Leadership Lesson: Mashed-together, made-up organizations rarely work.

In the last post, I wrote that one leadership lesson emerging from the ongoing events in the Arab world is that mashed-together, made-up countries (and organizations) rarely work (Libya and Iraq are often portrayed as amalgams of diverse and quarreling tribes). Really, the problem seems to be most acute with mashed-together entities that are forcibly arranged by third and fourth parties. And it is the italicized part that is most critical.

Whether countries, companies or schools, an outside party dictating the structure of the new entity typically fails because it invites the wrong sort of expedient leadership. Tyranny too often seems the fastest, shortest route to imposing order onto chaos and to extracting the third party from the mess. Third parties of all sorts tell themselves that oppression is the price that is paid for order in the "less developed" world. Such ideas are the intellectual foundation for colonialism.

With Libya as the latest poster child, and Jordan not too far behind, maybe the time has come for expedience to take a back seat to finding moral solutions to vexing problems.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad.