Smart Leadership

Context and Issue

As a result of increased non linearity and intensified networking, the business, societal and academic environment is becoming increasingly complex. Current reductionist paradigm used by leadership leads to suboptimal strategic decisions and missed opportunities.

It would be nice if we had some examples to support this claim. A set of "classical" mistakes. Andreas

Project Objectives

This project will perform empirical research to verify the hypothesis that “smart” leadership – read “complexity aware” leadership – selects trajectories in business, society and academics, that vastly outperform trajectories selected by “non complexity aware” leadership.

Project Approach

Overall steps

Step 1 will be executed as part of the Complexity Science Summer School. Step 1 will be finalized by September 1st 2010.

Step 1: define smart or complexity aware leadership

Step 2: field research to identify cases of complexity aware and complexity unaware leadership

Step 3: define - qualitative - measurements concerning performance in business, society and academics

Step 3: analyze cases for performance

Step 4: conclusions on the outperformance hypothesis

Approach for step 1

Smart or complexity aware leadership is defined as leadership that is capable of identifying and deploying the appropriate complexity-based methodologies, including selecting the related tools and techniques, when faced with a complex problem. This capability needs to be present on the different managerial levels, i.e strategic, tactical and operational.

The capability will be described in a structured way by setting up a three dimensional matrix, containing the description of the sub-capability for each of the constituting elements.

Dimension 1 will contain the taxonomy of complexity based methodologies
Dimension 2 will contain the taxonomy of current complex problems
Dimension 3 will contain the taxonomy of managerial domains: strategic, tactical, operational

Apart from the three dimensional matrix, a taxonomy of business, societal and academic contexts will be developed

The set of complex problems that hit leadership will depend on the business, societal and/or academic context. The context of a start-up company, for instance, is different from the context of two global companies going through a merger process.
There for the sub capabilities within the three dimensional matrix will be tagged with a context indicator.

Finally the logic for assessing leadership for their smartness or complexity awareness will be developed

Leadership will be assessed as smart if they master all sub capabilities tagged with the indicator of their context. Moreover the leadership needs to see the relations and the interdependencies between the different sub-capabilities tagged within their context indicator.

Activities in step one

Activity 1: Brainstorm with the team to develop the draft Smart Leadership Framework (SLF) : matrix, sub capabilities, context and assessment logic (Mon 14 – Tue 15 June)

Activity 2: Challenge the draft SLF with some selected complexity experts and groups of CSSS2010 participants (Wed 16 – Tue 22 June)

Activity 3: Perform desk research (internet, Santa Fe library, ..) to challenge, enrich and optimize the daft SLM (Wed 16 – Tue 22 June)

Activity 4: Develop SLF v1.0 (Wed 23 – Fri 25 June)

Activity 5: Plan activities to finalize the SLF by September 1st

Team Members

Jing Lee, Andreas Ligtvoet, Massimiliano Spaziani, Shiva Mayer and Erik Van den broecke

Budget

A lot of beers and pizza!

Appendix

Original suggestion

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

Dear Li, Andreas, Massimiliano and Shiva,

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.

Thanks so much for the nicely crafted draft, Erik! Let's talk about it tonight. When shall we meet? Lee

As discussed during diner (Shiva, I was not able to trace your down ;-)), we will meet tomorrow at 7.30am for a breakfast meeting. Thanks for reading the draft project description upfront and formulating your remarks, additions, questions .. This way I am sure we will be able to finalize the document during breakfast, so that we can deliver it as requested at 9.00am.