Why Collaborative Leadership Makes Sense
Managing Natural Resources in a Complex World
The Death of Business as Usual
Continual litigation. Decreased budgets. Climate change. Increased public scrutiny. The external environment keeps getting more challenging, and demands keep increasing. If that wasn’t enough, there are internal changes to deal with: administrative reorganizations, a changing workforce, departmental mandates, political swings that lead to drastic shifts in policy and priorities. Any one of these factors, in isolation, would place stress on an organization. Put them together, and federal resource management agencies are caught in a perfect storm of continual upheaval. There is simply no such thing as “business as usual” anymore.
The Leader’s Dilemma
For leaders, these trends can produce a feeling of being bombarded by demands and overwhelmed by information. When a leader looks for tools to cope with this situation, traditional wisdom (“plan better” or “gather more data”) offers little help. The reason may lie in the increasingly complex environment in which we live.
Everyone agrees that the pace of change has increased exponentially. Everyone agrees that our world is more interconnected than ever before. What we may fail to appreciate, however, is the implications those two factors have for our lives and our organizations.
Increased rates of change and increased connectedness lead to degrees of complexity, unlike those we have encountered before. Complex systems are intrinsically different than complicated ones; they behave in different ways based on different governing dynamics. This article summarizes insights about today’s complex environment and how it impacts leadership.
“Any one of these factors, in isolation, would place stress on an organization. Put them together, and federal resource management agencies are caught in a perfect storm of continual upheaval. There is simply no such thing as “business as usual” anymore.”
Complicated vs. Complex
In the article, “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” David Snowden and Mary Boone point out that complicated systems have many interlocking parts, each with a different function. They use a Ferrari as an example. If you have a problem with your Ferrari, you don’t want to lift up the hood and just start trying things: you want a mechanic with particular expertise in Ferraris. This example illustrates the principle that when dealing with a complicated system, expert knowledge often provides answers about how to intervene when something is not working.
There are, however, two important characteristics of Ferraris (and complicated systems in general) that prevent them from qualifying as complex:
Although there are many parts, each with a different purpose, the parts maintain the same function over time. In other words, they do not adapt.
There is one ideal way that these parts are supposed to fit together.
Traditional management tools and approaches (i.e., lengthy Master Plan documents and highly-centralized decision making) emerged from a view of natural resource management as complicated but not necessarily complex. In this model, a single leader made all or most critical decisions, and the staff executed those decisions. The underlying rationale seemed to be that if a leader was smart enough and had enough useful data, he or she could figure out the right decision.
Is Our Worldview Obsolete?
The idea of there being a “right” decision regarding the complex problems that resource managers face seems less and less viable in today’s environment. In her book Leadership and the New Science, Margaret Wheatley argues that our current organizational structures—which emphasize control, standardization, and top-down directives—emerged out of a Newtonian view of the universe as a giant machine, ultimately orderly and ultimately predictable. It was complicated—incredibly complicated, even—but if someone had all the facts, they could theoretically figure out how everything would work. Our organizational structures attempt to replicate that order and predictability on a smaller scale.
Scientific revolutions in the 20th Century, Wheatley points out, have delivered a radically different understanding of the universe, one we have barely begun to come to terms with. The picture of the world revealed through experiments in quantum physics makes the notion of a predictable, machine-like structure obsolete.
On the contrary, they present us with a world in which the very fact of observing a phenomenon changes how that phenomenon unfolds. Embedded in this picture is an understanding of the world as vastly more complex than a predictable machine could be. Instead, the world is seen as a living, interactive system in which everything is connected and everything affects everything else. Wheatley proposes that our organizations, and we ourselves, are still operating on the incomplete and outdated Newtonian model. If she is right, if our mental picture of the universe does not correspond with the reality that we encounter every day, it may help explain why so many leaders feel ill-equipped to respond to the pace and scope of change they face. Simply put, our expectations may be inappropriate and unrealistic.
How, then, can leaders develop a more accurate picture of the environment in which they are operating? And, if they succeed, how will they lead differently? To answer these questions, we need a basic understanding of what makes a system complex and how complex systems differ from complicated ones.
Understanding Complex Systems
The emerging field of complexity science—which studies patterns at work in structures as diverse as economies, eco-systems, epidemics and social networks—has identified basic characteristics common to all complex systems. These include interdependence, adaptation, and unpredictability.
Because of interdependence, any change in a complex system quickly affects the system’s other parts. Because of adaptation, those parts then respond, setting off further chains of effects and responses. As a result, complex systems, such as the social, economic, and political environment in which national resources are managed, are extremely unpredictable.
What implications does this have for leaders responsible for those resources? There are four basic recommendations for leading in a complex environment:
Expect to tame complex problems, not solve them.
Resist coming to a final conclusion.
Pay attention to patterns.
Develop a collaborative leadership approach.
As technology and interconnectedness have reshaped our society, the environments we work in have become far more complex than in the past. When we fail to appreciate this fact, we may bring unrealistic expectations and counterproductive choices in our work as leaders. A desire for quick top-down decisions, final judgments, and solutions that do not have to be monitored can easily backfire. These approaches may lead us to overlook important warning signals and cause problems to ripple outward in ways they need not have.
A more realistic outlook involves containing and managing complex problems, continually questioning one’s assumptions and judgments, and being sensitive to response patterns at work in the environment. A collaborative leadership approach—in which final decision authority is clear and utilized to move things forward but where diverse views and perspectives are genuinely welcomed—will improve the range of information gathered, the quality of final decisions, and the creative thinking displayed. Finally, such an environment will invite levels of ownership and commitment that a traditional, top-down approach does not.
Collaborative leadership takes consistent effort. There is no guarantee a team will get there. However, if they do, the positive results—in terms of quality of decisions, level of commitment, and staff morale—will be well worth the effort.
“...if our mental picture of the universe does not correspond with the reality that we encounter every day, it may help explain why so many leaders feel ill-equipped to respond to the pace and scope of change they face. Simply put, our expectations may be inappropriate and unrealistic.”
“Because of interdependence, any change in a complex system quickly affects the system’s other parts. Because of adaptation, those parts then respond, setting off further chains of effects and responses. As a result, complex systems, such as the social, economic, and political environment in which national resources are managed, are extremely unpredictable.”
Go deeper.
Download the FULL WHITEPAPER which explores the recommendations for leading in a complex environment and shares key elements to collaborative leadership.
