The Accountable Leader: Developing Effective Leadership through Managerial Accountability

272 Pages·2008·1.55 MB·English

by  Brian Dive

AccountableLeader_TP:beyond branding PB TP 2/6/08 17:26 Page 1
THE ACCOUNTABLE
LEADER
Developing Effective Leadership
Through Managerial Accountability
Brian Dive
London and Philadelphia
In memory of my sister Susan
and my lifelong friend Phil Mears
Publisher’s note
Every possible effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this book
is accurate at the time of going to press, and the publishers and author cannot accept
responsibility for any errors or omissions, however caused. No responsibility for loss or
damage occasioned to any person acting, or refraining from action, as a result of the material
in this publication can be accepted by the editor, the publisher or the author.
First published in Great Britain and the United States in 2008 by Kogan Page Limited
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or
review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication
may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the
prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction
in accordance with the terms and licences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning
reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned
addresses:

120 Pentonville Road 525 South 4th Street, #241
London N1 9JN Philadelphia PA 19147
United Kingdom USA
www.koganpage.com
© Brian Dive, 2008
The right of Brian Dive to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978 0 7494 5160 8
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dive, Brian.
The accountable leader : developing effective leadership through managerial
accountability / Brian Dive.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-9-7494-5160-8
1. Leadership. 2. Organizational effectiveness. I. Title.
HD57.7.D587 2008
658.4'092– –dc22
2008017598
Typeset by JS Typesetting Ltd, Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements x
Praise for The Accountable Leader xii
Introduction 1
Part 1
1 Accountable for success 7
Held to account – what does it mean? 7
Accountability, organization design and effective leadership 10
Accountability: what does it mean? 11
Why is accountability important? 12
The link to authority 15
Teams and shared accountability 16
What is management accountability? 16
Personal fulfilment on the front line 20
The Accountable Leader Chapter 1: Key points 20
2 Organizing for accountability 23
Hierarchy: the response to increasing complexity 23
The importance of a sound organizational platform 24
What makes for an accountable organization in which leaders are
held to account? 26
The importance of organizations being ‘in flow’ 27
The Accountable Leader Chapter 2: Key points 32
iv Contents
3 Leaders and leadership development 34
The Napoleon syndrome 34
Leadership versus management: a barren dichotomy 35
A key distinction 36
What is meant by leadership? 37
The issue of talent 39
Leadership pipeline – what pipeline? 40
Leadership development in the organization 42
Job evaluation: status, grades and ranks 43
Self-actualization 48
The Accountable Leader Chapter 3: Key points 48
4 Holding leaders to account: leadership by design 50
The DMA Solution Set 50
What is Decision Making Accountability? 51
The importance of conceptual integration 52
The link to business strategy 53
Management layers and work levels 57
The Seven Elements of DMA 62
The Accountable Leader Chapter 4: Key points 73
Part 2
5 Held to account at the front line 79
On the level 79
At the sharp end 79
The Seven Elements at the front line 80
Challenges at the front line 84
The supervisory role in the first level of accountability 85
Support roles and their link to authority 87
The supervisory challenge at the front line: a ‘spanner in the works’? 90
Spans of control 99
The well-organized customer service front line 100
Warning signs: typical issues resulting from multiple tiers of front-
line supervision 101
Possible next steps 102
The Accountable Leader Chapter 5: Key points 103
6 Managing the front line 105
A rule of thumb: organize for value from the front line 106
Contents v
The Seven Elements at the second level of accountability 107
Implications for management 111
The problem with professionals 112
Attention: spans 115
Key steps to define the optimum span of control 124
The span of control questions 125
The advantages and shortcomings of narrow and wide spans 125
Layers: redressing the balance 126
The Accountable Leader Chapter 6: Key points 127
7 Managing the managers 130
The essence of Level 3 accountability 131
Issues at Level 3 136
The business unit 138
Automation 142
Organization design problems at Level 3 143
How it works in practice: a Work Level 3 case study 144
Dwell-time at Level 3 149
The Accountable Leader Chapter 7: Key points 150
8 Managing on a global stage 154
Strategic accountability 155
When is a regional headquarters justified? 159
What does the CHQ do? 170
Reporting links 175
The Accountable Leader Chapter 8: Key points 177
Part 3
9 Organizational design accountability and leadership in practice 183
Leadership development schemes and why they fail 183
Organization design is critical to leadership development 184
Operational and strategic work: identifying the dividing line 189
Performance is no guarantee of promotion 191
The importance of boundary moves 192
Faulty organization design masks the identification of talent 197
Confusion about values, skills and competencies 199
The way forward? 205
The Accountable Leader Chapter 9: Key points 208
vi Contents
10 Leadership development schemes: how can they succeed? 211
The challenge 211
The key steps to identifying and developing leaders 212
Pulling the threads together 230
The Accountable Leader Chapter 10: Key points 230
11 Tracking a successful leader 232
The era of the inclusive leader 232
A Level 8 career track 232
Advising leaders at Levels 6 and above 243
The Accountable Leader Chapter 11: Key points 244
12 The accountable leader: 20 key ideas 245
20 key ideas in this book 245

References 248
Index 254
Foreword
What company does not want to describe its organization as ‘high performance’?
To achieve this goal, a variety of continuous improvement (eg lean six sigma)
and annual ‘enterprise wide’ re-engineering initiatives are often put in place,
to engage the entire organization from the bottom to the top. Yet, as Brian
Dive demonstrates in The Accountable Leader, there is much more to achieving
organizational effectiveness than simply optimizing business processes. In
particular, the power of a leader depends on the power of the context: the
structures in place that, depending on their design, can either support or
constrain people as they try to perform.
The core elements of organization design include structure, decision rights,
information flows and motivators. (At our own firm, we call these the ‘building
blocks’ of an organization’s DNA; together, they determine its culture and
collective capabilities.) Brian’s previous book The Healthy Organization correctly
emphasizes the roles of decision rights – or as he calls it, Decision Making
Accountability (DMA) -- and their direct linkage to appropriate organization
structure. It is not by accident then that one of the frequent areas of rapid cost
reduction that we find with our clients (often representing up to 20 per cent
in headcount reduction by function or business unit) is in delayering their
organizations by clarifying DMA up and down the organization spine.
What is new about The Accountable Leader? It provides a critical piece of
the organization design and strategic leadership puzzle, one that is often
overlooked. It turns the focus on the application of organization accountability
principles from efficiency to effectiveness, especially in the area of leadership
development. Far too many companies cannot develop leaders effectively
because of a dearth of leadership roles where the incumbent has clear
viii Foreword
accountability established through well-defined decision rights up and down
the organization.
For example, the most important decisions are often made by a process of
multiple layers and committees of review, followed by an ultimate decision
made only at the top 1 or 2 layers. Brian makes a key point that ‘managerial
leadership’, especially in up to Levels 3 or 4, cannot be developed in this
environment. Organizations at their core are created and designed to execute
against a set of stable processes that can be measured and improved upon
over time. Managerial leaders are put in charge of functions or business units
to get results from resources applied against these processes. As Brian defines
accountability of a managerial leader, it includes this ‘goal oriented behavior,
a role that is neither shared nor conditional, that is meaningless without
consequences, and that applies to individuals’. This description appears quite
apt when applied up to Level 3 or 4.
But leadership changes when the role transitions from primarily ‘opera-
tional’ to ‘strategic’ – or to what Brian terms ‘Strategic Accountability’. Here
The Accountable Leader provides detailed descriptions, in the form of ‘seven
elements of a role’ (Nature of Work, Resource Complexity, Problem Solving,
Change, Internal Collaboration, External Collaboration, Time Frame) for
each of the levels. In the management consulting vernacular we often call the
operational tasks required of a business the ‘running and fixing’, while the
strategic tasks are the ‘changing’ of the business. And we also say that ‘Change
Leadership is a TEAM Sport’.
When it comes to leading change, the best CEOs are not capable in all
dimensions. But they know how to bring together a team that represents a full
range of ability. Any individual leader typically is strong in just one or at most
two ‘leadership spikes’ from four main change leadership attributes:
Thinking creatively and innovatively;
Empowering others through focus on execution;
Aligning through the ability to integrate across disparate insights and perspec-
tives; and
Mobilizing through motivating and encouraging the organization.
The most successful CEOs are aware of those change leadership attributes
where they are themselves not strong, and they compensate by teaming against
strategic change initiatives with other executives who have complementary
‘spikes’.
This is consistent with Brian’s views that the nature of the collaborative
elements increases dramatically as organization levels increase. It also explains
Foreword ix
in part why the vast majority of strategic change initiatives at corporations fail
to achieve their original intended target – failing to understand the important
distinctions between managerial and strategic leadership. If for only this key
insight, Brian’s latest book, The Accountable Leader will be a valuable book for
senior executives, CEOs and Boards of Directors who are involved in top
leadership development and CEO Succession.
Steve Wheeler
Senior Vice President
Booz Allen Hamilton
Acknowledgements
The evolution of ideas underpinning this book took many years of fieldwork
in many countries to germinate and come to fruition. I am indebted therefore
to a great number of people along the way who have enabled me to identify
and refine the ideas that form the basis of this book. I referred to the lineage
of thinkers and the key events that first sent me down this path in The Healthy
Organization (2002) and others subsequently in the second edition (2004).
Since then I have worked with others who have helped me further test the
assumptions that now form the basis of this book. Many of these leaders have
moved to other organizations since, but they include Valerie Scoular (Aegis
Media and Barclays), Mike Cutt and Stephen Lehane (Alliance Boots), Fiona
Rodford (BAA and Alliance & Leicester), Rachael Mason (Air New Zealand),
Pavita Walker, Sue Turner, Adam Pearce when at Barclays and latterly as an
OD colleague, Malcolm Saffin and Peter Dugmore (Cable and Wireless),
Shaunagh Dawes (Orange), Claire Davies (QBE), Iain McDonald (Royal
Bank of Scotland), Catherine Glickman and Jane Storm (Tesco Stores), Joe
Singleton (New York DEP), Chris Johnson and Paul Fretten (UK Cabinet
Office), John Fingleton and Sarah Kaye (The Office of Fair Trading), Judy
Vezmer (Reed Elsevier), Chris Dik and Luc de Baets (Ahold).
I have also enjoyed working with key players in Booz Allen Hamilton such
as Dave Mader, Martina Sangin (USA), John Potter (UK), Marco Kesteloo,
Robert Spieker and Ralph Maenen (The Netherlands), with support from
Vinay Couto, Gary Neilson, Tim Hoying and Giri Rao in the USA.
The work in Chapter 10 in New Zealand and Australia was carried out
with the support of Janne Pender, Collene Roche, Eileen Henderson, Chris
Faisandier, Phil Mahoney and Pat Lynch.