Reimagining Leadership
Leading ComplexitySimply Reimagine .....
In this final section, the main elements of re-imagining leadership are summarised. You can either go straight to the summary which will give you a brief outline of the key learning points or there are two video's that lead you through the main arguments which is narrated by Stephen Brookes.
We hope that this has given you a taste of what is on offer from this website which accompanies the Selfless Leader. More detailed sections are available but you will need to be registered to access the Knowledge Hub either by enrolling for leadership development programmes and/or workshops or by requesting access by contacting us (you can use the contact form to do this).
The importance of patterns
Leadership can be considered as a way of exploring, understanding and creating patterns as it is patterns that will determine the problem profile that leaders will be faced with. Understanding these patterns is one of the first tasks in reimagining leadership. Watch the interactive presentation below which illustrates the gist of Leadership3 in combining whole systems approaches (based on geometry), identifying the 'unknown unknowns' and how a true transformational leadership style can be developed and applied.
Summary
Summarising this introduction to Leadership3
Read this summary of the main points to arise during this introduction to Leadership3.
Introducing 'Whole Systems' Approaches
We first explored the Collective Leadership approach as a complex system, ass illustrated below.
We noted that systems surround us. They frustrate us, they get in the way of problem-solving and they can be highly unpredictable! We considered this through the lenses of synergetic and cybernetic perspectives.
Complexity and Chaos
We noted that a characteristic of complexity is that it is unlikely that the issues or problems underpinning it are likely to be fully resolved. In this sense, it shares these characteristics with those of wicked problems and, moreover, that humans' tendency to intervene (what Fuller described as a precessional effect) can skew what leadership is trying to achieve. A key lesson from Chaos Theory is to differentiate the concepts of order versus control.
Synergetics and Cybernetics
We have briefly considered the combination of synergetics and cybernetics. The approach to synergy compliments our approach in tackling complex systems
Cybernetics is the science or study of control or regulation mechanisms in human and machine systems, including computers. Beer used the icosahedron as a model for organizing projects for much the same reason as Fuller used for structure.
Cybernetics helps us to understand the underlying patterns of collective leadership, based on both qualitative and quantitative relationships between the contextual conditions, the mechanisms and the outcomes. This is based on the interaction between the context (which draws on synergetics) and the mechanisms (drawing on cybernetics), although close associations remain between both synergetics and cybernetics
Into the Unknown ....
In leading complexity we start with the ‘known knowns’ and then move progressively to identify the ‘unknown unknowns’
We took note of Donald Rumsfeld comments in February 2002, at a Defence Department briefing:
There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.
In the interactive activity at the beginning of this session, we also explored the high level 3-dimensional model that helps to progress through a public leadership framework and a collective leadership model, and considered how Buckminster Fuller's geometry help us to explore this in much more detail
