Leaders Create the Environment

Thomas Guthrie, Thomas Guthrie

• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781647012823
• eBook ISBN: 9781647012830
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

Based on his 28 years of Army service in infantry units, Tom Guthrie suggests that leaders of any organization (military, business, sports, etc.) are responsible for creating the environment that enables the organization to succeed and the members in it are developed so that they have future success. While many senior executives are capable of providing their organization a vision and even a strategy on how to get there, not many give that same amount of intellectual energy into what they want their organization to "feel" like; describing the environment that they know will get them to that vision. Tom Guthrie believes that the Environment is a function of Organizational Values, the Climate, and the Culture and that the leader "owns" all of it.E = f (Values + Climate + Culture)This is not a theoretical, rub your chin in deep thought type of book. Tom uses personal and professional examples from his career to bring this idea to life and then offers a practical example of the environment he created while commanding hundreds and even thousands of Soldiers.

Chapter 9

Freedom to Exercise Initiative

Flattening an organization is not about speed and technology, it’s about empowering members to exercise initiative.

For the past few years it appears to me that senior executives—whether they reside in business, politics, the military, or even athletics—all state a desire (a need) to “flatten their organization.” “Flat” has evidently become synonymous with “better,” but what is “flat,” and under what conditions would flat be “better”? There is no shortage of articles written on this subject, and some of them are very well researched. Since I am lazy, I will skip the research effort, but I do listen actively for context.

Most bureaucracies have a hierarchical structure associated with them (see example below). Regardless of field (business, politics, etc.), the CEO at some point gets frustrated with the layering, the processes, the difficulty with getting real information, the perceived “slowness” of this structure, and therefore demands that the organization be flattened.

Given this very common scenario, the context for which the senior executives are using “flatten the organization” is really one of “accelerating the decision-making process.” If true and with this as the context, CEOs seek to streamline the organizational structure by making it look physically flatter (it becomes visually wider and less deep). Their version of flat has almost nothing to with empowering subordinates, or creating an environment where taking the initiative is expected.

Whether intended or not, such a revised structure brings with it consequences. With a larger span of control, the CEO will undoubtedly have more meetings requiring his/her presence; he/she will probably receive more information that has not yet been vetted or questioned; and he/she will likely make more decisions per day, week, and month in this structure than he/she ever did previously. The CEOs will also feel the need to leverage technology and establish an organizational SharePoint site or company intranet that provides everyone the illusion of collaboration. Bingo! The CEO got what he/she wanted (a flatter organization) and in the process lost his/her longstanding Thursday 1:00 p.m. tee time at the club.

These CEOs got it (flat) wrong. “Flat” to them meant “faster” and, more specifically, the perceived need for them to make decisions faster.

The successful, fast, and flat organizations that I have seen and been a part of do not grade their “flatness” in terms of speed or the number of decisions that the “boss was able to make today.” Quite the opposite. Regardless of what the organizational structure looked like on paper, the successful organizations knew the power of “flat” meant moving the appropriate decision-making authority to where the knowledge actually resides (and hint: it is almost never at the top). The guy who knows the answer (the bottom box below) is empowered (dare I say expected) to make the decision, consistent with the CEO’s intent, so that the CEO doesn’t have to be the one making it.

It is not the structure of the organization, or necessarily the processes that control it that matter, but it is the organizational environment that the leader creates which governs how the people in the organization, top to bottom, interact with each other and the responsibilities/authorities vested in them at echelon that matters.

It may seem counterintuitive for senior executives to not make a bunch of daily decisions, but if they are making numerous ones, then their organization is “slow” by their own hand.

When trust and empowerment (freedom for initiative) are combined, the effects are great. Members of the organization go above and beyond their required duties and do so willingly. They want to make the impossible possible.

When I was a CPT in the 75th Ranger Regt in the early 1990s for about eighteen months, I had a very demanding job as a Plans and Exercise officer responsible for knowing and coordinating the war plans and all the training exercises conducted in both Europe and the Middle East. The hours were long, and there was a ton of travel, but there was also a lot of responsibility and autonomy that came with it.

The commander of the Regiment, a colonel, had a vision at the time to “make the Rangers known globally,” and to that end he directed me to coordinate a trip to Europe, where he could visit with like outfits from allied nations. This colonel had boundless energy and drive: the seven-day-total trip in March 1992 would involve visiting five countries during that span (Norway, Germany, Belgium, England, and France). It was an exciting and fast-paced event.

On the long plane ride back to Fort Benning, Georgia, the commander told me to write some notes down regarding his thoughts on how to move forward with getting Rangers into Europe. All I had was an airplane napkin, and I scribbled the best I could. This is a picture of that napkin, which I still have today:

I will tell you that every one of these separate “clouds” constitutes a ton of work to coordinate.

• Thirty or so Rangers to attend the French Alpine School
• A Ranger platoon (thirty to forty Rangers) to attend the Belgian Commando School
• Coordinate for ten Belgian commandos to attend our US Army Ranger School (thank God for a thing called statute of limitations because I severely “bent” a few Army, and likely national, regulations making that one happen)
• A Ranger Company (approximately 150 Rangers) to Norway for a mountain-cold-weather exercise.
• Another Ranger platoon to attend the French Foreign Legion Jungle School in French Guinea, and in reciprocation, plan an exercise for forty legionnaires in the United States
• And the big one! Plan a “secret” Ranger battalion (seven hundred Rangers) exercise with the British Parachute Regiment where the Ranger Battalion would fly from Georgia to Scotland, conduct an airborne assault into Scotland, then plan a ten-day combined exercise with the Brits. Just to make that one more interesting, he told me that he did not want to pay for that exercise, so I needed to find some other headquarters to foot the near-$4million bill. Nice.

After he finished talking and me scribbling, I asked him my big question, knowing full well the amount of time and energy it would take to pull all of this off. I asked, “Sir, over what period of years do you see all of this happening?”

And his response was predictable. “Years? Screw that. I want all of this to happen before Christmas.” Nine months of blood-sweat-and-tears staff work, we made the impossible possible. I keep that napkin as a reminder that when people trust you, empower you, and believe in you, you will do whatever it takes for t...

Table of contents

• Organizational Values
• Climate
• Culture
• Organizational Environment
• Creating the Organizational Environment: An Example
• The Knowledge that Subordinate Input is Valued
• Leaders Communicate, Listen, and Care
• A Sense of Collaboration, Shared Responsibility, and Trust Exists
• Freedom to Exercise Initiative
• Honest Mistakes Are Forgiven
• Role Models and Mentors Are Present and Active
• Challenging Education and Training
• Organizational Assignments and Opportunities that Prepare Leaders for Future Responsibilities Are Deliberately Planned
• Employees’ and Leaders’ Time Is Not Wasted
• Teamwork—Downward, Laterally, Upward, and Even with Our Competitors