Leadership in Chaos - Leaders Digest: 32nd edition.

Hi 👋, welcome back to our 32nd edition 🙌.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.”

Carl Jung

Culture: three body problems.

Picture this. You’ve just hired a candidate. They’ve a great track record, in the same role, in two previous companies. Everyone’s excited. 6 months later, they’re struggling. Same job. Same person. Different results. Why? Well Dave Hodges wrote how it’s just like the famous three body problem. Complex systems don’t behave in the way we expect. Science could predict the behaviour of two bodies, but discovered it was impossible to predict three. Three bodies create chaotic dynamics. Tiny changes in one, can completely alter the system. Behaviour in organisations, is similar. Every action emerges from the interaction of three components: Someone (the person), Somewhere (the environment), and Something (the task). And like gravitational bodies, these three elements continuously influence each other. And importantly, it is how they interact, and what affordances emerge, that determine the results.

A thought for leaders: Traditional change management looks at problems, identifies what’s broken, and tries to fix it (root cause analysis). But organisational problems, are much more like three body problems. Only by looking at the system, and how each element interacts together, can we truly understand their complex nature. They can’t be deconstructed. They are, as Rory says, Sudoko problems. And small changes to the someone, the somewhere, or the something, can have huge impact. The individual is obviously important, but remember…..it’s always a three body problem.

Leadership: jazz rhythms.

Control is an odd thing. Leaders can obsess about getting and keeping it. It can feel empowering. And in chaotic, uncertain times, it can feel safe. Traditional leadership advocated for tight control. Like an orchestra conductor. But control is often just an illusion. And worse, a culture of tight control can stifle innovation, and create dependency. Rather than obsessing about symphonic control and orchestration, great leaders today know the world is more like a jazz session. Consequently, as Michael Hudson wrote, leaders today need to find rhythm, not control, to succeed in chaos. Like the rhythm in a jazz ensemble. As Michael writes, “in our BANI world (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible), sustainable performance comes not from tighter control but from laying down a beat over which your ensemble can play”.

A thought for leaders: One way to lay down a beat, as recent HBR research found, is with team rituals. Collective activities (like huddles or progress updates) that teams regularly engage in (and attribute meaning to) can be hugely beneficial. They can provide a rhythm of metronomic certainty. Just like jazz, they help to enable collective individualism. Apart, then together. Independent, then collective. So, thinking about your own ensemble, do you keep the rhythm for them? Do you inspire your best talent to improvise brilliantly, to improve the entire group, but still keep to the beat? And are you consistently enabling them to play at their very best?

C.S. Lewis once wrote “we are what we believe we are”. And Henry Ford said, “whether you think you can, or you can’t – you’re right”. Both are bang on. Attitude and beliefs are everything (see also here). So this widely circulated piece on The Death of the Corporate Job, by Alex McCann, was interesting. In it, he breaks down a post-COVID malaise that’s set in. Lockdown exposed how little some people felt they really did. And how little value they believe they deliver. And people, it seems, haven’t recovered. Which is now accelerated by AI. Many see their jobs as “elaborate performance art. They’re professional email forwards. They’re human middleware between systems that could probably talk directly to each other.” Others believe their life is a PowerPoint slide show. Something’s bubbling up. Might be a good time to check what your people believe?

A thought for leaders: Leaders are also meaning makers. You provide purpose. You inspire belief. Look at how filmmaker Christopher Nolan shapes beliefs, “Every film I do, I have to believe that I’m making the best film that’s ever been made. Films are really hard to make. They are all-consuming. So it had never occurred to me there were people doing it who weren’t trying to make the best film that ever was. Why would you otherwise? Even if it’s not going to be the best film that’s ever been made, you have to believe that it could be”. Passion and belief are contagious. Are you a super spreader for yours?

Podcast: EP 21: Bias in Chaos

We’ve included this episode because it ties closely to the Belief Crisis piece above. It explores how conviction can both comfort and confine. Strong beliefs reassure us, but they also filter how we see and experience the world, often unconsciously.

You can listen to it here.

Enjoy revisiting or newly discovering it 😊

You can follow Flow Group on LinkedIn here.

Hope you enjoyed, and please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

P.S. This month’s featured artist is Christy Lee Rogers. Rogers is known for her large-scale, maximalist photographs shot completely underwater, suspending figures in the midst of billowing garments. Using a range of lighting effects and vibrant fabrics to compose dramatic images, her style is evocative of Baroque or Rococo paintings and murals. Born in Hawai’i, she was fascinated by water from an early age. “For me, water has always been both chaos and freedom,” the artist says. “It strips away control and asks us to see ourselves in a different light. That’s where my stories begin.”