Leadership and management need the warmth of imagination as much as bloodlessness of logic and reason.

In my experience the missing ingredient of modern management and leadership is more likely to be imagination, why is that?

In 1946 Peter Drucker observed that: “In every large organisation there is a natural tendency to discourage initiative and to put a premium on conformity” and big business was destined to suffer “from parochialism of the executive imagination”.

Somehow, the modern organisation of work seems to narrow the scope of our imagination, it rewards a provincial ‘not-invented here’ mindset, and it actively grinds out new information or knowledge that doesn't fit the prevailing view. And, while my reflection is recent, Drucker’s observation from over 65 years ago suggests that my experience is not novel.

All the while the same organisation that craves conformity also extolls the virtues of innovation, and wrings its hands at the absence of new ideas and innovations that will carry us all forward.

The paradox of imagination in organisations is that the capacity for reflection, conception and connection are at the opposite pole of that required for control, efficiency and action.

Modern management ethos recognises the need for adaptation, change and reform but it dares not to dream of it for fear that if control is lost, even for the merest moment, all will be lost.

The illusion of control that is central to modern management has bound it fundamentally into Max Weber’s iron cage of bureaucracy. Too long in chains conditions our thinking and limits our imagination. More destructively, we are socialising others into the rules of the cage—don’t think, just do.

My interest is in what perpetuates this situation and I suspect that it is about a cult of control that permeates management-one that rewards action over thought.

Henry Mintzberg's 1973 study, The Nature of Managerial Work is a classic study of senior management. Indeed, from the late 1960s to the early 1980s was a time when there was some excellent thinking about management, work and organisation. This has been replaced in recent times with, in my view, things we already knew repackaged to look interesting.

Anyway, back to Henry Mintzberg. Henry spent quality time with five CEOs in different industries and surveyed the contents of a large number of management diaries. His conclusion: all that talk about rational management executed through top-down planning, organisation, co-ordination and control had next to nothing do with what CEO’s actually do. Most of the time they moved like small birds sampling flowers on a bush. They danced from topic to topic and issue to issue never stopping to think. From Mintzberg:

“The CEOs met a steady stream of callers and mail from the moment they arrived in the morning until they left in the evening ... The traditional literature notwithstanding, the job of managing does not breed reflective planners; the manager responds to stimuli as an individual who is conditioned by his job to prefer live to delayed action.”

Is this what senior management should be doing or is this what senior management chooses to be doing?

I suspect the latter. With constant action comes the illusion of control and an inherent sense of purpose. In contrast, thinking and reflection and imagination are seen as purposeless and idle activities.

Most importantly, the importance of constant movement, without reflection is transmitted throughout the organisation as the expected behaviour—the way things are done around here.

If you are in a position where you are turning over a subject every ten minutes, how imaginative can you be? A question closer to home might be, how effective can you be?

In modern times, information moves faster and there is much more of it. Illusions of control are difficult to maintain but we continue to hold on to the idea that if we just go faster, if we just keep moving, we will not be out-paced, we will not fall behind, we will not fail. 
If I continue to do…I will not fail…that is the core of why control is so central to management psychology and behaviour.

Unfortunately, the more senior one becomes the more failure is likely and the more dependent one is on others for success. But the mindset of the senior manager is one of responsibility and accountability. I am accountable. Statement. Fact. This has been drilled into managers from their first days in the cage. They are told you must meet the objectives. But, they think, not unrealistically, I am dependent on others and most of them I don’t know. How can I trust them to do it right? I have no direct influence, I can’t be everywhere, I can’t do everything…I am distant but accountable…I am not in control. The solution to my uncertainty and fear is assertive management. I will define, I will insist, I will measure, I will be in control, I will not fail.

How can imagination and innovation flourish in this environment? How can the expectation of innovation be plausible? Has our design of work and organisation broken management imagination?

Imagination is the only key to the chains and the door to the cage. The tools we have before us, those that have been so central to our success, will not help here.

To be imaginative requires trust, letting go the desire for control, and acceptance that new knowledge and new ideas are not the product of ever-finer categorisation, measurement and analysis. Rather, imagination requires us to make connections that go beyond what we know or what we can control.

If you want innovation you need to give permission for imagination, and to adapt a saying, if you want to get to there I wouldn't start from where we are today.