Jerald Greenberg, Robert A. Baron, Behavior in Organizations. Chapter 13: Leadership in Organizations

The leader is the person with the most power in a group. A leader is non-coercive, goal-directed (Joel's note: I think this one is debatable; if someone can effectively veto any other goals, but puts forth no goals of their own, perhaps they are a leader that breaks this definition or an anti-leader; either way, their role clearly has something to do with leadership), and has followers.

A leader, who determines the group mission, is different from a manager, who implements that mission. But this distinction can be blurry, and one person can have both roles.

Great person theory says that all leaders tend to share special traits, such as drive, honesty, motivation, self-confidence, intelligence, domain knowledge, creativity, and flexibility.

Behavioral analysis of leadership suggests several dimensions. One grid is Autocratic to democratic and permissive to directive. Another is high to low person orientation and high to low production oriented; these are two different axes, and grid training is a technique to move people who are low on one or both to high on both, "9,9".

Analysis in terms of followers: the leader-member exchange (LMX) model, which defines "in-groups" and "out-groups"; leaders treat in-group members better. In self-managed teams, a team leader builds trust and teamwork, expands the team's capacity, attempts to create a team identity, exploits (in a positive way) differences between group members, and tries to foresee and influence change. Grassroots leadership empowers people to make decisions.

The attributional approach is a theory in which leaders try to understand and change the causes of followers' behavior. It also describes how followers think about leaders' motivations, e.g., the "rally 'round the flag effect" when followers extend additional trust to leaders when the group is in crisis.

Charismatic leaders exert special power due to personal charisma. Transformational leaders revitalize and transform their organizations.

Contingency theories focus on the relationship between leaders' characteristics and the context in which they lead. Least Preferred Co-worker (LPC) contingency theory says that leaders can be evaluated by how they treat the follower they like least (like judging someone by how they treat waiters and servers). A low LPC leader is likely to succeed in environments of low situational control, when impersonal direction is usually appropriate, and high situational control, when the leader has unchallenged power. In context of moderate situational control, a high LPC leader will be more effective. The notion of putting leaders in situations appropriate for their personal capabilities is leader match.

Situational leadership theory defines two axes: task behavior (higher means more direction required) and relationship behavior (higher means more support required). In low task, low relationship, delegation is the best strategy. In low task, high relationship, participation. In high task, high relationship, selling. In High task, low relationship, telling.

Path-goal theory says that followers like leaders who help them on their path to their goal. Leaders can adopt four styles: instrumental, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented.

Normative decision theory says that seven criteria (leader information rule, goal congruence rule, unstructured problem rule, acceptance rule, conflict rule, fairness rule, acceptance priority rule) together suggest which of five basic strategies (autocratic, autocratic with input, consultative with individuals, consultative in group, group decision) is best for a specific context.

The substitutes for leadership framework describes conditions where leaders are not necessary, such as when individual characteristics of workers make leadership unnecessary, or when the jobs or organization are structured to not require leadership.

Leaders can develop via 360-degree feedback, networking, coaching, mentoring, and on-the-job experience.

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Okay, that was the study guide. Now I will stop biting my tongue on my personal interpretations:

• p 504. "In view of all the attention that has been paid to the dishonest dealings of many top business leaders in recent years (e.g., most notably the late Ken Lay and his associates at Enron), it's important to note that successful leaders do, in fact, place a considerable emphasis on ethics and morality." This is the purest bullshit, special pleading of the rankest species. "oh, those guys don't count, because they were caught. real leaders are good people. How do we know that? Because leaders are good." This line of logic comes from the same batch of mental vomit as Bush's assertions that the US doesn't torture, or the idea that, "When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
• p 517. Rupert Murdoch's vision is cited as "To provide accurate access to news for people throughout the world." He may have said that, but nothing in his record suggests he's ever believed that for as long as one second.
• p 522. "An airline pilot leading a cockpit crew is expected to take charge and not to seek the consensus of others as she guides the plane onto the runway for a landing." In fact, the most horrible air disaster of all time happened because a pilot, impatient to take off on a foggy runway after many delays, ignored his flight engineer's concerns about another plane possibly being on a runway. 583 people died. It's certainly true that, "when the demands of the task make it clear what a leader should be doing, it is perfectly acceptable for them to focus on the task at hand." But the example cited better illustrates the risk of a leader refusing to listen to subordinates.
• p 529. So, can we run nations through the checklist and see if democracy ever comes out as the appropriate leadership style?
• p 540. Question for discussion: "What special qualities make Chan Suh [founder of Agency,com, an online advertising company] so effective as a leader?" Oh, I know. The quality of being lucky. Lots of people are bold visionaries who create companies in sectors that conventional wisdom says there is no market. It takes leadership to do that. But most of those companies fail; it takes luck to land in a sector that really does explode. Bad leadership will help you destroy a success, but good leadership is not a sufficient condition for success. Again, the premise of the question is that, because person X has success, they must be an effective leader, and to me this is a circular premise.

Ethnocentrism is in-group versus out-group identity; pride in the in-group; disrespect for the out-group. Ethnocentrism is necessary for maintaining group identity, and thus for maintaining groups. Every country's foreign policy discourse is ethnocentric, not just China's.

Okay, I'm having trouble following his point. Looking around the room, I'm not the only one. Looking around the room, I see only two other white people; perhaps the speaker would do better to switch to Chinese? He's reading prepared remarks, and his head goes up and down from the table to eye level every second or so, and if I look directly at him, I get dizzy. The talk is grammatical but, given how much trouble he's having getting to any sort of discernible point, the speaker is ill-served by his poor pronunciation.

Okay, none of the details and examples are registering in my brain, but the gist is that both the Chinese and Americans are ethnocentric. China and other countries are somewhat obsessed with the US; this is somewhat natural given the weight of the US, but many countries magnify that perceived weight. For example, there is a slogan that "the Chinese-American relationship is the weightiest of the weightiest" (it sounds better in Chinese). A sign of progress is that this slogan is no longer used. China's foreign policy elite were thrilled after good Clinton/Zhang Zemin relations, but the Belgrade embassy bombing was very bad for relations.

Many Chinese policy elite—challenge from the audience after the speaker names a Chinese academic: what makes him an elite? Does Deng Xiaoping listen to him? The tone in the rooms starts to turn a bit impatient. The speaker thinks the crowd is hostile because of his position; personally, I can't really figure out what his position is in order to judge it.

Chinese policy elites and newspapers give excess weight to the US; Kissinger and Brzezinski get quoted regularly and the US dominates "foreign"-oriented Chinese newspapers.

Some article titles, loosely translated: "Who else can take the ring after the inevitable decline of the United States". One academic's recent article is "Let's compete against political ideologies with the west." He was explicitly denying there is any universal ideology among men. "China should try to slow down the inevitable decline of the United States." "China's moral hegemony will sustain while the US immoral hegemony will not sustain." An outburst from the audience as an academic is named: "He's not an elite. he's my friend actually"

Obsession with the US will be counterproductive to a more dynamic Chinese foreign policy. Some signs of progress in shedding US obsession. The weight of the US in China's interests has declined. China cannot always use the US perspective on things, human rights, development, etc.

Q: You're saying that China's making its own policy based on its own interest. That's simple; why do you have to spend so much time working through this? What is your sample size? What is your hypothesis? How do you test it? A: (he's talking but I don't follow what he's saying or how it relates to the question.) I'm not taking a quantitative approach. How many articles? Fifty, and more than a hundred pieces ....

Q: Among "elites", have you found anyone promoting universal rights, individual human rights? (interjection from another person at the table: What universal rights? US or Chinese?) A: Because of the Chinese political system, talking about universal rights must be "fuzzy".

Q: Psychologists use experiments, not guesswork. Your sampling could be subject to selection bias. How do you define the foreign policy elite? Look at all their writing, speeches, comments, and then decide what are the dominant themes. (that reminds me of this.) A: Yes, in psychology you can do experiment, but not in foreign policy. You can't do a Cuban Missile Crisis experiment. ... Nietzsche, foucault, ... a lot of things can't be quantified. Interjection: you could use one journal back to 1997 or earlier and study all the words and issues.

Q: Many African-Americans and Hispanics still say in surveys that they are inferior to whites. ... A ...

Q: where is Chinese foreign policy formulated? At the X school, or the "muliao"? A: It's far more open than any time before; Zhang Zemin initiated more openness.

Q: There is a theory that national perception and interest are part of the context of foreign policy. But the elite groups actually express foreign policy.

Q: Who and where to watch for changes in foreign policy? A: Read journals, but it's mostly private internal discussions. I can't name who I think are the most influential; I have a list but I can't tell you.

Q: At X university where I was for some time, perhaps half of students and professors' research focus was on US domestic politics or Sino-US relations.

Q: What's the percentage of Chinese elite have a strong version of ethnocentrism? A maybe 30%.

In reaction to the huge response to their last event, SPMI's schedule is blossoming with events. Another full room today (A few more ang moh's here today. Apparently we're all doing the shaved head thing now) for "Collaborating with the Enemy", by Steven Blais of IIL. This event is S$10 for SPMI members, including a very tasty Indian Vegetarian meal (places in the world that have to deal with halal and other religious requirements tend to be very kind to vegetarians as a bonus. Some sort of drawing with a prize over $1000 is announced, which gets a loud murmur going as people dig for their business cards. Given that S$10 each probably doesn't cover catered meals plus rental, IIL must expect to drum up a lot of business here.

Joel's executive summary: Projects must solve problems. Problems come from business. Business analyst, project manager, and system analyst are distinct and mutually exclusive roles. The business analyst role is responsible for ensuring the project solves the problem.

The rest of this post is my paraphrase of the speaker unless otherwise noted.

The great gap between project managers and those people who want our services. We have to bring in projects that are on time, on budget, and have all the features we promised. And what keeps us from doing this? The customers! When I started they didn't have this gap, they didn't have users. My first system was the automated payroll for the Navy. Punchcards, line printer. Chesty Puller: "I don't really understand this stuff; we have a printer that can print 1400 lines per minute; who can read that?" Not much user interface, the users worked with us, it was fine.

The project manager: what are your requirements?

The business person: I have a problem. You're the IT, you fix it. What are requirements? I have a problem with the annuities system.

PM: Give me some requirements

B: Well etc etc

PM: (to self) this is great, I can use that new java framework and ...

Joel's note: it doesn't seem like hilarity is going to ensue. Summary: the project manager and business person have different goals, contexts, and languages. Process-oriented business versus project-oriented project management. Business teams are together for years; project teams may last two months.

Anecdote about delivering a computer system to which the user responds, "it doesn't feel good." After many weeks, this was articulated into how it looks, how the mouse moves across the screen.

Standard personalities for technical people: INTJ (that sounds familiar. Now can we get the stereotypical FIRO-Bs?). For business people: ESFP.

How does the gap affect the project? changes, delays, scope creep, cost overruns. What tools help deal with this? change management, product acceptance. Joel's note: Hmm, agile techniques are one way to try and deal with this structural problem. I wonder if he'll talk about them, or some other approaches? Here's some thinking on integrating Agile and PMBOK.

I won an award 35 years ago for a US Navy project. On time, under budget, delivered everything promised, never had a defect reported since delivery. Of course, it was never used, and we knew it would never be used before we started working on it. Best project I ever did, because there were no users to mess it up. The point is that a successful project is not the same thing as a successful business. Projects are tactical, not strategic. Strategic business people should not be involved in projects. But now there's a gap between the business needs and the project. Who fills the gap? The PMO? No, it's not their business either.

Let's fill the gap. Organizations have a role for that, whether they label it or not: business analyst. Most of you PMs also do that role. The business analyst's job is to ensure that the project produces a product that solves the problem. The business analyst is a bridge.

As a consultant, I'll be working with a company to improve their project management, and I'll ask, what do you see the role of the business analyst as? And they say, they're a bridge between technical and business. Actually, they are a bridge between problem and solution, which may or may not be technology. The definition of the solution is the requirements. The business analyst establishes the bridge and the project manager gets us across the bridge. In SCRUM we call them the product owner. (Ding! Agile mention. Quick sidenote: I don't want to be mistaken for an Agile cheerleader. My own experiences with Agile are mixed. Whether or not one or more Agile methods is a good solution, they are at least addressing the right problem, which is basically this same gap he's talking about.)

Business Analyst is a role: they define the real business problem, completely and accurately; and "maintains full communication between stakeholders with the problem and solution team". At IBM we weren't allowed to have problems, only challenges.

The business analyst should ask, how will you know that we've solved your problem? If there isn't an answer, there isn't a problem. When we have that, we have acceptance criteria, a contract. The issue is that many times, the business doesn't know their real problem. Incidentally this happens well before we have a project.

If customers get more features, it's scope creep. If IT throws in some extra things, it's gold-plating. Notice who's naming these things.

Incidentally, this guy is a very good speaker, even though he's got powerpoint in the background. I think he could spike 80% of his slides, leaving only a few diagrams, and be better for it. But perhaps the other, wordier slides, which he generally ignores, are helping the readers? Anyway, he's very animated, vivid; you can see the punchlines coming but that just makes it more intimate.

Users don't have requirements; they don't know what's possible. They develop requirements together with the technical team. It's not if the requirements change, it's when. Plan for that evolution and you won't have creep. Halting scope creep won't help if the product doesn't solve the problem, e.g., have the right scope; if the product doesn't solve the problem, why are you making it? And, scope can't creep unless somebody agrees. It's up to the PM to say no to anything that doesn't solve the problem. Um. It feels like there's some sleight of hand here. How can you predefine the scope, given that we've agreed that it's impossible to understand the requirements before you start? I'm not convinced that scope exactly equals problem.

A need is not a problem. Why do you need it?

PM has conflict of interest. PM defines the project she's responsible for, and may push for a better project rather than a better solution. The business has a conflict of interest: it is not objective about the problem or solution. Businesses rarely do due diligence over the project: creating a charter, determining ROI, etc.

The business analyst starts before the project and ends after the project. The business analyst communicates changes back and forth between the business and the project. After project close, the business analyst is still confirming that the delivered product solves the problem. "If you have a solution that does not create at least three new problems, you have the wrong solution." If you are a PM who is also a business analyst, skip the party, go down and have just one Singapore Sling with the project team, then go back and see if the product works in production.

What's the difference between business analysts, project managers, and system analysts? They all do the same functions, (plan, manage risk, work with stakeholders, requirements, test, estimate, impact analysis, evaluate alternatives). But they all do them differently, for different people. BA does acceptance tests; PM tests project plan; SA tests integration. How to test the project plan? The plan breaks everything down into work tasks. Each task has an input and an output. You test the plan by ensuring that all inputs and outputs are used. You test it by laying out the tasks with your team (not with MS Project, but with the actual people). BA focus is business; PM focus is project; SA focus is technical. It is very difficult for one person to do all three roles, especially if they aren't trained.

How many of you grew up and went to school and said, I want to be a project manager. We're almost all accidental project managers. There are people who grow up to be systems analysts, go to school for that. Hopefully some day there will be schools for PMs, fraternities, etc. These three roles call for different personalities, different talents.

BA to customer: Is what you are asking for going to solve your problem? My job isn't to build something, it's to solve your problem.

(Side note because he said something about dodgeball: this is cute but raises the disturbing question: why would you pay three dollars to see the equator?)

How to wear two hats: As the PM, focus on the team. As the BA, don't let project noise (deadlines, etc) influence your relationship with stakeholders. I literally had different hats that I switched back and forth depending on the work I was doing.

First, make sure you understand what the role of the business analyst is. Keep the roles separate. Write the requirements as a BA; come back as a PM and pretend somebody else wrote the requirements.

about ten people just got up and left simultaneously. It's 8:35; are they all going to catch a bus, or like CEOs giving themselves raises, did they just realize that they could leave? The speaker is good but it's true the crowd (myself included) has been drifting for a few minutes.

An abrupt ending, and only one question. I think he could have wrapped up ~8 minutes earlier and had 10 minutes of good questions.

Q: Who has authority? A: The project manager has authority and accountability for the project, the BA for the business.

A lecture from Shaukat Aziz, former Prime Minister of Pakistan.

Joel's note: The Boston Globe seems to think he's one of the good guys. The following notes are my paraphrase of the speaker unless otherwise noted.

"Think beyond and outside the box, and try to meet the new challenges with vigor. ... The only constant in life today, ladies and gentlemen, is change. You must adapt to change. ... Staying still is not the answer." Apparently this will be an all-platitudes speech?

Today's topic was chosen and approved by Dean Mahbubani. Perhaps he thought that as a survivor of several assassination attempts I would be qualified to speak ... Terrorism is global.

With the recent upsurge in terrorism—clearly it has increased. If you try to travel today, it is a hassle. If your name is Muhammad .... This is done because not everybody knows who you are and there's a risk that if they let the old person in, they will cause trouble.

People link terrorism with a particular region or religion, Islam, but this is not historically the case. In my view, one word can describe most, not all, of the causes: "deprivation".

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Joel's note: Hm. Let's see what a cursory literature search says.

Club de Madrid says ... well, they certainly didn't come down to one word. "Poverty per se is not a direct cause of terrorism."

The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, Robert A. Pape, U Chicago :

"this study collects [188] terrorist attacks worldwide from 1980 to 2001. ... This study shows that suicide terrorism follows a strategic logic, one specifically designed to coerce modern liberal democracies to make significant territorial concessions. Moreover, over the past two decades, suicide terrorism hasbeen rising largely because terrorists have learned that it pays.

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Meanwhile back to the speaker, who has said essentially nothing notable. "If you treat people with respect, they'll be less prone to getting into extreme behavior. More importantly, we must give people a voice. ... At the end of the day, if people have a voice, can within certain norms express their views .... Give people a level playing field and a sense of hope and you will see ... this will bring the temperature down. It has to happen, because there are many fires burning around the world ...."

"Here the role of the media in civil society is critical. The media ... if there is a message that, see how destructive this is, it will help in the hearts and minds of people."

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Q: (from Dean Mahbubani) We both lived in New York, in fact in the same apartment, St James Tower. A: but your apartment was twice as big. Q: But your salary was more than twice as much. A: That's true.

Q: How do we change the American conception of Islam? A: If you see what goes through their minds, 9/11 and 7/7, these are not minor incidents. The whole country was shaken up. ... Make people aware that the acts of a few angry people do not represent ...

Q: So Pakistan decided to side with the US. We hear that Pakistan is signing deals with the people it was fighting against. Is this a good idea? A: We joined the coalition against terrorism because terrorism is bad [my paraphrase]. If a group is willing to talk, I think that is the right way to go. The more people you can get back to a normal life, you have gained.

Q: Assassination of Bhutto discouraged good men and women. to some, terrorists are merely freedom fighters. Can you comment on that? A: Bhutto's death was a national and global tragedy. Every life is precious.

Q: [A regular attendee at these seminars reads from two pages of notes until he is cut off firmly. No idea what his point or question was. He started with "Singapore has found racial harmony with four races and four religious beliefs living together." Aziz responded that the questioner had an incorrect view of Islam?

Q: Is Islam being used as a force multiplier, or is the root cause relative (not absolute) deprivation? Is there a need to control radical madrassas? A: Madrassas are religious schools. I was asked to open a school; they had O-levels and were going to A-levels, they had proper computer classes. In Pakistan, the madrassas we have are clearly performing a role. There may be a few, who are, not as an institution but with individual teachers promoting extremism. Largely they are helping people memorize the Koran and so forth, and also free lodge and board for children who need education. Free books. The curriculum is being broad-based; those who are strictly in religious teaching, no need to be defensive about them, this is an important function in any society. To your first part, there may be affluent people going into terrorism, but they can still be deprived. They may be living in a country where a dispute is festering for ages.

The dean is getting very impatient with long-winded questions. A: The question is on ISI and its links to uh. Let me say that ISI is professional and respected. They pursue the national interest. The Taliban, the people in Afghanistan ... the rest of the world together recruited young people to fight the Soviet Union. ... Pakistan is very clear that we do not allow on our soil activities that are prejudicial to our interests or any other nation's. The Taliban is an Afghan government. We have 3 million refugees in Pakistan, Afghan will not take them back. We would like resettlement, more aid (which is happening in the Paris conference), a concerted effort against drugs.

Q: Karzai threatened to send troops to Pakistan after a jail break? do you think he's serious? A: Pakistan has always said that a strong, stable Afghanistan is good for the region.

Q: in the west, there's a myth that the religious reasons for terrorism are more important. Is that true? A: Faith does play a part, but it's only part. Islam as a faith doesn't promote violence. There are many attacks outside the Islamic world.

Q: When you were prime minister, what did you do to improve the quality of life of the people and deprive people of the financing for the terrorism? A: Great economic growth in Pakistan. Pakistan's per capita GDP is much greater than India. For the last several years, 7.5 percent growth, 5.5 percent this year. In terms of quality of life, reduction of poverty .... In terms of financing, it's a global effort.

Q: What is the greatest cause of deprivation that is leading to terrorism and what can we do? A: It's hard but I'll give you a few. Lack of people having rights, lack of income, feeling of hopelessness, ...

Like many of these seminars featuring politicians, the informational content of the seminar is very close to nil. The value in attending is in getting a sense of the personality of the speaker.

Impact Analysis

What would have happened to those receiving intervention if they had not received the intervention? In scientific terms, you need a control group. Remember that a control group is not a population that remains unchanged. A control group is a population that is subject to everything the target group is subject to except the intended intervention. The important thing to know here is that there are many, many ways to end up with useless data, as this Economist article about randomized evaluations discusses. A randomized study showed that giving away mosquito nets for free was far more effective that charging anything.

You might conclude that the trial showed that they should always be given away. Yet it turns out that millions of nets were already in use in the part of Kenya where the field trial took place, so their value was known. The experiment guaranteed supplies, so it did not test the assertion that you need to charge something to encourage reliable suppliers. And the recipients were pregnant women, whereas the point of giving bednets away is to provide anti-malaria treatment universally. The evidence from western Kenya was clear. But it hardly settled the question of whether the government should give bednets away across the country.

As an aside, it seems like we could very profitably spend a few weeks on the scientific method directly, rather than orbiting it with alternate language.

Experiments

The best experiment possible: fully blind, randomized, large sample size, repeated.

Since this is rarely possible in economics and social science, especially at larger scales such as national development, we can use alternative methods:

• natural experiment. For example, when different states in the US which are otherwise similar adopt different policies.

  An example of a natural experiment occurred in Helena, Montana during the period from June 2002 to December 2002 when a smoking ban was in effect in all public spaces in Helena including bars and restaurants. Helena is geographically isolated and served by only one hospital. It was observed that the rate of heart attacks dropped by 60% while the smoking ban was in effect.—Wikipedia

• matching
• statistical equated controls
• non-experiments

The instructor apologizes for putting Mao in a list with Stalin and Hitler in a previous lecture. I certainly think, based on my understanding of history, that by many plausible definitions of the set of "most prolifically evil dictators of the 20th century", Mao is a solid member (scholars actually put him at the top of the democide league table). Where's my apology for taking him out of the list? The instructor further notes that anyone who thinks that Hitler, Mao, et al were "born evil" is missing the point of the class. Judging from remarks in this and previous classes, those of us who are not in the habit of writing and forwarding angry emails are missing out on a substantial portion of discourse for this class.

Perspective: when I get somewhat frustrated with the challenges of this course and fantasize about nasty feedback (example: instructor: "students who are not faring well in terms of points right now should ..." me: "is there a way for us to know how we are faring in terms of points right now?" instructor: "no, but there will be soon" Oh good, it's the final session of class for the semester and the only information about our performance is a single paper that has been returned.) I find it helpful to read things like this, which illustrate how you can easily out yourself as an asshole to be ignored. Then I take a deep breath and pet my dog.

Since we are still talking about cost-benefit analysis and how to apply it to situations with hard-to-value outcomes, here's an interesting article in the New York Times:

The Bush administration is about to propose far-reaching new rules that would give people with disabilities greater access to tens of thousands of courtrooms, swimming pools, golf courses, stadiums, theaters, hotels and retail stores.

... The Justice Department acknowledged that some of the changes would have significant costs. But over all, it said, the value of the public benefits, estimated at $54 billion, exceeds the expected costs of $23 billion.

If you've seen my sidewalks photo-essay, you'll know that Singapore isn't great with accessibility. This is not scientifically collected data, but I do see very very few disabled people, such as people in wheelchairs. in public here.

About half an hour before class was over, a camera crew from "Corporate Communications" came in to film the lecture in progress for some unspecified purpose. A few minutes later, we came to this slide in the lecture:

Design contamination refers to the situation where participants know that they are being observed (tested) and act differently because of it.

In the slightly stunned silence after they left, someone muttered, "this is contamination."

Evaluation

Programs convert inputs to outputs, which lead to outcomes. Process evaluation is a descriptive analysis, performed after implementation, which measures the efficiency of inputs to outputs. Impact analysis measures the relationship between outputs and outcomes and seeks causes.

Reading

Rossi, P., M. Lipsey and H. Freeman (2004) Evaluation: A Systematic Approach. 7th Edition. Sage Publications, Chapter 1—An Overview of Program Evaluation, pp 1-28

Rossi, P., M. Lipsey and H. Freeman (2004) Evaluation: A Systematic Approach. 7th Edition. Sage Publications, Chapter 12—The Social Context of Evaluation, pp 373-419

Each time I try to do the readings for this class, I bounce off. There's more than a few Harvard Business Review articles, and they all tend to blend into one ur-article, which goes something like this:

Does A Successful Dynamic Leadership Framework Need Great Followers?¹

I've dedicated my entire life to following the greatest men in the world. I know that they are great because they are the CEOs of big corporations that make lots of money. And they have security guards, so I can't follow them too closely. But I am compelled to understand why they are so, so great. When I first started in the 70s, everyone said I was daft to research greatness, but I did all the same, just to show them. I conducted research so intense that they had to invent a new kind of supercomputer to crunch my data. It melted. So I recruited a team of highly trained interns and conducted more research, on a more powerful supercomputer. That one melted. So I built a third. That one caught fire, set off the halon system, killed three of my interns, then melted. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, reader, the strongest leadership research on the strongest leaders in the world.

And what I discovered is that one single factor explains why some men are great and others are not. That factor is awesomeness. The greatest men are awesome. In the chart, you can see a list of awesome men and details of how awesome they are. If you train yourself to be awesome, you too can be a great man. But you have to be awesome.

By the way, I have a consulting business where I teach people how to be awesome. Call me.

Yes, these articles really annoy me. If you want straight-up notes for the exam, go read my notes for Policy Analysis, the other core module this semester. I promise those are straight up. Anyway, here is the reading for the class.

Peter Drucker, Managing Oneself. Best of Harvard Business Review 1999.

Know yourself, including what kind of learner you are (visual, auditory, etc) and if you are more of a leader, follower, or adviser. Do this by feedback analysis. "Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations." Once you know yourself, do what you are good at.

W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne, Tipping Point Leadership. Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation.

Bill Bratton is great. Do what Bill Bratton did. Which is Tipping Point Leadership. So you should do Tipping Point leadership. There are four hurdles, Cognitive, Resource, Motivational, and Political. You should, respectively, Break Through, Sidestep, Jump, and Knock Over these four hurdles. (Yes, the palimpsest on this one is pretty easy to see through. They had an article about hurdles, a book called "Tipping Point" was a big best-seller, so they put the words "Tipping Point" on their hurdle article. What it really is is a missed opportunity to talk about the tipping point of the hurdles. But you only actually tip the Political Hurdle, so I guess that wouldn't work.)

Here's a reality check, courtesy the Washington Post. It shows crime over Rudy Giuliani's whole tenure as mayor; remember that Bratton was only commissioner from '94 to '96. And don't forget to look for the tipping point:

As a further aside, as long as Rudy continues bragging about his 9/11 leadership, perhaps those deaths should be included in the graph in 2001, which would obliterate the notion that violent crime decreased in New York over his tenure. But happily we haven't heard much of him lately; presumably running one of the worst presidential campaigns in American history has shown that platform consisting of three digits and a punctuation character isn't a winner.

In fairness to Malcolm Gladwell, the graph shows an inflection point, not a tipping point, which is "the level at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable", something more relevant to network theory and propagation models. Whether or not there's anything to "tipping point" beyond glib pseudo-science is a discussion for another day; suffice it to say there's little of Gladwell in Tipping Point Leadership.

Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee. Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance. Harvard Business Review: Breakthrough Leadership, December 2001.

Summary: emotions matter. Great leaders cited: Jack Welch, in a sidebar.

Maria T. Farkas, Linda A. Hill, A Note on Team Process.

This is actually quite useful. It is from Harvard, but not from the Harvard Business Review. It's a note prepared "for class dicussion". It's too good and thoughtful to glibly condense to one sentence. And it mentions women and other groups that may be excluded from team discussion.

Jim Collins, Level 5 Leadership, The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve

Out of 1435 Fortune 500 companies, only 11 sustained greatness for 15 years after a major transition. All 11 had a "level 5 leader." Therefore, you should become a level 5 leader. A level 5 leader is deeply humble and intensely willful.

From page 6: "If Moclker had given up the fight, it's likely that none of us would be shaving with Sensor, Lady Sensor, or the Mach III—and hundreds of millions of people would have a more painful battle with daily stubble." All I can do in response is point to this article by Moclker's successor, James Kilts: Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades. (Here's some more serious criticism, noting among other things that "Kilts was personally never part of our community anyway. He never moved here, commuting from Rye, N.Y., and even holding his ''worldwide annual meetings" within a few miles of his home."

If you google for Level 5 Leadership, Jim Collins' home page cites David Maxwell of Fannie May. When "Maxwell’s retirement package, which had grown to be worth $20 million based on Fannie Mae’s spectacular performance... became a point of controversy in Congress", Maxwell voluntarily gave up the last $5.5 million of it. Wow! Amazing. What humility! Meanwhile, Fannie Mae engaged in "extensive financial fraud" over six years by doctoring earnings so executives could collect hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. Of course, Maxwell retired in 1991 and fraud was only uncovered going back to the late 1990s. I'm sure Maxwell was completely clean..

Louis B. Barnes, Managing Interpersonal Feedback

Jerald Greenberg, Robert A. Baron, Behavior in Organizations. Chapter 13: Leadership in Organizations

Nothing to do with Harvard.

Ron Heifetz and Marty Linsky, A Survival Guide for Leaders. Harvard Business Review.

When people are forced to change, they often attack the person responsible. Be prepared for this.

This is actually a perfectly reasonable point, and there's some good advice: recruit the uncommitted; "resist resolving conflicts yourself—people will blame you for whatever turmoil results"; "restrain your desire for control and need for importance", "read attacks as reactions to your professional role, not to you personally". I have only two objections to the article. First, it very strongly encourages you to assume that the change you are promoting is the right change, and dismisses the idea that people are resisting the change because it's a bad idea. It's quite true that people resist good changes, but people also resist bad changes and the people directly affected by a change do have special insight into its impact. That shouldn't amount to an automatic veto, but it shouldn't be treated primarily as resistance to overcome or subvert, either.

Second, Heifetz and Linsky are the perpetrators of "Adaptive Leadership", the basis for books and articles and who knows what else. It just reeks of bullshit, in this case the bullshit of perfectly good but un-novel ideas repackaged under a new name to start the next fad. "Who Moved my Tipping Cheese Fish: Adaptive Leadership Lessons from the Great Lieutenant Bligh".

I think what really gets my goat on these things is that I don't buy the premise. The premise of almost all of these articles is, X is objectively great, as proven by outcome Y. X's secret is Z, and therefore you should do Z. But outcome Y is often quite flimsy. Bratton wasn't responsible for decreasing crime in New York. Jack Welch's financial success with GE may have been partially built on sand. Maxwell shows humility for giving back a fraction of a monstrous cashout. I think the real lesson is that, at a minimum, we know much less than we think we know, and we should be really cautious about people drawing bold conclusions, especially when they are trying to sell us something. I hope that's not news to anybody.

What about Enron?

I found two HBR articles about Enron prior to 2001 (plenty more afterwards). Both were positive:

Enron, with its "loose-tight" management policy, is an example of an organization that has figured out how to effect change without the usual pitfalls, says Mintzberg. [It] manages only two corporate processes very tightly: performance evaluation and risk management. Everything else is managed loosely, and local leaders get an enormous amount of discretion in figuring out how to get things done.

—Burning Questions 2001: How to overcome Change Fatigue". Harvard Management Update

[Enron] has invested millions of dollars ... to ... ensure that fluctuations in gas prices do not jeopardize the company's existence. ... [Enron]'s success - measured by both market share and profits - illustrates how financial engineers, working with marketers and strategists, can differentiate a commodity product without taking undue risk.

—"How Financial Engineering Can Advance Corporate Strategy", Harvard Business Review Jan-Feb 1996

---

1 This title is derived from the most commonly used words in the 90 Harvard Business Review articles with Leader in the title.

Presenter: Larry Hahn, retired DEA agent now living in Singapore.

Training was in Jordan, not Iraq, for safety reasons.

8 week training period, would have preferred 16. Time pressure came from political timetable for government turnover. Training to a standard of "minimum competency".

Trainees were motivated primarily by job-seeking. Instructors were from about twenty coalition countries, and all spoke English (except for the Scots), using Arabic-speaking translators. Almost a third of instructors were Jordanian and spoke Arabic.

Training based on UN/Kosovo model, emphasis on human rights; 4 weeks general policing and 4 weeks tactical exercise. Modified to a more paramilitary curriculum: democratic policing; patrol; terrorism; crime; firearms; defensive tactics; patrol 2; patrol 3.

Training site built in the desert in Jordan (by DynCorp, on a no-bid contract).

What went wrong? See "The Coalition Provisional Authority's Experience with Public Security in Iraq", US Institute of Peace. Large-scale public order breakdowns; army not trained to deal with civil disorder or provide police functions. Existing Army and police force disbanded, and probably would not have been effective anyway.

Some recruits said that when they went back, their bosses would just send them out to get money. "When you do this training, you've got to train all segments." It takes about five years to train an effective police force.

Context analysis of Queen Elizabeth I at her ascension to power.

Scope	Boundary	Opportunity
Global	Catholic Church, Spain, France	Colonies
National	decentralized power system sectarian civil war threats from abroad	public desire for peace Crisis=opportunity
Organizational	No money no standing army parliamentary limits on monarch	offer of marriage Institutional power of monarchy
Personal	gender limitations questions of legitimacy	daughter of a king

Seven sources of power: positional, coercive, reward, expert, referent, network, and associative.

Reading

The readings come from a book in pre-publication.

• p 40: "power without legitimacy is always transient." Oh really? An awful lot of dictators-for-life (or their subjects) would disagree, surely. You could argue that the ability to maintain power through violence is a form of legitimacy, but then you get fairly tautological: power without the ability to maintain power is transient.
• p 49: Wikipedia says Bill Gates topped out at just over $100 billion, not $160B.

Guest lecturer.

Context matters. Um, was somebody saying it didn't? The context paradox: it both enables and constrains. Four levels of context: personal/team, institution/organization, the nation, global.

Does a good leader adapt to the environment or pursue a consistent vision and, perhaps, choose the moment where the variable environment suits that vision?

The most critical part of leadership is knowing when to step aside, and a system which enforces that is a good idea.

Reading

The readings come from a book in draft form.

• p 8: To quote Samuel Huntington, "a framework is a simplified way of viewing reality." I don't care for that definition at all. I think "modeling" is a much better term for simplifying reality. OED's first definition is "A structure composed of parts framed together." A conceptual framework may set some things as more or less important, but that's not essential to its function.
• p 13: "According to ... the US State Department ... between 1985 and 2004, 13,096 people around the world were either injured or killed as a result of terrorist attacks." This is then compared to deaths from a few genocides and wars. Setting aside the incorrect conflation of casualties with fatalities, if this chapter is about context, then how about seeing death tolls from diseases, malnutrition, natural disasters, and so forth. (An interesting side-note would be to look into somehow better identifying "inevitable" versus "evitable" consequences of natural disasters, where evitable consequences come from population patterns, building codes, etc. Then we would get into which population shifts are themselves evitable and inevitable and ... maybe that thread is better left unpulled.)
• p 14. You can compare GDP with sales revenue? We've been discussing that here (1, 2). As a rule of thumb, profits plus one half of revenue (approximating labor costs) may be a better equivalent to GDP. Although this quibble does just bolster the point of the book, that the biggest companies are still smaller than "minor regional powers". Although I wouldn't call Taiwan minor. What's halfway between minor and major?
• p 14.

  ... what then defines the national context? We offer a simple list of three defining elements:

  1. Geography
  2. History and Culture
  3. Economy

  That's four elements.
• p 16: "Huntington identified a number of conflicts which were occurring at what he termed the fault lines between Civilizations. His choice of a geographic expression to describe this phenomenon was not accidental because most of the conflicts he identified occurred in places where two civilizations came into proximate contact and hence conflict." But the majority of conflicts since World War II have been civil wars. So I'm not clear on what point Huntington (or his paraphrase) might score by showing that most conflicts between civilizations happen where two civilizations come into contact. It seems like the (wrong) point lurking in the shadows is that most conflicts are are between civilizations, which they aren't.
• p 17. Now we're citing Bernard Lewis, having heard from Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama. It would be nice if every public intellectual who was utterly wrong about the Iraq War was then treated more critically for the rest of their career.

The point of the chapter seems to be that context matters. I agree, but don't see anything novel or outstanding about how the chapter develops that fairly obvious point that justifies the existence of the chapter. It felt like a series of, "yeah, and?" moments.

Chee Soon Juan, leader of the Singapore Democratic Party, is in the news lately because of court hearings to ... well, there are a bunch of things, all stemming from civil disobedience and arguments with the Singapore establishment, e.g., Lee Kuan Yew. There was a three-day hearing to "assess damages in a defamation suit brought against them by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew." During that hearing, Chee and his sister "behaved in a manner that 'scandalised the court, adversely affected the administration of justice, and impugned the dignity and the authority of the court'," which led to contempt of court charges. One of Chee's lawyers was Mr Jeyaretnam, who "became an opposition MP in 1981, but has been in the political wilderness since 2001. That was when he was declared bankrupt for failing to pay damages totalling about $600,000 from defamation." During the course of the hearing, both Lees were witnesses, and Chee, acting as his own lawyer, had some intense confrontations with the Lees, which (judging from the newspaper accounts) amounted to Lee Kuan Yew being so kind as to tell Chee what his problem was.

For good measure, "in a separate hearing ... Chee Soon Kuan and a party supporter were fined for speaking in public without a permit."

I'm not informed enough about the details of the cases or the laws to offer my own opinion; it wouldn't surprise me if Chee was technically guilty of everything he's charged with. What's more striking to me is how utterly thin-skinned both LKY and Singapore's legal system appear to be. For Lee, who is profoundly powerful many years after his nominal retirement, to castigate Chee, who was never more than the most token of opposition and seems just about as close to powerless as one can be—broke and nearly devoid of allies or public sympathy—is graceless and petty.

Followup articles about the incident quote the judge as saying that, if left unpunished, misbehaviour in court will diminish the dignity and authority of the court. Chee and his sister started serving 10 and 12-day jail sentences for contempt this week; I didn't see what happened with the damages for defamation.

On the same page of the Straits Times we read that

Singapore's Attorney-General has warned against "fanatics" who seize on the cause [of human rights] to further their own political agendas. Human rights has become a "religion" that breeds devotees who border on the fanatic ...

The A-G's fellow speaker was Professor Thio Li-ann, whom I've quoted before for her anti-gay bigotry.

The last thread of this saga is Gopalan Nair, a former Singaporean who is now a US citizen. Singapore disapproves of his calls for civil disobedience on his blog, and threatened to arrest him when he arrived in Singapore to observe the Chees' hearing. He dared them to, and they did. He's now out on bail, though he surrendered his passport. He's asking for the right to travel in order to, among other things, deal with accumulating parking fees for his car at the San Francisco airport. I just have to say, if you are going to fly to a country whose authorities behave as demonstrated above, and you dare them to arrest you, do not leave your car in short-term airport parking. That's just a failure of common sense.

On a personal note, I've tremendously enjoyed my stay here in Singapore, a stay which is due to end in six weeks. I'm quite grateful to the Singapore government and taxpayers for partially subsidizing my stay here. It's a very interesting country with some lessons to teach, both good and bad. I cannot imagine being comfortable enough with the political climate to settle here, and I think even a two-year stay would have been a bit too long. The only other place I've lived that had the same oppressive sense of fearful self-censorship was mainland China. I guess you could say I have to leave for religious purposes.

Discount Rates

A thousand dollars today is not the same as a thousand dollars in ten years. Cost-benefit analysis must account for changes in the value of money, i.e., inflation. This affects both costs and benefits.

Dealing with uncertainty

Several tools to account for uncertainty in cost-benefit analysis.

Sensitivity Analysis

Adjust some of the variables and see how much the projected outcomes change. Ignores relationships, especially non-linear relationships, between variables. This can be addressed by bundling various "consistent combinations" of changes into scenarios and comparing scenarios.

Monte Carlo Analysis

Estimate the probabilities of the different values of the key variables, including probabilities relative to other variables' changes. Use a computer to simulate thousands of different outcomes and see which are most likely. (Example)

Reading

Zerbe, Richard O., Jr., and Allen S. Bellas. 2007. A Primer for Benefit-Cost Analysis. Chapter 9-10, pp. 215-289. Edward Elgar Pub

This book says benefit-cost instead of cost-benefit. The difference has me counting syllables and emphases to figure out why it sounds worse. I think cost-benefit is iambic, or nearly so, as "cost" is de-emphasized. And analysis is purely iambic, so putting them all together is magical: "cost ben-e-fit a-nal-y-sys". But be-ne-fit-cost a-nal-y-sis sounds terrible.

• p 250. Using inflation numbers like 5% or 10% for discounting, when extended over a human lifespan or longer, produces a discount multiplier close to zero. That is, it says that the present value of something 70 or 100 years in the future is nothing. Taken at face value, this makes long-term cost-benefit analysis useless, and raises ethical questions. Instead, other rates such as "Social Rate of Time Preference" and "Shadow Price of Private Capital" can be used; charts on page 251 suggest values for time periods measured in decades and centuries.
• p 256: Risk is typically ignored in cost-benefit analysis. That's been very clear to me as a project manager doing estimates, and the key reason is that the users of the analysis don't want the risk. They just want a number. So I try to present a range instead of a number, but I think it just gets collapsed to the side of the range that the user wants to hear.

The class to date in context. First, we did a two-day module on leadership and communication, unfortunately scheduled in the middle of the busiest stretch of the previous semester, and discussed "inner compass" issues (classes -1 and 0). Then we did reviewed our Myers-Briggs results (class 6), which are a bridge from the self to the group and FIRO-B (class 5, I think). The 360 reviews (class 6) are very much, how does the group see me. Presentation skills (class 7). Today is the penultimate lecture by the professor; then a guest lecturer gives two lectures on context, then the final lecture is on theory. The self-oriented material is more psychological than other things, and that can chafe. At the outer areas, context and organizations, studying these issues hasn't been proven to change behavior.

Class exercise to identify and deconstruct the behavior that we want to change.

Cost-benefit analysis

Financial Analysis

Starts with the cash flow, the direct, measurable flow of money as a consequence of a policy alternative. Then broaden to include indirect costs, such as opportunity costs. IBM, for example, calls these green dollars and blue dollars. I once worked with a CIO who said that a particular policy option would be "free" because they could use their existing staff without extra training or having to hire or rent experts. This fallacy reflects a failure to understand "blue dollars".

Financial analysis vs cost-benefit analysis

To get to a true cost-benefit analysis, the scope of analysis must be widened even further. In addition to direct cash flow and indirect costs, complete cost-benefit analysis includes broader social costs and externalities.

Ex ante CBA is performed during planning, to inform decision-making. Ex post CBA is performed after a project is complete, to evaluate the outcome and add to general knowledge. It is also possible to do CBA in the middle of a project, and to compare ex post and ex ante CBAs to see how accurate the ex ante analysis was.

Kaldor-Hicks Criterion (an improvement on Pareto optimality): a policy should be adopted if the gainers could, in theory, compensate the losers and still be better off.

What's better, a cheap project with a very high benefit/cost ratio, or an expensive project with a lower benefit/cost ratio? They have different scales, and cannot be directly compared without more context.

Standing is very important: who and what should be counted in CBA?

Include only the changes in costs and benefits which are attributable to the alternative, i.e., the difference between baseline and the alternative. Exclude sunk outcomes. Exclude costs which are shared across all alternatives. Exclude transfer payments (not to be confused with transfer pricing), because they don't change the net cost or benefit, just the distribution. Treat taxes and subsidies case by case. Include true opportunity cost of government costs, not arbitrary prices. Avoid double-counting. Consider changes in asset value. Include externalities. Consider secondary outcomes. Include unpriced outcomes.

Reading

Boardman, A. E., D. H. Greenberg, A. R. Vining &D. L. Weimer. "Cost Benefit Analysis Concepts and Practice. Chapter 1

• p 5: Discussion of US federal requirements for performing CBA, starting in 1981. I think it's important to note (though the authors don't) that CBA is often a partisan political tool. A few ways it can be manipulated: require CBA for disfavored projects while not performing CBA on favored projects; control the scope of CBA to include or exclude important factors; selectively use or ignore the results of CBA.
• p 18: three perspectives, based on role. Analysts do real CBA. Guardians (e.g., OMB) tend to do only financial analysis. Spenders (in "service or line departments") tend to see all expenditures as benefits. They also weight their CBA heavily by political support.
• p 22: "CBA is often taught in a way that is completely divorced from political reality. We wish to avoid this mistake."

Sinder, J. A. & D. J. Thampapillai, "Introduction to Benefit-Cost Analysis", Chapter 4 & 5

• p 52: exclude international outcomes. Um. It's hard for me to get on board with that while still feeling like an ethical person.
• p 61: handy checklist of private vs social perspectives on various costs.
• p 62: Review questions. This looks like good practice.

Framework for feedback observations:

Situation

Behavior

Impact

Student presentations

The groups that volunteered to present today on Adaptive Leadership had a very vague brief. Our group decided after some discussion to present by play-acting our discussion about how to present, simultaneously a bold move and a kind of cop-out. (Amusingly, the way we played with the fourth wall was by raising it, since we interacted as if the audience didn't exist, instead of by speaking to them.)

We were lucky to have an expert presentation coach present for class, albeit a grumpy one since she had come directly from the airport without a stop home. It was tough for me to listen positively to the feedback, because I was proud of our work and wanted more strokes before the criticism, which the coach was simply not in the mood to provide. So it might have been an artifact of my imagination that her final words, congratulating us for making a presentation tailored to the group that communicated our message, came across in a tone of damning with faint praise.

Our most essential feedback, I felt, was when the class was asked for a show of hands: who thought we achieved our objective. The majority raised their hands. Other feedback: our method of writing out dummy text for our points as we went, and then revealing well-formed writing on another whiteboard as we left, was a bad idea. We should have just planned our stagecraft better to write out legible points as we went.

The presentation following us used the overhead for powerpoint, a minus in my book, but they more than made up for it by showing clear signs of practice: they all spoke freely and naturally without notes (except for the over-long Churchill quote). So the fluency was a big plus (update: well, two and a half well-performed segments out of five was still a huge step up from most presentations last semester). Content-wise, it didn't seem especially penetrative; something about politics as an integral part of leadership; a profile of Jesus as a leader, another of Churchill, and a shout-out to Jack Welch. At the very best, they didn't get any closer to defining "adaptive" leadership than our group did. (The message of our group was that adaptive leadership was an ill-defined buzzword, even to the point that we weren't sure whether it was intended to mean leaders who adapt, or leaders who lead people to adapt. While there might be useful ideas related to adaptive leadership, we weren't convinced they were new ideas.) Overall, the second group seemed like five independent presentations on peoples' personal interests, coordinated neither with each other nor with those before or after.

Side note: Jack Welch's leadership skills should be continually re-assessed for the next twenty to fifty years as the long-term damage he did to GE in search of consistent, indefinite short-term results emerges.

Second side note: I don't think Jesus is a good example to use for illuminating adaptive leadership. Religious figures aren't very suitable as case studies or anecdotes, because they're mythological. I don't mean that they're false (though as an atheist I happen to think that as well), I mean that they are loaded with content and meaning that is distracting from the point. Believers may overly credit, or perhaps not bother no notice, the actual context; disbelievers may wonder how the speaker's belief colors or undermines the suitability of the case study to the point at hand.

Watching the coach criticize the second group is illuminating, though again I'm not a neutral observer. She came to the front smiling, whereas she did not with ours. She asked for a show of hands between liking slides with pictures versus slides with only text, but her body language seemed to dictate the result (half the class raised their hands for the first, but only about 1/6th for the second choice). I have the impression that she has a number of pre-scripted points to make and is looking at the presentations largely for cues to spool out her points. I agree with many of the points, but don't care for the style of presentation (I'm complaining about the style of presentation used to critique the presentation - I'm so meta(l)).

Third group: finally, somebody seems to have found what the prof told us is the one paragraph buried in the entire book about Adaptive Leadership that actually defines it. (My paraphrase) Adaptive leadership is when a leader changes group behavior to better solve problems. Both the leaders and the followers are adaptive. More specifically, the problems and solution may be ill-defined, and the methods of changing behavior include cooperation and personal communication.

Sadly, it doesn't look like groups 2 or 3 haven't adapted anything in their presentations to address how the first two presentations went. We deliberately dodged this by going first. Although, we did consider making a change in our last rehearsal just before class and were unable to work it out, and so stuck with our original plan, so we wouldn't necessarily have adapted any more effectively.

Review of our 360 Reviews

A mention of the five stages of grief (denial, anger, etc). I had read that this wasn't actually grounded in clinical evidence. Here's a 2007 study:

Results: Counter to stage theory, disbelief was not the initial, dominant grief indicator. Acceptance was the most frequently endorsed item and yearning was the dominant negative grief indicator from 1 to 24 months postloss. In models that take into account the rise and fall of psychological responses, once rescaled, disbelief decreased from an initial high at 1 month postloss, yearning peaked at 4 months postloss, anger peaked at 5 months postloss, and depression peaked at 6 months postloss. Acceptance increased throughout the study observation period. The 5 grief indicators achieved their respective maximum values in the sequence (disbelief, yearning, anger, depression, and acceptance) predicted by the stage theory of grief.

I've read that three times and I'm still not sure what they are saying. I guess they sort-of validated Kübler-Ross?

Decision Matrices

We're looking at this chart on page 249 of "Expert Advice for Policy Choices". For some reason, the authors assert that both of the choices, pushing welfare recipients to get jobs, and "child support enforcement", are strongly supported by Conservatives, but "jobs" is only weakly supported by Liberals, and enforcement is actively opposed. Our overall topic is how to set up decision matrices to evaluate outcomes, but this example shows pretty clearly that this can be a very thin exercise. Let's catalog how it can go wrong:

• Are all of the important criteria included?
• Are all of the criteria weighted accurately?
• Can each criterion be accurately converted into a proportionate numerican value?
• Can you accurately determine the value of each alternative according to each criterion?
• Are all of the criteria mutually independent?

At the very least, it seems like malpractice to me to make and present measurements like this as single numbers instead of ranges.

Anyway. Three kinds of matrices:

• Alternatives by criteria.
• affected parties: what is the benefit or cost on each affected party for each alternative?
• political matrix: which constituencies support or oppose which alternatives?

Once you have a decision matrix, how do you reduce heterogeneous criteria scores to comparables?

• Qualitative:
  • Remove dominated alternatives. If an alternative is worse or tied with another alternative on every criterion, remove it. This can be combined with any method, qualitative or quantitative.
  • Rank the criteria. Whichever alternative is best by the #1 criterion wins. Ties go to the #2 criteria, etc. Assumes that the #1 criterion is more important than all others combined.
  • Pairwise. Compare two alternatives across all criteria and judge the winner. Compare the winner to the next alternative. Repeat. There can be only one.
• Quantitative
  • Satisficing. For each criterion, determine a minimum level to be acceptable. Score each alternative pass or fail for each criterion. This effectively quantifies everything, but does not address the relative value of different criteria.
  • Weighted criteria. Assign each criterion a value proportionate to its relative merit, and convert ratings within criteria to fractions of that value.

Another possibility is to combine elements of several alternatives.

Analytical reports should do as much as possible to simplify the decision for the decision-maker. If some alternatives are clearly excluded, they should be identified as such. If more information is needed to rank tied alternatives, that information should be precisely specified.

Readings

Bardach Part I, pp 47-59. Appendix A, pp 107-121

Weimer, D. & A. Vining (1999). Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, Chapter 1, "Review: The Canadian Pacific Salmon Fishery," pp 1-26

Weimer, D. & A. Vining (1999). Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice, Chapter 11, "Goals/Alternatives Matrices: Some Examples from CBO Studies"

Today we are reviewing our Myers Briggs test results. This is also the deadline to complete our 360 Reviews. This is a third-party program to whom the school is paying lots of money to operate an independent website where we can type in our co-workers' emails and names to harass them to fill out a questionnaire about us. I think we're supposed to get seven people to respond. I sent invitations to thirteen people, of which three completed the survey and two started and abandoned it. I don't blame them for abandoning it; it's seventy questions and a lot of them read like this:

AHMED reduces complexity to a few core priorities in pursuit of 
the major strategic objectives
 	1. Substantial improvement needed
	2. Slight improvement needed
	3. Effective
	4. Very effective
	5. Role model
 
	0. Not observed

Here's a few more actual questions:

• ...develops strategies in accordance with the business vision
• ...monitors the effects of change initiatives and reviews their value

Please excuse me while I go monitor the effects of my change initiatives.

Class Session

We got our Myers-Briggs results back, and spent 90 minutes arranging ourselves around the classroom in order of score. Then we got and discussed our FIRO-B scores. Some of this seems helpful but it takes me a conscious effort of will to ignore the similarities with horoscopes and cold reading techniques.

Paul Kagame spoke at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore to a crowd of students, diplomats, and reporters. All text is my paraphrase of his remarks unless otherwise noted.

Africa has a reputation for perpetual crisis and unfavorable investment climate, but this is no longer completely correct. What changed? Africans deposed many dictators; the end of the Cold War; the end of apartheid; the spread of information technology, finance, and investment in Africa. Resulting in improved investment climate. Joel's note: He said "investment" nine times during his remarks.

Q: What is the key to better governance? A: You need good leaders at many levels, not just at the top. [some empty verbiage] It's a matter of choice that Africans have to make.

Q: Singapore has its own kind of "democracy". What kind of democracy will Rwanda have? (Joel's note: this is a very loaded question in Singapore, since Singapore's form of democracy is not very democratic. Kagame didn't seem to pick up this nuance.) A: ... common principles of democracy, different details. People must free themselves, not just apply foreign formulas. When I'm watching TV [of the West?], I get the impression that it's about having the most money to splash about.

Q: Did Rwanda choose Singapore as a model/advisor? A: [...] yes.

Q: Being Tutsi, how did you feel about reconciliation? A: ... from my background of injustice and prejudice, I know how good it is to be different [from that behavior]. ....

Q: Your focus on human rights is rare for Africa. What steps are you taking to promote this in the African Union? Do you see leadership on this in Africa? A: [...]

Q: I commend your zero-tolerance on corruption. What institutional framework are you implementing to prevent more massacres? A: genocide is ideological, from the colonial legacy ...

Q: You come close to fitting the bill of the "Big Man" trap. What are you doing to not follow that role? A: "I don't feel close to a Big Man ... I am very conscious of the fact that there is a tomorrow without me." You have to build institutions ... constitutional processes ... limits .... "I will follow it to the letter. If you want, there is another time of judging coming up [when Kagame reaches his term limit]"

Q: What about the office of Vice President, which was created just for you in 1994 and dissolved after you became President in 2000? A: "yes..." It was during a transition period. I didn't want to be in government, but they said I couldn't leave after our struggle to get to that point, so they made me VP. The guy I recommended for president didn't work out and problems remained, so I accepted the presidency.

Q: Will China rape our resources too? A: "This is the most important thing you have come to ask. They say the right things ... the US is more worried about China in Africa than Africans are. They [the US] are worried they [China] are going to beat them at their own game." Africa must step back and plan. "I don't think anybody owes us anything. If they find you sleeping, they will take things and leave you sleeping. They will not wake you up." There is no value-added industry in Africa; cotton is exported raw instead of being processed in Africa. It's up to Africa to demand cotton processing in Africa. It's not discrimination; we have to set the terms. China and India compete for what we have, so [having both interested] will give us a better price, "if we are not sleeping."

Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute, Inc, on "Winning the Oil Endgame". Unless noted, all text is my paraphrase of the speaker's message.

Winning the Old Endgame, a free book describing a for-profit path to eliminate oil usage in the US by 2040. How? Improve efficiency, at (US$ ca 2000) $12 per saved barrel, and new sources (cellulosic ethanol) at less than $26/bbl.

Global response to the 1970s oil crisis was drastic worldwide conservation, in which the world reduced demand so much that OPEC lost pricing power for a decade.

Whaling was the fifth-biggest US industry in the early 19th century. New technologies rendered whaling obsolete (for lighting oil) before the whales were (all) gone.

Cars could be made more fuel-efficient (via streamlining, lower mass, etc) at an effective price of US$0.15/liter. Trucks can be similarly improved.

Cars can be made more efficient without being made undesirable. Of the chemical energy in auto fuel, 6% ultimately moves the car (as opposed to pushing air out of the way, warming the tires, etc etc. Only 0.3% goes to moving the driver. Carbon fiber crash cones can solve the issue of lighter cars being more dangerous (all other things equal).

Showing a demonstration design: "Think about it like a computer with wheels, not a car with chips." Uh, that may not be the best line to use. Also, the information design of his presentation is awful, not even counting the horrible black backgrounds.

Joel's note: this is very sexy, so far, but he's focused solely on replacing oil and on lighter cars. He's not talking directly about carbon emissions, although those are reduced when cars are made more efficient. Also, carbon-fiber construction is much more energy-intensive than steel, at least for now: "the effective combination of [reduce/reuse/recycle] could decrease the energy intensity of CFRP to the level of steel parts." Aside from that, I'm accumulating cognitive dissonance as he keeps describing and demonstrating all of these technology solutions that don't seem to be showing up in force in the real world. Industry conspiracy again?

Plug-in hybrids could alter the pattern of electricity usage. Power up your hybrid at night with cheap power; during the day, park your car at work at a smart plug and sell your power back to the grid at premium prices. "The first two million Americans to do this can earn back the cost of their car."

Blended body airplanes can be three times as efficient as tube and wing construction.

Joel's note: I start to suspect that the real benefit of four dollar gas is that it will batter down the social resistance to doing "weird" things. Anybody running a long-distance truck fleet could have saved a lot of money any time in the last few decades (or more, for all I know) by introducing more efficient, but weird-looking trucks. Why didn't they? I bet social resistance is a huge factor. Oh, and just to mention: we are once again sitting in an heavily air-conditioned room at noon with the shades drawn and the lights on listening to someone talk about energy efficiency.

Sweden planned to get off oil by 2020, but a new government postponed that to 2030.

Most of this will happen without government participation. Five ways governments can help.

Stimulate demand for more efficient vehicles. Feebates: rebates on more efficient cars paid for by fees for less efficient cars; revenue-neutral and serves to internalize the pollution externality. Require government procurement to include only most efficient cars. E.g., don't let officials pick their own prestige SUVs etc. Working with Wal★Mart to get more efficient supply trucks.

Share R&D risk. 50% of casualties in US military come from convoys; 70% of their cargo is fuel. This is because of military planning that assumed fuel delivery was free. By changing this assumption in procurement rules to account for fuel delivery cost (in money and human lives), fuel will count one or two orders of magnitude more, and 0.1mpg tanks will be more accurately perceived as very limited military options.

It is possible to shrink the adoption curves, so they don't take 15 years to turn over from old products to new products. How to rebuild the US military with efficiency in mind.

The Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States. In 2006, it spent $13.6 billion to buy 110 million barrels of petroleum fuel (about 300,000 barrels of oil each day), and 3.8 billion kWh of electricity. This represents about 0.8% of total U.S. energy consumption and 78% of energy consumption by the Federal government.

Breakthrough competitive strategy via platform efficiency. Boeing 1997 is like Detroit now.

An hour in, he mentions carbon intensity for the first time.

Peak oil is a distraction, because 1) we can't know when it happens because so much oil reserve is in non-transparent countries, 2) efficiency justifies the same actions that peak oil justifies, 3) (I missed #3).

The biggest threat to US energy security is US energy policy. The effects of US policy have transferred tremendous wealth to Venezuela, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. US policy favors overly centralized systems of oil, natural gas, and grid distribution, and creates terrorist targets.

What about Singapore? Sitting on a gold-mine of "negabarrels" and "negawatts". You could save 3/4 of your usage in the next few decades. Singapore does have a good policy of charging close to the true social cost of driving. A modern power system (distributed, diverse, renewable) will cost less and emit less. Singapore is uniquely positioned to demonstrate the path to an oil-free future and set an example for China.

Q: Why are the policies so backwards? Is this just special interest capture? A: The oil industry is split, more good than bad. We're used to thinking that the oil problem can only be solved by draconian measures, but design, technology, and business strategy can solve the problem better. The Prius did outsell the Ford Explorer last year, and compacts and subcompacts are outselling SUVs. If I actually want to get things done, I'll work with the private sector together with civil society, not with government. I open-sourced "Hypercar" concepts in 1993 so that nobody could patent it and the industry would have to compete to implement it.

Q: How energy-efficient are the lightweights to make? A: Lifecycle analysis is very favorable. If you have a limited carbon budget, it's better to spend the carbon turning it into structural materials are light and strong and don't rust or fatigue than to burn it to propel steel.

Q: Is this a case of negative externalities? A: The car-making industry is in many ways the biggest human enterprise ever. It's fairly unique. They base strategic decisions on accounting, not economic analysis. Breaking these habits requires strong leadership, like Mulally at Ford. Car company employees tell me they have all of the necessary capabilities but they've never been asked to put them together.

Q: I'm an engineer. Why aren't we doing these things if they are so easy? A: See my lectures on the topic. It costs less to do things right, but it doesn't happen. It's about rethinking economic assumptions. "Singapore has some of the best engineering in the world for clean rooms, HVAC design, ..., but it doesn't get much respect here because it didn't just step off a plane with slides." See also 10xE

Now that people are abundant and nature is scarce, the Next Industrial Revolution will raise natural resource productivity 10- to 100-fold.

We want to get CEOs to call school deans and warn them that they will only hire properly trained engineers.

Leadership Direction

If a person has a sense of purpose, they seem to go much further, including perhaps going further biologically.

Happy life: research points to three factors: pleasure, engagement, and meaning.

Randy Pausch Lecture

The Food Crisis, by Juan Jose Daboub, managing director of the World Bank.

Food prices have risen dramatically. Dollar-denominated prices have increased 2.5 times since 2002, most of that in the last year or so.

Boilerplate description of the problem and solutions. It's hard to pay attention to him reading from his prepared remarks, especially when they give the sense of being polished to a fine state of inanity and inoffensiveness. "Power is shifting not just between countries, but within countries." Seriously? I refuse to believe you until I see it on a powerpoint slide (to his credit, no Powerpoint). "A few years ago, few people knew of Youtube. Today ... million videos are downloaded each day." Really? Wow. "Singapore has much to teach the world. Of course not all lessons from a small island nation are applicable, we understand that .... but I do believe Singapore can and should do more. As a small but highly successful state highly integrated with the global economy ...." "These are unprecedented times and they call for us to work together ...." "There are no excuses for failures; Singapore's example shows hard work pays off ... you have a responsibility to help keep the flame of economic freedom burning."

And the moderator: "In a short twenty minutes you have cast canvas on a range of issues we in Singapore and we in ASEAN have to deal with, and are dealing with."

Q: My question has to do with the implications of recent food price increases for the Doha framework. Is more rapid progress in the Doha round needed? Is that one of the measures you have in mind?" That was a much less pointed question than I expected from that questioner.

Q: Can you provide more explanation of why the food crisis is happening. What kind of response is necessary?

A:

We estimate 7% of world food production is traded internationally. ... Short-term actions: we are working with 54 countries that need to provide some temporal relief to 5, 10, 12% of their population. They are providing some direct, transparent, focalized to the demand subsidies ... In the medium term, the solution is to have the supply side respond. We are reviewing policies that certain countries have and try to advise ...

Reading notes

Economies don't have purpose. They just happen. Just as wearing a striped shirt in front of a television will cause a pattern to appear; collecting a number of independent actors who can exchange things of value with one another will cause an economy to happen. There's no purpose for the moire pattern on TV; there's no purpose for an economy. It just is. Since material wealth (broadly defined to include drinking water, health care, etc) is the primary source of happiness, a good economy is better than a bad economy. A good economy is one with allocative efficiency: the most possible output for a given input. Of course that's not the only way to define "good" for an economy; other contenders include Pareto efficiency, equality, and fairness, but in purely economic terms the best economy is the most efficient one. The challenge for public managers is to balance the various definitions of "good" in a way that more or less reflects the preferences of the public, and having defined aggregate good, to do what they can to help achieve it. Last weeks' readings pointed out the danger of skipping that first part, the definition of the problem. This week's first reading assumes the problem is simply one of efficiency:

Boadway, R. & D. Wildasin (1984). Public Sector Economics, Chapter 3, "Market Failures"

A economic fundamentalist justification of the public sector's existence as a cure for (some) market failures.

• p 58: "... the jointness in use of public intermediate goods prevents the market from extracting a price from firms unless they can be excluded." Ack. No. Jointness of use does not prevent the market from extracting a price; only lack of excludability does. Jointness of use, more commonly (but no more usefully) called rivalry, is separate. Consider a golf course. It is, up to a point, non-rival. If I'm playing the tenth hole, I could care less whether or not somebody is playing the first hole. Within a certain range, let's say between one and a hundred golfers at a time, adding an extra golfer has no cost. That's great for the club because it provides them with a large "inventory" of time slots to sell. But it neither enables nor prevents them from "extracting a price". What enables the golf club to extract a price from golfers is the fence they put up around the course to keep the public out. That's excludability.
• p 73 to 77: charts of US government expenditure. Not adjusted for inflation, so mostly worthless; they do include percent of GDP, though. The total expenditure table does include state and local, which is nice. Still, I think this is pretty skippable.
• p 77: "Veterans Services", as it usually is, is mistakenly broken out into a separate category instead of included within "National Defense". If you send a million people to war and promise to take care of them, surely the lifelong cost of that care is part of the cost of war. (And if you manage that obligation as a cost to be cut, obscenities like this will be inevitable.

Kleiman, M., and S. Teles (2006). "Market and Non-Market Failures," in Moran, M., M. Rein and R. Goodin (eds) Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, Oxford University Press, pp. 624-650

Same topic, two decades later. Let's see if anything has improved.

• p 625: "Under certain highly restrictive assumptions, the market can be shown to be a a Pareto optimum." Those are better qualifiers for "assumption" than the last article's "It has been shown by Friedman and Savange (1948) that under certain reasonable assumptions individuals will behave [so as to maximize their expected utility]". Does that reflect 20 years of progress or are these authors just more rational (hah hah) to begin with?
• p 625: "The economic analysis underlying the doctrine of market failure assumes an individual capable of maximizing expected subjective utility ... That assumption is obviously false for children and the insane. But it is also false for many decisions made by ordinarily competent people about, for example, time management, saving, financial risk taking, diet, exercise, and the use of psychoactive chemicals. ... Thus the scope of suboptimal performance in voluntary individual choice and spontaneous organization is substantially larger than orthodox welfare-economics approaches suggest." Yay! Much better.
• p 637: causes of government failure: Inadequate Penetrative Capacity, i.e., not enough detailed information; Inadequate voluntary cooperation; institutional overhead; voter attention and inattention; path dependence of political decision-making; competition for technical expertise; weak administrative culture.
• p 647: "Public policy, institutional analysis, and political philosophy do not deal with three distinct subject matters; rather, they are three different attempts to deal with the problem of how human beings ought to govern themselves."

Much better.

Class notes

Class lecture starts with the material from class 2 reading.