Chapter 2: Adapative Order Systems (Pages 83-93)

Personal take-aways:

Sometimes the wording behind a “goal” makes all the difference, as it shifts the focus and thus the mindset. In a company setting people often talk about “profit” and maximizing shareholder value as the alpha and the omega. However, when approached from another perspective, one could state that these two “goals” are merely the consequences of having achieved different ones. For example: The goal is to focus on helping employees reach their true potentials in a company setting which is thought to lead to profit and maximizing shareholder value based on the interest of the employees to grow and thus improve the functioning of the company itself. In other words, a goal should possibly always focus on the “mean” and not the “consequence.”

On another note, a leader’s success appears to always depend on the ability of his/her followers to understand the leader’s actions and successes. In other words, leaders always appear to be defined by their visible successes and not their overall performance. The best example is Obama: “Corporate profits are at record highs, the country’s adding 200,000 jobs per month, unemployment is below 6%, U.S. gross national product growth is the best of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The dollar is at its strongest levels in years, the stock market is near record highs, gasoline prices are falling, there’s no inflation, interest rates are the lowest in 30 years, U.S. oil imports are declining, U.S. oil production is rapidly increasing, the deficit is rapidly declining, and the wealthy are still making astonishing amounts of money.” Still, Obama is considered a failure by many. Why? Because what they see, understand and use to define their leader is for example that salaries did not go up. Thus, when talking about having a long-lasting impact, leaders need to understand how to achieve quick wins that their followers can understand and see.

Notes:

• The Civil Society
  • in the past leadership meant the strong decided what was to be done without any further legitimization
  • maintaining status-quo was preferable to not threaten the ruler’s claim to mastery
  • the concept of self-actualization based on personal freedom without any rules and forms does not work in a community -> example of the avantgarde movement
  • theses:
    • we must formulate our goals anew
    • we must learnt o save and to improve methods
    • political leaders and schools must again demand that citizens excise individual responsibility
    • citizens want to identify with the state-> they feel: We are the state!
    • committment to the community is understood to be a part of self-actualization
      • –> personal note: this applies to a company as well
  • leaders need to be assessable by the results they produce
    • the possibility of measuring and assessing performance creates personal success-based confirmation for all participants
  • we need to explain to people why we are setting new goals and seeking to change work procedures with the aid of examples
    • leadership operates less effectively with constraints and discipline and far better with participant motivation
      • tool: dialogue
  • competition has an advantage: it exerts pressure to act