title:
Leadership Ensemble: Lessons in Collaborative Management from the World’s only Conductorless Orchestra

author:
Seifter, H. and Economy, P.

 review:

There are two kinds of leadership books. The theoretician, who spends his/her time analyzing data, measuring inputs and outputs and offering well-analyzed suggestions on how to intercept corporate entropy and increase overall performance, writes one kind. The other book is written by the person who has his/her head firmly fixed on a desired outcome and spends years walking the rocky road of practice, pursuing a dream until the day that the dream becomes real. Leadership Ensemble is the later type. It gives the reader valuable lessons that have allowed the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra to play without a conductor for over thirty years. Moreover, there continues to be much buzz about personal empowerment, flatter organizational structure, teamwork, and collaborative leadership. Yet in spite of the talk, you will have to search far and wide for any organization – and for our concern church – that really empowers its employees and members to become all God would have them become. In fact the authors note:

“A Gallup survey of twelve hundred U.S. workers demonstrates that the reality of worker empowerment is quite different than the story touted by today’s “enlightened” businesses. While an impressive 66 percent of surveys respondents reported that their managers asked them to get involved in decision making, only 14 percent felt that they had actually been given real authority.”

So I’m convinced that Leadership Ensemble (LE) is worth the read if not only to force leaders to ask ourselves can we do better by the people who we are called to serve.

The book structure follows what LE calls the Orpheus process. It is a ten-step process to get their teams up and running.

1. Put the power in the hands of the people (appoint a leader)

2. Encourage individual responsibility for product and quality (instead of waiting for a supervisor to flag or fix problems, individuals take the initiative to resolve the issues as expeditiously as possible

3. Create clarity of roles

4. Share and rotate leadership (everyone at least has to try at some time in some way)

5. Foster horizontal teamwork (cross-organizational teams and teamwork build on wide-ranging personal expertise and individual responsibility)

6. Learn to listen, learn to talk.

7. Seek consensus (and build creative structures that favor consensus)

8. Be dedicated passionately to your mission

If you’re like me you might think there is nothing new here and for the most part you are right. Good leadership is quite practical. Yet I believe the strength of these steps is not in their novelty but in their ability to help us diagnose our company, team, ministry or church. They force us to ask questions like: Do people understand their jobs? Do we have communication problems? Are our teams competing and or working against each other? Do our teams have the ability to solve a problem as it arises, if not why? Is there a general lack of passion for our mission? Many times leaders forget to ask the right question. There are no right answers to wrong questions. Leadership Ensemble gets us
asking some of the right questions aimed in the direction.

However, in spite of the book’s practical help, Leadership Ensemble remains silent and is unable to adequately address groups that are not “knowledge worker” based. A phrase coined by business guru Peter Drucker is one of the basic premises behind LE:

“Drucker notes, orchestras, like hospitals and universities, are “information-based organizations” composed largely of specialists who direct and discipline their own performance through organized feedback from colleagues, customers, and the organization’s anagement.”

Because leadership ensemble uses an orchestra that by nature consists of highly trained specialists as its model, it does not address the normative developmental issues found in most organizations. The need for personal skill development, competencies, life stages, willingness, and even personal readiness are not addressed. Yet these issues remain major challenges to leaders all over the world and even more for leaders in the church. However, since a command and control style of leadership remains the default style for most leaders (Mark 10:42-45), Leadership Ensemble continues to push forth a collaborative model
that will challenge the thinking and practices of today’s leaders. If you are a leader, it’s a must read, if only to stretch your thinking beyond comfort zone.

publisher:
Time Books

reviewer:
Dwight Seletzky