Senge: dispersed leadership

Senge (Senge et al, 1999) has some fairly challenging ideas about this. He says that successful leadership of change does not have to come from the top of an organization. It comes from within the organization. He remarks that senior executives do not have as much power to change things as they would like to think.

He asks why we are struggling so much with changing our organizations, and he attacks our dependence on the ‘hero leader’. He claims it results in a vicious circle. The circle begins with a crisis, which leads to the search for a new CEO in whom all hopes are invested. The new CEO acts proactively and aggressively, and makes some dramatic short-term improvements such as cutting costs and improving productivity. Everyone then falls in line to please the new CEO, who does not suffer fools gladly. Employees comply rather than work hard to challenge the status quo, and a new crisis inevitably occurs. This vicious circle does not result in new thinking or organizational learning or renewal, or even growth, and in turn feeds our desire to find new hero-leaders. See Figure 4.1.

Figure 4.1: The search for a hero-CEO
Source: Senge et al (1999)

Senge offers some stark truths about organization change, which counteract the reliance on top-level vision set out by Bennis and Kotter.

Little significant change can occur if it is driven from the top.
CEO programmes rolled out from the top are a great way to foster cynicism and distract everyone from real efforts to change.
Top management buy-in is a poor substitute for genuine commitment and learning capabilities at all levels in an organization.

You can see Senge’s point. How could one or two brave people at the top of an organization really be responsible for envisaging and tackling the enormous range of challenges that present themselves when fundamental change is attempted? He claims that we need to think about developing communities of interdependent leaders across organizations. Different types of leaders have different types of role. He identifies three important, interconnected types of leader: local line leaders, executive leaders and network leaders.