l to r: Kenzan, Riley, his wife Judy, Ronnie Heifetz
From Friends, Avnet, and Independent Scholar’s Journal

In 1989 I was selected to be the Avnet Computer representative on the end-user team that met all day every day for months to design the specifications for Avnet’s new IBM mainframe inventory management, purchasing, and logistics system. I learned a LOT about large corporate IT systems development during that time.

From the first day, I was fascinated by a new person in the room. Riley Sinder had been hired by ISD (Avnet’s Information Services Division) to monitor the process. I started asking him during breaks what he was doing there. What I found out was he was a brilliant and witty person who among other things, was working on a manuscript with his friend Ronnie Heifetz, who ran the Leadership Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Riley started giving me printouts of chapters as they developed the drafts. I devoured each chapter.  Riley and I had long talks about organizational dynamics as he and Ronnie were working out their theory. The manuscript later became the basis for Ronnie’s best selling book Leadershipv Without Easy Answers, in which he acknowledged Riley for the “intuitions and underpinnings of this book”. Riley and I became great friends, which lasted for years. Riley, his wife Judy, and Ronnie came to my Shuso Hossen at ZCLA (graduation ceremony as head trainee), pictured above.

From the acknowledgments in Leadership on the Line

Many of these ideas were first articulated by Ron’s longtime collaborator, Riley Sinder, who first intuited the difference between leadership and authority, who cobuilt the framework, and who painstakingly reviewed this manuscript with detailed comments and rewrites at every stage of the process.