i’ve got to work faster
and spin new flesh
and weave new bone
with every letter and word
to move my ghost
from impernanent me
to a lasting digital sea

i can do the blood in ink,
i can sing the sinew with
a keyboard accompaniment,
but it’s the harrowed heart
that’s the centre of the art
i cannot get;
how to take
this single soul
and put it here;
how to place
my white-hot light
and make it sear
what i am
and what i was
into you and yours
i am at a loss
on how to emboss
and make my mark
on it all

It’s weird. The death of Stan Lee has really choked me up. Here I am a 50 year old man and I keep finding myself emotional over the passing of the comic book legend.

Maybe it was what he represented. All those amazing characters he created (chief among them to me was Spider-Man) or shepherded represented something substantial and good in the world. Each of them flawed human beings like the rest of us. Identifiable.

Somehow he took the remarkable and made it achievable through the humanity each expressed.

Maybe I couldn’t shoot webs or climb walls but I could be nice, I could be compassionate.

What a guy…he will be missed.

just a skinny New York Jew
that went on to change the world
one dumb kid at a time;
here’s to you Stanley Martin Lieber,
maybe Spider-Man to the end
but you were Peter Parker too,
teaching us that the best part of being human
came from what was behind the mask
and we could be heroes…

“The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the state of entropy of the entire universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time. The second law also states that the changes in the entropy in the universe can never be negative.”  – Sadi Carnot

Basically all things degrade; all things run-down; all things tend toward chaos.

I write a lot about the 2nd law as it relates to human systems, management and leadership because I find it apt (and it makes me seem smart). I repeat myself in this area because I think this is an area that largely bears repeating – it is important and people forget about it.

Leadership and its subset, management, are critical bulwarks against entropy in organizations where the 2nd law is at work in determined and often rapid fashion.

Without sound, cohesive, intentional leadership over an entire system or organization a vacuum forms. When this happens another wondrous law of nature comes to play with entropy – nature abhors a vacuum.

Situational leaders, people who rise to the occassion for good or ill, fill the gap left by the absence of structured leadership and they do so in a haphazard, tribal and often ill-informed fashion.

Each of these sitch leaders attempts to slow the entropy threatening their particlar ecosystem. Their vision is often limited to their silo, they are rarely experienced leaders, and they almost never consider the whole but only the part they exist within. When they do consider the whole they do so with incomplete information.

As these leaders develop across an organization the irony is their efforts to stem entropy in their fiefdoms accelerate it across the whole. This often leads to selfish decision making and conflict – decisions that seem right for the area but do not work when the whole is taken into account.

The longer this state is allowed to persist the more difficult it is for an incoming leader/manager to bring it under control.

Lack of sound leadership can destroy organizations.

Leadership vacuums can occur for a number of reasons – the person in charge is not, in fact a good leader and abdicates authority to other managers down the chain. This is not the same as trust and one should know the difference.

A good leader enables their managers to do their job in order to ensure the hositic vision and goals of the organization are met. A poor leader simply lets their managers manage the whole organization out of laziness or fear of conflict and does not enforce a central vision and stays generally uninvolved.

Sometimes people leave an organization. This happens all of the time. I am a firm believer that organizations do not live and die on the basis of one individual – none of us are that important from the board chair, mayor, CEO, city manager on down.

That being said, having the right person in the right position is critical to organizational effectiveness.

This is why you should never promote someone to a position of leadership simply because they have been there the longest. This is the absolute worst possible thing an organization can do in these circumstances and it can be very destructive. It is like organizational Russian roulette. Do not take people who are performing excellently in one area and move them to another, different area, because you assume they will perform just as well.

You put good leaders into position of leadership regardless of their tenure and experience.

Many times when an organization loses it’s head, so-to-speak, after the departure of a senior manager in a position of overall leadership, it is thought that the best thing to do is to go into a state of sustain until the new leader can come in.

There is no such thing as sustain in organizations – you move forward or you degrade.

This is often the mistake of boards, councils, legislatures etc. Assumptions are made at the board level that the organization can weather the storm over a few weeks/months without any leadership – just business as usual.

When senior leaders depart it is the board’s responsibility to ensure strong operational leadership is in place even if they have to exercise it themselves.

This is not a popular opinion. It runs square up against the axiom that boards govern and staff operate and neither the twain should meet. But like all good rules (and this is a good rule) there are exceptions.

Boards must step up and ensure a strong central vision and the policies and procedures that go with it remain in place and are enforced in the interim between leaders or else the situational leaders take over.

This happens very quickly – not days or weeks but rather minutes and hours.

Boards must be intentional about this. They cannot sit back and assume staff will imform them if problems arise. They must appoint a representative who connects immediately with remaining management and staff to communicate the will of the board while the circumstance persists. They must be willing to ask questions and seek out info.

You get the point. To fight entropy in leadership vacuums contingency plans need to be in place for just such an occassion – plans that answer the question “what do we do if the CEO quits?” Plans that are actively and intentionally developed to ensure strong, central management persists through the transtion. Most importantly the organization needs to be ready to implment those plans immediately.

Penguin is sending me a copy of Slavoj Žižek’s latest book to review so stay tuned. The book is titled Like a Thief in Broad Daylight: Power in the Era of Post-Humanity. See Penguin’s description below:

“In recent years, techno-scientific progress has started to utterly transform our world – changing it almost beyond recognition. In this extraordinary new book, renowned philosopher Slavoj Zizek turns to look at the brave new world of Big Tech, revealing how, with each new wave of innovation, we find ourselves moving closer and closer to a bizarrely literal realisation of Marx’s prediction that ‘all that is solid melts into air.’ With the automation of work, the virtualisation of money, the dissipation of class communities and the rise of immaterial, intellectual labour, the global capitalist edifice is beginning to crumble, more quickly than ever before-and it is now on the verge of vanishing entirely.

But what will come next? Against a backdrop of constant socio-technological upheaval, how could any kind of authentic change take place? In such a context, Zizek argues, there can be no great social triumph – because lasting revolution has already come into the scene, like a thief in broad daylight, stealing into sight right before our very eyes. What we must do now is wake up and see it.”

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/311/311080/like-a-thief-in-broad-daylight/9780241364291.html

Exercising good leadership in a growing organization can be a little like juggling on a tightrope whilst blindfolded. Take to firm a hand and you risk alienating valuable staff; become too hands-off and your people and departments can spin off into choas like so many planets into space after their sun vanishes.

A balance must be struck between active involvement and the exercise of trust in people who were hired to do their jobs.

It can be particularly difficult for boards and their various dopplegangers (municipal councils, legislative assemblies, house of worship elders or councils etc).

One of the reasons it is difficult for boards is becuase the goal of a board is to focus and emphasize governance and not to nitpick at the operational level – this is what the CEO/Executive Director, city manager, CAO, deputy minister, pastor, imam, rabii etc. is for.

Staff report up to the CEO and the CEO reports to the board. All communications from staff to the board should go through the CEO and all communication from the board to staff should be through the board chair/mayor etc.

So how do we manage effectively and no when there are issues at the operational level? Well the kind of reports provided to boards on a monthly basis should contain metrics that can provide you with an overall sense of organizational well-being. The reports should give you the information you need to ask the right questions.

Ultimately the health of an organization is dependent upon the strength and clarity of the vision as developed by the board and effectively communicated to the staff through the CEO.

The CEO should be someone who can assist the board in developing the vision and be capable of implementing said vision. There should never be a disconnect between the two as that creates friction and structural breakdown at the operational level.

An organization should never be in a position where the CEO is complaining to staff and management about the board and the board should never be in a position to be complaining publicly about their CEO – when this happens one or both have failed in their roles.

Conflict will always arise in organizations and it is up to the board and management to come to a place of understanding and peace – if they cannot management needs to go.

You might ask – “why not the board? Maybe the board needs to go.”

This may be true but this is the decision of the shareholder/member/electorate at the AGM or election and for them to make an informed decision they need information and that is their responsibility to get it and the responsiblity of the board to ensure the organization distributes it.

Unhealthy organizations fear distributing all but the most harmless information. The healthiest organizations are as transparent as they can legally be.

If you want to know how healthy an organization you are a member of is start asking questions. Stonewalling, patronizing or outright lack of response is a sign there are significant problems.

Back to leading amidst growth.

There are two primary kinds of organizational growth – strategic/planned growth based upon the need to meet strategic vision and unplanned, reactive growth that results from a lack of vision at the corporate level.

The first kind of growth happens when leadership is clearly and regularly communicating the strategic vision to the staff and the members of the organization. The second kind of growth happens when there is no strong strategic vision or that vision is not communicated on a regular and clear basis.

In the second instance the vacuum of vision and leadership begins to be filled on an ad hoc and tribal basis at the department level. This most often leads to internal conflict, low morale, and inappropriate spending on competing micro-visions developed by formal and informal departmental leaders.

You want the first kind of growth but this requires a great deal of effort and intentionality on the part of the board and the CEO. It requires a clear vision that feeds a strong and clear corporate strategic plan that can be elecidated at increasingly accurate levels from 5 to 3 to 1 year on a rolling basis (or whatever timeframes are appropriate for your organization).

From this plan department heads are to develop departmental strategies accordingly – all designed to meet the desired results of the corporate plan. At this level all hiring, budgeting, growth etc is fed by and feeds the strategic plan and vision.

In all of this one of the significant keys to success is strong, clear, vibrant, inspiring communication of the vision and strategic plan to the staff and membership.

For a plan to succeed those obligated to carry it out must be inspired and believe in that plan. They must feel like they matter in the ultimate achievement of said plan and have been able to contribute to the development of the plan and vision otherwise you are simply an organization trying to maintain the status quo all the while deteriorating into chaos. You become the practical outworking of the second law of thermodynaimcs demonstrating that all things tend toward entropy and fall apart.

The struggle with leading in a time of growth is that growth brings immediate challenges that need to be met and it is easy to forget the vision and strategic plan in order to remove the challenge as fast as possible. However if you do this you risk eroding the vision and plan with poorly thought out decisions that have a ripple effect throughout the organization.

It is better amidst growth to allow immediate pain and take time to make the right decision than to eliminate the pain by a quick decision and suffer significantly over the long term.

The longer you take to implement sound vision-based leadership the more likely small, tribal leaders will emerge and become recalcitrant in their ways communicating competitive visions to their staff creating conflict between staff and one-another as well as staff and the CEO/board. In this circumstance departmental needs begin to outweigh corporate needs and costs can begin to dramitcally increase due to decentralized, selfish thinking.

If you are not careful you run the risk of being in a situation where you have to reboot the entire organization from the top on down which, while it may be necessary, is both costly and distracting.

To avoid this from happening the board must maintain a strong and healthy relationship with the CEO while the CEO must do the same with management and management with staff. Each relationship models the next and starts between the board and the CEO feeding the organization with the organization feeding the membership and the membership then feeding and informing the board.

Eventually a healthy cycle ensues…and trust me when I say the absence of a healthy cycle is not a vacuum – it is the creation of an unhealthy and destructive cycle that sees perpetual turnover, escalating costs, and constant disastisfaction amongst all stakeholders.

Strong vision. Strong strategic plan. Strong leadership and, tying it all together, strong communication – these are the keys to success amidst a growing organization.