Servant Leadership and the triple bottom line

Introduction:

In this blog post I look at servant leadership and explore how servant leadership as described in Peter Block's (1996) Stewardship and Robert Greenleaf's (2002) Servant Leadership: A Journey fits with the concept of the triple bottom line.

First, I must describe servant leadership. However, before I can proceed, I want to point out that the treatment of servant leadership by Block and Greenleaf are similar but at the same time, have clear differences. Also, Block the recent author of the two, appears to be influenced by the writings of Greenleaf. In both authors' work, the leader becomes a servant leader by being in service to others. For Block the leaders and everyone in the organization are in service of those on the front line, i.e., those who produce the final product, sell it, or those who are in service of the customer in general. Greenleaf's view on the other hand, is more expansive; he not only writes about the leader being in service to the individuals in the organization, but also about the organization itself being in service to the larger community, "the organization as servant." Here, Greenleaf focuses on the role that trustees can play in various organizational settings as a way to ensure such a service is delivered to society as a whole. I have been privy to attending a part of a Board of Trustees meeting for a university in which the board members and the board as whole acted in a servant capacity, trying to make sure that university is committed to its mission of service to the student and local community. During the meeting, several student were questioned about their programs and the larger role that their programs play in the community.

Another difference between the treatment of the subject by both authors is that Block is more concerned with democratic leadership and flattening the organization than Greenleaf. Still, Greenleaf does touch on the subject, but does not go as deep as Block. It would seem that Greenleaf takes democratic leadership as a matter of course in servant leadership. He writes about the concept of first among equals(primus inter pares) as a way for the leader to operate in teams. This position seems to be at odds with Block's view which calls for true equality in work teams. Each of the position has its own merits, however, that is the subject of another paper.

An area of similarity between the two authors is the relationship of servant leadership to community building inside the organization. Both authors seem to think that there is a link. It would seem that Block's ideas in this book about the relationship between community and servant leadership serve as a precursor to his book Community:The Structure of Belonging book. Both authors think that servant leadership and the environment that it creates in an organization is more conducive to creating a communal experience within the organization.

Servant leadership has its roots in religious tradition. Here two stories stand out, the story of Jesus Christ washing the feet of the disciples, an activity only reserved for the most lowly servants of the time. The other story is the story of a leader of a religious order named Leo, who traveled with a group as their servant, while unbeknownst to them he was the leader of the religious order to which they belonged. As the story goes, the success of the group was highly dependent on the presence of this servant to the degree that the group fell apart once he left the group(Greenleaf, 2002).

Servant Leadership and the Triple Bottom Line

The triple bottom line is about organizations measuring their success not only by using financial measures, but also by how well they treat people and the environment. Some have understood people to include both employees and the larger community, while others have a more limited sense that included one or the other but not both. The triple bottom line provides a more systemic view of the organization that fits squarely within the assumptions of open systems theory; the organization is both adapting and influencing of its external environment: resources, people and ideas flow in and out of the organization. Also by measuring impact on the environment, and the community the organization takes responsibility for its actions. Finally, measuring the impact of the business on the employees is a better indicator of performance than financial measures alone, which usually have a lag or delay and are therefore insufficient as a sole measure of organizational health.

The environmental aspect of the triple bottom line seems to be absent from either authors' work. This lack of concern environment could be either done on purpose to keep the focus on democratic values. Also at the time of the writing of either book, environmental awareness was not as high as it now. Finally, the organization can really afford to ignore the environment as it is a commons, and commons usually have no feedback loop to indicate their level or quality.

Unlike the case with the environment, where there are no immediate consequences for acting in an environmentally irresponsible manner, dealing with the employee can have immediate impact on the bottom line. Both Block and Greenleaf seem to agree on how organizations and leaders should treat their employees. Both agree about the lack of success of top-down command and control leadership and the success of democratic leadership.

As far as the role of the organization as servant, Block seems to favor more money making, this can be inferred from his focus on serving the front-line employees such as production and sales people. Greenleaf, on the other hand suggests that the organization should take on some of the role played by government. The argument here is that American large businesses have the needed resources to act in a manner that is similar to government , and at the same time are nimble enough to have good chances of success, unlike the bureaucratic government.

Block, Peter(1996). Stewardship:Choosing Service Over Self-Interest. San Francisco, CA. Berrett-Koehler.

Greenleaf, Robert(2002). Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness 25th Anniversary Edition. Mahwah, New Jersey. Paulist Press.

Heifitz, Ronald(1998). Leadership Without Easy Answers. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.

Holman, Peggy et al(2007). The Change Handbook: The Difinitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems. San Fransico, CA. Berrett-Koehler.

Meadows, Donella(2008). Thinking in Systems. White River Junction, VT. Chelsea Green

Red eye

Tens of millions of Americans drink large(SB's Venti and grande) as opposed to small(Tall) coffee. Having a larger quantity of liquid, the cups for these larger drinks use up anywhere between 10-25% more material.

The other day I stumbled on something called "Red eye" which is basically drip coffee fortified with a single shot of espresso. And while I find it very strong for my taste, I think that a few million people might enjoy the extreme caffeine buzz and abandon their "super sized" coffee in favour of a smaller sized environmentally friendlier drink.

Cashless Quadcore CPUs

Last month AMD launched their quad core CPUs without level three cash. These CPUs offer 10% lower performance at a 30% lower price with 20% less power. They almost perform on par with the Level 3 cash version expect for games and a few other applications.

Considering that the performance per watt is 10% better, it got me thinking that maybe Intel should follow suit. Not only would this be helpful for the environment, but would also allow more people to adopt quad core processors as these cashless processors are 30% smaller and therefore are cheaper to produce.

It is a shame that AMD was at least six months late with these processors. In any case, the next challenge for AMD is to bring down the power consumption even further. In theory these processors should consume 30% less power(because of the 30% smaller size) as opposed to a "mere" 20% reduction.

Looking back, I think that Level 3 cash looks great on paper, but in reality it is a poor way to spend chip real estate. Maybe in the future both AMD and Intel would restrict level 3 cash to gamer and server oriented chips where a level 3(L3) cash would make a real difference.

I also hope that AMD goes the same root with their desktop 6 core CPU. Without L3 cash the six core CPUs would have the same die area as a regular quad core with L3 cash, this would allow for significant power savings or more headroom for higher clocks. More importantly it would cost the same with at least 20% more performance. But if AMD decides to go the L3 cash root, then they would have the same large die area as they have for their Istanbul server chips(approx 330 mm2), which is currently the largest x86 die area.

Sugar

For many years I noticed that people in developing countries like their coffee or tea very sweet, usually pouring an average of 2.5 tea spoons of sugar per cup. 12 years ago I used to put that much sugar in my coffee, but then I slowly went down, by half a table spoon every couple of weeks until I finally settled at 1 tea spoon per cup. Now I find tea or coffee with just 1.5 tea spoons of sugar extremely sweet.

Whenever I met someone who put too much sugar in their tea I would always tell them how I was able to cut down and I still find my tea sweet. I always told this out of concern for their health since refined sugars are bad for health and artificial sweeteners might not be helpful with weight loss in the long run, not to mention their alleged bad health effects.

But the fact that a reduction in sugar consumption might be also good for the environment did not hit me until today. As far as use with tea or coffee goes, the potential for reduction in developing countries is huge, assuming five cups per day and 1 billion adults, the annual saving could be as large as 18 million tons, almost 10-11% of total world demand. This means that land areas devoted to sugar cane or beet production can be either used for something else that is more worthwhile or reforested.

Will there be a financial loss for sugar producing countries? I doubt it as price is likely to go up a bit and compensate for the lower demand. Also as mentioned above there will be additional land available for other crops.

Cats and Dogs

Millions of Americans have pets and millions are pondering which pet to get, a cat or a dog. The arguments for and against are somewhat well known.

Cats require little or no toilet training, are independent, do their own thing most of the time, and unless de-clawed can damage furniture and carpets. Still they are cute and have a "sixth sense".

And while dogs require months of toilet training, they have many things going for them; they are very loyal, protective of their owner, and smarter than cats. There is a good reason why it is considered man's best friend.

But these difference aside, I wanted to answer the most important question and that is the environmental one. Here cuteness or intelligence do not matter. Because both animals are carnivores, cats would win hands down as they are much smaller than dogs and therefore consume significantly less food than dogs. If 80% of dog owners switched to cats over the next 10yrs, there would be tremendous environmental savings.

CPU Power Usage Regulation

Who says that government can not do good. Back in the 70s the government made targets for car mileage and this resulted in tangible improvements in fuel economy and reduced the environmental impact by millions if not billions of tons of CO2.

So if the government can regulate fuel economy, why can't it regulate CPU or computer platform TDP? And unlike the situation with cars there are only a handful of high end CPU players out there: AMD, Intel, IBM, and SUN. This should somewhat be easy, and can be done in a reasonable manner assuming there is political will.

Previously I suggested that CPU manufacturers, voluntarily reduce the max TDP over time. But now I think that a little push by the government might go a long way towards kick starting things.

A hypothetical time line for quad core CPUs might go something like this:

*2010, max TDP==> 120 W
*2012, max TDP==> 110 W
*2014, max TDP==> 100 W

Similarly for dual core CPUs:

*2010, max TDP==>55 W
*2012 max TDP==>45 W

And so on.

In order not to hurt CPU companies so much, the government might decide to regulate certain market segments and not others. For example, consumer CPUs, but not servers.

Another way would be for government to impose extra taxes on energy inefficient CPUs. Alternatively it could give tax breaks/tax credit for energy efficient CPUs; Individual states can increase sales tax on computer costing more than 800$.

This same kind of logic can also be applied to GPUs, chipsets and other computer components like hard drives memory, and power supplies.

For GPUs the break down would not be in the number of cores but based on market segment. For example:

*Enthusiast==> 150 W
*Performance==> 110 W
*Mainstream==>75 W
*Entry level ==> 45 W

And these numbers would be reduced by 10 watts every two years, similar to what I proposed for CPUs.

Shaving And The Environment

I know this might be a stupid post, but as I was shaving the other day, I started to get ideas about how shaving can impact the environment, so in someway, this is not so different than my previous post on hair.

For starters, I think using disposable razors is a big no no. Probably as I write this, millions of these went into the trash. And I somehow doubt that the plastic in them is being recycled.

The second piece of advice that I wanted to mention is choosing a none disposable razor. And here, I would recommend choosing a current generation one as cartridges would be available for many years to come and they tend to last longer. Not to mention the fact that current generation razors tend to produce a smoother shave.

I really do not feel comfortable in recommending an electric shaver on two grounds: a) the price and b) the fact that it uses electricity or batteries. I would like to see an environmental impact study for both electric and regular razors. On the good side, electric shavers do make use of shaving a cream so there is some sort of saving there.

Speaking of shaving cream, one should get the largest size available largely due to fact that a larger size would use less packaging materials.

One last thing that I should mention is doing away with shaving all together and letting your beard grow, this might sound like good advice, but in reality you would use more soap to wash your face. So this actually needs further study.