My first post is up on becomealeader.org — a site targeted principally at social enterprise and non-profit/third sector leaders. It addresses the challenges of leading transformations (in organizations and in society). It is based on research from Harvard Business Review and Business Strategy Review and offers an action plan based on self-discovery, celebration of diversity of perspectives, and rethinking listening.
Your thoughts and comments are encouraged!
Over the spring 2011 semester I spent considerable time looking at the challenge of leading complex systems. This was the first of what will be a six-semester effort over the next three years. In this initial, broad brush examination I used the sustainable city as proxy for a complex system. I also looked at both the literature on systems and systems leadership as well as at traditional leadership work to see if I could discover why there seems to be such a vacuum of leadership at the system level. The resulting paper, very much a work in progress, is posted below.
Among my findings was that the traditional leadership literature — that which most of us are taught — comes up short on three critical points:
- Complexity: a leader must understand what kind of complexity he or she confronts and have a framework for dealing with it. There are dramatic differences, for example, between disorganized and organized complexity (see the paper for details);
- Agency: how much do leaders control completely versus how much do they co-control and co-create with others. In complex systems, leaders control less and can influence more than they realize;
- Emergence: how much can leaders design versus how much must they help establish the conditions in which a positive outcome emerges. There is a strong predilection toward the former yet reality is closer to the latter.
I welcome your comments and will continue to post updates on this work as they are ready.
Download the PDF: Meta System Leadership
Where ar
e the transformational leaders? Research I’ve done on behalf of MontaRosa shows that people with those natural talents are few and far between. The skills for transformation can, however, be taught and honed. Ongoing research that I’ll be writing about soon will reveal that the gap between the leaders we have and the leaders we need may be even wider.
Please read the post and let me know your thoughts.
I recently wrote a piece for the MontaRosa blog that looks at the challenges of leading in a world where the next disruption for your organizaion may be far off your radar screen. As we’ve seen recently in the Middle East, seemingly small incidents can quickly become major disruptions in our interconnected, interdependent world.
How do you lead in a world that appears unpredictable? The answer is deceptively simple. I invite you to read the post and share your thoughts.
The following is an excerpt. Read the full post on the MontaRosa blog.
Art by Andy Goldsworthy
Firms spend an enormous amount of money on leadership development, creating lists of competencies, structuring modules, and crafting evaluations. For the most part, the money and effort is wasted. Why?
Too many initiatives spend an exhorbinant amount of time wordsmithing lists of compentencies rather than focusing on the underlying drivers of excellent leadership. One has great control over one’s capacity to lead. With purposeful action, it is infinitely expandable. I have interviewed dozens of leaders from the corporate world, non-profits, and government organizations and the truly effective ones have two things in common in terms of how they build their capacity: they are self-aware and they are curious – they are lifelong learners who ask a lot of questions. Many leadership development programs spend little time encouraging these traits.
Read more here. Leave your thoughts there or below. Thanks.
