BY MIKE KITSON
TRANSFORMING
LEADERS
The time seems right to explore exactly what is needed in terms of leadership within the corporate and business sectors. The past fifteen years of this century have seen a proliferation of articles purporting to have the solution to “21st Century” leadership; many of these being out of date within six months or so of having been written – so fast is the pace of change that all leaders are working within. This article tries to offer neither a grand truth nor a 100 year solution but rather to confine itself to 2015.
The Context
To a certain extent the context within which 2015 leadership sits is well known, it is the world within which we are all working and living, however, it is worth reiterating as there is often a difference between ‘living in’ and ‘understanding’ something, and this difference is extremely pertinent to the development of relevant and effective leadership abilities.
The world is increasingly being recognised as an intricate, delicate and complex matrix, or web, of interconnecting relationships and strands of information. The concept of power and status is changing, increasingly becoming diffused from traditional positions and often becoming extremely transitory in its nature. Information, thanks to the internet and social media, is now dispersed and accessible to more and more people at a time and at faster speeds.
Global economies are still in a state of flux; growth is still slower than predicted in many areas despite political spin in many countries. Conflict is still a clear and present danger in many areas, there are many disputes that could suddenly escalate; other unknowns include epidemics, will Ebola break out of West Africa, and politics – what will the May 2015 elections bring to the UK, will the UK still be in the European Union in 2016?
As well as the above global and universal challenges there are many others that face 2015’s leaders, no matter at what level in an organisation they may be; three of these main issues are:
• Increasing ambiguity and complexity
Organisations are complex systems operating within wider complex systems; such systems have lives of their own; by their very nature they are dynamic, however this dynamism is non-linear and so unpredictable when compared with the sort of “complicated” systems many of us have been trained and educated to expect, these are mechanistic and can be “managed.”
TRANSFORMING
TOMORROW'S
LEADERS