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LACK OF LEADERSHIP: A LIVING SYSTEMS PERSPECTIVE

Lane Tracy

Department of Management, Marketing, and Production
Ohio University
Athens, OH 45701

ABSTRACT
This paper defines leadership in terms of the top echelon of the decider subsystem of a group, organization, or society. A leader usually serves as top decider for two or more systems. When the purposes and goals of these systems conflict, the leader's loyalty is divided. The implications of such divided loyalty are discussed with respect to problems of national and international leadership.

INTRODUCTION
It is fashionable to bemoan the lack of strong leaders in the world today. E. E. Jennings (1960) surveyed the field of great leaders and found few alive who could match those of past generations, such as Roosevelt, Churchill, Lenin, or Gandhi. Particularly lacking are the heroes -- leaders who are dedicated to great and noble causes -- and the supermen and superwomen who break rules and create new values. Mueller (1980) echoed the same theme twenty years later with a call for "more leaders and fewer executives." News analysts and editorialists attribute the losses of the Democratic party in the United States and the Labor party in Great Britain to a lack of strong leadership. We repeatedly hear questions such as "Can Yugoslavia survive without Marshall Tito?" and "What will happen to China without Mao Zedung?"

It would be difficult to prove that there are any fewer great leaders in the world now than there ever were before. Miner (1977) attempted to show the loss of one form of leadership. He measured the "motivation to manage" of business students and executives over a period of many years, and found a steady decline in willingness to accept the responsibilities of leadership. The characteristics that Miner attributed to a successful leader, however, seem to fit the executive mold rather than the description of a great leader.

Leadership has attracted a great deal of research and theorizing, yet it is difficult even to say what leadership is. It has been said that "There are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define the concept" (Bass, 1981:7). This paper will add to that record. By stating a new definition of leadership in terms of living systems theory, I hope to gain some novel insights into the problems of leadership and the reasons for a shortage of great leaders.

It is assumed in this paper that the reader is familiar wich living systems theory (Miller, 1978). The theory of living systems provides an ideal framework for study of a topic such as leadership which involves interaction between individuals and groups or organizations. Individuals, groups, organizations, and nations are different levels of living systems, each having certain basic characteristics in common. For our purposes in this paper the most important common characteristic is that every living system must have its own decider subsystem. It is with respect to the decider subsystem that leadership will be defined.

A LIVING SYSTEMS DEFINITION OF LEADERSHIP
Miller (1978) dismissed the concept of leadership because of lack of a clear definition or agreement on what leadership is. He suggested the use of his critical subsystem categories, instead. But leadership is a topic of interest to many people. It cannot be so easily dismissed or replaced.

Despite the variety of definitions and uses of the term "leadership" and the multiplicity of functions ascribed to leaders, there is a core concept that is obviously related to the decider subsystem of groups, organizations, societies, and supranational systems. The decider is defined by Miller as "the executive subsystem which receives information inputs from all other subsystems and transmits to them information outputs that control the entire system" (1978:67). The decider process can be divided into four distinct stages: (1) establishing purposes and goals for the system; (2) receiving and analyzing information from all subsystems and components; (3) synthesizing the data in order to narrow the range of alternatives to a choice of action; and (4) implementing the choice by transmitting commands or other forms of information that will cause other subsystems and components to carry out the chosen processes.

This description of the decider process, as it applies to groups and organizations, sounds very much like the process of leadership. It encompasses virtually every aspect of leadership cited in other definitions. Some definitions may focus more on the implementation stage, others on the stage of establishing purposes and goals (e.g. Jennings' superman). Yet leaders, especially "great" leaders, are expected to set goals, process information, choose a course of action, and mobilize followers to pursue that course. Is there more to leadership than that?

There remains one other issue in establishing a living systems definition of leadership. Decider subsystems typically have several echelons. For instance, a government may have a prime minister, a parliament, a bureaucracy, and a court system all making decisions for the nation. Are they all part of the leadership of the nation? Such a definition would not fit the common conception of leadership. Instead, we will define leadership in terms of the top echelon of the decider subsystem of a given system. This does not preclude the possibility of several levels of leadership within a large system such as a nation. Lower-level leaders, however, would be leaders of subsystems, being the top echelon of the deciders for those subsystems.

Our living systems definition of leadership may now be stated as follows: Leadership is the assumption of some or all of the functions of the top echelon of the decider subsystem of a group, organization, society, or supranational system. All of the terms in this definition are as defined by Miller (1978).

In accordance with the definition, leadership can be assumed by an individual, a group, or an organization that is lower in level than the system. Leadership may also be divided. One leader may assume the function of setting purposes and goals, another may process information and make choices, while a third leader directs the implementation of decisions. Furthermore, leadership is hierarchical. A leader of a group, for instance, may receive orders from a suprasystem leader, modify them to suit group goals, and then issue directions to individual group members. Likewise, information may flow upward from leader to leader.

SOURCES OF LACK OF LEADERSHIP
The living systems viewpoint sheds new light on certain leadership problems. For instance, it becomes clear that much of the leadership process is invisible. Researchers have tended to focus on the implementation stage, which is the most visible aspect of leadership. The quality of a leader's decisions may be equally important, but only a few researchers such as Vroom and Yetton (1974) have focussed on the decision-making stage of leadership. Management theorists are concerned with the problem of obtaining accurate information, but it is seldom studied in a more general leadership context. Leadership theory often includes the setting of goals as a leadership function, but research on goal-setting tends to focus on the process of influencing others to accept the goals.

Another aspect of leadership highlighted by living systems theory is the fact that leaders must supply the decider functions for themselves as well as for a group or organization. In other words groups, organizations, and nations possess decider subsystems only on a shared-time basis. In some instances the goals of the institution and its leader may coincide. When they do not, however, the leader must decide whether to serve as the decider for the institution or for himself/herself.

Other social entities may also vie for a leader's attention. For example, the head of a nation may also be the leader of a political party, the armed forces, or a junta, as well as head of a family. The leader may strive to blend the interests of all of these entities and to make decisions that do not compromise the interests of any of them, but there are bound to be instances in which this is impossible. When a head of government must choose whether to support a tax increase that would benefit the economy of the nation but hurt the party at the polls, somebody's interests must suffer. At such moments, one of these institutions effectively lacks a top echelon for its decider subsystem. Moreover, the nature of leadership is such that all groups, organizations, and nations must from time to time be temporarily leaderless.

What are the effects of temporary loss of leadership? Miller (1978) maintains that the decider subsystem is the one indispensable subsystem. Without a decider of its own, a living system ceases to exist as an independent entity. If a leader is the sole decider for a system, the system dissolves if the leader abandons it for long. An example is a youth gang whose leader decides to get married and settle down. The gang must quickly choose a new leader or cease to exist.

Most groups and organizations have multiple echelons in their decider subsystem. The gang leader has a lieutenant. The nation has a legislative body, courts, and a host of bureaucrats and functionaries. When a political leader chooses to act for himself/herself or for the party and ignores the good of the nation, the nation still has a functioning decider subsystem. But that subsystem must function without the overall coordination that the top echelon is supposed to provide. The lower-echelon leaders, if not suffering from the same divided loyalties as the top echelon leader, make decisions for subsystems. These decisions may be suboptimal for the system as a whole. The result for a nation is a bit like the drunken person whose legs seem to have a mind of their own. Without top-level leadership a nation or large organization soon dissolves into a warring group of departments or tribes.

A group, organization, or nation may not immediately recognize that its leader is not acting in its own interests. A Machiavellian prince is one who is adept at disguising the fact that he is pursuing his own interests. By playing off one group against another a leader can often subvert any organized opposition and continue to rule for personal gain for many years. Investment of authority in a position increases the likelihood of blind acceptance of corrupt leadership. People tend to assume that anyone given the title of President or Prime Minister will naturally try to act in the best interests of the nation. It took more than two years of revelations and a final "smoking gun" to convince many Americans that President Nixon had anything to do with the Watergate incident.

DIVIDED LOYALTY
Divided loyalty of leaders is inevitable. At the very least, a leader must make decisions for himself/herself as well as for the group or organization. The result for the institution is either lack of leadership or corrupt leadership. To some degree all leadership is either lacking or corrupt, because human institutions do not possess deciders of their own. The basic question is one of degree: To what degree is the leader loyal to the system?

For a leader to remain primarily loyal to the values, needs, purposes, and goals of a group, organization, or society requires either that the leader identify with that system or that the leader turn over the primary decider functions for all other systems to someone else. An example of the first case is a hereditary ruler who is raised and educated to assume the role of leader for a nation. To a king, "L'état c'est moi." The purposes and goals of the king are the purposes and goals of the nation.

The second case would be illustrated by a national leader who puts all personal and family affairs in the hands of his/her spouse or a lawyer, and who delegates party affairs to a deputy leader. Willingness to make such delegation is, unfortunately, rare. The family and the party may not be happy with it, either. All too often, for instance, the party wants its own person in the President's chair for its own sake, not for the good of the nation. The Presidency is seen as a source of patronage and power for the party.

If I seem to be presenting arguments against democratic government in favor of royalty, permit me to point out a flaw in hereditary government as well. "The state is me" all to easily becomes "the state is mine." In other words, all but the greatest kings of history tended to think of themselves as owners of the nation rather than as leaders. The difference is crucial. It is as if your brain, instead of regarding itself as an integral part of you, suddenly started treating the rest of your body as a possession, to be disposed of at will. In an individual we would call such a state "madness." We may as well use the same term for a ruler who dissociates himself/herself from the ruled.

Military juntas, another common form of government, fare no better in analysis from a living systems perspective. Whether we are talking about government by a group or a single dictator, such leaders are beholden to the military organization that is the source of their power. Furthermore, their knowledge of the values, purposes, and goals of the rest of the population is usually limited or distorted by their military background. Guerrilla leaders are likewise usually limited to identification with a particular class of the population, as well as by loyalty to their band.

It has often been observed that great leaders seem to emerge in times of stress. Great events or causes beget great leaders. This observation can be explained from a living systems perspective. It is not that a society suddenly "grows" great leaders when it needs them. The talent is there all the time, but much of the time it is devoted to making decisions for self or for minor causes. Winston Churchill hardly seemed like a prime candidate for greatness before World War II. In his youth he seems to have had difficulty leading himself, let alone a nation. Yet the stress of war focussed his energies and talents so that he emerged as a national leader. This emergence of leadership ability is analogous to what happens to some individuals under personal stress. Their senses are sharpened and their attention becomes focused. The "juices" start flowing and they are ready for action.

In other words, the emergence of leadership during times of stress can be understood in terms of focusing the loyalty of the leader. In ordinary times a politician can play "politics as usual," figuring that the nation will muddle through somehow. In the face of a major threat to the nation, however, the politician may realize that the country needs his or her leadership more than the party does.

SIZE AND COMPLEXITY
Another factor that has often been cited as contributing to the lack of leadership is the ever-increasing size and complexity of our institutions. It has been suggested that the human mind simply cannot cope with the decider requirements of such institutions. It is like trying to control an elephant with the brain of a pigeon. Yet people created these institutions in the first place. Moreover, within limits our larger institutions seem to have more survival potential than smaller ones. That suggests that the decider subsystems of large institutions are functioning at an adequate level, at least. Perhaps the problem is that we do not recognize leadership when we see it. Or perhaps the level of competition in the environment of large institutions is such that they can survive without a strong top echelon.

Living systems theory suggests another effect of increasing size and complexity on leadership. In any complex living system there are several echelons within the decider subsystem. Some deciding may occur at the level of components that carry out input and internal transduction processes, for instance. Further deciding may occur at nodes within the channel and net subsystem. Finally, there may be several echelons of "executives" below the top echelon. At each echelon decisions are made that reduce the total amount of information fed to the top echelon, thereby eliminating alternatives. The leader may be presented with a fait accompli or may not receive the information necessary to make a good decision.

Even if the leader is loyal to the organization, lower echelon deciders may not be. They may already have made choices that eliminated the best alternatives for the system. For example, several U.S. Presidents may have been prevented from making the best decisions about the Vietnam War because lower echelons filtered and distorted information about the progress of the war for their own purposes.

The likelihood that the leader will not receive accurate and sufficient information to make a good decision, or that the decision will be made at a lower echelon, increases directly with the number of echelons of deciders. Modern bureaucracies may interpose too many echelons of deciders for anyone to function effectively as a leader of the system. The problem is magnified if there is unity of command, as recommended by Fayol (1949). Upward flow of information is likely to be limited to the same chain of communications used to transmit orders downward. The lack of alternate channels eliminates redundancy and any chance of checking the accuracy of information. Of course, some limitation must be set on the amount of information fed to the top echelon, in order to avoid information overload. What the leader needs is an alternate loyal but selective source of information.

The problems created by multiple echelons within the decider subsystem are compounded when lower echelons are also leaders of their own groups or organizations. Their loyalty is bound to be divided when the requirements of the suprasystem conflict with the requirements of their own system. In anticipation of such conflicts they my decide to filter or distort the information that they feed upward. For example, it is common practice for administrators to submit inflated budget estimates in anticipation of cuts. The administrators' subordinates would regard them as traitors if they did not do so.

Mass education has probably contributed to the apparent lack of leadership today. As the lower echelons of decider subsystems have become populated with better-educated people, these people have begun to think for themselves. They have become less willing simply to take orders and pass on information without alteration. Even when they are not leaders of a subsystem or component group, they fancy themselves as important contributors in the decisions of the system. They may be loyal to the system and yet uncertain of their loyalty to the leader. They may, indeed, be capable of making good decisions for the system, but only if they are kept well informed of basic policies and the bigger picture into which their decisions must fit. Most bureaucracies do not provide that sort of information to lower-level administrators. Perhaps it is time they did.

RECOMMENDATIONS
How can a system overcome the problem of divided loyalty of the leaders? Systems try various methods to assure that their leaders will act in the best interests of the system. Capitalist societies are organized in such a way that leaders acting in their own economic interests will also be acting in the interests of the society (or so the theory goes). Communist party leaders are pledged to party loyalty. Judges are given lifetime appointments so that they will not be swayed by outside interests. Business leaders are given stock options so that the firm's success will automatically be the leader's success.

That these methods do not always work is shown by your daily newspaper. The best interests of business leaders sometimes cause them to conspire to fix prices, or to manufacture automobiles that are defective and dangerous. Executive stock options sometimes cause leaders to make decisions based on short-term profits or the price of the stock rather than the long-term viability of the company. Judges still try to make money on the side with speeches and to retain connections through law firms. Communist party leaders feather their own nests with limousines and country estates.

Another method of dealing with the problem of divided loyalty of the leader is to use a system of checks and balances. The division of power in the United States between the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court is an example of this approach. The assumption is that, if several leaders approach a system decision with a mixture of system loyalty and hidden agendas, the latter will tend to cancel each other out. Communist countries sometimes divide power between the premier and the head of the party. Stockholders' meetings can serve as a check on the decisions of the Board of Directors. The Board can in turn monitor the decisions of the Chief Executive Officer. Some decision-making groups have a devil's advocate whose role is to try to keep the group from unwittingly falling into the trap of pursuing its own interests.

Again these methods are not perfect. A devil's advocate may not raise certain issues for his or her own reasons. The Chairman of the Board may choke off debate from stockholders. But checks and balances do help to insure that leaders will act in the best interests of the system.

Probably the best answer to the problem of divided loyalty is to divise institutions and choose leaders such that there is a natural congruence of interests between leader and institution. A founder of a religious sect, an entrepreneur of a small business, or a leader of a social movement may have an opportunicy to form such a congruence right from the beginning. For larger institutions whose character is already formed, however, this solution becomes more difficult. At times of crisis or external threat to the system, the congruence of interests tends to be strengthened. At other times the system must try to find a leader who is dedicated to the purposes and goals of the system. Such a leader is more likely to be found within the system than from outside. It is also true that such a leader is not likely to make any great changes in the purposes and goals of the system.

Large institutions may need to develop leaders. Many tribal cultures, for instance, require their leaders to pass through a series of training stages or trials in order that they may prove themselves worthy. Yet many modern nations turn over the reins of government of much larger size and complexity to leaders whose only trial is an election and whose only training may be as a legislator. Some national leaders have had leadership experience in a political party, a cabinet post, a governorship, or the military, but it is very haphazard. Why not establish a system of leadership training to be required of all candidates for a leadership office?

The prescription often given to leaders of large organizations to help them cope with complexity is to delegate authority and responsibility for some areas of decision making. The areas of delegation are supposed to be carefully defined so that decisions of narrower scope can be made at lower echelons, leaving the leader free to concentrate on decisions of broader import. This advice seems sound from a living systems point of view, but it requires that the leader's own role expand in other directions.

First, the leader must assure an adequate flow of information upward. The top echelon may delegate many decisions to lower echelons, but it needs to be able to monitor these decisions periodically. Leaders must also know that they are receiving full and accurate information for decision areas that they retain. Various structures are used to provide alternate channels of information. For example, the General Accounting Office monitors many areas of the U.S. federal government; the Adjutant General's Office Serves a similar function in the U.S. Army. Business organizations use such structures and devices as comptrollers, consultants, attitude surveys, an ombudsman, and an open-door policy.

Closely allied to the first point is the need to keep lower echelons informed of policies and the reasons for them. Educated decision makers can make excel lent decisions for the system, provided that they know and understand the full context of their decisions. No leader today can be an expert in everything. Well-informed specialists are often better qualified to make a decision in their own area of expertise than the leader is. But the key words are "well informed." Without the proper context specialists are very likely to make a decision that is suboptimal for the systen.

In addition to the knowledge of lower echelons, a leader must be concerned about their motivation. A leader must try to obtain strong commitment from lower-echelon deciders to the purposes and goals of the system. One method is to allow them to participate in the process of setting those purposes and goals. This method has a side benefit of helping to keep lower-echelon people informed of the context of their decisions. Another method is to structure the rewards of the system so that they support the development of proper system values within lower-echelon deciders. For instance, if the system requires rapid development of human resources, administrators should be rewarded for readying their subordinates for early promotion. On the other hand if the system needs stability, administractors should be rewarded for keeping people happily in their places. A third method is to select lower-echelon deciders who are already committed to the purposes and goals of the system. Volunteer organizations often operate on this principle.

A leader of a large, complex system should spend relatively more time on establishing system purposes and goals, and less time on analyzing, synthesizing, and implementing. Tne lower echelons can carry out much of the latter three stages of the decision process if they understand and accept the purposes and goals of the system. The leader must continue to implement in the sense of communicating purposes and goals, however.

Finally, a leader must try to establish structures that will stabilize the system and reduce the energy cost of maintaining steady states. In other words, the leader must try to improve the charter of the systemso that certain values will endure even after a change in leadership. This is perhaps the most important contribution of leadership in a large system. It is what separates great leaders from those who simply make the existing system work.

Many examples can be found of leaders who changed the basic values or structure of a society or organization. Marx and Lenin revolutionized societies from capitalism to communism. Gandhi brought about elimination of castes in India as well as independence from Britain, Freud and Jung led people to look at themselves in a new way. Einstein and Bohr led scientists to a reconsideration of the laws of physics. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and other religious leaders each brought about fundamental changes in societies.

Are there no leaders today who are revolutionizing our institutions? I believe there are. We have been looking in the wrong direction for them. We have been looking for the great implementers. These leaders become prominent in times of crisis. At other times, however, it is the setters of purposes and goals, the system architects, who are the great leaders. Today we have leaders who are revolutionizing our knowledge of physics, biology, sociology, psychology, mathematics, and philosophy, as well as systems. We have leaders probing the frontiers of space and the ocean depths. We have Japanese business and government leaders developing new forms of economically productive society. We have world political leaders, despite a supranational system with a weak top echelon, finding ways to avoid nuclear war. In some cases we do not even know the names of these leaders. Their leadership is not so visible as that of the implementer. But living systems theory tells us they are leaders, nonetheless.

REFERENCES
Bass, B. (Ed.)
1981 Stogdill's Handbook of Leadership. New York: Free Press.

Fayol, H.
1949 General and Industrial Management, trans. Constance Storrs. London: Pitman.

Jennings, E.E.
1960 An Anatomy of Leadership. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Miller, J.G.
1978 Living Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Miner, J.B. (Ed.)
1977 Motivation to Manage: A Ten Year Update on the "Studies in Management Education" Research. Atlanta: Organizational Measurement Systems Press.

Mueller, R.K.
1980 "Leading-Edge Leadership." Human Systems Management 1:17-27.

Vroom, V.H. and Yetton, P.W.
1974 Leadership and Decision-making. New York: Wiley.