WHARTON LEADERSHIP DIGEST 

September, 2004, Volume 8, Number 12

CONTENTS

Crisis Leadership:  What Dr. Martin Luther King Can Teach Us About Business Change
School Leadership:  Students Learn Better When Public Schools Are Well Led Leadership Development:  New Marine Corps Program
 

Crisis Leadership:  What Dr. Martin Luther King Can Teach Us About Business Change 

By Dave Holloman, Change Management Practice Leader, IBM Business Consulting Services 

Leading business change remains an inherently risky undertaking.  In today’s environment, business change leaders need every tool possible to confront the inevitable risks and challenges that must be faced and resolved.    

This article examines a change campaign in crisis and the tactics leaders used to prevail.  It is the story of a civil rights campaign under the leadership of Dr. King.  Following this examination are lessons available to business leaders championing change within their own organizations.  

A Case Study in Leadership Crisis – The Birmingham Change Campaign

It was the spring of 1963 that Dr. King and his team were paralyzed to act.  His organization was in Birmingham to obtain racial integration in downtown shopping areas.  Support for the campaign he initiated had yet to emerge and the movement was stalled.  Success in Birmingham, and King’s career reputation as a national leader, were at risk.  In this atmosphere of crisis, King called his leadership team together. 

Eight years had passed since the groundbreaking integration success in Montgomery, Alabama.  That campaign integrated city busing and raised King’s profile onto the national stage.  Since that time, his organization had searched for a new level of success that would elevate their objectives back into the national spotlight.  Racial integration in the city of Birmingham was targeted for this goal.  The strategy they employed to achieve this goal was straightforward; force local, intransient economic leaders to negotiate racial integration through economic boycott, peaceful protest, and filling local jails beyond their capacity.   

King’s Challenges 

Despite a clear strategy and months of detailed planning, King and his organization faced multiple obstacles.  Their primary challenge was a shortage of volunteers willing to protest and risk jail time.  Only a few hundred people had stepped forward to volunteer, compared with a plan that required thousands.   

Support from essential constituencies was also lacking:    

o Established members of the local community favored a solution through the normal political process. 

o Fearing economic reprisal, the African-American business community offered only tepid support.  

o Federal government intervention was important to establish a path to negotiations.  But with international concerns dominating the national agenda, the presidential administration had little incentive to act.   

o National media attention was a source of leverage King used to encourage negotiation.  King’s power lessened in their absence. 

These issues struck at the core of King’s strategy and stood squarely between his current situation and success.   

The Road to Revitalization 

Dr. King first attempted to revitalize his campaign by making a very personal decision to protest and go to jail.  King believed that a public display of personal sacrifice would catalyze support and mobilize badly needed volunteers.   However, King left jail after nine days in solitary confinement with heightened morale in his organization, but little increase in the numbers of volunteers or the amount of press coverage. 

King was then immediately faced with a controversial change in tactics. King and his leadership team debated a decision to involve the community’s youth in peaceful protest.  This was a tumultuous decision given the prospect of damaging criticism.  Core constituency groups – local African-American leaders and the Kennedy Administration – strongly advised against their involvement.  Yet the youth of Birmingham shared the passion for his objectives, were rigorously trained in peaceful engagement, and were not burdened with the threat of economic reprisal.   

King’s decision to involve them was the tipping point in his campaign. The peaceful demonstrations that followed were met with violent retribution by the local authorities.  Becoming national front-page news, photographs of police dogs attacking teenagers placed King’s objectives within the context of the conditions of the time.   

These events evoked a nationwide outcry that sparked a reluctant White House to act.  The local government, facing harsh criticism and filled jails, were left with limited choices beyond negotiation.  They entered into negotiations which led to racial integration.  King has his organization overcame their challenges and success came their way.    

Lessons Learned for the Change Leader 

Several lessons emerge from this story that are instructive for today’s business leaders: 

Conflict Can Be Constructive:  King effectively used conflict to bring reluctant parties into negotiation and catalyze progress.   

Resistance to business change is often manifested in prolonged decision making and endless calls for consensus.  These are the Achilles Heel of business change initiatives.  Faced with the prospect of delays that compromise commitments and erodes morale, the change leader may need to escalate a conflict to catalyze dialogue, decision, and action.   

Public and Personal Sacrifice Has Limits:  Change Leaders believe strongly in their “personal” power.  Yet this example demonstrates that public examples of personal sacrifice have limits.  Personal sacrifice will help to bolster your own credibility and increase morale within the internal change organization.  Rarely will it have any material affect on any person or group outside of the organization you control. 

Dramatizing the Reality to Vision Gap is Vital:  King’s strategy focused on dramatizing present conditions in a way that built credibility for his cause.  Present-day realities are often viewed as less important than a future vision.  But the gap between the present situation and the intended change motivates action.  Placing a future vision within the context of the present demonstrates the degree of progress required, which is essential.   

Execution to Plan Supersedes Stakeholder Concerns and Desires:  In the case of the Birmingham campaign, King’s key constituencies demanded different tactics.  He would have failed if he catered to all of their demands.  King knew that the tradeoff between an supportive constituent and poor execution is no trade-off.  Decision-making based solely on constituency concerns becomes a “stakeholder trap” that compromises progress. 

After success in Birmingham, King went on to deliver the “I Have a Dream’ speech and then received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in leading societal change.  It was King’s persistent application of these lessons that translated into his success, and can help executives successfully lead today’s change initiatives. 

Note:  Dave Holloman can be reached at dave.holloman@us.ibm.com.
 

school Leadership:  Students Learn Better When Public Schools Are Well Led  

Kenneth Leithwood, Karen Seashore Louis, Stephen Anderson and Kyla Wahlstrom have published a review of research on how school leadership affects student learning.  The executive summary concludes that “leadership can best promote learning concludes that leadership’s impact tends to be greatest in schools where the learning needs are most acute. How can leaders achieve this impact? By setting directions – charting a clear course that everyone understands, establishing high expectations and using data to track progress and performance. By developing people – providing teachers and others with the necessary support and training to succeed. And by making the organization work – ensuring that the entire range of conditions and incentives in districts and schools fully supports teaching.”   

Note:  Published by Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, and Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (September, 2004), a summary of the report is available here.    

Leadership Development:  New Approach in Marine Corps Program 

By Colonel Melvin G. Spiese, Director, Expeditionary Warfare School, Marine Corps University, Training and Education Command; and Major Paul Nugent, Program Director for Leadership, Marine Corps University, Training and Education Command 

U.S. Marines are being tested Afghanistan and Iraq, and central to achieving their mission is the quality of their leadership. Current Marine Corps leadership development, while successful, is inconsistent beyond the entry level and does not provide formal instruction or tools for new roles as Marine officers ascend the institution’s hierarchy.  This precludes assurance of success in individual development, and limits standardization of understanding and performance across the Marine Corps. 

Marine Corps officer leadership development consists of three elements:  intense and demanding training in rigorous entry level programs, formal counseling as a part of the Performance Evaluation System, and informal mentoring by seniors.  Marine officer screening at the (three-month) Officer Candidates School and training at the (six-month) Basic School (TBS) revolves around leadership. Training is skill-based and focuses on modeling institutionalized traits and principles in an evaluated environment.  Formal leadership instruction ends upon completion of TBS, whereupon development is supplanted by a dynamic, informal mentoring process.  However, this process is not optimal and often forces officers to “discover” advanced leadership skills on-the-job as they assume positions of greater responsibility, and fill new roles well beyond those that can be mastered through modeling the basic traits and principles presented at OCS and TBS. 

As officers advance, they will see a corresponding expansion of the span of control consistent with their positions, while being further removed from the majority of those they will lead.  As a result, they will be less able to dominate or influence subordinates directly by their physical presence, and will become far more dependent upon subordinate leaders.  Consequently, we are taking an entirely new approach at the Expeditionary Warfare School (EWS), the Marine Corps’ ten-month, professional military education program for captains.  We have designed a curriculum targeted at preparing the students for the new roles they will assume when they graduate.  Instead of a skill-based set of tools designed for an environment dominated by the presence of a hierarchical leader, we are developing a knowledge-based program to prepare students for their new leadership roles in the operating forces.  The goals of the EWS program are to engender an understanding for developing subordinate leaders and to inspire a bias to lead within an ethical framework.    

The new EWS curriculum will be built on the leadership progression model presented in figure 1 (the figures are located here).  We have not been able to locate any reference to support the model, but it has been validated in every venue in which it has been presented.  The model recognizes five stages in the leadership hierarchy.  It is novel in acknowledging the value and experience gained in the intensive and demanding entry-level training pipeline, while appreciating the change and development of the officer-candidate and officer-student.  The model displays leadership progression as a maturation process occurring in stages.

 Our program is presented in the four modules depicted in figure 2.  The first module is a review of instruction and experiences up to this point in the student’s career.  It is unique in its linkage of core values to the traits and principles, as the foundation upon which they must be grounded (figure 3).  The second module is the core of the new academic instruction and is intended to elevate the officer from a skill-based leader, modeling traits and principles in an environment dominated by his presence, to a knowledge-based leader dependent upon subordinate leaders.  This module will address how leadership is learned, taught, and assessed.  In addition to academic instruction, guided discussions within conference/focus groups, and case studies, each student will design a strategy for developing subordinate leaders.  The case studies will be appropriate to rank and occupational roles ensuring relevancy of issues presented.  Studies will be oriented to more ethically and morally challenging peacetime scenarios, rather than the typically stark combat scenarios presented earlier in their careers.  Instruction will culminate with the presentation of strategies for developing subordinate leaders.   

The third module addresses leadership in adversity and prepares the students for their return to the demanding environment of the operating forces of the Marine Corps.  It will  build upon a new understanding of leadership, and prepare our graduates for the challenges of the current operating environment in the Global War On Terrorism.  This module will include panel discussions with recent combat-experienced leaders, warfighting situational and decision-making exercises, and will conclude with cold weather exercises at the Mountain Warfare Training Center, Bridgeport, CA in February.  The forth module will be reinforcement during the remainder of the year.  

Our end state is students with a more complete understanding of leadership and themselves, an appreciation for the new roles they will assume as leaders, and some tools to apply when they assume their new leadership duties as they return to the Fleet Marine Forces. 

Note:  Colonel Spiese can be reached at melvin.spiese@usmc.mil.  A description of the Leadership and Ethics Program of the Expeditionary Warfare School is available here.