The evolution of leadership

For some time we have been looking at leadership and management as processes to run organizations and help the individuals in them to operate with common goals in an efficient way. This view of leadership and management is fading away as we are moving more and more into a truly global economy.

These days many people speak about the recession we are facing, we are already in, or will be in very soon. Interestingly, many “experts” when asked about the measures the Federal Reserve and government agencies are using, point towards interventions that have worked in the past and how to apply them in this particular case. As frequent readers will recall, we are actually dealing with the definition of insanity: “Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results”.

While we acknowledge that our world is changing on a daily basis and it appears this change is accelerating, we are still trying to apply old practices of leadership when it comes to solving problems. Much like I am saddened by the fact that many organizations still believe they should lead in a command and control fashion applying a vertical hierarchy, I am also dismayed by the backwards approach to our modern problems.

In leadership I believe the time of inspiration has begun. I am by no means the first person to say so and it’s not just something that started yesterday. In 2000 while interviewed for an article in Fast Company, Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi said:

“In the 21st Century, organizations need to achieve peak performance by creating conditions that allow them to unleash the power of their people. – not leading them, not by managing them, but by co-inspiring them.”

This inspiration is focused on providing the fertile environment to be creative and develop new solutions to emerging problems. That’s why having six meetings every day, talking about procedures to keep a process going, or managing processes to achieve small advances, is not what leadership should be focusing on anymore. Rather we need to find what differentiates us in the Western world from those in the global economy who gladly produce goods and services for a comparatively low hourly rate.

For me the evolution of leadership is directly related to the achievement of wisdom. As you have read in the past, by my definition, wisdom is the sum of knowledge and experience. Some of the new competitors in the global marketplace might have a longer history than the United States, Britain, France, Germany or other European economic powers. Japan just celebrated the 1000th anniversary of a certain book and China can look back at more than 6000 years of history. Still, the modern global economy is not really based in this ancient history, but in experiences and advancements of the last approximately 150 years.

With this perspective, the Western countries clearly have the experience advantage. It’s not a matter of better, greater, earlier; it’s just a simple fact. When we want to advance on a global scale, I believe we should each focus on what we are good at and what is needed.

In the Eastern emerging powers, the standard of living needs to be raised, human rights need to become a matter of all aspects of life and providing basic (and maybe more and more advanced) goods to the enormous populations is a challenging goal.

For the Western economic powers, the goal should be to provide solutions to the problems of the globe. These solutions will need to be based in the significant economic experience. This allows wisdom and creativity to exist. True evolving leadership has the aim to share. We can and shall develop the solutions of the future and have their manifestations produced in those areas of the world where high quality production at affordable rates is possible.

For these new developments to emerge, an inspirational environment needs to be present. It is formed by allowing people to have time to reflect and wait for solutions to emerge in front of their inner eye. There are a lot of similarities to an artist waiting for inspiration to direct the shape of the next sculpture, the colors of the next painting, the sound and rhythm of the next symphony.

No longer can we afford to see leadership as defining a goal, communicating it to the managers of the organization, and have them develop the processes to realize these goals. The goals themselves have to emerge, directing us to see the processes required to refine them to a point that we can describe them in such detail that other members in the global community can construct the products that will make these goals become reality.

Axel Meierhoefer, President AMC LLC