Leading in a Complex World Chapter 1

1 LEADING THE POSSIBLE

Leadership by its very definition is about taking people and ideas to new places.

This is the rise of VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

organizations are also more complex because there is much more information available and things are much more interconnected.

What we don’t notice is that because we are using the past as a kind of measure of what’s likely, we have sharply constrained the set of possibilities when we made our decisions.

Complexity is about getting our heads around what is possible (because anything could happen) rather than what is probably going to happen (which is determined from what has happened before).

this task of leading in times as complex and volatile as today is a bigger stretch for us humans than anything else we’ve ever had to do.

there is a way to grow more able to handle the complexity in the world around us: three habits of mind that stretch your thinking capacity and help you grow more “complexity of mind.

These habits of mind are deceptively simple: • Asking different questions • Taking multiple perspectives • Seeing systems

the thing leaders do is answer: they craft a vision, get others to follow them, make decisions purportedly at the drop of a hat.

Stereotypical leaders have vision, charisma, and brilliant minds. They also tend to be male and, oddly, tall.

One leadership skill that you might not even see as a leadership skill at all is the power of asking different questions, which pulls against the stereotype of leaders having all the answers.

most of us ask questions to confirm our hypotheses, not out of any deep curiosity or doubt.

In a time of complexity and uncertainty, though, this pattern is unhelpful. You don’t know which data might be more important or where the novel solution to an emerging issue might be hiding. Your old patterns constrain you, and your old questions keep you in familiar territory. It is new and different questions that open up

new and different possibilities.

figure out what you really don’t know and to ask those questions.

Trying to figure out what questions you’re asking and making an intentional shift to different questions opens up new avenues for exploration in an uncertain and volatile world.

Your mindset determines your behavior, determines what is or is not possible in a given situation, including what questions you think to ask.

Narrowing to decide is key for someone who needs to take action quickly.

It’s not very good for coming up with innovative solutions to complex problems.

Although, as leaders, we often use threats and stresses as powerful prompts to action, there is a cost in this: it is much harder to learn when you’re faced with threat.

FIGURE 1.1

shift your mindset and your mindset can shift your questions.

Leadership is about gathering people together—even people with quite different goals and understandings—and helping them build bridges that take everyone to a new place.

Understanding other people’s perspectives is a central tool in bridge building, because until you know how others see the world, you’ll have little opportunity to influence or learn from their perspective.

If you think about an issue with which you’re struggling, you can imagine for a minute the variety of people and perspectives involved.

You could probably map them together, watching for the ways the players intersect with one another, the way they hold or give away power or information, the way they seem to cluster around a variety of different primary interests.

Taking into account multiple perspectives simply involves remembering that whatever other people do, they tend to do it because they think it’s the right thing.

taking multiple perspectives also helps widen your scope to improve your problem solving.

When the way is not simple and predictable, one of the core requirements of those in power is likely to be to cede some of the control to others and let the system itself begin to come into a new pattern, guided but not controlled by those in power.

In a complex world, as we’ll explore together, it takes a collective sharing of power, creativity, and perspectives to become agile and nuanced enough to lead into the uncertain future.

As you try to ask different questions to grow your curiosity, take multiple perspectives without losing your own, and influence the system even though you’ll never be able to see the whole thing, you are always trying to keep your head above the paradoxical waters of leadership.

The main gist is that we are thinking for a new and complex time with old habits- especially leading with tendency to quick assessments and making multiple decisions. Take time to ask different kinds of questions and consider things from multiple perspectives to come up with truly innovative solutions to complex problems.

Definitely going to try to ask some different questions- especially when you get into time pressured situation you just tend to make decisions based on your experience and  this must be hampering innovative thinking at times.