look at the world around one and have everything ‘fit’ with what one thinks one knows, with what one believes to be true (p. 48). Unfortunately, it is an exercise in wishful thinking and self-delusion, albeit often on the subconscious level. Still, it can explain some spectacular failures of leadership, as Welter and Egmon elucidated: “’When did Motorola notice the shift from analog to digital? When did Nokia notice the shift from technology to cool design?’” (p. 48). The answer is the same for both questions: “’Too late’’ (p. 48).

Accordingly, a key part of the skill of observation is knowing how to allocate one’s attention, figuring out which things one should pay attention to in one’s complex and often-changing environment (Welter & Egmon, 2005, p. 49). Attention is all about focusing consciousness, crystallizing it so that one can ascertain particular features or pieces of information in more detail (p. 50). Of course, this also means that one must ignore other things, since one cannot, by definition, give ‘undivided attention’ to everything all at once (p. 50). In some cases, leaders fail to act because they are not paying attention to the correct things: their attentions are distracted by other things, and so their decision-making processes suffer as a result (p. 50). Self-awareness is an essential quality for cultivating good attentive habits: if one is more self-aware, one will be better equipped to pay attention to one’s own patterns of attention (p. 50). Leaders who are not adequately self-aware tend not to do this, curtailing their own abilities to manage and improve their styles of leadership (p. 50).

Pattern recognition is still another important skill, one that is again a part of the skill of observation (Welter & Egmon, 2005, p. 52). As with attention and perception, pattern recognition is an ability that can make or break a leader, and determine whether or not they will act. Pattern recognition is very important for guiding the processes of perception and attention: one must be able to recognize and make sense of things in the environment if one is to be an effective leader, and recognizing similarities and continuities is absolutely vital to this (p. 52). Leaders who fail to recognize patterns will not know how to extract useful meaning from the environments of the organizations that they lead, and this will often lead them to inaction and inertia (p. 52). As with perception and attention, pattern recognition is a skill that can be cultivated, and leaders who challenge themselves to do so will experience much greater success for it (p. 52).

Observation, of course, is not the only quality capable of exercising an influence on leaders’ predilections towards action or inaction. Motivation is another: if a leader lacks motivation to change or act, by definition they will fail to do so (Montgomery, 1995, p. 108). This dynamic may obtain even in situations where a leader is exercising good perceptive abilities, inasmuch as sensitivity to a particular need for change or action may vary in intensity (p. 108). There are a number of reasons why a leader might lack sufficient motivation for change, but the main one is the direct costs imposed by the change or other action (p. 108). After all, important decisions often entail some costs, ranging from lost opportunity costs to the costs of confronting a major challenge or crisis, to implementing reforms or other changes within the organization (p. 108). Therefore, in some cases, leaders may avoid taking action, or even seek to repress change, preserving the status quo to avoid the costs of change (p. 108).

A very good example of precisely this phenomenon was given by Acemoglu and Robinson (2012), who articulated an institutional theory of world inequality between wealthier and poorer nations: they argue that in general, poorer countries remain poor primarily because the elite groups in those societies have monopolized economic and political power through “extractive” institutions (p. 81). Powerful leaders and elites are willing to enrich themselves, even at the cost of impoverishing entire countries, because allowing the kind of change that would increase economic growth would endanger their grip on power, exposing them to the “creative destruction” of market-oriented economies in societies possessing pluralistic, “inclusive” political and economic institutions (pp. 81-84). Thus, a dictator such as Joseph Mobutu (aka Mobutu Sese Sako), who ruled the Congo/Zaire from 1965-1997, was willing to impoverish his country and keep it poor, even though a richer country might well have increased his own personal wealth, because allowing his people to prosper would have ultimately endangered his stranglehold on power (pp. 83-84). While a Mobutu is unlikely to change his mind, more reasonable leaders may well be motivated by factors other than their investment in the status quo, such as accountability to their followers (pp. 81-82).

Another reason for the failure of leaders to act is a failure of creativity (Montgomery, 1995, p. 109). A leader may have accurate perceptions, and even a motivation to act, but be unable to think of an efficacious option (p. 109). This dynamic is particularly perilous when the leader’s organization is facing difficulties that require the leader to come up with a dynamic and compelling solution (p. 109). A failure of creativity may also be due to a blockage of analysis, which may be caused by too much rapid change in the environment—or at least, too much rapid change occurring in the field of a leader’s attention (p. 110). Still another cause of creative failures is a reactive mind-set: when leaders are inclined to believe that the problems they are facing are both “natural and inevitable” (p. 110). This takes the form of a kind of self-imposed ‘box’, or even a self-fulfilling prophecy: leaders and/or their advisors see the problems as natural and inevitable, which leads them to simply accept them rather than trying to optimize performance by acting (p. 110). Another, closely related, cause of creative failure is failure of strategic vision: if leaders are operating with a set of objectives and goals that is woefully inadequate for the opportunities and challenges they face, they may well experience failures of creativity, which will in turn leave them unable to act (p. 110).

The solutions to the above problems are largely self-evident: in general, leaders who are suffering from a failure of creativity need to broaden their creative resource base by tapping the opinions and expertise of others. Leaders experiencing analytical blockages due to speed and complexity in the environment may need to hone their observational skills, as well as delegate tasks. Reactive mindsets are best challenged by looking at the problem from multiple angles, which—again—is best done with many minds. For strategic vision, leaders should focus on defining priorities, and assessing their organizations’ assets and shortcomings, as well as the opportunities and challenges in the environment.

Leaders fail to act for three basic reasons: failure to perceive, failure of motivation, and failure of creativity. Observation is a skill which must be cultivated, so that leaders can ascertain the need for action and how to act. Leaders who do not cultivate perception, attention, and pattern recognition will hamstring their own efforts. Leaders who are motivated by accountability to their followers are more likely to see a need for change than leaders who are motivated primarily by their desire to preserve their own power in the status quo, even if change imposes certain significant costs. Finally, leaders who encourage the participation and input of others are less likely to find themselves with creative failure.

References

Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty. New York: Random House.

Eubanks, D. L., & Mumford, M. D. (2010). Destructive leadership: The role of cognitive processes. In B. Schyns & T. Hansbrough (Eds.), When leadership goes wrong: Destructive leadership, mistakes, and ethical failures (pp. 23-48). Charlotte, NC: IAP—Information Age Publishing.

Montgomery, C. A. (Ed.). (1995). Resource-based and evolutionary theories of the firm: Towards a synthesis. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Welter, B., & Egmon, J. (2005). The prepared mind of a leader: Eight skills leaders use to innovate, make decisions, and solve problems. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.