[I’ve] never given this talk before; so
in all probability it will be a crummy talk,
but I thought that rather than give a rote
set of thoughts, I would just share with you
some about the topics of responsible leadership
that might be useful, especially for those
of you who are in the business of teaching
the future leaders.
Let me describe the dilemma that I think academia
has kind of imposed on responsibility and
leadership: A good friend of mine was chosen
to be the dean of the graduate schools at
one of the most prestigious universities in
America—world class scientist.
As they were testing the credentials to be
sure that there was not anything hidden, it
became known that she taught Sunday School
in the Episcopalian Church in their community.
The fact that it was known that she taught
Sunday School almost scuttled the deal.
The idea that a religious person could ever
function as the Dean was um…and ultimately
she got the job and did a wonderful job.
When I learned of that, I thought, “My gosh!
What has happened to academia that it is so
narrow-minded that you couldn’t have that
kind of diversity in the faculty?”
In defense of academia, does that mean you
have to embrace discussion about any topic
on any issue?
Decid[ing] what fits in and what fits out
is an issue that just makes academia very
difficult when you now are faced with the
challenge of teaching people to be responsible
leaders.
As long as you keep the level and discussion
at the level of values, then everybody can
buy in to values, but if you start to get
any deeper about what types of values are
we talking about, then you just get in all
kinds of discussion and argument about "we
can teach this, we can’t teach that."
In my own thinking, I have decided that maybe
a better way to frame values in leadership
is what we need to do in academia is to teach
our students how to think rather than teach
them specific values that they should all
follow or not all follow.
In fact, if we teach ourselves what theory
is about, understanding how theory [works],
what theory is, and how it applies, [we] might
give our graduates, as tomorrow’s future
leaders, a better a way to work their way through
all of the pitfalls that might arise if we
try to teach [that] certain values always
ought to be or not ought to be applied.
So, theory might be really important in teaching
tomorrow’s leaders how to be responsible.
The word theory gets a bum rap with managers,
because the word theory is associated with
the word theoretical which denotes impractical,
but a theory is a statement of what causes
what, why, and under what conditions.
When you think of a theory in those terms,
it turns out that managers are veracious consumers
of theory because, every time they make a decision
to take an action it is predicated upon a
theory in their minds that if I do this I
will get the result I need.
Every time a manager puts together a plan,
it’s predicated upon one or more theories
that if we do these things, then we will be
successful.
So managers really truly are veracious consumers
of theory, and the problem of course is a lot
of times they don’t know the theories they
are using and, they sometimes uses crummy theories.
How a theory is developed [is important] to
get a sense for why being a good theorist
might be useful for a leader and in a fact
be flexible enough to deal with some of the
problems that otherwise kill us.
If you go back to the Middle Ages, there was
a long effort that lasted hundreds of years
to research flight, and the question was,
is it possible that mankind ever might be
able to fly.
So the way they approached it in the Middle
Ages was they collected data and they observed
that almost every[thing] that could fly had
wings and feathers, and those who can’t
fly don’t; there were a few exceptions:
Ostriches had wings and feathers and couldn’t
fly; bats had wings with no feathers and they
flew very well; flying squirrels had neither
and they got by.
The correlation between the attributes of
wings and feathers and the propensity to fly,
the “r-squared,” was so high that researchers
of the day would fabricate wings, stick feathers
on them, strap them on, bulk up, go up to
cathedral spires, jump off, and flap real
hard.
It just didn’t ever seem to work.
For centuries they would criticize those who
killed themselves by saying well they just
had bad wing designs or they didn’t bulk
up enough or didn’t flap hard enough, but
they kept killing themselves.
Then Bacon in 1285 published a very important
theory, where he essentially said, “You
guys got the categories wrong.
It’s not wings and feathers and no-wings
and feathers that decide the outcome—it
is solid versus hollow bones.”
Turns out that those who can fly all have
hollow bones and those that have solid bones, can't.
Bad news for humanity, you have solid bones,
therefore you can’t.
Then he proposed a bunch of machines that
could flap their wings and maybe there was
hope for man after all.
Daniel Bernoulli came along in the 1500's or
1600's through his understanding of mechanical
physics, and he observed that it isn’t wings
or feathers but there is a particular shape
that we call today an air foil and if wind
runs against that shape it pushes it up.
Bernoulli’s principle is the research that
[helped] us to understand what causes flight,
not what is correlated with flight.
For a while it still didn’t help us much
because you had this force going on, but people
would try to build airplanes that harnessed
that principle and sometimes they would be
successful and sometimes they would fail.
When research would fail, the researchers
would look up around this question, “Gosh
I wonder what it is about the circumstance
that that pilot found herself in, that caused
this causal mechanism not to result in successful
flight.”
Then they would wait around until there was
another crash and say, “Alright, we can
learn more.
What is it about this situation that they
found themselves in that caused Bernoulli’s
principles not to result in successful flight?”
So little by little, the researchers articulated
the different circumstances in which you might
find yourself that would cause this mechanism
to fail, which then allowed them to say, “Alright,
so if you are in this situation, this is the
way you need to fly the plane, but if you
find yourself in this situation, don’t fly
it that way because you will fail.
You will have to follow these rules instead.
If you are in this situation, don’t even
try because it is impossible.”
Bernoulli figured out what caused successful
flight but then understanding the different
situations in which you might find yourself
caused flight to be predictable; so today
we are the beneficiaries of a wonderful theory
that is very safe because we understand the
different situations that we might find ourselves
in.
So wouldn’t it be interesting if there were
theories about leadership and management that
would allow the next generation of leaders
to say, “Oh, so this is the situation I’m
in and therefore these are the principles
I need to follow as I lead, but if I find
myself in this situation I shouldn’t follow
those rules”?
It’s possible that if we arm the leaders
of the future with good theories, they might
actually provide better leadership to us than
otherwise.
I thought I might close by raising an interesting
question for you, that is, I think America
has been horribly led over the last twelve
years.
Isn’t it odd, because our presidents all
have been graduates of Harvard?
You would think that we would graduate the
best leaders in the world and now you are
led by a graduate of Oxford, so you shouldn’t
have to worry about whether he is going to
be a great leader, right?.
Let me pose this as what has happened in America’s
experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya
and Egypt, now possibly 
what we might do with Syria.
I think our leaders did good correlation analysis,
and they observed that there is a very high
correlation between having a government based
on democracy and prosperity.
Our leaders have then concluded that everybody
ought to be governed by democratic governments
and as we had the opportunity, we intervene[d]
in Iraq and knocked out the
old leader and then announce on Monday morning,
“Let’s have democracy, shall we?”
Then we do the same thing in Afghanistan,
run by really bad people: The Taliban.
We do our best to get rid of them and then
announce, “Why don’t we have democracy
here starting on Monday?”
Well, it turns out, that if you really guided
by a solid theory that yes, democracy is a
wonderful institution, but there some circumstances
in which democracy works quite well, but there
are other circumstances in which democracy
actually doesn’t work.
And it turns out there is no apparent evidence
that our leaders asked that question, rather
we saw a correlation between these two, tried
to impose democracy, but the circumstances
in which you might find yourself in are--democracy
actually is designed so that you can’t catch
most criminals.
It’s predicated upon people under democracy
to step forward and voluntarily choose to
obey all of the laws.
Democracy works because people choose to obey
even unenforceable laws.
Because we voluntarily choose to obey the
laws, democracy works, but if you look in
situations where people actually don’t believe
that they will be held accountable for following
unenforceable laws, democracy actually doesn’t
work very well at all.
Look at the situations in which America tried
to impose a type of government; we tried to
impose it in a situation where democracy won’t
work.
Qaddafi has been a bad actor for a long time,
and as momentum builds up through the Middle
East, CNN, which really dictates our foreign
policy, builds enough momentum around Qaddafi
where there was enough movement that we got
to get that actor out, so we killed him.
We never asked another question and that is,
“What happens if you take the leader out
and there is nobody behind that person to
take charge?”
It turns out that people who have been in
power for a very long time get their power
by killing all the people underneath them.
So you take out Qaddafi and then the Americans
say, “Oh sorry, we have got to watch our
children, (because you can do this by remote).
I am going to watch a children’s football
game, and I’m sure there is somebody in Libya
that can take charge.”
We never thought about that there are two
different situations.
There is one situation where there is a leader,
and then there is another cadre of people
who are ready and willing and capable to take
charge, but there is another situation where
if the leader goes, there is actually nobody
to take charge.
America essentially plunged Libya, and before
that Haiti, into chaos because there isn’t
anybody in charge.
We didn’t come here to analyze our foreign
policy, but I raised it because here we have
our well educated leaders, and now we face
Syria where this guy clearly is a bad actor.
What a horrible person to gas thousands of
children.
So what should we do?
Well, without thinking about the theory involved,
[the] circumstance are we in, and given the
circumstance that we are in, what would be
a stupid thing to do versus a better way to
approach it? I just worry that we have leadership
that don’t know how to think.
I just wanted to offer this as an academic
who has some responsibility to teach the next
generation of leaders that if we try to teach
them the detail of all of the values, [then]
we need to keep themselves at all times in
order to be a good leader.
Maybe we would give them better tools to wield
if we [were to] teach them what good theories
are, because any time they try to act in one
way or another, they are using a theory.
Maybe that’s the way we need to influence
them.
I hope that this might give us something to
argue about as this hour progresses.
