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Leaders: The strategies for taking Charge
Books 829
perspective. H e depicts a new kind of Islamic intellectual, disenchanted both with the educationally impoverished ulema and with Marx, who seeks to develop " a contemporary, integrated Islamic system of thought and action that presents a genuine alternative to the dominant system". He draws somewhat on Professor alAttas' essay, woven into his new book, The Dewesternization of Knowledge. He thinks that it is 15ossible to isolate the foreign elements infused into present knowledge as it is conceived in the universities and elsewhere, and so " t h e foreign elements and disease will have first to be drawn out and neutralized before the b o d y of knowledge can be remoulded in the crucible of I s l a m " . This is a cry from m a n y cultures: " c a n ' t we only have science without the Western values in which it is adventitiously clothed?" W e can see similar debates both in Confucian and Marxist China, in India and elsewhere. Similarly, there is the hope of an Islamic way of practising the Shari'a in the m o d e r n world, an Islamic economics and so on. O n e can sympathize with these aims. Yet they are in m y view, more or less hopeless. Islam will have to make a different kind of accommodation. It is not possible for Islamic civilization stretching from West Iran to West Africa to cut itself off economically from the rest of the world, and in the world economic
system non-Islamic principles will apply. Those countries and blocs that have partially isolated themselves, have done badly--Burma, Kampuchea, the Marxist countries. A n d in fact they are increasingly being drawn into the world system. As for the pursuit of knowledge in an Islamic way, involving the imposition of a religious framework on the university, it is somewhat sinister in m y view, and no doubt self-defeating. Science too is an integrated world system, and it is hopeless to isolate Islamic science. There is perhaps a different path which Islamic reformers will have to tread: that of liberal modernism in an Islamic context, in which Islam frankly recognizes itself as a minority religion in a plural world (all religions and ideologies are of minority s t a t u s - though they do not always act as if this is so). In working within a wider world culture, Islam will have to take a more modest position, rather than assume that it can substitute Islamic certainty for the doubts and pluralism which inevitably characterize the pursuit of knowledge and value-satisfaction. Still, these are stimulating books, especially that of Sardar. Some of his chapters on matters such as the reform of the Hajj and Islamic views on development are excellent. But is his ambitious epistemological p r o g r a m m e more than a cry of protest?
A target that beckons Trevor Williams Leaders: The Strategies for T a k i n g Charge W a r r e n Bennis and Burt Nanus xi + 244 pp, £14.95 (Harper and Row, New York, USA, 1985) T h e saving grace of Leaders lies for me in the first three pages of its chapter on Trevor Williams is a management consultant, London, UK, and a member of the advisory board of Futures. FUTURES December 1986
" A t t e n t i o n through vision". T h e second of the two quotes which head the chapter is Martin Luther King, J r ' s , " I have a d r e a m " . That phrase has been described elsewherO as K i n g ' s best remembered words and as the best possible example of a 'pathfinding' expression. In his speech, K i n g quoted from the second sentence of the American Declaration of Independence: " W e hold these truths to
830 Books
be self-evident, that all m e n are created equal . . . . " T h a t assertion has been described z as the best illustration o f a p a t h f i n d i n g statement. T h e strength of the Bennis a n d N a n u s introduction to their discussion of vision lies not, however, in their p o w e r of an ideological assertion but in the elaboration of " d r e a m " . T h e authors quote from D a v i d H a l b e r s t a m ' s description of W i l l i a m P a l e y ' s ability, when he took over at CBS in 1928, to form a mental picture of a situation which did not then exist. It is because we have lost the sense of " i m a g e " in the w o r d " i m a g i n e " and the c o m p a r a b l e sense of a picture in " e n v i s a g e " that it has b e c o m e , I think, helpful to use the word " e n v i s i o n " . H a l b e r s t a m uses the word to convey P a l e y ' s ability to see an a u d i e n c e where n o n e then existed. Vision can be used to denote the skill involved in creating a mental picture. A t its sharpest it speaks of the picture itself. Bennis a n d N a n u s say: " T o choose a direction, a leader m u s t first have developed a mental image o f a possible and desirable future state of the organisation, This i m a g e . . . we call a vision . . . . " T h e difficulty o f r e t a i n i n g the sharpness of this simple statement is revealed before the end of the c h a p t e r ' s first three pages. T h e authors follow the statement that " A vision is a target that b e c k o n s " with two illustrations. T h e first is of J o h n F. K e n n e d y ' s i n a u g u r a l c o m m i t m e n t to p u t t i n g m a n on the m o o n b y the end of the decade. P e r h a p s m a i n l y because of television I can associate pictures with that promise. T h e second is of Sanford W e i l l ' s aim " t o m a k e A m e r i c a n Express the w o r l d ' s l e a d i n g investment b a n k i n g c o m p a n y in five y e a r s " . N o picture forms. In the rest of the book Bennis a n d N a n u s find it very difficult to live up to the p r o m i s e of their early statement that: " V i s i o n grabs". F r o m one perspective (on which I c o m m e n t below) Leaders suffers from two m o r e serious flaws. T h e first concerns a f u n d a m e n t a l a s s u m p t i o n about leadership a n d also
the criteria b y which particularly a d m i r a b l e leadership is identified. Bennis and N a n u s never quite fall into the trap of stating unequivocally that all leaders are good and all leadership beneficial. I n d e e d they acknowledge (for e x a m p l e page 16) that leadership can be perverse. Yet the impression pervades that " l e a d e r s h i p is a good t h i n g " . It is in faith that the authors say (page 2): " T h i s book was written in the b d i e f that leadership is the pivotal force b e h i n d successful organisations . . . . " (emphasis added). In all the hype of, in particular, the opening chapter, it is easy to forget that the foundations of the book lie in that belief/ assumption. F u r t h e r , we are not told on what basis the 90 individuals selected for interview were preferred to other individuals. T h e 60 C E O s are described as " s u c c e s s f u l " , with an average basic income of $400000, and we are told that about half of t h e m w e r e from Fortune's top-200 list. T h e 30 other people interviewed are said to be " o u t s t a n d i n g leaders from the public s e c t o r " . A n e x p l a n a t i o n of the a u t h o r s ' reticence m a y be found in some critical c o m m e n t s on Excellence 3 since it was written four years ago. Peters a n d W a t e r m a n used, a m o n g their criteria for selecting excellent companies, six numerical measures of long-term superiority. It is not surprising that since 1982 c o m p a n i e s ' p e r f o r m a n c e according to those measures has p r o v i d e d a m m u n i tion for sniping at Excellence. It seems that some later authors have been at pains to avoid sticking their necks out so far. As a result the r e a d e r is asked to proceed in faith. H a v i n g selected their 90 leaders by (in any useful detail) u n k n o w n m e a n s Bennis and N a n u s are similarly unconvincing in p e r s u a d i n g the r e a d e r that the processes by which they discovered the secrets of effective leadership are reproducible. T h e authors themselves say " T h e ' m e t h o d o l o g y ' we u s e d - - i f t h a t ' s the p r o p e r word to apply, a n d we d o u b t it--..." a n d " W e looked to see if there were a n y kernels of truth about leader-
FUTURES December 1986
Books~Sciencefiction 831
ship . . . . Perhaps others would look elsewhere. For us . . .". T h u s faith is needed also if one is to accept the usefulness of the four " k e y s " referred to in the book's sub-subtitle, " T h e four keys of effective leadership". A n d yet. In a book which I have found much more powerful, 4 Harold Leavitt argues that in examining the three main components of m a n a g e m e n t - - p a t h f i n d ing, problem solving, and implementing - - i t is wrong to apply problem-solving logic to pathfinding vision. H e shows how incomprehensible that second sentence of the American Declaration of Independence is to the classic problem solver. T h e reader of Leaders is left to determine what trust he or she can place in the assertions made. The reader must, further, apply subjective j u d g m e n t in assessing the quality
and relevance of the book as a whole and of its sub-sections. (The futurist interested in the application of some futures techniques m a y find pages 9 6 - 1 0 7 , and 166-183, of particular interest.) Bennis and Nanus argue that the leader usually obtains his or her vision from others. Martin Luther King, Jr, J o h n F. K e n n e d y a n d - - i n Halberstam's description--William Paley are rich sources.
Notes and references 1. Harold J. Leavitt, Corporate Pathfinders. Building Vision and Values into Organisations (DowJones, Irwin, 1986). 2. Ibid. 3. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies(Harper and Row, New York, USA, 1982). 4. Op cit, reference 1.
SCIENCE FICTION Literature of ideas Dennis Livingston The Memory of Whiteness K i m Stanley Robinson 351 pages, $3.50 (New York, T O R Books, 1986) In his latest novel, K i m Stanley Robinson takes us on what is at once a glorious travelogue and first rate intellectual adventure, marred only by some annoying loose ends left unexplained at the book's end. We are in the c o m p a n y of J o h a n n e s Wright. Wright is Ninth Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra, a R u b e Goldberg contraption that combines a large array of instruments into a single, immense contraption playable by one person. It is the year 3229, and Wright, along with Dennis Livingston, Strategic Forecasting and Issues Management, 2 Campbell Park, Somerville, MA 02144, USA.
FUTURES December1986
assorted crew members, camp followers, and enemies, has set off on a G r a n d T o u r of the solar system to play his music for the throngs that await him along the route. Robinson uses science fiction in one of its classic roles, as the literature of ideas. Plot and characters are subordinated to the playing out (literally) of two profound themes. O n e concerns nothing less than the nature of reality, as that issue is approached and answered through the work of particle physicists. The second is the concept of music as the embodiment of that answer. The premise of the book is that what is currently taken as the indeterminate shuffling of quarks is not the last word on events at the sub-atomic level. Yet more basic stuff is rolling around within the ten dimensions (five macro, and five tightly-curved micro dimensions) that
perspective. H e depicts a new kind of Islamic intellectual, disenchanted both with the educationally impoverished ulema and with Marx, who seeks to develop " a contemporary, integrated Islamic system of thought and action that presents a genuine alternative to the dominant system". He draws somewhat on Professor alAttas' essay, woven into his new book, The Dewesternization of Knowledge. He thinks that it is 15ossible to isolate the foreign elements infused into present knowledge as it is conceived in the universities and elsewhere, and so " t h e foreign elements and disease will have first to be drawn out and neutralized before the b o d y of knowledge can be remoulded in the crucible of I s l a m " . This is a cry from m a n y cultures: " c a n ' t we only have science without the Western values in which it is adventitiously clothed?" W e can see similar debates both in Confucian and Marxist China, in India and elsewhere. Similarly, there is the hope of an Islamic way of practising the Shari'a in the m o d e r n world, an Islamic economics and so on. O n e can sympathize with these aims. Yet they are in m y view, more or less hopeless. Islam will have to make a different kind of accommodation. It is not possible for Islamic civilization stretching from West Iran to West Africa to cut itself off economically from the rest of the world, and in the world economic
system non-Islamic principles will apply. Those countries and blocs that have partially isolated themselves, have done badly--Burma, Kampuchea, the Marxist countries. A n d in fact they are increasingly being drawn into the world system. As for the pursuit of knowledge in an Islamic way, involving the imposition of a religious framework on the university, it is somewhat sinister in m y view, and no doubt self-defeating. Science too is an integrated world system, and it is hopeless to isolate Islamic science. There is perhaps a different path which Islamic reformers will have to tread: that of liberal modernism in an Islamic context, in which Islam frankly recognizes itself as a minority religion in a plural world (all religions and ideologies are of minority s t a t u s - though they do not always act as if this is so). In working within a wider world culture, Islam will have to take a more modest position, rather than assume that it can substitute Islamic certainty for the doubts and pluralism which inevitably characterize the pursuit of knowledge and value-satisfaction. Still, these are stimulating books, especially that of Sardar. Some of his chapters on matters such as the reform of the Hajj and Islamic views on development are excellent. But is his ambitious epistemological p r o g r a m m e more than a cry of protest?
A target that beckons Trevor Williams Leaders: The Strategies for T a k i n g Charge W a r r e n Bennis and Burt Nanus xi + 244 pp, £14.95 (Harper and Row, New York, USA, 1985) T h e saving grace of Leaders lies for me in the first three pages of its chapter on Trevor Williams is a management consultant, London, UK, and a member of the advisory board of Futures. FUTURES December 1986
" A t t e n t i o n through vision". T h e second of the two quotes which head the chapter is Martin Luther King, J r ' s , " I have a d r e a m " . That phrase has been described elsewherO as K i n g ' s best remembered words and as the best possible example of a 'pathfinding' expression. In his speech, K i n g quoted from the second sentence of the American Declaration of Independence: " W e hold these truths to
830 Books
be self-evident, that all m e n are created equal . . . . " T h a t assertion has been described z as the best illustration o f a p a t h f i n d i n g statement. T h e strength of the Bennis a n d N a n u s introduction to their discussion of vision lies not, however, in their p o w e r of an ideological assertion but in the elaboration of " d r e a m " . T h e authors quote from D a v i d H a l b e r s t a m ' s description of W i l l i a m P a l e y ' s ability, when he took over at CBS in 1928, to form a mental picture of a situation which did not then exist. It is because we have lost the sense of " i m a g e " in the w o r d " i m a g i n e " and the c o m p a r a b l e sense of a picture in " e n v i s a g e " that it has b e c o m e , I think, helpful to use the word " e n v i s i o n " . H a l b e r s t a m uses the word to convey P a l e y ' s ability to see an a u d i e n c e where n o n e then existed. Vision can be used to denote the skill involved in creating a mental picture. A t its sharpest it speaks of the picture itself. Bennis a n d N a n u s say: " T o choose a direction, a leader m u s t first have developed a mental image o f a possible and desirable future state of the organisation, This i m a g e . . . we call a vision . . . . " T h e difficulty o f r e t a i n i n g the sharpness of this simple statement is revealed before the end of the c h a p t e r ' s first three pages. T h e authors follow the statement that " A vision is a target that b e c k o n s " with two illustrations. T h e first is of J o h n F. K e n n e d y ' s i n a u g u r a l c o m m i t m e n t to p u t t i n g m a n on the m o o n b y the end of the decade. P e r h a p s m a i n l y because of television I can associate pictures with that promise. T h e second is of Sanford W e i l l ' s aim " t o m a k e A m e r i c a n Express the w o r l d ' s l e a d i n g investment b a n k i n g c o m p a n y in five y e a r s " . N o picture forms. In the rest of the book Bennis a n d N a n u s find it very difficult to live up to the p r o m i s e of their early statement that: " V i s i o n grabs". F r o m one perspective (on which I c o m m e n t below) Leaders suffers from two m o r e serious flaws. T h e first concerns a f u n d a m e n t a l a s s u m p t i o n about leadership a n d also
the criteria b y which particularly a d m i r a b l e leadership is identified. Bennis and N a n u s never quite fall into the trap of stating unequivocally that all leaders are good and all leadership beneficial. I n d e e d they acknowledge (for e x a m p l e page 16) that leadership can be perverse. Yet the impression pervades that " l e a d e r s h i p is a good t h i n g " . It is in faith that the authors say (page 2): " T h i s book was written in the b d i e f that leadership is the pivotal force b e h i n d successful organisations . . . . " (emphasis added). In all the hype of, in particular, the opening chapter, it is easy to forget that the foundations of the book lie in that belief/ assumption. F u r t h e r , we are not told on what basis the 90 individuals selected for interview were preferred to other individuals. T h e 60 C E O s are described as " s u c c e s s f u l " , with an average basic income of $400000, and we are told that about half of t h e m w e r e from Fortune's top-200 list. T h e 30 other people interviewed are said to be " o u t s t a n d i n g leaders from the public s e c t o r " . A n e x p l a n a t i o n of the a u t h o r s ' reticence m a y be found in some critical c o m m e n t s on Excellence 3 since it was written four years ago. Peters a n d W a t e r m a n used, a m o n g their criteria for selecting excellent companies, six numerical measures of long-term superiority. It is not surprising that since 1982 c o m p a n i e s ' p e r f o r m a n c e according to those measures has p r o v i d e d a m m u n i tion for sniping at Excellence. It seems that some later authors have been at pains to avoid sticking their necks out so far. As a result the r e a d e r is asked to proceed in faith. H a v i n g selected their 90 leaders by (in any useful detail) u n k n o w n m e a n s Bennis and N a n u s are similarly unconvincing in p e r s u a d i n g the r e a d e r that the processes by which they discovered the secrets of effective leadership are reproducible. T h e authors themselves say " T h e ' m e t h o d o l o g y ' we u s e d - - i f t h a t ' s the p r o p e r word to apply, a n d we d o u b t it--..." a n d " W e looked to see if there were a n y kernels of truth about leader-
FUTURES December 1986
Books~Sciencefiction 831
ship . . . . Perhaps others would look elsewhere. For us . . .". T h u s faith is needed also if one is to accept the usefulness of the four " k e y s " referred to in the book's sub-subtitle, " T h e four keys of effective leadership". A n d yet. In a book which I have found much more powerful, 4 Harold Leavitt argues that in examining the three main components of m a n a g e m e n t - - p a t h f i n d ing, problem solving, and implementing - - i t is wrong to apply problem-solving logic to pathfinding vision. H e shows how incomprehensible that second sentence of the American Declaration of Independence is to the classic problem solver. T h e reader of Leaders is left to determine what trust he or she can place in the assertions made. The reader must, further, apply subjective j u d g m e n t in assessing the quality
and relevance of the book as a whole and of its sub-sections. (The futurist interested in the application of some futures techniques m a y find pages 9 6 - 1 0 7 , and 166-183, of particular interest.) Bennis and Nanus argue that the leader usually obtains his or her vision from others. Martin Luther King, Jr, J o h n F. K e n n e d y a n d - - i n Halberstam's description--William Paley are rich sources.
Notes and references 1. Harold J. Leavitt, Corporate Pathfinders. Building Vision and Values into Organisations (DowJones, Irwin, 1986). 2. Ibid. 3. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr, In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies(Harper and Row, New York, USA, 1982). 4. Op cit, reference 1.
SCIENCE FICTION Literature of ideas Dennis Livingston The Memory of Whiteness K i m Stanley Robinson 351 pages, $3.50 (New York, T O R Books, 1986) In his latest novel, K i m Stanley Robinson takes us on what is at once a glorious travelogue and first rate intellectual adventure, marred only by some annoying loose ends left unexplained at the book's end. We are in the c o m p a n y of J o h a n n e s Wright. Wright is Ninth Master of Holywelkin's Orchestra, a R u b e Goldberg contraption that combines a large array of instruments into a single, immense contraption playable by one person. It is the year 3229, and Wright, along with Dennis Livingston, Strategic Forecasting and Issues Management, 2 Campbell Park, Somerville, MA 02144, USA.
FUTURES December1986
assorted crew members, camp followers, and enemies, has set off on a G r a n d T o u r of the solar system to play his music for the throngs that await him along the route. Robinson uses science fiction in one of its classic roles, as the literature of ideas. Plot and characters are subordinated to the playing out (literally) of two profound themes. O n e concerns nothing less than the nature of reality, as that issue is approached and answered through the work of particle physicists. The second is the concept of music as the embodiment of that answer. The premise of the book is that what is currently taken as the indeterminate shuffling of quarks is not the last word on events at the sub-atomic level. Yet more basic stuff is rolling around within the ten dimensions (five macro, and five tightly-curved micro dimensions) that