1. University of Iceland 2013 Autumn
School of Social Sciences OSS112F
Department of Political Science Leadership in Public Organizations
Adjunct Lecturer: Margrét Sigrún Björnsdóttir
THE KING STAY THE KING
Real Leadership through the lens of The Wire: Leadership and change in a complex world
of institutions and systemic problems
DECEMBER 18, 2013
GARÐAR STEINN ÓLAFSSON
270883-4519

2. 1. Table of Contents
1. Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... 1
2. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 2
3. Why Real Leadership?....................................................................................................... 3
4. Why The Wire?................................................................................................................... 8
5. Terminology and Concepts ................................................................................................ 9
5.1. Defining the Concept of Leadership............................................................................ 9
5.1.1. Leadership, Management and Social engineering.............................................. 10
5.1.2. Transformational-Transactional......................................................................... 11
5.1.3. Adaptive-Technical ............................................................................................ 12
5.1.4. Real-Counterfeit................................................................................................. 12
5.2. Institutionalism and individualism ............................................................................ 13
6. Case Studies of Leadership from The Wire...................................................................... 14
6.1. Unlikely Activist – Detective Jimmy McNulty......................................................... 15
6.2. Community Policing and Corner Boys – The Case of ‘Bunny’ Colvin .................... 17
6.3. The New Day Co-op and ‘Stringer’ Bell, B.Sc. Drug Marketing ............................. 19
6.4. Successful Leadership in The Wire........................................................................... 21
7. Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 22
8. Biblography...................................................................................................................... 24

3. 2. Introduction
This article is written as part of a course on Leadership in Public Organizations, under Adjunct
Lecturer Margrét Sigrún Björnsdóttir. The aim is to illustrate some of the course material,
specifically Dean William’s Real Leadership1
, through the lens of HBO’s immortal television
epic The Wire.2
Other work on leadership theory will be cited as appropriate to illustrate points
or provide contrast.
Research for the article consisted of a literature review of leadership theory as well as the
methodology and ontology underlying social science. Reviewing of key episodes of The Wire
also proved necessary.
In the complex and nuanced world of HBO’s The Wire; change3
, activist or transitional
leadership usually runs afoul of structural and institutional factors, revealing that individuated
agents of change are relatively powerless in the face of systemic failure. Are anecdotes of the
effects of change, activist or transitional leadership in the literature inherently simplified and if
so, what does that imply about utility in a real world more complex than any narrative structure?
The thrust of the article can be said to be an examination of this author’s scepticism toward the
idea of a systemised and generalizable knowledge of leadership. Every motivational speaker,
self-help book writer or proponent of a system of leadership implicitly embraces the idealistic
notion that the right system, skilfully applied, is sufficient to prevail over the institutional
dynamics and sociological forces at whose mercy human lives are.
How realistic is that notion? There exist convincing empirical studies sufficient to accept that
the weight of evidence indicates that in small groups, under stressful conditions, leadership is
crucial to success and often survival. But is that applicable to larger contexts? Are techniques
of leadership derived from the study of interpersonal relationships or small-group dynamics
relevant to attempts to enact institutional change on a large scale?
Is the study and practice of such leadership techniques by those who hope to reform a
dysfunctional bureaucracy or alter a toxic organisational culture? Or is it little more than mice
studying self-defence in the hope it will enable them to fight off cats and terriers?
1
Dean Williams, Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges (San
Fransisco, CA: Berret-Koehler Publishers, 2005).
2
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, The Wire, TV Series/DVD Complete Series (New York: HBO Video, 2002-2008).
3
See Kotter, John P. Heart of Change. NY: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012. Kindle edition.

4. These questions cannot not be answered by tautological affirmations in the style of Bass’
argument that leadership’s importance is asserted by the many schools it is taught and the
amount of research and interest in it.4
By that logic, the widespread availability of seminary
education would prove the existence and importance of the Roman Catholic God.
These questions may not have answers at all. Einstein, after all, tells us that the reason we can
learn to split the atom and make weapons of unparalleled power, but not design political systems
that prevent us from using them is: “[…] because politics is more difficult than physics.”5
3. Why Real Leadership?6
At first, it may cause confusion that this author should elect to examine Dean William’s Real
Leadership in any context, as one is hardly noted for one’s faith in transformational or adaptive
leadership in specific, nor indeed management or leadership theory in general. It is important,
however, to distinguish between a belief that the study of leadership is worthless, which this
author has never professed, and the epistemological position that knowledge about social
phenomena is not subject to generalisation or systemisation, as not only is it always a contextual
social construct, but one that can only be communicated through some imprecise abstraction;
be that numerical data, a system of leadership or even just a written narrative of a case study.
Abstractions of data about complex systems always risk adaptation decay in the informational
value. When dealing with a system with a sensitive dependency on initial conditions7
where the
various factors in the system are interdependent to the point of an exponential matrix of
complicity8
, as any social system must be; this consideration is critical and serves to massively
depreciate the value of research methods inspired by physical sciences and utterly invalidate
the very concept of normative models of leadership based on positivist principles.
With chaotic systems, even a tiny loss of fidelity in the recording of data, whether from
necessity or in the name of simplicity and utility with empirical methods of analysis, will rapidly
4
Bernard M. Bass, Bass & Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership: Theory, Research and Managerial Applications
(Third edition. New York: The Free Press, 1990), p. 10.
5
Grenville Clark, “Einstein Quoted on Politics,“ reader's letter to the New York Times, April 22, 1955.
6 Some of the phrasing relevant to social science in general that appears in this chapter draws on the author‘s
unpublished notes for the opening section of the literature review in his MPA thesis.
7 Edward Lorenz, "Designing Chaotic Models," Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences: 62:5 (2005), p. 1574–1587.
8See Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos: discovering simplicity in a complex world, (City of
Westminster: Penguin Books, 1994).

5. be compounded in the analysis until any derived model can have only accidental correlation
with reality.9
In other words, once sociological data has been converted into “objective” numerical values,
“generalizable” leadership systems or some form of expression supposedly amenable to
“scientific” empirical repeatable analysis, the informational value of the data has been vastly
compromised by the loss of context and nuance. Any resulting model of social interactions will
be descriptive only of the arbitrary abstractions10
of assigned numbers or constructed narratives
and have little relation to the real subject of the study.
Not only is the map not the territory, but due to the intolerance for any imprecision in the initial
data when modelling chaotic systems, the relationship between map and territory will grow ever
fainter the further the model is projected in time, space or conceptual divergence. A model can
be mathematically sound and in accordance with scientific principles, generalizable or vaguely
descriptive of the thing modelled; but in any field where untidy human behaviour is allowed to
interfere with abstract models, it cannot be all three things at once. In fact, most models fall
down flat if they attempt even two of these desiderata.
No amount of rigorous quantitative methodology can overcome this basic truth. Nor would
there be any benefit to so doing; as any model or collection of numerical data is meaningless to
the human mind without interpretation. Even assuming no bias in the collection of data, during
the process of this interpretation, the consumer of any scientific model or data will substitute
his own linguistic, cultural and theoretical prejudices for those of the researcher.11
Only an
awareness of the inevitability of bias and the practice of reflexive inquiry on the part of
everyone involved in the process of study, researchers and readers alike, can serve to keep the
distortion of reality to some acceptable minimum.12
No one with a basic understanding of science would thus posit that any social phenomena could
be studied entirely by means of objective13
, empirically testable experiments; yielding
9Ibid.
10 See Jean Baudrillard, Simulacrum and Simulacra, transl. Sheila Glaser, (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan Press), 1994.
11 See Michel Foucault, "What is an Author? The Author Function,” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice,
transl. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 124-127.
12 See Ann L. Cunliffe,“Reflexive inquiry in organizational research: Questions and possibilities,” Human
Relations Vol. 56, Iss. 8 (2003): p. 983-1003.
13 See Jacques Derrida, "'Genesis' and 'Structure' and Phenomenology," in Writing and Difference (London:
Routledge),1978; and Baudrillard, Simulacrum and Simulacra.

6. falsifiable theories with a wide generalizability. The complex, complicit14
relationship between
observer and observed, data and interpreter, entirely negates the possibility of such prescriptive
theoretical models.15
All social science is and must be descriptive, not prescriptive.16
The author is hardly the first to point out the cognitive dissonance involved when researchers
graduating from serious universities, where they might be expected to attain some idea of the
basic principles of epistemology and logic, nevertheless take their freshly acquired MBA/MPA
degrees out and proceed to study complex sociological phenomena arising in emergent systems
while using simplistic frameworks, expecting to be able to generalise about the subject by
distilling whatever narrative they constructed from case studies into a list of 3-5-7-8-14 or
whatever number of trite truisms.
In a world where the methodology and understanding of science has moved on from both
Auguste Comte and Margaret Murray, one would not expect to see anyone conduct “research”
into social phenomena through such discredited methods as either crunching a mass of numbers
without being able to hope to understand the social context underlying them all and then fitting
the results into their preferred narrative; or by analysing the actions of one or a few actors within
a chaotic system, comparing it to a subjective narrative about results and simply assuming
causal relationships from apparent correlation.
Yet both are apparently still accepted practice within the MBA management/leadership circuit
and often even compounded by presenting the resulting “management systems” or “leadership
methods” without sufficient information about real sample size, i.e. how many instances were
not considered remarkable enough to notice, record, mention or study.
It must not be intimidated that these failings are universal. Even within the notoriously pseudo-
scientific field of management and leadership theory, there exist conceptual frameworks of
considerably greater sophistication than typical buzz-word heavy books touting the secrets of
success. Ever since the 1980s, at least lip-service has been paid to the idea of greater complexity
than old-fashioned strict positivism acknowledged among the mainstream in the field of
leadership studies. Real Leadership even acknowledges that leadership is an “interactive art”
in the introduction,17
right before the 260 pages that purport to teach a method to perform it.
14 Cohen and Stewart, The Collapse of Chaos: discovering simplicity in a complex world, p. 288.
15 See Cunliffe, “Reflexive inquiry in organizational research”.
16 Flyvbjerg, B. “Five Misconceptions About Case-Study Research.” Qualitative Inquiry 12 (2006): p. 223.
17 Williams, Real Leadership, Introduction, p. xiii-xvi.

7. There are even academic and professional approaches to leadership studies where basic
scientific concepts like complexity and emergence are not blithely ignored as too abstruse to
make for best-selling self-help books. Generally labelled either complexity leadership theory18
or complex adaptive leadership19
, such research is at least theoretically cognisant of the
impossibility of epistemological certainty in its field. One might quibble with the terminology
used at times20
, but from an academic point of view, they are streets ahead of the popular curve.
Even so, management consulting is a big business where customers are paying for authoritative
lies and not confusing truths, so there is already a vibrant market in buzz-word driven
simplifications of CAL, ignoring the actual science and focusing on marketable solutions.
In the opinion of this author, the true value of social science research and study lies in rich and
textured qualitative data, which while it cannot replace experience, can at least approximate it.
Case studies that present as much of the social context as possible are valuable, in that no one
can experience everything and one of the best ways of developing empathy is adopting another
point of view, often through reading a narrative.
It is when researchers and “leadership gurus” attempt to distil some universal wisdom from
their knowledge, be that a few narrow cases studies or an extensive field of shallow numerical
data overlaid with narratives, that the value of their product plummets sharply. The drive to
construct universally applicable frameworks, hypotheses, theories, systems or methods of
leadership, or indeed any other social interaction, is at best naïve and at worst a cynical attempt
to bilk simpletons who believe that following a simple system will make them better at
massively complex social interactions.
The truth is, being consistently good at any social task requires not only superior situational
awareness and a deft instinct for convincing performance; but also near-magical perception of
individualistic cues, profound empathy, enormous experience of social phenomena, perfect
self-control, real-time analytical ability that baffles supercomputers21
and eidetic recall. It’s not
18 Benyamin B. Lichtenstein et al, “Complexity leadership theory: An interactive perspective on leading in
complex adaptive systems,” Emergence: Complexity and Organization, Vol. 8, Iss. 4 (2006), pp. 2-12.
19 See Nick Obolensky, Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (Farnham, England:
Gower Publishing Ltd., 2010).
20 Once the pluralistic range of the social processes that produce certain results are acknowledged, it seems fairly
counter-intuitive to retain the term “leadership” to describe all of them. Words may be arbitrary delineations of
concepts that inherently exist within a multi-dimensional matrix of meaning, but that doesn’t change the fact that
it’s more convenient to retain common-usage definition as far as they can be reconciled with conceptual precision.
21 Which is why humans generally don‘t successfully analyse social interactions, because the brain is considerably
better at coming up with a heuristic approximation than going through a true analytical process. Most analysis of
other‘s motivations is a constructed narrative after the fact.

8. exactly a conceptual breakthrough to realise that very few people are, indeed, consistently good
at such a broadly defined social task.
Instead, through a combination of inborn talent, dedication, experience, analytical ability, luck
and self-confidence, the best most people can do is be good at a limited subset in a single narrow
context. Most Great Leaders were actually good at leading particular people in a particular
situation facing particular challenges. Those who faced many different leadership challenges
and demonstrated consistent excellence might have been lucky, the examples were cherry-
picked or they simply happened to be incredibly intelligent, perceptive, wise, driven and strong-
willed, which, while rare, does happen. But telling someone that they need to be more like
Mozart doesn’t actually help anyone become a musical composer.
In general, what has worked for one person in one situation isn’t all that likely to work for
another person, in another situation, facing different challenges. Thus, even a study of
leadership which carefully shies away from claiming to be a theory is suspect by the very
universality it implicitly claims by being a study of “leadership”, free of context.
In this author’s opinion, that is hubris of the worst kind and the very best conceptual frameworks
in leadership theory can at most function as a shared language of agreed-upon shorthand. That
is not useless, for it facilitates the convenient and clear communication of complex concepts,
but it is a far cry from claiming that study of the system itself will improve the leadership skills
of anyone.
Then why bother with Real Leadership? The first reason is that theories of adaptive leadership
do at least pay lip-service to epistemological reality. This makes them greatly to be preferred
over other, even more simplified theories with even greater implicit or explicit claims to
universality. A charitable reader could even consider books on adaptive leadership a
deliberately folksy and easy-to-understand22
attempt to introduce to a wide readership basic
commonsensical concepts that are less harmful than older pseudoscientific superstitions of
leadership theory, as they are reconcilable with basic science and logic, as long as you squint a
bit in some cases.
22
A counterargument to that charitable interpretation is the atrocious and gratuitous use of the malapropism
“irregardless” on p. 277 of Real Leadership. A conflation of the words “irrespective” and “regardless”, it means
nothing more or less than either of those words, and is generally used exclusively by pseudo-intellectual people
seeking to inflate their apparent vocabularies, but without the intellectual rigour to actually look up a fancy
synonym, so they use a one-syllable longer word they heard sometime, not realising that it’s not a word at all.

9. The second is that while no step-by-step instructional manual has ever made a good horn player
into a great improvisational jazz artist, a basic text advising not to blow into the wide end of the
horn could provide some value to players who haven’t ever seen a horn or any other instrument.
Even if following a script only serves to make someone a profoundly mediocre leader, one must
consider the fact that by definition, half of humanity is below average and anyone who has
spent time among humanity is aware that a significant part of it has difficulty even conceiving
of such excellence as the average.
Even if every major assertion of a textbook on leadership happens to be wrong, which it
generally will be, at least if applied universally, there is an interesting concept in the work of
the two best living philosophers of science, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (as well as the great
Sir Terry Pratchett). It is that children are taught about the world through a series of increasingly
sophisticated, yet nevertheless completely erroneous, simplifications in narrative form that they
call Lies-to-Children: "A lie-to-children is a statement that is false, but which nevertheless leads
the child's mind towards a more accurate explanation, one that the child will only be able to
appreciate if it has been primed with the lie".23
The same concept has been dubbed Wittgenstein’s Ladder, expressed as his Proposition 6.54
thusly:
My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me
eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond
them. He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.24
If Real Leadership and related works serve as useful lies-to-children for those otherwise blind
to social nuance and can help such poor unfortunates navigate the complex minefields of
interpersonal relationships, by all means let us illustrate a few of the concepts therein for them.
4. Why The Wire?
Having disposed of the larger puzzle, it remains unanswered why the author would choose a
fictional television series instead of real case studies to illustrate and critique the conceptual
framework of William’s Real Leadership. One answer may be found in Dwight Waldo’s
23
Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart, The Science of Discworld (London: Ebury Press, 1999), p. 42-43.
24
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, transl. Frank P. Ramsey and C.K. Ogden (London:
Kegan Paul, 1922), p. 189.

10. perceptive statement: ”Through literary treatments we can more closely come to grips with the
psychological and moral aspects of administrative decision-making.”25
Another is that HBO’s The Wire is more complex, more nuanced and more realistic than any
other TV series before or since. Written by a veteran crime reporter, a former police detective
and a team of talented novelists, it is journalism made more compelling by narrative, while
retaining a sense of place and verisimilitude that even real journalism rarely reaches. It is
simultaneously a crisp and accurate picture of Baltimore at the turn of the millennium and a
timeless evocation of human society. Through fiction, it delivers truth, as Aesop was said to do:
Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to
their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone
knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real
events.26
Most of all, however, it is that The Wire manifests its commitment to realism in its cynical, but
hard-to-deny, portrayal of dysfunctional institutions that may be man-made in theory, but in
reality have emerged from a complex and complicit process that no one controlled or chose,
and that no one can steer or reverse. Show-runner and primary creative impulse behind the
show, David Simon, expresses it in these words:
The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It’s
the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school
administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting
people in the ass for no decent reason.27
5. Terminology and Concepts
The terms used to label the concepts of leadership theory are generally words in common usage,
which only serves to make it more confusing when different frameworks define them in
different ways. In order to enable some shared understanding between reader and writer, this
author’s usage of some major concepts deserves elucidation.
5.1. Defining the Concept of Leadership
25
Dwight Waldo, The Novelist on Organization and Administration: An Inquiry into the Relationship between
Two Worlds (Berkeley, CA: Institute of Government Studies, University of California-Berkeley, 1968), p. 8.
26
Philostratus (the Athenian) and Eusebius (of Caesarea, Bishop of Caesarea), The life of Apollonius of Tyana, the
Epistles of Apollonius, and the Treatise of Eusebius, volume 1, transl. Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969.), p. 495.
27
David Simon, “David Simon: Creator‐Producer‐Writer of HBO’s The Wire” (interview taken by Nick Hornby,
The Believer, August 2007).

11. The concept of leadership itself is a very problematic term. Some authors define it in functional
terms while others implicitly or explicitly assign it a value-laden meaning. Some include in it
every aspect of social interaction or even every aspect of behaviour, thought or perception in
the context of accomplishing tasks, while others differentiate between tasks that are leadership
tasks and tasks that are analytical, technical, organisational or other.
5.1.1. Leadership, Management and Social engineering
As a personal choice, this author greatly prefers terminology which is precise enough to allow
differentiation between concepts which can be clearly shown to be distinct.28
This means that a
comprehensive definition of leadership as all or most things that are done or not done during
the process of accomplishing some task is rejected as so all-inclusive as to be incapable of
drawing distinctions that most people are perfectly capable of distinguishing.
As a result, this author favours a Gardnerian conceptual split between management and
leadership. While Gardner was not the first29
academic purporting to study leadership theory to
draw a distinction between leadership and management, his articulation of the divide may be
the most eloquent and well-known. While Gardner expends a considerable amount of verbiage
on the matter, in short form, his definition of a manager boils down to: “the individual so labeled
[who] holds a directive post in an organization, presiding over the processes by which the
organization functions, allocating resources prudently, and making the best possible use of
people.“30
While preferring to ignore the requirement that a manager must necessarily be so labelled, i.e.
that he must have formal authority, this author finds this a useful and logical definition. Using
it, we may frame a distinction between management, as the direction of work-flow and
coordination of resources; and leadership; as the adjudication of social dynamics and the
motivation of the volitional agents involved in a task. The manager coordinates the physical
aspects of the task while the leader coordinates the social ones. Often, both jobs are necessary,
but there is no compelling necessity for the same person to carry them out.
28
While this author disagrees with some of the definitions, the conceptual clarity of is excellent in James Scouller,
The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill (Oxford:
Management Books 2000 Ltd., 2011).
29 See, for example; Abraham Zaleznik,. "Managers and leaders: Are they different?" Harvard Business Review,
Vol. 55, Iss. 5 (1977), p. 67-68; and Warren G. Bennis & Bert Nanus, Leaders: The strategies for taking charge
(New York: Harper & Row, 1985).
30 John W. Gardner, On Leadership (New York: Free Press, 1989), p. 3.

12. As another personal aesthetic choice, this author objects to lumping situational awareness,
analytical ability, wisdom or even ability to perform lateral or upwardly vertical social
engineering31
under the umbrella term of “leadership”.
Certainly, in order to be successful in a challenging leadership position, all of these qualities
may be needed, and more. But just because a successful Hollywood career needs a shrewd eye
for quality scripts, good marketing and high-powered negotiating, we don’t count these as part
of “acting”. Indeed, we assume, rightly, that people who are good at something valuable can
get others to perform those tasks they need done, but at which they are not talented or
experienced.
Finally, this author absolutely and utterly condemns the practice of defining leadership
according to implicit moral values. The idea that “good” leadership is leadership that appears
to lead to ends that the speaker favours and “bad” leadership is that which leads to ends he
disapproves of is a death-blow to any pretence at academic objectivity.
Leadership is ultimately a tool, a way to nudge the social dynamics of a group of people in
order to facilitate their ability to accomplish a task more effectively than they could by working
singly. And like any tool, it can be used for “good” or “evil”, according to whatever moral or
ethical framework one selects to judge such things.
The definition preferred by this author, then, is a morally-neutral, functionalist32
one which
focuses on leadership as one tool in a huge toolkit of social, intellectual and emotional tools
required to face a multitude of challenges. Leadership is any method used to direct social
dynamics to facilitate the ability of a group to accomplish a given task. However, in discussing
the terminology used by Williams, his definition will be contrasted with this author’s more
functionalist one.
5.1.2. Transformational-Transactional
31
Any deliberate attempt to change the behaviour of a volitional agent through social means.
32
More or less identical to the one in C.F. Roach and O. Behling, “Functionalism: Basis for an alternate approach
to the study of leadership," in Leaders and managers: International perspectives on managerial behavior and
leadership, James G. Hunt (Ed.) (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1984) p. 51-61.

13. Transformational leadership was first distinguished from transactional leadership by Burns in
197833
, but developed and popularised through the work of Bernard Bass.34
Briefly, the
transactional leadership is said to differ from transformational leadership in that transactional
leadership is traditional, reactive leadership in which the leader attempts to motivate lagging
followers through rewards or exchanges. Transformational leadership, however, is the proactive
approach of rejecting a purely exchange-based relationship and instead attempting to identify
higher needs on the part of the led and in fulfilling those needs, engaging the led as a full person.
5.1.3. Adaptive-Technical
In many ways similar to transformational leadership in that it acknowledges the context-
sensitive nature of leadership as well as stressing the need for social situational awareness,
Heifetz’s35
distinction of adaptive leadership36
from technical challenges forms the basis for his
disciple Williams’ work.
Technical challenges are defined as tasks that require the straightforward application of
expertise to solve a problem, while adaptive challenges are defined as tasks that necessitate the
change of people’s values, habits, practices or priorities.37
In substance, not all that different
from Bennis’38
manager-leader dichotomy, with managers as technical experts and leaders as
practitioners of adaptive leadership. It also works well enough with this author’s functionalist
definition, in which management is a technical challenge and leadership an adaptive one.
5.1.4. Real-Counterfeit
Dean Williams takes a bold stance on morality by defining “real” leadership as leadership that
facilitates improvement in the human condition.39
Unfortunately, he then neglects entirely to
give any sort of ethical system or yardstick which can be used to judge what would constitute
improvement, what represents stagnation and what would fall under regression. Counterfeit
33 James .M. Burns, Leadership. (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
34
Bernard M. Bass, "From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision."
Organizational Dynamics (Winter 1990): p. 19-31; see also B.M. Bass & B.J. Avolio (eds.), Improving
organizational effectiveness through transformational leadership (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994).
35 Originally and most famously in Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1994).
36 Most recently articulated in Ron Heifetz, Marty Linsky and Alexander Grashow, The Practice of Adaptive
Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
Business Press, 2009).
37
Williams, Real Leadership, Introduction, p. xv-xvi.
38
Bennis & Nanus, Leaders: The strategies for taking charge.
39
Williams, Real Leadership, Introduction, p. ix.

14. leadership he defines as leadership that provides “false” solutions and allows a group to bypass
“reality”.40
No ontological position is given about reality or falsehood.
In essence, Williams’ leadership framework rests upon several concepts which he does not
define and about which there exist a wide variety of mutually contradictory positions and
definitions. This means that in order to guess at whether a given instance would be considered
real or counterfeit leadership under his conceptual framework, one must first attempt to guess
at Williams’ philosophical views, personal morality, politics and foibles and then guess how he
would construct a narrative of the instance under review.
In the vast majority of cases, no such determination could be made within living memory, as
which tasks were false and what was the reality facing a group are rarely simple determinations
and can almost never be made without the benefit of historical hindsight. One must also
question the value of advice which essentially tells people to do what facilitates improvement
and not to avoid reality.
The problem is rarely that people do not realise that these are excellent goals, it is that they are
generally not capable of correctly diagnosing the nature of reality and how to solve any
underlying problems in a way that facilitates improvement in the human condition in real time,
at least not while living in a complex world instead of a convenient narrative.
With infinitely more information than the participants had at the time and with the luxury of
years to ponder every day of decision-making, historians still debate what this king or that
should have done. If people can’t agree on whether an action facilitated improvement in the
human condition when the consequences of it are known, how are they going to agree on it
while making decisions with limited information and based on guesses about the future?
5.2. Institutionalism and individualism
The dichotomy between institutionalism and individualism is reflected in the eternal debate
between historians about the Great Forces vs. the Great Men paradigms of historical
interpretation. Institutionalism is a variety of theories that argue that large scale social and
economic trends shape the individual. It posits that organisations are powerful social constructs
40
Ibid.

15. that act to constrain and limit individual and group behaviour.41
As noted above, The Wire is
strongly institutionalist in nature, almost Foucauldian.42
Individualism, meanwhile, sees macro-scale change emanating from the choices of key
individuals. It is summed up in Carlyle’s immortal words: “The history of the world is but the
biography of great men.”43
While Williams amends Carlyle’s words to “…biography of foolish
men”,44
the basic assumption that individual action and choice ultimately determines the
direction of history remains unquestioned.
Like almost all proponents of leadership theory45
, Williams is an individualist. Witness his
words: “I believe that real leadership can mark the difference between success and failure in all
aspects of human activity – between developed states and failed states; between great schools
and poor schools; between mediocre companies and extraordinary companies; even between
war and peace.”46
Strong words.
6. Case Studies of Leadership from The Wire
It is not hard to identify compelling and illustrative cases of leadership in The Wire. The
problem is rather to restrict the selection to a manageable number of examples. Lt. Cedric
Daniels Development Challenge47
as he must construct a Major Case Unit from the leavings of
other departments is thrilling, but too small in scope.
Reluctantly, one must give short shrift to such fascinating real-world inspired topics as the
effects of performance metrics or targets on institutional incentives48
and the consequences for
their real missions49
, as witnessed by Baltimore PD’s Comstat50
and the “No Child Left Behind”
policy in public schools.
41
H. Georege Frederickson et al, The Public Administration Theory Primer. (Colorado: Westview press, 2012.),
p. 70-71.
42
See, for example, Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New
York: Vintage, 1977).
43
Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (New York: Fredrick A. Stokes & Brother,
1888), p. 127.
44
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 266.
45
The occasional exception exists, such as the excellently critical James R. Meindl and Sandford B. Erhlich, "The
romance of leadership and the evaluation of organisational performance," Academy of Management Journal, vol.
30, iss. 1 (1987), p. 91–109.
46
Williams, Real Leadership, Introduction, p. xvi.
47
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 89-114.
48
Christopher Hood, “Gaming in Targetworld: The Targets Approach to Managing British Public Services,“
Public Administration Review, vol 66, iss. 4 (2006): p. 515–521.
49
David W. Kammler, „The Well Intentioned Commissar,“ highered.blogspot.com, January 8, 2009.
50
Their equivalent to New York City‘s celebrated Compstat.

16. Which means also overlooking the everyday heroic actions of characters like Sgt. Elliot Carver
and Major Cedric Daniels, or cop-cum-schoolteacher ‘Prez’, in trying to cope with them.
Surviving the day-to-day grind of dysfunctional institutions might be what most people try to
do, but it is not illustrative of Real Leadership, in which there ought to be narratives, with a
beginning, rise, climax and satisfying conclusion; a win for the savvy Real Leader. Prez is out
of place in that narrative, with his weary: “No one wins. One side just loses more slowly.”51
6.1. Unlikely Activist – Detective Jimmy McNulty
For a better example of leadership study case study material, one could cite alcoholic,
idiosyncratic, but nevertheless effective Det. Jimmy McNulty. Over five seasons, he found
himself faced at least three times with his theme of a recurrent Activist Challenge.52
In all cases,
he was trying to convince his peers and superiors that the police department should take action
against a criminal syndicate he believed to be responsible for heinous crimes, but which had
not yet disturbed the status quo by becoming widely known to the community at large.
Because McNulty was comically without self-reflection or the ability to perceive the threat he
represented to others53
(“What the fuck did I do?”), and less strategic54
than he was relentless,
he had constant trouble in that role. Given his willingness to take any chance and go outside the
chain of command to open up new fronts55
and his luck in finding allies like Lester Freamon to
support him56
, however, he managed to rope his fellow detectives and supervisors into one
investigation after another.
Yet even though few could call an investigation of mass murder a false task, it is very unlikely
that he felt his actions had benefitted him and it is even more dubious that they benefitted
anyone else. With his intransigent attitude and willingness to do anything to get his way,
McNulty alienated his family, co-workers and everyone else who knew him. He was crusading
instead of leading.57
As described by Sgt. Jay Landsman, McNulty always believed that he
knew The Truth and everyone else was wrong58
:
51
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, “Refugees,” The Wire, Season 4, Episode 4.
52
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 59-87.
53
Ibid, p. 74-76.
54
Ibid, p. 76-78.
55
Ibid, p. 81-84.
56
Ibid, p. 84-86.
57
Ibid, p. 253-256.
58
Ibid, p. 27-28.

17. No, it's not funny, sir. As a matter of fact, it's a fucking tragedy, is what it is. The guy, he has
come to believe that he is always the smartest fuck in the room, and you know what? It's not his
fault. Because let's face it, he's not going to Johns Hopkins or joining MENSA, he's taking a
fucking job with the Baltimore Police Department. His first two years in Homicide, he's in
Omansky's squad partnered with 'tonio Martino.
Christ! It must've been months even, he was the smartest fuck in the fucking room!59
The barrier60
faced by McNulty was always the same. The detectives and ordinary police lacked
motivation to unnecessarily complicate their jobs. No one wanted to give a damn when it wasn’t
their turn to give a damn.61
And the bosses, the bosses didn’t want to ruin the statistics for their
department by turning a number of missing person reports into murders, murders which might
not be solved and which would then push up the crime statistics in the city and drag down the
police clearance rates.
But what is the promise62
in a situation where success means that new murders are discovered
where people had previously believed crime had gone down in the district? Even an arrest and
conviction of the perpetrator is less a victory for the police than it is damage control for the now
greatly increased homicide rate in their part of the city.
And no one but a particularly naïve rookie could believe that taking one thug of the streets
would make them appreciable safer for citizens. With around half of Baltimore’s black males
unemployed, a culture of drugs and violence in the inner city and no realistic alternatives for
many young teens than drug dealing, there would be new murderers, whether or not one of them
was caught.
This illustrates a pervasive implicit assumption in leadership literature, the assumption that lack
of motivation on the behalf of other parties can be fixed by correctly framing the principal
challenge63
, by calling attention to a contradiction in values64
, by finding the right combination
of levers65
or some other form of inspiration, motivation or anything else than boils down to
communication.
It ignores the all-too-common situation where there is no communication problem. There is
simply a rational assessment of interest and the other party has an interest in preserving the
status quo which outweighs any rational incentive which is in the leader’s power to give. What
59
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, “Old Cases,” The Wire, Season 1, Episode 4.
60
, Williams, Real Leadership, p. 60.
61
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, “The Target,” The Wire, Season 1, Episode 1.
62
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 60.
63
Ibid, p. 51-54.
64
Ibid, p. 59-61.
65
Ibid, p. 107-110.

18. remains then is officious use of authority, manipulation, deception, threats and violence;
because not every situation can be resolved with a win-win. But a lose-lose is easy to arrange.
6.2. Community Policing and Corner Boys – The Case of ‘Bunny’ Colvin
Howard ‘Bunny’ Colvin was a veteran Major of the Baltimore Police Department; nearing
retirement when he was introduced. He’s strongly opposed to performance indicators and
statistics, believing that focus on such indicators harms good policework and encourages
gaming the system in order to present the appearance of success without the substance of it. He
incurs the rage of his superiors by reporting an increase in felonies two consecutive weeks,
instead of doing as they expect him to do, and juke the stats so that he’ll show the improvement
that will help the Baltimore PD’s chosen mayoral candidate.
While worldly and wise, he nevertheless operates in a context of bounded rationality66
and
limited authority, which means that he is doing well when he manages to just keep his
organisation in a good enough shape to react to the symptoms of systemic failure in his
community.67
He is pained by his inability to find any solutions to the endemic violence and
ruined lives, but there are no easy answers.
At a civic meeting, Colvin demonstrates a strong moral compass and rare courage for a civil
servant, when he answers questions with perfect honesty:
I know what’s goin’ on in your neighborhoods; I see it every day. Ma’am, it pains me that you
cannot enter your own front door in safety and with dignity. But, truth is, I can’t promise you
it’s gonna get any better. We can’t lock up the thousands out there on the corners. There’d be no
place to put ’em even if we could. We show you charts and statistics like they mean somethin’.
But you’re goin’ back to your home tonight, we gonna be in our patrol cars, and them boys still
gonna be out there on them corners, deep in the game. This is the world we got, people, and it’s
about time all of us had the good sense to at least admit that much.68
A man in the audience asks Colvin what the answer is. Weighing his words with great care,
Colvin replies: “Well, I’m not sure… but whatever it is, it can’t be a lie.”69
Bunny is setting
aside his convictions to see what is there.70
66
Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative
Organization (New York: Free Press, 1965).
67
See Charles E. Lindblom, „The science of „muddling through“. Public Administration Review, vol. 19, iss. 2
(1959): p. 79-88.
68
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, “Amsterdam,” The Wire, Season 3, Episode 4.
69
Ibid.
70
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 42-45.

19. Colvin does find his answer. Drawing on every ounce of his persuasiveness, reputation and
respect, he convinces his men to agree to free-zones, areas where the police don’t enforce the
drug laws. Likening this enforcement strategy to the brown paper bag, which the police of a
previous era used as an excuse to wink at public drinking, in lieu of having to arrest most of the
citizens, Colvin isn’t happy about what it means, but he prefers it over a constant cycle of
violence and repression against whole communities.
Colvin is facing a Transition Challenge, 71
but the attitudes he has to change are extremely
strongly held. Some of his own men are furious at his seeming betrayal and even the
beneficiaries of the free zones, the drug dealers, prove hard to convince that he’s in earnest.
Bunny has to take on the role of the ferryman72
, figuratively and literally, convincing his men
to use police vehicles to transport the addicts and their supplies to the new free zones, away
from the homes of the citizens not involved in the drug trade.
With Herculean effort, the multitude of challenges are dealt with, one by one, and some minor
benefits start to be seen. Confronted with unintended consequences, like unemployed children
of school age who used to work as look-outs for the dealers (who now have no need for them),
Bunny finds his initiative sprawling. He gets charities involved, arranges for sanitation, clean
needle donations, sports for the kids and a variety of programs that couldn’t reach many while
the at-risk population was dispersed, but reaches a critical mass with the concentration.
The crime statistics show a dramatic drop and not due to manipulation or selective reporting,
but a real improvement in safety on the streets. There is still crime in the free zones, but the
dealers have a strong incentive to avoid serious violent incidents, as they are aware that this
would bring the whole edifice crashing down.
Even when some superiors hear about his blatantly illegal initiative, it’s not immediately shut
down. The incoming mayor even considers endorsing it, given the positive effects it seems to
be having. Colvin’s leadership is exemplary73
and he seems to be managing a real change in the
community. Until, that is, an angry bigoted cop who is frustrated at not being allowed to rough
up drug dealers any more brings in the media. When the free zones appear in all the news, it
71
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 115-140.
72
Ibid, p. 118-121.
73
Hitting nearly every target in Sergio Fernandez and H.G. Rainey, "Managing Successful Organizational Change
in the Public Sector." Public Administration Review, vol. 66, iss. 2 (2006), p. 168-176.

20. gets too big to sweep under the carpet and no politician interested in re-election can publicly
advocate legalising drugs, even if only partially.
Bunny retires in disgrace, lacking a couple of weeks to a full pension. The charities and social
activities that had built up around the free zones are left with no constituents. And the addicts
and dealers go back to conducting their business among the ordinary citizens, bringing with
them violence and fear.
Bunny had failed to get all his people to own the passage.74
He had, in fact, lied to the most
rabid of his own men, that his free zones were an enforcement strategy and that they would one
day sweep up all the dealers. Bunny’s hope was that when the benefits became clear to them,
they would accept this solution as less bad than the status quo. But they didn’t.
Most every leadership system stresses honesty and integrity. But if Bunny had been honest, the
only thing that would have been different is that things would have collapsed earlier. No amount
of honesty or integrity is going to suffice to convince fundamentally unreasonable people to be
reasonable. Not every difference of opinion has a negotiated solution. Someone who believes
that protecting and serving citizens is the first duty of a policeman is never going to see eye to
eye on this issue with someone who is a cop because it allows him to hurt “bad guys”.
6.3. The New Day Co-op and ‘Stringer’ Bell, B.Sc. Drug Marketing
It is difficult to imagine a character more different from ‘Bunny Colvin’ than Russell ‘Stringer’
Bell. Where Colvin was world-weary, wise, compassionate and community-oriented; Bell was
ambitious, intelligent, callous and profit-oriented. ‘Stringer’ is attending a local college while
serving as the number two man in a powerful drug crew, taking business classes and littering
his speech to subordinates about criminal conspiracies with marketing and management buzz-
words.
Bell tries to transform the drug business he is involved in by establishing the New Day Co-Op,
where he hopes to provide a forum to resolve territorial disputes peacefully, leverage buying
power to get better wholesale prices and enable everyone to make higher profits. Stringer should
be facing a Development Challenge75
, in that the latent capabilities he’s trying to unleash are
certainly present, but the macho culture and lack of business savvy among the top gangsters
74
Ibid, p. 127-131.
75
Ibid, p. 89-114.

21. means that he’s also facing a Transition Challenge76
. As he explains to fellow street capitalist
‘Proposition’ Joe, it’s just business:
Bell: Remember, man, talk this shit up when you hit them bricks. Best way to get more involved
is to tell people about the benefits of this here thing [The Co-op]. No beefing, no drama, just
business.
Joe: Anybody got problems with anybody else here, we bring it to the group.
Bell: We ain’t gotta take it to the streets.77
By any rational measure, Stringer is an exceptional leader. While Williams might disagree, on
the basis that Bell’s plan is probably immoral, it’s hard to argue that what he wants to do isn’t
the best case scenario for everyone. Drugs get sold anyway, this way there is a minimum of
violence attached to it. And Bell is extraordinarily effective at helping others see the
possibilities for win-win. He’s calm, he’s rational, he’s perceptive and he doesn’t let his pride
get in the way. He clearly believes in what he’s doing and his sincerity shines through.
Through a shrewd focus on how everyone can make more money, Bell provides an orienting
purpose.78
Having a grasp of financial vocabulary and a familiarity with Robert’s Rules of
Order doesn’t hurt, either. In choosing negotiations over violence himself, and by allowing
representatives from a neighbouring gang to share territory in exchange for product, he and his
immediate circle become a visible symbol of the transition ideal.79
Stringer starts to dress in
suits and invests his money in real-estate development.
And by incorporating a democratic structure into the New Day Co-Op, as well as appointing
the respected ‘Prop’ Joe chairman instead of trying to take the role himself, Stringer ensures
that the other gang leaders must own the passage as well.80
Despite near constant small crises
and immense friction as the institutional culture of glorification of violence and manhood resists
this gentrification of motive and incentives, there are real indications that drug business in
Baltimore might be changing.
For all of this, Bell ends his life brutally murdered. Why? Not for any of the reasons Williams
or Kotter81
might imagine. Rather, it is revenge for his part in a killing many years ago, where
76
Ibid, p. 115-140.
77
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, “Straight and True,” The Wire, Season 3, Episode 5.
78
Williams, Real Leadership, p. 123-126.
79
Ibid, p. 137-140
80
Ibid, p. 127-131.
81
John P. Kotter, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” Harvard Business Review vol. 73, iss. 2
(1995): p. 59-67.

22. his role was confined to relaying information over the phone and the victim was an armed
robber preying on his organisation.
The New Day Co-Op is subverted after his death, the reasonable Prop Joe losing his position
and his life to the terrifyingly amoral and ruthless Marlo Stanfield. The mechanism for settling
disputes without violence has become the incitement to it and is then used to assert a totalitarian
dominance. Just when you thought the Game might be changing, you are reminded of the words
of Slim Charles: “Game the same. Just got mo’ fierce.”82
6.4. Successful Leadership in The Wire
There are not many examples of leadership that achieves successful change in The Wire.
Granted, Det. Lester Freamon becomes the unofficial leader of the Major Crimes Squad,
changing them from a disparate group comprising time-servers, goofballs, thugs, alcoholics,
crusaders and ordinary people into a professional investigative team.
But he does so by being infinitely wise, extraordinarily intelligent, supernaturally perceptive,
perfectly controlled and endlessly patient. Lester always knows when to be respectful, when to
push, when to manage, when to lead and when to fade into the background and let others take
the lead. No one who could do what Lester does will ever need advice on how do it and if
someone can’t already, then no advice will help. Playing social situation like a virtuoso violinist
may be learnable; but not without a heap of talent. And it is certainly not teachable.
A more interesting example can be found in the unlikeliest of places. Long-time drug addict
‘Bubbles’ hit rock bottom when he accidentally killed his friend with a bad syringe of heroin.
Instead of suicide, he drifted into rehab. He manages to stay clean for a while and his innate
decency shines through as he spends most of his free time helping those few who have less than
he. In all his NA/AA meetings, however, Bubbles shares only humorous anecdotes and
clowning around, growing popular, but never giving of himself, never addressing his own
problems. His guilt and self-loathing over the death of his friend still poison his life, inhibiting
any true recovery.
Through persistence and patience, fellow former-addict and Bubbles’ sponsor, the bearded
Waylon, calls bullshit on Bubbles’ light-hearted act. He never pushes, never commands and
never claims to know more than he does. In fact, most of the time he gives advice he qualifies
82
David Simon, Ed Burns et al, “Amsterdam,” The Wire, Season 3, Episode 4.

23. it by saying that he spent the past decades ruining his own life, so if there is anything to what
he has to say, it’s only because he’s learnt from bitter experience. Yet little by little, he induces
Bubbles to open up.
The end of the series, when a shy Bubbles admits to a half-empty church of people at rock
bottom that his real name is Reginald, before starting to confess his guilt and then trying to
forgive himself, is a moment of triumphant victory for Bubbles, for The Wire and for the
leadership of Waylon the sponsor.
7. Conclusions
In a series showcasing deeply dysfunctional institutions, it is no surprise that the only leadership
victories we see are individual. On the other hand, it is hard to dismiss the meticulously detailed
and all-too-rational examples of why change leadership fails. This isn’t mere dramatic
convention or the prejudices of the artists, this is a fictional representation of real truths, the
fact that while organisations might be man-made; it doesn’t mean men can always predict or
control them.
There are no mysterious forces at work in the weather. We understand well enough how air and
water move around. Yet no computer ever made can predict the weather in a month and
humanity has no realistic way to try to control weather. Emergence, complicity and complexity
mean that even if we understand all the factors that govern a system, we don’t necessarily
understand the system.
Like the economy, another man-made thing which isn’t controlled by man, large organisations
aren’t designed by men. Millions of decisions made by people who cannot see the whole picture
affect each other and are affected in turn. The end result wasn’t planned by anyone. The
pervasive idea in adaptive leadership theory that organisations are every perfectly designed to
perform their present tasks and that all that is needed to make them ideal for another task is a
skilled leader83
is simply a power fantasy.
Quite simply, leadership only works if there are common values to appeal to, a possibility of a
win-win, a promise at the end of the transition. When there are systemic factors that present
stronger incentives for opposition than anything the leader can appeal to, leverage, exchange,
83
See, for example, Heifetz, Linsky and Grashow,. The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for
Changing Your Organization and the World.

24. evoke or reach; the overwhelming odds are that it doesn’t matter how perfectly some formula
for successful leadership is followed.
There is, however, one organisation in the series which appears, at least, to occasionally work
as it is intended. That is the NA/AA. Judging from what we see, the sponsors are certainly
leaders and the ultimate goal is certainly a transition challenge, i.e. changing the habits and
behaviour of the recovering addicts. But there are important differences from most leadership
theory.
First of all, the sponsors don’t even try to lead people. They don’t believe that anyone can be
successfully led through the process of life-altering change. They have to seek it out themselves.
The sponsors can only guide, support and teach. Second, while real NA/AA may have a
formalised twelve-steps program, the one we see succeed with Reginald/Bubbles is never
shown going through those steps in any order.
Instead, there is no prescription, no formula and no hierarchy. The sponsors open by saying that
they don’t know any more than you, but since they’ve gone through this, they can tell you what
worked for them. There are no hierarchical structures, no doctors, nurses, psychologists or
social workers. Again, this may not be indicative of real AA/NA, but it characterised the one
seen in The Wire.
Because of this, people either buy-in completely or they stay out. No one is going to force them
to go through with change. Not because no one wants to do that, but because no one believes
that this is a realistic goal. If pressed to draw some positive lesson from The Wire that is
applicable to the study of leadership theory, one could do worse than the idea that you usually
can’t change others and you certainly can’t change society, but if you try really hard and have
the support of good people, you may be able to change yourself. Maybe the AA people have
something to teach management consultants and leadership gurus after all:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.84
84
AA Serenity Prayer, originally written by Reinhold Niebuhr.

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