What is an Effective Organization?

One of my favorite things to think about is how small organizations work. Having been a part of both successful and unsuccessful teams of people, I’ve wondered why did that team work well together and a similar team did not. Today I think I discovered one reason, leadership. Not just a good leader, but how the job of leadership is performed.

My theory is that every group must have a two people that divide the jobs of speeches, meetings etc and day to day operations. The job of speeches and meetings is the ‘presenter’ of the group. This is the face. This person is the charismatic leader, the one that people look to. They can attract people and make them interested in the project. The other person is the operations leader. This position makes the ideals and goals of the strategy and makes a meaningful process to accomplish this. The key is however, that these two people must be equals in their eyes and must be both strong enough to lay out the strategy for the group.

Additionally, it is extremely rare to find a presenter and operational leader in one person. Partially because I believe people are either stronger in one area or another. Also, as the group grows, the roles of both of the position will grow quickly and there a time restraint will creep in, until one of the jobs cannot be done by one person.

There are examples of successful teams like this and there are many others that are unseen. One of the first that came to mind was George W Bush/Karl Rove and as an odd counterpoint, Bill and Hillary Clinton. Many times in political areas, the operations job is done by a Chief of Staff, but the important role here is how strategy is set. It has to be a mutually agreed job.

A group with just a charismatic leader will fill the seats of a meeting room and wow the people with great ideas, but in time, the ideas never seem to expand into real projects. An operational leader will get very few people into the seats, but they will be wowed with the detail and ability to execute the plan. However, the ideas will not keep coming and the people will loose interest.

This is a theory. I’m looking at groups to see if this is true in many cases. All the groups I’ve examined seem to have this either working for them or have a failing in getting going.