Leadership as Motion

I’m circling around this language as I build out the new body of work on Social Leadership: in this work I build upon the idea of the Organisations as Ecosystem, and the notions of ‘boundary’ that I’ve been playing with in Quiet Leadership. This speaks to me of leaders not as a static part of a formal system, but rather of changing their context and perspective through motion.

In my publishing plan for next year, the book has the provisional title of ‘Leadership as Motion’, but it will almost certainly change – but it does show intent. The title has shifted between Leadership ‘as’ motion, and Leadership ‘in’ motion, which is only a subtle change, but reflective of my thinking. It is an overall dynamic perspective, and speaks of leaders operating through systems, with fluid power, and often through acts of convening, storytelling, sharing.

I’m very much still in the formation stage of ideas, having written about thirty primary pieces of writing so far this year, with more exploration to come. The Blog allows me to try out ideas that I then carry into my own practice. Hence tomorrow is my first chance to share the new work on ‘The Self as Trespasser’ up at the Open University Business Agility Conference, work that may well fall apart in the first telling. I’m ok with that though – as I shared yesterday, #WorkingOutLoud is about sense making and the creation of meaning, not simply sharing a static truth.

Sometimes I find that an ideas plays itself out before the book is written: it ends up being part of the story, not a core narrative. But we will see. The key themes currently are of the Organisation as Ecosystem, of leadership at the boundaries, of motion, of imperfection, of dialogue. But this will not be the whole story.