There is a wide gap between the currently dominant view of organizational leadership - as supposedly practised by those in formal leadership positions - and the complex social dynamics of organizational life, as discussed in this Blog.
Although leadership is supposed to be about creativity, innovation and change, and about enabling staff to pursue the leader’s assumed-to-be-far-sighted and inspiring vision, the reality tends to be much more mundane. And, despite what might be suggested by the formal trappings of organization, decisions arising wholly from rational analysis of ‘the facts’ and step-by-step decision-making are rare – if they exist at all. In practice, people tend to make progress through informal interactions, ad hoc sense-making conversations, ongoing political accommodations, and plain, common-or-garden ‘muddling through’. Most significantly, perhaps, whilst leaders might be formally ‘in charge’, they are not – indeed cannot be – in control of the outcomes that emerge from the complex interplay of the myriad local interactions that constitute everyday organizational life.
This is not a matter of incompetence. Far from it. But it might be portrayed as such, were it not to be covered over by the superficial gloss of management speak and formal process rituals that maintain the illusion of rationality, predictability and control. Or if there was no post-hoc rationalization of actual outcomes that savvy political behaviour demands.
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