"Any old map will do..."

There's a famous story, likely apocryphal (more on that below) of a group of Hungarian soldiers who were sent on a scouting mission in the Alps during World War I.  They were caught in a heavy snowfall and quickly became lost.  After they failed to return to base after several days, their captain assumed that they had all perished in the mountains.  One day, they showed up unexpectedly back at the base.  The captain asked what had happened, and one of the sergeants replied:

"We were lost in the snowstorm and started running low on food and water.  We had given up hope and resigned ourselves to die. Then one of the men found an old, crumpled and tattered map in his pocket. With its help we knew we could find our way back. We made camp, waited for the snow to stop, and then as soon as we could travel, we found our way back to base."

The captain nodded and replied, "Show me your map."  When the captain unfolded the map, he discovered that it wasn't a map of the Alps.  It was a map of the Pyrenees!  

The old, crumpled and tattered map of the Pyrenees proved valuable because it represented hope.  Rather than waiting until they froze to death in the mountains, the soldiers now had something believable and tangible to follow. The map of random mountains and valleys had, fortuitously, pointed the way towards home.

The story of the lost Hungarian stories has a rather interesting backstory.  As I mentioned in the first sentence of this post, I'm not even sure that it is true.  I've read versions where the story takes place during World War I and others where it takes place during World War II.  The story has always involved Hungarian stories though, perhaps because it was first told by the Hungarian physician-scientist, Albert Szent-Györgyi whose medical studies were interrupted by World War I (notably, Szent-Györgyi was awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his discovery of vitamin C).  Szent-Györgyi told this story several times over the years to different individuals, including to the Czech immunologist and physician Miroslav Holub.  Holub was also an accomplished poet and wrote a poem about the Hungarian stories, called "Brief Thoughts on Maps" in 1977:

Albert Szent-Györgyi, who knew a lot about maps

according to which life is on its way somewhere or other,

told us this story from the war

due to which history is on its way somewhere or other;

The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps

sent a reconnaissance unit out onto the icy wasteland.

It began to snow

immediately, snowed for two days and the unit

did not return.  The lieutenant suffered: he had dispatched

his own people to death.

But the third day the unit came back.

Where had they been? How had they made their way?

Yes, they said, we considered ourselves

lost and waited for the end. And then one of us

found a map in his pocket. That calmed us down.

We pitched camp, lasted out the snowstorm and then with the map

we discovered our bearings.

And here we are.

The lieutenant borrowed this remarkable map

and had a good look at it. It was not a map of the Alps

but of the Pyrenees.

Goodbye now.

Apparently, the organizational psychologist (and one of the leading investigators on high reliability organizations, HROs), Karl Weick heard this story and used it routinely in his writings and lectures.  Weick often ended his retelling of the story with, "The moral of the story - when you are lost, any old map will do." Unfortunately, he apparently didn't credit Holub or Szent-Györgyi and claimed the story was a true one (and occurred in Switzerland), leading to claims of plagiarism, which Weick vehemently denied.  Regardless, the lessons here are important, especially given the topic I've been discussing in the last several posts.

I've introduced and talked about the concept of self-managed teams and self-organizing teams, particularly as they relate to complex adaptive systems.  While not every organization has completely adopted self-managed teams (Morning Star, a tomato processing company - see the HBR article "First, Let's Fire All the Managers!" and Zappos - see the HBR article, "Beyond the Holocracy Hype" are at least two) or the concept of Teal Organizations, several companies are starting to flatten the traditional hierarchical org chart and adopting methods like Agile, which emphasize self-managed teams and self-organizing teams.  The logical question, then, in these new organizational structures, what, if any, role does a leader play?  Here is where the story of the Hungarian soldiers becomes important.  Just like the tattered and crumpled old map of the Pyrenees, leaders "show the way."

Let me be clear - it would not be right to say that "any old map will do" if we are using the word map in this context as a metaphor for leadership!  Leadership still matters, even in the world of Teal, Agile, flattened hierarchies, and self-managed teams.  Whether that leadership comes from an individual at the top or from amidst the team itself doesn't matter as much, as long as someone is "showing the way".  Here is a summary of the key differences in leadership within a hierarchical organization versus a self-managed team:

When I think about self-managed teams, I am reminded of the Navy SEALS, who emphasize decentralized leadership, the U.S. Army Rangers motto Sua Sponte, the U.S. military doctrine of "commander's intent", the German Wehrmacht doctrine of "Auftragstaktik", and of course the High Reliability Organization principle of "Deference to Expertise".  The message is not lost on me (and I hope it's not lost on you either) that all of the aforementioned examples come from military organizations, who are traditionally considered very hierarchical.  Perhaps not.  If the military is moving more towards decentralized leadership and "deference to expertise", why aren't other organizations doing so?