Is anyone familiar with Keith Grint’s model of
leadership? Apparently he has been
developing it for a while, but I just read his paper from 2010 on wicked
problems, clumsy solutions, and the ways different kinds of leaders deal with
them. I was really impressed with his
take. I am proud to say that I have been
espousing the same basic ideas for even longer than his papers have been
around. But he got them published, so
hats off to Keith J.
He creates a 2-dimensional matrix of leadership characteristics.
- If there is no need to collaborate among the team and there is no uncertainty about the solution, a command and control leadership style is called for.
- If there is a large need to collaborate among the team and a lot of uncertainty about how to proceed, a Jim Collins Level-5 leadership style is called for.
- In the middle (on both dimensions) calls for a process manager.
But what I like the most is that he talks about using a
bricolage strategy to implement your leadership. On your team there are going to be people who
prefer different ways of being managed.
Some team members will respond to a hierarchical, high power (in the Hofstede
sense) leader. Others will thrive in a
free-market where they are empowered to experiment and pursue their own
directions. Still others will gravitate
towards group decision making and consensus building. Instead of picking one, the best leaders will
create lots of small initiatives that mix and match among them. This is what he terms “clumsy” solutions and
strongly recommends them for the “wicked” problems that have high uncertainty
and require collaboration.
He has a whole stream of papers on this topic so I am sure I
have oversimplified and missed lots of good insights. Good reads.
I recommend them.
