[Ailist] Mental Models and Executive Leadership Teams

[Lionel Boxer]

I notice that many organisations suffer corporate memory loss in many areas including the development of leadership.

In the quest to eliminate the demonic habits of the past, many great traditions have been removed.  In some cases, "boomers" have come along with a great totalitarian wave that cleansed organisations of what "boomers" perceived to be evil.  Hitler did this during WWII to a greater and more ruthless extent and similar events have occurred throughout history..

In great organisations it is interesting to learn where leaders come from in the past.  In some cases it seems that the production of leaders was part of the "incorrect regimes" that have been removed.  A lot of corporate history has been "burned" through willful determination to change history and replace it with a more pleasing version.  Sadly, in the process, people lose sight that their leadership models were built by leaders who had experienced lifelong leadership development through, scouting, soldiering and community groups along with great mentoring along the way.  In some cases, these leaders selected their staff from others who had experienced the same solid foundational experience.

So, where to from here?  Do we try to recreate leadership models or do we look to what worked and replicate those models.  I suggest creating an aggregate of all the good things.

See this link of a 1957 paper by the then Governor General of Australia, Field Marshal Sir William Slim, the only WWII general to make it to the top general list of all time.  http://intergon.net/slim.html In this paper, Slim addressed the Australian Institute of Management about the challenge of developing leaders in business; that paper could have been written today.

Slim rose from private to five-star general and is most famous for reversing the success of a defeated army in Burma during WWII.  His book "From Defeat to Victory" taught a generation of leaders (and remains on reading lists in leadership institutes around the world).  Whiile that generation was not sensitive to the issues that arose during the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and beyond, they certainly achieved a great deal.

Consider this in the current Australian context.  Now Australia has a myopic GenX Minister for the Environment, whose qualification is having been a front-man of a globally successful iconic punk rock band (whose albums I have purchased and I watched some of their 1970s performances on RAGE TV over the weekend) on another crusade to rewrite the rules of the world; he is part of a government that is eliminating history from highshool curriculum (on 3RRR this morning one anouncer said her mother things the new Australian Prime Minister looks like a nun).  So, the cycle continues this time led by seasoned anarchists, but their foundation is not necessarily in leadership experience.  Or perhaps we no longer want to be led.

This may explain the thuggery I hear of that is far too often applied (perhaps because people in authority do not understand leadership): 
http://www.leader-values.com/Content/detail.asp?ContentDetailID=304

Lionel Boxer CD PhD MBA BTech(IndEng) - 0411267256
Associate of RMIT University - lionel.boxer at rmit.edu.au
Graduate School of Business
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The Sustainable Way: http://intergon.net/tsw