Leading Complex Organizations: Lessons from Thad Allen

Thad Allen and the Deepwater Horizon Response

The case "You Have to Lead from Everywhere" is told from the perspective of Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the Deepwater Horizon response. The Deepwater Horizon event was considered a total government response, in which different agencies were responsible for different components. The central challenge, as Allen describes it, was "creating unity of effort" — getting everybody to perform their disparate roles in line with a common objective during a time of crisis. Some of the more significant challenges Allen identified involved issues that were not strictly part of the response doctrine for oil spills under law, such as seafood safety and behavioral health problems. The effort was further complicated by the need to coordinate with BP and to navigate the varying interests of both the public and the different layers of government (Berinato, 2010).

Allen identified that it was necessary to create, quickly, a set of shared values to guide the response, and that leadership had to be able to identify a vision of what success looked like and then execute on that vision. The phrase "you have to lead from everywhere" refers to Allen's management of multiple stakeholders. He had to split his time between Washington, D.C., and the Gulf in order to ensure that all major stakeholders received due attention.

Allen — and the author of the case — does not identify something that "went wrong" so much as specific challenges associated with the complexity of the event and the multiple stakeholders involved in the disaster response. Allen noted in particular that leadership required a high degree of flexibility. There are different ways to lead and different ways to run a disaster response, but in dealing simultaneously with citizens, the military, government agencies, and corporations, a number of different approaches are needed. People in each of those types of organizations carry their own worldviews and their own protocols and methods for handling problems, so leadership had to be highly flexible in order to manage that challenge effectively.

Applying Allen's Leadership Lessons to Personal Experience

While this may be a surprising admission, I have never run point on a disaster response. I have never encountered anything even close to that level of complexity. I have never had to fly to Washington to brief Congress on a project, appear on news networks, or face angry questions from people whose lives are being ruined by a disaster I am trying to solve. I work in smaller organizations — or small components of large ones — and have never led a team much larger than a couple of dozen people. There is no reasonable corollary I can draw between Allen's experience and my own.

That said, I have at least been able to provide guidance to people from a leadership position. Granted, my stakeholders are fairly similar in terms of their demographics and are driven by a common objective that I need only frame clearly. But as Allen had to be available to his different stakeholders, so too must I. I need to ensure that the messages I want conveyed are repeated multiple times, providing a steady stream of reinforcement for the people who must work together. The common objective needs to be defined and communicated so that everyone understands it.

One area Allen touches upon is the difference between leading when there is one clear leader and a chain of command — as in the military — versus situations where one must lead more in partnership with others. Allen notes that communication is important in both, but that in the latter, collaboration is also critical. You are not merely communicating your ideas to subordinates; you must also communicate with your partners. Everyone needs to be on the same page. This is the complexity Allen faced in the disaster scenario, and it is complexity I have never encountered.

Allen clearly needed to work with key partner stakeholders to determine what the agenda needed to be and to secure everyone's support for that agenda — and he had to do this very quickly. He kept it simple, which I believe was the right call, because it allowed each stakeholder partner to return to their constituents and communicate the mission effectively. The idea that Allen wrote out a mission statement for the Deepwater Horizon response is one I find compelling, and it is something I would personally adopt should I ever find myself working in a more complex organization.

The questions about my own workplace situation seem to hint that a conflict scenario should be examined. However, Allen was not in a conflict situation, and he expressed no regrets about how he handled anything. I have little experience with workplace conflict either. First, I encourage constructive dialogue. Second, I maintain clearly established chains of command, so there are people in charge of each decision. Third, decisions are made on evidence and facts. This does not mean conflict can never occur, but conflict beyond constructive debate is simply not part of our organizational culture.

I do not classify some events as "incidents" and others as not. Everything that transpires within our organizational context is part of doing business. There is no magic line where something becomes "an incident," as this creates a false dichotomy out of what is ultimately a continuum of interpersonal and inter-organizational interactions. People do not always agree, but treating a disagreement as a crisis is toxic. This is, in fact, how Allen appears to run his organizations as well. He sets the tone from the outset — as he did with the speech he gave in Baton Rouge — and works hard to reinforce his messages. The result is an organization capable of managing a highly complex situation without needless conflict. Of course, the interview presents only his perspective; he may overstate the harmony of his operation considerably.

Richardson (2008) opens the discussion about the role complexity plays in managing an organization. The more complex an organization, the more difficult it becomes to conceptualize how its different components work together. My organization is sufficiently simple that I can manage this fairly easily. Complex systems — especially when multiple complex systems interact — are usually broken down into smaller pieces, but ultimately someone at the top of the organization must understand how everything comes together to meet organizational objectives.

Management vs. Leadership: Complementary Functions

Kotter (2008) explains the difference between management and leadership as follows. Leadership is an old concept, rooted in the time when humans first began to organize themselves into groups. The roles typically associated with leadership include motivating, inspiring, providing direction, and offering support. Leadership is therefore inherently a human endeavor — the result of an interaction between two or more people (Kotter, 2008, p. 3). Management, Kotter argues (p. 3), is "largely the product of the last 100 years" and is concerned with organizing the resources and activities of complex organizations. Without management, such organizations would quickly become chaotic, regardless of the quality of leadership (Kotter, 2008, p. 4).

Management and leadership are related, complementary functions, but they are not the same. Management is needed to organize resources, while leadership is required to guide the human element of the organization. Management alone is not sufficient for this, because humans are unlike parts of a machine and cannot simply be put into place to produce a result. There are subtler elements to leadership, which has made the subject considerably harder to pin down.

Organizational systems are largely a management concern, but certain aspects of leadership also shape them. Systems are the means by which resources are organized, and the role of management is to develop those systems. However, leadership is involved in at least two important ways. First, leadership is responsible for setting the organization's mission and vision. These provide the basic framework for what the organization hopes to achieve, and that framework forms the basis for the systems themselves. The vision and mission also provide a means for establishing performance mandates and benchmarks. Second, leadership must secure buy-in from the people within the organization. This buy-in is required both to implement the system and to ensure that people are working at their best to make the system effective. Leadership sets out the basic vision and provides the motivation and direction for the organization, while management translates that vision into operational structure.

How people lead is another matter altogether. The more traditional vision of leadership resembled management — in the mid-twentieth century, management was accorded far more importance than leadership. As leadership theory has evolved, older, more autocratic styles have fallen out of favor, and management is now just one function within an organization, with leadership arguably more important. There is no one-size-fits-all optimal leadership style, but it is important to recognize that one's leadership style should reflect who one authentically is.

References

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Kotter, J. (2008). Force for change: How leadership differs from management. The Free Press.

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