Fish-bone diagrams and leadership

The following was part of a dialogue with a colleague regarding leadership influence in an organization, problem-solving, and my thoughts on my approach to leadership from 2007. The response uses several concepts from books we were discussing regarding strategy, change, and leadership to highlight one approach to leading change and facilitating innovation. The references are listed at the bottom of this post.

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As I was reading through the texts and from the perspective of leadership and decision-making, I came across Geoff Coyle's book, Practical Strategy: Structured tools and techniques, and the use of fish-bone diagrams, originally developed by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, a Japanese quality control statistician. The diagram is useful for understanding what is going on with a particular problem, process, or activity by involving people from around the organization to participate in the analysis. The process is beneficial to understand why problems arise and how they might be addressed.

I raise this to say that we don't necessarily have to go outside of an organization to find new ideas or learn. When leadership influences teams to critically think about how processes work and where inefficiencies exist through the use of tools like the fish-bone diagram, force-field analysis, environmental scanning, SWOT, or STEP, internal thought processes are stimulated and innovation can occur. I think every organization attempts to constantly cross-pollinate the workforce via training, conferences, symposia, education, and other fora, but my personal approach is to include all of the fora plus the critical and reflexive thinking analysis to inform decision-making, process improvement, and efficiency in the organization.

There's nothing revolutionary or different in my approach, but the discipline of consistency over time is what makes organizations grow and sharpen their competitive position as learning organizations. In short, my leadership approach is to not become complacent and to continually look for opportunities to innovate and invent. Coyle (2004) provided some actionable approaches for me to consider in my current work. I really like the simplicity of the fish-bone diagram and the accompanying thought processes it provokes.

The book and ideas that capture my leadership style and the leadership necessary in today's environment is Peter Vaill's Managing as a Performing Art: New Ideas for a World of Chaotic Change (1989) and Learning as a Way of Being: Strategies for Survival in a World of Permanent White Water (1996). These two books are very applicable to what Dr Ward describes as advocacy and inquiry in leadership and exhort managers and leaders to be flexible and in a mode of constant learning to adjust to the velocity of change and the demands of the 21st century.

The point of posting part of the dialogue with my colleague from a few years ago is to revisit my thinking at the time, evaluate whether the points above are useful in my current organizational context, and to keep learning. I challenged my colleague with the following question as part of our dialogue and hope to generate some discussion here in the context of leadership and innovation.

Do we need new ideas to lead or do we need a learning organization where experience, intellect, and sensing allow leaders to influence positive change that creates measurable success and progress?


References

Coyle, G. (2004). Practical Strategy: Structured tools and techniques, (1st Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Vaill, P. B. (1989). Managing as a performing art: New ideas for a world of chaotic change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Vaill, P.B. (1996). Learning as a way of being: strategies for survival in a world of permanent white water. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass