This last week, I’ve been poring over a Deloitte working paper titled “Leadership by Design.” You can read a description on the Deloitte site and then download the paper, or jump right to the download. They say that the paper is intended to address fundamental questions about “how we approach leadership in organizations.” Here are the questions.
“Should organizations leave leadership to chance? Are there any CEOs or Chairs of boards who are confident they have both the right set of current leaders and the infrastructure in place to develop an effective set of future leaders?
Or, are there concrete ways they can deliberately increase the likelihood of having the right leaders with the right skills and capabilities—now and in the future?”
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking, “Why, that’s leadership development they’re talking about.” You’re right, but the firm starts by describing their key assumptions.
- Leadership matters.
- Leaders are made not born for the situation at hand.
- The term “leadership” is definable.
It turns out that Deloitte’s definition of leadership is a tad eccentric. First they define three kinds of problems: tame, crises, and wicked. The Deloitte definition of a “wicked” problem is different from the Horst Rittel definition that comes out of city planning.
Not familiar with that definition? I emailed several colleagues and asked them if they recognized the term, because I did not. The only one who did was a city planner who referred me to some of the literature.
The bad news is that it’s easy to get bogged down in the intellectual exercise of defining “leadership a la Deloitte.” The good news is that there’s a lot of value in this paper even if you don’t buy into (or even understand) the Deloitte definition.
My suggestion is that you don’t bother much with the definition, unless you relish that sort of thing. Read it and keep going. If you’re at all interested in leadership development, this paper is a must-read. You probably won’t agree with everything you read, but you’re sure to garner both insight and ideas. To encourage you, I offer the list of “several leading practices that cultivate truly great leaders” in companies around the globe. Every one is presented with a list of questions to ask.
- Their leadership strategy is their business strategy
- They know how to spot potential.
- They view leadership development as a contact sport.
- Their senior team leads by example.
- They “feed the network” in order to feed the pipeline.
- They use formal learning to accelerate on-the-job development and catalyze networks.
- They use technology to make development readily available and pervasive.
- They measure impact.
- They keep things simple.
