The complexities of Responsible Leadership

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Leadership, Uncategorized

Earlier in the week, I had the privilege of spending the morning exploring ideas around complexity and leadership with two friends who understand both fields. Our conversation mostly centered on Responsible Leadership as one of the participants runs the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership and it's a very relevant topic at the moment. At Davos […]

Jungle vs Zoo - Reflections on change and resilience

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Healthy organizations, Innovation, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

In my previous post I introduced the analogy of a jungle vs a zoo to help us make sense of the complex contexts we face and the often ordered organisational structures and processes we tend to create. In this post I want to explore this analogy further and look specifically at how change and resilience from the […]

It's hard to survive in the jungle if all you know is the zoo

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Metaphor

I recently posted a tweet that created an unexpected enthusiastic response. It read: “It’s hard to survive in the jungle if you were trained in a zoo” I love using metaphors and analogies to explain the concepts I work with, like the difference between complex (jungle) and complicated or obvious (zoo) contexts. This is one […]

Maintain diversity and redundancy (Building resilience: Principle 1)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Leadership, Resilience

"Systems with many different components (e.g. species, actors, or sources of knowledge) are generally more resilient than systems with few components. Redundancy provides 'insurance' within a system by allowing some components to compensate for the loss or failure of others. Redundancy is even more valuable if the components providing the redundancy also react differently to […]

The soft stuff has become the hard stuff

Boundaries, Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Meaning and purpose

The Gallup State of the Global Workplace report was released recently, containing employee engagement results per country. The results are generally pretty dismal, an indictment on the prevailing cultures in our organisations. For sub-Saharan Africa, the report states: In most sub-Saharan African countries, formal employment for an employer is still relatively rare; many residents work at subsistence […]

Workshops with Prof Dave Snowden in Jhb & Cape Town (October 2013)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Leadership, Narrative

As promised in an earlier post, here are the details for the various public workshops taking place with Dave Snowden in October. In Gauteng: 1. A full day workshop at Worldsview Academy in Johannesburg on 17 October with a focus on complexity & leadership Find out more about it here 2. A half day workshop at […]

Has management become a dirty word?

Leadership, Teams

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine yesterday about the perspective that "everyone is a leader" and what that says about management. The debate around the difference between management and leadership is certainly not a new one, and it seems that everyone has a different definition for each of these concepts. It […]

Leadership is about climate control, not command and control

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Metaphor

In a new TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (embedded below) he focuses on prevailing education systems and how they stifle learning and creativity. He eloquently makes the case that education is not a mechanistic endeavor that is about conformity and compliance, but an inherently human and organic process that is about valuing diversity […]

A monster that devours itself: a capitalist's parable?

General musings, Leadership, Meaning and purpose

Erisychton (Er-is-ya-thon), according to Ovid's tales from Greek mythology was a wealthy timber merchant and Thessalian King. He was a greedy man who thought only about profit. To him, nothing was sacred. The goddess Demeter had a sacred grove with a special tree beloved by the gods. Prayers of the faithful were tied to the […]

Courage

Engagement, General musings, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Strengths

“The original definition of ‘courage’ . . . is from the Latin word ‘cor,’ meaning ‘heart.’ And the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first, and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t […]

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Blog - Category: Leadership