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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Choose Leadership Blog
Articles from: complexity
One More Time: Leaders Need Coaches
One of the most common refrains we hear from new leadership coaching clients is “Wow, it’s really great to be able to step back and talk about me in the context of my work and organisation. No one else ever listens to me like that, including my boss or partner." When...
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...
Being with Polarities
Brian Emerson & Kelly Lewis have written a short book about a complex topic, polarities: paradoxical situations in which two seemingly opposite yet interdependent states need to coexist over time in order for success to occur. Why? Either/or thinking creates binary worlds and narrows our options to “this or that”.
Making Sense of Cynefin
If you are looking for a deep dive into complexity theory, then this book is not for you. If you want a fuller understanding of its impact in the world, it is well worth the read. Different practitioners share how they have made use of and experienced the framework, and David Snowden, if truth be told.
Where are we and how did we get here?
It’s that time of the year again. No Mo May is over and the grass can be cut. The bees are flourishing. And the year is almost halfway over! Man alive, where is the time going? Indeed, where is the year going? June is the perfect time to step back as a team and share...
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...
Complexity and getting out of feeling stuck
One of my favourite ways to work with clients who are navigating complex contexts is through “balance” coaching. Co-active balance coaching is about finding and standing in perspectives which serve the client – perspectives which create possibilities, rather than...
Complexity Needs Leaders from Behind
The conversation got up this week in Choose Leadership HQ about complexity and leadership. Dave Snowden defines complex systems as ones with some constraints, but where everything is connected, except we don’t know what the connections are. We can assess probability...
In complex environments, leaders must stop being right
Take a moment and notice: What does it feel like to be right? I bet you can’t really tell. Because it just feels … normal. I’m sure that you can answer much more easily what being wrong feels like. I’m guessing: Embarrassing, shameful, wanting to hide it from others …...
Leading in Complexity
In times of complexity, many leaders wait for more information as they don’t see themselves able to make a decision when they have to consider too many entangled and unpredictably moving parts. Their inability to make decisions puts teams and whole organisations under...