Innoversity Blog

Dangers of prototypical leaders

I am going through quite a lot of articles at the moment, and the difference between how I read articles now compared to how I did it in the beginning of my phd-project is significant. Because now I know what I am looking for, my data presents me with interesting patterns, and I look into theory for theory to aid my understanding and interpretation of those very patterns.

One of the articles I read today was different though, even if it was not exactly was I was looking for, the article had me reading it from beginning to finish, and their research will definitely be referenced in my dissertation, somehow. It was an article from Academy of Management Review by Hogg & Terry (2000) entitled: “Social Identity and Self-Categorization Processes in Organizational Contexts”. There were several interesting points to pull from that article, but one paragraph was particularly interesting, and this is what I thought that I would share with you: Their discussion of the social construction of leadership in groups:

From a social identity perspective, leadership is, according to Hogg & Terry from University of Queensland, a “structural feature of ingroups (i.e. leaders and followers), which is produced by the processes of self-categorization and prototype-based depersonalization. Therefore (...) being a prototypical group member may be at least as important for leadership as having characteristics that are widely believed to be associated with a particular type of leader” (Hogg & Terry, 2000:128).

What this means is, that leaders often become leaders exactly because they embody “the aspirations, attitudes, and behaviors of the group”(Hogg & Terry, 2000:128), and not necessarily because they possess leadership qualities and competences. This is as such not interesting per se, we see that everywhere, the socalled Peters Principle or Law, where people are promoted until they no longer excel in what they do. The interesting thing in this article is their description of how groups tend to form such leaders themselves, through dynamic processes of social identity construction in groups with a high degree of group cohesiveness.

The danger to innovation then is that cohesive organizations (which we see everywhere in or branded and teambuilded organisations) then, according to Hogg & Terry (2000:129) often end op producing leaders who are selected as leaders exactly because they reproduce the present and therefore are less likely to produce the future (and even less likely to produce innovation). Such organizations:

1. Produce leaders who are prototypical but do not possess task-appropriate leadership skills (and end up producing groupthink instead of good management)
2. Consolidate organizational prototypes that reflect dominant rather than minority cultural attributes, and thus, exclude non-prototypical others from gaining influence, and obtaining managerial roles, and therefore
3. Produce an environment that is conducive to the exercise, and perhaps abuse, of power by leaders.

However, as Hogg & Terry explain (2000:130): “This rigidly hierarchical leadership scenario is most likely to emerge when conditions encourage groups (and organisations) to be cohesive and homogeneous, with extremitixed and clearly delimited prototypes that are tightly consensual”.....

Hmmmmm, something to think about......

Serial Innovation (Sopranos II)

I already made one post about serial innovation, but thought that I wanted to develop that trail of thought a little further, with a look into the processes employed by the Sopranos crew, and how they benefit from the differences in the group in their serial innovation.

have been watching a few of the behind the scenes featurettes, as well as looking into interviews with both the executive producer David Chase, as well as audio commentaries by both producers, directors and screenwriters, in order to better understand the process they go though in the development of each of the Sopranos episodes. And it actually is quite an interesting picture emerging from these leisure-time studies of mine (some would call it procastrination, but since I do it for the blog, is most certainly is not ;.D)-

In the development of each of the episodes, the overall story-line, it seems that the team of writers, producers and directors meet on a regular basis, where they use collective ‘sit-downs’ (as Tony Soprano would call them), where the together will discuss and develop on the stories and episodes, and what they want to happen to whom, as a group.

After this initial brainstorming, they will decide who of the writers should then continue working on the storyboard, and then one of the staff writers will go off and write up a first draft of the episode and then come back and present it to the team. Based on what the team then decides, changes will then be made by the whole team, and sometimes another writer will be asked to re-do it or alter the whole episode script.

Once the script then has been approved, it will be given to a director. The directors of the show cannot pick and choose the episodes they would like to direct, but are given an episode based on whom the group finds to be the best director of that particular episode, and then they take over from there.

Often the director is someone from the outside, not part of the staff, who will then be working with the cast in creating each episode. Some of the directors have directed more than one episode, but many of them are newcomers. I have not yet been able to find out very much about how this use of director-as-newcomer is perceived by the cast. I have heard several of the directors mention that it feels quite strange to be ‘in charge’ at the set, whilst at the same time being the newcomer. But it most certainly provides for a continuous addition of new perspectives, and the director has to build on the talent working with him, he/she will never get away with a “my way only-approach”.

I would however like to find out what the cast thinks of the fact that they are continually confronted with a new director. They will usually spend between 8-12 days shooting each episode, and with each season consisting of app. 10 episodes, they are likely to be instructed by a new director ever other week or so.

Imagine working on an innovation project where the project manager is replaced every two weeks?

Managing serial innovation....

Over the last couple of weeks I have become increasingly fascinated with the hugely popular and most talked-about TV series “Sopranos”. The mobster series features the life of depressive mafia boss Tony Soprano and the life of his two families. Apparently, no American show on cable has ever been more successful with both critics and fans - and with good reason. I love it!

Watching The Sopranos on DVD is a great evening get-away from my writing, reading, thinking and analysis work done during daytime at Stanford. But even while watching Sopranos, innovation (the focus of my Ph.D.) never completely leaves my mind. And so I started wondering how on earth the Sopranos and other successful TV series manage to keep innovating - to capture their audience show after show, year after year?

How do the successful TV series crew and cast manage this? How do they manage what one might appropriately call ‘serial innovation?’

I realize that I do not have the answer to this question, but yet I started wondering - and began looking at the team behind the success of Sopranos - the cast, the crew - and I was soon to discover one interesting thing; namely that the managerial team (producer and co-producers, screenwriter and director) is NEVER the same from one episode to the next. NEVER! Is that not interesting?

For every episode of the Sopranos, either a new director or a new screenwriter will be added to the managerial team and someone else will exit; only the chief producer (Sopranos creator David Chase) has been constant over the six year production period. Everyone else is in and out - constantly. To illustrate this ever changing managerial team, I have made a list of the writers and directors for each of the 13 episodes of the first season, sourced from Wikipedia (click image to enlarge).

                                                                                                                                                              Could one of the explaining factors behind the ‘art of serial innovation’ be this constant constant mix and re-mix (many of the names appear several times) of the managerial team?

It does most certainly make sense in that it would provide for the continuous re-creation and re-negotiation of the set, the series itself, the story-lines, the cast etc. Different people constantly not only ‘manage’ the story, the crew, the cast and the series, but also prevent ‘the way things are done around here’ from being introduced to the set.

Such managerial flux forces the crew to continuously negotiate and re-negotiate their individual part, both with the newcomers, and with the existing cast and crew - which maintains a sort of permeable boundary around the ‘innovation group’, preventing them from becoming too settled in their roles too quickly, one of the primary barriers to successful innovation.

Imagine if organizational innovation was managed in the same way? Imagine if you brought in a new ‘screenwriter’ (content manager) for every innovation project? Or a new director (process manager) for every new episode (innovation project)?

This was just one thing we could learn from the production and innovation of successful TV series, but I know that there are many many more and I already look forward to exploring them further ..... so if this has you interest, please stay tuned for another episode of the innoversity  blog ;-D

Team based innovation

According to an article by Kratzer, Leenders & Engelen (2004) approximately 80% of companies today make use of a team-based approach to innovation, where teams are become the locus of most organisational innovation activities. This is probably hardly a surprise to anyone!

The big surprise however, consists in the extreme lack of knowledge about the functioning and management of such innovation teams. We tend to know quite a lot about the functioning of project teams, about project management - the literature and research on the topic of teams and how to manage teams is both vast and abundant. But when it comes to the management of innovation teams, we know surprisingly little about the conditions that may enhance or obstruct their performance, which is why - I guess - that so many innovation teams end out being managed as if they were project teams.

But there IS a huge different between managing a project team and managing an innovation team. When you manage an innovation team you do not know where you are heading - which is why the project management approach applied to so many innovation teams and innovation projects - bring about both poor and relatively non-innovative results.

We most definitely need more research in this field; we need to know more about how to manage innovation teams!

In my Ph.D. project I am focusing on the practice of such innovation teams, and while I primarily take an interest in the construction of homogeneity and diversity in such teams, I of course also focus on how such teams are managed! And in doing literature searches  for my project on the topic of team-based innovation or the management of innovation teams, I still come across very little research - which is kind of surprising as this must be a key concern and a highly important topic to app. 80% of organisations today (!!).

NBB: The picture is from a Wine Festival in Cairanne in the Rhone Valley, taken last summer - where I was quite amazed by the ability of this band. The members seemed to excel in collaboration and improvisation, even though they were walking around among the people playing their music, and some of them even managing to be sipping red wine at the same time.