Mark P. McDonaldLeaders are responsible for raising performance through having a vision and creating successful change. When this happens, leaders are praised and rewarded for creating new processes, products and organizational capability. Leaders are highlighted for the change they created and the value inherent in the ‘more’ their company is all about.
Change is vital to an organization and its sustained performance but change for its own sake creates a different kind of leader – an accretive leader.
What is an accretive leader? One who allows individual changes to build up, one on top of the other, with little consideration of the cumulative effect of change.
CIOs and IT call accretion – legacy – and recognize it as a barrier to change as new solutions and technologies rest on the debris of past transformation efforts. The figure below provides a lighter look at the accumulated legacy that has accreted in many organizations.
Some characteristics of accretive leaders include:
- Piling on solutions in an ‘ad hoc’ fashion to address point needs and specific situations. If you do not ask, what will we stop doing, then you may be an accretive leader.
- Recreating your prior enviornment whenever you come into a new orgnization or role. If you the only way you can be successful is to deal yourself a new hand rather than playing the cards you were given, then you may be an accretive leader.
- Valuing the promise of potential value over the reality of current operations. If solving the issue is only as far away as ‘buying a new solution’’, then you may be an accretive leader.
- Allowing organizational performance to reach a crisis situation before taking action. If you have to create a burning platform that presents no option to the organiation, then you may be an accretive leader.
- Following an old engineering ‘rule’ that when something breaks you need to make it ‘thicker’ or applying more duct tape. If just making something better by giving it more management focus, creating a new organizational unit, or assigning a task force, then you may be an accretive leader.
- Discounting the experience, insight and potential of your people to find creative and innovative ways to re-imagine and re-engineer solutions. If you assume your organiation is biased against change, then you may be an accretive leader.
- Placing greater value in activity over results, as activity, any activity as being as a substitute or diversion for achieving results. If you are talking about building momentum or getting started even if we may be partially wrong, then you may be an accretive leader.
If these statements ring a bell, there is a chance that you may be an accretive leader or be leading an accretive function – which can include IT.
An accretive leader is not a bad leader, rather than are incomplete leader. Their mindset treats transformation as a transaction and a way of managing rather htan resolving business issues. Accretive leaders find purpose in perpetuating a performance sistuation, constantly tinkering with it, engaging in sequential change. They see change as something they do and need to do more of to create value without regard for the cumulative impact of change on operations, finances and future organizational agility. If there is no need to change, then does the company need you as a leader?
So are you an accretive leader? Do you work for one? Do you know of others in your company?
Some thoughts on reforming the accretive leader is the subject of the next post.
Category: Economy Innovation IT Governance Leadership Lean Thinking Management Technology Tags: Business Leadership, Business Strategy, CIO strategy, Leadership, Strategy and Planning
10 responses so far ↓
1 Sachin Kundu August 2, 2011 at 5:21 am
if you make more rules, when something goes wrong you are an accretive leader
2 Mark P. McDonald August 2, 2011 at 6:40 am
Sachin, great addition. Thanks Mark
3 jean-marc bronoel August 3, 2011 at 3:51 pm
I tend to think that operationally focused – as opposed to strategically focused – organizations create more accretive leaders than leaders, with a tendency to enforce the latest and greatest set of metrics and rules, avoiding to specify what the teams should stop doing. Then an interesting metric to look at is the ratio of operations managers / pmo as a percentage of total org headcount. The higher the more accretive.
4 Mark P. McDonald August 4, 2011 at 12:19 am
jean-marc
Thank you for your comment and observation. The operational-strategic axis is a characteristic that helps describe the potential for one being an accretive leader.
I would suggest that strategic focused people can become accretive leaders particularly when they place a premium on the future ‘to be’ without recognizing the fact that the future rests largely on the things we have now — the ‘as is’. In that situation I build new things without thinking about getting rid of and removing the old things.
Operational leaders who understand their cost structure and the nature of operations often are sensitive to the impact of accretive change, although they too can get caught up chasing the latest thing.
My thanks for reading the blog and making a contribution.
5 Dave August 5, 2011 at 6:22 am
I struggle slightly with the simple depiction in the graphic. Process improvement is cyclical. You establish a new operating norm, or process, typically with a supporting IT system. You then start making small improvements to this process, piling on the little “updates” and ” fixes.” to the supporting systems. Then, at some point, the process quits performing at the level needed and it is time for another redesign.
A good leader recognizes that inflection point, and knows when to stop the accretive build. Unfortunately, while I’ve encountered the accretive leader that doesn’t know when to stop piling on, I’ve also met a number of leaders that jump to “it always broken and must be redone.” There is a cost to that too. One of your bullets does allude to this, but it feels like there is another name for this.
In the end, it feels like a good leader can manage the gray area and maximize th value of IT, wearing the right hat at the right time.
In the
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7 Mark P. McDonald August 17, 2011 at 6:58 am
Dave. Thanks for your comment.
The graphic was an attempt to illustrate and make light of the issue of accretive change. It is interesting that you mention process improvement as it certainly a technique for driving change.
The process improvement cycle rarely includes removing things, rather its in making multiple changes as you point out. Such repeated improvements can become accretive.
The need to manage both the improvements and the legacy is a leadership skill and one that I was trying to highlight with the term ‘accretive’ leader and how not to be one.
8 winkleink August 18, 2011 at 8:47 am
What if your manager is accretive.
Potentially like ever shifting sand.
9 Mark P. McDonald August 18, 2011 at 9:59 am
Winkleink Thanks for your point and your are right most of the accretive change comes bottom up in little pieces and generated by individual managers.
You can use some of the ideas in the subsequent post on corralling the accretive leader: http://bit.ly/pvK8dA
Also I would suggest advocating the manager start to present his team’s performance in terms of the amount of work you do/ transactions/customers/etc per person. That way you can see the negative impact on productivity from accretive change.
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