Ecosystems Instead of Elephants

by Tori Toh

Leadership, management and efficiency within organisations. Very often people view a leader as just one person directing and guiding others for a goal, however that is not fully the case for producing great leadership. Leaders describe what it feels like in their organization almost like riding an elephant, “I am desperately trying to get this elephant to move in a particular direction, but it has a mind of its own and it goes wherever it wants to, leaving me feeling out of control and hanging on for dear life!”. A more effective and efficient approach is to view it as an ecosystem instead, adaptable, reliant and dependent on one another to produce results, create fresh ideas, follow and “grow” towards a great outcome. 

Peter Drucker’s “yesterday’s logic” explains the worldview on how the world is thought of as being predictable, uniform and controllable like a well-oiled machine that will just execute an action with a button pressed. Following on from this idea, leaders will expect actions and outcomes to be achieved just from a single button press to create a certain result, implying that formulas exist on how to manage, which is not the case. Instead we require a new organisational narrative where we accept the world as also being unpredictable and complex, with the idea of an ecosystem instead of a machine-like living. This would mean viewing leadership in a fundamentally different way. The new narrative would emphasise the multiple interactions and accompanying feedback loops that constantly change systems and behaviours. Other ideas such as the ripple effect with great leadership where good principles of leadership spread within an organization due to interdependence and interactions.

Within these ecosystems, unpredicted ideas and unexpected behaviours can arise leading to new and surprising outcomes and projects, with the idea of more collective attitudes and behaviours from colleagues in a more interdependent way. Social media has also played a huge part in the fueling of these ecosystems with new ideas quickly emerging and spreading and the freedom and ease of expression of people’s opinions shown on multiple platforms to bring about new thoughts.

From the article from management magazine, Drucker suggests that leading organisational eco systems require a new logic which is able to embrace the world as predictable, controllable and linear and as chaotic, unpredictable and non-linear. At times set formulas from the past are beneficial and can help create new ideas  and solve problems, while sometimes these formulas are completely inappropriate for the new emerging dynamic. Therefore leaders of today require the capacity to intuitively sense into and even beyond each situation to seek the most appropriate response, contextually within the webs of relationships they are part of.

There are three key capabilities for leaders of today to ace for greater adaptable leadership. Firstly, ‘Integrating’ ( the first part of ‘Eco Intelligence’), which is the capability that enables ‘matrix or integrative thinking’, extracting value from diverse groups of people and technologies by leveraging the inter-dependencies. In effect it means the creation of psychological safety to help stimulate and generate dialogue between people of many ranks of an organization to basically ”allow things to happen”. The second part is ‘Shaping’, where a strong leader is able to gain focus, create boundaries, define what needs to be done and be able to shape and move things forward with speed and efficiency; the capacity to “make things happen”. Lastly, is ‘Intuitive Intelligence’ or ‘Sensing’, requiring leaders to not only sense a situation and know what to do but to also know when to bring fresh perspectives and insight to a project, connecting the dots between ideas and feel a gut feeling and knowing of when something is needed. Great leaders of the 21st century are requiring more skills in ceasing the moment to make things happen and to be agile and adaptable to bring forth the right kind of leadership to produce great outcomes. Creating ecosystems instead of riding the elephant looking down in a top down approach will help bring about new ideas and projects for organisations and also help tackle problems and overcome challenges.