09.14.09
Fullan on leadership
Quite some time ago I started reading Michael Fullan, “The Six Secrets of Change.” I blogged a bit HERE.
I picked it up again tonight and was impressed at the way Fullan sets the stage. He begins with conscious humility — that is, an awareness that all theories are limited, all applications unique. Moreover, that our ability to analyze any situation, given the complexity we now face, will be limited. For this reason he offers a strong qualifier as he begins: “wisdom is the ability to act with knowledge, while doubting what you know” (Pfeffer and Sutton, 2006).
He then proceeds by questioning some of the accepted models and accepted gurus: was Jack Welch really such a genius, or was he lucky and has his single minded modality actually begun to do as much damage as good? There are no “silver bullets.” Fullan notes that “the two greatest failures of leaders are in decisiveness in times of urgent need for action and dead certainty that they are right in times of complexity.”
So any theory is only as good as it travels the rough roads of reality. “Good leaders are thoughtful managers who use their theory of action (such as the six secrets) to govern what they do while remaining open to surprises or new data that direct further action.” (8)
Just a little further on he offers his iconoclastic critique of management theory in general: “Management theory.. has four defects: it is constitutionally incapable of self-criticism; its terminology usually confuses rather than educates; it rarely rises above common sense; and it is faddish and bedeviled by contradictions.” (16)
