Leadership Research - Favorite Quotes
The quotes below represent a thin thread of leadership research dating from Hayes and Abernathy (1981) to the works of Rickover (1981), Kotter (1982), and Gabarro (1987) and support the value of expert leadership. Leaders with deep knowledge and understanding of their organization’s core business operations (i.e., expert leaders rather than generalist leaders tend to be more effective. Hayes and Abernathy (1981) first identified the trend of selecting CEOs and senior managers from the finance and legal functional areas instead of the traditional sources of leaders like production and operations.
I continue to research the myth perpetuated by the leadership industry that anyone can be a leader. Neither the evidence nor history supports that proposition.
Gabarro (1987) found, “The all-purpose general manager who can be slotted into just about any organization, function or industry exist only in management textbooks” (p. 68).
The myth of the generalist leader who can lead any organization still persist. I served 33+ years in the USAF and 15 years as a senior defense analyst-management consultant. In my experience, the most successful leaders I observed were those who knew their organization’s core business functions better than anyone else. I was confident in following their lead because they knew how to make our organization successful. Now it seems that too many organizations are led by individuals who do not know the details of their own organization’s core functions. I call these generalist “cheerleaders” in charge. (Smile)
A Few of My Favorite Quotes
According to Hayes and Abernathy (1981), as early as 1960, organizations began selecting CEOs and other senior executives from the finance and legal functions rather than the traditional sources of operations and production. The increasingly popular MBA programs had become a substitute for, rather than an addition to, practical industry experience and expertise. The following quote from Hayes and Abernathy (1981) provides an insightful explanation.
The road to the top. During the past 25 years, the American manager’s road to the top has changed significantly. No longer does the typical career, threading sinuously up and through a corporation with stops in several functional areas, provide future top executives with intimate hands-on knowledge of the company’s technologies, customers, and suppliers. (Hayes & Abernathy, 1981, p. 16)
What has developed, in the business community as in academia, is a preoccupation with a false and shallow concept of the professional manager, a “pseudoprofessional” really – an individual having no special expertise in any particular industry or technology who nevertheless can step into an unfamiliar company and run it successfully through strict application of financial controls, portfolio concepts, and a market-driven strategy. (Hayes & Abernathy, 1981, p. 17)
The gospel of pseudoprofessionalism.
In recent years, this idealization of pseudoprofessionalism has taken on something of the quality of a corporate religion. Its first doctrine, appropriately enough, is that neither industry experience nor hands-on technological expertise counts for very much. At one level, of course, this doctrine helps to salve the conscience of those who lack them. (Hayes & Abernathy, 1981, p. 17)
Hayes, R. H., & Abernathy, W. J. (1981). Managing our way to economic decline. McKinsey Quarterly(1), 2-23.
ADM Rickover spoke to Columbia University: Columbia University School of Engineering on November 5 [1981].
The man in charge must concern himself with details. If he does not consider them important, neither will his subordinates. Yet "the devil is in the details." It is hard and monotonous to pay attention to seemingly minor matters. In my work I probably spend about 99 percent of my time on what others may call petty details. Most managers would rather focus on lofty policy matters. But when the details are ignored, the project fails. No infusion of policy or lofty ideals can then correct the situation.
There is concern today over the apparent decline in U.S. productivity. In searching for its causes we should not overlook the impact of the many professional administrators who run large corporations. Though trained in management at our leading universities, they are often unskilled in the technical aspects of the company. As a result they manage largely in the terms they learned at school. Technical, operational, and production issues are quickly reduced to issues of numbers and dollars, upon which these administrators apply their management techniques.
Rickover, H. (1981). Doing a job. speech at Columbia University. Retrieved May 2 from http://www.govleaders.org/rickover.htm.
Excerpts from General Managers by Kotter
Kotter (1982) found that General Mangers (GMs), “tended to think of themselves as “generalists.” Many felt they had the skills to manage nearly anything well. Yet in reality, they were all highly specialized in many ways. They had specialized sets of interests, knowledge, skills and relationships. This specialization or “fit” was central to helping them perform well in very difficult jobs (Kotter, 1982, p. 8).
Kotter, J. (1982). The General Managers. New York: The Free Press, Simon & Schuster, Inc.
In 1987, Gabarro studied 14 senior management succession over a three-year period in a variety of industries in the United States and in Europe. His findings supported those of Hayes and Abernathy (1981, 2007) and my own research on how knowledgeable and experienced U.S. Air Force munitions and missile maintenance officers thought was required to lead a nuclear weapons organization. The quote below from Gabarro’s book, The Dynamics of Taking Charge, below reveals his most important finding.
The findings described…have several implications for succession planning and for taking charge.
The first and most basic is: a manager’s prior experience and skill base make a difference and are not to be ignored in succession planning. However, the most important implication of these findings is: “The all-purpose general manager who can be slotted into just about any organization, function or industry exist only in management textbooks.” (Gabarro, 1987, p. 68).
Gabarro, J. (1987). The dynamics of taking charge. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.