FIVE
The Expert and the Achiever: The most common managerial action-logics
The Opportunist and Diplomat developmental action-logics are in some ways pre-managerial action-logics. For one thing, few middle or senior managers are, in fact, found to hold them exclusively (see Table 5-1). For another, neither action-logic can reliably use feedback to generate performance improvements. Put still a third way, the Opportunist and Diplomat action-logics are not yet concerned with generating new systemic value by actions that are timely in the sense of cutting costs through new efficiencies or increasing revenues through new sources of effectiveness. Thus, these two action-logics do not produce many managers, and we can understand why, because they do not produce manager-like actions of forward planning, performance feedback, and operational improvement.
By contrast, as shown in Table 5-1, the Expert and Achiever action-logics together account for the vast majority of all managers—about 80 percent. These two action-logics are also the first two that begin to value single-loop feedback for improved performance. However, they do so in very different ways, and they do not yet encourage double-loop feedback that contributes to their own or others’ development to later action-logics.
Larry, an Expert
The same supervisor who described Phil as a Diplomat in Chapter 4 offers this description of Larry, a fellow supervisor:
Table 5-1 Developmental Distribution of 497 Managers (across industries and organizational levels)
Larry has unquestioned technical expertise in his area and believes himself to be unrivalled in this area as well as in administrative record keeping. He is a perfectionist, even going so far as to criticize one of his employees about his technique of decorating the office Christmas tree.79
Larry is very conscientious, has a high sense of obligation to moral standards, and feels this differentiates him from the rest of the group. He strives to outperform everyone around him and is not against pointing out the faults of others. He is almost as unforgiving of his own mistakes, so I guess that’s fair. He values decisions based on merit as long as they fit within his guidelines. He would, however, prefer to make all the decisions himself. I work closely with Larry and find that sometimes he will take over a project we are both responsible for and complete it all himself, which makes me look bad and, worse, puts me in a weaker role in the group.
Larry is ambivalent about receiving feedback. He has shared with me a feeling that feedback is not required for him and that it is, in some instances, even irritating to him. He seems to be sure that he knows everything he needs to know to do his job. I am impressed with his planning and organizational skills. He has been a great help to me and I do not want to sound too negative about him, but he is extremely dogmatic. His word is law and is not subject to discussion. “My way, or no way” is Larry’s credo. Even though we are peers, he seems determined to maintain a position of total dominance. I have tried to be patient and wait him out, but so far he seems to be unyielding.
The Diplomat may come to feel bedeviled by the conflicts between other people’s priorities for him (his buddies want him to go out for a beer, his boss wants him to stay late, and his wife wants him home by 6 PM). Eventually, rather than continuing skillfully to meet others’ expectations and suffering silently, he or she may desperately seek a more internally consistent, a more reliably value-adding, and a more objective basis for decision making. For the Expert, the guide to action becomes a specific craft-logic that yields a single “right answer.” This characterization certainly seems true of Larry, based on his colleague’s description of him.80
The Expert no longer identifies with what makes him or her the same as others in the group. He or she identifies more with the unique skills that make him or her stand out from others in the group. In Larry’s case, he takes over, without any discussion, projects for which he shares responsibility with a fellow supervisor. Experts depend less on others’ judgments of quality, more on their own. They view their judgments as objective based on the mastery of a skill.
For the Expert, other people’s preferences are treated as variables in a wider situation—usually unimportant variables—rather than as guides to his or her own actions. We say “usually unimportant variables” because in each of the early developmental transformations, the process of deidentifying with the prior action-logic initially leads to a devaluation of what the prior action-logic holds most dear. This process tends to mean that Diplomats disdain “uncivilized” Opportunists and Experts disdain “namby-pamby, political” Diplomats.
The bright sides of the Expert action-logic include a future-oriented, project organizing and completing approach; hard work for the sheer sake of completing an assignment well; a willingness to receive feedback and learn from acknowledged masters of the craft, though rarely from peers (as in Larry’s case); and a kind of authority resulting from his or her expertise that can lead subordinates to strive for the Expert’s admiration for a job well done (and that can impress even an annoyed peer, as in Larry’s case).
Experts’ shadow sides include not usually being good team players because their critical demand for perfection within the logic of their particular discipline can come to seem like sheer competitiveness to others. Also, their unwillingness to respond to feedback outside their area of expertise (e.g., to feedback about customer preferences or time-to-market considerations) can make them seem altogether closed to feedback. Again, Larry serves as a prime example. His logic is the only logic.
Another shadow aspect of the Expert is that he or she may fall victim to self-generated stress. In Chapter 1 we described Anthony, a young manager who for two full years dedicated his efforts to becoming an Expert in a very complex method for comparing company benefit programs. Anthony testified to the anguish, both physical and mental of his “perfectionist nature.” “I would find myself obsessing about minutia in an effort to rationalize every last variation in my results.” Anthony’s successful experiment with action inquiry gave evidence that he began to develop beyond the Expert action-logic toward the Achiever action-logic, an accomplishment that only a minority of managers today realize.81
But, before looking at the Achiever action-logic in more detail, we invite you to stop reading for a few moments and note on your sheets of paper the Expert characteristics and illustrations that you are now beginning to appreciate as such in your own action-logic, or in those of the colleagues you are trying to understand better.
Joanne, a Rising Achiever
Joanne, the manager we meet next, is explicitly exercising action inquiry in order to enter the Achiever action-logic. Like Anthony, who took on the task of helping the senior managers of a consulting firm’s branch office change their roles, Joanne is breaking the constraints of the Expert action-logic and is beginning to understand and experience things in a new way, illustrating for us how action inquiry can help us transform our own action-logic. The length and detail of her story as well as its fresh, up-beat tone seem to reflect her sense of discovering a new world.
My job as market research manager for the magazine requires that I be a problem solver and “perfectionist.” It is part of my daily routine to delve into why things are the way they are—digging, analyzing, and presenting the results. Comments that people make about me include, “You’re really good with numbers,” “I don’t know how you can understand this stuff.” These are comments that an Expert would love to hear, and I have loved hearing them in the past. But I am now finding this action-logic very constraining. I would prefer to be less detail conscious and be more involved with the overall picture, working towards long-term effectiveness rather than short-term efficiency.
Steve, the marketing director, confided in me that he was interviewing for a different position within the company and, if he were to accept, it would be fairly soon. I felt it was vital that I display more of the characteristics of the Achiever stage of development in order to be seriously considered for the position of marketing director. I developed a plan that included a number of experiments.82
My first action on hearing this news was to have a discussion with Steve and ask his advice on the best way to proceed. I said I was very interested in eventually becoming the marketing director. Steve expressed confidence that I could do the job, but his response also confirmed what I already knew: I needed to become more visible to upper management—in general, take a proactive role in increasing my communication with these people.
The next major action that I took was to rewrite my job description. Jim, the publisher, had asked us to send him our job descriptions so he could start thinking about the division of responsibility (now that the marketing director position was unfilled). On Steve’s suggestion, I rewrote my job description and included responsibilities of the marketing director that I am interested in taking on. I clearly stated in my letter, “I’m not sure that I’ve adequately expressed my abilities and interest in the past and am taking this opportunity to do so.” I also told him that one of my priorities was to continue to improve my written and oral communication skills.
By taking this action I was letting Jim know that I was making efforts to change my behavior. The letter itself was unprecedented for me. I also opened myself to some self-examination and opened the floor for criticism. My hope was that Jim would realize my level of commitment and assist my development.
There was no direct response to my letter and rewritten job description, but over the past few weeks Jim and the national sales manager have sent me copies of presentations that they liked and have called to solicit my opinion on other presentations. Recently, Jim has asked me to take on the development of the general presentation. I adamantly expressed interest in this project in my letter.
An ongoing action is to maintain daily contact with Jim, the ad director, and with the national sales manager. While this sounds like a small and trivial thing, it is actually one of my most effective experiments. I used to go an entire week or two without speaking to the publisher. By taking this initiative, I’ve created a chain reaction. My calls to them have started conversations that have prompted them to call me more often. During these conversations I’ve been able to convey my knowledge on different subjects—which, in some cases, has led to being given responsibility for certain projects or keeping track of certain matters. Another result is that my name comes up often in discussions between these people and other upper-level managers in the company.
Another effective action that I took was to volunteer for a project with which I previously had no involvement. We needed to develop a new rate structure for buying advertising space in our magazine. The project had an almost impossible deadline, but I was able to meet it. It involved working several nights until 9 PM and on two weekends. I felt it was important for this project to go as smoothly and quickly as possible. If there had been delays and mistakes, Jim might not have entrusted it to me again. This was an area he might not have thought I could help with. If I hadn’t taken the initiative, he still wouldn’t know it.83
The next major action I took was to schedule a meeting with Jim to discuss my compensation. In essence I wanted to ask for a raise, but I also wanted to convey that I was confident in my abilities and the contributions that I make and have the right amount of aggressiveness to be successful in marketing. This meeting was my best opportunity to properly apply framing, advocating, illustrating, and inquiring in my conversation. By thinking about these conversational elements, I was able to turn a potentially difficult and tense conversation into a positive and productive meeting. We discussed my reasoning and his and were able to make each other see the other’s view on a few issues. He agreed that I was not adequately compensated for my contributions.
In conclusion, I am very satisfied with the progress I’ve made. While no decisions have been made to promote someone to the position of marketing director, I feel I’ve made significant progress towards the goal of being that person.
My frequent contact with the publisher and others in the company has helped me to move fully out of the Expert stage and into the Achiever stage. I receive criticism in a much more productive manner and have changed my focus from short-term satisfaction to long-term effectiveness. The most personally felt progress that I’ve made, however, is my ability to be an initiator and no longer a pawn.
The Achiever is passionate about accomplishing goals. Whereas Joanne heretofore has concentrated on digging into the inner workings of things, mastering the numbers, and presenting the answer, the Achiever action-logic is wider in scope. It focuses not just on how things work on the inside, but on how to be effective in one’s wider surroundings and on how to help the organization as a whole be effective. As Joanne moves from Expert to Achiever we see her attention expand beyond digging into research data. She conveys her “knowledge on different subjects” and takes on new kinds of projects, such as recommending a new rate structure. She advocates a promotion for herself from the more technically oriented position of market research manager to the more entrepreneurially and managerially oriented role of marketing director, typical of the Achiever’s focus on functions that help the organization carry out its established strategy.84
Much more than those who hold the prior action-logics, the Achiever pays attention to differences between his or her own and others’ points of view and places a value on teamwork and on agreements reached through consensus. The Achiever action-logic is the first that recognizes the juggling of different time horizons as not just a bother, but, rather, as close to the essence of what managing is. In developing the new advertising rate structure, Joanne illustrates this canny interweaving of time horizons, recognizing that she had to act fast, but also efficiently and effectively to succeed in contributing value.
The Achiever welcomes personal feedback and seeks mutuality in relationships with co-workers. In Joanne’s case, her associations with other managers are on the rise as she assumes the Achiever action-logic. She observes the sharp increase in her frequency of contacts with other managers, noting that her initiative in this area is even beginning to cause “chain reactions.” She reasons with her boss on the subject of her salary, emphasizing not just that she got her way, but that mutuality was achieved. Increasingly, she appears to be seeking and valuing feedback.
There can be a flip side, a darker side, to the Achiever’s way of handling feedback, however. Bluntly, the feedback had better fit within the Achiever’s already-established scheme of things (his or her action-logic), or it will be rejected. You have probably known examples:
- The project manager asks you along with managers from several other departments to attend a meeting in order to give your department’s inputs and comments about how the project is being run. Many changes are suggested, but the project manager accepts only those that are consistent with the basic approach she is already pursuing.
- A friend phones you one evening excited about a new business venture he hopes to launch. He tells you his plans and asks your advice. He asks, in addition, that you invest money in the enterprise to help get it started. You think his plans are not sound. You suggest to him several key questions you feel he should explore before proceeding. You tell him further that you do not have the money to invest. He is extremely upset with both your responses. He ends the conversation by saying you and he are no longer friends.85
In both these cases the Achiever takes an initiative and seeks feedback about it. But when the feedback is given it becomes clear that the Achiever’s effort to achieve is made only in terms of his or her own preestablished focus. The Achiever is not prepared to question the validity of the action-logic itself and possibly reframe his or her approach in the midst of action.
The Achiever’s orientation toward subordinates and superiors is complex. On the one hand, the manager at the Achiever stage values and encourages creativity among subordinates and is able to delegate significant responsibilities to them. At the same time, he or she is able to act mutually with superiors, initiating interactions with them, proposing projects, and disagreeing with them. On the other hand, however, the Achiever’s inability to question his or her own limited conception of the organization’s larger goals prevents any serious consideration or acceptance of strategic alternatives that deviate from the current official or tacit regime.
You are undoubtedly aware of many examples of the thought and action of the Achiever. In our studies of managers (Table 5-2), Achievers represented 35 percent of the total sample. Table 5-2 highlights the particular managerial characteristics associated with each of the two action-logics we have examined in this chapter.
Art’s Summary of the Four Action-Logics and a Look Ahead
Now we will revisit the four action-logics we have considered in Chapters 4 and 5—the Opportunist, Diplomat, Expert, and Achiever action-logics, with one more story. Art is a manager in a business owned by his family. In his story, Art describes transitions he has made through each of the four action-logics. This affords us a review, but also highlights in a remarkably vivid way something we glimpsed in Joanne’s story: the potential people have for acquiring successively wider, more inclusive action-logics. Art presents himself as having accomplished at least four transformations, with a fifth possibly underway. The last two paragraphs of his story provide a look at three further action-logics, the Individualist, the Strategist, and the Alchemist, which are all develop-mentally beyond the Achiever action-logic. When you reach that point in Art’s story, you can look for new themes—post-Achiever themes—which we will discuss in greater detail in the chapters that follow. Here is Art’s story:86
Table 5-2 Managerial Style Characteristics Associated with the Expert and Achiever Developmental Action-Logics
When I was 15, I worked in my grandfather’s store and I evidenced some Opportunistic tendencies. I would do things that made me look good at the time, but had poor future consequences.
At 19, when I was in college, I worked for my father who had bought a large auto body repair franchise. My managerial behavior was diplomatic: I wanted everyone to like me and I avoided confrontational situations. But due to the nature of the people who work in that industry I could not, and did not, remain a Diplomat for long. Our employees generally had alcohol, drug, emotional, behavioral, social, or legal problems. Many were in and out of court and jail and could not handle their finances from one week to the next. In retrospect, this put most of them clearly as Opportunists.
I remember the turning point from a Diplomat’s to an Expert’s mindset, though I had no name for it at the time. The incident was the first time I had to fire someone. After that, my focus was on driving the employees to do the job right. I was very organized, methodical, and procedural, instituting procedures in our shop that were recommended for use across the country. I hated for anyone to try to tell me that there was a different way to do something other than the “perfect” way I was already doing it, though I often would try new ideas after work when nobody was around. I also welcomed and enjoyed people asking me about problems they could not figure out.87
I came to a brick wall using this strategy when we could no longer find any new employees because of the low unemployment rate. I was not able to fire anyone for not following the rules because there was no one to replace them.
I find evidence subsequently of the Achiever style. Rather than adhering to the strict procedures, I decided to have the goal be to have the jobs done right and that there could be many ways to achieve that goal. I learned quickly the value of flexibility, working with an alcoholic who would often disappear for several days or weeks; a paranoid individual who put a mirror on his tool box so he could see if anyone was watching him; a person I would call hyper who would run through the shop jumping over cars, climb walls, swing from pipes, coming up behind people to startle them; and an employee who, when I asked how he did such a good job, replied that he would just get high and work. Previously, I could easily have fired any one of them, but I learned that each was useful in his own way. At this time, I also sought out critiques on what I did and if there were ways that I could do better. I watched others to see what I could learn from them and found that everyone had something I could learn from.
After a while, I started doing arbitration occasionally, and I think this introduced me to the Individualist’s sense of multiple action-logics and of the interaction between process and task. The first brief would seem so convincing, then the other brief would change my mind, and then the oral presentations would again change my view of the whole case. It was also interesting to experiment like a Strategist with different ways to resolve problems that leave each side feeling as if they have had their say and accepting my decision as fair and reasonable. In dealing with customers and employees, I now use these same techniques strategically.
The next precipitous event, which may be a glimpse of the Alchemist stage, happened when a customer was yelling about something to do with his car. It was also during the busy season. I had 15 employees, 75 cars, hundreds of inventory items, and customer inquiries to handle. I remember that while the person was yelling I felt that I was above the situation looking down. I figured out what I should do to correct the situation and then went back down. After this incident, I could do this as needed, separating myself from the circumstances and calmly determining what I should do to control the situation. After several times, I was both amazed and scared of being able to do this.88
Art himself identifies some of the themes of action-logics beyond the Achiever when he refers to “the Individualist’s sense of multiple action-logics and of the interaction between process and task,” to the Strategist’s sharing the decision-making process with others, and to the Alchemist’s experiencing an interplay of detachment from, and committed action in, present circumstances.
Next Steps
We will explore the post-Achiever action-logics in more detail in the chapters that follow, but in the meantime, we hope you are beginning to become as fascinated and delighted as Art at the possibility of discovering new action-logics yourself. If you have listed some of your own characteristics associated with various action-logics (or if you do that writing now), you will have taken the first step in the developmental process. Does your list focus heavily within one action-logic and does that action-logic seem like a comfortable but challenging home? Or does it straddle two action-logics suggesting you may be in transformation from one to the other? Or, like Joanne, does your current action-logic seem confining and the next one liberating? Or have none of the action-logics described so far sounded essentially like you, even in combination? In that case you may find yourself better represented in one of the chapters to follow.
At this point, you may be interested in going beyond your own first-person self-assessment of your action-logic to seek second-person estimates from your colleagues or family members, or even take a third-person scientific measure. If this is true for you, we can offer the following suggestions. With regard to second-person estimates, we know of a number of people who have mixed the phrases for all the action-logics taken from the tables in each chapter, put them on a page, and asked co-workers to circle those that they think apply to the person asking. Not only can this generate some rich information for you, but this process also often generates good work-related conversations about one another’s styles. And several times the co-workers have all asked for the same sort of feedback, leading to a double-loop change in how the team as a whole operates.89
With regard to taking a third-person scientific measure, we can suggest the Leadership Development Profile, the measure on which all of our statistics about managers’ action-logics is based. You can learn more about this measure in the Appendix. You can also begin thinking about and actively experimenting with themes that characterize the next action-logic beyond your present action-logic, as Joanne and Art are doing.
These relatively unstructured initiatives are more likely to appeal to someone at the Achiever action-logic than to someone holding the Expert action-logic, unless the Expert is currently feeling confined by that action-logic, as Joanne described herself in her story. Most Experts will find themselves making better headway toward transformation by engaging in more structured environments, such as the action-oriented MBA program described in Chapter 3, that will teach, and encourage them to practice discrete action-inquiry skills.
Practice Openness
Both Experts and Achievers experience distinct and definite kinds of satisfactions that accompany being very skilled and knowledgeable at what they do. Paradoxically, when we hang onto those satisfactions too long, they can close off further learning and development. To open yourself up, practice an open-system action-logic by carrying with you the assumption that there is something new and valuable for you, small or large, that can be gained from absolutely every person you encounter, anywhere. During or immediately after encounters with others, or during your daily check-ins, listen into yourself with sufficient inquiries (such as the three offered here) to discover new pearls of great price for yourself.
- What is one specific quality about this person that I really appreciate? How might I cultivate that quality in myself?
- How do I name the specific quality of this person that irritates me? Can I look in the mirror and discover where I also have that irritating quality? How might I befriend and transform this feature of myself that I don’t like very much? 90
- With any person, and especially with people who view things differently than I do, I will try the following internal inquiries:
- “That person is so different from me, but knows something about something that I don’t know or understand. What is one item of knowledge or experience that person has, that I don’t have?”
- “How might this inform and benefit me in one, or two, or three, or all four territories of experience?” (Keep yourself “on the hook” until you identify something about that person’s point of view or experience that you can benefit from learning about.)
- I will seek out this person and pursue an action inquiry into my question. Afterward, I will notice if I feel differently about this person.
Notice whether you are attracted or repulsed by these suggested practices.
Conclusion
Now, we return to the doorway Art has opened for us into a new realm, the world of the post-Achiever action-logics. These action-logics, starting with Individualist, differ from the four earlier action-logics we have focused on in Chapters 4 and 5, in ways that are vital to you as a current and/or future leader of your organization. Recent research (reviewed in Chapter 7) indicates that people at the Individualist stage and beyond are likely to be more effective in transforming their organizations than those whose action-logics precede the Individualist. Because of this significant social benefit to developmental movement beyond the Achiever stage, we devote a chapter each to the Individualist (Chapter 6) and Strategist (Chapter 7) action-logics to show how their themes differ from those of the Achiever and to show the kinds of performance these postconventional action-logics enable.