Out of control
Two apparently unrelated ideas: control and complex systems
Two topics relevant to leadership have arisen for me in the last week or so: on the one hand, some leaders’ effort (and expectation) to control, and, on the other, the reality that all organisations and teams operate in a context of complex systems.
The priority for the former type of leader is to be and feel in control: that feeling gives them a sense of safety and predictability, especially when they feel challenged by the uncertainty inherent in their lives. Uncertainty in fact characterises the life of all organisations and all leaders – just think of the unpredictable events in the world in the last five years – global pandemic, war in Ukraine, accelerating climate crisis, war in the Middle East and, just a little further back, the financial crisis, all of which have nurtured uncertainty. A sense of being in control also gives some leaders a sense of authority, power and even status.
In fact, success in the quest for control is impossible because all organisations (including families) consist of constantly moving parts in interrelationship with each other. The constant moving of itself creates changes in the interrelationships and therefore the interdependencies: everything is dynamic, and not everything is by any means as predictable as that leader seeking control may wish.
Order and control
Even if it was ever the case that effective and sustainable leadership could be delivered through the leader having everything in order and/or being totally in control, this approach to leadership doesn’t usually lead to engagement or discretionary effort. It may lead to compliance (which will inevitably be temporary and unsustainable) but it doesn’t lead to flourishing, health or vibrancy in an organisation.
For the leader in this context, it’s more likely to lead to anxiety, stress and perhaps obsessiveness, and sometimes a lack of delegation, not to mention a lack of flexibility and of resilience in themselves and their team, a limited and partial view of what’s actually happening, and a culture lacking psychological safety (which would make it feel safe for people to offer new ideas, speak up, admit errors or ask for help). It also engenders vulnerability and fragility in the system because it rests on the assumption that the world is definitive and predictable, that the elements that make up systems are discrete, and that the path to solutions consists of cause-and-effect chains, rather than by many causes and effects at the same time. It ignores the interdependencies that underlie the facts as they may be today.
Systems and constellations
Hard facts alone are not enough to equip the leader for their task, because organisations and teams function in systems and nested systems. And the relationships between the elements (the facts) in those systems are complex. In other words, the relationships between causes and effects can only be perceived in retrospect. Emergence rather than any sense of good practice is a characteristic of decision making in complexity, according to Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework[1]
One way of seeing how systems work is through systemic constellations: when one element moves its position, so do all the others in response (see my blog on systemic complexity). They assume a different configuration, so their relationships to each other change, which in turn will have implications for what needs attention at any given moment, and what kind of attention. Not only that, but also elements or factors in a situation may show up which might otherwise have been forgotten or excluded.
Being part of a constellation as a representative, or observing a constellation, demonstrates powerfully how systems work – and in the process demonstrates how control, or an attempt to control, simply doesn’t work: the system has a life of its own, and will function according to its own principles.
Learning for leaders
This holds valuable lessons for leaders: the way forward, in the times of complexity that we live in, is step by experimental step: run one small experiment at a time, within guardrails, learn from the process as well as the outcome, plan the next experiment on that basis, learn again, and let the way forward evolve and emerge.
[1] A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone, Harvard Business Review November 2007
