Simple stories get in your way when trying to solve complex challenges. Instead of making up simple stories, a beginner’s mind is the way out of this trap.
Beginner’s Mind
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Articles from: Complexity and Uncertainty
Navigating organisational change
“I feel like we’re this close to figuring this all out”, the CEO says smiling. And then she adds after a little pause, “even though I know it’s much more complex and we aren’t.” Everyone on the Board is smiling now, because they are all aware of their own conflicting...
Leading in Complexity
Leading in Complexity and Uncertainty requires a new set of skills and is grounded in the ability to step into different perspectives.
Your Inner Game drives your Outer Game
I have been reflecting on two quotations for a few weeks now: First, Bill O’Brien’s “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.” And Carl Jung’s “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will...
Start with Who, not What or How
Bill O’Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance, observed of his efforts to lead transformational change in his organisation, that “the success of an intervention depends on the inner condition of the intervener.” To make clear what this means, O’Brien is making the...
U-Lab: When relying on your experience gets you nowhere
To be successful in our fast paced and uncertain world, leaders can no longer apply old solutions to new problems. We need a new way of leadership to solve the problems which our old thinking has created. In other words, leaders need to help their teams and organisations to stop …
Leading from the System
Collective intelligence trumps the combined intelligence of individuals. This has implications for leadership. Leaders need to shift from 1:1 solution finding to leading from the system. Let us show you a great resource for learning by doing how this can work for you and how you can uplevel your team’s problem solving capacity.
Five Dysfunctions of a Team Re-imagined
Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Dysfunctions of a Team (2002) is a classic framework to better understand why a team may not be delivering hoped for results. It is a means of diagnosing what might be wrong, and it offers remedial steps which allow a team to move forward more...
Why Use Co-Leaders?
The first co-leaders I worked with, my Mom, was known to say “Two heads are better than one.” She would say this when we would be working on a particularly thorny arithmetic problem, looking for an article of clothing or book that I had invariably misplaced, or trying...
Co-Leading is the new Normal
Organisations and their leaders must deal with rising complexity and uncertainty which leads to overwhelm. Co-leading is a way out of that overwhelm.
Hitting a wall
In an unpredictable and complex environment, leaders and organisations often find themselves hitting a wall: an apparently insurmountable obstacle.
Leading in complexity: Navigating the Unknown with Confidence
Whether you’re leading a team, a division, or an organisation, I’m pretty sure you think that you have to have the answers in order to be seen as a strong leader, inspire trust, feel that you deserve your position. Yet in a complex environment, that belief...