A634.1.6.RB_LloydPayneDamien

Many believe that management education has contributed to the systemic failure of today's leaders. After reading the Podolny (2009) article,  in your reflection blog share your thoughts on how business schools can best prepare future leaders to adopt a holistic approach to business problems and ethical dilemmas. Be sure to share benchmarks and examples of how some of the B-Schools are accomplishing this.

In the article, The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School, Joel Podolny states that academics aren't interested in teaching the practical side of what happens inside companies in the real world and instead “develop theoretical models that obscure rather than clarify the way organizations work. Many also believe that a theory's relevance is enough to justify teaching it” (Podolny, 2009).

The author goes on to discuss the need for a more holistic approach to business school stating, “Business schools need to redefine what they teach and how they teach it,” continuing with, “take the first steps by moving away from teaching in functional silos and emphasizing the integration of several disciplines”. (Podolny, 2009, p66).  In other words, to best prepare future business leaders to function and develop highly successful business models, the school must implement practical teaching philosophies that mimic the business organism.  That means, teachers and academic institutions must integrate first year grad student in strategic level development and eliminate the power based positions faculty members have built their pride on.  Integrating a polyarchal type structure in business school would allow for the cross integration of important principle concepts like ethics.   Ethics would not be a “course” that was taught, but would be integrated throughout all courses and all learning objectives.  And this is the most important point.  Ethics is great as a stand alone course, but ethics is something that surrounds every business deal, every business telephone conversation, the way we deal with clients, staff and customers.  In the business world, ethics is everywhere when we look for it - but in scholarly circles, you may only find ethics in one semester.

 So how can this change?  Professors who have real world business experience that can bring something that is real to the table instead of just theories about what the business world is all about would be a great start. Theories are great but don’t really get into the root of what happens inside real organizations.  There needs to be a clear understanding of how organizations work on all levels. Ethics cannot be glossed over or be a box to check - it needs to be ingrained into everything that students think about.  Will it stop businesses from being unethical?  We may never know unless we try.  

Other authors agree with this approach: “Without tying ethics to a business curriculum, we are graduating students who are very myopic in their decision-making," (Korn, 2013).  The author goes on to suggest that we don’t want to turn out narrow-minded decision makers, we want people who can make objective judgments while thinking universally not individually.  In Lessons, professors shouldn’t be afraid to use real world examples and guide their students to really explore why and what caused these companies to forget about ethical practices.

While it may appear to be easy to point the blame finger at the business schools, the reality is that people do things that are rewarded.  If a person is rewarded for being quiet, the corporation gets quiet people.  If the corporation rewards employees for individual effort, as opposed to, team effort; they get individual effort.  The philosophy is established at the top by the leaders and if watching out for personal achievements is expected and rewarded; this is the behavior standard that employees pursue.  If reflective thinking is applied to the problem of ineffective business schools, the blame should be applied evenly among the people who have a vested interest in the success of the graduate. In short, each class and every professor should be integrating ethics into every aspect of the classroom.  Every course is a study into the concepts the students will be using, and not knowing the ethical bounds is detrimental to their studies.

There are some schools that are trying to do this, by making consequences for alumni who fall foul of deliberately flouting ethics.  Some of the measures include taking away the degrees of students who have violated codes of conducts and to make sure business schools are no longer judged on rankings - which do not reflect often the quality of the teaching, but in some cases the salaries of the jobs students get after graduation.  "Unfortunately, business schools must be prepared to abide by norms that govern how they compete for students if they want society to continue regarding them as professional schools" (Podolny, 2009).  Some schools are trying these very ideas, while others, simply do not - Harvard Business School’s indifference to the role that some of its graduates have played in recent business scandals has been noticeable by more than one author.


References:
Korn, M. (2013, February 6). Some B-Schools Step Up Efforts to Tie Ethics to Business Programs. WSJ.com. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324761004578286102004694378.html

Podolny, J. M. (2009). The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School. Harvard Business Review. 87(6), 62-67.

A511.8.3.RB_LloydPayneDamien

Watch this video:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhquUOlBuOY&feature=youtu.be&t=5s and reflect upon and analyze what Rosabeth Moss Kanter has to say and how that does or does not coincide with what Yukl says about gender-based discrimination. Do you agree? Why or why not.

OMG! Here we go - Damien gets in massive trouble with women all over the world by expressing his opinion as to why there are not an equal number of women in the top jobs as there are men.  So let's make this disclaimer: Do I believe there is some sex discrimination in the workplace? Yes.  Do I acknowledge the fact as Rosabeth states that some private conversations go on behind closed doors that say they don't want to take the woman away from her family, and so they don't get the offers? Yes.  Do I believe this is all men's fault? Hell no.
Let's just get right down to it: women are more emotionally connected to the family than men are - and so they should be, they carried another human inside them for 9 Months, gave birth to them and are genetically engineered over millennia to watch out for that child - her very hormones are designed to want to look after the child first.  There are few won=men, having had a child that want to go back to work straight away, and although you hear about those that say (before their first child is born) how they will take a little leave and then go straight back, this isn't actually the rule, it's the exception.
We also have to remember, that despite the fact that there are two different sexes, each group contains some people who like the idea of leadership, and prove to be good at it and the majority of the rest do not. Doesn't matter weather you are a man or a woman.  Everyone has different education and opportunities, and everyone has different roles they are better at.  When I think of great female leaders, one in particular springs immediately to mind.  That's Margaret Thatcher (Milk Snatcher), sorry, you'll have to google the Milk Snatcher thing to catch up -who was universally hated in her time - not for being the worst leader, but for just being an uncaring B**ch.  If she was a man, she probably would have been admired for her toughness, but that is not a trait that many admire in a woman (and I'm including women in that statement).  And yet her leadership was powerful, strong willed and forthright.  She did what she believed in and was true to her word.  Not everyone liked what she believed in sure (me included), but enough of them did that she was voted in for 4 successive terms at least.  Did she sacrifice the things that male leaders would have had to sacrifice too? - family, social responsibilities, community involvement etc - sure she did.  But she did so not because of her gender, but because her position required it.  She was most unique in the fact that she accepted those sacrifices without telling anyone that they were a sacrifice.
Rosabeth argues that opportunity is not there for the women, and agrees with Yukl on culture playing an important role in women's acceptance into leadership roles. "the belief that men are more qualified to be leaders still persists in segments of the population and it remains strong in countries where it is supported by cultural values (Yukl, 2013. P. 371).  I'm not however convinced that opportunities are not there, I think that women who truly want these roles are not there.  There may be a complex set of reasons for this, and I suspect that every women has a different reason, but I do agree that as society changes, as we head away from an office structured system and teleconference and work from home more, many more women will be seen in top leadership positions.
My last word is on the glass ceiling.  To my mind the glass ceiling has been put in place by the very people who espouse that the ceiling is there in the first place.  I don't think it is there.  Women have been successfully involved in every organization, every work type, every position and every leadership role since WW2 made it necessary for women to step up.  But the reason the glass ceiling hasn't yet been broken in some of these roles is because the women who get close believe that something magical has to happen to push them through it - but really, the one who succeeds is more likely to wholly believe that there wasn't one their in the first place.  It's much more of an admirable quality to have if you ignore the rhetoric and trivialize things like glass ceilings and push on regardless than it is to pretend that you would be achieving something extra special just because you are a woman.  I especially don't think men think that way.  Men surely don't care that a leader is a man or a woman anymore, they just care that the leader is effective.

Reference:
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in Organizations. (8th ed., pp. 63-72.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

A511.7.3.RB_LloydPayneDamien

Understanding oneself is a core competency of good leaders. After all, self-knowledge allows us to be able to understand others as well. For most individuals who train to become coaches, the value of the training is as much about their increased self-awareness as it is about their ability to work with others and help them achieve their potential.

Goffee and Jones’ article “Getting personal on the topic of leadership” emphasizes the art of self-awareness, as does your textbook’s discussion.
Now, think about yourself, and reflect on what differences distinguish you and would help you in living and acting on the basis of your core value.

Everyone has a "style", whether that is a style of leadership, or a clothing style, or just the way that you communicate - it's all a different style.  People tend to identify strongly with others of the same style, and this can be helpful to people like Bill Gates who projects "geekiness" if he is trying to attract other geeks to come and work for him in the computer industry.
What is key in the reading however, is this statement "What we observe in effective leaders is primarily a matter of self-awareness" (Goffee & Jones, 2006).  Essentially, what they are saying is that if you know what works with other people, then use it to your advantage.  So this got me to think about what I use in this way in business.  I think there are two major things, one of which just came to light more recently.

My first 'trait' if you like is one of authenticity.  I project that I know what I am talking about, I make sure that I do know what I am talking about, I keep up with current affairs surrounding the thing I am talking about, and I use visual clues to show those who may not be listening that I know what I'm talking about.  Let me give you an example.  My first change in career was a big promotion from lowly follower with a ton of sales experience to managing my first team of people in a sales force.  The problem was it was in a totally different industry.  What I quickly realized was that some of my new employees would at first be quite skeptical about how much I really knew about their industry, and how suitable I would be at making sure they were successful.

I don't know if you have ever seen the Michael J Fox movie "the Secrets of My Success", but in this movie, Michael J Fox plays a lowly mail clerk with a good business education, that accidentally takes over an office and starts to run a department without permission.  Soon, he's very successful at it, and nobody questions his authority.  The scene however that stuck in my mind, was when someone came to check out this new head of transportation when Michael was on his mail route.  Going into his 'office' the person noticed all over the walls graphs, pie charts and other simple and colorful representations of profits, movements, targets etc.  Just through seeing these charts, the guy leaves the office authenticating Michael as someone who clearly knows what he is doing.
I decided to do the same thing.  I 'decorated' my walls with the same types of graphs and charts showing targets and performance, and it gave me the same gravitas that it seemed to give Michael.  It was important in this new job that the image projection was one that at least in part projected that I was not only capable, but I was on the ball, knew what was going on, was keeping an eye on progress and had already disseminated where the important things were in the industry.  My team swallowed it whole, and I was able to move on with learning their idiosyncrasies and directing them in the way that I wanted. I'm not sure if this was authentic leadership in it's purest form, but I certainly used what I had to get what I needed as quickly as possible - acceptance.

My second, and more recent 'trait' came about when I moved to America.  It seems that Americans love a good accent - and apparently to many Americans, the English accent comes with a reputation of gravitas and class.  It's actually quite hard for me to describe, but I'm told that the English accent makes you sound like you talk with an air of authority - even if you don't.  I have started to use this to my advantage - on one occasion even turning on the 'englishness' to prove a point.  It really works.  Sounding like someone from Downton Abbey actually has people stop, listen and take note.  I'm combining this skill with charm , good-naturedness and also some joking around, so that hopefully, when people think of Damien the pilot at Merck they say "he's good natured, good fun, and would be a good leader".  I've already noticed several people listening to what I have to say and passing it on.  The court of public opinion is strong in the Merck workplace, and often a few sensible but well directed statements can go a long way.  It's a long haul, but the setup is there to have people gravitate towards me when it comes to the leadership role that I'm looking for.  As they say, from small acorn grow mighty oaks - and I'm hoping that many of my current coworkers will be willing followers at crunch time.  Time will tell. Where I have to be careful is this use of charisma is not without risks.  Yukl (2013) states "Charismatic leadership is risky.  It is impossible to predict the results when people give people too much power in the hope that he or she will actually be able to deliver a vision of a better future" (p. 320).  Shaping that vision then will be all important, and the next thing I have to work on.  I think I'll probably have to wait for a crisis.

Reference:
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in Organizations. (8th ed., pp. 63-72.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson-Prentice Hall.

Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (2006). Getting personal on the topic of leadership. Human Resource Management International Digest , 14 (4), 32-34.