Smart Leadership

Complexity: Friend or Foe ?

(Erik Van den broecke). I am setting up a new initiative – code name “The European Institute for Complexity Embracement”, that aims to foster “smart leadership” (read: complexity aware leadership) in business, government and academia. By mid July we will finalize the service portfolio. Per service we need to define the service value, service pricing and target groups. Furthermore high level service descriptions (process, techniques, tools) need to be described. As from mid July we will go to market.

Today we have identified four candidate services, namely: foresight, organizational performance, training on complexity related approaches and complexity awareness for leaders & decision makers.

First thing is to brainstorm on leadership/management related, complexity based, services.

• I'd be interested in discussing what (potentially) goes wrong if you do not take a complexity perspective Ligtvoet

   -> That would be nice! To give you already some food for thought, I provide you a link to the slide pack on our initiative, regards, Erik Van den broecke

• (Giovanni Petri) Same. I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean (as I'm not a biz/gov person) but I'd gladly discuss it further.
• First idea as a response to the slides is that this also reminds me of the idea of embracing uncertainty; this is e.g. propagated in the Real Options idea of financing projects. Basically, instead of seeing uncertainty (complexity) as a risk, it should be seen as an opportunity. This does require a change in decision makers' thinking, which is exactly what you suggest in the slides, right? I am working with some colleagues on a paper on buying/selling (the concept of) real options - we could parallel that with complexity. Ligtvoet

   -> THIS EVENING (Monday) 8PM to 9PM, GREAT HALL, for the ones interested: I will present some slides explaining the project. 
   -> After that we can discus to finetune the objective and approach of the project.   
   -> @Daniel: can we use the classroom/projector?"
   -> HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE, Erik van den broecke.

FURTHER DISCUSSION TO DEFINE THE PROJECT: tonight (Tuesday) 7pm

• Hi Li, Shiva, Andreas and Massimiliano. So many thx for your interest in the project "Smart Leadership"
• Perhaps we can meet after diner, at 7pm, walk or drive to the city, have a drink, .. and in the meantime exchange further ideas on the objectives and approach for the project.
• What do you think about it ?

Regards, Erik

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Based on the discussions we had yesterday, I have developed a draft project description. I would propose that we gather this evening to finalize the document, Erik.