Technology & Leadership
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

Participant
I am posing this question just for clarification: There have been two threads of the discussion of "Leadership and Technology" thus far: 1)use by business leaders and 2)use for citizen participation in government.

Am I correct that use by business is the one that interests most Participants here and therefore should be the focus of our remarks? I support that--and will only suggest here that use of citizen participation might be the focus for a later discussion.

Participant
Don, I, for one, hope that we can continue to include the focus on the public sector. But it isn't just citizen participation that is the issue. Here again we have leaders who are disconnected from IT. How can IT serve strategic leadership in the social/political area?

Participant
Several years ago, long before the sophisticated IT we have today, one of my professors in graduate school suggested that a large electronic billboard should be erected across from the capitol building in Washington, DC. That display board should be a map of the United States, and in each state should be displayed minute-to-minute poll results on a given issue that is before the public. It would be like a stock market ticker, reeling off the public's sentiment regarding policy issues currently under debate on the hill. If the poll results were at all accurate (and, of course that would be crucial), then Senators and Congressmen would have to be disciplined in their public assertions regarding "what the public wants/thinks", since the data would be there for all to see.

Participant
Larry: I am concerned about placing more emphasis on "what the public wants/thinks"--which is really the product of opinion polls--before we first ddress the quality of education on the issues that the average citizen possesses. We need to move more toward collaborative problem solving procedures and away from adversarial sound bit pressures. A big topic, but in my mind one with an equally big priority!

Participant
What role can IT play in furthering collaborative problem solving? There is a professor at UC San Marcos who has a decision-making facility that is built upon a computer program that takes the individual responses to a given question, collates them, summarizes the outcome, and suggests next steps in moving toward a consensus. Local organizations utilize the facility to further decision-making about issues that face their executive committees and work groups. I'm sure there are other applications that can be made of IT to further collaboration. Just posting the poorly educated opinions of various segments of the population on a billboard is, of course, not the final answer. Can IT be used to move collaboration toward a synergistic outcome; and avoid the pitfalls of "groupthink" in the process?

Participant
We are feeling the effects of the proverbial "rolling present" here, aren't we! At least three threads running in parallel.

1. There is a distinction being made about information vs. interpretation vs. wisdom, etc., that I think misses a point. When I spoke of having what is known in one place available immediately in another place, I did not have in mind that it would be a good thing for the CEO to know all the available information. I did have in mind that the CEO would want to understand that the capability was there, and think about how to use that capability wisely, adapting his structure and style to take advantage of it--and, of course, to avoid information overload by himself and others. To do this, he would have to have some understanding, I think, of IT works--what it will do and what it won't do, or doesn't yet do.

2. The prospect of instantaneous accurate opinion poll displays available to the Congress scares the hell out of me! I just came from the barber shop (and look better for it, even if I feel worse) where I listened to frightening exchanges of opinion by "ordinary folk" who knew nothing at all of what they were talking about. I hope, and believe, that we have designed our system of government for better things than this.

Participant
Larry, re your 1:38: What I "vision" is a shift from confining citizens to a passive role that results in a bombardment of sound-bites into one in which they can partake in active education leading to participative decision making. In this vision, IT makes it possible to provide a seminar experience (which until recently was necessarily restricted to face-to-face gatherings) for many thousands of people. For example, we will soon (five to ten years?) have digital tv in most homes and the capability of the tv to be an expansion of what e-mail (like this group is experiencing) could do to duplicate traditional town meetings.

What is missing is the ability (and experience) of those who have developed FACILITATION (rather than CHAIRING) of meetings to enhance the decision making potentials of groups. I see this as a promising, and still not widely accepted, field for experimentation.

I am not suggesting that such procedures should replace the role of legislators, but rather that it will replace the current role of citizens simply to be counted in polls.

Participant
I'm told that there is a lot of collaboration software on the market, enabling work teams to join in non-geographic communities, and to accomplish even complex and creative work online, but I don't know the software myself. Perhaps others do. Does it work for top leadership in strategy building?

Participant
Richard, there are a host of collaborative technologies out there (I listed and defined about 30 in my book). Have top leaders used them for strategy building? By and large, no (I'm going on anecdotal evidence here). I did, however, gather some interesting anecdotes about top executives using technologies to augment face to face meetings with large groups. These were primarily polling instruments to get real-time feedback during a presentation.

Certainly executives have used videoconferencing (and I consider that a collaborative technology) and they use audioconferencing all the time. Email too. I remember right after my last book came out 10 years ago, one of the executives I interviewed was rather miffed with me and said, "Why did you write about email? Executives will never use email. They want databases." He called me 5 years later (in the early days of the web) to tell me he was dead wrong and could he take me to lunch as an apology! Email use by top executives may not be ubiquitous but it has certainly grown over the past 10 years.

The point is that there are a whole range of technologies that can serve as leadership tools, but we don't have enough technology generalists who can illustrate creative ways to use them for leadership.

Don, do you remember Newt Gingrich's reading list for Congress way back in 1995? He put Leadership and the Computer on the list because he really saw the need for leaders to understand technology. He heavily promoted the use of technology by citizens as a means of holding government accountable. Remember when he had all that Congressional stuff put online? I think if we want to use computers for citizen participation in government, that's more likely to happen after the leaders understand the value and capabilities of the technologies. Then maybe they'll be willing to allocate the funds to get citizens involved. Although, I have to say, I'd be hard pressed to suggest they invest in computers or other technologies until after they get better voting machines!!!!!!

Participant
Mary: see my # 40 above re trying to meld the growing art/skills of facilitation with the upcoming digital TV via Public TV. I strongly believe that a high priority is to introduce collaborative decision making into the mix of our political process but perhaps this is too academic an approach. I would love to get your view on this, and also that of Larry Grossman (former Chair of National Public TV). I think he once attended a WBSI meeting. Do you know him? I

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Isn't it interesting how we've started using the message numbers as citations? It's a bit like Biblical chapter and verse. (John Locke, incidentally, strongly disliked the use of chapter and verse, on the grounds that it encouraged people to read the Bible as a set of separate--and separable--passages, rather than as a grand whole. But I don't think we have to worry too much about that here.) I wonder if the designers of Caucus intended them to be used this way.

My apologies for being such a hands-off host these last few days, not that the discussion has suffered from my absence. In the real world, my wife and I just took possession of a new house, and I've been pulling up carpet, dealing with hot and cold running contractors, and so on since the weekend. However, the illusion of control is starting to dawn.

I wonder if it be useful at this point to split up the discussion into a couple parts: into, say, a thread on management and IT, and one on the use of IT in improving the democratic process? I can see some ways in which a comparison of the ways IT could be used in each realm could be valuable--especially given the underlying desire to make BOTH more participatory--but maybe we would get farther on each by treating them separately for a bit, then attempting a synthesis. Any preferences?

Don: One important issue to deal with in an online network devoted to political discourse and decision-making is that of reliability--not the kind of reliability of having the servers always up, but the kind that comes from transparency in the process. At Britannica, we experimented for a time with online opinion surveys (beloved by Marketing, reviled by the content side of the shop, which at the time

I ran), and we often saw what you could call the Kamal Ataturk Effect: no matter the question (who was the most important politician of all time, the greatest baseball player, the winner of the 1952 Kentucky Derby), the answer was Kamal Ataturk. Clearly, in the great Chicago tradition, someone was voting early and often.

Credibility of process is likewise the great bugaboo of Web search engines (how do you know the results aren't weighted, through programmer's assumptions or bribery, to favor some sites?), Web shop bots (how do you know they've really selected the lowest price?), and any kind of online survey. We've recently had a lesson in how even something as simple as counting votes can become complicated and contingent when you deal with millions of them. Could you assure a potentially skeptical public that an online system you're offering them wouldn't be subject to the same kinds of potentially catastrophic uncertainties, or couldn't be hacked?

Mary: I wonder if you could say a bit more about the differences in traditional versus interactive managerial styles? Maybe a more focused example would help--say, contrast how each would develop a policy, or respond to a crisis.

I think Ray's point in 1:39 about the ultimate futility of parsing "information," "knowledge," "wisdom," etc. is right on. Among other things, even if most of the time managers want more abstract distillations of big data sets, there are times when they want a specific piece of information--a stock price at the opening bell, the news from a foreign capital during a coup--as soon as possible, in as raw a form as possible.

Participant
Alex: Re the "difference" between management and democratic-governance use of IT: One way of combining the two--at least at the start of our discussions would be to consider the use of IT for problem-solving tasks rather than for surveys and polls of opinions. In fact, I believe that this was what you meant by focusing on participatory procedures.

Am I correct (and here I would rely on the views of Mary and Lisa and perhaps others) that much of the new research in business circles is focused on participatory decision making". I believe there are many lessons learned in that research that could greatly enrich the less successful efforts of those concerned with "governance".

What I have in mind is: the use of facilitated rather than "chaired" discussions, the value of collaborative efforts at understanding the problem, pertinent data, and different goals before short-circuiting the decision process by the introduction of adversarial solutions.

These are basic (almost cultural) shifts in how we reach decisions that really should precede a consideration of IT as a means to put them into practice.

Participant
I think most of the participants in this discussion know of Caucus's ability to allow the branching of discussions into separate items. If you like, we could start one or two new branches along the lines Alex suggests. Whatcha think?

Participant
I think it would be a good idea to "branch", but not necessarily right at this moment. Don's thoughts about collaborative decision-making are applicable to both branches, and could well be addressed here rather than twice.

Participant
Hello. I'm coming in late, was not able to join the conference earlier because of a little technological glitch. So I'm mindful of IT's shortcomings at the moment. I find this a fascinating discussion and plan to check out the material on the links Alex cited earlier. I'm interested in all dimensions of this subject, have just completed a book on global civilization which deals, of course, with many of the themes being discussed here. I kind of like the term "informatization of society," coined some years ago by a couple of French writers.

Participant
Hi, Walt. Welcome. You have a lot to bring to this discussion, and I'm looking forward to your contributions.

I think we are seeing that what top leaders want more than information is each other. What can IT do to foster that? What does it mean to have access to each other? Along what dimensions? How can advice, opinion, criticism, interpretation, encouragement be made systematically available? What more might leaders really want from each other? Can IT give them something they are not getting now in other ways? Does it perhaps get into less rational areas such as friendship? Does it cross emotional boundaries that IT usually doesn't address? Should it be organized on industry-wide rather than organization-wide basis? Or between the private sector and the state?

Participant
I don't know much about what's going on in this field, but it seems obvious to me that what's necessary is not only the right technologies but also the right kind of facilitation by people and organizations (such as WBSI) to make it easy for leaders to use the hardware in ways that are easy and productive for them.

Participant
I strongly believe that there is an urgent need for "researching" the use of IT for citizen participation in governance. Not for the 1960's connotation of "power to the people", but for quite a different reason.

Many of the hard decisions ahead have to do with coming to grips with environmental/population impacts on our planet. And most of the strategies for reversing the damage that our consumption patterns are causing will demand difficult changes in our life styles.

I have found it useful in some teaching that I have done to suggest that these changes/choices demand that we THINK THE UNTHINKABLE IN ORDER TO AVOID THE UNTHINKABLE.

What I mean by that phrase is that we will not voluntarily or easily accept the higher costs of environmental protection unless we first "internalize" the unthinkable results if we do not accept those costs. Nor will we easily internalize such perceptions by simply listening to or reading the wisdom of others. Only through participating in deliberative discussion will we emotionally accept the unthinkable consequences of running out of water or global warming sufficiently to accept the "unthinkable" sacrifices needed to mitigate such results.

One possible way to involve citizens in such deliberation might be to harness the skills of facilitated, participatory discussion with the new, computer-like technology of digital television (especially via Public Television). The timing is right for this, since digital tv for everyone is still some years away, but many of the Public TV stations are now thinking about how best to use this new technology.

Perhaps this is a challenging, useful, and interesting route to travel for this forum??

-------------

Forgive this interruption. But there are not many forums that I know of where I would have the luxury of spilling my thoughts so freely as I have done above!!

Participant
I am enjoying a lot the discussions. I have little to contribute at this point, since the wisdom about leadership is clearly more in your hands. I am just a devoted student and ardent follower. --Rodrigo

Participant
Now, Rodrigo. Your modesty is becoming, but I know that you have been one of the major leaders in South America for many years. You have much to contribute to this discussion. Would you be willing to comment on the possible differences in the perception and use of information technology by the leaders of South America as compared with Europe and the US?

Participant
Don, one of the learnings of psychologists is that how one asks a question will determine the perceived intelligence of the respondent. In political surveys, for example, if we ask people how they intend to vote on a particular proposition among many on a ballot, they will never have heard of it and appear stupid. If, on the other hand, we were to be able to simulate alternative futures, showing the trade-offs and consequences, they would choose wisely and appear intelligent. Too often the press and others treat people as if they are stupid but well informed, when it is the other way around. So perhaps the new developments in IT could present people with alternative futures, much to our advantage as a society.

Participant
Dick, I totally agree with your 1:73. I would also like your response, as a psychologist AND an environmentalist, with regard to the need for deeper understanding by the average citizen of the consequences of future environmental degradation before they will accept and support the current need to make some sacrifices to avoid the consequences of that degradation.

Participant
Yes, I'm afraid that while there is much that can be accomplished through legislation, regulation and action at the upper levels, ultimately, on environmental matters, all of us have to cooperate, and that will require our shared understanding of the risks and benefits. I think that most will agree, for example, that the eventual solution to environmental degradation is likely to be in the area of conservation, even though we keep hoping for clean technology like solar or waste-free nuclear energy. But conservation requires cooperation at all levels of society. It doesn't work if only a few of us do it. And the changes will be wrenching. For example, imagine how difficult it would be to ask people to give up eating meat or automobile travel or air conditioning. We might as well ask them to cut off their right arms. It may not be possible to dislodge people from such God-given rights, even when the dramatic scenarios are graphically presented, any more than we can get an adamant gun owner to give up his gun after hearing about a father coming home, wondering why things don't look quite right, getting his loaded gun, and surprised by his 12-year-old daughter playfully jumping out of a closet to scare him, shoots her, and her dying words are, "I'm sorry, daddy". I was at dinner the other night with such a gun owner, and I mentioned that people with loaded guns in their houses are 43 times as likely to shoot themselves or a loved one than they are an intruder. He said, "Not me!" That said, I do think that when the situation is made more graphic, many people will change. Curiously, the psychological research shows that when you make things too scary, it becomes counter-productive. For example, if you want children to brush their teeth, it is better to talk about cavities than about blood or gum disease or cancer.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
My apologies for disappearing for an extended period--like the East Coast blackout of 1965, several small things (like the end of the academic year, and delivery guys, contractors and electricians who--respectively--can't count, can't read, and can't tell time) overloaded an already burdened system.

While waiting for contractors and delinquent students, I've been reading Steven Johnson's forthcoming book "Emergence," which makes the argument that emergent behavior is something that explains a great deal of the interesting behavior of cities, brains, and various other complex entities. The essential idea is that systems can exhibit considerable intelligence that exceeds the capabilities of its individual members. Ant colonies, for example, are intelligent in a way that individual ants are not, and even have distinct--albeit very limited--personalities. In a similar manner, city neighborhoods--from industrial concentrations (think how many cities have areas called Jewlers' Row, Printers' Row, Bankers' Row) to the kinds of neighborhoods celebrated by Jane Jacobs in her work on cities--possess a kind of enculturated intelligence that isn't quite the sum of its individuals. What's fascinating about these things is that no one's in charge: these systems have lots of resilience and intelligence, and survive far longer than any single member.

This has been especially striking because of the resonances between this argument and some of the points participants here have been making. It obviously overlaps with what most interests Donald --the use of IT to help the body politic evolve, to become capable of dealing with the scale of contemporary problems without abandoning the principles of participation and democratic action. The collective local intelligence of the town hall could handle eighteenth- and nineteenth-century issues, and still works for very local problems; but the problem is that fewer and fewer important problems are really local. This, I now suspect, is the flip side of the problem that is the principal concern of this forum. I've been asking what kinds of things leaders today need to make reasonable decisions. Perhaps the better way to frame the question is to ask: What kinds of technologies or organizational forms help institutions develop this kind of responsive intelligence? And what does that leave executives to do? Would it drive executive time between decisions up from 11 minutes to something else? When I first read that fact (see Richard's 1:69), I thought, Gee, I wonder what kinds of devices could help manage that flow. But the end of the anecdote suggests that the real solution is to reduce the flow.

The other interesting reading that recently caught my eye was a couple pieces on Silicon Valley executives: Oracle's Ray Lane topped the executive salary list (at $250 million), while a new study indicates that CEO lifetimes are getting shorter, as company boards demand faster turnarounds, better response to crisis, and greater profitability. Clearly, CEOs aren't obsolete yet, even in a region that prides itself on being the technological and entrepreneurial capital of--well, the world in the late 1990s and first several months of 2000, anyway.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Richard's point about the relationship between conservation and cooperative action reminded me of something going on in the world of environmental regulation and policy. There's been a fair amount of interest in these circles in the use of commodities markets to achieve environmental goals. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the system works like this: a government issues a number of pollution credits to energy producers, etc., who can then "spend" them (by polluting), or sell them to other companies, or conservation groups who can just retire them. The government determines how many such credits will be issued each year, and can manipulate the supply: by issuing fewer credits each year, they reduce pollution levels.

Governments like it because it's cheaper to run such an exchange than it is to determine and then enforce a new set of regulations. It has two other virtues. First, it turns pollution into something that companies really have to PAY for, the same way they do electricity or other goods. (Traditionally, pollution was free; it was the air scrubbers, stringent disposal practices, etc. that cost you.) Second, it creates a system that possesses a measure of intelligence about the costs and benefits of pollution, and the economical solutions. It doesn't force all companies in a sector to reduce NO2 emissions by X percent, for example, but allows companies to determine which economic goals--avoiding the cost of pollution or the cost of upgrading--is more attractive, even while pushing the entire system toward a certain goal.

This might not be quite the sort of example of cooperation that Richard had in mind, but still, it is a successful one.

Participant
No, it's not like all of us driving smaller cars or becoming vegetarians, but it is a good example of the kind of action at the top that can make a difference. That's where our policy recommendations might be directed.

Participant
>> the problem is that fewer and fewer important problems are really local. <<

I hope that this fact, undeniable as it may be, does not suggest that problems that are not "really local" need not be addressed locally.

In re #78 & 79: might it be possible to design a pollution credit system that would provide the same incentive for driving smaller cars or becoming vegetarian? The pollution from cars is readily measured; that from feed lots should be as easy to work out if it hasn't been already.

Participant
While I can't remember where, I have seen estimates of the contribution of methane gas emitted from cattle feces and flatulence worldwide to the destruction of the ozone layer, and it is substantial. Maybe the leading contributor? The lowing herds of cattle seem so bucolic and harmless, but here are some figures about water usage: In California (and I think elsewhere) 90% of our water goes to agriculture. 80% of that agriculture water goes to crops to feed animals. So giving up eating meat would be a major contribution to environmental health.

There is a connection between Alex's tentative suggestion that perhaps IT can somehow capture, reflect, quantify, regulate, automate, underscore, support or enhance the emerging organizational or group wisdom about many dimensions of life that we ordinarily assign to leadership, and the kind of discussion we are having about crediting anti-pollution activities. I'm not sure what the connection is, but I believe it is there.

Participant
Dick: I am being a Johnny-One-Note here, but I think one connection is the need to involve ordinary citizens in discussions like this one if only we can invent ways of using IT that are both user friendly and will capture the interest and participation of "we, the people".

Without that, I believe the ultimate "solution" may be a kind of dictatorship that will enforce the necessary behavior without voluntary consent. The first strategy will not be easy. The second strategy will not be pleasant.

A prior question that we must all ask ourselves without fudging to be politically correct: Do we really want to be governed by we, the people???

Participant
With regard to your "prior question", Don, I not only believe in full participation by the citizenry, but I would extend the franchise to children, and to resident aliens. The problem is not in the inability of the masses to make good decisions, it is in the system we have that attempts, or fails to attempt, to elicit that inherent intelligence. I'm with you, Don, there are better ways. While I am occasionally vulnerable to the attractiveness of governing by an elite, or by a benevolent leader, I have no doubt that such a recourse is unwise. Every tyrant began by passionately believing that he was serving his people.

Participant
Having the software surely isn't sufficient. Some good collaborative software now exists, but isn't used. Your point suggests that we need to design meta organizations that could facilitate clusters of leaders using IT in new ways. The ILF is potentially one, as you point out. But there would have to be many others, working within and among organizations and with leaders in various combinations, to create a new atmosphere of acceptance of the technology, and to inspire its use strategically.

Participant
For what I have been able to see at the Media Lab at MIT, the idea is that IT will evolve into something so ubiquitous that common people will be able to participate in decision making processes that never before were considered. This is an application of IT rather than the management of it, or the use by executives. The common person is the target. Get them all into the digital age. Participate. Vote. Influence processes. Dick Morris, with this Vote.com is trying to do that. How successful? I do not know. But democratizing the management of nations via the digital age is certainly an obvious field of development.

Participant
Some of the recent conversation has caused me to ruminate about some of the paradoxes that Dick Farson brought out in his most interesting book "Management of the Absurd". For example "There are no Leaders. There is only Leadership. In our complex society, leadership is less the property of the individual than the property of a group." Certainly in a high tech company such as ESI we soon found that consensual decision making was the only way to keep "reinventing" ourselves so that we could remain in existence for the last 50 years and during that time "leadership" roved around the company almost like relay runners passing the baton.

Another of Dick’s non-intuitive insights is encapsulated in his chapter entitled "The Best Resource for the Solution of Any Problem Is the Person or Group that Presents the Problem". Again a "group dynamics" solution that would warm the cockles of Carl Rogers' heart and has proven to be a very rewarding management style for our company.

Another from his book "Listening is More Difficult than Talking": In the earlier incarnation of WBSI, I found "listening" to the written words of others to make listening easier and more reflective that oral engagement so I would chalk up a plus for computer mediated discussion. Further, the use of it for group dialog "levels the playing field" so that all can be "heard"--a very useful tool for facilitating participative leadership!

Considering these insights about "group leadership", I have great hope that our increasing technical competence in information technology will provide the tools for a different and more productive form of shared leadership.

Participant
On that last point, Doug, you suggest another advantage to online communication. People often refer to missing the valuable communication of voice, body language, etc., but we seldom appreciate the fact that online communication reduces stereotyping, a process that determines much of our communication face-to-face. With this medium we are not pigeon-holed as women, children, blacks, elderly, etc. That's got to be an important advantage in management, community building, human relationships in general. I recall when one of our staff members was having a vigorous real time intellectual discussion with a stranger online which was interrupted when his correspondent said, "I've got to go. My mom has called me to dinner." He was twelve.

Participant
There are two sides to that, Dick. Affinity caused by shared characteristics --including gender, age, race, etc.--does bring people together as well as separate them.

For purposes of stimulating leadership, I'm sure we can agree that the stereotypes work against us. But there are situations where they work for us, too (i.e., in community building--see another conference on that point).

Participant
Touché, Ray. Actually, we seldom appreciate the value of stereotyping because we are made so aware of its evils. We are constantly reminded of the times when we unfairly judge someone because of our prejudice based upon stereotyping. But stereotyping is how we cope with the world, including, as you point out, choosing our associates. Stereotypes are actually a shorthand way of handling our highly complex encounters with others, and are usually accurate. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are inaccurate, but they are unfair to those who do not fit, or do not intend to fit.

Previous Page        Next Page

top