After years of being a somewhat public figure, I have gotten used to being misinterpreted and misquoted in the popular press, even when a reporter has interviewed me. But this is the first time someone in academia has done so, and it was compounded by a failure of a respected business magazine to conduct proper fact-checking.
Here's the story. I recently received a "teaser" saying,
"Recently, people have been asking us what they can do to respond to the current economic crisis and the major leadership challenges they face today. We have also received numerous requests for success stories of organizations investing in their capacity for adaptive change.
"Here are some new resources that we think you will find helpful:
"...Our article in the July-August issue of the Harvard Business Review, "Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis," identifies three case studies that illuminate recommended practices, tools and tactics from the Adaptive Leadership framework. A quick taste:
"...Embrace disequilibrium – When Paul Levy became the CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, there was a high level of disequilibrium in the hospital. The organization had both financial challenges as well as difficult internal tensions. After working through the financial issues, Levy kept up the state of discomfort in order to induce change and resist the temptation for the organization to fall back on status quo."
There are two problems here. The first is that the authors misrepresent my management approach. The second is that neither they nor the publishers of the magazine contacted me in preparing their publication or the publicity surrounding the publication.
Beyond the break in protocol, this public characterization of how I manage an organization is troubling. The authors make it sound manipulative and disrespectful of the people in the organization, as opposed to a role more akin to coaching. They make no mention of how I frame issues in the context of the underlying values of the organization and the people working here, nor encourage a shared governance approach to problem-solving, both aided by being very transparent about the state of the institution. This draws strength and involvement from the staff: That, not embracing disequilibrium, is the key message.
Indeed, it feels like the authors squeezed what I actually did into their pre-existing analytic framework rather than fully exploring what it was.
Imagine how a nurse or doctor reading this would respond. I think they would feel that they had been used, versus how they really felt during that time -- engaged and energized. That is the ultimate problem with the materials presented by the authors and publisher.
I hesitated to write this, but I know of no other way to correct the record in a manner reasonably contemporaneous with publication of the teaser and the article.
