Evan Allred

What is Leadership?

2009-02-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

“Workers will do what their told if they are paid to do so, and therefore [leaders] should study the best ways for tasks to be performed and then scientifically select and train workers to perform those tasks.” (Fredrick Taylor, 1911)

“People change their behavior when they know they are being observed.” (Hawthorne studies – Roethlisberger & Dickson, 1939)

“We are likely to modify our own behavior when we participate in problem analysis and solution and when we are more likely to carry out decisions we have helped make.” (Weisbord, 1987)

“Leadership must assume that people are lazy, uninvolved and motivated solely by money. Therefore, a command-and-control leadership is required to bring about desired results.” (Theory X - McGregor, 1960)

“Traditional top-down models of leadership that we associate with groups such as the military are outdated and unworkable in modern society—even in the military” (Denhardt & Denhardt, 2009)

“Leadership…will become an increasingly intricate process of multilateral brokerage…more and more decisions will be public decisions; that is, the people they affect will insist on being heard” (Bennis, 1983)

“In this country, leadership is dispersed among all elements of society and down through all levels, and the system simply won’t work as it should unless large numbers of people throughout society are prepared to take leader-like action to make things work at their level.” (Gardner, 1987)

“Leadership is not just about doing things right; it is about doing the right things.” (Bennis & Nanus, 1985)

Transactional v. Transformational Leadership

Copyright, Fair Use and iTunes

2008-11-17T11:31:00.000-08:00

Lessig describes the four modalities of regulation: law, social norms, markets and architecture. An article written by Rob Kasunic, a professor of law at American University explorers the tension between copyright and fair use. The article points out the challenges and tension between what the law allows with regard to copyright and fair use with regard to music downloads. However, in attempt to protect copyright, many recording labels (and iTunes has complied) have architected systems that in many ways, prevent fair use of legally purchased products. Digital Rights Management (DRM) in the music industry is certainly controversial among consumers and may actually infringe on the fair use rights of those who purchase music. An interesting debate!

Book Review: The Wisdom of Crowds

2008-11-16T19:58:00.000-08:00

In "The Wisdom of Crowds", James Surowiecki argues that, under the right circumstances not only are groups intelligent, but that they are often smarter than the smartest people in them. Surowiecki disputes the notion of Charles Mackay, who wrote in 1841 that: "Men, it has been well said, think in herds...It will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one." Or, as the French writer Gustav Le Bon said "In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated." Le Bon was appalled by the rise of democracy and dismayed by the idea that ordinary people had come to wield political and cultural power which makes this book all the more interesting examination of not only the so-called "Wisdom of Crowds" but its relationship to how people should be governed. Surowiecki makes his arguments through what he calls the three types of problems groups can solve, cognition (who will win the Super Bowl this year), coordination, (how do you safely drive in heavy traffic), and cooperation (how to deal with pollution). Finally, the Surowiecki explores the right circumstances under which groups can be wise, including groups that are sufficiently large, (turns out bigger is usually better) diverse, independent and decentralized.

While full of interesting examples and case studies of wise crowds such as the weight of an ox, the location of a lost submarine, heavy traffic in London, pedestrian traffic in NYC, etc. Surowiecki's greatest contribution is in the ways we think about governing and public administration, especially in light of new technological tools. The examples of deliberative polling and deliberative democracy, election markets and even predicting disasters within a betting market are fascinating, if not controversial ideas. These thought provoking examples and supporting evidences along with an engaging writing style are the strong points of the book. However, Surowiecki doesn't go far enough into the practical application of this new idea or how to sufficiently build or leverage groups that can "operate under the right circumstances to be wise".

What "The Wisdom of Crowds" does do very well is change the thinking on the subject of representative vs. direct democracy. The conventional wisdom since the founding fathers was that the best ordinary people could do was elect intelligent individuals who reflect the values of the community, state or nation and send them to work. However, declining costs of communication and the ability to quickly aggregate and dis-aggregate vast amounts of data and information because of technology, suggests that a more direct democratic model of government is not only now possible, but also desirable. "The Wisdom of Crowds" contributes an important perspective in exploring the role technology can play in governance and public administration and to the question: can the "people" make better choices than even the smartest individuals? "The Wisdom of Crowds" is a useful read for policy analysts and public administrators.

PEAK 2008 Presenatation Resources

2008-11-07T11:09:00.000-08:00

PEAK 2008 Slide Show

Teachers are from Mars, Tech Staff are from Venus

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

The NSBA 2008 T+L technology survey results are here.

Friend or Foe: Tech Staff and Teachers Don't Always Get Along

Lessig, "Code 2.0" -Quote #2

2008-09-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

Page 81 (Regulation by Code) - "The question here is not how the architecture of the Net will make it easier for traditional regulation to happen. The issue here is how...the code itself becomes a regulator... A locked door is not a command 'do not enter' backed up with a the threat of punishment by the state. A locked door is a physical constraint on the liberty of someone to enter some space."

"Code as a regulator" suggests that what can or cannot be done is increasingly being decided by programmers, application developers and Chief Information Officers. As a CIO, I sometimes half-joke that CEO's and CFO's don't really have any more power than we say they do. Through the applications themselves and IT policies / procedures we have the ability to limit the kinds of decisions possible, the type of information available and the speed in which it is received. It can often be very easy to say, "I'm sorry, the system doesn't allow that". Those with the technical knowledge increasingly have power to shape the environment and many will not know there was any other way.

Lessig "Code 2.0" - Quote #1

2008-09-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

Page 167 - "I fear this [allowing legislation to answer the constitutional questions related to new technology] not because I fear legislatures, but because in our day constitutional discourse at the level of the legislature is a very thin sort of discourse...We have been trapped by a mode of reasoning that pretends that all the important questions have already been answered, that our job now is simply to translate them for modern times. As a result, we do not quite know how to proceed when we think the answers are not already there. As nations across the world struggle to express and embrace constitutional values, we, with the oldest written constitutional tradition, have lost the practice of embracing, articulating and deciding on constitutional values."

Lessig seems to be suggesting that courts and lawyers are better at constitutional questions and discourse than the citizenry and the legislators (acting on their behalf). It's an interesting and often polarizing question about who should be defining and defending our national values, so called "liberal judges" or the "hard working blue collar, regular guy". I agree with Lessig that as a nation we have slipped into a dependancy on government to protect us and make our hard decisions for us. In many ways, this is how the courts have been allowed to interpret and translate our values into the ways they exist for us today. This could be described as a general laziness on behalf of the average citizen. If this laziness and dependancy is true, then then truly interesting questions are, how can technology be leveraged to create a more engage and informed citizenry, ensuring that the people are defining the values and prioritizing them, instead of lawyers and judges.

BrainTech Conference - Article Analysis

2008-09-14T19:22:00.000-07:00

Futurists: Feds to squash online freedom - In this report from the BrainstormTech Conference held this past summer, "futurist" Lawrence Lessig predicts that a terrorist attack on the stability of the Internet will prompt the U.S. government to clamp down on Internet freedoms in an online parallel to the Patriot Act. In making his prediction, Lessig related conversations he had with Richard Clarke, former federal counter-terrorism adviser about how the majority of provisions in the Patriot Act were written pre-911 and similarly, the federal government has proposed changes in the law regarding it's use of technology ready when a "9/11" event occurs. Lessig elaborates on this notion in his book on page 76 where he says that "a really devastatingly destructive work...will trigger the political resolve to do what so far governments have not done: push to complete the work of transforming the Net into a regulable space."

Two of the values in tension here are the rights of privacy compared to the value of national security. In other words, can or should government infringe on rights of privacy to "protect" the Internet and all that hinges on it from commerce to social networking to national secrets.

In this article, the suggestion is that the government will use the constraints of "Law" and "Architecture" to regulate the Internet. An alternative way to address this potential problem could be the use of "Market" to ensure redundancies are built into the network or create products that help identify and block potential threats.

My concern is that when an event takes place, it will generate sufficient political will among the masses to "do something" and the rights of privacy will again suffer. I believe our federal government has already drifted well across the line of individual freedoms and liberty envisioned by the framers of our Constitution. In so doing, we as a nation have become increasingly dependent upon the government to protect us from bad things. But that dependence and protection have come at a high price. And with dependence, comes an increasing inability to stand, act and think for ourselves. This to me, the value of freedom, liberty and privacy are far greater than the value of protection from "bad things" happening.

The Future of Work - Malone

2008-09-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Malone reading mirrors in some ways for me the book "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki that suggests that collobration and groups are the decision makers of the future and that the quality of decisions is improved because of this trend. I tend to accept Malone's agrument that we are moving in a more decentrailized decision-making environment and that his three main forces of transition (cost of communicaiton, availablity of information and power of computation) are indeed major reasons why collobration is more possible.

Malone's description of moving from a command-and-control management style to developing skills in cooridnate-and-cultivate is an especially useful description of the practical consequences of this new enviornment of how "work gets done". Understanding these ideas have ramifications not just for managers, but also for public adminstrators. If we accept the idea that crowds make better decisions, and that true democracy ensures freedoms and reflects that public's values, then encouraging, coordinating and cultivating citizen particpation becomes an important endeavor and a focus for the would-be public adminstrator and politicians.

I do question however, Malone's arguement of how our ogranizational structures have moved from Bands to Kingdoms, to Democracies. Malone emphasized the role that "people's values making these changes desirable." played in creation of larger more centralized groups. I don't question that falling communication costs made these changes "possible". But the argument that bigger organziations formed because it gave people things they wanted for me seems to minimize the role that old fashioned, base instinct power played in the development of these larger, more centralized organizations. The desire for power by a few (or even one) probably was a greater (and still is today in some places) catalyst for centralizing organizations. To quote The Refreshments "I've got the pistols, so I'll keep the pesos. Yeah, that seems fair", I believe Malone fails in this fundamental analysis of WHY roving bands moved to kingdoms, and thus larger, more centralized organizationial structures. I'd also argue that communciation costs had little to nothing to do with why these larger organizations were centralized under an emporer, chief or king. It was nothing more complicated than simple human base desire for power. To Malone's credit, he does acknowledge that people probably didn't concsionsly choose to give up their freedoms as hunter/gatherers in order to obtain the economic and military benefits of larger, centralized hierarchies. But this is only a small acknowldgement and not part of his core thesis.

Instead, perhaps falling communication costs, and rising access to information is diluting the power that a few, centralized decision-makers CAN have over the masses. If knowldge and information is power, and it is now freely available, then we all have power. This new world REQUIRES decsion-making to become more distributed and decentralized.