November, 2007, Volume 12, Number 1

CONTENTS 

RETIRING THE GENERATION GAP
By Jennifer J. Deal 

A NEW POWER ELITE? Making Sense of Evangelical Influence
By D. Michael Lindsay 

EVANGELICAL EXECUTIVES: Q+A with D. Michael Lindsay
Wharton Leadership Digest 

LESSONS FROM SPAIN: How Leadership Can Foster Innovation
By Mark Hanna

RETIRING THE GENERATION GAP

By Jennifer J. Deal 

The following article is a condensed, edited version of the presentation by Jennifer Deal at the 11^th Annual Wharton Leadership Conference on June 7, 2007. 

Is there a generation gap in the office? Certainly media reports and office chatter would have us think so.  

Young people, we hear, want to play video games all day, while thinking they should be in charge the Monday after they start. They are disloyal and will leave the job at the drop of a hat. Young people need praise all the time, yet they are non-conforming and don’t understand the rules of workplace.   

Stereotypes of older people are equally common, including that they are RIP (“retired in position”) and unwilling to leave their jobs until someone drags them out. Older people can’t learn new things - especially technology.  

People tend to have these implicit mental conceptions of who older people and younger people are, and what they can and cannot do. For a counter point, however, consider this hypothetical job description: Well-paid interesting work, with opportunities for learning and advancement, a supportive boss, credible leaders and trustworthy peers and subordinates.  

Who wouldn’t want that job? The truth is people of all generations want jobs with those characteristics. So is there really a generation gap? 

Demographic Realities and the Leadership Pipeline  

At the Center for Creative Leadership, we constructed a survey on the topic and gathered data for more than five years. As of April, 2007, we had more than 6,000 respondents from more than 100 organizations on 6 continents. The results reported in the book (and in this article) are based on the 3,200 respondents both born and currently living in U.S. 

We broke our American respondents down into five cohorts: 

   The Silent Generation, born 1925-1945

   Early Baby Boomers, born 1946-1954

   Late Baby Boomers, born 1955-1963

   Early Generation X-ers, born 1964-1976

   Late Generation X-ers, born 1977-1986 

What most people don’t understand about the generations is their relative size, and that is critical. It affects everything from retention to advancement to the need for learning. The defining demographic fact of Generation X is too few bodies, especially as compared to the Baby Boomer bulge; there are more than a million fewer Gen X-ers than there are Boomers. As the 1994 McKinsey & Company study War for Talent said, in the short term, the demand for young talent will far outstrip supply.  

Because organizations face a leadership talent gap, they are likely to be paying more for young talent. At the CEO level, it’s not much of an issue because we can always import CEOs.  But five levels down in the leadership pipeline, it is an issue; if you have too few bodies to fill jobs at the bottom or middle of the pipeline, you potentially have a real problem.  

The take-away here is that stereotype of young people having an “entitlement mentality” is based in demographics; supply and demand underpins everything in the workplace. Gen X-ers are a scarce commodity, and they can demand more because the market will bear it. This understanding is critical because it affects the way you deal with requests like pay raises. If you walk in thinking, “They feel so entitled,” you are going to deal with them differently than if you are thinking, “Their demands are not personal, it’s just a matter of economics.”  

Everyone Wants to Learn 

I’ve had people come tell me, “If I know an employee’s generation, I can develop a training system for them; their age is all I need to know.” I find that outlook rather frightening, in large part because our research found surprisingly high levels of similarity across generations. In other words, age is not the critical piece of information people think it is. 

When we asked respondents about learning on the job, 97% across generations said it was important . . . and when do 97% of people agree on anything? This finding is particularly important because it means you can walk in assuming most people of every generation want to learn; you don’t have to spend time convincing them. Happily, 90% of respondents reported they were learning on the job.  

Why do people want to learn? Many respondents said the work contract has changed: they don’t think they have a job for life. Their desire to maintain their viability on the job market creates a driving desire to learn. Again, happily, 79% said they were developing skills they need for future. What’s important for employers to realize is that on-the-job learning is about as important as pay when it comes to retention, and that can be especially important for younger people who are bumping up against non-retiring Baby Boomers. 

Learning Depends More on Level than on Age 

So people of all generations are motivated to learn. But what do they want to learn? The common wisdom holds that older people want training on big picture things like vision and strategy, while younger people can’t see the big picture and therefore want only skills and tactics. Yet, when we offered respondents 40 different areas of learning, there were no substantial differences among the generations in what training they wanted. 

When we looked at level-in-organization, however, we found a strong pattern. Everyone wants leadership training.  As people move from professional to executive positions, their desire for skills training goes down, while their desire for strategy, vision, managing change, and team building goes up. Only those in management positions are strongly interested in strategic planning. Therefore, if you want to know what training someone wants (and believes that they need), it is more productive to look at their position in the organization than their age. 

Though level and age are highly correlated, we found that position in the organization was more relevant to what people wanted to learn than their age was.  In other words: a 30-year-old executive and a 50-year-old executive are likely to want the same development, and what they want is going to be different from a 30-year-old and a 50-year-old professional.   

Surprising Facts about Computer-based Training 

How do people want to learn new skills? We gave respondents 15 options, including three that were computer based. Before we began the study, many people assured us: “Younger people want to do everything on the computer, and older people don’t want to touch the computer at all.” 

What we found was remarkably consistent across the generations. When it comes to soft skills, such as leadership and communication, respondents from every single generation rated “on the job” as their first choice; computer-based options did not appear in the top five choices for any generation.    

With hard skills, such as accounting and project management, older workers said they preferred live classroom instruction, while younger groups still liked on-the-job learning best. What explains this discrepancy? Our best guess is that many younger people are in school after work, so they are already putting in classroom time and would prefer learning through some other method.  

Surprisingly, Late Boomers were most likely to say they wanted computer-based training for hard skills. Why is that? We theorized that since Late Boomers are more frequently in management and upper management, they may perceive computer-based training as the most efficient use of their time.  

Everybody Wants a Coach 

One of the most striking findings of our research is that everyone – regardless of age or level – wants a coach. Across generations, nearly 85% of each generation said they wanted a coach, someone who helps and advises them on their job, career, and leadership development. There were some variations across age and level. Early X-ers wanted more focus on their careers, while professionals wanted more focus on their job, and managers wanted more focus on leadership development.  

What form do employees want their coaching to take?  I have heard that web-based coaching is the new thing, and that young people in particular want coaching over the Internet. In fact, our data show that an overwhelming majority of every generation say they want face-to-face coaching. And the majority of employees don’t just want it face-to-face, they want it frequently, as often as every week or every other week. 

This would seem to pose a practical dilemma. How can employers possibly fulfill this widespread desire for frequent, face-to-face coaching? First, let’s remember the old maxim, “The best way to learn is to teach.” Second, it is helpful to realize that in many cases what people want is simply someone to listen to them, and luckily that role can be filled by peers. Third, when we asked employees, more than 75% said they thought they could be coaches, and that number increased with age and level in the organization. One possible solution, then, is to use your own employees as coaches. Of course some training would be required, but more than training, employees would need time to serve as coaches for one another.  

The Bottom Line

You can’t change the birth rate from 20 or 30 years ago, but you can accelerate the development of the leadership talent you already have. The ace up your sleeve is that 97% of people of all generations want to learn on the job, and such development is arguably as important to retention as pay. But you need to remember that what people want to learn is related to their job, not to their age. Given that nearly everybody wants a coach, I believe using employees to coach one another is an efficient, targeted way to develop leadership talent on the job. The best part of the strategy is that you already have a population that wants it. 

Author’s Note:  Jennifer Deal is a senior research scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership and manager of its World Leadership Survey and Emerging Leaders research projects. She is co-author of Success for the New Global Manager, and sole author of the Retiring the Generation Gap: How Employees Young and Old Can Find Common Ground (2006.) She can be reached at dealj@ccl.org.
 

A NEW POWER ELITE? Making Sense of Evangelical Influence

By D. Michael Lindsay 

Rice University sociologist D. Michael Lindsay spent five years interviewing hundreds of evangelical leaders in the fields of politics, business, entertainment and academe for his new book, Faith in the Halls of Power. Below is excerpt from that book. – Ed. 

Evangelicals populate elite centers like New York and Los Angeles now more than ever. They can be found at the top of nearly every social institution in America, and their influence can be seen in public policy, commerce, and the media. To determine if evangelicals are “taking over,” though, we have to examine the structure of power in this country and whether evangelicals have a decisive edge over other groups in those powerful circles. In general, scholars endorse one of two ways of thinking about power and leadership in a given society. One tradition, which can be traced back to Karl Marx, says there is a single, unified ruling class that dominates society. In the twentieth century, advocates of this perspective—the “monolithic” model—thought social power was held by a small group of leaders who shared backgrounds and experiences. These leaders worked together professionally, sometimes switching positions with one another, and knew each other socially as well. Because they occupied the top positions in society, they were seen as collaborating on decision-making and trying to maintain their privileged positions at whatever cost. Some who favor this perspective think this unified elite is needed for society, but most regard their power as illegitimate because it has been usurped from the people. According to this perspective, power has been passed down from one generation of rulers to the next, usually through a group of families. Gradually, an aristocracy developed. As society continued to evolve and people became more educated, leaders needed to offer an explanation that validated their privileged positions. In the medieval era, one such explanation was the idea that the authority of the king was divinely appointed, which justified his reign. According to this line of thinking, the explanation propounded by the elite helps maintain the status quo, quelling rebellious impulses among the masses.  

A second way to look at societal power is to see it as dispersed and held by many different people. In contrast to those who see elite power as cohesive and unified, advocates of this “pluralist” perspective say society is so complicated today that no one group could hold all the powerful positions. In pre-modern societies, commerce, government, and the arts were directed by a small number of wealthy families, but as those sectors became more independent, the number of people who lead them grew exponentially. Social power is not distributed according to a firm hierarchy, say the pluralists. Instead, it is spread around geographically, in various sectors, and in the hands of many different people and institutions. These different people reach the pinnacle of their respective fields through different paths, which inhibits any sense of cohesion that might result from a shared class sensibility or overlapping authority. 

Looking at American evangelicals, I find qualified support for both perspectives. As the pluralist model suggests, power is indeed divided across many different social institutions. Most leaders have spent a majority of their professional lives climbing specific organizational ladders, and rarely does a leader in one sector jump over to lead another. Business leaders do not often come from the world of politics, and academics do not often become entertainers. Also, very few public leaders hold multiple positions of power at the same time. To the extent that evangelical public leaders work together and occupy overlapping positions of responsibility—what C. Wright Mills called “structural coincidence”—it is not in their professional lives but rather in their religious lives. 

This, in fact, is the most intriguing thing I found. As Marx and others might have predicted, there are ways in which these public leaders today are united. But it is not principally by social class or shared backgrounds: It is by faith. If American evangelicalism leads to any overlap of people and institutions in the country’s elite, it is through parachurch organizations. If evangelical public leaders from different segments of society work together, it is usually in this context as board members at World Vision or as trustees of Fuller Seminary. This, of course, creates special bonds among powerful people, which, no doubt, play a role in their professional lives. But it is through religious institutions, not corporate or professional bodies, that these elites most often overlap today.  

In essence, I found an alternative to these two reigning perspectives on societal power in the case of evangelical public leaders. As the monolithic model predicts, there are indeed sources of elite cohesion that can be facilitated by institutional structures like the evangelical nonprofit sector. But like the pluralists, I find society today to be highly differentiated, which makes it difficult for leaders to act in unison. Evangelicalism provides a unique, binding ligament that can, in turn, create additional institutional sources for cohesion. This brings leaders together in a way no other force can. Through this, American evangelicals have built an increasingly powerful movement that unites leaders even in a complex society. Beginning with the Reagan administration, evangelicals came to occupy enough positions of governmental leadership that they represented a distinct segment of the political elite. And because they embraced their evangelical identity, they carried it with them into the professional realm. There have been similar developments in other areas of American culture—in business, the arts, entertainment, and on college campuses. For these public leaders, evangelicalism became part of who they were, both personally and professionally. In this way, faith unifies a segment of the nation’s leadership. 

Fifty years ago, C. Wright Mills published The Power Elite. In it, he argued that the United States was ruled by a small group of political, military, and business leaders. Like most others who studied power at the time, Mills relegated religion to the background. For him, church was just one of many affiliations that these white Protestant males shared with one another. More recently, some have noted how the nation’s elite includes a more diverse range of leaders such as women, African Americans, and Latinos. Are evangelicals just another group added to the mix? 

The rise of American evangelicalism has coincided with the ascendance of a new power elite. Although the leaders I interviewed—like all leaders when asked—do not see themselves as powerful, they are. Holding what Mills would call a “commanding” position at a major public institution, like the military or a corporation, bestows upon the leader extraordinary influence. As this book show[s,] evangelicals are now in those powerful positions. They are not only powerful but wealthy, well educated, and motivated. Through remarkable social networks, they know one another and share a vision for how things ought to be in society. Their faith unites them and provides a broad system of meaning for leadership. But at root, evangelicalism is a reforming movement, which is why evangelicals will never be comfortable with the status quo even within the power elite. 

Though evangelical public leaders may be small in number, these faith-inspired leaders are activists, and for at least the next few generations, America’s leadership will not be the same. Against those who claimed the elite would be increasingly secularized, evangelicals have shown how faith can not only be part of one’s leadership but actually motivate and advance it. Leading a pluralistic society requires people of faith to bridle their zeal, which is why cosmopolitan evangelicals appear more domesticated than their populist kin. But this is not a duller Christianity, just one that is more at home within the establishment.  

Does the advent of this new power elite constitute an “Evangelical Establishment?” There are a host of factors standing in the way. First, institutional inertia is often too much for a few leaders to overcome. Also, individual ambition is often an obstacle to achieving shared goals, and evangelicalism is a movement of big personalities and corresponding egos. In addition, overlapping networks of powerful people are not, in themselves, enough. Though evangelical public leaders have convening power, they do not necessarily have decision-making power. Evangelicals played important roles in policy issues like abortion, foreign relations, and faith-based initiatives, yet I could find little evidence to show that evangelical networks resulted in specific policy outcomes. Decisions at the national level are rarely shaped by individual groups or constellations of networks, no matter how powerful the individuals within those networks. Third, evangelicals are far from dominant among America’s leadership. The reason they have received so much attention in recent years is that they represent a prominent, new group entering the elite. But they still comprise only a fraction of the nation’s political leadership, and much less in the other sectors examined. Nonetheless, this is a uniquely cohesive and increasingly influential group, and in our segmented society, that is noteworthy. 

The growing influence of American evangelicalism, accomplished largely by evangelical public leaders working through their social networks, has brought the movement back into the public square. As evangelicals move beyond the borders of the movement’s subculture and into the mainstream, what will happen to evangelicalism? Some suggest that its relationship with the rest of society will become increasingly acrimonious. I have cited several examples of what I call “evangelical triumphalism,” whereby movement leaders, in the name of majority rule, sought to impose their vision on society.  Empirically, of course, their claim to represent the majority is not true. Even by the most generous accounting, American evangelicals are less than half of the U.S. adult population. Moreover, though evangelicals frequently claim to be marginalized and persecuted, they are curiously insensitive to the possibility that minority groups like Jews or atheists might see their efforts as a crusade for domination. For these groups, the alliance between evangelical fervor and power is a scary prospect that conjures visions of religious zealots ruling the country with intolerant force. Of course, evangelicals do not have to pursue this strategy. The movement’s elastic orthodoxy might allow evangelicals to build alliances with even more groups. If the impulse for evangelicalism to become a “counterculture for the common good”—that is, a distinct group that still works for the good of all citizens, not just their own—takes root, the movement will thrive. It can then continue to advance its priorities without becoming the religious crusade its critics fear most. The challenge will be to maintain what one evangelical theologian has called a “soft difference” toward pluralistic society, one in which they can remain open to other people’s convictions yet still faithful to their own. 

Religious identity is a formative influence in people’s lives, and observers since Tocqueville have noted how religion in this country can anchor one’s moral obligation to the common good. In an increasingly pluralistic democracy like the United States, we are reminded that enlightened democracy grows from the same root as isolating self-interest. Our best and worst attributes can flow from the same source—the difference is in how those streams are directed. Evangelical public leaders have brought faith convictions to bear in their respective spheres of influence. History will be the judge of whether this contributes to a more enlightened democracy, where engaged citizens use their faith to serve the common good, or whether we have merely witnessed the triumph of another interest group with a distinctive vision for society. What cannot be denied is that these leaders have brought evangelical faith—once confined to the lower ranks of society—into the very halls of power. 

Note: This article is excerpted from Faith In The Halls Of Power: How Evangelicals Joined The American Elite, published by Oxford University Press, Inc. © 2007 by D. Michael Lindsay.
 

EVANGELICAL EXECUTIVES: Q+A with D. Michael Lindsay

Wharton Leadership Digest 

Michael Lindsay’s definitive account of how evangelicals have risen to power in the arenas of politics, business, entertainment and academe has received significant attention in the media, prompting debate and discussion on the role of religion in public life. This month the Wharton Leadership Digest reached Michael Lindsay by phone to ask him about his research among evangelical executives. He spoke about the question of whether evangelical executives are more ethical than their secular counterparts; why he thinks evangelicals have been shamefully silent on executive compensation; and what role religion can play in creating a unique and value-added corporate culture. 

Wharton Leadership Digest:  Could you say a word about your own religious identity and how, if at all, it affected your research? 

          Photo © Sean Sime              D. Michael Lindsay:  When I approached people, I told them I was interested in interviewing people of faith in leadership positions. I described myself in that same language, sometimes saying, “I’m also a Christian.” That was the extent to which I felt comfortable [revealing] my own personal identity. 

My own religious background is somewhat eclectic: I grew up Roman Catholic; I married a Methodist; I did a Master of Divinity degree at a Presbyterian seminary; I’m a member of a Baptist church, and I send my daughters to a Jewish preschool. I do think that being a person of faith helped me pick up on nuances other observers have missed. At the same time I’m not writing the book as an insider trying to defend the movement nor as a skeptic on the outside trying to critique it. 

WLD:  You describe evangelicals’ rise to power as being driven, in large part, by a sense of purpose: “There is something wrong with the world, and I can fix it.” Does the content of evangelical belief matter? Or is it just their ability to create a sense of purpose and belonging? 

Lindsay:  I think the content of evangelical faith does predispose evangelicals to being actively engaged in public life. There is a tradition within the Bible of what might be considered “common grace theology.” This idea says, in essence, we humans are endowed by God to be stewards of His gifts. In other words, people can take an active part in doing divine work. Not all religious traditions have that high view of human potential, and I think that is part of what gives evangelicals an edge. 

WLD:  You write that “parachurch” organizations have played an important role in developing evangelical leadership talent in business. First, what are parachurch organizations, and how does being involved in such organizations benefit evangelical executives?  

Lindsay:  The term “parachurch” means “alongside the church,” coming from the Greek term paro. So parachurch organizations are special-purpose organizations, classified now in our tax code as 501(c)(3)s. In essence, they serve religious aims outside of a local congregational body. What I found in my research—something that really surprised me—is that evangelical executives tend to be disengaged from their own churches and are involved instead with these parachurch organizations.  

In many ways, these parachurch organizations function like corporations, and that’s why a lot of business leaders I interviewed have gotten involved in them; it feels familiar to them. World Vision, for example, is a billion-dollar-a-year [charitable] operation; it is the largest distributor of food worldwide. Through serving on the boards of these organizations, [evangelical executives] build relational ties with one another.  

WLD:  You quote Gayle Miller, the former president of Anne Kline II, saying she encountered “an evangelical bias against women” in her professional life. Looking ahead, is this a blind spot for evangelicals, one that will limit their growth?  

Lindsay:  Women are not supported in the same way that men are in their professional pursuits in the evangelical community. At the elite level I studied, many activities such as Bible studies and retreats are men-only. Being a CEO is a very lonely job; you often long for friendship and advice. These informal groups provide that for many evangelical men but there were very few of those organizations for women. I do think that is holding them back. That said, women in general are still under represented at the elite level, not just evangelical women.  

WLD:  Do those informal professional networks for evangelicals, which provide the equivalent of professional coaching and mentoring, give evangelical business leaders an advantage in the business world? 

Lindsay:  Absolutely. These [networks] provide a lot of professional value but it’s not reported in the newspaper because it’s not happening at your local church. Evangelicals are not alone in providing this; the gay and lesbian community has a similar type of support infrastructure to help professionals excel. But within the realm of religion evangelicals have the edge. They do it more so and better than any other organization. 

WLD:  Was that professional networking conscious on their part – “we can all get ahead if we help each other out” – or did it just arise organically?  

Lindsay:  A little bit of both. Among senior executives, I would say it has been more incidental. [Some networks started because] they were looking for friendship. When it comes to mentoring young leaders, however, it’s more intentional. There is very much a focus on helping young people get an edge in graduate school or in positioning their early career.  

WLD:  The obvious danger of an elite social network is that people will get ahead simply because they are part of that network, not because they are qualified. Did you find that to be the case among evangelicals?  

Lindsay:  I did not find nepotism occurring within the organizations I studied, but I do think evangelical CEOs help one another across industries. They may give a leg up by introducing each other to leaders they might otherwise not have access to.  

WLD:  Are you saying evangelical networks have an internal set of ethics that prevents those kinds of abuses?  

Lindsay:  Absolutely. I sometimes found that [evangelical executives] bent over backward to demonstrate to their secular colleagues that they’re not giving preference to someone who shares their faith orientation.  

WLD:  You interviewed many executives who talked about their sense that God has called them to their leadership roles. But is one person’s “call from God” another person’s “strategic fit?” Is it just a matter of language? Are evangelicals actually different from other executives? You point out that Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers were both well-known evangelicals.   

Lindsay:  We have to acknowledge that [talking about] faith is in some ways expressive and rhetorical. Yet I do think on the whole that evangelicals demonstrate a higher degree of accountability, and, of course, there are glorious exceptions like Lay and Ebbers, who prove that evangelicals are also capable of large-scale fraud. I found that evangelicals are often the clean-up crew for scandals, and a great example of this is Eric Pillmore, who was hired as senior vice president for corporate governance at Tyco after all of its scandals; he was an evangelical known across the industry as someone who had high moral standards. The same thing happened with Johnson & Johnson after the Tylenol scandal when they named Ralph Larsen as CEO.  

WLD:  If you are leading a secular organization, are you better off being an evangelical?   

Lindsay:  If you’re a cosmopolitan evangelical, the answer is yes because you have an overarching sense of meaning and transcendence that’s not dependent upon quarterly projections. [Your faith] allows you to endure the challenges of the executive lifestyle. A CEO’s power can be intoxicating, yet I think the evangelical faith encourages [its leaders] to hold onto that power lightly.   

WLD:  At what point does an expression of faith from a leader begin to turn off employees or drive away customers? You gave the example of Alaska Airlines’ CEO Bruce Kennedy’s decision to include Bible verses along with every in-flight meal; it’s easy to imagine a lot of people disliking that decision.  

Lindsay:  When I asked Kennedy about it, he said 90 percent of the letters he received were encouraging. Over the last 20 years or so, a lot of CEOs have felt safe to bring faith into their organizations, [in ways] such as mentioning God in their mission statements. In certain contexts that may turn off potential customers or clients, but on the whole it becomes a way to differentiate their company. It can provide a competitive edge.  

WLD:  Can a specific religious faith really be the backbone of a strong corporate culture?  

Lindsay:  In order for corporate cultures to succeed, they have to generate profitability, and they have to be difficult to imitate. Religion does provide those elements for several of the companies I profiled in the book. The spiritual journey of the CEO, for example, may become part of the company lore. You hear stories about loan officers praying over loans in Jesus’ name with customers, but such [explicit statements of evangelical faith] are very rare. I do think that using God-language, or creating an environment where faith expressions are welcome, have opened up huge opportunities for some companies.  

WLD:  If evangelicals have done well in the business world, will other religious groups, whether it’s American Muslims or traditionalist Catholics or atheists, try to do the same? Could such mutual promotion societies pull apart the secular workplace?  

Lindsay:  This is the real tension of allowing [employee-organized] affinity groups in the corporate context, but research shows that employees want to be valued as whole individuals. They want to bring in their faith in ways that are not off-putting but allow them to be true to who they are. A CEO or business leader has to think strategically about how much faith expression to allow because you can’t let identities divide your workforce; you have to look for ways to build bridges. The affinity group movement has enabled people to build relationships that have, on the whole, worked positively.  

WLD:  You described the dilemma Ralph Larsen faced in deciding whether Johnson & Johnson should get involved in the emergency contraception business. How do evangelical executives handle decisions that relate to divisive cultural issues like abortion or homosexuality?   

Lindsay:  The evangelical faith is very individualistic. It’s very possible for one evangelical business leader to come to a particular decision on an issue out of moral conviction, while another evangelical looks at the same data and comes to a very different conclusion and also justifies his or her position based on faith commitments. This individualism results in some surprising differences across cases. I know of moments when a CEO would say [about a fellow evangelical executive,] “He made that decision. I would have gone in a very different direction.”  

WLD:  When it comes to personal wealth, you wrote that evangelicals share an ambivalence toward it, though not a sense of guilt. You also point out, somewhat critically, that evangelicals have not been outspoken on the issue of executive compensation. Could you comment? 

Lindsay:  I do take these evangelical CEOs to task [over executive compensation.] If they are really interested in working for the common good, they ought to figure out ways where they can be a little less self serving. That’s really strong language, I realize, but it seems to me this is one area where they can really stand apart from their secular peers and, on the whole, they don’t. I did come across evangelicals who presented attractive examples of trying to live out their faith [amidst great wealth,] but these were notable for being rare. Ralph Larsen of Johnson & Johnson and Kevin Compton of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins both told me they had decided they would not live in bigger houses as they moved up in net worth, and David Grizzle, senior vice president of Continental Airlines, has decided to live an intentionally lower lifestyle than he can afford – but again, these are rare examples. 

WLD:  In the political arena the new conventional wisdom is the evangelical movement is fragmenting and therefore will be less influential in 2008 presidential contest; we’ve even seen some early obituaries of the religious right. What do you see ahead for evangelical leaders in business? Are they going to be affected by a decline in evangelical political power?  

Lindsay:  I don’t buy the idea of declining political power [of evangelicals.] The data doesn’t show that at all. What’s happening is that they’re diversifying their influence and that actually builds a wider power base. They are becoming a bigger voice in the Democratic Party, from which they’ve been excluded over the last 30 years. Rather than dissipate, their power will continue to grow. In terms of business, there is an entire generations of young leaders now in training at Harvard Business School and other elite institutions who are really serious about their evangelical faith. Evangelicals have done a good job of building an infrastructure for long-term cultural change.  

WLD:  Are these changes for the better? Do we all benefit as a result of evangelical influence in business and other arenas of American life?  

Lindsay:  The jury is still out on this. Evangelicals have moved into powerful positions within the last 30 years, and it’s too early to tell if this is something that indeed serves the common good or if it’s just a triumph of another interest group with its own particular vision for society. What I can say is that evangelical participation in civic life is most definitely a very good thing. Evangelicals are more giving of their time and resources and are more ethical in their behavior. If they dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow, we would be in really bad shape.   

Note:  This interview was conducted by Andrea Useem, who writes about religion and public life at www.ReligionWriter.com.
 

LESSONS FROM SPAIN: How Leadership Can Foster Innovation 

By Mark Hanna

As Peter Drucker once observed, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”  

When the Center for Creative Leadership recently asked 247 senior executives about ten important leadership trends for their 2007 white paper, 10 Trends: A Study of Senior Executives’ Views of the Future, one of the major “right things” they mentioned most frequently was fostering innovation. Indeed, fostering innovations is a goal to which so many organizations aspire. The hard question, of course, is how to do it. 

Researchers J. Alberto Aragón-Correa, Victor J. Garcia-Morales, and Eulogio Cordón-Pozo from the University of Granada tackled that question and reported their findings in their April, 2007, article “Leadership and organizational learning’s role on innovation and performance: Lessons from Spain,” in the journal Industrial Marketing Management.     

The authors hypothesized that transformational leaders (defined here as highly motivational leaders who seek out new opportunities for their firms) positively and indirectly influence firm innovation, and thus performance, through organizational learning.  In this study, organizational learning was said to occur if the survey respondents agreed that over the past three years their firms had acquired new and relevant knowledge and their firm members had acquired critical capacities and skills. 

Methodology 

To test their hypotheses, the Spanish authors sought a suitable sample frame and used a Dun and Bradstreet 2001 database, which included the 50,000 largest companies operating in Spain. Nine-hundred firms were randomly selected from four sectors: farming, manufacturing, construction, and services.  

Specific pre-tested scales with established reliability and validity were used to measure the constructs of interest: transformational leadership, organizational learning, innovation, and performance. The paper defines these measures in considerable detail. 

Structured-question surveys were then sent to CEOs of selected firms along with assurances that the results would be kept confidential and that analyses would be aggregated to protect the identity of each organization. The survey was conducted only once, meaning that the study was “cross-sectional” in nature. In the end, the final response rate for usable surveys was 45 percent. 

The data were analyzed using a structured equation modeling program called LISREL 8.3. To improve the quality of the analysis, control variables were used. In this case, the major control variables were size (whose proxy measure was the number of employees) and industry type, as measured by Standard Industrial Classification codes. 

The authors pointed out several limitations of the study, which included: 

1. Survey data based on self-reports. These kinds of data may be subject to social desirability bias; however, they noted that anonymity can reduce such bias even when responses concern sensitive topics.
2. Cross-sectional design. Longitudinal research, which is conducted over several intervals of time, is needed to assess the direction of the causality of the relationships and detect possible reciprocal processes.
3. Geographical and business peculiarities of the sample. It is possible that studies conducted in other countries and on other industries would find different results.

Results  

The authors were able to analyze and confirm the simultaneous influence of transformational leadership and organizational learning on firm innovation. They found that although both directly influence innovation, the collective process of organizational learning had a stronger direct influence on innovation for the given sample than transformational leadership. However, the study also showed that leadership has a strong and significant influence on organizational learning, and the authors emphasized the positive and significant influence of firm innovation on performance.  

Managerial Implications 

What are some practical implications of this study? First and foremost, a leader desiring to improve the firm innovation (and thus, performance) should concentrate on improving organizational learning. 

By logical necessity, then, a leader should cultivate the antecedents of organizational learning, which implies (1) choosing, retaining, and developing the right people; (2) building into the organization the right structures and processes for acquiring, distributing, interpreting, and remembering crucial knowledge, skills, and routines; and (3) reinforcing the culture of learning through leadership acts, words, and deeds—especially in the form of follower recognition and rewards. 

In the words of the authors, the transformational leader must “emphasize developing a vision and inspiring followers to pursue the vision;…change or align systems to accommodate their vision rather than work within existing systems; and…coach followers to take on greater responsibility for both their own and others’ development.”  

Final Observations 

Interestingly, many of the managerial implications the authors cite overlap with the survey results from the Center for Creative Leadership study mentioned above. In that survey, the top three strategies mentioned for driving innovation to ever-higher levels were, in order, overt innovation processes, talent and talent development, and reward and recognition programs that align employees’ efforts. In other words, the leader needs to develop a multi-pronged organizational approach to fostering the antecedents of innovation. 

With these strategies in place, leaders will likely find their firms achieving greater levels of innovation, and as Peter Drucker rightly observed, “Innovation is…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”