Well, we’re movin on up,
To the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin on up,
To the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

Chorus of Movin’ On Up, Cowritten by Ja’net Dubois and Jeff Barry

Hearing that song again (well, technically…having the song stuck in my head again) got me thinking about career progression and moving up the company ladder. My colleague and I are working on a leadership study of small- to medium-sized aerospace manufacturers. We are investigating how leadership impacts performance in these companies. We recently interviewed two individuals at a small aerospace manufacturing company. One person (Bill) was a technician who had been working with the company for over 16 years. He loved his job, performed well, and seemed very happy in his role. The other (Joe) was a first time supervisor who had been with the company for just over a year and had been recently promoted from a line job.

I asked Bill about career progression and opportunities within the company. He explained his perception that there was not a lot of possibility for career progression and that when the rare position did become available, management had already decided who would be put into the role. Joe had a completely different outlook. In fact, Joe couldn’t understand why some people in the company were content to just sit back and do their jobs without thinking about how they might progress in the company. He had taken the time to ask his supervisor and his manager what opportunities might fit his interests and abilities. He also asked how he could become a more valuable team player.

I was struck immediately by the tremendous differences between the two. Bill seemed to have an external locus of control – events in his life happened to him. Most likely, Bill will remain in the role that he is in no matter how many times his supervisor’s position becomes available. I am not suggesting that is a bad thing, just that if there are limits placed on how high he ascends in the organizational hierarchy, those limits are self-created and self-imposed. Joe had an internal locus of control – he made things happen around him. So much so, that even his manager (Jill – two levels up) had mentioned that we would be interviewing someone whom she had identified as a fast mover within the company. That also struck me…Jill specifically said that she had identified him, giving the impression that she also has a high internal locus of control. Undoubtedly, both will continue movin’ on up the company ladder.

We are still in the very early stages of our research. Nevertheless, themes are starting to emerge. One theme is that smaller companies have limited opportunities for advancement. Many smaller companies don’t have sophisticated Human Resource systems that will identify individuals for advancement. Instead, individuals have to be proactive and find ways to get onto the radar in a positive manner. This is no groundbreaking revelation, unless you happen to be “stuck” in a job with no perceived prospects for movin’ on up.

• We don’t know exactly how to be or what to say or do to be 100 percent certain of getting things done through other people. People have agency. That means that people have a fundamental desire to determine their own actions.
• At the base level, how is leadership really different from manipulation? Is it a matter of intention? If I’m working towards the organizational purpose, I am leading… but, if I’m working towards my own or some other purpose, I am manipulating? How do organizational members tell the difference and what is the appropriate action when lines are crossed?
• Why do we spend so much of our time talking about the leader at the top of the hierarchy? Most leadership conversations have focused around the characteristics, traits, behaviors, abilities, or actions of an individual. Everyone else is a follower. Does that make sense?

Here is what I think:

The only way an organization truly reaches its potential is when every member of the unit reaches his or her potential. That takes granular leadership… leadership at every level of the organization, down to each individual. What does that mean and what are the implications?

Granular leadership means that every single person enrolls in the vision, understands the mission, is living the values, and understands his or her unique role in accomplishing the mission. Really, it means that everyone is fired up about the vision and jumps out of bed each morning to accomplish the mission. And, it means that each person acts with integrity to implement the organizational goals and strategies.

Back to the search for a word – I need a word to describe what I am thinking here. Something catchy (and new) that encompasses the ideals above; that leadership has to be a shared endeavor to uphold democratic values and honor personal agency. Without that one word, I have to retell the whole story about what is wrong with the current words.

Do you have a word that can describe what I am thinking?

Has leadership run its course?

Are we done talking about leadership?

Are you fired up to get to it every morning because you are so excited about where your organization is going?

]]> http://thecaalblog.com/aviation-and-aviation-leadership/leadership/leadership-synergy-flow.html/feed 0 http://thecaalblog.com/aviation-and-aviation-leadership/leadership/pearl-harbor-who-is-she.html http://thecaalblog.com/aviation-and-aviation-leadership/leadership/pearl-harbor-who-is-she.html#comments Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:26:21 +0000 Dr. Daryl Watkins http://thecaalblog.com/?p=398 The New York Times recently published an article entitled “Pearl Harbor Still a Day for the Ages, but a Memory Almost Gone.” The article tells a powerful story of a Pearl Harbor survivor, Mr. Harry R. Kerr, who was talking about his experiences to a group of kids when a young girl raised her hand and asked, “Pearl Harbor? Who is she?”

Surrounding the story are links to other stories of the final commemorations of watershed events – the Battle of Gettysburg, the Sinking of the Titanic, a World War I ambulance unit. These got me thinking about our collective ability to both remember and forget the watershed moments in our lives. From my life, I think of riots, assassinations, hostage crises, celebrity overdoses, market crashes, space shuttle explosions, earthquakes, and Tsunamis. And of course, there was 9/11. I can still remember what I was doing as I learned the news of each of these events and tragedies.

Why is that we seem to remember the tragedies? Do the horrible events create a greater mark on our collective consciousness? Are we culturally inclined to dwell on the negative? It could just be that we connect with each other through our stories. We transmit our lives’ meaning and purpose through our struggles and our triumphs. To hear that young girl ask who Pearl Harbor is must have been a bitter pill for a man who has been remembering that day for 70 years. You see, we need to know that our efforts will not die with us, that what we fought for and endured will be passed on to future generations.

Indeed, that man has helped to keep the memory of Pearl Harbor in our collective conscious for 70 years. We owe it to him to continue to pass the word about December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy. The lessons that I keep from the attack on Pearl Harbor are these: we are connected and isolation is not a solution to adversity and we must always remember and always stay vigilant.

The hyper turbulent environment is further clouded by conflicting trends in the workforce. Baby Boomers were born between January 1st, 1946 and December 31st, 1964 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That means that this year, Baby Boomers started to turn 65. Over the next several years, boomers should be retiring at unprecedented rates. But, will boomers have the luxury of retirement? Many Baby Boomers don’t have pensions, retirement plans, savings, or resources that will carry them through their projected life spans. Even for those boomers who planned well, there is a possibility that their retirement funds and social security will disappear completely. Bloomberg cited a Stanford University report that suggested California’s three biggest pension funds are underfunded by over $500 Billion. The Congressional Budget Office reported that in 2010 (for the first time ever), Social Security outlays exceeded income. Add to all this the possibility that emerging leaders may not be ready for leadership and Senior leaders will feel economic and social pressure to remain in the driver seat. But even they may not be ready for the future.


We live in an era of complexity where inflection points are coming more rapidly. Future generations of leaders will need to cope with dramatically different environments than current leaders deal with. New industries are emerging that weren’t conceived of just a few years ago; conversely, some mature industries will be gone. Leaders will have to demonstrate a broad range of competencies to be successful and they will need to develop high-performing teams who can rapidly shift priorities. But, where and how do they learn these competencies? Universities can help by developing management and leadership programs that provide significant leadership development opportunities. However, companies must provide a proving ground for emerging leaders to learn. This means that the onus for developing the new crop of leaders falls back on the shoulders of the current senior leaders. Senior leaders must fight to keep money in the budget for leadership development. And, they must develop a long-range outlook that allows emergent leaders to learn from failure as much as from success.


Embry-Riddle and CAAL are working with industry to develop leaders on several fronts. Embry-Riddle is launching a Master of Science in Leadership Program. CAAL has developed industry partnership through initiative based leadership programs, manufacturing initiatives, action research partnerships, Aviation and Aerospace industry reports and summits, and through a STEM+M program for High School.


Are you concerned that there will not be leaders capable of leading your organization into a promising future? And, how serious is your company about developing leaders?

I think my definition is good, but perhaps there are better definitions. In Learning to Think Things Through, Gerald Nosich offers three:

1. Critical Thinking is reasonable, reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or what to do. (Robert Ennis)
2. Critical Thinking is skillful, responsible thinking that is conducive to good judgment because it is sensitive to context, relies on criteria, and is self-correcting. (Matthew Lipman)
3. Critical thinking is thinking about your thinking, while you’re thinking, in order to make your thinking better. (Richard Paul)

The inference here is that the best leaders develop feedback mechanisms for their thought processes that result in better decisions. The more we practice, the more critical thinking becomes part of our natural thinking process. This is important, because we are normally wired to take shortcuts in an effort to conserve our energy, to survive, or just to move on. If our thought processes are normally intellectually lazy, can we expect to be able to turn on the critical and creative juices in a crunch?

So, how do we practice critical thinking? Nosich offers the acronym SEE-I as a tool to get started. State the question as briefly, clearly, and as precisely as possible. Elaborate on the question by expanding and explaining in your own words. Exemplify by creating a good example that captures the essence of the question. Finally, illustrate the question by crafting an appropriate metaphor, concept map, or some other illustration of the question.

The SEE-I acronym can be applied to fundamental questions about leadership and developing critical thought.

State – how can leaders improve critical thinking competencies?
Elaborate – how is leadership thinking different than leadership critical thinking? How do leaders develop critical thinking? What is the best way to learn and retain important skills, behaviors and competencies? For leaders to be as effective as possible, how should they approach and solve problems? Is critical thought a necessary component of leadership? How do you recover if you make a mistake? How would a leader know if he was not thinking critically, given his own blind spots?
Exemplify – An example of leadership critical thinking is trying to reason through what cognitive biases I or my team have related to a particular decision. What am I missing that is informing the viewpoint of someone who disagrees with my position? Non-critical thinkers might just ignore that disagreement. Critical thinkers would ask “why would a normal, rational person have this point-of-view?”
Illustrate – The conceptual map below is an adaptation of 8 elements of reasoning described by Vosich. The 8 elements fit within the context of the decision, in this case leadership. The alternatives are the choices that could be made as a result of the reasoning. According to Vosich, each of the 8 elements of reasoning is present in every case of critical thinking.

How would you describe critical thinking? Which definition above works for you and why?

Since many people view leadership as the same across the organization and at every level, the focus remains on getting work done more effectively and more efficiently and not on developing new skills, behaviors, and values as one takes on more challenging roles.

Furthermore, companies are focused on keeping high performers moving rapidly up the org chart; so those high performers miss developmental opportunities as they fly through assignments or skip certain levels altogether. The high performers are dubbed high leadership potential because they have demonstrated a level of technical competence. Sometimes, these leaders are set-up to fail because they have not learned to “play nice” at the appropriate organizational level.

Consider that in the next 5-7 years, the aerospace industry is expected to lose a large number of science, engineering, and manufacturing employees due to retirement. Wharton University (2011) warns that this exodus of employees may leave a leadership vacuum at the top of some companies. The implication is that individuals will be elevated to enterprise leadership without the requisite knowledge, skills, and experience to be successful in their new roles.

Fortunately, leaders can be developed through systematic developmental programs. In The Leadership Pipeline, Charan, Drotter, and Noel (2001), presented a model for developing leaders through six leadership transitions. They refer to the transitions as passages. Each stage builds upon competencies developed in previous stages until the leader is ready to take on the role of executive leadership.

• Passage One is the transition from Managing Self to Managing Others.
• Passage Two is the transition from Managing Others to Managing Managers.
• Passage Three is the transition from Managing Managers to Functional Manager
• Passage Four is the transition from Functional Manager to Business Manager
• Passage Five is the transition from Business Managers to Group Manager
• Passage Six is the transition from Group Managers to Enterprise Manager

Each passage requires mastering different skillsets, behaviors, and sometimes values. For instance, at Passage One, individuals need to learn to value important skillsets like coaching, planning, and delegating. At Passage Two, they need to learn how to empower their direct reports to manage others. At Passage Three, leaders learn to manage people with diverse functional expertise that might be unfamiliar to the leader. At Passage Six, leaders shift their focus to developing long-term visionary outlooks and must learn how to deal effectively with external stakeholders.

The key is that each of the passages builds on lessons learned during all of the previous passages. The Leadership Pipeline offers case studies, strategies, and diagnostic tools to help leaders identify individuals who have skipped levels and missed crucial, gut checking, leadership experiences. The book is also useful as a self-diagnostic tool to check personal values and competencies against one’s organizational level.

In my view, our military does an outstanding job of ensuring that leaders are imbued with necessary values at each level of responsibility. I am not confident that this is true in private industry or governmental agencies. For instance, my research on the state of leadership in the financial services industry from 2000-2008 pointed to the possibility that the financial services industry would fail. I am not saying that I predicted the current economic crisis, but I am saying that there was a clear lack of leadership at the highest levels of that industry.

I am now involved in helping to build a masters’ level leadership curriculum here at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Hopefully, our work here will produce aerospace leaders that are ready to step into leadership roles at various levels.

Works Cited

Charan, R., Drotter, S., & Noel, J. (2001). The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership-Powered Company. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wharton University. (2011). Wharton’s Perspective on the Aerospace and Defense Industry. Retrieved February 10, 2011, from University of Pennsylvania, The Wharton School, Executive Education Website: http://executiveeducation.wharton.upenn.edu/custom-programs/industry-practices/manufacturing/aerospace-defense/Wharton-Perspective-on-the-Defense-Industry.cfm

I explained the concept of a trim tab. As aviators or sailors, many of us are aware of the mechanical and aerodynamic principles behind a trim tab. Basically, a trim tab is a relatively small control surface connected to the trailing edge of a larger control surface (like a rudder). The location and direction of the trim tab allow the pilot to more easily control the aircraft or ship by making small adjustments to the angle of the trim tab.

How does that relate to my student’s situation? Well, my student is passionate about making big changes to his organization. He wants to be the rudder. He is regularly going to battle with his management about all of the problems that he sees. Because of his aggressive style, his management has probably branded him as negative, pessimistic, and a troublemaker. Surely, he is just not a team player. And, since management doesn’t seem to be listening, he just makes more noise every time he approaches them with a problem. His approach is much like a person who talks louder hoping that increased volume will solve a language barrier.

He needs to flip his mental mode to thinking in terms of becoming a trim tab instead of the rudder. What small sources of influence might he be able to develop and control that could change his level of effectiveness? For instance, maybe he could contribute to the company newsletter, become a union rep, or help with the boss’ pet project. The point is that small changes can have big impacts.

For instance, as a Little League baseball coach, I had a few players who always arrived about 5 minutes late to practice. It wasn’t their fault; they were reliant upon their parents to get them to practice. Bribery, laps, and threats did not seem to make a difference. I finally solved the problem by having all of the players attach their equipment bags to the backstop in the order they arrived. Batting practice would go in the order of the bags. If they forgot to attach their bags, they had to put the bags at the end of the line. Sure enough, my late players soon put enough pressure on their parents that they were now arriving early to practice.

In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey talks of finding small levers that can ultimately result in big changes, essentially becoming a trim tab for your organization. In the embedded video below, Dr. Covey shows how New York City dramatically reduced crime rates and how Principal Madeline Cartwright turned around Blaine Elementary in the inner city of Philadelphia by getting on her hands and knees and cleaning a urinal.

Are you a trim tab?