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New Leaders Wanted – Now Hiring!12 kinds of People You Must Find, Seduce, Hire, and Create a Job For

AUTHOR: Leandro HerreroPUBLISHER: meetingmindsDATE OF PUBLICATION: 2007240 pages

New Leaders Wanted – Now Hiring! by Leandro Herrero

THE BIG IDEA

It’s a different world out there. The current organizational climate is universes away from the one of just a few years back. As a result, the needs of companies that operate today are vastly different too. Companies need to look out for people who can help them stay competitive in the face of all these changes.

New Leaders Wanted: Now Hiring! identifies 12 kinds of leaders – the "new types" who satisfy new needs – who the managers of today must go out of their way to hire. These are:

Re-constructors of Elephants Signal Spotters Space & Time Architects Rightbrainers HCIF Managers Lead(brok)ers Riders of the Network Chaordic Acrobats Disruptors Butterfly Managers Conquistadores Talki-Walkers


WHY YOU NEED THIS BOOK

• This interesting and refreshing book is vital for those who wish to stay on top of the management game.

• It identifies and profiles each new type of leader that companies should seek to hire.

• It thus serves as an excellent guide for those in search of finding the right people to help their companies weather today’s tough and rapidly changing times.


THE PERSONALITY TYPES

Type 1: Reconstructors of Elephants

Profile:• See patterns of things, not bits and pieces• Connect dots• Are able to reproduce a story from a set of bullet points• Provide/make sense• Can handle complexity without trivializing• SO-WHAT expertise (we have the SWOT ones)• Synthesizer• See an elephant when confronted with an elephant

The Re-Constructors of Elephants are those with the ability to re-construct “elephants” from their parts, reconstruct strategies from bullet points, and re-construct portfolios from individual projects. They are big-picture people and they don’t get bogged down with details when it’s the big picture that needs looking at.



Type 1: Reconstructors of Elephants

These people are needed because far too many people are unilateral, reductionist, and bullet-point – they can’t see the forest for the trees. But that’s not entirely their fault:

• There’s quite a bit of information pollution floating around out there. We welcome pre-digestion, filtering, and simplification; we can’t absorb everything.

• We can’t take time to think and reflect. We are in the ‘doing’ business (“We are so busy doing that we have no time for being”). So if there is ‘no time’, there is even less time for complexity or any holistic approach. At least bits and pieces are more digestible, we feel.

• Many people are saddled with a ‘cut-and-paste’ education. Education has little time for learning how to connect the dots. Dot-connecting and sense-making are very weak curriculum skills.



2. Signal Spotters

Profile:

• Read/interpret trends (beyond the industry sector)

• Think five years ahead

• Ask, ‘What does it mean? What’s that telling us?’

• Ask questions but do not provide the answers before the questions have been agreed upon (actually, people who have all the answers should automatically be disqualified for the job)

• Have been found in the corridor saying ‘aha!’

• Speak the language of behaviors vs. the language of processes – a small set of behaviors can deal with a significant number of challenges or fixes, and can even shape a culture



2. Signal Spotters

True Signal Spotters will show proficiency in spotting the following:

• Organizational signals. Signal Spotters are able to understand what is going on in the company, beyond the noise of complaints, whining, and ever-growing lists of issues.

• Customer and market signals. Beyond the paraphernalia of market research and its sister, benchmarking, Signal Spotters are able to extract trends and interpret data. They are more interested in what some sorts of data mean (facts, feedback, external input) than in the arithmetic of their benchmarking.

• Decision-making signals. Signal spotters tend to reject yet another cry for greater ‘availability of data’, another wave of surveys and ‘feedback’, or another 1,000 interviews.



3. Space & Time Architects

Profile:• Readers of philosophy (space & time section)• Connoisseurs of quality time• Supporters of free conversation• Storytellers• Role models of face-to-face communication• Protectors of psychological space• Architects (yes, architects!)

These people are needed because space and time are indispensable assets for both the individual and the organization, and in today’s hectic world far too many companies fail to respect them. As a result these companies fail to engender freedom and trust.



3. Space & Time Architects

Space and Time Architects eschew simple “work-life balance” considerations for other mechanisms:

• Protection of psychological and personal space, acknowledging the need for time to think and reflect

• Encouraging and providing opportunities for formal discussions and debate without the need to ‘close the issue’ or reach a decision

• Encouraging and protecting informal conversations via networks of many types without the fear that people may waste their time or ‘use it’ for non-company issues

• Encouraging and engineering face-to-face collaboration, direct talk and less use of digital conversations when they are a simple substitute for face-to-face conversations



4. RightbrainersProfile:• Competency in drawing, must still be at the primary school level in this

sense• Risk taking (ask them to demonstrate this by listing all the times they have

been fired. The more times they have been fired, the more points they score.)

• Creativity and innovation (give them a blank canvas and see)• Look, observe, see patterns in things• Demonstrate ‘however’ thinking• Bring options, not fully cooked answers• Fast forward competency: can visualize futures• Visualize success and failure in those futures• Have proven track record of driving linear, rational and predictable people

nuts

The average business organization is governed by left-brain rules and led by left-brain people. But in many cases the structure and rigidity of that setup leaves little room for dealing with uncertainty. Leaders of today need the ability to play with what-if scenarios!



4. Rightbrainers

• The ‘split-brain’ metaphor. The brain has two hemispheres: right and left. They work in a complimentary way, but they deal with very different aspects of our mental activity. The left brain is the home for logic. Speech, reading and writing abilities reside here. The right brain is the home for intuition and creativity. Images are more important than words.

• Right-brain vacuum. You need new leaders who can bring imagination back, who dare to dream of things and who exercise their intuition as well. You need new leaders who don’t have all the answers and, above all, who can imagine the future.

• From kindergarten to Corporate Normalcy. Find good rightbrainers, seduce them and offer them a job. Take the risk. Bite the bullet, the same way you bit the bullet points. Hire the creative, intuitive, pattern-recognizing, ‘however’ type of people and, in the first instance, protect them!



5. Human Capital Investment Fund (HCIF) Managers

Profile:• Investment background• Venture capital background• Create conditions for IQ growth• People enhancers• Good at spotting talent• Can spot people who develop relationships and use them• Experts in organizational climate change• Followers of the philosophy of ‘You-got-an-A-explain-why’.



5. Human Capital Investment Fund (HCIF) Managers

People are neither costs nor assets; they are investors of their own human capital, which is the pool of talent that invests in companies at any given point, and which, like any investor, can decide to withdraw or pull out if returns are too low. It falls to the BCIF Managers, therefore, to manage this sort of capital.

Companies of today sorely need leaders who are BCIF Managers, who really believe in and live the ‘investors metaphor’ and who are good at spotting talent. These people should be scattered all over the place in management and leadership positions.



6. Lead(brok)ers

Profile:• Build support as a matter of principal• Facilitators• Strong role models• Catalytic• Horizontal connectedness (not hooked on top-down philosophy)• Brokers• Deal makers• Able to tap into any source of good human capital and make sure

that it is shared• Backstage managers• ‘Invisible hands’

There is a huge interdependency between people, teams and divisions within companies. But a similar one also exists between companies themselves. Brokers – those who act as intermediaries, negotiators or agents between these parties – are thus crucial.



6. Lead(brok)ers

To understand how these people exercise lead(brok)ership we need to look at these five dimensions:

1. Bridging, building, gluing. Lead(brok)ers are masters of relationships. The way they build bridges and ‘integrate’ people is usually horizontal: across groups or divisions, across interests.

2. Clearing the way. Another aspect of lead(brok)ership is the tearing down of barriers so people can actually do their jobs.

3. (Back)stage management. Most of the good lead(brok)ership stuff is fairly invisible. Lead(brok)ers are stage managers without the visibility of the Almighty Project Manager.

4. Effectively distributed leadership. The distributed leadership model implies that leadership can be found at all levels of the organization and not only in the boxes at the higher levels of the organization chart.

5. Managing the organizational decibels. Lead(brok)ers have the great ability to decrease the noise, to calm things down, to quietly find the assumed source and put things in perspective.



7. Riders of the Network

Profile:• Possess social intelligence• Demonstrate connectedness• Have navigation skills (in any form)• Are hyper-linked• Demonstrate extra-structural management (we have reached

our quota in intrastructure management)• Are relationship builders

We live in a teamocracy. The average company is organized in teams. Think of something to be done and somebody will shout: “Let’s have a team!”



7. Riders of the Network

The innovation quest(ion). Teams breed strong ties. But you also need loose networks of people (‘belonging’ to different places/teams) talking to each other, to tap into sources of human capital which may bring something new to the party. Only about a quarter of all creative interactions occur within the formal organizational framework; three-quarters of it occurs in the mostly invisible, unstructured social network of people conversing outside these structures.

This is where Riders of the Network come in. They navigate through connections both inside and outside an organization, and work on social capital – the quantity and quality of relationships in a company. They manage the flow of conversations and influence where almost all the real action takes place.



8. Chaordic Acrobats

Profile:• Not bothered by troublesome situations or ambiguity management• See possibilities in both the structured and unstructured side of

things• Cross boundaries without creating internal diplomatic incidents• Think that having two bosses is not enough. Want at least three,

so as to have more possibilities of influencing senior people• Previous experience as a bishop or squadron commander is an

automatic disqualification for this job

The term ‘chaordic’ describes the combination of apparent chaos and order that corresponds to what most people would term as ambiguity. Ambiguity is present in all organizations, and leaders can’t afford to ignore it at all; they must seek to manage it properly, or else risk failure.



8. Chaordic Acrobats

There are several areas where ambiguity tends to pop up, and where Chaordic Acrobats are badly needed:

1. Boundaries. Relationships in the form of strategic collaborations, joint ventures, partnerships, co-marketing, etc., sometimes form a big web in which the recognition of strict borders becomes harder and harder.

2. Decisions and ‘closure’. The problem is that most of the work force doesn’t see the fine lines, but only the thick, fat, bold ones. Chaordic Acrobats have the ability to push for closure when needed one day and to suspend judgment another day.

3. Measurement. Einstein said that not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.

4. ‘Conversation’. Conversations are also exiled from management and leadership teams. They are supposed to be a decision or sanctioning machinery.



9. Disruptors

Profile:• Challenge the status quo• Take risks• Can be un-reasonable people• Ask difficult questions• Learn from deviance• Seek discontinuity• Anti-default position thinkers• See ‘progress’ as discontinuity, healthy conflict and

perhaps controversy• All the above may be uncomfortable for others, but they

don’t capitalize on that pain or seek disruption for the sake of it

• Need to show at least one instance where their disruption made a difference, which can be anywhere and anytime between kindergarten and now



9. Disruptors

Disruptors share some of the following characteristics:

• They challenge the status quo. They are uncomfortable with continuity, with the pervasive progression of more of the same.

• No contention, no progress. Disruptors challenge conventional thinking, perhaps just because it is conventional.

• They enjoy taking risks. They see risk as progress and avoiding risk as a death certificate.

• They engage contradiction. Disruptors seem to have an aversion to the common or conventional thinking that says you must choose between A and B as you can’t have both.

• They seek out dissidents and deviants. Because of all the above, disruptors tend to look for dissidents and people who deviate from the norm.



10. Butterfly Managers

Profile:• Prefer to handle backstaging, stage management – work

in the back room• Lead quietly• Mobilize commitment and energy (as opposed to sucking

energy from others)• Possess small ‘r’ proficiency• Action-oriented (as opposed to talk-oriented)• Take influence seriously, even ‘personally’ (those who

think this is ‘politics’ shouldn’t bother to apply)• Have shown examples of their ‘stage management’

abilities and can articulate achievements obtained with little personal visibility



10. Butterfly Managers

This is what Butterfly Managers do:

• Influence: it’s personal. They influence their immediate network by first endorsing the necessary changes and role modeling them.

• Mobilize commitment. They are infectors themselves and tend to energize other people.

• Distributed leadership. They practice a form of leadership that is distributed across the organization, although they may not call it this.

• r+r+r=R. This is the Butterfly Management equation: small radical changes add up to create Big Radical Change.



11. Conquistadores

Profile:• Possess inquisitorial minds• Are very curious• Are in quest mode• Have a ‘spirit of conquest’• Cartographers• Explorers• Need to show that discovery is a turn-on, versus

‘business as usual’• Adventurers



11. Conquistadores

Below are 10 keywords which characterize these new leaders:

Discovery. Conquistadores believe that there are still territories worth discovering.

Curiosity and inquiry. They ask lots of questions! Explorers. They have the instinctive belief that multiple ways lead to

multiple places. Mapmaking. They rely on maps, but if these don’t exist, they will make

their own. Travellers. To travel, do it, move… as opposed to writing out strategic

plans or virtual travel. Imagination. New leaders with great talent for imagination allow

themselves to wander. Restless minds. They are not satisfied easily, but they are not the

kind that is never satisfied. Adventure. They take risks and go beyond the predictability of normal

organizational life. Quest. It may be a quest for quality, for uniqueness in customer

interaction or for innovation. ‘In transit’. It means constantly moving, walking, traveling and on a

quest for a better performance. Also a state of mind, an attitude towards continuously moving forward.



12. Talki-Walkers

Profile: Mainly interested in behavior Conscious of the fragility of trust Make use of visible actions, including heroic ones if needed Keep promises Action-people first; language is part of the package

Talki-Walkers, as the name suggests, take the idea of “walking the talk” very seriously. They are obsessed with the thought that whatever they say as leaders must be shown in practice. The most visible element of their leadership is action following language.

These people are perfect in three incredibly important areas:1. They build trust big time. 2. They are powerful role models.

3. They practice behavioral translations.


MOVING EAST

Below is a summary graph to help leaders and teams move forward from the old skill sets that everyone has gotten used to, towards the changes for differentiation and innovation. Keep moving, because it may perhaps not be too late.


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