Difference between revisions of "ITLPviii Group Kotter"

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* '''Jim Loter''' <br/> [mailto:jloter@engr.washington.edu jloter@engr.washington.edu] <br/> ''206-543-1791 (PDT)''
 
* '''Jim Loter''' <br/> [mailto:jloter@engr.washington.edu jloter@engr.washington.edu] <br/> ''206-543-1791 (PDT)''
 
* '''Erik Lundberg''' <br/> [mailto:lundberg@cs.washington.edu lundberg@cs.washington.edu] <br/> ''206-543-2795 (PDT) (office/mobile)''
 
* '''Erik Lundberg''' <br/> [mailto:lundberg@cs.washington.edu lundberg@cs.washington.edu] <br/> ''206-543-2795 (PDT) (office/mobile)''
* '''Ashish Pai''' <br/> [mailto:apai@ou.edu apai@ou.edu] <br/> ''405-831-3578 (mobile), 405-641-6716 (mobile) (CDT)''
+
* '''Ashish Pai''' <br/> [mailto:apai@ou.edu apai@ou.edu] <br/> ''405-831-3578 (office mobile), 405-641-6716 (mobile) (CDT)''
 
* '''Sherif Samaan''' <br/> [mailto:sherif.samaan@nyu.edu sherif.samaan@nyu.edu] <br/> ''212-998-1105 (EDT), 917-887-1321 (mobile)''
 
* '''Sherif Samaan''' <br/> [mailto:sherif.samaan@nyu.edu sherif.samaan@nyu.edu] <br/> ''212-998-1105 (EDT), 917-887-1321 (mobile)''
  

Revision as of 23:30, 10 May 2007

ITLPviii Main Page > Group Kotter




Group Kotter


Group Members

What time is it
for everybody?


Phone meetings

Date PDT CDT EDT
Wed,
May 9
8:30 am 10:30 am 11:30 am
Thur,
May 10
7am 9am 10am
Sherif's Conference Bridge
  • (212) 998-2280
  • 49657 - when prompted, enter this conference bridge number.
  • 100607 - when prompted, enter this six digit access code to enter the conference.

Our Paper

What Leaders Really Do by John Kotter
Harvard Business Review, December 2001
HBR_What_Leaders_Really_Do.pdf (704 KB)

The Other Papers

The Work of Leadership by Ronald Heifetz and Donald Laurie
Harvard Business Review, December 2001
HBR_Work_of_Leadership.pdf (316 KB)

The Leadership Advantage by Warren Bennis
Leader to Leader, No. 12, Spring 1999
http://www.pfdf.org/leaderbooks/l2l/spring99/bennis.html

The Leaderful Community by Joseph Raelin
Innovative Leader, Volume 12, Number 6, June 2003
http://www.winstonbrill.com/bril001/html/article_index/articles/551-600/article579_body.html

The Assignment

Develop a brief synopsis of the author’s views on leadership to be presented to the group on Day One. Please contrast the author you are reading with at least one of the other authors’ perspectives on leadership; discuss how your team wants to make your ten minute (or so) presentation. You are encouraged to be innovative in how you share this work with the class. Reading PowerPoint slides does not qualify as innovative: A leader needs to have the ability to capture and hold people's attention while communicating a message. (Full description.)

Comments/Thoughts

Kotter (What Leaders Really Do) - 1977 (1990)

From Jim Loter, UW, 5/3/2007...

I'm keeping my non-editorial notes on the reading here: http://www.engr.washington.edu/confluence/x/FAY

From Erik Lundberg, UW, 5/3/2007...

I've only just started to read the Kotter article (What Leaders Really Do), but the main point that crystalized for me is that:

  • "Managers promote stability, and leaders promote change".
  • And secondarily, "One person can do both".

Jane DelFavero, NYU 5/10/2007

- The balance between vision and planning seems to be a key point, in particular, the uselessness of long term planning (esp without a vision to guide it)

"visions and strategies" v plans

Heifeetz-Laurie (The Work of Leadership) - 1997

From Erik Lundberg, UW, 5/7/2007...

The Heifeetz-Laurie article (The Work of Leadership) is about "Adaptive Work". Leaders don't solve problems themselves. Instead, they

  • (a) pose the questions that engage others to take on the responsibility to identify the problems, and
  • (b) create an environment that makes it okay to break the rules and do things differently.

From Jim Loter, UW, 5/7/2007

My summary: http://www.engr.washington.edu/confluence/x/JwY

Interesting point to contrast with Kotter: "The prevailing notion that leadership consists of having a vision and aligning people with that vision is bankrupt because it continues to treat adaptive situations as if they were technical: The authority figure is supposed to divine where the company is going and people are supposed to follow." (13)

Doesn't this sound like a direct challenge to Kotter?

Maybe more of an expansion on the "domain" of leadership, in a new dimension. Kotter was all about the Man on the Balcony, because that was the prevailing view of that time (20 years prior). Heifeetz-Laurie (and the others) are pushing those same principles, but are now driving them down into the organization. (summary from our Wed meeting) Lundberg 13:54, 9 May 2007 (PDT)

Bennis (The Leadership Advantage) - 1999

From Erik Lundberg, UW, 5/7/2007...

My summary of the Bennis article (The Leadership Advantage) is:

  • Key to an organization's success is the "capacity to create the social architecture capable of generating intellectual capital."
  • "Exemplary leaders are distinguished by the master of the soft skills, above all, character."
  • "Exemplary leaders believe they have a responsibility to extend people's growth and to create an environment where people constantly learn."

Raelin (The Leaderful Community) - 2003

From Erik Lundberg, UW, 5/7/2007...

These two quotes lifted from the article seem to distill it for me:

  • "Leadership becomes a collective property, not the sole sanctuary of any one (most important) member."
  • "Leadership of the unit needs to come from within the community, not from an ultimate authority imposed from the outside."

Themes

Evolution of Leadership "Theory"

  • Kotter was seminal - and 30 years ago - and was all about the person at the top. Hierarchical - that was normal for the time. An authority-figure at the top shows the masses where to go and how to get there.
  • The other authors accept these "new" principles of leadership that Kotter laid out, but are all about the organization. Driving leadership concepts down into the org, flattening the org. Power to the people! In what ways does this reflect more general societal move (eg, social networking, the internet)?

Presentation Ideas

A two-part presentation:

(1) overview of the evolution of thought about leadership, represented by these papers

  • Focus on Kotter (that is our prime assignment, after all)
 Question from Jane: Is it really possible for a leader to be both a good manager 
 and a visionary thinker? Kotter says yes, I have my doubts
  • Point out how each of the authors who followed in his footsteps have expanded those principles, and pushed them into new dimensions.
  • Summary: Kotter built the house of leadership. Twenty to thirty years later, the others have done some remodeling, but the foundation remains untouched. (EL)

(2) panel discussion, where we present a case study (or whatever) from each institution

Each university takes one of the three Kotter Principles for their case study:

  1. Aligning People vs. organizing & scheduling
  2. Setting Directions vs. planning & budgeting
  3. Motivating and Inspiring vs. controlling activities and solving problems.
  • NYU - Alignment: about 8 years ago, there was the first step of a reorg with the creation of central ITS from 3 existing groups (telecom, Academic Computing and UCC/administrative computing). After a couple of years, a survey was done of the staff, and the biggest issue that people identified was inter-group communication. As a result, it was decided that every Tuesday, there would be a subject-matter based, cross-group meeting. The attendees are generally not director-level, but line staff and managers. The topics and structure of these meetings have changed over time, but they produced some useful, and perhaps unexpected output. First, they allowed communication between groups and people who had not met regularly before, which allowed knowledge and respect to develop (as well as improving communication). But, they also allowed natural "affinity groups" to develop, made up of people who shared interests in larger organizational issues. It also created an environment where people who were not in a managerial role could exercise their leadership skills. This seems to be a good example of aligning people, rather than organizing them (see Kotter, p 7)

[maybe something about how, after the reorg, our org structure was very flat, but that was inefficient, because it makes it hard to resolve disputes, allocate resources]

  • UW - not in a reorg, but are collaborating more these days, and this shift is being supported, by "central IT" leaders (encouraged, even? fostered???)
  • OU - It seems to me the topic of reorg and collaboration have been covered very well by the two case studies above. So, I thought I could talk about one of the many adaptive challenges we faced during our long road to providing better service. However, if this is a discussion to show the approaches adopted by the three institutions, I could talk about our recent reorg efforts to align individuals with teams where their skills and expertise would prove most beneficial.

An "innovative presentation" idea?

Perhaps as a follow-up to the panel discussion, we could attempt to engage the audience - by asking our colleagues from each of our institutions to come up with further examples to support the Kotter Principles that we outlined in the first part of our presentation. Maybe drawn from their particular area of the organization, or something they've noticed in the broader community. ("A leader needs to have the ability to capture and hold people's attention while communicating a message.") (EL)

Off-shoot topics

Kotter Breakout Topics - How these articles apply to higher-ed. Some strawman topics for discussion.