EDITORIAL
Volume 10, Issue 5, September 2015
Leadership Lessons of Lee Kuan Yew, 1923-2015
Sattar Bawany
From time to time the world brings forth an inspiring leader who achieves what seems impossible. Lee Kuan Lee took a whole country from rags to riches in his 30-year leadership. His own view of leadership to provide a strong framework for people to “learn, work hard, and be rewarded” Sattar Bawany has selected three of the tenets espoused by Lee Kuan Yew, which have universal application. First, leadership must be authentic. Leaders must believe in the vision and present in public what they genuinely feel. Second, they must plan for their eventual replacement. If the leader is indispensable, everything will stop when the leader withdraws. Third, there needs to be a team of people who apply themselves to the same vision with the same passion. All these factors together make a strong basis for any project, from micro-enterprise to building a nation.
The Question of Why?
Barbara Hankins
Self-awareness is important, one of the principal elements of emotional intelligence. In the midst of academia we rightly avoid subjectivity, but occasional periods of introspection can be helpful. A mix of personal experience and theoretical knowledge can give us deep insight. Reflective sessions, being introspective, will differ from individual to individual, but there are some universal questions. What does our past contribute to our present, both positively and negatively? How far are we wired to behave in certain ways, and how far do we make choices? Who has influenced us? Do those influences bring us to shared conclusions, or lead us to new thoughts? How do we achieve a balance between our passions and our practical needs? Barbara Hankins has looked at her personal history, and how this has led her to the work she has done, including developing tools for self-awareness.
The Tyranny of Improvement
Helen Henwood
Sometimes fashionable ideas become so fixed that it seems unreasonable to challenge them. Continuous improvement is one of these. If the goal is improvement is continuous, it would seem inevitable that things will get steadily better, but Helen Henwood calls this into doubt. Achievement is a great motivator. The call for continues improvement devalues achievement, highlights shortcomings, and makes some failure inevitable. Failure is a great deterrent. The relentless quest for improvement may have the opposite from the intended effect. It is important to challenge established ideas from time to time, and not let them acquire the status of infallibility
Collaborative Leadership
Mike Bagshaw
The constant changes in the business world constantly disturb our equilibrium, and sometimes have contradictory effects. There is an ever greater need for leaders to relinquish sole control, and to invite new people and encourage new ideas. People who may not think of themselves as leaders need to come forward, and collaboration has never been more important. They need to reach agreement in situations with much uncertainty, which makes agreement both more important and more difficult. People are feeling insecure, with good reason, as the old job-for-life culture has all but gone. The way out of insecurity is to be ready to change and to embrace new ideas. The more things change, the more important this is. But change brings insecurity, and reduces the confidence to branch out into the new, just at the time when it’s most important. This paper looks at the Stacey Matrix, which shows how uncertainty and disagreement can bring chaos, but there are ways to prevent this.
Creativity Questionnaire
An IJPM publication
The IPMA journal is producing a library of resource materials for managers, which are being published in regular issues, and may in time form a resource book. This month the topic is creativity, a perennial need in a changing society. People do naturally seek novelty, and there is a creative spark in all of us, but alongside that is a desire for stability and to keep things the same. When everything around is changing fast it may bring anxiety and reluctance to change at the very time when the need to change is paramount. Stasis can become embedded. This questionnaire is not a diagnostic tool, but a set of questions to ask, to bring to light how ready individuals are attuned to being creative (or not), and how helpful the organisation is in providing a culture that encourages this (or not). Lively conversations can be expected to follow, and possibilities for improvement discussed.
ARTICLE TOOLS
Editor's Message
- The International Professional Managers Review has been created to provide academics and practitioners a platform and a Journal for their exploration of new ideas, concepts, techniques and practice.
Our Journal aims to provide steady information about the latest theories and practices, right across the world. Recent issues have ranged from individual employability to global operations strategy, and having contributors from four continents.
Our aim is to achieve a high quality of contribution in the areas of management and business. However, we cannot be complacent. The world is changing, and there is always a need to assess and reassess, to try out new ideas, to discuss the results, and then assess again. For this we need to hear from people who are active in professional management, and in research. Theory and practice are interconnected, and we want to join up the gaps.
We are aiming for a mix of approach, including, interviews, case studies, research with conclusions, exploratory ideas, and student papers. Sometimes we will have a special edition, where different authors explore the same topic from different angles, testing different theories, views from different countries, and so on. This should lead to in-depth discussion, more thought, more research, more articles, and further advance in theory and practice.
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- The International Professional Managers Review has been created to provide academics and practitioners a platform and a Journal for their exploration of new ideas, concepts, techniques and practice.