The mutant offspring of transformational leadership
Our world is full of increasingly technically complex businesses. Often, we visualise our enterprises as a linear translation of “Mission” into “Values” into “Strategies”… before finally arriving at implementation choices, which include choices of technology.
Richard Rumelt describes such linear depictions rather unkindly:
a mutant offspring of the concept of charismatic, then transformational, leadership
(Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt, 2011, p70 )
Unkind, perhaps. But he’s not incorrect. The idea that decision making in our complex world is linear underlies a large amount of waste. For organisations, linear processes are often cult-like behaviours, with little basis in reality.
There are plenty of books and consultancies out there which will be happy to recommend change processes which are linear in origin. Sometimes they incorporate iterative (or “Agile”) aspects, but the linear underpinnings remain. Some of them are well put together (e.g. “no one’s listening and it’s your fault” or Unified Process).
But, the topology of our decision making is multi-dimensional. We don’t deal with just one or two sources of unknown. Rather, at regular intervals, we face a sea of unknowns. Unknown opportunities and problems. Unknown financial, people and technology considerations. We aren’t looking for a linear equation, starting from a few secure footholds. Instead, we must look for the rare islands of solidity amongst this sea of unknowing.
Good leadership means spotting areas of natural alignment. There is a craft to interpreting the data. But, it does not work by simple translation from “mission” to “implementation”. Instead, we consider the sea of possibilities and discover areas where they form coherent footholds on which we can build.
One of the ways we can open ourselves up to success is to set aside the notion that certain aspects of the solution come “first”. We should not look for a “problem” to justify choosing a “solution”. Rather we should look for what problems and what solutions are currently possible, feasible, and relevant. Then we should look to see where some might naturally fit together. Look for patterns of constructive interference.
Then, and only then, we can record our destination in the form of a mission or vision statement. And, such statements are only as good as our journey proves them to be. As we set out for our destination, we may discover that we read the data wrong. Someone else may settle the island first.
Our true task is to read the data with an open mind, to avoid the trap of linear thinking, and to set aside comforting, linear strategies in order to better deal with our non-linear world.
