Building A Winning Culture In Government. Patrick R. Leddin

formal title. Every organization has an informal network of “go-to people” for wisdom, advice, and solutions. They are often neither senior leaders nor managers, but they have earned “informal authority” because of their experience and influence.

Having a few leaders deciding everything just bottlenecks the whole organization. Important issues often stack up waiting for a decision from the front office. Just think of how long it takes to get the boss to sign off on something. We have grown accustomed to this, assuming this is simply how government works. Gary Hamel challenges all organizations to rethink this mindset saying, “We still have these organizations where too much power and authority are reserved for people at the top of the pyramid…. We have to syndicate the work of leadership more broadly.”14

      Everyone Leads

      So if you want to motivate people, and leaders are the most motivated people, why not make everyone a leader?

      It’s entirely possible to create the conditions where everyone can be a leader if you change your paradigm of what a leader is. When you no longer think of leadership as the sole province of a few select people, you realize that all people have primary leadership qualities that can be leveraged. Initiative, resourcefulness, vision, strategic focus, creativity—these qualities are in no way limited to the front office. Even small children can become leaders.

      Thousands of schools have adopted the 7 Habits as a way to teach leadership to children. Usually, “student leaders” are a small group of gifted, outgoing kids who are always the class officers, the top athletes, or the leads in the school play. But in schools we’ve worked with, all students are expected to be leaders. Every child is a leader of something. Organizing books, announcing the lunch menu, collecting homework, greeting guests, dispensing hand sanitizers—these might not seem like “leadership” roles, but leadership starts here. The children learn what it feels like to be responsible. They learn that being a leader means being a contributor.

      Most students take huge pride in their responsibilities. Some don’t want to miss a day because of their desire to fulfill their leadership roles. As they mature, so do their responsibilities: they take over marking attendance, teaching lessons, leading projects, mentoring other students, even grading homework. Every student can lead something. An autistic boy who struggles to keep track of time does small daily routines in the nurse’s office. He is so excited to fill his leadership role that he watches the clock like a hawk and is never late for his job. Another boy with a history of discipline problems is assigned to lead the office staff in doing several tasks once a day. He not only shows up for his “shift,” but comes back two or three times a day wanting to know if he can help; his discipline problems have evaporated.

      These children will grow up seeing themselves as leaders no matter what “positions” they hold in their careers. They will understand the key difference between an office holder—or perhaps someone stuck with an additional duty—and a leader. They will learn to understand the difference between formal authority and real authority. This paradigm has had a profound impact on academic performance, which has dramatically increased over the time the school adopted this “leadership framework,” and has led to a marked decrease in discipline issues. At the time of this writing, more than 3,500 schools have followed this model with remarkable results.

      Patrick tells the story of an extraordinary government leader he had the opportunity to interact with over a twelve-year period. “In 1998, I was assigned to work on a project at a U.S. Air Force base. My work focused on studying and documenting highly complex financial-management processes. The project required me to meet with various subject-matter experts, conduct interviews to understand aspects of the overall process, connect the dots to define the entire system, and work with my teammates to create a handbook that would be used throughout the Department of Defense (DoD). In all honesty, the project was a bit daunting. After all, with a system that complex, where does one start?”

      The first day on the job, Patrick met Rick and was informed that if he needed any guidance, Rick would point him in the right direction. “When we first met,” Patrick explains, “I didn’t realize that I was standing in the presence of the one of the best leaders and change agents I would ever meet. In hindsight, the initial introduction was rather prosaic. Rick was sitting in a cubicle space like everyone else in the building, had no ‘block’ on the organizational chart, and introduced himself using only his first name. He was friendly and said he was willing to help me if I needed anything.”

      As it turns out, in addition to being a wealth of knowledge about how Patrick could tackle his work, Rick was working on a major project of his own. Where Patrick’s project was complex, Rick’s assignment proved to be a tortuous labyrinth. He was tasked to define the Air Force’s requirements for a multiservice computer system. The project required him to travel often, make recommendations to senior leaders, and keep his team on track as they worked to accomplish a number of high-visibility deliverables. Patrick later learned that while others ran from the thought of working on the project, Rick volunteered—he stepped up to lead his part of the endeavor. In doing so, he played an invaluable role in getting the solution right for the thousands who would use the system in the coming decades. While others were saying the project wouldn’t work or would be too daunting, Rick took ownership.

      If he had done this once, it would have been remarkable, but leading out on tough issues became a hallmark of Rick’s careers. Over the next decade, Patrick saw Rick not just as one of a hundred program analysts working in a cubicle farm, but the one program analyst who chose to lead from where he sat and changed the trajectory of the organization. Rick volunteered his best and played active roles in creating a DoD-wide cost accounting system; establishing several workforce-development programs, including the certification of thousands of employees; and negotiating a relationship between the U.S. government and one of the nation’s top universities to establish a graduate-studies program for high-potential government employees. Rick did not seek out formal leadership positions—in fact, he turned down the ones he was offered. Nonetheless, he was a strong leader, made huge contributions, owned numerous projects, mentored many people, led lots of teams, and left a legacy that is felt throughout the Air Force.