Dr. Holley (my dissertation mentor) has pointed out some issues that need to be addressed. Most notably, why would any leadership care about my study? I think that leaders should always care about how their customers (patients) and employees are communicating with each other and how they are communicating with management. Social networking presents problems for old-style corporations or organizations that have always maintained tight control over what is said within and by and about their organization. Such control is lost when social networking tools are used. However, on the potentially positive side, social networking can also open the lines of communication between patients and clinicians and between employees and management. Such openness has the potential of reducing confrontation and increasing collaboration between employees and management (Chesbrough, 2006; Levine, Locke, Searls, & Weinberger, 2001; Tapscott, & Williams, 2008). I am also planning to do some research on how social networking could affect the cost of healthcare and productivity for both patients and clinicians. I am eager to see if there is an affect.

References:

Chesbrough, H. (2006). Open innovation: The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.

Levine, R. Locke, C. Searls, D. and Weinberger, D. (2001). The cluetrain manifesto: The end of business as usual. New York: Perseus Publishing.

Tapscott, D. & Williams, A.D. (2008). Wikinomics: How mass collaboration changes everything. New York: Penguin Group.

P.S. My new word-of-the-day is winsome. I was called this by someone I work with. What do you think?

Overloaded Donkey Cart OR My Life as a Donkey

The last couple of months have been “interesting.” There is an old Chinese curse that says “May you live in interesting times.” 2010 has definitely been that for me! In the last couple of months my post-concussion syndrome headaches have reasserted themselves. They haven’t been as bad as they were initially, but they’ve still been very hard to deal with. I’m on a different headache preventative Rx, but they still come and go. They just make dealing with everyday life difficult. So I decided to make a few changes in my life in order to try to relieve stress and, hopefully, prevent headaches.

1. I decided to take a break from school. I’m not quitting. I’m not even stopping working on my dissertation. I’m just taking a few months off from classes. I’m thinking that I will start back up again after the New Year. I’ve just been so tired with everything and everyone but school has made the sacrifices for me. Work has been wonderful. My family and friends have been supportive. Mark has been phenomenal! I just need to take some time to relax a bit.
2. I’ve decided to stop watching so much TV. I have already cut out the commercials by recording everything I watch on DVR first, but so much of TV is just pure drivel lately. Even the “educational” channels like Discovery, TLC, National Geographic, and Biography have turned to mush with sensational, shallow, and hollow TV shows. It’s really quite sad… Not even the SciFi (now Syfy) Channel has embraced the lowest form of SciFi for movies and gone away from its original mission and started showing “professional” wrestling and Ghost Hunters.
3. To replace all of my TV watching I’ve decided to read more. I suddenly find myself in various stages of several types of books, depending on my mood. I just finished The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (more on that later…). I’m also reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Ethics: The Heart of Leadership, Socialnomics (as an Audible.com book), and Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason (another Audible.com book). All are interesting and the topics vary pretty widely.
4. I’ve also decided to take on a mini-project called Photo365. The idea is to take one photo each day for a year and post it on the web to share. Yes, this is another social media thing. I’m going to start on September 1st and go through August 31st, 2011. Once I start uploading photos, I’ll post them on http://365project.org/ and share them here, on Twitter, and on Facebook. It will be interesting to see what comes out of it.
5. I also plan to blog more often. I’m considering starting some series on life, photography, interesting questions to ponder, the aforementioned reviews of what I’m reading, and probably some op-ed pieces too.
6. I’ve taken a break from Toastmasters. I was in two clubs and was also being encouraged to participate in leadership roles. While I enjoy the Toastmasters program and have learned a LOT about public speaking, I find that a) I want to dive in and fully participate right before b) I collapse in an exhausted heap from even thinking about diving in and participating fully. I will return to it, but I just found myself having to say “No” and feeling lousy because I really wanted to say “Yes” to everything I was asked to help with.
7. Finally, I’m going to get into an exercise regimen. I joined Curves and really enjoy the program, but all of the headaches I’ve been having, coupled with all of the pressure I’ve been under lately, have made getting there to DO the exercise quite difficult. Starting Monday, I’m getting back on that horse and will go AT LEAST 3 days each week.

Have you ever had to do anything like what I’ve done here? How did you handle it? Any advise? Please comment. I’d love to hear from you.

I tend to be a person who embraces change and rolls with the punches that change throws my way. I don’t say this to brag, but to advise. Change is going to happen. As leaders, we need to work hard to prepare our followers for the coming changes. If we know there is a reorganization coming, then as leaders we need to help our workers shine so they find a place in the new organizational structure. If we know there are layoffs coming, we need to prepare our followers for that inevitability so they can land on their feet and keep going. I would also hope that leaders in this program will also stress the need for followers to educate themselves. Not everyone is cut out to pursue a graduate degree, but a culture that values education is one that can innovate its way out of tough situations. That’s my two cents…

Kofman & Senge (1993) pointed out that three major organizational challenges must be overcome in order for an organization to integrate an organizational learning culture. These are “fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness.” A very relevant example is currently unfolding in the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. I am not referring to the organization called BP, but to the United States Government. While these problems may occur within BP, I have not studied this company enough to prove it. However, the “fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness” of the US government is obvious and I have studied that organization for years.

Fragmentation:
The Hill News website reports (Snyder, 2010) that three Congressional committees are having hearings on the BP Oil Spill. Recently I heard of another five hearings that were happening. In addition the following agencies have been cited as being involved by the media: Minerals Management Service (2010), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (2010), the Coast Guard (2010), the EPA (2010), and others. This fragmentation shows an abundance of rework being done and quite possibly a lack of communication between the agencies. While I’m sure that the Federal Government is committed to hiring intelligent people to work for these agencies, and I admire them a great deal, the lessons learned from this environmental catastrophe will not be easily shared across organizational boundaries (Scott & Davis, 2007).

Competition:
Competition and finger-pointing between and within the political parties is not doing any good for this situation either. Playing the blame game only causes divisiveness and wastes time and resources (Guttman, 2005). The parties should come together to solve the problem, not stand apart and point fingers at each other. They are both responsible for making the government function and right now the government is too fragmented to function effectively.

Reactiveness:
Because of the cronyism that runs through both parties and at all levels of government, the response to the oil spill has been reactive and chaotic. While BP was required to file a disaster response plan, according to documents obtained by the media (The Maddow Blog, 2010), BP had apparently cut and pasted sections from other drilling disaster plans because they mention animals that live in cold climates, not the Gulf of Mexico. Nobody in the government caught this or, if they did, they did nothing about it. These reactions are wrong and do not demonstrate a learning organization.

Will the Federal Government learn from this disaster and make changes? I don’t know. I hope so. Your thoughts?

References:

Environmental Protection Agency. (2010). EPA response to the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/bpspill/.

Guttman, H.M. (2005). Partnering to solve team problems. Leader to Leader, 2005(37), 16. Retrieved September 7, 2009, from ProQuest Database.

Kofman, F. & Senge, P.M. (1993).Communities of commitment: The heart of learning organizations. Organizational Dynamics; Autumn93, Vol. 22 Issue 2, p4-23, 20p. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=9402182644&site=ehost-live.

Minerals Management Service. (2010). News and Press Releases. Retrieved from http://www.gomr.mms.gov/homepg/whatsnew/newsreal/newsreal.html.

National Ocianic and Atmospheric Administration. (2010). Publications, Factsheets and One-Pagers. Retrieved from http://response.restoration.noaa.gov/topic_subtopic_entry.php?RECORD_KEY(entry_subtopic_topic)=entry_id,subtopic_id,topic_id&entry_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=812&subtopic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=2&topic_id(entry_subtopic_topic)=1

Scott, R.W. and Davis, G.F. (2007). Organizations and organizing: Rational, natural, and open system perspectives. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Snyder, J. (May 10, 2010). Congress opens probe into gulf coast oil spill. The Hill. Retrieved from http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/96865-congress-opens-oil-spill-probe.

The Maddow Blog. (June 9, 2010). Preshow homework: BP wasn’t ready (Blog post). Retrieved from http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/06/09/4487189-preshow-homework-bp-wasnt-ready.

US Coast Guard. (2010). Coast Guard Compass. Retrieved from http://coastguard.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/06/stay-up-to-the-minute-with-the-deepwater-horizon-response/

For millenia almost every culture on the planet has been led by “Great Men” who have been rich or influential enough to garner enough power and strength around them to run things by force or strength of will. Perhaps we need to get away from following such people and look for more of what Robert K. Greenleaf calls Servant Leaders. These types of leaders are not interested in amassing power for the sake of building up themselves and their interests. They are interested in serving others through leadership so that everyone benefits, not just their friends and followers. Becoming a Servant Leader takes a change in mind-set from most of the examples given in the past. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. were Servant Leaders. Their protégés haven’t had the same successes that they did because they don’t seem to understand how to be Servant Leaders.

Is it possible to get away from the tyranny of the Great Man Theory of leadership in the United States? I don’t know. Servant Leaders are a rare breed, but perhaps if more leaders were to espouse this newer theory and begin working for the betterment of everyone rather than for just themselves and their followers, we would begin to see real change in the world. Perhaps corporations would learn to make money for their shareholders while also being good to their workers and the environment. Perhaps politicians would work for the benefit of their constituents rather than their donors. We need to start expecting this from our leaders if we ever hope to get it.

What are your thoughts on this? How can we switch to Servant Leaders? Are Servant Leaders and Great Men (or Women) mutually exclusive or can they blend techniques? Please share…

I just finished listening to the Audible.com version of The 360-Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence from Anywhere in the Organization as read by the author, John C. Maxwell. I enjoyed listening to it and Mr. Maxwell reads it very well. Mr. Maxwell gave advice on how to lead your supervisors, peers, and subordinates in a manner that is inoffensive to all three groups and yet still gets things done. It seems that what some forget is that leadership is a matter of influence, not force or position.

Learning how to build influence has been a tough lesson for me to learn, but I think I might finally be getting the hang of it. I’m not talking about learning to manipulate people or win at office politics. I am talking about building a reputation for yourself as a subject matter expert (SME) and proving that expertise over and over again. In part, leadership is an exercise in constantly improving yourself so that you can work on helping others improve themselves, their situations, and the organizations you work in.

While leading from the middle can be tricky, Mr. Maxwell’s book is full of examples of middle leaders who have had an effect on all levels of their organization. While I don’t agree that some of Mr. Maxwell’s examples are positive examples of leadership, I do agree that they are correct. He uses former Vice President Dick Cheney as an example of a 360-degree leader. I agree that Cheney is a leader, but not one that leads for the betterment of everyone. His influence and decisions have led us down a path that has caused environmental, social, and economic disasters that now must be corrected while Mr. Cheney sits back and shrugs his shoulders. I would encourage Mr. Maxwell to pick more positive examples in the future.

Are you a middle or 360-degree leader in your organization or community? Please share your story and challenges here. I’d love to know how you are handling the issues mentioned here.

One of my classmates asked the question “Am I a leader?” The instructor thought this was an extraordinary question to ask. In hindsight I have to agree. I have always seen doctoral students as strong-willed, determined individuals who are working to become leaders in their fields. Why else would anyone put themselves through this process? I feel that I have been a leader my whole life and my tendency to set goals and work to achieve them is one of the traits that makes me a leader.

To answer my classmate’s question for myself, yes, I am a leader! I may not be a manager in the organization I work for or a district officer in Toastmasters, but I am a leader in almost everything I do. At work I have a manager that I report to, but I am a leader to about 500 of my coworkers who have been trained as site administrators. It is my job to teach and guide them in using a communication tool and to become effective, efficient, and proficient in using it. When they need help I provide it. When they are stuck, I make suggestions for making progress. When they don’t remember or understand something, it is my job to rephrase or re-explain something. I love doing it!

That is just one reason why I am pursuing my doctoral degree…