And the year comes to an end
Now that the school year is done, I wanted to take the opportunity to explore a bit more all of the things I have learned in my various classes. While some classes may not be applicable right away, I know that all the tools and frameworks I have studied for the past year will be useful in the future. I can't believe a whole year has already gone by and that I start my internship in three weeks. One of the classes I took in the spring semester was focused around frameworks and ideas to keep in mind and have a direct impact right away, during the internship.
In Leadership in Organizations, we mainly focused on one framework: the congruence model. For the whole semester, we looked at different parts of it and how changes to any one section had a ripple effect throughout.
While we studied the whole model, some key areas of it really stood out to me the most: executive leadership, culture, and change. Having worked at Amazon prior to pursuing my MBA, I had become used to having an overall vision for the company cascade down to affect my everyday work. Having strong leadership is something I have been conscious to look for in any company that I may want to join. I fully believe that the leaders of the company should set the vision and strategy, while allowing its workers the freedom to pursue those goals. For the summer I will be interning at the NBA, which has a very strong history of being driven by its commissioners. While looking at various other companies for the summer, I began to understand a bit more what I considered strong leadership. I tended to lean towards the company where nearly every discussion mentioned the director, vice president, or CEO and what his/her vision was. A company that I absolutely loved, Facebook, was described by many of my peers after a company visit as seeming almost like a cult, due to their constant mention of "Zuck" and his goals for the company. In my eyes, it symbolized clear goals with everyone working together towards them. I began to see the distinction between leadership and management, and the fact that leaders could show you the vision for the future rather than sit down with you to start building it, which is typically what I prefer. The best leaders in my eyes were those that not only communicated their goal, but took the time to understand the obstacles in the way, how the company could overcome them, and how he could be of help. One CEO considering himself smart enough to do it is not a leader; the CEO who is able to motivate his workers is. Weak leadership will affect the whole company, as the model shows; it will create a weak strategy, affect the culture and its people, and likely damage the output.
The second aspect of the model that will stick with me is culture. In order for me to succeed at a company, the fit has to go both ways. I have to enjoy what I am doing while providing work that is valuable to the company. I tend to be more laid back and work well with a team. If I joined a company where the culture and social norms stated that all internal interactions were to be formal and work was to be done alone, it would not be a proper fit for me. While I like to challenge the culture that states "this is how we've always done it", I have come to understand my boundaries and how far out of my comfort zone I can push myself before my fit with a culture, or lack thereof, begins to impact my work. I appreciate a strong culture, as I mentioned previously in leaning towards the "cult-like" companies. But a strong culture can also be a hindrance sometimes, when a company must adapt to changing times and is unable to do so due to its stickiness to the past. I learned that while most people think that the most important thing to being hired or being happy in a job is having the skillset necessary to succeed, the true success lies in understanding your surroundings, constantly re-evaluating your options, and making the best choice available. As we learned, nothing is black and white; instead, choices are presented as a dilemma, without the right answer, only trade-offs.
Lastly, a topic that affects nearly all aspect of the congruence model, change. Discussing change had the most impact on me. Having worked at a company where our priorities changed weekly, sometimes daily, taught me to work in ambiguous situations, but not how to appreciate the work that goes in to making quick changes and how to take part in it. The model we studied in class for change had three parts to it: unfreeze, change, refreeze. While it may take a long time to change the strategy, culture, output, or any other aspect of a company, there are various parts to it that cannot be skipped. There are eight steps that should act as a guideline for a company going through major changes:
Establish a sense of urgency
Form a powerful guiding coalition
Create a vision
Communicate a vision
Empower others to act on the vision
Plan for and create short-term wins
Consolidate improvements and produce still more change
Institutionalize new approaches
This process can take months to years to instill in a company. It is important to display the need for change and create a buzz around it. To convince people that change is necessary, it needs a group of strong leaders to communicate the message. It is a better approach to have the top 20% of people that want to change work on the people in the middle who are on the fence about it, rather than the ones at the bottom, whom, no matter the arguments made, will not change their opinion. Next, leadership needs to create and clearly communicate a new vision. By clearly displaying the why, they should empower the workforce to discover the how to get there. A company will not be successful in achieving change if it does not have the buy-in of its workforce. Next, everyone needs to celebrate all the small wins throughout the changing times, in order to motivate everyone to continue down that path. Along with celebration, everyone should be looking for anything that can be consolidated and producing more change. Once the company has become stable again, the new way needs to be institutionalized, so that all the work towards changing does not revert back to its old ways.
While there were many more topics we discussed in the class, these are the three key takeaways I will take from the class. I can directly apply bits and pieces of these learnings during my internship and at a full-time job after graduation. In addition, looking back at the course holistically, it gives me the chance to really pin down my takeaways and summarize what I would like to keep, which I hope to do with a few other courses.
