Citation
Randall, R. (2016), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 44 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-01-2016-0007
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Editor’s letter
Article Type: Editorial From: Strategy & Leadership, Volume 44, Issue 2
The cover headlines for this issue are:
Leadership: Pfeffer on power politics vs. character
Christensen updates disruption theory
Four scenarios on the future of “The American Dream”
Scanning “outliers” for strategic novelty insights
Transforming disagreements into learning opportunities
Leadership lessons from a case of global IT-enabled change
The issue leads off with Brian Leavy’s provocative interview of noted Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer titled, “Stop selling leadership malarkey.” Over the past 40 years there has been a cacophonous chorus of advice from a legion of consultants on the kinds of leadership attributes and organizational cultures most likely to inspire greater creativity, motivation and productivity. A growing trend has been to advocate a principled approach to leadership based on character attributes like integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion or on qualities like authenticity. Pfeffer’s latest book, Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time, warns that, seduced by the “inspirational” but “unscientific” nostrums of much leadership literature, we have been getting way ahead of ourselves with this aspirational agenda in unrealistic, dangerous and ultimately disappointing ways. In particular, we need to first deepen our insight into the central role that power and politics continue to play in organizational life, a reality that much of the “inspirational” leadership literature seems to bemoan or want to ignore.
Also wading into the middle of another hotly disputed topic, Stephen Denning looks at how upstart disruptors continue to defeat incumbent titans despite decades of defensive advice. His masterclass “Christensen updates disruption theory” asks the world’s foremost authority, Harvard professor and author Clayton Christensen, why recent events in the battle between incumbents and challengers has turned the field of disruptive innovation into intellectually contested territory. “The theory of disruption,” says Christensen, “is a theory of competitive response. Disruption is a process, not an event, and innovations can only be disruptive relative to something else. Over the last twenty years, little by little, we have realized that we need additional theories to account for what’s going on.”
And if two disputes weren’t enough, to fuel the fires of a dialog about the future of opportunities in America, futurist and former Battelle strategist Stephen M. Millett imagines, “What will happen to the ‘American Dream’? Four scenarios for opportunity in the United States to 2035.” The logical basis for these four possible futures – their two sets of driving forces–is that technological, political, economic and social factors – and the decisions of voters and their leaders–will result in either many or few opportunities which will be available to many or few players.
Increasingly strategists are pressed to search for novelty, foresight and insight into what’s next. Conventional strategy is being challenged by industry shifts and by potentially disruptive strategic innovations that “outliers,” organizations that do not fit established ways of doing things, have discovered. “Learning lessons in strategic novelty from outliers” by researchers Liisa Välikangas of Aalto University and Michael Gibbert of Lugano University, reports on cases of companies that operate outside, or at the very edge of, the conventional understanding of industry dynamics and even industry boundaries. By examining outliers–their business models, constraints and opportunities – practitioners can also gain a better understanding of changing industry dynamics and the potential fate of the incumbents.
Let’s agree to disagree, productively. Counterproductively, at many workplaces the standard practice is to dodge debate, argument, conflict and disagreement. Instead, Darden Business School authors Sergiy Dmytriyev, R. Edward Freeman and Mark E. Haskins suggest “Transforming disagreements into opportunities to enhance learning, decision making and trust.” They believe firms would derive many benefits from encouraging a climate in which disagreements are purposefully offered and heard and leaders can effectively and efficiently “mine” an honest debate, uncovering and extracting its beneficial kernel of added insight or critical caution.
Managing IT-enabled change without adversely affecting business processes has become a skill that is essential for organizations’ long-term survival. “Strategies for leading IT-enabled change: lessons from a global transformation case” by Uppsala University professor Einar Iveroth explores how a unit of the telecommunications company Ericsson successfully implemented its “Global Finance and Accounting Transformation Program.” Four key findings are: such a process is dynamic in nature and requires continuous learning; IT and organizational issues influence each other as changes are implemented; local conditions determine the appropriate timetable and IT-enabled change is first and foremost about how it will successfully enable the people in an organization.
Good reading!
Robert M. Randall
Editor