Leaders Present and Future
The world is going through a huge transition. This is more than just ‘normal’ change. It requires a completely new way of thinking and understanding.??In the workplace, the last two years of the pandemic speeded up that transition radically changing how people want to work and what is important to them. The learning from the pandemic includes:
·???????The sharpened realisation of social, health and digital inequality
·???????How innovative and resilient human beings are?
·???????The Great Resignation as employees decide, in a tight labour market, who they want to work for, and how organisations measure up on flexibility, net zero, and well-being policies
·???????The failure of global governance and co-operation over vaccines?
·???????A more visible polarised society and populism
·???????A world that cannot control nature?
·???????How interconnected and interdependent the world is?
·???????The geopolitical turmoil in the world and the retreat of liberal democracy
·???????Climate change and the need to act more quickly?
However, this is not a list of separate issues but rather interconnected challenges that reflect policies from both business and government during the last few decades.?
At the same time, there is a huge amount of true transformation yet to be achieved. Part of that is a radical new approach to developing leaders who not only understand this new world but want to use their leadership to create a better one. However, there are huge hurdles to overcome first. Just over twenty- one years ago I wrote:?
“Organisations are coming to a point of being ready for transformation, but they are prevented by a dying worldview or paradigm and all the thinking and values associated with it. They are still structured in a hierarchy with the belief that those at the top should decide the purpose and direction. The required changes in the thinking and consciousness of individuals cannot be forced but they can be influenced.” (In Search of Leaders 2020)?
During the last two years, science has gained credibility around the world and science can help us here too. The world has yet to wake up to the meaning of the scientific transformation that took place at the start of the twentieth century and its relevance to leadership in this time of a series of crises. Just as Copernicus transformed our view of the world when he showed that we are not the centre of the universe; just as Darwin transformed our understanding of evolution and how we perceive ourselves and life in this unfolding process; just as Einstein’s theory of relativity led to our understanding of reality at an atomic level – but each time these scientific transformations take place it takes about a hundred years for the reality to be absorbed.??This last shift in our understanding of reality was so huge it was necessary for physicists to change their concepts of space, time, matter, object, cause, and effect. This revolution in our understanding of reality overturned Newton’s mechanistic world; a world we thought we could control, that influenced the Industrial Revolution and the birth of management as we know it today with its pinnacle, the MBA, where subjects are broken up into specialisms. This world view belongs to the past. It is not right for today’s fast changing and complex world.?
This new quantum understanding of reality showed that the world, instead of being a machine we could control was in fact about interconnections and inter-relationships. This is the thinking that created the internet, the new mathematics of complexity and shows how our actions affect the planet. New technologies, new strategic alliances, instant communication, increasing competition and disruptions, the growth of China and now the madness of the Russian invasion into Ukraine – alters the way we deal with the world and the way the world deals with us.?
New understanding is required in our organisations today. No more is that truer than with those who lead. Before anyone can lead today, they must learn about this new world. Anyone who does not master this mercurial context will be mastered by it. This is the challenge for leaders today.?
“ …the C- Suite are contending with a baffling world that most are ill-equipped to analyse. This is partly because the challenges that confront business right now cannot be easily defined by the intellectual tools that have long been venerated in business schools, such as economic models or balance sheets.” Gillian Tett Financial Times 13thJanuary 2023?
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We can take an analogy from science to explain how leadership should be understood in this new context. In physics, fission creates energy by splitting the nucleus of the atom. This requires watchful control through layers of systems in the same way management of hierarchical organisations operate. We can argue that hierarchical organisations in business and government encourages blindness to learning, entitlement for the few and disconnection from everyone else. Opposite to this is fusion. Instead of splitting atoms apart, fusion joins together atomic nuclei - which isn’t easy as each atom has a positive charge that repels others. This is overcome by removing the atom’s boundary and the result is five times the energy. In other words, our structures, silos, systems and processes with their boundaries and layers of management control are preventing leadership as well as limiting the productivity and contribution of everyone.?
Leadership through the eyes of fusion is about:
·????????Joining together
·????????Creating connections and relationships
·???????Sharing information
·???????Encouraging conversations and dialogue
·???????Taking joint responsibility
·???????Creating a sense of unity
·???????Seeing the organisation, employees, suppliers and customers as a whole rather than separate.?
For this, leaders should be at the centre of an organic organisation structure, rather than at the top of a hierarchy. Leadership can then operate through hybrid working and using digitisation, AI, augmented reality, and other technologies rather than trying to fit technology into ‘old’ structures.??This is going to require radical transformation in our thinking as well as using innovation and upskilling. Most of all, the thinking and consciousness of where we see ourselves; the organisation and its people; the context in which it operates in; all need to be transformed. We know that business, our economics and consumerism cannot go on as it has, or we will destroy the planet; we know that technology is growing faster than our wisdom and that upskilling to keep up, let alone keep ahead, is too slow. Therefore, the challenge is to have the right leaders to guide us through what we can call the ‘decade of transition’.??
Not all organisations operate this way. New technology companies and other successful entrepreneurial companies have a flattened structure. The people there dress the same, look the same and you might find a table tennis table in the corner. Leadership in the UK is out of tune with the rest of the world. It goes back to the feudal system the Normans instilled in us, with its strong hierarchy that propagates entitlement and huge financial differences. Instead of the King owning all the land, the shareholders hold the wealth. Below the King were the Barons who had control of the land and today we can call these the CEOs. Underneath the barons were the Knights who provided protection and gave military service. Today we could call these the senior executive team. Finally, there were the Villeins, or serfs who provided food and services through their labour who today we could call the employees. This class-based model is not only out of date, with many around the world, but also becoming more and more ineffective. So where are the leaders to change this??
For the last fifty years we have seen many different models of leadership from trait, contingency, and situational leadership to servant, adaptive and transformational leadership. The key to understanding and learning about one- self as a leader comes from one’s own life, personality, and experience – not theories and models about leaders.?
We don’t want any more competency models either, as research shows time and again, they don’t work, but satisfy a need to tick a box. Today’s new world requires something else beyond new tools of interpretation. This is a serious issue as many of our present leaders have yet to develop their thinking and consciousness for a world that is transforming day by day.
The Future in Leader Development
Leader development should focus on solving real challenging problems and have an interdisciplinary approach to learning. In other parts of the world, all degrees are now interdisciplinary, and they no longer offer MBA s which are considered no longer ‘fit for purpose’. What is required is a paradigm shift to how we develop leaders - rather than minor adaptations. This is because the change required across business, public services, government, and society, needs to be a radical shift in cognition, pedagogy, and practice and in organisational structure and culture.??It should also include broadening the diversity of potential leaders. The best leaders should understand how psychology, sociology, science, economics, geopolitics, risk analysis, building scenarios, sustainable development, use of data, character including integrity and courage, the mathematics of complexity, new technology and innovation all work together rather than as different subjects. We are on the cusp of transformation in all aspects of our lives, and it will require new thinking and a new consciousness. The work of The Leaders Institute reflects this as we launch our new national programme for leaders under 40 years of age in June.??Join us and contribute to shaping the future.?