Principles vs. prescriptions
With deepening complexity in our business environment, there’s a growing chorus of advice gurus telling leaders to be more directive with their teams. Ostensibly, people need prescriptive leadership under these conditions. They need to be told exactly what to do.
There is some merit to this advice. When immediate goals must be met, and confusion abounds, specific instructions can be useful. But for the most part a push for prescription strikes me as the opposite of what today’s leadership model requires. If indeed our business environment is becoming more volatile and unpredictable — and it is — a top-down transmission of step-by-step instructions will eventually become futile. At some point these instructions will always be out of step with the speed of the latest developments. There will have to be a shift from prescriptions to principles.
Grappling with an earlier version of this challenge, Harvard Business School pioneered the case study method about 100 years ago. Educators were designing a way to teach business leaders, recognizing that decision variables are forever unique. The idea was to expose the class to real-world challenges, and to push the students’ critical thinking skills under highly ambiguous conditions. Then the teacher would explain what actually happened, and students could compare their prediction with the result.
Those who have gone through the case study method don’t return to work with a playbook. They walk away with meta skills rather than micro skills. Mindset, for example, is a meta skill. Self-confidence and situational awareness are mindset components that build a frame and foundation for effective action. They set the stage for better decisions that can’t possibly be predetermined.
General Stanley McCrystal, in Team of Teams, records how the US military came to a similar realization in the second Iraqi conflict. The Americans quickly discovered it was individual initiative, not the execution of centralized commands, that determined battle outcomes. Eventually, military leadership learned to communicate the “commander's intent” — a desired outcome of the mission — and to encourage local teams to devise the best methods to make it happen.
Leadership can’t be about building playbooks in this era. It must be about facilitating judgment. It must be about nurturing the self-belief that supports radical ownership, spirited collaboration, and frontline innovation.