"If you're in a bad situation, don't worry, it'll change. If you're in a good situation, don't worry, it'll change."
-- John A. Simone Jr.
The Meaning to be Made in a VUCAlicious World
Found this primer to the challenges facing the Next Generation Leaders on Jessica Margolin’s site. Called, Next Generation Leadership it is a short PDF on leading in the VUCA world.
VUCA stands for: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous-the four horsemen of chaos and complexity.
Margolin goes on to astutely assert that success will favor those who thrive in VUCA environments. Couldn’t agree more.
When we talk about capacity evolution, we have just an environment in mind. Our work in Japan has brought us client after client who are caught flat-footed as they rather suddenly have to try and navigate a world of little certainty, rapid & unpredictable change, and situations with no and many “right” answers that are often questions themselves.
In a VUCA world, leaders need the capacity to perceive, act and make meaning in non-linear, trans-rational ways. Some come to it naturally, some will be called, many will have to be shown the way.
Where do you fit in?
Tags: ambiguity, capacity evolution, complexity, leadership, uncertainty, volatility
Integrity
This is the redux of a post I wrote awhile back in a previous blogging incarnation:
There are a number of models for integrity: honesty, fairness, being faithful. They honor standing for truth, standing for justice, standing for and keeping a promise.
Fundamentally, integrity is often seen as a matter of unity. Do you do what you say? Do you say what you mean? Are you walking the talk? Do you say “yes” and mean it? Do you stand for what you believe?
Often, people we see as having integrity are those we feel we can trust, those people who (we believe) aren’t going to bad mouth us when we leave the room, the politician who (we believe) will actually do something about health care. They stand for something, we believe in it and they inspire us to also believe in them.
There is something about integrity that grounds a person for us, makes them dependable, makes them someone we want to follow or be with. There is something about a show of integrity that moves us. Remember this:
Another example is this stirring recount from Old School by Ellis Amdur of Kino Shizue, then head of the Higo-ryu naginata, a true warrior on the floor of the Tokyo Budokan stopping the “show” for her match with Abe Toyoko, head of the Tendo-ryu (another naginata school):
It was 1982, at the All Japan Seniors Competition, featuring kendo, jukendo, and naginata. Kino Sensei fought first with an eighth-dan kendo teacher. Using Higo Ko-ryu techniques, her stances were low and solid, and she aggressively attacked throughout. Her most effective attack was to fake a cut to the head, then sweep into a cut under her opponent’s arm when he responded to the feint. Though this is not considered a “point” in either kendo or atarashi naginata, it was one of the few unarmored places open to attack in ancient warfare. At one point, her opponent cut at her head. She sidestepped. In a move typical of modern kendo, he continued his movement past her, exposing his back. She simply turned and struck him three times before he could turn around.
At the end of the shiai, the announcer decided that enough time had been spent on the “old folks” matches, and tried to move the program to it’s next segment, an exibition of atarashi naginata done in unison to music. However, there was another individual waiting to engage Kino Sensei, already dressed in protective armor. The announcer breezily apologized for the lack of time over the loudspeaker.
Kino Sensei shook her head and walked out to the center of the Budokan, a huge performance hall, perhaps a third as big as a baseball park. All alone she stood at the center of the floor, with the butt of her weapon planted firmly on the wooden floor.
Silence.
The young women who had fluttered onto the floor to do their performance, looked at each other and drifted back to the sidelines in small groups. Nervous laughter went through the audience.
The announcer rather patronizingly said that “…we all appreciate Kino Sensei’s spirit! We have to move on now!”
She ignored him.
Finally, he and two officials of the kendo federation went out on the floor to remonstrate with her. She ignored them for five minutes, standing there, a warrior holding a bridge to a more glorious past, all alone. Finally, the officials went back to their seats, and the announcer grudgingly stated that there would be one more match. The hall erupted in cheers, and Abe Toyoko Sensei walked onto the floor.
To lead you don’t need integrity. People will follow or settle for much less. But as a leader, I encourage you to ask where do I stand? What do I stand for? If you reflect on the above, in these times of great change, I hope you’ll know when it’s your time, your place to make a stand.
Tags: integrity, leadership
The Power of Permaculture Principles
David Holmgren in his excellent book Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability lays out 12 principles for engaging with the eco-systems in which we live in truly sustainable ways.
For those of you who don’t know about permaculture, the quick and dirty definition is that it is a way of life that provides a low energy, high yield, eco-systemically coherent approach to living with the land. The idea is that by understanding how things work in your particular place you can partner with the systemic dynamics in a way that maximizes utility, output and performance while preserving and enriching diversity.
Holmgren’s 12 principles are as follows:
4. Apply Self-Regualtion and Accept Feedback
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources & Services
7. Design from Patterns to Details
8. Integrate rather than Segregate
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
12. Creatively Use and respond to Change
These principles work for apartment balconies, small backyards and gardens, and large plots of land as well as providing insight into general living, corporate management and community planning. This may well be the way of the future folks. Learn it, know it, live it.
Tags: permaculture, permaculture principles, sustainability
The Seven Transformations of Leadership
In a landmark 2005 article David Rooke and Bill Torbert outlined leadership stages as defined by the Leadership Development Framework. The framework is a list of the seven action logics and their characteristics. The action logics correspond to the Interkannections system in the following manner:
(X) Opportunist: Wins any way possible. Self-oriented; manipulative; “might makes right.”
(G) Diplomat: Avoids conflict. Wants to belong; obeys group norms; doesn’t rock the boat.
(I) Expert: Rules by logic and expertise. Uses hard data and force of opinion to gain consensus and buy-in.
(T) Achiever: Meets strategic goals. Promotes teamwork; juggles managerial duties and responds creatively to market demands to achieve goals.
(H) Individualist: Operates in unconventional ways. Ignores rules he/she regards as irrelevant. Recognizes value and is inclusive of multiple perspectives.
(A) Strategist: Generates organizational and personal change. Highly collaborative; weaves visions with pragmatic, timely initiatives; challenges existing assumptions.
(U) Alchemist: Generates social transformations (e.g., Nelson Mandela). Reinvent themselves, organizations and communities in historically significant ways.
These are stages of development world leaders and the guy and gal down the street pass through. For a great description of these stages in action in a business context I strongly suggest you download The Seven Transformations of Leadership from the Harvard Business Review website.
Check back for more on leadership stages soon!
Tags: capacity evolution, I-shaped people, leadership, leadership stages, leadership transformation, t-shaped people
The LimiTaTions of T
Let’s be honest, this whole “I-shaped“, “T-shaped” thing, though, useful is, by itself, a pretty big over simplification of the complex and diverse wholeness of a human being. I have found a number of posts and comments on other blogs that speak to this quite clearly.
At peterme.com there is a good discussion about this:
Let me step back a bit. I have long had issue with the fetishization of “T-shaped” people for the simple reason that I’m not T-shaped. I’ve never been able to articulate my “vertical leg”. Throughout my career I’ve moved from activity to activity, from web development to interface design to information architecture to user research to product strategy. And I think my success is due to my ability to understand the synthesis across these skills and disciplines, to appreciate how to orchestrate them, to know how these integrate to achieve optimal affect.
And at Ryskamp.org Bob Ryskamp has this to say:
Consider this my plea for the design community to stop using the term “T-shaped people”. It’s demeaning, over-simplistic, misleading, and dangerously-influential, which combined with the prior three traits makes for trouble—that starts with “T”…
There are two problems with this phrase: T-shaped people don’t exist, and having T-shaped traits does not indicate design success…
To refer to them as “T-shaped” ignores all these other essential parts of each designer. That is why I say that calling someone “T-shaped” is demeaning and over-simplistic. People shaped like “T”s just don’t exist.
They’re right. We are much more than than any type or shape. These are just shorthand and simplified attempts at understanding something much more complex-a living, breathing complex, open human system. We are much more and will always be much more than any system of classification can make us.
What is important is to use these systems as a means for understanding ourselves, understanding others and how we relate to and engage the world around us. At the heart of this is our capacity to do so, of which being “T-shaped” “I”, “H” or “A-shaped” is only one crucial yet incomplete part of a much larger and complex whole.
Tags: A-shaped people, capacity, I-shaped people, t-shaped people
We Do as We Are (Part 1: T-Shaped People)
A foundational element of our capacity to understand and engage the world is the way in which we relate to the world. In other words, we understand that of which we are aware–what we perceive. We engage with what we believe the world to be. How we engage with the world is who we are. A simple example is this: If I perceive the world as fundamentally other or separate from me then I will tend to be in opposition toward it. I will tend to try to control it, manipulate and use it as end to my means. That is who I am. Sound familiar?
In the this series of posts we’ll look at the different stages of perception we pass through as adults and the types of people these stages of perception tend to produce.
There has been a lot written about T-shaped people. For a good list of links visit Keith Instone’s blog. Tim Brown’s article in Fast Company talks about their strategy at IDEO:
We look for people who are so inquisitive about the world that they’re willing to try to do what you do. We call them “T-shaped people.” They have a principal skill that describes the vertical leg of the T — they’re mechanical engineers or industrial designers. But they are so empathetic that they can branch out into other skills, such as anthropology, and do them as well. They are able to explore insights from many different perspectives and recognize patterns of behavior that point to a universal human need. That’s what you’re after at this point — patterns that yield ideas.
T-shaped people can dive deep like their predecessors, the I-shaped people, but they have left the safety and comfort of their expertise behind. They engage and appreciate others and the contribution those people might bring to the project. However, people at the T-stage in their development may still tend to see their wide ranging connections as a means to a specific end. In other words, if you are in the T-shaped person’s network, you may be being used.
To really get egalitarian, we’re actually not looking at “T”, we’re talking about “H”. The difference is this: at the “T” level of capacity we are just beginning to engage others and the world in their complex glory. Others are still others. The world is still “out there.” When we make the move from “T” to “H” we take on a more inclusive perspective. The boundaries between “me”, “you” and “the world” begin to blur. The flower of inter-relation blossoms and the potential for organizations, communities and nations to really begin to transform emerges.
Tags: capacity, H-shaped people, I-shaped people, t-shaped people