The Builder’s Manifesto: Breaking Free from 20th Century Leadership
I just read an insightful article on the Harvard Business Review blog entitled “The Builder’s Manifesto” by Umair Haque.
Stating that “20th century leadership is what’s stopping 21st century prosperity,” Umair defines the problem as the following:
“What leaders ‘lead’ are yesterday’s organizations. But yesterday’s organizations — from carmakers, to investment banks, to the healthcare system, to the energy industry, to the Senate itself — are broken.
“Today’s biggest human challenge isn’t leading broken organizations slightly better. It’s building better organizations in the first place. It isn’t about leadership: it’s about ‘buildership,’ or what I often refer to as Constructivism.”
Builders, he says, are “prime movers,” and as such are antecedent to and more fundamental than leaders. Leaders try to fix broken organizations; builders build new, better ones.
He compares and contrasts a list of leaders versus builders, which is followed by ten principles of “Constructivism.” Interestingly, the builders he references are people we’d refer to as social leaders.
Check out the article and let me know what you think.
Is he right? Is 20th Century leadership broken and obsolete? Does the article help your social leadership efforts?
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Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.
He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity, as well as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interaction.
He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate and faculty member of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.
Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela.
Subscribe to Stephen’s blog and contact him at stephen [at] leadershipwriter [dot] com.
3 Responses to “The Builder’s Manifesto: Breaking Free from 20th Century Leadership”
Steve,
That article is fantastic. Thanks for pointing me to it. The current view of leader is broken and needs to be re-defined as Mr. Haque states. I especially like the contrast between Bernanke and Yunnus.
Great piece.
Comment made on December 19th, 2009 at 7:12 amGreat article, he is shifting from issues to forms and this was great 4th to 1st turning thinking.
I feel progressivism is a passe relic as it looks at change at any cost and is blind to its own Utopian flaws. It is poor form. Even so, it has media to give it gloss and sell it.
The challenge is to learn from the past, understand human nature, and understand the true nature of things. If builders do not, the forms they built will be faulty. Worldview impacts the forms we build. So, as with all building, the foundation is crucial. Build yes, but upon rock, not sand.
Thanks for the great article!
Comment made on December 19th, 2009 at 8:18 amI thought the article was overall a great article. More so, from your overview perspective and the concept of adding the competency of “builders.” However, there are some fallacies in argument (e.g. implied definition) regarding leadership itself or what specifically is 20th Century leadership is defined as (noting that there are many arguable theories of leadership). Second, the fallacy in implied definition in the assumption that all organizations are broken or do not work. While we are seeing many examples of this in both government and the corporate world, there are a few examples of innovative and collaborative organizations that are working well. It could be argued that the examples given for builders, are just another type of leader, or a type of transformational and authentic leader that has embraced a vision, and has the courage to follow through with action imho.
Comment made on December 19th, 2009 at 3:20 pmLeave a Comment