book review
By Alyson Nyiri, CHRL
SCALING LEADERSHIP: BUILDING ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITY
AND CAPACITY TO CREATE OUTCOMES THAT MATTER MOST
BY ROBERT ANDERSON AND WILLIAM ADAMS
WILEY, 2019
Back in the late 90’s while I was working for a non-profit,
community-based agency, a consultant was hired to foster
a more cohesive and collaborative culture. The consul-tant
put staff through a Complexity matrix, analyzing
who could 1) tolerate and presumably thrive in complexity and 2)
how much complexity was built into their role. I was never privy
to my results, but based on the ED’s reaction, I was effectively
a simpleton.
Yet complexity, as a theme and as a model, continues to be woven
through business, leadership and personal development theories
and practices. Now, we can add scale to complexity. Without being
able to level up or scale, conscious leaders will be unable to man-age
growth and all the complexity that comes with it. That leaves
me out.
Scaling Leadership is about how we, “increase the multiple on our
leadership and scale it.” To help those of us who cannot manage
complexity right off, there is a Leadership Circle Profile Self-
Survey and a Leadership Development Plan that comes free with
the book.
Back to scaling and complexity. The opening chapter in the
book is subtitled “Spiritual Boot Camp for Leaders.” The mixed
metaphor should alert readers to the theme and content of the
book as a whole. We are told effective organizational leadership is
predicated on leadership of the self. This fits with the boot camp
metaphor: Without a more evolved commander, the company will
be at risk.
Optimal leadership is the ability to show up in our lives in ways
that best serve our desired outcomes. Those outcomes include
families, strong relationships and friendships, work that matters
and futures worthy of our life’s commitments. This must be the
spiritual aspect of the metaphor.
From here, we jump to self-leadership as a lifelong stance of
continually focusing on a desired future and taking action, in spite
of our current realities at home and at work, to bring our vision to
fruition. The boot camp metaphor comes back to drive home how
organizational leadership is scaling the capacity and capability of
those within the organization. Now, we have fusion of spiritual
self-enlightenment with unlimited, yet community and environ-mentally
mindful, growth. And, critically, without the evolution or
scaling up of the consciousness of leadership, the organizational
system and the business itself cannot transform to a higher stage
of development.
Making a business case for leaders to embrace their own enlight-enment
is a welcome change from earlier business books focusing
on growth at any cost. However, make no mistake, this so-called
evolution or scaling is in reality mutton dressed as lamb. Urging
leaders to do right by their employees, customers, communities
and the planet is a step in the right direction. Human resource
professionals use books like this to further the cause of building
more humane, thoughtful, functional and environmentally-friendly
organizations that offer meaningful work for us all.
As Scaling Leadership tells us, “Creative leaders multiply their
strengths beyond technical competence by leading in deep relation-ship,
with radical humanity, passion and integrity.” n
56 ❚ DECEMBER 2018 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL