Doug Noll, a lawyer and peacemaker, argues that leaders shape culture while managers control processes. He uses an apple barrel metaphor: a single bad apple corrupts a good barrel, but a good apple in a poorly managed barrel turns bad. Leaders must build collaborative environments that protect good people and isolate or rehabilitate bad ones.
Chapters
I'm Doug Noll, lawyer to peacemaker. One of the things that I've learned over the years in working in deep organizational conflict is how important leadership is to both ethics and also to having an effective operating organization. A lot of people confuse leadership with management, and that's a big mistake to make. So what I tell people is we lead people and we manage things. When we start to manage people, we get into trouble. Another thing I like to tell people is to think about people as apples. We have good apples and bad apples. Every now and then you get a bad apple. If you put a bad apple in a good apple barrel with good apples and you don't pay attention, what's going to happen? You're going to start to get bad apples around that one bad apple. So I teach people tools to isolate the bad apple and help that bad apple turn into a good apple. Maybe we make some apple pie or apple cider out of it, or maybe sometimes we have to gently and gracefully lift that apple, that person out of the organization and put them somewhere else. The second thing that I like to do is look at the apple barrel, because if you take a good person and put that person into a bad situation where that person is being managed rather than led, more likely than not, that person is going to turn out to become a bad apple. Not as productive, not as happy, not as effective. As if that person were operating in a good environment, a good apple barrel. And finally, who makes the apple barrels? It's the apple barrel makers, the leadership of an organization. And when I can take those leaders and show them how to make a good apple barrel, how to create a culture of collaboration, a culture of caring, a culture of working with people to their highest and best, and working with conflict in constructive ways, we can create really great apple barrels where really good apples can thrive. We can take people and put them into places and into positions and into environments where they will be their happiest and most productive, which obviously goes right to the bottom line of all organizations. So this is my passion. This is what I love to teach and talk about. And if it resonates with you, give me a call and let's talk about it.
