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Leadership

Assessment of Worldview (LAW™)

Cavanaugh Leahy & Company

Leadership Assessment of Worldview (LAW™)

ã 2000

Cavanaugh Leahy & Company, Ltd.

Princeton Pike Corporate Center

993 Lenox Drive, Suite 200

Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

609-844-7615

The LAW™ assessment was created by T. J. Elliott, M.S., and Martin J. Leahy, Ph.D. , is based on Dr. Leahy's Model for Company™, and supported by their collaborative research on leadership. Their collaborative research involves investigations and writing based on the academic and business literatures on leadership and research in action with real leadership groups within diverse organizations.

The Model for Company™ is an eclectic product with a diverse set of sources. Its primary scholarly roots are in Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan's (1979) research on Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis and the "paradigm wars" that followed in organization science. That body of knowledge was supplemented by the work of researchers in many disciplines, among them: Chris Argyris, David Bohm, Jean Baker Miller, Martin Buber, Mary Parker Follett, Paulo Freire, Carl Jung, Thomas Kuhn, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Donald Schön, and Ken Wilber. Leadership and OD practitioners interested in the theory behind this model should request the accompanying monograph from the Theory-In-Practice series.

How can I be a great leader in this company?

That depends on how you [should?] answer these questions: What is a company? Why bother to create one?

ne hundred years of research on leadership and we still ask: What does it take to be a great leader? Favorite places to look for answers have been: the right individual competencies, psychological profile, style, traits, habits, and now, if evolutionary psychologists have their way, it will be the right genetic make up since, for them, leaders are born not made. All of those answers have one thing in common, the belief that the answers are within the individual. This is hardly surprising. The US is a very individualistic culture. Plus, psychology has dominated leadership research for most of the last hundred years. Our search has been restricted by our culture and our tools; we've been looking for answers based on what we know how to do, one way of looking.

Recently, teams have become the rage. Teams are everywhere, even in places where teaming makes no sense given the task or situation. So, there is a big swing to the other extreme from the individual to the group, from the individualism to the collectivism. The answers now are in the ideal group. We, Americans, don't like being lumped into groups; we are uncomfortable with collectives. Plus, trying to create an ideal group is about as abstract as trying to be the exemplary individual.

The choices seem to be either focusing on the individuals, the parts of a company, or the group, that is the whole company. But what about some other way of looking that accounts for the individuals, the group, and what actually happens between actual people. Here we are suggesting that the answers are in your organization.

There is another place to look and that is what happens between real individuals, inside a particular group, when they are working on something real, something they all care about. This is a grounded approach that prefers concrete experience to abstract profiles of the perfect individual or group. If you want to excel at leading in this company, use your experience to investigate things like:

Are people or profits more important?

How do they like to organize themselves? Is being organized important?

Where do they put their money? Who has the power to decide that?

How do they talk to one another? What values do they espouse, which do they follow?

What attitudes or beliefs seem to influence just about everything they do?

Do they care more about creating big hit transformations or day-to-day excellence?

Knowing the answers to these questions will give you some practical steps that you can take to be a leader with these people at this time in this company and market environment. It is not that the individual or group perspectives are wrong, rather they are limited. Plus, they often offer one-size-fits-all prescriptions that are not only theoretical but ignore the realities of the leader and the situation.

In order to uncover how you yourself lead, and the preferred mode of leading in your company [the law?], and what is needed from leaders in this company or group, we ask you to consider a few basic questions. What is a company? Why do people create them, or, since they are often tough to manage or lead --- why bother in the first place? Two basic assumptions are behind images for what it takes to be a great leader. They are the answers to those two questions.

What is a Company?

All of us have an answer to this question. And while, for most of us the answers are rich ad complex, our responses tend to emphasize or favor one of two dimensions, namely the material or the human side of the organization, the stuff or the people.

Its people. If we see a company as primarily being all about its people, we will talk about left-side things like knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, vision, values, and culture.

He held no holds barred employee meetings and realized the company needed a new roadmap.

They are turning the lumbering corporate culture on its ear. They want to free people to run their businesses.

Many employees today did not grow up with authoritarian fathers… you must transition to a modern style of motivating people… as part of his strategy, he has encouraged more of his troops to think boldly and to take more risks.

Its materials. If we see a company as fundamentally about material matters, we talk about right-side things like money, power, and information or things like structure, systems, and processes. The quotes below show leaders with a "material" definition of company:

We need to cut several layers out of the organizational hierarchy

He had a secret determination to equal the best of his competitors by refocusing the growing company on its core products successfully pushed into new markets around the world

She uses cash to make the company first or second in every market

Why Bother to Create a Company?

Again, while the responses provided here are also complex, our answers tend to favor one or the other end of a continuum: in order to organize the chaos and bring about stability or to create change, to do something brand new.

Create change. Those who see company as being about change focus on the top half of the model --- by either asking radical questions about what we think we know, our beliefs and assumptions, or, alternately they look to fundamentally restructure the rules of the game like how to get more money, power, and information.
Here are some sample top-side quotes from executives oriented to transformation:

Building wealth in this tough global environment requires nimbleness, the old former conglomerate rose like a phoenix to become #1 in their business. Profits jumped 98% in 1997 alone.

He is delivering the kind of savings and synergies he promised when his company out maneuvered two competitors in the takeover bid.

They hire brilliant workers and use incentives to keep them creating and marketing software.

Bring order. Those who see company as being about order and incremental improvement focus on the bottom half of the model. They look to the nuts and bolts of either structure, systems, and processes or how people are connecting to concrete lived experience. Again, quotes from the articles

It is a matter of nurturing an essential core that impels employees to deliver top-notch service on the ground and in the air.

They are able to get infrastructure built and control cash flow problems.

He acts as if every penny the company spends is his.

Four Leadership Worldviews

Having answered these two basic questions, four worldviews emerge that dramatically effect how people see organizations and leadership. These worldviews emphasize alternately how we: think, communicate, resource , or organize.

A worldview is a collection of beliefs, values, practices; ways of seeing and ways of thinking, a whole philosophy, or kind of shorthand, about leadership, people and organizations. All of us have worldviews that are some combination of the four presented below yet we tend to lean more or less strongly toward one of the four quadrants.

It is important to know that worldviews are the property of particular communities of people. If we are talking about leadership, these worldviews provide the rules for the right way of leading, exemplary leadership models, values, stories of past successes, tools for solving problems, etc.

It is also important to know that these worldviews are often unexamined. We follow them without being consciously aware of what is driving our actions. Finally, organizations tend to favor some worldviews and look down on others. This results in the dominance of one way of doing things and weakness in the areas that are not favored. We believe that all four are necessary, four kinds of leading, and that a "company" is the outcome of healthy respectful contention among the four.

The quotes on the following page illustrate each of the four worldviews and the kind of leader who is likely to hold this worldview.

Four Ways of Leading

Click here to see image of how leaders fit quadrants

 

Leadership Worldviews Questionnaire

 

  1. If you were trying to improve customer satisfaction at a company, which of the following initiatives would most appeal to you?
    1. Better organize work flow, e.g., install new procedures, systems, reassign responsibilities, to assure better customer service and product quality
    2. Get "inside" information about the marketplace, e.g., hire an industry expert to get customer care information on competitors and/or get access to information about consumer spending habits and expectations
    3. Instill a culture of service among employees, service to the customer above all else, heroic customer service.
    4. Create an "Idea Lab" as an incubator for revolutionary approaches to customer care
  2. Which of these leadership philosophies sounds most useful to you
    1. Concentrate on brainpower — employees can create miracles if they are given the freedom to think and to challenge the status quo
    2. Forge a reputation as a team builder who excels at producing results through collaboration, do what ever you can to fuel the esprit-de-corps
    3. Deploy resources smartly, e.g., spend heavily to win an even larger share of your market,
    4. Redesign the processes at the company, e.g., to make for a more efficient supply chain, eliminate redundancies, clearer accountabilities
  3. Which of these interventions is usually most effective in turning around a company that is performing poorly
    1. Challenge some of the basic assumptions on which the business and industry are built, e.g., create performance breakthrough projects
    2. Cut costs. There's often a quick hit, 10-15% improvement, based on efficiencies alone.
    3. Invest in that new cutting edge technology that will surprise and stun the competition
    4. Create a partnership with employees, involve them in the turnaround
  4. A leader at your company must pay attention to
    1. Commitment to our mission, culture, and values (Nordstrom's), the rest will take of itself
    2. Acquiring, protecting, and deploying assets so that the company can be #1 or #2 in every one of its markets (GE), be a master at the game of business
    3. Management of the day to day affairs of the business (McDonald's) so that customers can count on us to deliver what we promise consistently
    4. Asking questions about all of things we simply take for granted, needs to be a visionary thinker and developer of visionary thinkers (Apple)
  5. The best approach to solving problems at this company usually involves:
    1. Investigating what is behind the problem, those things that we are unaware of, finding out "what we don't know we don't know"
    2. Getting people together for input and to insure alignment and buy-in
    3. Examining internal structural barriers, like reporting relationships, and people's inability to take an objective view, to move beyond subjective wants to what is needed for the whole company
    4. Finding out who holds most of the cards, i.e., the money, the power, and the information
  6. An exemplary leader at this company is a
    1. Dynamic and inspirational speaker who has built a remarkably loyal employee base. (e.g., Herb Kelleher with his enthusiastic employees at Southwest Airlines.)
    2. Someone who reinvents the game, who changes the rules of how the company and the industry operates, who flawlessly negotiates deals and alliances (e.g., Charles Schwab with discount brokerage on the Internet)
    3. Nurturer of individual talent (e.g., Bill Gates at Microsoft who focussed sharply on getting the best people and then riding their development of new ideas)
    4. Architect of systems: distribution, the physical movement of physical staff, the information technology and programs to keep track of everything, an overhauler of what does not work in this area (Sam Walton)
  7. In my experience to get the job done you must:
    1. Promote a culture that drives excellence
    2. Institute the right structure, systems, policies, and procedures so that people aren't reinventing the wheel everyday to address the basics
    3. Teach people to constantly question the status quo
    4. Pay more attention to what is going on in the market than inside the company, e.g., manipulate capital, cash, price to outflank the competition

     

  8. The most important asset at a company is
    1. What people know, its intellectual capital
    2. The trust, commitment, and spirit of its employees
    3. "Deep pockets," its financial resources
    4. Our ability to implement flawlessly and consistently

Scoring

Match your response to each question by putting an X through the leadership worldview that fits each response, i.e., think, communicate, resource, or organize.

For example, if your response to Question #1 was "D" put an X through the Think. Continue until you have matched all questions and responses to appropriate worldview.

Response Question #

A

B

C

D

1

Organize

Resource

Communicate

Think

2

Think

Communicate

Resource

Organize

3

Think

Organize

Resource

Communicate

4

Communicate

Resource

Organize

Think

5

Think

Communicate

Organize

Resource

6

Communicate

Resource

Think

Organize

7

Communicate

Organize

Think

Resource

8

Think

Communicate

Resource

Organize

 

Total all answers below. Use the model on the next page to graphically display your leadership worldview

THINK

  

COMMUNICATE

  

RESOURCE

  

ORGANIZE

  

by putting the total number of all Xs for each worldview in the appropriate quadrant For example, if you had a score of 3 for Think, put 3 Xs in that quadrant, and 1 for Organize put I X in that quadrant, 4 for Communicate, put 4 in that quadrant, and 0 for Resource, put none in that quadrant.

 

Reflections:

  1. On which side, left (people) or right (material), are most of your Xs. What might this indicate about how you view what constitutes a company? About how it is to be lead?
  2. Do you have more Xs in the top (create change) or bottom (bring order) quadrants? What does this say about your rationale for creating a company? Do you see success as achievable through transformative change or day-to-day order?
  3. In which quadrant are most of the Xs?
  4. In which quadrant do you find the fewest?
  5. Where do your peers fall on this model? Your boss? Your employees?
  6. Does the leadership at your organization strongly favor one of these modes of leading? Does it dismiss any of them?
  7. Given your current business situation, what kind of leading is called for?

There are several other ways of identifying leadership worldviews. If you want to explore yours further, try these methods.

Write down your 5 greatest successes as a leader. Use this format. Write a brief paragraph that describes the problem, the actions you took to address it, and the results. Partner with a peer, read them your stories and have them put Xs in the appropriate quadrants of the model whenever they hear words or phrases or actions that suggest that way of leading. Reflect on the results. Switch roles and coach your peer.

Think about the biggest challenge that you are facing right now as a leader. Make two lists. List 1 names all of the barriers and obstacles to success from your point of view. List 2 names all of the barriers and obstacles as seen by your fellow leaders. Label all of the barriers with a T (Think), C (Communicate), R (Resource), or O (Organize). Where do you tend to look? How about your teammates? Are there ways of leading that are neglected by you? Your team? Are there ways of leading that would be especially useful given this particular challenge? Are there ways of leading that are not acceptable in your group?

Again, think about the biggest challenge that you are facing right now as a leader. What is the problem; give it a name? How would others on your team name the problem?

What are the implications for being a great leader?

A successful company is created when all four ways of leading are available.

This will create necessary and healthy contention but that is the heart of creativity. The belief is that the company, or decision, will be greater than the sum of the parts.

In order to do this, you will need to develop, and help others develop

 

In order to do this, you will likely need to do less of the following:

Conclusion

Leadership arrives neither through magic nor inheritance. Development of leadership depends first upon awareness of the existing frameworks that you use. Then leadership requires a willingness to explore the consequence of those frameworks, and an eagerness to build capacity by testing other points of view and gaining new skills. This assessment can only address the first part of building awareness. The decisions about whether your actions and attitudes constitute the right mix for your organization at this time are left for you to make. Likewise, the actions to continue your learning in order to refine your leadership can only come about through your choices.