Organizational Behavior And Leadership During A Political Revolution

Background
Humankind has, throughout history, altered the form of their existing government in society a countless number of times. Change has occurred by a variety of means: democracy, rebellion, secession, coup d’etat, and so forth.
However, great political revolutions are a rare occurrence in the world.
By definition, a great political revolution is when society changes the form of government through often violent methods, and the revolution also radically changes the fundamental way in how people behave in their everyday personal and economic lives.
There have been many attempts at great revolution, but most have foundered because the leaders did not, or could not, project enough power. Circumstances aside, the leaders of the failed revolutions generally did not understand the methods of organizational behavior well enough.
Three successful (but very different) great revolutions provide a good contrast on how ideas such as power, leadership, communication, group properties, human resource management, and other organizational aspects influenced the outcome in the favor of the revolutionaries.
Examples
In the first example, a prosperous society demanded an independent and democratic republic, in many ways a first amongst modern nations. Likewise, the new nation necessitated the end of excessive taxation and the termination of any outside influence by an empire led by a monarch.
In the second example, an inept empire that was being defeated in a great war was overthrown in the midst of a complete collapse of civilization. Yet somehow, while being subjugated to a massive internal revolt and outside military invasion, the new leaders established a ruthless totalitarian regime to consolidate the revolution, win the ensuing civil war, and end the influence of the monarchy to establish a workers paradise.
In the third example, a corrupt monarchy that had been instilled (via undemocratic methods) by an outside republic was overthrown by the masses who wanted to establish a radical fundamentalist theocracy. Immediately, the successful new rulers faced seemingly insurmountable odds that they managed to overcome.
The Rise Of Democracy
The 1770’s saw an incredible surge of disaffection among thirteen of the various British possessions in North America. The colonists were tired of unjust taxes and other laws that they felt were unfair, since they had no representative vote in the English parliament. Thus, they did not have any outlet for legitimate political behavior. Moreover, the colonists were not successful in using power tactics such as rational persuasion or personal appeals with the monarchy. One conflict led to another, and by 1775 open warfare broke out between the mostly rural farmers and the British army, which was arguably the best in the world.
The colonists had quite a few advantages, due to the width of the Atlantic Ocean and the natural terrain and climate of North America. Nevertheless, the rebels encountered a set of major organizational factor issues. A primary problem was that the rebels were unclear on what type of organizational design the new government and society would have, and how (and by whom) it would be led through a chain of command. Moreover, and just as important, was how to get an irregular volunteer militia to use group decision making in order to fight effectively and efficiently enough to evict the English troops from the colonies.
Thomas Jefferson was a man of many talents, but he may well be best remembered for his contributions to the American Revolution. Jefferson was the de-facto leader of a member-exchange and problem-solving team consisting of himself, as well Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and the lesser-known Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman. Together, they drafted the Declaration of Independence. The anti-monarchist and pro-republican theories of Jefferson created the idea of an independent nation, and many of the concepts (such as the separation of church and state) expressed in the famous document are still evident in Western society to this day.
The Declaration of Independence was enough to inspire many more fellow citizens to the cause, but the British administration was not the least bit interested in negotiating, bargaining, or mediating any of these ideas. King George III of England decided to send in military reinforcements, both in quantity and quality.
The rebels, lightly armed and dressed in their everyday work clothes, at first would simply go out to meet the British Army for a skirmish. The outcome was generally disastrous for the colonists, and even when they did find a rare victory the farmers would simply go back to their homes when the day was over. Overall, the team composition and processes needed to be reformed
The question remained: how do you turn a volunteer militia into a force capable of defeating the largest empire in the world? How do you allocate adequate resources, leadership and structure, a climate of trust, and performance evaluation and reward systems to a ragtag motley crew?
George Washington, a successful farmer himself, was a charismatic leader who had experience as an officer with the Virginia militia under the British Army in the (so-called) French and Indian War. During this engagement, he perceived the vast disparity of quality between the highly-trained and professional British Army and the rather undisciplined colonial forces. George Washington, by demonstrating the strengths of transformational leadership, turned the irregular forces into an extremely effective army that (with generous French help) was able to turn the tides on the British Army and defeat the greatest military force on the globe.
The United States of America went on to become a hegemonic and unparalleled global superpower.
The End Of A Monarchy
In 1917, the Russian Empire was in the midst of a series of massive disasters. World War One was going very bad and the Central Powers were advancing on all fronts. The monarchy was being ruled and influenced by very poor decision makers. The Russian soldiers were not following orders and were also deserting en masse, giving new definitions to the terms workplace deviance and absenteeism. Likewise, there was quite a bit of emotional dissonance across the vast country, manifesting itself as riots and revolts which wreaked havoc on supply systems and transportation.
New leadership councils quite adept at using downward, upward, and lateral communication were spontaneously appearing, and these networks of groups could possibly be called virtual teams for that time period. The councils, called soviets, were successful in February/March of 1917 and forced the monarchy to step aside for a more democratic government. However, the aforementioned serious problems did not end. On the contrary, the war continued to go badly. Group decision making in all sectors became excessively democratic to the point of anarchy. Food stopped being delivered to cities, inflation reared its ugly head, and various radical groups continued to vie for power.
In October of 1917, a small but tightly disciplined work team calling themselves the Bolshevik Party seized power in a coup d’tat. The revolutionary group had a common plan and purpose, very specific goals, confident team efficacy, and similar mental models. The Bolsheviks tended to silence internal conflict levels while instigating the same conflicts between their opponents, and the Bolsheviks did not allow any social loafing whatsoever.
By this time, the Imperial German Army had occupied some of the most productive lands of the nation. Allied expeditionary forces began to occupy strategic cities across Russia. Internal groups from all across the political spectrum began to mobilize against the fledgling regime, and disparate nationalities that had been absorbed into the former Russian Empire began seceding from the new and radical "dictatorship of the proletariat“. Furthermore, starvation and societal collapse was imminent.
The question still remained: how do you turn around a country that has degenerated into lawlessness? How do you get the citizens to start working again? How do you develop a military force capable of defeating a massive assortment of enemies from within and from abroad? How do you allocate adequate resources, leadership and structure, a climate of trust, and performance evaluation and reward systems to a nation in turmoil?
Leon Trotsky, after Vladimir Lenin, was the most important leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. Trotsky displayed expert leadership and was an experienced revolutionary, and was also quite proficient at the different aspects of the organizational communication process. Most of all, Trotsky certainly understood motivation concepts as well as goal-setting and reinforcement theory, and decided to use mass coercion in a desperate attempt to defeat the myriad of forces arrayed against the new government.
Trotsky’s methods included an innovative and effective propaganda campaign, mass labor and military conscription, the seizure of food and property by force, as well as giving political commissars the power to arrest and execute citizens for dubious crimes against the government. In addition, the state abolished organized religion and confiscated most of the property of the church.
Trotsky’s strategies, although brutal by today‘s standards, worked very well and were continued afterwards by an even more ruthless ruler, Josef Stalin. The Bolsheviks defeated (quite possibly) the most extensive attack from all sides in the history of warfare. Every internal enemy was smashed, all foreign interventionists were ousted, and the government was able to restore most of the former Russia into a new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The USSR, once again using the same principles of mass coercion, later (with generous Allied aid) completely repelled an invasion by the most powerful army on Earth during World War Two and became a global superpower.
Theocracy Restored
The year 1978 was the beginning of the end for the Iranian Monarchy under the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. His political legitimacy and appointment was the direct result of a USA-inspired (and CIA-led) coup d’etat in 1953 that overthrew the democratically elected government. The Iranian Monarchy was a staunch ally of the United States against the USSR during the Cold War, and the Shah was equally determined to modernize his country as fast as possible and diminish the influence of the Islamic clergy.
The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini rose to power in 1963 during a reactionary wave of resistance to modernization, including the Shah‘s plans to breakup the holdings of religious property and grant women the right to vote. Khomeini showed a referent leadership style, and his followers treated him as a demigod. Khomeini preached that the new Iran should merge the state with religion as one entity. Furthermore, Iran should resist both the USA and USSR, and make fundamentalist Islam a political force from Morocco to Malaysia. Arrested in 1964, he was exiled for 14 years.
Regardless, modernization was not well accepted by the impoverished masses. Resistance and rebellion accelerated in the 1970’s, and by December of 1978 the nation was on a general strike. The Iranian Monarchy dissolved in February of 1979, and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was made the head of a new and radical Shiite Islamic Republic.
These events came as a surprise to the Western Powers, who had economic and security concerns in the region. Likewise, the USSR and many Arab states were also very uneasy, as they were fearful of an Islamic Shiite uprising in their own countries.
As a distributive bargaining strategy aimed at the USA, the new regime took hostages at the American Embassy and elsewhere. The preparation and planning for this action took place by a radical student group. The ground rules and justification were by definition the following: the USA must return the Shah to Iran for trial, the USA must apologize for interference in the internal affairs of Iran, and the USA must release any Iranian assets that they had frozen. Both sides began bargaining and problem solving to get the hostages released in a tense regional atmosphere, finding closure and implementation 444 days later when the hostages were released.
Nonetheless, the new Islamic Republic was surrounded with enemies. Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein, took advantage of the chaos and invaded Iran with military and financial support from the USA, USSR, and the surrounding Arabic states.
Once again, the question remained: how do you repel an invasion backed by both superpowers as well as nearly every other country in the region? How do you get the citizens to fight as soldiers against an enemy that is using chemical weapons? How do you allocate adequate resources, leadership and structure, a climate of trust, and performance evaluation and reward systems to a nation under a threat to its very existence?

The Ayatollah Khomeini turned to his Basij, young men and boys who had complete identification-based trust with their mentors and were willing to give up their lives for martyrdom. Emotional labor was very high in all Iranian units. Many of the Basij did not have weapons and would run into minefields as human minesweepers to clear out the territory for the regular army behind them. Not surprisingly, the Iraqi Army was dislodged by these tactics and fell back in full retreat. The Islamic Republic was saved, and had fought off an sneak attack by a country that was assisted by the equipment and support of the two best armies in the world.
To this day, Islamic fundamentalism remains a potent and international force with global superpower aspirations.

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