Leadership Challenges for the 21st Century

"The way in which we are managing our people is still destroying them" - Ed Deming

Constant change is a reality of our daily lives. Everything is evolving and reinventing itself. Yet our collective paradigm on management and the role of managers in organisations, is something that has not yet done the same. The same paradigm of command and control is alive and well within the vast majority of companies today.

Ask any manager to define his job, and chances are that you will get variations on the theme “Plan, Organise, Lead, Control” as originally postulated by Fayol in the early 20th Century. Fayol and Taylor revolutionised the productivity of teams and companies and established the role of managers as we know it today, but let’s face it, that was 100 years ago.

The Management 1.0 paradigm of Fayol, Taylor and others has led to an either/or reference frame which has been woven into the systemic fibre of most organisations. This creates a set of false alternatives, boiling down to the apparent choice between control and chaos.

What happens if we shift away from this dichotomy and rather view control and chaos in any organisations as being in creative tension? More importantly, why would one want to do this?

Consider for a moment the conditions for innovation and creative thinking. Make a list of what enables you to tap into your own creative ideas and thoughts. Make another list with the key characteristics describing the culture of your team or organisation. The more we control, the less room there is for creativity and innovation. In a changing world, the difference between organisations that grow and thrive and those that whither and move towards irrelevance, is their ability to keep up with the change and stay ahead of the competitive curve.

Gary Hamel, author of “The Future of Management” postulates that management innovation is the key distinguishing factor that will enable success in the 21st Century. Management innovation differs from operational-, product-, service- and strategic innovation. It requires us to rethink the way in which we structure and manage interrelationships in our organisations. This goes beyond superficial ideas of inverting the hierarchical paradigm without really changing anything. It requires systemic changes in power relationships, remuneration practices and reward, decision making, the job of setting direction and much more.

Consider your own organisation. If you could start from a blank slate and create a team or company in which the balance between equality and power, efficiency and innovation, autonomy and interdependence as well as fairness and reward were in creative tension with each other, enabling both profit AND the passion of staff, how would this business look?

Practical Exercises:

1. Draw up a list of factors that enable you to access your creative genius. How can you create these conditions for others in your team as well as for yourself?

2. Put 2 hours in your diary next week for doing nothing while at work. Make this non-negotiable. Use these 2 hours to think about a problem you’re experiencing. Notice where you’re at after these 2 hours. Remember that this is not a time of doing, but of “slack”

3. Reflect on your own “paradigm” of what management is and isn’t. Is it relevant to the 21st Century? How much has it really changed since the first day you became a manager?

4. Identify the courageous change your team is hungry for. Start the conversation on what needs to change on a systemic level to enable this. Be patient within the conversation and remember that as a leader your role is to convene with questions, rather than answers in mind.