Is it time for an extreme form of leadership?

Order order

The industrial era organisational approach, ie Taylorism, is an approach that many if not all organisational leaders are looking to emulate. The modern business classic, E-Myth Enterprise book by Michael E. Gerber encourages readers to work on their business and not in it. Build a sausage machine and simply work out how to turn the handle faster and with less effort. The underlying assumption is that you can ‘process-ise’ people such that they operate like a well-behaved machine component. The indoctrination process for becoming a wage cog starts early, your first day at school.

It’s complex

‘Unfortunately’ people are realising that having a disconnect between who they are and how they are expected to behave at work causes cognitive dissonance. Such stress results in the cogs behaving ‘badly’.

So even in a factory, whether it be generating products or services, humanity eventually contaminates the machine.

So even in a factory, whether it be generating products or services, humanity eventually contaminates the machine. The approved culture morphs towards something that no leader or manager can control. Consequently unplanned behaviours and outcomes emerge. In a complex world, traditional governance mechanisms no longer work. Leaders feel insecure. Books such as the E-Myth Enterprise book have joined the emerging genre of business erotica. Delightful to read but ultimately of little use.

Chaos rules

The result of macroenvironmental forces increasingly bearing down on organisations create chaos and thus modern-day organisations that desperately try to apply process-centric principles become what might be called ‘dis-organisations’. The days of forecasting profit etc are over. So are the days of reliance on one organisational model. Regardless, the business schools continue to churn out bureaucrats when we need firefighters.

Disorderly leadership

So to take stock from a leadership perspective, there are three scenarios or levels:

• Order

• Complexity

• Chaos.

BTW David Snowden’s Cynevin framework is a source of insight in this respect.

Order

We are rapidly moving away from this model. Though it might appear that we are moving towards it in respect of intelligent AI agents replacing high maintenance humans. But even a whirring peopleless factory will be ill-equipped for a chaotic world, where context is everything.

Such organisations are led by administrators and efficiency is their god.

Complexity

We have had this for a long time. In fact complexity arrived with the very first workplace humans. It’s just that the humanity element has taken a while to express itself. Effective leaders in this domain are akin to therapists. They treat people as individuals and look for a happy medium in respect of the needs of the organisation and the individual. They influence (massage) rather than control the organisation.

Chaos

My go-to analogy here is the barroom brawl (I was raised in an inner London pub).  There is no time to work up a plan and get it signed off. There is no point trying to reason with a frenzied crowd who are all feeding off each other in respect of destruction. So leaders need to be more akin to riot police. Job number one is to regain order. Worrying about dirty shoes on the carpet or damaging a sofa is not their primary focus. If they can get the public bar under control, then normal operations can resume there whilst they set about regaining order in the saloon bar.

Extreme leadership

I appreciate that the idea of leaders as riot police is unlikely to gain traction. So hopefully you will not notice my metaphor shift to leader as firefighter. Firefighters are innovative, act quickly, get to the root of the problem whilst managing significant risk.

Whilst I am an advocate of ubiquitous leadership to make this transition, we need leaders who are comfortable in chaos. Firefighters, A&E professionals, space mission specialists and special forces come to mind. In the absence of suitable conventional talent, then reformed organised/disorganised crime leaders are likely a good call.

My main point is that we need a new and perhaps more extreme type of leadership to guide both business and society through what is becoming an increasingly chaotic world.