The evolution of leadership


As with every other aspect of the near future, the ideas and concepts that underpin the notion of leadership will evolve . The new leaders , the Navigators, will need to take personal responsibility . This requires a new set of skills. The list of these skills looks very different from those that were important in the twentieth century.

  • Future creation through anticipation and weak signal scanning .This is the process of defining the future direction from a foresight, future-maker perspective while at the same time identifying current indicators of the changing future.

  • Attending to the self . In times of high external uncertainty, high internal certainty is valuable . Activities that increase confidence in one s skills, de-stressing and lifestyle balance are important.

  • Fluidity in thinking . The new leadership requires openness of thinking. Being open to new ideas and being prepared to challenge one s own success is critical in a fast changing world. Look to put yourself often into situations where such challenging occurs.

  • Having a global village mentality . Leaders must be able to contemplate the scope of situations that face them. In this world that is always global, there are few barriers to connectivity and competitiveness .

  • New mental models for new rhythms . The new rhythms require us to think differently. If we can anticipate the likely shape of the near future we will have a filter to qualify opportunities and to create new roads to value.

This new leadership style requires a new decision-making style. Navigators know that command-and-control hierarchical structures won t work. They understand the following statement:

The complexities of modern life and the interconnectedness of everything with everything else means that in our nations and our world, nobody can possibly know enough to be in general charge of anything interesting or important.
Harland Cleveland [9]

For example, many of the systems that are at our disposal, like the Internet or the international monetary system, are specifically designed so that no one can be in charge. In this world, leadership must be devolved to that point where decisions are best made. Normally that point is at the decision-making interface, for example, with a customer. The command-and-control decisionmaking style is too slow for a fast changing world.

Navigators accept and expect that there will be a core of people who set the overall sense of direction and purpose. This is imperative for aligned decision-making. The core must also act as boundary setters, systems and framework developers and coordinators of common defence.

The organisation of the future will be the embodiment of community, based on shared purpose calling to the higher aspirations of people.
Dee Hock [10]

One of the paradoxes of this future is that the more uncertain the external environment, the higher the requirement for internal certainty.This is the responsibility of the leader. Internal certainty for the leader involves:

  • being attuned to your own value and how others see it

  • having the ability to learn and adapt and focus when required

  • understanding yourself and listening to your instinct as much as you listen to your logic.

Figure 2.2 illustrates the skills that leaders will need in the twenty-first century.

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Figure 2.2: Eight skills for twenty-first century leaders

Perhaps future leaders will be assessed as much for their use of ˜self disciplines such as meditation practice, as their technical competencies and track record.

Some years ago, Edward de Bono spoke of what he termed water logic and rock logic. [11]

  • Rock logic represents a structured and often adversarial approach to thinking. It is rock logic that tends to drive us into a world where concepts and ideas are routinely and artificially isolated from each other in order to ease the decision-making processes.

  • Water logic is about creative thinking, alternative development and being sensitive to perception. It provides a platform for living in a borderless world and seeing that value can often be found by understanding that most things are interconnected rather than separate.

The fluidity in thinking of water logic allows us to understand the emerging realities of the real-time global village and, in doing so, to understand better the new rhythms described above.

It is hard to lead by yourself when you think differently. You need to seek the company of those who are trying to understand the questions and look for those who see themselves as future- makers , as it is they who want to get to the future first.

However, new conversations are easier now, because we can readily access technologies to create powerful images of our ideas. Strong visualisation provides the basis for a sense of direction that ennobles our spirit and helps avoid low-value activities that contribute little to today or tomorrow.

Change the crowd

Ideas thrive in a climate where they are celebrated and encouraged rather than constantly criticised. If our current circles fail in this regard then we need to change the crowd.

The regular crowd is a product of our solution-driven society. This crowd normally has conversations that go nowhere. Most of the participants have long since forgotten that gaining clarity of focus, through the asking of powerful questions, should be a first priority. Instead they seek to converse only through a set of linear assertions about solutions. They don t really have conversations at all. They have a series of monologues that are subservient to the vocally dominant and powerful. These conversations are part of the machine world view and the antithesis of living systems.

We need to step outside our machine. Our imaginative mind will be stimulated if we seek unconventional opinions , if we listen carefully to the outcomes that customers really want, or if we seek the wisdom of those at a distance from our current mental model or from other less travelled parts of the global village.

Morpheus to Neo:Your whole life has been spent living inside a dream world, inside the map, not the territory.
From the film, The Matrix

Would-be Navigators need to step back and assess what kinds of crowds they are part of. If change is required and a new crowd has to be found, expect that it is likely to exist, think and act in a networked way. Some of these networks will be geographically dispersed and virtual. Navigators will need to spend time nurturing these virtual networks and find ways to adopt suitable communication techniques.

Space is never empty

The future is new space that no one has ever been to. Each of us has an opportunity to ˜fill part of it. However, if we fail to define and create the future space, others will do it for us. They will, if we allow it, dictate how we are to behave. Those who cling to what was, or what is, will be future-takers not future-makers.

These future-makers are likely to come from India, China or some other community that has less than us. In this globalised village there will be few vacuums. For those who have little, there is no crisis of imagination . They are ready to innovate and occupy any space where present opportunities are half seen. They will seek to make the future by changing the rules of success.

Figure 2.3 illustrates the various niches available now and in the future. Future-makers rarely play in the overcrowded market. Some gain a foothold by introducing disruptive thinking that allows them to occupy space in overlooked niches . Others seek to compete through impeccable timing. Their technique often involves listening carefully to what people say they want and then delivering the precise benefits asked for, no more and no less. They have little or no investment in what is. Almost always their eyes are on the white space, and they are happy to share with others their white space aspirations (though future-takers will probably greet these ideas with laughter , disbelief and
derision).

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Figure 2.3: Future space in a foresightful world

Innovation is about seeing very clearly what it is that customers are willing to pay for. In a global village we will need to understand our place or niche and become specialised in our activity. The efforts of the generalist will constantly be eroded by those of the specialist who networks. Becoming more specialised will require us to look for space at either the top of the market or at the bottom. This is because the centre , the easily seen position, is where it is always most crowded.

This future world is a space where capability will be the basis of advantage, not particular products and services, as shelf life for products and services is reducing almost exponentially. It will require us to be very clear about future individual and organisational capability. As we develop products and services we will need to understand how such activity helps us learn about what comes next .

In this future world, innovation is not just about products and services . . . it is about life. In a living-systems world view, success means expanding the capability to grow and adapting the ability to produce, not just seeing production as an end in itself. This means that we will need to be innovative in the way we build production abilities . We will need to be innovative in the way we create and sustain networks. We will need to be innovative in our channels and markets. It will be a life of complexity, often confusing and blurred. In a machine world this would drive us crazy, but in a living-systems world we will celebrate the confusion as the passage from the old to a new order.

Navigators must define themselves as future-makers and understand that attention to capability building will be the basis of advantage. While maintaining a sense of realism and performance in today s world, they must seek to migrate activity away from the overcrowded space and find ways to explore what might be.

Go visual

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Visual is the dominant platform for communication at the moment. In the near future, new mediums that touch all our senses will take us beyond visual to virtual reality. These technologies will enhance our ability to communicate and process information with whatever senses suit our way of thinking and learning. Even now the ability to create a graphic or visual view allows us to deal with significantly more complexity than we are confined to in a written or oral world (the graphics used in this chapter are an example of this in action).

As our visual material gets closer to mirroring our realities we will have much better devices to understand the navigation possibilities. This will allow us to explore alternatives in a much more interesting and dynamic way. It will reduce the requirement to use imagination simply to absorb information and instead will enable us to redirect time to exploring what might be.

Almost at every turn new visual industries are springing up and, slowly but surely, they are challenging and replacing the ˜written word paradigm. This ˜go visual world is a very different one from that based on the written word. One of the more interesting effects is that it democratises the power of knowledge and information. It is much more difficult to keep visual information hidden, to be used at an appropriate time, as is often done in machine power games .

Visual is becoming the preferred medium of communication by the young, particularly as it becomes more real time. Might it be that future commerce will more and more come to resemble the challenging and interactive video games so beloved by segments of the population? Real time, of course, is a valuable asset in a warp- speed world.

Go visual is part of rewiring . It means we will need to move from our mostly one-dimensional communication paradigms to exploring multidimensional activity. For example, next time you have a PowerPoint presentation to make, try doing most of it, except for the summary, as a visual. It will be challenging for you and refreshing for your audience.

Riding the dead horse

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Innovation and imagination cannot flourish without space. If the present and the future are crowded, how then do we create space? The answer lies in abandoning the dark art of dead-horse riding. Dead-horse riding is the undertaking of activities that can reasonably be expected to have little or no value. Stopping can be more difficult than it seems, as horse riding is prestigious and other horse riders like, sometimes even demand, company. Most organisations and individuals engage in a number of dead-horse activities, some of which are institutionalised. For example:

  • dead-horse meetings (ritualised meetings or those without purpose, substance or outcome)

  • long- term projects to fix things that, despite effort, are still not fixed

  • new projects that are clearly going to fail (often known as riding the ambulance to the bottom of the cliff )

  • ongoing production of products and services past their use-by date

  • activities or decisions, which are undertaken by well-meaning people, but are poorly aligned with the intended direction (which in turn cause a round of frustrating activity to realign these activities and decisions);

  • inertia and symbolism valued at the expense of change.

Often we can t let go of dead-horse activities because there is a whole range of other more valued activities attached to them. In other words, the dead-horse activity continues because of the dependencies. Once we recognise this, we need to bury the horse and find ways to deliver the dependencies in another manner. It s amazing how the dependencies thrive when freed from the constraints of futility.

Dead-horse organisations also have a strong opportunity-envy culture. They can t stand others being successful, particularly if it looks easy. Their envy drives them to develop ˜me too activities every time an opportunity arises. They fail to realise that in a specialised and networked world we should pursue only those opportunities that are aligned to our sense of direction and purpose.

As dead-horse riding is a pointless activity, it has little or no value. To give ourselves personal space to free our imaginations, we need to eliminate such activities from our day-to-day schedules and our organisations. Low-value activity blinds us to navigation possibilities and is debilitating to the spirit.

It is a long road to nowhere

Nothing fires the imagination more or drives innovation harder than a sense of direction or aspiration. The more demanding or stretching a direction or goal appears, the more likely it is that high levels of innovation will be required to attain it. In contrast, nothing stultifies imagination and innovation more than a lack of direction. This is the world I call the long road to nowhere .

Powerful statements of aspiration and intent are highly directional. They help those who subscribe to them make decisions that are aligned or consistent with the defined direction. It is interesting to observe that some aspirations seem to be created almost in defiance of the future. At some level, though, they must make sense in the marketplace and they must be deserving of personal commitment.

  • Individuals or organisations on the long road to nowhere can be recognised by:

  • a poor sense of aspiration or a lack of vision (so they try to move forward by using forecasting instead of foresight)

  • their pride in their machine-like thinking (which, however, they seem to have trouble implementing)

  • their use of traditional models to grow and develop (however, when challenged they rarely have a coherent growth strategy)

  • their engagement in practices that they know don t work but which are part of the corporate ritual .

On the long road to nowhere, imagination and innovation are seen as optional extras rather than essentials. Individuals and organisations on this road can t see the weak signals that are patently obvious to everyone else. The long road to nowhere is debilitating in every sense. It is the antithesis of life and those who can, get off it.

Not all of us, though, can or want to leave our nowhere organisations. But wherever we are, we can t easily ignore the changes that confront us. In our society there are frequent expressions of concern about the lack of vision. No one wants to go down the road to nowhere. A number bemoan the lack of direction or aspiration among current leaders. The courage and imagination to create a new sense of destiny seems conspicuously absent. The challenge is considerable and Navigators will need to use every ounce of imagination and innovation to chart a new course. Navigators must become less tolerant of nowhere activity. They must seek opportunities to introduce disruptive thinking and either create or support aspirational ideas through their own behaviours.

[9] Dialogue from the film The Matrix , as quoted in G Yeffeth (ed. ), Taking the Red Pill: Science, philosophy and religion in The Matrix, op. cit. , page 72.

[10] For a well-developed articulation of this blindness and some remedies, see M Watson & M Bazerman, ˜Predictable Surprises: Disasters you should have seen coming , Harvard Business Review , March 2003,Vol 81, page 72.

[11] Adapted from the Global Foresight Network s program, 9 Principles of Strategic Foresight. For more details, see www.globalforesight.net.




Innovation and Imagination at Work 2004
Innovation and Imagination at Work 2004
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2005
Pages: 116

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