Extraordinary times demand extraordinary leadership
Opportunities for KM: The best way to execute the above three practices on a sustained basis is through a combination of technology, especially AI and analytics, and human sense-making. However, much has been written about AI being mostly rearview mirror-focused, and with good reason. If we’re talking about improving foresight, we need to consider dusting off the large body of knowledge in the sleeping giant field of anticipatory systems. (See my September 2018 column: “From just-in-time to just-ahead-of-time.”)
Adaptive leadership and the democratic enterprise
Adaptive leadership means exactly that—the ability to quickly and effectively sense, adapt, and respond to change. Or better yet, to quickly sense and adapt in order to lead change. Doing this demands a special set of leadership attributes.
Rudy Garrity, an IIKI seminar speaker, points out three key shifts in leadership focus in his 2012 book, American Learnership: Total Learning, Knowing, and Leading as a Mindful Way-of-Being. The first is a shift from viewing business as an efficient mechanism for selling to predictable markets to a responsive system prepared to satisfy unanticipated customer and stakeholder requests.
The second shifts the focus from maximizing profits through economies of scale that drive down fixed costs to maximizing returns based on economies of scope through reusable, modular product components and processes. (Think “circular economy.”)
Third, strategy moves from being a mostly static plan aimed at satisfying predefined markets through specific products and services to an adaptive business designed to sense earlier and respond faster to unpredictable change.
On the democratic side, people are demanding that their voices be heard. If an enterprise of the future is going to make these shifts a reality, then open, ongoing conversations with all stakeholders are paramount. This means embracing the rapidly emerging notion of the democratic enterprise described by Bill Halal, another IIKI speaker, in his March 9, 2022, Fortune article, “The ‘Democratic Enterprise’ Will Redefine Our Society.”
Opportunities for KM: The emergence of hybrid work environments post-COVID has resulted in the accelerated introduction of technologies and adaptive, democratic enterprise. For example, you can easily record any and all online discourse, both spoken and written. Then you can use a tool such as relative.ai to run a series of deep analytics that measure sentiment and how it changes over time. You can thus spot trends early and adapt.
Use these tools to brutally and honestly reveal who has been “hogging bandwidth” and who has been merely lurking in the background. And be sure to identify and correct biases and hints of favoritism that can end up discouraging, demotivating, and demoralizing people from contributing potentially valuable inputs and insights.
Some final thoughts …
When the old rules no longer apply, you’ll need to create new rules, sometimes on-the-fly. Leading and thriving in extraordinary times need not be frightening. It can actually be uplifting. Be sure to extract weak, early warning signals from the preponderance of available data (science-based). But don’t just sit around waiting for data to magically appear on your dashboard. Learn to anticipate (foresight-driven). Then be ready to adjust, adapt, and even change the rules (adaptive). Not in the old, autocratic style, but in a safer, more open environment (democratic enterprise). Build and strengthen these attributes so that when surprises come your way, you’ll be better prepared to turn them into opportunities.
Think about which of these new leadership styles you’ll personally embrace and develop. Then put them into practice and help co-create a truly extraordinary future.