Univ. of Southern Mississippi Leadership Presentation 3 21-13

21st Century Leadership:
Thinking Differently

Les Wallace, Ph.D.

Today’s Luncheon Sponsor

© Signature Resources Inc. 2013

Than You For
Your Interest in Leadership
Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes.

Clever people can do it in five minutes.
Sensible people never go the lectures at all.

So who R U guys?

Leading in the 21st Century

“When best selling authors bore
you, you think it’s your fault.”
Jim Collins


Our Best Seller…
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 30 dimensions of Contemporary
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 New research on leadership
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 Ten 21st Century Legacy needs
 Gobs of other great stuff


A Legacy of
21st Century Leadership
All humans struggle with two common issues…

1. We want to be successful—with our work, our
families and our lives.

2. We are unable to predict the future.
That’s why leadership matters so much!


Leaders are Learners
If you’re the same leader today that you were
last year at this time you’re not growing.

How are you different?
What competencies have you enhanced?
Are people noticing?
Learners have learning plans: What’s Yours?

Leadership Advice
from a Wise Woman

“To be responsible inventors and discovers,
we need the courage to let go of the old
world, to relinquish most of what we have
cherished, to abandon our interpretations
about what does and does not work.”

Acknowledging the Real Work of
Leadership
Get out of the blender
…it’s a daily challenge to come up

for air from the rigors of management, teaching

research or service to the perspective and behaviors of leadership…

Into the Helicopter
…to see ourselves and our organizations from a distance—

And to test the moment to moment choices we make!

“The Work of Leadership”, Ronald Heifetz & Donald Laurie (HBR 12:2001)

“Why Should Anyone Be Led by You?” R. Geoffee & G. Jones (HBR 9:2000)

Extraordinary Leader: Turning Good Managers into Great Leaders, Jack Zenger (2002)

Open Leadership, Charlene Li (2010)


What to ask the
person in the mirror?
“There comes a point in your career
when the best way to figure out how you’re doing
is to step back and ask yourself a few questions.
Having all the answers is less important than
knowing what to ask.”
“What to Ask the Person in the Mirror, R. Kaplan” ( HBR 1/07)

Who am I / are we?
What is leadership?
How well am I / are we leading?


“The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Yogi Berra


“A series of once in a Hundred Years Crises!”
Treasury Sec., Hank Paulsen
 Chrysler bailout 1980

 Savings and Loan collapse ’86 & ’95
1990’s Bank closures

 9/11/01

 12/2/01 Enron collapse

 Katrina

 U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, plus ongoing smoldering
in Middle East, Africa, N. Korea

 2008 World Financial Meltdown

 U.S. Government budget Sequestration 2013

“Welcome to the New Normal” Warren Buffet

21C…It’s Different
Speed: blinding, touching every aspect of life.

Complexity: quantum leap in mix of related forces.

Risk: Upheaval raises threats and risks for anything “new.”

Change: radical, drastic, quick.

Surprise: hard to imagine—challenging sensibility and
logic.

James Canton, The Extreme Future (2006)

Also: The Meaning of the 21st Century, James Martin (2006)


The New Normal:
Jobs for 2030
The Futurist Jan. 2011

 Amnesia surgeon  Robotician
 Astro-psychologist  Smart car interior
advertisement sales rep
 Avatar relationship manager
 Space junk recycler
 Clone rancher
 Transhumanist consultant
 Digital archaeologist
 Holodeck trainer


Changing Pressures on Academic
Leadership
 Changing nature of student populations
 Globalization of science and technology
 Increased importance of educational technology
 Increased emphasis on educational accountability
 Increasing volatility of state and system-level actions
 Increasing influence of alternative & for-profit
institutions.

 Integration of the university into the larger society

Is the pace of change likely to moderate?

We find ourselves in

“Permanent Whitewater” Peter Vaill, Learning as a Way of Being, 1996

…1980s Change compatible—tolerate change

…1990s Change adaptable—evolutionary adjustments
…21st Century Change driven—create change

“Predictions are hard,
especially about the future.” Yogi Berra

“Leaders…
who ultimately will be successful in shaping the future
are already scanning far beyond the horizon.”
Francis Hesselbein, The Leader of The Future, 2006

What’s on the horizon for nursing education?



We lead in a busy matrix where we can easily…
…mistake busy for successful
…mistake email for human contact
…mistake Google for intellectual activity
…mistake a job for a life
…mistake position or management for leadership
…mistake goal achievement for impact

Coordination is Not Leadership
 John volunteers at his daughter’s school—he’s a
leader.
 Janine got a job as team trainer—she’s a leader now.
 Emerson has been appointed to her College’s task
force on technology in the library—she’s a leader.
 Arthur spoke up against letting part time faculty have
a vote in the faculty senate—he’s demonstrating
leadership keeping the undeserving at bay.
 Les stays to clean up after the church potluck—
grandma thinks he’s showing leadership.


A risk we face is applying old solutions
to new problems:
 Time to change the conversation about leadership:
 What’s required in this century is different!
 Designing, Rallying, Navigating Transformation!
 The “status quo” is slow death!

 How leadership is learned vs taught!
 Modeled behavior; Self-directed learning; Coached learning.

 How legacy leadership gets embedded over shorter
cycles of leadership tenure than before!

Means Legacy Thinking
 Thinking about legacy
requires us to move beyond
short term definitions of
success.
 To consider a journey from
success to significance.
 Success is accomplishing
management or academic
goals…significance is
making a lasting impact.


 Legacy: How capable an organization is to lead itself
versus depend on you!

 Legacy: How well the organization transforms to stay
vibrant, valuable, and relevant… not simply manages
change.


Points to Ponder
 Transformation rather than Rescue
The age of heroic leadership is over!

"Evolution keeps you alive,
Revolution keeps you relevant.” Gary Hamel


From “Heroic” to “Transformational”
“Whereas the heroic manager of the
past knew all, could do all, and could
solve every problem, the post-heroic
manager asks how every problem can
be solved in a way that develops other
people’s capacity to handle it.
Charles Handy, The Age of Reason

What about the heroic teacher or post heroic teacher?


Points to Ponder
 Transformation rather than Rescue
 Leaders create ongoing conversations about the future

 Leaders help people let go of old models that worked in the
past for new models that better fit the current environment

 Strategy translation requires a two-way dialogue—not
PowerPoint

Revolution vs Evolution
How many organizational associates do you think
are willing to go on this revolutionary journey with
you?

Points to Ponder
 15% are ready to go and wonder what’s taken you so long to figure it out!

 Another 15% are right behind, willing to join in shortly

 30% are slightly wary and will look for signs it’s safe

 25% are comfortable, skeptical, fearful

 15% are dinosaurs with walnut brains and the ice age is upon them!
Everett Rodgers, Diffusion of Innovation (2003)


Points to Ponder
“Change is hard, it’s
hardest on those
caught by surprise.”
Tom Friedman, The World is Flat

How Leaders Reduce the Impact of Surprise:

 Inoculation—ongoing discussion about the future.

 Anticipation (scenarios)--“What if?”

 Course Corrections quickly—early warning signs.

 Inclusive intelligence—every person a sentinel.

 Change leaders at all levels—broad based coalition.


Points to Ponder
 Distributed leadership vs top down
“The most pernicious myth of all is that leadership is
reserved for only a few of us.”

“When we liberate the leader in everyone,
Extraordinary things happen!”


Points to Ponder
 Focus on the Vital Few
All leaders are busy: focused is very different than busy.

? If you only had 2 hrs. a day
to work on your priorities
in the next month,
on what would you focus?

 “Leaders don’t create followers…

…they create other leaders!”


Points to Ponder
 Developing others
More than 76 million baby boomers will take their
wisdom out the door in the next 20 years
Leadership succession must replace management
succession: leadership succession is a robust,
inclusive, commitment to leadership development
early and often!

 Private sector managers invest 15-20% of their time here
 U.S. Federal government managers invest < 5%

Points to Ponder
 Breakthrough Innovation

Old solutions don’t work on new problems.

Innovation is different than creativity.

Asymmetrical thinking is required for breakthrough.

Leaders bring “fresh eyes” into the dialogue!

If we’re not scaring one another on a regular basis
with new ideas breakthrough isn’t going to happen!


Servants or Commanders
“No one likes to be bossed!”
“The servant-leader is servant first… It
begins with the natural feeling that one
wants to serve. Then conscious choice
brings one to aspire to lead.”
“That person is sharply different from one
who is leader first, perhaps because of the
need to assuage an unusual power drive or
to acquire material possessions…The
leader-first and the servant-first are two
extreme types.”

Servants or Commanders
“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by
the servant-first to make sure that other people’s
highest priority needs are being served.

The best test, and difficult to administer, is:

Do those served grow as persons?”


Building Leadership
Competencies in Every Classroom—
Moment to Moment
Is it even reasonable to ask a nursing faculty
member to also be teaching leadership?

Can each of us, faculty and student, embed leadership
development within our clinical development?

If so How?


Building Leadership
Moment to Moment
 Modeled behavior.
 Communicate with clarity.
 Facilitating teams.
 Appreciative Inquiry.
 Learning how to learn.
 Assessing and levering strengths.
 Transfer of the diagnostic model to other problem solving.
 Learn to communicate without PowerPoint.


Building Leadership
Moment to Moment
 Model leadership behavior—and talk openly about it.
 Teach others to communicate with clarity—papers and
presentations around your course content is the early
opportunity to influence communication clarity.
 Every future leader must deal with group diversity and
dysfunction—create team effort in your lesson plans and
spend a few minutes every now and then reflecting you
leadership of teams. If you have students work in teams
then teach them something about successful teams.


Building Leadership
Moment to Moment
 Demonstrate “appreciative inquiry” and link the practice
directly to the “clinical diagnostic process.”
 Help students “learn how to learn!” Maybe they create a
learning plan for your course as a model for future lessons to be
learned. Possibly you have a model to show them or a professor
from “Curriculum and Instruction” can give a 15 minute
presentation.
 Help students assess their strengths—discuss this topic face-
to-face and have students think about how to make them even
stronger. https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com


A Moment on the
leadership strengths Topic
 Think of the best leader you ever knew or worked with:
o Did they have some weaknesses?
o Why didn’t they matter?

 “Fatal Flaws” vs “Weaknesses”
 ROI on leveraging strengths:
85% greater ROI than working on weaknesses.
The Extraordinary Leader, Jack Zenger (2009)

Now, Discover Your Strengths, Marcus Buckingham & Don Clifton (2001)


Building Leadership
Moment to Moment
 Emphasize the transfer of the diagnostic model to other real life
problem solving with groups:
o Problem minded first, then solution minded.
o Gather evidence.
o Get a consultation; consult the existing evidence and models.
o Test your hypothesis.
 Help students learn to communicate without PowerPoint—have
them teach mini-lessons without props; use impromptu presentation
assignments and debrief the “communication” dimensions as well as
the “content” elements.


Building Leadership
in the Classroom
Leadership is really this simple:
 Help others be as successful as they can be.
 Help others gain knowledge and develop new skills.
 Help others anticipate the future of their work and
organization to reduce surprise.
 Help others adapt to the transformation of their work
and organization-anticipate and cope.
 Help your entire organization / profession continue to
innovate and transform to stay relevant and vibrant.
 And in all things, remain honest and true to yourself.

Fully Awake for 2.5 Questions


Les Wallace, Ph.D.
President, Signature Resources Inc.
Les@signatureresources.com
 Signature Resources is a 40 person consulting consortium providing governance and
leadership strategy to public and private sector enterprise globally through two domestic
and three international offices.

 Dr. Wallace is recognized for tracking business environment and workplace trends and
their impact upon business and government. His publications have appeared in
Leadership Excellence, Physician’s Assistant, Personnel Journal, Credit Union
Management, Public Management, and Nation's Business as well as numerous
research and conference proceedings. His latest book, co-authored with Dr. Jim Trinka,
A Legacy of 21st Century Leadership, outlines the leadership organizations need in a
global, fast moving business environment. His governance workbook, 21st Century
Governance is used by 2,500 EDs and Board members.

 Les is a frequent consultant and speaker on issues of organizational transformation and
leadership, employee engagement, strategic thinking and board of directors
governance. His clients include Fortune 100 businesses, Government agencies, and
not-for-profit organizations world-wide. Dr. Wallace is also the 9Minute Mentor, a
resource of short articles and DVDs on leadership, governance, management and
personal success.

Univ. of Southern Mississippi Leadership Presentation 3 21-13

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