Companies are like people. Other things being equal, companies which do well believe in themselves. They carry vivid images of victory, they fiercely belive success is their destiny. On the other hand, companies which fret about failure usually succumb to the
fielding flu and fail.
Yet, the opposite is also true. My friend Greg Pye, the famous and profound management philosopher,
writes here about the importance of staring into the abyss and looking for ways in which things can fail. This is an essential part of planning, both for putting defences (or plan Bs) in the right place and in setting expectations.
Balancing these necessary evils, faith and scepticism, is one of the hardest and most universal problems of leadership. Every healthy organization needs this split personality, or
dissociative identity.
The simplest solution is to locate these faculties, and the associated sub-cultures, in different departments. This works fine in organizations of thousands of people, despite the friction between departments. But it is hard to do on a smaller scale, say at a cricket club or on a film crew.
The Six Thinking Hats technique popularized by Edward do Bono is also useful. It involves containing the sceptical imagining of failure within a contained area, called Black Hat thinking, before moving on to creative Green Hat thinking or optimistic Yellow Hat thinking.
My discontent with the Six Thinking Hats is with the assumption that faith - that sense of destiny - is the product of thought. It is not. It is an emotion. It is produced by thought, sure, but also by a whole lot else. I find that the more useful way of balancing faith and scepticism is to remain rooted in the emotional state of faith, even while working through the cognitive process of scepticism.
PS:
John Kotter essentially wishes away this problem by labeling the faculty of faith as Leadership and the faculty of scepticism as Management. This is worse than useless, because "leaders" are paid a
lot more than "managers". This tilts the playing field away from scepticism, and exagerrates the natural cognitive bias towards optimism.
PPS: The original title for this post was Schizophrenic Leadership. But
wikipedia tells me that, despite the etymology, Schizophrenia is not about split personalities. It is about distorted perceptions of reality, typically hallucinations. People with split personalities have a dissolute identity disorder.
Another characteristic of great leaders... learning all the time :)
This is the Tolkien trip for the real Tolkien fans.
I noted before that the movie was good, but left an old-time Tolkien fan like me a touch unsatisfied, like having eaten half a meal. Now, having watched the extensive appendices which come with the DVD box set, even I am sated, chock full of Tolkien fundas to inflict on the innocent bystander.
Here is a sampling of the nuggets that made the appendices totally worth watching:
- Rohan is modelled on Saxon culture. The motifs on the armour, the design of the helmets, they are meant to look like artefacts from the famous Saxon burial sites at Sutton Hoo. Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, the culture which produced Beowulf, and deeply regretted the loss of a “native” English mythology with the coming of the Normans. Rohan was his way of imagining how Saxon culture may have developed if the Battle of Hastings had been won
- The tale of Beren and Luthien, of the elven princess who gives up immortality to wed a man, is incidental to Frodo’s quest. But it is probably the most intensely personal element of the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s grave refers to himself as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Beren, and to his wife Edith, buried alongside, as Edith Mary Tolkien Luthien
- The original movie script had Arwen fighting alongside Aragorn at Helm’s Deep. Liv Tyler spent months training to use a sword. Several fight sequences with Arwen were filmed. Then, there was a leak, the bloggers found out, and revolted. They accused Liv Tyler of betraying Tolkien because she wanted to play Xena, the Warrior Princess. The online vitriol was so intense that the bloggers won. The elven host finally showed up at Helm’s Deep without Arwen. Liv Tyler was clearly very upset by this, but it was the right outcome. Well done, bloggers
- On the shoot, Viggo Mortensen had the hots for the Rohirrim girls. Not for the gorgeous Eowyn. But for the soldiers who rode with Eomer. They’re babes in drag. Apparently, Viggo was really into these lithe, lissom, helmeted ladies, wearing beards and carrying spears. This was gleefully reported by Dominic Monaghan, who plays Merry, and later denied by Viggo
- At the party to celebrate victory at Helm’s Deep, Legolas drinks Gimli under the table. That’s what happens in the movie. In real life, Orlando Bloom passes out at the merest whiff of alcohol. In Dominic Monaghan’s words “Orlando is so pure, his breath smells of flowers”.
The appendices have enough room to acknowledge, and even enrich, Tolkien’s vast Middle Earth. And they also open up another vast world, the world of Peter Jackson’s film project. Watching the appendices, you’re an insider to one of the biggest films ever made.
If you’re the sort of person who has ever dreamt about wearing an elven cloak and canoeing down the Anduin with the fellowship, the appendices are a must watch. 
