Report from the Board:
Distributed Leadership in a Global La Leche League
Jean Moneyhon,
Nan Jolly, and Susan Deo
LLLI Board of Directors
From: LEAVEN, Vol. 40 No. 5, October-November 2004, pp. 98, 118.
La Leche League has become
a large and diverse organization with over 7,600 Leaders and a presence
in 65 countries around the world. Although our mission remains the same
as when we were a small local organization—helping breastfeeding
mothers and babies—we now encompass much more social, economic,
and cultural diversity. Physically, members and Leaders are located
farther apart than ever before, making it hard to know everyone’s
needs and capabilities or the impact and effect of our work. As we become
more diverse, we are linked together only through common interests and
our passion for the La Leche League mission. Breastfeeding is what connects
us, while geography, time, money, and culture separate us. No wonder
our traditional organizational leaders (Board of Directors, Executive
Director, and Administrators) find it increasingly difficult to know
and administer the organization in ways that best suit each individual
part.
One way we have tried to
meet the diverse needs of the organization is to make policies and processes
generic enough to fit all areas and cultures around the world, sometimes
at the cost of losing their local flavor and possibly even their meaning.
This has seemed inevitable because publications are translated and published
in over 20 different languages and for so many different audiences.
These are not new predicaments, or even ones only faced by our organization.
They are the issues of most international organizations and they’re
compounded each year. At some point successful organizations face their
situation head on. We believe that it is time for La Leche League to
find ways to work through these challenges so we stay focused on our
mission rather than on our structures. We want to truly become a global
organization; an organization whose members and member entities share
a common purpose as well as a way of working together and at the same
time have autonomy and accountability to each other and the central
core of the organization.
The Board of Directors and
others in the organization have been exploring solutions to these concerns
for many years. The Renewal Initiative and our work with several Chaordic
Commons consultants were some recent attempts to find more effective
ways to connect with one another and work together—ways that would
minimize our differences and maximize our capabilities.
This exploration has also
helped us look more closely at ourselves, reevaluate our goals, think
about our work, manage using different approaches, and communicate with
a wider breadth of styles. Just as we urge new mothers at our meetings
to take home and try out that which works for them, the Board is currently
preparing to employ approaches and ways of working together that have
proven useful to us in order to improve our organization. At the same
time, we want to leave behind approaches that haven’t worked.
One of the approaches we
will use is called distributed leadership, where resources, responsibility,
and leadership itself reside across the organization rather than in
only one part or at only certain levels. Modern organizational researchers
find that it is often more efficient and effective to break a global
organization into small local units for leadership, organizational management,
communications, and everyday work in order to support creativity, motivation,
and flexibility. Rather than a top heavy centralized effort, leaders
are everywhere, making decisions based on the needs of what’s happening
around them. In smaller locally tasked and locally led units, people
can identify better with one another and see the impact of their actions.
They can connect with local needs and resources; they can enjoy more
autonomy, and they will provide direct input into, and feedback from,
their local unit.
Leaders throughout La Leche
League are familiar with the idea of distributed leadership. We began
this way nearly fifty years ago and many of us have, at one time or
another, been involved in some activity that demonstrates this approach.
Here are some La Leche League examples that might seem familiar to you
and describe instances of distributed leadership:
- Teams of Leaders review
one another’s articles or Conference sessions.
- Leaders form collaborative
relationships with external companies and sponsors, such as teaching
daycare provider classes or working with local doctors’ offices
to organize an informal lunchtime meeting.
- Leaders have get-togethers
across state and Area lines with Leaders who are closer geographically
to one another.
- Leaders hold joint training
sessions or create common projects. For example, Leaders start or
join a local breastfeeding helpline not specifically for LLL, they
join a local taskforce or group that impacts breastfeeding or vice
versa.
- Teams of Leaders work
together to revise LLL publications, such as the recent edition of
the Leader’s Handbook.
Do you have other examples
you would like to share? Send them to a member of the Board of Directors.
In distributed leadership,
formal "managers" are identified but everyone in the group
has the opportunity (and the obligation) to lead in some way. Those
with formal management roles act more like coaches and mentors than
supervisors or rule makers. Vision, planning, and accountability are
shared throughout the distributed organization. Recognized leaders—people
with the most influence, no matter their formal title or position—are
those who have invested time and effort in our community, who provide
guidance and encouragement, and who give of themselves and of their
time.
This is the right time for
us to become a distributed organization. Our sheer size makes it too
hard to connect people within La Leche League through traditional lines
of communication and traditional organizational structures: they don’t
fit anymore—culturally or practically. Consider, for example, that
because administrators are no longer local, they have become unknowns
to many members and have no practical means to become familiar with
remote members. An idea for a procedure or new project might sound good
to a staff member or a volunteer administrator, but implementation may
prove easy in one area while very difficult in another. Local La Leche
League Groups in one community might find a way of working that would
be culturally unacceptable in several other communities.
It will be the responsibility
of the Board and Executive Director to ensure that care is taken to
prevent the small, local units from becoming fragmented and disconnected
from the larger distributed organization. We will do that through newly
created means of communication; some are new sorts of technology, others
are based on time-honored, face-to-face meeting time. We will also help
establish agreed upon governance that ensures we all stay connected
while everyone, throughout the organization, has more control over her/his
own destiny and is recognized as an integral and meaningful part of
the larger whole.
In summary, here are some
characteristics of organizations that practice distributed leadership
and reasons why we find these attributes attractive:
- Getting work accomplished
is based on relationships, and relationships are based on trust, with
everyone contributing in some way and people trusting that others will
do their part. People work together based on cooperation and collaboration.
People alternately give and ask for help to get work done, as the situation
requires. People assume the best about others and their expectations
are usually rewarded because people are trustworthy.
- Respect and teamwork are
the vehicles used to achieve a common purpose. People are responsible
for looking for better ways of doing things. They create change, as
needed. There is always room for creativity, innovation, and good
ideas. Errors are seen as opportunities to learn and improve things.
Everyone shares the work and everyone shares in the resulting success.
- Everyone is rewarded for
her or his contributions.
- Everyone is seen as an
expert based on his or her individual knowledge and experience. In
La Leche League we see mothers as experts about their own babies.
It just makes sense that we also assume local members of a Group know
what is best for their community. Everyone has access to the information
needed to do their job. Teams in different areas share resources and
responsibilities, as required. Being treated with respect increases
confidence and motivates everyone to improve and to work harder and
better for the organization.
- Everyone has freedom to
share and develop his or her ideas. Everyone grows and is enriched.
Everybody matters and everyone learns. Everyone is interested in and
takes pride in tapping the expertise, ideas, and effort of everyone
involved.
- The whole depends on each
of the parts. Everyone is responsible and accountable to one another,
and everyone is responsible and accountable for the integrity of the
organization. Every individual represents and is integral to the health
of the entire organization so each individual carries a very real
and important responsibility to be accountable to every other member
and to the organization as a whole. Together, everyone is responsible
for achieving goals and the organization’s mission, for customer
satisfaction, and for work quantity and quality.
- Everyone contributes in
some way to the decision-making process. Because everyone participates
openly in work processes and procedures, and because everyone has
input and gets feedback, each individual is part of the leadership
team. Everyone has some knowledge or expertise that contributes to
the decision-making process and each person’s values and principles
enrich every outcome.
- Formal "managers"
work to facilitate and connect people and projects that maximize individual
skills and abilities. Formal "managers" hold the pieces
of the organization together in a productive relationship around a
common culture and set of expectations.
For a large and truly global
organization, the Board feels that distributed leadership would be a
better organizational fit than our current traditional hierarchical
structure. We believe that distributed leadership will help Leaders
around the world to have more freedom and autonomy, and it will ensure
that we stay connected to each other, learn from each other, and accomplish
our mission. In a distributed organization, we will all share the freedom
to try out new ideas, to enact change, to learn from each other, to
find creative solutions, and to work together to bring La Leche League
forward into the future. We will also all share responsibility and accountability
to each other and to breastfeeding mothers and babies around the world.
The Board of Directors welcomes questions or comments on distributed
leadership. Please contact us at lllibod at llli.org (email).
Page last edited Sun Oct 14 09:31:28 UTC 2007.
