leading@e-speed

We all know that the nature of the world and business is changing dramatically. We are moving at e-speed into an unknown world of the future. And the rate of change is escalating. Competitive pressures demand that product cycle times are shorter resulting in the need for faster decision making. Though technology and market innovation are occurring in increasingly shorter timeframes, human capacity to respond to this rate of change is not developing as fast. We are moving into uncharted territory. The leader has to be able to guide the organization into an unknown future, with few roadmaps. Today, leaders must be able to continuously scan the environment to anticipate what is coming next, stay on top of what the competition is doing, ensure that market opportunities are seen and seized quickly. Simultaneously s/he must also ensure that the organization builds the capacity for the innovation necessary to generate and implement breakthrough thinking. All of this creates unparalleled demands on the attention of a leader. Research indicates that leaders are receiving on average 190 messages a day via phone, email, etc. This combined with the pressures mentioned above, raises the specter of overwhelm from the seeming chaos that we are living in. Many respond using previously proven methods. Trying to work more, harder, longer. However this is a time of discontinuous change, where old methods no longer work. It is not enough for a leader to redivide the allotment of time distribution on the pie chart. Instead, a new type of attention is required. As Gary Hamel says in Leading the Revolution, "Today the competitive terrain is changing so fast as to make experience irrelevant or dangerous- you can't use old maps in new terrain". Alan Kay, who was first at Xerox, and now is an "imaginer" at Disney, is reported to have said, "Perspective is worth 80 IQ points." The way in which we use our attention is critical to successfully navigating through this tumultuous time of continuous change. As we have learned from self-organizing systems, underneath the seeming chaos, there is order if one would just look differently. In addition, attention, as a resource, is not bound, as suggested by the use of a pie chart. Attention can not only be redistributed; it can also be expanded. This is what the leader must now learn how to do: to look differently, to expand their attention and perspectives in ways that enable them to see the patterns underneath the chaos that can lead to greater insight and breakthrough thinking. Leaders need to both transform and master their quality of attention and help their organization quickly convert knowledge to wisdom. Attention As humans we have immense capacity to not only pay attention, but to pay attention to how we are paying attention. It is no longer enough to examine and re-arrange things in the external environment. We now have to examine and re-arrange things in our internal environment. Many recognize that attention is an executive's scarcest resource. A leader has to be able to expand both their capacity for and quality of attention in order to operate skillfully in this environment. Our partners are currently engaged in an action research project with three global companies to understand what influences an individual's abilities in this area. This is leading to the development of relevant practices to expand the capacity and quality of attention of leaders and their organizations. Wisdom Leaders must also learn to move themselves and their organization through the value chain from knowledge to intelligence to wisdom. In doing so they will then release the collective genius of their organization by evoking its innate wisdom. Progression through this value chain can be achieved with the use of a design or a model. Current designs typically provide an incomplete view or 'silos of perspective'. What's needed are designs that provide a whole and integrated set of perspectives that evoke and utilize the knowledge, intelligence and wisdom that is innate in the members of the organization. We work with designs that provide this whole and integrated set of perspectives. These designs have proven valuable for individuals in helping them learn to access their own wisdom and powerful for groups and organizations in releasing the collective genius. As Martin Luther King, a leader with great insight and breakthrough thinking said: " One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change". Mike W Bell has been a senior executive, leadership coach and organizational development consultant for over 30 years. For the last 15 or more of these I have been weaving an old wisdom tradition with the latest science and research to find more whole and balanced approaches to leadership and organization.  My latest eBook, a modern fable entitled Leadership Intelligences in Action can be previewed at http://mutualinspiration.co.uk/leadershipintelligences/liaebook/