Chaos, chaos, chaos all around, one can but only move with the flow
Doing research around what Prof. Chris Breen, Emeritus Associate Professor at UCT and programme director of the Leading Executive Programme (LEP) at the Graduate School of Business (GSB), is teaching, I found it incredibly interesting that the latest thinking around leadership is really to give in to chaos; to give in to the swirl of uncertainty, and to actually be in awe of the tumultuous complexity of things; and to just best leverage that which is at hand, in the moment, and act.
Being a musician I picture a sort of jazz ensemble: Miles Davis, Coltrane, Bra Hugh, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, all riding a constantly evolving and transforming, pulsating groove, finding their opportune moments to improvise over the top. I mean, in such a scenario, there are no limits, only possibilities – thrilling, magical ones at that. They don’t dwell on the movements of the moments before; instead they are totally immersed in the now, forming the melodies of the coming movements as they unfold. Of course what determines the quality of the tune is the amount of time each instrumentalist has spent on their craft, how open they are to allow others their ‘voice’ and to deeply listen to it, and their ability to learn from one spontaneous bar to the next. If they can do this, they form meaning out of the chaos, and harness it.
Breen says, in today’s business environment, what Eddie Obeng calls the world after midnight, leaders need to unstick themselves from their old ways of seeing the world and make a radical and often brave shift towards a new way of being. Obeng says the rules of the game have changed, whether leaders are ready for it or not.
“About fifteen years ago all the rules about how to run a business, organisation or government successfully were changed or deleted and a completely new set of rules has been in operation ever since,” says Obeng. “We have moved as a world, from an age when we could learn faster than our local environments changed, to one where the local environment of individuals, organisations and governments changes faster than we can learn.” And when learning falls behind the rate of change, Obeng says, “It basically breaks everything”. So, classic know-it-all heroic leadership approaches no longer work. Obeng calls for leadership from the front, not the top; leading by allowing others who may have better answers to fix things; leading without an entrenched knowledge and experience.
What is required in the world after midnight is the type of leader Otto Scharmer speaks of, one who operates in the paradigm of what he calls “Theory U”, one who can “learn from the future” – the unfolding melody.
Scharmer emphasises the importance of an open mind, so as to learn, an open heart so as to work with others, and an open will, so as to act. The voice of judgement, voice of cynicism, and the voice of fear should be cast out as one “deepens the attention to the current moment” and becomes a host for change.
This makes sense in a chaotic universe where no-one can control the complexity nor predict the outcomes of the millions of little events happening all the time, but one can learn constantly and explore and innovate without hindrance if fully immersed in the moment. “One need only know two things,” says Scharmer, “the direction you want to go, and, the very next step.”
The LEP course is like music to my ears, what does it sound like to you?
