New Book Review: "The Ideal Executive"

New book review for The Ideal Executive: Why You Cannot Be One and What To Do About It, by Ichak Kalderon Adizes PhD, Adizes Institute, 2004:

Without question, this book is the best on the topic of "management" I've ever read in my entire career. The subtitle of this book, "Why You Cannot Be One and What To Do About It", might be a bit misleading to many readers at first glance. But make no mistake, this subtitle doesn't speak to the failures of a given individual to become an "ideal" executive, but instead the reasons why *nobody* can become an "ideal" executive. What exactly is an "executive", and why does the cover of this book mention "management"? At the outset in chapter 1 ("Barking Up the Wrong Tree"), Adizes immediately differentiates his writing from all others I've ever had a chance to read, immediately setting the reader straight as he sets the stage for not only this book, but the two follow-ups which I've also worked through: "Management / Mismanagement Styles: How to Identify a Style and What To Do About It", and "Leading the Leaders: How To Enrich Your Style of Management and Handle People Whose Style Is Different From Yours".

The author summarizes what "management" is all about with respect to what is taught and practiced today into seven points: (1) it denotes hierarchy, (2) it is unidirectional, (3) it is elitist, (4) it is individualistic, (5) it is industry based, (6) it is socio-political, and (7) it is culturally bound. In his discourse on point #1 in the initial chapter, the author explains that "when people use the word 'management', what they usually mean is a group of people whose role is to manage. Each individual in this group is called a 'manager'. 'Management' refers to a certain rank in an organization; in the United States it generally refers to the middle and lower upper ranks – one level above supervisors and one level below executives." However, what's this? Adizes explains in his follow-up section entitled "The Fallacy" that "there is a big confusion in the field on what management is granted. But one thing we *do* know is what *mismanagement* is and it is a subject of books, articles and gossip at cocktail parties."

The author explains that "the word that was originally used to describe the process was 'administration'. That is why business schools used to be and some still are called Graduate Schools of Business Administration, and those that are in the profession of managing and have the diploma to prove that they have been professionally trained are Masters of Business Administration and the first journal in the field was the Administrative Science Quarterly. But since administrators failed to produce the desired results, the word 'administrator' is now used mostly as a synonym for 'bureaucrat'. So a new word came into use: 'Management'. Educational institutions became Graduate Schools of Management instead of Administration. But when the desired outcomes were still not achieved, the word 'management' came to denote only the middle level of the hierarchy – and the need for a new word emerged."

"That word was 'executive'; thus we began to hear the terms 'executive training', 'executive action', and 'Chief Executive Officer'. When even this did not work, the word 'leadership' evolved to replace 'executive', and this is where we are today (2004). Although there are plenty of books that will tell you how leadership is different from administration, which is different from executive action, which is itself different from management, I suggest that this new fad will not work either. In fact, I would not be surprised if in the next few years yet another new word is coined to define the process, while the word 'leadership' is redefined to mean some piece of the managerial process or hierarchy – exactly what happened to the words 'administration' and 'management'. The root problem is that the paradigm has remained the same: it is the same woman in a new dress."

"The paradigm that has not changed is that the entire managerial process is always personified in a single individual, whether we call him administrator, manager, executive, leader, tsar or sultan, who should do this and should do that. This is a manifestation of the American culture of individualism. The paradigm of the 'lone leader' – all-wise and all-powerful – has never worked – and as the rate of change keeps accelerating, increasing the level of uncertainty that needs to be dealt with, and as businesses become global instead of local, a paradigm shift is now more necessary than ever." The author soon explains that "what is needed, first, is to recognize reality, and second, to deal with it." He makes clear by the concluding paragraphs of his first chapter that "this first book in the series is only an introduction, which defines and analyzes what we are doing wrong and what we should be doing differently. The second through the third books in the series will address how to develop good managers based on this paradigm shift."

Adizes explains in the preface of this book the basic premise: "A well-managed organization must be effective and efficient in the short and the long run, and the role of management is to make that happen. In order to achieve a well-managed organization, I have found that four roles need to be performed, which I summarize as: (P)roducing the results for which the organization exists, which makes the organization effective; (A)dministering, for efficiency; (E)ntrepreneuring, for leading change; and (I)ntegrating the parts of the organization for long-term viability." As the author further explains, "if one, two, or three roles are performed well and the others meet the minimum threshold of competence, a managerial style will be manifested…when one role is performed well, but the three others are performed below the necessary threshold of competence necessary for the task or not at all, a specific, predictable mismanagement style, depending on which roles are lacking, will result."

While many theories about leadership styles and issues of leadership have been developed in the past, the author explains, the focus of most of these has mostly been on behavioral patterns from a psychological perspective, and the difference is that his orientation is purely managerial. In other words, he is interested in how different people decide differently, communicate differently, staff and motivate differently, and how he can help them perform better for their organizations. As such, this book isn't based on theoretical frameworks from psychology, or interviews, or analyses of controlled experiments, but from his more than thirty years of clinical (consulting) work in the field, working with organizations in forty-eight countries that have ranged in size from as small as fifteen employees to as large as one hundred thousand employees. 

Now, these aspects of the author's background might be dismissed or downplayed by some. I know from my own personal experience that this is unfortunately the case. For example, a fellow executive outright dismissed my experience consulting thirty organizations over the course of my professional career. As with much in life, nobody is accepted by everyone. So don't ever let this aspect of life get you down. Perhaps for a short while, yes, this is only human. But certainly not for a long period of time. This book series has not only personally provided some sanity, it has also better equipped me to better understand some of the reasons dysfunctional organizations exist, validating and broadening the perspective I've formed in my many years of consulting. Another executive once told me that "everybody knows" what an individual should do given a particular role. No, this is a fallacy. When I hear someone say something like this, I think to myself, "Is this why you don't document anything?" As a starting point, read points #5, #6, and #7 in the author's aforementioned summary of management if you still don't understand why this is the case.

This book is especially challenging to review because it doesn't contain any of the fluff typically found in most books of this genre: every single page seriously has important nuggets of information. If anything, the working through of this book by anyone with some work experience is bound to help them better understand not only themselves, but those around them. For example, I initially came to the conclusion reading through what Adizes has to say that my management style is likely coded as "PaEi" (more on this below). In referencing the aforementioned roles, what this style essentially means is that I typically demonstrate excellence at "Producing" and "Entrepreneuring", and I typically demonstrate competence in "Administering" and "Integrating". "Producing" results make a given organization effective in the short run, and "Entrepreneuring" combines creativity with the willingness to take risks.

As the author explains, if one or more of the "PAEI" roles isn't being performed at all (signified by a dash in the code), a corresponding mismanagement style emerges. For example, an Administer ensures that organizational processes are systematized: that an organization does the right thing in the right sequence with the right intensity. What would this management style mean for someone when they are an "-A–"? It would mean that they're a Bureaucrat. Similarly, "–E-" means Arsonist, "—I" means SuperFollower, and "P—" means Lone Ranger. None of these management styles are healthy, because everyone should demonstrate excellence performing at least one role, and demonstrate competence performing the other roles. Now, as a consultant I eventually developed the habit of marketing myself as being able to do "everything", which is technically true, but a better explanation would likely have been to instead communicate competence across the board, because some could misinterpret my saying otherwise as the ability to do everything all at the same time, and Adizes repeats the refrain that *nobody* can do this.

Interestingly, the author specifically calls out the "PaEi" management style. He explains that he has come to change his mind after calling "paEi" an Entrepreneur in an earlier book he wrote 30 years prior entitled "How to Solve the Mismanagement Crisis". He now refers to "paEi" as a Creative Contributor because the Entrepreneur must be strong in the "P" role in addition to the "E" role. In his explanation, Adizes uses faculty members at business schools as an example of those often fitting the profile of Creative Contributor. "Why? Because they are *only* creative. They may even be prolific in their creativity, as measured by the number of articles they publish. And the focus of their creativity may even be (E)ntrepreneurship, or how to make money. Nevertheless, if they do not have the second characteristic I believe is necessary for an (E)ntrepreneur – the willingness to *proact*, to walk *into* the fog, to take risks, to follow a vision – they cannot be (E)ntrepreneurs. They will not succeed at making money even if they wrote the book on how to do it."

Adizes argues that a given individual cannot be a leader unless one of their roles is "I" because this is needed to enhance whatever other roles a manager excels at performing. While I wasn't initially sure as to whether I was in agreement with this, the author provides a good explanation in chapter 12 ("The Right People and Shared Vision and Values"). In particular, the opening section in this chapter, entitled "Leadership is Being a Thumb", is especially well done, starting with a visual that many of us have probably seen in some organizations. "Many people visualize leadership as a pointing finger: 'Do this, do that!' My view is that a complementary team is like a hand composed of fingers of different lengths and capabilities, and its leader is like a thumb. Why? Because the thumb is the only finger that opposes the other fingers, yet can 'work' with any or all of them – thus enabling them to perform as a hand. If you lose a thumb, a surgeon will break one of your healthy fingers and refashion it into a thumb so that you can have a hand again." Ouch!

"Being a leader is being a thumb: Making *different* fingers work *together* like a hand. A good *manager* does not necessarily have to excel at (I)ntegration, or being a thumb. A *leader*, however, does. The difference between good management and the next level, leadership, is that a leader must excel in at least two of the managerial roles, one of which must be (I)ntegration. Without the ability to (I)ntegrate, which enables four fingers to perform like a hand, there can be no teamwork. Of course, all members of a team should have some leadership qualities -  at least the minimum level necessary to (I)ntegrate a department or a meeting, and keep conflict from destroying fragile agreements." The author then goes on to explain three archetype styles for leadership: "PaeI" (the "shift-level leader" or "The Small League Coach"), "pAeI" (a "Participative Administrator"), and "paEI" (the "Statesman"). He then explains that if all three of these were to exist on a given team, the changing nature of tasks to be performed would need to determine the question of who would lead that team.

All of this said, Adizes furthers his explanation of leadership by stating that the kind of leader that is best can differ not only for a particular organization, but for a given moment in time of that organization, depending on several variables such as the lifecycle phase of the organization, as well as the styles of other team members and the nature of tasks to be accomplished. And while he doesn't explicitly explain as such, I've come to the conclusion that what this essentially means is that a given individual can work in multiple modes: in my case, yes, "PaEi", but also permutations that include "I" and potentially not "P" or "E". But do I actually *enjoy* performing in these alternative modes? The author doesn't seem to factor in what someone enjoys doing, either, just whether they're capable of serving in a role, and as such, the presumption here is that Adizes doesn't find this topic of relevance.

Before discussing the nine characteristics that good leaders have in common (self-awareness, consciousness, well-rounded with no zeroes in PAEI code, knows strengths and weaknesses and knows their uniqueness, accepts strengths, weaknesses, and uniqueness, can identify excellence and weaknesses in others, can accept and appreciate differences in others, knows how to slow down and relax in difficult situations, and creates a learning environment in which conflicts can be resolved, by both commanding and granting mutual trust and respect), the author shares a great quote by Lao Tse, which would agree with the philosophy I've often heard exclaimed over the course of my consulting career, the last phrase of which is summarized quite well by The Third Law of Consulting in "The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully" by Gerald M. Weinberg: "Never forget they're paying you by the hour, not by the solution."

"A leader is best when people barely know that he exists,
Not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
Worst when they despise him.
Fail to honor people,
They fail to honor you;
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will all say, 'We did this ourselves.' "