Now that we've covered all of the elements of the context and content of geek leadership, there's only one more question to explore: How do geek leaders lead? The answer is that they seek to harmonize the content and context of geekwork. They strive to build coherence among the environment, the work, the culture, and the approaches to geekwork.
Of course, as in most other ambiguous knowledge work, each answer brings its own questions. Again, the question is, How? How do they harmonize the content and context of geekwork? The answers have already been provided in a number of chapters but are worthy of highlight here. First, geek leaders bring coherence to the workplace through the stories they tell—the narratives that hold together the chaotic world of geekwork. And second, they use themselves, their embodiments of their narratives, to verify the truth of their stories.
Geekwork is anchored by its inherent ambiguity—its consistent uncertainty and inconsistent facts. Contradictions and paradox are just a regular part of the business. The ultimate goal for leaders in this environment is to fight against doubt and dissonance, to harmonize the content and context of geek leadership. Although it may be an unattainable goal, it is the striving that transforms unorganized, unproductive, unhappy groups into focused, driven, goaloriented ones.
As sense-making animals, humans in general, and geeks in particular, have a strong need for order and consistency. In part, it's why the problem-solution thinking model is so compelling for them. Every action, every thought is focused on answering questions, pushing back the frontiers of chaos, and expanding the bubble of clarity, knowledge, and consistency.
This need extends beyond a simple desire for consistency. It is part of the deep-seated emotional needs that lie at the core of humanity's drive for knowledge, understanding, and dominance over the environment. Although geeks' passion for reason may lead them to focus more on the conceptual and cognitive aspects of harmony, the need is ultimately an emotional one.
Harmonizing content and context does more than manage ambiguity. In managing ambiguity, geek leaders help to answer fundamental questions about environment, structure, and tasks; in harmonizing, they seek to align the disparate answers for internal coherence and completeness. For example, when the leaders of a small technology company interpret its environment, recognizing that it has ten employees versus the fifty thousand of its largest competitor yet insisting that it provide the same range of products and services, they are attempting to create an unrealistic, grandiose identity that is inconsistent with the interpretation of the market. Harmonizing might force them to consider on which limited range of products and services the company may reasonably compete and to forge a more reasonable identity for the group.
In addition, leaders must harmonize the approach to answering the questions and performing work with the answers themselves. For example, it's very difficult for a leader to declare dictatorially that all workers feel empowered. More than a humorous irony, the means of leadership can easily undermine the ends of a leader who lacks a sense of harmony.
Inconsistencies in the answers to fundamental questions or conflicts between the actions of leaders and the answers to questions at best undermine the clarity that geeks strive for and at worst may be perceived as hypocrisy on the part of a leader. Either interpretation saps motivation and limits the effectiveness of geekwork.
Leaders have two key tools at their disposal in harmonizing context and content. They're the same tools of leadership that religious and social leaders have used since the beginning of time to win over the hearts and minds of populations. In his groundbreaking book Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner identifies the centrality of the stories leaders tell and their embodiment of those stories to effective leadership.
Narratives speak to the deepest longings and often unspoken needs of humanity. They seem to be wired somehow in the human brain, as the craving for stories seems to begin early in life. As children acquire language, they simultaneously begin constructing and consuming stories. Child's play centers on creating narratives such as stories and games.
As children become adults, their relationship with narratives grows and changes but never diminishes. As self-awareness grows, identity develops, and worldviews form, narratives remain important as development raises a constant stream of new questions to be explored.
Within all realms of life, whenever we try to make sense of the complex and contradictory environment, we turn to narratives—stories to knit together and bring meaning to the complex and disparate facts of the world. Faced with the most profound mysteries of existence, of identity and purpose, of meaning, morality, and mortality, we seek out narratives as comprehensive, comprehensible vessels to bundle together and hold important questions, observable facts, unsolvable problems, and paradoxes in a coherent form. It's no coincidence that religions are based on a core set of stories that seek to answer the central questions of life. "Who are we?" "Where did we come from?" "Why are we here?" "What is our relationship with the rest of the observable universe?" Every nation writes and reinterprets the story of its history, of its founding, the identity of its people, and its purpose. And every technology organization does the same thing on a much smaller scale.
The narratives that a leader provides or adopts knit together the facts of an organization's existence—an interpretation of its environment, purpose, identity, and strategy. And just as there are many religions that interpret the mysteries of human life through different stories, an organization can define its core stories in many ways.
The term narrative is used here in its broadest sense to include more than myths, movies, fairy tales, and novels—to encompass almost any coherent simplification and representation of events, ideas, and characters. More than just traditional stories, they include many other forms of sense making, such as models, theories, plans, and projections.
The second tool leaders have at their disposal is that of embodiment. As leaders craft and select stories to bring form and order to followers' ideas about the organization, their actions may either embody or contradict the interpretations and values promoted in the stories. Leaders embody their stories when they display behavior that is consistent with and reinforces the messages of their narratives. To embody their stories, leaders must not only act consistently with the values expressed in their narratives, but must do so in an authentic rather than a forced manner. Artificial or forced behavior does not validate a leader's stories. Geeks are particularly sensitive about issues of embodiment and can easily dismiss a leader perceived as a hypocrite or a faker.
Together, narratives and embodiments represent the primary symbols through which leaders lead. Narratives are the primary tools for managing ambiguity and influencing followers, peers, superiors, customers, partners, and others. Leaders themselves also serve as a symbol through the embodiment of their narratives. Collectively, the narratives either mutually reinforce or undermine each other.
Leaders lead through a variety of narratives that bring coherence to a group. There is no one simple story that can encapsulate all of the information needed to lead a group. Over time, small narratives cluster together to become conglomerations, much as scenes cluster into acts and acts into plays. In addition, a leader's narratives encompass a wide range of subjects, each with a purpose and place in the constellation of ideas that help resolve ambiguity.
A geek leader's narratives usually include stories about the following subjects:
The context of geek leadership. Stories are the way that leaders interpret and communicate about the sociopolitical environment, the organization, geeks, leaders, and geekwork.
The content of geek leadership. Internal coordination is performed through the intricate creation and exchange of narratives such as plans and documents. External representation is done through the expression and exchange of the narratives of the group. Similarly, motivation is nurtured and ambiguity managed through narratives.
Leaders. Leaders offer narratives about themselves, their history, and their relationship with the organization and followers. These stories represent a critical part of the bonding between leaders and followers, communicating information about expertise, legitimacy, values, and vision.
Geeks. Leaders tell stories about their followers—their triumphs, failures, and relationships. These stories are also critical to forming the bond between leaders and followers, offering information about the identity of geeks and how a leader views followers.
Past, present, and future. Leaders interpret and communicate about the past and present of a market, an organization, a group, or an individual through the use of narratives. Similarly, they project the future in narrative form as well.
Values. Every story expresses values, judgments about right and wrong, good and evil, and priorities. Some are explicit, while others are subtler. Some are deliberately included in narratives, while others are unintended expressions of hidden or even subconscious motivations.
Together, a leader's narratives contribute to the formation of world-views of both leaders and geeks. When they serve to harmonize content and context, they support all of the responsibilities of geek leadership. When they conflict with one another, the dissonance distracts attention from geekwork and diminishes effectiveness in creating technology that supports the overall goals of the group.
Narrative, Embodiment, and Motivation. Narrative is among a leader's most potent tools in attempting to nurture motivation among geeks. The power of narrative to help answer some of the most fundamental questions for both groups and individuals helps leaders create an environment in which intrinsic motivation for creativity flourishes.
A narrative defines for an organization, department, or project team the sense of identity answering the "Who are we?" question that so often bedevils groups. This definition helps to establish the boundaries that define membership and relationships with outsiders, and it can even hint at the purpose of a group's existence.
In fact, if you reexamine the foundation for the geekwork model discussed in Chapter Nine, it will become clear that it is really a structured way of viewing the narratives that leaders and followers develop to support their work. Leaders tell stories to frame issues, interpret the environment, and define purpose, laying the foundation for motivation to develop. Each follower develops his or her individual narratives of identity and meaning, interpreting and evaluating the leader's stories.
Motivation is particularly sensitive to issues of embodiment. When a leader displays consistency between narratives and behavior, the ideas and information of the narratives are validated, and motivation can develop. Inconsistency calls both the content of a leader's narratives and the integrity of the leader into question, creating, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a mutiny.
Narrative, Embodiment, and Representation. Coherent and compelling narratives provide a foundation for furnishing external representation. In addition to establishing group identity and boundaries, which are clearly needed to identify external entities, narratives also serve to undergird the relationships established between the leader and outside groups.
Not only do narratives provide information to group members about their identity, but they also communicate that same information to outsiders, who also need to understand who geeks are, what they do, and how they relate to the rest of the organization. Narratives also help outsiders develop their own measures of meaning and significance for geekwork and technology.
The narratives need to prove compelling not only to the geeks within a group but to outsiders, including upward executive management, peer organizations, customers, and partners. If the narratives are compelling only to geeks, a leader will have trouble establishing support, acquiring resources, and even getting attention from senior management.
And just as with motivation, narratives are most effective when the leader embodies their values and ideas.
Narrative, Embodiment, and Facilitation. Narrative provides information to geeks about the internal structure of the group, the roles of leader and followers, and the values and culture that the group aspires to.
Powerful and compelling narratives reduce the need for internal facilitation. When all the geeks in a group understand the purpose of the group, the roles they play, how they are expected to interact with one another, and how they should coordinate with one another, less of the burden of coordination falls on the leader as an individual and is distributed more effectively across the group.
When geeks buy into the group's narratives, the tension that can develop between leaders and followers over issues of control is reduced. The more committed that individuals in the group are to the values and goals of the narratives, the less a leader needs to be directive. A leader will then be more likely viewed as a facilitator helping a group reach its goals rather than a powerful overseer to resist.
Narrative, Embodiment, and Ambiguity. More than anything else, narrative is the tool for resolving ambiguity at all three levels of the hierarchy. As one of the most important tools humans have for helping to make sense of the world, narratives are the response to ambiguity. Stories transform chaotic facts and observations into coherent patterns that we can comprehend and retain with relative ease.
You can think of the hierarchy of ambiguity as a system for classifying narratives that need to be developed in order to create an effective organization. Each layer of the hierarchy poses questions and issues that need to be responded to in the form of narratives that sufficiently resolve the issues and provide both the factual information and the emotional content to drive an organization.
Among the many narratives that leaders develop and tell, not all have the same importance to a group. Some are merely for entertainment and bonding. Others provide some minor information but nothing crucial. But there are two narratives that play a particularly prominent role in forging an effective organization: the defining narrative and the leader's vision for the future of the organization.
The defining narrative provides the conceptual and emotional foundation for establishing group identity. It usually consists of the history of the organization or group, combined with an interpretation of elements of the context of geek leadership. Together, these ideas form one of the most important core stories to help a group make sense of the reason for its existence and its relationship with the outside world.
The defining narrative for Apple Computer, for example, has grown to become an industry legend. In April 1976, two computer hobbyists, Steve Wozniak, age twenty-five, and Steve Jobs, age twenty-one, started out to sell microcomputers that they assembled in Jobs's parents' garage. The Apple I was a modest success and quickly led to the Apple II, which became a blockbuster. Wozniak and Jobs's original purpose was to make computers for geeks, but by the time they introduced the Macintosh, Apple's story was complete. Until that time, all computers were hard to use and expensive. Apple's new purpose was to make computers that were so easy to use that they would be in every household. Even this brief telling of the story hints at the elements of its technical engineering culture, aesthetic approach, and points of differentiation from others in the market.
The leader's vision for a group builds on the defining narrative and projects it out into the future. It describes both a view of the defining narrative of the group at some future time and the transformational path between the current state and the future state.
To help geeks be effective, the defining narrative and vision together should:
Define a high-level strategy for overcoming obstacles in achieving the future state.
Link geeks and geekwork with the future state.
Identify or imply organizational values.
Outline a quest worth pursuing.
Although building and maintaining narratives is one of the key tools that leaders use to lead, it would be a mistake to believe that developing and communicating narratives is the sole province of leaders. In this age of free-flowing information and especially when working with geeks, new narratives, additions to old ones, and modifications to existing ones can come from anywhere and anyone.
Although you may have a particular interpretation or projection of some facet of the external environment like the marketplace, an article in the morning Wall Street Journal could easily challenge your view and destabilize your previously accepted narrative interpreting the marketplace. You might hire a new middle manager from a competitor who brings along a completely different interpretation of the basis of competition in the market that catches on quickly with the geeks in his group.
As new information emerges and people join and leave the organization, narratives evolve and change. Many of these changes may not be under the control of a particular leader. In fact, at times, a leader's version may be the most difficult one for geeks to accept if they believe that is only a representation of the corporate party line.
Within an organization, the generally accepted version of key narratives is constantly in flux, the result of an almost Darwinian struggle between competing stories that attempt to answer the same questions and interpret the same facts. Which versions of the narrative survive and which are shunted aside can be difficult to predict since there are no generally accepted criteria for what will catch on. Although one version may better fit the facts, another may be more emotionally compelling. Or perhaps the narrative that a leader proposes may best fit the circumstances but be discredited because the leader fails to embody the values of the narrative and the story is dismissed by association.
In addition to directly conflicting or contradicting narratives, new and more complex ones may emerge that subsume older ones. Just as in physics, new theories frequently explain a broader range of phenomena than older theories and subsume less general ones.
In fact, not only are the creation, communication, and embodiment of compelling and comprehensive narratives not restricted to leaders, they are also an important route to achieving leadership status. Those who comprehend, explain, and plan for increasing levels of ambiguity are often the ones promoted to leadership positions.
As important stories compete for attention within an organization and the prevailing accepted versions change, major disruptions can take place. If a board of directors decides that a CEO's vision is not in harmony with their interpretation of the environment, he may lose his job and be replaced by one whose vision is supported by the board. On a smaller scale, a leader's vision or defining narrative may be rejected by geeks in favor of an opposing one, forcing the leader to change his story or risk losing support.
This book closes with a topic that many leadership books start out with: building trust, respect, and unity. You may have noticed the conspicuous absence of a subject of such importance to leaders, but it has been deliberate. Geek leaders who set out with an explicit goal of building trust and respect for themselves frequently fail to acquire it. The formulaic and forced behavior that often accompanies a leader's attempt to build credibility undermines the authenticity of his embodiment of his narratives.
Although the reasoning may seem a bit circular, if you start out to build trust and respect so that you can be an effective leader, you're unlikely to get it. But if you set out to be an effective leader and consistently and authentically work to do so, trust and respect will follow, enabling you to be effective.
Earning the respect of geeks is critical to being an effective leader but can be very difficult. There's a reason that the comic strip Dilbert, with its depiction of the pointy-haired, incompetent boss, is so popular. Geeks' independence combines with their tendency to make swift and merciless judgments of leaders to make it difficult to earn their respect. Things can be especially tough for leaders without a technical background, since geeks place a high value on technical prowess as a qualification for leadership.
In large measure, respect develops in response to the narratives of a leader. The more comprehensive, coherent, and compelling his stories are, the more he attracts respect for having insight and vision. The more widely communicated, universally accepted, and stable his narratives are, the more he becomes a respected source of information and ideas.
Establishing unity within a geek group also results in large measure in response to a leader's narratives. If they become generally accepted and prove emotionally compelling, followers will unite around the common vision. Unity is ultimately achieved through a group of people independently committing to a single story that brings together elements of identity, purpose, and direction.
Trust is not the same as respect or unity. Geeks may respect the skills and insight of a leader but distrust his motives. Or they may trust his intentions yet not respect his skills and stories. Trust and respect are two independent reactions.
Earning the trust of a group of geeks can be just as difficult as earning their respect, if not more so. Trust carries a more emotional commitment and is given more slowly than respect. A geek group may learn to respect a new leader very quickly as she displays vast knowledge and skill in initial meetings. Trust takes longer to develop and stems largely from the authenticity and consistency with which a leader embodies her stories. If, over an extended period, a leader is judged by geeks to be relatively consistent in her stories and behaves in concert with them, she will be more likely to win their trust. Should she be perceived as self-contradictory or hypocritical, geeks will withhold or remove their trust.
In geek groups, the essential trust and respect that leaders need cannot be sought but only granted.
Fundamental Questions
How do geek leaders lead?
How do geek leaders harmonize content and context?
How do narratives and embodiments support geek leadership?
What vital narratives do geek leaders use to guide followers?
How do geek leaders gain the trust and respect of geeks?
Key Ideas
Geek leaders are most effective when they seek to harmonize the content and context of geek leadership.
Leaders have two key tools at their disposal to help harmonize content and context: narrative and embodiment.
Narratives are a geek leader's primary way of communicating about the context and content of geek leadership.
Stories about content and context that are mutually consistent and compelling support leaders in fulfilling all of their responsibilities.
Two of the most important narratives that geek leaders develop and communicate are defining narrative, which helps describe and define identity and purpose, and vision, which projects the defining narrative into the future.
Geek leaders earn the respect of geeks by telling compelling stories of coherence and consistency.
Geek leaders earn the trust of geeks by consistently embodying the ideas and values of their stories.