Rethinking Complexity

Crisis of Power: Exploring Three Different Leadership Stances

Are you Not Enough, Too Much or Enough?

At the 2011 National Training Lab Annual Conference this August, Collins Dobbs, Mary Ann Huckabay, Craig Shchuler, and Yifat Sharabi-Levine asked its participants to answer this question.

I was one of them.

The question was part of an experimental exercise designed to explore different sides of ourselves and the people with whom we interact.

The facilitators posted three statements on the wall in separate areas of the room: Not Enough, Too Much, and Enough. We were then invited to select the statement that resonated with us and go to that area.

Everyone would eventually have a chance to visit each statement. We were then encouraged to embody the statement we chose.

I was fascinated by what resulted.

Evolutionary Leadership: The Embodiment of Systems Being

In a previous post, I presented the need to move from systems thinking to systems being.

There is a reason for that: I believe that it is through systems being that we will be able to truly transform our world. And transforming the world is the task of leaders. However, the most prevalent understanding of leadership is narrow and hierarchical: one leader on top and many followers below; few with power and many powerless.

As members of society and organizations, we have accepted a passive, victim stance in the face of complex challenges while we point fingers hoping that elected officials and business executives take care of our problems. Our behavior represents a relinquishing of our power. We suffer the problems but we don’t see ourselves as part of the solutions. And if we find ourselves dissatisfied about our leaders, we act as if we can’t do anything about it.

This distorted concept of leadership needs to be revised and expanded, because it is not very useful and it may be dangerous in today’s world. By our mere participation in social structures through our daily lives, we are creating our future. But we haven’t done so consciously.

Peter Senge shares the view that "ultimately, leadership is about creating new realities." He once said, "Because of our obsession with how leaders behave and with the interactions of leaders and followers, we forget that in its essence, leadership is about learning how to shape the future.... Leadership exists when people are no longer victims of circumstances but participate in creating new circumstances. Leadership is about creating a domain in which human beings continually deepen their understanding of reality and become more capable of participating in the unfolding of the world.”

Transforming Our Economic System: From Egocentric Domination to Ecocentric Real Wealth

A reoccurring theme has been emerging in conversations with my friends and colleagues: our economic system.

Does our current economic system work? Who does it serve? Who is it damaging? Is it sustainable? Is there a better way? Can the system be changed?

I've wrestled with the underlying purpose of our financial structure for sometime. From an ecological and social justice perspective, I've never quite understood why we strive for affluence to the detriment of the environment and to the majority of the world's people.  

According to statistics from GlobalIssues.org and The World Bank, almost half of the world—more than three billion people—live on less than $2.50 USD a day. Additionally, "more than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening," GlobalIssues.org noted.

In 2007, Forbes magazine scouted out 946 billionaires across the globe—from Mumbi to Serbia to Madrid to Cyprus. "Ingenuity, not industry, is the common characteristic" among the rich, the article noted.

"These folks made money in everything from media and real estate to coffee, dumplings and ethanol," according to Forbes. "Two-thirds of [2006's] billionaires are richer. Only 17 percent are poorer, including 32 who fell below the billion-dollar mark. The billionaires' combined net worth climbed by $900 billion to $3.5 trillion. That equates to $3.6 billion apiece."

Regardless of Forbes boasting, wealth is not proven to make us happier, which annuls any happiness argument for attaining material prosperity.

Seven Pillars of Governance

Every week I see signs that our social institutions and organizations have lost their ability to accomplish key tasks, even as the urgency to do so rises. In fact, the intensity of feelings among different stakeholder groups seems to be a factor contributing to breakdown.

We depend on large organizations, government, and community groups to accomplish large and complex tasks. But they cannot do that if they are paralyzed about the nature of their task and how to gather the resources they need and accomplish it. It is not clear who should decide, how that should be done, and how to keep their focus and get things done without having to face the demands to change course.

This foundation of agreement is called governance, as distinguished from operations and management. We are facing a major crisis as governance structures face challenges to their legitimacy and the governors themselves find it hard to reach agreement. Finding the right thing to do is becoming increasingly difficult as we lack the ability to forecast even the immediate outcomes of our actions. We have to solve the problems of how to govern our institutions and entities if we are to survive as a civilization.

As I view the global questions of legitimacy of nations and super-national entities, I work as a consultant in governance to family businesses and educational institutions. I see similar challenges in defining and carrying out effective governance. If an entity cannot decide what it wants to do, craft a workable design for getting there, and stick to it while prudently changing course when challenges arise, then the best machines and organizations cannot function.  How can they organize human energy to get things done, and balance the different interests of different stakeholder groups who want something from the organization?

To begin the conversation, I want to define seven key considerations that effective governance, whether of a company, a nation or a supra-national alliance, must take into account when they craft their governance process.

Gloomy September

My home is in Reno, Nevada, and it feels like a small town.

Between the Sierra Nevada and the Carson Range (the Great Basin, as it's known), is high desert with four distinct seasons and crisp and clean air almost all year. Fall's arrival has brought the first splash of autumn color to the leaves of the mountains and city.

California's Pacific Coast weather comes to us, rising from the sea and crossing the steep peaks of the mountains, usually taking two days for San Francisco rain to reach us. Even though the Sierras are a barrier between Reno and much of the world, I see reflections of the greater world and connections to what is happening everywhere, reflections and connections of different kinds of violence that are contributing to my autumnal sense of melancholy.

This September in Reno has been colored with tragedy. First there was a shooting in Carson City on September 6. A gunman entered an IHOP in Carson—30 miles south of Reno—with an AK-47, targeted National Guardsmen, shot eight people, then killed himself. Three of the eight people who were wounded have since died. Some people who knew the shooter remarked that he was a gentle person and a nice man, but schizophrenia distorted his mind and actions with disastrous results.

The Reno Air Show scheduled for September 16 through September 18 ended tragically after a plane crashed into the viewing stands. The death toll kept rising—from three deaths the first day to 11 at last report. Many people from all over the U.S. love Reno's Air Show and come to see the vintage planes in action. For all the Renoites and air show fans, this has been a sad time.

Last weekend topped off the list of tragedies with two rival motorcycle gangs—the Hells Angels and Los Vagos—shooting at each other in the Nugget Casino in Sparks. The leader of the Hells Angels' San Jose club was killed in the gun fight. Motorcycle riders from everywhere come to Reno to have a good time during the Street Vibrations annual celebration of motorcycles, food, gambling, and rock and roll, but the two gangs' hatred got the best of them—or the worst of them, you might say.

These September tragedies have been expressions of different kinds of violence—violence caused by insanity, by accident, and by hating somebody just... because.

Sadly, these incidents of violence are happening everywhere, not just in Nevada. They are repetitive patterns. There are other, more pernicious, patterns of violence that make the news with numbers and statistics, but without the names and faces of victims or perpetrators.

Dealing with Vulnerability

After my study session wound down earlier tonight, I scanned my bookshelf to find an organizational systems topic that I could write this post on.

Organizational culture. Sustainability. Leverage points. They all jumped out, but none of them grabbed me.

Then my eyes landed on a thin booklet from the Leadership Institute of Seattle (or LIOS)—a booklet I received at Saybrook's January 2011 residential conference. The 43-page manual—a learning guide from a workshop I attended called "InterAct: Skills for Adaptive Leadership"—had been sitting on my shelf unopened for almost nine months. It was pinned between a book by Peter Block and a large, white envelope with a revised copy of my 2010 Saybrook admissions essay and transcripts.

I pulled the booklet off the shelf and flipped through it, immediately assuming I'd find nothing of interest or at least nothing I'd really want to revisit, let alone publicly. That two-day InterAct session, after all, was pretty tough.

InterAct was like a group therapy session only there weren't any psychologists in the room and the group consisted of fellow students who, for the most part, were complete strangers to me. The instructors divided us into two small groups and had us sit in a circle in the center of the room, one group at a time. In the safe space the instructors created, they asked us to consciously react to the assumptions and perceptions each group member in the circle had.

Day one went great for me, but day two was brutal. It wouldn't have been if one minor observation hadn't opened up a can of emotional worms.

Rethinking the Complexity of Learning Organizations

Today’s educational system is wrought with complexity—from the work of educating students to the lack of financing in heated political climates.

Working in the educational system can be complex, but it can also be rewarding.

The challenge is finding the right people with the right passion who are able to view the world from a systemic view—people who are willing to fearlessly delve into the chaos of the current system and make sense of it.

I work in an office that focuses on career and technical education programs. Even though our role is limited to vocational education, we try to keep a whole-student view of the educational system—a view that makes student success the primary focus supported by a system that encourages this success.

Earlier this year, I had a long conversation at work with two of my colleagues for a Saybrook class paper concerning complexity in the workplace. Our discussion helped me see that a lack of clarity seems to be fueling the complexity issues affecting the current educational system.

Some employees don't have a clear understanding of the expectations they're required to meet while others find themselves struggling to figure out how to move the system forward holistically rather than just focusing on individual pieces.

Systems-Blindness

I’m working on becoming more compassionate.

His Holiness the Dalia Lama believes that compassion forms the basis for ethical behavior. My interest in compassion is less noble. I find that when I remember to shift my attention from analysis to compassion, I always learn something.

Two articles published last week have tested my capacity for compassion.

Before reading them, I would have been hard-pressed to feel even a stitch of empathy for fashion models or a cup of human kindness for college athletes... sorry. You see what I mean? I can’t even get through the sentence without a tongue-in-cheek metaphor. Now I find that I’m left with more questions than answers.

In the October 2011 issue of Atlantic Monthly, Pulitzer Prize winning author and civil rights historian Taylor Branch shines a harsh light on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (or NCAA) in his article, The Shame of College Sports. Branch provides a history of the NCAA while demonstrating—case-after-case—how the twin ideals of “Student-Athlete” and “Amateurism” are actually contrived structures that allow institutions and private corporations to make billions of dollars from the labor of 18 to 20 year olds who are not afforded basic employment or property rights.

In one example—a case that's currently in the court system—Ed O’Bannon, former UCLA basketball player of the year, complains that UCLA and the NCAA continue to derive revenue from the sale of video games starring an Ed O’Bannon character. Even though O’Bannon is neither an amateur nor a student-athlete, he has no right to the use of his image by UCLA and the NCAA.

A Leadership Challenge, Part 2: Lessons from Action, Surrender, and Vulnerability

The first part of this leadership challenge explored the concept of “unveiling the illusions of the true professional.”

The concept behind the exploration came from Margaret Wheatley's poem "The True Professional," where she challenges the reader to seek a “reliable truth” that will “let the human heart rest.” I would now like to focus on the “action” and “surrender” sections of the same poem.

In "The True Professional," Wheatley wrote: "Action like a sacrament/is the visible form of an invisible spirit/outward manifestation of/an inward power.” Is she saying that a leader's actions should be religiously executed as sacraments are and perhaps driven from within, anchored in values that are or can be operationalized?

In his 1994 book, A Higher Standard of Leadership: Lessons from the Life of Gandhi, Keshavan Nair asserts that “operationalizing values transforms them into action… and ... by operationalizing our values we take personal responsibility and are willing to be held accountable.”

The type of action Wheatley speaks of in her poem is action realized from values as opposed to action based on a reaction to external elements. It is action birthed from within, as Wheatley wrote: "An expressive act is not to achieve a goal outside myself/but to express a conviction/a leading, a truth that is within me."

Can exploring the emotional side of complexity make us better leaders?

What is the emotional side of complexity and how can it help us understand and manage complexity?

John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor and expert on leadership and change, said this year that managing change is about understanding the human condition of fear that is inherent in all change. Change, he added, is managed through deeds that generate credibility.

How leaders generate credibility is not a lightweight change plan. It involves depth and honesty; it is transformational rather than transactional.

Fear is often made worse because people often don’t take accountability for working through the change themselves. Instead, they wait to be saved by the hero who they hope will come along and take care of things or they lack authenticity by denying their feelings.

In an article that ran earlier this year in Resurgence magazine, Margaret Wheatley and Debbie Frieze posited that it is time to recognize that, emotionally, we are addicted to a hero-type of leadership—that we are seeking out the one who will save us and the one we can blame if they don't.