Power & Leadership: Part II?

Musings on Leadership and Power??

Ruled by Secrecy??

?In the first part of this two-part article, we opened the window on the nature of the predominant leadership style used and promoted in many organisations. We also mentioned that we are operating in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) and that this inherently complex world requires a different kind of thinking and behaving for organisations to thrive and grow.??

The predominant leadership style would have us believe that to address such a VUCA environment leaders should create stability, simplify the understanding of the structures and operating model/dynamics, and decisions, build certainty into outcomes by predicting and controlling the path. It is in this stance that we reveal the sandy foundations; the strict ‘control things’ approach masking the secret that these types of leaders want to hide. They want to hide their inherent anxiety driven by the unconscious knowledge that they are not on top of things and cannot be on top of things – the image of control is a fallacy and thus organisations with such leadership behaviours are ruled by secrecy: the complexity of a VUCA world is ruled by other laws.??

The 2nd Law??

“All natural and technological processes, proceed in such a way that the availability of the remaining energy decreases. In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves an isolated system, the entropy of that system increases. Energy continuously flows from being concentrated to becoming dispersed, spread out, wasted and useless.” Muse, The 2nd Law: Unsustainable.??

In physics, entropy is a measure of disorder or complexity of a system and relentlessly increases. This is a useful concept when it comes to thinking about the nature of organizational dynamics. Our window of thinking on the dynamics of complex systems needs to be widened: dynamic not stable, interdependent not independent, uncertain not certain, patterned not controllable, emergent not predictable, nuanced not either/or.??

In the context of leadership and power, styles of leadership and the wielding of its power influence the response of the system. Our awareness of the styles and options available provide more flexibility in how we interact with the complex organisational system that we are an integral part of.??

A different style of thinking and behaving that embraces the facets of a complex system needs to infect us at a cerebral level.??

?Thought Contagion??

We previously mentioned other approaches and models to leadership and power (Lean, Agile, Growth Mindset to name a few) These look beyond the core idea of leadership being founded in the ability to control and enforce control through hierarchical position. They indicate that leadership and power have many more options open to everyone in an organisation. However, the how to access, utilise, and scale such ideas is often ephemeral or left as ‘an exercise for the interested reader!’??

Figure 1 is a helpful way to think about the spectrum of leadership styles. This has two primary dimensions of respect for people and energy (consumed by that style). This reveals four broadbrush categories for leadership. The predominant conventional hierarchical styles being on the left of the figure (low respect for people) they are characterised through their sources of power (position, reward, and coercion). The styles on the right-hand side access a wider set of power sources that move beyond leading from hierarchical positions. Leading and influencing from anywhere within your organisation with leadership and followership becoming a quantum superposition throughout. Those alternative sources of power being empathy, passion, knowledge, grounded, self-control, nonlinear communications, and contextual systems thinking.??

Accessing and applying these powers in varying degrees based on contextual settings helps generate an understanding of how they can influence (so long as we look for and notice their impacts).??

Knowledge and empathy are good combinations that underpin critical thinking and innovation. We recently worked with a client embedding these power types within their continuous improvement programme. The mixing of knowledge and people generated novel solutions to problems that they could implement quickly; the human factor of both understanding the problem and gaining buy-in through implementation was a vital element of their success. This organisation was able to increase capacity by >20%, and gained a 25% increase in customer satisfaction, winning industrial quality awards for their CI programme.??

Passion, knowledge (sharing), and being grounded pay dividends in achieving goals and innovation for an organisation’s future. Another client organisation was undertaking a transformation that combined their inherent passion for excellence in their technical field with a critical assessment of themselves and their needs in the future. They used business agility and a business model canvas approach to cocreate a future vision and path to get there. The level of support throughout the organisation in taking this approach is paying dividends: individuals take up the goal and business tactics implementing them locally and spontaneously in parallel with the main transformation activity. They have thus far increased productivity by over 25%, reduced time to market timescales by >45% resulting in increased revenue streams of ~20%.???

Self-control works well across all aspects of being in an organisation and the lived experience of a complex system. This inherent respect for people overlays across the above examples and many other client engagements.??

Understanding and utilising these power sources requires effort (energy!) as well as guidance to explore the multitude of ways to adopt them.??

?Explorers??

A useful start point on an exploration is to know where you are starting from. From there you can shine light on the landscape ahead to see possible paths, and particularly the shadows. Holding up a mirror to your organisation (and you) is akin to Plato’s ‘allegory of the cave’, and the growing awareness of options beyond the familiar can be significant.??

It also useful to be aware that your destination and path there will be changing as you explore. we have walked many of these types of paths multiple times. That is not to imply we know the outcome or precise path; we know the paths we have taken and taken with clients. There is no one path and even our experience has not exhausted the numerous paths that could be taken.??

In exploring and journeying along the paths it is wise to have a guide with contextual experience to help adapt and flex: your landscape is always changing from both your learning journey and the changing VUCA environment.??

?Knights of Cydonia??

At Catalyst, we Cats are a diverse clowder where we all hold equity in a wide set of knowledge and experiences. Being cats, curiosity is always on our minds – we would welcome to hear of specific examples you have and your thoughts on these articles: what has resonated for you, have you had any ‘a-ha’ moments, do you have alternatives views or experiences? We openly invite you to share such thoughts as a start point on an exploratory discussion; when one shares both can learn.??

Perhaps your thoughts are already poised to explore how to utilise such styles within your organisation. You may be considering implementing agile ways of working, aligning your organizations culture and behaviours to match future market and customer needs, or redesigning your organizational operating model. We have proven experience in all these and many more areas. Through our engagements our clients see us demonstrate these alternative leadership styles and power sources. Clients experience first-hand how to apply them successfully within their organization, see what they can deliver for your customers, organisation, and employees.??

Wherever you are on your journey, get in touch.??

• Explore the Power of? Agile Leadership??

• See the Benefits of Business Model Canvas??

• Align Goals with Senior Management Team Alignment Workshop??

• Learn more about our Lean training courses??

?One final musing: “Come ride with me through the veins of history” … your future history!??

???

??

Figure 1: Schematic of leadership styles.??