Leadership in Complex Situations

Abstract

The common understanding of position-based leadership may prevent participants from considering better ways to address the continuum of complex situations. By definition, a single person cannot know everything about a complex situation—or it would not be complex (Rittel and Webber, Policy Sci 4:155–169, 1973). This article proposes that leadership be redefined to be the act of voicing a change idea (McCrimmon, Burn! 7 leadership myths in ashes. Action Publishing, Gloucester, 2006) which means those with sufficient courage to speak up in a given situation are, in that moment, leaders. The role of executives/managers/supervisors involves not only voicing their change ideas (thus providing leadership) but also setting the conditions for more voices to be heard. The more complex the situation, the more important it is to seek all relevant perspectives. It then becomes the personal responsibility of each person to voice their change ideas. Anyone could have information, insight, or a possible approach. From this leadership in all perspective, the importance of each conversation is apparent (Stacey, Complex responsive processes in organizations: learning and knowledge creation. Routledge, New York, 2001, Complexity and organizational reality: uncertainty and the need to rethink management after the collapse of investment capitalism. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, London, 2010). Patterns of conversation can be noticed and named that identify an emerging way forward. Ways to embrace wide-ranging voices include utilizing the tenets of knowledge creation (Nonaka The knowledge-creating company. Harvard Business Review, November–December, pp 96–104, 1991) and open space technology (Owen Expanding our now: the story of open space technology. Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, 1997). Choosing this proposed perspective opens the possibility of everyone leading, everyone contributing, and everyone more successfully navigating (perhaps repeatedly) through the complex situation.

The complexity that surrounds us is reflected in recent explorations of globalization (Croci Angelini, 2011), internationalization (Scott-Kennel and von Battenburg, 2012), investment capitalism (Stacey, 2010), information technology (Marler and Liang, 2012), engineering (Bosch-Rekveldt et al. 2011), the Occupy Wall Street movement (Davenport, 2011), Arab Spring (AlSayyad and Massoumi, 2012), and leadership to name a few. Maznevski (2011) in her article The Complexity Conundrum noted the short term focus of managers who were “simply unprepared to anticipate the impact of their decisions in a more complex world” (p. 3) and laments manager naivety in the still lingering economic crisis. Addressing leadership in this volume could help all leaders and managers deal more effectively with the complexity that seems to be increasing at every turn.