Traditional notions of leadership and management are based on certainty; and the assumption that the world is ‘knowable’; that systems are predicable, efficient and effective. In this type of world leaders rely on a formula or abstract models to plan and control organisational problems (1).
Complexity Science in the 21st Century has shown how naive these assumptions are in a world that is never stable, constantly evolving into new structures, patterns and interactions. In this reality of the 21st Century the notion of a single heroic leader having all the answers is no longer viable (2).
New words and meanings are therefore evolving to help organisations understand leadership as a system-wide behaviour, not something one person does. This behaviour emerges from the dynamic nature of the interactions and interdependencies between people, ideas, organisational units and divisions, as well as whole organisations and their business environments (2).
(1) Plowman and Duchon. 2008. Dispelling Myths About Leadership: From Cybernetics to Emergence, Complexity Leadership Part 1, Information Age Publishing. (2) Schreiberand Carley. 2008. Network Leadership: Leading for Learning and Adaptability, Complexity Leadership Pert 1, Information Age Publishing.
New approaches to leadership in Western Australia
During 2011 the POWA Institute is introducing Complexity Leadership programmes into WA. These programmes are based on the concepts of complexity science and the new approach to leadership that is being called for throughout the world, as demonstrated by the key findings of the IBM 2010 survey of 1541 CEO’s world-wide:
Our current complexity leadership programme:
