1   LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT © May 18, 2019/Gregory Douglas Poole ABSTRACT This paper discusses the complex nature of leadership: how it’s not just a singular phenomenon but one that is influenced by many variables, from individual attributes to cultural belief systems to national governments. It explores the nature of decision-making, including the importance of free environments, strong imperatives, and cross-functional team networks. It explains why certain efforts – in music, in companies, in space exploration, in disaster response, in medical emergencies – are successful and why others are not. It looks into cycles, of exploration and discovery, that affect decision-making; into the ten intelligences that influence learning; into the problem phases, from unknown-unknowns to known-knowns, that affect business environments and outcomes; into the advantages of industry clusters and of indigenous talent. Overall, the paper looks at what it takes to cope successfully with change – the only constant in our multifaceted lives.   2   LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT Gregory Douglas Poole Introduction Study leadership, study critical thinking, study ethics! This is what business students are told: learn well these three separate subjects. The textbooks of the typical courses on management, critical thinking, and ethics lead students to believe that these subjects are mutually exclusive. But my life experiences have shown me that good leadership, critical thinking, and ethics are, in reality, mutually inclusive. I have witnessed musical creativity first-hand. I was raised in the View Park area of Los Angeles, California. I can exaggerate a bit and claim that musicians from my neighborhood invented rock-and-roll and forever altered the direction of American music. My best friend’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Turner; yes, Ike & Tina Turner. Ike Turner recorded what is considered the first rock-and-roll record, “The Rockets.” (Wikipedia) Across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Turner lived Mr. and Mrs. Ray Charles. A fifteen-minute bicycle ride down the hill at the intersection of Fairway and Mullen is where my family lived. Our next-door neighbors and best friends were George and Louis Johnson, the Brothers Johnson. Maurice White, the founder and bandleader of Earth, Wind & Fire, lived across the street. When George, Louis, my brother, and I were not playing ping-pong or basketball late into the night (anything to avoid homework), we were jamming in the Johnson’s living room, which had been turned into a music studio for teenagers.   3   George once audaciously declared, “My music teacher said I mastered the guitar -- there is nothing more for me to learn.” And, Louis would always say, “One day, I am going to be the baddest bass player in the world.” Yes, a lot of innocent adolescent bravado but also the fierce rivalry am ...

1. 1
LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT
© May 18, 2019/Gregory Douglas Poole
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the complex nature of leadership: how it’s
not just a
singular phenomenon but one that is influenced by many
variables, from individual
attributes to cultural belief systems to national governments. It
explores the nature of
decision-making, including the importance of free
environments, strong imperatives,
and cross-functional team networks. It explains why certain
efforts – in music, in
companies, in space exploration, in disaster response, in
medical emergencies – are

2. successful and why others are not. It looks into cycles, of
exploration and discovery,
that affect decision-making; into the ten intelligences that
influence learning; into the
problem phases, from unknown-unknowns to known-knowns,
that affect business
environments and outcomes; into the advantages of industry
clusters and of indigenous
talent. Overall, the paper looks at what it takes to cope
successfully with change – the
only constant in our multifaceted lives.
2
LEADERSHIP – A MATTER OF CONTEXT
Gregory Douglas Poole
Introduction

3. Study leadership, study critical thinking, study ethics! This is
what business
students are told: learn well these three separate subjects. The
textbooks of the typical
courses on management, critical thinking, and ethics lead
students to believe that these
subjects are mutually exclusive. But my life experiences have
shown me that good
leadership, critical thinking, and ethics are, in reality, mutually
inclusive.
I have witnessed musical creativity first-hand. I was raised in
the View Park
area of Los Angeles, California. I can exaggerate a bit and
claim that musicians from
my neighborhood invented rock-and-roll and forever altered the
direction of American
music. My best friend’s parents are Mr. and Mrs. Turner; yes,
Ike & Tina Turner. Ike
Turner recorded what is considered the first rock-and-roll
record, “The Rockets.”
(Wikipedia) Across the street from Mr. and Mrs. Turner lived
Mr. and Mrs. Ray

4. Charles. A fifteen-minute bicycle ride down the hill at the
intersection of Fairway and
Mullen is where my family lived. Our next-door neighbors and
best friends were
George and Louis Johnson, the Brothers Johnson. Maurice
White, the founder and
bandleader of Earth, Wind & Fire, lived across the street.
When George, Louis, my brother, and I were not playing ping-
pong or
basketball late into the night (anything to avoid homework), we
were jamming in the
Johnson’s living room, which had been turned into a music
studio for teenagers.
3
George once audaciously declared, “My music teacher said I
mastered the guitar -- there
is nothing more for me to learn.” And, Louis would always say,
“One day, I am going to
be the baddest bass player in the world.” Yes, a lot of innocent
adolescent bravado but

5. also the fierce rivalry among African-American musicians
competing for that Number 1
hit. And then, the other kids and I would tease back, “You’re
never gonna make it,
you’ll never be better than the Jackson Five.” This was 1970
and the Jackson Five were
number 1 with “I Want You Back,” “I’ll Be There,” and “ABC.”
Michael Porter
describes this spirit of competition in his book and Harvard
Business Review article,
“The Competitive Advantage of Nations.” “Domestic rivals
engage in active feuds;
they compete not only for market share but also for people, for
technical excellence, and
perhaps most important, for ‘bragging rights.’ One domestic
rival‘s success proves to
others that advancement is possible and often attracts new rivals
to the industry.”
(Porter, 1990)
On Wednesday nights, the neighborhood kids and I would
congregate at Mr.
White’s house, to listen to Earth Wind & Fire rehearse until the
late night hours. Trial-

6. and-error musical verses repeated again and again became loud,
repetitious noise as
they blew through each musician’s towering six-foot-high
Fender Rhodes speaker—
from rehearsal to perfection. Noise pollution? Our neighbors
wouldn’t dream of calling
the police. This was an African-American neighborhood and
music was deemed our
most important cultural asset. By the mid-70’s the Brothers
Johnson proved us
neighborhood kids wrong with such hits as “I’ll Be Good to
You,” “Get the Funk Out
Ma Face,” “Strawberry Letter 23,” and “Stomp.” Earth, Wind &
Fire recorded such hits
as “September,” “Boogie Wonderland,” “Fantasy,” and “Let’s
Groove.”
4
Thus, my first intimate experience with creativity, competition,
leadership, and
teamwork came from the musicians of my neighborhood. I’m
tickled when I think that

7. the guys from my ‘hood sold over a billion albums either of
their own music or as
session musicians for other artists. Louis Johnson was a session
musician on sixty
albums for the likes of George Benson (‘Give Me the Night’)
and Michael Jackson
(‘Off The Wall,” “Thriller,” and “Dangerous”). Louis Johnson
is most famous for
having created the baseline for Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”
(Wikipedia) A billion
albums is big business! According to the United States
Department of
Commerce/International Trade Administration, the U.S.
represents a third of the global
share of Media & Entertainment earnings for film, music, book
publishing, and video
games. In 2015, U.S. Media & Entertainment earnings were
$632 billion. (DaSilva,
2016) The U.S. Media & Entertainment industry plays a major
role is shaping
American cultural soft power.
My father, a mechanical engineer, introduced me to technology
and innovation

8. in the halls of the American military-and-space industrial
complex (Litton
Industries/Northrop Grumman, Teledyne Technologies, and
Ampex) when I
accompanied him to work on weekends before those Monday-
morning project
deadlines. I remember well Apollo 11, the first manned lunar
landing on July 24, 1969,
for I was touched by Commander Neil A. Armstrong’s
proclamation, “One small step
for man, one giant leap for mankind.” My father, employed at
Ampex, was a member
of the project team that designed a small box made of some
aluminum alloy, which
housed core memories to be left on the Moon. My dad’s box is
still up there
somewhere.
5
Later in life, I founded International Strategic Communications,
a boutique

9. language institute that served the Japanese corporate English-
education market. I was
able to foster long-term business relationships with numerous
Japanese companies
across a spectrum of industries. Managing a business in Japan
allowed me to gain
valuable insights into Japanese management culture. I learned
how Japanese managers
employ a holistic, meritocratic, consensus approach to decision-
making and decision-
implementing. My intimate experiences with Japanese culture,
and Japanese
management practices in particular, would serve as a lens
through which to view and
compare my experiences in Saudi Arabia.
My ideas about leadership developed significantly during eight
years of serving
as a lecturer in the Core/Humanities Department and the
College of Business
Administration at Prince Mohammed Bin Fahd University
(PMU) in Al Khobar, Saudi
Arabia. I taught Critical Thinking & Problem Solving,
Leadership & Teamwork, and

10. other management courses at PMU, learning from students
while they learned from me.
Saudi Arabia is the center of the Arab/Islamic world, where
leadership is often
described as tribal, paternalistic, privileged, hierarchically
centralized, and soundly
embedded in the “Great Man” theory of management. (Robbins
& Judge, 2011)
These varying cultural experiences convinced me that one
cannot disentangle
critical thinking, leadership, and ethics from one another.
Organizations that are able to
sustain long-term, competitive advantages are gyroscopically
managed to harmonize
their imperatives, strategies, and tactics into a decision-
making/decision-implementing
culture that embodies critical thinking, innovative leadership,
and ethics.
6

11. When teaching critical thinking, I inevitably focus on
leadership, and when
teaching leadership, I can’t help but address critical thinking.
And then there are the
questions: Why and how does ethics intersect with critical
thinking and leadership?
How can an instructor teach one without addressing the others?
And how can students
truly understand one without truly understanding the others?
The thinker or leader who
fails to explore ethical reasoning will ultimately fail to
critically analyze and ethically
balance conflicting moral views for the greater good of the
organization and society.
The leader who cannot critically think and the critical thinker
who cannot lead
are bound to fail. If one were to write a tagline for a critical -
thinking course it could
read “Seeking Superior
Solution

12. s!” Similarly, the tagline for a leadership course could
read “Implementing Superior