Management of Organizations

Themes Session Topic

1 Introduction and Systems Thinking

Systems
2 Incentives and Motivation
3 Judgment and Decision Making
Skills and 4 Ethical Decision Making
Self
Awareness 5 Leadership Dilemmas
6 Social Influence
7 Power and Managing Up
Challenges 8 Stereotyping in Organizations
9,10 Leading Change

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
PATIENT ZERO SIMULATION

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Overview
• You will be faced with 5 leadership dilemmas under
incomplete information
• You have to keep your country together, keep the morale of
your people up, and minimize the impact of the pandemic
• For every dilemma, think about the principles and values
at stake.
• As a team, deliberate about the principles that you are
trading off with each decision.
• You will be operating under time pressure and scrutiny
• Remember that reasonable people can disagree about
the right course of action
• Outcomes are partly a function of luck as well as the
capabilities of the country that you have built.
Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas
MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Steps
Country Creation: Type of government, economy,
personality, culture
Playing the events: Every event starts with a video. Assign
one person to be the “editor”; this person will control the
flow of the team and will record all the decisions into the
system.
Outcomes/results: The decisions will affect public morale,
the percentage of the population infected, and the
likelihood of societal collapse. You will get country results
on all these three parameters at the end of the five
decisions.
Note your own personal reactions to the team decision at
the end of each decision.
Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas
MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Advice
You should be true to yourself; think about what you would
do in these situations.

Embrace the choices; often, as leaders, you have to choose

between two suboptimal solutions. This exercise simulates
that.

Recognize that as leaders, you often have to work with

limited information.

Run your teams as per the rules you all agree to; it is entirely
up to the team to decide how to manage itself.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Technical
The simulation moves at the same pace for
everyone.
The editor has the responsibility to control the flow,
roll the dice, and record decisions.
You have a video at the start of each decision. If it is
distracting to play them individually, you can all
watch it together on one computer or use
individual earphones.
Keep an eye on the timer.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Five Events
Event 1: Pilgrimage to Ascension Church

Event 2: Insight technology test kits

Event 3: Bilbring and Hite’s ineffective vaccine

Event 4: Zephyr Computing’s hidden software

Event 5: Bombing a cluster of the infected

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Discussion
What was the most difficult decision that you had
to individually make?

What was your team most conflicted about and

how did it resolve that conflict?

How satisfied were you in working with your team?

Why and why not?

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 1: Pilgrimage to Ascension Church

Ban the pilgrimage outright

• Make a public announcement warning citizens of the health
risks they’re taking if they disobey the ban
• Increase police presence along major routes to Faith Tower,
assuming pilgrims will participate regardless of safety
• Dedicate significant military presence to enforce the ban

Allow the pilgrimage

• Make a public announcement discouraging participation
• Assign military escorts to Reverend Hill and her staff
• Dedicate military and police presence to the site to quell an
outbreak

Defer making a decision

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas
MGTO – Kakkar
Event 1 Class Results

0
Ban the pilgrimage outright Allow the pilgrimage Defer
High Medium Low

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Event 2: Insight Technology Test Kits
Go public with the defect
• Publicly commit to government support for a new and improved
device
• Demand that Insight make financial reparations to families of
anyone killed or quarantined
• Make continued illegal use of the device punishable by law

Keep the design defect secret

• Privately demand that Insight increase funding and effort to fix the
defect
• Require mandatory second rounds of testing for any positive,
hopefully reducing the number of false positives
• Enforce a policy of quarantine (not death) for people who test
positive

Defer making a decision

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 2 Class Results

0
Go public with the defect Keep design defect secret Defer
High Medium Low

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 3: Bilbring and Hite’s Ineffective Vaccine

Subsidize the drug

• Invest in research for a more effective vaccine
• Educate the public about the efficacy of the drug
• Require completion of a safety course to access the drug

Do not subsidize the drug

• Continue to educate the public about the efficacy of the drug
• Require that Bilbring and Hite discontinue the drug
• Sponsor a generic version, overriding national IP law

Defer making a decision

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 3 Class Results

0
Subsidize the drug Do not subsidize the drug Defer
High Medium Low

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 4: Zephyr Computing’s Hidden Software
Run the software
• Restrict access to any information gained to public health officials
• Work on legislation that would allow for this in the future
• Assign a PR/communications team to determine how to share the
story with the public

Do not run the software

• Work on legislation that would allow for this in the future
• Work with public health officials on other ways to improve the
accuracy of information about the outbreak
• Do everything possible to uninstall the software and discontinue all
related operations

Defer making a decision

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 4 Class Results

0
Run the software Do not run the software Defer
High Medium Low

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 5: Bombing a Cluster of the Infected
Order military assault
• Establish a small area to be spared from the attack and direct the
medical team there
• Give the medical team two more days to research, then order the
attack
• Warn the medical team one last time, then order the attack

Do not order the assault

• Send more medical teams in to support the efforts to find a cure
• Increase military intervention an attempt to evacuate the medical
team by force
• Pull all military support from the city and leave the medical team to
do what they want

Defer making a decision

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Event 5 Class Results

0
Order military assault Do not order the assault Defer
High Medium Low

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Take Home
Three types of leadership dilemmas

Tradeoffs: Different cherished principles are in

direct conflict with each other

▪ Care vs. Fairness (the bombing issue)

▪ Security vs. Privacy/individual rights (the software
issue)
▪ Order vs. right to information (the testing kit issue)
▪ Religious freedom vs. safety (the church issue)

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Take Home
Tensions: Decisions not involving any compromise
of values but involve cost-benefit analysis (e.g.,
public outcry vs. benefit of better tracing).

Identity Challenges: The case for a course of

action is clear but goes against cherished
principles.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Take Home
Dealing with the consequences:
▪ Important to manage loss and disappointment well—
blaming can often be counter-productive

▪ Distinction between (a) the decision itself (b) how the

decision was made, and (c) the consequences of the
decision.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Difficult Decisions: Issues to consider

Trade-offs Who am I?
(Value conflicts) (Identity challenge)

Who am I willing to
Tensions disappoint?
(Weighing costs vs. benefits) (Which stakeholders am I
going to prioritize?)

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Difficult Decisions: Issues to consider

Who am I? Employee Reactions

(Identity Challenge)
Judgments of
behavioral
integrity
(Does the leader
walk the talk?)
? ?
Trust in the
leader
Enacted
Espoused (Can I be
Values vulnerable to this
Values leader)
(what we do; can
reflect our latent (What we say)
preferences)

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Take Home
• When working in a team, it is critical to openly discuss
moral conflicts.
• Weigh competing values and principles, see situations from
different moral perspectives, and engage in
constructive disagreement over resolving moral conflicts.

• You often receive surprisingly different reactions from

observers from what you expect. Often, it is an issue of the
values that observers are using to judge your actions.

• Acting under uncertainty: Part of what leadership

requires is the capacity to make hard decisions in the
absence of certainty.
Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas
MGTO – Kakkar
Team Satisfaction

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
Event 1 Event 2 Event 3 Event 4 Event 5

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Take Home
Leadership decisions don’t always have technical
solutions but deal with moral conflicts.

Be patient with the randomness of outcomes. Analyzing

how decisions are made is critical.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Having Difficult Conversations

▪ Clarify for yourself who you are (identify clarification)

▪ Silences don’t help you or your partner
▪ Stop arguing who is right: Explore each others’ stories
▪ Don’t assume that they meant it: Disentangle intent
from impact.
▪ Reduce focus on blame: Focus on contributions
▪ Explore, label, and articulate your feelings

Difficult conversations by Stone, Patton, & Heen

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Having Difficult Conversations
In the meeting:
▪ Start with what matters the most
▪ Don’t make them guess—be clear about what you
mean
▪ Don’t present your conclusions as the truth
▪ Share where your conclusions are coming from
▪ Ask how they see it differently and why
▪ Don’t exaggerate with terms such as “always” or
“never”

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Balancing “care” for a person and “candor
toward the person”

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Pandemic Simulation: Take Home
Nature of leadership
• Leadership in an adaptive challenge is experimenting with
interventions that keep a system focused on tackling the problem at
hand.

Failure
• Failure can often teach us significant lessons.

Ambiguity of conflict
• Conflicts in and of themselves are neither bad or good. Adaptive
challenges tend to produce many kinds of conflict; the task is
managing them productively.

Loss
• Losses—of standing in a group, in terms of bad results for your
country, etc.—are inevitable during upheaval. Loss management in a
crisis is a central task of leadership.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Traits Adaptive Leadership Celebrates

• Disappoint people at a pace they can handle.

• Develop a capacity for tolerating despair in the face of

losses and failures.

• Encourage productive disequilibrium.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Authority
• Authority has three components: trust, power, and
service.

• To have authority is to be entrusted by an authorizing

body with certain powers in order to perform various
services.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Formal versus Informal Authority

Formal authority comes when formal mechanisms (an

election, promotion, etc.) lead people to entrust you with
certain power to perform certain services.

Informal authority comes when informal mechanisms

(charisma, moral character, family connections, humor,
etc.) result in people entrusting you with certain power to
perform certain services.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Leadership

Leadership is primarily an activity; it is something you

do rather than something you are.

One possesses authority, formal or informal, but one

exercises leadership (with our without authority).

Exercising leadership is mobilizing individuals toward

making progress on solving adaptive challenges.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Challenges
Technical challenges
• A technical challenge or problem is the sort of problem facing
society, organization, community, etc., for which there is already
expert knowledge about how to address it.

Adaptive challenges
• An adaptive challenge or problem is one for which no expertise
currently exists about how to solve it.

A warning
• There is a strong and ever-present temptation to see adaptive
problems as technical ones—to misinterpret leadership challenges
as managerial—and to wrongly attempt to apply expert knowledge
and preexisting institutional measures to new problems that require
new solutions.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Leadership and Learning
In this model, exercising leadership is primarily working
toward creating an environment in which learning (to
solve adaptive problems) can take place.

Learning only happens with a certain degree of

discomfort and disequilibrium as the people involved are
compelled to expand their competence.

Good leadership involves building a holding

environment that can withstand the stresses of
learning.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Working Adaptively
Adaptive problems sometimes announce themselves but
often require effort to focus a team’s attention since they
are difficult and beyond our current expertise.

Teams are disposed to engage in work avoidance when it

comes to adaptive problems.

Leadership includes creating the urgency and focus

to confront the adaptive problem—to face the work at the
center.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Final Thoughts on Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive leadership focuses on the notion of thriving and
uses biology as a model.

Organisms that thrive—that evolve—don’t change

completely but also don’t stay stagnant. They learn
what to take with them and what to leave behind.

Exercising good leadership involves creating an

environment where people are encouraged to respond
rather than react.

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
Final Thoughts on Adaptive Leadership
Pros:
• Change is anticipated and seen as a good thing
• Inclusive – multiple opinions are embraced
• Not heavy emphasis on rules
• Focus on team’s strength

Cons:
• No emphasis on structure
• Rules are meant to be broken
• Decisions can be made too quickly

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Role of Leadership
COMPREHEND

Clear
BONDS Supportive Goals + ACQUIRE
culture Reward

Fairness

DEFEND

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar
 Takeaways
Leaders face defining moments
▪ Being true to one’s identity
▪ Understanding differing values of others
▪ Being patient with the randomness of outcomes
▪ Having difficult conversations

Create a fair and just work climate

▪ Voice, equitable treatment, adequate notice, extending
basic respect in interpersonal interactions

Session 5 – Leadership Dilemmas

MGTO – Kakkar