Leadership as Systemic: Boundaries

I’m sharing work this week on ‘disorientation and being lost’ in learning – part of a broader pattern of work around the ‘Unreconciled Self’ and ‘Imperfect Leadership’ – so as a word of warning, expect this writing to be convoluted… or possibly adrift! I’m playing with new ideas.

To say that leadership is systemic is tautologic. At least until we question our understanding of where the boundaries of the system lie. In my work on the Social Age, i would argue that the context of our Organisations has shifted, and much of that shift has permeated the boundaries of our Organisations, to the extent that we may now need to consider leadership as a more holistic feature, held both within the formal structure and, at the very least, at the boundary of the system (if not trespassing beyond it).

As with various aspects of the modern Organisation, this represents a shift in the Social Context and Contract, and one which we focus on more from the perspective of what we can take, than what it will cost us.

We already see the increasing anthropomorphism of Organisations through the facility of the ‘Social CEO’, the one with the stream of narrative on social channels about their strategy, direction, humility, and pride (with varying perceptions of authenticity from their audience), and in parallel this reflects the general experience for many of us – against a backdrop of a fractured Social Contract – that we operate as an irreducible unit of one – and that we should curate and maintain the strength and reputation of that ‘self’.

When we hire someone, we hire their time, and their portable persona, as well as renting access to their network – which essentially means hiring access to their collective ‘sense making’ space. Or at least we do if they trust us with it.

Whilst utility can be bought, access, trust, and community are gifted and privileged.

All of this – as well as broader trends around our radical connectivity, the new nature of knowledge, and the full context of the Social Age – lead to a strange phenomenon whereby the strength of our Organisations may be more distributed (and negotiated or gifted), where we need leadership to be more interconnected and inter-connective, at the very time that our sense of belonging, purpose, and opportunity may be fleeing to external structures (like communities of practice or purpose, where we earn no money but find great value).

Or to put it another way: we know what Organisations were, but not necessarily what they are today, or what they need to be tomorrow. And whilst we view our Organisations as formal and owned constructs they are, in fact, social constructs and devolved. Organisations are what we dreamed them up to be – and must become something new.

Around all of this, the weather. We are rebuilding in a storm. Potentially a tipping point or fracture: moving from the Structural Organisation to the Socially Dynamic at the time when the storm of Generative AI, social context, and the Social Age all break over us.