After all, isn’t a leader someone who isn’t satisfied with taking the direction set by others?
Whenever I want to learn about something, I arrange to teach a course on the subject. After I’ve taught the course enough to learn something, I write a book.
leadership is the process of creating an environment in which people become empowered. When people are empowered, they are free to see, to hear, to feel, and to comment. They are also free to move about, to act, to ask for what they want, to be creative, and to make choices.
Ormond was easy to beat; he was the worst pinball player in the neighborhood. Looking back, I think his parents did him a disservice by letting him play for free, because Ormond had no motivation, no push, to learn to play better. If he wasn’t doing well, he just reset the machine and started another free game. I, on the other hand, had a nickel of my own money invested in every game, so I was determined to get my full penny’s worth out of every ball.
In order for change to occur, the environment must contain three ingredients: • M: motivation–the trophies or trouble, the push or pull that moves the people involved • O: organization–the existing structure that enables the ideas to be worked through into practice • I: ideas or innovation–the seeds, the image of what will become Leadership can also mean preventing change. If you want to stop some change from occurring, you must do one of three things to the environment: • M: kill the motivation—make people feel that change will not be appreciated; do everything for them so they won’t feel the need to do things for themselves; dis- courage anything that people might enjoy doing for its own sake • O: foster chaos—encourage such high competition that cooperation will be unthinkable; keep resources slightly below the necessary minimum; suppress information of general value, or bury it in an avalanche of meaningless words and paper • I: suppress the flow of ideas—don’t listen when you can criticize instead; give your own ideas first, and loudest; punish those who offer suggestions; keep people from working together; and above all, tolerate no laughter Whether used to foster or prevent change, the MOI model gives us a gross model of leadership style. In French, moi means “me,” and we can characterize a particular person’s approach to leadership in a specific instance by classifying that person’s actions as motivational, organizational, or innovational.