Values Leadership?

Return To Humanitarian Series Post

Recent unusual comments and social positions were taken by numerous CEOs that got me to thinking about the limits to which CEOs should support or reject social, political, or personal causes within the business environment.  Many CEOs on both sides of the aisle seem to be overstepping the boundaries or at least what was thought to be a boundary.  How do we define those boundaries and what should be supported? 

Values Leadership?

In The World Is Flat the author, Thomas Friedman, outlines an overarching vision that people work for companies that embrace their social, political, and religious ideologies. Friedman went on to indicate that governments deal with CEO's directly and the people indirectly. The idea is that people, the majority, would gravitate towards companies that hold popular beliefs and companies that hold unpopular beliefs would fade away or change. The political leadership then transitions from its current form to one of CEO politicians and aristocrats who oversee them. In a strange sensibility, political, religious, and personal views would be economically rationed and the government would no longer have elected leaders represent the people. In chapter four, Friedman points to comparisons between the Industrial and Information revolutions leading to a belief that the flattening could have been predicted by Karl Marx.

There has been trending in the direction that companies assume human-like qualities. In 1886, the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company the United States Supreme court ruled a corporation is the same as a living breathing organism. The ruling has become known as corporate personhood in which corporate law has been built applying laws intended for humans to the corporation. Complicating this position of corporate personhood is the emergence of the corporate governance that fundamentally changes and commingles personhood with governance. A corporation assumes under corporate governance, at some level, governing responsibilities. Among these governing duties, the corporation has a moral, ethical, and economic responsibility to its people. 

Corporate governance which includes sustainability efforts institutionalized the infusion of political initiatives into business giving CEOs a venue to express their personal, political, and religious beliefs. CEOs from both sides of the aisle have jumped on this supporting nearly every personal, political, or religious cause regardless of merit. Political leadership in the US has also pursued state-owned enterprises, SOEs, which are also economic venues for advancing political ideologies. This has framed a debate to what extent should personal, political, and religious views of CEOs be infused into industry and business or should the people be empowered equally to follow their own personal, political, and religious beliefs as the United States founding documents guarantee.

Two companies recently embattled over the views of their CEOs are Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A. Their positions are diametrically opposite as are their approaches. Starbucks' CEO insists upon his personal views telling dissenting shareholders to sell off shares - leave. Whereas, the CEO of Chick-Fil-A speaks to principles and values that his company holds. The difference is one threatens dissent and the other sets principle-based values for the company. I need to pause here and frame the discussion. The merits of any specific social debate are not part of this discussion. This is a discussion about leadership style and the extent to which a CEO's personal value system should become part of the business.

The paramount question that must be addressed is what criteria apply to determine if a social concern is applicable to a business. The traditional purpose of business is a value-added process in which there is a redistribution of wealth in return for productive work and risk-taking. In short, labor is compensated for productive work and business owners are compensated for taking a risk. The business puts money in the pockets of people. An ancillary debate is under what system does this perform best; capitalism, socialism, or some other system which is not part of this post but is discussed a little in the post, Transitioning World - New Economy. Social concern must somehow couple to, at a minimum, optimizing risk and/or improving the workforce of a business. Most companies are connecting social concerns to sustainability initiatives that assure long term profitability. For example,

• Sustainable workforces
• Sustainable resources
• Sustainable markets
• Sustainable environments

The book Collapse: How Society's Choose To Fail or Succeed discusses an operationalized view of sustainability in complex economies. The author, Jared Diamond, looks to the capacity and capability of the ecology and economies. Diamond argues that societies that succeed make choices related to sage sustainability based on the carrying capacity of the economies and ecology. For the purposes of this discussion, societies are treated as companies.  If work and resources are monetized then sustainability also applies to the wise use of available currency in the economy or business.  In choosing social issues to support, CEOs must ask at least three questions:

• How does this assure long term profitability? 
• How does this optimize operations and the business? 
• Does support of this issue exceed the carrying capacity of the organization? For example, does supporting a social cause increase health care costs, result in the loss of the workforce, or place an unnecessary tax on the business such as to exceed the ability to support.

Many social issues do not advance profitability or optimize operations for the business. Both Chick-Fil-A and Starbucks have failed to demonstrate how their support for opposing sides of the same social issue benefits the business. In fact, the Starbucks CEOs encouraged negative outcomes to the business limiting the prospective pool of investors (and customers) if people opposed his personal view that has yet to demonstrate business value.  Is that a wise business practice? Furthermore, there is little evidence that a CEO's personal, political, and religious views in support of a cause of the moment attract sustainable labor in the long run. Most labor is interested in two things; a reasonable paycheck and secure employment driven by natural causes as opposed to the perception of artificially held security. 

In the United States, the appearance is that religious institutions no longer drive one's personal moral code but instead a system of CEOs and aristocrats economically ration values to the workforces. Oddly, the workforces are forbidden to speak about personal, political, and religious views in the workplace. Yet, CEOs are not only discussing these topics in the workplace but imposing personal, political, and religious views into business as a requirement for participation.  For example, a  mortgage management software vendor requires all employees to sign a document stating a belief in Global Climate Change and green initiatives in order to be employed. How are the CEO's views connected to the business and grander than any of those working for the CEO? Somehow, stacking the deck with politically sympathetic employees is good business?

I wonder from where do these CEOs get these values and how do we evaluate its honest merit when it is economically rationed via a paycheck? Is that the measure of virtue, a paycheck? The truth comes down to the virtue of the value, principle, ethic, or moral code. There are methods to assess the virtue but those methods are independent of the business. A high degree of confidence in an unsupported or poorly supported personal, political, or religious belief does not meet the test of virtue.

In the end, CEOs must use some sort of rule of thumb in selecting social causes to support. Whatever the cause, it should fit snuggly into a set of well known and understood criteria that has widespread support of not only the workforce but the customer base as well. In doing so, meaningful, productive, and reasonable outcomes have enjoyed that advance the business ensuring long term survivability.

References:

Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Penguin Books: New York.

Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat. (1st e.d.). Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: New York.

Return To Humanitarian Series Post

Bottom Up Leadership

Comment: Most people think of leadership as being something top down and doing what they are told. The fact is that everyone is called to be leaders. Unfortunately, few have proper leadership training or realize that a greater amoun t of leadership is bottom up.  Bottom up leadership is not about kicking your boss in the butt to motivate him or her. Leadership, in general, is about motivating others to effect a change. Bottom up leadership is the ability to effect that needed change from a humble place.

Leading Bottom Up

In some situations there is faulty, absentee, or weak leadership top down. This occurs for a variety of reasons. The individual is simply inexperienced, has an emotion aversion towards leadership, has an incorrect focus, or has causes that are not just. Other situations are such that you have a good idea, you know how to solve a persistent problem, or you want to change something for the better. If you are under one or more of these situations then what to you do?

You step up and lead!

The American Forefathers abhorred aristocracy as much as tyranny. Bottom up leadership is the classic model of leadership that the American Forefathers used when framing the United States under the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the U.S. Bill of Rights. They designed a framework in which the common human being could rise up to perform great feats then return to the humble origin from where they came. Another example of bottom up leadership is the Biblical form of leadership. Even modern culture has shifted more towards bottom up leadership known as democratization. There has been a movement to democratize many activities such as design, conversations in the public sphere, governments, and  even marketing. Methods include small groups in the church or community planning in Progressive party, design of the Internet using Request for Comment’s (RFCs), and many more approaches. The idea in all of these is to take a vision, build support, and achieve an end state.

The Leadership Model

Leadership begins when you correctly identify a problem, formulate a vision, set the goals to get you to the end state, and motivate people to join the cause. Bottom up leadership requires that the leader builds constituencies’ not only beneath them but to a greater extent on their level and above their level. Each group requires different approaches and may even have different goals common to the same end state. The successful leader is capable of pulling it all together.

More importantly, constituencies must believe in the cause, solution, or end state. The successful leader has an end state and goals that are deemed worthy by the constituencies’ who are stakeholders and principles in the cause. The cause must not be self-gratifying, self-indulgent, or apply to a limited group of people among those affected. The cause may be different to groups within the constituency but the end state will remain the same.

Parsing bottom up leadership into formal, informal, positional, green, thought, and other forms of leadership does not change the practical skills or the process. The leader may adjust the tactics and approaches used but the leadership process remains stable.

Top Leadership

Wise leaders at the top are not top-down leaders. They are top-out and tend to delegate authority to the bottom up leaders. For top leadership, the general thought shifts from looking inward at the organization for control to looking outward guiding where the organization is going. This is a paradigm shift for many people who feel a tight control is important. Leadership is a loose control over the constituency and more akin to the idea of charging ahead, throwing your arm up, and shouting follow me! Those who see the value in your efforts will follow.

In conclusion, bottom up leadership is really true leadership. Bottom up leaders are not attempting control. They, too, like top leadership are looking at where they are going and not where they were. If everyone were leaders looking to the future then organizations would soar.  People would be pulling together not  good ideas but instead good vision as well as good works. Onward and upward.

Leadership: Plan for Updates

Comment: This is the eigthth post of the Leadership Process series. I began this series because I saw a lack of rigor and discipline to leadership. The purpose of these posts is to look at a process model used by leaders. 

Plan for Updates

Many leaders tend to shoot from the hip. They assess, in their minds, what needs to get done and just do it. They are in charge and direct people to perform the necessary steps. That is the way things got done in the days of the movie star John Wayne.  Today, complexity frustratrates the process with nonlinear relationships and uncertainty or risk. Leaders need to be more diligent and deliberate in their actions and decisions. Thus, the need to plan updates to the vision and strategy.

The updates are generally known and were an outcome of assessing results. They typically would originate from the EBO process. specifically, measures of effectiveness and triggers would indicate the adjustments necessary to correct the efforts tracking.  The intent is to make the necessary adjustments to refocus the effort and achieve the planned results. Once the updates are prepared and infused in to the strategy they re-enter the cycle for another go around. 

If necessary, the constituency is informed and adjusted as necessary. Then the organizational design is reconsidered to ensure it meets the new demands. Finally, the PM recieves the adjustments and mobilizes the resources in order to compensate for the updates and move closer to the strategic goals and objectives. Finally, the updates are assessed to determine if progress was made or additional updates are required.

In the end planning for updates requires small adjustments to the strategy and vision that trickle down through the EBO process seeking to affect the measures in favor of the desired outcomes or effects.

M-Theory Brief

Comment:  This science brief was intended to prepare readers for another series by establishing a rational perspective of cosmological concerns about other dimensions. I am coupling this to the leadership series with the intent to demonstrate how a leader's rational thought and the ability to communicate complex ideas is important. I choose M-Theory because of its widespread recognition but has literally no practical understanding by the general public which has lead to some irrational cosmological beliefs. By the end of this, I hope that readers have a functional understanding of the theory and concepts.

M-Theory

M-Theory has been  popularized in many movies such as Timeline, The Matrix, and many others. Hollywood took a creative license when investigating the many possibilities of the theory. Nonetheless, M-Theory is relatively new being introduced during 1997 by Physicist Edward Whitten who sought a unifying theory for the everything. The theory stunned the science community because of its well supported and demonstratable applicability. The meaning of M-Theory designation is just a serialized name for the theory to distinguish from other theories like G-Theory or Q-Theory. Scientists do not know what to call it yet.

Whitten in developing M-Theory, took the well establised equations of space-time, the theory of relativity, quantum loop theory of gravity, superstring theory, and others  into a mathematical relationship that demonstrated a ten dimensional universe with a mathematical error as a 11^th dimension. The error is generally thought of as insignificant and indicates the model may not be complete yet.  The underlying support for strings is that everything is in a natural resonance or vibrational state, known as harmonics, which is characterized by an oscillating string linking the quantum realm to the physical realm.

Conventions In Physics

Let us first consider some conventions used in physics. Many people hear about particles and strings but have little grasp as to what these things really are about. They are abstractions that represent a local grouping of collective behavior physicists are observing.

Particles generally appear in the Planckian realm at an order of magnitude of about 10^-30 meters. In lay terms, particles are generally thought of as soupy fields of local goop (not plasma fields as they occur at a higher order of magnitude) that demonstrate a common behavior. Physicists assign the concept of a particle to the field in order to conduct 'combinatory play' or foley with the behaviors. Consider love and hate. They are intangible and not empirically observable but we know they exist and have some general traits. If a love particle and a hate particle are assigned traits such that they resemble something like pool balls, then we can assign the qualities of love and hate to the respective particles. In this way, we can begin to explore their interactions.

Likewise, harmonics and waveforms resemble an oscillating string and can take on many other shapes. Please recall when as a child you took a long rope or string and shook the end such that a wave or bump travelled down the rope, this is the  concept of strings as used in physics. Strings describe the behavior of lightwaves, particle waves, and a variety of wave shapes.  The string is mathematical formulation of the harmonic state of the waveform. Thus, innumerable strings are possible. Edward Whitten used the most probable strings in formulating M-Theory which are a closed loop string as opposed to an open ended string.   

Harmonics and M-Theory Formulation

In M-Theory, strings are infinitely thin and run through the substance of space-time forming the 'fabric' of space time. The natural resonance of all things is a natural harmonic that requires a time basing association of the waveforms or strings representing the resonance. Looking at M-theory, the first four dimensions are space-time and the remaining six dimensions are natural but cannot be explored by humans directly. Let's look at some of these equations briefly to understand what is going on.

The equations for space-time are expressed as functions of time and annotated as X(t) for example. A is acceleration, V is velocity, and X₀ is the intitial displacement in space. The equations of space-time are:

X(t) = 1/2 At² + Vt + X₀
Y(t) = 1/2 At² + Vt + Y₀
Z(t) = 1/2 At² + Vt + Z₀

The dimensions are X, Y, Z and t or Time. In a simliar fashion the Theory of Relativity is developed into a function of time.  E = MC² is the Theory of Relativity that must be transformed into a function of time as the common point of reference. The equation for velocity is distance over time or distance as a function of time, D(t). Thus, the speed of light;   C = V(t)  where V(t) can be in any one of the first derivative (velocity) of the three spatial directions X(t), Y(t), or Z(t) or a combination of directions known as a vector as well as their formulas on the other side of the equal sign.  The equation becomes:

E(t) = M [ V(t) ]²

On a side note, many scientists hold the speed of light constant in order to make their theories work properly. However, there is evidence that the speed of light may vary. Theories indicate that the universe has been / is expanding. This has the effect of dilating time and subsequently affecting the speed of light. For example, relax a rubber band and put two marks one inch apart, name the span between the marks 1 second, then place the rubber band under tension. The marks spread apart making the distance between them greater but the definition between the marks remains one second. The dilation is related to the delta in the distance between the marks before and after tension. The universe is also said to be under tension of expansion forces counter by equal and opposite particle forces that want to draw the universe back to a singularity. 

The fifth dimension becomes energy, E(t), which includes three of the four natural forces and is now tied to space and time. Gravity is a sixth dimension as string's tension describes quantum gravity. While seemingly complicated this is the approach Whitten took. All these equations were based on time and used to formulate unified equation of reality. Common to linear algebra methods, a matrix of simultaneous equations was formed to solve the equations for various conditions and instances.  Hence, the movie The Matrix draws its dichotomy of reality (the red pill) or the matrix versus illusion (the blue pill) or the results produced by the matrix from this analogy.

Looking Deeper



Figure 1

Whitten went farther than we did here as he used 11 dimensional strings that tied the quantum to the physical in Superstring Theory. Please refer to Figure 1: Wave form Basics, in the following discussion. Note that vibrating strings can occur in 2 or more dimensions.  Velocity of a vibrating string is frequency. Acceleration is the rate of change in velocity. Additionally, vibrating strings' amplitude is associated to the energy in the system. Tension or stiffness in the string is associated with gravity. Time is associated with the period and wavelength of a string. For example, a second of time is one wavelength of Argon gas.  The remaining dimensions are related to the harmonics of vibrating strings and may be attributed to other natural dimensions as well. Time basing the equations is necessary in harmonics. The mathematical error consists of the eleventh dimension which is technically insignificant.  Whitten Discusses.

The significance of M-Theory is that it illustrated to scientists that the parts or pieces of the universe were well understood and science had been too close to the puzzle preventing them from seeing the picture being assembled. Many scientist equated the discovery to stepping back and looking at the whole elephant from a distance rather than up close and only seeing the individual components.

Subset Theories

When the ten dimensions of M-theory are conformally mapped into three dimensions to see what they look like the process reveals an infinite number of spheres called Worlds and large infinitely thin sheets known as membranes or Branes for short.  This model has become known as the Brane-World model of the universe. Scientist then hypothesize that the worlds (spheres) collide with each other or are slapped by the membranes flapping like a flag in the wind. These collsions between Worlds results in new universes that are merged together or bounce around like pool balls on a billard table. Meanwhile, a World slapped by a membrane, The Many Slap Theory, results in a reordering of the World or Universe. Such a slap from a membrane would be considered a Big Bang from within the universe.

There are many implications for M-Theory and it has some profound impacts on the human perception of reality and the human place in the cosmos.

I hope you enjoyed the read and gained some valuable insight into the theory. My goal was to communicate as best possible a complex concept. Please fell free to email me and let me know your thoughts. james.bogden@gmail.com. Thanks!