Elevating Change & Transformation Leadership Series - Leading Disruption with Grace (1 of 10)

‘Us-two’ Leading through Disruption

Have you found yourself wondering what to prioritise with the growing list of daunting, long-term disruptions and difficult, short-term demands? Feeling aware of your finite resources of capital, time, and energy? Still carrying the emotional and financial burdens of the disruption of recent years within your organisation or yourself? Sensing that anxiety levels have shifted in many segments of our society? Privately finding yourself concerned how all this will play out?

While simultaneously being drawn to increasing collaboration, are you seeing challenges that become possible through bringing people together with a common sense of purpose? Excited about the global connectivity and accessibility of ideas and information? Sensing unrealised potential in yourself and people around you? Feeling more awareness of the need to lift above division and lead building of deeper human connections? Feeling compelled to contribute to initiatives and movements towards a better world?

You are not alone.

As we will uncover through this article series, these are common questions across Boardrooms, around Executive tables, and in the homes of the talent needed to navigate this disruptive decade.?We may use differing language across the many perspectives this disruptive context is viewed yet, at a deeper level, many of the themes are common.

As we wrap up the first 1000 days of the 2020s and lead into this next phase there are so many factors to consider for those leading organisations and their careers with intention, while simultaneously we feel constrained on our time to ponder.

Accountable leaders around the world are acknowledging that strategic cycles are shortening with the combination of ongoing disruptions and the need for responsive and intentional transformations. Leading within inherited industry operating models is different to leading with intention to reinvent and reshape how we serve markets and engage talent to remain relevant. Under-performing leadership through transformations directly impacts organisational outcomes and the humans involved. The cumulative consequences of under-performing leadership through transformations are now a key Board level strategic opportunity/risk.

This series is to assist you with elevating leadership of change and transformation.

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Through this 10-part series, we will be framing and considering questions such as:

• Where is your organisation (and career) on the path through the disruptive decade view?
• In the context of leading through ongoing disruption where is your leadership coming from? Where does it need to be?
• Considering the leadership centres of gravity from a Business Transformation perspective where does your organisation need to elevate and integrate?
• What chronic conditions of ‘under-performing’ transformation leadership is your organisation presenting?
• Where could we expand our Business Transformation leadership capacities to make the biggest impact?
• Why it starts with me?! For the Bright, the Bold, and The Board.

This series is for Leaders.

Leaders taking the systemic and impact view of the enterprise, industry, and society.

The series is written to be accessible and useful for the three leadership ‘centres of gravity’ in effective Business Transformation. It is based on significant research and application with Leaders just like you -

The Bright. The Bright-Sparks seeking to fulfil their potential and positively contribute. Bright, and have the ‘spark’ for today and the future.

The Bold. Executive Leaders working to shape the(ir) future.

The Board. The direction setters and health monitors of the enterprise trajectory.

This series is NOT for:

• Those that need convincing of the shifting context and relevance risk.
• Those retreating to the perceived safety of leading ‘pockets of expertise’, without accountability for enterprise, industry and bigger picture outcomes.
• Those that are choosing to observe, over practise Business Transformation leaderships evolution.

“There are three types of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.”

~ Nicholas Butler, President of Columbia University, 1932

How to work with the material being shared:

The leaders I partner with, and those expected to get value from this series, are accomplished and typically deep experts within industries and specialist domains. I find the famous Einstein quote resonates and relaxes us to look more deeply and shift beyond the simplistic competition of ideas and discipline expertise.

“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

~ Albert Einstein

It’s with this acknowledgement that none of us know it all, that contexts are not fixed, and that Business Transformation involves engaging many perspectives that this series is structured around sharing frames and questions. We have already found it to be complementary to the work of Directors and Executives as well as Strategy, Governance, Innovation, Risk & Resilience, Change, Business Transformation, and Enterprise Architecture specialists.

“Good questions inform, great questions transform.”

~ Ken Coleman

In my mind, I picture it is like we are on a trek into new territory. There are some familiar features to the terrain, some features you or I may know, and others that are not yet clear. Standing side by side, we look out to the horizon and assess and consider potential blind spots, pathways and priorities. The intention is to create a reflective and expansive environment for the reader, consistent with mentoring and leadership team facilitation environments.

Through the series we will be using the phrase “Us-two” and this visual icon as we look together and consider the necessary evolution of our Business Transformation leadership.

I am borrowing and adapting this from the Australian Indigenous author, Tyson Yunkaporta. In his book ‘Sand Talk’ he explained:

“I write to provoke thought rather than represent fact, in a kind of dialogical and reflective process with the reader. For this I often use the dual first person. It is a common pronoun in Indigenous languages but not present in English; that’s why I translate it as ‘us-two’, my fingers typing those letters while my mouth is saying ngal.

Solutions to complex problems take many dissimilar minds and points of view to design, so we have to do that together, linking up with as many other us-twos as we can to form networks of dynamic action. I am not offering expert answers, only different questions and ways of looking at things.”

~ Yunkaporta, Sand Talk, pages 22-23

In my experience it is in this collaborative and engaging space that the individual unique self is valued, we can be inspired as we build shared meaning, we all expand awareness and, through participation in the creation, there is deeper relevance realised.

Grow your unique self. Lift the trajectory. Lead Disruption with Grace.

If Elevating Change and Transformation Leadership is important to you, I invite you to:

• Subscribe to the weekly LinkedIn newsletter to receive further articles you can utilise in your work.
• Connect here on LinkedIn to continue sharing and learning with other leaders.
• Join me at upcoming events of the Australian Transformation & Turnaround Association, Association Change Management Professionals, International Association of Facilitators, GovernWith, and SAP Enterprise Architecture.
• Email to discuss how I could support you as a speaker or mentor for your Bright, Bold and Board.

Bernie

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Bernie is known for building capability and confidence in leaders who need to transform organisations that are continually reshaping to survive and thrive.

Bernie works with:

- The Bright (we see your spark for today and the future ??)

- The Bold (Executives shaping the(ir) future)

- The Board (accountable for direction and organisation Change-fitness across strategic cycles.)

Where do you need to elevate and integrate?

His career began in whole of enterprise and cross-organisation shifts, followed by 10 years in Business Transformation Diagnostics, Training, and Mentoring across Australia and SE Asia.?He currently works with leaders who are focused on accelerated development and re-imagination of industry value systems. He loves contributing to leaders, teams and networks successfully transitioning to the next phase, creating a positive ripple effect.

In 2020 Bernie authored Traction: Building Change-fit Leadership Teams.

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Contact Bernie via LinkedIn or Email or Phone: + 61 421 915 608

Or check out his website at BernieKelly.com

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