No leadership is ever the same. They vary according to the organization, the people, the goals, and more. In this episode, Melanie Parish takes us into the world of a different kind of leadership. She sits down with Daniel Edds, a Practicing Management Consultant, to talk about his books, Transformation Management and Leveraging the Genetics of Leadership, where he looks at how elite organizations approach the practice of leadership. He lays down how they differ from what the average organization is doing and how you, too, can apply some of their strategies and practices to help you improve your leadership skills. Follow along with Daniel in this conversation as he shows how he is trying to radically transform leadership and more.
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How Elite Organizations Approach The Practice Of Leadership With Daniel Edds
I’m here with Dan Edds. For years, he’s been a Practicing Management Consultant, working primarily with state and local government healthcare, K to 12 education, higher education and nonprofits. He’s the author of two books, Transformation Management and Leveraging the Genetics of Leadership: Cracking the Code of Sustainable Team Performance. His book looks at how elite organizations approach the practice of leadership. I’m excited to have Dan Edds on my show. Dan, it is great to have you on my show.
Thanks. It’s a privilege to be with you.
I want to dive right in. You’ve had a long career as a management consultant. I’d love to hear what you’re working on.
My career management consulting is focused on public sector work, state and local governments, nonprofits, healthcare, education, both K-12 as well as higher education. What I’m working on started years ago when I began to ask myself the question, “How do high performing organizations, those organizations that consistently, year-in and year-out, perform at a high level? How do they approach the practice of leadership?” That started a four-year journey that I have to say is probably becoming somewhat obsessive. It’s about the only thing I can think about. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it. It has been an amazing journey and one that is profoundly needed for our work cultures.
I’m super curious about what you’re thinking about when you wake up in the middle of the night.
How do I revolutionize the whole theory and practice of leadership, which is no small task? There are all kinds of data that support this. Gallup is probably the biggest source of the data that shows that 66% of the workforce is either actively sabotaging their workplace or they don’t care. They also report that in the highest performing organizations, 70% of the workforce is actively engaged. They’re driving innovation and driving customer value. There’s a huge disconnect between what the average organization is doing around the practice of leadership and what the highest performing organizations are doing around the practice of leadership.
As a coach, I often get called in to do remedial work, something’s broken, as opposed to optimizing for innovation which is way more interesting.
I’ve been in that same situation. I’ve done a fair bit of process and improvement work. Organizations will ask me to come in and work with this team or this work unit or workgroup. It’s to fix them. They’re not doing well there. Their performance is low. People are fighting. Do some process improvement things and fix them. Sometimes it’s worked well. This is what got me into this whole question in the first place. Sometimes, it would work remarkably well. I’d come back six months later and have a total transformation.
Elite Organization Leadership: In the highest performing organizations, 70% of the workforce is actively engaged. They’re driving innovation and driving customer value.
Other times, I’d come back six months later and nothing had changed. When I’ve gone in to do those remedial projects, most of the time, I get there and the rank and file staff in one way, shape, or another, they say, “We’ve been through this before. What’s going to make this extra exercise different?” What they do is they point to leadership. It took me a while before I began to say, “It wasn’t the workforce. It was not the rank and file. It revolves around leadership and how the organization approaches leadership.”
Sometimes people ask me to go in and if they think I need a baseball bat as opposed to a tiny hammer to tap on their system, probably it’s not money well spent to have me in at all. If we can make tiny shifts, then you can make huge gains. If you have to rebuild something from the ground up, it’s quite expensive to spend the time to do that.
You used, what is the operative word for me, the system. In most of our literature around leadership, good leaders always exhibit certain traits. I’m convinced if we added up all of the world’s top ten leaders in any given age, we couldn’t get all ten of them combined to exhibit and model all of the traits that great leaders are supposed to exhibit. What I discovered is that there is this unseen thing in organizations called the system. Sometimes that’s identifiable and you can quantify it. Other times, it’s this thing that people say, “We can’t do anything about it.” What I find is if you could tweak the system, sometimes not by a whole lot, but if you could change the system, you change everything.
To give you one simple example, this reflects on the theme of your show and your book which is The Experimental Leader. One of the interviews that I did for my book was a young man. He was 37 at the time of the interview. The story started when he was 34. He’s a brilliant civil engineer. He designs large public works, construction projects, especially his wastewater treatment plants. He applied for this internal promotion within his company and he got it. He became 1 of 300 emerging leaders leading one of the world’s largest civil engineering firms.
As he explained to me, he said, “I knew how to run projects. I knew how to run project teams and then I applied for this title and they gave it to me, and I realized I didn’t have a clue what I was supposed to do as a leader.” All of a sudden, he was leading multiple teams that were geographically diverse across multiple markets with different skillsets than his own. He could manage a project based on his expertise and skillset but now he had to lead other groups that didn’t have the same skillset that he did. He had to learn how to lead. I asked him how he did that. I thought, “For a civil engineer, this was brilliant.” He said, “I read several books on leadership, historical as well as current.” This was the exact quote, “Leadership is a relational enterprise.” He started from that platform and designed a system of leadership for himself.
Within 2 or 3 years, the other 300 emerging leaders were coming to him saying, “How do you do what you do? How do you lead?” The other part of that story is that when he was telling me about this experience of being named as a leader in his company, I said, “What did the company do? Did they send you off to a month of leadership development school?” Brian is a guy that gets serious about everything. His eyes got big and he got serious. He said, “No. They didn’t give me anything.” I said, “Don’t take it personally because that’s the norm. The data suggest that only a third of all first-time managers, leaders get any training, coaching or experience at all.” What he did is what he typically does on the job. He designed a system. This system had to be a leadership system but he started from that overall purpose or approach, which is leadership is a relational enterprise and therefore everything I do as a leader must be focused on developing relationships.
I don’t know anything about Brian or his story. My guess is, hearing the story that he might be a white privilege guy. Am I right in that assumption?
Yeah. He’s a white privilege guy. I know his family well. He grew up in a modest but comfortable home. Both parents work, both are professionals. He has a great education. He’s a hard-working guy. He probably fit that class as a gentleman of white privilege. I never thought about it that way.
Elite Organization Leadership: Leadership is a relational enterprise, and, therefore, everything you do as a leader must be focused on developing relationships.
What comes to mind as I’m thinking about this idea of the quality of the relationships, that it’s a relational enterprise. Was that the quote?
Yes.
I was taken by that quote and I was thinking about the struggles that people of color have, that women have. In that relational enterprise, I’ve never had this thought before but I was curious because what you said was interesting. The gap for people who struggle in leadership a little more maybe around that relational enterprise. He may have had a clearer path than the other 300 people, depending on race, ethnicity and gender. It doesn’t negate what he learned but I do think that because leadership is a relational enterprise, and I would agree with that, the quality of the relationships determines the quality of the leadership. I do see a barrier in the quality of the relationships for people who don’t fit that privileged place. I’d love for you to comment on that in your learning if there’s anything you can offer to that?
The beauty of doing these shows is I’m always learning something new myself and getting a question I never thought of before. What Brian would say and this is what I’ve discovered in looking at how high-performing organizations approach the practice of leadership is in fact that there is always something to learn. It was one of the case studies in my research as a manufacturing company. After spending some time with them, it was clear that they practiced servant leadership. When I asked about their approach to leadership, they said, “Unequivocally, we practice servant leadership.” When I got the CEO on the phone and I’m conducting this interview and telling him about my research into leadership as an organizational system, he said, “I want to learn how to do that.” Even though it was obvious, he knew he was doing it.
This would be universal. What Brian did was design a system of leading based on the premise that good leadership is a relational enterprise. What he started to do was simple. He said, “When people would come into my office and when we would try to solve a problem or whatever, I’d always take a few minutes to learn to know them as people. That was working well. I decided I’d better maybe take it up another notch. When I would visit someone at their workstation, I’d always take a few minutes to get to know them better as people. That was working well and then I realized it wasn’t my relationship with my people, but it was the collaborative relationships within the work unit.”
He did two things. One, he stripped out all of the office workplaces. He went to an open office concept and he put a ping pong table in the middle of the office because he realized that it wasn’t his relationship with his subordinates, but it was all of the relationships within the office. Everybody needed those relationships. He designed a system of leadership around not just building a one-way relationship but relationships within the whole office. From follow-up conversations, what he would say is that most of those race, class, privileged, non-privileged, ideas began to break down as people began to see each other as people. Knowing him well, I would say that probably a great learning for himself is that he could begin to see people as people and not as this person of that kind, race, ethnic or whatever.
I would love to know a little more about how you’re experimenting in your work, your business, your life.
This whole research project has been one large experimental project. I’m transitioning my consulting practice to pushing forward this idea that leadership can be understood and maybe even should be understood as an organizational system as opposed to a collection of individuals. The whole idea is an experiment. Outside of a small handful of academics, nobody is talking about leadership as a designed organizational system. The whole thing is one big experiment. I’ve got to say it is equal parts terrifying and at the same time exhilarating.
Elite Organization Leadership: Leadership should be understood as an organizational system as opposed to a collection of individuals.
When I talk to somebody and find people to endorse the book, I’d be having conversations with various people and they’d say, “Let me get this straight. I’ve always felt that the way we approach leadership is not the healthiest. It’s more about an organizational system.” They’d say, “Is this what you’re talking about?” I’d say, “Yes.” It would be in an instantaneous euphoria. At the same time, when someone doesn’t get it, you get radically depressed. The mountain is high and it’s steep. Based on the research of high performing organizations, to your point, we can experiment a little bit with the way we approach leadership.
If we can disconnect ourselves from some standard ideas about leadership, we can radically transform not only the practice of leadership, not only our organizations, but we could transform the experience of the workplace. Imagine what it would be like going to work where every day you knew that your voice was valued, you knew that your opinion was appreciated. You knew that if you saw an opportunity to improve a work process, to improve a relationship with a client or a customer, that your voice was encouraged, was valued. Your immediate supervisors were there to help you become a stronger, more confident, more empowered person. What would happen to the workplace if we all went to work in that environment? That’s exactly the kind of workplace we find in organizations that consistently perform at a high level.
Where can people find you, Dan?
The best place to find me is my website, DanielEdds.com. That is the best place to get the book, the title of which is Leveraging the Genetics of Leadership: Cracking the Code of Sustainable Team Performance. I’m not here to sell a book. What I’m here to do is start conversations around this whole idea that organizations can custom design an organizational DNA that will unleash the basic human capacities for creativity and innovation. At the same time, produce economic outcomes that are unparalleled when compared to their competitors.
It’s been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you. I appreciate this opportunity.
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I’ve been here with Dan Edds talking about systems and leadership. I think it’s important to consider in systems work how the system inhibits and elevates teamwork and how people work together. It’s also important to look at how that same system can hold on to institutionalized racism, sexism and how it can only do the opposite. It’s important to realize that the system can help hold the opposite. It can help hold an inclusive environment as well. The system can become a powerful force for change as well as for holding on to the status quo. It’s how you create, tweak and do with the system. Go experiment.
Important Links:
- Dan Edds
- Transformation Management
- Leveraging the Genetics of Leadership: Cracking the Code of Sustainable Team Performance
- The Experimental Leader
About Dan Edds
For 25 years Dan Edds has been a practicing management consultant, working primarily with state & local government, healthcare, K-12 education, higher education, and nonprofits.
He is the author of 2 books, the first, Transformation Management, and his most recent book, Leveraging the Genetics of Leadership, Cracking the code of sustainable team performance.
His latest book looks at how elite organizations approach the practice of leadership.
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