The Structure of Leadership

There is yet another crucial aspect to matching leadership styles, organizational archetypes, and market environments: each archetype has its own ideal type of leadership structure. 

A breakdown of these structures looks like this:


Ruler organizations need leaders who are comfortable focusing on the bottom line and the delivery of products.  One on one management tends to be the style, with heavy use of individual-oriented performance management to ensure adequate sales and delivery of products.

Warrior organizations need aggressive, financially driven, marketing-oriented leaders who will cut across functions to coordinate activity and drive down costs, and who will stop at nothing to acquire new points of distribution.
   
Hunter organizations need highly flexible, mission-driven leaders who are able to manage teams and groups of all kinds, and who are able to thrive in a very cost-conscious, constantly changing environment.

Pioneer organizations need visionary, technically competent leaders who can develop and maintain high financial and technical support for products.  They need to be comfortable taking risks, and must be able to put their faith in products, ideas, and people that may sometimes seem far removed from present-day reality.

The Multi-Market Organization
While many organizations function within a single market, some operate in a variety of different ones.  Very large corporations, such as 3M and GE, may own businesses in all four types of markets.  In such cases, the leaders of each business, unit, or division must be suited to the appropriate organizational archetype, and the market within which it operates.

These multi-market organizations need to focus some of their energy on developing leaders who can be successful in each of the four environments.  Some of these leaders will be highly effective in one type of organization, but unable to operate in the other three archetypes; other leaders may have the skill and wisdom to be flexible, adapting their leadership style and approach to their particular assignment. 

Regardless of how an organization trains and supports its leaders, simply knowing where any business lies on the matrix of archetypes enables management to determine what it needs and expects from a leader.  This alone can give any organization an enormous edge.

Redefining Leadership
The whole way of looking at leadership described in the Perfect Biz Match - focusing on the fit between an organization, its market, and the actions of its leaders - belies the traditional view of leadership espoused by many consultants.  Put simply, there is no one best way to manage companies.  Everything depends on the kind of market environment (or environments) in which the company must compete. 

To come at it another way, there is no moral right or wrong about any particular structure or approach.  The issue is whether the market - and the organization - require that  approach and structure.

We have often heard diatribes about leaders who espoused traditional bureaucracies and were not comfortable without these structures.  Yet these people might provide extraordinary leadership for certain ruler or warrior organizations.  On the other hand, these same leaders might be impotent at best in almost any hunter or pioneer organization.

Too many of us in management have ascribed moral values to our own leaders, leadership styles, and organizations.  Those who instill collaborative thinking in their employees may consider themselves better than those who manage on a one to one basis.  Warrior leaders who are successful in doing more with less shake their heads at R&D-focused pioneer leaders, who may spend large sums of money developing three products, then bring only one of the three to market.

It is essential to understand that there is no moral issue involved here.  Rather, the issue is one of organizational fit.  As leaders, our job is not to practice some set of imagined managerial virtues (and avoid the ostensible leadership sins), but to create the best fit between the market, our organizational archetype, and what we and our co-workers do each day.

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Organizational ArchetypesThe Structure of Leadership There is yet another crucial aspect to matching leadership styles, organizational archetypes, and market environments: each archetype has its own ideal type of leadership structure. Read More Each Archetype Needs Its Own Type of Leader Traditionally, people who write and talk about leadership have attempted to identify a set of qualities that typify effective leaders.  By now I hope it has become clear that no one style of leadership can possibly be effective in all four organizational archetypes.  Each archetype needs - in fact, demands - its own particular style of leadership. Read More Culture and Values Each archetype requires a particular type of culture, which supports the organization and enables it to thrive (or at least survive and compete) in its market. Read More Systems and Behavior The organizational pattern in each archetype is largely determined by two factors: its natural and appropriate organizational structure, and the nature of professional relationships among its leaders and employees. Read More Four Organizational Ways of Life Archetypes are ways of describing the world, not limiting it.  The four organizational archetypes presented here are not clear-cut categories into which all businesses neatly fit at all times.  While many organizations are classic pioneers, or hunters, or rulers, others are better described as hybrids of two different archetypes.  Still others closely fit one archetype in many ways, yet have a handful of elements of one or more of the others.  The point here is not to put companies into pre-fabricated boxes and then provide black and white "solutions" for any organization that's been dumped into that box.  In fact, my purpose is quite the opposite: to provide you with a useful framework for examining your own organization and its market environment, so that you can devise your own unique answers based on the skills and information you'll acquire from Perfect Biz Match. Read More Organizational Fitness In nature, successful organisms - whether they're sharks, orchids, or impalas - are designed to survive and thrive in their particular environments. Paradoxically, however, the same characteristics that make a creature so successful in its natural environment also restrict its ability to survive elsewhere. A shark can't live even an hour on dry land; an orchid won't survive a single winter in Tennessee. The same principles hold true for businesses and markets. There needs to be a fit between the dynamics of an organization and the market environment in which it operates. Indeed, this fit is crucial to the company's survival. Read More