دانلود رایگان مقاله رهبری در دنیای پیچیده: چگونگی مدیریت "تراژدی انتخاب"

Contrary to popular notions, leaders do notlead people: They lead organizations that in addition to people include social roles, cultural values, beliefs, hopes and expectations. For instance, the oldest continuing organization on earth, the Catholic Church, is led by a Pope who need not have such traditional leadership qualities as being charismatic, visionary, decisive, ambitious, or well connected. He is chosen in large part because he shows promise to keep the Church solvent and perhaps even growing; and because he is committed to the values that the followers expect the Church to provide. A good Pope will need to have different qualities from a Genghis Khan or from a John D. Rockefeller, who led organizations that were very different from the Catholic Church. Yet the most important task of both Genghis Kahn and Rockefeller, like that ofthe Pope, was to convince people that it was in their best interest to follow them and keep the organization they led (e.g., the Mongol Horde, the Rockefeller financial empire) prosperous.

DIVERGENCE WITH CONVENTIONAL WISDOM (CSR SHIBBOLETHS LEADERS SHOULD AVOID)

Just because leaders have embraced the complexity of incorporating CSR into their value sets does not mean they must accept every ideal associated with sustainability on faith. We have identified a few shibboleths, outmoded beliefs, which can hurt the process. Myth #1. Transparency is an end in itself (it isn’t) Leaders should distinguish between transparency for values (a good thing) but not necessarily for actions. Visionary leaders give themselves time to build consensus, prioritize communication and coordinate their moves. To reference Sun Tzu, ‘‘victorious warriors win first and then go to war.’’ This artfulness in disclosure serves a concrete purpose in building culture. As Schein points out in Organizational Culture and Leadership, values and assumptions are only accepted as true when the positive effects can be observed by the many. As a result, it is in a leader’s best interest to ensure the successful outcome of a new and untested initiative based on unfamiliar values, even if that means keeping it hidden from sight until it is a sure win. As noted above, Steve Jobs kept Apple’s sustainability efforts under wraps to mitigate a damaging skeptical press. Similarly Nike laid careful, quiet groundwork for decades on its ‘‘Considered’’ line of environmentally friendly products started by sustainability chief Hannah Jones, which has helped to inform the Higg Index. This international model for the apparel and footwear industry is used to assess sustainability throughout a product’s entire life cycle, from materials to end-of-life. Currently the metrics created by Higg Index are limited to a company’s internal use for the evaluation and improvement of environmental performance. Plans for a future version include the creation of a scoring scale designed to communicate a product’s sustainability impact to consumers and other stakeholders. Even Ray Anderson at Interface Carpet knew not to communicate his sustainability efforts until he had ‘‘measurable deliverables in a credible fashion to share publicly.’’