Old vs. New Leadership Styles: Bureaucracy to Jazz Band

Introduction: Bureaucracy and the Rise of Top-Down Authority

Max Weber was correct that in modern society, the power of the bureaucracy increased exponentially with urbanization and industrialization, particularly when it was called upon to deal increasingly with social and economic problems. Such organizations were hardly designed to enable others to act within a democratic or participatory system, but rather to act on their behalf and direct them from above in a very hierarchical system. For example, during the Progressive Era and New Deal in the United States, the civil service was expanded to regulate capitalism in a variety of ways, to administer large parts of the economy, and to manage the growing social welfare state. With the growth in the power and influence of the civil service, opportunities for bribery, corruption, authoritarian behavior, and catering to special interests instead of the public interest became far more common. Building public trust and confidence in the civil service and the political system in general has been a chronic problem in the United States and other Western nations in recent decades, particularly given the widespread perception that these institutions are not acting in the public interest.

This same process of bureaucratization occurred in Fordist mass production industries, in the education system, and in all other large organizations, including hospitals and nonprofits. Starting with the railroads, large institutions and corporations borrowed authoritarian, top-down leadership models from the military, in which an elite group of planners, designers, and administrators made decisions for the masses of employees and consumers. This anti-democratic system was rationalized by popular writers like Frederick Taylor and Walter Lippmann, who argued that only educated elites and technical specialists were capable of dealing with the complexities of running modern society. Managers, public administrators, and leaders must therefore find ways to increase popular participation in decision making, ensure that they are held accountable, and control the power of special interests rather than cater to them.

Bureaucratic and Democratic Leadership

This authoritarian-bureaucratic model runs contrary to most new theories of management and leadership that have become popular over the last thirty years, which advocate pluralism, diversity, ethics, democratic participation, and respect for unique individual talents. In Max DePree's Leadership Jazz, for example, the central theme holds that the leadership of a jazz band — in which performers are allowed great leeway for improvisation, imagination, and creativity — is the best model for any type of organization. DePree believes that the jazz band leader sets the pace and tempo, finds the music, and then performs in public, while allowing for a great deal of diversity and individual creativity among the musicians. They can perform well or badly, and the quality of their work depends on many factors, including the environment, their own skills and abilities, their desire to play well, and the ability of the leader to solicit their best work while still treating them as unique individuals. Jazz band leaders are servant leaders rather than distant, authoritarian, or bureaucratic figures, and they know how to obtain the best performance from players by recognizing the special gifts and talents of each while also acknowledging that the future is not truly predictable. As DePree puts it, "creative work needs the ethos of jazz" in which the leader "will pick the tune, set the tempo, start the music and define a 'style'" (DePree, p. 102). Some bands may be very formal and restrained while others are spontaneous, wild, and creative, but all types of bands should play the music because they love it and want the audience to enjoy it as well. Great leaders will also realize that musicians must be able to play both solo and as a group in order to infuse the band with vitality.

Communication, or finding one's voice, is essential to effective leadership; leaders who are unable to do so will not be successful. Leaders have to develop an understanding of "human strength and potential" through meaningful interactions with employees and colleagues, and DePree notes that "the best leaders, like the best music, inspires us to see" (DePree, p. 49). He describes water carriers as people "imbued with the qualities and attributes of humor, compassion, an acute sense of history, the ability and desire to teach new members, and an unflappable commitment to the prosperity and posterity of the tribe" (DePree, p. 69). In business as in personal life, all relationships are based on trust and ethics, and "a leader's commitments and beliefs are part and parcel of the same thing. A true leader cannot commit herself without beliefs… action must follow closely a solid sense of one's ethics" (DePree, p. 139). He calls leadership a job rather than a position and states that it is important for leaders to recognize an ongoing need for what DePree calls "tuning oneself" (DePree, p. 184).

Great leaders face problems directly rather than attempting to conceal or ignore them, or allowing them to worsen through procrastination. This is also the far more difficult course of action, especially in rigid organizations that have grown comfortable with certain routines — as all organizations do over time. Great leaders must also have been followers at some point in the past and must have learned what it is to see the world through their followers' eyes rather than living in an ivory tower. People in charge of organizations should always stay grounded and connected to reality rather than losing touch with themselves and those they lead. Many organizations fail because of this disconnection, and also because both leaders and followers have become bored with their work and no longer truly enjoy what they do. For this reason, DePree also praises amateurs — not in the sense of those who are inexperienced, but those who still love their work and derive genuine enjoyment from it.

During the 1960s, despite the tremendous economic prosperity and power of the nation, public administration and corporate management often failed to serve the public interest, particularly in the implementation of programs that political operatives exploited for narrow ends (Wood, 1955, pp. 3–4). Government did attempt to address a host of long-neglected issues such as poverty and civil rights, but its failures of implementation led to considerable backlash against Washington from both the Left and the Right, with many members of the public angered that their voices were not being heard in matters affecting their communities (Ruscio, 2008, p. 3). To many critics like Theodore Lowi, the Great Society was thus very different from Franklin Roosevelt's implementation of the New Deal in the 1930s. Many different private and corporate interests wanted new programs and regulations restricted or reduced; FDR refused to bend and instead focused on the needs of the public. This allowed his administration to create policies openly embraced by the public, which increased public confidence in his leadership and helped ensure that he would be elected to four terms (Edward, 2005, pp. 1–7).

Theodore Lowi's The End of Liberalism was written during the same period as Implementation and expressed many of the same frustrations at the failures of Great Society liberalism. Lowi was very critical of interest-group liberalism and the corruption of the public sector, as well as vague, hastily conceived, and poorly implemented programs that did not truly address the nation's social and economic problems as promised. Instead, they merely increased public cynicism and distrust of government, and played into the hands of conservative politicians who wanted to roll back the welfare state (Lowi, 1969, 2009). Anthony Downs was especially critical of old-line bureaucracies in his classic work Inside Bureaucracy (1967), arguing that bureaus in decline showed evidence of rigidity and sclerosis, becoming too formal and routinized, as well as corrupted by various special interests. Lyndon Johnson also agreed with this — ironically — and often asserted that new programs should never be handled by old, stagnant agencies. On the other hand, many of his new initiatives, like the Economic Development Administration and the Office of Economic Opportunity, were hardly very successful either, particularly as the Vietnam War starved them of funds and conservatives pressured Congress to abolish them. Morton Grodzins also pointed out in The American System that many new federal programs were being very badly coordinated and implemented at the state and local levels, a subject of frequent complaints by governors and mayors at the time (Grodzins, 1966, 1984).

DePree's Jazz Band Model in Practice

Contrary to most conventional managers, who are task- and process-oriented, DePree maintained that the best leaders always take time to acknowledge and sincerely praise the contributions of followers — not simply as a pro forma exercise. This is easy to say but difficult to put into practice, and few managers truly exhibit this more compassionate and nurturing side. They tend to see the organization not as a band but as a pyramid or hierarchy, which was in fact the standard model of the industrial era, with its rigid routines, assembly lines, and conveyor belts, as well as an autocratic, top-down management structure. No one could really be an equable, humane servant leader in such an environment, nor was that system designed to value change, innovation, or creativity.

Gandhi and Martin Luther King exemplify the ethical, servant leadership that DePree describes, in both their means and ends. Often, moral leadership consists in doing what is right regardless of the consequences, and morality is not defined by personal comfort and convenience, or even by what the majority of people believe to be right. In history, truly moral leadership has been very rare and often takes on the most heroic qualities imaginable.

Leaders in older industrial conditions advanced their careers by literally ensuring that the machinery worked, and employees were generally treated as part of that machinery. In an organization no longer run on such rigid and authoritarian lines, DePree's jazz band model seems far more appropriate — one in which leaders share power and responsibility and encourage independent thought and creativity among followers, none of which existed under the old industrial model. Many leaders in newer organizations will fail because they were trained under the old methods and never learned to appreciate the value of followers and water carriers, or to deal with the change, risk, and uncertainty of a globalized economy. Even more difficult is the leader's task of persuading followers that they too will benefit from change and should participate in it, and of genuinely acknowledging their dignity and humanity.

Conclusion

No matter what the size or purpose of their organizations, leaders must learn to be more humane and empathic — even if empathy has become a cliché and buzzword in advice books of this type. They must be genuinely concerned about the feelings, desires, and interests of their followers, not simply focused on a list of tasks at hand or on advancing their own careers. Giving advice like this is quite easy; following it consistently is not. If leadership is not simply about getting things done on schedule but is fundamentally about ethics and compassion, then many leaders fall short in dealing with the human side of the equation and resemble soulless technicians and mechanics more than great leaders. They wear the mask of authority, titles, and position but come up short in other areas, and are difficult to picture as leaders of a jazz band, or any other type of band for that matter.

In most organizations, the followers and water carriers that DePree praises are treated like lowly-paid menials, noticed only when they fail to carry out their assigned tasks in a timely manner. In that case they might be reprimanded, but they are rarely thanked or praised. No tribe or band could survive without them, yet many managers hardly bother to say hello to them or give them the time of day, much less tell them that their contributions are valued. Leaders often act as though they are unaware of their followers' existence unless something goes wrong — and this does not make for a dynamic or healthy organization.

References

Adrian, C. (2006). Political Democracy, Trust and Social Justice. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

Coles, R. (2001). Lives of Moral Leadership: Men and Women Who Have Made a Difference. Random House.

DePree, M. (1992). Leadership Jazz. Dell Trade Paperbacks.

Dobel, P. (1998). Political prudence and the ethics of leadership. Public Administration Review, 58, 74–81.

Downs, A. (1967). Inside Bureaucracy. Boston: Little, Brown.

Edward, C. (2005). Downsizing the Federal Government. Washington, DC: CATO Institute.

Grodzins, M. (1966, 1984). The American System: A New View of Government in the United States. Rand McNally.

James, W. (1908). Pragmatism. New York, NY: Longmans, Green and Company.

Lowi, T. J. (1969, 2009). The End of Liberalism: The Second Republic of the United States. New York: Norton.

Pressman, J., & Wildavsky, A. (1984). Implementation (3rd expanded ed.). University of California Press.

Ruscio, K. P. (2008). The Leadership Dilemma in Modern Democracy. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

Wood, R. (1955). Ethics in government as a problem in executive management. Public Administration Review, 15, 1–7.