Monfort Institute

Leadership System Design...

 

Leadership System Design...

Leadership System Design for Sustainable Excellence: CEO Perspectives



By John R. Latham, Monfort Institute at the University of Northern Colorado

Summary

Paper, Poster and Virtual Presentation at the Business as an Agent of World Benefit: Manage by Designing in an Era of Massive Innovation, Case Western University, Cleveland. Sponsored by: Case Western Reserve University, United Nations Global Compact, and the Academy of Management

This paper builds on professional leadership and management system design practice and in-depth interviews with CEOs to develop a theoretical foundation for the design of “custom” leadership systems that facilitate the transformation of organizations to create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders.

Conceptual Framework: The conceptual framework for this study was the design studio approach and framework for management system design. The design studio approach is an established methodology and framework that has been used to design a wide variety of management systems from strategic management systems to employee and leadership development systems. The design studio approach has evolved over several years of professional practice in management system design and is informed by leading concepts from product design. The studio approach and framework consists of nine components: (1) system purpose and requirements; (2) key concepts and theories; (3) examples; (4) the unique context of the particular organization or situation; (5) design principles; (6) systems perspective; (7) current system design; (8) diagnosis; and (9) design. This framework was used to explore the design of leadership systems for participating Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) recipient organizations.

Questions: The purpose of the study was to identify the leadership system design characteristics and practices found in MBNQA recipients. The study identifies common leadership system characteristics, compares and contrasts the 14 cases, and then develops the characteristics into a framework that can be used to guide the custom design of leadership systems for a wide variety of organizations.

Research questions included:

1. For each MBNQA case, what are the key leadership system characteristics?

2. How do the design and deployment of leadership systems compare across the various MBNQA cases?

3. How do the behaviors of the most senior leader (e.g., CEO) affect the design and deployment of the leadership system?

4. How do the type and level of organizational learning affect the design and deployment of the leadership system?

Methodology: This study was an inductive, qualitative theory building study. CEOs from fourteen Baldrige award recipients were chosen as participants because they had all successfully transformed their organizations to create value for multiple stakeholders. The participant organizations included representatives from a variety of industries including: large service business, large manufacturing, small business, education (K-12 and higher ed), and healthcare. In-depth interviews were conducted with the CEO of each organization. The average length of the CEO interviews was nearly 2 hours. Qualitative Data Analysis Software (NVivo8) was used to analyze over 500 pages of the verbatim transcripts from the interviews and organization documents to develop the model for designing custom leadership systems.

This study produces several themes and findings related to designing leadership systems for sustainable excellence including: leadership system design considerations, a leadership system model, the benefits of an explicit leadership system and the application of the findings to address social and environmental issues. The study provides guidance to inform the design of custom leadership systems that create sustainable value for multiple stakeholders.

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