I will never forget the management job I hated. Hating it is putting it lightly, but it taught me many lessons. I still look back and have no regrets about moving on to another organization and career field. Yet, I do not regret that job because of the invaluable experience I gained from dealing with people and processes. The main reason I despised that job was the high level of chaos involved in every aspect. I never felt a sense of progress. It was within a manufacturing organization where the priority was to meet production schedules. This meant that there was no time for delays no matter what the scenario. Parts shortages, equipment failures, safety issues, absent employees; it did not matter because my job was to keep things moving. Each day posed brand new challenges I never dealt with before and there were no procedures or experts to conveniently reference. No two days were the same and there was always an emergency (some genuine, some false). I was mostly on my own and simply had to figure things out. Combine the fact the organization was in the process of laying off some management employees; needless to say, it was extremely stressful. Organized chaos at its finest.
Thinking back now, as chaotic and stressful as that job was, progress was still occurring. The business usually met its production goals and everything flowed just as the day before. Complex? Yes. Chaotic? Absolutely! Nonetheless, things just found a way of working out. This is similar to the results of Obolensky’s (2012) game/experiment where roughly a dozen participants are randomly placed throughout a large room. Obolensky then provides instructions by first identifying the boundaries of the area and for participants to pick two people as reference points. When the game begins, players move very slowly within the boundaries to try and achieve an equal distance to each of their reference points. Players can only stop once the equal distance is achieved and the game is over when all players have achieved this distance. I was fairly pessimistic as to whether or not players would be able to overcome such complexity. However, to my surprise, it only took players around 45 seconds to complete the exercise. After the exercise, Obolensky asked, “what would have happened if we had put one of you in charge?” (2012) and everyone laughed because they knew it would have taken much longer to complete. This game revealed a significant relationship between complexity, chaos, and leadership strategy.
Obolensky (2014) suggests “the counter-intuitive and intriguing conclusion is that the more complex the situation and task, the less directive traditional leadership is needed” (p. 101). This statement makes a connection I have recognized throughout the course in how self-leading can occur through wu-wei. According to chaos theory, there are patterns and repetitions associated with complexity. They may not be evident at first, but become clearer after further investigation. For example, the butterfly effect suggests small changes can produce big results, there are universal laws within chaotic systems according to Fiegenbaum’s Delta, and there are fundamental patterns or fractals in leadership theories and scientific development (Obolensky, 2014). A leader must implement certain principles and release some control if they want a self-leading organization. Many leaders within a traditionally structured organization may have an illusion of control where they believe they can control every aspect of the organization. It truly is an illusion and they must shift their way of thinking if they want the organization to succeed. Obolensky (2014) discusses 8 principles that organizations must utilize to become more self-leading and more effective when dealing with complexity. These principles are used to create the Four + Four model. Together, they “form the basis of the organizational level of Complex Adaptive Leadership” (Obolensky, 2014, p. 110). The Four + Four model composed of the 8 principles is Implicit purpose vs. Explicit Objectives, Freedom to act vs. boundaries to confine, People’s skill/will vs. Few simple rules, and Ambiguity/chaos vs. Unambiguous feedback. The 8 principles were each present in Obolensky’s experiment and played a part in the successful accomplishment. The Four + Four model has a Yin/Yang relationship in the way they complement and yet are paradoxical to each other.
The biggest implication the exercise had on strategy is the impact on a leader’s level of control. For example, as an instructor (not a leader), Obolensky communicated some simple rules and the objective participants were trying to accomplish and then he stepped back. If he would have tried to direct each person on exactly how to accomplish the objective, just as with traditional leadership, the exercise would have been frustrating and took incredibly longer. This would have contradicted the eight principles by being too restrictive, decreasing the will of the participants, and increasing chaos. A leader with a traditional approach just needs to let go sometimes because when “one lets go, things tend to sort themselves out often faster and better than if one tried to control” (Obolensky, 2014, p. 118). In doing this, I think it allows an organization to act more like an organism that is fluid in they way it performs. Bonchek (2016) makes a similar comparison of how murmurations or coordinated movements, as seen in flocks of birds or schools of fish, occur without a leader. They follow a few simple rules to become a cohesive group. The same can be applied to an organization when the eight principles are embedded so “leaders have an opportunity to let go without losing control, and to add structure without losing speed” (Bonchek, 2016).
References:
Bonchek, M. (2016, June 2). How leaders can let go without losing control. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/06/how-leaders-can-let-go-without-losing-control
Obolensky, N. (2012). Who needs leaders? Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E
Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: embracing paradox and uncertainty (2nd ed.). Farnham, Surrey, UK: Gower.
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