Leadership is like a computer
by Miki SaxonLeadership has been a source of fascination to humans for centuries, both AC and BC. We research, dissect, write, discuss, preach, teach, and study it, all with the goal of defining it so people can learn how to do it and then improve it.
It’s considered a soft science, a moving target, amorphous and difficult to pin down. It’s often found in unlikely places and not found in the expected ones.
How in the world can that be compared to a computer, with it’s unyielding hardware and logical, literal software?
In computing, the term I/O refers to input, whatever is received by the system, and output, that which results from the processing.
Programmers know that the results coming out of the computer won’t be any better than the information given it, and this phenomenon is know as “garbage in/garbage out.”
And there you have the similarity with leadership, as well as management, culture and everything else in life.
What comes out is a function of what you put in.
Blindly accepting everything offered by even the most brilliant source will result in garbage out at some point.
Learning/improving leadership skills requires critical thinking on your part. No one person, past, present or future, has all the answers. You need to evaluate the available information, take a bit from here and a bit from there, apply it to your situation and, like a computer, process it. The result will be at least slightly different from what you started with, because you’ve added the flavor of your own life experiences, knowledge and MAP to the mix—and that’s good, it shouldn’t be an exact copy.
Leadership is a living organism, growing and changing all the time and you’re contributing to that growth.